Evangelical Christians have long been the foot soldiers of the Republican Party. In 2010, they made up about 36 percent of Republican voters.

But the GOP's reliance on religious voters isn't necessarily a formula for long-term success—especially since the next generation of Americans has serious reservations not just about organized religion, but about the very existence of God. For the past 25 years, the Pew Research Center has been asking voters whether they ever question the existence of God. The numbers have been pretty stable. Older voters are pretty set on God, with 86 percent of baby boomers saying they never question His existence.

But Millennials, defined as Americans born after 1981, are bending the curve. This year, only 68 percent of Millennials surveyed said they never questioned God's existence, the lowest number of any group in 25 years. That's down from 76 percent only five years ago. The numbers suggest Millennials are going to be a generation of skeptics. No other generation has seen such a dramatic crisis of faith in such a short time. 

Pew Research Center

The trend lines join other bad polling news for evangelicals, namely that younger Christians are turned off by attacks on gays and lesbians. Such trends don't bode well for the Republican Party. By 2020, Millennials will make up the largest single voting bloc in the country, some 90 million strong, and they are already showing a distaste for GOP politics.

Evangelical political activists like Ralph Reed have contended that these sorts of numbers don't mean the movement is in a death spiral. Reed has scoffed at polling data showing younger people fleeing the religious right. "Young people may start out liberal, but once they start getting married, having babies, and paying taxes, we got 'em," he told me after the 2010 midterm election.

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Mitt Romney, shown here waving goodbye to legal abortion in red states.

Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that paved the way for legal abortions in America, is likely to be in serious danger if GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is elected in November. The future of the nation's highest court hasn't gotten a lot of attention this election year, but the subject was thrown into stark relief on Friday, when Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, discussed it with a group of journalists at Netroots Nation. "Oh my god, it's just immeasurable how bad it would be," Richards said in response to a question from my colleague Andy Kroll about Romney's potential impact on the court. "It's difficult to make it a voting issue for average Americans because they don't think of the Supreme Court every morning when they get up. But the next nominees to this court are going be critical."

Given the aging profile of the Supreme Court, the next president is expected to nominate several justices. The court already has an active conservative majority, and the next nomination is likely to be for the spot of liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is 79. Stephen Breyer, another liberal justice, is 73; conservative Antonin Scalia and Republican-appointed Anthony Kennedy (often the swing vote) are 76 and 75, respectively. If all four step down during the next administration—something that's certainly possible—whoever is president will have an opportunity to reshape the court in his image. Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights, would be able to ensure that abortion remains legal for the foreseeable future. Romney, who believes states should be allowed to outlaw abortion, would almost certainly be able to ensure that would happen. (The Senate does have to confirm Supreme Court nominees, so control of that body will matter, too.)

Here are more of Richards' comments:

Oh my god, it's just immeasurable how bad it would be. I think right now, there are several cases that could get to the court on Roe. I don't think anyone is confident that Roe will be upheld. You see more and more bills pass and signed at the state level that are unconstitutional under Roe and I think again the Supreme Court, it's difficult to make it a voting issue for average Americans because they don't think of the Supreme Court every morning when they get up. But the next nominees to this court are going to be critical. There's just no way to overstate that.

[...]

The real concern is what could happen in this country if Roe is overturned or just continues to get chipped away at, and it just becomes a country more and more where women are safe in some states and not safe in others. That's clearly what Mr Romney would like to see. I've seen that around the world and it's not pretty. The divide that you see and we're already seeing in this country is that women who have access to reproductive care—safe and legal abortion, birth control, cancer screenings—it becomes a have and have-not, and that's what really of concern. Reproductive health care will always be available to women who have money. But not for women who are struggling just to have access to basic care.

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A guard tower at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility

The Supreme Court's decision on Monday not to hear appeals from a group of Gitmo detainees leaves the remaining 169 detainees at the facility with little chance of securing their freedom through US courts. 

In the 2008 case Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled detainees at Gitmo could challenge their detention in US courts. That decision was seen as effectively ending the Bush administration's attempt to carve out a legal black hole for suspected terror detainees. Shortly thereafter, Gitmo detainees began appealing their detentions—and frequently winning in court. But in the years since the decision, conservative judges on the DC Circuit have interpreted the law in a way that assumes many of the government's claims are true and don't have to be proven in court. By not taking any of these cases, the Supreme Court has ensured these stricter rules will prevail. Civil-libertarian groups say that essentially leaves detainees at Gitmo with habeas rights in name only, since the rules make it virtually impossible for detainees to win in court. A Seton Hall University School of Law report from May found that, prior to the DC Circuit's reinterpretation of the rules, detainees won 56 percent of cases. Afterwards, they won 8 percent.

Others, such as the Brookings Institution's Benjamin Wittes, have argued that more detainee losses don't mean the new standards are unfair. In May, Wittes wrote, "I don’t think one can simply assume that a world in which detainees aren't winning is a world in which review is meaningless either. Maybe, just maybe, it's a world in which a lot of detainees are more likely than not—based on the available materials—'part of' enemy forces."

It only takes four votes to ensure a case gets heard. That means one of the four Democratic appointees on the court voted not to hear the detainee cases. As the American Prospect's Scott Lemieux notes, why that happened will remain a subject of speculation: Either one of the four Democratic appointees fears that the Supreme Court might make the situation worse, or they concur with what the DC Circuit has done. Some other configuration of six "no votes" is also possible. The result is the same regardless: The decision means that the DC Circuit's de facto reversal of Boumediene will stand, leaving Gitmo detainees with very slim chances of securing their freedom by challenging their detention in court. 

The Obama administration shares some of the blame for this result. As a presidential candidate in 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama praised the Boumediene decision. Earlier this year, his administration urged the Supreme Court not to take the Gitmo detainees' appeal, leaving in place legal standards that civil libertarians argue render Boumediene almost meaningless.

Gitmo detainees have now lost virtually every avenue—other than dying in detention—for leaving the detention camp. Congress has curtailed transfers to other countries by making the restrictions on them nearly impossible to meet. Gitmo detainees can't be brought to the United States for trial in federal court. And the Supreme Court has now effectively blessed legal standards that make success in court almost impossible. There are now 169 detainees left at Gitmo, and like the facility itself, they aren't going anywhere.

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Aviation ordnancemen assigned to the Eagles of Strike Fighter Squadron 115 arm a GBU-16 Paveway II on an F/A-18E during flight operations aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington. George Washington departed Fleet Activities Yokosuka on May 26 to begin its 2012 patrol. George Washington and its embarked air wing, Carrier Air Wing 5, provide a combat-ready force that protects and defends the collective maritime interest of the U.S. and its allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific region. US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Paul Kelly.

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