The Most Interesting Justice on the Supreme Court Is Also the Loneliest
By Stephen I. Vladeck – July 8, 2024
Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
When this Supreme Court term began last October, one of the more intriguing predictions from commentators was that Justice Amy Coney Barrett — entering her third full term on the court — would come out of her shell and emerge as the court’s new swing justice, casting the decisive vote in the most divisive cases.
The commentators got half of that right: There’s little doubt, in looking at the oral arguments the court has conducted and the decisions it has handed down over the past nine months, that Justice Barrett has found her voice — and has easily become the most interesting justice. Her questions at argument are penetrating; the analysis in her written opinions spares no one in its detail.
The second part of that prediction didn’t come true, though. Justice Barrett did side with some or all of the three Democratic appointees in several of the term’s most important cases — but her fellow conservatives seldom joined her. Indeed, while Justice Barrett was establishing her principled independence in the middle of the court, the other five Republican appointees moved only further to the right.
When the majority in the Colorado ballot disqualification case went further than necessary, and the Democratic appointees called them out for doing so, there was Justice Barrett — writing separately to chastise all of her colleagues for failing to send a unified message to the country. When Justice Clarence Thomas took too wooden an approach to assessing historical practice and tradition in a trademark case, there was Justice Barrett — pushing back in an important concurrence that was joined by Justice Elena Kagan and in part by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
When the Fifth Circuit allowed anti-vaccine activists and red states to bring an unprecedented lawsuit against the Biden administration built on the dubious claim that the government had coerced social-media networks into removing vaccine-related disinformation and misinformation, there was Justice Barrett — writing the majority opinion holding that the plaintiffs hadn’t come close to establishing that they had been harmed by the alleged government action and that the Fifth Circuit clearly erred in concluding to the contrary. And when the court sidestepped a highly charged dispute over emergency abortions in Idaho, it was Justice Barrett who wrote for the court’s “middle” in explaining why.
Even on Monday, when Justice Barrett otherwise joined the five other Republican appointees in holding that presidents enjoy at least some immunity from criminal prosecution, she went out of her way to push back against the majority’s most controversial holding — that protected conduct can’t even be used as evidence in criminal prosecutions against former chief executives.
Her partial concurrence offered a not-so-subtle road map to Judge Tanya Chutkan, presiding over the Jan. 6 prosecution, for how she might apply the majority’s new framework. Just as in her dissenting opinion in the Fischer v. United States case — in which the other Republican appointees, joined by Justice Jackson, voted to narrow a criminal obstruction statute used to prosecute Jan. 6 rioters — Justice Barrett was cleareyed about the threat to democracy Jan. 6 posed and the importance of holding to account those who were responsible for it.
This pattern has repeated in the more opaque context of emergency applications. In March, when the court briefly allowed Texas’ new state-level deportation regime to go into effect, it was a not-so-subtle nudge from Justice Barrett, in a concurring opinion, that prompted the Fifth Circuit to quickly put it back on hold (where it remains).
And in January, it was Justice Barrett who provided the fifth vote (joined by the three Democratic appointees and Chief Justice John Roberts) to allow the Biden administration to remove razor wire that Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas had placed along the U.S.-Mexico border — defusing what had been a brewing conflict between state and federal authorities in and around the town of Eagle Pass.
The justice reflected in all of these cases is someone who comes across in her writings as principled, nuanced and fair-minded — regardless of the bottom line that her votes end up supporting. Many of us may not agree with the principles reflected in her writings (like her majority opinion in a case holding that U.S. citizens don’t have a liberty interest in the immigration status of their noncitizen spouses). What cannot be doubted is that they are principles, and that, to an extent greater than many of her colleagues, Justice Barrett does her best to hew to them.
The problem that the court’s rulings at the end of the term drove home is that, as willing as Justice Barrett is to follow her principles even when they lead her away from Republican political preferences, the same can’t always be said of the other two justices in the court’s middle — Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The chief justice wrote the majority opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in which the court overruled its 40-year-old decision in Chevron — and the principle of deference to administrative agencies for which it stood. The chief justice wrote the majority opinion in Fischer, which narrowed the criminal obstruction statute so prevalent in Jan. 6 cases in blatant defiance of the principles of textualism to which the conservative justices are supposedly committed. And the chief justice wrote the court’s sweeping majority opinion in the Trump immunity case.
And it is the split between the five other Republican appointees and Justice Barrett in that last case that is most revealing. Whereas the majority mostly left application of its new and not exactly clear approach to presidential immunity to be hashed out by the lower courts, Justice Barrett “would have answered it now.” Whereas the majority went out of its way to punt on whether the charges against Mr. Trump can go forward, Justice Barrett was emphatic that, for at least some of the charges, she saw “no plausible argument for barring prosecution of that alleged conduct.”
And whereas the majority went out of its way to hold that immunized presidential conduct couldn’t even be used as evidence to try charges for which even the majority agrees there is no immunity, Justice Barrett criticized the majority and endorsed Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, noting that “the Constitution does not require blinding juries to the circumstances surrounding conduct for which presidents can be held liable.”
As with her dissent in the Jan. 6 obstruction ruling, Justice Barrett seems willing to accept that the court lives in the real world — and that the rules it hands down should be designed to actually work on the ground and to persuade those reading them that the court understands the limits on its proper role in our constitutional system.
In the end, this contrast is perhaps one of the defining — and most chilling — takeaways from the Supreme Court’s term: Justice Barrett came out of her shell. And the other Republican appointees retreated into theirs.
Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at Georgetown, writes the One First weekly Supreme Court newsletter and is the author of “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.”
US heat wave turns deadly as high temperatures continue to scorch the West
Robert Shackelford, Sydney Bishop, Rachel Ramirez, Angela Dewan, Raja Razek and Jamiel Lynch – July 8, 2024
(CNN) — More than 50 million people across the US are under heat alerts amid a brutal heat wave that has shattered records and caused multiple deaths across the West.
California and Nevada are expected to see more daily record high temperatures in the week ahead. By Thursday, the heat in the Pacific Northwest will shift to the Intermountain West and northern High Plains, the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center cautions.
In Oregon, four people died of suspected heat-related illnesses over the weekend, according to a Monday news release from Multnomah County. Three of the four were residents of Multnomah County, while the other individual was transported from outside the county and later died at a Portland hospital.
These deaths happened after the county declared a state of emergency Friday due to “dangerously hot temperatures,” but the news release noted “further tests and investigation will determine whether the deaths are officially hot-weather-related. In some cases, the deaths may be found to have had other causes.”
Dozens of locations in the West and Pacific Northwest tied or broke previous heat records in recent days, and more than 165 daily high temperature records could be tied or broken this week.
A motorcyclist died Saturday in California’s Death Valley from heat exposure, the Death Valley National Park said in a news release. The high temperature that day was 128 degrees Fahrenheit, according to preliminary data.
Six motorcyclists were near Badwater Basin when they became sick due to the heat, the release said. In addition to the cyclist who died, one was transported to a hospital in Las Vegas and the other four were treated on scene.
Rescue efforts were hampered due to the extreme heat at the park, as emergency medical flight helicopters cannot fly safely when it is over 120 degrees, the release noted.
“Heat illness and injury are cumulative and can build over the course of a day or days,” the release said. “Besides not being able to cool down while riding due to high ambient air temperatures, experiencing Death Valley by motorcycle when it is this hot is further challenged by the necessary heavy safety gear worn to reduce injuries during an accident.”
Heat is the deadliest weather threat in the United States, killing more than twice as many people each year on average than hurricanes and tornadoes combined.
Record-high heat during a holiday weekend
Death Valley was among a slew of places where daily temperature records were broken this Fourth of July weekend.
On Saturday, Death Valley reached 128 degrees, breaking the daily record of 127 set on July 6, 2007. An excessive heat warning is in effect until late Wednesday evening for the area where temperatures are expected to be between 122 to 129 degrees.
Areas across the West are bracing for multiple days of triple-digit temperatures this week. – Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images
Many areas in Northern California surpassed 110 degrees Sunday, while Phoenix, Arizona, set a new daily record for the warmest low temperature: it never got below 92 degrees.
Las Vegas also made history, reaching a record high of 120 degrees on Sunday.
Indiana resident Mark Kavacinski told CNN affiliate KVVU his family almost canceled their vacation to Las Vegas because of the intense heat.
“We knew it was going to be hot. It’s July, right? Did we know it was going to be this hot? No,” Kavacinski said. “But we decided that heat’s heat. We can handle it.”
Las Vegas hit an all-time high temperature record on Sunday, with 120 degrees. – John Locher/AP
Las Vegas temperatures have exceeded 110 degrees each day since Wednesday and are forecast to do so every day until at least next Sunday, which would mark a stretch of prolonged extreme heat longer than any ever experienced in the city, with 11 days or more above 110 degrees.
Sunday’s heat was enough to melt crayons, the weather service office in Las Vegas demonstrated on X.
Further north, Oregon’s weekend scorcher broke many records. On Sunday, Salem hit 103 degrees, just over the city’s 100-degree record from 1945, according to the National Weather Service office in Portland. Eugene also experienced temperatures of 103, breaking the 1945 record of 98 degrees.
But some Oregonians told CNN affiliate KATU Sunday they would not miss the Portland Timbers soccer game, regardless of the heat.
“Yeah, I know it’s hot! It’s 100, it’s crazy. but the game here is greater,” Tim Hueng of Tigard, Oregon told KATU as he waited in line to enter Providence Park.
Officials are urging people to take precautions in the face of dangerously high temperatures. – Zoe Meyers/Reuters
Even mountain destinations couldn’t beat the heat.
What is Project 2025? The conservative road map is raising a lot of eyebrows, on both sides of the aisle.
Katie Balevic – July 6, 2024
Project 2025 is a road map for the next Republican president.
The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, authored the plan.
It calls for eliminating the Education Department, among some other surprising things.
Well before the disastrous presidential debate during which President Joe Biden may have handed the keys to the White House back to former President Donald Trump, conservative thinkers were assembling a game plan.
In January 2023, The Heritage Foundation began promoting Project 2025, a 922-page “playbook” assembled with input from dozens of other conservative organizations to guide the next Republican administration.
“The time is short, and conservatives need a plan,” reads the website for the right-wing presidential transition plan. “The project will create a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies.”
Some of Project 2025’s priorities include:
Slashing employment in the federal government and muzzling “woke propaganda at every level of government”
Eliminating the Department of Education and its “woke-dominated system of public schools”
Prohibiting the FBI from fighting misinformation and disinformation
Ending the “war on fossil fuels” and allowing further development on Native American lands
Ending active FBI investigations that are “contrary to the national interest”
The plan is so extreme that even Trump has distanced himself from it, writing on Truth Social this week that he knows “nothing about Project 2025.”
“I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them,” Trump wrote.
A spokesperson from Project 2025 told Business Insider that the playbook “does not speak for any candidate or campaign.”
“We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president. But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement,” the spokesperson said.
Heritage faces blowback after ‘bloodless’ revolution comment
Emily Brooks – July 6,2024
The Heritage Foundation and its president, Kevin Roberts, are facing blowback in the wake of his comment about an ongoing second American revolution that will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
President Biden’s campaign jumped on the comment, with a spokesperson saying it shows that former President Trump’s allies are “dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.” Commentators ranging from former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) to MSNBC hosts and guests reacted with alarm.
And in the wake of the comment, though without mentioning it, Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 — an initiative led by the conservative think tank that aims to provide a conservative policy blueprint for the next Republican administration and that has also ignited political firestorms.
Heritage and Roberts, though, are standing by the comment, dismissing the criticism as being in bad faith.
“Americans in 2024 are in the process of carrying out the Second American Revolution to take power back from the elites and despotic bureaucrats. These patriots are committed to peaceful revolution at the ballot box,” Robers said Wednesday in a post on the social platform X, continuing to describe the threat he sees and warning that “the Left may not allow a peaceful transfer of power.”
Heritage itself repeated the “bloodless” comment in a separate post on X alongside a compilation video of Democrats, commentators and public figures making controversial comments about unrest and protests.
“The Second American Revolution will remain bloodless if the Left allows it to be,” the Heritage post said. “Unfortunately, they have a well established record of instigating the opposite.”
Roberts made his original comment Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast — hosted that day by former Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), since Bannon reported to prison for his contempt of Congress sentence the day before — when discussing the Supreme Court’s ruling that presidents have presumptive immunity for official actions. The decision handed a win to Trump as he fights indictments over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
“The left has taken over our institutions. The reason that they are apoplectic right now, the reason so many anchors on MSNBC, for example, are losing their minds daily, is because our side is winning,” Roberts said. “And so I come full circle on this response, and just want to encourage you with some substance. That we are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
For the Biden campaign, the comments were an opportunity to advance one of its core messages: that Trump is a threat to democracy.
“248 years ago tomorrow America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him one at our expense,” Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a statement. “On January 6, they proudly stormed our Capitol to overturn an election Donald Trump lost fair and square – something not even the Confederacy was able to accomplish – now they are dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”
Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman who is critical of Trump and has endorsed Biden, wondered about the implications of if the left did not “allow” a “bloodless” revolution.
“And if they dont? What if Americans decide they prefer to hash out differences as the constitution calls for, vis a vis politics, then what? Spell it out. If you can win politically then what?” Kinzinger said in a post on X.
And MSNBC host Joe Scarborough responded directly to Roberts’s quip about anchors on the network.
“First of all, Kev, I’m not losing my mind,” Scarborough began, later saying, “You’re the one talking about revolution. Why are you so angry, Kevin? Why are you losing your mind? America’s great. We’re strong militarily, we’re strong economically, we’re strong culturally … This whole idea that we need a new revolution — I mean, I know it is great fundraising, but it’s just B.S.”
The outrage about the comment builds on heightened attention on the leading conservative think tank and its advocacy group as it leads dozens of conservative organizations in Project 2025, which aims to compile policy proposals for the next right-wing administration.
Democrats and Biden’s campaign have repeatedly pointed to Project 2025 when warning about policies a Trump administration would enact if he wins in November, noting that former Trump administration officials have ties to it.
But in a signal that the project could have too many political liabilities for Trump’s electoral prospects, the former president said in a post on his Truth Social website Friday that he “know[s] nothing about Project 2025″ and has “no idea who is behind it.”
“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them,” Trump said.
Neither Trump nor his campaign said the “bloodless” comment from Roberts impacted his statement, but Trump’s move to distance himself from the Heritage-led project further highlights the ideological controversies that the conservative think tank has embraced under Roberts’s leadership.
A spokesperson for Project 2025 posted on X that the coalition “does not speak for any candidate or campaign.”
A conservative leading the pro-Trump Project 2025 suggests there will be a new American Revolution
Ali Swenson – July 3, 2024
FILE – Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, speaks at the National Religious Broadcasters convention at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center Feb. 22, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. Roberts, the leader of a conservative think tank planning for a massive overhaul of the federal government says we are in the midst of “a second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.” (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)More
NEW YORK (AP) — The leader of a conservative think tank orchestrating plans for a massive overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win said that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts made the comments Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, adding that Republicans are “in the process of taking this country back.”
Democrats are “apoplectic right now” because the right is winning, Roberts told former U.S. Rep. Dave Brat, one of the podcast’s guest hosts as Bannon is serving a four-month prison term. “And so I come full circle on this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Roberts’ remarks shed light on how a group that promises to have significant influence over a possible second term for former President Donald Trump is thinking about this moment in American politics. The Heritage Foundation is spearheading Project 2025, a sweeping road map for a new GOP administration that includes plans for dismantling aspects of the federal government and ousting thousands of civil servants in favor of Trump loyalists who will carry out a hard-right agenda without complaint.
His call for revolution and vague reference to violence also unnerved some Democrats who interpreted it as threatening.
“This is chilling,” former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson wrote on the social platform X. “Their idea of a second American Revolution is to undo the first one.”
James Singer, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, pointed to this week’s Fourth of July holiday in an emailed statement.
“248 years ago tomorrow America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him one at our expense,” Singer said, adding that Trump and his allies are ”dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”
Roberts, whose name Bannon recently floated to The New York Times as a potential chief of staff option for Trump, also said on the podcast that Republicans should be encouraged by the Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling.
He said Monday’s decision — which gives presidents broad immunity from prosecution — is “vital” to ensure a president won’t have to “second guess, triple guess every decision they’re making in their official capacity.”
In an emailed statement on Wednesday, Roberts reiterated his comments from the podcast, saying Americans “are in the process of carrying out the Second American Revolution to take power back from the elites and despotic bureaucrats.”
“These patriots are committed to peaceful revolution at the ballot box,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s the Left that has a long history of violence, so it’s up to them to allow a peaceful transfer of power.”
Roberts pointed to the protests after the killing of George Floyd by police in 2020, some of which erupted into crime, vandalism and violence. Democrats, in turn, have accused their Republican counterparts of violence, using the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in which Trump supporters tried to forcibly overturn his loss to President Joe Biden.
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said Roberts’ comments about a “second American Revolution” are “a bit terrifying but also elucidating.” The 1,000-page Project 2025 playbook calls for far-reaching changes in government, including rolling back protections for the LGBTQ community and infusing Christianity more deeply into society.
“Roberts, the Heritage Foundation, and its allies in Project 2025 want to reorder American society and fundamentally change it,” Beirich said. “He’s said the quiet part out loud.”
Trump seeks to disavow ‘Project 2025’ despite ties to conservative group
Nathan Layne – July 5,2024
Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds a campaign event in ChesapeakeHouse Freedom Caucus and others hold a press conference regarding federal government spending, in Washington
(Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump tried to distance himself on Friday from a conservative group’s sweeping plans for the next Republican presidency, days after its leader claimed a second American Revolution was underway that would “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
The Republican presidential candidate renounced any connection with Project 2025, a plan Democrats have been attacking to highlight what they say is Trump’s extreme policy agenda for a second term should he beat President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election.
Many people involved in the project lead by the Heritage Foundation, America’s top conservative think tank, worked in the Trump White House and would likely help fill out his administration if he wins in November.
But Trump said on his Truth Social platform he had nothing to do with the plan.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” he wrote.
“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying,” he continued, adding some of their assertions were “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
Trump’s post came three days after Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts’ comments on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast about a second American Revolution. Democrats and others criticized what they viewed as a veiled threat of violence.
In a statement provided by a Project 2025 spokesperson on Friday, Roberts repeated his claim that Americans were carrying out a revolution “to take power back from the elites and despotic bureaucrats” and said it was the political left that had a history of political violence.
The spokesperson said that while Project 2025 provided recommendations for the next Republican president, it would be up to Trump, should he win, to decide whether to implement them.
Trump’s move to create distance with Project 2025 could in part reflect an effort to moderate his message in the final months of the race, especially with Biden’s campaign faltering after the Democratic candidate’s June 27 debate, said James Wallner, a political science professor at Clemson University.
“Trump is basically now seeking to appeal to a broader audience,” Wallner said.
The Biden campaign has stepped up its efforts to tie Trump’s campaign to Project 2025.
“Project 2025 is the extreme policy and personnel playbook for Trump’s second term that should scare the hell out of the American people,” campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement.
The 900-page blueprint calls for drastic reform of the federal government, including a gutting of some federal agencies and a vast expansion of presidential power. Trump’s statements and policy positions suggest he is aligned with some but not all of the project’s agenda.
The plans have been drawn up by the Heritage Foundation in coordination with a collection of other like-minded groups.
A number of people who worked on Project 2025 have close ties to the former president. Russ Vought, who was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget and is heading up a key committee at the Republican National Convention, authored one of the project’s chapters.
Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Trump who is widely expected to be tapped for a top job in a second Trump administration, heads up a legal group on Project 2025’s advisory board.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Chris Reese)
Who Should Lead the Democratic Ticket? Six Columnists Weigh In.
Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris, President Biden — who is best positioned to beat Donald Trump in November? July 4, 2024
By Charles M. Blow, Ross Douthat, David French, Nicholas Kristof, Pamala Paul and Lydia Polgreen
Produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vishakha Darbha and Jillian Weinberger
With President Biden’s candidacy in question, we asked six New York Times Opinion columnists: Who would you like to see as the Democratic nominee? Read their answers below. Or listen here:
Who Should Lead the Democratic Ticket? Six Columnists Weigh In.
Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris, President Biden — who is best positioned to beat Donald Trump in November? Listen · 29:20 min
00:35: Lydia Polgreen on Vice President Kamala Harris
06:33: Nicholas Kristof on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan
09:42: Ross Douthat on Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia
13:55: Pamela Paul on Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland
18:10: David French on Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania
23:57: Charles M. Blow on President Biden
Lydia Polgreen: Kamala Harris ‘Does Very Well in Going Up Against Bullies’
I’m Lydia Polgreen, Opinion columnist for The New York Times. Like many of my colleagues, I think it’s time for Joe Biden to bow out. And I believe that the best person to replace him is Kamala Harris.
She didn’t make it that far in the primaries, and that might make you think: This is someone who has tried and failed to become president — why would she be good on the national stage? But I think it’s important to remember that running in the primaries and running for the general election are actually two very different things.
In the primaries, you’re essentially running against your peers — in many cases, your fellow politicians from your party — and you’re arguing with them over smaller differences than the big differences that separate our politics in this very polarized time. And where gender and race actually play a huge role in terms of how people are perceived and where the showing of emotion or anger or other feelings play very differently, depending on whether you’re a woman, depending on whether you’re a person of color — that primary environment, I think, is actually quite complicated.
Those same dynamics can be at play in a general election, as well, but they’re actually much different in thisparticular general election, because Donald Trump is a very particular kind of politician.
I think one of the things that makes Kamala Harris really compelling in this environment is that we’re dealing with a bully. And she is a person who does very well in going up against bullies. She has a demeanor, she has a way of speaking that very much comes from her experience as a prosecutor that plays very well when dealing with someone who really is kind of outside the bounds of the law.
One of the things that was most troubling about the debate between Biden and Trump was that, unsurprisingly, Trump just spouted lie after lie after lie, The thing that was so devastating was that Joe Biden just seemed completely unable to counter those lies. And it’s just impossible to imagine that Kamala Harris, who is really a very successful debater, wouldn’t be able to just methodically come in and counter, point for point, every single thing that came out of Donald Trump’s mouth.
The Biden administration has put Kamala Harris front and center on the messaging about abortion rights, and rightfully so. Everyone knows that Joe Biden is not a great messenger on this issue. He has had a long history of ambivalence about choice. He is a devout Catholic, and I think it’s fair to say he does not feel particularly comfortable speaking in strident terms about a woman’s right to choose.
That is not a problem for Kamala Harris. She is a lifelong believer and fighter for this cause and would be an eloquent and powerful spokesperson for the issue as the nominee, just as she has been on the campaign trail as part of the ticket.
I think there are really two separate questions we need to ask ourselves. One question is: Would Harris be a good nominee? I feel, based on what we’ve seen, that actually she could make a pretty compelling case for herself as a strong candidate. Then there’s another question, which is: Would she make a good president? And in an abstract world where we weren’t weighing her against Donald Trump, that’s an interesting conversation to have.
One of the criticisms of her when she was a primary candidate was that there wasn’t a clear and compelling reason that she could give for why she should be president. What was her vision? And I don’t think that she solved that problem. But I think it’s important to remember that circumstances dictate who the right person is at any given time.
What is the need of the hour? The need of the hour is to somehow find a way to ease Joe Biden out of the presidency, somehow find somebody to take on Donald Trump. And so for me, the case for Kamala Harris is that she is the right person for that first part of the job. Which is, frankly, the most important part of the job.
This is an existential crisis. We cannot survive another Trump administration. Preventing Trump from winning the presidency, I think, has to be the paramount goal. I’m not saying that I don’t think that Kamala Harris would be a good president. She might very well be a great president. I have no idea. But I don’t think that that’s a question that we, frankly, have the luxury to ask right now. Because we know that Donald Trump would be a catastrophic president.
In order to have a vacancy, in order to have an opportunity to run another candidate, President Biden has to decide not to run. And that, ultimately, is his decision to make. And it’s going to be an excruciating and very hard decision.
And to me, part of the reason that anointing Kamala Harris, who is his vice president, is an easier thing to do than simply throwing it open to a brokered convention is that this is a natural order of things. You choose a vice president because you might not live through your entire term. That’s true of any president. I think it would be easier and less damaging for the party for President Biden to simply say, “You know what? I think my time is up. It’s time for me to pass the baton to the person you, the voters, voted into office as part of my administration to carry us forward.”
Nicholas Kristof: ‘Gretchen Whitmer Is the Best Biden Alternative’
I’m Nicholas Kristof, and I’m here with a case for Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan.
I’m rooting for Whitmer because the job of the nominee — and especially at a time when the stakes are so high, when Donald Trump is the opposition — the job of the nominee is to win. I do think that Governor Whitmer is particularly well placed to get votes in the handful of states that are in play.
For starters, Michigan is an absolute must-win state for the Democrats, and Whitmer has won it handily in both her races for governor. That suggests that she will also do well in nearby states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and I think her pragmatism will also play well with centrists in states like Arizona and Georgia.
I think a Michigan governor is well positioned to ride the anti-incumbent, anti-elitist mood that we see among voters in the U.S. and just to generate excitement as a fresh face on the national scene, somebody from a new generation. And boy, I would just relish seeing how a dynamic younger candidate can force Trump on his heels and make him defend himself as the old guy with dubious mental acuity left in the race.
I’ve been following Whitmer ever since she was a state senator, and in 2013 she gave just an extraordinary speech for abortion rights that put her on the national map.
Audio clip of Gretchen Whitmer: I rise for my “no” vote explanation, as the Republican male majority continues to ignorantly and unnecessarily weigh in on important women’s health issues that they know nothing about.
Toward the end of that speech, she put down her notes and disclosed something that she had hidden from most people that was intensely personal.
Clip of Whitmer: Over 20 years ago, I was a victim of rape. And thank God, it didn’t result in a pregnancy, because I can’t imagine going through what I went through and then having to consider what to do about an unwanted pregnancy from an attacker.
She was emotional, raw, powerful and persuasive. And that speech marked her as a politician to watch.
Look, there are lots of uncertainties ahead. I have no idea what Whitmer’s foreign policy would be. But I do know that she’s a good speaker, that she has shown she can win over centrist voters and that she was only 1 year old when Biden was elected to the Senate. So in my view, Gretchen Whitmer is the best Biden alternative. Keep an eye on her.
Ross Douthat: Joe Manchin Would Be ‘the Most Moderate Candidate’
I’m Ross Douthat, and I’m a columnist for The New York Times. I’m here to make the case that the Democrats should nominate the senator from West Virginia Joe Manchin.
Much of the Democratic Party and many of my friends in the media are convinced that this election has almost existential stakes for the United States of America. And if that is the case, there is a reasonable argument for the Democratic Party to nominate someone who is as close to the center of American politics as you can get, with a long record of voting for Democratic causes. So, Manchin 2024.
I’ve thought Joe Manchin should run for president for a while. In 2023, I made the case that he should run as an independent. I thought, as a moderate Democrat, Manchin was well positioned to run basically, I argued, a kind of test-the-waters campaign.
But the reason to think of him as a plausible third-party candidate is also the reason to think of him as a plausible nominee for the Democrats — if their absolute goal is to defeat Donald Trump, no matter what.
Manchin is a guy who successfully managed to get elected to the Senate from West Virginia over the course of multiple election cycles where West Virginia was being transformed from a reliably Democratic state into a reliably Republican one. And his strategy always seemed to be: Pull a given piece of Democratic legislation more toward the middle (or toward the middle as he understood it), but be willing to vote for it when push came to shove.
He was more socially conservative in various ways on issues ranging from abortion to immigration. He tended to be more skeptical of large spending bills of all kinds, climate change legislation in particular. He did a lot of things, especially in the Biden era, that made more ideological Democrats incredibly frustrated with him. At the same time, he remained a pretty reliable vote for Democratic causes and programs and judicial nominations and everything else.
In imagining him as a Democratic nominee, you’re picking someone who in a different kind of era would have been the leader of probably a pretty big centrist faction in the Democratic Party. And so nominating him wouldn’t require the Democratic Party to radically shift its positions on almost any issue. It would be a unique signal to the country that the Democrats were willing to make a major ideological compromise, which is the kind of signal that, if you are determined to win the election at all costs, you want to be sending.
I think Manchin’s biggest challenge in the incredibly unlikely event that he was the Democratic nominee is that because he is a moderate who is despised by key activist groups in the Democratic coalition, most Democrats are just not going to turn out for someone who spent the Biden years trying to make Joe Biden’s agenda more moderate and sometimes contributing to derailing it.
That’s always the problem with trying to nominate the most moderate candidate: You risk alienating your own base. But I think in this scenario, given the lateness of the hour and Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee, that what you would gain among swing voters would outweigh what you would lose in the party’s base.
Both political parties have nominated candidates for president who are broadly unacceptable to the middle 30 percent of Americans, and it would probably be useful for the country if one of the two parties tried to nominate someone who was much more acceptable to Americans in that middle ground.
Pamela Paul: Wes Moore Could ‘Energize the Electorate’
I’m Pamela Paul, an Opinion columnist for The New York Times, and I’m here to make the case for Wes Moore as the Democratic candidate for president.
Wes Moore is the first-term governor of the State of Maryland. So, relatively inexperienced in politics but with a broad range of experience before coming to politics. He has served in the military, including serving at war in Afghanistan. He’s worked in the private sector in investment banking. He has foreign policy experience and expertise, and he’s published five books, including books for young people.
As the former editor of The Book Review, I’ve been aware of Wes Moore for a long time as an author, and that’s how I often thought about him. I first met him out at Stanford University, where he was participating in a conference about revitalizing American institutions. He and Gov. Chris Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, did a panel together in which they had a really lively, interesting conversation.
Audio clip of Chris Sununu: I’m absolutely honored to be here and to be with Wes who I consider a great friend. He’s a great governor.
And the thing that struck me most about their conversation is that they were friends, even though they are from very different sides of the political spectrum.
Chris Sununu, as the more experienced governor, has given advice to Wes Moore, and Wes Moore called him his best adviser as a governor.
Clip of Wes Moore:When I think about some of the governors who are the most helpful to me, as I made the transition, because I’d never run for office before I became governor. People can think about “It’s this governor, that governor, which political party.” The reality is, you’ve been one of the most helpful governors to me in this transition. And that’s a Republican governor.
And I thought that was remarkable because, as we all know, we live in a hyperpartisan time.
And something that really came out in their conversation was that, as governors, you need to get things done. You need to balance a budget. You cannot just not vote. You cannot just slide by. It’s not like the Senate. And one of the reasons I think that Governor Moore is one of the best-equipped people to assume the presidency is that as a governor, he has better experience than many people who have served in Washington for a long time.
I think his relative youth could shake up a campaign that no one is happy with between two geriatric candidates. He could energize the electorate. I think that he could win and govern well and he could really usher in a new era of leadership for Democrats. I mean, how have we gotten into a situation where we have an 81-year-old man who’s been in politics his entire life as being our candidate when it’s clear that Americans are not happy with how things are going and with the current direction of this country?
The No. 1 thing people will say about Wes Moore is that he doesn’t have the experience necessary, that it’s not his time yet. But first of all, I feel very frustrated with the “it’s his time” or “it’s not his time” thinking because when Biden was running, everyone thought, “Oh, it’s his time. He deserves it.” When Bob Dole was running: “Oh, it’s his turn. He deserves it.” This is a way to lose a campaign.
This is not about making someone feel better. This is about what’s doing right for the country. And Wes Moore, though he may not have a lot of governmental experience, he certainly has a lot more experience than Donald Trump did coming on.
And in fact, I think his relative inexperience would work in his favor because people are looking for someone to bring a new perspective who is not afraid of change, who can draw from a wide range of experience outside Washington and who’s shown that he knows how to solve problems and lead.
David French: Josh Shapiro Would Be a Choice Americans Can Feel ‘Unambiguously Good About’
I’m David French. And I’m here to make the case that Josh Shapiro should replace Joe Biden on the top of the Democratic ticket.
Until 2016, I was a Republican. I’m still conservative. I’m a conservative in the Reagan conservative mold. So it is very unusual for me to be giving any kind of advice to the Democratic Party. However, I am of the belief that Donald Trump needs to lose in 2024 for the health of the country, for the health of our Constitution and for the health, honestly, of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. And so I want to see the best possible Democrat face Donald Trump in 2024.
Josh Shapiro is the first-term governor of Pennsylvania, a former attorney general of Pennsylvania and a former member of the State House of Pennsylvania.
I think there are multiple reasons Josh Shapiro would be a very good pick. And we can start with ideology, we can go to temperament, and then we can end with location, location, location.
So, ideology. Josh Shapiro is a more moderate or centrist Democrat. There are a number of initiatives, for example, in the State of Pennsylvania, that he has broken with his party on, at least to some degree, to move toward the center. For example, he has advocated for lowering corporate tax rates in Pennsylvania, the kinds of things that Republican voters would either appreciate or at least see that this person is not an ideological extremist, but somebody who’s willing to reach out across the aisle.
He’s somebody who ideologically is much closer to the exact kinds of voters who helped give Joe Biden the presidency in 2020, a lot of these suburban voters and college-educated women and others, many of whom voted Republican in the past. He seems to be much more in line with the bulk of the American people than somebody who’s more on the left side of the Democratic Party.
And then let’s talk about the really important aspect of temperament. This is a guy who really, by and large, has a pretty measured tone, an ideal way of confronting someone like Donald Trump, who really needs to be meticulously rebutted in all of his falsehoods. Dismantling these wild statements that Donald Trump has made and doing so in a calm and measured way, I think, is exactly what the doctor ordered for the public square. It would, in many ways, be a restoration of the way we think about the presidency: that we’re not just electing a vehicle for an agenda but a human being who we could actually have a degree of trust in.
And then finally, he has the advantage of location, location, location — the three most important things in real estate. He’s a popular governor in a key swing state. This is perhaps the key swing state in the 2024 election. And this is something that’s really important not just for the sake of Pennsylvania but other swing states. I think there’s some real possibility there that he’s actually a good cultural fit for some of these swing states.
And there’s one other thing I didn’t mention: He’s relatively young. He was born in 1973. He’s a Gen X-er. And this contrast between a Gen X candidate who’s reasonable, who’s sober, who’s sharp as a tack, against a 78-year-old man who physically is able to sort of cover up his decline but cognitively is capable of the exact kinds of word salads that we saw come out of Joe Biden’s mouth in the debate — the contrast, I believe, would be very real and very obvious and exactly the kind of contrast that the American people are looking for.
And so these are all things that I think speak strongly in his favor, but I’m not going to pretend that it’s just a no-brainer of a decision. There are also some downsides that come with Josh Shapiro. Nothing major or glaring, but there’s two right away that you can think of. One, he’s a first-term governor. He’s not had a complete term as a governor, so there would be some questions about experience. It also has to be acknowledged that nobody knows who he is. If you’ve tuned into this and you knew who Josh Shapiro was before you tuned in, you’re either a Pennsylvanian or a political nerd. And nothing against political nerds — I’m one of you — but it’s just part of the challenge that you have when you’re trying to introduce yourself to the American people.
But on balance, when you’re talking about the identity of a candidate: Is he a man for the moment? It’s not simply the case that you can say people want anyone not named Donald Trump. That’s not where the American people are. They’re wanting a choice that they can feel unambiguously good about. And the debate performance, I think, robbed Biden of that message now and for the rest of the campaign.
Here is a different candidate people can be voting for, as opposed to purely voting againstDonald Trump.
Charles M. Blow: ‘Joe Biden Should Not Be Forced Off the Ticket’
I’m Charles Blow, an Opinion columnist at The New York Times. And while a lot of my colleagues are making the case for replacements for Joe Biden, I’m making the case that Joe Biden should not be forced off the ticket.
I assume that most people who want to replace Joe Biden want the exact same thing that I want, which is to prevent Donald Trump from being re-elected as president of the United States.
If that is the goal, then you have to go with the person who has the best chance of defeating him. And I think that for right now, that person remains Joe Biden.
There is no evidence that any of the other candidates who have been proposed as possible replacements for Joe Biden would do better than Joe Biden. There is no F.D.R.-, Barack Obama-like candidate waiting in the wings whom everyone knows and who is going to galvanize the Democratic Party.
The people in Louisiana do not know the governor of Michigan. The people in North Carolina do not know the governor of California. And we are saying that somehow in a brokered convention at the end of the summer with only three months to go, you could put forth a virtually unknown person to the country and that somehow that would be better than sticking with a person whom we already know.
In addition to that, a brokered convention would mean that the voters would not have a say in who the candidate is. There would be no direct voting for the person the Democrats put forward. These would be delegates. Some of them are elected officials, and I guess you could say that elected officials are kind of secondhand representatives of the people. So people did vote for the elected officials, and if they vote for the candidate, maybe that makes you feel a little bit better.
But delegates are also party leaders. No one voted for these party leaders. These are just people who have participated and won favor and people like them. Those are the people who would pick the candidate? That is not democratic. That doesn’t feel like the business that the Democratic Party would want to be in, which is having the candidates produced not by the voice of the people but by the voice of the insiders.
This has become an election about people who are for democracy and those who are not for it. It has nothing to do with the individual people and the individual characters and their individual competency.
So I’m not trying to convince anyone that Biden is your best candidate, he’s a fantastic person, shooting on all cylinders and full of verve. I’m just saying that as it stands, he is likely your best option to prevent catastrophe. None of these candidates are people that I’m going to say, ‘Oh, I’m just jumping up and down because this person is so electric and magnetic.”
I’m simply saying, “Do you want to keep a country or not? Where’s your best chances of keeping the country that you know and you love and that will have a chance to fight again one day with different candidates who may be younger, may be more to your tastes?”
I am convinced that people are not scared enough yet. I don’t think that people will be turning out for Biden. They’ll be turning out against Donald Trump.
I don’t need a champion in the White House this cycle. What I need is someone to hold the White House and to hold the country in its current customs, in its current structure, so that the next cycle, maybe we have better options that we can be excited about.
Joe Biden is already strapped to the rocket. At this point, he remains the best option.
Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; photographs by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters, Laurent Cipriani, Matt Rourke, and Evan Vucci/Associated Press, Andrew Harnik and Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger, Vishakha Darbha, Derek Arthur and Sophia Alvarez Boyd. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser. Engineering by Sonia Herrero, Isaac Jones, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Mixing by Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Carole Sabouraud, Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Charles M. Blow is an Opinion columnist for The New York Times, writing about national politics, public opinion and social justice, with a focus on racial equality and L.G.B.T.Q. rights.
Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author, most recently, of “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.”
Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.”
Pamela Paul is an Opinion columnist at The Times, writing about culture, politics, ideas and the way we live now.
Lydia Polgreen is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The Times.
A John Wayne flop has been linked to high cancer rates. A new documentary aims to tell the community’s story.
Zack Budryk – June 30, 2024
A John Wayne flop has been linked to high cancer rates. A new documentary aims to tell the community’s story.
The 1956 movie “The Conqueror” is infamous among cinephiles, both for its casting of John Wayne as the Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan and for a suspicious number of deaths that followed its filming downwind of a nuclear test site. Nearly 70 years later, the makers of the documentary “The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout” hope to tell the story of the affected “downwinder” community in St. George, Utah, near where the film shot as their federal compensation for radiation exposure is on the line.
At the time “The Conqueror” filmed in the Utah desert just outside the town, St. George was 137 miles downwind from the Nevada Test Site, where the federal government conducted more than 900 nuclear tests.
The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for years insisted to locals there was no danger, and when ranchers’ sheep began mysteriously dying, the federal government blamed it on the ranchers’ negligence.
But after the movie was shot, observers noted the high rate of cancer among people involved with the filming: 91 of 220 crew members developed the illness, and 46 died. Director Dick Powell and stars Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead all eventually died of cancer as well, while Pedro Armendáriz Sr., an accomplished Mexican actor and the only nonwhite member of the film’s main cast, died by suicide when his cancer became terminal.
Local Paiute Native Americans were used as extras for crowd and battle scenes, but no records were kept of cancer rates among them.
“The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout” director Will Nunez said at a panel discussion Wednesday that he had the idea for the documentary in 2020 during COVID-19 lockdowns, and that at the time, he was only aware of the movie’s infamy and the alleged cancer connection.
“What started as a lark about this terrible movie became something else as I was researching about atomic testing and all that, and my goal was to see how I can try and do this in the most entertaining way possible so that a general audience can understand what had happened,” he said.
He noted that many of the most absurd features of the 1956 movie — such as flowery, pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue written with Marlon Brando in mind that sounds extra ridiculous in the mouth of the Duke — added some levity to what could otherwise be a straightforwardly depressing story.
The movie notes that eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who produced “The Conqueror,” may have exacerbated radiation exposure during filming by having 60 tons of the irradiated desert sands delivered to the RKO Pictures soundstage in Hollywood to film interior scenes.
Epidemiologists have warned of the difficulty of definitively identifying a single cause for one cancer. Wayne himself was skeptical of a connection between the filming and the disease striking the cast and crew, noting late in life that he, Powell and Armendáriz were heavy smokers.
But Hayward and Powell both died in their 50s — a notably young age to develop cancer — and, as the documentary makes clear, the residents of St. George who developed cancer during the same period included young children.
Hughes would later say he felt “guilty as hell” about the production of the movie, and as he became increasingly reclusive, he bought every print of it and watched it on a loop in his hotel suite.
Ultimately, questions surrounding Wayne’s death that first surfaced in People magazine led Utahns to begin investigating a potential connection to their medical histories. The declassification of internal AEC documents followed, and strenuous lobbying by downwinders won former Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) to their cause, culminating in the 1990 passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which recently expired.
The documentary incorporates a variety of perspectives on the movie and its legacy, from Wayne’s and Hayward’s sons to conservative talk radio host Michael Medved, who began his career as a film critic specializing in “so bad they’re good” movies. Its most emotional voices, however, are those of downwinders themselves, many of whom remember the movie production coming to town and continue their lobbying over the radiation to which it helped draw attention to this day.
In the film, Mary Dickson, a downwinder activist and thyroid cancer survivor, notes that the effects of the nuclear testing fallout were not considered an emergency until the Defense Department began to worry that they may have, as an internal document put it, “killed John Wayne.”
RECA was reauthorized in 2022, but its authorization formally expired earlier this year after lawmakers failed to agree on a further extension. A bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), which would reauthorize the law and expand it beyond the 20 counties covered, as well as to children of downwinders, passed the Senate with 69 votes in March. However, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has declined to bring it to the House floor thus far, citing concerns about cost and whether it has the votes to pass in the GOP-controlled chamber.
Nunez’s documentary comes weeks after the authorization for RECA officially expired. Almost exactly a year ago, sponsors of the expansion bill hoped to take advantage of the buzz surrounding “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb. Nunez told The Hill he hopes his movie, while much smaller, can similarly help drive conversation about downwinders’ plight.
“What I’m hoping is, now that RECA’s expired and the downwinders want to expand it to beyond the 20 counties, that this movie will help spread the word,” Nunez said.
Ultimately, however, he credited the dedication of affected locals for both the original law and for any breakthrough on reauthorization.
Nunez compared the downwinder community to the locals in Love Canal, N.Y., who pushed for a federal cleanup after the neighborhood became the site of an environmental disaster in the 1970s.
“If you notice, it’s all the women that raise hell,” he said.
Kagan, liberal Supreme Court justices issue scathing dissent in Chevron ruling
Rachel Frazin – June 28, 2024
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan offered a scathing dissent Friday as her conservative colleagues transferred the power of federal agencies to the courts in a major decision overturning the Chevron deference.
In overruling that doctrine, Kagan argued that “the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar.”
Joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, she wrote that the majority replaced a rule of “judicial humility” with one of “judicial hubris.”
“In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law,” Kagan wrote.
She added that the decision puts the courts at the center of a wide variety of policy issues, ranging from climate change to artificial intelligence.
“The Court has substituted its own judgment on workplace health for that of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; its own judgment on climate change for that of the Environmental Protection Agency; and its own judgment on student loans for that of the Department of Education,” Kagan wrote.
The 6-3 decision by the court upended a 40-year administrative law precedent in which federal agencies were given leeway to interpret ambiguous laws through rulemaking.
Now, judges will substitute their own best interpretation of the law, instead of deferring to the agencies — effectively making it easier to overturn regulations that govern wide-ranging aspects of American life.
“Chevron is overruled,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his decision, which was joined by his five conservative colleagues.
Roberts argued that “courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”
Why Republicans Are Talking About Biden’s ‘Dictatorship’
Jamelle Bouie – June 25, 2024
Credit…Will Matsuda for The New York Times
The United States under President Biden is a “dictatorship,” according to Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota.
“Under Joe Biden,“ Burgum told Fox News, “we’re actually living under a dictatorship today where he’s, you know, bypassing Congress on immigration policy; he’s bypassing Congress on protecting our border; he’s bypassing Congress on student loan forgiveness; he’s defying the Supreme Court.”
Asked on Sunday to defend his claim, Burgum, who is apparently on the short list of potential running mates for Donald Trump, stood his ground, telling CNN that Biden is “bypassing the other two branches of government to push an ideological view of — whether it’s on economics or whether it’s on climate extremism — he’s doing that without using the other branches.”
It is an odd sort of dictatorship in which the head of state is bound by the rule of law as well as by the authority of other constitutional actors, one in which the dictator’s critics can organize to defeat him in an election without intimidation, penalty or threat of legal sanction — and in which he will leave office if he loses. If nothing else, it is hard to imagine a world in which Biden is both a dictator and someone who would allow Burgum, a regime opponent, to speak freely on national television as he works to defeat Biden at the ballot box.
In fairness to the North Dakota governor, he was trying to make a point about a perceived double standard, in which Trump and not Biden is blasted as an authoritarian for his use of executive orders. But even this is misleading, because the issue with Trump is not the use of executive orders per se. Instead, it is his demonstrated contempt for democratic accountability — he does not accept the right of an electorate to remove him from office — his desire to use the instruments of state to inflict punishment and suffering on his political enemies and his efforts to transform the office of the presidency and the broader executive branch into instruments of his personalist rule.
(That said, there is a conversation for another day about the overreliance on executive orders by presidents of both parties as a symptom of congressional weakness and a product of long-running structural transformations in the nature of the presidency, tied specifically to the growth and pre-eminence of the national security state.)
Governor Burgum is obviously wrong about the idea that Biden is a dictator. But he is not the only Trump ally to speak in such dire terms about the United States. As Politico’s Ian Ward noted, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio — another Republican hoping to stand with Trump as his second — believes that “the United States is on the verge of going up in smoke” and that “electing Trump represents the only hope that Americans have for getting off the path to literal civilization collapse.”
And Russ Vought, former budget chief in the Trump administration and one of the architects of the former president’s second-term agenda, believes that Americans are living in a “post-constitutional” moment that justifies the radical use of executive power to quash protesters with the military, the gutting of the federal civil service in favor of a spoils system for Trump loyalists and the seizing of the power of the purse from Congress. He urges his comrades in arms to “cast ourselves as dissidents of the current regime and to put on our shoulders the full weight of envisioning, articulating, and defending what a Radical Constitutionalism requires in the late hour that our country finds itself in, and then to do it.”
Just as Americans are not living under a Biden dictatorship — in which the watchful eye of Dark Brandon prowls the nation in search of malarkey — the United States is also not on the verge of collapse. Our economy is the envy of the world, we remain the pre-eminent military power, and for all of its serious problems of representation and inclusion, our political system is still capable of handling at least a few of the major issues that face the nation. It does not downplay the challenges we confront to say that we have the capacity and the resources to meet them head on. That, if anything, makes it all the more frustrating that we have not yet secured decent housing, health care, child care and education for everyone in this country. None of these things are beyond our material ability to accomplish — far from it.
Of course, even mentioning the reality of conditions in the United States is a bit beside the point, because the breathless catastrophizing by Trump and his allies is not an expression of ignorance as much as it is a statement of intent. Rhetorically, the MAGA political project of personalist rule in support of social hierarchy, unrestrained capital and the destruction of public goods depends on the conceit that the nation exists in a state of exception that demands extraordinary — and extreme — measures to resolve.
The cultivation of this notion of a state of exception, of a sense of emergency, is the overriding aim of MAGA political messaging. The targets change — in 2020 it was leftists and protesters, this year it is migrants and refugees again, as it was in 2016 — but the goal is always the same: to designate an enemy, to label that enemy an urgent threat to society and to try to win power on a promise to destroy that enemy by any means necessary.
Embedded in this maneuver is a radical claim of sovereignty. The so-called enemy is whoever Trump says it is, and once designated, the entire political system must bend to his will on the notion that he, alone, can fix it.
Sovereign power of the sort that Trump and his allies gesture toward does not exist in the American system as traditionally understood, and there is no provision in our Constitution by which the executive can set aside the rule of law to deal with threats and emergencies. But the point of this rhetoric of exception is to set the conditions for doing just that — for creating an actual state of exception in American politics.
Put another way, if we are on the verge of civilizational collapse, if we are in a post-constitutional moment, if we are already in a dictatorship, then anything is permitted in defense of the old order. And if democracy should stand in the way of recovery and restoration, then democracy should, perhaps, be set aside.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln did not present himself as a bulwark of liberty who could resolve the crisis alone. He tried, as much as possible, to embody and act on his deep belief in the rule of law. For example, after taking unilateral steps to confront the rebellion and defend the Union at the outset of the conflict, he went to Congress to ask for its blessing and support. In his message, issued on July 4, 1861, Lincoln did not make demands or assert extraordinary powers.
Instead, the political scientist Nomi Claire Lazar wrote, Lincoln invited “Congress to share the burden of both reflection and action, to consider and judge the reasons he has given.” What guided his deliberations, she continued, is “precisely a commitment to the rule of law as a collective and collaborative project. What is the best we can do, given the constraints and imperatives, he asks, and how can we do our best together?”
If there is anything to know about either Trump or his closest allies, it is that they do not share this commitment to collaboration or deliberation or public reason. They know only force and dominance. And they want everything to be a crisis, not for an opportunity to affirm democracy, but for a chance to undermine it.
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington.
