Monday morning a friend texted me a story in the New York Times about Steve Calabresi, a renowned constitutional law professor and the co-founder and de-facto leader of the Federalist Society, the Conservative debate club that wields outsize influence and, which Donald Trump has publicly declared, hand-picked the three Supreme Court Judges nominated on his watch. Approximately 90 percent of the federal bench in the Trump era were either in or had been in Fed Soc.

According to the Times, Calabresi has now flip-flopped on the important question of whether or not the Constitution says Trump can be on the ballot for the 2024 election. Last month Calabresi said, in a blog post, Trump is ineligible. (The argument is, basically, that Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment bans officials who then cause insurrections).

But then the professor changed his mind, arguing essentially that the Constitution says there’s a difference between those elected to office and those appointed to office.

He’s not the first legal thinker to change his mind about to how interpret the Constitution. And he’s a bit mystified that the Times bothered to put his thoughts on the front page. “Must have been a very slow news day,” he told me on the phone with a chuckle.

But the Times is right to care what Calabresi thinks. He’s a man of much greater political influence than most people realize. He’s the intellectual backbone and curator of the Supreme Court.

Read on at Vicky Ward Investigates