Overreach Weekly: The News Hooks You Might Have Missed
SCOTUS, OBBB, and other Catholic overreach this week.
Thank you for the warm welcome to Substack and enthusiasm for The Overreach Monitor when we launched last week. Overreach Weekly will be a regular(ish — we aren’t going to send it if our office is closed, for example) analysis of some of the top news in religion and politics.
The close of the Supreme Court term leaves us closer to a theocracy than ever before. Our friends at Court Accountability’s Tilted Scales wrote last week about the aptly-named “turducken of [the Roberts Court’s] theocratic, plutocratic, and anti-democratic agenda.” This is certainly true of the decisions in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, US v. Skrmetti, and Mahmoud v. Taylor, to name a few. While those were the cases we were tracking most closely at Catholic for Choice, we know these aren’t the only ones.
One word of caution, though — it is my humble opinion that SCOTUS made the right decision in unanimously favoring Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission. As a Catholic, a too-narrow definition of “religious purposes” disproportionately favors the cisgender, presumably celibate, mostly white actions and views of the Catholic hierarchy. While that was certainly a motivating factor for Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion, Justice Sotomayor’s opinion of the Court led with more nuance. Sotomayor is one of seven Catholics on the Supreme Court, and the lone liberal-leaning one.
Catholic hierarchy shows ideological fractures over the so-called “big beautiful bill.” The budget reconciliation process in the Senate is moving so quickly today that any predictions on what might happen will become immediately outdated. But I’ve been keeping an eye on what the Catholic hierarchy is saying about the bill. Last week, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops sent what Religion News Service calls a “firm but mixed” letter to Senators about what they liked and didn’t like about the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” After reading the letter, I’d say that the institutional hierarchy has once again fallen short on moral leadership compared to Catholic sisters, Catholic news outlets, or even individual Catholic bishops and other faith leaders who are calling for a resounding “no” vote. According to Pew Research, 150 members of Congress, or 28.2%, are Catholic.
Faith-based (and specifically Catholic!) friends, here’s where I’m looking to you: I recognize and appreciate the long legacy of work people of faith have protecting Medicaid. And yet, there is more than one way legislators seek to cut and restrict healthcare for people, especially low-income people, who need it. I haven’t seen many faith groups connect the dots on the threats to “defund” Planned Parenthood by prohibiting them from receiving Medicaid funds and federal dollars for healthcare that doesn’t include abortion. This loss in coverage, according to the newly-released CBO report, will cost taxpayers $52 million over ten years, and as Planned Parenthood says, “disrupt access to birth control, cancer screenings, and other essential, preventative sexual and reproductive health services.” After last week’s green light from the Supreme Court to allow states to refuse funding, we must also be outspoken about how these attacks are the latest way that marginalized people can get caught in the crosshairs of politics and suffer the most. Healthcare is a human right, and that includes the ability to pick your own doctors.
Two other pieces for further reading:
Religion News Service has an article about OMB Director Russel Vought, stemming from his exchange with Rep. Mark Pocan earlier this month about identifying as a Christian nationalist.
Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was on a podcast for America magazine with Jesuit priest Father Jim Martin. While Buttigieg is not Catholic, his dad is a former Jesuit priest, and he was educated at Catholic schools. I’d argue that Buttigieg does something liberal-leaning politicians do sparingly: articulate a values-based argument rooted in faith.
That’s all for this week! If you have resources or articles you want our take on, feel free to send them to me or leave a comment.