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The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court - Paperback | Diverse Reads

The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

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A senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee recounts how anonymous donors seized control of the U.S. Judiciary, including the Supreme Court

“An absolute must-read.” —Congressman Ro Khanna (CA-17)

As the story breaks of a secretive cabal of extreme religious zealots who waged a stealth campaign to ingratiate themselves with “amenable” Supreme Court Justices—who in turn leaked draft decisions to them—the paperback version of The Scheme comes at a time of crisis for the American judiciary.

Following his book Captured on corporate capture of regulatory and government agencies, and his years of experience as a prosecutor, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, called “a powerful voice in defending our American democracy against the relentless, pervasive—and often hidden—power of corporate special interests” by Senator Elizabeth Warren, here turns his attention to the right-wing scheme to capture the United States Supreme Court. Whitehouse chronicles a hidden-money campaign using an armada of front groups, helped by the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, using the Federalist Society as an appointments turnstile, and with the same small handful of right-wing billionaires and corporations enticing the Senate to break rules, norms, and precedents to confirm wildly inappropriate nominees who would advance the anti-government agenda of a small number of corporate oligarchs.

Now, available in an affordable paperback edition with a new preface addressing the Reverend Schenck disclosures about politicking the Justices and Justice Thomas’s recently disclosed conflicts of interest, The Scheme offers what Kirkus Reviews calls “A maddening indictment of a corrupt and corrupted judiciary.”

ISBN-13: 9781620978344

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: New Press, The

Publication Date: 10-10-2023

Pages: 320

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

Sheldon Whitehouse represents Rhode Island in the U.S. Senate. He has served as his state’s United States Attorney and as the state Attorney General, as well as its top business regulator. The author of Captured and The Scheme (both from The New Press), he lives in Newport, Rhode Island. Jennifer Mueller is a writer based in Washington, DC. She has worked on issues related to campaign finance and political participation as an attorney, academic, and consultant for more than twenty years. She is the co-author (with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse) of The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court (The New Press).

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I Behind the Scheme

Chapter 1 Climate Denial, Regulatory Capture, and Covert Ops 13

Chapter 2 Of Courts and Corporations 19

Part II Motive

Chapter 3 Of Social Gains and Election Losses 29

Part III Means

Chapter 4 The Plan: The Powell Memo 39

Chapter 5 Building the Influence Machine: Campaign Finance Cases 44

Part IV Co-conspirators

Chapter 6 Mercenaries, Fringe Groups, and Lobbyists 61

Chapter 7 The Front Group Archipelago 65

Chapter 8 Super PACs, 501(c)s, and Corporate Shareholders 74

Part V Method

Chapter 9 The Federalist Society Turnstile 81

Chapter 10 The Doctrine Factory and Casting Call 93

Chapter 11 The Senate Conveyor Belt 103

Chapter 12 Plaintiffs of Convenience and Friends of the Court 121

Part VI A Susceptible Victim: The Compromised Court

Chapter 13 Ripe for Capture 137

Part VII Payday: The Captured Court

Chapter 14 The 80 (aka The Prize) 155

Chapter 15 Cases Controlling the Political Process 160

Chapter 16 Cases Protecting Corporate Interests 172

Chapter 17 Cases Restricting Civil Rights 181

Chapter 18 Cases Advancing a Far-Right Social Agenda 185

Part VIII Rebuttal

Chapter 19 So-Called Conservative Principles 193

Chapter 20 The Shadow Docket 213

Part IX Closing Argument

Chapter 21 The Scheme 219

Acknowledgments 227

Appendix A "The 80": Decisions by the Roberts Five, 2005-2019 229

Appendix B Amicus Briefs Filed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse 243

Appendix C Whitehouse Brief Appendix: Overlapping Amici Funders in Seila Law 247

Appendix D Wharton Analysis of Corporate Funding Disclosure 249

Notes 251

Index 275