Rightwing cases built on made-up stories keep making it to the US supreme court | Moira Donegan

Again and again, the conservative movement promotes cases based on inaccuracies, falsehoods and outright deceptions

The first of many lies at the center of Moore v United States, the major tax case that the supreme court decided on Thursday, was that the issue at stake was an existing tax law.

Conservative movement lawyers had taken up the cause of Charles and Kathleen Moore, a Washington state couple who own a substantial stake in an India-based company that manufactures farm equipment. The Moores were given a one-time, $15,000 tax bill for their stake in the company under 2017's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the law colloquially known as the Trump tax cut. To pay for the steep cuts to federal revenue, that bill included a tax on foreign assets held by American shareholders - hence the bill that the Moores received from the IRS.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist