vox--2020-07-21--Silicon Valley’s richest are getting richer just as the pandemic is getting worse

America ’ s wealthiest tech billionaires are faring extraordinarily well six months into a historic pandemic , posing a striking contrast with the fate of other Americans during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression .
When the coronavirus pandemic began to ravage the economy , those who worry about inequality expressed concern that billionaires — and particularly tech billionaires — would amass more power and that the income gaps would grow more dramatic .
And their worries appear to have been well founded .
People like Jeff Bezos , Elon Musk , and Steve Ballmer have added tens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worths since the beginning of the calendar year , according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index .
The success of the very richest was punctuated on Monday when Bezos ’ s net worth grew by $ 13 billion , the largest single-day jump since Bloomberg began tracking the day-to-day changes in 2012 .
It ’ s easy to lose track of precisely how wealthy the ultra-wealthiest have become .
Terms like “ billionaires ” can generalize and disguise the scale of the fortunes created in today ’ s economy .
A billion here , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remain very rich .
Exactly how rich can feel irrelevant .
But the particulars of their staggering success matter because at the other end of America ’ s income inequality divide , the extra money would not feel so irrelevant .
More than 30 million Americans are now depending on unemployment benefits , some of which are set to expire at the end of the month .
Low-wage workers are especially prone to layoffs .
And the pandemic is pounding poorer neighborhoods in particular , where the number of Covid-19 cases is higher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as zero-sum — those extra billions can make a difference if redistributed — and are calling for a remaking of the American economy after this crisis .
They would like to see the very wealthy pay more in taxes in order to repair what they believe is an insufficient safety net .
Market-oriented thinkers argue that these billionaires are becoming rich because they are creating value for their shareholders — which is a basic imperative of capitalism — and the billionaires happen to be some of these companies ’ largest shareholders .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is worth assessing the figures in the uppermost echelon of America ’ s elite .
Over the last few weeks in particular , tech fortunes have climbed to new heights .
That ’ s true for no one more than Bezos , whose assets in 2020 have climbed by $ 75 billion ; his net worth is now nearing almost $ 200 billion .
That historic wealth gain is due to the rise of Amazon , which has proved indispensable as people around the world stay at home in response to the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since the start of the year .
That ’ s a boom for him as well as for his ex-wife , MacKenzie Bezos , whose shares in the company have put her on the doorstep of becoming the world ’ s wealthiest woman , a position held now by Francoise Bettencourt Meyers .
On New Year ’ s Day 2020 , MacKenzie Bezos was the world ’ s 25th wealthiest person — now she ’ s 13th , with $ 63 billion to her name , per Bloomberg .
Amazon is not the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has made the rich richer .
The S & P 500 may be about flat in 2020 , but the stock appreciation at Facebook , Apple , and Google parent company Alphabet has created even more winnings for its billionaires .
But the rise of two other tech companies and the billionaires behind them have changed the tippiest of the tippy-top .
Ballmer , the longtime CEO of Microsoft , is not a household name for most Americans , who are far more familiar with his predecessor , Bill Gates .
( Many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are not faces you would recognize if you passed them on the street . )
But Ballmer is not just any rich person — he has sneakily become America ’ s fifth-richest person thanks to the enormous growth in Microsoft ’ s stock , which has almost quadrupled over the last five years .
That could draw more scrutiny to Ballmer , who remains in the public eye primarily as the animated courtside presence at the home games of the Los Angeles Clippers , which he owns .
Ballmer began the year as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ billionaire who has turned a fortune into a super-sized fortune amid the recession is Musk , the idiosyncratic founder of Tesla and SpaceX .
At the start of 2020 , Musk ranked as the 35th richest person .
But his net worth has nearly tripled over the last seven months , and Musk is now the sixth wealthiest person in the world with almost $ 75 billion .
Tesla ’ s stock has almost quadrupled this calendar year .
All told , the coronavirus is proving to offer pretty good times for Big @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 15 richest people in the world come from America ’ s technology sector , according to the Bloomberg rankings , compared to seven at year ’ s beginning .
Almost every tech billionaire is in the black , not the red , this year .
Not many Americans can say the same .
And if the American economy drops further , the tech billionaire will loom — fairly or unfairly — as an easy scapegoat .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a contribution to Vox today .

America’s wealthiest tech billionaires are faring extraordinarily well six months into a historic pandemic, posing a striking contrast with the fate of other Americans during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
When the coronavirus pandemic began to ravage the economy, those who worry about inequality expressed concern that billionaires — and particularly tech billionaires — would amass more power and that the income gaps would grow more dramatic. And their worries appear to have been well founded.
People like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Steve Ballmer have added tens of billions of dollars to their net worths since the beginning of the calendar year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The success of the very richest was punctuated on Monday when Bezos’s net worth grew by $13 billion, the largest single-day jump since Bloomberg began tracking the day-to-day changes in 2012.
It’s easy to lose track of precisely how wealthy the ultra-wealthiest have become. Terms like “billionaires” can generalize and disguise the scale of the fortunes created in today’s economy. A billion here, a billion there — the very rich remain very rich. Exactly how rich can feel irrelevant.
But the particulars of their staggering success matter because at the other end of America’s income inequality divide, the extra money would not feel so irrelevant. More than 30 million Americans are now depending on unemployment benefits, some of which are set to expire at the end of the month. Low-wage workers are especially prone to layoffs. And the pandemic is pounding poorer neighborhoods in particular, where the number of Covid-19 cases is higher.
Voices on the left see this as zero-sum — those extra billions can make a difference if redistributed — and are calling for a remaking of the American economy after this crisis. They would like to see the very wealthy pay more in taxes in order to repair what they believe is an insufficient safety net.
Market-oriented thinkers argue that these billionaires are becoming rich because they are creating value for their shareholders — which is a basic imperative of capitalism — and the billionaires happen to be some of these companies’ largest shareholders.
That argument, though, is why it is worth assessing the figures in the uppermost echelon of America’s elite. Over the last few weeks in particular, tech fortunes have climbed to new heights.
That’s true for no one more than Bezos, whose assets in 2020 have climbed by $75 billion; his net worth is now nearing almost $200 billion.
That historic wealth gain is due to the rise of Amazon, which has proved indispensable as people around the world stay at home in response to the pandemic. Its stock has skyrocketed 70 percent since the start of the year. That’s a boom for him as well as for his ex-wife, MacKenzie Bezos, whose shares in the company have put her on the doorstep of becoming the world’s wealthiest woman, a position held now by Francoise Bettencourt Meyers. On New Year’s Day 2020, MacKenzie Bezos was the world’s 25th wealthiest person — now she’s 13th, with $63 billion to her name, per Bloomberg.
Amazon is not the only big tech company whose relative success has made the rich richer. The S&P 500 may be about flat in 2020, but the stock appreciation at Facebook, Apple, and Google parent company Alphabet has created even more winnings for its billionaires. But the rise of two other tech companies and the billionaires behind them have changed the tippiest of the tippy-top.
Ballmer, the longtime CEO of Microsoft, is not a household name for most Americans, who are far more familiar with his predecessor, Bill Gates. (Many of the country’s richest people are not faces you would recognize if you passed them on the street.)
But Ballmer is not just any rich person — he has sneakily become America’s fifth-richest person thanks to the enormous growth in Microsoft’s stock, which has almost quadrupled over the last five years. That could draw more scrutiny to Ballmer, who remains in the public eye primarily as the animated courtside presence at the home games of the Los Angeles Clippers, which he owns. Ballmer began the year as the 15th-richest person.
The other tech billionaire who has turned a fortune into a super-sized fortune amid the recession is Musk, the idiosyncratic founder of Tesla and SpaceX. At the start of 2020, Musk ranked as the 35th richest person. But his net worth has nearly tripled over the last seven months, and Musk is now the sixth wealthiest person in the world with almost $75 billion. Tesla’s stock has almost quadrupled this calendar year.
All told, the coronavirus is proving to offer pretty good times for Big Tech’s leaders. Nine of the 15 richest people in the world come from America’s technology sector, according to the Bloomberg rankings, compared to seven at year’s beginning. Almost every tech billionaire is in the black, not the red, this year.
Not many Americans can say the same. And if the American economy drops further, the tech billionaire will loom — fairly or unfairly — as an easy scapegoat.


vox--2020-07-21--“The jobs aren’t there”: Cutting off enhanced unemployment benefits would leave workers in the lurch

Expanded unemployment insurance is scheduled to expire later this month — a development that could have dire consequences for millions of workers who still don ’ t have jobs to go back to .
“ I am still furloughed and if the Senate does not extend the expanded weekly amount , I won ’ t be able to pay my rent or bills , ” says Amy Muller , a teacher based in California , who ’ s been receiving unemployment insurance since this spring .
Republicans in Congress have argued that enhanced unemployment insurance ( UI ) deters people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Muller ’ s situation illustrates , many don ’ t have jobs they can return to at this point .
“ If you cut off the $ 600 to incentivize people to go back to work , that will just be cruel , because for millions of people the jobs aren ’ t there , ” says Heidi Shierholz , the former chief economist at the Department of Labor and current director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute .
First approved in the CARES Act , the recent boost to UI @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to benefits that a worker receives .
That expansion is significant : Exact benefits vary by state , but the average weekly amount prior to this addition was $ 370 .
With the legislation ’ s boost , that figure increases to $ 970 per week .
Experts say the UI expansion has been central to keeping the country ’ s economy afloat as the US continues to deal with the fallout from Covid-19 : The benefits are intended to help workers stay safe and remain home as policymakers address the public health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a critical safety net for millions of workers whose jobs have effectively been eliminated in the near term .
According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute , as many as 11.9 million workers have zero chance of returning to their prior jobs as temporary job losses become permanent ones .
Whether Congress will extend the expanded UI remains an open question .
Lawmakers returned to the Capitol this week and have until late July to take action before the program is due to sunset .
Democrats sought to continue the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Heroes Act , while Republicans have countered with “ return-to-work ” bonuses and even an ad campaign that argued people without work should “ find something new.
” The GOP approach , however , ignores a dismal reality .
With small businesses continuing to shutter , new job postings slowing to a halt , and companies issuing fresh rounds of layoffs , unemployed workers are left with few options to pursue .
In Muller ’ s case , she ’ s been waiting to see if her job will come back , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ I have applied to every [ art ] teaching position that has posted in California , ” she told Vox .
“ Not one has followed up as of yet.
” In recent months , the number of people who are unemployed has far surpassed the number of new jobs that have been added to the economy .
According to the June jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics , while 4.8 million new jobs were added that month , at least 17.8 million people remained unemployed .
A weekly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as many as 33 million people were receiving state and federal UI benefits as of late June .
These figures indicate that the number of new job openings isn ’ t near comparable with the number of people who have filed for unemployment in recent weeks .
A June working paper from researchers Jose Maria Barrero , Nick Bloom , and Steven Davis put it a different way : For every three new jobs , there have been 10 layoffs , they concluded .
Certain fields have dialed up hiring during the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point out : E-commerce giants including Amazon , delivery services like Instacart , and online education tools like Outschool have all sought to bring on more workers while other industries continue to contract .
The issue is that the number of jobs these industries are adding does not come close to making up for the number of jobs that have been lost .
Additionally , many of the new jobs that are emerging are not in line with the experiences or fields that people may have been working in prior to the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was laid off this spring , for example , has been networking extensively but turning up little in the way of work in his field .
“ I ’ m on LinkedIn Premium , Indeed , CareerBuilder , you name it , looking for jobs , but I always get the same response , ” he told Vox .
“ A few firms are interviewing ... but with no real intention of hiring in the near future.
” He notes that he ’ s started a programming course , in case that could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ line .
Experts emphasize that many of the job losses that have taken place this year could well be recovered once the economy fully bounces back from the pandemic , though some industries — like brick-and-mortar retail — could see more permanent effects .
In the short term , the industries that have been forced to shutter or reduce their operations to promote safe practices during the pandemic — including restaurants , gyms , and hair salons — are among those that won ’ t see many jobs coming back any time soon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that we can assume will be really , really suppressed until we have a vaccine or effective treatment , ” says Shierholz .
In addition to providing workers with vital support while the job market remains in flux , the UI expansion has also played an important role in maintaining consumer spending and supporting other jobs .
“ Our estimates suggest that expiration will result in large spending cuts , with potentially negative effects on both households and macroeconomic activity , ” researchers at JP Morgan Chase concluded in a July analysis , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from an end to the expanded UI .
These cuts could be devastating for the economy , Shierholz notes — affecting as many as 5 million other jobs .
“ When ... that $ 600 goes away , so [ millions of workers ] will not be able to buy goods and services , those workers who were producing those goods and services , those workers lose their jobs , ” she says .
Without the expanded UI , many workers will also face increasing challenges when it comes to basic living costs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well as food .
“ The extension is a necessity for myself and others who have been affected by this pandemic , ” says Nick Parisi , an IT worker in Michigan , who was laid off earlier this year .
For now , Congress is still at an impasse on what UI policy would look like in the next stimulus package , with Republicans intent on including incentives that will motivate people to return to work .
That approach , however , continues to overlook a fundamental reality of the current economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Expanded unemployment insurance is scheduled to expire later this month — a development that could have dire consequences for millions of workers who still don’t have jobs to go back to.
“I am still furloughed and if the Senate does not extend the expanded weekly amount, I won’t be able to pay my rent or bills,” says Amy Muller, a teacher based in California, who’s been receiving unemployment insurance since this spring.
Republicans in Congress have argued that enhanced unemployment insurance (UI) deters people from going back to work. But as Muller’s situation illustrates, many don’t have jobs they can return to at this point.
“If you cut off the $600 to incentivize people to go back to work, that will just be cruel, because for millions of people the jobs aren’t there,” says Heidi Shierholz, the former chief economist at the Department of Labor and current director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
First approved in the CARES Act, the recent boost to UI adds an extra $600 per week to benefits that a worker receives. That expansion is significant: Exact benefits vary by state, but the average weekly amount prior to this addition was $370. With the legislation’s boost, that figure increases to $970 per week.
Experts say the UI expansion has been central to keeping the country’s economy afloat as the US continues to deal with the fallout from Covid-19: The benefits are intended to help workers stay safe and remain home as policymakers address the public health crisis.
Additionally, UI has served as a critical safety net for millions of workers whose jobs have effectively been eliminated in the near term. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, as many as 11.9 million workers have zero chance of returning to their prior jobs as temporary job losses become permanent ones.
Whether Congress will extend the expanded UI remains an open question. Lawmakers returned to the Capitol this week and have until late July to take action before the program is due to sunset. Democrats sought to continue the expanded program through January 2021 in the Heroes Act, while Republicans have countered with “return-to-work” bonuses and even an ad campaign that argued people without work should “find something new.”
The GOP approach, however, ignores a dismal reality. With small businesses continuing to shutter, new job postings slowing to a halt, and companies issuing fresh rounds of layoffs, unemployed workers are left with few options to pursue.
In Muller’s case, she’s been waiting to see if her job will come back, and applying to other openings in the meantime. “I have applied to every [art] teaching position that has posted in California,” she told Vox. “Not one has followed up as of yet.”
Job losses outweigh gains at the moment
In recent months, the number of people who are unemployed has far surpassed the number of new jobs that have been added to the economy.
According to the June jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while 4.8 million new jobs were added that month, at least 17.8 million people remained unemployed. A weekly report on jobless claims also notes that as many as 33 million people were receiving state and federal UI benefits as of late June.
These figures indicate that the number of new job openings isn’t near comparable with the number of people who have filed for unemployment in recent weeks. A June working paper from researchers Jose Maria Barrero, Nick Bloom, and Steven Davis put it a different way: For every three new jobs, there have been 10 layoffs, they concluded.
Certain fields have dialed up hiring during the pandemic, Barrero, Bloom, and Davis point out: E-commerce giants including Amazon, delivery services like Instacart, and online education tools like Outschool have all sought to bring on more workers while other industries continue to contract.
The issue is that the number of jobs these industries are adding does not come close to making up for the number of jobs that have been lost. Additionally, many of the new jobs that are emerging are not in line with the experiences or fields that people may have been working in prior to the pandemic.
Jose, a Texas-based architect who was laid off this spring, for example, has been networking extensively but turning up little in the way of work in his field. “I’m on LinkedIn Premium, Indeed, CareerBuilder, you name it, looking for jobs, but I always get the same response,” he told Vox. “A few firms are interviewing ... but with no real intention of hiring in the near future.”
He notes that he’s started a programming course, in case that could help him with job opportunities down the line.
Experts emphasize that many of the job losses that have taken place this year could well be recovered once the economy fully bounces back from the pandemic, though some industries — like brick-and-mortar retail — could see more permanent effects. In the short term, the industries that have been forced to shutter or reduce their operations to promote safe practices during the pandemic — including restaurants, gyms, and hair salons — are among those that won’t see many jobs coming back any time soon.
“[There are] industries that we can assume will be really, really suppressed until we have a vaccine or effective treatment,” says Shierholz.
The UI expansion offers workers a safety net and boosts consumer spending
In addition to providing workers with vital support while the job market remains in flux, the UI expansion has also played an important role in maintaining consumer spending and supporting other jobs.
“Our estimates suggest that expiration will result in large spending cuts, with potentially negative effects on both households and macroeconomic activity,” researchers at JP Morgan Chase concluded in a July analysis, which examined the fallout that would result from an end to the expanded UI. These cuts could be devastating for the economy, Shierholz notes — affecting as many as 5 million other jobs.
“When ... that $600 goes away, so [millions of workers] will not be able to buy goods and services, those workers who were producing those goods and services, those workers lose their jobs,” she says.
Without the expanded UI, many workers will also face increasing challenges when it comes to basic living costs including rent and mortgage payments, as well as food. “The extension is a necessity for myself and others who have been affected by this pandemic,” says Nick Parisi, an IT worker in Michigan, who was laid off earlier this year.
For now, Congress is still at an impasse on what UI policy would look like in the next stimulus package, with Republicans intent on including incentives that will motivate people to return to work. That approach, however, continues to overlook a fundamental reality of the current economic crisis.


vox--2020-07-21--Why the next president should establish a Department of Climate

It ’ s been a big month for new climate policy ideas in the US , with a flurry of plans out , brimming with hundreds of policy recommendations .
The presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden campaign ’ s task force on climate change , for example , released new proposals on July 14 for reducing fossil fuel use , aiming to establish a national clean energy standard and rectify climate injustices .
Earlier in July , the campaign also convened a new Climate Engagement Advisory Council to mobilize more people in the fight against climate change and systemic racism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming put out a 500-plus-page Climate Crisis Action Plan .
But so far , none of these plans has included a key action that would strengthen the government ’ s ability to make these policies a reality : the creation of a new , Cabinet-level Department of Climate .
To give these new proposals a fighting chance , the committees and councils must recognize that the executive branch is not yet properly aligned to respond to climate change , a complex problem of unmatched size @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high-level executive body focused on climate is not radical .
Countries around the world — from Austria to Australia , Pakistan to Portugal — have created dedicated departments or ministries specifically to address climate change threats .
Establishing new Cabinet departments in the US isn ’ t that unusual either .
In fact , more than half of the government ’ s 15 active departments have been formed in just the past 75 years , four within my lifetime .
But among these executive-level departments and in all the hundreds of federal agencies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dedicated to the climate crisis .
There isn ’ t even one with the word “ climate ” in its name .
To meet the threat of climate change , one of the first actions of the next administration and the 177th Congress should be to create this Department of Climate .
Its mission would be to mitigate global climate change , reduce America ’ s vulnerability to climate impacts , build resiliency to the impacts that do occur , and strengthen our nation ’ s infrastructure by forging a sustainable , thriving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three reasons why the US needs this new agency , how to do it , and why now is the time to start building one : 1 ) Climate change is a threat to our security — and we need a unified structure to fight it Climate change is a critical national security challenge that will not be resolved over the course of one administration .
In a report published earlier this year , the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Climate and Security identified several major ways in which climate change puts national security @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and political instability due to drought and water stress , damages to military bases and infrastructure from rising seas and increased flooding , and detrimental effects on force readiness and health caused by more frequent heat waves and wildfires .
But perhaps the greatest risk to national security is the fact that climate change threatens our health , social equity , and economy , weakening the nation ’ s resilience .
Current and future climate impacts put our very life , liberty , and pursuit of happiness at risk .
It is well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When the United States faced grave security threats in the past , we rose to those challenges by reorganizing the executive branch .
For instance , after World War II , the National Security Act of 1947 was enacted by Congress and signed by President Truman .
The act reorganized military and intelligence branches , established the National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency , and merged the War and Navy department into what became the Department of Defense .
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11 , 2001 , the Department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 22 different federal agencies and offices into one unified Cabinet department .
In a message to Congress on June 18 , 2002 , President George W. Bush wrote : “ History teaches us that new challenges require new organizational structures .
History also teaches us that critical security challenges require clear lines of responsibility and the unified effort of the US Government.
” Although there is currently no one department or agency focused solely on climate change , there are many people spread across the federal government working on climate-related issues .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ find an agency that does not already work on some element of climate change : from monitoring current environmental conditions to projecting climate impacts , from creating innovative energy solutions to building climate-resilient communities .
But this legion of civil servants , who have devoted their careers to combating climate change , are fragmented and lack that clear line of responsibility President Bush described as necessary to address critical security challenges .
These leading experts could be convened under one broad mission , with the potential for producing unified actions and outcomes far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parts .
Just as the Department of Homeland Security promises “ relentless resilience ” to attacks against the United States , a Department of Climate could deploy this same mindset , ensuring the US has the foundation it needs to take on the threats climate change poses to this nation and to future generations .
2 ) Climate change is a threat to our health — and we need dedicated resources to respond to it In the US , Americans are already experiencing more frequent extreme heat days , increases in wildfires that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely makes people more susceptible to Covid-19 ) , more severe storms with long-term , devastating health impacts , and longer seasons for disease-carrying mosquitoes and ticks .
Rising carbon dioxide levels means longer and more severe allergy seasons and less nutritious crops .
Not to mention the impact on our mental health .
As the House Select Committee points out in its Climate Crisis Action Plan , “ the United States currently lacks a comprehensive national strategy to respond to the health risks and harms of the climate crisis.
” Their plan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , placing much of the burden of action on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) .
However , federal health agencies ’ ability to focus on climate-related health impacts is currently inadequate .
This is in part because of leadership dismissive of climate change — and in part because their attention is , understandably , on the Covid-19 pandemic .
And the 2018 hurricane season before that , and Zika before that , and Ebola before that .
While the CDC and other health agencies are full of experts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their priorities will always be driven by the next new global health crisis — and by each new administration ’ s political whims .
A new department would not be completely immune to the same geopolitical winds that tug on other federal health agencies ’ attention ; but a dedicated budget and clear language in its mission mandating action on climate change would better position it against such winds .
Instead of each new administration interpreting whether work on climate falls within the scope of an agency ’ s mission , there would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is within the purview of the Department of Climate .
While there are many offices or divisions across numerous agencies engaged in work related to energy or transportation , these cross-cutting topics nevertheless have Cabinet-level leadership and congressionally determined budgets to ensure their missions are met regardless of who sits in the White House .
As with education , labor , or agriculture , we should have a Department of Climate so that our nation always has the clear dedication of resources it needs to concentrate on crucial issues .
The department could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to human health— collaborating with CDC and other health agencies to strengthen , not further tax , our health sector — and obviate the seasonal question of whether the US is making climate change a priority or not .
3 ) Climate change is a threat to equity — and we need to build the capacity to do better Climate change threatens our health , but it does not threaten it equally .
Certain communities are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change , including children , older adults , people with pre-existing health conditions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Indigenous peoples , and many communities of color .
As we see with Covid-19 , discrimination leads to disproportionate rates of illnesses and deaths from environmental health hazards among Black , Hispanic , and Indigenous peoples .
Climate change does not just exacerbate the impacts of racism , it is also caused by white supremacy , a snake eating its own tail .
As Hop Hopkins wrote for the advocacy group the Sierra Club : “ You can ’ t have climate change without sacrifice zones , and you can ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and you can ’ t have disposable people without racism.
” And people of color— who , as the writer and podcast host Mary Annaïse Heglar points out , have faced their own existential threats for hundreds of years and have unrivaled experience building activist movements — often do not have enough seats at the table when it comes to developing or implementing environmental policy .
The Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) and the Department of Justice ( DOJ ) work to enforce health and safety rules and pursue criminal anti-pollution cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new environmental justice plan proposes to strengthen .
But even providing more resources to these existing government structures won ’ t be enough to guarantee meaningful involvement of all people in actions to address climate change .
We need to build out additional capacity and create more jobs in the environmental justice field .
One way to do this is by building divisions in the Department of Climate that , in addition to helping the EPA and DOJ prosecute violators of environmental protections , work to prioritize those communities made most vulnerable to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of the climate solution .
By bringing in more people with social movement-building experience and new voices from communities often unheard , we could accomplish so much more — and more quickly .
This is important because the world has a lot of lost time to make up for in terms of fighting climate change and systemic inequity .
The threads of these two existential threats are intricately and tragically interwoven ; the most effective way to unravel them both is to solve them together .
A Department of Climate , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but made of the people with the most expertise in social justice and the most knowledge of their communities ’ unique needs and strengths , would give the US its best chance of implementing creative , long-lasting , and just solutions to climate change .
What the future could hold The United States has faced crises in the past , as we do today , and will again .
We don ’ t need to look very far back in history for examples of how effective federal restructuring can provide the means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these lines from the 2002 Proposal to Create the Department of Homeland Security with the words “ climate change ” swapped in to see just how easily a similar proposal could be created for a Department of Climate : Today , no single government agency has climate change as its primary mission .
In fact , responsibilities for climate change are dispersed among more than 100 different government organizations .
America needs a single , unified climate change structure that will improve protection against today ’ s threats and be flexible enough to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future .
Creating the scaffolding for such a department now would be a clear signal to our country ’ s youth and to the communities most at risk that they don ’ t have to take on the entire burden of addressing climate change themselves .
And it would be a clear signal to the rest of the world that the United States is finally ready to be a leader among the global community fighting climate change .
We have the urgency of the crisis to drive us , the precedence to guide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the experts to unify it— everything we need to create a response commensurate to the size of this huge task .
Allison Crimmins is a climate scientist in Washington , DC , whose research focuses on the impacts of climate change on human health .
The views expressed here are her own and do not represent those of her employer .
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Editor’s note, November 11: This article was originally published in July and has been updated following election results.
In their acceptance speeches on November 7, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris included combating climate change on their to-do list for healing the nation. After a campaign filled with climate change-related policies, committees, speeches, and commercials, the Biden administration has what many experts are calling a mandate to act on the climate crisis.
Before the administration can start making large, meaningful strides in this mandate, however, it will first need to play catch-up, repairing the damage done by the Trump administration. Much of this work will include repealing harmful executive orders, reversing regulations that hinder science, and reinstating research policies, budgets, and advisory boards. It will also include the enormous task of rebuilding public trust in science, restoring a culture of scientific integrity, reviving the morale of discouraged federal workers, reconvincing scientists that public service can be a rewarding and honorable career path, and re-staffing agencies with a new generation of diverse talents and expertise. It will take a lot of hard work, and it won’t all be done by January 21.
But the incoming administration can make progress on all this needed restoration and move forward on the goals outlined in Biden’s clean energy and environmental justice proposal right now: by laying out plans for a new, Cabinet-level Department of Climate. In fact, rumblings about the creation of a “White House office for Climate Mobilization,” similar in structure to the National Security Council, started circulating in early October.
The idea of a high-level executive body focused on climate is not radical. Countries around the world — from Austria to Australia, Pakistan to Portugal — have created dedicated departments or ministries specifically to address climate change threats.
Establishing new Cabinet departments in the US isn’t that unusual either. In fact, more than half of the government’s 15 active departments have been formed in just the past 75 years. But among these executive-level departments and in all the hundreds of federal agencies, not one has a mission solely dedicated to the climate crisis. There isn’t even one with the word “climate” in its name.
Related How Joe Biden plans to use executive powers to fight climate change
To meet the threat of climate change, one of the first actions of the Biden administration and the 117th Congress should be to create a Department of Climate. Its mission would be to mitigate global climate change, reduce America’s vulnerability to climate impacts, build resiliency to the impacts that do occur, and strengthen the nation’s infrastructure by forging a sustainable, thriving, and just economy.
Here are three reasons why the US needs this new agency, how to do it, and why now is the time to start building one:
1) Climate change is a threat to our security — and we need a unified structure to fight it
Climate change is a critical national security challenge that will not be resolved over the course of one administration. In a report published earlier this year, the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Climate and Security identified several major ways in which climate change puts national security at risk. These include: social and political instability due to drought and water stress, damages to military bases and infrastructure from rising seas and increased flooding, and detrimental effects on force readiness and health caused by more frequent heat waves and wildfires.
But perhaps the greatest risk to national security is the fact that climate change threatens our health, social equity, and economy, weakening the nation’s resilience. Current and future climate impacts put our very life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness at risk. It is well past time we defend against such threats.
When the US faced grave security threats in the past, it rose to those challenges by reorganizing the executive branch. For instance, after World War II, Congress enacted the National Security Act of 1947 and it was signed by President Truman. The Act reorganized military and intelligence branches, established the National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency, and merged the War and Navy department into what became the Department of Defense.
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security was established, integrating 22 different federal agencies and offices into one unified Cabinet department. In a message to Congress on June 18, 2002, President George W. Bush wrote: “History teaches us that new challenges require new organizational structures. History also teaches us that critical security challenges require clear lines of responsibility and the unified effort of the US Government.”
Although there is currently no one department or agency focused solely on climate change, there are many people spread across the federal government working on climate-related issues. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find an agency that does not already work on some element of climate change: from monitoring current environmental conditions to projecting climate impacts, from creating innovative energy solutions to building climate-resilient communities.
But this legion of civil servants, who have devoted their careers to combating climate change, are fragmented and lack that clear line of responsibility President Bush described as necessary to address critical security challenges. These leading experts could be convened under one broad mission, with the potential for producing unified actions and outcomes far greater than the sum of their disaggregated parts.
Just as the Department of Homeland Security promises “relentless resilience” to attacks against the United States, a Department of Climate could deploy this same mindset, ensuring the US has the foundation it needs to take on the threats climate change poses to this nation and to future generations.
2) Climate change is a threat to our health — and we need dedicated resources to respond to it
In the US, Americans are already experiencing more frequent extreme heat days, increases in wildfires that lead to poor air quality (which likely makes people more susceptible to Covid-19), more severe storms with long-term, devastating health impacts, and longer seasons for disease-carrying mosquitoes and ticks. Rising carbon dioxide levels means longer and more severe allergy seasons and less nutritious crops. Not to mention the impact on our mental health.
As the House Select Committee points out in its Climate Crisis Action Plan, “the United States currently lacks a comprehensive national strategy to respond to the health risks and harms of the climate crisis.” Their plan calls for Congress to strengthen such planning, placing much of the burden of action on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Related House Democrats just put out the most detailed climate plan in US political history
However, federal health agencies’ ability to focus on climate-related health impacts is currently inadequate. This is in part due to leadership that is dismissive of climate change — and in part because their attention is, understandably, on the Covid-19 pandemic. And the 2018 hurricane season before that, and Zika before that, and Ebola before that. While the CDC and other health agencies are full of experts working to mitigate climate-related health threats, their priorities will always be driven by the next new global health crisis — and by each new administration’s political whims.
A new department would not be completely immune to the same geopolitical winds that tug on other federal agencies’ attention; but a dedicated budget and clear language in its mission mandating action on climate change would better position it against such winds. Instead of each new administration interpreting whether work on climate falls within the scope of an agency’s mission, there would be no question that addressing climate change is within the purview of a Department of Climate.
While there are many offices or divisions across numerous agencies engaged in work related to energy or transportation, these cross-cutting topics nevertheless have Cabinet-level leadership and congressionally determined budgets to ensure their missions are met regardless of who sits in the White House. As with education, labor, or agriculture, we should have a Department of Climate so that our nation always has the clear dedication of resources it needs to concentrate on crucial issues.
The department could take the lead on addressing climate threats to human health — collaborating with the CDC and other health agencies to strengthen, not further tax our health sector — and obviate the seasonal question of whether the US is making climate change a priority or not.
3) Climate change is a threat to equity — and we need to build the capacity to do better
Climate change threatens our health, but it does not threaten it equally. Certain communities are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change, including children, older adults, people with pre-existing health conditions, low-income communities, certain occupational groups, Indigenous peoples, and many communities of color.
As we see with Covid-19, discrimination leads to disproportionate rates of illnesses and deaths from environmental health hazards among Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous peoples.
Climate change does not just exacerbate the impacts of racism, it is also caused by white supremacy, a snake eating its own tail. As Hop Hopkins wrote for the advocacy group the Sierra Club: “You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism.”
And people of color — who, as the writer and podcast host Mary Annaïse Heglar points out, have faced their own existential threats for hundreds of years and have unrivaled experience building activist movements — often do not have enough seats at the table when it comes to developing or implementing environmental policy.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) work to enforce health and safety rules and pursue criminal anti-pollution cases, efforts Biden’s environmental justice plan proposes to strengthen. But even providing more resources to these existing government structures won’t be enough to guarantee meaningful involvement of all people to address climate change. We need to build out additional capacity and create more jobs in the environmental justice field.
One way to do this is by building divisions in the Department of Climate that, in addition to helping the EPA and DOJ prosecute violators of environmental protections, work to prioritize those communities made most vulnerable to climate change and ensure diverse voices are part of the climate solution.
By bringing in more people with social movement-building experience and new voices from communities often unheard, we could accomplish so much more — and more quickly. This is important because the world has a lot of lost time to make up for in terms of fighting climate change and systemic inequity. The threads of these two existential threats are intricately and tragically interwoven; the most effective way to unravel them is to solve them together.
A Department of Climate, not just working for the people disproportionately affected, but made of the people with the most expertise in social justice and the most knowledge of their communities’ unique needs and strengths, would give the US its best chance of implementing creative, long-lasting, and just solutions to climate change.
What the future could hold in the Biden administration
The United States has faced crises in the past, as we do today, and will again. We don’t need to look very far back in history for examples of how effective federal restructuring can provide the means to meet such challenges. Try reading these lines from the 2002 Proposal to Create the Department of Homeland Security with the words “climate change” swapped in to see just how easily a Department of Climate could be proposed:
“Today, no single government agency has homeland security climate change as its primary mission. In fact, responsibilities for homeland security climate change are dispersed among more than 100 different government organizations. America needs a single, unified homeland security climate change structure that will improve protection against today’s threats and be flexible enough to help meet the unknown threats of the future.”
And the power of a Climate Department would go beyond even its ability to take meaningful, sustained action. It would also signify a new, permanent prioritization of the climate crisis among the country’s top concerns, a move that has been sorely missing. It would be an immediate acknowledgement to millions of voters that the Biden administration is taking their mandate to act on climate seriously. It would be a clear signal to our country’s youth and to the communities most at-risk that they don’t have to take on the entire burden of addressing climate change themselves. And it would be a loud message to the rest of the world that the United States is finally ready to be a leader among the global community fighting climate change.
We have the urgency of the crisis to drive us, the mandate to move us forward, the precedence to guide us, the blueprint to build it, the experts to unify it, and the leaders to enact it— everything we need to create a response commensurate to the size of this huge task.
Allison Crimmins is a climate scientist in Washington, DC, whose research focuses on the impacts of climate change on human health. The views expressed here are her own and do not represent those of her employer.


vox--2020-07-21--What’s at stake if Trump gets to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

On Friday , Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg released an unsettling statement .
This May , she explained , she “ began a course of chemotherapy ( gemcitabine ) to treat a recurrence of cancer.
” Doctors discovered lesions on her liver , and , after less aggressive treatment “ proved unsuccessful , ” the justice began chemotherapy .
Ginsburg ’ s most recent cancer screening , which took place on July 7 , “ indicated significant reduction of the liver lesions and no new disease.
” And she ’ s beaten cancer several times before .
So there is reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ continue to serve on the Court for a good while longer .
But the outcome of decades of future Supreme Court decisions is likely to turn on whether Ginsburg , a feminist icon and the seniormost member of the Court ’ s liberal wing , continues to serve until after President Trump leaves office .
In 2016 , the Senate ’ s Republican majority refused to vote on — or even hold a hearing on — President Obama ’ s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill a Supreme Court vacancy that opened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Scalia .
At the time , Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell claimed that the “ next president ” must choose who fills this seat in order to “ give the people a voice in filling this vacancy.
” Four years later , McConnell has made quite clear that he only cares about giving the people a voice when that voice could benefit the Republican Party .
Asked in 2019 whether the Senate would confirm a Trump nominee if a vacancy opened the same year as the 2020 election , McConnell smiled and replied @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fill it.
” Indeed , some Senate Republicans are already talking about filling a Supreme Court vacancy even if they are repudiated at the polls .
Sen. Joni Ernst ( R-IA ) told an Iowa public television show on Friday that “ if it comes to an appointment prior to the end of the year , I would be supportive of that , ” even if it means filling the seat in a “ lame-duck session.
” With Republicans controlling 53 seats in the current Senate , Democrats would have to convince four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to prevent a lame-duck confirmation .
The stakes , if a vacancy does open up on the Supreme Court , 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 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ justice like Ginsburg , 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 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 ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 three 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 ’ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and less fearful of the awesome surveillance power given to police by new technology .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

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.