Trump’s Supreme Court picks split in ‘train wreck’ transformation: legal analyst
Source: www.rawstory.com ·
Section: politics ·
Bias: Right
· Published: Thu, 08 Oct 2026 02:37:10 GMT
Two of President Donald Trump's Supreme Court appointees are headed in very different directions, and one legal analyst can't stop watching.Legal AF host Michael Popok said in a Wednesday episode of the "Unprecedented" podcast with constitutional scholar Lisa Graves that Justice Neil Gorsuch has moved sharply to the right while Justice Amy Coney Barrett is shaping up as the court's new center as the 2026-2027 term opens.Popok said he once held out hope for Gorsuch, but that has evaporated."I've given up, Gorsuch having moved so far to the right and joined as a troika Alito and Thomas in ways that even shocked me," Popok said. "I had hope for him in the first 5 years or so. That hope is now lost."He offered no such grace to Justice Brett Kavanaugh."Kavanaugh I had no hope for from day one, and that's been proven correct," Popok said.Barrett, on the other hand, has become the justice he watches most closely, which he likened to "a train wreck you can't look away from."Popok argued that justices often "start becoming their own justices" as they get further away from their confirmation fights, pointing to past Republican picks like David Souter and Harry Blackmun who drifted toward the middle."I don't expect her to go that far away from her roots," Popok said. "But I do watch her to see...how much of the center of the court she will end up representing, more than even Roberts."Graves agreed that Barrett is "in some ways appearing as a swing vote," though she cautioned that the court's middle ground has shifted with its majority."To the extent that the right has moved so far over the middle, the middle is pretty far on the right," Graves said.Graves reserved her highest praise for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, calling her "brilliant" and the liberal justice "most willing to just say precisely how dangerous what this majority is doing."She also took aim at Justice Samuel Alito, arguing he has "an agenda" and is "at the peak of his power."The pair went on to make the case for expanding the court, with Popok floating a future in which Jackson leads it as chief justice.
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