Over a year ago, on February, 13th 2016 leading conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia passed away. News of his death spread across the country; his vacancy had the potential to completely shift the political balance on the highest court in the land. Of all the president’s powers, appointing a Supreme Court justice may be the longest lasting; justices serve for the remainder of their life. Their ideologies, almost always paralleling the incumbent’s presidents, have a recurring effect on American politics decades after the president leaves office.

Following Scalia’s death then president Obama nominated Merrick Garland to be the next Supreme Court Justice representing the country. Despite the president’s nomination, the Republican led Senate body refused to hold a confirmation hearing for Garland. Majority leader Mitch McConnell stated his reasoning for his refusal, saying, “I believe the overwhelming view of the Republican Conference in the Senate is that this nomination should not be filled, this vacancy should not be filled by this lame duck president,” in defense of his decision to filibuster the voting process.

Traditionally, a lame duck president has been defined as an elected official whose successor has already been formally elected. McConnell chose to extend this definition to the upcoming presidential race to allow the verdict of the upcoming presidential election to influence the Supreme Court justice selection. His rationale, though most likely partisan, held its basis in allowing the American electorate to determine the political leaning of the newly appointed Justice.

Once Donald Trump won the election over his Democratic counterpart Hillary Clinton, Garland was ousted from any nomination procedures and eventually replaced by Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s selection for the court vacancy. Despite a minority in the Senate, a sixty-vote minimum for Justice confirmation allowed incumbent Democrats to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination. The reasons for the filibuster varied; Democratic opinions range from believing that Gorsuch is stealing Garland’s seat to claiming that the nominee’s evasive answers during the confirmation hearings rendered him unqualified.

While the reasons for the liberal filibustering effort varied, the result did not. Senate Democrats’ announced that they had the necessary votes to successfully block justice Gorsuch’s confirmation. Yet, the Democratic party faced another challenge: the possibility of the nuclear option. Over the past decade, legislative majority leaders have used the nuclear option–changing the rules so only a simple majority vote is required to confirm a presidential nominee (instead of the current sixty percent) –as a bargaining tactic. The minority party is given a referendum; accept the nominee or the majority party will change the rules to confirm him anyway. Today, the nuclear option transcended its bargaining functions and became law.

Despite numerous grassroots campaigns citing an unprecedented power-grab and an overthrow of traditional checks and balances, Senate Republicans voted to “go nuclear” and change the confirmation procedures. Justice Gorsuch is expected to be irreversibly confirmed by late afternoon tomorrow and, at forty-nine years of age, can conceivably serve for decades to come. His appointment has the potential leave a lasting conservative majority on the Supreme Court that may take many years to reverse. Although outrage is spread amongst Democratic grassroots campaigns to elected representatives in Washington, progressive leaders have likely been left without any options for resistance.

Up until this point in this blog, I have limited each post to a singular topic. This design is aimed to maintain reader focus and to flush out the details of the items I am discussing. However, with two massive politically relevant activities occurring within the past forty-eight hours–the exercising of the nuclear option and the chemical attack in Syria–it would be improper to write a response devoid of both events.

Global tensions have steadily elevated over the fight between the Syrian King Assad’s regime and the resistance attempting to overthrow him. Although the United States has publicly denounced the incumbent king’s reign on numerous accounts of human rights violations, America has never formally acted on its denunciations. Indeed, the Syrian civil war is much more complex than rebels versus incumbents; each side has a superpower supporting them, with The United States aiding the former and Russia helping the latter. Russian influence has limited the possibility of intervention against the Assad Regime, as global entities have been searching for a way to diffuse the situation without the possibility of entering a major war.

Three days ago, on April 3rd, 2013, the Syrian king ordered the dropping of bombs containing banned agents of chemical warfare on its civilians. Children, adults, and first responders alike perished in the streets from suffocation. Since 1997 the Chemical Weapons Convention has been the adopted standard for chemical weapons around the globe. The treaty’s terms ban chemical warfare and require the destruction of any banned agents in a nation’s possession. The Assad regime’s blatant violation of these terms prompted a response that the United States had been avoiding: warfare in Syria.

Today, President Trump ordered a coordinated military strike on the Syrian airfield from which the chemical weaponry came. The global response to this attack is likely to become clearer over the next couple of days. In Trump’s first foreign policy test, he has the potential to succeed greatly or fail horrifically. Uncertain times are ahead; it is best we all stay informed.