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President Biden and the Supreme Court faced an exceptionally challenging week, experiencing significant setbacks that were even worse than initially perceived.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three liberals on the Supreme Court dominated by a right-wing supermajority, shared in a speech last month, “There are days I’ve come to my office after a case announcement, closed my door, and cried.”

Friday likely was one of those days. The court issued another landmark ruling, overturning long-standing precedents on women's, voters’, and workers’ rights, gun safety, the environment, criminal justice, and political corruption. The Republican-appointed justices continued to weaken the legal cases against Donald Trump for trying to overturn an election. This includes Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., who have conflicts of interest suggesting a clear bias in his favor.

If Sotomayor felt teary on Friday, she wasn't alone in her misery. Many Americans — mostly Democrats, but also supporters of democracy in general — weren't just upset about the new court decisions. They were grappling with a political hangover: the realization that President Biden’s poor performance in Thursday night’s presidential debate increased the chances of Trump returning to the White House.

Unfortunately, the court’s rulings and the presidential debate are closely related.

Biden's poor debate performance and the justices' latest decisions show why voters should remember that the federal courts are at stake in the 2024 election. It’s crucial to avoid giving Trump the chance to pick judges again or giving Republicans control of the Senate, which approves them.

Trump has already picked one-third of the Supreme Court, allowing the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, as he promised in 2016 and bragged about during the debate. He also appointed many lower-court judges, including U.S. district court judges Aileen Cannon in Florida, who has weakened the government’s case against Trump involving classified documents, and Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, who tried to ban abortion medication across the country.

On Friday, business and anti-government supporters got a long-awaited victory: the six conservative justices overturned a 40-year-old unanimous ruling that established the "Chevron deference" doctrine. This doctrine required courts to defer to federal agencies when laws are unclear. This change is a major power grab for unelected judges, taking authority from expert officials who answer to elected presidents.

The damage this ruling could cause to governance is huge, particularly in areas like protections against financial fraud, clean air and water, safe food and drugs, quality healthcare, and worker rights. In their dissent, the liberal justices, led by Justice Elena Kagan, predicted “large-scale disruption,” similar to the court's disruptions of healthcare for pregnant women and gun control enforcement with its extreme decisions.

But it’s nearly impossible to get voters to understand or care when the issue is the government's regulatory process (boring) and the outcomes are hypothetical.

You know who does care deeply? The Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and right-wing donors who prioritize overturning Chevron and reducing the "administrative state" over other issues like Roe v. Wade. They worked to ensure Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, sympathetic to deregulation, made it onto Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

The court’s recent decisions have undermined Republicans’ past calls for “judicial restraint,” back when the balance of power was more moderate or even progressive. In other rulings on Friday, the court allowed local governments to criminalize homeless people sleeping in public and dismissed felony charges against many insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol in 2021.

Amid ongoing court developments, attention now turns to Monday's expected Supreme Court ruling on whether former President Trump has legal immunity from charges related to Jan. 6 and classified documents. The justices' delay ensures he won't face trial before the election.

Against this background, much focus shifted to Biden and his debate performance, where he struggled to assure his party and the nation, at 81, of his readiness for a second term. Trump, on the other hand, continued his pattern of falsehoods on topics like his economic record, Jan. 6, immigration, and election fraud. He avoided questions about accepting election results, while Biden found it difficult to effectively counter these falsehoods. His arguments were sometimes clear but delivered in a weak, raspy voice with a vacant expression that underscored his age. He even stumbled over words, ending one response with a puzzling remark: “We finally beat Medicare.”

As expected, Democrats reacted swiftly, with former Obama advisor David Plouffe describing it as a "DEFCON-1 moment" early in the debate. They are considering options: convincing Biden to step aside (unlikely), replacing him at the top of the ticket (also unlikely), or minimizing damage for down-ballot Democrats.

Some pundits have suggested Biden should step down, a view I'm tempted to support, but it's impractical and likely to backfire to open the Democratic convention in August to choose a replacement. Many Democrats are hesitant to turn to Vice President Kamala Harris, yet ignoring her could have serious consequences in a party where Black women are a crucial constituency.

 

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