“Supreme Court Shocks—Trump’s Power Just Exploded” reads the typically hyperbolic headline from religious-right podcaster Steve Turley. “The Supreme Court's recent rulings are a game-changer for Trump's immigration policies, empowering ICE with aggressive tactics,” reads Turley’s Wednesday morning email newsletter. “With Kavanaugh's backing, ethnicity now plays a role in enforcement—cue the controversy!”
Turley is referencing a ruling by the Supreme Court’s MAGA majority overturning lower court rulings against racial profiling by ICE as it conducted roving raids in Los Angeles. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s
dissent called the majority ruling “unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees.”
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” the dissent says.
In contrast, Turley celebrates that the Court’s MAGA justices are engaging in “a fundamental restructuring of American government power” by “systematically removing judicial constraints on executive authority that have existed for decades.”
It’s not exactly surprising that Turley is jubilant about MAGA justices approving authoritarian actions by Trump. Like many U.S. right-wing activists, Turley has been a big fan of dictatorial leaders like Hungary’s Victor Orbán. In 2020, Turley
cheered Orbán for “crushing” liberalism, taking over arts and cultural institutions, banning “transgenderism,” and threatening to jail journalists.
During the first Trump term in 2019, Turley titled a podcast “WHITES Project to Become Dominant SUPERMAJORITY in U.S.” and declared that multiculturalism is “slowly but surely dissipating.” At that year’s World Congress of Families conference in Italy, Turley crowed that religious traditionalists were having more children than secular people, ensuring that America’s future would be “evangelical, Mormon, and Amish.” Turley
celebrated legislation in Uganda criminalizing homosexuality.
Turley’s “Turley Talks” operation is based in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was
deeply involved in promoting the failed gubernatorial campaign of Christian nationalist state Sen. Doug Mastriano.
