Fighting Back Against a Reactionary Court

Fighting Back Against a Reactionary Court

After Dobbs, Linda Hirshman joins The Time of Monsters to discuss the legal battles to come.

Jeet Heer
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 supermajority of Republican-appointed justices, is on a rampage. On Friday, they extinguished the constitutional right to reproductive freedom. Then on Monday, they eased restrictions on teachers and coaches leading students in prayer at public schools.

In his majority statement in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that ended abortion rights, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made a curiously two-faced statement about future rights: He said that he thought previous court rulings on birth control, marriage equality, and gay rights broadly were badly decided. But he also offered assurances that they would not be touched since they were less serious issues than abortion.

Should Alito be trusted? The fact that conservative justices previously made misleading statements about respecting precedent on abortion suggests not.

This week I talk to Linda Hirshman, whom I often describe as the Cassandra of the American left because she has been warning of this moment for decades. Linda is an astute analyst of conservative judicial extremism, whose work can be found here. We talk about where the court is going next and also radical (but also perfectly doable) actions the Democrats can take to stop the evisceration of basic constitutional rights.

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

Support The Nation’s June Fundraising Campaign

With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.

We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.

It’s in our power to build a more just society, and your support at this critical moment brings us closer to that bold vision. I hope you’ll donate today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Jeet Heer Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


Ad Policy
x