Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the left’s sudden flip-flopping on the Supreme Court, and cover more media misses.
Suddenly, the Supreme Court Is Good
The Nation’s Elie Mystal writes that Trump has been “racking up some wins at the Supreme Court and the answer for why is simple: John Roberts is a feckless coward.”
“He’s like a cop in Uvalde, cowering outside waiting for the shooting to stop, instead of doing his job,” Mystal said in a post on X sharing his column about the Court’s “rubber stamp rulings.”
That commentary came on the very same day that the Court unanimously handed the Trump administration a loss in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who was deported without due process last month to a maximum security prison used to house deportees in El Salvador.
The 29-year-old, who illegally entered the U.S. as a teenager, was deported by the Trump administration along with alleged Tren de Aragua gang members from Venezuela who were deported to the notorious Salvadoran prison under the Alien Enemies Act.
Garcia was arrested outside a Home Depot in 2019 and identified as a member of MS-13 by a confidential police informant. He was on track to be deported until a judge granted him a stay of removal based on his claim that he’d be persecuted by gang members if sent back to El Salvador. Under the order, which was still in force at the time Garcia was sent to El Salvador’s prison, he could have been deported to any country besides El Salvador.
The Court ruled 9–0 that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the release of Abrego Garcia. The justices, however, didn’t specify how he should be returned to the U.S. but directed the district judge to “clarify” her order requiring his return.
Mystal, in his column written shortly before the Court’s ruling came down, wrote that Roberts had previously “decided to keep Abrego Garcia in El Salvador until Roberts gets around to fully considering the merits of returning him to this country to defend his legal and constitutional rights.”
“I have no idea when Roberts will get around to that: He is a busy man who works one, sometimes two, weeks per month,” Mystal quipped, before going on to add, “If it can happen to Abrego Garcia, it can literally happen to any of us.”
The order has received bipartisan support. NR’s editors argue in a new editorial that Garcia should be returned from El Salvador. The case “is a most unusual one in that no one denies that the government violated the law in deporting him,” the editors write.
But now that the Court has given a ruling they agree with, several pundits on the left have changed their tune about the high court.
Pod Save America shared a post on X that read “BREAKING: The Supreme Court has unanimously decided that the government must facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. So f*ck you, JD Vance.”
VP Vance defended the deportation, saying, “My comment is that according to the court document you apparently didn’t read he was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here. My further comment is that it’s gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize.”
Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau responded to Vance saying, “Looks like all nine members of the Supreme Court just ruled that you’re dead wrong (I assume they probably read the court document):”
And yet in 2020, Favreau advocated for Court-packing because “Mitch McConnell single-handedly changed the size of the Court in 2016 and has packed it with right-wing extremists over the objections of most Americans. We’ll fight to restore balance to our judiciary system — from the federal courts to the Supreme Court.”
Former NR reporter Isaac Schorr replied to Favreau, asking, “Ok so will you admit the Supreme Court isn’t an illegitimate, Trump-controlled farce and condemn those Democrats who call it that?”
Of course, he did not receive a response.
After the Trump administration argued it has no duty to return Garcia, Democrats who have spent the last several years trying to undermine the credibility of the Court became the judiciary’s staunchest defenders.
While those on both sides of the aisle can agree it is concerning that the Trump administration has thus far defied the Supreme Court’s orders, the administration does so in an environment in which the judiciary is less respected — an environment that Democrats helped create.
Representative Adam Schiff now says, “The Supreme Court has ruled. Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be returned home.”
But just two years ago, Schiff was complaining that the Court was “packed by Mitch McConnell” and that it must be reformed via expansion, term limits, and the adoption of a code of ethics, “otherwise the loss of reproductive rights is just the beginning.”
It’s a similar argument from Representative Don Beyer, who says it is “sick” that Trump has defied an order from the Court, after Beyer previously reintroduced legislation to impose 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, in an attempt to “help restore balance to a heavily politicized court.”
Representative Melanie Stansbury writes on X, “The U.S. Supreme Court UNANIMOUSLY ruled that you broke the law and must return him. You are refusing to comply with the law.”
Just last month she introduced the Judicial Ethics Enforcement Act of 2025, which would create an Office of the Inspector General to “ensure accountability by justices in the Supreme Court of the United States who are failing to police themselves from the influence of political mega donors.”
Headline Fail of the Week
The New York Times is out with a hit piece on the Trump administration centered on an unlikely topic: honeybees.
“The Bees Are Disappearing Again,” a headline from the outlet reads.
“For beekeepers, the problem isn’t just climate change and extreme weather: It’s also DOGE, the trade war and the immigration crackdown,” a subheading adds.
Media Misses
• Taylor Lorenz once again proved she cannot be normal about Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Lorenz says she notched her biggest audience growth ever when she started speaking out about Mangione, a growth that she attributes to people recognizing that she speaks to the anger they feel.
“You’re going to see women especially that feel like, ‘Oh my God,’ right like here’s this man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who’s young, who’s smart. He’s a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.”
• The Detroit Free Press mistakenly used a photo of Michigan’s Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrest alongside a story about GOP Representative John James entering the state’s gubernatorial race. Both men are black.
• The View has done little to show a commitment to sharing opposing viewpoints, according to a new study by media watchdog NewsBusters, which found the show had zero right-leaning guests on to talk politics during a three-month period beginning in January. That’s compared to a whopping 63 left-leaning guests over the same period, ranging from Democratic politicians like Senator Chuck Schumer and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, to liberal celebrities like John Leguizamo and the cast of Queer Eye.