"A republic, if you can keep it," Ben Franklin is alleged to have said.

Spoiler alert: We didn't keep it.

And now Trump will finish his makeover of the Supreme Court by replacing the two justices who want to retire (Alito and Thomas) with younger, meaner versions. Who will live forever-- or, at least, it will seem like it.

And they will rubberstamp Project 2025, every step of the way.

There's no silver lining here. This won't "heighten the contradictions."

Frank Luntz in The Hill:

During his first term in the White House, Trump appointed three justices: Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. With their addition to the bench, Roe. v. Wade was overturned in 2022, ending the federal right to abortion and punting it back to the states.

The pollster argued that with a majority in the Senate, Trump will have an easier time implementing some of his policy proposals.

“If he has the Senate, it becomes easier for him to put forward his economic policies and some of it doesn’t even require a vote of Congress, but if you’re looking for that, that tariff policy is more likely than not to come into play,” Luntz said.