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78 percent of white evangelical voters are Republicans or lean Republican. So are 62 percent of white men without a college degree, 60 percent of rural southerners and 57 percent of people who attend religious services weekly.

the percentage of Americans who are not affiliated with a religion keeps rising — up 9 percentage points since 2009, to 26 percent in 2019 — and the percentage of people identifying as Christians keeps falling — down 12 percentage points, to 65 percent over the same decade

Lastly, the percentage of Americans with college degrees keeps rising, moving from 4.6 percent in 1940 to 36 percent in 2019.

Conservatives see all of these trends, and they are alarmed. So, they want to freeze time, or even turn it back. Their reading of the Constitution is stuck in the understanding of it when it was written. It is the same for religious texts. They want to return to a pre-1960s era, before the civil rights movement, women’s rights movement and the gay rights movement, before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and Roe v. Wade, before the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage, before there was a Black president and a browning country.

This is why they happily cheer Trump’s attack on immigrants — both legal and undocumented. It is why they encourage efforts to disenfranchise voters. It is why Trump’s attacks on cities resonate, as does his MAGA mantra.

Social progress is now on the chopping block. In this way, for many of us, Donald Trump’s legacy will likely be with us for the rest of our lives.

Ms. Collins, the lone New England Republican remaining in Congress and one of her party’s most politically endangered members, has been a pivotal swing vote in filling vacancies on the Supreme Court, and all eyes are on her in the battle to come.

Republicans hold a 53-to-47 majority in the Senate, meaning they can lose only three votes

— or at least the effort to consider one so close to the presidential election —

Opposing a drive by Mr. Trump to swiftly install a successor to Justice Ginsburg could be a powerful way for her to repair her reputation with moderate voters who turned against her after her vote in 2018 to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

wait the results of the November presidential election, and the appointmen

In a carefully worded statement on Saturday, Ms. Collins, who is trying to defend her reputation as a m

the first Republican to explicitly say she would oppose a confirmation vote before the election. Any such vote, she said, should await the results of the November presidential election, and the appointment should ultimately be made by the person who won

the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the president who is elected on Nov. 3,”

She said Mr. Trump had the right to choose a nominee and that she had no objection to the Senate beginning to consider the person

She is one of two Republican senators who support abortion rights, and has said she would not vote to confirm a nominee who would strike down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade

Sara Gideon, her Democratic opponent, has already received millions of dollars raised based on Ms. Collins’s support for Justice Kavanaugh, and after Justice Ginsburg’s death, progressive groups were gearing up to pour more money into targeting voters there.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the lone Republican to oppose the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh in 2018. Like Ms. Collins, she is one of the few remaining Republicans on Capitol Hill who supports abortion rights and has shown a willingness to break with her party in the past.

she joined Ms. Collins in saying that she would not support a confirmation vote before the Nov. 3 election.

Ms. Murkowski noted that she had also objected to filling the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death early in the final year of President Barack Obama’s second term. Now, less than two months before the November election, she said, “I believe the same standard must apply.”

Ms. Murkowski is not up for re-election until 2022

Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, had not yet been elected to Congress when the fight to confirm Justice Kavanaugh became a partisan brawl in the Senate.

has shown a willingness to break with the administration and the Republican Party.

Most notably, Mr. Romney became the first senator in American history to vote to remove a president of his own party from office during an impeachment trial — and the only Republican to vote to remove Mr. Trump.

he made no mention of his position in a statement and instead focused on paying tribute to Justice Ginsburg.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who led the Judiciary Committee in 2016, has said that he would not conduct Supreme Court confirmation hearings in a presidential election year, particularly given the Republican blockade of Merrick B. Garland,

But Mr. Grassley no longer oversees the committee. He gave no hint of his intentions in a statement after news of Justice Ginsburg’s death, praising her “sharp legal mind, tenacity and resilience.”

While plenty of Supreme Court nominees have been confirmed in presidential elections years, none has ever been approved so close to the election itself.

The last time any seriously contested selection for the court was rushed through so quickly at any point in the election cycle, counting from the date of the original nomination, was in 1949

Democratic donors chipped in $160 million online through ActBlue, the leading site for processing digital donations, in the first three days after Justice Ginsburg’s death.

on the day the nation passed the grim milestone of 200,000 killed by the virus

“A couple of days ago, the biggest issue in this election was Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Now it’s a battle over the Supreme Court.”

“This is going to be a late deliverable, which combined with a Covid vaccine will be substantive issues for late deciders,” he said

In fact, the Constitution permits changing the number of seats on the court just as it permits the president and the Senate to confirm a nominee at any point in the election cycle, but neither has been the norm in modern times.

Anti-abortion voters have long been a bedrock of the Republican coalition and often more devoted to casting ballots on that issue than their counterparts. But polls show the broader electorate supports retaining Roe v. Wade, and Democrats hope that if the ruling appears to be threatened it will activate voters who support abortion rights.

While the White House would never say so publicly, by pushing to confirm a choice before voters render their judgment on him, Mr. Trump is effectively conceding that he could lose and therefore it would be better to fill the seat immediately.

Some Republican strategists said it would make more sense to proceed with hearings while holding back on a final vote until after the election to let conservative voters know what is at stake and give them a reward, in effect, for turning out.

"That is true," Barrett responded.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, also asked the nominee about the severability doctrine. Barrett explained to Feinstein that the doctrine was like a game of "Jenga," where a court must decide whether a law can stand if it pulls out part of it.

Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy said that Barrett had not written or spoken in defense of the ACA but had publicly criticized the court and Chief Justice John Roberts for voting to uphold sections of it. Barrett said on Wednesday she had previously spoken as an academic rather than as a judge, and had "never had occasion to speak on the policy question."

Barrett later told Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, "I have no animus to, or agenda for, the Affordable Care Act."

Barrett said, "No one is above the law," but declined to answer the question, saying it "has never been litigated."

"So because it would be opining on an open question when I haven't gone through the judicial process to decide it, it's not one in which I can offer a view."

Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons asked Barrett if she agreed with her mentor and former boss, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, that Griswold v. Connecticut, which established that married couples have a right to obtain and use contraception in the privacy of their own home, was wrongly decided.

She explained that it's "unthinkable that any legislature would pass such a law" prohibiting the use of birth control and that it's "very unlikely" a lower court would buck the Supreme Court precedent.

Barrett said that "the only reason that it's even worth asking that question" is because the 1965 case underpins the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade, which found a constitutional right to abortion. "So because Griswold involves substantive due process, an area that remains subject to litigation to the country, I don't think it's an issue or case that I can opine on," she said. "But nor do I think Griswold is in danger of going anywhere."

California Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, asked Barrett about Shelby County v. Holder, which allowed some jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression to escape additional federal scrutiny under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

"I think racial discrimination still exists in the United States, and I think we've seen evidence of that this summer," added Barrett.Harris later asked Harris if Covid-19 is infectious, whether smoking causes cancer and whether climate change is "happening and is threatening the air we breathe and the water we drink."

"I will not do that," she said. "I will not express a view on a matter of public policy, especially one that is politically controversial because that's inconsistent with the judicial role as I have explained."

Republican senators appeared confident on Wednesday that they will confirm the Notre Dame law professor and judge on the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals by the end of the month, giving conservatives a strong 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court.

Justice Scalia had famously written that the Roe v. Wade decision establishing abortion rights was wrongly decided and should be overturned, Judge Barrett refused to clarify her own views on the issue.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett declared at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Tuesday that she was “not here on a mission to destroy the Affordable Care Act” and would not “allow myself to be used as a pawn to decide this election for the American people.”

But at the same time, she declined to say whether she would recuse herself, if confirmed, from considering an upcoming case in which Republican states are trying again to get the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act — or from any case that may arise if there is a legal dispute over the outcome of next month’s presidential election.

Supreme Court justices do not like to recuse themselves, in part because, unlike at the district and appeals court levels, there is no one to replace them if they step aside. If a justice decides to stay on a case despite accusations of a conflict of interest, there is no appeal.

Judge Barrett eventually defended herself to Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, insisting that she had integrity “to apply the law as the law” and was not trying to achieve any political end

Asked about other issues — notably abortion rights — Judge Barrett spoke about the doctrine of “stare decisis,” which says the Supreme Court should be reluctant to revisit issues it has previously decided.

“In English, that means I interpret the Constitution as a law,” said Judge Barrett. “The text is text, and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. It does not change over time, and it is not up to me to update it or infuse my own views into it.”

Trump's appointment of a new Supreme Court justice marks the third of his tenure in office, giving Republicans a historic opportunity to deliver on the key conservative priority and campaign promise of transforming the federal courts through lifetime appointments.

Barrett, who is 48 years old, is likely to serve on the court for decades and will give conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, a shift in its makeup that could have dramatic implications for a range of issues that could come before it, including the future of the Affordable Care Act and any potential disputes regarding the 2020 election.

They moved to confirm Barrett over the objections of Democrats who have argued that the process has been a rushed and cynical power grab that threatens to undermine Ginsburg's legacy.

Senate

Senate Republicans, who hold a majority in the cham

Senate Republicans, who hold a majority in the chamber, pushed ahead with one of the quickest nomination proceedings in modern times following the death of the late Justice and liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month

"By any objective standard, Judge Barrett deserves to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. The American people agree. In just a few minutes, she'll be on the Supreme Court," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said ahead of the final confirmation vote

The confirmation battle has played out in a bitterly-divided Senate, but the outcome has not been in question for much of the fight. With few exceptions, Senate Republicans quickly lined up in support of Barrett after her nomination by President Trump, while Democrats united in opposition.

Two Republican senators crossed party lines to vote with Democrats in opposition to a key procedural vote on Sunday -- Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.Murkowski announced that she would ultimately vote to confirm Barrett in the final vote

Senate Republicans largely rallied around the nomination, however, praising Barrett as exceedingly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court

Senate Democrats, in contrast, have decried the nomination and the confirmation process. Democrats have warned that Barrett's confirmation will put health care protections and the Affordable Care Act in jeopardy. They have argued that the confirmation process has been rushed and accused Republicans of hypocrisy in moving ahead with the nomination after blocking consideration of former President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016.

Democrats, who are in the minority, have been limited in their ability to oppose the nomination, but have protested the process in a variety of ways.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the nomination, Democratic senators on the panel boycotted the vote, filling their seats instead with pictures of people who rely upon the Affordable Care Act in an effort to draw attention to an upcoming case on the health care law's constitutionality and their arguments that Barrett's confirmation would put the law at risk.

During confirmation hearings, Democrats sought to elicit answers from Barrett on a number of controversial topics the Supreme Court could take up. Barrett repeatedly declined, however, to specify how she might rule on a range of topics, from the Affordable Care Act to Roe v. Wade and the high court's ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.

Barrett explained during the hearings that she shared a philosophy with the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, whom she clerked for, but argued she would not be an identical justice if she is confirmed.

As a federal appeals judge, Judge Barrett has often ruled in ways friendly to employers. She has joined rulings that stopped a case in which the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission objected to a company that allegedly assigned workers to particular geographic locations based on race and ethnicity and that limit the scope of laws prohibiting age discrimination.

In the following decades, the court became publicly associated with liberalism and civil rights. But just as the conservatives of an earlier generation recognized that the courts could be used to override majorities that pushed for limitations of property rights, in the summer of 1971, the lawyer Lewis Powell wrote a memorandum for the United States Chamber of Commerce, “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.”

Soon after, Richard Nixon nominated Powell for the Supreme Court; he was a justice for 15 years, and his rulings helped to expand the First Amendment rights enjoyed by corporations, paving the way for Citizens United.

But these cases in themselves are less significant than the underlying question: Will the Supreme Court become once more what it was in the early 20th century

And it could mean that — as has so often been the case in recent years — workers, ordinary citizens and the very possibility of democratic governance will again lose out.

“S.B. 8 was designed to nullify this court’s precedents and to shield that nullification from judicial review,” wrote Brian H. Fletcher, the acting solicitor general, in the federal government’s brief. “So far, it has worked: The threat of a flood of S.B. 8 suits has effectively eliminated abortion in Texas at a point before many women even realize they are pregnant, denying a constitutional right the court has recognized for half a century.”

The patient may not be sued, but doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, and people who help pay for the procedure or drive patients to it are all potential defendants. Plaintiffs do not need to live in Texas, have any connection to the abortion or show any injury from it, and they are entitled to at least $10,000 and their legal fees if they win. Defendants who win their cases are not entitled to legal fees.

“Where, as here, a state enacts a blatantly unconstitutional statute, assigns enforcement authority to everyone in the world and weaponizes the state judiciary to obstruct those courts’ ability to protect constitutional rights,” the brief said, “the federal courts must be available to provide relief.”

The law effectively deputizes ordinary citizens — including those from outside Texas — allowing them to sue clinics and others who violate the law. It awards them at least $10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful.

Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, filed a single brief in both cases, arguing that neither the federal government nor the providers were entitled to sue. The right way to challenge the law, Mr. Paxton said, was for abortion providers to violate it, be sued in state court, and present constitutional or other arguments as defenses.

“If Texas is right, no decision of this court is safe,” he wrote in his brief. “States need not comply with, or even challenge, precedents with which they disagree. They may simply outlaw the exercise of whatever constitutional rights they disfavor; disclaim enforcement by state officials; and delegate the state’s enforcement authority to members of the general public by empowering and incentivizing them to bring a multitude of harassing actions threatening ruinous liability — or, at a minimum, prohibitive litigation costs.”

the press for using the term “shadow docket”, a term coined by a conservative law professor. All Justice Alito succeeded in doing, however, is proving his sensitivity to the public discourse about the court.

Nobody is forcing this conservative supermajority to use the shadow docket to rewrite American jurisprudence. Pregnant people in Texas no longer have a constitutional right to abortion because five justices on the supreme court opted to nullify Roe v Wade by way of the shadow docket.

“beyond recognition” in order to “justify” reimposing juvenile life without parole. The court rejected its own decisions in cases decided just nine and five years ago respectively. When precedent is so blatantly ignored, it is difficult to explain the court’s change in direction but for politics.

Such a claim of ethical clarity just isn’t credible when it is uttered on stage right next to the person most responsible for the partisan gamesmanship that packed the court. What Justice Barrett did succeed in doing with her remarks is to confirm just how closely justices listen to the public narrative about the court – and how sensitive they are to it.

The justices, through their own actions and words, have demonstrated their vulnerability to public pressure in support of court reform. Turns out, justices do not like being told they have no clothes on.

As the court delves into its new term, it should have no doubt that all eyes will be upon it. If they want to escape it, rather than hoping the press will be cowed into submission, the justices of the court might consider fulfilling the mission of the institution they embody, by upholding constitutional rights and respecting judicial norms.

Grassroots movements don’t have a great track record, he wrote. “

Some marchers went into party politics: One participant from Maine—a woman who’d never done anything political but vote before attending the Women’s March—went home and became the chair of the Maine Democratic Party. Only a fraction of the marchers kept taking their cues from the Women’s March organization itself. And that makes sense: The Women’s March encompassed an almost unbelievably broad array of concerns.

Some did run for office, and some won. The march itself encompassed a diverse coalition of interest groups and the convention that followed, in October 2017, hosted workshops on the messier aspects of political organizing.

The members of that group threw themselves into the fight against partisan gerrymandering and worked to pass a state ballot initiative for an independent redistricting commission. Now, the Michigan maps have been redrawn. Though it’s impossible to measure how much the Women’s March contributed to that outcome, it unquestionably played a part.

Change happens when people run for office, amass coalitions of interest groups, engage in the messy practice of politics.”

They were everywhere: at fashion shows, cutting in front of rank-and-file participants at events, on magazine covers that they complained were not distributed widely enough. They accepted awards, posed for glamorous photo shoots, and fought a two-year battle to trademark the phrase “women’s march,” which they eventually dropped.

Organizers of marches are rarely given such disproportionate credit for their events’ success. Seasoned activists know that power of a grassroots movement lies not in its branding or executive leadership structure, but in the people who show up and sustain it. And yet, the Women’s March foursome quickly claimed to speak for something far more decentralized and organic than their own narrative would suggest.

But the organizers of Women’s March didn’t get that memo. The nonprofit that grew around it treated its four leaders — Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, Bob Bland, and Linda Sarsour — as celebrities, the visionary trailblazers at the head of a cohesive political movement.

But the Women’s March organization didn’t do much to refocus all that attention on the thousands of local organizers and millions of marchers who gave the march its meaning.

So when Mallory and Perez drew criticism for their support of noted sexist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, it was no big stretch for critics to use the leaders of the Women’s March to smear the entire movement.

The groundswell of women looking for community and purpose after Trump’s election needed some guidance—literally, marching orders. They did not need a clique of unelected spokespeople.

They had come to the Women’s March not as a unified people following a leader with a specific set of demands, but as individuals with a variety of related grievances, wanting to express a broad feeling of dismay at the direction the country was headed.

Many of them were inspired to undertake a deeper political education and find their place in other movements, including the fight to save the Affordable Care Act and the racial justice uprisings in the summer of 2020. In an alternate timeline, with no Women’s March to warm them up, would many of the white people at those Black Lives Matter marches have shown up at all?

The most memorable subsequent actions of the Women’s March—the groups that traveled to D.C. to beg their senators not to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the marches in the streets to protest the end of Roe v. Wade in Texas—what did they accomplish?

Protests and marches reassure people that they’re neither alone in their anger or fear, nor crazy for being angry and fearful. They introduce demonstrators to new friends and networks of political activity. There’s nothing like the rush of standing in a chanting crowd, sweating or shivering with thousands of people who share one’s outrage, to revive flagging willpower.

I’m sure there are plenty of Women’s Marchers who heaved a sigh of relief and went “back to brunch” after Joe Biden took office, thinking the work was done. But I don’t think that’s the prevailing view among the people who first woke up to politics when Trump became president. They watched, as we all did, as right-wing rioters took the Capitol last Jan. 6. They’re witnessing the dissolution of a broad voting rights bill at the hands of two Democratic senators. They’re watching abortion rights disintegrate in Texas and across the South. And they’re living through the hottest years in recorded history, bracing for the next hurricane or forest fire, as the people with the power to save life on Earth as we know it look the other way.

In this moment, under those conditions, with five years of hindsight, the Women’s March looks nothing short of revolutionary.

the growing divisions between red and blue states represent a reversion to the lines of separation through much of the nation’s history.

“very similar, both geographically and culturally, to the divides between the Union and the Confederacy. And those dividing lines were largely set at the nation’s founding, when slave states and free states forged an uneasy alliance to become ‘one nation.’”

he’s warning that the pressure on the country’s fundamental cohesion is likely to continue ratcheting up in the 2020s

the “MAGA movement”—as the U.S. equivalent to the authoritarian parties in places such as Hungary and Venezuela. It is a multipronged, fundamentally antidemocratic movement that has built a solidifying base of institutional support through conservative media networks, evangelical churches, wealthy Republican donors, GOP elected officials, paramilitary white-nationalist groups, and a mass public following

Virginia has voted like a blue state at the presidential level, and Arizona and Georgia have moved from red to purple. With these three states shifted into those categories, the two “nations” are almost equal in eligible voting-age population, and the blue advantage in GDP roughly doubles, with the blue section contributing 48 percent and the red just 35 percent.)

This divergence itself creates enormous strain on the country’s cohesion, but more and more even that looks like only a way station

the underlying political question of the 2020s remains whether majority rule—and democracy as we’ve known it—can survive this offensive.

Podhorzer defines modern red and blue America as the states in which each party has usually held unified control of the governorship and state legislature in recent years.

By that yardstick, there are 25 red states, 17 blue states, and eight purple states

the red nation houses slightly more of the country’s eligible voting population (45 percent versus 39 percent), but the blue nation contributes more of the total U.S. gross national product: 46 percent versus 40 percent

it is determined to impose its policy and social vision on the entire country—with or without majority support

The hardening difference between red and blue, Podhorzer maintains, “empowers” the 10 purple states (if you include Arizona and Georgia) to “decide which of the two superpower nations’ values, Blue or Red, will prevail” in presidential and congressional elections

that leaves the country perpetually teetering on a knife’s edge: The combined vote margin for either party across those purple states has been no greater than two percentage points in any of the past three presidential elections

That’s a reversal from the middle decades of the 20th century, when the basic trend was toward greater convergence.

One element of that convergence came through what legal scholars call the “rights revolution.” That was the succession of actions from Congress and the Supreme Court, mostly beginning in the 1960s, that strengthened the floor of nationwide rights and reduced the ability of states to curtail those rights.

Key moments in that revolution included the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and the Supreme Court decisions striking down state bans on contraception, interracial marriage, abortion, and, much later, prohibitions against same-sex intimate relations and marriage.)

Simultaneously, the regional differences were moderated by waves of national investment, including the New Deal spending on rural electrification, the Tennessee Valley Authority, agricultural price supports, and Social Security during the 1930s, and the Great Society programs that provided federal aid for K–12 schools and higher education, as well as Medicare and Medicaid.

The impact of these investments (as well as massive defense spending across both periods) on states that had historically spent little on public services and economic development helped steadily narrow the gap in per capita income between the states of the old Confederacy and the rest of the country from the 1930s until about 1980.

Since about 2008, Podhorzer calculates, the southern states at the heart of the red nation have again fallen further behind the blue nation in per capita income.

red states, as a group, are falling behind blue states on a broad range of economic and social outcomes—including economic productivity, family income, life expectancy, and “deaths of despair” from the opioid crisis and alcoholism.

other measures that show those places in a more favorable light

Housing is often more affordable in red states; partly for that reason, homelessness has become endemic in many big blue cities. Red-state taxes are generally lower than their blue counterparts. Many red states have experienced robust job growth

And red states across the Sun Belt rank among the nation’s fastest growing in population.

blue states are benefiting more as the nation transitions into a high-productivity, 21st-century information economy

red states (apart from their major metropolitan centers participating in that economy) are suffering as the powerhouse industries of the 20th century—agriculture, manufacturing, and fossil-fuel extraction—decline.

The gross domestic product per person and the median household income are now both more than 25 percent greater in the blue section than in the red,

The share of kids in poverty is more than 20 percent lower in the blue section than red, and the share of working households with incomes below the poverty line is nearly 40 percent lower.

Gun deaths are almost twice as high per capita in the red places as in the blue, as is the maternal mortality rate.

Per capita spending on elementary and secondary education is almost 50 percent higher in the blue states compared with red

All of the blue states have expanded access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, while about 60 percent of the total red-nation population lives in states that have refused to do so.

All of the blue states have set a minimum wage higher than the federal level of $7.25, while only about one-third of the red-state residents live in places that have done so.

Right-to-work laws are common in the red states and nonexistent in the blue, with the result that the latter have a much higher share of unionized workers than the former

No state in the blue section has a law on the books banning abortion before fetal viability, while almost all of the red states are poised to restrict abortion rights

Almost all of the red states have also passed “stand your ground” laws backed by the National Rifle Association, which provide a legal defense for those who use weapons against a perceived threat, while none of the blue states have done so.

During the seven decades of legal Jim Crow segregation from the 1890s through the 1960s, the principal goal of the southern states at the core of red America was defensive: They worked tirelessly to prevent federal interference with state-sponsored segregation but did not seek to impose it on states outside the region.

Jim Crow segregation offers an important reference point for understanding how far red states might take this movement to roll back civil rights and liberties—not that they literally would seek to restore segregation, but that they are comfortable with “a time when states” had laws so “entirely different” that they created a form of domestic apartheid.

The flurry of socially conservative laws that red states have passed since 2021, on issues such as abortion; classroom discussions of race, gender, and sexual orientation; and LGBTQ rights, is widening this split. No Democratic-controlled state has passed any of those measures.

he documents a return to historical patterns from the Jim Crow era in which the dominant party (segregationist Democrats then, conservative Republicans now) has skewed the playing field to achieve a level of political dominance in the red nation far beyond its level of popular support

Undergirding that advantage, he argues, are laws that make registering or voting in many of the red states more difficult, and severe gerrymanders that have allowed Republicans to virtually lock in indefinite control of many state legislatures

how the United States will function with two sections that are moving so far apart.

History, in my view, offers two models

bedrock differences dating back to the country’s founding are resurfacing. And one crucial element of that, he argues, is the return of what he calls “one-party rule in the red nation.”

in the last years before the Civil War, the South’s political orientation was offensive: Through the courts (the 1857 Dred Scott decision) and in Congress (the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854), its principal aim was to authorize the expansion of slavery into more territories and states

Podhorzer, like Mason and Grumbach, believes that the MAGA movement’s long-term goal is to tilt the electoral rules in enough states to make winning Congress or the White House almost impossible for Democrats

Then, with support from the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court, Republicans could impose red-state values and programs nationwide, even if most Americans oppose them. The “MAGA movement is not stopping at the borders of the states it already controls,” Podhorzer writes. “It seeks to conquer as much territory as possible by any means possible.”

The Trump model, in other words, is more the South in 1850 than the South in 1950, more John Calhoun than Richard Russell

it does mean that the 2020s may bring the greatest threats to the country’s basic stability since those dark and tumultuous years.

We may need to forget our pressing worries over inflation and gasoline prices just long enough to take to the streets, with unceasing frequency and in greater numbers, in order to make our beliefs and our voices heard.

the greatest shock of all would be to wake up one morning and find that while we were driving the kids to soccer practice and enjoying that welcome after-work cocktail, more and more of our rights had been stripped away, as has happened in so many countries in which democracy vanished, overnight and in darkness –when, as it were, no one was looking. The overturning of Roe v Wade should shock us even more than it already does – shock us into looking beyond the dance floor of the Titanic and spotting that iceberg, looming in our path, not so very far away.

a pro-life libertarian will recognize the humanity and dignity of both mother and child.

The entire philosophy of libertarianism depends on a healthy recognition of human dignity. A healthy libertarianism can still be individualistic, but it’s also deeply concerned with both personal virtue and the rights of others.

The difference between libertarianism and libertinism can be summed up as the difference between rights and desires. A libertarian is concerned with her own liberty but also knows that this liberty ends where yours begins

A libertine, by contrast, is dominated by his desires. The object of his life is to do what he wants, and the object of politics is to give him what he wants.

A libertarian is concerned with all forms of state coercion. A libertine rejects any attempt to coerce him personally, but he’s happy to coerce others if it gives him what he wants.

Donald Trump is the consummate libertine. He rejects restraints on his appetites and accountability for his actions. The guiding principle of his worldview is summed up with a simple declaration: I do what I want. Any movement built in his image will be libertine as well.

Trump’s movement dismisses the value of personal character. It mocks personal restraint. And it’s happy to inflict its will on others if it achieves what it wants

Libertinism says my desires are more important than your rights, and this means that libertines are terrible ambassadors for any cause that requires self-sacrifice.

I don’t think the pro-life movement has fully reckoned with the political and cultural fallout from the libertine right-wing response to the Covid pandemic

Here was a movement that was loudly telling women that they had to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, with all the physical transformations, risks and financial uncertainties that come with pregnancy and childbirth, at the same time that millions of its members were also loudly refusing the minor inconveniences of masking and the low risks of vaccination — even if the best science available at the time told us that both masking and vaccination could help protect others from getting the disease.

Even worse, many of the same people demanded that the state limit the liberty of others so that they could live how they wanted

This do-what-you-want ethos cost a staggering number of American lives. A 2022 study found that there were an estimated 318,981 vaccine-preventable deaths from January 2021 to April 2022.

Now there’s evidence from Ohio and Florida that excess mortality rates were significantly higher for Republicans than Democrats after vaccines were widely available.

It’s not just that libertinism robs Republicans of moral authority; it’s that libertinism robs Republicans of moral principle.

In each state, all the pro-life movement needed was consistent Republican support, and it would have sailed to victory. All the Democrats in the state could have voted to protect abortion rights, and they would have lost if Republicans held firm. But they did not.

“Do as I say and not as I do” is among the worst moral arguments imaginable.

A holistic pro-life society requires true self-sacrifice. It asks women to value the life growing inside of them even in the face of fear and poverty. It asks the community to rally beside these women to keep them and their children safe and to provide them with opportunities to flourish. It requires both individuals and communities to sublimate their own desires to protect the lives and opportunities of others.

An ethos that centers individuals’ desires will bleed over into matters of life and death. It did during Covid, and it’s doing so now, as even Republicans reject the pro-life cause.

The challenge is much more profound. Pro-life America has to reconnect with personal virtue. It has to model self-sacrifice. It has to show, not just tell, America what it would look like to value life from conception to natural death.

At present, however, the Republican Party is dominated by its id. It indulges its desires. And so long as its id is in control, the pro-life movement will fail. There is no selfish path to a culture of life.

As the Senate's questioning was close to winding up Wednesday, Jackson -- at the request of California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla -- reflected on what message she'd give to young people feeling doubtful of their own abilities as they watched her ascent. She recalled feeling out of place and homesick during her first semester at Harvard University as an undergraduate

Coming out of the hearings, Democrats were insistent as ever that Jackson belonged on America's highest court and that they intended to put her there. "She will be confirmed. She will be a star on the Supreme Court," Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said after Wednesday's hearing. "And I for one will proudly cast my vote for her."

In the lead-up to the hearings, Republicans previewed a "dignified" approach to the nominee that would be "respectful" in tone and "substantive" in content.

"underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about."

Several of Jackson's harshest questioners are believed to be in contention for a 2024 presidential run. Other talking points GOP has forecast for the 2022 midterm campaign also made their way into the questioning. Cruz badgered her about "critical race theory" -- an academic discipline that looks at system racism, even as Jackson insisted it plays no role in how she approaches judging. At one point he grilled her on the presence of the children's book "Antiracist Baby" in the curriculum of the private school for which Jackson serves on the board.

The proceedings were at their ugliest in the lines of Republican inquiry focused on the sentences Jackson handed down in select set of child pornography cases. Republicans argued that she was unduly lenient towards those offenders -- a claim at odds with the fact that her record is mostly in line with how judges typically approach these cases.

The Republicans said that they were disappointed she didn't identify a specific judicial philosophy -- like the originalism or textualism strains favored by conservatives -- that she followed. But just as notable was the distance she put between herself and the judicial approaches that had typically been heralded by progressives.

Republicans make a case for the Supreme Court to revisit Roe, same-sex marriage and other key rulings

He suggested that the legal basis for that ruling -- a concept known as substantive due process, that also underpins rulings on interracial marriage and birth control -- was principle that "allows the court to substitute its opinion for the elected representatives of the people."

Under the philosophical construct of horny bro-dom, the idea is that abortion isn’t good or bad, but it is an act that a woman wishes to commit, and nobody should tell anybody else what to do, or what not to do. In fact, in 1992, then-Gov. Bill Clinton (a noted horny bro) said

Barstool conservatives are “people who, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, accept pornography, homosexuality, drug use, legalized gambling, and whatever Gamergate was about.” But what they do not accept, ever, is being told what to do, whether by “hectoring, schoolmarmish” politicians and media or by the federal government

“This attitude is ‘liberal’ in that it regards sexual license as an unalloyed good, and treats any kind of social or religious conservatism as a dead letter. But at the same time it wants to rebel and lash out against the strictures it feels that feminism and political correctness have placed on male liberty, male rights.”

The debate that Mr. Hefner and Mr. Buckley had about politics in the 1960s has become a defining question for the conservative movement: whether conservatism is a project intended to get people to do something (even things they do not wish to do) or to protect people from being told what to do.

This has created peril for traditional Republicans. Attempting to come across as the “cool mom” of political persuasions — do whatever you want, just do it at home, and ideally, do it in a way that owns the teetotaling libs — is not the natural affect of movement conservatives.

there’s little reason to enserf or enslave a worker (not quite the same thing, but let’s leave that aside) if labor is abundant and land is scarce, so that the amount that worker could earn if he ran away barely exceeds the cost of subsistence.

But if land becomes abundant and labor scarce, the ruling class will want to pin workers in place, so they can forcibly extract the difference between the value of what workers can produce — strictly speaking, their marginal product — and the cost of keeping them alive.

Yet serfdom wasn’t reimposed, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. One thought, however, is that holding people captive in order to steal the fruits of their labor isn’t easy.

In fact, the real historical puzzle is why high wages didn’t always lead to widespread slavery or serfdom

serfdom in the West had more or less withered away by around 1300, because Western Europe was overpopulated given the technologies of the time, which in turn meant that landowners didn’t need to worry that their tenants and workers would leave in search of lower rents or higher wages.

But the Black Death caused populations to crash and wages to soar. In fact, for a while, real wages in Britain reached a level they wouldn’t regain until around 1870:

Labor was scarce in pre-Civil War America, so free workers earned high wages by European standards. Here are some estimates of real wages in several countries as a percentage of U.S. levels on the eve of the Civil War:

Indeed, slaveholders and their defenders lashed out at anyone who even suggested that slavery was a bad thing. As Abraham Lincoln said in his Cooper Union address, the slave interest in effect demanded that Northerners “cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right.”

Notice that Australia — another land-abundant, labor-scarce nation — more or less matched America; elsewhere, workers earned much less.

Landowners, of course, didn’t want to pay high wages. In the early days of colonial settlement, many Europeans came as indentured servants — in effect, temporary serfs

landowners quickly turned to African slaves, who offered two advantages to their exploiters: Because they looked different from white settlers, they found it hard to escape, and they received less sympathy from poor whites who might otherwise have realized that they had many interests in common. Of course, white southerners also saw slaves as property, not people, and so the value of slaves factored into the balance sheet of this greed-driven system.

again, the dynamic was one in which greedy slaveholders used and perpetuated racism to sustain their reign of exploitation and terror.

Because U.S. slavery was race-based, however, there was a limited supply of slaves, and it turned out that slaves made more for their masters in Southern agriculture than in other occupations or places

Black people in the North were sold down the river to Southern planters who were willing to pay more for them, so slavery became an institution peculiar to one part of the country.

As such, slaves became a hugely important financial asset to their owners. Estimates of the market value of slaves before the Civil War vary widely, but they were clearly worth much more than the land they cultivated, and may well have accounted for the majority of Southern wealth.

Inevitably, slaveholders became staunch defenders of the system underlying their wealth

Hence the rise of serfdom as Russia expanded east, and the rise of slavery as Europe colonized the New World.

But Northerners wouldn’t do that. There were relatively few Americans pushing for national abolition, but Northern states, one by one, abolished slavery in their own territories

This wasn’t as noble an act as it might have been if they had been confiscating slaveholders’ property, rather than in effect waiting until the slaves had been sold. Still, it’s to voters’ credit that they did find slavery repugnant.

And this posed a problem for the South

Anyone who believes or pretends to believe that the Civil War was about states’ rights should read Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, which point out that the truth was almost the opposite. In his conclusion, Grant noted that maintaining slavery was difficult when much of the nation consisted of free states, so the slave states in effect demanded control over free-state policies.

This should sound familiar. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, states that have banned abortion have grown increasingly frantic over the ability of women to travel to states where abortion rights remain; it’s obvious that the right will eventually impose a national abortion ban if it can.

For a long time, the South actually did manage to exercise that kind of national control. But industrialization gradually shifted the balance of power within the United States away from the South to the North:

So did immigration, with very few immigrants moving to slave states.And the war happened because the increasingly empowered people of the North, as Grant wrote, “were not willing to play the role of police for the South” in protecting slavery.

So yes, the Civil War was about slavery — an institution that existed solely to enrich some men by depriving others of their freedom

And there’s no excuse for anyone who pretends that there was anything noble or even defensible about the South’s cause: The Civil War was fought to defend an utterly vile institution.

Trump and Leo, a prominent conservative lawyer influential in his first term, have not spoken since 2020, according to people familiar with the matter. Their relationship ended over a heated fight in 2020 at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump accused Leo of picking Rod J. Rosenstein to be deputy attorney general, a person familiar with the matter said. Trump’s anger around Rosenstein centered on his decision to appoint special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to oversee the Justice Department’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election

Trump has signaled that he wants the Justice Department to go after his political opponents, and his associates have drafted plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, which would allow him to send the military against civil demonstrations. Near the end of his time in the White House, he repeatedly complained that his White House Counsel’s Office wasn’t doing enough to help him overturn the election results. His attorney general resigned after he would not back up his claims.

“He’s the leading candidate, so I don’t know that it matters what I think,” said Brent O. Hatch, a lawyer who is on the board of the Federalist Society.

Although Trump reshaped the Supreme Court while in office, leading to the overturning of Roe, he has sometimes told others that the decision is a political albatross for Republicans. And he has complained recently at rallies about the Supreme Court and the decisions the judges make, saying without evidence they rule too often against Republicans to show “independence.”

Trump is running on a campaign focused, at least in part, on vengeance and retribution. The former president has made it clear that loyalty would be a key criteria in how he makes decisions if returned to office.

Most members of the Federalist Society board of directors declined to comment on the record or did not respond to a request for comment. Interviews with a dozen other prominent lawyers suggested most had serious misgivings about Trump returning to power but were resigned to the high likelihood he will be the nominee, and many expressed openness to working for another Trump administration.

There is a heated debate underway in conservative legal circles about how GOP lawyers should interact with what increasingly appears to be the likely nominee, according to conservative lawyers who described the private talks on the condition of anonymity. The discussions include whether they would return to work for Trump.

One prominent lawyer described a November dinner he attended where almost all the attorneys in the room said they would prefer another nominee — but were split on whether to back Trump if he wins

Leo, McConnell and McGahn have expressed reservations about what another Trump term would look like, though they have largely stayed away from a public fight.

Some of the informal conversations and debates underway in conservative legal circles about a second Trump term include Project 2025, a coalition of right-wing groups that has outlined plans for the next Republican administration. Clark, who is working on the Insurrection Act for Project 2025, has been charged with violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, in the case alleging Trump and co-conspirators of interfering in the 2020 election. Clark pleaded guilty.

The involvement of Clark with that effort has alarmed some other conservative lawyers who view him as a potentially disastrous choice to take a senior leadership role at the department because of his past activities around the 2020 election.

Rob Kelner, a prominent conservative lawyer, said more conservative lawyers should have spoken up against Trump, but that it would cost them business and relationships.

“There were so many positions he took and so many statements that he made that flatly contradicted the foundational principles of the conservative movement and the Federalist Society, and yet it was so rare to hear conservative lawyers speak out against Trump,” Kelner said.

some sort of correction was probably due. Sex-positive feminism went from “hey, women shouldn’t feel ashamed about enjoying sex” to “it’s feminist to enjoy being choked while having lots of casual sex” alarmingly quickly.

What was meant to liberate women turned into a repackaging of the patriarchy. “It feels like we were tricked into exploiting ourselves,” one twentysomething told BuzzFeed, summing up the general vibe.

A new passion for celibacy among young women feels like a natural way of putting that chapter of feminism to bed.

In their place, Trump’s stump speech has become dominated by grievances about the wrongs he believes have been done to him and his promises to get even for them. It doesn’t quite create the festive atmosphere of eight years ago, when many attendees were clearly having a great time. Where the new, more prosaic feeling lacks the uplift of the past, though, it has still managed to generate enough enthusiasm

The lack of catchy slogans might not matter if they were just slogans. But in 2016, they were a symbol of Trump’s willingness to talk about things that other candidates, including other Republicans, shied away from.

Regarding the war in Gaza, he has criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called for the conflict to end quickly—but on Israel’s terms.

He had several such policy positions, including breaking with the bipartisan consensus on free trade, pledging to protect Social Security and Medicare, and claiming to have opposed the Iraq War from the start.

The focus on the wall also showed that he was willing to deploy (putatively) “commonsense” ideas that other politicians weren’t. This helped Trump to appeal not just to Republicans but to disaffected voters of all stripes

Where Trump once trumpeted his appointment of justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, he is now fumblingly trying to formulate a position on abortion that doesn’t alienate either his base or swing voters, mostly relying on ambiguity

Trump is emphasizing fewer big transformational ideas compared with 2016. His promises are a scattershot collection of ideas targeted at particular segments of the electorate: ending taxes on salary earned from tips, defending TikTok (a platform he once tried to ban), declassifying files on John F. Kennedy’s assassination, rolling back fossil-fuel regulations. Although he promises to clamp down on the border and deport undocumented immigrants, you won’t catch a “Round ’em up” chant at his rallies. And Project 2025, his allies’ proposal to overhaul the federal government by massively expanding political patronage, doesn’t lend itself to a bumper sticker.

Trump allots a great deal of his stump speech to mocking Biden as incoherent and senile (sometimes awkwardly) while also warning that Biden’s administration has made the United States a failed nation, and that his reelection could be fatal to the country. The disconnect between the images of Biden as doddering fool and as evil schemer is one that Republicans have struggled to reconcile but that Trump has concluded doesn’t need resolving.

Grievance is not a new note at Trump rallies, but four and eight years ago, he used to talk about other people’s grievances and promise to redress them. Now the grievances are largely his own

One big problem for Clinton was the criticism that she had no compelling goal for her candidacy other than that she wanted to be president. Trump’s campaign now is about nothing so much as his desire to be president.

Even Project 2025 is about the accumulation of executive power itself, rather than any particular policy goal