ABSTRACT
The populist attack on evidence-based politics in the United States resulted in a public policy too often based on ideology, partisanship and wishful thinking rather than on scientific consensus. Institutions that might have blunted the populist challenge to evidence-based politics in the United States had been captured before the pandemic or were captured during the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of people may have died because President Trump was uninterested in science (or in governing). Most notably, while the Supreme Court initially placed more emphasis than the Trump administration on evidence-based public health concerns, ideology, partisanship and wishful thinking had a major say and increased influence on that tribunal’s voting and religion jurisprudence after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by Justice Amy Comey Barrett.
