Martin, Tennessee, is a small, out-of-the-way town that is ultimately best explained to strangers by relaying its travel time from Memphis. (Two hours and some change.) It’s not the sort of place where grand history happens, and yet, in 1971 this sleepy burg was the site of a world-historic upset.
Inside the local university’s gym, the Harlem Globetrotters had come up short. The classic lineup featuring Meadowlark Lemon and Hubert “Geese” Ausbie had tried and failed to beat their perennial foils: the Washington Generals, playing that night as the New Jersey Reds. An audience expecting acrobatic basketball stunts and on-court clowning set to “Sweet Georgia Brown,” the Globetrotters’ signature song, was instead treated to a real, close-fought exhibition. At the end of overtime, the Reds pulled out a one-point victory, their first in more than 2,000 games. Lacking champagne for the occasion, they poured orange soda on owner-coach-player Herm “Red” Klotz’s head.
The upset might not have been what the exhibition’s management wanted, and it definitely wasn’t what the crowd paid to see, but it was a healthy reminder that the Reds’ squad was more than just the butt of an endless string of hardwood jokes. The losingest jersey in sports masked five no-funny-business basketball players who could give superstars a scare. When Abe Saperstein, the Globetrotters’ founder, stormed the Reds locker room in a huff, Klotz warned him, “If you let your guard down, we’ll get you again.” But the Reds/Generals would go on to lose their next 17,000 games, an unbroken streak of ignominy that continues to this day.
I was reminded of the 1971 fluke while reading that the Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a rare loss at the Supreme Court on Monday. Chief Justice John Roberts and Company once again rejected his bid to avoid paying the $5 million in civil damages awarded to the writer E. Jean Carroll, after a jury found the president had sexually abused her at a Manhattan department store and later defamed her.
The president had appealed that verdict, as well as a larger defamation verdict in a separate lawsuit, all the way to the Supreme Court. The high court rejected Trump’s first attempt to overturn the verdict in June.
The news was applauded across Bluesky, the largely liberal social media platform, with posts calling Trump “Senile Satan” and characterizing the decision as a rebuke for a “adjudicated rapist.” (The president has not been convicted of rape; he was found guilty of sexual abuse by a jury in a civil trial.) But for me, the ruling brought to mind Klotz’s orange soda bath and empty boasts.
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Across its 2025-2026 term, the Court has proven that it’s more than willing to let Trump dunk all over them, doing everything short of giving him a boost on the way to the rim. In June, they allowed the president to pull Congress’ athletic shorts down, giving him the power to revoke the temporary protected status that lawmakers had granted to Haitian and Syrian immigrants.
That same month, Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the Court’s liberal justices to ward off an attack on birthright citizenship, allowing liberals to claim victory while the dissenting conservatives laid out a road map for future cases.
But within a week, Roberts and Barrett had returned to their squad, getting caught up in the magic circle that surrounds Trump’s actions as president. In a decision that overturned nearly a century of precedent, the conservative majority granted Trump the ability to fire the heads of independent regulatory agencies in the executive branch, effectively letting the administration bowl over any career officials and oversight that might stand in the way of the president’s radical agenda.
Notably, there was an exception to the Court’s stooge act: They won’t allow Trump to toy with the Federal Reserve. Messing with the nation’s money is off-limits, apparently even for Republicans. You have to wonder how the Generals’ unwelcome win would be remembered if it had hurt the Globetrotters’ gate receipts.
All of this is downstream from the Roberts Court’s most egregious ruling: Trump v. United States. In a 6-3 decision that fell along partisan lines, the Court held that Trump could do almost anything he wanted while in the White House and be largely immune from prosecution. Writing for the majority, Roberts found that so long as Trump could provide the barest of cover, even illegal actions are allowed as part of his presidential duties. The chief justice’s ruling shredded an essential part of the Constitution to confetti, and like Meadowlark Lemon, Roberts loaded it into a bucket for Trump to toss into the air whenever he needs a distraction.
The fiction being peddled by the Court — that this is the legitimate carrying out of the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution — is similar to the one used in basketball arenas across the country when the Globetrotters come to town.
The fiction being peddled by the Court — that this is the legitimate carrying out of the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution — is similar to the one used in basketball arenas across the country when the Globetrotters come to town. The team is free to carry out any number of obvious fouls, double-dribbles and prop-assisted scoring plays so long as the audience maintains the idea that what they are watching is a refereed game of basketball. The Court is free to play-act at being a check on Trump’s power, so long as the majority of Americans consider it a legitimate body. Keeping that ruse going is crucial for the aims of the wider right-wing project. And to do that, the conservative majority can’t just rubber stamp every last thing this president does.
By handing Trump a highly publicized and embarrassing loss on an issue that doesn’t hamper Republicans’ agenda, the conservative justices are continuing their smoke screen by reinforcing the Court’s legitimacy as an impartial body at a time when they’re more captured by partisan politics than ever. Occasionally ruling against the president keeps up the charade.
Trump might have been sent packing this time, but don’t expect his foils on the Court to go on a winning streak. SCOTUS will be back to their regularly scheduled losing soon enough.
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