This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court this June. Alongside Amicus, we kicked things off this year by explaining How Originalism Ate the Law. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!)

On Friday morning, the Supreme Court issued an explosive decision hobbling the president’s ability to enforce regulations—just 12 hours after President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance at the CNN debate against Donald Trump. The conservative supermajority’s ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overturned 40 years of precedent based on “Chevron deference”—shifting an immense amount of power away from Congress and the executive branch toward the judiciary. The ruling gives unelected judges free-floating veto power over the enforcement of virtually all laws and puts a heavy thumb on the scale of deregulation, hobbling Democratic presidents’ ability to govern.

On Saturday’s episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discuss the connection between the debate and the court’s decisions with Stanford Law professor Pam Karlan, who served in the Biden administration as deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. A preview of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: I have this lingering question about how the Trump-Biden debate, and presidential debates more generally, mislead and misdirect the conversation about how government actually works. Onstage, it looks like these two guys will personally be setting policy on veterans affairs and climate and immigration and........

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