motherjones--2020-10-22--If You’re 16 or 17, We Want to Hear Your Ideas for Repairing America

Let ’ s face it , we are all struggling .
The devastation from the last four years , the pandemic , the climate crisis , the terrifying shredding of the norms we thought would somehow endure and protect our democracy , all seem to be heading for a day of reckoning on November 3 .
But , of course , the election is only the beginning .
What about everything else ?
What are the next steps that we need to take in order to fix so many institutions , address such deep problems , create a future that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the past ?
Every day , our reporters talk to some of the greatest experts in whatever field they happen to be covering .
But for this project , we ’ d like to hear from young people , ages 16 and 17 , who may not be able to vote , but who are definitely able to dream , plan , and imagine a much better world .
If you are a young person in this age range , or if you know a young person—perhaps you ’ re a parent or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ send us two of their very best ideas for repairing this country .
You could focus on climate change or COVID , politics or racial justice , police violence or our courts , the economy or whatever else you think will be crucial in order to mend the mess we ’ re in .
Your ideas can be global or local .
This is a chance to turn what you ’ ve been trying to explain to parents , or teachers , or even friends , into a concrete suggestion for us to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even be your parents , teachers , and friends ) .
Fill out the form below with your two best ideas .
We will go through them and invite a few of you to join us for a longer conversation .
But rest assured , we will read all of your responses .
And who knows , someone who actually has some power may be inspired by what you suggested and put this thought into action .
You never know .

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
Let’s face it, we are all struggling. The devastation from the last four years, the pandemic, the climate crisis, the terrifying shredding of the norms we thought would somehow endure and protect our democracy, all seem to be heading for a day of reckoning on November 3. But, of course, the election is only the beginning. What about everything else? What are the next steps that we need to take in order to fix so many institutions, address such deep problems, create a future that is not mired in the mistakes of the past?
Every day, our reporters talk to some of the greatest experts in whatever field they happen to be covering. But for this project, we’d like to hear from young people, ages 16 and 17, who may not be able to vote, but who are definitely able to dream, plan, and imagine a much better world. If you are a young person in this age range, or if you know a young person—perhaps you’re a parent or a teacher or a friend—please ask them send us two of their very best ideas for repairing this country.
You could focus on climate change or COVID, politics or racial justice, police violence or our courts, the economy or whatever else you think will be crucial in order to mend the mess we’re in. Your ideas can be global or local. This is a chance to turn what you’ve been trying to explain to parents, or teachers, or even friends, into a concrete suggestion for us to share with other readers (who may even be your parents, teachers, and friends).
Fill out the form below with your two best ideas. We will go through them and invite a few of you to join us for a longer conversation. But rest assured, we will read all of your responses. And who knows, someone who actually has some power may be inspired by what you suggested and put this thought into action. You never know.


motherjones--2020-10-22--How Will We Know if a COVID-19 Vaccine Is Safe? Because Scientists Will Tell Us.

The first COVID-19 vaccines will be approved in the next few months , but many Americans say they won ’ t immediately take them .
A STAT/Harris poll this week found that 42 percent of respondents don ’ t trust the vaccines in development—up from 31 percent in August .
Among Black Americans , who have suffered disproportionately from the coronavirus , the number is even higher : 57 percent of Black respondents said they wouldn ’ t get the vaccine right away in the October poll , compared to 35 percent in August .
Americans ’ hesitation is understandable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been pushing for months to speed up the vaccine review process—most recently , they tried to bar safety measures proposed by the Food and Drug Administration .
( They failed . )
The Trump administration has applied pressure on scientists in myriad other ways , from meddling with CDC coronavirus guidance to downplaying the risks of climate change .
In an October piece in the scientific journal Nature , Columbia University epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman described Trump ’ s anti-science crusade succinctly : “ This is not just ineptitude , it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to tell if a COVID-19 vaccine is really safe—or a Trump-influenced rush job ?
A good place to start is the experts .
Luckily for us , there ’ s an easy way to do this : Today , the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is convening to make recommendations to the FDA about safety and standards for COVID-19 vaccines .
The group is almost entirely composed of independent scientists—authorities in their field who are not connected to the FDA .
The meeting will be public : If you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sit through all seven hours from the comfort of your laptop .
Once a drug company submits data about a specific vaccine , the committee will convene again to review it .
The FDA is fully expected to adopt the recommendations that the committee makes .
But let ’ s pretend that 2020 throws us yet another curve ball and that , for political reasons , the FDA opts not to follow the advice of the advisory committee .
Without these safeguards , how will we know whether the vaccine meets the rigorous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out ?
There is a simple answer : We will know whether to trust a vaccine because scientists will tell us .
Epidemiologists , virologists , and infectious disease specialists will be watching every step of the process .
Some will air their concerns through official channels : California , for example , has already convened a panel of its own scientists to review any vaccine that the FDA approves .
But that ’ s not the only place you ’ ll hear experts weigh in .
If scientists have any concerns about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can bet they will sing them from the rooftops of Twitter , cable news , and op-ed pages .
“ The scientific community has a much bigger voice now than we ’ ve had in the past , especially on the cable news networks and in the media , ” virologist Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine told me in August .
“ I think that if the White House tried to pull a fast one and tried to get the vaccine out before we knew it was safe and effective , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They ’ ve done this before .
Back in May , Rick Bright , who had recently been removed from his role as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services ’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency , spoke out in a whistleblower complaint about political manipulation of science .
In June , bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel and vaccine scientist Paul Offit—who sits on the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “ Could Trump Turn a Vaccine Into a Campaign Stunt ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , scores of scientists and physicians have sounded the alarm over President Trump ’ s repeated endorsement of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 .
With any luck , scientists won ’ t need to sound the alarm over a vaccine .
Since our August conversation , Hotez says he has become more confident in the integrity of the vaccine approval process .
“ We were in an almost adversarial position with [ the Health and Human Services agency ] a month ago , ” he told me this week .
“ But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effort to try to diffuse that and really came around to make good decisions .
We ’ re in a far better position now.
” On 60 Minutes this week , Dr. Anthony Fauci said , “ I trust the permanent professionals in the FDA .
The director , the commissioner of the FDA , has been very public that he will not let politics interfere.
” Still , the public health community is on high alert .
There is no version of the next few months where an unsafe vaccine is secretly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
Scientists are livid about the ways in which President Trump has undermined public trust in their work .
If Trump wants to regain Americans ’ confidence in the vaccine approval process , his administration will have to step back and let scientists ensure that the vaccine is as safe and effective as possible .
The stakes couldn ’ t be higher .
There ’ s a saying among immunologists : Vaccines don ’ t save lives ; vaccinations save lives .
In other words , the shot doesn ’ t do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If a significant portion of Americans really opt out of the vaccine , COVID-19 is going to be with us for an awfully long time .

The first COVID-19 vaccines will be approved in the next few months, but many Americans say they won’t immediately take them. A STAT/Harris poll this week found that 42 percent of respondents don’t trust the vaccines in development—up from 31 percent in August. Among Black Americans, who have suffered disproportionately from the coronavirus, the number is even higher: 57 percent of Black respondents said they wouldn’t get the vaccine right away in the October poll, compared to 35 percent in August.
Americans’ hesitation is understandable: Top officials at the White House have been pushing for months to speed up the vaccine review process—most recently, they tried to bar safety measures proposed by the Food and Drug Administration. (They failed.) The Trump administration has applied pressure on scientists in myriad other ways, from meddling with CDC coronavirus guidance to downplaying the risks of climate change. In an October piece in the scientific journal Nature, Columbia University epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman described Trump’s anti-science crusade succinctly: “This is not just ineptitude, it’s sabotage.”
So how will we be able to tell if a COVID-19 vaccine is really safe—or a Trump-influenced rush job? A good place to start is the experts. Luckily for us, there’s an easy way to do this: Today, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is convening to make recommendations to the FDA about safety and standards for COVID-19 vaccines. The group is almost entirely composed of independent scientists—authorities in their field who are not connected to the FDA. The meeting will be public: If you’re up for it, you can sit through all seven hours from the comfort of your laptop. Once a drug company submits data about a specific vaccine, the committee will convene again to review it.
The FDA is fully expected to adopt the recommendations that the committee makes. But let’s pretend that 2020 throws us yet another curve ball and that, for political reasons, the FDA opts not to follow the advice of the advisory committee. Without these safeguards, how will we know whether the vaccine meets the rigorous safety criteria that the FDA has laid out?
There is a simple answer: We will know whether to trust a vaccine because scientists will tell us. Epidemiologists, virologists, and infectious disease specialists will be watching every step of the process. Some will air their concerns through official channels: California, for example, has already convened a panel of its own scientists to review any vaccine that the FDA approves.
But that’s not the only place you’ll hear experts weigh in. If scientists have any concerns about the safety of a vaccine, you can bet they will sing them from the rooftops of Twitter, cable news, and op-ed pages. “The scientific community has a much bigger voice now than we’ve had in the past, especially on the cable news networks and in the media,” virologist Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine told me in August. “I think that if the White House tried to pull a fast one and tried to get the vaccine out before we knew it was safe and effective, the scientific community is strong enough.”
They’ve done this before. Back in May, Rick Bright, who had recently been removed from his role as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency, spoke out in a whistleblower complaint about political manipulation of science. In June, bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel and vaccine scientist Paul Offit—who sits on the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Could Trump Turn a Vaccine Into a Campaign Stunt?” Throughout the course of the pandemic, scores of scientists and physicians have sounded the alarm over President Trump’s repeated endorsement of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.
With any luck, scientists won’t need to sound the alarm over a vaccine. Since our August conversation, Hotez says he has become more confident in the integrity of the vaccine approval process. “We were in an almost adversarial position with [the Health and Human Services agency] a month ago,” he told me this week. “But now FDA has made a good faith effort to try to diffuse that and really came around to make good decisions. We’re in a far better position now.” On 60 Minutes this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “I trust the permanent professionals in the FDA. The director, the commissioner of the FDA, has been very public that he will not let politics interfere.”
Still, the public health community is on high alert. There is no version of the next few months where an unsafe vaccine is secretly released and no one finds out about it. Scientists are livid about the ways in which President Trump has undermined public trust in their work. If Trump wants to regain Americans’ confidence in the vaccine approval process, his administration will have to step back and let scientists ensure that the vaccine is as safe and effective as possible.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. There’s a saying among immunologists: Vaccines don’t save lives; vaccinations save lives. In other words, the shot doesn’t do any good unless you take it. If a significant portion of Americans really opt out of the vaccine, COVID-19 is going to be with us for an awfully long time.


motherjones--2020-10-22--Trump Wants the Supreme Court to “End” Obamacare. Here’s How They’d Do It.

That ’ s what President Donald Trump told CBS this week , referring to an upcoming Supreme Court case that will decide the fate of Obamacare .
On November 10 , the court—which will almost certainly include three Trump appointees—will hear arguments in the latest Republican challenge to the landmark health care law .
If the justices side with Trump , millions of Americans could lose their health coverage .
The president has repeatedly insisted that if the Affordable Care Act is eliminated , he ’ ll somehow replace it with a better health care program and protect people with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t presented a viable plan to do so .
The case , California v. Texas ( in the lower courts , it was called Texas v. United States ) , hinges on whether Trump ’ s 2017 tax cuts—which reduced the financial penalty for failing to obtain health insurance to $ 0—invalidate the entire ACA .
Back in 2012 , a sharply divided Supreme Court had ruled that the ACA ’ s individual mandate qualified as a tax and was thus a valid exercise of Congress ’ constitutional powers .
But late last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans—a federal appeals court struck down the mandate , reasoning that because the new tax law zeroed out the penalty , the mandate could no longer be considered a tax .
Yet the stakes are far higher than the fate of the individual mandate .
The GOP plaintiffs , along with the Trump administration , have argued that the mandate is inseverable from the rest of Obamacare—that is , they say that if the mandate is struck down , everything else in the ACA is invalid , too .
It ’ s a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Now , the conservative-dominated Supreme Court will weigh in .
Nicholas Bagley , a professor of law at the University of Michigan , was one of four health law experts to file an amicus brief in May arguing that the individual mandate is indeed severable from the rest of the ACA and that the law should survive even if the mandate is invalidated .
“ Any other conclusion , ” the scholars write , “ would be a judicial usurpation of Congress ’ s lawmaking power.
” In an interview with Mother @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the case and what will happen next if the Supreme Court kills Obamacare .
The conversation below has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity .
Do you think there is a reasonable possibility that the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act ?
Or is the legal argument too far out ?
Both .
I think the lawsuit is a long-shot .
The arguments in the lawsuit are very weak , and the plaintiffs have to win three very difficult arguments in order to prevail : They ’ ve got to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They have to win on the merits .
And then they ’ ve got to win their severability argument on remedy .
And they could fail at any one of those three points .
They ’ ve got to run the table in order to win .
That said , especially with the 6-to-3 super-majority conservative court , there ’ s a chance—it ’ s small , but a small chance of a very bad outcome is worth worrying about .
Could the whole problem be resolved by raising the penalty for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Definitely .
We could repeal the offending language , or actually add a severability clause [ stating that if one part of the law is invalidated , the rest of the law survives ] .
It would take one sentence of text , and it would get rid of the lawsuit immediately .
Is it normal for legislation to have severability clauses ?
Why doesn ’ t the ACA ?
It is quite common , especially for big pieces of legislation .
One thing to keep in mind with the Affordable Care Act @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It was never meant to become law in the form that it did .
Back in 2010 , the Senate passed the Affordable Care Act when they still had a filibuster-proof majority , and the law went to the House , and the House passed a different version that would have gone to a conference committee .
But in the meantime , Ted Kennedy died and Scott Brown [ a Republican ] was elected in his place , so the Democrats no longer had a filibuster-proof majority .
Instead , Democrats passed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passed a sidecar bill through reconciliation authority .
So there are a series of mistakes and oversights in the Senate bill that would have been corrected in the conference committee , and the lack of a severability clause may well have been one of those things .
Trump has signed several executive orders saying he would protect people with preexisting conditions and enact an “ America First ” health plan .
Why do these orders not carry the full weight of law that the Affordable Care Act does ?
We live in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sign a piece of paper , but unless he has the legal authority to bind private parties , it has no more legal weight than a tweet .
He ’ s trying to gaslight the American public into thinking that he has a plan .
Even more to the point , if you look at the executive orders themselves , they don ’ t even purport to actually impose any legally binding obligations .
They just say that it is the policy of the United States to support protections for people with preexisting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know what that means , but it ’ s certainly not a legally binding command to insurance companies not to discriminate against people who are sick .
Would it be possible , if the ACA were overturned , for certain states to keep their marketplaces , or to enact laws keeping certain provisions of the ACA ?
They could do some things to maintain the protections that are in place , but the short answer is no , they ’ re going to struggle .
The big problem with health insurance is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get people who lack insurance covered , you ’ ve got to spend money .
The federal government has the ability to deficit spend , so it can spend as much as it needs to in order to cover folks .
States have to balance their budgets , and that means that any dollar they spend is either going to have to be reflected in an increase in taxes , or in a decrease in other services , like education or roads .
The ACA has two big funding streams , one for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the private exchanges .
If you eliminate those two funding streams , the states have very limited fiscal authority to step into the breach , which is why , before the Affordable Care Act , only Massachusetts and Hawaii had achieved something like near universal coverage .
It ’ s just too expensive for most states to go it alone .
If the Supreme Court did find that the lack of an insurance mandate invalidated the whole ACA , what precedent would that set for severability cases in the future ?
I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ holding , and one that runs counter to the broad drift of Supreme Court case law .
The presumption is in favor of severability , not invalidating a whole law as constitutionally infirm .
But—and this is a fairly important but—the severability doctrine is really a pretty malleable counterfactual inquiry , because what you ’ re trying to do is figure out what Congress would have wanted to do had it known that the provision in question was unconstitutional , which of course it didn ’ t .
That ’ s an inquiry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and that means that a decision about whether a particular provision is integral to a particular law may not have much bearing on a case about a different provision .
So , is it impossible to get to the result that the entire ACA is invalid ?
No .
Would it portend a massive shift in how the court goes about severability analysis ?
Probably not .
Sometimes big cases can issue decisions that are good for one train and one train only .
You could imagine this case being one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could this be for future attempts at instituting something approaching universal health care ?
I don ’ t think the Affordable Care Act case is going to tell you what you need to know there .
The conservative movement is aimed primarily at throwing a wrench into government , out of commitment to a set of libertarian ideals , and if you think that any major piece of Democratic legislation is going to make it through a supermajority conservative court , I think you ’ re not paying attention .
The stakes here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the Affordable Care Act , but for future legislation .
Amy Coney Barrett has told us that if she had been on the Court in 2012 , she probably would have sided with the challengers in that year ’ s lawsuit against the ACA .
That means that if we had had a 6-3 court back when the Affordable Care Act was adopted , it would have been struck down .
And I have no reason to think that future legislation will be treated more humanely by a 6-3 court .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to my life .
I think people don ’ t get it .
I clerked at the court , and when Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito came to the court , it was a conservative majority for the first time .
I think people were taken aback by how conservative they were , but it kind of didn ’ t penetrate public consciousness .
I think the vote to sustain the Affordable Care Act the first time around and the occasional vote in favor of social causes led people to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s not .
It is a hard-right conservative court , and it will be for decades .

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“I hope that they end it.”
That’s what President Donald Trump told CBS this week, referring to an upcoming Supreme Court case that will decide the fate of Obamacare. On November 10, the court—which will almost certainly include three Trump appointees—will hear arguments in the latest Republican challenge to the landmark health care law. If the justices side with Trump, millions of Americans could lose their health coverage. The president has repeatedly insisted that if the Affordable Care Act is eliminated, he’ll somehow replace it with a better health care program and protect people with preexisting conditions. But he hasn’t presented a viable plan to do so.
“A small chance of a very bad outcome is worth worrying about.”
The case, California v. Texas (in the lower courts, it was called Texas v. United States), hinges on whether Trump’s 2017 tax cuts—which reduced the financial penalty for failing to obtain health insurance to $0—invalidate the entire ACA. Back in 2012, a sharply divided Supreme Court had ruled that the ACA’s individual mandate qualified as a tax and was thus a valid exercise of Congress’ constitutional powers. But late last year—in response to a lawsuit filed by Republicans—a federal appeals court struck down the mandate, reasoning that because the new tax law zeroed out the penalty, the mandate could no longer be considered a tax. Yet the stakes are far higher than the fate of the individual mandate. The GOP plaintiffs, along with the Trump administration, have argued that the mandate is inseverable from the rest of Obamacare—that is, they say that if the mandate is struck down, everything else in the ACA is invalid, too. It’s a brazen argument, widely derided by experts. Now, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court will weigh in.
Nicholas Bagley, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, was one of four health law experts to file an amicus brief in May arguing that the individual mandate is indeed severable from the rest of the ACA and that the law should survive even if the mandate is invalidated. “Any other conclusion,” the scholars write, “would be a judicial usurpation of Congress’s lawmaking power.” In an interview with Mother Jones, Bagley explained the potential consequences of the case and what will happen next if the Supreme Court kills Obamacare. The conversation below has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Do you think there is a reasonable possibility that the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act? Or is the legal argument too far out?
Both. I think the lawsuit is a long-shot. The arguments in the lawsuit are very weak, and the plaintiffs have to win three very difficult arguments in order to prevail: They’ve got to show the court that they have standing. They have to win on the merits. And then they’ve got to win their severability argument on remedy. And they could fail at any one of those three points. They’ve got to run the table in order to win. That said, especially with the 6-to-3 super-majority conservative court, there’s a chance—it’s small, but a small chance of a very bad outcome is worth worrying about.
Could the whole problem be resolved by raising the penalty for not having insurance to $1?
Definitely. We could repeal the offending language, or actually add a severability clause [stating that if one part of the law is invalidated, the rest of the law survives]. It would take one sentence of text, and it would get rid of the lawsuit immediately.
Is it normal for legislation to have severability clauses? Why doesn’t the ACA?
It is quite common, especially for big pieces of legislation. One thing to keep in mind with the Affordable Care Act is that it was a rough draft. It was never meant to become law in the form that it did.
Back in 2010, the Senate passed the Affordable Care Act when they still had a filibuster-proof majority, and the law went to the House, and the House passed a different version that would have gone to a conference committee. But in the meantime, Ted Kennedy died and Scott Brown [a Republican] was elected in his place, so the Democrats no longer had a filibuster-proof majority. Instead, Democrats passed the Senate bill in whole and then passed a sidecar bill through reconciliation authority. So there are a series of mistakes and oversights in the Senate bill that would have been corrected in the conference committee, and the lack of a severability clause may well have been one of those things.
Trump has signed several executive orders saying he would protect people with preexisting conditions and enact an “America First” health plan. Why do these orders not carry the full weight of law that the Affordable Care Act does?
We live in a government of laws. The president can sign a piece of paper, but unless he has the legal authority to bind private parties, it has no more legal weight than a tweet. He’s trying to gaslight the American public into thinking that he has a plan.
Even more to the point, if you look at the executive orders themselves, they don’t even purport to actually impose any legally binding obligations. They just say that it is the policy of the United States to support protections for people with preexisting conditions. I don’t even know what that means, but it’s certainly not a legally binding command to insurance companies not to discriminate against people who are sick.
Would it be possible, if the ACA were overturned, for certain states to keep their marketplaces, or to enact laws keeping certain provisions of the ACA?
They could do some things to maintain the protections that are in place, but the short answer is no, they’re going to struggle.
The big problem with health insurance is that it’s expensive, so to get people who lack insurance covered, you’ve got to spend money. The federal government has the ability to deficit spend, so it can spend as much as it needs to in order to cover folks. States have to balance their budgets, and that means that any dollar they spend is either going to have to be reflected in an increase in taxes, or in a decrease in other services, like education or roads.
The ACA has two big funding streams, one for Medicaid and one for insurance purchased on the private exchanges. If you eliminate those two funding streams, the states have very limited fiscal authority to step into the breach, which is why, before the Affordable Care Act, only Massachusetts and Hawaii had achieved something like near universal coverage. It’s just too expensive for most states to go it alone.
If the Supreme Court did find that the lack of an insurance mandate invalidated the whole ACA, what precedent would that set for severability cases in the future?
I think it would be a very aggressive severability holding, and one that runs counter to the broad drift of Supreme Court case law. The presumption is in favor of severability, not invalidating a whole law as constitutionally infirm.
But—and this is a fairly important but—the severability doctrine is really a pretty malleable counterfactual inquiry, because what you’re trying to do is figure out what Congress would have wanted to do had it known that the provision in question was unconstitutional, which of course it didn’t. That’s an inquiry where different judges can have different instincts, and that means that a decision about whether a particular provision is integral to a particular law may not have much bearing on a case about a different provision.
So, is it impossible to get to the result that the entire ACA is invalid? No. Would it portend a massive shift in how the court goes about severability analysis? Probably not. Sometimes big cases can issue decisions that are good for one train and one train only. You could imagine this case being one of them.
What sort of a harbinger could this be for future attempts at instituting something approaching universal health care?
I don’t think the Affordable Care Act case is going to tell you what you need to know there. The conservative movement is aimed primarily at throwing a wrench into government, out of commitment to a set of libertarian ideals, and if you think that any major piece of Democratic legislation is going to make it through a supermajority conservative court, I think you’re not paying attention. The stakes here really could not be higher, not for the Affordable Care Act, but for future legislation.
Amy Coney Barrett has told us that if she had been on the Court in 2012, she probably would have sided with the challengers in that year’s lawsuit against the ACA. That means that if we had had a 6-3 court back when the Affordable Care Act was adopted, it would have been struck down. And I have no reason to think that future legislation will be treated more humanely by a 6-3 court. It’s a dangerous situation.
That’s a grim outlook.
Welcome to my life.
I think people don’t get it. I clerked at the court, and when Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito came to the court, it was a conservative majority for the first time. I think people were taken aback by how conservative they were, but it kind of didn’t penetrate public consciousness. I think the vote to sustain the Affordable Care Act the first time around and the occasional vote in favor of social causes led people to think that it was a moderate court. It’s not. It is a hard-right conservative court, and it will be for decades.


motherjones--2020-10-23--Amy Coney Barrett Is the Least Experienced Supreme Court Nominee in 30 years

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett took some heat from Sen. Richard Blumenthal ( D-Conn. ) during her confirmation hearing last week , when he pressed her on her failure to turn over additional relevant documents to the committee , including an anti-abortion newspaper ad she ’ d signed in 2006 .
Barrett responded that she had submitted 30 years ’ worth of material to the committee , and that she had simply missed the 15-year-old ad .
“ I produced 1,800 pages of material , ” she insisted , implying that this submission was voluminous .
In the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1,800 pages of documents barely registers as a footnote .
Chief Justice John Roberts rustled up 75,000 pages of records for his 2005 confirmation hearing—just from his time serving in Republican administrations .
The Senate reviewed about 170,000 pages of records before confirming Justice Elena Kagan and 180,000 for Justice Neil Gorsuch .
No one even comes close to the document dump from Justice Brett Kavanaugh .
The Senate Judiciary Committee waded through more than 1 million records during his 2018 confirmation fight , including a supplemental submission of 42,000 the night before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course , are not a perfect proxy for experience , but the relative paucity of Barrett ’ s is an indication of just how circumscribed her legal experience has been compared with virtually all of her predecessors—and even one nominee who was ultimately denied the position .
The permanent record of the 48-year-old former Notre Dame law school professor is in direct proportion with her resume , which is strikingly thin for someone nominated to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court .
By almost any objective measure , Barrett is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Court since 1991 , when President George H.W .
Bush nominated Clarence Thomas , then just 43 , to replace the legendary Thurgood Marshall .
Barrett ’ s limited CV did have an upside : It ’ s one reason that Republicans have been able to rush her confirmation hearings and vote on her nomination , which the Judiciary Committee did Thursday without a single Democrat in the room .
( The full Senate will vote on it Monday . )
There ’ s simply not that much in her record to review @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history raises some pertinent questions about her nomination that go beyond how she might rule on hot-button social issues : How did a professor from a second-tier law school with such a shallow reservoir of experience manage to leapfrog to the top of the list of potential Republican Supreme Court nominees ?
And why were Republicans , who have spent decades obstructing legislation that would help women advance in the workplace , so eager to promote this particular under-credentialed , female candidate ?
“ How did she go from really good law professor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Angie Maxwell , a political science professor at the University of Arkansas who studies conservative politics and feminism .
“ That ’ s not from being a law professor .
That ’ s from partisan networks and groups she worked with , and that ’ s what ’ s concerning.
” Barrett has spent virtually all of her professional life in academia .
Until President Trump nominated her to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017 , she had never been a judge , never worked in the government as a prosecutor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or attorney general , or served as counsel to any legislative body—the usual professional channels that Supreme Court nominees tend to hail from .
A graduate of Notre Dame law school , Barrett has almost no experience practicing law whatsoever—a hole in her resume so glaring that during her 7th Circuit confirmation hearing in 2017 , Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were dismayed that she couldn ’ t recall more than three cases she ’ d worked on during her brief two years in private practice .
Nominees are asked to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never tried a case to verdict or argued an appeal in any court , nor has she ever performed any notable pro bono work , even during law school .
The ABA ’ s code of professional responsibility says lawyers should aspire to provide 50 hours a year of free legal services , with an emphasis on serving the poor in recognition of the fact that “ only lawyers have the special skills and knowledge needed to secure access to justice for low-income people.
” Chief Justice John Roberts famously met some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Florida ’ s death row .
In response to the Senate Judiciary Committee ’ s questions about her pro bono work , Barrett said she probably helped with such cases during her two years in private practice , but she couldn ’ t recall any details .
Instead , she described her family ’ s participation in Angel Tree drives and volunteer work at a local soup kitchen—worthy projects undertaken by families all across America but not even close to the official definition of pro bono work .
Yet Barrett ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Supreme Court candidate almost as soon as Trump took office .
She didn ’ t make the list of potential Supreme Court candidates his campaign released during the 2016 campaign , probably because she ’ d never been a judge .
The president fixed that problem in 2017 , when he nominated her for a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals .
The American Bar Association deemed her well-qualified for the post , and within three months of her investiture in 2018 , White House officials were interviewing her to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comparison , the American Bar Association had reservations about Brett Kavanaugh when George W. Bush nominated him ( for the third time ) to serve on the DC Circuit in 2006—his inexperience and his “ sanctimonious ” performance during oral arguments counted against him .
But by the time Trump picked him to replace Kennedy , he had spent 12 years on the appellate court and written hundreds of opinions .
Trump ’ s other appointee , Justice Neil Gorsuch , had been an appellate court judge for 11 years before Trump nominated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the late Justice Antonin Scalia .
Justice Sonia Sotomayor had been an assistant district attorney in New York City , a solo practitioner , and later a corporate litigator and law firm partner .
She had been a federal judge , first at the trial court level , and then on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals , for 17 years before Obama tapped her for the Supreme Court .
Not all Supreme Court justices have logged decades on the lower courts before moving up the ladder .
The late Chief Justice William @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been a judge when President Richard Nixon appointed him .
Barrett ’ s defenders often compare her to Justice Kagan , who also came to the court after working mostly in academia .
Kagan had never been a judge , but she had wide-ranging legal experience when President Barack Obama nominated her in 2010 , including significant public service experience .
In 1993 , she took leave for a summer from her teaching position at the University of Chicago law school to serve as special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee .
Her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Court nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg , the legendary feminist Trump chose Barrett to replace .
Kagan later spent four years working in the Clinton White House , first as associate White House counsel and later at the domestic policy counsel .
Clinton nominated her to a seat on the DC Circuit in 1999 , but the GOP-led Senate never acted on the nomination .
When Obama tapped her for the Supreme Court , critics complained that Kagan , like Barrett , had never tried a case .
But unlike Barrett , Kagan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s questions about the most notable 10 cases she ’ d worked on in private practice at the Washington , DC , law firm Williams & Connolly before she went into academia .
At the time of her nomination , she was the solicitor general , the first woman to hold the post , where she argued frequently before the Supreme Court , wrote briefs , and oversaw the work of nearly two dozen lawyers before the high court .
As for Kagan ’ s 15 years in academia , she wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ teaching three classes a year as Barrett did during her 15 years as a full-time law professor .
In 2003 , Kagan became the first female dean of Harvard Law School , where she had also studied .
At the nation ’ s largest and most prestigious law school , Kagan oversaw a $ 400 million capital campaign , an operating budget of $ 180 million , and 500 employees .
Even Harriet Miers had a more substantial legal background than Barrett .
Miers was the last woman a Republican president tried ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high court .
Then more than a decade older than Barrett is now , she was White House counsel for President George W. Bush when he nominated her in 2005 to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O ’ Connor , the first woman on the Supreme Court .
Conservatives ultimately torpedoed her nomination because they thought she ’ d go all wobbly on abortion or other conservative litmus-tests issues , much the way they believed George H.W .
Bush ’ s nominee Justice David Souter did .
Miers had once been a Democrat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that while she ’ d litigated and argued a host of cases in federal and state courts , they weren ’ t the right kind of cases .
( Flash forward to Barrett , who has never litigated anything in federal court . )
The fight over her failed nomination obscured Miers ’ rather impressive resume .
Though never a judge , she had been a trailblazer in Texas , where she was the first woman hired at the big firm now known as Locke Lorde—and eventually its first female president .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ State Bar of Texas .
At one point , she even served as a witness in a sexual discrimination case against her own firm—the sort of experience Ginsburg might have appreciated in a colleague .
Outside the courtroom , Miers had a rich record of civic involvement and public service reminiscent of O ’ Connor ’ s , including serving two years on the Dallas City Council .
And Miers did a considerable amount of real pro bono work , including representing a poor , single mother of six , with a ninth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Supreme Court in a fight over disability benefits .
( The court declined to hear the case . )
When Bush was elected governor , he tapped her to clean up the troubled Texas Lottery Commission .
Miers went to the White House with Bush , where she served as staff secretary , deputy chief of staff , and counsel to the president—the second woman ever to hold that post .
A recurring theme among Republicans is that Barrett is also something of a trailblazer—not because of any of her professional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she will be the first woman on the court with school-aged children at home .
“ As a nominee for our nation ’ s highest court , Judge Barrett is an example to girls and young women in Iowa , and across America , that they truly can do it all , ” Sen. Joni Ernst ( R-Iowa ) said after Barrett was nominated .
When President Trump took office , he immediately prioritized the federal judiciary in a way no other president has .
To help him fill the bench with religious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Society , a conservative legal organization established in 1982 that over the years has been funded with millions of dollars in dark money donations in an effort to stack the federal courts with conservative and libertarian judges for decades to come .
By July 2020 , the group had helped the GOP-controlled Senate ram through a record 218 Trump judicial nominees—85 percent of them white , and 76 percent male .
Its singular focus on youth and ideological purity among the nominees has been instrumental in lowering the standards for judicial office .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ American Bar Association rated as unqualified to serve on the federal bench ; seven of them were confirmed .
Among those unqualified nominees was Brett Talley , an amateur ghost-hunter from Alabama who had blogged favorably about the Klan .
( He withdrew from consideration . )
And then there was Matthew Peterson , an elections lawyer nominated for a seat on the US District Court for the DC Circuit .
The ABA rated him as qualified , but he withdrew his nomination shortly after his confirmation hearing , where he couldn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( R-La . )
about basic legal concepts .
“ They certainly value ideology and fidelity over traditional notions of careerism , qualifications and experience , ” says Amanda Hollis-Brusky , a politics professor at Pomona College and the author of Ideas With Consequences : The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution .
“ Their idea of someone who is a good judge is someone with a particular ideology , not someone who understands the craft.
” Lowering the standards for judicial nominations has benefitted a lot of mediocre men , but it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few smart conservative women like Barrett , whose family life has put them at a disadvantage in racking up the sorts of legal qualifications normally required of a federal judge .
“ The pool [ of conservative women lawyers ] is so small that someone with her relative lack of experience on the bench is on the top of the list , ” says the University of Arkansas ’ Maxwell .
Indeed , in 2016 , when Trump released his original list of 21 conservatives he ’ d consider for the Supreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women currently serving on a federal court .
Barrett first joined the Federalist Society in 2005 and then again in 2014 , after which she set off on an extensive speaking tour sponsored by the conservative legal outfit—a tour that bears all the hallmarks of a political campaign , only one targeted at the unelected post of Supreme Court justice .
Between 2016 and the time Trump nominated her to the Supreme Court this year , she spoke at nearly two dozen Federalist Society events across the country , with the group picking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her in 2018 and 2019 .
Barrett is not the only conservative woman with a shallow CV to benefit from an assist from the Federalist Society .
Sarah Pitlyk , a former Kavanaugh clerk who had previously worked at an anti-abortion legal nonprofit , is now a Trump-appointed judge on the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri .
A unanimous committee of the ABA rated her unqualified for the seat , in part because of “ a very substantial gap ” in her resume .
During her confirmation hearing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a deposition or tried a case because she had arranged her schedule to spend more time with her four children .
During her Senate testimony she described herself as “ very fortunate ” for having had the opportunity to work “ at small firms with very accommodating and flexible colleagues who want the best for me and for my family in addition to the best for our clients .
I have had the luxury of getting to be as protected as possible and as supported as possible by my colleagues.
” Would that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The legal profession is tough on women in a way it is not on men , and those who succeed often do so at huge costs to their personal lives .
A 2017 McKinsey study found that while women represented almost half of entry-level workforce legal jobs , only 19 percent of equity partners in the nation ’ s biggest law firms were women , and women were nearly 30 percent less likely than men to make the first level of partnership .
Children are a major factor in the attrition rate .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Kagan , and Miers had expansive resumes but no spouses or children when they were nominated to the Supreme Court , even though all of the male justices are married with children .
The late Justice Antonin Scalia had nine of them ; Chief Justice Roberts ’ 4-year-old son famously upstaged President George W. Bush by tap dancing through the press conference when Bush announced Roberts ’ nomination .
That ’ s one reason Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee couldn ’ t stop marveling about Barrett ’ s seven children @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kennedy even asked her who did her family ’ s laundry .
Clearly , one likely reason Barrett ’ s resume is so thin is precisely because she has seven children .
Consider this : If she took all the paid family leave available to her while she was a full-time professor , she would have spent nearly two of the 15 years she worked at Notre Dame on leave .
That ’ s not the sort of butt-in-the-chair performance expected of lots of lawyers , much less those on track for superstar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a work-life balance many liberal women lawyers would envy .
And she ’ s done it at a conservative Catholic law school , within the confines of a patriarchal conservative religious movement that in many quarters still frowns upon working mothers , paid family leave legislation , contraception , and anti-discrimination laws .
“ It ’ s striking because the Federalist Society has so few women , it ’ s not as if they are a pipeline to uplift women in general , ” says Pomona ’ s Hollis-Brusky .
Women like Barrett @ @ @ @ @ @ @ granted these opportunities by men who approve of their life choices.
” Indeed , Barrett is aligned with a movement in which people like Fox News ’ Tucker Carlson blame working mothers for the “ decline ” of men , or conservative Christian commentator and RedState editor Erick Erickson publicly condemns working mothers as bad for kids .
Yet these same conservatives give Barrett a pass .
Carlson , who once said he felt sorry for Elena Kagan because she was “ never going to be an attractive woman ” is over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barrett is a remarkable person , an unusual person , maybe the most impressive person to receive a Supreme Court nomination in memory , ” Carlson told his 4 million viewers in September .
She “ represents everything that made this a great country.
” Historically , Maxwell says , the conservative movement has made an exception for women like Barrett as long as they are furthering its anti-feminist agenda .
She compares her to another Catholic superwoman of the religious right , the late Phyllis Schlafly , mother of six , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rights Amendment as part of her lifelong campaign to keep mothers out of the workplace .
“ She ’ s clearly very intelligent , ” Maxwell says of Barrett , but her nomination is reminiscent of the time when Sen. John McCain ( R-Ariz. ) was trying to find a woman to put on the 2012 GOP presidential ticket and emerged with Sarah Palin .
The former governor of Alaska had five children , including one with Down syndrome .
Barrett also has a child with a disability , as well as two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a woman like Barrett , who ’ s managed to do it all , is one way the conservative movement likes to “ thumb its nose at all of the things that women say are still obstacles , ” Maxwell says .
If one woman with many kids succeeds at the highest level of law and politics , she says , “ it invalidates [ the obstacles ] for all the other women.
” Barrett also checks another important box for the religious right : Men who would like to see the Supreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Roe v. Wade have long hoped to have a woman cast the deciding vote .
“ It washes away the stench of it being sexist if it ’ s coming from a woman , ” Maxwell says .
Having not just a woman but one with seven children poised to overturn Roe explains conservatives ’ outsize enthusiasm for a nominee whose professional record falls short when compared with most Supreme Court justices .
“ That is really part of the symbolic strategy , ” Maxwell says .
“ I can still have it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of the children , cherish life , and still have all the success that every woman wants .
”

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Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett took some heat from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) during her confirmation hearing last week, when he pressed her on her failure to turn over additional relevant documents to the committee, including an anti-abortion newspaper ad she’d signed in 2006. Barrett responded that she had submitted 30 years’ worth of material to the committee, and that she had simply missed the 15-year-old ad. “I produced 1,800 pages of material,” she insisted, implying that this submission was voluminous.
In the world of Supreme Court nominees, however, 1,800 pages of documents barely registers as a footnote. Chief Justice John Roberts rustled up 75,000 pages of records for his 2005 confirmation hearing—just from his time serving in Republican administrations. The Senate reviewed about 170,000 pages of records before confirming Justice Elena Kagan and 180,000 for Justice Neil Gorsuch. No one even comes close to the document dump from Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Senate Judiciary Committee waded through more than 1 million records during his 2018 confirmation fight, including a supplemental submission of 42,000 the night before his hearing started.
Page counts, of course, are not a perfect proxy for experience, but the relative paucity of Barrett’s is an indication of just how circumscribed her legal experience has been compared with virtually all of her predecessors—and even one nominee who was ultimately denied the position. The permanent record of the 48-year-old former Notre Dame law school professor is in direct proportion with her resume, which is strikingly thin for someone nominated to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court. By almost any objective measure, Barrett is the most inexperienced person nominated to the Supreme Court since 1991, when President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, then just 43, to replace the legendary Thurgood Marshall.
Barrett’s limited CV did have an upside: It’s one reason that Republicans have been able to rush her confirmation hearings and vote on her nomination, which the Judiciary Committee did Thursday without a single Democrat in the room. (The full Senate will vote on it Monday.) There’s simply not that much in her record to review.
But Barrett’s insular professional history raises some pertinent questions about her nomination that go beyond how she might rule on hot-button social issues: How did a professor from a second-tier law school with such a shallow reservoir of experience manage to leapfrog to the top of the list of potential Republican Supreme Court nominees? And why were Republicans, who have spent decades obstructing legislation that would help women advance in the workplace, so eager to promote this particular under-credentialed, female candidate?
“How did she go from really good law professor to the short list?” asks Angie Maxwell, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas who studies conservative politics and feminism. “That’s not from being a law professor. That’s from partisan networks and groups she worked with, and that’s what’s concerning.”
Barrett has spent virtually all of her professional life in academia. Until President Trump nominated her to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017, she had never been a judge, never worked in the government as a prosecutor, defense lawyer, solicitor general, or attorney general, or served as counsel to any legislative body—the usual professional channels that Supreme Court nominees tend to hail from. A graduate of Notre Dame law school, Barrett has almost no experience practicing law whatsoever—a hole in her resume so glaring that during her 7th Circuit confirmation hearing in 2017, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were dismayed that she couldn’t recall more than three cases she’d worked on during her brief two years in private practice. Nominees are asked to provide details on 10.
Barrett has never tried a case to verdict or argued an appeal in any court, nor has she ever performed any notable pro bono work, even during law school. The ABA’s code of professional responsibility says lawyers should aspire to provide 50 hours a year of free legal services, with an emphasis on serving the poor in recognition of the fact that “only lawyers have the special skills and knowledge needed to secure access to justice for low-income people.” Chief Justice John Roberts famously met some of these requirements by representing a mass murderer on Florida’s death row.
Barrett has never tried a case to verdict or argued an appeal in any court, nor has she ever performed any notable pro bono work, even during law school.
In response to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questions about her pro bono work, Barrett said she probably helped with such cases during her two years in private practice, but she couldn’t recall any details. Instead, she described her family’s participation in Angel Tree drives and volunteer work at a local soup kitchen—worthy projects undertaken by families all across America but not even close to the official definition of pro bono work.
Yet Barrett’s name was already being bandied about as a Supreme Court candidate almost as soon as Trump took office. She didn’t make the list of potential Supreme Court candidates his campaign released during the 2016 campaign, probably because she’d never been a judge. The president fixed that problem in 2017, when he nominated her for a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The American Bar Association deemed her well-qualified for the post, and within three months of her investiture in 2018, White House officials were interviewing her to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.
By comparison, the American Bar Association had reservations about Brett Kavanaugh when George W. Bush nominated him (for the third time) to serve on the DC Circuit in 2006—his inexperience and his “sanctimonious” performance during oral arguments counted against him. But by the time Trump picked him to replace Kennedy, he had spent 12 years on the appellate court and written hundreds of opinions. Trump’s other appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, had been an appellate court judge for 11 years before Trump nominated him to fill the seat vacated by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Justice Sonia Sotomayor had been an assistant district attorney in New York City, a solo practitioner, and later a corporate litigator and law firm partner. She had been a federal judge, first at the trial court level, and then on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, for 17 years before Obama tapped her for the Supreme Court.
Not all Supreme Court justices have logged decades on the lower courts before moving up the ladder. The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, for instance, had never been a judge when President Richard Nixon appointed him. Barrett’s defenders often compare her to Justice Kagan, who also came to the court after working mostly in academia. Kagan had never been a judge, but she had wide-ranging legal experience when President Barack Obama nominated her in 2010, including significant public service experience. In 1993, she took leave for a summer from her teaching position at the University of Chicago law school to serve as special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her job there? Working on the Supreme Court nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the legendary feminist Trump chose Barrett to replace.
Kagan later spent four years working in the Clinton White House, first as associate White House counsel and later at the domestic policy counsel. Clinton nominated her to a seat on the DC Circuit in 1999, but the GOP-led Senate never acted on the nomination. When Obama tapped her for the Supreme Court, critics complained that Kagan, like Barrett, had never tried a case. But unlike Barrett, Kagan had no trouble satisfying the Judiciary Committee’s questions about the most notable 10 cases she’d worked on in private practice at the Washington, DC, law firm Williams & Connolly before she went into academia. At the time of her nomination, she was the solicitor general, the first woman to hold the post, where she argued frequently before the Supreme Court, wrote briefs, and oversaw the work of nearly two dozen lawyers before the high court.
As for Kagan’s 15 years in academia, she wasn’t just any law professor, teaching three classes a year as Barrett did during her 15 years as a full-time law professor. In 2003, Kagan became the first female dean of Harvard Law School, where she had also studied. At the nation’s largest and most prestigious law school, Kagan oversaw a $400 million capital campaign, an operating budget of $180 million, and 500 employees.
Even Harriet Miers had a more substantial legal background than Barrett. Miers was the last woman a Republican president tried (though failed) to put on the high court. Then more than a decade older than Barrett is now, she was White House counsel for President George W. Bush when he nominated her in 2005 to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court. Conservatives ultimately torpedoed her nomination because they thought she’d go all wobbly on abortion or other conservative litmus-tests issues, much the way they believed George H.W. Bush’s nominee Justice David Souter did. Miers had once been a Democrat and conservatives attacked her credentials, suggesting that while she’d litigated and argued a host of cases in federal and state courts, they weren’t the right kind of cases. (Flash forward to Barrett, who has never litigated anything in federal court.)
The fight over her failed nomination obscured Miers’ rather impressive resume. Though never a judge, she had been a trailblazer in Texas, where she was the first woman hired at the big firm now known as Locke Lorde—and eventually its first female president. She was the first woman to head the State Bar of Texas. At one point, she even served as a witness in a sexual discrimination case against her own firm—the sort of experience Ginsburg might have appreciated in a colleague.
Outside the courtroom, Miers had a rich record of civic involvement and public service reminiscent of O’Connor’s, including serving two years on the Dallas City Council. And Miers did a considerable amount of real pro bono work, including representing a poor, single mother of six, with a ninth grade education, appealing all the way to the Supreme Court in a fight over disability benefits. (The court declined to hear the case.) When Bush was elected governor, he tapped her to clean up the troubled Texas Lottery Commission. Miers went to the White House with Bush, where she served as staff secretary, deputy chief of staff, and counsel to the president—the second woman ever to hold that post.
A recurring theme among Republicans is that Barrett is also something of a trailblazer—not because of any of her professional accomplishments or teacher-of-the-year awards, but because she will be the first woman on the court with school-aged children at home. “As a nominee for our nation’s highest court, Judge Barrett is an example to girls and young women in Iowa, and across America, that they truly can do it all,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said after Barrett was nominated.
“As a nominee for our nation’s highest court, Judge Barrett is an example to girls and young women in Iowa, and across America, that they truly can do it all.”
When President Trump took office, he immediately prioritized the federal judiciary in a way no other president has. To help him fill the bench with religious conservatives, he turned to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization established in 1982 that over the years has been funded with millions of dollars in dark money donations in an effort to stack the federal courts with conservative and libertarian judges for decades to come.
By July 2020, the group had helped the GOP-controlled Senate ram through a record 218 Trump judicial nominees—85 percent of them white, and 76 percent male. Its singular focus on youth and ideological purity among the nominees has been instrumental in lowering the standards for judicial office.
Trump has nominated 10 judges that the American Bar Association rated as unqualified to serve on the federal bench; seven of them were confirmed. Among those unqualified nominees was Brett Talley, an amateur ghost-hunter from Alabama who had blogged favorably about the Klan. (He withdrew from consideration.) And then there was Matthew Peterson, an elections lawyer nominated for a seat on the US District Court for the DC Circuit. The ABA rated him as qualified, but he withdrew his nomination shortly after his confirmation hearing, where he couldn’t answer questions from Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) about basic legal concepts.
“They certainly value ideology and fidelity over traditional notions of careerism, qualifications and experience,” says Amanda Hollis-Brusky, a politics professor at Pomona College and the author of Ideas With Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution. “Their idea of someone who is a good judge is someone with a particular ideology, not someone who understands the craft.”
Lowering the standards for judicial nominations has benefitted a lot of mediocre men, but it has also accrued to the advantage of a few smart conservative women like Barrett, whose family life has put them at a disadvantage in racking up the sorts of legal qualifications normally required of a federal judge. “The pool [of conservative women lawyers] is so small that someone with her relative lack of experience on the bench is on the top of the list,” says the University of Arkansas’ Maxwell. Indeed, in 2016, when Trump released his original list of 21 conservatives he’d consider for the Supreme Court, only two of them were women currently serving on a federal court.
Barrett first joined the Federalist Society in 2005 and then again in 2014, after which she set off on an extensive speaking tour sponsored by the conservative legal outfit—a tour that bears all the hallmarks of a political campaign, only one targeted at the unelected post of Supreme Court justice. Between 2016 and the time Trump nominated her to the Supreme Court this year, she spoke at nearly two dozen Federalist Society events across the country, with the group picking up $15,000 in travel expenses for her in 2018 and 2019.
Barrett is not the only conservative woman with a shallow CV to benefit from an assist from the Federalist Society. Sarah Pitlyk, a former Kavanaugh clerk who had previously worked at an anti-abortion legal nonprofit, is now a Trump-appointed judge on the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. A unanimous committee of the ABA rated her unqualified for the seat, in part because of “a very substantial gap” in her resume.
During her confirmation hearing, Pitlyk explained that she had never taken a deposition or tried a case because she had arranged her schedule to spend more time with her four children. During her Senate testimony she described herself as “very fortunate” for having had the opportunity to work “at small firms with very accommodating and flexible colleagues who want the best for me and for my family in addition to the best for our clients. I have had the luxury of getting to be as protected as possible and as supported as possible by my colleagues.”
Would that all women lawyers were so lucky. The legal profession is tough on women in a way it is not on men, and those who succeed often do so at huge costs to their personal lives. A 2017 McKinsey study found that while women represented almost half of entry-level workforce legal jobs, only 19 percent of equity partners in the nation’s biggest law firms were women, and women were nearly 30 percent less likely than men to make the first level of partnership. Children are a major factor in the attrition rate.
It’s no coincidence that Sotomayor, Kagan, and Miers had expansive resumes but no spouses or children when they were nominated to the Supreme Court, even though all of the male justices are married with children. The late Justice Antonin Scalia had nine of them; Chief Justice Roberts’ 4-year-old son famously upstaged President George W. Bush by tap dancing through the press conference when Bush announced Roberts’ nomination. That’s one reason Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee couldn’t stop marveling about Barrett’s seven children during her confirmation hearing. Sen. John Kennedy even asked her who did her family’s laundry.
Clearly, one likely reason Barrett’s resume is so thin is precisely because she has seven children. Consider this: If she took all the paid family leave available to her while she was a full-time professor, she would have spent nearly two of the 15 years she worked at Notre Dame on leave. That’s not the sort of butt-in-the-chair performance expected of lots of lawyers, much less those on track for superstar status. She’s pulled off a work-life balance many liberal women lawyers would envy. And she’s done it at a conservative Catholic law school, within the confines of a patriarchal conservative religious movement that in many quarters still frowns upon working mothers, paid family leave legislation, contraception, and anti-discrimination laws.
“It’s striking because the Federalist Society has so few women, it’s not as if they are a pipeline to uplift women in general,” says Pomona’s Hollis-Brusky. Women like Barrett, she says, have “been granted these opportunities by men who approve of their life choices.”
Indeed, Barrett is aligned with a movement in which people like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson blame working mothers for the “decline” of men, or conservative Christian commentator and RedState editor Erick Erickson publicly condemns working mothers as bad for kids. Yet these same conservatives give Barrett a pass. Carlson, who once said he felt sorry for Elena Kagan because she was “never going to be an attractive woman” is over the moon about Barrett. “Amy Coney Barrett is a remarkable person, an unusual person, maybe the most impressive person to receive a Supreme Court nomination in memory,” Carlson told his 4 million viewers in September. She “represents everything that made this a great country.”
Historically, Maxwell says, the conservative movement has made an exception for women like Barrett as long as they are furthering its anti-feminist agenda. She compares her to another Catholic superwoman of the religious right, the late Phyllis Schlafly, mother of six, who worked full time to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment as part of her lifelong campaign to keep mothers out of the workplace.
“She’s clearly very intelligent,” Maxwell says of Barrett, but her nomination is reminiscent of the time when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was trying to find a woman to put on the 2012 GOP presidential ticket and emerged with Sarah Palin. The former governor of Alaska had five children, including one with Down syndrome. Barrett also has a child with a disability, as well as two kids she adopted from Haiti. Elevating a woman like Barrett, who’s managed to do it all, is one way the conservative movement likes to “thumb its nose at all of the things that women say are still obstacles,” Maxwell says. If one woman with many kids succeeds at the highest level of law and politics, she says, “it invalidates [the obstacles] for all the other women.”
Barrett also checks another important box for the religious right: Men who would like to see the Supreme Court overturn the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade have long hoped to have a woman cast the deciding vote. “It washes away the stench of it being sexist if it’s coming from a woman,” Maxwell says. Having not just a woman but one with seven children poised to overturn Roe explains conservatives’ outsize enthusiasm for a nominee whose professional record falls short when compared with most Supreme Court justices. “That is really part of the symbolic strategy,” Maxwell says. “I can still have it all, adopt the babies, have all of the children, cherish life, and still have all the success that every woman wants.”
Images from left: Win McNamee/ZUMA, Michael Reynolds/CNP/ZUMA; Karen Bleier/Getty


motherjones--2020-10-23--A Latinx Evangelical Pastor Tries to Thread the Ideological Needle in the Trump Era

Rev .
Gabriel Salguero is an influential evangelical pastor in Orlando known for the passionate bilingual sermons he delivers with his co-pastor and wife , Rev .
Jeannette—he usually speaks in Spanish as she translates to English .
They have an undeniable spark on stage thanks to their rapid-fire Puerto Rican New Yorker energy ( they left the city for Florida six years ago ) , and their swift interpretation of each other is hypnotizing .
When Salguero is talking politics , which he does with increasing regularity these days , he often likes to share a version of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ‘ Oh he ’ s Latino , he must be a Democrat.
’ Then they say , ‘ He ’ s evangelical , so he must be a Republican.
’ Then they say , “ He ’ s a Latino evangelical ?
What is he ?
’ ” Latinx evangelicals , Salguero notes , tend to support humane treatment of migrants at the border , a path to citizenship for young immigrants , criminal justice reform to end racially motivated police killings , and government assistance for those in need .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and same-sex marriage , and are concerned with issues of religious liberty .
They are , Salguero likes to say , “ the quintessential swing voters.
” About 11 percent of the United States ’ 90 million evangelical Christians are Latinos , and many of them live in swing states like Florida , where polls currently show Joe Biden holding a slight lead over President Donald Trump .
While Latinx evangelicals tend to be more conservative than Latinx Catholics , they are still significantly less so than white evangelicals—and , like Salguero , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In assessing the Latinx electorate , FiveThirtyEight noted that “ the group among which Biden is most liable to struggle—and where Trump may have the most success picking up or maintaining support—is among evangelicals , who make up the vast majority of Latino Protestants.
” After earning about 58 percent of the Protestant vote in 2016 , Trump has made a bigger effort to court Christian voters in 2020 , touting his support for school prayer , tough restrictions on abortion , and the appointment of more conservative judges across the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evangelical Latinos with political recognition , high-profile surrogates and digital ads , ” as well as host dozens of virtual events , according to a Washington Post story .
Earlier this year , not long after a post-impeachment trial editorial on Christianity Today called for the removal of Trump from office , he chose to address evangelicals nationwide from Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesús , a church in Miami .
The Biden campaign , meanwhile , rolled out a faith outreach program with a focus on Latinx communities over the summer .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virtual events in Florida and focused on communities that “ could play pivotal roles in the election—including Latino evangelicals.
” Last month , Biden launched Creyentes con Biden ( Believers with Biden ) , an effort to bring together “ Latino faith voices and discuss ways to get involved in our Latino faith engagement efforts.
” To get a better sense of how the campaigns ’ efforts were landing with voters , particularly in Florida , I reached out to Salguero , the president and co-founder ( with Jeannette ) of the National @ @ @ @ @ @ @ met the couple in the summer of 2016 , they were preaching to a 4,000-person congregation at a megachurch called Iglesia Calvario .
I saw how political they could get in a Sunday service without mentioning a party or candidate by name , speaking instead about how Jesus would have responded to the need of immigrants at the border .
One evening , I witnessed the church ’ s lobby transform into a voting registration site with mostly Latinos filling out forms .
At one point , an impromptu salsa dance party broke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ congregation said she didn ’ t think the Salgueros ’ message was political , because the pastors were simply “ awakening the people ’ s senses that we are discriminated in some manner , and we are not supposed to do that because we are the children of God.
” Four years ago , Salguero was firm in his belief that Latinx evangelicals shouldn ’ t be blind in their allegiance to one political party , even as his sermons walked the line of criticizing hateful rhetoric from Trump .
When I called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me he feels that even more strongly today .
“ There ’ s a real tenor and tone of hyperbole partisanship , and I don ’ t think people when they come to worship God want that , ” he said .
“ I think they want truth .
I think they want justice .
I think they want conviction .
They want to know what the Gospel has to say about their everyday life and policies that impact their everyday life , and they want it without political idolatry or partisan idolatry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political landscape.
” Salguero hasn ’ t publicly endorsed either candidate this presidential election cycle .
When I asked him who he and members of his congregation support in 2020 , he said , “ Latino evangelicals are politically homeless ” —a description that ’ s increasingly making the rounds these days .
Neither major party , he said , “ speaks to the totality of the Hispanic evangelical voting priorities.
” Sure , I said , but does one get closer ?
At this , Salguero quickly repeated , without any notable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evangelicals are politically homeless ” —making it clear that he wasn ’ t going to tip his hand .
I chuckled , and for a brief moment , so did he .
“ I have people in our congregation who have voted for Trump and people who would never vote for Trump , ” he said .
“ That ’ s why we don ’ t endorse candidates , but we do get behind certain policies , because we need real autonomous civil leaders to speak into this hyperpolarized moment.
” It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shied away from speaking out on a number of policy issues , from social justice to abortion .
Earlier this year , he joined other faith leaders in publicly asking President Trump to stop his attack on DACA , criticized the president ’ s “ misogynistic language used by the president , ” and put out a statement in support of the racial justice movement and police reform in the aftermath of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor .
He has testified before Congress in support of giving undocumented immigrants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” disagrees with “ children being caged at the border , ” and criticized the government ’ s response to a pandemic that is killing people of color at higher rates .
At the same time , Salguero joined 100 Christian leaders this summer in a public letter urging the Democratic Party to “ recognize the inviolable human dignity of the child , before and after birth.
” He served as President Obama ’ s faith-based advisory council and says he has also been in communication with the Trump administration in a similar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Salguero last month , and the two had an “ instructive and fruitful conversation ” when Biden visited Florida .
And though the Trump campaign didn ’ t reach out for a meeting when Trump went to Florida in September , Salguero says he ’ s been on “ many email chains and conversations ” with the White House about “ issues that impact the Latino faith.
” Rev .
Robert Schenck , a prominent evangelical minister and president of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute in Washington , DC , said Salguero ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ A pastor doesn ’ t want to do anything that either creates tension , division , or distress within the congregation , and I think that ’ s a good impulse , ” said Schenck , who hosts a monthly call with Salguero and about 30 other evangelical leaders from across the country .
Still , he said , there are many churches that are either all-in with a progressive social agenda , or all-in for the Republican Party .
In his 40-year career as a minister , Schenck says he has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ community .
And it ’ s not just across political lines : Thirty years ago when he would preach at a mostly-Latino and Spanish-speaking church , he would go back to the white churches and tell those congregations about “ how beautiful ” it was to have seen those churches packed .
“ Back then , people would cheer , ” Schenck said .
“ Now , when I talk about the growth of large Spanish-speaking congregations , people look at me very suspiciously , like , ‘ Wow , that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ completely different than what it was before.
” Schenck blames Republicans—and Trump , in particular—for fostering “ suspicion and even contempt for Latinos ” in the white evangelical community .
After “ a lot of prayer and consideration , ” Schenk told me he voted early for Biden , the first time he ’ d voted for a Democrat—for any office—in 44 years .
Unlike Schenk , Salguero won ’ t publicly back a candidate , but one could argue he has dropped some hints here and there about his personal preference .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ National Convention , for example , Salguero made an appearance to lead a prayer , as he did at the in-person DNC in 2016 .
But when I pressed him on it , he said , “ Praying is a nonpartisan activity , so I can be very transparent and say that if the RNC and GOP invited me , I ’ d go pray with them.
” Before our conversation , I had watched Salguero speak at a virtual panel titled “ Pastoral Leadership in a Politically Divisive Climate.
” One of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how pastors should negotiate policy versus character—what should pastors do when they join political conversations ?
Salguero encouraged other pastors to do as he does , to try to not look at it as a binary , and he used a very Latino way to explain this .
“ I love me some arroz con pollo , and when I eat arroz con pollo , I don ’ t think , ‘ Man , do I have to choose between the arroz and the pollo ?
’ ” Salguero said .
“ This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a way that blesses me , and so I think that is a way to disciple people to say , ‘ You have to look at the whole thing.
’ ” Salguero is using his platform to try to guide a new congregation—a mix that includes Puerto Ricans , Venezuelans , and other Central and South Americans who ’ ve recently arrived in Central Florida—through an incredibly divisive election cycle by looking at all the issues that matter to them , and avoid becoming one-issue voters .
“ This is not easy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And as the election nears , Salguero has continued to tighten this message .
In a short video sermon from early October titled “ Faith on the Ballot , ” Salguero spoke directly to Latinx evangelical voters , asking them to remember that God judges not just individuals , but nations .
Jesus , he said , is asking them , “ How did you vote ?
How did you treat the least , the last , and the lost ?
” “ This November , like every election cycle , I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jesus Christ : Did you vote on those values that were important to Jesus ?
” he said .
“ Yes !
Life , pro-life , the sanctity of life .
Yes !
Racial justice and reconciliation .
Yes !
Poverty .
And yes !
El inmigrante y la inmigrante , our sisters and our brothers from all over.
” “ Someone has even asked me , ‘ Pastor Gabe , how would Jesus vote ?
’ The truth is , ” Salguero said , tossing his hands in the air , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would vote .
But I do know that Scripture has some principles that can not be ignored—in our private lives and in our public lives .
”

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Rev. Gabriel Salguero is an influential evangelical pastor in Orlando known for the passionate bilingual sermons he delivers with his co-pastor and wife, Rev. Jeannette—he usually speaks in Spanish as she translates to English. They have an undeniable spark on stage thanks to their rapid-fire Puerto Rican New Yorker energy (they left the city for Florida six years ago), and their swift interpretation of each other is hypnotizing.
When Salguero is talking politics, which he does with increasing regularity these days, he often likes to share a version of this: “People see me and say, ‘Oh he’s Latino, he must be a Democrat.’ Then they say, ‘He’s evangelical, so he must be a Republican.’ Then they say, “He’s a Latino evangelical? What is he?’”
Latinx evangelicals, Salguero notes, tend to support humane treatment of migrants at the border, a path to citizenship for young immigrants, criminal justice reform to end racially motivated police killings, and government assistance for those in need. But they also typically oppose access to abortions and same-sex marriage, and are concerned with issues of religious liberty. They are, Salguero likes to say, “the quintessential swing voters.”
“People see me and say, ‘Oh he’s Latino, he must be a Democrat.’ Then they say, ‘He’s evangelical, so he must be a Republican.’ Then they say, “He’s a Latino evangelical? What is he?’”
About 11 percent of the United States’ 90 million evangelical Christians are Latinos, and many of them live in swing states like Florida, where polls currently show Joe Biden holding a slight lead over President Donald Trump. While Latinx evangelicals tend to be more conservative than Latinx Catholics, they are still significantly less so than white evangelicals—and, like Salguero, many are unaffiliated with a political party. In assessing the Latinx electorate, FiveThirtyEight noted that “the group among which Biden is most liable to struggle—and where Trump may have the most success picking up or maintaining support—is among evangelicals, who make up the vast majority of Latino Protestants.”
After earning about 58 percent of the Protestant vote in 2016, Trump has made a bigger effort to court Christian voters in 2020, touting his support for school prayer, tough restrictions on abortion, and the appointment of more conservative judges across the country. The campaign has “carefully targeted evangelical Latinos with political recognition, high-profile surrogates and digital ads,” as well as host dozens of virtual events, according to a Washington Post story. Earlier this year, not long after a post-impeachment trial editorial on Christianity Today called for the removal of Trump from office, he chose to address evangelicals nationwide from Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesús, a church in Miami.
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, rolled out a faith outreach program with a focus on Latinx communities over the summer. As the Associated Press reported, Biden held virtual events in Florida and focused on communities that “could play pivotal roles in the election—including Latino evangelicals.” Last month, Biden launched Creyentes con Biden (Believers with Biden), an effort to bring together “Latino faith voices and discuss ways to get involved in our Latino faith engagement efforts.”
To get a better sense of how the campaigns’ efforts were landing with voters, particularly in Florida, I reached out to Salguero, the president and co-founder (with Jeannette) of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. When I first met the couple in the summer of 2016, they were preaching to a 4,000-person congregation at a megachurch called Iglesia Calvario. I saw how political they could get in a Sunday service without mentioning a party or candidate by name, speaking instead about how Jesus would have responded to the need of immigrants at the border. One evening, I witnessed the church’s lobby transform into a voting registration site with mostly Latinos filling out forms. At one point, an impromptu salsa dance party broke out. A Latina member of the congregation said she didn’t think the Salgueros’ message was political, because the pastors were simply “awakening the people’s senses that we are discriminated in some manner, and we are not supposed to do that because we are the children of God.”
“I think they want truth. I think they want justice. I think they want conviction.”
Four years ago, Salguero was firm in his belief that Latinx evangelicals shouldn’t be blind in their allegiance to one political party, even as his sermons walked the line of criticizing hateful rhetoric from Trump. When I called him in late September, he told me he feels that even more strongly today. “There’s a real tenor and tone of hyperbole partisanship, and I don’t think people when they come to worship God want that,” he said. “I think they want truth. I think they want justice. I think they want conviction. They want to know what the Gospel has to say about their everyday life and policies that impact their everyday life, and they want it without political idolatry or partisan idolatry because we live in a tragically unnuanced political landscape.”
Salguero hasn’t publicly endorsed either candidate this presidential election cycle. When I asked him who he and members of his congregation support in 2020, he said, “Latino evangelicals are politically homeless”—a description that’s increasingly making the rounds these days. Neither major party, he said, “speaks to the totality of the Hispanic evangelical voting priorities.”
Sure, I said, but does one get closer? At this, Salguero quickly repeated, without any notable reaction, “I think that Hispanic evangelicals are politically homeless”—making it clear that he wasn’t going to tip his hand. I chuckled, and for a brief moment, so did he.
“I have people in our congregation who have voted for Trump and people who would never vote for Trump,” he said. “That’s why we don’t endorse candidates, but we do get behind certain policies, because we need real autonomous civil leaders to speak into this hyperpolarized moment.”
“I have people in our congregation who have voted for Trump and people who would never vote for Trump.”
It’s true: Salguero hasn’t shied away from speaking out on a number of policy issues, from social justice to abortion. Earlier this year, he joined other faith leaders in publicly asking President Trump to stop his attack on DACA, criticized the president’s “misogynistic language used by the president,” and put out a statement in support of the racial justice movement and police reform in the aftermath of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. He has testified before Congress in support of giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, “fundamentally” disagrees with “children being caged at the border,” and criticized the government’s response to a pandemic that is killing people of color at higher rates. At the same time, Salguero joined 100 Christian leaders this summer in a public letter urging the Democratic Party to “recognize the inviolable human dignity of the child, before and after birth.”
He served as President Obama’s faith-based advisory council and says he has also been in communication with the Trump administration in a similar capacity. The Biden campaign reached out to Salguero last month, and the two had an “instructive and fruitful conversation” when Biden visited Florida. And though the Trump campaign didn’t reach out for a meeting when Trump went to Florida in September, Salguero says he’s been on “many email chains and conversations” with the White House about “issues that impact the Latino faith.”
Rev. Robert Schenck, a prominent evangelical minister and president of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute in Washington, DC, said Salguero’s cautious approach is not unusual. “A pastor doesn’t want to do anything that either creates tension, division, or distress within the congregation, and I think that’s a good impulse,” said Schenck, who hosts a monthly call with Salguero and about 30 other evangelical leaders from across the country. Still, he said, there are many churches that are either all-in with a progressive social agenda, or all-in for the Republican Party.
“A pastor doesn’t want to do anything that either creates tension, division, or distress within the congregation, and I think that’s a good impulse.”
In his 40-year career as a minister, Schenck says he has never seen such division within the evangelical community. And it’s not just across political lines: Thirty years ago when he would preach at a mostly-Latino and Spanish-speaking church, he would go back to the white churches and tell those congregations about “how beautiful” it was to have seen those churches packed. “Back then, people would cheer,” Schenck said. “Now, when I talk about the growth of large Spanish-speaking congregations, people look at me very suspiciously, like, ‘Wow, that’s not good.’ That’s something completely different than what it was before.”
Schenck blames Republicans—and Trump, in particular—for fostering “suspicion and even contempt for Latinos” in the white evangelical community. After “a lot of prayer and consideration,” Schenck told me he voted early for Biden, the first time he’d voted for a Democrat—for any office—in 44 years.
Unlike Schenck, Salguero won’t publicly back a candidate, but one could argue he has dropped some hints here and there about his personal preference. At this year’s virtual Democratic National Convention, for example, Salguero made an appearance to lead a prayer, as he did at the in-person DNC in 2016. But when I pressed him on it, he said, “Praying is a nonpartisan activity, so I can be very transparent and say that if the RNC and GOP invited me, I’d go pray with them.”
Before our conversation, I had watched Salguero speak at a virtual panel titled “Pastoral Leadership in a Politically Divisive Climate.” One of the questions from the attendees was about how pastors should negotiate policy versus character—what should pastors do when they join political conversations? Salguero encouraged other pastors to do as he does, to try to not look at it as a binary, and he used a very Latino way to explain this.
“I love me some arroz con pollo, and when I eat arroz con pollo, I don’t think, ‘Man, do I have to choose between the arroz and the pollo?’” Salguero said. “This whole plate has to be digested in a way that blesses me, and so I think that is a way to disciple people to say, ‘You have to look at the whole thing.’”
Jesus, he said, is asking them, “How did you vote? How did you treat the least, the last, and the lost?”
Salguero is using his platform to try to guide a new congregation—a mix that includes Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, and other Central and South Americans who’ve recently arrived in Central Florida—through an incredibly divisive election cycle by looking at all the issues that matter to them, and avoid becoming one-issue voters. “This is not easy,” Salguero said in the panel.
And as the election nears, Salguero has continued to tighten this message. In a short video sermon from early October titled “Faith on the Ballot,” Salguero spoke directly to Latinx evangelical voters, asking them to remember that God judges not just individuals, but nations. Jesus, he said, is asking them, “How did you vote? How did you treat the least, the last, and the lost?”
“This November, like every election cycle, I’m asking you as a follower of Jesus Christ: Did you vote on those values that were important to Jesus?” he said. “Yes! Life, pro-life, the sanctity of life. Yes! Racial justice and reconciliation. Yes! Poverty. And yes! El inmigrante y la inmigrante, our sisters and our brothers from all over.”
“Someone has even asked me, ‘Pastor Gabe, how would Jesus vote?’ The truth is,” Salguero said, tossing his hands in the air, “I don’t know how Jesus would vote. But I do know that Scripture has some principles that cannot be ignored—in our private lives and in our public lives.”