Tag: Supreme Court
Will the GOP Steal the 2024 Election?
The greatest threat to American democracy today is not a repeat of January 6, but the possibility of a stolen presidential election. Contemporary democracies that die meet their end at the ballot box, through measures that are nominally constitutional. The looming danger is not that the mob will return; it’s that mainstream Republicans will “legally” overturn an election.
In 2018, when we wrote How Democracies Die, we knew that Donald Trump was an authoritarian figure, and we held the
How Democrats Are Fighting to Save Voting Rights
There is a gnawing anxiety among voting-rights advocates that even if Democrats find a way to roll back the Senate filibuster and pass new federal legislation safeguarding access to the ballot, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court might still strike it down.
Last week’s Supreme Court ruling, in which the six Republican-appointed justices outvoted the three appointed by Democrats to uphold two Arizona laws that critics called racially discriminatory, has elevated that concern to a new height. It is
The Supreme Court Has Neutered the Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act regime as we knew it is gone, and it’s not coming back.
Once thought of as the crown jewel of the Second Reconstruction, the VRA has lost its luster. For the past decade or so, the Supreme Court has systematically reduced the scope and reach of the law. The Court’s decision last week in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee is only the latest case, and certainly will not be the last, to interpret the act in
Why Is Mitch McConnell So Powerful?
To visit Mitch McConnell at his office in the Capitol, you must first pass through a faded world that he has meticulously preserved. A fireplace in the reception room still bears a crack left by a fire British soldiers set during the War of 1812. Through a doorway, a conference room displays portraits of former GOP Senate leaders, among them the luckless Charles McNary, who landed the job just when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Democratic Party captured whopping majorities. Looking around
The Irony of Being Undocumented
The last time a Democrat lived in the White House, I was nearly detained outside of its gates. It should have been obvious to me, an undocumented immigrant, that giving my blank passport to a Secret Service agent could get me in trouble.
But I, along with a classmate, had been asked to be there for a meeting about college access hosted by first lady Michelle Obama’s higher-education initiative, and my security form had cleared the night before. And
What Biden Must Do to Right the Wrongs of Guantánamo
Many Americans like to tell themselves a story about the choices the country makes in times of national crisis. We see our country’s policies as a pendulum. We may overreact at first, temporarily sacrificing principles and rights to meet the emergency at hand. But eventually the crisis recedes, and in restoring our commitment to foundational principles and the rule of law, we push the pendulum back toward equilibrium.
This story is comforting; it makes sense of America’s reactions to crises
The Rotting Internet Is a Collective Hallucination
Sixty years ago the futurist Arthur C. Clarke observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The internet—how we both communicate with one another and together preserve the intellectual products of human civilization—fits Clarke’s observation well. In Steve Jobs’s words, “it just works,” as readily as clicking, tapping, or speaking. And every bit as much aligned with the vicissitudes of magic, when the internet doesn’t work, the reasons why are typically so arcane that explanations for it are