vox--2020-08-25--What happens to the Supreme Court (and the Constitution) if Trump wins

In 2019 , Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society that President Trump owes his broad support among Republican voters to one issue .
“ The single biggest issue that brought nine out of 10 Republican voters home to Donald Trump , ” McConnell claimed , “ just like nine out of 10 voted for Mitt Romney , was the Supreme Court.
” McConnell ’ s “ nine out of 10 ” estimate is almost certainly an exaggeration , but there ’ s no question that Republicans view filling the judiciary with Federalist Society @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , if not the highest priority .
The GOP-controlled Senate passes little legislation .
It rarely even considers bills that arise from a Democratic House .
But McConnell has transformed the Senate into a virtual factory that kicks out judicial confirmations almost as fast as Trump can nominate conservative lawyers for the bench .
If Trump prevails in November , he is likely to remake the courts — and , specifically , the Supreme Court — in his image .
Two members of the Court ’ s liberal minority , Justices Ruth Bader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their 80s .
And Ginsburg began a course of chemotherapy earlier this year .
If Trump wins , Republicans could gain a 7-2 majority on the nation ’ s highest Court by the end of his second term .
The stakes , if a vacancy does open up on the Supreme Court while Trump is still president , are enormous .
Though Chief Justice John Roberts , frequently the median vote on the current Supreme Court , is very conservative , he is both less partisan and less aligned with movement conservatism than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rejects conservative legal arguments that are poorly reasoned or transparently partisan , or that ask him to move the law to the right faster than he is willing to go .
If Trump gets to replace a liberal justice , however , this check on Republican power is likely to disappear .
Trump spent the past three and a half years filling federal appellate courts with staunch conservatives , often with the guidance of conservative organizations such as the Federalist Society .
That gives him a deep bench of potential Supreme Court nominees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the future .
The Court has already moved significantly to the right since it handed down some decisions protecting LGBTQ rights , limiting police surveillance , and preserving most of Obamacare , among many other things .
If Trump fills a seat currently held by a liberal justice , those decisions are potentially in grave danger .
To be sure , there ’ s always some amount of unpredictability in the Supreme Court .
Sometimes , a conservative justice is torn between competing ideological commitments , some of which lead them to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And it ’ s always possible that several conservative justices could be forced to leave the Court shortly after a Democratic president takes office .
But realistically , if Republicans gain a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court , they are likely to hold that majority for a long time .
And with six votes , Republicans could afford to have one of those six cast an occasional , futile vote for a liberal outcome .
Roberts is less tolerant than his fellow Republican justices of bad lawyering by conservatives The Supreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little more than a week ago , a term that featured several high-profile — if narrow — losses for conservative causes .
Notably , Roberts broke with his fellow Republicans in two cases where conservative advocates presented unusually weak arguments to his Court .
Roberts typically votes to limit abortion rights , and his recent opinion in June Medical Services v. Russo spends several pages criticizing the Court ’ s decisions protecting those rights .
Nevertheless , Roberts reluctantly voted with his four liberal colleagues to strike down a Louisiana law requiring abortion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nearby hospital — a credential that is very difficult for these doctors to obtain , and that does little or nothing to improve health outcomes in abortion clinics .
The reason for Roberts ’ s vote was simple : The Louisiana law at issue in June Medical was , in all relevant respects , identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down four years earlier in Whole Woman ’ s Health v. Hellerstedt ( 2016 ) .
“ I joined the dissent in Whole Woman ’ s Health and continue to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Roberts wrote in his June Medical opinion .
But he concluded that the principle of stare decisis — the doctrine that courts should generally be bound by their prior decisions — compelled him to strike down Louisiana ’ s law .
A similar dynamic played out in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California , where Roberts joined his four liberal colleagues in holding that the Trump administration didn ’ t complete the proper paperwork when it decided to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 700,000 undocumented immigrants to live and work in the United States .
The striking thing about Regents is the utter pointlessness of the Trump administration ’ s decision to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court .
If the administration wanted to end DACA , it should have corrected its paperwork error instead of spending years unsuccessfully trying to convince the courts to excuse this error .
In many cases , Roberts ’ s insistence on legal and procedural regularity will only delay conservative outcomes — Roberts , for example @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the constitutional right to an abortion once abortion opponents bring him a better case .
But Roberts ’ s formalism also places significant constraints on the Court ’ s Republican majority , and on the Republican Party ’ s ability to set policy through litigation .
Roberts appears somewhat committed to this same principle that procedural rules and inconvenient precedents can not simply be tossed aside because they stand in the way of a conservative outcome .
The other four Republicans appear far less committed to this principle , given their willingness to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases like June Medical .
And , if Trump gets to fill another seat currently held by a liberal justice , then Roberts will no longer be the swing vote .
It is likely that a majority of the Supreme Court will ignore many of the constraints that , as Scalia wrote a generation ago , prevent judges from ruling by fiat .
America becomes even less democratic if Trump gets to fill another Supreme Court seat The United States is hardly a paragon of democracy .
Americans have a president who received @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic opponent in 2016 and a Senate where , thanks to malapportionment , the Republican “ majority ” represents 15 million fewer people than the Democratic “ minority.
” Both of Trump ’ s justices were nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half of the nation .
Meanwhile , the Court ’ s Republican majority has been a disaster for democracy .
In this past term alone , the Court handed down several significant orders limiting voting rights in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that effectively allows the state to make it very easy for older voters ( who tend to favor Republicans ) to obtain absentee ballots , while making it impossible for most younger voters to do the same .
Under Roberts ’ s leadership , the Supreme Court dismantled much of the Voting Rights Act .
It ’ s neutered most of the nation ’ s campaign finance laws .
And it ’ s permitted laws that serve no purpose other than voter suppression .
But it can get worse .
“ There are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Court to dismantle campaign finance reforms , ” according to Ciara Torres-Spelliscy , a law professor at Stetson University and an expert on money in politics .
In this sense , Torres-Spelliscy told me , a third Trump justice would only provide a “ superfluous 6th vote ” for the Court ’ s decisions undermining these laws .
But there is one area of campaign finance law where the current Supreme Court has stayed its hand : disclosure laws .
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ( 2010 ) , the Court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spend unlimited sums of money to influence elections , Justice Clarence Thomas argued that his Court should have also tossed out many laws requiring many donors to disclose their donations .
At the time , Thomas was the only justice who took this position , but the Court has changed significantly in the decade since Citizens United was handed down .
Justice Neil Gorsuch frequently provides a second vote for Thomas ’ s most radical opinions .
Similarly , as an aide to then-President George W. Bush , Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constitutional problems ” with laws imposing limits on how much donors can give directly to candidates — one of the few campaign finance laws left untouched by decisions like Citizens United .
That suggests that Kavanaugh could join Thomas in striking down more campaign finance laws .
And then there ’ s Justice Samuel Alito .
Though Alito did not join Thomas ’ s opinion in Citizens United , he is arguably the most reliable Republican partisan on the Supreme Court .
As Adam Feldman , a lawyer and political scientist who runs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Alito “ is the sole conservative justice on the Court not to join the liberals in a 5-4 decision ” — meaning that he has never once cast the deciding vote for a liberal outcome .
( The one plausible exception to this trend is Alito ’ s brief opinion in Gundy v. United States ( 2019 ) .
But , in Gundy , Alito endorsed a conservative deregulatory project that is rejected by all four of the Court ’ s liberals . )
It is unlikely , in other words , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a campaign finance case if four other justices already support a conservative outcome .
A third Trump justice could also erect new barriers before the right to vote .
Although the Roberts Court has already dismantled much of the Voting Rights Act , the primary law preventing racial voter discrimination , it has thus far left in place the law ’ s “ results test , ” which prohibits any law that “ results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , while the Act is much weaker than it was just a decade ago , it still retains some vibrancy .
Many state laws that disenfranchise voters of color remain illegal .
But Roberts is a longtime opponent of this safeguard against racism in elections .
According to the voting rights journalist Ari Berman , Roberts was the Reagan Justice Department ’ s point person in a failed effort to scuttle the results test .
As a young lawyer , Roberts “ wrote upwards of 25 memos opposing ” such a test , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the votes right now to effectively dismantle what remains of the Voting Rights Act .
The Supreme Court has not heard a major Voting Rights Act case since the relatively moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy was replaced by the hardline conservative Justice Kavanaugh , so we don ’ t know how far the current Court is willing to go in dismantling what remains of the Voting Rights Act .
At the very least , however , every Republican added to the Supreme Court increases the likelihood that the remainder of the Voting Rights Act @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lose health coverage in the middle of a pandemic if Trump appoints another justice Chief Justice Roberts famously broke with his fellow Republicans in NFIB v. Sebelius ( 2012 ) , a decision upholding most of the Affordable Care Act .
Three years later , in King v. Burwell ( 2015 ) Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy broke with their fellow Republicans again to reject a new attack on Obamacare .
But Kennedy is no longer on the Court .
And if one of the four liberal justices is replaced by Trump , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there will still be five votes to preserve the landmark legislation that provides health coverage to approximately 20 million people .
And , if Trump does get to fill an additional Supreme Court seat , Obamacare could fall quite rapidly .
The Supreme Court plans to hear oral arguments in California v. Texas , the latest case seeking to repeal Obamacare by judicial decree , in the fall .
The plaintiffs ’ arguments in Texas are , frankly , outlandish .
They rest on the assumption that , when Congress repealed a single @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2017 , that requires the courts to dismantle the entire law .
But the fact that these arguments are widely viewed as ridiculous — even by many conservative legal scholars — won ’ t necessarily deter most of the Supreme Court ’ s Republicans from voting to strike down Obamacare .
On the eve of oral arguments in NFIB , the first Obamacare decision , the plaintiffs ’ arguments in that case were also widely viewed as misguided .
An American Bar Association poll of Supreme Court experts found that 85 percent believed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and another 9 percent believed the Court would dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction .
That didn ’ t prevent four justices from voting to repeal the entire law .
And , if Trump gets to fill another seat on the Supreme Court , that four could become five .
LGBTQ Americans could be stripped of their constitutional rights The Supreme Court ’ s recent decision in Bostock v. Clayton County , which held that federal civil rights law prohibits workplace discrimination against LGBTQ workers , is probably safe .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Gorsuch voting with the majority .
But the Court ’ s constitutional decisions protecting LGBTQ rights stand on far more precarious ground .
Obergefell v. Hodges ( 2015 ) , the Supreme Court landmark decision establishing that same-sex couples enjoy the same marriage rights as opposite-sex couples , was a 5-4 decision with Kennedy in the majority .
Lawrence v. Texas ( 2003 ) , which placed strict limits on the government ’ s ability to prohibit sexual activity between consenting adults , and Romer v. Evans ( 1996 ) , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laws solely to express “ animus ” against gay people , were both 6-3 decisions with Justice Sandra Day O ’ Connor and Kennedy in the majority .
O ’ Connor and Kennedy were replaced with hardline conservatives .
It ’ s possible , in other words , that all three of these decisions could fall even if no vacancy opens up on the Supreme Court — although , for that to happen , a state would likely have to pass a law that violates Obergefell , Lawrence , or Romer to test @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law down .
If Trump gets to fill another seat , it is even less clear that the Court ’ s new majority will value stare decisis more than it values a conservative approach to LGBTQ rights .
It ’ s also possible that the Court could leave decisions like Obergefell nominally in place , but allow states to deny many rights to LGBTQ Americans .
The Court , according to Shannon Minter , legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights , “ might permit states to undermine Obergefell by treating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — for example , by permitting states to favor straight couples in adoption or family benefits or even in the definition of who is a legal parent.
” Minter ’ s view was echoed by Josh Block , a lawyer with the ACLU ’ s LGBT & HIV Project .
While Block said he does not think a newly constituted Court “ would vote to overrule Obergefell completely and allow states to ban marriage outright , ” he fears that the Court ’ s new majority “ could allow states to treat those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s more or less the approach that Gorsuch took in Pavan v. Smith ( 2017 ) .
Obergefell held that the Constitution protects same-sex couples ’ right to marry “ on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.
” In Pavan , a majority of the Supreme Court struck down an Arkansas law that treated married same-sex couples differently than married opposite-sex couples with respect to which names appear on a birth certificate .
Gorsuch dissented , in an opinion joined by Thomas and Alito .
His opinion suggested that states may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so long as they argue that “ rational reasons exist ” for the discrimination .
The EPA could become a hollow husk As a general rule , Congress may legislate in two different ways .
The simplest way is to enact a law commanding certain individuals or businesses to behave in a certain way .
Thus , for example , if Congress wishes to limit pollution , it can pass a law commanding power plants to install a particular device that reduces emissions .
But Congress may also lay down a broad policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relatively easily updatable regulations implementing that policy .
The Clean Air Act , for example , provides that certain power plants must use “ the best system of emission reduction ” that currently exists , while also taking into account factors such as cost .
It also gives the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) the power to issue binding regulations instructing energy companies on which systems they must use to limit emissions .
That way , the regulations can adapt as technology evolves .
Congress still sets the overarching policy — the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best system of emission reduction ” — but EPA determines what that “ best system ” is at any given moment in time .
In Gundy v. United States ( 2019 ) , however , Gorsuch called for vague new limits on Congress ’ s power to delegate regulatory power to agencies .
And , while Gorsuch ’ s opinion in Gundy was technically a dissent , all five members of the Supreme Court ’ s Republican majority have since signaled that they are supportive of Gorsuch ’ s approach .
Current precedents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s decision to delegate regulatory power to an agency .
Gorsuch would replace these precedents with a new standard providing that a federal law permitting agencies to regulate must be “ ‘ sufficiently definite and precise to enable Congress , the courts , and the public to ascertain ’ whether Congress ’ s guidance has been followed.
” Under Gorsuch ’ s approach , judges — and ultimately , Supreme Court justices — would get to decide which federal laws delegating power to an agency are “ sufficiently definite and precise , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down .
So it will matter a great deal who sits on the Supreme Court .
In a post-Gundy world , courts will have far more power to make discretionary calls about which regulations they wish to uphold and which ones they wish to strike down .
That means that a more conservative Court will tend to strike down more regulations favored by Democrats .
Police could gain far more power to engage in surveillance The current Supreme Court is arguably more friendly to criminal defendants than it was 20 years ago .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ dominated by conservatives incubated in the “ tough on crime ” rhetoric preferred by presidents like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan .
The current Court , by contrast , is more likely to see criminal justice cases through a libertarian lens .
A big reason for this libertarian turn is that individual conservative justices hold defendant-friendly views on certain criminal justice issues .
Roberts often votes with his liberal colleagues in cases where police use new technology to conduct intrusive searches .
Gorsuch wrote the lead opinion in a case holding that criminal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unanimous jury .
Kavanaugh is a longstanding opponent of racial jury discrimination .
While it ’ s important that justices like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh sometimes take a broad view of the rights of criminal defendants at trial , Roberts ’ s support for limits on police conduct is likely to prove more consequential — because the overwhelming majority of criminal suspects never receive a trial to determine their guilt .
“ 97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains , with defendants pleading guilty in exchange @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a 2012 analysis by the New York Times .
So Supreme Court decisions protecting trial rights only impact a small minority of defendants .
The gap between Roberts and his fellow Republicans was most on display in Carpenter v. United States ( 2018 ) , where Roberts voted with his four liberal colleagues , and held that police “ must generally obtain a warrant supported by probable cause ” before obtaining cellphone records that can be used to track an individual ’ s movement .
Carpenter was a significant case because , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Court has typically held that “ individuals have no Fourth Amendment interests in business records which are possessed , owned , and controlled by a third party.
” But Roberts recognized that , as police gain more and more technologically sophisticated methods of tracking criminal suspects , the Constitution must recognize new limits on these methods .
It ’ s one thing to say that police can track every number dialed on a particular phone , but it ’ s another thing altogether to say that police can turn each individual ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ monitors their every movement .
If Roberts is no longer the swing vote , Carpenter could potentially fall .
At the very least , the Court is likely to grow less skeptical of police overreach , and less fearful of the awesome surveillance power given to police by new technology .
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Editor’s note: This article was published before Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020. Read Vox’s coverage of Ginsburg’s life and legacy here.
In 2019, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society that President Trump owes his broad support among Republican voters to one issue. “The single biggest issue that brought nine out of 10 Republican voters home to Donald Trump,” McConnell claimed, “just like nine out of 10 voted for Mitt Romney, was the Supreme Court.”
McConnell’s “nine out of 10” estimate is almost certainly an exaggeration, but there’s no question that Republicans view filling the judiciary with Federalist Society stalwarts as one of their highest priorities, if not the highest priority.
The GOP-controlled Senate passes little legislation. It rarely even considers bills that arise from a Democratic House. But McConnell has transformed the Senate into a virtual factory that kicks out judicial confirmations almost as fast as Trump can nominate conservative lawyers for the bench.
If Trump prevails in November, he is likely to remake the courts — and, specifically, the Supreme Court — in his image. Two members of the Court’s liberal minority, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, are in their 80s. And Ginsburg began a course of chemotherapy earlier this year. If Trump wins, Republicans could gain a 7-2 majority on the nation’s highest Court by the end of his second term.
The stakes, if a vacancy does open up on the Supreme Court while Trump is still president, are enormous. Though Chief Justice John Roberts, frequently the median vote on the current Supreme Court, is very conservative, he is both less partisan and less aligned with movement conservatism than his fellow Republican justices. He sometimes rejects conservative legal arguments that are poorly reasoned or transparently partisan, or that ask him to move the law to the right faster than he is willing to go.
If Trump gets to replace a liberal justice, however, this check on Republican power is likely to disappear. Trump spent the past three and a half years filling federal appellate courts with staunch conservatives, often with the guidance of conservative organizations such as the Federalist Society. That gives him a deep bench of potential Supreme Court nominees who are unlikely to disappoint the GOP in the future.
The Court has already moved significantly to the right since it handed down some decisions protecting LGBTQ rights, limiting police surveillance, and preserving most of Obamacare, among many other things. If Trump fills a seat currently held by a liberal justice, those decisions are potentially in grave danger.
To be sure, there’s always some amount of unpredictability in the Supreme Court. Sometimes, a conservative justice is torn between competing ideological commitments, some of which lead them to form occasional alliances with their liberal colleagues. And it’s always possible that several conservative justices could be forced to leave the Court shortly after a Democratic president takes office.
But realistically, if Republicans gain a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, they are likely to hold that majority for a long time. And with six votes, Republicans could afford to have one of those six cast an occasional, futile vote for a liberal outcome.
Roberts is less tolerant than his fellow Republican justices of bad lawyering by conservatives
The Supreme Court completed its most recent term a little more than a week ago, a term that featured several high-profile — if narrow — losses for conservative causes. Notably, Roberts broke with his fellow Republicans in two cases where conservative advocates presented unusually weak arguments to his Court.
Roberts typically votes to limit abortion rights, and his recent opinion in June Medical Services v. Russo spends several pages criticizing the Court’s decisions protecting those rights. Nevertheless, Roberts reluctantly voted with his four liberal colleagues to strike down a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital — a credential that is very difficult for these doctors to obtain, and that does little or nothing to improve health outcomes in abortion clinics.
The reason for Roberts’s vote was simple: The Louisiana law at issue in June Medical was, in all relevant respects, identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down four years earlier in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016). “I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided,” Roberts wrote in his June Medical opinion. But he concluded that the principle of stare decisis — the doctrine that courts should generally be bound by their prior decisions — compelled him to strike down Louisiana’s law.
A similar dynamic played out in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, where Roberts joined his four liberal colleagues in holding that the Trump administration didn’t complete the proper paperwork when it decided to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants to live and work in the United States.
The striking thing about Regents is the utter pointlessness of the Trump administration’s decision to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court. If the administration wanted to end DACA, it should have corrected its paperwork error instead of spending years unsuccessfully trying to convince the courts to excuse this error.
In many cases, Roberts’s insistence on legal and procedural regularity will only delay conservative outcomes — Roberts, for example, is still overwhelmingly likely to dismantle the constitutional right to an abortion once abortion opponents bring him a better case. But Roberts’s formalism also places significant constraints on the Court’s Republican majority, and on the Republican Party’s ability to set policy through litigation.
As Justice Scalia wrote in 1989:
when, in writing for the majority of the Court, I adopt a general rule, and say, “This is the basis of our decision,” I not only constrain lower courts, I constrain myself as well. If the next case should have such different facts that my political or policy preferences regarding the outcome are quite the opposite, I will be unable to indulge those preferences; I have committed myself to the governing principle.
Roberts appears somewhat committed to this same principle that procedural rules and inconvenient precedents cannot simply be tossed aside because they stand in the way of a conservative outcome. The other four Republicans appear far less committed to this principle, given their willingness to cast aside principles like stare decisis in cases like June Medical.
And, if Trump gets to fill another seat currently held by a liberal justice, then Roberts will no longer be the swing vote. It is likely that a majority of the Supreme Court will ignore many of the constraints that, as Scalia wrote a generation ago, prevent judges from ruling by fiat.
America becomes even less democratic if Trump gets to fill another Supreme Court seat
The United States is hardly a paragon of democracy. Americans have a president who received nearly 3 million fewer votes than his Democratic opponent in 2016 and a Senate where, thanks to malapportionment, the Republican “majority” represents 15 million fewer people than the Democratic “minority.” Both of Trump’s justices were nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half of the nation.
Meanwhile, the Court’s Republican majority has been a disaster for democracy. In this past term alone, the Court handed down several significant orders limiting voting rights in a pandemic — including a Texas order that effectively allows the state to make it very easy for older voters (who tend to favor Republicans) to obtain absentee ballots, while making it impossible for most younger voters to do the same.
Under Roberts’s leadership, the Supreme Court dismantled much of the Voting Rights Act. It’s neutered most of the nation’s campaign finance laws. And it’s permitted laws that serve no purpose other than voter suppression.
But it can get worse.
“There are already five conservative votes on the Supreme Court to dismantle campaign finance reforms,” according to Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a law professor at Stetson University and an expert on money in politics. In this sense, Torres-Spelliscy told me, a third Trump justice would only provide a “superfluous sixth vote” for the Court’s decisions undermining these laws.
But there is one area of campaign finance law where the current Supreme Court has stayed its hand: disclosure laws. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the Court’s landmark decision allowing corporations to spend unlimited sums of money to influence elections, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that his Court should have also tossed out many laws requiring many donors to disclose their donations.
At the time, Thomas was the only justice who took this position, but the Court has changed significantly in the decade since Citizens United was handed down. Justice Neil Gorsuch frequently provides a second vote for Thomas’s most radical opinions.
Similarly, as an aide to then-President George W. Bush, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 2002 email that there are “constitutional problems” with laws imposing limits on how much donors can give directly to candidates — one of the few campaign finance laws left untouched by decisions like Citizens United. That suggests that Kavanaugh could join Thomas in striking down more campaign finance laws.
And then there’s Justice Samuel Alito. Though Alito did not join Thomas’s opinion in Citizens United, he is arguably the most reliable Republican partisan on the Supreme Court. As Adam Feldman, a lawyer and political scientist who runs the website Empirical SCOTUS, told me, Alito “is the sole conservative justice on the Court not to join the liberals in a 5-4 decision” — meaning that he has never once cast the deciding vote for a liberal outcome. (The one plausible exception to this trend is Alito’s brief opinion in Gundy v. United States (2019). But, in Gundy, Alito endorsed a conservative deregulatory project that is rejected by all four of the Court’s liberals.)
It is unlikely, in other words, that Alito would cast a liberal vote in a campaign finance case if four other justices already support a conservative outcome.
A third Trump justice could also erect new barriers before the right to vote. Although the Roberts Court has already dismantled much of the Voting Rights Act, the primary law preventing racial voter discrimination, it has thus far left in place the law’s “results test,” which prohibits any law that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
Thus, while the Act is much weaker than it was just a decade ago, it still retains some vibrancy. Many state laws that disenfranchise voters of color remain illegal.
But Roberts is a longtime opponent of this safeguard against racism in elections. According to the voting rights journalist Ari Berman, Roberts was the Reagan Justice Department’s point person in a failed effort to scuttle the results test. As a young lawyer, Roberts “wrote upwards of 25 memos opposing” such a test, according to Berman.
Roberts may have the votes right now to effectively dismantle what remains of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court has not heard a major Voting Rights Act case since the relatively moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy was replaced by the hardline conservative Justice Kavanaugh, so we don’t know how far the current Court is willing to go in dismantling what remains of the Voting Rights Act.
At the very least, however, every Republican added to the Supreme Court increases the likelihood that the remainder of the Voting Rights Act will fall.
20 million Americans could lose health coverage in the middle of a pandemic if Trump appoints another justice
Chief Justice Roberts famously broke with his fellow Republicans in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), a decision upholding most of the Affordable Care Act. Three years later, in King v. Burwell (2015) Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy broke with their fellow Republicans again to reject a new attack on Obamacare.
But Kennedy is no longer on the Court. And if one of the four liberal justices is replaced by Trump, it’s far from clear that there will still be five votes to preserve the landmark legislation that provides health coverage to approximately 20 million people.
And, if Trump does get to fill an additional Supreme Court seat, Obamacare could fall quite rapidly. The Supreme Court plans to hear oral arguments in California v. Texas, the latest case seeking to repeal Obamacare by judicial decree, in the fall.
The plaintiffs’ arguments in Texas are, frankly, outlandish. They rest on the assumption that, when Congress repealed a single provision of the Affordable Care Act in 2017, that requires the courts to dismantle the entire law. But the fact that these arguments are widely viewed as ridiculous — even by many conservative legal scholars — won’t necessarily deter most of the Supreme Court’s Republicans from voting to strike down Obamacare.
On the eve of oral arguments in NFIB, the first Obamacare decision, the plaintiffs’ arguments in that case were also widely viewed as misguided. An American Bar Association poll of Supreme Court experts found that 85 percent believed the Affordable Care Act would be upheld, and another 9 percent believed the Court would dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction.
That didn’t prevent four justices from voting to repeal the entire law. And, if Trump gets to fill another seat on the Supreme Court, that four could become five.
LGBTQ Americans could be stripped of their constitutional rights
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that federal civil rights law prohibits workplace discrimination against LGBTQ workers, is probably safe. That decision was 6-3, with both Roberts and Gorsuch voting with the majority.
But the Court’s constitutional decisions protecting LGBTQ rights stand on far more precarious ground. Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court landmark decision establishing that same-sex couples enjoy the same marriage rights as opposite-sex couples, was a 5-4 decision with Kennedy in the majority. Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which placed strict limits on the government’s ability to prohibit sexual activity between consenting adults, and Romer v. Evans (1996), which held that the government may not pass laws solely to express “animus” against gay people, were both 6-3 decisions with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Kennedy in the majority.
O’Connor and Kennedy were replaced with hardline conservatives.
It’s possible, in other words, that all three of these decisions could fall even if no vacancy opens up on the Supreme Court — although, for that to happen, a state would likely have to pass a law that violates Obergefell, Lawrence, or Romer to test whether the Supreme Court would strike that law down. If Trump gets to fill another seat, it is even less clear that the Court’s new majority will value stare decisis more than it values a conservative approach to LGBTQ rights.
It’s also possible that the Court could leave decisions like Obergefell nominally in place, but allow states to deny many rights to LGBTQ Americans. The Court, according to Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, “might permit states to undermine Obergefell by treating married same-sex couples differently in some ways — for example, by permitting states to favor straight couples in adoption or family benefits or even in the definition of who is a legal parent.”
Minter’s view was echoed by Josh Block, a lawyer with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project. While Block said he does not think a newly constituted Court “would vote to overrule Obergefell completely and allow states to ban marriage outright,” he fears that the Court’s new majority “could allow states to treat those marriages differently.”
Indeed, that’s more or less the approach that Gorsuch took in Pavan v. Smith (2017). Obergefell held that the Constitution protects same-sex couples’ right to marry “on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.” In Pavan, a majority of the Supreme Court struck down an Arkansas law that treated married same-sex couples differently than married opposite-sex couples with respect to which names appear on a birth certificate.
Gorsuch dissented, in an opinion joined by Thomas and Alito. His opinion suggested that states may be able to discriminate against same-sex couples so long as they argue that “rational reasons exist” for the discrimination.
The EPA could become a hollow husk
As a general rule, Congress may legislate in two different ways. The simplest way is to enact a law commanding certain individuals or businesses to behave in a certain way. Thus, for example, if Congress wishes to limit pollution, it can pass a law commanding power plants to install a particular device that reduces emissions.
But Congress may also lay down a broad policy and instruct a federal agency to issue relatively easily updatable regulations implementing that policy. The Clean Air Act, for example, provides that certain power plants must use “the best system of emission reduction” that currently exists, while also taking into account factors such as cost. It also gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to issue binding regulations instructing energy companies on which systems they must use to limit emissions.
That way, the regulations can adapt as technology evolves. Congress still sets the overarching policy — the impacted power plants must use the “best system of emission reduction” — but EPA determines what that “best system” is at any given moment in time.
In Gundy v. United States (2019), however, Gorsuch called for vague new limits on Congress’s power to delegate regulatory power to agencies. And, while Gorsuch’s opinion in Gundy was technically a dissent, all five members of the Supreme Court’s Republican majority have since signaled that they are supportive of Gorsuch’s approach.
Current precedents typically require courts to defer to Congress’s decision to delegate regulatory power to an agency. Gorsuch would replace these precedents with a new standard providing that a federal law permitting agencies to regulate must be “‘sufficiently definite and precise to enable Congress, the courts, and the public to ascertain’ whether Congress’s guidance has been followed.”
Under Gorsuch’s approach, judges — and ultimately, Supreme Court justices — would get to decide which federal laws delegating power to an agency are “sufficiently definite and precise,” and which ones should be struck down.
So it will matter a great deal who sits on the Supreme Court. In a post-Gundy world, courts will have far more power to make discretionary calls about which regulations they wish to uphold and which ones they wish to strike down. That means that a more conservative Court will tend to strike down more regulations favored by Democrats.
Police could gain far more power to engage in surveillance
The current Supreme Court is arguably more friendly to criminal defendants than it was 20 years ago. For many years, the Court was dominated by conservatives incubated in the “tough on crime” rhetoric preferred by presidents like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The current Court, by contrast, is more likely to see criminal justice cases through a libertarian lens.
A big reason for this libertarian turn is that individual conservative justices hold defendant-friendly views on certain criminal justice issues. Roberts often votes with his liberal colleagues in cases where police use new technology to conduct intrusive searches. Gorsuch wrote the lead opinion in a case holding that criminal defendants may only be convicted by a unanimous jury. Kavanaugh is a longstanding opponent of racial jury discrimination.
While it’s important that justices like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh sometimes take a broad view of the rights of criminal defendants at trial, Roberts’s support for limits on police conduct is likely to prove more consequential — because the overwhelming majority of criminal suspects never receive a trial to determine their guilt.
“97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains, with defendants pleading guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence,” according to a 2012 analysis by the New York Times. So Supreme Court decisions protecting trial rights only impact a small minority of defendants.
The gap between Roberts and his fellow Republicans was most on display in Carpenter v. United States (2018), where Roberts voted with his four liberal colleagues, and held that police “must generally obtain a warrant supported by probable cause” before obtaining cellphone records that can be used to track an individual’s movement.
Carpenter was a significant case because, as Justice Kennedy wrote in dissent, the Court has typically held that “individuals have no Fourth Amendment interests in business records which are possessed, owned, and controlled by a third party.”
But Roberts recognized that, as police gain more and more technologically sophisticated methods of tracking criminal suspects, the Constitution must recognize new limits on these methods. It’s one thing to say that police can track every number dialed on a particular phone, but it’s another thing altogether to say that police can turn each individual’s cellphone into a homing device that monitors their every movement.
If Roberts is no longer the swing vote, Carpenter could potentially fall. At the very least, the Court is likely to grow less skeptical of police overreach, and less fearful of the awesome surveillance power given to police by new technology.


vox--2020-08-25--Kimberly Guilfoyle’s speech encapsulated the Fox News feel of the RNC’s first night

Trump surrogate Kimberly Guilfoyle might no longer be a Fox News host , but you ’ d be forgiven for thinking she still was , given her speech at the Republican National Convention Monday evening .
Speaking grandly to an empty auditorium , Guilfoyle delivered a speech more fit for an arena full of screaming supporters than the eerily empty venues of the Covid-19 era .
But one of her central themes — and a common one on Fox News — was a familiar one : accusing Democrats of being “ socialists ” and fear-mongering over how electing Democratic presidential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ downfall of the country .
“ If you want to see the socialist Biden-Harris future for our country , just take a look at California , ” said Guilfoyle , who is dating Donald Trump Jr. , another speaker Monday night .
“ It is a place of immense wealth .
Immeasurable innovation and an immaculate environment .
And the Democrats turned it into a land of discarded heroin needles in parks , riots in streets , and blackouts in homes.
” From the carefully coiffed waves in her hair to the backdrop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fox Newsiness of the first night of the RNC .
It celebrated America and touched on a range of favorite conservative media talking points , from cancel culture to calling Democratic leaders “ cosmopolitan elites ” to warnings about the US Southern border .
“ They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live , ” she said .
“ They want to enslave you to the weak dependent liberal victim .
They want to destroy this country and everything that we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to steal your liberty , your freedom.
” The only way to stop it , according to Guilfoyle , would be by reelecting President Donald Trump .
She listed several of Trump ’ s accomplishments since taking office , mentioning tax cuts , taking on ISIS , and renegotiating trade deals .
“ Don ’ t let the Democrats take you for granted , ” she said .
“ Don ’ t let them step on you .
Don ’ t let them destroy your families , your lives , and your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kill future generations because they told you and brainwashed you and fed you lies that you weren ’ t good enough.
” Toward the end of her speech , Guilfoyle was essentially shouting into the podium mic at the government-owned Mellon Auditorium in Washington , DC .
At the center of her speech — and the rest of the evening — weren ’ t conservative policies or a political party ’ s vision for the country , it was just one man and one mission : getting Donald Trump reelected .
“ President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the promise of America and ensure that every citizen can realize their American dream !
” she exclaimed .
“ Ladies and gentlemen , leaders and fighters fought freedom and liberty and the American dream , the best is yet to come !
” In the spring , we launched a program asking readers for financial contributions to help keep Vox free for everyone , and last week , we set a goal of reaching 20,000 contributors .
Well , you helped us blow past that .
Today , we are extending that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vox each month to understand an increasingly chaotic world — from what is happening with the USPS to the coronavirus crisis to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work — and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Trump surrogate Kimberly Guilfoyle might no longer be a Fox News host, but you’d be forgiven for thinking she still was, given her speech at the Republican National Convention Monday evening.
Speaking grandly to an empty auditorium, Guilfoyle delivered a speech more fit for an arena full of screaming supporters than the eerily empty venues of the Covid-19 era. But one of her central themes — and a common one on Fox News — was a familiar one: accusing Democrats of being “socialists” and fear-mongering over how electing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would lead to the downfall of the country.
“If you want to see the socialist Biden-Harris future for our country, just take a look at California,” said Guilfoyle, who is dating Donald Trump Jr., another speaker Monday night. “It is a place of immense wealth. Immeasurable innovation and an immaculate environment. And the Democrats turned it into a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets, and blackouts in homes.”
From the carefully coiffed waves in her hair to the backdrop of flags, her speech typified the Fox Newsiness of the first night of the RNC. It celebrated America and touched on a range of favorite conservative media talking points, from cancel culture to calling Democratic leaders “cosmopolitan elites” to warnings about the US Southern border.
“They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live,” she said. “They want to enslave you to the weak dependent liberal victim. They want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom.”
The only way to stop it, according to Guilfoyle, would be by reelecting President Donald Trump. She listed several of Trump’s accomplishments since taking office, mentioning tax cuts, taking on ISIS, and renegotiating trade deals.
“Don’t let the Democrats take you for granted,” she said. “Don’t let them step on you. Don’t let them destroy your families, your lives, and your future. Don’t let them kill future generations because they told you and brainwashed you and fed you lies that you weren’t good enough.”
Toward the end of her speech, Guilfoyle was essentially shouting into the podium mic at the government-owned Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC. At the center of her speech — and the rest of the evening — weren’t conservative policies or a political party’s vision for the country, it was just one man and one mission: getting Donald Trump reelected.
“President Trump is the leader who will rebuild the promise of America and ensure that every citizen can realize their American dream!” she exclaimed. “Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters fought freedom and liberty and the American dream, the best is yet to come!”
New goal: 25,000
In the spring, we launched a program asking readers for financial contributions to help keep Vox free for everyone, and last week, we set a goal of reaching 20,000 contributors. Well, you helped us blow past that. Today, we are extending that goal to 25,000. Millions turn to Vox each month to understand an increasingly chaotic world — from what is happening with the USPS to the coronavirus crisis to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work — and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. Contribute today from as little as $3.


vox--2020-08-24--5 winners and 2 losers from the RNC’s first night

Vox answers your biggest questions about the 2020 US presidential election , which could be one of the most consequential of our lifetimes .
The first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention is in the books .
The event was supposed to be in Charlotte , North Carolina ( then Jacksonville , Florida ) , but mostly featured speeches delivered from a podium in Washington , DC .
It felt a little odd , and not just because of the virus-required distancing .
In theory , Monday ’ s programming was supposed to tell a story about the Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In reality , it was mostly about the evils of the Democratic Party — and the one man , Donald J. Trump , who could protect you from it .
It told a dark story about America , a place wracked by violence and threatened from within by a corrupt elite , and then asked you to reelect the man who is currently in charge of that country .
And when it touched on the biggest challenge we face — the Covid-19 pandemic — it told a story of a president who confronted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ farcical messaging that couldn ’ t possibly withstand contact with the country ’ s actual , depressing reality .
Sometimes , the programming buckled under the weight of these tensions .
Sometimes , though , things worked the way that Team Trump probably hoped it did .
Here ’ s our rundown of which parts fell into which of those two buckets — and other winners and losers from RNC night one .
Night one of the Republican National Convention was an evening of fan service .
While some of the speakers may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ viewers who spend a significant amount of time watching Fox News ( or , following the president ’ s direction , OANN ) would have recognized any number of returning guest characters , not to mention former Fox News host and Trump campaign surrogate Kimberly Guilfoyle .
There was Turning Point USA president and frequent Fox News guest Charlie Kirk ( the fate of the Falkirk Center , his think tank endeavor with embattled Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. remains unclear ) .
There were personal injury attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black Lives Matter protesters and destroying beehives that belonged to the neighboring Jewish Central Reform Congregation ) .
And there was Kimberly Klacik , a Black Republican running to replace the late Rep. Elijah Cummings ( D-MD ) , using an ad produced by Turning Point ’ s Benny Johnson that got her an interview with Fox News ’ s Laura Ingraham .
Even the aesthetic was familiar : the shiny lights , smooth hair , and unbridled — and occasionally , unhinged — enthusiasm for Donald Trump , all hallmarks of Fox @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least in part , to the party faithful .
But if you were an on-the-fence voter , forced to decide between Trump and Joe Biden and tuning in to the Republican National Convention for guidance and a path forward , you may have been somewhat unmoored .
Who are these people , you might ask , and why are they yelling at me ?
If you were a dedicated fan of the Fox News channel — and already planning to vote for President Trump — you would have felt right at home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night for the base .
( That is , unless you missed any part of it because Fox News cut away . )
After a parade of speeches by Fox News personalities , viral video stars , and personal injury lawyers known only for threatening political protesters with firearms , former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley ’ s speech felt weirdly normal .
She spoke in complete sentences , and in an indoor voice .
And she made her case for Trump in a tone normally associated with former governors and not with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ montage warning of the “ radical left ” and a speech in which a watery-eyed Donald Trump Jr. compared Democratic nominee Joe Biden to the “ Loch Ness monster , ” Haley ’ s calm , lawyerly demeanor felt like something from a different convention — or perhaps something from the Republican Party of another decade .
Substantively , Haley ’ s speech mixed well-trodden Republican talking points from that previous era ( Democrats “ want a government takeover of health care ” ) with some of the Trump-era GOP ’ s greatest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ correctness and cancel culture are dangerous and just plain wrong ” ) .
But it also felt like the kind of speech a presidential hopeful delivers to introduce themselves to the nation — including a riff about Haley ’ s background as the “ proud daughter of Indian immigrants.
” Haley is widely viewed as a potential contender for the presidency .
Haley , in other words , appears to be betting that , after four or eight years of being governed by Trump ’ s Twitter feed , Americans will be eager @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2024 .
Her speech placed her firmly in a conservative tradition that would continue the Trump White House ’ s policies if she got that chance .
But she also brought a seductive normalcy that ’ s likely to distinguish her from other Republicans eager to run the same bombastic playbook pioneered by Trump .
Sen. Tim Scott ( R-SC ) was one of two people to mention the death of George Floyd on Monday night ( the other was Donald Trump Jr. ) and the only speaker to mention the death of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the hands of Louisville police during a botched no-knock raid .
He is also the only Black Republican currently serving in the Senate ; during his remarks at the Republican National Convention , he noted that history , saying , “ Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.
” Unlike many made on Monday night , Scott ’ s speech was , like the senator , seemingly measured .
While other speakers warned that Vice President Joe Biden would usher in a lawless , police-free America , Scott decried Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bill .
While he criticized the impact of Biden ’ s economic policies , he stopped short of arguing Biden would put voters ’ lives at risk as president .
Scott , who is not a populist , instead struck a more inclusive note : He discussed Opportunity Zones , a favored program of his ( and of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner ) that intends to encourage investment in low-income urban and rural communities by giving preferential tax treatment to those who choose to build and invest .
He argued that President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economy ever ” ( a debatable point ) .
And he said that the election was far bigger than either Biden or Trump , adding , “ It ’ s about the promise of America.
” Then he denounced cancel culture because , after all , this was still the Republican National Convention .
Scott ’ s speech wasn ’ t a work of soaring rhetoric .
But on a night aimed squarely at Trump ’ s base , his remarks were among the few to focus on an audience beyond Fox News @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s few genuine foreign policy accomplishments is its record on US hostages abroad .
The president and his team have struck deals to free a number of Americans held by authoritarian states , and they deserve credit for it .
During the convention , Trump assembled six of these freed Americans and spoke with them in a panel format .
It seemed like a good way to highlight a real bright spot — but then Trump turned to Pastor Andrew Brunson , an American who had been detained by Turkish President Recep Erdogan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ captor : Erdogan , Turkey ’ s strongman leader , personally accused Brunson of having “ dark ties to terror groups ” to justify his detention .
And here ’ s Trump , on national television , talking to Brunson about how great he was to Trump personally .
This isn ’ t unusual : Trump seems to genuinely love President Erdogan .
According to reporter Carl Bernstein , he ’ s one of Trump ’ s favorite leaders to speak to on the phone : So it makes sense that Trump would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s what he always seems to do : treat dictators as personal friends , and himself as the protagonist of every story ( a trait frequently on display Monday ) .
Though President Trump promised that the RNC would be a hopeful and uplifting affair , Charlie Kirk kicked off night one by calling Democrats “ bitter , deceitful , and vengeful.
” Things didn ’ t get much more positive from there .
With the exceptions of Covid-19 magical thinking and Sen. Tim Scott ’ s ( R-SC ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ healing racial wounds in the country , the case for the president ’ s reelection was mostly framed in negative terms during the first night of the RNC .
Florida businessman and Cuban exile Maximo Alvarez compared Joe Biden to Fidel Castro .
Trump campaign adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle said Democrats “ want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear , ” adding that “ they want to steal your liberty , your freedom , they want to control what you see and think .
Conservative activist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far as to accuse Biden of wanting to abolish doctors .
The message was less that a second term of Trump will help people , and more that one term of Joe Biden will end America as we know it .
Instead of selling hope , Republicans sold fear .
Nikki Haley and Tim Scott gave the two best speeches of the night , but the reason they stood out is that they felt out of step with the rest of the two-and-a-half-hour convention .
Speaker after speaker tonight leaned into contentless culture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of inescapable and deep civil conflict that ’ s defined the Trump era and that ’ s aimed squarely at the Fox-watching base .
Rep. Matt Gaetz , for example , warned that “ the woketopians will settle for Biden because they will make him an extra in a movie.
” Others accused Democrats of wanting to not only defund the police — a policy the national party has explicitly chosen not to embrace — but of aiming to “ abolish the suburbs.
” The spectacle made clear one fact that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This is a party that no longer knows what it stands for , other than hating Democrats and loving Trump .
The GOP on display Monday night wasn ’ t a party engaged in a real battle of ideas with their political opponents .
The RNC is a vehicle for the Trump show , a one-man performance of cultural grievance fueled by lies about Democrats .
Haley and Scott ’ s speeches weren ’ t that impressive on their own : They were basically normal political speeches that you ’ d hear at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beamed in from another time and place indicates the current sorry state of the GOP .
The Republican Party might want you to think their party after Trump will look like Haley and Scott , but two-and-a-half hours of Trump cheerleading and red-meat rhetoric — and several years of a politics of pure resentment — suggest otherwise .
If you listened to the speakers at the RNC ’ s first night , you would have heard a story of Trump ’ s triumph over Covid-19 .
But as my colleague German Lopez details @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid-19 is winning , and Trump has allowed it to win .
And nothing that was said Monday suggests the situation will change soon .
The president is not responsible for Covid-19 ’ s existence .
And other countries struggled with their outbreaks initially .
But America ’ s response to the novel coronavirus is one of the worst in the world .
Foreign Policy ’ s Covid-19 Global Response Index puts the US among the worst-performing countries , along with Mexico , Turkey , Indonesia , Iran , and China .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Europe , Australia , Canada , and New Zealand , and several African countries .
Under Trump , the CDC ’ s top officials have often been sidelined .
He resisted masks for months , even as a consensus grew among experts that they could stem the spread of the novel coronavirus .
As the New York Times reported , the White House was hoping in the spring and early summer that it could delegate as much responsibility as possible to states .
Then cases rose and deaths along with them , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That is twice what it was early July , though not as high as the peaks in the spring driven by the NYC outbreak .
State governments have gone their own way , with some more aggressively restricting business activity and others more resistant to recommended public health measures like mask-wearing .
As some hot spots have cooled off , others have flared up after restrictions on certain business activities were eased .
The US response is , in other words , fundamentally incoherent .
“ The biggest problem in the US response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Jeremy Konyndyk , who served in the Obama administration ’ s Ebola response and is now a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development , told Lopez .
“ There is a New York response .
There ’ s a Florida response .
There ’ s a Montana response .
There ’ s a California response .
There ’ s a Michigan response .
There ’ s a Georgia response .
But there is not a US response.
” When speakers brought up Covid-19 on the first night of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ praise Trump ’ s leadership , for removing regulatory barriers for drug approvals and vaccine development .
There is some optimism about getting an effective vaccine in what would be record time , with trials underway in the US and the UK .
But we don ’ t yet know which ones will work or how well .
And that optimism must be tempered by the cost of Trump ’ s often-times hostile attitude toward public health experts and blatant political interference in what are supposed to be public health decisions .
Soon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by far the highest toll in the world in raw count and one of the highest when adjusted for population .
The virus has already won .
In the spring , we launched a program asking readers for financial contributions to help keep Vox free for everyone , and last week , we set a goal of reaching 20,000 contributors .
Well , you helped us blow past that .
Today , we are extending that goal to 25,000 .
Millions turn to Vox each month to understand an increasingly chaotic world — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the coronavirus crisis to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work — and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

The first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention is in the books. The event was supposed to be in Charlotte, North Carolina (then Jacksonville, Florida), but mostly featured speeches delivered from a podium in Washington, DC. It felt a little odd, and not just because of the virus-required distancing.
In theory, Monday’s programming was supposed to tell a story about the Republican Party and its ideals and values. In reality, it was mostly about the evils of the Democratic Party — and the one man, Donald J. Trump, who could protect you from it. It told a dark story about America, a place wracked by violence and threatened from within by a corrupt elite, and then asked you to reelect the man who is currently in charge of that country.
And when it touched on the biggest challenge we face — the Covid-19 pandemic — it told a story of a president who confronted the virus and kept us safe, farcical messaging that couldn’t possibly withstand contact with the country’s actual, depressing reality.
Sometimes, the programming buckled under the weight of these tensions. Sometimes, though, things worked the way that Team Trump probably hoped it did. Here’s our rundown of which parts fell into which of those two buckets — and other winners and losers from RNC night one.
Winner: The Fox News cinematic universe
Night one of the Republican National Convention was an evening of fan service. While some of the speakers may have been unknown to casual observers, viewers who spend a significant amount of time watching Fox News (or, following the president’s direction, OANN) would have recognized any number of returning guest characters, not to mention former Fox News host and Trump campaign surrogate Kimberly Guilfoyle.
There was Turning Point USA president and frequent Fox News guest Charlie Kirk (the fate of the Falkirk Center, his think tank endeavor with embattled Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., remains unclear). There were personal injury attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey (best known for waving guns at Black Lives Matter protesters and destroying beehives that belonged to the neighboring Jewish Central Reform Congregation). And there was Kimberly Klacik, a Black Republican running to replace the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), using an ad produced by Turning Point’s Benny Johnson that got her an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
Even the aesthetic was familiar: the shiny lights, smooth hair, and unbridled — and occasionally unhinged — enthusiasm for Donald Trump, all hallmarks of Fox News.
Political conventions always appeal, at least in part, to the party faithful. But if you were an on-the-fence voter, forced to decide between Trump and Joe Biden and tuning in to the Republican National Convention for guidance and a path forward, you may have been somewhat unmoored. Who are these people, you might ask, and why are they yelling at me?
If you were a dedicated fan of the Fox News channel — and already planning to vote for President Trump — you would have felt right at home. In short, it was a night for the base. (That is, unless you missed any part of it because Fox News cut away.)
—Jane Coaston
Winner: Nikki Haley
After a parade of speeches by Fox News personalities, viral video stars, and personal injury lawyers known only for threatening political protesters with firearms, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s speech felt weirdly normal. She spoke in complete sentences and in an indoor voice. And she made her case for Trump in a tone normally associated with former governors and not with used-car salesmen.
Sandwiched between a video montage warning of the “radical left” and a speech in which a watery-eyed Donald Trump Jr. compared Democratic nominee Joe Biden to the “Loch Ness monster,” Haley’s calm, lawyerly demeanor felt like something from a different convention — or perhaps something from the Republican Party of another decade.
Substantively, Haley’s speech mixed well-trodden Republican talking points from that previous era (Democrats “want a government takeover of health care”) with some of the Trump-era GOP’s greatest hits (Trump “knows that political correctness and cancel culture are dangerous and just plain wrong”). But it also felt like the kind of speech a presidential hopeful delivers to introduce themselves to the nation — including a riff about Haley’s background as the “proud daughter of Indian immigrants.” Haley is widely viewed as a potential contender for the presidency.
Haley, in other words, appears to be betting that, after four or eight years of being governed by Trump’s Twitter feed, Americans will be eager for something calmer and more predictable in 2024. Her speech placed her firmly in a conservative tradition that would continue the Trump White House’s policies if she got that chance. But she also brought a seductive normalcy that’s likely to distinguish her from other Republicans eager to run the same bombastic playbook pioneered by Trump.
—Ian Millhiser
Winner: Sen. Tim Scott
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) was one of two people to mention the death of George Floyd on Monday night (the other was Donald Trump Jr.) and the only speaker to mention the death of Breonna Taylor, who was killed at the hands of Louisville police during a botched no-knock raid. He is also the only Black Republican currently serving in the Senate; during his remarks at the Republican National Convention, he noted that history, saying, “Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.”
Unlike many made on Monday night, Scott’s speech was, like the senator, seemingly measured. While other speakers warned that a President Joe Biden would usher in a lawless, police-free America, Scott decried Biden’s involvement in the 1994 crime bill. While he criticized the impact of Biden’s economic policies, he stopped short of arguing Biden would put voters’ lives at risk as president.
Scott, who is not a populist, instead struck a more inclusive note: He discussed Opportunity Zones, a favored program of his (and of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner) that intends to encourage investment in low-income urban and rural communities by giving preferential tax treatment to those who choose to build and invest. He argued that President Trump had created the “most inclusive economy ever” (a debatable point). And he said that the election was far bigger than either Biden or Trump, adding, “It’s about the promise of America.”
Then he denounced cancel culture because, after all, this was still the Republican National Convention.
Scott’s speech wasn’t a work of soaring rhetoric. But on a night aimed squarely at Trump’s base, his remarks were among the few to focus on an audience beyond Fox News.
—JC
Winner: Recep Tayyip Erdogan
One of the Trump administration’s few genuine foreign policy accomplishments is its record on US hostages abroad. The president and his team have struck deals to free a number of Americans held by authoritarian states, and they deserve credit for it.
During the convention, Trump assembled six of these freed Americans and spoke with them in a panel format. It seemed like a good way to highlight a real bright spot — but then Trump turned to Pastor Andrew Brunson, an American who had been detained by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, and praised his captor:
TRUMP: 28 years, right? They had you scheduled for a long time, Andrew. We had to get you back. I have to say that, to me, President Erdogan was very good. You are a very innocent person. And he ultimately, after we had a few conversations, he agreed. So we appreciate that. And we appreciate the people of Turkey. And you still appreciate the people of Turkey, I understand, right? BRUNSON: I love the Turkish people. TRUMP: That’s good. It’s great to have you back, Andrew.
Erdogan, Turkey’s strongman leader, personally accused Brunson of having “dark ties to terror groups” to justify his detention. And here’s Trump, on national television, talking to Brunson about how great he was to Trump personally.
This isn’t unusual: Trump seems to genuinely love Erdogan. According to reporter Carl Bernstein, he’s one of Trump’s favorite leaders to speak to on the phone:
By far the greatest number of Trump’s telephone discussions with an individual head of state were with Erdogan, who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump... Two sources described the President as woefully uninformed about the history of the Syrian conflict and the Middle East generally, and said he was often caught off guard, and lacked sufficient knowledge to engage on equal terms in nuanced policy discussion with Erdogan. “Erdogan took him to the cleaners,” said one of the sources. The sources said that deleterious US policy decisions on Syria — including the President’s directive to pull US forces out of the country, which then allowed Turkey to attack Kurds who had helped the US fight ISIS and weakened NATO’s role in the conflict — were directly linked to Erdogan’s ability to get his way with Trump on the phone calls.
So it makes sense that Trump would praise Erdogan in this extremely incongruous setting. It’s what he always seems to do: treat dictators as personal friends, and himself as the protagonist of every story (a trait frequently on display Monday).
—Zack Beauchamp
Loser: Optimism
Though President Trump promised that the RNC would be a hopeful and uplifting affair, Charlie Kirk kicked off night one by calling Democrats “bitter, deceitful, and vengeful.” Things didn’t get much more positive from there.
With the exceptions of Covid-19 magical thinking and Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) remarks, which absurdly praised Trump for healing racial wounds in the country, the case for the president’s reelection was mostly framed in negative terms during the first night of the RNC.
Florida businessman and Cuban exile Maximo Alvarez compared Joe Biden to Fidel Castro. Trump campaign adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle said Democrats “want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear,” adding that “they want to steal your liberty, your freedom, they want to control what you see and think.” Conservative activist and cancer survivor Natalie Harp went as far as to accuse Biden of wanting to abolish doctors.
The message was less that a second term of Trump will help people, and more that one term of Joe Biden will end America as we know it. Instead of selling hope, Republicans sold fear.
—Aaron Rupar
Loser: The GOP beyond Trump
Nikki Haley and Tim Scott gave the two best speeches of the night, but the reason they stood out is that they felt out of step with the rest of the two-and-a-half-hour convention.
Speaker after speaker Monday night leaned into contentless culture war bromides, conjuring up a vision of inescapable and deep civil conflict that’s defined the Trump era and that’s aimed squarely at the Fox-watching base. Rep. Matt Gaetz, for example, warned that “the woketopians will settle for Biden because they will make him an extra in a movie.” Others accused Democrats of wanting to not only defund the police — a policy the national party has explicitly chosen not to embrace — but of aiming to “abolish the suburbs.”
The spectacle made clear one fact that’s become evident these past four years: This is a party that no longer knows what it stands for, other than hating Democrats and loving Trump. The GOP on display Monday night wasn’t a party engaged in a real battle of ideas with their political opponents. The RNC is a vehicle for the Trump show, a one-man performance of cultural grievance fueled by lies about Democrats.
Haley’s and Scott’s speeches weren’t that impressive on their own: They were basically normal political speeches that you’d hear at a normal convention. That they felt beamed in from another time and place indicates the current sorry state of the GOP. The Republican Party might want you to think their party after Trump will look like Haley and Scott, but two and a half hours of Trump cheerleading and red-meat rhetoric — and several years of a politics of pure resentment — suggest otherwise.
—ZB
Winner: Covid-19
If you listened to the speakers at the RNC’s first night, you would have heard a story of Trump’s triumph over Covid-19. But as my colleague German Lopez details, reality tells a different story: Covid-19 is winning, and Trump has allowed it to win. And nothing that was said Monday suggests the situation will change soon.
The president is not responsible for Covid-19’s existence. And other countries struggled with their outbreaks initially. But America’s response to the novel coronavirus is one of the worst in the world.
Foreign Policy’s Covid-19 Global Response Index puts the US among the worst-performing countries, along with Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, Iran, and China. The US has performed more poorly than most of Europe, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, and several African countries.
Under Trump, the CDC’s top officials have often been sidelined. He resisted masks for months, even as a consensus grew among experts that they could stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. As the New York Times reported, the White House was hoping in the spring and early summer that it could delegate as much responsibility as possible to states. Then cases rose and deaths along with them, to over 1,000 per day. That is twice what it was in early July, though not as high as the peaks in the spring driven by the NYC outbreak.
State governments have gone their own way, with some more aggressively restricting business activity and others more resistant to recommended public health measures like mask-wearing. As some hot spots have cooled off, others have flared up after restrictions on certain business activities were eased.
The US response is, in other words, fundamentally incoherent.
“The biggest problem in the US response is there is not a US response,” Jeremy Konyndyk, who served in the Obama administration’s Ebola response and is now a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, told Lopez. “There is a New York response. There’s a Florida response. There’s a Montana response. There’s a California response. There’s a Michigan response. There’s a Georgia response. But there is not a US response.”
When speakers brought up Covid-19 on the first night of the RNC, it was typically to praise Trump’s leadership for removing regulatory barriers for drug approvals and vaccine development.
There is some optimism about getting an effective vaccine in what would be record time, with trials underway in the US and the UK. But we don’t yet know which ones will work or how well. And that optimism must be tempered by the cost of Trump’s oftentimes hostile attitude toward public health experts and blatant political interference in what are supposed to be public health decisions.
Soon, 200,000 Americans will have died from the virus, by far the highest toll in the world in raw count and one of the highest when adjusted for population. The virus has already won.
—Dylan Scott
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