For the past few weeks, Easy A has celebrated women, past and present, who organize for the greater good in their communities. These women have shown us how we can all do our part to change the world.

This week, we’re excited to announce that Red Wine & Blue has a brand new place for us all to organize like these women and get sh*t done — the Red Wine & Blue App!

Our new app is a place just for our community, free from social media algorithms and rich tech bros who have been increasingly stacked against us. It’s a safe and moderated space that combines community groups (just like Facebook groups) with all our resources, conveniently in one place.

In the app, you can connect with people in your state, share ideas with other RWB members all over the country, and tap into resources like our 160 Ways to Change the World guide. You can also register for our events, get our voting guides, read Easy A, and more. It’s truly everything Red Wine & Blue has to offer — right in your pocket!

So earn your Easy A this week by joining the RWB App! It’s free and all you need to get started is your name and email address. Take a few minutes and download it right now!

You can learn more about the app on our website. We look forward to seeing you there!

The Supreme Court works in some ways like any other court of law, like divorce court or criminal court, where two people (or groups) face off against each other, each hoping for justice. But the Supreme Court only rules on a few of the most special or high-stakes cases. Sometimes they hear cases that involve the government directly, like lawsuits between states or cases that involve U.S. ambassadors.

Why do nine people have the power to make these incredibly important decisions? And why are some people worried about whether current Supreme Court justices are making decisions that are bad for the American people?

The Noble Nine

Justices on the Supreme Court are appointed by the President and approved by Congress. It’s a lifetime position, meaning that once they’re approved, they can serve until they die, they decide to retire, or they’re impeached (which has only happened once, in 1805). The Court is currently made up of nine Justices: Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

They’re basically the legal experts on what’s constitutional in America. They have what’s called “plenary authority,” which just means they’re allowed to hear or not hear whatever cases they want. They get about 10,000 requests each year and end up ruling on about 80 cases.

But the Court didn’t always have nine Justices. It started as six, back when it was originally established by the very first Congress in 1789. The Constitution allows Congress to decide how to organize it, and in 1869 they raised the number of Justices to nine. It remains that way to this day.

Although technically anyone can be nominated by the President, Justices are almost always lawyers, judges, or other experts in the legal system. But it’s also been a long road to equality for Justices who are women or people of color. Thurgood Marshall became our nation’s first Black Supreme Court justice in 1967, and Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court in 1981.

There have only ever been six total women on the Supreme Court throughout our history, and four are currently on the Court right now: Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. And other than Thurgood Marshall, there’s only been one other Black man to be a Supreme Court Justice: Clarence Thomas.

Are Supreme Court Justices Really Impartial?

The Justices are supposed to be impartial, voting according to their legal experience and their interpretation of the Constitution, but since they’re appointed by Presidents, they usually end up voting along party lines – Democrat or Republican.

Ideologically, our current Court leans conservative, with six Justices appointed by Republican Presidents and three appointed by Democrats. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are considered the most conservative, ruling according to values held by Republicans – and, lately, Donald Trump specifically. The Court almost certainly wouldn’t have overturned Roe v. Wade, for example, if we had a more even balance of liberal and conservative Justices.

And last year, in Trump v. The United States, they ruled that presidents are immune from criminal charges for any “official acts” they made while in office.

This isn’t to say that every single Supreme Court ruling is decided along political lines. Some end up splitting along other lines, and some even end up unanimous. But you can see why people are worried that the Supreme Court may not be as impartial and apolitical as they claim to be.

And there’s more evidence too. In 2021, Justice Alito flew an upside-down American flag in front of his house, a symbol used by extremists who wouldn’t accept that President Biden won the 2020 election. It was carried by lots of people who stormed the capitol on January 6th. And yet, despite this obvious political statement, Justice Alito refused to recuse himself from cases that involved Trump, including cases about January 6th itself. Recuse just means removing yourself from a case because you can’t be impartial. Despite being clearly biased, Alito ruled that a January 6th rioter couldn’t be charged with obstruction of justice and that Trump was immune from criminal charges.

There are concerns about the ethics of Justice Clarence Thomas too. A Senate investigation showed that he’s accepted gifts and special privileges from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, like private jet trips, private school tuition for a relative, and luxurious vacations.

Who Holds the Supreme Court Accountable?

In 1969, the United States Judicial Conference issued a code of ethics which forbids all federal judges from accepting fees, gifts, or compensation of any kind for all bench activities, except for the Supreme Court. So we shouldn’t be surprised that we have a Justice accepting millions of dollars’ worth of gifts from a Republican mega-donor, right as he’s ruling on cases like Roe v. Wade and Trump v. The United States. As far as historians can tell, the extent and frequency of these gifts has never happened before in the modern history of the Supreme Court.

Some Important Supreme Court Rulings from the Last Term

United States v. Skrmetti. The Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care can remain in place, which means that similar bans in other states are likely to stay in place too.

United States v. Texas. The Supreme Court ruled that federal courts don’t have authority to issue nationwide decrees like the one blocking Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. They said that courts can only rule on behalf of people in the district it serves.

Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. The Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid patients can’t sue over being denied access to specific providers, even though the Medicaid Act specifically says that patients are free to choose their provider.

What Congress — and you — can decide!

Congress has the power to change the way that the Supreme Court works. It can pass legislation to define a code of ethics, to change the number of Justices there are, and even whether they should have lifetime appointments. That means you have the power to influence the Supreme Court just by voting and by talking to the people in your life about who they vote for. We deserve to know if these decisions are being inspired by a deep understanding of the Constitution… or a million-dollar vacation to Bali.

So why are people drawn to conspiracy theories? What real harm do they cause? And how can we help a loved one come back to reality?

Conspiracy Theories Are Not New

Humans are natural problem-solvers. It’s how we built the internet, and the Eiffel Tower, and even the concept of democracy. We observe the complicated world around us, synthesize it, and draw conclusions that help us survive and thrive. It helps us feel a sense of order and control in a world that can feel chaotic and overwhelming.

In times of turmoil and upheaval, it can be disorienting not to know why things are going wrong. When people are feeling afraid, like the world is out of control, we turn to simple explanations that help us make sense of things. Even a scary conspiracy theory, like the idea that a powerful shadowy cabal is controlling everything behind the scenes, gives the believer a sense of order.

That’s why conspiracy theories have been around since the beginning of history. Archeologists have found conspiracy theories scratched into walls in ancient Roman ruins – people posited that Emperor Nero started the great fire of Rome, and in turn Nero came up with a theory that the Christians started the fire. And conspiracy theories about witches in the 17th century arose in a time of social unrest and a smallpox epidemic, leading to the tragic executions of more than a dozen women and girls during the Salem Witch Trials.

Conspiracy Theories in the Modern Age

Unfortunately, unfounded and false conspiracy theories are still causing real harm. Fears over vaccines, and the idea that the government is somehow secretly manipulating us with them, have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. The National Library of Medicine estimates that at least 230,000 deaths from Covid-19 could’ve been prevented with vaccinations just from 2021 to 2022 alone. And we’re currently in the midst of a measles outbreak after eliminating the disease in the US in the year 2000. The disease has seen a resurgence as vaccination rates have dropped due to disinformation.

Likewise, we have almost universal agreement among scientists that climate change is real, and yet conspiracies about it continue to be pushed by members of the Trump Administration. Project 2025, the far-right extremist playbook that’s been the road map for this administration, recommended that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration be dismantled for driving what it called the “climate change alarm industry.” (We call it science!)

It’s particularly troubling that many of our political leaders right now are encouraging these types of conspiracy theories, and it’s not just about climate change. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr., is a well-known conspiracy theorist. He’s pushed easily-debunked theories about chemtrails, vaccines, and even denying the existence of AIDS.

Are People Who Believe Conspiracy Theories Really Happier?

Conspiracy beliefs are a response to anxiety and uncertainty, but they don’t actually make people feel better. In fact, research in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology shows that conspiracy theories increase feelings of powerlessness, fear, and anti-social behavior. And that’s not to mention all the real-world consequences we’ve mentioned already.

So if someone you love is in the grips of a conspiracy theory (or several), how do you help them?

It’s tempting to think that we can argue people into seeing the light. If we just show them the facts, if we just prove it to them, surely they’ll stop believing. Unfortunately, exactly the opposite is true. The more you argue with someone, the more they dig in their heels. If you offer Exhibit A to show that of course the Earth is round, we’ve measured it in a thousand different ways, they’ll say, “That’s what they want you to think.” If you show them a picture of Earth from space, they’ll tell you that those pictures are fake. Even just repeating the conspiracy theory in the first place further cements it into people’s minds.

Instead, it’s better to ask questions that might cause them to doubt the conspiracy theory. It’s also important to affirm the beliefs you do have in common. Many conspiracy theories, as strange as they may seem, center values that most of us share, like protecting children. And as anti-social as many of these conspiracy groups seem, they’re actually creating a close-knit community within the group that believes. We all need community, and we’re in a moment of increased isolation, so alienating loved ones who believe in conspiracy theories will only drive them further into the comfort of their conspiracy community.

If we hold onto our values, pay attention to experts, value evidence, and treat each other with respect and compassion, we can all make it through this moment of turmoil . . . together.

But in the past, the government had guardrails to protect our information. Only certain people, after thorough background checks, could access our data. And even then, it was on a “need to know” basis. Someone from the student loan office couldn’t see your Medicare application just because they were curious. And every time someone did access your data, it was carefully recorded.

Privacy concerns used to be nonpartisan and honestly, they still should be! Back when the Privacy Act was passed in the 1970s, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater worried about the possibility that “every detail of our personal lives can be assembled instantly for use by a single bureaucrat or institution.” And Republican Senator Charles Percy said, “I hope that we never see the day when a bureaucrat in Washington can use his organization’s computer facilities to assemble a complete dossier of all known information about an individual.”

DOGE Got Unprecedented Access to our Data

Fast-forward to today. There have been serious concerns about Elon Musk’s DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, and how their employees are using our information.

What’s different about DOGE is that they got unprecedented access to all of our federal data, across departments and agencies. And because it was never an official government department, DOGE employees didn’t have to go through the same background checks and screenings.

DOGE gained access to payment systems that process trillions of dollars in government transactions – and at least one employee had edit access as well, meaning that they could both see and change the data. In April, a whistleblower reported that DOGE employees were making copies of sensitive information. Elon Musk may have even gotten access to information about employees at his own companies, Tesla and SpaceX.

Palantir and Peter Thiel

Meanwhile, Peter Thiel, another billionaire and the founder of the tech company Palantir, has been working to build a massive, government-run database of Americans… a one-stop shop with all of our information, from tax returns to medical records, all in the same place. You know, exactly the thing the government has always known not to do. In fact, there’s a law about it – the 1974 Privacy Act.

In September, Palantir is scheduled to release a new system called ImmigrationOS which tracks people based on geolocation devices and biometric data like voice patterns and facial recognition. Given the security concerns about how DOGE mishandled our data, why would we believe that Palantir would do any better?

Data Privacy Has Bipartisan Support

Even in the past few years, data privacy has been an issue that transcends political parties. Bipartisan bills were introduced in 2022 and 2024 related to data privacy, but neither bill made it to a vote in the House of Representatives. With the majority of Americans in agreement, we can push for stronger data protections.

In the meantime, we can also protect ourselves online. Check out these resources from our event, Cybersecurity 101: Protecting Yourself Online to learn how.