A recent fundraising letter from the Family Research Council’s legislative action arm praises President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees for powerfully “transforming America” and urges supporters to send money so that FRC Action can gear up for the next Supreme Court confirmation battle. “No one knows for sure,” says the letter from FRC Executive Vice President Jerry Boykin, “but as I write you today, we could be only months—even DAYS—away from the next retirement by a U.S. Supreme Court justice.”
In addition to his role at FRC, Boykin serves on the council for the Trump-supporting “prophetic” network POTUS Shield, whose leaders have repeatedly prayed for God to “remove” additional Supreme Court justices so that Trump can continue to build out the kind of Supreme Court he promised religious right leaders in return for their help putting him in the White House. Boykin has said that God’s “imprint” was on Trump’s election and has described opposition to Trump as “diabolical” and a “spiritual attack.”
“With the help of grassroots Christian conservatives like you and me, President Trump is building judicial ‘fortifications’ around faith, family and freedom at all levels of the federal court system,” Boykin writes in the October fundraising letter.
Boykin declares, “By God’s grace, FRC Action played a critical role in securing confirmations for Justices [Neil] Gorsuch and [Brett] Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.” He promises that getting more Supreme Court justices like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will “disable” what Boykin calls “the Left’s most potent weapon for pushing their anti-Christian, anti-Constitution, anti-family agenda.”
“Our opponents know the next vacancy gives you and me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a clear majority of pro-Constitution, pro-life, pro-religious liberty majority on the highest court in the land—where support for faith, family, and freedom will be restored instead of attacked!” Boykin exclaims.
Boykin’s letter demonstrates the religious right’s decades-long anger at federal courts for upholding church-state separation, equality for LGBTQ people, and access to abortion and other health care:
Activist judges, legislating from the bench, are how the Left transformed America… took over our healthcare system… banned God and prayer from our public schools… forced same-sex marriage on the nation… made abortion-on-demand a ‘right’… and I could go on.
Today, by God’s grace, we have an opportunity to reverse that moral decline, restore religious liberty, and defend faith, family, and freedom in our republic.
But only if God’s people answer the call, united our voices, and boldly prepare for the fight that lies ahead to confirm the next Supreme Court justice.
People For the American Way’s “Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” series of reports and blog posts continues to document the harmful impact that Trump’s judges are already having on the judiciary and on America’s rights, freedoms, and legal protections. And Right Wing Watch has documented that right-wing legal strategists have even larger ambitions for a Trumpified judiciary than those expressed by Boykin; they’re hoping to overturn decades of jurisprudence and return the U.S. to a pre-New Deal, states’ rights-focused Constitution that reverses progressive reforms and guts the ability of the federal government to address issues like education, health care, and poverty.
