The Absurd GOP

[Angrboda]

On Wednesday, one day after a federal court struck down Texas’ new Republican gerrymander, Judge Jerry Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee, published his belated dissent from the 2–1 decision. It is one of the most unhinged opinions ever published by an American jurist. Smith’s 104-page screed, released a day after the majority opinion, is a rancid gumbo of feverish conspiracy theories and character assassination: He invokes the liberal Jewish philanthropist George Soros no fewer than 17 times, deriding the plaintiff’s expert witness as a “Soros operative” who draws millions from “his Soros piggybank.” He accuses Soros and his son Alex of having “their hands all over” the case, darkly warning that the plaintiffs’ lawyers were doing the bidding of their “Soros connections” and the “Democrat Party.” He impugns the integrity of his own colleagues on the bench, including a Donald Trump appointee who sided against him, charging them with “disingenuously false” claims to serve “Soros a victory” on “a silver platter.”

This Dissent From a Reagan Judge Is One of the Most Unhinged Judicial Opinions in U.S. History