Today's Edition community chat during debate

June 26, 2024

President Biden spent Tuesday preparing for Thursday’s presidential debate. Although I will not engage in predictions or provide advice, if you are interested in reading informed discussions about the debate I recommend Hillary Rodham Clinton’s op-ed in the New York Times, which includes this gem:

It is a waste of time to try to refute Mr. Trump’s arguments like in a normal debate. It’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are. He starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather.

See Hillary Rodham Clinton, I’ve Debated Trump and Biden. Here’s What I’m Watching For.  (Accessible to all.)

I also recommend Dan Rather’s Substack, Steady, If You See Crazy, Report Crazy. Per Dan Rather,

First, let’s get something straight. The 90-minute political event airing Thursday night on CNN is not a debate. It is a joint appearance by two candidates running for president.

 I have heard from many readers that they will not watch the debate—a completely understandable and reasonable position. The post-debate analysis from reputable sources will create emotional distance that will make it easier to focus on substance without the bother of real-time anxiety about gaffes and flubs.

But if you plan to watch the debates, I invite you to do so as part of the Today’s Edition newsletter community. I will open a Substack Chat five minutes before the debate begins. All subscribers (free and paid) can join the chat.

I will be watching the debate and following a few commentators at mainstream media sites, so I won’t have much time to moderate the Today’s Edition’s Debate Chat. So, everyone please be on your best behavior!  When the chat begins, you will receive a notification on your computer or phone.

But if you are anxious about the debate, do something relaxing instead—take a walk, read a book, or watch re-runs of Antiques Roadshow or This Old House. The debate will still be there the following day—if it is not eclipsed by outrageous decisions released by the Supreme Court.

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Speaking of outrageous decisions by the Supreme Court

As we await monumental decisions from the Supreme Court, it is worth noting a dissent penned by Justice Sotomayor last week that should be cause for alarm regarding the continued legal viability of same-sex marriages. See Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, Supreme Court opinions: Sotomayor sounds marriage equality warning.

As Lithwick and Stern explain, an opinion issued last week authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett in Department of State v. Muñoz is a logical step in denying constitutional protection for same-sex marriage—a right established in Obergefell v. Hodges. As Lithwick and Stern discuss, Barrett ruled that the right to live with a non-citizen spouse is not a right “objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”

Does that phrase sound familiar? It should. It is the phrase used by the Court when it extinguished the right to reproductive liberty in Dobbs. When the majority in Dobbs extinguished the right to reproductive liberty, it promised that its decision would not be extended to abolish other rights, such as the right to same-sex marriage. But as Justice Sotomayor noted, it took only two years for the majority to break its promise.

Per Justice Sotomayor:

Despite the majority’s assurance two Terms ago that its eradication of the right to abortion “does not undermine . . . in any way” other entrenched substantive due process rights such as “the right to marry,” . . .  the Court fails at the first pass.

As explained by Mark Joseph Stern,

I think she’s preemptively mourning Obergefell and suggesting that it will be the next casualty of Dobbs. Really, there’s no other way to read it.

Although Obergefell's demise is not likely to happen in the 2024 term, the fact that the Court just granted a review of bans on gender-affirming medical treatments suggests that it is on a path to undermine Obergefell's reasoning bit-by-bit until nothing remains of the original decision.

There are dozens of urgent reasons for Americans to show up at the polls in record numbers in 2024. Add to that list the Supreme Court’s not-so-secret goal of abolishing the federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Everyone in a same-sex marriage, their children, and family members who love and accept them should be outraged by this slow-motion train wreck that is as predictable as the overruling of Roe v. Wade.

Unlike Roe, we should not wait until after the fact to muster the outrage over the extinguishment of a constitutional right. We need to dilute the reactionary majority before they get the chance to do further harm to liberties protected by the Constitution! We can reform the Supreme Court if we maintain control of the Senate, flip the House, and reelect Joe Biden!

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The religious right is setting up a Supreme Court challenge on the separation of church and state

As we saw in the assault on Roe v. Wade, the religious right proceeded by way of manufactured “test cases” that allowed the reactionary majority to chip away at the Roe v. Wade decision until there was little to support the original rationale of the decision—at which point Roe was overturned by Dobbs.

The religious right is now mounting a more audacious project—to eliminate the separation of church and state entirely. The latest step to accomplish that goal is the mandate for public school classrooms in Louisiana to display the Ten Commandments. See Ian Millhiser in Vox, The coming Supreme Court showdown over the Ten Commandments in public schools.

As explained by Millhiser, the state legislature in Louisiana has mandated the display of the Ten Commandments in such a way as to provoke a challenge under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”).

Per Millhiser,

Indeed, the new state law appears to be written to be maximally offensive to the Constitution, or, at least, the Constitution as it was understood before former President Donald Trump remade the Supreme Court. [¶]

Louisiana’s law does not just require classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. It also lays out in minute detail the specific wording that display must use, requiring classrooms to use a version of the Commandments that is often used by Protestants and that is different than the version preferred by most Catholics and Jews.

The law, in other words, appears to have been drafted to undercut as much of the Court’s precedents separating church from state as possible. To uphold this law in its entirety, the Supreme Court will need to burn nearly all that remains of the Constitution’s ban on laws “respecting an establishment of religion” to the ground.

The Louisiana law has already been challenged in federal courts by groups seeking to protect the civil liberties of Louisiana’s public-school students. See Roake v. Brumley | Complaint for Declaratory Relief | USDC Middle District of Louisiana.

As explained by Millhiser, although the Supreme Court should invalidate the Louisiana law, there is reason to believe that at least four members of the reactionary majority would vote to uphold the mandatory display of the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments—effectively abolishing the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment.

Although the separation of church and state seems like an abstraction, removing the wall between the two would allow a Christian minority to impose its religious tenets on all Americans. The reactionary majority has signaled its willingness to do so. We should believe them. This is yet another reason to show up at the polls in overwhelming numbers, which will produce an incontestable victory.

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Reminder re Founding Members Zoom meeting on Wednesday.

The monthly Founding Members Zoom meeting will take place on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. I will send a reminder on Wednesday morning with the Zoom link.

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Concluding Thoughts

That’s all for tonight. The next three days will be big news days, so we should enjoy the respite while we can.

I moderated an event this evening with Rep. Jeff Jackson (NC-14) and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. The event supported Jeff Jackson’s bid to be elected as North Carolina’s Attorney General and was sponsored by All in for North Carolina and Senate Circle.

In 2023, the North Carolina legislature gerrymandered Jeff Jackson’s congressional district out of existence, so Jeff is running for state Attorney General.

Both Jeff Jackson and Andrea Campbell are impressive. They stressed the importance of state attorney generals as a last line of defense for citizens victimized by corporate greed and legislative overreach. In North Carolina, for example, the state legislature and state supreme court are controlled by Republicans. Electing a Democratic Attorney General (and Governor!) of North Carolina can impose a check on one-party rule in the state.

As Democrats, we should be filled with pride and confidence when we are represented by elected officials like Jeff Jackson and Andrea Campbell. The 2024 election cycle will be tough, but we have great candidates up and down the ballot. We don’t have to win every race—just enough of them to maintain the rule of law while we outlast and defeat the retrograde spasm of white nationalism unleashed in 2008. We can do that. We are doing that. We just need to keep it up!

Talk to you tomorrow!