Supreme Court revealed it's embarking on a 'galling' initiative to gut rights: expert

A legal expert is reacting to the "galling" signs of the "deeply flawed" Supreme Court's push to gut constitutional rights.

During an interview with liberal political commentator David Pakman, journalist and lawyer Katie Phang shared her thoughts on the current state of the Supreme Court. Pakman was particularly curious about Phang's thoughts on its decision to deny Trump's bid to end birthright citizenship.

"Birthright citizenship never should have been taken up by the Supreme Court in the first instance," Phang said. "Their willingness to take up that type of case shows that there's something deeply, deeply flawed about this current iteration of the Supreme Court of the United States."

She also spoke about the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Slaughter, a case dealing with whether the president can fire the heads of independent agencies without cause. Trump won that case, and Phang contrasted it with how Trump lost a case in which the Supreme Court let Lisa Cook remain a Federal Reserve governor for now.

Phang's determination was that the Fed was spared because it's more consequential to markets, but she also cautioned that right-wing groups like the Federalist Society and dark money megadonor Leonard Leo are lining up particular cases that take aim more broadly at civil rights.

"They have been making all these emergency applications to the Supreme Court at numbers that have never been seen before," Phang said. "They know that they have ripe, kind of for-the-picking justices that have been waiting, waiting in the wings for these types of cases to be teed up for them."

Phang warned that the current Supreme Court and conservative and right-wing groups have been "chipping away" at rights, and pointed to the "erosion of civil rights when it comes to voting" and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

"The fact that you have some justices that are like, 'Yeah, maybe we can flirt with this idea now of doing away with an amendment that guarantees birthright citizenship,' that is galling," Phang said. "Yet not surprising considering the kind of downward spiral we've seen coming."