RUSH: Josh Hawley, after the Supreme Court decisions, proclaimed that this now is the end of the conservative judicial movement, that there isn’t one. Meaning, if the best and the brightest conservative judges can side with the liberals on the Supreme Court on something nobody ever thought any sensible conservative would do, then what is the point of having a conservative judicial movement?

It’s the left that has a liberal judicial movement. It is the left that finds judges that never waver, that never do anything but what they are to do: They are to rule in favor of liberalism in every case. They are to rule in favor of liberal people in every case, liberal policy. They are there to write law from the bench. That’s their mission; that’s what they do.

We do not, and yet we’re the ones demonized! We’re the ones lied about. (sniveling impression) “This is vicious. There’s this mean-spirited, conservative judicial movement out there. It’s led by the Federalist Society. They’re a bunch of Nazis,” and so forth. All these insults are coming around. There is no… Hawley is right. There is no judicial conservative movement. There can’t be.

But Hawley also said what that proves is legislation doesn’t happen in the Senate anymore, and it doesn’t happen in the House. Now, let’s take a look at this one case, the Gorsuch case, where textualism was used to go ahead and look at the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and say, “Yep! It included transgenders, because we think it should.” But it didn’t!

Transgenders, transgenderism was nothing when that law was written. If you want the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include transgenders, then what you have to do is go back and write legislation for it. They didn’t want to do it! The Republicans didn’t want to do it because they don’t want to get grief from conservative donors. Pelosi didn’t want to do it because she’d just as soon Republican turncoats on the court do it for her.

She wins a twofer here. They get transgenderism in the Civil Rights Act plus they get conservative judges betraying the conservative movement. That’s a win-win for her or any of the other Democrats out there that look at matters this way, count wins and losses this way. But the vast majority… That’s why this police reform bill that the Senate is now debating…

I actually did a double take because you just don’t see actual legislation happening on Capitol Hill very much. They farm everything out. Base closures, unelected regulators writing regulation nobody ever sees until they run up against them, judges making law from the bench. Except our judges don’t. They help liberals make law from the bench. So it’s a… (interruption)

Well, no, what it does is it’s setting Hawley up well for a presidential run in 2024. I think you’ve got two Republicans right now that… We’re just talking about 2024 right now. We’re assuming that Trump wins. We’re assuming Trump’s gonna win in November. So the next presidential race where there will be an open ticket will be 2024.

Right now, Josh Hawley is making a move on it, and so is Tom Cotton, and they are positioning themselves as heirs of the Trump movement, heirs of a populist movement. They are not selling some return to conservative, small government — you know, whatever the old conservative arguments were: Smaller, less spending, smaller government.

They’re setting themselves up to inherit the Trump agenda, which is populism, Make America Great Again. That’s okay. I mean, I’m fine with that. I think it’s cool for them to already be thinking about this. I like both of their reactions to what is going on.