Welcome to your first case of the Mondays in a new America that’s borrowing heavily from a much older America. This week, there are more guns being carried on the streets, fewer separations between church and state, and the absence of equal health care rights for women in what amounts to government mandated pregnancy. If you’re among the majority of Americans who disagree with these court decisions, what’s next? First, and this is important, while I feel it as much as the next person, it’s critical to note that despair is a value-less currency in this fight. Second, the decades-long plot to overturn Roe and turn back the clock on American social progress has been remarkably effective, but there’s a chance that overturning Roe—a move made possible by Mitch McConnell’s court packing and justices who overtly lied during confirmation hearings and in private conversations with senators—will be viewed as a step too far. Between inflation, gas prices, and usual midterm trends, the November elections were looking bleak for progressives. Abortion (along with the additional rights now threatened) becoming a key political issue might change that. And third, the second item will only hold water if we find leadership capable of harnessing the surge of political energy. Like the characters in the Matrix, proponents of a modern America need to find their Neo; in this case that means a political leader with the (youthful) energy and aggressiveness to convince voters of the extreme seriousness of this moment in American history, when everything from health rights to maintaining a habitable planet is on the line. How will we know when we’ve found The One? For starters, they’ll agree with what Ron Brownstein explains in The Atlantic: America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good. “What’s becoming clearer over time is that the Trump-era GOP is hoping to use its electoral dominance of the red states, the small-state bias in the Electoral College and the Senate, and the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court to impose its economic and social model on the entire nation—with or without majority public support. As measured on fronts including the January 6 insurrection, the procession of Republican 2020 election deniers running for offices that would provide them with control over the 2024 electoral machinery, and the systematic advance of a Republican agenda by the Supreme Court, the underlying political question of the 2020s remains whether majority rule—and democracy as we’ve known it—can survive this offensive.”

+ Adam Serwer sums up a similar point in this lede. “The Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, allowing state governments to force women to give birth, is the result of decades of right-wing political advocacy, organizing, and electoral victory. It is also just the beginning of the Court’s mission to reshape all of American society according to conservative demands, without fear of public opposition.”

+ 18 Ways the Supreme Court Just Changed America.

+ Supreme Court backs a high school coach’s right to pray on the 50-yard line. (That’s what they’re there to do, folks.)