Why You Should Be Concerned about Loper Bright

 

In the season of Trump, it's hard to find bandwidth for anything else happening in the Supreme Court, especially as we wait for the decision on presidential immunity. But the decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, handed down on Friday, will have a direct impact on all of our lives. It will upend agency regulations that are used to implement federal law. That sounds dry and far away from our daily lives. But it’s not.

The administrative state, which conservatives have spent decades attacking, has operated since the Chevron decision in 1984 on the basic premise that Congress passes laws and agencies issue regulations that implement them. What happened when a regulated entity didn’t like an agency’s decision? They could sue.

The longstanding Chevron deference doctrine required courts to defer to agency action when the law was ambiguous and the agency’s view was reasonable. That came to an end on Friday, when Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority in no uncertain terms, “Chevron is overruled.” After Loper Bright, it’s up to the courts.

Judges need no longer defer to subject matter experts at a federal agency after the Supreme Court wrote that the experts have “no special competence” and decided courts were better suited to make these decisions.

So now, it’s up to the courts. Want to know if you can use the abortion drug mifepristone? Despite studies confirming the drug is safer than Viagra and Tylenol, that decision is up to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas. If he decides the FDA was wrong to approve it, well then, he can deny women access to medication abortion.

What happens if a company that builds airplanes objects to an agency decision that requires them to use, say, six bolts to attach an engine to a plane? They can go to court and make their case to a federal judge. And then, that judge—a lawyer, not an engineer—gets to decide how it will work.

The arbitrary action the court expresses concern agencies might take is replaced by arbitrary action from far less qualified federal judges—possibly shopped for in the infamous one-judge-divisions like the one that gave us the mifepristone case. Do you feel less safe suddenly? Like courts’ decisions might be politically tinged?

Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse joined us for “Five Questions” after the oral argument and explained in practical terms why Chevron deference made sense for people interested in good government, “The Supreme Court’s Chevron framework ensures that unelected judges defer on certain complex technical questions to the career experts. 

These agency experts report to politically accountable agency heads and the president, and are subject to congressional and judicial oversight, to be sure that they properly implement and refine Congress’s stated policy objectives. For nearly four decades, Chevron has been bedrock administrative law and a key piece of the modern regulatory structure that Congress set up. But right-wing corporate forces resent Chevron, so they’ve cooked up and laundered fringe legal theories to try to strike it down…

“Eliminating Chevron deference would degrade accountability, and the separation of powers, by shifting the power to make expert policy decisions from an elected Congress and the tightly monitored executive agencies to the judiciary where neither technical expertise nor political accountability are to be found. And it’s all part of a well-coordinated, industry-driven campaign to dismantle administrative agencies.”

It’s no secret that part of the conservative agenda that led groups like the Federalist Society to back Donald Trump was the prospect of putting judges on the Court who would reverse this longstanding precedent, just like they did with Roe v. Wade. 

Even before Loper Bright, the Court was well on the way to abandoning Chevron deference with the emergence of new approaches like the major questions doctrine that allowed the Court to abandon Chevron deference when they deemed the issue under consideration, in their discretion, a “major question.”

They did that in cases like the one where they reversed OSHA’s workplace vaccine mandate during the pandemic, West Virgina v. EPA, where the Court rejected the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, and Biden v. Nebraska, where the Supreme Court rejected the student loan forgiveness program approved by the Department of Education. But that was not enough. Loper Bright reverses Chevron outright, yet another indication that no precedent is safe from the ideological ambitions of the Roberts Court.

The death of Chevron is not something that we’ll discuss tonight and be done with. The uncertainty and change will be an enduring feature of the administrative landscape going forward. Especially since the only way agencies can now avoid having the courts oversee their decisions is to have Congress pass clear, unambiguous laws—something that has rarely been the case and is even less likely with the current political dysfunction in that institution. It’s important for us to understand that this is a highly technical legal ruling that impacts us all.

If you’re interested in a little more information, here are a few good places to study up:

·       Review Loper Bright itself.

·       Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post has this piece, where she writes, “Administrative law doesn’t pack the emotional punch of abortion access or LGBTQ+ rights, but the day-to-day impact of this seemingly arcane issue is profound.”

·       Dahlia Lithwick explained the case’s impact on MSNBC’s The Katie Phang Show.

 

This description of the case from the conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom, which I shared with you all in the newsletter just ahead of oral argument, gives you a good sense of how carefully advocates behind this case selected this particular fact pattern to make agency decision making look as overbearing as possible:

“A National Marine Fisheries Service regulation requires that herring fishing boats allow an additional person on board their small boats to serve as a monitor, tracking compliance with federal regulations. The fishermen must also pay the monitor’s salary of around $700 per day. Overall, the regulation reduces fishing profits by about 20%. Loper Bright Enterprises, a fishing company in New England, and other fisheries sued to challenge this federal government rule, arguing that NMFS lacked statutory authority to force them to pay for these monitors.”

As I wrote back then, this narrative ignores the importance of monitoring. And the point of the case was never about providing relief for small businesses, it was about taking decision-making about the administrative regulation of big business out of the hands of agencies and giving it over to the newly remade conservative courts, with a federal judiciary fully 28% of whom had been appointed by Donald Trump as of 2021.

(That number has likely dropped with Biden appointments, but only slightly, because barring emergency, judges appointed by other Democrats are the most likely to leave office with a Democrat in the White House, while Republican appointees try to stay on the bench until a Republican is in the White House).

This has been the work of decades—ever since the Chevron case was decided. Case exemplifies the reasons we say the Court is on the ballot. It’s about judicial ethics, or the lack of them. Justice Thomas participated in the decision as did Justice Alito, although both of them vacationed at the expense of folks who had an interest in the outcome of this case. It’s also about the kind of justices—and judges—who are appointed to the bench and whether they will abide by the principle of stare decisis, or following binding precedent, that is essential to a rule of law system.

When longstanding precedent is reversed simply because the personalities that make up the Court change, it undercuts public confidence in the rule of law. The president determines who to appoint to vacate judicial seats. Cases like Loper Bright dramatically reshape the balance of power between the three branches of government, knocking the checks and balances envisioned by the Founding Fathers off kilter.

Resetting that balance is not something that will happen overnight. It will take time and commitment to the fundamentals of democracy. But we know it can be done. Conservatives played a very long game to overturn Roe v. Wade and Chevron. Restoring the rule of law will require the same dedication and vigilance.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

New Sobering Studies about Antartica's Melting Ice

It was only two years ago that studies of the infamous Thwaites Glacier, aka: the Doomsday Glacier located in West Antarctica, found rapid melting. At the time, scientists said it was “hanging on by its fingernails.” (Source: ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Which Could Raise Sea Level by Several Feet, is ‘Hanging by its Fingernails,’ Scientists Say, CNN, September 6, 2022)

Since that warning was issued the planet has vastly exceeded global warming expectations. A new study raises the bet on sea level rise, maybe by a lot. The study warns that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting in a “new, worrying way” that scientific models of sea level rise have failed to account for. (Source: Alexander T. Bradley, et al, Tipping Point in Ice-Sheet Grounding-Zone Melting Due to Ocean Water Intrusion, Nature Geoscience, 2024)

British Antarctic Survey scientists discovered warm ocean water seeping beneath the ice sheet down to the grounding line, which is where the ice rises from the seabed and starts to float. Moreover, adding another dimension, new studies show that small increases in ocean temperatures can have big impact on melting. 

These new facts raise very serious concerns about all projections of sea level rise. Moreover, ocean temperatures have been setting new records. “The ocean has now broken temperature records every day for more than a year.” (Source: The Ocean Has Shattered Records for More Than a Year, The New York Times, April 10, 2024)

Making matters more edgy yet, a 2,000-foot-long ice core removed from West Antarctica looks like a game-changer. And it’s not pretty. (Source: Mackenzie M. Grieman, et al, Abrupt Holocene Ice Loss Due to Thinning and Underground in the Weddell Sea Embayment, Nature Geoscience, Feb. 8, 2024)

The 2,000-foot-long ice core is the first paleoclimatic proof that the Antarctic ice sheet can melt very fast in a relatively short period of time.

Under circumstances somewhat like today, but 8,000 years ago, part of the ice sheet melted by 450 meters (1,476 feet, or higher than the Empire State Bldg.) over a period of only 200 years, which was at the end of the last ice age. 

According to Eric Wolff, glaciologist at University of Cambridge/UK: “We’ve been able to say exactly when it retreated, but we’ve also been able to say how fast it retreated.” (Source: Scientists Discover an Alarming Change in Antarctica’s Past That Could Spell Devasting Future Sea Level Rise, CNN, February 8, 2024)

According to the scientists, in today’s world: “If it does start to retreat, it really will do it very fast.” And of course, the concern is not only 1,476 feet of ice melt over 200 years, but also, and more importantly, what will be the sea level impact of the initial several feet over upcoming decades, assuming a repeat of what occurred 8,000 years ago, which, so far, knock on wood, does not look to have started, yet. But West Antarctica is not going to make a pre-announcement that it’s ready to commence a cascading meltdown!

According to Ted Scambos, glaciologist, Univeristy of Colorado, Boulder: “The amount of ice stored in Antarctica can change very quickly— at a pace that would be hard to deal with for many coastal cities,” Ibid.

The Grieman, et al detailed study of the 8,000-year-old ice core revealed the biggest surprise in recent memory: Antarctic ice meltdowns can happen much faster than current sea level studies assume. According to Wolff: “We actually spent a lot of time checking that we hadn’t made a mistake with the analysis,” Ibid.

Wolff warns that it is crucial to take all measures possible to tackle climate change to avoid “these tipping points.” We do not want the same 1,476-foot ice meltdown to start again at such an alarming rate. 

The point is: It already happened under similar circumstances as today so it’s an understatement that nation/states should react as soon as possible and take all measures possible to mitigate climate change/global warming.

The most recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report highlights concerns: The month of May had a record-high monthly global ocean surface temperature for the 14^th consecutive month. The ocean-only temperature for May in the Southern Hemisphere ranked the highest on record.

“Over the past 50 years, the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula has been one of the most rapidly warming parts of the planet. And it has been established that Antarctic Circumpolar Current is warming more rapidly than the global ocean as a whole.” (Source: Impacts of Climate Change, Discovery Antarctica)

Assuming nation/states fail to take enough measures soon enough to mitigate global warming, which increasingly looks likely, a significant issue arises: When should sea walls be built and how high will be high enough?  

-Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.   

Image by Torsten Dederichs    

from CounterPunch

Presidential Debate 2024

CNN - If Joe Biden loses November’s election, history will record that it took just 10 minutes to destroy a presidency.

It was clear a political disaster was about to unfold as soon as the 81-year-old commander in chief stiffly shuffled on stage in Atlanta to stand eight feet from ex-President Donald Trump at what may turn into the most fateful presidential debate in history.

Objectively, Biden produced the weakest performance since John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon started the tradition of televised debates in 1960 — then, as on Thursday, in a television studio with no audience.  

Minutes into the showdown, hosted by CNN, a full-blown Democratic panic was underway at the idea of heading into the election with such a diminished figure at the top of the ticket.

Biden’s chief debate coach, Ron Klain, famously argues that “while you can lose a debate at any time, you can only win it in the first 30 minutes.” By that standard, the president’s showing was devastating. The tone of the evening was set well before the half hour.

It is too early to say how voters will respond and whether the president can rescue himself. But Biden barely beat Trump in key battleground states in the middle of a pandemic in 2020. His approval rating was below 40% before the debate, when he was at best neck-and-neck with his rival in the polls. It would only take a few thousand voters to desert him to put Trump back in the White House.

There has been no public sign that Biden is unable to fulfill the duties of the presidency, which include tough decisions on national security. He has just returned from two grueling foreign trips, for instance. But on Thursday’s evidence, his ability to communicate with the country – and even to sell his own vision for a second term – is severely compromised.

If the debate was the president’s best chance to turn around a tight race with Trump, which has him in deep peril of losing reelection, it was a failure. Biden ended the night with the Democratic Party in crisis with serious conversations taking place behind the scenes among senior figures over whether his candidacy is now sustainable, two months before the Democratic National Convention.

Trump’s task on Thursday was to avoid playing into Biden’s claims that he’s “unhinged” and is therefore unfit to return to the Oval Office. He largely did so as he got out of the way while the president was damaging his own campaign. The presumptive Republican nominee’s unaccustomed restraint, however, did wear thin later in the debate.

But in one devastating moment, after yet another Biden waffle, he said: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”

The ex-president didn’t avoid his own disqualifying issues. He was uncouth and divisive. He spouted outrageous falsehoods about his own presidency, his attempt to steal the last election, and sometimes lapsed into gibberish himself, especially when asked about climate change. He blatantly lied about his role in the mob attack by his supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The twice-impeached convicted felon repeatedly declined to say that he would accept the result of the 2024 election if he lost and made sweeping, vague and often illogical claims that US enemies overseas would bend to his will just because of his personality. The former president also struggled to parry Biden’s arguments that he’d slash taxes for rich Americans and leave workers struggling, and he was wobbly on policy, just as he was in the White House.

By the time the aged rivals slipped into a bitter debate about who was the best golfer, it was not hard to understand why voters have long told pollsters that they want no part of the choice they have been offered this year.

                                                             ********

[Last night] was the first debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and by far the most striking thing about the debate was the overwhelming focus among pundits immediately afterward about Biden’s appearance and soft, hoarse voice as he rattled off statistics and events.

Virtually unmentioned was the fact that Trump lied and rambled incoherently, ignored questions to say whatever he wanted; refused to acknowledge the events of January 6, 2021; and refused to commit to accepting the result of the 2024 presidential election, finally saying he would accept it only if it met his standards for fairness. 

Immediately after the debate, there were calls for Biden to drop out of the race, but aside from the fact that the only time a presidential candidate has ever done that—in 1968—it threw the race into utter confusion and the president’s party lost, Biden needed to demonstrate that his mental capacity is strong in order to push back on the Republicans’ insistence that he is incapable of being president.

That, he did, thoroughly. Biden began with a weak start but hit his stride as the evening wore on. Indeed, he covered his bases too thoroughly, listing the many accomplishments of his administration in such a hurry that he was sometimes hard to understand. 

In contrast, Trump came out strong but faded and became less coherent over time. His entire performance was either lies or rambling non-sequiturs. He lied so incessantly throughout the evening that it took CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale almost three minutes, speaking quickly, to get through the list. 

Trump said that some Democratic states allow people to execute babies after they’re born and that every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned—both fantastical lies. He said that the deficit is at its highest level ever and that the U.S. trade deficit is at its highest ever: both of those things happened during his administration.

He lied that there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency; there were many. He said that Biden wants to quadruple people’s taxes—this is “pure fiction,” according to Dale—and lied that his tax cuts paid for themselves; they have, in fact, added trillions of dollars to the national debt. 

Dale went on: Trump lied that the U.S. has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has when it’s the other way around, and he was off by close to $100 billion when he named the amount the U.S. has provided to Ukraine. He was off by millions when he talked about how many migrants have crossed the border under Biden, and falsely claimed that some of Biden’s policies—like funding historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and reducing the price of insulin to $35 a month—were his own accomplishments.

There is no point in going on, because virtually everything he said was a lie. As Jake Lahut of the Daily Beast recorded, he also was all over the map. “On January 6,” Trump said, “we had a great border.” To explain how he would combat opioid addiction, he veered off into talking points about immigration and said his administration “bought the best dog.”

He boasted about acing a cognitive test and that he had just recently won two golf club tournaments without mentioning that they were at his own golf courses. “To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way,” he said. “I can do it.” 

As Lahut recorded, Trump said this: “Clean water and air. We had it. We had the H₂O best numbers ever, and we were using all forms of energy during my 4 years. Best environmental numbers ever, they gave me the statistic [sic.] before I walked on stage actually.”

Trump also directly accused Biden of his own failings and claimed Biden’s own strengths, saying, for example, that Biden, who has enacted the most sweeping legislation of any president since at least Lyndon Johnson, couldn’t get anything done while he, who accomplished only tax cuts, was more effective.

He responded to the calling out of his own criminal convictions by saying that Biden “could be a convicted felon,” and falsely stating: “This man is a criminal.” And, repeatedly, Trump called America a “failing nation” and described it as a hellscape.

It went on and on, and that was the point. This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them.

Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective.

There are ways to combat the Gish gallop—by calling it out for what it is, among other ways—but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him. 

That’s not ideal, but as Monique Pressley put it, “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.” 

A much bigger deal is what it says that the television media and pundits so completely bought into Trump’s performance. They appear to have accepted Trump’s framing of the event—that he is dominant—so fully that the fact Trump unleashed a flood of lies and non-sequiturs simply didn’t register.

And, since the format established that the CNN journalists running the debate did not challenge anything either candidate said, and Dale’s fact-checking spot came long after the debate ended, the takeaway of the event was a focus on Biden’s age rather than on Trump’s inability to tell the truth or form a coherent thought. 

At the end of the evening, pundits were calling not for Trump—a man liable for sexual assault and business fraud, convicted of 34 felonies, under three other indictments, who lied pathologically—to step down, but for Biden to step down…because he looked and sounded old. At 81, Biden is indeed old, but that does not distinguish him much from Trump, who is 78 and whose inability to answer a question should raise concerns about his mental acuity. 

About the effect of tonight’s events, former Republican operative Stuart Stevens warned: “Don’t day trade politics. It’s a sucker’s game. A guy from Queens out on bail bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade, said in public he didn’t have sex with a porn star, defended tax cuts for billionaires, defended Jan. 6th. and called America the worst country in the world. That guy isn’t going to win this race.”

Trump will clearly have pleased his base tonight, but Stevens is right to urge people to take a longer view. It’s not clear whether Trump or Biden picked up or lost votes; different polls gave the win to each, and it’s far too early to know how that will shake out over time. 

Of far more lasting importance than this one night is the clear evidence that stage performance has trumped substance in political coverage in our era. Nine years after Trump launched his first campaign, the media continues to let him call the shots. 

—Heather Cox Richardson

Notes:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/all-the-crazy-things-trump-said-you-might-have-missed-in-biden-debate

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/04/trump-biden-presidential-debate-prep-408651

https://archive.is/JNu8D

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/us/politics/trump-revenge-biden-convicted-felon.html

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MoniquePressley/status/1806527221881847898

 

Debate Doping: Tour de CNN by Matthew Stevenson

 

Finally, a political development that gets me excited: American politics are going the way of the Tour de France. For years I have watched the debates and other campaign events, and as the candidates have crossed the finish line, I have wondered: “No way they did that on bananas, power bars, and sugary water.”

Now at last—thanks to the Donald Trump campaign—we may be getting a “clean” debate that will have the candidates peeing into cups (one thing both do well) as soon as Jake Tapper or Dana Bash signs off for the night.

Obviously, there is the risk that the presidential campaign staffs will remain one step ahead of the CNN doping controllers. It happened with steroids in baseball and Erythropoietin (EPO) in cycling, but at least Trump’s testing proposal shows the good intentions of American democracy in not wanting a president elected on the strength of what Barry Bonds knew as “the clear and cream”.

Just this morning I heard a long interview with Trump handlers who were speculating about what illegal substances President Biden might be trying out during his debate preparation week at Camp David in the Cacoctin Mountains.

It shows you just how out of touch Trump’s medical staff is with high altitude training and oxygen tents. Technically, such a natural form of blood packing isn’t exactly illegal, but it would certainly give President Biden added red blood cells and an advantage when having to make sense of his policies in Gaza.

* * *

I know many voters would like to think that there was a time in American politics, before doping, when candidates came to a political debate having had only a good night’s sleep, steak dinner, and long conversation with one of their aides on the tariff question or the dollar’s parity to gold and silver.

I know many American historians have written that Abraham Lincoln was the last “clean” presidential candidate and that he prepared for his debates with Stephen A. Douglas by splitting rails and drifting on the Ohio River.

It makes for uplifting history to imagine “Honest” Abe not to have been part of his team’s “program”—but sadly it’s an illusion to think that Lincoln, let alone Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, didn’t have a little help from white male testosterone, which apparently was administered to all of them at birth.

Washington and Jefferson were also suspected of having used what at the time was called “slavery” (now a banned substance) that provided them with income, education, and free time to dabble in political debates.

* * *

For a long time in American history, debates were not part of presidential electoral politics. In fact, until the election of 1896 (William Jennings Bryan versus William McKinley) campaigns were run largely by surrogates, who (to use Tour-speak) were the lead-out men in the sprints and “drove the bus” in the mountains.

Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy restored debates to the campaign cycle, but it would be foolish to think that either man would have tested negative if the race had the controls that the Trump campaign is now proposing.

As early as his House and Senate campaigns in the 1950s, Nixon used what were then called “slush funds” ($18,000, not the PAC millions available to Trump) to make payments during tight races, and it was widely disclosed that Nixon dressed his wife Pat in a vicuña coat, which clearly (along with a cocker spaniel puppy named Checkers) kept Nixon on the ballot in 1952 to run as vice president.

Not that during the 1960 campaign John F. Kennedy was turning down what in the Tour used to be called an “atomic bomb” (multiple espressos and Coca-Cola consumed ten kilometers from the finish line). In Kennedy’s case, his “bomb” made it possible for thousands of cadavers to vote Democratic in Mayor Daly’s Chicago precincts, which tipped the election for the Massachusetts senator.

* * *

Just because Donald Trump has some suspicions that President Biden is prepping this week with Dr. Michele Ferrari (a well-known feel-good doctor in Tour de France circles who “worked” with Lance Armstrong) does not for sure mean that “Jacked Up” Joe is blood packing or getting injections that will allow him to walk and talk like a forty-five-year-old politician.

The Biden campaign has routinely posted pictures of the president on his bike at his beach house in Delaware. Admittedly, the bike’s geometry looks fairly relaxed, his saddle is low, he’s usually wearing sneakers, and he seems to be running 700 x 38c tires, but those might just be Biden playing mind games with Trump, much the way Lance would ride up Alpe d’Huez in the big ring or stare down Jan Ullrich before dropping him.

Nor should one overlook the possibility that Trump himself might be bringing something more than Gatorade to the presidential election. Apparently one of the signs that a candidate is doping is that their hair turns orange, and their neckties grow a few additional sizes.

Another telltale is when a candidate falls asleep while on trial for 34 felonies or spends fifteen minutes talking about sharks at a political rally. (Sharks are a classic stoner obsession—a bit like the munchies—as is the fear of weak shower pressure after you have applied conditioner glop to your combed-over hair.)

* * *

Who doesn’t long for the days when American politics were the product of long days in the saddle, Mama’s pasta, and chocolate bars in feed bags. But that’s like imagining American democracy as the provenance of an engaged citizenry and Swiss-like referendums voted every two months.

You cannot divide your life between the mall and your phone, and then not have an election between two bionic candidates with IQs on the level of a Festina domestique.

At least rigorous testing at the debates will restore transparency to the political system, and once and for all we will understand how nearly half the country can imagine that Donald Trump is sane. And we may even finally have the genetic code that explains how the Democratic party decided to gamble the future of the republic (without so much as a contested primary) on a candidate who otherwise is a dead man walking.

 

 

Matthew Stevenson is the author of many books, including Reading the Rails, Appalachia Spring, andThe Revolution as a Dinner Party, about China throughout its turbulent twentieth century. His most recent books are Biking with Bismarck and Our Man in Iran. Out now: Donald Trump’s Circus Maximus and Joe Biden’s Excellent Adventure, about the 2016 and 2020 elections.