Media Mentions

The confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court would produce a 6-3 conservative majority that could have far-reaching implications for federal energy and climate policy, according to several legal experts. Barrett, 48, did not establish a significant environmental track record from her current seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit before being nominated Sept. 26 to fill the open Supreme Court seat created by the recent death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As a former law clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, however, Barrett adopted the conservative icon's strict reading of the U.S. Constitution known as originalism and advanced by the Federalist Society, a group dedicated to confirming originalist judges. Several legal experts said that view of the law, which aims to follow closely the original understandings and expectations of the Constitution’s drafters and ratifiers, could make the conservative-tilting high court even less inclined to grant federal agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deference in regulating planet-warming greenhouse gases...And with the retirement in 2018 of Justice Anthony Kennedy and the addition of his replacement, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court no longer has the same majority that produced the 5-4 decision in Massachusetts. "You could leave Massachusetts v. EPA untouched, but you could drain it of its efficacy by interpreting away the other authorities within the Clean Air Act to address CO2 in any kind of meaningful way," said Joe Goffman, former general counsel in the Obama EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. Goffman said the addition of another conservative justice to the Supreme Court could have major consequences if it eventually decides Clean Air Act legal challenges dealing with the EPA's authority to regulate methane from oil and gas facilities and California's long-held waiver authority to set its own tailpipe pollution standards. "In both cases, they overturned years and decades of the agency's own precedents," Goffman said in an interview. "That means that to the extent it is potentially a jump ball as to what the courts are going to do, you really need to have as many judges that, let's say signed up for the Federalist Society worldview, on the bench in order to increase your chances of winning what could otherwise be a tough challenge."

Amy Coney Barrett's likely ascension to the Supreme Court would affect climate policy beyond shoving the court rightward in the abstract. Why it matters: If Joe Biden wins the presidential election, his regulations and potential new climate laws would face litigation that could reach the high court. If Trump wins, ongoing cases over his dismantling of Obama-era policies could also reach SCOTUS. Whoever wins, a court with a 6-3 conservative majority will issue rulings that undoubtedly have ripple effects...Several analysts point to Barrett's writings that suggest support for "non-delegation doctrine," a legal theory that massively restricts how much power Congress can hand off to executive agencies. A related area: She could take a narrow view of the "Chevron deference," or the idea agencies deserve running room when statutes are vague or silent on a topic. Both matter when it comes to using the Clean Air Act to tackle global warming, because the 50-year-old law does not directly address the topic...Axios also asked Harvard Law School's Richard Lazarus about whether the more conservative court might upend Massachusetts v. EPA: "While the Court sometimes overrules it constitutional rulings, it almost never overrules its rulings on the meaning of federal statutes. I don’t think they would do it here."

On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we're discussing the Trump administration’s actions to weaken or dismantle environmental regulations that are meant to protect the environment, public health and curb greenhouse gases. Over the past four years, the administration has repealed or weakened at least 100 environmental regulations, including fuel economy standards, rules governing clean air, and the regulation of methane emissions. Guests: Caitlin McCoy, staff attorney with the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School. Sharon Lerner, investigative reporter for The Intercept, covering health and the environment.

Romaine Bostick & Taylor Riggs bring you the latest news and analysis leading up to the final minutes and seconds before the closing bell on Wall Street and tackle the SCOTUS impact on the Affordable Care Act, the delayed TikTok ban and oil's lackluster demand Guests Today: Meb Farber of Cambria Investment Management, Jonathan Gruber of MIT, David Conrod of FocusPoint, Jose Antonio Vargas of Define American, Chris Davis of Davis Advisors, Jason Katz of UBS, Richard Lazarus of Harvard Law School.

Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, a Circuit Court judge with strong support from conservatives, could spell trouble for landmark judicial holdings about climate change, Pro's Alex Guillén reports. Barrett is considered an "originalist" in the mold of late Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked in the late 1990s. She has long advocated for the Supreme Court to show more flexibility in overturning past precedents. That could apply to the high court's 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA that said the Clean Air Act gave EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, Alex reports. At least two justices still on the court have signaled interest in revisiting the climate ruling — Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — and other members of the court's conservative wing may also be sympathetic to arguments to reconsider the decision. With a more conservative judge such as Barrett, the court could weaken Massachusetts without overturning it, said Jody Freeman, director of Harvard Law School's Environmental and Energy Law Program and a former Obama White House adviser. That could include "interpreting provisions to require additional cost benefit analysis, taking a limited approach to the 'co-benefits' that come with climate rules, and otherwise making it harder for the agency to regulate greenhouse gases and other pollution," she said in an email. No case has yet advanced far enough for a court to take a position on the scope of EPA’s authority, but if Trump is reelected, that could provide such an opening.

With Judge Amy Coney Barrett poised to become the sixth Republican-nominated justice on the nation’s highest bench, environmental law experts see her influence tipping the scales on energy and climate rules. President Trump tapped Barrett on Saturday, and Trump—with the help of a Republican-led Senate—is intent on swiftly filling the position left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was nominated in 1993 by President Clinton, a Democrat (Greenwire, Sept. 26). Barrett, who currently serves on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has a relatively slim record on climate and environmental matters. But if she is confirmed to the high court, Barrett, 48, likely would lock up a conservative coalition there, legal experts said. That bloc could smooth the path for future environmental rollbacks or make it more difficult to expand emissions regulations through a broad reading of statutory authority. “I view Barrett being added to the court as taking it even further in the direction it was already going,” said Jody Freeman, founding director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School. The court “was already headed in the direction of [being] much more skeptical of broad efforts to regulate new problems, to interpret statutes that may be older, to deal with new risks,” she added...That momentum could be a boon for Trump’s legacy of relaxing environmental standards, as a conservative high court likely would be more amenable to his viewpoint in legal challenges to those efforts. Trump has pushed to roll back regulations on vehicle, power plant and industry emissions.

An article by Noah Feldman: Like many other liberals, I’m devastated by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, which opened the way for President Donald Trump to nominate a third Supreme Court justice in his first term. And I’m revolted by the hypocrisy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s willingness to confirm Trump’s nominee after refusing to even allow a vote on Judge Merrick Garland. Yet these political judgments need to be distinguished from a separate question: what to think about Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump has told associates he plans to nominate. And here I want to be extremely clear. Regardless of what you or I may think of the circumstances of this nomination, Barrett is highly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. I disagree with much of her judicial philosophy and expect to disagree with many, maybe even most of her future votes and opinions. Yet despite this disagreement, I know her to be a brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will analyze and decide cases in good faith, applying the jurisprudential principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them. I got to know Barrett more than 20 years ago when we clerked at the Supreme Court during the 1998-99 term. Of the thirty-some clerks that year, all of whom had graduated at the top of their law school classes and done prestigious appellate clerkships before coming to work at the court, Barrett stood out. Measured subjectively and unscientifically by pure legal acumen, she was one of the two strongest lawyers. The other was Jenny Martinez, now dean of the Stanford Law School.

When the Business Roundtable last August issued a statement on corporate purpose shifting from focusing on returns to shareholder to satisfying the needs of a broader range of stakeholders, it was treated as momentous news. But were the U.S. CEOs signing the statement serious? Would anything really change? Two academics decided to follow up, contacting the 184 companies where CEOs pledged their support, asking who was the highest level decision-maker that approved the decision – was it the board of directors, the CEO, or an executive below the CEO? Only 48 companies responded, and 47 said it was approved by the CEO, not the board. There’s no reason to believe the picture would be much different in the non-respondents, suggest the researchers, Harvard Law School professors Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita. And they argue the fact the boards weren’t involved indicates the CEOs didn’t regard the statement as a commitment to make a major change in how their companies treat stakeholders. “In the absence of a major change, they thought that there was no need for a formal board approval,” they report in a law school publication. Another explanation, of course, is that the CEOs believe the statement is what their corporations are already committed to. In his just-released book The New Corporation, UBC law school professor Joel Bakan writes about how companies have been trying to present a different face in recent years, more compassionate and committed to social ends. “Visit the website of any major corporation and you’ll wonder whether you’ve accidentally clicked on that of an NGO or activist group. These days all corporate communications lead with social and environmental commitments and achievements,” he notes. Whether this is driven by noble impulses, or an attempt to do well financially by doing good societally, or just blarney is up for debate. You, however, may be happier working for a company that is more socially and environmentally conscious, perhaps with a high-sounding purpose and even giving you time off for volunteer activity, as some companies do.

An article by Noah Feldman: As President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell move to nominate and confirm a conservative Supreme Court justice, progressive Democrats are increasingly talking about packing the Supreme Court in retaliation — increasing the size of the court and adding new, liberal justices to the bench. At a minimum, the idea rests on the heroic assumption that Democrats will win the presidency and both houses of Congress. But that’s not all. History demonstrates the grave difficulty of successfully mustering even majority-party support to add new Supreme Court seats. To pack the court, Democrats would need more than just the prospect of a conservative court. They would need a sustained argument that the court had become fundamentally illegitimate by its composition or its conduct. The archetypal example of attempted court-packing came in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second term in office. Democratic frustration with the court was at a high point. The conservative, libertarian-leaning majority of the court had been striking down progressive wage and hour regulation for three decades during what came to be known as the Lochner era (named for the 1905 case of Lochner v. New York, which struck down a 60-hour work week for bakers). Then, in 1935, the court struck down the two cornerstones of Roosevelt’s New Deal, the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Roosevelt got no Supreme Court appointments in his first term. In the 1936 election, he won more than 60% of the vote and carried the electoral college 523-8 — a landslide by any measure. The Democrats held a stunning 74 seats in the Senate to the Republicans’ 17, and ruled the House of Representatives by a margin of 334-88.

An article by Cass Sunstein: Here is a paradox. It is pretty easy to predict the voting patterns of new Supreme Court justices. But it can be exceedingly difficult to predict the votes of justices in specific cases, which means that it can be difficult as well to predict how those cases are going to be decided. When President Bill Clinton appointed Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court in 1994, those who knew Breyer’s work knew that his voting patterns would be moderately liberal — more centrist than those of progressive heroes Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, but to the left, for sure, of Justice Antonin Scalia. And when President George W. Bush appointed John Roberts as chief justice in 2005, it was clear, from Roberts’ record, that his voting patterns would be moderately conservative — distinctly more conservative than those of Breyer, but distinctly less so than those of Scalia. Something similar can be said about every Supreme Court nominee over the last half-century. At the same time, the court is capable of big surprises. For example, many experts did not predict that in 2015, it would rule in favor of same-sex marriage; that in 2020, it would strike down President Donald Trump’s decision to repeal President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, designed to protect some unauthorized aliens from removal; or that in the same year, it would interpret the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

President Trump announced his nomination over the weekend of conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett as a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Sept. 18. If Barrett is confirmed by the Republican majority in the Senate, before or after the November election, Trump will have managed to seat three right-wing justices on the country’s highest court and cement an ironclad 6-3 conservative hegemony for a generation to come. That may thrill Trump’s base and the conservative legal movement that has seen the Trump administration fill numerous federal judicial positions with its ideological allies. But Trump’s impact on the Supreme Court has also stirred growing alarm and anger. The president’s critics and opponents are furious over the naked hypocrisy of many of the same Republican senators who blocked President Barack Obama’s nominee in 2016 on grounds that such a weighty decision should not proceed in the middle of an election year. Moreover, Trump’s critics see his latest move as part of a broader autocratic power play. For months, the president has openly called into question the legitimacy of the upcoming election, ahead of which polls show him trailing by a significant margin nationally. A recent article by the Atlantic’s Barton Gellman outlined the all-too-real, looming set of constitutional crises that could follow, should Trump attempt to remain office or question the credibility of the vote. Key to such an attempt would be both Trump’s considerable executive powers and the conservative majority in the Supreme Court, which Trump has already admitted may be crucial to maintaining his place in the White House. It is difficult for the public to see the court as politically neutral “when a primary reason being given in favor of an expedited Senate confirmation hearing is … so the new justice can be there in time to vote in a way that will ensure the reelection of the president who just nominated them,” Richard J. Lazarus, a Harvard University law professor, told The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes.

An article by Vivek Wadhwa: For a moment in time, there was complete harmony in the social media world. US President Donald Trump demanded that TikTok be sold to a US company, and China’s propaganda outlet Global Times tweeted: “The US restructuring of TikTok’s stake and actual control should be used as a model and promoted globally.” China and the US agreed that having foreign companies control commonly used apps not only poses a threat to national security, but also distorts a country’s culture and values. Global Times went on to say, “Overseas operation of companies such as Google, Facebook shall all undergo such restructure and be under actual control of local companies for security concern.” India could learn from both countries, requiring that Facebook India be sold to one of India’s tech tycoons. This would be ones step to ensuring that all data be kept locally and tightly protected, and that the algorithms That determine the information that users will receive - which, after all, influences their behavior - truly reflect India’s culture and values. The soulless geeks of Silicon Valley and the ruthless autocrats of China simply cannot be trusted to do that. In fact, it would conflict with their interests.

The addition of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court will maintain the number of female justices, but the composition of the panel continues to look quite different than the rest of America in gender, race and religion as well as on certain key policy issues. If she’s approved by the Senate, Barrett is expected to be another conservative voice on a court that’s mostly white, male and Catholic. In an era of increasing questions about systemic racism in the judicial system, the court may find itself out-of-step with the rest of the country if the November election results in a substantial shift to the left. “Obviously, demography and anything else that shape one’s experience affects how one thinks about the world and thus one’s judging,” said Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School. “Chief Justice Roberts implicitly denies this when he talks about judges calling balls and strikes, but I think most people acknowledge that a judge’s experience cannot somehow be abandoned when donning robes.” Some of the issues on which the court may come to be at odds with public opinion include abortion, which 79% of Americans say should be legal, at least under certain circumstances, and upholding the Affordable Care Act, which is viewed favorably by 49% of Americans according to a September Kaiser Family Foundation Health tracking poll, compared to 42% who view the law unfavorably.

Disinformation targeting Latino communities is ramping up ahead of Election Day, when the demographic is expected to play a crucial role in key battleground states. Advocacy groups and election security experts alike say material is circulating on social media platforms and online messaging apps that pushes false conspiracies that echo larger disinformation campaigns in English. The misinformation efforts, some of which reflect the QAnon conspiracy theory, are especially critical in Florida, a crucial swing state where polls show Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is running behind Hillary Clinton’s 2016 support among Latino voters. Advocates said the misinformation could dissuade Latino voters, who have historically low levels of voter participation, from voting in this year’s election...Oumou Ly, a staff fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, said foreign actors are likely propping up these narratives. Officials have warned against similar foreign interference efforts from four years ago heading into the 2020 election. FBI Director Christopher Wray told a House panel last week that Russia is seeking to denigrate Biden’s campaign through social media interference. Much of the disinformation targeting Latino voters has the intent to dissuade their participation in the election, advocates said, including pushing unsubstantiated claims that vote by mail is not secure or the election system can be hacked. The disinformation is targeting Latino voters beyond Florida.

The animated 1998 film Mulan remains one of Disney's all time greatest hits. Fans greeted Disney’s announcement of a live-action reboot starring an all Asian cast with great excitement. But COVID-19 forced the film from the big screen to Disney streaming, and the film’s recent debut sparked controversy both here and in China. At a time when Asian Americans are being attacked publicly — and being erroneously blamed for the coronavirus — 2020 has been fertile ground for significant growth in Asian themed feature films and TV programs, with independent films helmed by Asian directors and Asian actors in lead roles. What is the power of this expansion of representation? And does it especially matter in this moment? Guests: Elena Creef, professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. She specializes in Asian American visual history in photography, film and popular culture. Jenny Korn, fellow and the founding coordinator of the Race and Media Working Group at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

When the framers of the Constitution debated the document’s careful system of checks and balances, they confronted a question that would only become more important over time: Should there be a mandatory retirement age for federal judges? Alexander Hamilton argued against one. Writing in The Federalist Papers, he dismissed “the imaginary danger of a superannuated bench.” Hamilton won out, and the Constitution placed no term limits on the service of federal judges, including the men and (much later) women who would make up the Supreme Court. More than two centuries later, the United States stands alone in its handling of lifetime appointments to its highest court, and the drawbacks of a “superannuated bench” have become ever more clear. Last Friday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the third member of the Supreme Court to die in office in the past 15 years. Her death injects a partisan fight over the judiciary into the tempest of a presidential election, and it has brought about a nightmare scenario for Democrats, who have long feared the possibility that a conservative would replace her progressive vote on the Supreme Court and shift the nation’s jurisprudence dramatically to the right. But it also serves as a reminder that only in the U.S. does the balance of so much national power hang on the ability of an 87-year-old jurist to hold out for a few more months against the ravages of disease and the inevitability of life’s natural course... “Everybody who’s thought about designing a constitutional court since 1900 has thought that a retirement age was a good thing. There’s no reason to think that they were wrong,” Mark Tushnet, a Harvard law professor and legal historian, told me. “The existence of tenure until death or choice is extremely rare around the world.” There’s a fairly simple explanation for why the Framers decided against a mandatory retirement age, Tushnet and other legal historians told me: People didn’t live as long back then, and, as Hamilton wrote, few “outlived the season of intellectual rigor.”

Joseph R. Biden Jr. was trying to demonstrate the lasting power of the federal judiciary. So he did the math. Addressing a Michigan law school audience in April 1991, then-Senator Biden said that if trends in life expectancy held, a justice freshly confirmed around that time would “be making landmark decisions in the year 2020.” “I’ll be dead and gone, in all probability,” Mr. Biden told the crowd. He was half right: Nearly three decades later, the man whom the Senate confirmed that year, Justice Clarence Thomas, is still rendering decisions — the eldest jurist, if President Trump has his way, of a soon-to-be 6-to-3 conservative majority. But Mr. Biden is indeed alive, left to consider what the court’s emerging tilt would mean for the Democratic agenda if he wins the White House — and for his own attachment to the Capitol’s bygone harmony and mores. After a half-century in public life, with a lead role in several indelible confirmation dramas through the years, Mr. Biden could, if elected, be saddled with a Supreme Court primed to counteract his policy aims on health care, abortion and other defining issues. Many Democrats now believe that adding seats to the court is the urgent remedy, an extraordinary step that has not been seriously contemplated since the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. They argue that the court’s legitimacy has already eroded amid the Republican confirmation maneuvers of the last four years. Yet for Mr. Biden, a proud man of the Senate, such an effort would amount to the sort of norm-razing exercise that might strike him as an escalation too many...Laurence H. Tribe, the Harvard Law School professor who helped prepare Mr. Biden for the Bork hearings, said Mr. Biden had tended to resist pressure to subject nominees to explicit partisan screening, even after the process had grown more openly ideological. “I don’t think he ever came close to articulating a ‘Biden test’ for what’s acceptable,” Mr. Tribe said. But, he added, Mr. Biden was concerned about nominees who would lead to the court’s “being way out of kilter and out of sync with the country as a whole.”

Google parent Alphabet has agreed to commit $310 million to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as part of a settlement for a series of sexual harassment and misconduct lawsuits filed against some of the company’s officers and directors. As part of the settlement, filed on Friday in California Superior Court, Alphabet will establish a diversity, equity, and inclusion advisory council featuring outside experts, which include retired judge and Harvard Law School professor Nancy Gertner and former member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Fred Alvarez, as well as company executives including CEO Sundar Pichai and Google chief legal officer Kent Walker. The settlement also ends Alphabet’s mandatory arbitration for harassment, discrimination, and retaliation-related disputes between employees or contractors and the company. It limits Google’s use of nondisclosure agreements and ensures that the recommended consequences for misconduct are equal across business units. “This settlement will not only change and improve the culture at Google, but it will set the standard for culture change at tech companies throughout Silicon Valley,” Ann Ravel, an attorney from Renne Public Law Group who led parts of the settlement negotiation, said in a release. "Recent years have involved a lot of introspection and work to make sure we’re providing a safe and inclusive workplace for every employee," said Google vice president of people operations Eileen Naughton in a blog post Friday. "That doesn’t stop here and you’ll receive reports on our progress as we move forward."

President Trump intends to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court seat. The nomination process has sparked some questions, and the Verify team exists to get those answers. QUESTION: Who is eligible to be nominated to the Supreme Court? Are there any restrictions? ANSWER: There is essentially only one restriction: A person impeached and convicted by Congress in a verdict that bars you from federal office. PROCESS: Questions about the Supreme Court nomination process have started popping up online since the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We took this question to the experts: What are the qualifications for becoming a Supreme Court Justice? ...Our experts told us there is essentially one restriction that bars someone from being nominated to the Supreme Court — impeachment. Law Professor Laurence Tribe told us in an email that someone who is impeached and convicted by Congress in a verdict that bars that person from holding federal office in the future cannot be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Firms love to talk about “culture” when it comes to distinguishing themselves, but while it can be key to attracting lateral partners, it can also be a critical factor in limiting associate development. That’s particularly true when firms are adopting special measures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of which have hit associates hard. If firms don’t pay attention to key characteristics like transparency and feedback, they run the risk of losing younger talent, industry observers said. Experts agree that competition for talent is growing more fierce as more junior attorneys realize they have options outside of their current firms or even away from Big Law, and culture plays a larger role than ever in firms attracting and retaining the talent that can push them ahead of their competitors. Culture is often a reflection of leadership. Scott Westfahl, professor of practice and director of executive education at Harvard Law School, has an interesting definition of what leadership means. “Leadership is about disappointing people,” he said. “That is the lens on it, and it is such a critical thing to understand. You are going to need to make changes as the world changes. The better your articulate who you are, why you are, the better you will be able to make principled decisions.” Westfahl said he has worked with firms in the past that have clear, defined culture and values, many times embedded in the firm’s strategic plan, literally written down for all to see. But he has worked with many more that have a looser, more ambiguous approach to defining their firm culture, and that can create a problem. “A lot of law firms haven’t been specific about defining their culture and their values,” Westfahl said. “The Big Four have been much more deliberate. When you have an inspiring mission, people can rally around it. When you have to make hard decisions, you at least have the framework around how to make those decisions, and you can explain to those who aren’t happy why the decisions were made.” Westfahl said that absent that, you can create a situation where there can be the perception of favoritism or unfairness when it comes to difficult decisions like salary cuts or layoffs, work allotment or promotion.

Earlier this summer, thousands of Americans spilled into the streets in anger and anguish over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, whose killings at the hands of police and vigilantes sparked an outcry against racism not seen in this country since the peak of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Donations were made. Petitions were signed. Books like “How to Be an Antiracist" and “White Fragility" climbed to the top of bestseller lists. Protests spread from cities to suburbs, denouncing police brutality and demanding justice. More white Americans seemed willing to admit that deep-seated, structural racism did not end with the banishment of Jim Crow. But recent polling suggests white support for the Black Lives Matter movement has slipped. According to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, support for the movement fell from 67 percent in June to 55 percent in September. The decline was driven largely by white adults, whose support dropped from 60 percent earlier this summer to 45 percent this month...In the context of US racial history, it is not surprising that support among non-Black groups, and white adults in particular, has fallen, experts said. Historians drew parallels between the current moment and the 1960s, a decade that saw sharp peaks and valleys in white support for the civil rights movement... “Importantly, that groundswell of support . . . followed white perpetrators attacking nonviolent demonstrators,” said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a legal historian and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. “That’s the scenario in which whites are likely to support civil rights movements because there are two clear sides” representing “good" and "evil,” she said... Krugler and Brown-Nagin said white backlash to the civil rights movement was intensified by the “law and order” rhetoric Richard Nixon deployed in his 1968 presidential campaign, which Trump and other political figures have echoed in their derision of protesters today.