Oct. 21, 2024

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

 

 

Why This Election’s Battle For The Supreme Court Matters More Than Anything Else

By Rick Manning

The Supreme Court is on the ballot right now.

The left has made their goals abundantly clear: end the current Court majority at all costs.  The Biden administration only failed to pack the Court due to the opposition of two Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, to ending the filibuster in the Senate.  

However, a hand-picked commission on the Supreme Court came up with a court-packing scheme that would have given Biden unprecedented power to reshape the court for generations. 

Should the Democrats win control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House in less than three weeks, expect the filibuster to be ended when they take office, guaranteeing the court-packing scheme to be implemented.

This has led to untrue attacks on individual conservative justices to justify forcing them from the Court or negating their influence by packing it.

It has also led to unprecedented leakage of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade well before its publication. The Dobbs leak was designed to create sufficient public pressure to reconsider the decision with an attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family’s lives resulting from it. 

A less publicized leak earlier this year concerning a memo that Chief Justice John Roberts sent to his fellow justices on the handling of cases involving former President Donald Trump’s immunity from prosecution claims related to actions he took in office was designed to undermine the decisions of the court and trust in the institution.

This ideological bomb-throwing by either liberal justices or their clerks has one purpose: to destroy the court to justify packing it.

This is why Congress should take action to move forward on the Keep Nine constitutional amendment, which puts court packing to rest forever.  The language would simply add the number of Supreme Court Justices to the U.S. Constitution, ending threatened political manipulation of the court to suit partisan needs.

However, the reasons behind the big government left’s desperation to end the current majority on the court are also found in some of the critical rulings they have made, which transitioned power from both the court and the administrative state to the people.

In Dobbs, the decision transferred the decision on abortion to the states, so people’s elected representatives or through direct vote mechanisms, the people themselves decide for their state.

In a variety of Second Amendment cases ranging from the Heller decision to the more recent New York Rifle and Pistol Association decision, the individual rights of citizens to keep and bear arms have been affirmed, with state and local government attempts to abridge them being declared unconstitutional. Not shockingly, politicians like Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who have supported rioters burning down cities over the police who are sworn to protect those very cities, also want to subject individuals to the tyranny of the mob with no hope of help from 911 — no matter what the Jennifer Love Hewitt television show would tell you.

States, like Washington and Colorado, seeking to end religious conscience rights guaranteed under the First Amendment have been slapped around by the court as individual freedom to practice religion has been upheld in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case and Kennedy v. Bremerton wherein Joe Kennedy, who was fired for praying after a high school football he was coaching (to learn more about this case by seeing the just-released movie ‘Average Joe’.)

Perhaps the most dramatic action by the Supreme Court from a strictly limited government perspective has been its decisions in the West Virginia v. EPA case and in the joint cases – Relentless v. Dept of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. 

West Virginia v. EPA struck down a major regulation promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency because it went beyond the authority granted by Congress. This restoration of the power of the people’s elected representatives over the permanent bureaucracy was transformational.

However, when coupled with the Relentless and Loper Bright cases, the administrative state's iron-fisted rule has ended. Relentless and Loper overturned a forty-year court precedent, resulting in one of the largest power grabs in American history – the so-called Chevron deference. Chevron's deference has meant that in a legal dispute between the federal bureaucracy and anyone else, the federal bureaucracy had to be deferred to legally. 

The combination of West Virginia v. EPA and the end of Chevron deference gives the limited, constitutional government a fighting chance in our legal system. In contrast, before, the ever-growing, liberty-encroaching federal government was an almost guaranteed winner.

This election is a battle over whether constitutionally guaranteed liberties will survive.  

Kamala Harris and the left want to pack the Court to end religious conscience freedoms, curtail the individual right to keep and bear arms, and end the restoration of the power of the people through their elected Congress over the power of the unelected bureaucracy.

That’s why any candidate for Congress who refuses to say they oppose packing the Supreme Court and refuse to say they will support the Keep Nine amendment cannot be trusted with the keys to unlock — or lock up — your liberty.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government. 

To view online: https://townhall.com/columnists/rickmanning/2024/10/19/why-this-elections-battle-for-the-supreme-court-matters-more-than-anything-else-n2646413

---

 

Biden and Kamala Harris Have Cost Democrats Steeply with Minorities – Will the Party Ever Recover?

By Manzanita Miller 

A demographic trend Americans for Limited Government has been warning about for years is materializing before our eyes this election, with a significant number of Black and Hispanic voters – especially young men – planning to abandon Democrats. 

President Joe Biden’s shaky performance was already sending economically driven minorities running from the Democratic Party in polls conducted last autumn, but that trend has only accelerated since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him as the nominee. 

Now, polling shows Harris is well below where Biden was with Black and Hispanic voters four years ago, and former President Donald Trump is on track to make the largest gains with minorities of any GOP presidential candidate in 60 years.   

The latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows that minority voters continue to move toward Trump, with the former president eking out sizeable portions of the Black and Hispanic vote, with particular strength among men, young people, and the working-class. 

It’s always a good idea to temper expectations – no one is saying Black and Hispanic voters are completely switching parties. However, as the Times’ Nate Cohn recently pointed out, Trump may be on track to do better among minorities this fall than any GOP presidential candidate since the Civil Rights Act in 1964. That is worth exploring.    

According to the Times data, Kamala Harris is still on track to win the overwhelming majority of the Black vote, with 78 percent of Black voters planning to support her while 15 percent plan to support Trump. This still places Harris – a Black woman – nine points below where Biden was with Black voters in 2020. So where is that slippage coming from?  

Black Americans planning to vote for Trump are disproportionately men, younger voters, and those living in the western part of the country, according to the data. While 70 percent of Black men plan to support Harris, 20 percent plan to support Trump. Among Black women, 83 percent plan to support Harris and 12 percent plan to support Trump. It’s worth noting that in 2020 Trump earned just 12 percent of the Black vote overall. 

Then there is age. Young Black voters under age 30 appear to make up a sizeable portion of those planning to desert Democrats this fall and vote for Trump. A fifth of Blacks under 30 plan to support Trump, compared to around 15 percent for older voters. 

Another interesting takeaway is individuals who identify as Black mixed with another ethnicity are significantly more likely to support Trump than those who identify as Black alone. A third – 33 percent – of those with a mixed ethnicity plan to vote for Trump in November.   

Another interesting takeaway is that Black voters from regions that have less of an African American presence and that never experienced slavery – such as the western part of the United States – are significantly more likely than Blacks from the south or east to support Trump. A full 34 percent of Blacks from the western United States plan to vote for Trump, while only 12 percent of eastern Blacks and 15 percent of southern Blacks plan to do so. 

Among Hispanics, the Times data shows Trump is ahead even more. According to the poll, Hispanics plan to support Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by a mere 12 percentage points, 52 percent to 40 percent. Let’s recall that Biden won Latinos by 33 points, 65 percent to 32 percent in 2020. Harris is on track to underperform Biden by 13 points, and Trump is on track to gain eight points compared to 2020. 

Here again, Hispanic men are much more likely to be supportive of Trump, with Trump on track to outright win Latino men by five points, 49 percent to 44 percent. Among Hispanic women there is a 15-percentage point gender gap for Harris, with 59 percent of Hispanic women planning to vote for her, but only 44 percent of Hispanic men planning to do so. 

Trump is also twice as popular among Latinos under age 44 as he is among Latinos over age 65. Forty-five percent of Latinos under age 44, which constitutes Millennials and Gen Z, plan to support Trump, compared to only 22 percent of Latinos over 65. Trump earns 42 percent of the Latino vote for voters 45 to 64. 

Here once again, Hispanics who identify as a mixed ethnicity – Hispanic plus something else – are significantly more likely to support Trump. In fact, Hispanics who say they are mixed plan to support Trump outright, 47 percent to 45 percent. Hispanics who identify as Hispanic alone plan to support Harris 54 percent to 38 percent.   

Education also plays a factor, with non-college educated Hispanics planning to support Trump by six points more than those with a college education, 42 percent to 36 percent. 

Hispanics in the southern United States – which includes the densely populated swing states of Florida and Texas – plan to support Trump outright over Biden by four points, 48 percent to 44 percent. Hispanics in the west – think Arizona and Nevada as far as swing states – plan to support Harris by the widest margin, 26 points. 

Among Hispanics who say they are neither Republican nor Democrat, Trump holds an eight-point advantage over Harris, indicating that while some Hispanics may be shy of the GOP label, they would prefer to vote for Trump. 

One issue that has been brought up by critics is question of whether lower propensity voters – such as Black and Hispanic men – will actually turn out to vote for Trump in November. 

The honest answer is we don’t know, but that doesn’t change the core issue for Democrats. While it would be a “best case” scenario for conservatives if these voters do end up supporting Trump in November by greater margins, there is a much more nuanced reality.   

Even if a sizeable share of Black and Hispanic men choose not to vote at all, the fact that around a fifth of Black men and nearly half of Hispanic men are deeply unsatisfied with Democrats and Kamala Harris should be worrying to the party. Young minority men are essentially protesting the system and by indicating their willingness to vote for Trump – even if a sizeable share of them sit out the election – they are signaling their rejection of the Democrat agenda.

Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation. 

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/10/biden-and-kamala-harris-have-cost-democrats-steeply-with-minorities-will-the-party-ever-recover/