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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."

Originally posted here:
Biden And Sanders Release Their Joint Policy Recommendations - NPR

Last month, a wave of progressive candidates surged in New York states primary, ousting longtime Democratic incumbents in the House of Representatives, the state legislature, and local offices.

Tuesday, the opposite happened on the other side of the Hudson River.

In Hudson Countys primary races, a slate of progressive candidates floundered. Preliminary election results showed left-wing candidates for Senate, House, and county Freeholder seats trailing far behind incumbent Democrats, raising questions about the viability of a progressive movement in the county.

We did have a lot of momentum, but I think it is just highlighting how big of an advantage the party line is in New Jersey primaries, said Eleana Little, who challenged the party-backed Yraida Aponte-Lipski in the race for Fourth District Freeholder. Even a well-organized slate of progressive challengers has difficulty overcoming the structural advantages of the party line in the primary.

The Hudson County Board of Elections has tallied roughly one third of Hudsons mail-in ballots. Officials originally hoped to release data from 50,000 to 60,000 ballots by 8 p.m. Tuesday, but county Elections Clerk Michael Harper said the flood of mail-in ballots slowed down the counting process. Election workers counted only about 20,000 by the end of the night.

Were still here plugging away, Harper said Wednesday. Im still in the same clothes.

Harper said he doesnt expect the results, which he called a good sampling, to change dramatically, but he admitted that anything is possible.

But as the Hudson County Democratic Organizations candidates declared victory, progressives saw their hopes for a takeover dashed.

As a progressive and as a challenger, youre fighting an uphill battle, said Hector Oseguera, who mounted a primary challenge for the House of Representatives seat in New Jerseys 8th district. Tuesday nights results showed Oseguera behind incumbent Albio Sires by a three-to-one margin.

Other progressives fared similarly. In contested Freeholder races, challengers attracted just a fraction of the votes, far behind incumbents and HCDO-backed candidates. In the closest race, the Hudson County Democratic Organization-backed Freeholder Aponte-Lipski led Little by roughly 20 percentage points.

Little and Oseguera both acknowledged that outsider candidates were up against significant odds. Outsiders face well-funded opponents, often with better name recognition and a bundle of high-profile endorsements. And both singled out the party line, which arranges ballots so that local HCDO candidates are grouped with Joe Biden, as a major disadvantage.

Hudson County is a very progressive place, Oseguera said. I do think that there is a lot of viability for progressive challengers, if they have an even playing field to fight on.

But Amy DeGise, the chairwoman of the Hudson County Democratic Party, said the line was definitely not insurmountable.

I dont even see how you can call it that much of an advantage, she said. Because in the same token youre calling voters dumb, and saying that theyre not going to be able to look around the ballot and locate names. So I think its insulting to voters and people who have contributed to the democratic process and are engaged.

The HCDO welcomed challenges from the left, DeGise added.

Having the opponents that we did gave us an opportunity to highlight what were doing right and what we can work on, she said. DeGise said she was hopeful that the two wings of the Democratic party could come together in November.

Theyre our fellow Dems, DeGise said. Im really optimistic that we can all come together, even though (they) were opponents prior to the primary, that were all on the same team going forward to elect a Democrat into the White House.

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After primary rout, what is the future of the progressive movement in Hudson County? - nj.com

The progressive group Democracy for America will back Democrat Paulette Jordans long-shot bid to unseat Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho).

Idaho is a deep-red state and Risch won reelection by 30 points there in 2014.

But progressives believe they have a rising star in Jordan, who in 2018 became the first Native American woman to be a major party nominee for governor in U.S. history. Jordan would be the first Native American woman elected to the Senate if she wins.

When she gets to the U.S. Senate, Paulette Jordan will be a fearless voice for progress, a relentless advocate for the people of Idaho, and a history-making trailblazer for Native American women, saidDFA CEO Charles Chamberlain.

Ready to fight for a transformative approach to healthcare like Medicare for All and justice for every American who calls our country home, Paulette Jordan is running for U.S. Senate to put people first not corporate lobbyists or D.C. insiders. DFA was honored to stand with Paulette in 2018, were excited to fight alongside her today, and we cant wait to work with her in Washington as she gets busy delivering for Idahoans.

Jordan won the Democratic Senate primary in Idaho with 85 percent support.

She served four years in the Idaho state house before running for governor in 2018. Gov. Brad Little (R) won that election by 20 points. President TrumpDonald John TrumpDemocrats blast Trump for commuting Roger Stone: 'The most corrupt president in history' Trump confirms 2018 US cyberattack on Russian troll farm Trump tweets his support for Goya Foods amid boycott MORE carried Idaho by more than 30 points in 2016.

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Progressive group backs Democratic challenger to Sen. Risch | TheHill - The Hill

By and large, conservatives have taken a nuanced approach to the progressive attempt to redefine racism. This new definition crafted over the past few decades, mainly in the academy, states that racism is not a question of animosity or feelings of superiority towards a racial group but rather a matter of privilege and systems. Under this rubric racism is not about individual actions, but rather support for systems of oppression.

But there is a key difference in the way that the left and the right have engaged in this dialogue. Progressives have no trouble at all saying that people who reject their newspeak version of racism are in fact racist. Up until now conservatives have largely resisted reaching the logical conclusion of their definition of racism, which is essentially discrimination based on skin color. That has to change now. The blatant racial bigotry of the left must be called out. It is no longer an esoteric academic debate; it is a crisis that threatens to tear the country apart.

Take this tweet from Farnaz Fassihi, a journalist at the New York Times, in reaction to a letter calling for an end to cancel culture.

Allow me to be blunt. This tweet is patently, obviously and indisputably racist. The content of the letter is irrelevant to Fassihi. All she needs to know is the color of the skin of the people who spearheaded it to know that she not only disagrees with it, but must call it out. Refusing to engage with someones ideas because of their skin color is racist. All the post-modern and critical race theory mumbo jumbo in the world cannot change that basic fact.

The only way one could look approvingly at this tweet that boldly states that Fassihi chooses to ignore ideas from people based on their skin color is if one believes, as many progressives do, that racism against white people is impossible. This proposition is an absolute absurdity. Under this premise it is not racist to say, I hate all white people and wish them harm. If that statement isnt racist then what it is exactly?

This pernicious excusing of blatant racism is no longer simply a controversial trend in academia. Our children, as young as grade school, are being taught to judge others and themselves based on skin color. That is nothing short of an abomination. Anybody who believes in equality and justice must completely reject this system that values or devalues individuals on the basis of race. Its frankly incredible and alarming that we even have to discuss that.

Someone who will look you in the eye and say I am not a racist, I just value your opinion less because of your skin color, is not only engaged in enormous self-deception. They are engaged in a project to exchange the very concept of meaning for power. The reason that George Orwells newspeak maxims like war is peace are paradoxes of ideas opposed to each other is that all words must be redefined so that it is only possible to say what the Party accepts.

I have spent several years attempting to engage the left in a conversation about racism and how we understand, tackle and defeat it. I have come to the conclusion that most of them have absolutely no interest in having this conversation and are much more comfortable just pointing fingers and screaming racism to gain power.

So let me make my position perfectly clear. If you value someone or their ideas more or less because of their skin color you are a racist. That is what the word means. That is what the word has always meant. If we reach the point where words have no meaning as Orwell predicted, then we cannot be free, freedom is predicated upon a mutual understanding of reality. Todays left is destroying that understanding and it needs to be challenged. It needs to be challenged aggressively and it needs to be challenged now.

David Marcus is the Federalist's New York Correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.

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The Progressive Left Is Becoming Blatantly Racist - The Federalist