The Supreme Court eases the way for Project 2025
I will vote the Democratic ticket, up and down the ballot. Why? Because I know I would rather live in a world under a Democratic administration than I would under a Trump GOP Administration.
I say this for many reasons, but right now I’ll focus on just one: The Supreme Court. Since the onset of the Roberts Supreme Court in 2005, we have seen the ideological bent of the court move further and further to the right, with this court regularly overturning established, 50- to 100-year precedents, laying the groundwork for power further concentrated in the hands of the fewer and wealthiest and with new opportunities for corruption and authoritarianism to flourish. And while change is often good, with several key rulings, especially those remanding jurisdiction back to the states and the lower federal courts, the Court has only added to the growing divisiveness, litigiousness, inequality, and unrest in our country.
Let me offer examples:
The Dobbs Decision of 2022, which overturned the Roe v. Wade Decision, a precedent of 50 years. The Court’s 1973 Roe Decision held that the abortion right is part of a right to privacy that springs from the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The Roberts Supreme Court, however, decided that “the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition” and overturned Roe. Since the decision, a patchwork of extremely restrictive abortion laws have sprung up across the nation, with women and girls suffering unwanted, imposed, and life-threatening pregnancies; IVF becoming another target of restrictive legislation—with contraception potentially up next; and the Trump GOP speaking openly of a nationwide abortion ban to be imposed in a second Trump presidency.
The Chevron Decision, which struck down a 40-year precedent and cut back the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer, ruling that courts should rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws. As a result, executive branch agencies will have more difficulty regulating the environment, public health, workplace safety, and other issues that affect the health, safety, and well-being of the American people. And the courts will be flooded with lawsuits, further holding up the government’s work on behalf of the American people.
Each of these Supreme Court decisions has spawned a cascade of consequences over the last 20 years. Perhaps the greatest outcome of these Supreme Court rulings has been to disunite our States of America, with a patchwork of inequitable state laws now in place that erode the rights of our citizens.
Democrats want to use the White House and a necessary congressional majority to rectify the impacts of some of these Supreme Court decisions with laws that will apply across our nation, strengthening our democracy, and supporting most of our citizens.
When it comes to the Supreme Court, this next election is consequential; we are likely to see two conservative justices retire. I believe that if we want to preserve and further restore our democracy, we must vote in Democrats, up and down the ballot in November 2024.