Subcommittee Ranking Member Johnson’s Opening Statement at Hearing on How Republican Corruption and Extremism Broke the Supreme Court
Washington, D.C. (May 21, 2026)—Today, Rep. Hank Johnson, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet, delivered opening remarks at a subcommittee hearing condemning the decades of right-wing politicization, corruption and dark money that have led Americans to lose trust in the Supreme Court.
Below are Ranking Member Johnson’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at today’s hearing.
WATCH Subcommittee Ranking Member Johnson’s opening statement.
Ranking Member Hank Johnson
Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet
Hearing on “Court Packing: A Threat to the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy”
May 21, 2026
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Last summer, Kash Patel took a taxpayer-funded snorkel tour of Pearl Harbor, one of our nation’s most hallowed grounds while the cost of living for Americans skyrocketed. The Trump Administration just created a taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion relief fund for insurrectionists in exchange for his dropping a phony $10 billion personal lawsuit while millions of Americans lose their health insurance. President Trump is blocking clean energy projects for his fossil fuel campaign donors while the rest of us pay more at the pump every day.
What do these facts have to do with this hearing? On its face, the daily demonstrations of the incompetence and corruption of the Trump Administration have little to do with the Supreme Court. But if you look closer, these stories mirror how the far right has created a corrupt Supreme Court that too often works for corporations and oligarchs at the expense of the American people.
For decades, MAGA Republicans have systematically chipped away at the impartiality of our third branch. They have already delegitimized our judiciary, yet they now stand before the American people pretending to be guardians of judicial integrity.
Today’s blatant attempt to rewrite history would be laughable if the consequences were not so dangerous for our democracy.
But history matters. The American people deserve to understand how we got to this moment. And to understand how we got here, we must follow both the money and the machinery behind the modern conservative legal movement.
The Roberts Court is the culmination of a plot that began 50 years ago. In the early seventies, soon-to-be Justice Powell wrote, “the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change” to reassert corporate power over the needs of the individual.
This “Powell Memo” set-off a decades-long crusade by Republicans to concentrate power in the hands of the few, at the expense of the many. Wealthy donors and corporate interests spent billions of dollars to reshape the judiciary in their image.
Nowhere is the success of this decades-long effort more visible than at the Supreme Court, where a carefully appointed conservative supermajority now delivers the conservative outcomes this movement spent billions of dollars to achieve. And achieve they did.
In the last several years, the Roberts Court opened the floodgates to unlimited dark money in our political system, empowering billionaires and oligarchs like Elon Musk, the Koch brothers, Leonard Leo, Harlan Crow, and other powerful special interests to reshape the court and drown out the voices of ordinary Americans.
This Court has decimated reproductive freedoms that generations of women fought to secure, stripping away rights that millions of Americans relied on for nearly half a century.
It has granted Trump vast immunity, placing him virtually above the law.
And now, the Court has put the nail in the coffin of the Voting Rights Act, dismantling protections that generations of Americans fought, marched, and died for.
Abraham Lincoln once said this government cannot endure half slave and half free. Yet that seems to be the vision for America that Chief Justice Roberts and the conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court envision; where some enjoy easy access to the ballot box, while others are forced to overcome legal barriers designed to make our voices quieter.
Our nation is now in Jim Crow 2.0. We are a nation where the right to vote can once again be diluted, restricted, or simply ignored. And where the voices of rich and powerful carry more weight than the voice of ordinary Americans. But particularly, Americans who look like me.
Our 250-year experiment in self-governance can only succeed if Americans decide that the clock has run out on the far right’s attempt to overturn our democracy. So, we can either sit back as our Supreme Court continues to act without any restraint or checks and balances. Or we can do something about it.
The American people deserve accountability for the damage that has been done. The American people deserve a judiciary that serves our democracy, not a narrow ideological agenda that only benefits the rich and powerful.
Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. I am looking forward to a discussion about how to ensure that our democracy serves the many – not just the wealthy and well-connected few.
I yield back the balance of my time.
###