But there is something else that should be generating a great level of concern -- the effort by Republicans to use the Supreme Court to suppress voting across the country in an attempt to hold onto the White House and Senate.
Let's start with Florida. Recent polls have made clear that Florida is in play this November, thanks, in part, to Trump's mishandling of the coronavirus crisis and a surge of support for Biden among seniors.
But, last week, the Supreme Court issued an order that will likely help Florida Republicans continue to suppress certain citizens' ability to vote. According to the Court's decision, Florida can block ex-felons from voting if they have outstanding court fines or cannot pay all the costs associated with their convictions.
It should not have been this way.
In 2018, Florida voters approved an amendment restoring voting rights to most ex-felons who had completed their sentences, including probation and parole. Since then, Florida Republicans have tried to circumvent the amendment, passing a law clarifying the "terms of sentence" that formerly incarcerated people must complete -- full pay back of fines, fees and restitution --amounting to a modern-day poll tax before they are allowed to vote.
A federal District Court judge had tried to stop the rule, saying that the state "cannot condition voting on payments of amounts a person is unable to pay." But just months from the election, Republicans in the state were thrown a lifeline by the conservative Supreme Court, letting the Florida state law go into effect.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her dissent, the order will prevent thousands of Floridians from participating in democracy "simply because they are poor."
Unfortunately, this isn't the first anti-voting rights decision the Supreme Court has handed down this year. As the pandemic upends lives across the country, the Court has repeatedly sided with state Republicans trying to make it harder for people to safely vote.
In Wisconsin, a state that could secure a victory for Trump or Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden, Republican justices voted as a bloc to not extend the absentee ballot deadlines, after requests for the specialty ballots exploded.
The vote forced thousands of Wisconsinites to choose between going out in-person in the middle of a pandemic and forfeiting their right to vote in the primary. The four Democratic-appointed justices all dissented. Justice Ginsburg wrote at the time that the decision "boggles the mind."
In Alabama, a state that could play a role in determining control of the Senate as Democrat Doug Jones fights for his political life, the five Republican justices overruled their Democratic-appointed colleagues, again, to make it harder for people to vote absentee in the middle of the pandemic.
And, in Texas, a state where Biden is within the margin of error of Trump in a number of polls, the Court denied a request from Democrats to try to expand vote-by-mail to help people safely vote.
