The Ledger #016 - Trump, the Courts, and the Shadow State

Trump’s second-term judicial blitz is more than filling seats — it’s a direct assault on the networks that rule America off the books.

Trump just nominated five new federal judges across Alabama and Mississippi — his twenty-first set of lifetime picks since January. These aren’t ceremonial appointments. They are the foundation of a power struggle between a president reclaiming the judiciary and a “shadow state” that has long bent courts, agencies, and administrative machinery to override elections.

In his first term, Trump made 234 judicial appointments, a shift so deep it rattled the legal establishment. In this term, he is moving faster, nominating conservative litigators like Edmund LaCour, who has fought on abortion, gun rights, and electoral map battles. Unlike 2020, when Senate Democrats used procedural tricks to block him, Trump now faces fewer barriers. With a Republican Senate in place, the blue-slip veto that once killed his picks is dead weight.

This acceleration matters. Judicial picks aren’t about Alabama or Mississippi. They are test runs for whether Trump can penetrate the deeper fortress: the federal court system that the shadow state uses to entrench policies the public never voted for.

The “shadow state” is not a conspiracy. It’s the real architecture: unelected judges, entrenched bureaucrats, and executive appointees who form an informal network that decides what actually becomes law. Congress writes bills. Presidents sign orders. But the shadow state filters them — blocking what threatens its control, advancing what aligns with its agenda, often under the cover of technical rulings, administrative reviews, or procedural “delays.”

What Trump is attempting now is not just a conservative tilt. It’s an existential collision: one man trying to replace the shadow state’s guardians with judges loyal to constitutional order, while the entrenched system fights back with lawfare, media framing, and bureaucratic sabotage.