1NC

1NC — Off
 1NC — T-Progressive
Criminal justice reform requires constraints on criminalization and
punishment – that’s a prerequisite for effective debates
Sandra G. Mayson, 20 – professor of law at the University of Georgia School of Law; teaches
criminal law and criminal justice reform (“The Concept of Criminal Law” Criminal Law and
Philosophy https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-020-09530-z //DH
Yet The Realm does bear on existential reform debates, because it addresses an overlooked first step in any coherent deliberation about
What is the nature of the thing we seek to reform?
the future of the criminal legal system: defining “criminal law.”
What — if anything — makes criminal law a distinctive kind of law? Duff undertakes this task because one cannot
deliberate about what to criminalize without determining what the criminal law is for; and one cannot deliberate about what the
criminal law is for without determining what it is. This initial, definitional task, though, is necessary to more than criminalization
theory. It is necessary to debates about the value and future of criminal law itself. And notwithstanding the
centrality of the question, there appears to be no clear consensus among either scholars or reformers about what differentiates criminal
law from every other kind of law. This Essay contends that Duff gets the answer right.11 The
fact that makes criminal law a
unique form of law is that it operates as a mechanism of collective condemnation. It is a body of law
and legal practice that censures particular acts in the polity’s name. This concept of criminal law makes sense of the
bulk of existing criminal-law doctrine and institutions. To my mind, it is the only concept of criminal law that can. It is not a novel concept
of criminal law, and it is consistent with nearly all theories of criminal law and punishment in current circulation. But nor is it universally
recognized. Achieving clarity about the nature of criminal law is important for theory and reform alike.12 For
purposes of theory, recognizing criminal law as a mechanism of collective condemnation helps to refine the questions up for debate,
because the concept logically entails certain constraints on criminalization and punishment. For
purposes of reform, recognizing criminal law as a mechanism of collective condemnation is essential to thinking about whether we want
a criminal legal system at all, and what, in its best form, it should look like.

Violation — the affirmative increases criminalization and punishment

Vote neg for limits and ground — the affirmative’s interp makes the topic
bidirectional and allows for increasing punishment/restrictions on crime and
sending groups like Nazis to jail — that independently kills core generics
because this topic is already large enough
voter for fairness and education
 1NC — Disclosure
Teams should accurately disclose affirmatives 15 minutes before the round –
they didn’t – vote neg for fairness and clash – pre-round prep is key to in-
round education and negative strategy – justifies all forms of misdisclosure –
at the least, be neg leaning on generic links and strategies — that’s magnified
by them not specifying what the reform actually is in the 1ac — we can’t start
prepping the aff until 1ac cx
 1NC — Courts CP
Text: the United States federal judiciary ought to establish enact substantial
criminal justice reform of law enforcement hacking for the purposes of criminal
investigations in the United States.

Judicial action solves, spurs follow-on, and avoids

Dodson ’16 (Scott; 2016; J.D. from Duke University, B.A. in Biology from Rice University, Professor of Law at UC-Hastings College,
Associate Dean for Research at UC-Hastings College; University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 164 “The Gravitational Force of Federal
Law,” p. 703-753; RP)

D. Political Cover Compared to the justices on the Supreme Court, state judges are in a precarious position.
State court opinions can be overturned by the Supreme Court, by federal law, or by state law. Most
state constitutions are easier to amend than the U.S. Constitution, and some are notoriously
easier.199 These situations present a substantial risk that a state judge’s decision will be nullified or,
worse, reversed as wrongly decided.200 Further, state court decisions on state-law matters tend to implicate state-
law concerns that resonate with state citizens and state officials. Even if not overturned, state court decisions may
face intense criticism from these constituencies. Were state judges to hold life tenure like federal judges, they might not
care so tangibly about reactions to their decisions. But state judges do not have such job security. Political and
institutional conditions keep them close to state politics .201 Most state judges are elected by state voters;
others are term appointed and reappointed by elected state officials.202 From a career standpoint, state judges may
care very deeply about how their decisions are perceived. State judges have been voted off the bench
because of the opinions they signed.203 Political and public backlash, then, is a real concern for many
state judges.204 Following federal law and federal courts offers some cover against potential
backlash.205 Deciding an issue in tune with federal law allows state courts to shift responsibility to
federal law or the U.S. Supreme Court.206 State law decisions that deviate from federal law are more likely
to be overruled than those that conform to federal law.207 Part of the reason may be the belief among state courts that the
Supreme Court’s decision on an important or policy-laden matter of federal law can reflect public sentiment in a way
that gives state courts confronted with a similar issue comfort that their analogous resolution of state law will
be politically safe. This explanation is especially powerful if the national sentiments reflected in the Supreme Court’s opinion are
mirrored in the particular state in which the state court sits. Another part of the reason may be the political cost of
rejecting the Supreme Court’s view. In other words, even when the Supreme Court does not reflect
public opinion—or at least the public opinion of a particular state court’s state—the Supreme Court commands a level of
gravitas that seems to generate an expectation of following absent compelling reasons for deviation. If a
dropped rock falls to the ground, one needs no explanation, but if it defies gravity, one wonders what the hell is going on. Similarly, it is
far easier for a state judge to tell voters that her opinion follows the reasoning of the Supreme Court than
to try to explain why she diverged.208 These explanations seem to fit particularly well in certain matters of constitutional and
statutory law. Recall the story of gay rights and Bowers v. Hardwick told in Part I.209 Following Bowers—a rights-restrictive decision
holding a state statute criminalizing consensual, private, adult sodomy valid under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution210—
many state courts interpreted their state constitutions accordingly.211 Indeed, despite
its nonpreemptive and narrow
holding,212 Bowers was a major factor in the stagnation of gay rights over the next ten years.213 In 1996,
Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage for
purposes of federal law as between one man and one woman and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex
marriages validated elsewhere.214 Immediately following the federal government’s lead, most states
enacted mini-DOMAs restricting marriage under state law to opposite-sex couples.215 States that
diverged by expanding gay rights under state law tended to be quickly reined in,216 and, until very recently,
significant popular backlash, both generalized and targeted, to state advances of gay rights was a real threat.217
For example, in a widely reported retention election, three justices of the Iowa Supreme Court were voted down for retention primarily
on the basis of an opinion they joined that required Iowa to recognize same-sex marriage. This was the first time an Iowa Supreme Court
justice had ever been rejected for retention.218 It was
not until the Supreme Court decided United States v.
Windsor,219 holding the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment, that states felt
protected enough to begin advancing gay-marriage equality with vigor.220 Windsor, of course, was purely an
interpretation of federal law and went out of its way to note the federalism underpinnings that give states different
prerogatives on defining marriage.221 Yet even when not controlling, Supreme Court decisions offer states political
cover. The Supreme Court of New Mexico, for example, relied on Windsor (and Romer, Lawrence, and Loving222) in construing its
own state constitution to guarantee marriage equality.223 Those Supreme Court cases did not demand the result the state court reached
—indeed, they expressly disavowed any implications for it—but, as high-profile Supreme Court decisions, they no doubt
gave the state court more security in reaching it. The same scenario plays out in matters of statutory law that focus on
sensitive policy issues. As one commentator has argued, Simply stated, a state judge, despite having the inherent authority to
construe a state statute in a manner inconsistent with federal law, may hesitate to announce to the world that a majority
of the country’s highest court got the issue wrong, either because the judge wants to avoid charges of
judicial activism or out of respect for the reputation of the Supreme Court.224 Procedure cases offer a
counterpoint. Much of procedure is apolitical.225 Procedural choices often escape the attention of the lay public—and often of
legislators. Rulemakers have, at least until very recently, been insulated from the kind of politics that dominate legislation.226 States
were procedural leaders for centuries before the adoption of the 1938 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, so political cover is not a strong
impetus for state following of federal procedure.227 Of course, where federal procedure takes a decidedly provocative turn, such as
through the revolutionary changes of 1938 or the widely maligned Twombly and Iqbal decisions, acceptance of those federal changes can
offer political cover for states that follow them.228 Political cover may thus offer some explanatory value for the following of replica
states or those that have adopted Twombly and Iqbal. In the run-of-the-mill procedure choices, however, there is far less political effect.
Federal procedural law has no preemptive effect, and the Supreme Court cannot reverse a state court on an issue of state procedural
law.229 Procedural choices do not often generate front-page news.230 I thus infer only weak explanatory power of political cover for the
gravitational pull of federal procedure on states.
 1NC — Samoa PIC
The United States federal government should enact substantial criminal justice
reform of law enforcement hacking for the purposes of criminal investigations in the
United States in all states and non-Samoan territories.

American Samoa is in the U.S.

U.S. Park Service No Date (https://www.nps.gov/npsa/index.htm)
The National Park of American Samoa welcomes you into the heart of the South Pacific, to a world of sights,
sounds, and experiences that you will find in no other national park in the United States.

Crafting a law at distance destroys Samoa’s complex social structures –

communities are vulnerable
Samoa News 3/2/2017 (Gov. Lolo: Territories cannot afford any reduction in Medicaid
funding, www.samoanews.com/local-news/gov-lolo-territories-cannot-afford-any-reduction-
medicaid-funding)
At the outset of his statement, the governor points out that the territories
are often overlooked when federal policy
makers create laws, policies and programs that “are supposed to help our unique native communities.” However, he said often
times, “such initiatives ignore our remote distance, vulnerable economies and complex social
structures.” “Usually they fail to resolve the problems needing solutions or end up complicating already
difficult environments and stifling our ability to grow our economies and our communities overall,”
Lolo said.

That interference undermines the cultural autonomy of the Samoan way of life
Somoan Federation of America 8/25/2014 (BRIEF FOR INTERVENORS OR, IN THE
ALTERNATIVE, AMICI CURIAE THE AMERICAN SAMOA GOVERNMENT AND CONGRESSMAN ENI
F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/Faleomavaega-DC-Circuit-brief.pdf)
If Plaintiffs-Appellants and amici are correct and the courts must set aside the framework of the Insular Cases, it would undercut the very
predicate of the fa’a Samoa. American Samoa has worked closely with Congress to maintain a deliberate
distance between the territory and the law of the United States. It has done so because this
distance is necessary to respect the cultural autonomy of American Samoa and its way of life.
See Statement of Hon. Salanoa S.P. Aumoeualogo, LH, Constitution Hearing at 15, 16 (“ American Samoa enjoy and welcome
our present status as an unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States. It signifies our
desire to be part of the American Family, and at the same time, it preserves and protects our communal
land and matai system, the basic core of our Samoan way of life.”). If the courts bridge this distance USCA Case #13-5272
Document #1509225 Filed: 08/25/2014 Page 43 of 57 33 with a novel application of the Citizenship Clause it would effectively decide
the political status of American Samoa without any democratic input.

Cultural diversity prevents extinction

Stavenhagen 90 (Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Professor at the United Nations University, 1990, The
Ethnic Question pg. 73)
The struggle for the preservation of the collective identity of culturally distinct peoples has
further implications as well. The cultural diversity of the world’s peoples is a universal
resource for all humankind. The diversity of the worlds cultural pool is like the diversity of the world’s biological gene pool.
A culture that disappears due to ethnocide or cultural genocide represents a loss for all humankind. At a time
when the classic development models of the post war era have failed to solve the major problems of mankind, people are again looking at
so called traditional cultures for at least some of the answers. This is very clear, for example, as
regards to agricultural and
food production, traditional medicine, environmental management in rural areas,
construction techniques, social solidarity in times of crises, etc. The world’s diverse cultures
have much to offer our imperiled planet . Thus the defense of the collective rights of ethnic groups and indigenous
peoples cannot be separated from the collective human rights of all human beings.
 1NC — Mattei K
The plan identifies the non-Western world as a space devoid of the rule of law
— makes aggressive colonial and neoliberal violence inevitable
Ugo Mattei 9, Professor at Hastings College of the Law & University of Turin; and Marco de
Morpurgo, M.Sc. Candidate, International University College of Turin, LL.M. Candidate, Harvard
Law School, 2009, “GLOBAL LAW & PLUNDER: THE DARK SIDE OF THE RULE OF LAW,” online:
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=bocconi_legal_papers
Within this framework, Western law has constantly enjoyed a dominant position during the past centuries and
today, thus being in the position to shape and bend the evolution of other legal systems
worldwide. During the colonial era, continental-European powers have systematically exported their own legal systems to the
colonized lands. During the past decades and today, the United States have been dominating the international
arena as the most powerful economic power, exporting their own legal system to the
‘periphery’, both by itself and through a set of international institutions , behaving as a neo-
colonialist within the ideology known as neoliberalism. ¶ Western countries identify
themselves as law-abiding and civilized no matter what their actual history reveals. Such
identification is acquired by false knowledge and false comparison with other peoples, those
who were said to ‘lack’ the rule of law, such as China, Japan, India, and the Islamic world more
generally. In a similar fashion today, according to some leading economists, Third World developing
countries ‘lack’ the minimal institutional systems necessary for the unfolding of a market
economy. ¶ The theory of ‘lack’ and the rhetoric of the rule of law have justified aggressive
interventions from Western countries into non-Western ones. The policy of corporatization and
open markets, supported today globally by the so-called Washington consensus3, was used by Western bankers
and the business community in Latin America as the main vehicle to ‘open the veins’ of the
continent — to borrow Eduardo Galeano’s metaphor4 — with no solution of continuity between colonial and post-colonial times.
Similar policy was used in Africa to facilitate the forced transfer of slaves to America, and today to facilitate the
extraction of agricultural products, oil, minerals, ideas and cultural artefacts in the same countries. The
policy of opening markets for free trade, used today in Afghanistan and Iraq, was used in China during the nineteenth century Opium
War, in which free trade was interpreted as an obligation to buy drugs from British dealers. The policy of forcing local industries to
compete on open markets was used by the British empire in Bengal, as it is today by the WTO in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. ¶
Foreign-imposed privatization laws that facilitate unconscionable bargains at the expense of
the people have been vehicles of plunder, not of legality. In all these settings the tragic human
suffering produced by such plunder is simply ignored. In this context law played a major role in
legalizing such practices of powerful actors against the powerless.5 Yet, this use of power is
scarcely explored in the study of Western law. ¶ The exportation of Western legal
institutions from the West to the ‘rest’ has systematically been justified through the ideological
use of the extremely politically strong and technically weak concept of ‘rule of law’. The notion of
‘rule of law’ is an extremely ambiguous one. Notwithstanding, within any public discussion its positive connotations have
always been taken for granted. The dominant image of the rule of law is false both historically
and in the present, because it does not fully acknowledge its dark side. The false representation
starts from the idea that good law (which others ‘lack’) is autonomous, separate from society
and its institutions, technical, non-political, non-distributive and reactive rather than proactive : more
succinctly, a technological framework for an ‘efficient’ market. ¶ The rule of law has a bright and a
dark side, with the latter progressively conquering new ground whenever the former is not empowered
by a political soul. In the absence of such political life, the rule of law becomes a cold technology . Moreover,
when large corporate actors dominate states (affected by a declining regulatory role), law becomes a
product of the economy, and economy governs the law rather than being governed by it .

That creates a geography of evil that legitimizes liberal hierarchies and makes
war inevitable
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, Ph.D., Author, professor of critical geographies, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as
Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal Representations of War and Peace”,
http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf, accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
Given the representation practices embodied within the democratic peace theory discourse, it is best to view
the interactions that it fosters as ‘imperial encounters’. According to Doty, ‘the term imperial encounters is meant
to convey the idea of asymmetrical encounters in which one entity has been able to construct ‘realities’ that
were taken seriously and acted upon and the other entity has been denied equal degrees of kinds of agency ’.39
The ‘reality’ of democratic peace theory has been defined by Western representational practices outlined
above. These representations have shaped the production of knowledge and identities as well as making
particular courses of action appear possible/impossible/inevitable.40 Furthermore, to borrow a term from David
Campbell, democratic peace theory has constructed a new ‘geography of evil’ that (re)produces national
identity while dictating what courses of action are apt (i.e., conversion/force) when confronting the supposedly
non-liberal/democratic ‘other’.41 To reiterate this point in a slightly different fashion, “the context of the democratic
peace, then, includes not only the advent of a zone of peace among core states, but also international relations
of domination and subordination in the periphery…”.42 As a result of this analysis, the answers to the questions of ‘for
whom and for what purpose’ is democratic peace theory designed are now evident but not surprising. Democratic peace theory
and its associated discourse is for the people of the US/West. Its purpose is to fix the American/Western
national identity as civilized, peacefully inclined, and democratic with the non-West by definition being
considered uncivilized, war-mongering, and authoritarian. Democratic peace theory also aids in the
justification of the American/Western world-view which perceives both democracy and war in a particular
fashion. In turn, these conceptions of democracy and war help to hide much of the sordid past and present of the
international relations of western liberal democratic states. They help to justify the unjustifiable and to
legitimate the illegitimate. Of utmost importance is the ontological basis of these international relations
practices sanctioned by democratic peace theory and its associated discourse within the popular political
realm. This is the focus of the following section which examines the existence of one of the empirical silences within democratic peace
theory research and the consequences of ignoring these important events. Democratic Peace Theory and the Ontology of War and Peace
In Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War, Michael Shapiro tries to examine “the ways that enmity-related global geographies
and ethnoscapes emerge as collectivities, and how they try to achieve, stabilize, and reproduce their unity and coherence”.43 Historically,
the practice of war has emerged as one the most enduring methods to attempt to fix national identities and
ontological foundations. Victory in war confirms all the positive subjective views of the ‘self’ while at the same
time providing ‘proof’ of the subjectively perceived inferior nature of the ‘other’. Conversely, defeat not only
leads to (geo)strategic losses, but also to a reappraisal of the national identity and deep questioning of the
foundations that helped define national identity. The American defeat in the Vietnam War provides an
excellent example of these identity/foundation casualties . Therefore, Shapiro argues that war is not just
(geo)strategic, but is also about the confrontation between competing ontologies. As mentioned earlier, democratic
peace theory and its surrounding discourse views war as an activity waged by state actors in pursuit of (geo)strategic spoils (e.g.,
territory, resources, wealth), as well as an activity arising over disputes of ‘ownership’ of spoils and/or perceived violations of
sovereignty. As John Vasquez has argued, “the situation that states in the modern global system are most likely to deal
with by the use of force and violence is one in which their territory is threatened....territorial disputes provide
the willingness to go to war”.44 Democratic peace theorists believe that liberal democracies can peacefully
manage these kinds of disputes amongst themselves; however, in circumstances of dispute between a liberal
democracy and a non-liberal/democracy, war is seen as almost inevitable. Conventionally, this has been attributed
to the inherently aggressive nature of the ‘authoritarian’ state, which prevents liberal democracies from
trusting these states to adhere to peacefully negotiated settlements. Yet, when democratic peace theory is
viewed as a representational practice, war becomes inevitable between disputing liberal democratic states
and non-liberal/democratic states not because of the aggressive nature of authoritarian regimes but because
these situations are viewed as an opportunity for liberal democratic states to engage in a ‘civilizing’ mission
and reaffirm their national identity and ontology by demonstrating their superiority in battle. This imperative
becomes especially clear if we abandon the traditional view of war contained within democratic peace theory and look at democratic
non-state/liberal democratic state disputes and the underlying ontological contestations that fuelled them.45 Barkawi and Laffey have
argued that currently “force is used in the service of defending and expanding economic and to a lesser extent political liberalism (in the
guise of democracy) beyond the liberal capitalist core”.46 From a historical perspective, the dispute between the Iroquois Six Nations
and the Canadian government over the Grand River territory during the first decades of the twentieth century, provides an excellent
example of the ontological impetus behind international relations practices and how warfare can also be
directed towards the annihilation of culture.

The alt is to rethink democracy from the bottom-up — that requires a

rejection of their emphasis on Western-models of international law
Ugo Mattei 9, Professor at Hastings College of the Law & University of Turin; and Marco de
Morpurgo, M.Sc. Candidate, International University College of Turin, LL.M. Candidate, Harvard
Law School, 2009, “GLOBAL LAW & PLUNDER: THE DARK SIDE OF THE RULE OF LAW,” online:
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=bocconi_legal_papers
In the complex spectrum of global law, both throughout the era of colonialism and neo-liberal US-led
Western imperialism within a pattern of continuity, the rule of law, together with the theory of ‘lack’ and
other powerful rhetorical arguments, has been used in order to legitimize political interventions
and plunder in the ‘emerging’ economies. The sacred concept of rule of law, whose positive connotations are
‘naturally’ assumed, has been portrayed as the embodiment of a professional and neutral technology, thus
being capable of substituting the lack of democratic legitimacy of the institutions that are
protagonist in the creation of global law. But its dark side has never been shown or discussed. An
imperial rule of law is now a dominant layer for the worldwide legal systems. It is produced, in the
interest of international capital, by a variety of institutions, both public and private, all sharing a gap in political legitimacy sometimes
referred to as ‘democratic deficit’.31 At the same time, law
has been constructively turned into a technology and a
mere component of an economic system of capitalism, thus hiding its intrinsic political nature, and annulling
the relevance
of local political systems, now impotent in front of the dynamics of global law. The ‘dry technology’ of the rule of
law penetrates worldwide legal systems without any political discussion at the local level,
attempting to create the conditions for the development of market economies, often without success, and causing serious consequences
for the less powerful. Under the technology of the rule of law, in
its imperial version capable of producing
plunder, the essence of the United States’ law hides. In the aftermath of World War II, there was a dramatic change in the
pattern of Western legal development. Leading legal ideas once produced in continental Europe and exported through the colonized
world are now, for the first time, produced in a common law jurisdiction: the United States. Clearly, the present world dominance of the
United States has been economic, military and political first, and only recently legal, so that a ready explanation of legal hegemony can be
found within a simple conception of law as a product of the economy.32 Furthermore, US law has been capable of
expanding worldwide thanks to its prestige, the high level of professionalization of its attorneys and a series of
procedural institutions, that benefit plaintiffs, that allow US courts to have a certain capacity to attract
jurisdiction, while showing themselves as courts for universal justice.33 The general attitude of
the United States has been a very ethnocentric one, and precisely that of showing itself as the guardian of a
universal legality, which it is legitimized to export through its courts of law, scholarly
production, military and political intervention, and through a set of US-centric international institutions. In recent
times, in particular after September 11th 2001 and the declaration of the ‘war on terror’, the US rule of law has come
under attack 34, so that once admiring crowds of lawyers and intellectuals worldwide are now
beginning to look upon the United States as an uncivilized old West from the perspective of
legal culture, despite the professional prestige still enjoyed by the giant New York law firms and by the US academy.
Notwithstanding, there has been no decline in the rhetoric of the rule of law when it comes to foreign relations. Bringing
democracy and the rule of law is still used as a justification to keep intruding in foreign affairs. The
same can be said for the international financial institutions and their innumerable ‘development’ projects that come packaged with the
prestigious wrapping of the rule of law. A rethinking of the very idea of global law is necessary and it must
derive from a revaluation of the local dimension , which is currently ignored by the neo-liberal
model of development. The production of global law should change its direction, and follow a
bottom-up approach, rather than a top-down one, thus being sensitive to the local particularities
and complexities. Western spectacular ideas of democracy and the rule of law should be
rethought. On this planet, resources are scarce, but there would be more than enough for all to
live well. Nobody would admire and respect someone who, at a lunch buffet for seven, ate 90 percent of
the food, leaving the other guests to share an amount insufficient for one. In a world history of capitalism in which the rule of law
has reproduced this precise ‘buffet’ arrangement on the large scale, admiring the instruments used
to secure such an unfair arrangement seems indeed paradoxical. People have to be free to build
their own economies. There is nothing inevitable about the present arrangements and their
dominant and taken-for granted certainties. Indeed, it may be that the present legal and political
hegemonies suffer from lack: the lack of world culture and of global political realism.
 1NC — Elections DA — Warming
Biden wins – swing voters – BUT it’s not inevitable
Montanaro 10-9 – Domenico; senior political editor and correspondent. (“NPR Electoral Map:
Biden Lead Widens Again With Less Than A Month To Go” National Public Radio. October 9, 2020.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/09/921596963/npr-electoral-map-biden-lead-widens-again-with-
less-than-a-month-to-go)//SR
Given all of that, Trump's standing in the NPR electoral map analysis has gotten worse. With states that are determined to
be likely to go for either candidate or leaning toward them, Democrat Joe Biden now leads Trump, 290-163.
Here are the moves we've made in this month's map:

Wisconsin: Toss-Up —> Lean D

Arizona: Toss-Up —> Lean D
Nebraska 2nd Congressional District: Toss-Up —> Lean D
Iowa: Lean R —> Toss-Up
Nebraska 1st Congressional District: Likely R —> Lean R
Missouri: Likely R —> Lean R
Alaska: Likely R —> Lean R

That puts Biden — right now — above the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to win a
majority of the 538 available, leaving Trump with an uphill climb to win reelection. It comes with less than a
month to go in the election — and with millions of votes already cast.

To put Biden's lead in context, even if Trump wins all the remaining toss-up states, it would not be enough for him to win. The president
would need to make gains in the next three weeks in states now leaning toward Biden. Of
course, Trump was able to do
so against Hillary Clinton in 2016, particularly in the Upper Midwest.
We will update our map in a couple of weeks before the election – and things very well may shift and tighten between now and then, as
they did in 2016.

Fueling Biden's lead, according to national and statewide surveys, continues to be the former vice
president's overperformance with white voters, suburban voters, independents and seniors , all
groups Trump won in 2016.
Biden is showing strength in the Midwest and is also eating into Trump's margins in traditionally red
states. Biden is unlikely to win places like Alaska, Missouri, Montana and South Carolina, but being
more competitive there than Hillary Clinton was in 2016 is putting him on track to surpass Clinton's vote total and popular
vote margin of 3 million more than Trump.

It should be noted, however, that Trump remains within striking distance, especially in the Sun Belt
states, across the South and West.

The plan gives Trump that key accomplishment---CJR is a salient issue that
flips the election
Chung 19 – JD @ Georgetown, vice president for Criminal Justice Reform at American Progress
(Ed, “Do 2020 candidates care about criminal justice?,” USA Today,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/07/2020-candidates-should-make-criminal-
justice-central-campaigns/1289640001/)//BB
Last month, criminal justice reform became an issue in the 2020 presidential elections in a manner
befitting the Trump era: through a series of tweets from the president on Memorial Day insulting his potential
Democratic rivals. Trump first declared that anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill, the sweeping legislation
known for exacerbating mass incarceration, was “unelectable.” He then pronounced himself to be “responsible
for criminal justice reform” because he signed the FIRST STEP Act into law, even though some of the
most ardent supporters of the federal sentencing and prison reform bill say the legislation is but an
incremental step. Trump is, of course, no reformer. One can look at his actions before he became president when he publicly
campaigned for the execution of the wrongfully accused, and later convicted, Central Park Five. Or consider that his first Attorney
General was Jeff Sessions, who rolled back virtually every meaningful reform effort from the previous administration. Candidates aren't
Trump is an opportunist who is taking advantage of the void left by the
talking about criminal justice Rather,
current crop of candidates who have failed to discuss criminal justice reform on the campaign trail in a
meaningful way. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has been by far the most vocal about the need to reform the system, and Senator
Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota published an op-ed describing some of her policy ideas. Other candidates have weighed in on single issues.
But by and large, criminal justice reform has been cabined off to a question at the CNN Town Halls about whether
people who are currently incarcerated should have the right to vote (answer: they should). The lack of engagement on this issue by 2020
candidates is shown starkly in an interactive piece that The Washington Post published in April. The Post listed 15 broad topics — such
as healthcare, economic inequality, and climate change along with criminal justice — and measured the candidates’ share of words on
social media posts about each of the topics. Of the 15 issue areas, 13 had at least two candidates devote a double-digit percentage of their
social media posts to the topic. The only two issues that did not meet this low threshold were infrastructure and criminal justice. These
numbers likely have changed since April. But overall, thoserunning for the highest office in the country are
underestimating the importance to the electorate of reforming the criminal justice system. Just
look at recent polling from the battleground state of Ohio which shows that 64% of Ohioans overall —
including 78% of Democrats and 68% of independents — believe that the criminal justice system needs significant
improvement. Moreover, 70% of Democrats and 60% of independents believe too many people are in
prison, while only 24% and 26% respectively think there are too few or about the right number or people incarcerated. Against that
backdrop it remains unclear why so few candidates are talking about criminal justice reform. Perhaps they don’t consider mass
incarceration to be a crisis, even though there are nearly 7 million people locked up in prisons and jails across the country or otherwise
supervised by the system. For context, that’s the size of Los Angeles and Houston combined. Or maybe candidates think the criminal
justice system grew “naturally” because more people committed crimes, but they do not realize that national crime rates are near historic
lows and the system’s expansion is the result of deliberate policy choices to criminalize more behavior and to do it in a harsher fashion.
Criminal justice should be central for candidates It could be that candidates don’t talk about criminal justice
because they don’t see the connection with other traditionally “major” policy areas, like the economy. But mass incarceration has been a
key driver of poverty that has led to depressed physical, mental, and social outcomes especially for children, and especially African
American children, growing up in distressed communities. Thus, criminal justice reform can and should be considered an important tool
for social mobility. Perhaps candidates are listening to the wrong people — or at least defining relevant stakeholders too narrowly. The
conventional approach has been for politicians to consult mainly with judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement on public safety and
criminal justice matters. But candidates must recognize and learn from victims and survivors, people who
have been incarcerated, and their families. The expertise of those who have been impacted by the system must be valued
as much as, if not more than, those who work to maintain it. Criminal justice reform must be integral to the
candidacy of anyone running for elected office instead of merely a wedge for Trump to exploit. Candidates need to
develop substantive policy platforms and cast a vision for how they are going to address the crisis of
mass incarceration. It’s an issue voters care about and one for which candidates will be held
accountable if they take it for granted.

Trump reelection kills efforts to combat climate change

Starr, 19 [Paul, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton and a winner of the Pulitzer
Prize for General Nonfiction, May 2019, “Trump’s Second Term,”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/trump-2020-second-term/585994/,
BP]
This is one of those moments. After
four years as president, Trump will have made at least two Supreme
Court appointments, signed into law tax cuts, and rolled back federal regulation of the environment
and the economy. Whatever you think of these actions, many of them can probably be offset or
entirely undone in the future. The effects of a full eight years of Trump will be much more difficult,
if not impossible, to undo. Three areas — climate change, the risk of a renewed global arms race,
and control of the Supreme Court — illustrate the historic significance of the 2020 election . The first two
problems will become much harder to address as time goes on. The third one stands to remake our constitutional democracy and
undermine the capacity for future change. In short, the
biggest difference between electing Trump in 2016 and
reelecting Trump in 2020 would be irreversibility. Climate policy is now the most obvious example. For a long
time, even many of the people who acknowledged the reality of climate change thought of it as a
slow process that did not demand immediate action . But today, amid extreme weather events and
worsening scientific forecasts, the costs of our delay are clearly mounting, as are the
associated dangers. To have a chance at keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius — the
objective of the Paris climate agreement — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that by 2030,
CO2 emissions must drop some 45 percent from 2010 levels. Instead of declining, however, they
are rising. In his first term, Trump has announced plans to cancel existing climate reforms , such as
higher fuel-efficiency standards and limits on emissions from new coal-fired power plants, and he
has pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. His reelection would put off a
national commitment to decarbonization until at least the second half of the 2020s, while
encouraging other countries to do nothing as well. And change that is delayed becomes more
economically and politically difficult. According to the Global Carbon Project, if decarbonization had begun
globally in 2000, an emissions reduction of about 2 percent a year would have been sufficient to
stay below 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Now it will need to be approximately 5 percent a year. If
we wait another decade, it will be about 9 percent . In the United States, the economic disruption
and popular resistance sure to arise from such an abrupt transition may be more than our
political system can bear. No one knows, moreover, when the world might hit irreversible
tipping points such as the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would likely doom us to
a catastrophic sea-level rise.

climate change causes extinction

Sprat and Dunlop 19 (David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, *Research Director for Breakthrough
National Centre for Climate Restoration and co-author of Climate Code Red: The case for emergency
action; **member of the Club of Rome AND formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry
executive, chairman of the Australian Coal Association, chief executive of the Australian Institute of
Company Directors, and chair of the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions
Trading, "Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach," Breakthrough National
Centre for Climate Restoration,
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_90dc2a2637f348edae45943a88da04d4.pdf)//BB
2050: By 2050, there is broad scientific acceptance that system tipping-points for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and
a sea-ice-free Arctic summer were passed well before 1.5°C of warming, for the Greenland Ice Sheet
well before 2°C, and for widespread permafrost loss and large-scale Amazon drought and dieback
by 2.5°C. The “hothouse Earth” scenario has been realised, and Earth is headed for another
degree or more of warming, especially since human greenhouse emissions are still significant. While sea
levels have risen 0.5 metres by 2050, the increase may be 2–3 metres by 2100, and it is understood from historical analogues that seas
may eventually rise by more than 25 metres. Thirty-five percent of the global land area, and 55
percent of the global population, are subject to more than 20 days a year of lethal heat conditions,
beyond the threshold of human survivability. The destabilisation of the Jet Stream has very
significantly affected the intensity and geographical distribution of the Asian and West African
monsoons and, together with the further slowing of the Gulf Stream, is impinging on life support
systems in Europe. North America suffers from devastating weather extremes including
wildfires, heatwaves, drought and inundation. The summer monsoons in China have failed, and
water flows into the great rivers of Asia are severely reduced by the loss of more than one-third of the
Himalayan ice sheet. Glacial loss reaches 70 percent in the Andes, and rainfall in Mexico and central
America falls by half. Semi-permanent El Nino conditions prevail. Aridification emerges over more
than 30 percent of the world’s land surface. Desertification is severe in southern Africa, the
southern Mediterranean, west Asia, the Middle East, inland Australia and across the south-western
United States. Impacts: A number of ecosystems collapse, including coral reef systems, the Amazon
rainforest and in the Arctic. Some poorer nations and regions, which lack capacity to provide artificially-cooled
environments for their populations, become unviable. Deadly heat conditions persist for more than 100 days
per year in West Africa, tropical South America, the Middle East and South-East Asia, which together
with land degradation and rising sea levels contributes to 21 perhaps a billion people being displaced.
Water availability decreases sharply in the most affected regions at lower latitudes (dry tropics and subtropics ),
affecting about two billion people worldwide. Agriculture becomes nonviable in the dry subtropics.
Most regions in the world see a significant drop in food production and increasing numbers of extreme
weather events, including heat waves, floods and storms. Food production is inadequate to feed
the global population and food prices skyrocket, as a consequence of a one-fifth decline in crop
yields, a decline in the nutrition content of food crops, a catastrophic decline in insect populations,
desertification, monsoon failure and chronic water shortages, and conditions too hot for human
habitation in significant food-growing regions. The lower reaches of the agriculturally-important river deltas such as
the Mekong, Ganges and Nile are inundated, and significant sectors of some of the world’s most populous cities —
including Chennai, Mumbai, Jakarta, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Shanghai, Lagos, Bangkok and Manila — are
abandoned. Some small islands become uninhabitable. Ten percent of Bangladesh is inundated,
displacing 15 million people. According to the Global Challenges Foundation’s Global Catastrophic Risks 2018 report, even
for 2°C of warming, more than a billion people may need to be relocated due to sea-level rise, and In
high-end scenarios “the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model, with a high likelihood of
human civilisation coming to an end”. 22
 1NC — ACB DA V.1
ACB goes through inevitably — its only a question of before or after the
election — democratic power politics can push it into the lame-duck
Wittes & Reynolds 20 – (Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Molly
Reynolds, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; “Can Democrats Stop the Nomination?”; The
Atlantic; D.A. October 6th 2020, [Published September 22nd 2020];
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/questions-watch-senate/616428/) //LFS—
JCM
Anyone confidently predicting one way or another whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can
seat a new justice on the Supreme Court is blustering. Here is the only thing that’s certain: The coming
fight will not be resolved by principle—no matter how senators talk or what principles they profess. It will be
resolved by legislative gamesmanship , voting strength, and power politics.
Four major questions will determine the outcome of this struggle, set off by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg only six weeks before Americans finish voting for both president and control of the Senate, and only
four months before a new Congress gets sworn in. The first is whether McConnell actually has the votes. Right now, there are 53 Republicans in the Senate, and recent statements from senators suggest that enough of
them support holding a vote on the nominee put forward by President Trump this year for the process to move forward. Only two GOP senators are opposed to forcing someone through before the next president takes
office. Susan Collins, facing a tough electoral environment in Maine following her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, announced Saturday that “the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made
by the President who is elected on November 3rd.” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted against Kavanaugh, coincidentally declared hours before Ginsburg’s death was announced, “I would not vote to confirm a
Supreme Court nominee.” She reiterated that position following Ginsburg’s death: “For weeks, I have stated that I would not support taking up a potential Supreme Court vacancy this close to the election. Sadly, what was
then a hypothetical is now our reality, but my position has not changed." Other Republican senators, however, are backing McConnell’s aggressive stance. These include Martha McSally of Arizona, Steve Daines of
Montana, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Cory Gardner of Colorado.The biggest blow for Democrats came this morning from Mitt Romney of Utah, who declared earlier that “I intend to follow the Constitution and
precedent in considering the president’s nominee. If the nominee reaches the Senate floor, I intend to vote based on their qualifications.” So while McConnell entered the game with a thin margin, he’s been successful at
winning with thin margins before, including during last winter’s impeachment trial and the Kavanaugh confirmation—and the numbers have clearly broken in his favor. To create a majority, Minority Leader Chuck
Schumer would need to make sure Collins and Murkowski are solid, and he would need two more Republicans to flip positions. That’s a tall order. But the math may get worse for McConnell and better for Schumer after
the votes are counted in November—if the Democrats can stall things that long. McSally is running considerably behind the Democratic challenger Mark Kelly, and because Arizona’s race is a a special election to fill the
seat of the late John McCain, he would take office promptly were he to prevail—not when the new Congress convenes in January 2021. Although finalizing that election’s results and seating Kelly could take time, his
would be a potential additional vote against a nominee. More generally, if Democrats were to pick up Senate seats—as seems likely—or even take control of the chamber, particularly if Joe Biden were also to defeat
Trump, the optics of confirming a nominee during a lame-duck session of Congress would get particularly ugly for McConnell. He would, after all, be trying to ram through a defeated president’s nominee with a razor-thin
Senate majority that might be about to diminish further, or disappear entirely. And he would be doing so by way of allowing that defeated president and the defeated party in the Senate to seize control of the Supreme
Court in the face of apparent voter preference for the other side.

This possible erosion of McConnell’s position raises the second key question, which is one of timing: Does
McConnell push for
a confirmation vote before the election, or does he wait until a lame-duck session? This question is also
tricky. The fact that McConnell’s position will likely be weaker with respect to pure numbers, at least somewhat,
when the votes are counted creates a temptation to act quickly and get the confirmation done
before the election. But that will be hard. The election is only 42 days away, and, while plans could change to
accommodate the process, Congress is not scheduled to be in session for more than 11 of them.
Confirming a Supreme Court justice does take time. It requires hearings. There has to be floor
debate. And Democrats will be doing everything they can to stall and slow things down. Remember also
that all of those vulnerable incumbents whose seats McConnell wants to preserve need to go home and fight for their seats at precisely
the time a quick vote will require them to be in Washington. Even if they support confirming the president’s nominee while reversing the
positions that many of them took four years ago, when McConnell blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland,
remaining in Washington keeps them off the campaign trail. The result is a
complicated little puzzle for McConnell: His
position is stronger if he acts quickly, but he may not have the time to do so, and Democrats will
certainly attempt to slow things down and force the matter into the lame duck, where their hand
may well be stronger. This raises the third key question: How much delaying power do Democrats have, and how much of it will
they be willing to use?

The plan would be weaponized to break down Congress — ensures delay

Hunnicutt & Bose 20 – (Trevor Hunnicutt; Nandita Bose; “Hopes fade for reform of massive
U.S. criminal justice system”; Reuters; D.A. September 17 th 2020, [Published June 30th 2020];
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-justice/hopes-fade-for-reform-of-
massive-u-s-criminal-justice-system-idUSKBN2413H4) //LFS—JCM
But Congress has been unable to reach a bipartisan agreement on how to respond to demands for
change in recent weeks, making it unlikely in months to come. As such, nationwide protests under the umbrella of the burgeoning
Black Lives Matter movement are unlikely to end anytime soon. “It was kind of shocking, the huge gap between
where your congressional Democrats are, where a lot of people in the movement on the ground are and where
Republicans appear to be, and I think that’s really disappointing,” said Ames Grawert, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for
Justice, a liberal-leaning group, speaking of police reform legislation. “ They’re farther apart than ever,” said Randy Petersen,
a former police officer and now senior researcher at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative group. BITTER REALITY On June
25, Democrats in the House of Representatives passed
a police reform bill that Republicans have said they are
unlikely to support. A day earlier, Democrats in the Senate blocked the Republicans’ reform bill. Both
sides have accused the other of acting in bad faith. The breakdown is especially bitter to members of the
Brennan Center, the Texas foundation, and other deep-pocketed groups who helped push through a sweeping prison sentencing reform
bill in late 2018, heralded as the most significant change to sentencing in at least a decade. The First Step Act led to the release of
thousands of inmates. Supporters included Republican President Donald Trump, White House adviser Jared Kushner, billionaire
libertarian Charles Koch, celebrity couple Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West, police unions, faith groups and Democratic Senator
Cory Booker. The unusual coalition was no accident, lobbyists and activists who worked behind the scenes say. They pushed for
years to make sentencing reform and police restructuring appear above politics, appealing to religious
leaders’ belief in redemption, small government advocates’ belief in budget cuts and civil rights groups’ concern about racial inequity. “If
you have law enforcement and the faith community on the right and then you have civil rights and social justice organizations on the left
that has proven to be a strong and muscular coalition,” said Ralph Reed, a Republican strategist and founder of the Faith and Freedom
Coalition, which endorsed the 2018 bill. Republicans claim Democrats, in a position to potentially take control of the Senate
and the White House in the November elections, want to avoid giving the president a police reform bill he can
sign or a victory he can tout. Democrats “have decided that it is more politically expedient to align
themselves with the angry mob rather than uphold their primary responsibility to protect the
American public,” said Republican Senator Ted Cruz in a statement. Democrats and civil rights groups including the NAACP say they
opposed the Republican bill because it relies on incentives to effect reforms and seeks data collection on issues such as no-knock
warrants, rather than mandating changes as the Democratic bill does. It also failed to scale back “qualified immunity,” which shields
police from excessive force lawsuits. Senator Kamala Harris, who is on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s shortlist for
possible running mates, called Republicans’ efforts a “political trap” and “crumbs on the table.”

A political crisis under Trump causes nuclear use — extinction

Oppenheimer 19 – (Michael Oppenheimer, clinical professor with the NYU School of
Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs; “Will Trump risk war to save his presidency?”; The
Hill; D.A. October 7th 2020, [Published March 1st 2019]; https://thehill.com/opinion/white-
house/432275-will-trump-risk-war-to-save-his-presidency) //LFS—JCM
As we try to impose fact and law on immigration policy, we need to apply this lesson in contemplating Trump’s next desperate act. The
most worrisome scenario is a real but still manageable external crisis that arrives at a moment
when escalation is in Trump’s political interest. Response mismanagement would fuel the crisis, but the real
threat is a president motivated to hype a real crisis that his chaotic administration will be
unable to control.
Such a possibility has risen from Hollywood cliché to serious risk and the odds
of a "wag the dog" dynamic are
increasing. Trump is in a deep hole and digging furiously. The political benefits of the wall will
prove transitory, as construction bogs down in the courts and the latest caravan melts away. Between Mueller,
mounting congressional scrutiny, low poll numbers, Republican desertions, further indictments of
family and friends, impeachment (if not conviction) and an approaching election, the temptation to change the
subject and rally his base by hyping an external threat could become irresistible. Backed into a
corner and politically wounded, we can expect neither rational nor well-intentioned behavior
from the president.
Unlike the slow moving and artificial crisis over the border, a real national security crisis, provoked by Trump or
not, will move rapidly, present high, possibly existential risk, involve complexity, uncertainty and
unintended negative consequences from ill-conceived policy choices. Consider Berlin blockades, Soviet
missiles in Cuba, several global financial and economic crises, 9/11. Few presidents have avoided such perils and their
presidencies — and the future of the country — have been defined by their responses.

Such episodes are exacting tests of precisely those qualities lacking in the Trump Administration: the
rigor of policy process, the knowledge and skill of advisors, the confidence and mutual respect among and
between policy and intelligence officials and the calmness of the president. Even with the best of
intentions and effort, presidential performance has varied widely over our recent history.
At the extremes, JFK’s skillful management of the missile crisis produced a peaceful resolution, Soviet capitulation, an improved period in
U.S.-Soviet relations and enhanced political standing for the president. George W. Bush’s response to 9/11 was to invade Iraq, arguably
the worst strategic mistake since Vietnam and still paying negative dividends for ourselves and the Middle East.
1NC — Advantage 2
 1NC — Democracy Bad
DPT doesn’t solve war
Mousseau 16, Poli Sci Prof @ University of Central Florida, 16 (Michael, Grasping the scientific
evidence: The contractualist peace supersedes the democratic peace, Conflict Management and
Peace Science 1—18)
A weighty controversy has enveloped the study of international conflict: whether the democratic peace, the observed
dearth of
militarized conflict between democratic nations, may be spurious and accounted for by
institutionalized market ‘‘contractualist’’ economy. I have offered theory and evidence that economic norms, specifically
contractualist economy, appear to account for both the explanans (democracy) and the explanandum (peace) in the democratic peace research program
(Mousseau, 2009, 2012a, 2013; see also Mousseau et al., 2013a, b). Five studies have responded with several arguments for
why we should continue to believe that democracy causes peace (Dafoe, 2011; Dafoe and Russett, 2013; Dafoe et al.,
2013; Ray, 2013; Russett, 2010). Resolution of this controversy is fundamental to the study and practice of international relations. The observation
of democratic peace is ‘‘the closest thing we have to an empirical law’’ in the study of global politics (Levy, 1988: 662),
and carries the profound implication that the spread of democracy will end war. New
economic norms theory, on the other hand, yields the contrary implication that universal democracy
will not end war. Instead, it is market-oriented development that creates a culture of contracting,
and this culture legitimates democracy within nations and causes peace among them. The policy implications could
hardly be more divergent: to end war (and support democracy), the contractualist democracies should
promote the economies of nations at risk

(Krieger and Meierrieks, 2015; Meierrieks, 2012; Mousseau, 2000, 2009, 2012a, 2013; Nieman, 2015). In the literature are five factual claims for why we
should continue to believe that democracy causes peace: (1) an assertion that in three of the five studies that overturned the democratic peace (Mousseau,
2013; Mousseau et al., 2013a, b), the insignificance of democracy controlling for contractualist economy is due to the treatment of missing data for
contractualist economy (Dafoe et al., 2013, henceforth DOR); (2) a claim of error in the measure for conflict (DOR) that appears in one of the five studies that
overturned the democratic peace (Mousseau, 2013); (3) an alleged misinterpretation of an interaction term that appears in one of the five studies
(Mousseau, 2009) that overturned the democratic peace, along with in inference of democratic causality from an interaction of democracy with
contractualist economy (Dafoe and Russett, 2013; DOR); (4) a claim of reverse causality, of democracy causing contractualist economy (Ray, 2013); and (5) a
report of multiple regressions with most said to show democratic significance after controlling for contractualist economy (DOR). This study investigates all
five of these factual claims. I begin by addressing the issue of missing data by constructing two entirely new measures for contractualist economy. I then take
up possible measurement error in the dependent variable by reporting tests using both my own (Mousseau, 2013) and DOR’s measures for conflict. Next, I
disaggregate the data to investigate a causal interaction of democracy with contractualist economy. I then examine the evidence for reverse causality, and
scrutinize the competing test models to pinpoint the exact factors that can account for differences in test outcomes. The results are consistent across all
tests: there is no credible evidence supporting democracy as a cause of peace. Using
DOR’s base model, the impact of
democracy is zero regardless of how contractualist economy or interstate conflict is
measured. There is no misinterpreted interaction term in any study that has overturned the democratic peace, and the
disaggregation of the data yields no support for a causal interaction of democracy with
contractualist economy. Ray’s (2013) evidence for reverse causality from democracy to contractualist economy is shown to be
based on an erroneous research design. And of DOR’s 120 separate regressions that consider contractualist economy, 116 contain
controversial measurement and specification practices; the remaining four are analyses of all (fatal and non-fatal) disputes, where the correlation of
democracy with peace is limited to mixedeconomic dyads, those where one state has a contractualist economy and the other does not, a subset that includes
only 27% of dyads from 1951 to 2001, including only 50% of democratic dyads. It is further shown that this
marginal peace is a
statistical artifact since it does not exist among neighbors where everyone has an equal
opportunity to fight.

Democracy causes great power nuclear war — backsliding solves

Muller 15, director of the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt, professor of International
Relations at Goethe University, (Harald, Democracy, Peace, and Security, Lexington Books pp. 44-
49)
My own proposal for solving the problem. developed together with my colleague Jonas Wolff (Mü llcr 2004. Muller/Wolff 2006). turns the
issue upside down: We do not start with explaining mutual democratic peacefulness , but its opposite.
the proven capability of democracies to act aggressively against non-democracies. We note that — apart
from self-defense where there is no difference between democracies and non-democracies — —
democratic states go to war — in contrast to non-democracies — to uphold international law (or their
own interpretation thereof), to prevent anarchy through state failure, to “save strangers” when dictatorships massacre their own
people, and to promote democracy. None of these acts is likely to find its target in a democracy . Since the
use of force by democracies is hardly possible without public justification, even the rhetorical use of the said reasons will not stand public scrutiny when
uttered against a democracy — people will not believe it, War
other than for self-defense thus can only be fought by
democracies against non-democracies because against a fellow democracy justification would fail. Because
whether this is the case or not to a degree that justifies war as the ‘ultimate means” must rely on practical judgments. and practical judgments can differ
among even reasonable people. democracies might disagree whether or not the judgment applies in specific cases. Democracies also show variance in that
regard due (o a systematic. political-culturally rooted different propensity to judge situations as justifing war or not, and to participate in such wars (Gels et
al, 2013). It should also be noted that, given the continuum between autocracy, anocracy and democracy, whether a given state is a democracy or not can be
subject to interpretation. and this interpretation may even change over time (Oren 1995, Hayes 2013). The fact is that there are a couple of fairly warlike
democracies, and that the democracies participating most frequently in military disputes (apart from the special case of Israel) are, by and large. major
powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom. France. or India. This pattern is important to keep in mind when the question of the utility of
democratic peace for today ‘s world problems is to be answered. Transnational terrorism, failed states, civil wars and the like dominate the international
agenda on war and peace. At the classical level of international relations, in the relationships among major powers. developments arc undcr way which
potentially pose an even greater threat than this diverse collection of non-interstate problems presently does. We
are living in an era of
rather rapid and disturbing power change (Tammcn et al. 2000). The United States are still the leading power of the world with
unprecedented militany and economic poer. But others are coming closer: China. India. Braiil and Indonesia, China is at the top of this cohort, All major
power changes chal lenge existing structures and thus contain the potential for great disturbance. The leading power may start to fear for its dominant
position and take measures to ensure its position at the lop. These actions may frustrate emerging powers and even lead to the perception that their security
is endangered. which would motivate counter-measures that further propel a political escala tion spiral. An increasingly focused competition in which a true
power change appears increasingly possible. that is. a change of position at the top of the international hierarchy, has an even greater risk potential. If the
inherent dangers are not contained — which remains always a possibility major power war may ensue defying all propositions that major war has become
obsolete or that nuclear deterrence will prevent this calamity once and for all. Of course, states can grow peacefully into roles of higher responsibility. status
and influence on the world stage. There arc no natural laws saving that changes in the world’s power structure must end in war, despite all distur bances and
ensuing risks (Rauch 2014). The less conflict an emerging power experiences with established ones, and with peer challengers that emerge simultaneously,
the better the chances that the rise will travel a peaceful trajectory. Looking through this lens. thc relations of only one emerging power with the present
hegemon appear to be partially conflict-pronc. and seriously so: it concerns the pair China/United States. The Iwo great powers are rivals for preponderance
in East and South East Asia and eventually for being the number one at the global level. There is also Chinese resentment stemming from the US role in
China’s past as a victim of Western imperialism. On the other hand. China’s authoritarian system of rule and ensuing violations of human and political rights
trigger the liberal resentment discussed in the first part of this chapter. which is rooted particularly strongly in US political culture. The Chinese — US
relationship is thus thc key to a peaceful. tense or even violent future at the world stage. A small group of major powers . Including the United States
and China, is interconnected today by a complex conflict system. China has territorial claims against Japan, South Korea, Vietnam. the Philippines. Brunci. and
India which it pursues by a variety of means, not shying away from the limited, small scale usc of militan force in some cases, notably against obviously
weaker counterparts (Ellcman ci al. 2012). China’s relation (o wards Japan is the one most burdened by China’s past as a victim of Japanese oppression and
related cruelties, and the propcnsit of the conservative part of Japan’s elite to display cavalier attitudes towards this past or even sort of celebrate it (as
through visits to the notorious Yasukuni shrine hosting the remnants of war criminals) only adds to anti-Japanese feelings in China (Russia. another great
power. also openly pursues a revisionist agenda. as vividly shown in the recent Crimean move, but these territorial ambitions are not part of the most
virulent conflict complex in Asia). Territorial
claims are always emotionalized and dangerous . Territorial claims
by a major power bear particular risks, because threatened countries look for protective allies
which are, by necessity, major powers with the capability to project power into the region of concern.
The great power claimant and the great power protector then position themselves on the
opposite sides of the conflict. A classical constellation of great power conflict results that looks far more traditional than all the talk about
post-modern global relations in which state power struggles fade into oblivion would suggest. In the Asian conflict complex that structures the shape of the
US — Chinese contest (Foot/Walter 201 1). Japan. South Korea and the Philippines arc for mall allied ith the United Slates. India and Vietnam today entertain
rda (ions ith the United States that can be depicted as cordial entente, already include military cooperation, and might move further towards an alliance.
depending on deelopmens in Asia. The United States is also a protector of Taiwan. officially a Chinese province, factualh an independent political entity. and
the main object of Chinese interest because of the unfinished agenda of national re-unification. Given the enormous asymmetries between China and Taiwan.
the latter’s independence depends fully and unambiguously on the US guarantee. Russia
and China have a fairly ambivalent
relation with each other that is officially called a strategic partnership. Ambiguous as this relationship is, it is predictable
that the more the West and Russia are at loggerheads, the closer the Russian — Chinese relations
might become. On the other hand. Chi na is the stronger partner and harbors not completely friendly
feelings to wards Moscow. as Russia took part in China’s humiliation during the imperi alist period no less than the United States did. Russian
fears concerning covert immigration into Eastern Siberia and demographic repercussions and political consequences that might result therefrom add to the
uneasiness. China and India arc natural rivals for regional preponderance in Asia (Gilbov/Hcginbotham 2012). Both arc developing rapidly. with China still
ahead. Territorial disputes. India’s liospitalit Lo TibeLan exiles including the Dalai Lama. China’s close relation to Pakistan and a growing naval rivalry
spanning the Indian Ocean from the Strait of Malacca to Iranian shores (Garofano/Dew 2013) run parallel to rapidly growing economic relations and
ostensible efforts lo present the relationship if not as amiable then at least as partner-like. The United States, China, Russia and India
even today conduct a multi- pronged nuclear arms race (Fingar 2011: Gangul /Thompson 2011: O’Neill 2013. Mü llcr 2014). In
this race, conventional components like missile de fense. Intercontinental strike options, space-based assets and the specter of cbcr war play their role, as
does the issue of extended dcterrcncc The general US militar’ superiority induces Russia and China to improve their nuclear arsenals, while India tries not to
be left too far behind the Chinese in terms of nuclear capability. Pakistan and North Korea ork as potential spoilers at the fringe of this arms race. They are
not powerful but thc arc capable of stirring up trouble, whenever they move. In tems of the military constellation, the most disquieting development is the
drafting of pre-emptive strategies of a first (most likely conventional) strike by the United States and China, on either side motivated by the per ceived need
to keep the upper hand early in a potential clash close to Chinese shores (such as in the context of a Taiwan conflict). China is building up middle-range
ballistic capabilities to pre-empt US aircraft carrier groups from coming into striking distance and to desiroy US Air Force assets in Okinawa. while the
United States is developing means to neutralize exactly these Chinese capabilities. They
are steering towards a hair-trigger
security dilemma in which the mutual postures cry out for being used first before the enemy might destroy them (Goldstein 2013: Le Miô re
2012). It cannot be excluded that this whole conflict system might collapse into two opposing blocks
one da the spark for a major violent cataclysm could even be lighted by uncontrolled non-state actors
inside some of the powers. or — in analogy to the role of Serbia in 1914 — a ‘spoiler” state with a particularly
idios ncralic agenda. Pakistan. North Korea or Tai an arc con ceivable in this role. Even Japan might be considered, if nationalism in Nippon grows further
and seeks confrontation with the old rival China. If anything. this constellation
does not look much better than the one
which drove Europe into World War I a century ago. and it contains a nuclear component. To trust in
the infallibility of nuclear deterrence in this mufti- pronged constellation needs quite a lot of
optimism Can democratic peace be helpful in this constellation? Our conflict system includes democracies — the
United States, India, Japan. Indonesia and non- democracies such as China. Russia, and Vietnam, but not necessarily on the same side. Should the European
theater become connected to the Asian one through continuous US — Russian disputes and a Russian — Chinese entente. defective democracies
like Ukraine and Georgia may feature rather importantly as potential triggers for a worsening of
relationships. While democracy is useful in excluding certain conflict dyads in the whole complex, such as
India and the United States. Japan and the United States. Japan and India. from the risk that they might escalate into a violent conflict, and as
democratic peace is pacifying parts of the world. such as South America or Europe. it helps little in disputes between
democracies and non-democracies.

MARKED

To the contrary: as discussed above, democracies have a more or less moral-emotional inclination to
demonize non-democracies once they dis agree, and to feel a missionary drive to turn them
democratic. This might exacerbate the existing, more interest-based conflicts between
democracies and non-democracies, and it creates fears in the hearts of autocratic leaders that
they might be up for democratization sooner or later. The close inter- democratic relations
which democratic peace tends to produce, in turn, only exacerbate these fears as democracies tend
to be rich, well organized, and powerful and dispose together of much more potent military capabilities than their potential non-
dcnwcratic counterparts. Rather than helping with peace. the inter-democratic consequences of the
democratic peace tend to exacerbate the security dilemma which exists between democracies
and non-democracics an way. This non-peaceful dark side of democratic peace has escaped the
attention of most academic writings on this subject and certainly all political utterances about democratic peace in our political systems.
But democratic militancy is the Siamese twin of democratic peace as the Bush Administration unambiguously taught us (Gels et al. 2013: Mü llcr 2014b).
1NC — Advantage 1
 1NC — Barr — Generic
Barr circumvents — he refuses to enforce law and touts risks of increasing
crime
Smith 20 — Allan Smith (Political reporter for NBC News); “These prosecutors want radical criminal justice
change. Barr is fighting to stop them.;” NBC News; February 17th, 2020; https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-
department/these-prosecutors-want-radical-criminal-justice-change-barr-fighting-stop-n1126986 D.A. March 1 st, 2020 //jwilk

Progressive prosecutors, coming off one of the biggest years in their movement's short history, are
looking to 2020 with hope of winning key district attorney offices around the nation and boosting their influence
with an overhaul of the system from within. Attorney General William Barr is standing in their way.
Tensions reached a peak last week after Barr eviscerated the movement in a speech before the Major County
Sheriffs of America. He said the "self-styled 'social justice' reformers are refusing to enforce entire
categories of law, including law against resisting police officers." "In so doing, these DAs are putting everyone in
danger," Barr added, asserting that their "policies are pushing a number of America's cities back
toward a more dangerous past.", 20200:06 In a response signed by about 40 reform-minded prosecutors from around in
the country, the progressives said they "spend every day trying to make our communities safer and healthier." "We hold our jobs because
our communities put us in them after we promised a different and smarter approach to justice, one grounded in evidence-based policies
that lift people up while prioritizing the cases that cause real harm," they wrote. "Sadly, we are perceived as a threat by some who are
wedded to the status quo or, even worse, failed policies of past decades." They added: " This
is the same attorney general
who in the span of 24 hours attacked reform-minded, elected district attorneys for being soft on
crime, while demanding his own federal prosecutors lighten the punishment for an ally of his boss . He
touts the importance of the rule of law, yet undermines it in the same breath." The attack and
counterattack come as progressives' have seen their influence soar over the past few years , winning
district attorney races in cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago and enacting or furthering policies such as eliminating the
use of cash bail — which has become a major flashpoint in New York — overturning wrongful convictions, curbing enforcement of
lower-level marijuana offenses, refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities and vowing to hold police accountable. The
most prominent among them — and the one who has faced the most law enforcement pushback — is hard-charging Philadelphia
County District Attorney Larry Krasner, whose 2017 election was a watershed moment for the criminal justice reform movement.
Krasner has instructed his team to avoid prosecutions "where appropriate " to lower the
incarcerated population, opting instead for a more liberal use of diversion programs . He fired 31
prosecutors at the start of his term for their unwillingness to implement his changes, and he put 29 Philadelphia police officers on a "do-
not-call list" — meaning they could not be considered credible witnesses at trials. Especially notable was Chesa Boudin's victory last
year in San Francisco's district attorney race. Boudin, a Rhodes Scholar whose parents took part in one of New York's most notorious and
deadly botched heists as members of the far left Weather Underground in 1981, pledged to end "mass incarceration" and cash bail while
forming a unit to review wrongful convictions. Boudin, who took office last month, plans to move away from prosecuting minor quality-
of-life crimes and instead focus on taking on corporations and prioritizing the most serious offenses. And progressives have their sights
set on some big targets this year — like electing reformers in Los Angeles, Houston and Detroit, as well as State's Attorney Kim Foxx's
re-election effort in Cook County, Illinois, an election that will test the popularity of the liberal policies. The
Justice Department
and other law enforcement entities have characterized
many of the changes as anti-police and threats to
public safety. Tensions have been "escalating" in recent months, the head of the nation's largest police
organization told NBC News. "The path that we're going is not addressing the core issues that are creating poverty and crime in our
communities," said Patrick Yoes, president of the Fraternal Order of Police. "There has to be a more holistic approach to it rather than
trying to blame law enforcement for everything." Barr
last month announced the formation of a presidential
commission on law enforcement — one that will focus in part on combating the reformers and
provide Barr with recommendations in a report that is likely to come just before the November general
election.
 1NC — Police Power Turn
Reform expands police power – turns the aff
Jeffries & Ridgley 20 – (Fiona Jeffries, member of the Ottawa Sanctuary City Network and a
socialist and feminist activist, writer, educator, and editor. She is the author of Nothing to Lose But
Our Fear, among other things, and is working on an oral history of radical healthcare provision;
Jennifer Ridgley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental
Studies at Carleton University and a member of the Ottawa Sanctuary City Network; “Building the
sanctuary city from the ground up: abolitionist solidarity and transformative reform”; Taylor &
Francis group; D.A. May 1st 2020, [Published 2020]; Citizenship Studies, pg. 8-9;
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?
doi=10.1080/13621025.2020.1755177) //LFS—JCM
Mariame Kaba (2017) took up this question in recent debates about police reform following a string of police killings
in US cities. As protracted street protests demanded accountability and justice, debates erupted about the appropriate
course of action to redress the systemic racism and institutional violence of policing. Kaba (2014)
critiqued reform measures that purport to hold police accountable such as mandating body and dashboard cameras
and compelling officers to take sensitivity and implicit bias training courses to excise racist impulses and
punish the few ‘bad apples’ at whose feet responsibility could be laid. Despite their progressive gloss, Kaba (2014) argues
such proposals ultimately preserve and enhance police power by funnelling increased
resources to the police (e.g., in budget lines for new ‘community police’ units, technological
upgrades, and money for training). These reforms should be opposed because they expand ‘the
state’s capacity to punish’

MARKED

rather than diminish police power (Berger, Kaba, and Stein 2017, np). In diminishing police power we create the
conditions of possibility for non-reformist or transformational reforms (Stahly Butts and Akbar 2017) that reduce the state’s capacity for
violence without getting in the way of deeper systemic change (Berger, Kaba, and Stein 2017). Interim
reforms that serious
critics of policing should support, according to Kaba, include changes that boost institutional
accountability, provide reparations to victims of police violence, and proposals that divert
resources away from policing to other social goods such as healthcare, education, housing, and
transportation. These reforms do not in themselves abolish the institutions of policing, but they
focus on eroding police power while not getting in the way of abolition. The distinction between reformist
reforms and non-reformist reforms can provide a strong principle for sanctuary by helping us establish which kinds of sanctuary
practices, goals and proposals help us address immediate and urgent needs in our community while at the same time undermining the
state’s capacity to divide people and punish those with precarious immigration status. We now turn to applying Gilmore and Kaba’s
abolitionist reform criteria to contemporary sanctuary city struggles.
2NC
 K — Mattei
The permutation is inevitably co-opted and fails — alt alone solves the links
Oliver P. Richmond 9, professor at the School of International Relations and Director of the
Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of St Andrews, 2009, “A post-liberal peace:
Eirenism and the everyday,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 35, p. 557-580
However, other serious issues arise with any attempt to retain, while modifying, the core of
liberal peacebuilding. The neoliberal cooption of the liberal peace, its lack of social welfare
frameworks and failure to mediate cultural difference, and tendency towards assimilation rather
than local cultural engagement, means that it is often exceptionally abrasive when transplanted,
as recent experience in Afghanistan and Iraq illustrates. In addition, there is a serious issue with its incapacity for
environmentally sensitive engagement. It might be said that the conservative end of the liberal peace
spectrum, as with liberal imperialism, has become an exercise in hubris for the internationals,
Western states, donors, agencies and NGOs that propagate it, mainly because it lacks these sensitivities.
Ethically, moving beyond these limitations would amount to an ontological commitment to
care for others in their everyday contexts, based upon empathy, respect and the recognition of difference. This
commitment to care has instead been displaced by a parsimonious orthodoxy that offers its
participants the unproblematic right of interpreting and making policy for unknowable
others, normally defined as states rather than people or communities. This is why the liberal peace is mainly
focused on an international or regional peace, rather than an everyday form of peace .

Alternative solves — fosters a post-liberal form of peacebuilding. Its

comparatively better at creating peace.
Richmond 9 Professor of International Relations, and Franks, Research Fellow in the School of
International Relations [Oliver and Jason, “Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Statebuilding and
Peacebuilding”, Page 209-211, VJ]
Against the background of our case studies, we conclude that what is needed is the development of a praxis of post-liberal
peacebuilding (potentially utilising the eirenist approaches to IR and to peacebuilding that Richmond has detailed
elsewhere).13 These would be designed to capitalise on the core of the original conflict resolution and
peacebuilding agendas, addressing needs and root causes, connecting the new liberal state or polity with
older, locally recognisable and contextual, customary, political, social and economic traditions, and engaging
with grass roots and the most marginalised members of post-conflict polities. This would require a mediation
between the local and the international over peacebuilding praxis and social, political and economic practices that both deem plausible
and acceptable, rather than a wholesale top-down imposition of an only putatively universal liberal model — the virtual liberal peace.
This would enable the development of a post-liberal form of peacebuilding that would counterbalance the
core of liberal peacebuilding with the local as well as its needs and cultural patterns. But this would not be to
romanticise the local and its capacity for conflict resolution or its dysfunctionality, but rather to enable it to engage in ‘unscripted
conversations’ about what peacebuilding might entail.14 Rather than representing either an international or even a local
bias towards the interests of local elites, this would instead be predicated upon an intimate understanding of
everyday life and individual political agency and needs in each context, and what a peaceful everyday life
might be facilitated by. This might involve liberal peacebuilders facing up to some unpalatable truths about how bias towards
geopolitical interests and limited understandings of peace undermine peacebuilding and replicate violence, and would entail some
radical shifts of emphasis, not least from a blind faith in the power of political rights and the market for the provision for everyday needs
and a better understanding of customary practices.15
PIC — Samoa
Advantage — Democracy
1NR
 DA — ACB
Timeframe is fast — all checks are removed in a political crisis.
Oppenheimer 19 – (Michael Oppenheimer, clinical professor with the NYU School of
Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs; “Will Trump risk war to save his presidency?”; The
Hill; D.A. October 7th 2020, [Published March 1st 2019]; https://thehill.com/opinion/white-
house/432275-will-trump-risk-war-to-save-his-presidency) //LFS—JCM
Capitalizing on it will be. Internal
constraints on his behavior have all but disappeared and the enlarged
presence of hard right advisors in his inner circle will generate further impetus towards
escalation, especially if Iran provides the provocation. Our priority — in the public, the Congress, the press — is not to
improve the administration’s decision-making skills, but to contain Trump’s instincts for doing
harm.

Escalates globally
Oppenheimer 19 – (Michael Oppenheimer, clinical professor with the NYU School of
Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs; “Will Trump risk war to save his presidency?”; The
Hill; D.A. October 7th 2020, [Published March 1st 2019]; https://thehill.com/opinion/white-
house/432275-will-trump-risk-war-to-save-his-presidency) //LFS—JCM
We face an oversupply of potential crises and all offer ample opportunities for a president prepared
to distort and manipulate external threats for political purposes. Iran could give up on the JCPOA and
resume its nuclear program, reinforcing Iran-Israel conflict arising out of Syria and offering an
opportunity for U.S. intervention; internal conflict in Venezuela could worsen and be attributed to hostile
external influences; territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas could lead to a direct clash
between U.S. and Chinese forces, as could a crisis precipitated by a Chinese move against Taiwan;
there could be dangerous fallout from the failed nuclear negotiation with North Korea; Russia could
move more boldly into Ukraine.

McConnell.
Carney 20 – (Jordain Carney; “GOP rejects Schumer bill protecting ObamaCare amid Supreme
Court fight”; The Hill; D.A. October 8th 2020, [Published October 1st 2020];
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/519179-gop-rejects-schumer-healthcare-bill-amid-
supreme-court-fight) //LFS—JCM
Republicans on Thursday shot down a bill that would have blocked the Justice Department from
advocating in favor of nixing the Affordable Care Act, as Democrats try to squeeze GOP senators
amid an explosive Supreme Court fight. Senators voted 51-43, falling short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill,
after Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) caught GOP leaders by surprise when he set up the
vote, effectively winning temporary control of the floor. Democrats are stepping up their procedural
tactics against Judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination, and they view health care as one of their best arguments
against President Trump's pick. The bill would prevent the Justice Department from arguing in court to strike down the ACA. The
Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case that could determine the future of the landmark health care law a week after the election.
“You know we're fighting this Supreme Court nomination with the tools that we have. McConnell
has limited those tools when he so defiled the Senate and changed all the rules — but I managed to go on
the floor when there was no Republican there, ask to put on the floor a proposal that said, we will spend
no money to fight to repeal the ACA,” Schumer said during an MSNBC interview. Schumer earlier this week took a rare
procedural step to pave the way for Thursday’s vote. Typically only McConnell sets up votes on the floor, unless
there is unanimous consent. Underscoring the rarity of the move, senators estimated a member of the
minority party using the Senate’s procedural levers to leapfrog the Majority Leader and force a
vote had last taken place a decade ago. But Democrats are under pressure to use every option at their
disposal to protest Barrett’s nomination and the GOP plan to confirm her, absent a major setback, by the Nov. 3 election.

No COVID relief
Mascaro 10-8-20 – (Lisa Mascaro; “In 25th Amendment bid, Pelosi mulls Trump's fitness to
serve”; Waco Tribune-Herald; D.A. October 8th 2020, [Published October 8th 2020];
https://wacotrib.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/in-25th-amendment-bid-pelosi-mulls-
trumps-fitness-to-serve/article_9e8f934c-fefa-5248-a111-5142168e9d9f.html) //LFS—JCM
She said she told Mnuchin she was willing to consider a measure to prop up the airline industry, which is facing
widespread layoffs. But that aid, she said, must go alongside broader legislation that includes the kind of
COVID testing, tracing and health practices that Democrats say are needed as part of a national strategy to “crush
the virus.” Normally, the high stakes and splintered politics ahead of an election could provide grounds
for a robust package. But with other Republicans refusing to spend more money, it appears no relief
will be coming with Americans already beginning early voting. Democrats have made it clear they will not do a
piecemeal approach until the Trump administration signs off on a broader, comprehensive plan they are
proposing for virus testing, tracing and other actions to stop its spread. They have scaled back a $3 trillion measure to a
$2.2 trillion proposal. The White House presented a $1.6 trillion counter offer. Talks were ongoing when Trump shut
them down.

The plan is a 180 degree pivot from the conservative strategy on surveillance
and privacy—it’s highly polarized.
Birnbaum 9-25 (Emily, tech policy reporter, “What Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court
would mean for the future of tech,” 25 September 2020, https://www.protocol.com/supreme-
court-nominee-future-of-tech, DOA: 10-0-2020) //Snowball
Over the next decade, the Supreme Court will likely be asked to weigh in on issues that shape the future of
the tech industry, including government surveillance, U.S. privacy laws , intellectual property rights,
antitrust and content moderation. Its decisions could determine how far the government is allowed to reach into companies
like Facebook and Google and what the constitution says about digital rights.

If President Trump successfully nominates Amy Coney Barrett to the high court, he would be locking in
a bulletproof conservative majority of five justices to make those decisions, ushering in the most
dramatic ideological tilt to the court in the past 50 years .
Upon first glance, it would seem like Barrett's arrival would bode well for all businesses, tech or otherwise. A conservative-leaning
Supreme Court would be likelier to eschew aggressive regulatory efforts and side with tech companies on issues like taxes.

"I expect this pick to be very focused on so-called 'corporate rights,'" said Gigi Sohn, a former FCC counselor in the Obama administration.

But many of the topics at the heart of tech policy — including privacy, antitrust, Section 230 and intellectual property — do not map
easily along partisan lines, and experts said tech companies should brace for some decisions that they won't like.

"On technology, particularly in recent years, the court in any given case has had strange bedfellows," said Ed McAndrew, a partner with
DLA Piper who worked on cybercrime with the Department of Justice for 10 years. The late Justice Ruth Bater Ginsburg, for instance,
positioned herself against consumer advocates on IP rights, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the liberal justices in the antitrust
case Apple v. Pepper.

"The implications for those issues — net neutrality, antitrust, cyber — are less clear-cut than in other areas because there are cross-
currents that may pull a more conservative court in [a] different direction," said Pantelis Michalopoulos, a partner with Steptoe &
Johnson.
A short track record

There's an extremely small body of opinions from Barrett to examine and extrapolate from. She has only been on the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 2017 and has spent most of that time on relatively uncontroversial cases with little relevance to the
tech industry. She has a prolific history of academic scholarship, some of which is related to issues like faith and state's rights, but
appears to have stayed out of any of the core areas of jurisprudence that tech cares about, according to Corbin Barthold, the internet
policy counsel with TechFreedom, a tech-focused think tank.

Barthold has been poring over the records of the forerunners for Supreme Court nomination in recent weeks and so far has found that
none of them has weighed in at length on tech issues. That puts them at odds with former nominees — such as the most recent,
Kavanaugh, who, prior to joining the Supreme Court, issued a lengthy opinion arguing that the Federal Communications Commission was
not authorized to impose net neutrality regulations.

Several experts said they were paying attention to see if Barrett would be more of a "law and order"
conservative or a libertarian on issues like government surveillance and data privacy. Chief Justice John
Roberts, for instance, sided with the liberal justices in the landmark case Carpenter vs. U.S., which found the government violated the
Fourth Amendment by accessing cell phone location data without a search warrant. The next several years will almost certainly bring
more cases about how and why the government can collect certain kinds of data, and many of those could hinge on the leanings of the
new judge.

"The Supreme Court discussion that we're now having, I think will launch us into a very broad
discussion of privacy rights and where they exist within the Constitution," Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top
Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, said during a hearing this week.
Advantage — The Other One