Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. Let’s get into it.

One Big Idea: The electability conversation we should be having

Here’s something you wouldn’t know from most of the coverage of this year’s midterm elections: The biggest electability problem belongs to President Donald Trump and the Republicans. 

GOP candidates in the midterm elections must contend with defending an unpopular president leading an unpopular war, not to mention $4 gas (if they’re lucky). The administration has upset its own base at various moments — first tariffs, then the release of the Epstein files, now a worsening war — and the party has followed Trump into backing scandal-plagued candidates in the general election, including Ken Paxton in Texas and Max Miller in Ohio. To top things off, more than six years after the January 6 insurrection, any Republican who wants to remain in the president’s good standing cannot acknowledge the fact that he lost the 2020 election, an issue that helped cost the party major races in 2022 and could still bite in 2026. 

Tom Tiffany, the Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin, has stood side by side with Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as my colleague Zack Beauchamp wrote about recently. Just this weekend, Tiffany said he did not regret his efforts at all, even after events like the Jan. 6 insurrection. And Trump has done nothing to help candidates move past these concerns; his pardons for January 6 defendants and (so-far failed) attempts at creating a government fund for payouts have kept the issue fresh.

Yet still, the focus of Politics World (and to some extent this Substack) has often been the story that’s more dynamic: the changing nature of the Democratic Party. In doing so, “electability” has become synonymous with the ideological battle between moderates and progressives, and specifically the idea that left-wing candidates, in particular, are electoral underperformers.  

Take the latest edition of the New York Times political newsletter by chief polling correspondent Nate Cohn, which asks, “Could El-Sayed Cost Democrats Michigan?”

These candidates of the activist left often seem to fare much worse than mainstream progressives, even though they may not be very different on the issues. The members of Justice Democrats, which includes the Squad and many of their congressional allies, fare about five points worse than other Democrats. Elizabeth Warren, who might count as part of that broader group of activist-backed progressives who aren’t democratic socialist, has underperformed the Democratic baseline in Massachusetts by as much as 10 points on net.

On one hand, Cohn’s point is real — there is a trend of electoral underperformance among the most activist progressives worth analyzing. But the sample size is small (there are only nine members of Justice Democrats) and there are some complicating factors — mainly that the most progressive candidates often compete in uber-blue areas, so their organizing efforts are more focused on the primary than the general. 

There is also the reality of identity: Candidates of the left are often from a marginalized background — a woman, a person of color, maybe even both — and while the piece doesn’t mention the reality of things like racism, sexism, and (especially lately) Islamophobia, I’d argue that it’s a force multiplier in these conversations about progressive electability. What was Andrew Cuomo’s closing message against Zohran Mamdani if not dripping in Islamophobia? Prominent “Squad” members like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib continuously face even uglier rhetoric and conspiracy theories, and few politicians in America get more gendered attacks than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Would Democrats have been so willing to discard Francesca Hong as unserious if she weren’t a woman?  

These are ultimately questions batted around between political insiders that will be resolved in November, but the conversation also does the work of flattening just how unpopular Trump’s second-term MAGA agenda has been. That Democrats have a shot at retaking the House — much less the Senate — seemed far from certain in early 2025, considering the tough election map and partisan gerrymandering advantages. The president has upended the landscape through his sheer unwillingness to moderate, and there are no signs he’s hit his electoral floor. 

As we turn to November, it’s important for political coverage to reflect the main character of these elections (Trump). The president’s drag on electability should be front and center, with Republican candidates pressed about the administration’s actual policy at least as much as Democrats have been asked about Zohran Mamdani or Hasan Piker. Whichever party wins control of Congress, Trump will have far more power come January 2027 than any of the Democratic factions we’re discussing.

This is not to say we should “ignore the polls” — Trump’s plummeting approval ratings and voter discontent with issues like Iran and inflation are also derived from surveys, after all. But, as we saw in some surprising results in primaries this month in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, the polling side of the midterms should also not be treated as predictive gospel — and that goes double for platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket that have become integrated into mainstream media coverage and narrative-setting platforms like X. I’d also add that only bettors care about the spread — to most voters, who won is all that matters. 

Cohn and other top polling analysts like Nate Silver acknowledge the limits of predictive certainty in their writing, of course, and discuss Trump as well. But I do worry whether focusing on these kinds of small-bore distinctions between candidates risks getting ahead of things, especially after the primaries — a time when voters do consider electability as a factor — are over. 

It reminds me a bit of 2016, when the poll-driven anticipation of a Hillary Clinton victory pushed political coverage beyond the actual questions facing the public at the moment. That year, it sometimes felt like the press wanted a head start on holding Future President Hillary accountable, which presented a false balance between her inconsistencies and Trump’s overt extremism that — in my opinion — helped change the expected result in the process. 

This November, there’s a risk of repeating the same cycle. And in overfocusing on the supposed unelectability of the progressive left, we underplay the central story of this midterms: the massive delta between the actions of this administration and the voting public, and whether Republicans can either find a way to reframe that agenda or push Americans to weigh other issues instead. That’s what this election will be about. 

Last month, I was re-reminded of all this after reporting for a recent episode on gas prices for America, Actually. We stood outside of a Speedway in Allentown, Pennsylvania  — the heart of the state’s Seventh Congressional District, a key battleground in the midterms — and asked people about the most important issues for them heading into the general election. There, it was clear that people were mostly wrestling with their own financial struggles, but also their feelings about Trump, and the gap between his promised priorities on the campaign trail and the current reality. 

“I voted for him with his promises to the American people. And I think he’s let us down,” one Allen voter told me in our episode. I asked what the biggest broken promise was. “The prices…it’s skyrocketed. … My main objective is a roof over our head, pay our bills, and then what’s left? There’s hardly anything left.”

So consider this a coverage corrective. I have tracked the changes within the Democratic Party in our election coverage (and will continue to!), but I think this portion of the calendar requires us to update our language. The most toxic and consequential bromance in politics isn’t between a mayor and a Twitch streamer — it’s between the president and the party he’s reshaped in his image. 

What I’m hearing

This week, we’re back in Michigan! I asked a few questions to Orlando Bailey, executive director at Outlier Media, the Detroit-based newsroom that focuses on finding innovative stories in Black communities and beyond. ​​He is also the co-founder of the award-winning podcast, Authentically Detroit, and a regular contributor to WDIV-TV and Detroit PBS. 

Abdul El-Sayed will likely be the most-watched Senate race in the country this fall, after he survived a bruising primary against Haley Stevens. What’s one thing about that campaign you’ve seen on the ground that’s been less visible in the national coverage? 

The national conversation has largely focused on two fronts: first, trying to understand and define the values of the Democratic Socialists of America while assigning El-Sayed to that wing of the Democratic Party — a label he rejects, noting that he considers himself a “capitalist.” Second, his call for the United States to stop funding weapons for Israel in its current conflict with Hamas, a position that has also been incorrectly conflated with holding antisemitic views. 

What has been less visible in the coverage I’ve seen on the ground is the multiracial, multigenerational progressive coalition across the state that is supporting El-Sayed because they feel aligned with his message. I was on the west side of the state in Saugatuck, and my waitress was wearing an Abdul for Senate button. That surprised me because Allegan County tends to be more conservative. His lawn signs were everywhere, too. His message is connecting in ways I didn’t expect, and in places I didn’t expect.   

Part of the reason the margins were closer than expected is that progressive candidates still seem to lag behind moderate Democrats in Black communities. Why do you think some Black Democrats preferred Stevens to El-Sayed — and can he improve with those voters ahead of the general? 

I always take polls with a grain of salt, of course. I knew he wasn’t going to win the primary by double digits based on what I had been watching play out on the ground and online. El-Sayed actually lost Detroit to Stevens. I want to draw a distinction between Detroit’s large Black population and the Black electorate — the two are not synonymous. Black voters are still holding his feet to the fire over his participation in the Uncommitted movement during the last Democratic presidential primary, although he eventually came around to support Vice President Harris’ bid for office. Harris also endorsed him [after] the most recent primary.

There’s another issue, and I’ll say the quiet part out loud: There is a fraught relationship between Black communities and Arab American communities in southeastern Michigan. There is a history of conflict and mistrust between the two. Arab Americans own many of the commercial establishments that Black residents frequent, and tensions can reach a boiling point when people feel surveilled, cheated, or otherwise mistreated. Those tensions have, at times, escalated into violence, including incidents involving gas stations. El-Sayed is now being forced to have that hard conversation. He will also have to localize his policy priorities and explain plainly to people who are struggling how his agenda will affect their bottom lines.

I’ve found the Donavan McKinney race interesting. He’s a Black candidate near Detroit associated with DSA, and he’s maybe flown under the national radar. Tell me about McKinney and his race? 

McKinney started as a community organizer on Detroit’s east side, which is where I’m from. He was elected to the state House in November 2024 and has aligned himself with the progressive caucus in Lansing. He regularly holds town halls in his district and shows up when residents and advocates call on him. 

A little bit of history: Charles Diggs was first elected to Congress in 1954, and until Shri Thanedar’s election in 2022 — after the independent redistricting commission redrew the congressional maps — Detroit had always had Black representation in Congress. Since then, there has been a longing for Black representation to return to Detroit, and McKinney proved to be the right candidate at the right time. What’s interesting is that he and El-Sayed agree on a lot, but El-Sayed didn’t win Detroit. 

The question of whether President Donald Trump may, without seeking permission from Congress, demolish much of the White House and replace it with his own projects is now before the Supreme Court. 

Last fall, construction crews acting under Trump’s orders abruptly tore down the East Wing of the White House, the first step in Trump’s plan to replace the historic building with an enormous ballroom. A conservationist organization, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, soon sued to stop the construction on the ballroom in a case that is still ongoing. Lower courts have thus far agreed with this plaintiff that the ballroom is illegal. 

Last week, Trump formally asked the justices to greenlight his ballroom while the challenge works its way through lower courts. The case is known as National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

Trump’s claim that he may tear down large sections of the White House and replace them with the ballroom is not supported by law. A federal statute provides that “a building or structure shall not be erected on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.” Although Trump’s lawyers claimed that two separate statutes allow him to get around this provision, the federal appeals court that heard National Park Service thoroughly dismantled that claim in a 101-page opinion. 

That said, the Court could potentially hand Trump a victory by prohibiting anyone from bringing a lawsuit against his ballroom to begin with. Should this argument succeed, it could have major ramifications for a wide range of laws that seek to conserve environmental resources or preserve sacred or historical sites. 

Under current law, a plaintiff who alleges that a defendant’s actions will illegally damage such a site may file a federal lawsuit so long as they can demonstrate that they plan to visit the site in the near future and will find the site less attractive if it is altered. This is exactly what happened in National Park Service: A member of a conservationist group — the National Trust for Historic Preservation — who often went by the White House said the new construction would diminish the beauty of the site.

More broadly, the Court has long held that plaintiffs who wish to observe something beautiful may often sue to enforce environmental statutes that seek to preserve that beauty. As the Court said in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992), a seminal case that is often cited because it laid out limits on who is allowed to bring federal lawsuits, “the desire to use or observe an animal species, even for purely esthetic purposes, is undeniably a cognizable interest” that can be asserted in federal court.

Trump’s brief, however, rejects this longstanding rule. Without it, numerous environmental, conservationist, and historical preservation laws could effectively cease to function, because no one would be able to file a lawsuit enforcing them.

The stakes in National Park Service, in other words, are far greater than whether Trump can replace the East Wing with an eyesore. And they are even greater than the question of whether Trump can remake one of America’s most cherished landmarks without congressional authorization. If Trump prevails in National Park Service, he could fundamentally wound America’s environmental protection regime in the process.

Trump’s ballroom is illegal

Recall that federal law bars new construction on federal lands within the District of Columbia “without express authority of Congress.” So, unless there is some existing statute that allows Trump’s ballroom to move forward, the ballroom is illegal.

But Trump cited no such law in his brief. Instead, he relied on two statutes that might be read to authorize parts of what Trump needs permission to do.

The first is a provision that permits Congress to appropriate money that the president may use to pay for “the care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting (including electric power and fixtures) of the Executive Residence at the White House.” But, as the appeals court that ruled against Trump explained, there are numerous reasons why this statute cannot be read to permit the ballroom. 

The most straightforward reason is that Congress only gave the president a $2.475 million budget to spend under this statute. But Trump’s lawyers claimed this project will be funded by “approximately $400 million in private donations.” So, even if Trump’s ballroom counts as an “alteration” or “improvement” of the existing “Executive Residence at the White House” — and all three of these points are contested — Trump cannot use his White House maintenance budget to fund a $400 million project.

To get around this problem, Trump’s lawyers argued that the National Park Service is allowed to accept private donations, so it can use donated money to build the ballroom.

But, while it is true that the Park Service may accept donated funds, that doesn’t mean that it can use these funds to tear down an historic federal building and replace it with something completely different. The relevant federal law permits the Park Service to “promote and regulate the use of the National Park System by means and measures that conform to the fundamental purpose of the System units, which purpose is to conserve the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life in the System units and to provide for the enjoyment of the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

This law could not be clearer that it calls on the Park Service to “conserve” historic objects such as the East Wing and to leave them “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” So, if anything, this law prohibits Trump from using Park Service funds to build his ballroom. Tearing down an historical structure and replacing it with a different, much larger, and architecturally distinct structure is the opposite of conservation.

Still, there’s one big reason why Trump’s argument might win over the justices anyway. According to Trump’s brief in the case, the ballroom will sit on top of an enormous bunker that extends five stories underground and that includes “bomb shelters,” “secret military structures and equipment,” and “state of the art hospital and medical facilities.” The lower courts have already permitted construction on this bunker to continue; its legality isn’t before the justices. 

Trump’s lawyers’ attempt to characterize the ballroom as part of what their brief calls an “integrated military complex” is savvy, as the courts often defer to the other branches on questions of national security. And Trump’s Justice Department also makes an argument that plausibly could persuade this Supreme Court to rule in Trump’s favor despite the fact that the ballroom has no legal support. 

The most significant legal issue in National Park Service is whether anyone is allowed to sue in order to challenge the ballroom

As a general rule, no one is allowed to file a federal lawsuit unless they have been injured in some way by the defendant that they are suing; this requirement is known as “standing.” But the Court has long held that plaintiffs may challenge illegal practices that might alter the aesthetic beauty of a site that is protected by law. As the Court said in Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (2000), “environmental plaintiffs adequately allege injury in fact when they aver that they use the affected area and are persons ‘for whom the aesthetic and recreational values of the area will be lessened’ by the challenged activity.’”

Friends of the Earth does not permit literally anyone to challenge any alteration to protected lands or buildings. Such a plaintiff only has standing if they can show that they will visit the site at issue in their lawsuit and that the planned alterations to that site will actually reduce their aesthetic enjoyment of it — but that’s enough.

The plaintiff in National Park Service is a conservationist organization whose members include a professor emerita of architectural history who said that she travels “to the White House neighborhood frequently”; that she “regularly view[s] the White House”; and that she believes that Trump’s proposed ballroom would render the White House less attractive because it would “diminish the primacy of the White House,” because “no longer would the eye be drawn to the jewel of the building at the center,” aka the residential section of the White House complex.

Thus, because organizations are typically allowed to sue on behalf of their members, this conservationist group has standing. They have at least one member who clears the low bar the Court set in Friends of the Earth.

Trump’s brief, however, dismissed this “seeing-is-standing theory,” claiming that the professor’s mere discomfort, produced by “‘observation of conduct” that she disagreed with is “not an injury sufficient to confer standing.” Trump, in other words, is effectively asking the Court to overrule Friends of the Earth, along with many other cases establishing that plaintiffs may often sue over aesthetic injuries.

If that gambit succeeds, the consequences for conservationist laws of all kinds would likely be catastrophic. As the appeals court explained, Trump’s “cramped standing theory would deem no one injured by a decision to raze the Statue of Liberty, to obscure the names on the Vietnam War Memorial, or to install a political billboard atop Mount Rushmore.” It could also prevent private lawsuits against a company that dumps foul-smelling chemicals in a national park.

The whole point of many environmental and historical preservation laws is to ensure that something that Congress believes is beautiful will remain beautiful. If no plaintiff can assert an aesthetic injury, that means that laws intended to preserve pristine, sacred, or historical sites will go unenforced — and may become completely unenforceable.

So, the stakes in National Park Service are quite high. While Trump’s statutory arguments are meritless, this case is potentially an existential threat to numerous environmental laws. The question is whether the justices will be persuaded by some combination of Trump’s attacks on Friends of the Earth and his allusions to national security to upend many decades of established law.

Some professors might recoil at the idea of looking at their students’ dating app profiles. Not Gurit Birnbaum, a professor of psychology at Reichman University. She saw it as an opportunity. 

Some of the young people in Birnbaum’s classes, as well as close friends, asked for her advice and turned their phones over to her. After poring over their bios and photos, she had some opinions. 

What stood out were a few commonalities in how they presented themselves to potential partners: “Some profiles revealed almost nothing, others revealed too much. Some relied heavily on sexualized images, while many simply blended into a sea of interchangeable, generic profiles,” Birnbaum told Vox in an email. Many people seemed unsure of how to uniquely introduce themselves, instead offering a laundry list of qualities. She wondered which profiles sparked genuine interest and what characteristics these singles successfully transmitted. So she decided to research what more dating app users choose to reveal about themselves and how they go about it.

The results of those studies allowed Birnbaum and her collaborators to zero in on a few concrete strategies for crafting a dating profile that is not only authentic, but would get people to swipe right. Her findings, along with those from other researchers, can help everyday singles put their best foot forward. 

“The goal shouldn’t be to turn yourself into a product,” Birnbaum said. “The real challenge is getting the right kind of attention without losing yourself in the process.”

Get creative — but don’t exaggerate

One of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to online dating is that you must impress people and sell yourself, Liesel Sharabi, an associate professor in human communication at Arizona State University, told Vox. That mindset can lead you to present a slightly exaggerated or more idealized version of yourself. “That can be effective for getting a date or starting a conversation, but then by the time you actually end up meeting, it can lead to a lot of disappointment and even feelings that someone’s been misled, even if that’s not actually the case,” Sharabi said.

Instead of embellishing the details of your life, use your creative skills to package reality in an attention-grabbing way. Research shows daters value originality in dating app profiles — it signals intelligence and sense of humor. The profiles that were perceived as original contained vivid descriptions and imagery, metaphors, and frequent uses of adjectives and adverbs. Think: “I’m a star in the kitchen.” (They also contained elements of self-disclosure — more on that later.)

These specifics give daters an opening to start a conversation with you. Instead of simply saying you like running, you can express that same information with a cheeky call to action: “Tell me about your favorite running trails.”

When in doubt, Sharabi said, ask a friend to look over your profile to see if you’re being authentic or bending the truth — and take their feedback seriously.

Tell a story

Birnbaum’s research has shown that narrative presentations — in other words, short stories — are more effective at garnering empathy and interest than a list of likes and dislikes. Storytelling helps people see you as a person rather than a bunch of traits, which encourages perspective-taking and can foster empathy. “Empathy may be less the initial spark of attraction than the bridge from noticing someone to feeling that you might actually connect with them,” she said.

So consider reframing your best qualities in a way where you’re actively doing, experiencing, or reacting to something. In lieu of describing yourself as simply “funny,” Birnbaum suggests something more illustrative like, “I laugh at my own jokes first. It’s a character flaw.” Or instead of “outdoorsy,” try, “Most weekends I disappear into a trail, come back sunburned, and swear I’ll bring more water next time.”

“Those tiny stories bring a person to life in a way that generic descriptions simply don’t,” she said. And avoid using ChatGPT to craft these bios; people can spot AI-generated writing, and no one knows your life better than you do.

Be selective with how much you share

How much you choose to reveal about yourself is an art. Birnbaum found that sharing too little can be a signal you’re not serious about finding a relationship, while exposing too much may be overwhelming to potential dates. “Moderate disclosure seems to strike the right balance: enough information to create trust and a sense of connection, but not so much that curiosity disappears before the first date,” she said.

In the study on originality in dating app profiles, concrete self-disclosures were rated as more original. Think: “I start every day with waffles and ice cream,” over “I’m a foodie.”

Convey your willingness to get to know someone

Research has shown that feeling known by your partner predicts relationship satisfaction. But often, when singles create their dating app profiles, they can be a little too self-centric. You know what you’re looking for in a partner, after all. But it’s also important to communicate that you’d like to get to know someone else. So, how to signal your openness to understanding someone in your dating app profile? 

In one study, Juliana Schroeder, a professor of management of organizations at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, and her co-author found that dating app profiles that attracted the most interest were those who expressed an interest in knowing the person on the other end. In practice, that might look like expressing how you’re a good listener or your curiosity. Something as simple as, “I’m the kind of person who loves to ask questions. Be prepared,” gets the point across.

“Even if it’s something vague and just a signal that you’ll be the kind of person who will actually try to get to know them and try to support them,” Schroeder told Vox. “That’s what I would think people are missing in their profiles, and that’s what the research suggests that they could put in there.”

Use photos to accompany your bio

Photos are often the first thing other daters see on apps, so you’ll want to make sure they’re an accurate representation of you today. Not five years ago. Not with a hat or sunglasses on.

“A picture that would tell me if I show up somewhere, will I be able to recognize them based on the pictures they’re posting?” Sharabi, the human communication professor, said.

Beyond that, pictures can be a means of augmenting or contextualizing the words in your profile. In her research on storytelling in dating app profiles, Birnbaum found that photos that presented people’s lives narratively were more effective at garnering empathy than a random assortment of images. “Rather than posting a collection of disconnected flattering shots, choose attractive but authentic photos that show different facets of your life and, ideally, work together as a coherent slice of life,” she said. Put simply: If you like rock climbing, you may want to include an image of you bouldering at the gym. 

Dating app profiles, if done correctly, can be a savvy way of presenting yourself to other daters. And, as the science shows, there are ways to be a little more strategic at creating them. Just think of your life as a story a potential partner will want to be a part of.

The Republican Party’s supermajority on the Supreme Court was barely a month old when the justices handed down one of the most consequential religion decisions of the last several decades. It was Amy Coney Barrett’s first significant vote as a justice.

The issue in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020) was whether churches and other houses of worship were exempt from Covid-era restrictions on attendance. At the height of the pandemic, New York imposed strict limits on how many people could attend worship services at the same time — a rule that steered straight into the emerging partisan divide over whether pandemic restrictions had gone too far — although these restrictions were actually less stringent than the rules imposed on similar secular venues like theaters and lecture halls. 

Just months earlier, a 5-4 Court had upheld similar restrictions in California, with Republican Chief Justice John Roberts joining the Court’s Democrats. Although Roberts typically votes with his fellow Republicans in religion cases, he worried that the judiciary “lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health” and decide life or death matters like how to halt the spread of Covid. The Court’s other four Republicans dissented, but this was before Barrett joined the Court, so they were still in the minority.

But the new majority’s decision in Roman Catholic Diocese rejected this restrained approach, and the decision fundamentally shifted the Court’s approach to lawsuits seeking religious exemptions from state laws. Before Republicans gained their supermajority on the Court, the justices gave states a fair amount of leeway to navigate the fraught political questions that arise when someone exercises their faith in a way that can harm other people, or limit their legal rights. 

But now the justices typically make these calls themselves, and they usually do so in favor of religious conservatives. As a result, under the current Supreme Court, one of the Constitution’s most difficult balancing acts — the task of weighing when one person’s religious beliefs should overcome another person’s freedoms — has toppled over on the side of religious individuals and groups, often allowing them to violate the freedoms of others. This is especially true when lawsuits pit religious conservatives against people exercising sexual freedoms such as the right to use birth control or to marry a person of the same sex.

Prior to Roman Catholic Diocese, the rule was that religious institutions must comply with state law, so long as the state does not single people of faith out for inferior treatment. If a state closed all venues where people gather in auditorium-like settings, that was considered constitutional, even though some of those venues are churches. The courts would only get involved if a state tried to, say, close mosques but not movie theaters.

But Roman Catholic Diocese effectively ended that regime. The new majority held that churches may only be subject to the least restrictive rules that apply to any secular business, even if that business bears little resemblance to a house of worship. Indeed, Roman Catholic Diocese indicated that churches must be treated the same as outdoor facilities like “camp grounds” or “garages” where the risk of transmission, compared to a church, was minimal.

It was a clear sign of where the Court’s new majority wanted to take its religion cases. Under this majority, lawsuits brought by plaintiffs seeking religious exemptions from the law have largely been used to resolve cultural disputes between Democratic and Republican constituencies in favor of the latter. 

This Court’s religion cases, in other words, fit a pattern that is also found in its decisions on topics as diverse as voting rights, abortion, race, and the question of whether President Donald Trump is subject to US law. The Republican justices seek to advance policy goals that are popular within their political party and unpopular among Democrats, and they aren’t afraid to overrule a wide range of foundational Supreme Court precedents in order to do so.

More broadly, the Court’s new approach to religion threatens to disrupt public schools’ ability to operate, undercut many anti-discrimination laws, and potentially turn every future conflict between cultural liberals and the religious right into a constitutional case that must be resolved by the Supreme Court.

Conflicts between religious and secular visions of America are inevitable under the Constitution

Many of the Supreme Court’s religion cases are driven by two separate clauses in the Constitution that often pull in opposing directions. The First Amendment contains two provisions governing religion, the clause protecting “free exercise” of faith, and a clause prohibiting the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” The first provision guarantees everyone the right to practice their faith, while the latter was historically understood to prohibit the government from trying to advance a particular religious belief.

As the Supreme Court said in 1971, there is an “internal tension” between these two provisions — in part because it is inevitable that the government will make decisions that conflict with many people’s sincere religious beliefs. Taxes fund wars that many Americans believe are sinful. Public schools teach values that may be at odds with what their students hear in their temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques. Not long after Congress prohibited racial discrimination by restaurants in 1964, the owner of a South Carolina barbecue joint claimed that he could not comply because serving Black people violated his white supremacist religion (he lost in the Supreme Court).

Before Roberts was crowned as leader of America’s judiciary, the Court often resolved this tension by deferring to democratically elected officials. The Court permitted states to subsidize religious schools, but did not require it. It gave people who object to laws on religious grounds some exemptions from those laws, but did not allow these exemptions to give religious business owners an unfair advantage against their competitors. As the Court said in Locke v. Davey (2004), there must be some “play in the joints” between the competing values espoused by the Constitution’s two religion clauses.

But the current Court, which often seeks to centralize power within itself, has pushed hard to take away states’ ability to resolve some of these tensions, and instead resolves them itself. Under the old regime, blue states would sometimes operate their schools, or otherwise conduct their affairs, in ways that upset religious conservatives. And that was okay because that’s how things work in a multistate democracy.

This Court’s religion policies are both anti-federalist and anti-democratic. They restrict Colorado’s ability to bar anti-LGBTQ discrimination by religious business owners, and they force Maine to fund religious schools that label gay people “deviants” and “perverted.” These policies seek to impose a red-state vision on all 50 states, and, in some cases, they may go even further than that — requiring the government to subsidize religion in ways that even very conservative states reject. 

The Republican justices, in other words, have taken two vague constitutional provisions that espouse sometimes-conflicting values, and that reasonably can be read in many ways, and used them to impose their own values on the entire nation. The primary effects of these decisions are twofold: This Court often elevates religious freedom over other kinds of freedom, and it is rapidly tearing down the wall between church and state.

Religious freedom vs. others’ rights: The tug-of-war over the free exercise clause

The 20th-century Court cases that laid the groundwork for many modern debates over the Constitution’s free exercise clause are a bit of a muddle. 

In the 1960s, the Court used expansive language to describe the scope of this clause, and how easy it should be for religious plaintiffs to seek exemptions from complying with the law. Sherbert v. Verner (1963) held that laws that burden someone’s faith must “be justified by a ‘compelling state interest in the regulation of a subject within the State’s constitutional power to regulate.’” As any law student who has passed their first semester of constitutional law will recognize, this “compelling state interest” language is associated with a legal test known as “strict scrutiny,” the most demanding standard that courts apply in constitutional cases. Thus, Sherbert seemed to hold that nearly everyone who seeks a religious exemption from a state or federal law should receive one.

But the Court soon grew uncomfortable with the implications of this broad language — should people who claim that God does not want them to pay taxes, for example, really be exempt from the obligation to do so? — and began to place limits on who could get exemptions. 

The Court has ruled at least three times in favor of religious conservatives who sought an exemption from state laws or municipal policies that prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ people.

The expansive and easily available religious exemptions that Sherbert seemed to call for never actually came about. A 1992 study by legal scholar James Ryan found that federal appeals courts heard 97 free exercise of religion cases that applied Sherbert’s compelling interest test between 1980 and 1990, and they rejected 85 of those cases. 

In United States v. Lee (1982), the Supreme Court rejected an employer’s demand for a religious exemption from paying Social Security taxes. And, in Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor (1985), it ruled against a religious cult whose members worked in commercial businesses for no pay — the cult claimed that it should be exempt from minimum wage laws.

Both decisions were animated by a concern that a too-expansive reading of Sherbert would allow businesses that claimed religious exemptions to gain unfair advantages over their competitors. As the Court held in Lee, “when followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.”

But then the Supreme Court went too far. 

In Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the objectors were two Native American men who lost their jobs and were denied employment benefits by the state of Oregon, because they used the drug peyote during a religious ceremony. The Court said that no one was exempt from any law so long as it applied equally to religious and nonreligious people alike.

The decision triggered instant backlash, with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) warning that Smith could lead to the government controlling “the selection of priests and ministers” and barring “the use of wine in communion service.” It’s likely that Smith was so widely disliked because the justices picked the worst possible case to put their foot down against religious objectors. The two men’s participation in a religious ritual did not injure anyone else. And the Court’s suggestion that the government may ban Native American religious practices smacked of colonialism.

Congress attempted, semi-successfully, to overrule that case when it enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA). 

RFRA sought to “restore the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert … and Wisconsin v. Yoder,” a 1972 case establishing that Amish communities may educate their own teenage children instead of sending them to public high schools. The law, in other words, was intended to be a reset button, returning to the pre-Smith status quo when plaintiffs seeking religious exemptions were more likely to prevail.

But achieving that goal required answering a difficult question: What did the Religious Freedom Restoration Act actually seek to restore? Was it the expansive reading of Sherbert that courts never actually implemented — ie., that nearly everyone who seeks a religious exemption should get one — or the actual practice that existed prior to Smith, which was far more restrained?

By the time Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014) reached the justices, the two major political parties both had divergent answers to this question. That case asked whether employers who object to contraception on religious grounds could refuse to provide their employees with health plans that cover birth control — despite a federal regulation establishing that these workers had a right to contraceptive coverage. The central question in Hobby Lobby, in other words, was whether one person’s religion may be invoked to diminish another person’s rights.

Most of the justices, the ones appointed by Republican presidents, answered this question with a resounding “yes.” 

Dissenting in Hobby Lobby, Democratic Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg laid out her political party’s concern that one person’s rights should not be used to diminish another’s. She rejected the view that “RFRA demands accommodation of a for-profit corporation’s religious beliefs no matter the impact that accommodation may have on third parties who do not share the corporation owners’ religious faith.” 

But there were five Republicans and only four Democrats on the Court when Hobby Lobby was decided, so Ginsburg’s view did not prevail. Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion says that RFRA imposes an “exceptionally demanding” burden on the government when it wishes to enforce a law against a religious objector, and it ruled that a federal regulation requiring employers to offer contraceptive care in their health plans does not overcome this burden.

Yet even Alito seemed to recoil at the most expansive reading of Sherbert. His opinion concedes that “allowing tax-payers to withhold a portion of their tax obligations on religious grounds would lead to chaos.” So at least some aspects of Lee, the decision holding that private businesses must follow the same laws as their competitors, remain good law. 

After Hobby Lobby, the Republican Party’s position appears to be that religious objections trump laws that embrace a more liberal view of sexuality, or that otherwise resolve cultural conflicts between Democratic and Republican constituencies, but people of faith may not claim an exemption from literally every single law. At the very least, everyone still has to pay taxes.

Since Hobby Lobby, this agenda has come to define the Court’s religious liberty cases, including a number of recent ones that limit state governments’ ability to navigate political conflicts between religious conservatives and gay or trans people. While these cases are technically distinct from Hobby Lobby because RFRA only benefits plaintiffs who object to federal (that is, not state) laws, they also track the result in Hobby Lobby. 

The Court has ruled at least three times, for example, in favor of religious conservatives who sought an exemption from state laws or municipal policies that prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ people.

The Roberts Court, in other words, inherited a muddled mess of precedents governing when religious objectors may seek exemptions from the law, and much of this area of the law remains fairly muddled. Thus far, for example, this Court has not revealed whether it wishes to overrule cases like Alamo Foundation, that protect the rights of workers — though when it took up a case in 2025 that could have called Alamo Foundation into question, the Court did not do so.

But one bit of clarity that the current Court has provided is that, when the interests of religious conservatives conflict with the interests of queer people, queer people lose.

The Roberts Court has used education cases to tear down the wall separating church and state

Many of the Court’s cases involving religion in public schools also empower religious conservatives in cultural fights against LGBTQ Americans. In Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), for example, the Republican majority held that religious parents who object to books with gay or trans characters must be allowed to opt their children out of lessons that use such books. And, in Mirabelli v. Bonta (2026), the Republican justices appeared to hold that the Constitution requires public school teachers to out trans students to their parents, even if those students ask the teachers to keep their gender identity a secret.

But this Court has also advanced another project concerning religion, particularly in its cases about religion and education — dismantling the very idea that church and state must be separated. 

The First Amendment’s establishment clause — which prohibits the government from making any law establishing a religion — was long understood to require a degree of separation between government and religion. The Roberts Court hasn’t simply abandoned this reading of the establishment clause; it’s indicated that the very idea of separation between church and state is unconstitutional.

For much of the 20th century, the Supreme Court maintained that the wall separating church and state was quite high. In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), for example, the Court declared that “no tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.” 

The Court abandoned this approach nearly a quarter century ago, in its 5-4 decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002). But Zelman merely held that states could offer vouchers that can pay for tuition at private religious schools if they want to, not that they were required to do so.

One thing that is emphatically not forbidden by the current Court is government funding of religious institutions that many Americans find offensive. 

Similarly, before Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Court in 2005, the Court generally insisted that public schools must remain neutral on religion. When schools promote a religious view, according to Lee v. Weisman (1992), that places “subtle and indirect” pressure on students to conform to that view, and leaves the student with “a reasonable perception that she is being forced by the State to pray in a manner her conscience will not allow.”

Yet, while Lee was consistent with mid-20th-century precedents regarding religion in schools, the consensus favoring government neutrality on religion was already fading by the early 1990s. Lee was a 5-4 decision, and its author, the moderate conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, often argued that his more liberal colleagues read the establishment clause too expansively. Three years before Lee, for example, Kennedy dissented from a decision barring a county from displaying a Nativity scene in its courthouse. This decision, Kennedy wrote, “reflects an unjustified hostility toward religion.”

This idea — that government neutrality toward religion is itself a form of hostility against people of faith — could often be found in conservative critiques of the Court’s establishment clause decisions from this era. In a 1989 essay that foreshadowed many of the Roberts Court’s later decisions, legal scholar (and future federal judge) Michael McConnell made the then-audacious argument that the Constitution requires the government to subsidize religious schools.

The idea is that states typically tax all of their residents to pay for public schooling, but only some children actually attend these schools. Other families choose to pay out of their own pockets for private religious education, while still other families would prefer to send their children to a religious school but cannot afford it. This familiar system, where public schools are available to everyone and private schools are only available to people who can pay the tuition, McConnell claimed, is a form of discrimination against religious people. 

“That some parents wish their children to receive education in a religious environment should not deprive them of their fair share of the public resources devoted to education,” McConnell wrote. They pay the same taxes as families who send their kids to public schools. And so, McConnell argued, these religious families should be allowed to use that tax revenue to pay for their child’s private religious education.

Something close to the vision McConnell laid out in this 1989 essay is now the law. The seminal case is Carson v. Makin (2022), which involved a Maine program that provides private school vouchers for students in sparsely populated areas where it is not cost-efficient for the state to operate a public school.

Maine law provides that these vouchers may only be used at “nonsectarian” schools, and not religious ones. But, according to Roberts’s majority opinion in the decision, a system that “pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious” is “discrimination against religion.” Carson, in other words, turns the old rule from Everson on its head. What was once forbidden is now mandated.

More broadly, the Court’s Republicans have ground the establishment clause down to such a tiny nub that little of it remains. For many years, the Court read that clause to forbid the government from advancing a particular religious view, but the Court overruled the older cases prohibiting government endorsements of religion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), and they replaced them with something much narrower. Under this Court’s new test, the government can only violate the establishment clause by making “a religious observance compulsory” or otherwise coercing nonbelievers to engage in a “formal religious exercise.”

So the government cannot arrest you if you skip church services. Nor can a government official hold a gun to your head and force you to declare that Jesus is your personal lord and savior. But it is not clear that, under this Court’s approach to the establishment clause, anything else is forbidden. One thing that is emphatically not forbidden by the current Court — indeed, under cases like Carson, it is now required in many states — is government funding of religious institutions that many Americans find offensive. 

A plaintiff in Carson, according to Maine’s brief in that case, wanted the state to pay for tuition at a school that requires teachers to sign a statement agreeing that “God recognize[s] homosexuals and other deviants as perverted.” Previous federal court cases involved schools that teach girls they have a religious obligation to be subservient to their future husbands, or that prohibited Black students from having romantic relationships with white students. Under the Roberts Court’s new rules, taxpayers who find these views abhorrent — or who may even object to them on religious grounds — must nonetheless pay for tuition at schools that teach these values.

McConnell criticized the old regime for taxing religious parents to pay for secular education they find objectionable, but the converse is also true about the current regime — it taxes secular parents to pay for religious education that many Americans also find objectionable.

One nationwide solution

The unfortunate reality is that, in a pluralistic society, it is impossible to come up with a legal regime that won’t impose obligations on anyone that they object to on religious grounds. If a nation taxes citizens, some of them will object to how that money is spent. If it provides public schools, some families will object to the values taught in those schools. And if it changes which values are taught, some other families will object to the new lessons. 

The Roberts Court’s solution to these inevitable conflicts has largely been to resolve them in ways that favor members of the Republican Party’s coalition, such as religious conservatives, that burden members of the Democratic Party’s coalition, such as LGBTQ people, and that advance longtime Republican Party goals such as making private school vouchers widely available. 

That’s certainly one way to do constitutional law. The GOP controls the Supreme Court, and to the victor go the spoils.

But it is far from clear why many of these decisions should be made by a handful of unelected lawyers in black robes, especially in a nation that purports to be a democracy — and that also purports to be a federation of many diverse states. There was a lot of wisdom in Zelman’s approach, which allowed Maine to devise an education policy that makes sense for Maine and Alabama to devise an education policy that makes sense for Alabama. 

At the very least, cases like Zelman did not claim that the Constitution, with its two vague and often-contradictory approaches to religion, calls for one nationwide solution to the question of how to run a country made up of people of many faiths.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

Hi readers, it’s me again! Caitlin will be back on Wednesday. Now, for today’s news: President Donald Trump, South Korea, and the state of the US’s military alliances.

Remember Trump’s first-term “love letters” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un? Trump was so fond of them that he took them with him when he left the presidency in 2021 (the National Archives did not approve). Now, it seems like the two leaders are taking up where they left off.

Over the weekend, Trump announced in a social media post that he would “substantially reduce” scheduled joint military exercises between the US and South Korea, which get underway today. The reason? His “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea.” 

But there may have been another reason. Trump also wrote that “While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, “No thanks!””

The US-South Korea exercises “are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!),” Trump wrote, “but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.”

That last part — “unthreatening and respectful” — is not exactly true; in 2017, Kim called Trump “a mentally deranged US dotard” whom North Korea would “tame…with fire.” But in the present day, Trump’s announcement is a boon to the North Korean leader, who has denounced the military exercises. 

It’s also just the latest incident in the historically close US-South Korea relationship (the two countries have held military exercises annually for more than 70 years). Earlier this year, Trump lashed out with new tariffs, accusing South Korea of “not living up to its Deal,” referring to a 2025 agreement on trade and security between the two countries that South Korea’s legislature had not yet approved.

Go a little deeper

The US has more permanent troops in South Korea than it does almost anywhere else in the world, behind only its deployments in Japan and Germany. Under Trump, though, those once-durable commitments have started to look a lot shakier.

Europe — and Germany in particular — has borne the brunt of Trump’s second-term harassment: In May, Trump announced his intent to remove 5,000 US troops from Germany and threatened to go “a lot further”; the Pentagon has said that withdrawal will take place within 12 months. The US currently has more than 38,000 troops stationed in Germany.

Trump has made similar threats about US troops stationed in Italy and Spain, and even suggested removing all US troops from Europe.

Most of these threats have been triggered by Trump’s unhappiness with European defense spending, which he’s eternally trying to boost. 

But in his second term, the threats have grown much more tightly tied to Trump’s personal ambitions and grievances. Trump’s Germany announcement followed a clash with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the US war with Iran, which Trump has tried — unsuccessfully — to drag US allies into. Spain, in particular, has also drawn Trump’s ire for vocally opposing the war. 

Last month, he also tied the US troop presence in Europe to his insistence that the US be allowed to take over Greenland, which belongs to Denmark, a US ally and founding NATO member.

One link for later

➨ A low-tech way to save coral reefs. My colleague Benji Jones visited the island nation of Palau, in the western Pacific Ocean, to learn about a new approach to reef restoration. Scientists there are testing species of coral specifically for heat resistance to find better options for replanting reefs — all using some plastic picnic coolers and a bit of hot water. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in the Chilean Andes has the largest digital camera ever made? It captured its “first light” last year in staggering high-definition. 
• Today’s trivia: What was the title of Iran’s ruler until 1979? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Friday’s trivia: On Friday, we asked you which US president responded to inflation by ordering wage and price freezes. That was President Richard Nixon.