Commonwealth Club: Alex Wagner: The Steal

For critics of the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, much attention and ire is focused on the new justices appointed by President Donald Trump. But journalist Alex Wagner says the key president to note is Ronald Reagan, whose 1980 election marked a distinct right turn for American governance. Wagner, host of Crooked Media’s “Runaway Country,” says Reagan’s election marked the return to power of the conservative right after many decades on the fringes: Tax cuts, aggressive foreign policy, and law and order would soon become the cornerstones of Reagan's agenda. But, behind the scenes, a select group of administration officials and ideological allies had their eyes set on something much more valuable: an institution with the power to shape the country's legal, cultural and existential identity, long after any presidential term ended. Wagner says California’s own Ed Meese, an Alameda County district attorney lawyer and aide to Reagan from his days as governor, knew exactly what he had to do to seize the Supreme Court: get as many judges on the bench as possible, and make sure they were as conservative as he was on issues like abortion rights, taxes and criminal justice. Working in parallel to achieve the same goal were a band of fellow true believers: Paul Weyrich, a firebrand organizer; Joe Coors, the beer magnate whose fortune funded many of Weyrich’s efforts; and Robert Bork, the towering legal intellect of the right and an important mentor to a few young law students starting a new organization called The Federalist Society.  By the end of the decade, these men would change the face of the American judiciary forever. Join us as Wagner draws on the work in her new book The Steal to go into the closed-door meetings, public nomination hearings, and back rooms of American political power to reveal the story behind one of the most significant moments in American history, and how it affects us to this day.