Tag: Supreme Court
American Universities Are Post-truth – The Atlantic
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.
Over the past few years, conservatives have rapidly lost trust in higher education. From 2015 to 2023, Gallup found that the share of Republicans expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education fell by 37 points, from 56 to 19 percent. As conservatives have come to look negatively at these institutions, Republicans have engaged in political attacks
Trump’s Lawyer Walked Into a Trap
It was a cold and rainy morning in Washington, D.C., yesterday. Five years ago, Donald Trump said that was enough to deter him from visiting Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, to commemorate the fallen American soldiers—soldiers who died defending the nation whose Constitution he had sought to abrogate but now seeks to invoke. But yesterday, he showed up anyway. Appearing in court was more important to him, because this was about him.
And so at 9:25 a.m., the former president and his
Anti-abortion Conservatives’ First Target If Trump Returns
The Supreme Court’s upcoming decision about the most common pharmaceutical used for medication abortions may be just the beginning of the political battle over the drug.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of lower-court rulings that would severely reduce access to mifepristone. The Court’s acceptance of the case marked a crucial juncture in the legal maneuvering over the medication.
But however the high court rules, pressure is mounting inside the GOP coalition for the next
How Trump Has Transformed Evangelicals
Donald Trump and American evangelicals have never been natural allies. Trump has owned casinos, flaunted mistresses in the tabloids, and often talked in a way that would get him kicked out of church. In 2016 many people doubted whether Trump could win over evangelicals, whose support he needed. Eight years later, a few weeks away from the Iowa caucuses, evangelical support for the former president and current Republican frontrunner is no longer in question. In fact, there are now prominent
What the DeSantis and Newsom Debate Revealed
The best way to understand last week’s unusual debate between Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Ron DeSantis of Florida is to think of them less as representatives of different political parties than as ambassadors from different countries.
Thursday night’s debate on Fox News probably won’t much change the arc of either man’s career. DeSantis is still losing altitude in the 2024 GOP presidential race, and Newsom still faces years of auditioning before Democratic leaders and voters for a possible
The Last Word: Sandra Day O’Connor
“I didn’t know lawyers and judges. We were cattle ranchers. That wasn’t — we didn’t know people like that. So I didn’t know what I was getting into, and it never entered my mind that there wouldn’t be opportunities for women lawyers. It just never occurred to me. Should have.” Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. During her tenure on the high bench, she was the crucial swing vote, the decisive force in cases
The Cases Against Trump: A Guide
Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.
In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence. He’s also dealing with a civil suit in New York that could force drastic
Dobbs’s Confounding Effect on Abortion Rates
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Diana Greene Foster made a painful prediction: She estimated that one in four women who wanted an abortion wouldn’t be able to get one. Foster, a demographer at UC San Francisco, told me that she’d based her expectation on her knowledge of how abortion rates decline when women lose insurance coverage or have to travel long distances after clinics close.
And she was well aware of what this statistic meant. She’d
Virginia Could Decide the Future of the GOP’s Abortion Policy
A crucial new phase in the political struggle over abortion rights is unfolding in suburban neighborhoods across Virginia.
An array of closely divided suburban and exurban districts around the state will decide which party controls the Virginia state legislature after next month’s election, and whether Republicans here succeed in an ambitious attempt to reframe the politics of abortion rights that could reverberate across the nation.
After the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion in 2022, the issue played
Wisconsin and North Carolina Republicans Are Playing a Dangerous New Game
Even as U.S. politics became more contentious and polarized over the past quarter century, a few pockets of the government remained comparatively above the fray, including the courts, which sought to position themselves apart from politics, and state capitols, where pragmatism trumped partisanship.
But those redoubts have fallen in recent years. The Supreme Court has become more ideologically aligned with the Republican Party, and state legislatures host pitched ideological battles. Now institutions that sit at their intersection—state courts, especially state