| With the Supreme Court breaking for the summer, justices this week announced the final major decisions in cases they heard last fall and revealed some of the cases they'll take up this coming fall. There are two major pieces of news on that front, both of which underscore how an emboldened, conservative-majority Supreme Court is reshaping America. 1. A blow to Biden's climate change plan: The federal government can't force electric utilities to use more renewable resources in place of coal, the court ruled this morning in a decision that kneecaps the government's ability to dramatically lower fossil fuel emissions. Congress has never explicitly given the federal government that authority, conservatives on the court said, while the court's liberals argued that's a too-narrow reading of the law. We should note, however, that Congress does have the option of passing legislation clarifying that the government does have this authority.  Steam billows from a coal-fired power plant in Craig, Colo., in November. (Rick Bowmer/AP) | 2. Justices will consider giving state legislators more control over how to run elections: The Supreme Court announced it will hear a case next fall that could let state legislators run federal elections without state courts or even the state constitution having a say. It could mean politicians could gerrymander without courts stepping in. Or that courts couldn't chime in on voting laws that may violate the state constitution. Or, most dramatically, that legislatures could decide how to allocate electoral votes in a presidential race without being boxed in by courts or their constitutions. It would be a drastic change from the way the Supreme Court has seen the role of state courts — as a check on legislatures — and a victory for conservatives who have pushed this idea for decades, as well as Republicans who control a majority of state legislatures. Abortion rights on Native American lands? I explained in Wednesday's newsletter — and here — the serious legal problems with the federal government setting up abortion clinics on federal land in states where abortion is banned. It could open up doctors and patients to prosecution later on. But what about Native American land, which isn't the same as federal land? Many of you had this question. The answer, according to legal experts I surveyed, is this probably wouldn't work. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said a state can enforce its criminal laws against non-Indians who commit offenses against Indians. That probably means that states could enforce their abortion bans against non-tribal-member doctors, putting doctors in the same position as if they were on federal land performing abortions: at risk of prosecution. On politics and abortion: 'If you are in a close race this will be a game changer'  Abortion rights advocates in D.C. on Thursday. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) | That quote above is from Democratic pollster John Anzalone, talking to my colleagues Annie Linskey and Colby Itkowitz recently about the fall of Roe v. Wade. They point out that Democratic candidates are speaking with a nearly unified voice of fury about the end of the only federal abortion protection in the United States, while more-moderate Republicans are skirting around it. But what's the evidence for the claim that Democrats suddenly have a game-changing — and potentially career-saving — moment as they try to keep control of both chambers of Congress this November? It's still really early, but there are two high-quality national polls about the fall of Roe that do suggest Democrats have reason to be optimistic. A majority of Americans think it was the wrong decision: Americans oppose the decision 56 percent to 40 percent, according to a new NPR-"PBS NewsHour"-Marist poll. It's unpopular with women: A CBS poll found that 67 percent of women opposed the ruling. (NPR found 59 percent do.) Either way, that gives Democrats a pretty big opening with suburban, female swing voters who, election after election, play a pivotal role in deciding key congressional races. Democrats say they're motivated to vote because of this: This is the big one. Democratic-leaning voters are generally bad at showing up in nonpresidential years. And abortion rights supporters have yet to vote with the same force as abortion opponents, who have been primed by decades of activism. But there's evidence that could change. The NPR poll found 78 percent of Democrats say they're more motivated to vote in November because of it, compared with 54 percent of Republicans. And the CBS poll found that 50 percent of Democrats say this will make them more likely to vote — up from 40 percent last month, when the draft opinion leaked. | 
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