Slate [read 5 articles free before paywalled] – “If you’re interested in understanding more about what the high court is, how it functions, and why it seems to have recently lurched to the right, start here…The 5 Circuit Court of Appeals covers Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Trump appointed six judges to this bench, some of whom are among “the most extreme jurists in the country,” as Stern explained. Many of the Supreme Court’s most consequential cases of this term came from the 5th Circuit, including the gun control case U.S. v. Rahimi. There have been moments where even the Supreme Court’s conservative justices have rebuked the 5th Circuit. Just this year, Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the court’s most extreme conservatives, penned a majority opinion that completely rejected a ruling by the 5^th Circuit that declared the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unconstitutional. And this year, the Supreme Court also rejected FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a case sent up from the 5th Circuit that sought to eliminate access to the abortion drug mifepristone…”