Dear John, Things have gone from bad to worse on the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts. The right-wing faction that let Trump stay on the 2024 presidential ballot and then concocted sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution has issued 24 edicts on its “shadow docket” this year to let him tear our democracy to shreds, “for now.” Roberts and his partisan cohorts on the country’s highest court now stand poised to strike down one of the few remaining protections in the Voting Rights Act in order to help rig the 2026 midterm elections for the GOP. Think it can’t get worse? ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) and far-right groups are scheming to cement a nine-member U.S. Supreme Court into the U.S. Constitution, even though there is no set number. Hyper-partisan maneuvering and millions in special interest spending have stuck us with a captured Court using judicial power as a political weapon to take away our constitutional rights and overturn decades of legal precedents Americans rely on. Now, groups like ALEC and the so-called “Convention of States” (COS) — backed by Koch, big oil, and other billionaires — want to amend the Constitution to specify a nine-member Court and lock in their advantage permanently. What would that mean for our everyday Americans? Their billionaire backers’ goal is to “reverse 115 years of progressivism,” according to the Tea Party operative who helms COS Action. In fact, the endgame is even more drastic: to radically rewrite the U.S. Constitution to create a new Confederacy of sorts to insulate extremism and block progressive reforms to restore and expand the freedoms the Roberts Court has hamstrung. If they get their way, hundreds of civil rights, environmental protection, labor, and consumer protection laws would be nullified, a simple majority of states could veto any federal law they don’t like, and crucial safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare would be put on the chopping block. But the public rarely hears about this threat to our fundamental freedoms — so, if we have any hope of preventing a right-wing Constitutional Convention, the first step is raising the public alarm bells. | 
