Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch opined that too many laws and regulations in America can impinge on fundamental liberties. It’s a rich statement coming from a man who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, thus allowing states to put women or their doctors in jail for endangering or aborting a fetus.
“Too little law and we’re not safe, and our liberties aren’t protected,” Gorsuch told The Associated Press in an interview about his forthcoming book, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law. “But too much law and you actually impair those same things.”
In the wake of the end of Roe, fourteen states have criminalized abortion, and another 14 states and territories have become “hostile” to abortion, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, meaning lawmakers are moving toward an abortion ban. In Louisiana, lawmakers have made even possessing abortion pills without a valid prescription illegal, so those found with mifepristone and misoprostol who can’t present a prescription could face large fines and jail time. Earlier this year, a caucus representing House Republicans endorsed a national abortion ban — something Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance have previously supported.
But apparently those aren’t the kinds of laws Gorsuch meant when he said: “There were just so many cases that came to me in which I saw ordinary Americans, just everyday, regular people trying to go about their lives, not trying to hurt anybody or do anything wrong and just getting whacked, unexpectedly, by some legal rule they didn’t know about.”
Gorsuch also spoke on Fox News about the proposed Supreme Court reforms put forth by the Biden Administration. “I just say: Be careful,” Gorsuch warned.
He added that an independent judiciary “means that when you’re unpopular, you can get a fair hearing.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris proposed court reform following stories of Justice Clarence Thomas’ undisclosed gifts and vacations funded by right-wing, Nazi-obsessed billionaire Harlan Crow as well as the court’s ruling that Donald Trump and other former presidents have immunity against prosecution for official acts committed while in office — a decision that shocked even the Trump team.
Biden and Harris called for Congress to impose 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and for a binding code of ethics “that require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”
Gorsuch declined to comment on the proposed reforms specifically, citing a desire to stay out of campaign issues during an election cycle.
“I’m not going to get into what is now a political issue during a presidential election year,” he said. “I don’t think that would be helpful.”
Last month, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan publicly supported the idea of an enforceable ethics code.
“It’s a hard thing to do to figure out who exactly should be doing this and what kinds of sanctions would be appropriate for violations of the rules, but I feel as though we, however hard it is, that we could and should try to figure out some mechanism for doing this,” Kagan said.
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.