It’s an exciting time to do theology. Technology allows unprecedented access to vast deposits of historical resources. Scholars across disciplines are talking to one another in new ways. Conversations across traditional divides enable both interdisciplinary and ecumenical sharpening of iron by iron. For those faithfully listening to God speaking in Scripture, these are encouraging developments that have yielded fruit in recent theological publications. In Systematic Theology: From Canon to Concept, Stephen J. Wellum leverages these trends to make a strong case for the importance of careful and cohesive theological reflection on Scripture. Like his earlier work on biblical theology, this text is thoughtful and clearly written. Wellum sets out in this text—the first of two planned volumes—to introduce the task of systematic theology and explore the doctrines of revelation, Scripture, God, creation, and providence. Coherence of Biblical and Systematic Theology The church’s health depends on careful systematic theology. As Wellum notes, “Systematic theology is not optional for the church; it is fundamental to our thinking rightly about God, the self, and the world.” Everyone does systematic theology. The real question is “whether our theology is true to Scripture or not” (4). Therefore, wisdom calls us to conform our systematic theology to Scripture’s teaching. Healthy theology involves both reading Scripture and thinking about how to follow it. Therefore, Wellum refuses the false choice sometimes posed between biblical theology and systematic theology. Referring to the Great Commission, he observes, “To obey our Lord’s command requires careful biblical and theological thinking; knowing the Scripture, thinking rightly about who the Father, Son, and Spirit are; and faithfully applying all of Scripture to people’s lives. This is what theology is” (5). Healthy theology involves both reading Scripture and thinking about how to follow it. The task of systematic theology is essential for Christians as we read and apply the biblical text. It does not supersede or replace biblical theology. Instead, when systematic theology builds on the task of scriptural exegesis and biblical theology, it helps us to read Scripture more profitably. In other words, like biblical theology, systematic theology is essential to healthy theology. It is indispensable because “theology does not merely repeat Scripture; it seeks ‘to understand’ Scripture in terms of application, logical implications, and metaphysical entailments as a ‘constructive’ exercise in ‘faith seeking understanding.’” Theology must move beyond interpreting passages, chapters, or even books to fit all of Scripture together into one coherent picture. In doing so, “theology constructs and defends sound doctrine so that the church is not ‘blown around by every wind of teaching’ (Eph 4:14), but is instead ‘rooted and built up in Christ’ (Col 2:7)” (108).  Historical Theology’s Contribution Wisdom requires admitting we are not the first to ask questions about what Scripture teaches. Such wisdom acknowledges at least two potential problems. On the one hand, raising the authority of theological tradition to that of Scripture confuses the Church’s voice with God’s voice. On the other hand, refusing to listen carefully to the wisdom accrued through centuries of the church’s reading and reflecting on God’s Word confuses the individual’s interpretation with God’s voice. Wellum seeks to navigate a narrow channel between these twin errors. He does so by listening to a range of theological voices from the church’s past and constructively evaluating them in dialogue with sound biblical exegesis. The dual emphasis on eclectic theological retrieval and meticulous attention to the detail of biblical theology makes for some especially strong chapters on the doctrines of revelation, Scripture, and God. Wellum’s emphasis on the inseparability and interdependence of these topics is a strength of the book. He observes that “from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture claims to be the product of triune communicative agency in and through human authors. And given who the triune God is, Scripture speaks with absolute authority. Even though Scripture is written by human authors, its message, truth, and reliability are not lessened” (287). In a cultural climate characterized by skepticism about the existence and knowability of truth, the chapters on these subjects repay careful reading. Furthermore, Wellum’s treatment of natural theology, his retrieval of the patristic and medieval categories for understanding the doctrine of the Trinity, and his discussion of the classical categories of God’s attributes reflect a close interaction with biblical theology and constructive engagement with other theological traditions. Thus, this is an edifying volume for any Christian reader. Precision and Consistency This first installment of Wellum’s Systematic Theology leaves me anticipating how he will handle even more controversial subjects in the second volume. This unashamedly Presbyterian reviewer hopes his “unashamedly Baptist” brother will continue to place the precision of biblical theology in conversation with the retrieval efforts of historical theology to build even more bridges for constructive rapprochement between our respective “rooms” in God’s household. Unsurprisingly, given our different backgrounds, I have some points of friendly critique. In a cultural climate characterized by skepticism about the existence and knowability of truth, the chapters on these subjects repay careful reading. First, despite Wellum’s emphasis on categorical precision and retrieval through historical theology, he seems to adopt a grand narrative of decline regarding the Enlightenment, overlooking important historical discussions about how Christians both contributed to the development of modern thought and received critique during the transition to modernity. There is room for refinement here. For example, Wellum acknowledges that skepticism toward the “the truth of the gospel has existed in every age of the church” but then asserts that a “full-blown assault begins in the Enlightenment and continues today unabated” (41). The tactics for attacking the gospel may have changed, but the world, the flesh, and the devil have always strenuously opposed the truth according to the spirit of every age. Grand narratives of cultural progress and decline typically falsify as much as they clarify, and they lead to abuse by both cultural conservatives and progressives. Second, it would help to set forth a more explicit account of how the retrieval efforts of historical theology work and to ask why it is more operative in some chapters of Wellum’s work than in others. Recent discussions of such retrieval lead us to ask, Why should we listen to some authors from the past more than others? Why should we follow an author in one area but not in others? What principles do we utilize when our historical sources and traditions disagree? Thickening the engagement with such questions might help enrich the work’s ecumenical potential. Covenantal Debate Finally, this book would have benefited from greater nuance about the diversity within covenant theologies to better account for continuity and discontinuity between patristic, medieval, Reformation, and modern approaches to the subject. There are points within Wellum’s account of progressive covenantalism that sound more like historic Reformation accounts of covenant theology than he acknowledges. For example, as someone who fully subscribes to the doctrine of the covenants in the Westminster Confession of Faith, I am pleased to endorse the summary of the biblical narrative in Wellum’s definition of progressive covenantalism: It is better to think of God’s one redemptive plan, grounded in the “covenant of redemption” (pactum salutis, revealed through a plurality of covenants (e.g., Gal 4:24; Eph 2:12; Heb 8:7–13), all of which reach their fulfillment in Christ and the new covenant. Post-fall and due to God’s promise (Gen 3:15), God’s one redemptive plan is revealed through the covenants as the new covenant is progressively unveiled. This allows us to think of the continuity of God’s plan across time, now fulfilled in Christ, and it also helps us avoid “flattening” the differences between the covenants, which directly impacts a number of theological issues, specifically ecclesiology and eschatology. Each covenant, then, directs the life of those under it, but each covenant is also revelatory and prophetic of who and what is to come, namely Christ and the new covenant. (436) Wellum’s affirmation of the intra-Trinitarian pactum salutis, or covenant of redemption, makes his presentation more like historic Reformation accounts of covenant theology than many recent “Reformed” populizers, including several of the conversation partners that appear in his footnotes. He also affirms that the “creation covenant” with Adam was “temporary,” a “probation,” and required “covenantal obedience” to obtain “eternal life,” which, in spite of his claims to the contrary, sounds exactly like the doctrine of the “covenant of works” in the Westminster Confession (442). Wellum expresses his substantive affirmation of the covenants of redemption, works, and grace with thoughtfulness and concern for careful biblical exegesis. The primary caveat to my substantive agreement on the biblical narrative relates to the status of the new covenant and whether there is unresolved tension between his claims that “the fullness of new covenant blessings is still future” and that “all new covenant realities are now here and applied to the church in principle” (528). As Wellum explores the doctrines of the church, sacraments, and eschatology in the second volume, it will be interesting to see how he negotiates this tension. If the fullness of new covenant blessings is still in the future, this should inform theological reflection on these topics. In the meantime, Wellum helps us to see what careful biblical and theological thinking can look like. In this first volume of his Systematic Theology, Wellum displays the Bible’s primary message, the revelation of God, the story of redemption, and the meaning of all things in relation to God. I look forward to the expansion of the project in the next volume.

In this lecture on 1 John, Don Carson calls Christians to maintain gospel centrality, cautioning against an excessive focus on peripheral issues. He explores the details of John’s letter, emphasizing our need for salvation through Christ, walking in the light of his righteousness, and demonstrating genuine love for others as evidence of true faith. Carson also teaches on confession, repentance, and how we’re forgiven and reconciled to God through Christ’s sacrifice.

As the Caribbean sees its first Category 5 hurricane of the year, scientists warn that extreme weather is here to stay due to climate change. Aru Pande reports from Washington, where U.S. President Joe…

Politics Hogan Is Blowing the Maryland Senate Race A Republican can’t win by being Democrat Lite. The forces of Maryland politics are conspiring to make a jackass out of your humble correspondent, which he doesn’t appreciate—he has that base covered all by himself.  First we argued that Rep. David Trone, a grotesquely wealthy arriviste with bog-standard liberal politics, had it sewn up for the Democratic nomination for senate against Angela Alsobrooks. Trone’s polls were sagging as the primary approached, but Alsobrooks’s highest title to date is executive of Prince George’s County (not a name synonymous with good government in the Old Line State). Even Spiro Agnew, erstwhile Baltimore County executive, spent some time in the Governor’s Mansion before leaping into national politics. Alsobrooks walked away with it, 53 percent to 42—Trone didn’t even cover the spread. So be it. Every gambler loses some, for better or worse. We wrote about it. We then predicted that the solidly popular former governor, Larry Hogan, would be in good shape to capture the seat for the Republicans in the general election. Preliminary polling had shown him in a dead heat or edging out both Trone and Alsobrooks. Hogan was a recognizable character in American politics, the red governor of a blue state. You wouldn’t want him for president, but he was probably a cut better than your Parris Glendenningses and Martin O’Malleys. He had run a budget surplus while actually improving services like the Motor Vehicles Administration and beating cancer, which is (we are told) a big sympathy-winner. The right wing of Maryland Republicans regarded him as a bit of a squish, especially after some high-profile differences with President Donald Trump, but it didn’t seem insurmountable in a cycle that has seen the 45th president dance away from social issues and endorse whatever centrists are willing to smoke the peace pipe. It is now a month and a half later. The latest polling shows Hogan’s support in the mid-30s, more than 10 points behind Alsobrooks. So far from fielding a competitive showing against a weak candidate, Hogan is wandering into the realm of pain where people use words like “blowout” and “landslide” and (our favorite, watch for this one here when he loses) “massacre.” Alsobrooks is still a weak candidate; the same poll that showed Hogan 11 points behind pegged her support at an anemic 48 percent. (This is in a state where there are more than twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.) So what happened? A couple things. First, Hogan in mid-May vowed that he would be a pro-choice senator, coming out in favor of codifying Roe v. Wade at the federal level. The play here is obvious. The prevailing theory of Republican defeat in 2022 is that the Dobbs decision freaked out fiscally conservative (or at any rate, anti-tax) but socially liberal suburbanites. The first problem is that he had previously touted himself as a pro-life Catholic and as governor made marginal moves to restrict abortion access in the state. The Maryland Democrats have not forgotten. The second problem is that this disavows one of the GOP’s greatest victories at the federal level, and cuts against the party’s current states’ rights approach to the issue. Gratuitously, too—nobody is very worried that abortion is about to be banned in Maryland.  Second, Hogan vocally repudiated Trump’s peace overtures, saying that he has “no interest” in an endorsement after the former president had said he would like to see Hogan win his race. The reasoning is analogous—the theory is that the Trump name is poison in the suburbs, so running away from it is the thing to do. This is a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach. Trump is at the top of the party’s ticket, whether you like it or not; while the Maryland GOP relies on swinging suburbanites, the party’s rural bloc is all in on Trump. Your humble correspondent lives in the country. Outside the teeming college-town metropole of our county seat, the political (and physical) landscape is indistinguishable from the Pennsylvania exurbs that carried Trump to the presidency. These voters are the reason the GOP gubernatorial candidate in 2020 was a hardline lawyer involved in the former president’s election-fraud suits rather than Hogan’s anointed successor; they are a plurality of the state’s actual Republican base, such as it is. With a Trump endorsement, we suspect they would have held their nose to vote for Hogan (“the bald freak,” in local parlance). Without it—well, spite is a powerful thing. For the GOP to win statewide office, you need all those voters, as well as a share of the suburbs.  Hogan has tacked to the center and overshot. A voter may reasonably ask, If the Republican candidate is at war with the party leadership and has repudiated a huge part of the national party’s successes and current program, why not just vote for the Democrat?  Why not, indeed. A Republican cannot win by being Democrat Lite; there is a difference between moderating and pandering. The modal American voter isn’t infinitely wise, but he isn’t hopelessly dumb, either. He would rather vote for the real McCoy than a red carbon copy of the other guy—or sit it out. Trump’s 2024 campaign has been a canny, almost Nixonian study in balancing moderation and differentiation. On the other hand, Hogan appears to be making a beeline for the ash-heap with John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. The post Hogan Is Blowing the Maryland Senate Race appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Overturning Chevron May Prove Pyrrhic Does Loper bring the administrative state to heel, or just empower lawyers? Credit: Konstantin L The Supreme Court’s term has ended, as it often does, with a bang—or series of bangs. The Court set off legal fireworks on many fronts, but the most enduringly significant decision handed down is probably Loper v. Raimondo. In that case, the Court overruled its 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which had established the legal doctrine that came to be known as “Chevron deference.” Under this doctrine, courts were required to defer to a federal administrative agency’s interpretation of the statutory law it enforces whenever a statute is sufficiently ambiguous—even if a court might have interpreted the statute differently.  This effectively ceded enormous amounts of power to the administrative state, leaving ordinary citizens with little recourse to challenge the legal interpretations of the countless agencies that wield enormous power over their lives and livelihoods. Given the size and scope of the modern administrative state, this directly undermines the fundamental principle of republican government: consent of the governed.  At issue in Loper was whether or not the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service had overstepped its legal authority in imposing significant monitoring costs on fishermen. The Biden administration defended deference to the regulating agency on the basis of the agency’s purported expertise. The fishermen, by contrast, argued that Congress has been incentivized by Chevron deference to do far less than is constitutionally required, instead delegating to administrative agencies the power to rule by fiat rather than law. The Court accepted this argument and overturned Chevron. It did so partly on the basis of the inherent judicial authority to interpret laws in the “Cases” and “Controversies” explicitly contemplated by the Constitution, and partly on the basis of the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which was passed to check the “zeal” of New Deal administrative agencies that led them to “excesses” beyond the four corners of the laws that gave them life. Chevron deference, the Court said in Loper, was directly contrary to the APA. Statutory ambiguities can no longer be read as implicit and broad delegations to administrative agencies. According to Chief Justice John Roberts, “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority….courts need not and under the APA may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.”  In dissent, Associate Justice Elena Kagan asked, “Who should give content to a statute when Congress’s instructions have run out? Should it be a court? Or should it be the agency Congress has charged with administering the statute? The answer Chevron gives is that it should usually be the agency, within the bounds of reasonableness.” In hemming in the relatively unchecked power of federal bureaucrats, the decision in Loper has long been on the wish list of conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians alike. And, indeed, it’s not hard to imagine benefits flowing directly from the decision, in the form of heightened judicial oversight of the administrative state. But it’s equally easy to imagine the decision delivering far less than many hope, and even masking and ultimately accelerating progressivism’s long march through our institutions. Conservatives must be careful what they wish for.  Few know the story of how we got to Chevron and why many conservatives, including the likes of the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, initially embraced it. Since the advent of the modern administrative state, presidents, Congress, the courts, and agencies themselves have tussled over who controls it, and the extent to which it must be accountable to the American people. FDR himself, contrary to many early progressives, came to have doubts about the independence of “the headless fourth branch of government.”  As the 20th century wore on, both liberals and conservatives increasingly agreed on the necessity to control this fourth branch, albeit for different reasons. By the 1960s, liberals became suspicious of what they saw as a captured technocratic state operating without popular or judicial controls. They sought to enable interest groups, acting through courts, to control the levers of administrative power in pursuit of a variety of newly-fashioned social, political, economic, and environmental objectives. They often sued not simply to stop government action, but to demand it, in accordance with what they claimed were statutory objectives or constitutional mandates. In this endeavor, they relied on increasingly sympathetic federal courts staffed by progressive jurists to do their bidding. Through a variety of mechanisms, including loosened standing requirements and novel due process rulings, courts began to direct the organs of the administrative state to pursue progressive policy objectives.  Meanwhile, the Nixon administration, equally suspicious of administrative independence, sought to re-politicize the massive New Deal/Great Society federal Leviathan. Nixon’s goal was to hold it accountable, through the office of the president, to the wishes of the American people. He was often stymied by the shift in the balance of power away from executive agencies to even more unaccountable federal courts. In a sense, both liberals and conservatives attempted to affect what they understood to be a “democratization” of the administrative state, each having lost the early progressives’ faith in apolitical “expertise.” By the time the Chevron case was decided during the Reagan administration, many conservatives were fully on board with having courts step back from meddling in what they understood to be executive affairs. Progressive courts had hardly proved to be allies in reining in non-consensual administrative power.  As Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch points out in a footnote to Loper,  It should be recalled that, when Justice Scalia launched the Chevron revolution, there were many judges who “abhor[red] . . . ‘plain meaning’” and preferred instead to elevate “legislative history” and their own curated accounts of a law’s “purpose[s]” over enacted statutory text…Chevron, he predicted, would provide a new guardrail against that practice…As the Justice’s later writings show, he had the right diagnosis, just the wrong cure. The answer for judges eliding statutory terms is not deference to agencies that may seek to do the same, but a demand that all return to a more faithful adherence to the written law. That was, of course, another project Justice Scalia championed. And as we like to say, “we’re all textualists now.” But are we all textualists now? Conservatives should be cautious about embracing the shift to judicial superintendence over administration that Loper demands. It might well have the effect of preventing salutary politicization of such decision making by future conservative administrations confronting an even more progressive judiciary. One of the effects of overturning Chevron will be to shift even more power toward lawyers within the administrative state, rather than political officers. Over much of the last century, courts have routinely proved to be as non-deferential to conservative preferences as they have to the text of the Constitution itself. As conservatives should know—though many have forgotten the lesson—the most important question is not who wields power, but how much power is wielded. The goal of conservatives should be to reduce the size and scope of unaccountable bureaucracy, not celebrate who or what controls it. The fat lady that is the administrative state has not yet begun to sing. The post Overturning Chevron May Prove Pyrrhic appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Democrats Flee A Ship Named Democracy Debate debacle rattles the left. Under President Joe Biden’s leadership, the Democrats have cast the presidential election as a fight for democracy. How fitting then that a critical mass of Democrats are now contemplating jettisoning Biden, the winner of all the Democratic primaries, as the nominee and replacing him with someone who did not run and received as few as zero votes. All because they fear he will lose a democratic election in four months to former President Donald Trump. Biden himself professes to be upset that the Supreme Court made it more likely that the voters determine Trump’s fitness to serve another term rather than another court proceeding, despite saying that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 were apparent to anyone watching. Now Biden himself could be denied an opportunity to face the voters by the same Democratic bigwigs who helped clear the primary field for him, if they can persuade him to drop out or incite a big enough mutiny among the Democratic convention delegates, more than 90 percent of whom are committed to him. The runner-up in the Democratic primaries was “uncommitted.” The modern primary process is a relatively recent phenomenon, to be sure. Plenty of great presidents, from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower, preceded it. But none of them were pushing for the abolition of the Electoral College, the legislative filibuster, or the Senate itself on democratic grounds, as can be said of many Democrats pushing for a return to the smoke-filled room. If Democrats have their druthers, they would also dislodge Vice President Kamala Harris, who at least won the 2020 election alongside Biden, and replace her with a swing state-friendly ticket. But James Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat and Congressional Black Caucus grandee who rescued Biden’s candidacy four years ago, has already signaled that is a nonstarter. It is not clear that anyone else could directly inherit and control Biden’s campaign cash, which is imperative now that Trump has picked up the fundraising pace. As Democrats try to gently escort Biden into the good night now that he has apparently outlived his usefulness, leaked polling data from the Democratic firm OpenLabs purportedly shows Trump leading in the battlegrounds and gaining ground rapidly in the toss-up and heretofore reach states. This is consistent with what the post-debate national polling is showing and would endanger down-ballot Democrats. Thus the Democrats are starting to flee the sinking ship. For the good of democracy, of course. Which suddenly might be fine after all!  “Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that,” Trump-district Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) wrote in a remarkable op-ed. “Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system.” Democrats lost Golden’s district, good for one electoral vote, in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Polls now show Biden could possibly lose Maine statewide.  In the days leading up to the Biden debate disaster that suddenly made presidential decrepitude noticeable in polite company again, Democrats were focused on their other core issue for the 2024 election: the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, handed down two years ago. The court’s majority decided that abortion policy should be decided democratically rather than by judicial fiat for the first time in nearly a half century, without imposing its own preferences on the whole country. The Democrats’ anti-Dobbs fervor sits uneasily alongside their democracy push.  Of course, you can object to human rights issues being settled by majority vote, whether nationally or in the states, even if we disagree about the precise human rights question at stake. The Supreme Court’s junking of Chevron deference is really primarily about restoring power to the elected legislative branch that had gradually been taken by unelected bureaucrats. As was the case with Dobbs, it is not always clear that the legislators will use this power wisely or that Republicans in particular are prepared to grapple with all the thorny issues involved. But it is their duty and one of the reasons Congress has devolved into a clown show in the first place is that for the rank-and-file, lawmaking is now a secondary concern to lawmaking. The Constitution gives them better things to do. It’s true that there is more to a free and democratic society, much less a constitutional republic, than conducting elections. We learned that, or at least should have, with the folly of Iraq and Hamas’ participation in that supposed tidal wave of democracy in Gaza during that time period. But non-Democrats can be forgiven for wondering if the party’s commitment to the small-d variety is contingent upon the outcome. As one Joe Biden once put it, “You can’t love your country only when you win.” The post Democrats Flee A Ship Named Democracy appeared first on The American Conservative.

A sound that's all too familiar. The post The British band John Lydon never liked: “I like them as chaps, I hate their music” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Joe Biden just suffered through, politically speaking, the worst stretch of his presidency. The silver lining? Unlike most Democrats, he quickly forgets that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. Yesterday, reporters salted their questions to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre with such words as “disabled,” “Alzheimer’s,” and “dementia.” Jean-Pierre’s rote response to the barrage? “We all have bad nights.” (READ MORE: The Fall of Biden Portends Real Danger) Also on Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first Democratic Party officeholder of note to call on Joe Biden to withdraw from the race. Given donor unrest and the New York Times and other media outlets issuing the same demand, one imagines the pressure is building. Democrats Don’t Like Presidential Immunity On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court upended the lawfare strategy intended to prevent Donald Trump from winning back the presidency. The 6-3 Trump v. the United States decision favored the former president over the government. Just as the president cannot arrest members of Congress or the Supreme Court for decisions within the context of their jobs that displease, the executive branch cannot do the same to a former president — or maybe in Venezuela they can, but not in the United States. (READ MORE: Beware of AI’s Influence on the Election) “Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decisionmaking is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions,” the court ruled, “that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct.” It outraged the court’s most partisan member. Sonia Sotomayor carted out such words as “mockery,” “baseless” “nonsensical,” “illogical,” “misguided,” “draconian,” “troubling,” “unjustifiable,” and “ahistorical” to describe the decision supported by a majority of her colleagues. The level of vitriol suggests that Sotomayor, whose retirement plans perhaps become accelerated by the prospect of a Trump presidency, took it all very personally. The Supreme Court Defends Its Turf A decision receiving less attention from partisans likely impacts policy to a far greater degree came down on Friday. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the high court decided — again in a 6-3 decision authored by the chief justice — that the domain of interpreting law belongs to the courts and not unelected administrators within the executive branch. This overturned the Chevron doctrine, which, as Friday’s majority opinion pointed out, “the Court did not at first treat … as the watershed decision it was fated to become.” Unlike Congress, The Supreme Court generally dislikes when other branches usurp its role. When conservatives established a quasi-court to combat Communism in the postwar years called the Subversive Activities Control Board, the Supreme Court, for reasons beyond those articulated in Loper, eventually stripped it of its power. So, Friday’s decision seems less an ideological fusillade than a defensive turf-war maneuver undertaken by one branch against the encroachment of another. As Chief Justice Roberts says in the court’s opinion, “Chevron was a judicial invention that required judges to disregard their statutory duties.” (READ MORE: Dr. Jill Biden: Perfect Wife Amid the Panic of 2024) Just as Trump v. United States cuts off the left’s end-around on elections, Loper cuts off the left’s end-around on unfriendly legislatures and courts. What is the court’s message common to both decisions? Respect the process of representative democracy. That seems something beyond not Joe Biden but the panel of relatives and flunkeys who are really the president. According to a CBS News poll, nearly three-fourths of the country does not believe Joe Biden possesses the mental and cognitive health to serve as president. He nevertheless continues his run for a second term that ends with him as an 86-year-old man. The soundbite of the president putting a “Look, if we finally beat Medicare” exclamation point on a nonsensical, disjointed rant, the image of him staring glassy-eyed, almost catatonically, at the floor as his opponent spoke, and so much more from last Thursday amounts to undoable damage. When the president spoke energetically in North Carolina on Friday, everybody watching grasped that he read from a teleprompter. When he delivered a four-minute speech sans questions on Monday night, everyone watching understood they glimpsed a human marionette. The news may keep getting worse. The DEI mentality that compelled Biden to choose Kamala Harris hamstrings Democrats should they seek to leapfrog her in replacing Biden. Doing so possibly further demoralizes key Democratic Party constituencies. Not doing so replaces one unpopular old politician with another, possibly less popular, younger one. Joe Biden’s presidency implodes. Does he even know it? The post The Worst Week in Memory for Democrats Who Can Remember appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

You’re likely to hear a great deal more about the 25th Amendment as the political maneuvering builds around the addled-but-stubbornly-hanging-on Joe Biden and his increasingly futile efforts at re-election. The 25th (25A) is the constitutional amendment governing the disposition of a president who is no longer physically able to discharge his duties. Here’s what it says: Section 1 In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. Section 2 Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. Section 3 Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. Section 4 Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office. Should you get familiar with the 25th Amendment (we’ll call it 25A from here on in the interest of brevity) as much more than an academic foray into American civics? Perhaps not. But it’s going to become relevant, likely after the Fourth of July. We Should Use 25A to Declare Biden Unfit. But Democrats Won’t. That’s because Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) dropped a resolution on the floor of the House of Representatives on Friday calling upon Vice President Kamala Harris to convene the Biden administration cabinet for a vote to declare Biden unfit. BREAKING Rep. Roy files resolution to urge VP Harris to convene the Cabinet and declare President Biden unable to carry out his duties as Commander-in-Chief pic.twitter.com/vuJJU8iKsD — Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) June 28, 2024 In this, Roy has the full support of House Speaker Mike Johnson: Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that President Joe Biden’s Cabinet should discuss invoking the 25th Amendment in the wake of a politically disastrous debate that compounded age and acuity questions. Johnson, asked about calls from within his own conference for the amendment to be invoked, said that “there’s a lot of people asking about” it, but that it was up to members of Biden’s Cabinet. “I would ask the Cabinet members to search their hearts. … And we hope that they will do their duty, as we all seek to do our duty to do best by the American people. These are fateful moments,” Johnson told reporters. Pressed if he was saying he believed the 25th Amendment should be invoked, he added: “If I were in the Cabinet … I would be having that discussion with my colleagues at the Cabinet level. I would. … We’ll see what action they take. It’s a serious situation.” Will the Biden cabinet depose their president? No. They won’t do it over the Fourth of July holiday, they won’t do it next week, they won’t do it this month. They won’t do it. (READ MORE: Biden Voters Get the Red Pill) You will not get anywhere asking Jennifer Granholm, Pete Buttigieg, Alejandro Mayorkas, Lloyd Austin, Antony Blinken, Xavier Becerra, and the rest of Biden’s collection of otherwise unwanted accomplices to depose the man who made them cabinet secretaries. In truth, these people have been central to maintaining the fraud of Biden’s mental competence for the last four years. For them to turn on Biden now is not going to be in their interests. Especially when to do so would be to make Kamala Harris the acting president and, most likely, Biden’s successor as the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Nobody in the Democrat Party, save for its black female voters without which the Democrats can’t win elections, wants Harris atop the ticket. It might be horrifically dangerous to shut Harris out of the 2024 electoral equation, but virtually everyone in that party admits it’s even worse with her as the standard bearer. Does anybody think this is sellable to the American public? Kamala Harris: “Yeah girl, I’m out here in these streets… The majority of us believe in freedom and equality, but these extremists, as they say, they not like us.” This is so bad…. pic.twitter.com/1PNrigFmof — ALX (@alx) July 1, 2024 So no, they’re not going to move a 25A process to get rid of Biden. This is precisely why Johnson and Roy shouldn’t let this go. 25A should be all the House talks about between now and Labor Day. It should be holding hearing after hearing on Biden’s mental competence, every member of that cabinet ought to be dragged in front of House committees and grilled about Biden’s fitness, and vote after vote should be taken on resolution after resolution demanding that Biden be given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, the standard test for dementia. Make the 25A question the only one of any importance in Washington, D.C., from now until September. Democrats Should Pay for the Grand Fraud They Subjected Us To By establishing that backdrop, Johnson and the House can and should lean in, as heavily as possible, to the question of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s “inherent contempt” of Congress for having refused to provide the tapes of Biden’s deposition by special counsel Robert Hur. That’s the deposition after which Hur said Biden was essentially unfit to stand trial on charges of misuse of classified documents, and a transcript of it was released which many believe was sanitized for public consumption (even though it contained many damaging insights into Biden’s less-than-standard cognition). (READ MORE: Democrats Are Publicly Defecting) Garland’s resistance to releasing the transcript is purely political — in light of Thursday’s debate debacle, it paints the attorney general as part of the cabal gaslighting the American people over Biden’s cognition. That debate performance strengthens the case for the House to send its sergeant-at-arms to fetch the Attorney General and stash him in the Capitol basement until he turns loose the Hur audio. Let’s be blunt here: Garland and the rest of the Biden cabinet have to be held to account for their role in hiding the truth about Joe Biden from the American people. Thanks to Biden’s clear mental decline, which he isn’t going to recover from and which his campaign co-chair, failed New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, stupidly insists on continuing to aggressively showcase to the American people, the grand fraud they’ve subjected us to will make congressional action and oversight increasingly relevant and urgent. Maybe it’s political, but it’s also a pristine example of Congress fulfilling its function of oversight of the executive branch, something Congress has done a lousy job of for a very long time. Perhaps the House ought to be subpoenaing all recordings and transcripts of Biden’s meetings with cabinet secretaries and others, and then subpoenaing all of those officials to testify at House hearings as to the information contained in those recordings. Make them defend Joe Biden’s performance with specificity. And if any of them are caught in lies, vote them in contempt of Congress. Perhaps even inherent contempt, complete with a trip to the Capitol basement. Let Jennifer Rubin lose what’s left of her mind over that. (READ MORE from Scott McKay: That Debate Might Be the End of the Road for … Barack Obama) Let’s remember that Joe Biden isn’t the disease. He’s merely a symptom. Biden is a puppet of a cabal, probably headed by Barack Obama, which has been vigorously attacking America as founded for at least the past 16 years. They go on about “Our Democracy,” but they’ve corrupted and destroyed practically every significant cultural, political, and even to an extent economic, institution they’ve touched. Clearly, there has been a conspiracy within the Biden White House and administration to hide his cognitive condition from the American people. So let’s smoke this conspiracy out. Let’s put the Biden cabinet on the grill and watch them cook. It’s the least they deserve after what they’ve put us through. The post 25A All Of A Sudden Becomes Very Good Politics appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.