Los Angeles Times

Jackie Calmes: Unhappy with the Supreme Court? Your vote for president could make it worse

The U.S. Supreme Court building as seen on Sunday, July 11, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

By now it shouldn't need to be said: When Americans vote for a president, the federal courts are on the ballot as well. Yet too few voters, especially among those in the decisive middle, make their choice with that in mind.

Think about it: The issues that voters do care most about in this election year — immigration, reproductive rights, the economy and government regulation, gun control — increasingly are decided in federal courts reshaped by Donald Trump, including the Supreme Court, because of the paralyzing dysfunction in Congress.

Add to those perennial issues the novel one of 2024: Trump's legal accountability. Here, the judiciary'son the former president's efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat and to squirrel away top-secret documents.

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