Affirmative inaction is the biggest threat of all

We’re sliding back in time

Welcome to a late Thursday night edition of Progress Report.

There is no shortage of important state, local, and policy news to discuss, and we’ll do that in a premium subscriber-only edition of the newsletter on Friday evening.

Tonight, we’re going to dig deep into the Supreme Court’s latest ruling, its broader meeting, and what comes next.

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There are several ways to assess the Supreme Court’s decision today to effectively outlaw race-based affirmative action in college admissions.

As an individual decision, it is a cynical farce, a long-awaited ideological outcome set in motion once the conservative movement seized a supermajority on the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority decision ignores both established precedent and the reality in which we live, as Justice Kentaji Jackson wrote in her dissent.

Roberts inverted the meaning of the 14th amendment, originally passed to protect the rights of Black people, to instead protect a system inherently rigged for and by white people. In 2021, according to the most recent US census, 42% of non-Hispanic caucasians residents aged 25 and older held bachelor’s degrees, while just 28% of Black residents were college graduates.

Today’s decision will further exacerbate that unforgivable chasm in educational attainment, which is directly linked to financial security.

Should the far-right justices also toss out President Biden’s student debt cancelation plan on Friday morning, as is widely anticipated, it will cement a new Supreme Court doctrine: Black students are not legally entitled to help getting into college, but the are legally required to pay off the crushing student debt that disproportionately impacts them.

The numbers are stark: Whereas Black Americans accounted for just over 10% of students to obtain bachelor’s degrees in 2019, they own a disproportionate percentage of student debt. In fact, Black college graduates hold an average of $25,000 more in student debt than white college graduates; four years after graduation, Black grads owe an average of 188% more in student debt than white grads.

The ban on race-informed college admissions, while in and of itself a long-time goal of the conservative movement, will also open the floodgates to lawsuits seeking to end diversity hiring policies at private employers and broader attempts to adjust for historic discrimination in public institutions. The far-right has already spent the past year demonizing DEI programs and taking action in Republican-run states to banish them entirely.

Such is the coordination of the professional conservative political movement, which uses the Supreme Court as a battering ram to bust open new pathways to legalizing financial corruption and dismantling social progress. Since winning back Congress and sweeping statehouses in 2010, Republicans have engaged in a methodical pursuit of national regression.

Consider the past few years alone.

The end of race-based affirmative action.

The reintroduction of school prayer and the steady defunding of public education.

Whitewashed classes and book bans that erase people of color from history and LGBTQ+ folks from their communities.

Racist voter suppression laws that continue to disenfranchise.

Preemption laws that eliminate self-government and hand power to corporate actors.

The decline of reproductive rights and consequential rise of maternal catastrophe.

Gun control all but eliminated, no matter how many children are blown apart in mass shootings.

A neutered Environmental Protection Agency.

A violent coup.

There is no shortage of other examples, but the point should be clear: Conservatives are in the final stages of what has been a decades-long siege on modern civilization, and the one force that could turn them back refuses to do so.

Death by Apathy

It seems as if every time Biden is in New York City, his motorcade passes by my apartment building. When I walked outside this afternoon, the streets had been cleared of cars and buses and lined on either side by metal barriers; even the fruit vendor outside my building had to clear his entire stock off the large set of carts that I’d never seen empty or leave the sidewalk. People paid little attention to the cops trying to redirect them until the SUVs and motorcycles began to rumble up from the east and blare their sirens (a little unsure of that last detail, as it could have been an ambulance).

Soon people were pausing to watch for the president’s big armored consumer tank, and many took photos as it drove past. It wasn’t exactly a scene out of FDR’s whistlestop tour across a country deeply in need of a new hero, but it was nonetheless a reminder of the power and influence that a president can have on a public looking for leadership. Even if extreme partisanship has reduced some of the reach and impact, the agenda that a president sets still matters.

Not long after the motorcade had passed and the streets began functioning again, I saw a clip of Biden on CNN, pouring the cold water on talk about expanding the Supreme Court.

“If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it — maybe forever — in a way that is not healthy, that you can’t get back,” Biden said.

I don’t knew whether Biden, a creature of comfortable Washington for the last 50 years, actually thinks that the Supreme Court is not already politicized and permanently out of control in its current form; or maybe that’s just the go-to phrase that Biden, Dick Durbin, and other Democratic leaders use reflexively whenever presented by an idea that might change the sclerotic systems that they’ve worked so many years to preserve.

I don’t know which option is worse, but it doesn’t particularly matter. It is morally outrageous to maintain a status quo that has immiserated so many when there are avenues to pursue that could lead to the restoration of people’s rights and instant improvement of their lives.

It’s also politically idiotic.

Court expansion is a clean and permanent way of fixing the imbalance, because it would either chastise justices who see their power decline or it would turn the court into a self-immolating sideshow that neither party wants to entrust with what’s become unelected, fully unaccountable oversight. The Supreme Court’s approval rating is at a record low, creating the perfect justification for proposing and campaigning on the overhaul.

If that’s too big of a leap for this generation of Democratic leader, there’s an even easier path to wresting the court back from the far right. Every single conservative justice is steeped in undeniable corruption, and if Dick Durbin launched a real investigation into their failed disclosures and direct financial relationships with billionaires who have business before the court, it’d likely become very quickly apparent that the corruption runs far deeper and dirtier than anyone realizes.

The consequences to ignoring the corruption and granting the justices impunity are immeasurable. People will continue to be stripped of their rights, society will sink further into the toxic muck of endemic inequality and resentment, and belief in democracy will collapse. How long can National Democrats promise to stand up to “MAGA Republicans” and pledge to fight like hell for people, soak supporters for billions in small donations with emails that look as if a bank is going to repossess their homes if they don’t kick in on ActBlue, see record crowds turn up at the ballot box, and then just do nothing with their power?

Democratic leaders may think that they look like the “adults in the room” by refusing to take action and even acceding to Republican demands (this was literally Biden’s strategy with the debt ceiling), but what they’re actually communicating is that they don’t actually care about their constituents, that they see them as ATMs, and that engaging with democracy is utterly useless. Doing nothing suggests that we are in a permanent decline, that politics is rigged to guarantee that nothing can get better.

When that happens, people stop voting, stop believing, stop fighting back.

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Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

For just $5 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes:

• Premium member-only newsletters with original reporting

• Financing new projects and paying new reporters

• Access to upcoming chats and live notes

You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in the next weekend edition of the newsletter!