By Kate Scanlon
WASHINGTON (OSV News) — A historic year in American politics saw former President Donald Trump elected to a second term in the Oval Office four years after he lost his run for a consecutive term. Trump’s second election to the White House concluded a tumultuous campaign season that included two assassination attempts against him, his original Democratic rival President Joe Biden stepping down in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee, and his own continued claims, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
The U.S. Supreme Court also issued a number of major and historic rulings, including reducing the regulatory power of federal agencies and finding that presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution as it relates to core constitutional acts of their office. The high court also unanimously dismissed a challenge to mifepristone, a pill commonly used in medication-based abortion, finding that the challengers lacked standing to bring the case.
Trump’s election to a second term in the White House marked a stunning political comeback after leaving it four years ago. The year 2021 was also history-making when the former president left office in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol building. Congress had impeached him Jan. 13 — making Trump the only president in history impeached twice — and Trump refused to attend Biden’s inauguration, breaking a U.S. tradition symbolizing the peaceful transfer of power.
After announcing his third bid for the White House in late 2022, Trump defeated a handful of Republican rivals in the 2024 primary process. Without engaging in any primary debate, Trump dispatched Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Catholic, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, among others, to secure the nomination.
On July 13, just days before he was scheduled to formally accept the Republican nomination for president, Trump was rushed offstage by law enforcement agents as he was campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania. A would-be assassin fired at him from a rooftop, a security lapse that led to the death of a rally participant and a bullet apparently grazing Trump’s ear.
Just a few days later, Trump named Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a Catholic, as his running mate.
Meanwhile, Biden was grappling with the aftermath of a disastrous debate performance in June at which he seemed at times confused and spoke with a very faint voice. Pundits and analysts on multiple news networks the same evening openly questioned whether Biden should step aside and allow Democrats to nominate an alternative candidate at their upcoming convention.
In a history-making announcement July 21, Biden did so, bringing to an end several weeks of speculation about his political future, including both his viability in the November election and his ability to serve another four year term in the White House.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden said in a letter posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Biden ended a historic bid to become the first Catholic to serve two terms as president, and endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
Harris quickly secured her party’s nomination after Biden’s decision, but she was ultimately unable to separate herself from Biden and voters’ economic concerns, and Trump defeated her Nov. 5, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Trump was also the target of a second assassination attempt in September at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, but authorities intercepted the man behind it without incident.
Early data from the 2024 election results showed Catholic voters underwent a significant shift to the right since 2020, when they were more narrowly divided.
Election data analyzed by CNN also showed Trump gained 2.8 million votes over his 2020 performance, while Harris had 6.8 million fewer voters than Biden did in 2020.
In separate rulings, the Supreme Court issued decisions that in effect limited the power of the administrative state, but increased the power of the presidency.
Presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution as it relates to core constitutional acts of their office, presumptive immunity for official acts, but none for unofficial acts, a divided Supreme Court said in a July 1 ruling.
The ruling in Trump v. United States, in effect, marked a rejection of Trump’s sweeping claim of “absolute” immunity from criminal prosecution. At the same time, the court’s 6-3 decision meant Trump did not face further criminal trials over his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents, among other misconduct, prior to the November election.
On June 28, the high court also overturned a legal doctrine known as Chevron deference, reducing the regulatory power of federal agencies — some of which have been criticized for issuing rules that have created religious freedom conundrums for Catholic entities.
Two U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ chairmen, Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, chair of the’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, and Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chair of the Committee for Religious Liberty, raised this issue in an OSV News op-ed, accusing federal agencies of “working methodically to promote gender ideology at the expense of the rights of people of faith.” They argued that “eight separate rules enshrining gender ideology in law” issued in April and Mary showed federal regulatory agencies’ “steady march became a sprint” recently.
Under the terms of the so-called Chevron deference — a product of the Supreme Court’s 1984 opinion in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which upheld an Environmental Protection Agency regulation — if Congress had not directly addressed a particular matter in a law, courts gave “reasonable” deference to a federal agency’s interpretation of law in their implementation.
But as the result of two cases — Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce — the high court ruled that courts were no longer required to defer to agency interpretation of ambiguous statutes.
Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, a religious liberty firm, described the high court’s overturning Chevron as “likely the death knell for some new federal rules, especially the one that took a law about protecting pregnant women in the workplace and turned it into a federal mandate, forcing churches to support employee abortions.”
Also in June, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a challenge to mifepristone, a pill commonly used for abortion, finding that the challengers lacked standing to bring the case.
Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, the USCCB’s pro-life chair at the time, expressed disappointment at the outcome, and said the church will continue to pray for life and “educate the communities about the dangers of this pill and its devastating effects.”
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