Now that the Democrats have chosen a nominee, it’s time to focus on reversing the damage done by the Supreme Court.

Corrupted by years of dark money, political attacks, and propaganda, the United States’ democratic institutions aren’t holding, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the protracted lead-up to the 2024 election. In the last couple weeks alone, Donald Trump was shot at, Hillbilly Elegy’s JD Vance was announced as his running mate at the Republican National Convention, and President Joe Biden withdrew his bid for reelection after a geriatric debate performance led to weeks of bullying from media, donors, and party leadership, all demanding he drop out. What’s worse, all of it happened under the backdrop of the extremist, unaccountable Supreme Court taking a sledgehammer to rule of law right before summer recess.

Despite a bleak election year thus far, there’s been a surge of new hope and enthusiasm amongst Democrats after Biden immediately endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the nomination, spurring a flurry of endorsements from party leaders and potential opponents, and a record-setting $81 million spike in small donations in the first 24 hours. By Monday night, Harris had garnered enough delegates to clinch the nomination—and thank fuck she did. Contested conventions are good for ratings, but historically, they’re also election losers, and it was far from obvious we’d avoid the chaos of a mini-primary, which was supported by heavy hitters like Barack Obama, Mike Bloomberg, and the New York Times and Washington Post editorial boards, plus a slate of pundits with inflated egos and billionaires with their own personal preferences. (Obama has since given Harris his endorsement.) 

Safely on the other side, the party will inevitably face questions about how this went down come November, but for now, time is precious, and the looming, ongoing threat to democracy remains. Biden’s withdrawal was, for all the rifts it created, the right move, and seemingly, a calculated one. For a man alleged to be incompetent, he deftly outplayed Republicans and the media by timing his announcement after the RNC and Sunday morning talk shows, depriving them of a splashy platform to respond. In one afternoon, he orchestrated his succession, neutralized GOP and media attacks against him, and reinforced the most fundamental of democratic norms—the peaceful transition of power. Coup-loving Republicans are furious and scrambling, having wasted their convention trashing a candidate that’s no longer running. They have also recommitted to a convicted felon who, with Biden out of the race, is now the oldest candidate in history, with zero plans for how to face an energetic, younger, Black and South Asian woman who intends to run on protecting abortion. Trump, hilariously, has asked for his money back. 

It comes as a huge relief that the public infighting among Democrats is largely over, because it allows us to focus on the bigger story of the past few weeks, which is the far-right entrenching itself via the judiciary and gutting the state from within. What the extremist hacks on the Supreme Court have accomplished at the behest of their fascist mega-donors this summer has virtually remade our government overnight: The Federalist Society just delivered a judicial coup, and didn’t even need the executive branch to do it.

Thankfully, there’s fresh hope now that with a Harris candidacy, various factions on the left and center will align, as France just did, to rebuke the far-right. But even if the Democrats win in November, and Republicans don’t start a civil war in response, it’ll be a long road to undo all the damage that’s been done in the last couple months alone. The decisions in Trump v. United States and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in particular, are two of the worst opinions in Supreme Court history—which is wild considering the Roberts era already has so many doozies to choose from, like Dobbs, Shelby v. Holder, and Citizens United, along with more recent disgraces like Grants Pass v. Johnson or Snyder v. United States. 

I’ve been raising the alarm about plutocrat-funded Christian nationalism for close to a decade, but there’s no satisfaction in being right, only sorrow that we’re here. Political instability is an eater of dreams and a threat to people’s lives. The uncertainty of this moment is overwhelming, the losses too large to digest, and it’s created a rush to prophesize and pronounce definitive outcomes. Deniers, doomers, and accelerationists have all entered the chat, and all of them risk self-fulfillment. Our only option is to form a unified front against them and get to work.

In Trump v. United States, a case most legal experts thought the Court would dismiss outright, the far-right majority delivered their delayed decision on Trump’s coup,  inventing presidential immunity from criminal liability for official acts, while retaining the right to decide what counts as “official.” It’s a self-destructive move that undermines the most basic tenet of rule of law, which is that everyone is subject to it. The majority’s reasoning focused entirely on hypotheticals, deliberately ignoring the very real January 6th coup attempt that precipitated the charges, and greasing the way for more far-right political violence, particularly as trigger-happy Republicans warn in advance of the 2024 election that they won’t accept a loss. 

Years spent reading Soviet legal documents prepared me for the smug, dishonest, means-to-an-end mindfuck that is Trump v. US, though we don’t have to look outside American legal tradition for our own authoritarianism. The United States is infamous for treating people as property and corporations as people: We’re seeing the active legacies of the Fugitive Slave Act, Jim Crow, and the Comstock Act in the GOP’s endless voter suppression efforts, attempts to ban abortion medication by mail, and tracking of people seeking abortions across state lines. And still, Trump v. US lowers the bar. The opinion is a grotesque power grab that fundamentally upends the Constitution by magically bestowing criminal immunity on a criminal president, effectively making it legal for a (Republican) president to stay in power by any means “officially” necessary. (Richard “When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal” Nixon was ahead of his time.) 

It’s a curious feature of American exceptionalism that headlines on the decision jumped immediately to monarchy, not autocracy. It suggests a romanticism about domestic authoritarianism as something British we defeated in the 18th century—a period piece rather than a contemporary dystopia. In reality, we’re poised to elect an autocrat for the second time, not crown a king or queen for the first. 

As I’ve written about before, the US brand of white Christian fascism is both unique and on trend: Demonizing migrants, trapping women, and persecuting the LGBTQ community is the glue binding the global anti-rights movement. Republicans have been open about their desire to emulate far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s success at purging Hungarian universities, media, and business sectors. The people who wrote Project 2025, the 900-page Heritage Foundation manual for dismantling the country, looked explicitly to other autocrats for strategic advice on how to better end democracy. 

King George is certainly self-referential, but he’s far less relevant to our situation than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing Congress to a standing ovation with Elon Musk as his guest, Orban visiting Mar a Lago earlier this month, or Jared Kushner promoting ethnic cleansing while drooling over Gaza’s “waterfront property.” President Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov are openly celebrating Trump’s pick of JD Vance for VP because Vance has loudly advocated for letting Russia devour Ukraine and, relatedly, letting husbands abuse their wives. Former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Sherrilyn Ifill recently posted on Threads about the formative influence of apartheid South Africa on the grievance-driven tech billionaires Peter Thiel, David Sacks, and, again, Elon Musk—all of whom have thrown in for Trump, not that Musk’s support lasted long. Trump himself has been the least subtle of all, shouting out President Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un at rallies, and ominously referencing Nazi talking points about Weimar Germany’s inflation in his acceptance speech at the RNC. 

The influence of oligarchs like Harlon Crow and Peter Thiel—who personally nurtured Vance—is especially insidious within the judiciary. If the immunity case demonstrates the Supreme Court’s open alliance with Trump, they similarly delivered for their billionaire backers with the end of Chevron deference last month and the corruption of our federal regulatory system. Loper Bright covers less sexy subject matter, but its impact on the functioning of our government is arguably as tremendous as the immunity case. Decided in 1984, Chevron created a separation of powers between the judiciary and federal agencies, who employ thousands of career civil servants to administer the vast majority of federal rules that affect our lives, whether related to food and drug safety, air quality, or any number of rules that prevent corporations from preying on people. Under Chevron, courts deferred to agency interpretations of statutes for policymaking purposes. Now, thanks to Loper Bright, the judiciary has the last word on even the most minute agency rules, and any schmuck with enough money can sue and ask a judge with limited staff and zero technical expertise to veto federal regulation. If you think the US is scammy now, just wait. 

The challenges we face from Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo and Justice Sam Alito wouldn’t feel so daunting if corporate media weren’t also on their side. David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, the parent company to CNN, was recently quoted saying that what mattered most in this election is that the next president is friendly to business. “We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate,” Zaslav told reporters in Sun Valley, Idaho. How embarrassingly short-sighted to throw away the rule of law, and to treat press freedom as a nice to have, not a necessity. Does he expect to survive autocracy intact? 

The hypocrisy is not new. At the same time that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to another 16 years in Russian prison for doing his job, the WSJ editorial board was copying Putin’s playbook and accusing Democrats who pointed out Trump’s dictatorial ambitions of being responsible for his getting shot by a fellow Republican. It’s hard to trust that the same corporate media that has soft-pedaled fascism and developed tunnel vision a la Hillary’s emails over Biden’s debate performance won’t also find new ways to tear down Harris, who will face horrifying levels of misogynoir and disinformation that, for obvious reasons, other candidates will not. Media coverage of Harris’ campaign launch has so far been positive, but already there are rumblings of people who “just don’t like her for some reason,” not to mention a birther campaign, reviving all the greatest hits from Clinton ‘16 and Obama ‘08 and ‘12, respectively. The conservative mediasphere is taking the cheapest shots, accusing her of being a DEI candidate, of sleeping her way to the top, and, horror of all horrors, of laughing too much.

It’s generally bad news for democracy when the far-right captures essential institutions, staffs them with loyalists, and threatens political violence, all while aligning with big business and media for profit. Republicans are also itching to make legal trouble over any changes to the ballot, with Rep. Andy Ogles filing articles of impeachment against Harris, and Speaker Mike Johnson threatening to sue to keep Biden in the race. Considering the switch happened before the convention and before state deadlines have passed, this seems to be mostly posturing. That said, there’s still real concern that any case arising from this election ends up before a corrupt SCOTUS, giving them another opportunity to hand down a breathtakingly bad decision. The last thing we need is another Bush v. Gore, but on steroids.

So what can be done? A lot, actually. The goal in drawing attention to rising fascism has always been to catalyze opposition, precisely because resignation is so tempting. Harris, who is already walking off to Beyonce’s “FREEDOM” at her rallies, has provided a much needed contrast to the gerontocracy, and is generating the excitement American voters look for. Her campaign has moved quickly to calling out her opponents as creepy losers, delighting Democrats who’ve longed for the party to stop pulling their punches. And she’s gaining momentum. The Divine Nine Black frats and sororities are mobilizing for their AKA sister. Singer Charli XCX tweeted “Kamala IS brat.” Zoom’s Indian American COO, Aparna Bawa, made it possible for 44,000 Black women to join an organizing call the night Harris announced. Young people are signing up to vote for the first time, and the campaign has already seen an influx of over 100,000 volunteers. With Harris set to secure her party’s nomination at the DNC, the future feels less grim today, which is good because the fight is so far from over. 

The Democrats’ sudden return to life brings to mind Miracle Max from The Princess Bride: “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead… Mostly dead is slightly alive.” The boring truth is: Harris can win if people vote for her. She has a lot going for her as the incumbent VP, and as the prosecutor taking on an aging gangster, and as a woman running on reproductive rights against a rapist. Crucially, she and Biden both take court reform and expansion seriously—a necessity for us reversing the damage wrought by an extremist Supreme Court, and for preventing it from happening again in the future. She can also take credit for Biden’s strong legislative record, low unemployment, rising wages, and record-low violent crime rates—conditions that get incumbent administrations re-elected. 

Harris is, like any political candidate, an imperfect one; her prosecutorial record has earned her the leftist badge of “imperialist cop,” and uncommitted voters who’d been boycotting Biden for Gaza have vocalized outrage with Harris following her meeting with Netanyahu this week. Others are concerned that she’s been set up to fail via the so-called “glass cliff,” where women are only given responsibility in a crisis after men have made a mess of things. Because we are still a democracy, voters can and should be able to vocalize these concerns without fear, and to hold our representatives to account. But as even some of her critics have pointed out, Harris has the chance to not just be a strong candidate, but a genuinely decent one, simply by addressing voters’ concerns directly, righting the wrongs she can, calling out the far-right’s bullshit, and delivering on her campaign’s promises in order to preserve our democracy. Our job is to support her in these efforts and get us through November. Then we can fall apart.

The far-right is taking a victory lap, but it’s premature. Republicans are overplaying their hand after their court victories, with the Heritage Foundation president announcing a second American revolution and threatening violence unless the left rolls over. How quickly the creators of Project 2025 forget how much they’ve relied on plausible deniability, credulous institutionalists, and media normalization to get this far. As Harris said of Project 2025 in Milwaukee last week, “Can you believe they put that in writing?”

Let them mistake arrogance for invincibility. Abortion bans have been destroying Republicans electorally, including in red states. Trump is now saddled with an unpopular, brutish, 900-page manifesto that is penetrating popular consciousness across generations—on TV, social media, in conversation—and a thirsty VP “with the integrity of a Boeing 737” whose primary contribution to his campaign is more white male resentment and unpopular views on ending no-fault divorce. Even Appalachia doesn’t claim him. As Kentucky Governor and VP hopeful Andy Beshear said of Vance, “He ain’t from here.” And let’s never forget that Trump needed a new VP because he tried to have the last one murdered. Even Kim Jong Un won’t be his friend. Nobody especially cared that Trump almost got assassinated, either. 

The bigger issue is not that Trump is poised to win, but that Republicans are unwilling to lose. They’ve already shown their support for coups and stochastic terror, and they’ve captured the court. If we’re going to have any shot at undoing their grip and saving what’s left, court reform and expansion have to be the highest priority. And to have any hope of that, we have to vote our people in while we still have the chance, because with democracy on the line, the right to vote itself is on the ballot, too. So is bodily autonomy, and LGBTQ+ rights, and concealed carry laws, and Obamacare, and countless other policies that people depend on to live. We already exist in a violently racist status quo: Sonya Massey’s murder by police is a heavy reminder that Black people and other communities of color are especially vulnerable to state violence. A second Trump administration would further politicize the Justice Department to target prosecutors who investigate police abuse. Trump himself is personally promising to deport 20 million people who are “poisoning” the country via expulsions and camps. 

When I saw Masha Gessen speak several months ago, they described people lining up for Alexei Navalny’s funeral with power banks, water, and food, expecting to be arrested for expressing condolences. It was a bleak reminder that things can always be worse. We don’t have to end up that way, but that requires us to not be fucking stupid about dictatorship. Look at French voters who turned against Marine Le Pen once the threat of a far-right government sunk in. Last year in Poland, voters ousted the Law and Justice party and began trying to heal the damage, including plans to restore independence to a stacked judiciary. It’s harder to rebuild the rule of law once it’s gone, so it’s essential we prevent further backsliding. It’s doable for us to stave off fascism and reinforce our democracy, but only if we can keep the presidency, regain the House, and expand the Supreme Court. We have no choice but to aim big—and to demand that our representatives deliver on what they’ve promised.  

So gather your courage, your rage, your despair, and channel it into something for your community. Don’t be scared of good news, or to feel hopeful about the future. It’s in imagining better that we grow and move forward. Get active locally when national politics feel like too much. Sign people up to vote, knock on doors, and tell your people about the dangers of Project 2025. We have momentum against the threat of autocracy. Let’s get this done.