On June 27, a city worker in San Antonio heard a cry for help from a tractor-trailer abandoned on a desolate road. He followed the haunting cry, leading him to a horrific scene. More than 50 migrants lay dead or dying in the sweltering heat , reportedly covered in steak seasoning in what authorities said may have been an attempt to hide the stench. Forty-eight people died in that trailer, and another five were in the slow process of dying. After hearing this news, I was unable to sleep; I couldn’t stop thinking of how brutal the future of my people could be on a hotter planet. Higher temperatures will cause more deaths, and drought and other extreme weather will create even more refugees as people leave homes that are no longer livable.

As a Latino kid born and raised in Miami, I’ve known about the threats of a warming world for as long as I’ve been alive. I remember the fear I felt as a toddler when the roaring winds of Hurricane Katrina made steel structures sway in the building where I lived with my mother. In high school, Hurricane Irma barreled through Miami, hitting poor, Black, and brown communities the hardest. In the aftermath of that storm, the wealthy, white kids got power back in their homes far sooner than I did. I felt worthless in the eyes of a government that claimed to represent me. On Thursday, I woke up to a headline that conjured this familiar feeling.

In West Virginia v the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Supreme Court sided with fossil fuel executives over our communities and delivered a 6-3 ruling that severely limits the agency's power to fight the climate crisis. The ruling held that a section of the Clean Air Act can no longer be used to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal and gas fired power plants. The EPA cannot, without explicit congressional approval, establish nationwide standards to limit greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide, forcing utilities to switch to renewable energy sources.

The story of how we got here begins decades ago. In the twentieth century, as a response to massive wins by social movements like the civil rights, environmental, labor, and feminist movements, a dangerous right-wing alliance of corporate executives and white supremacists began a decades-long project to reverse the progress won. They formed a coalition to dismantle their common enemy: democracy. They aimed to take over the Republican Party, exploit loopholes in the Constitution, and use stolen power to force everyone back into their nightmare world. After decades of following this playbook, this movement has hijacked the Supreme Court and turned it into a corporate-friendly, antidemocratic death cult. In many ways, the success of this movement takes us back; back to a time where women and birthing people have no rights over their bodies, back to a time when Black political power is diluted, back to a time when Christian fundamentalists can persecute those who don’t believe what they do. But the extreme right wing isn't just taking us back to the 1950s — they are taking us somewhere we've never been before.

We have precious few years to confront the climate crisis, and the unelected extremists on the Supreme Court are trying to obstruct some of the only avenues we have for progress. What's worse is that leaders of the Democratic Party — who control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives — seemingly have no plan but to write some vague tweets and surrender.

One week ago, I went to see legendary labor organizer Dolores Huerta speak at a press event hosted by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus outside of the Capitol. Unexpectedly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi showed up. I approached her and asked how young voters could trust her after she supported Henry Cuellar (a fossil-fuel-friendly politician who happens to be the last anti-choice Democrat in the House) over his primary challenger Jessica Cisneros (a young Latina who is a pro-choice climate champion). I didn’t get an answer, but I did get a polite “have a nice day” from the bodyguard who pushed me away from her. The politicians of Pelosi’s era, like President Biden, remain committed to a fantasy that they can negotiate with Republicans, and that arcane Senate traditions are more important than taking the necessary action that will keep people safe and improve lives. It is clear that they are wrong.

In response to the draconian rulings by a stolen Supreme Court, Democrats need to wake up and respond at the scale demanded by the crises unfolding with our climate and democracy.

First, Democrats should defy and circumvent a Court whose legitimacy is dead. To defend democracy and our planet, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats should double-down on their commitments to climate action. That means Congress must abolish the filibuster and enact sweeping climate legislation, and Biden must use the full extent of his executive powers to justly transition our country to 100% renewable energy. There are things he can do right now, from further invoking the Defense Production Act to expedite the transition to renewables, declaring a climate emergency, and ending the practice of selling leases for public lands and waters for fossil fuel production, that would begin to tackle this crisis.

Second, Democrats must clean up the Court. Half of the conservative Justices were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote, many of these justices were backed by nefarious dark money groups, and the spouse of one, Clarence Thomas, was affiliated with the January 6 insurrection. Democrats must expand the Court and appoint justices with proven track records of defending civil and constitutional rights. All justices, old and new, should be held accountable to a binding code of ethics.

Democrats have a mission before them, and so do we. The only way we are going to build a true democracy that can keep the people and places we love safe is by building a movement powerful enough to take on the extreme, violent and ascendant right wing. They want us to feel worthless and like nothing will ever change. We cannot let them. Our generation must rise to this moment in history and fight — our lives depend on it.

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