First Liberty Institute says it has invested approximately $2 million on TV and digital ads that are targeting the right-leaning audiences at Fox News, Newsmax, and BlazeTV.
Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty, tells AFN the two similar ads warn the audience about a “Supreme Court coup,” the plan by angry and frustrated Democrats to add seats to the nine-member U.S. Supreme Court.
“If we lose our court, we lose our country,” an ad entitled “The Storm” starkly warns the audience.
The second ad, entitled “The Swamp,” describes Democrat plans to add term limits, too. “If they swamp the court, the whole country goes under,” the ad warns.
“The Supreme Court is the same structure, essentially, it's been since the founding of our country,” Shackelford says. “And all of a sudden, because the extreme Left doesn't like a couple of opinions, they want to completely dismantle it.”
Long list of landmark losses
Going back to Donald Trump’s one term, Democrats watched the hated Republican president appoint not just one but three new justices to the nine-member court. Then the Left witnessed the right-leaning court rule on abortion, Second Amendment rights, religious freedom, presidential immunity, and affirmative action.
Among those rulings, the court upheld the Second Amendment right to carry a firearm outside the home in 2022. Back-to-back rulings in 2022 and 2023 defended the free exercise of religion, and the court struck down race-based admissions during its 2023 term, too.
Among the most crushing rulings for Democrats, the Dobbs ruling in 2022 that reversed their revered Roe v. Wade abortion case likely angered them the most.
At the same moment the justices were hearing that landmark case inside their court building, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer angrily warned the justices from the steps of the court they “have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.”
Schumer later said his threat, which named two of the conservative justices by name, was not a threat.
Always clever with their language, Democrats call their plan to add seats “court reform,” even though there is nothing to reform by adding liberal justices to the nine-member court.
Both ads, in fact, similarly point out Democrats are calling their plans “reform” to justify their plans.
Shackelford says court packing has been done in other countries, where the judicial branch was seen as an obstacle to progress by despots.
“The day you do that, your country is over,” he warns. “The rule of law is over.”
