BREAKING: President Trump’s expected Supreme Court nominee is Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a favorite of the religious right, according to multiple news outlets. Here’s what else you need to know about her background and record. vox.com/21446700/amy-c…
Judge Barrett is a staunch Catholic and a former law clerk to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.
She was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017, also by Trump.
Barrett has very conservative views on issues like abortion and LGBTQ rights — and has reportedly stated that life begins at conception.
Based on her previous legal reviews of NFIB v. Sebelius (2012) and King v. Burwell (2015), she's also likely to vote to undercut Obamacare.
Four members of the current Court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh — have all called for their Court to take a more expansive approach to the Second Amendment.
If confirmed, Barrett is likely to provide the fifth vote for this project.
While Barrett’s judicial record is fairly thin, owing to the fact that she’s only been a judge for about three years, that short record suggests that she’ll be a reliable conservative if confirmed to the Supreme Court.
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What’s changed in the past two years is that far more people have been vaccinated and exposed to Covid-19 by now, which means most people now have some degree of protection, which lowers the likelihood of dying from it. But that’s not enough to absorb another wave of misery.
The virus itself is continuing to change in ways that make it easier to spread and harder to counter. And while most US adults have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, only a tiny fraction are up to date on their boosters. vox.com/science-and-he…
1/ Today, our Vox Conversations podcast officially relaunches as The Gray Area, a philosophical take on culture, politics, and everything in between with host @seanilling. link.chtbl.com/thegrayarea
2/ First up on The Gray Area: @neiltyson joins @seanilling to explain why Tyson thinks scientific illiteracy is a political crisis and what he thinks it'll take to achieve a more informed democracy. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nei…
3/ This month on The Gray Area, you'll also hear from:
—Luke Mogelson, a combat reporter who was in the Capitol building on January 6
—Judith Butler, a pioneer on the philosophy of gender
—@rezaaslan, a leading expert in world religions
Hurricane Ian is expected to have a "catastrophic" storm surge.
Storm surge occurs when a hurricane’s winds raise ocean water levels and sweep them inland, leading to flooding. This is often the deadliest part of a hurricane.
Ian is also projected to drench parts of Florida, even further inland, with as much as 25 inches of rainfall. Floodwaters could linger for days.
In some parts of Florida, like Tampa, Ian pulled water away from the ocean shores, an effect called a reverse storm surge.
The devastation from extreme weather events are getting worse because of climate change.
Rising average temperatures are lifting sea levels and increasing the amount of rainfall from major rainfall events, adding up to more destructive storm surges. vox.com/science-and-he…
The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed supermajority seems poised to deal a blow to the Clean Water Act, in a case that could do harm to America’s efforts to prevent floods and to ensure that everyone in the country has access to safe drinking water. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
The Clean Water Act prohibits “discharge of pollutants” into “navigable waters.” But it also defines the term “navigable waters” vaguely and counterintuitively, to include all “waters of the US, including the territorial seas.” vox.com/policy-and-pol…
In Rapanos v. United States (2006), the Supreme Court’s last attempt to define the key phrase “waters of the United States,” the justices split three ways, with no one approach winning majority approval from the Court. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
Public schools are fully reopened and most pandemic-era restrictions are now relaxed. But working conditions for families with kids who need child care are not back to normal. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
For workers and parents, already-grim trends in child care have only gotten worse since the pandemic began. Program costs have increased, while waiting lists in several states number in the tens of thousands. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
Despite the long wait lists, nearly 90,000 fewer people are working in the child care industry today compared to February 2020. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
This term, a potentially even more consequential issue than abortion rights is on the Supreme Court’s docket: democracy itself. @imillhiser explains: vox.com/policy-and-pol…
A single case, Moore v. Harper, threatens to fundamentally rewrite the rules governing federal elections, potentially giving state legislatures (some of which are highly gerrymandered themselves) nearly limitless power to skew those elections. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
A second case in the Court’s new term — which officially begins on Monday, October 3 — also places free and fair elections in the US in grave peril. vox.com/policy-and-pol…