The Nation: How Trump Could Remake the Supreme Court for a Generation
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on February 11, 2025.
Most people were concerned that Texas’s litigious and nefarious attorney general, Ken Paxton, would be given some kind of federal appointment in the new Trump administration. But the real threat coming from the Lone Star State is Andy Oldham, a circuit court judge who was appointed to his post by, yes, Donald Trump.
Oldham began making his bones as Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s right-hand lawman. As deputy solicitor general of Texas, he served as what the Alliance for Justice called the “architect” of Texas’s strategy to block Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) order. He also took strong stances against environmental protections and reproductive rights—and in favor of gun access. He did so well as deputy SG that Abbott elevated him to serve as his chief legal counsel in 2018.
Oldham didn’t stay in that position very long, however. A few weeks in, Trump nominated him to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. There, Oldham has done what Trump expected him to do: He has issued opinions overturning the federal ban on ghost guns and defending Texas’s draconian immigration laws and, in one particularly curious ruling, appeared to support vigilante justice. He has also been an outspoken opponent of what the white wing now calls “DEI.”