I wanted to direct your attention to this podcast episode from Slate. It’s actually the first episode of a series Slate is doing on popular constitutionalism. (The page linked above is paywalled. But, I’m told, the ‘By the People’ pod series itself is not. So you should be able to find it on podcast platforms.) It brings together in a engaging and coherent way a number of themes we’ve been discussing over the last couple years about the problem of and the corruption of the U.S. Supreme Court. And it frames the question around a 20-year-old book on popular constitutionalism by Larry Kramer (The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review).

President Biden and his team have reportedly been planning to have the President deliver a speech on protecting democracy ahead of the midterms for some time. But the recent uptick in threats and political violence as we get closer to the election — including the very high profile attack on the husband of the woman second in the line of secession — expedited the urgency of the message.