Crooked Media - What A Day: Full-Court Distress

-Laura Ingraham, who has clearly never received a hug

It’s officially summer so you know what that means: days at the beach, ice-cold lemonade, and the Supreme Court treating the majority of the country like silly putty. 

• Today, in another devastating 6-3 decision, the Court sharply curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate CO2 emissions. With many climate scientists saying we have less than a decade to right the ship on climate change, ever-rising sea levels, and wildfires becoming more intense each year, this one is pretty bad! In the immediate future, this decision will undoubtedly push the United States even further off track from President Biden’s goal of running the power grid on clean energy by 2035, and making the entire economy carbon-neutral by 2050.

• Biden called the ruling “another devastating decision that aims to take our country backwards,” but promised “not [to] relent in using my lawful authorities to protect public health and tackle the climate crisis,” and instructed the Justice Department to scour the ruling for weaknesses that will allow EPA to continue regulating climate pollution.
  
  That was their last lawless decision for this term, but they previewed a horrorshow to come! Today, the Court announced it will hear a case next term that could give state legislatures the power to determine how congressional elections are conducted without any checks and balances from state constitutions or state courts. We’ve seen how Republican legislators draw congressional maps with checks and balances, so the possibility of the court endorsing the far-right fringe “Independent State Legislature Theory” is extremely alarming. And with midterm elections looming and 2024 in our sights, it’s nothing short of an emergency.

If they do read “Donald Trump’s January 6 insurrection plan” into the constitution, their next step will be full-blown theocracy.

• The Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, a 50-year old precedent was built on what people in the legal profession call flimflam. For all of the claims that Roe was decided by an “activist court” what could be more proof of an activist court than a decision clearly made in 2022 with explicit evangelical Christian motivation in a country that foundationally separates church and state?

• Well, as it turns out, the hyperconservative majority doesn’t want to separate church and state. They further eroded that pillar of the Constitution in Monday’s Kennedy v. Bremerton School District decision, which again flew in the face of decades of precedent by ruling that public school employees such as teachers and coaches can (forcibly) lead students in prayer. Clarence Thomas stated bluntly after the Dobbs decision that he believes the Court should revisit landmark precedent cases involving birth control, gay marriage, and even criminalizing homosexuality.
   

This week should be the wakeup call Democrats desperately need to begin taking the cause of court reform seriously. It should also be the wakeup call the rest of us need that all of this becomes unfixable, even in theory, if Democrats lose in November.

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In the days since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, many Democrats have been frustrated with the Biden administration’s seeming inability to meet the historic challenges of this moment. Today, perhaps responding to public pressure, Biden said he would finally support reforming the filibuster in order to codify Roe into federal law. He’s talked a big game about protecting reproductive freedom. But we also learned today that Biden plans to nominate a conservative, anti-choice lawyer in Kentucky to the federal bench, as part of an agreement with Mitch McConnell to confirm future nominees without obstruction. Any deal that involves trusting Mitch McConnell to keep his word seems like, I don’t know, probably a bad one! (Plus, we really don't need an anti-choice judge named Chad on the bench) It’s also worth noting that this McConnell deal will go out the window if Dems lose even one more senate seat, which brings us to the news that 82 year-old Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) broke his hip and will need surgery. Oh, and Vermont has a Republican governor. The perils of gerontocracy never cease.

The government of New Zealand has officially classified The Proud Boys as a terrorist organization. How do we get in on that? Asking for a friend. 

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into New York City’s special victims division after decades of allegations of gross mishandling of sexual abuse cases. 

Missouri will enact strict new voting requirements such as photo IDs and will change their presidential primaries to caucuses in an undemocratic one-two punch. 

Investigators have uncovered a never-served arrest warrant for the White woman whose accusations led to Emmitt Till’s horrific murder in 1955. 

A Florida judge temporarily blocked the state’s 15-week abortion ban. 

Justice Department records show that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows went to then-Attorney General Bill Bar asking him to investigate “fraud” the day after the 2020 election. 

The Florida Department of Education has begun training educators on new civics and history standards for K-12 public schools, and the state has gone from “massaging the truth” to full-on rewriting history. The slides, which were leaked to the Miami Herald for anyone to view, involve teaching a history of the United States government in which, when the Founding Fathers advocated for separation of church and state, they didn’t mean Christianity, along with the utterly false notion that they were ardent opponents of slavery. Most of the Founding Fathers of course not only owned slaves, but wrote protections for the institution into the Constitution ensuring its perpetuation. Attempting, as one of the slides does, to argue that Thomas fucking Jefferson, who not only owned slaves but oversaw the enslavement of some of his own children, was an opponent of the institution is not only factually incorrect, it’s insulting on about one hundred different levels.

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Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced that his department will launch a first-of-its-kind, billion-dollar program to reconnect cities and neighborhoods racially segregated or divided by road projects.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Biden Administration can end Trump’s draconian “Remain in Mexico” order for asylum-seekers. 

Ketanji Brown-Jackson was officially sworn in as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Popular period-tracking apps are developing technology to protect users’ information in the wake of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. 

Massachusetts State House lawmakers passed a bill that would enshrine the right to abortion and gender-affirming care.