About this episode
Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court — just after the court delivered a blow to President Biden’s climate plan. Today, we talk about the divided court and what it means for the future of our democracy. Read more: On Thursday, the Supreme Court sharply cut back the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce the carbon output of existing power plants, a major setback for the Biden administration’s plans to combat climate change. The vote was 6 to 3 — like many votes were this term — with the court’s conservative supermajority voting together on blockbuster issue after issue, including gun control and abortion. “Any one of these would have been a big decision on its own,” says Supreme Court reporter Robert Barnes . “The fact that there were so many of them this term is what I think has really put the Supreme Court in the public eye in a way that it hasn't been for years.”