Conservative Catholics aren't really what we think about as the dominant force within the Christian right.

Right, like that space is occupied by white evangelicals.

But...

There's a longer story here about really we can think of white evangelicals and conservative Catholics coming together as a coalition.

This is nerdcast. I'm Scott Bland.

President Donald Trump is hoping to replace a liberal icon on the Supreme Court,

the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with a conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett,

who at 48 could shape the courts leaning for a generation.

The Catholic Church is very well united on this.

They are so thrilled that Amy was chosen.

They are so thrilled.

And if she's confirmed, she'll be one of six Catholic justices out of nine on the bench.

Five of them appointed by Republicans.

This is essentially a few decades of institution building that's been dismissed or gone under the radar.

That's Joshua Wilson. He's a political science professor at the University of Denver and his focus, the conservative legal movement. You know a lot of the work is just

getting students to understand the you know the judiciary in law it's complex. Now

there's been a lot of conversation around Trump's nominee even before she actually

was the nominee about Catholicism and anti-Catholicism and how her religious views do and

don't impact her decision-making and how that's going to come

up in confirmation hearings and the role in the 2020 elections and on and on.

Today we're going to cut through the political noise and talk about how we got here.

How conservative Catholics through years and decades of network building and movement building

...