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13th November 1953: Members of Supreme Court. Seated, Felix Frankfurter (far left) and William O ... [+] Douglas (far right). Standing, Robert H. Jackson (second from left). (Photo by George Tames/New York Times Co./Getty Images)

Felix Frankfurter was a man of the Left. He wrote often for The New Republic, and he helped found the ACLU. He lobbied the United States to recognize the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War. He was the foremost proponent of a new trial for the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.

While Frankfurter was agitating and organizing as a professor at Harvard Law School in the 1910s and 20s, the Supreme Court was striking down state licensing requirements, consumer-protection rules, and wage-and-hour laws. Like many on the Left of that day, therefore, Frankfurter believed in judicial restraint. Justice Louis Brandeis captured the contemporary progressive attitude in a 1932 dissent. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system, he wrote, that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

Brandeiss great ally on the court was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. It was not progressive principle that made Holmes a restrained judge; it was a bullet in the neck in the Civil War. What damned fools people are who believe things, he once told the socialist professor Harold Laski. Although he said it of a pacifist in a case before the court, the line captures how he saw most things, including judging. Oddly enough, the idealistic Frankfurter worshiped the cynical Holmes. A justice willing to uphold social legislation he thought pointless, even ridiculous, was in Frankfurters eyes the pattern of a sound judge. This might explain why Frankfurters own judicial principles would remain fixed as times changed.

And change they did. Frankfurter became a justice in 1939. The next year, on behalf of an 8-1 majority of the court, he declared that the First Amendment has nothing to say about the expulsion from school of Jehovahs Witnesses who refuse to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. Local governments must, Frankfurter thought, have the authority to safeguard the nations fellowship. Just three years later, however, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), the court voted 6-to-3 to overturn Frankfurters opinion. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, Justice Robert Jackson wrote for the majority, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

Now in dissent, Frankfurter fumed about judges who write their private notions of policy into the Constitution. It must be remembered, he wrote, quoting Holmes, that legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts. True, but not a very compelling point in a case about forcing schoolchildren to swear an oath against their (and their parents) will.

Shortly after the First World War, in fact, Holmes had started to take a more expansive view of the Free Speech Clause. When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, he explained in dissent in Abrams v. United States (1919), they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas. When it came to free speech, Holmes could use his old philosophical skepticism to justify a new judicial assertiveness. His pivot was driven in part by distress at the persecution Frankfurter and Laski suffered at Harvard for their radical views. Yet Frankfurter himself remained in awe of the Holmes who told Laski, just a year after Abrams, that if the people want to go to hell, a judges job is to help them along.

Frankfurter clashed often with a group of justices, led by William Brennan and William Douglas, who placed little stock in text, precedent, or history. This activist wing became increasingly dominant. Frankfurters hour was pastor, rather, had never come. When Brennan, writing for the court in Baker v. Carr (1962), overturned a raft of precedents on the way to declaring that legislative redistricting decisions can be challenged in court, Frankfurter issued a long and bitter dissent, suffered a stroke, and retired.

Frankfurter complained that the courts hard left produced opinions that were shoddy and result-oriented. He might have added anarchic. In 1968 a man wore a jacket emblazoned with the words F*** the Draft in a courthouse. He was arrested and prosecuted for disturbing the peace ... by offensive conduct. In his final months on the court, John Marshall Harlan wrote the decision in the mans appeal. An heir, in many ways, of Holmes, Brandeis, and Frankfurter, Harlan set a trend for many later conservative justices by evolving on the bench. His opinion in Cohen v. California (1971) declared the protester's conviction inconsistent with the First Amendment.

Because the offensive-conduct statute applied throughout the state, the defendant, Harlan concluded, was not on notice that certain kinds of otherwise permissible speech or conduct would ... not be tolerated in certain places. Harlan dodged the key questionwhat counts as offensive conduct in a courthouseby denying that the law can turn on context or matters of degree. Having thus oversimplified the case (and infantilized every citizen), he was free to ask simply whether a state may ban the use of expletives in public. At that point he could at least have knocked down his straw man with a straightforward no. Instead Harlan offered a paean to vulgar relativism, a tract now remembered mainly for the assertion that one mans vulgarity is anothers lyric. As Robert Bork noted in The Tempting of America, that statement is a challenge to all laws on all subjects. After all, one mans larceny is anothers just distribution of goods.

Does Cohen remain a totem of left-wing free-speech jurisprudence? The courts progressives seem to have reversed gear. Take the courts decision earlier this month in Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants Inc. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act bans almost all robocalls to cell phones. The Act contains an exception for robocalls that seek to collect a debt owed to the federal government. At issue in Barr was whether this carveout violates the First Amendment. While acknowledging that robocalls are widely despised, the court concluded, by a vote of 6-to-3, that the government nonetheless may not engage in content-based discrimination, baselessly favoring some robocalls over others.

Writing for himself and Justices Ginsburg and Kagan, Justice Breyer argued in dissent that robocalls are not vital to core First Amendment objectives, such as protecting peoples ability to speak or to transmit their views to government. Congress, in Breyers view, should have greater leeway to impose ordinary regulatory programs that pose little threat to the exchange of thought. Maybe sobut this is not the outlook on display in Cohen. Say the government prohibits writing political statements on tax returns. According to the Barr dissent, it is hard to imagine that such a rule would threaten political speech in the marketplace of ideas. Dont count on the wing of the court that let a man say F*** the Draft in a courthouse in 1968 to let you say F*** Taxes on a tax form today.

Why has the courts left wing lost its enthusiasm for free-speech absolutism? One factor is the emergence on the court of a right wing that upholds the free-speech rights of corporations. No longer the only ones patrolling constitutional boundaries, the progressives are more careful about loose rights talk.

Another factor might soon come to the fore. If the Left conquers American culture, sheds liberal values, and becomes a force for conformity, will the progressive justices shift in turn? In the case of a child expelled from school for refusing to acknowledge, and renounce, her privilege, would they chastise the wielders of power and discuss the fixed star in our constitutional constellation? Or would they gain a new understanding of Justice Frankfurters belief in the value of making parents accept the training of [their] children in good citizenship? In the appeal of a man charged with offensive conduct for wearing, amid a hostile crowd, a jacket maligning political correctness, would they use Cohen to lecture the easily offended about simply avert[ing] their eyes to avoid further bombardment of their sensitivities? Or might they suddenly see wisdom in the Cohen dissenters claim that absurd and immature antic[s] are conduct rather than speech?

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The Protean Progressive Free Speech Clause - Forbes

Judging from March, the ideological left wing of the Democratic Party in Texas should be inconsolable.

After months of high hopes, the faction ran into a centrist buzz saw in the March 3 primary. Joe Biden practically locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, and progressive candidates experienced electoral drubbings.

Among the fallen: presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros, U.S. Senate hopeful Cristina Tzintzn Ramirez, and Audia Jones, a candidate for Harris County District attorney endorsed by Sanders.

But rather than licking their political wounds, leading progressive candidates still in the fight say theyre invigorated and eager to use the coronavirus pandemic, fights over voting by mail and calls for police reform to score some late victories in the July runoffs.

Every time we have a progressive run, we get a little bit closer, said Sara Stapleton-Barrera, who is in a runoff against state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville. I feel like were slowly winning the war, but we have to get through some of these battles first.

Perhaps the most energy is coming from Austin, where two runoffs have the attention of progressives. Jos Garza is competing in the nationally watched Democratic primary runoff for Travis County district attorney. Mike Siegel is vying for his partys nomination in the 10th Congressional Districts Democratic primary runoff.

Garzas race is where the focus on police reform is arguably the clearest. Even before the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police prompted protests nationwide, Garza was challenging incumbent Margaret Moore from the left, arguing she was too harsh in her prosecution of nonviolent offenders. He earned the most votes in March and has promised to bring all police shootings and more police misconduct cases before a grand jury. He has also pledged not to accept campaign contributions from police unions.

Moore, meanwhile, has accused him of being inexperienced with the local criminal justice system and running a campaign focused on national issues instead of local ones.

In the 10th Congressional District, Siegel is running on a platform that includes supporting Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Siegel will face Dr. Pritesh Gandhi, who has cited his medical experience while pitching Medicare Extra, a proposal that does not go as far as Medicare for All and leaves some private insurance in place.

I think this is the exact moment in history when progressives are in a place to lead, and its because the times have caught up the policies were fighting for, Siegel said. This is the time to run as a progressive. I feel really good not just about my chances, but the movement overall.

Candidates embracing the progressive wing of political thought jokingly argue they have the gift of turmoil on their side. Tea Party Republicans, for example, seized on the Great Recession and its aftermath to reshape their party. And despite some fear that Biden locking up the partys nomination swung the conversation back to the center, progressives believe a global health crisis and the gruesome killings of Black Americans at the hands of police will galvanize the public behind their causes, which include reallocating police funds, Medicare for All, and expanded paid sick and family leave.

I think we have an opportunity in these runoffs to advance some solidly progressive folks, said Alex Morgan, the executive director of Progressive Turnout Project.

Since 2016, when Sanders presidential campaign began receiving plaudits for bringing policy ideas like free college and single-payer health care into the national sphere, progressives have tried to deepen their foothold in the Democratic Party. By some measures, theyve been successful. During the June congressional primaries in New York, two Black progressives Jamaal Bowman, and Mondaire Jones triumphed over their more moderate foes.

But in Texas, challenges for these candidates remain.

Insurgent progressives are battling an electability argument that more moderate Democrats are the best options to flip legislative and congressional seats by appealing to disillusioned Texas Republicans in the purpling suburbs.

I dont think I would equate pragmatism to being more moderate, said Gandhi, Siegels opponent. The two candidates are vying to challenge U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, in what has historically been a Republican district.

I think being pragmatic indicates to people that youre willing to go beyond the partisanship that defines Washington, D.C., right now, he said. Thats what people are hungry for. People want candidates who will value science and objectivity above partisanship and ideology. People are tired of empty rhetoric.

But progressives reject the idea that a more centrist candidate would be a more successful candidate in swing districts across the state.

The mantra of the establishment of the Democratic Party is this belief in the fantasy, unicorn Republican whos willing to flip into the Democratic category just because a Democrat says some things that sound slightly more Republican, said Charles Chamberlain, the chair of Democracy for America. I mean, its just ridiculous.

Another runoff that has drawn the attention of some national progressives is the one for the 24th Congressional District, where Kim Olson and Candace Valenzuela are competing to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell. The seat is a national Democratic target.

Valenzuela has endorsements like the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Warren, but the runoff has not as sharply split along ideological lines as much as it has on issues of experience and racial identity. Valenzuela, a former Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board member, and her allies are hammering Olson over her time as human resources director for the Dallas Independent School District. Valenzuela and her supporters are also touting that she would be the first Afro-Latina to serve in Congress. Olson is white.

But the divide might be clearest in South Texas, where the winner of the state Senate runoff between Lucio and Barrera will be the overwhelming favorite to win the seat in November.

Barreras allies are blasting Lucios Senate voting record, which they say is out of touch with the districts young, progressive voices. Theyve also accused him of being too cozy with Republicans. Campaign finance reports released this week show some of the biggest GOP donors in Texas, including Dallas oilman Ray Hunt, Dallas pipeline tycoon Kelcy Warren and Houston real estate developer Richard Weekly, pitched in to support his reelection bid.

Lucio, a conservative Democrat, has long split with his party on issues like abortion, and has cast votes that were controversial within his party in recent years on school choice and the 2017 bathroom bill that would have restricted transgender Texans access to certain public facilities. He was first elected to the Texas Senate 30 years ago and has touted his seniority, experience and local ties.

People are and vote moderate because they are afraid, Barrera said. Im not a fan of the moderate route. If youre going to do it, go big and bold to make some real change.

But so far this year, Texas Democrats have largely stuck with known commodities. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, one of the most moderate House Democrats, fended off Cisneros, who was backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while Tzintzn Ramirez finished third behind Dallas state Sen. Royce West and Air Force veteran MJ Hegar. (Tzintzn Ramirez quickly endorsed West, and some of the groups that supported her have since backed West as well. While few consider him as progressive as Tzintzn Ramirez, they see him as the superior choice to Hegar, whose party credentials have come under new scrutiny in the home stretch of the runoff.)

Those results have frustrated progressive groups, angry that while their policies such as tough action on climate change, student debt cancellation and single-payer health care poll high among Democratic voters nationally, their candidates often still fall short.

The disconnect emphasizes a fundamental schism among Democrats and has caused progressive groups, albeit privately, to divide blame between the candidates they backed and an electorate that has prioritized fear of another four years of President Donald Trump above all else.

But there is still cause for optimism among some on the left, given that issues once considered fringe are now popular.

Biden, for example, has embraced Warrens bankruptcy plan and a proposal from Sanders to make public college free for some students. At the local level, several city councils in Texas more liberal cities have seriously considered or adopted proposals to decrease police budgets or to mandate a reduction in police force against civilians. And in Texas, former presidential candidate Julin Castro recently launched a new political action committee, People First Future, that aims to invest in progressive candidates up and down the ballot nationwide. Hes already endorsed at least seven Texas congressional candidates.

The progressive movement is just getting started here in Texas, Siegel said.

I think all Democratic candidates are more progressive now than they were two to four years ago, and that demonstrates the success of the progressive movement, added Garza.

I think we have a lot to hold our head up high about.

Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.

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Texas progressives have hope for July runoff elections - The Texas Tribune

While some progressives are bullish about the outlook for the November election, Tatenda Musapatike surveys the political landscape and sees masses of unregistered voters who were supposed to be on the rolls by now, but for the pandemic.

It is making her increasingly anxious, and she is not alone.

It is hard to overstate just how underwater voter registration is, said Musapatike, senior director of campaigns at Acronym, a progressive group focused on digital strategy.

Democrats and Republicans alike are struggling to confront a simmering crisis that could hurt either or both of them in assorted contests this fall. Yet the stakes are particularly high for the left, which is relying heavily on mobilizing the sorts of people who often dont vote to help oust President Trump.

The numbers of new voters added to the rolls lately are way below where progressives want and need them to be. Voter registration is yet another casualty of the pandemic, which in this case tore apart carefully laid plans for mass mobilization through door-to-door drives signing people up.

After a lot of talk about progressive groups being well-equipped to shift their efforts online, the reality has so far proven more complicated. Many tactics Democrats rely on to lure potential voters are older even than the partys septuagenarian presidential candidate. The messaging is stale, the targeting out-of-touch and the infrastructure not entirely compatible with the digital age.

That has operatives like Musapatike working at a breakneck pace to innovate, desperately trying to bring cultural relevance and technological competence to the anachronistic American ritual of voter-registration drives. While money from big donors is flowing their way, they are confronting headwinds as some party leaders question how much to invest in experimentation.

We know what has worked in the past, Musapatike said. But we havent expanded our learning. Big ideas need to be explored. The $11-million effort she is spearheading, under the brand Peoples Power Grab, aims to talk to groups such as young Black and Latino Americans on platforms including TikTok and Instagram, with the kind of culturally resonant content that e-commerce marketers tapped into long ago.

One video has a stylish Black woman swiping through a dating app and checking out the playful profile of another user, only to balk when it reveals hes a nonvoter. Viewers of the video can then tap on a link that brings them to a page where they can register easily. It is supported by pioneering technology that simplifies the process and enables organizers to track the registration status and engage with the new voter through election day.

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Jesse Horwitz, an e-commerce entrepreneur, has been pushing Democrats to embrace just that kind of campaign, with limited success. Before the pandemic, he ran a voter-registration pilot program that experimented with e-commerce targeting tactics and user-driven content that has served corporate America well. Horwitz said he enlisted voters to register at a fraction of the price of traditional models, which often cost more than $100 for each registration.

While he offered his blueprint free to organizations spending big to register Democrats, its mostly been collecting dust. Its befuddling to me, Horwitz said.

A voter registration recital at the Brooklyn Public Library in New York.

(Associated Press)

The groups that have experimented outside the box are seeing some big successes. Voto Latino, a 15-year-old, digitally-oriented organization focused on spurring the Latino vote, saw its unconventional tactics rewarded with an explosion of interest amid the recent racial justice protests. More than 98,000 people registered through its platform in June, a nearly ten-fold increase over May, which was already a decent month for new registrants.

After the 2018 midterm election, half of the countrys voting-eligible Latinos reported they never got contacted by anyone about their registration status or plans to vote, according to Voto Latino. There is this stigma in the establishment that Latinx people dont come out and vote, said Danny Turkel, the groups communications director. Democrats must invest in contacting them and speaking their language, which is not Spanish but the way they communicate in their everyday lives.

Rock the Vote has also seen a surge in registrations lately, attracting college-age voters with events headlined by celebrities and influencers. When We All Vote, a new organization co-chaired by Michelle Obama and stars including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Janelle Monae, has mobilized tens of thousands of young voters by seizing on what is trending and on the energy of the current protests.

When #couchparty started trending on Twitter signifying the popularity of DJ D-Nices online tunes-spinning for people stuck at home the group pounced, launching its own virtual couch parties with him. The wildly successful events featured both music and talk to recruit those participating to vote, and to get their friends registered, too.

We knew it was important for people to talk about voting in a way that reaches people, not about doing this in some politically correct way, said Stephanie L. Young, a managing director of the group.

For all such efforts, the voter-registration decline triggered by states stay-at-home orders persists. Not even 200,000 people were registered in May, compared with nearly 1.5 million in May of 2016, according to the Democratic data analysis firm TargetSmart.

Those early numbers also showed people of color and voters under 40 making up a smaller share of new voters in April and May than previously. That gap, analysts at TargetSmart say, may have closed in June, when nationwide anti-racism protests ignited the interest reflected in the numbers posted by groups like Voto Latino and When We all Vote.

Yet many progressives are alarmed. They have been furiously trying to upgrade technology to navigate states balky registration systems, to help volunteers easily find who isnt registered, and then get them on the rolls more simply.

Outvote is a startup that seeks to enable activists to enlist people in their social networks to register and vote. It is unfortunately very complicated to vote in this country, said its founder, Naseem Makiya. Our app helps you see which forks they are stuck at, and make sure they move to the next step.

The firm Civitech is arming progressive groups and community activists with technology that uses Google Maps to create a real-time digital map of every unregistered voter. Neighbors, for example, can see who in their community is not on the rolls and then reach out to them.

A hospital in Philadelphia adopted every block within a one-mile radius, urging residents to send in their applications for vote-by-mail ballots, with a tongue-in-cheek note about not wanting to see them at intake with COVID-19 contracted during in-person voting.

Building this 10 years ago would have been impossible, said firm co-founder Jeremy Smith, crediting Google and Amazon mapping applications. There are a lot of people who would vote if you bothered to ask them.

His technology enables even citizen activists to engage in sophisticated microtargeting. It can, for example, find the seven Latinos who are unregistered in one particular neighborhood in Riverside. Or it can more broadly give organizers a view of where in a county Black residents are registering at high rates, and where there is work to be done. After potential voters are reached by cell phones, organizations can arrange to send them registration forms with prepaid postage, or walk them through online registration, where available.

But states and counties constantly shifting registration rules are a persistent challenge. Only two states Pennsylvania and Virginia accept voter-registration applications submitted through sites like Peoples Power Grab. Everywhere else, the information needs to be routed onto a state-sanctioned form.

And the hurdles some states have created to getting a vote-by-mail ballot are adding to the challenge, even as the pandemic pushes voting in that direction.

The rules are radically different state by state, said Emily Del Beccaro, a co-founder of OpenField, a digital organizing firm that shifted its strategy to focus on enabling activists to register voters remotely. Wisconsin, she said, has no single place voters send their vote-by-mail application. Hundreds of voting offices process them, and the voter must find the office for their area, making automation tough for organizations aiming to register thousands of voters a day.

All these organizations have been having to build new systems from scratch, Del Beccaro said. It is incredibly complicated.

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Progressives try to reinvent the registration drive amid a pandemic - Los Angeles Times

Supreme Court Voter Board members, Opinion contributors Published 3:15 a.m. ET July 10, 2020

We don't agree on everything, but we agree progressives must unite to fight for control of the court. Otherwise, everything we care about is at risk.

Republicans control the Supreme Court today because they fought for it by any means necessary. From the founding of The Federalist Society in 1982, conservative special interests have relentlessly pursued control of the judicial branch. Their strategy culminated in 2016 when, with a Supreme Court seat vacant following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Republican senators fell in line behind Majority Leader Mitch McConnells plan to deny President Barack Obama the opportunity to fill it.

Throughout, Republicans and conservatives worked to bring conservative activists and voters into the fight. During the 2016 campaign, Republicans talked constantly about how important the nation's high court is. Candidate Donald Trump even broke with tradition to announce a list of potential nominees, mobilizing and unifying conservative voters.

As progressives, we need to admit that the broad Democratic coalition including progressive activists did not do enough to stop Republicans from stealing that seat and, with it, control of the court.The Supreme Court was low-profile in most progressive and Democratic messaging in 2016 especially compared withthe drumbeat from the right. And, ultimately,Trump won voters who considered the Supreme Court the most important factor in their vote by 15 points.

As a result of Senate Republicans stonewalling of President Obama and changing Senate rules to confirm President Trumps nominee, five Republican-appointed justices control the Supreme Court today. The consequences have been disastrous. They haverubber-stamped many of President Trumps most dangerous policies from his Muslim travelban to his transgender military banto his attacks on affordable birth control. And they have damaged our democracy, greenlighting partisan gerrymandering and forcing Wisconsinites to choose between practicing safe social distancing and exercising their right to vote.

While this term brought some welcome victories for progressives, the narrow nature of those decisions and Justice Brett Kavanaughs appalling votes only go to show that the future of the Supreme Court is on the line right now, and that the dangers of Trump appointing more justices are profound.

The Supreme Court on July 6, 2020, in Washington, D.C.(Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)

Progressives continue to ignore the Supreme Court at their peril. This year can, and must, be different.

We do not agree on everything. We supported different candidates in both the 2016 and the 2020 presidential primary. We have devoted our careers to working on different sets of issues and we have different visions for how the progressive movement and Democratic Party should move forward. But we are absolutely united on this: Progressives must, and can, unite around fighting for control of the Supreme Court.

Undercutting confidence: Trump and Barr are making false claims about mail-in ballots to scare us out of voting

Without action, everything we care about is at risk. Republicans have long turned to the Supreme Court to enact their deeply unpopular agenda: repealing affordable health care, undoing commonsense gun violence prevention measures, tilting the law in favor of corporations and the wealthy, making it harder for workers to organize, undercutting the fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body and reproduction, and weakening civil rights protections. If Trump is able to appoint more Supreme Court justices, he will cement a right-wing majority that will enact a partisan, Republican agenda from the bench for decades to come.

We think the moment has arrived when progressives are ready to fight back. While Trumps hijacking of our courts has done enormous damage, it has also spurred those of us who oppose his agenda to mobilize around our judiciary. The Kavanaugh confirmation battle showed us all just how far Republicans are willing to go to entrench their Supreme Court majority and the courts unjust recent opinions have shown how damaging their campaign is to everything we care about. Progressives are fed up with a court that undermines democracy and civil rights, threatens access to health careand favors the rich and the powerful above everyone else.

Fortunately, most Americans agree with us. Theyoppose the Trump-backed lawsuit asking the court to overturn the Affordable Care Act and attacks on our democracy such as partisan gerrymandering and the court'sCitizens United decision. We should take a page out of the conservative playbook by making sure our friends and neighbors know every time the court turns on them.

2020 election: Supreme Court 'faithless electors' ruling aims to stabilize the election, but will it work?

With the possibility of a Supreme Court vacancy looming and the balance of the court on the line,the coming months could determine our countrys future for generations. This is our chance to send a message that we will not allow our children to grow up in an America where people like Brett Kavanaugh control an entire branch of government. We plan on taking it.

The authors are members of the advisory board of Supreme Court Voter:

Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy

Ady Barkan, co-founder of Be a Hero

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, physician and progressive activist

Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice

Anna Galland, former executive director of MoveOn

Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America

Mara Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino

Jen Psaki, former White House communications director

Jess Morales Rocketto, executive director of Care in Action and civic engagementdirector of the National Domestic Workers Alliance

Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats

Maya Rupert, progressive strategist and writer

Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers

Click here to follow them on Twitter.

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Trump and conservatives hijacked the Supreme Court. We're progressives ready to fight back. - USA TODAY

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders take part in a Democratic primary debate on March 15. After Biden wrapped up the presidential nomination, the two formed joint task forces to formulate policy recommendations on six big issues. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders take part in a Democratic primary debate on March 15. After Biden wrapped up the presidential nomination, the two formed joint task forces to formulate policy recommendations on six big issues.

A joint effort by former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to unify Democrats around Biden's candidacy has produced a 110-page policy wish list to recommend to the party's presumptive presidential nominee.

Throughout the Democratic primary, Biden stuck to a more moderate platform, while Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and much of the rest of the crowded field courted progressives and advocated for broader structural changes. But as the United States faces a growing pandemic and unemployment rates at the highest levels in generations, Biden has been talking more and more about a presidency that approaches Franklin Delano Roosevelt's, with bold progressive ambitions.

The policy document the work of six joint task forces appointed by Biden and Sanders in May would give the former vice president a road map to that goal.

"The goals of the task force were to move the Biden campaign into as progressive a direction as possible, and I think we did that," Sanders told NPR. "On issue after issue, whether it was education, the economy, health care, climate, immigration, criminal justice, I think there was significant movement on the part of the Biden campaign."

The document recommends that Biden commit to eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 and to zeroing out net greenhouse gas emissions across the entire economy by 2050. The task forces call for funding universal prekindergarten across the country, expanding Social Security, raising the national minimum wage and eliminating cash bail, among many other long-sought progressive stances.

"I don't think you could find any issue that we couldn't find an agreeable resolution on, that everybody in the room said, 'That will work,' " said Jared Bernstein, Biden's former economic adviser in the Obama administration and a task force member. "I don't think you could find anything in there that he won't want to take a very close look at."

"I commend the Task Forces for their service and helping build a bold, transformative platform for our party and for our country," Biden said in a statement on Wednesday. "And I am deeply grateful to Senator Sanders for working together to unite our party, and deliver real, lasting change for generations to come."

Biden's campaign has yet to publicly commit to doing anything other than "reviewing" the recommendations.

If he adopted them, the recommendations would shift Biden to the left, but they would not completely transform the platform he has been running on for more than a year.

"We did not have any impressions that we were going to turn Joe Biden into Bernie Sanders. That was not going to happen. That did not happen," said Faiz Shakir, who managed Sanders' presidential campaign and helped coordinate the task forces.

Where the health care task force landed

The health care recommendations illustrate that point best.

Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal co-chaired the health care task force. She has long pushed, like Sanders, for a single, government-run health insurance program but didn't bring that recommendation to the table in any of the meetings or negotiations.

"Obviously our candidate who is pushing for 'Medicare for All' did not win," she told NPR. "There was a lot that Biden had already said on health care, which somewhat limited our ability to perhaps get as much as we wanted to get."

Still, Jayapal was happy with the recommendations, which include expanding the benefits and lowering the costs of the public health insurance program Biden wants to add to the Affordable Care Act, as well as insisting that Medicare, not any private health insurance company, would administer the plan.

The task force also called on Biden to pursue requiring employers to offer employees the option to sign up for government-administered health care, rather than company plans.

Jayapal thinks the report can help sell onetime Sanders-backers on Biden.

"I feel like I can go and legitimately sell this as something that the movement achieved, something that we were able to do that pushed Vice President Biden further than he has been and solidified the need for universal, high-quality, low-cost coverage for everybody provided through public providers, not private insurance companies," she said.

The leftward shift of the policy recommendations could provide more fodder for President Trump, who has tried, at times, to paint his Democratic challenger as "a helpless puppet of the radical left."

Courting progressives might not be as essential for Biden as most Democrats once expected it to be. Poll after poll shows Biden with a double-digit national lead over Trump and several swing states moving toward the Democratic column.

Still, even as he cleared the presidential field faster than any Democrat in decades, party members have remained less excited and fired up about his candidacy and more motivated by the idea of defeating Trump.

Sanders hopes this document will get more progressives excited about the goals, not just the existence, of a Biden administration. "When I talked to Joe a while back, he said that he wants to be the most progressive president since FDR," Sanders said. "Do I believe that Biden believes that now is the time for bold action to protect the working class and lower-income people in this country? Yes, I do believe that's the case."

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Biden And Sanders Release Their Joint Policy Recommendations - NPR