Yesterday’s shameful Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade was telegraphed months ago.

But, during the angst-laden wait for the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe, the court, so radically reshaped during the Donald Trump years, made hay trashing other vital precedents in its stampede to remake the country’s legal priorities in an extreme-right direction. This court will, with the Roe ruling and with a slew of other rulings from the past weeks, go down as arguably the most destructive court in United States history, certainly the most destructive in the post-Civil War era.

The six members who make up the majority on the court must be understood as far right extremists, not “conservatives.” By definition conservatives are not supposed to like sudden, jarring change; they are supposed to put a premium on stability and continuity. This court, by contrast, is a radically activist court, selectively trashing precedents to inject a far right vision of the role of religion […]