What a conservative Supreme Court is doing with its power

From 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, until the pandemic made inaction untenable, Congress enacted hardly any major legislation outside of the tax law President Trump signed in 2017. In the same period, the Supreme Court dismantled much of America’s campaign finance law, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, permitted states to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, weakened laws protecting against age discrimination and sexual and racial harassment, and held that every state must permit same-sex couples to marry. This powerful unelected body, now controlled by six very conservative Republicans, has and will become the locus of policymaking in the United States.

Ian Millhiser, Vox’s Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what those six justices are doing with their power. The right to abortion is over, and affirmative action will soon be unlawful. But Millhiser shows that it is in the most arcane decisions that the Court will fundamentally reshape America, transforming it into something far less democratic, by attacking voting rights, dismantling and vetoing the federal administrative state, ignoring the separation of church and state, and putting corporations above the law. The Agenda exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right—its agenda is to shape the very nature of America's government, redefining who gets to have legal rights, who is beyond the reach of the law, and who chooses the people who make our laws.

"From 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, until the present, Congress enacted hardly any major legislation outside of the tax law President Trump signed in 2017. In the same period, the Supreme Court dismantled much of America's campaign finance law, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, permitted states to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, weakened laws protecting against age discrimination and sexual and racial harassment, and held that every state must permit same-sex couples to marry. This powerful unelected body, now controlled by six very conservative Republicans, has and will become the locus of policymaking in the United States. Ian Millhiser, Vox's Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what those six justices are likely to do with their power. It is true that the right to abortion is in its final days, as is affirmative action. But Millhiser shows that it is in the most arcane decisions that the Court will fundamentally reshape America, transforming it into something far less democratic, by attacking voting rights, dismantling and vetoing the federal administrative state, ignoring the separation of church and state, and putting corporations above the law. The Agenda exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right--its agenda is to shape the very nature of America's government, redefining who gets to have legal rights, who is beyond the reach of the law, and who chooses the people who make our laws"--

"Ian Millhiser offers an engaging, accessible and well-informed statement of progressive anxieties about what the Supreme Court's newly strengthened conservative majority may do." -Zachary Price, SCOTUSblog

"In this short and very accessible work...Millhiser makes a strong case that Americans should be worried about what a Supreme Court shaped in no small part by Donald Trump's three appointees-Trump, who defeated Hillary Clinton with almost 3 million fewer votes-will mean for the future of our nation and our democracy." - Geoffrey R. Stone, The Washington Post

"Lawyer Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox, argues persuasively that the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 Republican majority, 'is potentially an existential threat to the Democratic party's national ambitions-and, more importantly, to liberal democracy in the United States'....A cogent, timely warning about the fragility of American democracy." -Kirkus Reviews

"Writing clearly and succinctly, Millhiser dissects many of the worst opinions the modern court has rendered about voting rights, administrative law, religion and forced arbitration. After reading his cogent arguments, it becomes perfectly obvious why he thinks it's necessary to end 'with a note of alarm' ... [A] great short book." -The Guardian