The Supreme Court’s New Term, and a Race for Nuclear Power on the Moon

From the New York Times, it's the headlines, I'm Will Jarvis, Infra Tracey Mumford. Today's Monday, October 5th, here's what we're covering. In Washington today, the Supreme Court is kicking off a new term. The justices have selected about 60 cases to hear in the coming months, and this morning, they'll start with a major one about climate change. The case centers on whether states and local jurisdictions can sue fossil fuel companies to make them help pay for the impacts of global warming, like damage from wildfires and heatwaves. The decision could clear the way for dozens of other lawsuits around the country that are trying to demand billions from the oil industry, but the court could also side with the fossil fuel companies, potentially dooming future efforts like this to tackle climate change. Beyond this case, the court is also set to weigh in on a number of other consequential issues this term. For example, in a closely watched case about gun control, the justices will consider whether bans on semi-automatic rifles, like AR-15s, violate the Constitution. They're also taking up a challenge to a state law in Texas that requires every public school classroom to display the 10 commandments, and the justices will hear a number of cases dealing with the Trump administration's aggressive immigration agenda. In addition to the cases on the court's docket, it could also be drawn further into the midterm elections, after weighing in on a range of hot-button disputes over things like voting maps and mail-in ballots in the past few months. We've already seen the court getting pulled into these pre-election challenges. There could certainly be more, but what election law experts other academics are watching are for post-election challenges. If there are, for instance, allegations of voter fraud or refusal to certify a member of Congress who's won an election, that's really where the court can get pulled into some pretty contentious cases. Anne Marimo covers the Supreme Court for the Times. She says that the court might find itself making consequential rulings about elections at a time when polls show that a majority of Americans now see the court as being motivated by politics rather than law. So the justices are keenly aware that they are viewed as polarized and political, and as much as possible, they would like not to get pulled into these election challenges. The academics and former law clerks I've spoken with say that's the message from the orders they issued over the summer, sort of please stop sending us these cases. We don't want to get involved too close to the election and be responsible for election chaos or changing the rules for voting, but when these requests come to them, they need to say yay or nay, and that has an impact on the shape of elections. Meanwhile, we are not part of any political movement, and we are not attempting to further any political agenda. In a recent interview with CBS News, Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court's most reliable conservative votes, pushed back on accusations that the court is playing politics, saying the justices are only focused on interpreting the Constitution. In the interview Alito, who's 76, was also asked about how long he would stay on the bench. If Democrats take control of the Senate in November, Alito would likely come under pressure to retire and give President Trump a chance to nominate a new justice before lawmakers are seated in January. People who know Alito tell the times that he may not want to jeopardize the chance of ensuring he has a successor who aligns with his ideology. The only justice older than Alito is Clarence Thomas, who's 78, but in recent years he's ruled out retiring and suggested he'll stay on the court for decades to come. After the weekend, U.S. military commanders rushed to move a dozen air force bombers out of a British airbase after receiving new threats of a potential Iran-backed attack. The sudden withdrawal came just a week after British officials arrested five men in white vans near the same facility, and what the British Prime Minister said was an incident connected to Iran. According to two U.S. officials, the highly unusual scramble to get the jets out was so urgent that some of the planes left before key refueling aircraft were even ready. By yesterday, at least some of the bombers were back at their home base in South Dakota. American officials haven't specified exactly what kind of threat against the base they detected this weekend, and investigators are still trying to unravel what exactly happened during the incident with the vans last weekend. Security officials from several countries told the times that one subject of debate among investigators is why one of the men inside the vans dialed emergency services before they were arrested, effectively tipping off authorities. Some think that it could have been because the men were low-level criminals who suddenly realized they'd been hired to do something serious. One official described the men as "unwitting chumps." For its part, Iran has denied any accusations that it was involved in the incident with the vans. But the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps previously said that the British base, which has been used by U.S. forces and attacks on Iran, is a "legitimate target," and the head of Britain's domestic security agency has long warned that Iran uses low-level crooks as a kind of proxy force in the UK to target its enemies. The Times has been covering a new space race that seems like something out of science fiction, a rush by the world's superpowers to build a nuclear reactor on the moon. At the moment, both the U.S and China are trying to beat each other to build the first base on the moon, to be able to search for resources like helium and frozen water, and to use it as a jumping off point for missions deeper into the solar system. But in order to get those bases to operate long-term, they'll need a source of power that can withstand extremely harsh conditions. Solar panels are not really going to work during the long lunar nights, which extend to just over 14 days. And then you also have to contend with these massive swings in temperature between 130 degrees Fahrenheit and -334 degrees Fahrenheit. So the countries who are working on this believe that nuclear reactors are the most reliable solution for power sources for these bases. My colleague Salam Gibrekadin is a Times Investigative Reporter. She says that there is a secretive Chinese Russian effort underway to get a reactor on the moon's surface in the next decade, building on Russia's experience launching reactors aboard satellites during the Cold War. In response, NASA has recently asked contractors to come up with a plan to get an American nuclear reactor up to the moon by the end of 2030, fueling concerns about the safety of the plans. Over the last few months, I've been talking to a lot of experts, nuclear engineers who are both for these kinds of developments and against them. And there are a certain number of risks that became very apparent in my reporting. Primarily, launch is the moment where there is a lot of risk. Now, what is true is that the reactors themselves are not going to be active or operative at the time of launch. But a lot of things can still go wrong. For example, if the reactor splashes down into an ocean, water has certain effects on a reactor like that. It will not be a massive disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima, but there might still be a release of radioactive material close to the reactor itself. And the other risk is that a reactor that is in space can come back tumbling down. This happened in Canada in the late 1970s. This was a Russian satellite that had an uncontrolled entry over Canadian airspace and a crash there, and it ended up spreading radioactive material over more than 48,000 square miles of Canada's north. And they spent close to one year on cleanup and were only able to recover a very, very tiny proportion of that nuclear power source. Salam says that there would be more potential risks from nuclear reactors like this once they were up on the moon. For instance, decommissioning a reactor at the end of its life would normally be a careful painstaking process, but the US and Russia have both said they plan to just leave any leftover radioactive material on the moon behind. One nuclear scientist told the Times that when it comes to a space race like this, "they don't want to be bothered with a difficult problem that nobody has a solution for." And finally, across the country, school music programs are at a growing risk of going silent. The threat they're facing is the skyrocketing price of instruments. The pinch started with pandemic supply chain snarls, then President Trump's sweeping global tariffs made things even worse, since most beginner instruments are made in China. One economist told the Times that due to rising costs, imports of string instruments have plunged 50 percent, and the supervisor of an arts program at a public school system in New Jersey said a student saxophone that used to be about $400 is now $900. Atuba is at least $9,000. With expensive new instruments increasingly out of reach, educators are scrambling to find other options. They're doubling down on encouraging students to clean and care for their old flutes and violins to make sure they last longer. Some are scouring eBay and Facebook Marketplace for use instruments. instruments, and one elementary school music teacher in Oregon said she'd considered using a 3-D printer to make plastic ukuleles. Still, one high school orchestra director in West Virginia said he's concerned that even if his students can hobble along on old instruments, it could undermine their musical education. He told the times that when students play on instruments that sound bad, they don't blame the instruments, they blame themselves. He added that with a total orchestra budget of just $500 to $600 a year, he's had to pay out a pocket to buy instruments himself. Those are the headlines. Today, on the daily, what new polling from the times shows about how Democrats are doing in the run-up to the midterm elections. We pulled the five red states where the Democrats seem to have their best chance of winning. Ohio, Texas, Iowa, Alaska, and Kansas, and we found the Democrats were really highly competitive in all five of them. You can find that in the New York Times app, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're not a time subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to everything we publish when you download the Times app now. I'm Will Jarvis, the show will be back tomorrow.