Project 2025 in review

Political analyst John Oliver analyzes Milf Manor and Project 2025. His insightful analysis suggests that people ought not vote for DJT for anything.

Commentary on the USSC decision to neuter congress and federal agencies

As I argued yesterday, the decision by the USSC yesterday to eliminate the Chevron defense amounted to a massive shift of power from the president, congress and federal agencies to the USSC itself. That case is at least as damaging to democracy and the rule of law as the catastrophic 2010 Citizens United case that legalized large-scale corruption in American politics. 

The last time the USSC took this much power for itself, was in 1803 in Marbury v. Madison. That decision held that the USSC itself, not congress, the president or voters, had the power to decide what laws were constitutional and what ones were not.

The Nation writes about the impact of nullifying Chevron in the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision the USSC published yesterday:

We Just Witnessed the Biggest Supreme Court Power Grab Since 1803

The court has given itself nearly unlimited power over the administrative state, putting everything from environmental protections to workers’ rights at risk 

In the biggest judicial power grab since 1803, the Supreme Court today overruled Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a 1984 case that instructed the judiciary to defer to the president and the president’s experts in executive agencies when determining how best to enforce laws passed by Congress. In so doing, the court gave itself nearly unlimited power over the administrative state and its regulatory agencies.

Now, if you’re not a lawyer, that probably sounds bad, but mainly in a technical sense. Regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Securities and Exchange Commission issue influential but deeply complicated rules, so it makes sense that somebody should have final authority over whether and how to enforce those rules. Since we have already made the disastrous decision to allow the Supreme Court to tell us who gets to be president and what women can be forced to do with their bodies, it might not sound like that big of a leap to also let the court decide how much lead can leak into our drinking water or which predators are allowed to sell mortgages.

The thing is: The US Constitution, flawed though it is, has already answered the question of who gets to decide how to enforce our laws. The Constitution says, quite clearly, that Congress passes laws and the president enforces them. The Supreme Court, constitutionally speaking, has no role in determining whether Congress was right to pass the law, or if the executive branch is right to enforce it, or how presidents should use the authority granted to them by Congress. So, for instance, if Congress passes a Clean Air Act (which it did in in 1963) and the president creates an executive agency to enforce it (which President Richard Nixon did in 1970), then it’s really not up to the Supreme Court to say, “Well, actually, ‘clean air’ doesn’t mean what the EPA thinks it means.”

For an unelected panel of judges to come in, above the agencies, and tell them how the president is allowed to enforce laws is a perversion of the constitutional order and separation of powers—and a repudiation of democracy itself.

But repudiating democracy to expand its own power is exactly what the Supreme Court did today in its ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned Chevron. In a 6-3 decision, which split exactly along party lines, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the courts—and, more particularly, his court and the people who have bought and paid for the justices on it—are the sole arbiters of which laws can be enforced and what enforcement of those laws must look like. Roberts ruled that courts, and only courts, are allowed to figure out what Congress meant to do and impose those interpretations on the rest of society. He wrote that “agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”

That is a naked power grab that places the court ahead of literal experts chosen by the president, who is the one elected official we all get to vote for. Who do you think has a “special competence” in resolving what the word “clean” means in the context of the “Clean Water” or “Clean Air” act—experts at the EPA or justices on Harlan Crow’s yacht? Who do you think has a special competence to resolve what “safe” working conditions require—experts at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or justices who have never worked as much as a day at a job that requires them to be outside? Who do you think has a special competence to resolve what “equality” means under the Civil Rights Act for women in workplaces—experts at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or justices who have been accused of attempted rape?  

[The] ruling in Loper Bright effectively completes the suite of powers the Supreme Court has given itself to lord over everybody else. The court can now: veto acts of Congress as unconstitutional, decide who gets to be president [referring to the USSC appointing Bush to power in 2000], and decide what the president is allowed to do while in office.  

There is literally nothing that can be done to restore the rights the Supreme Court has taken away, or restore the power the Constitution gives to the people, other than reforming the Supreme Court and flooding it with justices who do not think they are kings. Court expansion is the only way to stop the Supreme Court. But to expand the court we have to elect Democrats, many of whom are also against court expansion. Then we have to push those Democrats to get rid of the filibuster, which many of them don’t want to do. Then we have to get Democrats to use their power. Then we have to get the Democratic president to put the right kinds of justices on the court. And we have to do it all over the unified objection of the Republican Party, the Christian right, the fossil fuel industry, the financial services industry, your racist uncle who watches Fox News, and Ice Cube.

Predicting the future

What is going to go away is things like environmental regulations, consumer protections, civil liberties protections, worker protections and financial regulations that experts have put in place. Experts write regulations to try to implement the incompetence, incoherence and amateur slop that congress routinely produces in the form of things called "laws." Now, the "experts", i.e., unelected federal judges, are going to simply push aside the actual experts and the idiots in congress. Now the USSC has the power tell us what all that congressional slop really means. 

What does all of this mean? 

What it all means is crystal clear. It means that kleptocratic authoritarianism is now fully empowered to rise and displace democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. That has been the dream of America's radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement for decades. A gigantic authoritarian payoff is finally at hand. 

Kleptocratic plutocrats will now attack every regulation that stands in the way of profit. Kleptocratic Christian nationalist theocrats will now attack and obliterate the last vestiges of church-state separation. Taxpayers will pay both the plutocrats and the theocrats. Consumers will get lied to and ripped off. Elections will become a sham. Government will become kleptocratic. Corporate profits will soar. The environment, e.g., our drinking water and air, will be more aggressively polluted. Secularism will be slowly wrung out of American society, commerce and government and replaced with a bigoted Christian Taliban implementing Christian Sharia law. Wealth inequality will continue its ruthless rise, leaving a few very rich elites and their hired goon enforcers to rule everyone else with an iron fist. Finally, an impenetrable veil of secrecy will shield all of the sleaze, corruption, fornication, treason and abomination that wealthy and/or powerful elites will conduct their daily business behind, much like as is the case today (but just a lot more so). 

How things are going to play out for regular

people in the new, post-Chevron world?

I hope not, but it is now possible

In other words, what is this USSC decision means is that we are all well and truly screwed, but elites are well and truly empowered and unleashed.

Q: Will there be a serious power struggle between the USSC vs. congress and or the next president in 2025-2026?

He got better!

Here is Joe Biden at a rally in North Carolina yesterday. He woke up and got over his cold.

Regarding DJT, there even was a chant of LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!! 

Lawrence O'Donnell has an interesting take on the debate: We live in a country where most commentators declared the liar the debate winner 

Right, DJT did not win the "debate." Democracy and the rule of law lost to that exercise in asymmetric warfare, dark free speech vs. honest speech.

It will be interesting to see how or if the public opinion chances according to post-debate polls.

Big SCOTUS decision coming Monday…

Yes, the one we’ve all been waiting for: 

Does a President of the U.S. have absolute immunity?

The immunity case in Donald J. Trump v. United States will center on one simple sentence: “whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.” -constitutioncenter.org

So, what do you think?  If yes, should Biden order Seal Team 6 to go in and assassinate DJT as an official act of saving democracy?  Okay, I kid (barely). 🤨

Yes, that is a ridiculous statement on its face.  But in actuality, from what I can tell, we are dealing with exactly that scenario. 

What makes something an official act?  Need it be in the Constitution to be an official act?  Otherwise, how is it determined?

The nightmare awaits.  Discuss or Disqus... pick your poison.

(by PrimalSoup)

Biden Debacle Update

6/29/24

Some important information has emerged since the debate fiasco. The following are excerpts from 2 articles. One is from The Wall St. Journal, the other from The Intercept.  In the latter, Akela Lacy asks, "Can Anything Stop the Democratic National Convention from being a Biden Coronation?" She writes:

People have been talking behind closed doors about President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline for the past several years. After the Wall Street Journal published a story earlier this month raising concerns about Biden’s health, Democrats slammed the article, deflected the criticism, and characterized it as a hit piece. But after his performance in the first presidential debate on Thursday night, party operatives were no longer able to hide the problem. 

Now, as Democrats scramble to assess the damage, the question has turned to how – or if – the party will address Biden’s candidacy crisis at the Democratic National Convention in August.

“They’ve just been trying to skate to the general election with as minimal exposure as possible to the public. And now it’s blown up on them,” said Thomas Kennedy, a former delegate to the Democratic National Committee who resigned in January over Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. “The delegates knew, the electeds knew, the donors knew, obviously the staffers know,” he said. “Everybody knew.

Efforts to raise concerns within the DNC about Biden’s health have been definitively shut down for years, Kennedy said. One DNC member who suggested that another candidate should run in 2024 said he was attacked by other members and faced with a vote to remove him from the committee. “That’s the sort of pushback that any sort of — not just dissent, but any sort of mentioning of this topic — has been happening for two years,” Kennedy said. 

Biden’s campaign, for its part, made clear on Friday that he has no intention of backing down. Asked about his debate performance, campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt emphasized that Biden would not be stepping down and pointed to the campaign’s $14 million fundraising haul after the debate and a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday. “He just gave a very forceful speech at a rally in NC with a fired up crowd,” Hitt wrote to The Intercept. In comments made on Air Force One on Friday afternoon, Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler doubled down: “Joe Biden is the nominee,” Tyler said

Current and former delegates told The Intercept there is little chance that the DNC would change course. The convention, the delegates said, would likely follow the same pro forma processes that have sidelined reform efforts and with them, the party’s progressive wing. The convention has already moved the vote for the presidential nomination online, weeks before the actual convention is held in person in Chicago.

There are mechanisms to allow for an open convention to nominate another candidate, but the party has avoided that option as a last resort and it would be too late at this point, said Nadia Ahmad, a DNC member in Florida. Biden would have to decide to step aside on his own accord. Or, delegates would have to organize themselves quickly to commit to another candidate. Given that the nomination vote will take place ahead of the convention, Ahmad said that any open nomination process would have to take place online too, which is unlikely.

“There’s definitely an appetite for what I would call the combustion factor,” Ahmad said. “People are willing to burn things down to maybe get them to work. That’s where you see the rise of a third party.” 

The convention has long stopped serving as a place for democratic decision-making, she added. “The Democratic Party is more invested in trying to maintain control than it is in trying to win an election in November.”

Another DNC member who requested anonymity to avoid reprisal said the debate only emphasized what progressives have been saying about the DNC in recent cycles. “Unless Biden withdraws, the convention is a stage managed coronation.” 

Kennedy noted that the days of action-packed political conventions are far behind us. “These are not the conventions of 1968 or 1972 that we read about,” he said. “They’re just highly choreographed top-down affairs where there’s not a lot of room for political maneuvering or opposing sides, or anything that strays away from the establishment. And the delegates are carefully chosen and funneled in a way that they’re part of the party machinery and hackery.” 

Days before the debate, the New York Times published a story about how the president was battling “misleading videos” showing his age-related deterioration. Very quickly into the debate on Thursday evening, Biden’s campaign was battling on another front: how to stop the bleeding as coverage swirled about how the performance would affect his chances at winning the November election. During a routine, post-debate call with surrogates last night, campaign staff acknowledged that the debate was rocky, according to a source who attended. By the next day, the party apparatus was back to normal messaging.

***

The WSJ article, "The World Saw Biden Deteriorating. Democrats Ignored the Warnings." , paints a picture of mounting apprehension about Biden's fitness for office both domestically and internationally-- esp. in recent months. It suggests that the Democratic Party's decision to overlook these concerns will have significant consequences not only for the upcoming election, but also global politics. 

Many European officials expressed worries about Biden's focus and stamina prior to the recent presidential debate. These concerns were echoed by some Democrats whose warnings went unheeded by top WH officials who instead have engaged in attempts to control all discourse around Biden's inability to function normally. Here are some excerpts-- with some examples highlighted-- from the long article which is behind a paywall.

European officials had already been expressing worries in private about Biden’s focus and stamina before Thursday’s debate, with some senior diplomats saying they had tracked a noticeable deterioration in the president’s faculties in meetings since last summer. There were real doubts about how Biden could successfully manage a second term, but one senior European diplomat said U.S. administration officials in private discussions denied there was any problem.

The White House disputed the characterization that Biden has stumbled on the world stage. “Foreign leaders see Joe Biden up close and personal,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson. “They know who they are dealing with, how effective he has been, and how important his leadership is on the world stage.”

Diplomats described Biden’s performance at the Group of Seven summit in Italy in mid-June as mixed, with Biden appearing physically frailer than in the past but alert in many of the most important discussions.

Biden missed the summit’s dinner party in a medieval castle, an off-camera and less- scripted part of the summit in which leaders often exchange views more candidly. He was the only G-7 leader not to attend the meal; the White House told reporters in advance he wouldn’t be there because it would be a “jam-packed two days” of meetings. Biden instead held an event with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and had a news conference.

The next day, Biden followed through on his plans to forgo a Swiss peace summit on Ukraine to attend a California fundraiser instead, frustrating Ukrainian officials who had organized the conference in Switzerland directly after the G-7 in the hope that Biden would come from Italy. 

Top White House officials disputed any portrait of a president slipping during his European trip, which included 12-hour days chock-full of meetings. “He didn’t miss a beat,” said Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser for international economics who participated in meetings with Biden. Singh said that there has been no change to the “forceful and substantive rigor” that Biden brings to meetings with foreign leaders....

“The reading in Europe is that this has been an unmitigated disaster,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute of International Affairs in Rome and a former adviser to the EU’s foreign-affairs chiefs, referring to Biden’s attempts to reassure voters worried about his age. European officials and prominent commentators, she added, “have been talking about it. It’s something that has been known, always, that his age is his main Achilles’ heel.”

In the hours after Thursday’s debate, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters that the Democrats have a problem.

“I was afraid of this. It was to be expected that in a direct confrontation, in a debate, it would not be easy for the president,” said Tusk, who has known Biden for years. Asked what he thought of proposals to replace Biden with another candidate, he said: “They definitely have a problem. The reactions have been unambiguous.”

Norbert Röttgen, a senior lawmaker in Germany’s center-right main opposition party and the former chair of its parliament’s foreign-affairs committee, said on X: “The Democrats must switch horses now.” Slovenian former Prime Minister Janez Janša said he bet months ago that Biden would no longer be on the ballot in November. 

When Biden was in France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day in June, he struggled. During a bilateral meeting in Paris with Zelensky, Biden spoke so softly that reporters brought in to document the meeting between the two men couldn’t initially hear the American president. Zelensky, a non-native English speaker, could be heard clearly.

During the brief exchange, Biden flubbed when explaining what the Ukrainians would do with a new tranche of $225 million in funds that the U.S. was sending. Biden told Zelensky that money was “to help you reconstruct the electric grid.” Officials traveling with the president explained that the money was actually a series of munitions including air defenses that could protect the electric grid, among other targets, and not for rebuilding the electric grid.

Back in Washington for a brief time between his trips to France and Italy, Biden appeared at a Juneteenth concert at the South Lawn. Video footage of the event showed him clapping noticeably out of time to the music. He needed assistance from the person seated next to him when it was time for him to get up. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked about his awkward behavior at the event, dismissed the question. “That is just not a health issue,” she said.

[After describing Jill Biden as a "strong supporter of her husband's decision to run" the article continues]Biden’s top aides insist publicly and around various Washington dining room tables that the president is mentally sharp. As recently as May, one aide in frequent contact with the president insisted that there has been absolutely no change in his performance. And, when confronted with evidence that Biden is deteriorating, the White House pushes back hard, including when The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Biden showed signs of slipping in negotiations with congressional leaders. In February, before the Hur report was released on the probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents, White House lawyers sought to strip references about Biden’s memory from the report. The White House team of communications officials labeled Hur’s comments on Biden’s memory as “gratuitous” as they expressed relief that he wasn’t recommending criminal charges against Biden.

The WSJ then turns to the complaints and concerns of Biden donors, many of whom saw him fumbling and flubbing his lines during fundraisers and meeetings. 

At a September 2023 fundraiser in New York, Biden retold the same anecdote twice—leaving at least one attendee shaken and worried about his age. In February, Biden used a teleprompter at a fundraiser in Los Angeles, and questions were screened in advance, according to a person familiar with the matter—frustrating some donors...

During a May fundraiser in Washington state, Biden appeared to lose his train of thought as he talked about Israel and at one point paused for five seconds before continuing, according to a pool report from a journalist who attended. Biden said: “The cease-fire would begin tomorrow. It all has to do…you know, we’ve not…anyway, I guess I shouldn’t get into all this about Israel but…”

Some major Democratic donors have sat this race out, believing that the ticket might change or that Biden is too old, according to two people familiar with Biden’s fundraising operation. So far the money has come in at such a fast clip that those naysayers have been ignored.

These articles, and other emerging information indicate a crisis not only within the Biden election campaign, the DNC, the down-ticket elections which will take a hit along with the reputation and credibility of the party, but also the confidence of political actors on the world stage. Though the WSJ focused on the EU and its member states, it is doubtful that other major states in the world are not similarly shaken by the state of affairs described above. With urgent policy decisions being made daily in multiple regions of the world with cascading effects of great magnitude, any already-existing doubts and fears within the international community will almost certainly be greatly accentuated by the fact that all of this has now exploded into public view and consciousness in US mainstream media. The curtain has been pulled back. Things have been said and seen that cannot be unsaid and unseen. How this will affect policies such as those concerning Israel, Ukraine and China-- just to take 3 obvious examples-- is not yet clear. But it is, I think, fair to say that not only American domestic politics, but International Relations will be dangerously offset by the live-streaming trainwreck that is the Biden Administration in this historic moment. We're all in uncharted waters now. 

***

Here is a transcript of what Biden said Thursday night when asked a simple question on on of his strong points relative to Trump-- i.e. abortion.

"President Biden?"

"It's a terrible thing, what you've done.

The fact is that the vast majority of constitutional scholars supported Roe when it was decided, supported Roe. And that was--that's-- this idea that they were all against it is just ridiculous. 

And this is the guy who says the states should be able to have it. We're (ph) in a state where in six weeks you don't even know if you're pregnant or not, but you cannot see the doctor and have your-- and have him decide on what your circumstances are, whether you need help.

The idea that states are going to do this is a little like saying  we're going to turn civil rights back to the states. Let each state have a different rule.

Look, there's so many young women who have been--including a young woman who was just murdered and he-- he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by a-- by--by an immigrant coming in, and they talked about that. But here's the deal, there's a lot of young women who are being raped by their-- by their in-laws, by their-- by their spouses, brothers and sisters, by--just-- it's just--it's just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it. 

And they tried to arrest them when they crossed state lines.

Bash: Thank You.

(Source: Politco's  Meredith McGraw post of final CNN transcript)

 

Supreme Court finds a route to leniency for some Jan. 6 traitors

The WaPo writes (not paywalled) about another ding on democracy (and the rule of law):

Justices strike obstruction charge for Jan. 6 rioter, likely impacting others

Hundreds have been charged with felony obstruction, among other counts, for their role in the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol

Federal prosecutors improperly charged a Jan. 6 defendant with obstruction, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday, a decision that will likely upend many cases against rioters who disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election and which Donald Trump’s legal team may use to try to whittle down one of his criminal cases.

After the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, federal prosecutors charged more than 350 participants in the pro-Trump mob with obstructing or impeding an official proceeding. The charge carries a 20-year maximum penalty and is part of a law enacted after the exposure of massive fraud and shredding of documents during the collapse of the energy giant Enron.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said prosecutors’ broad reading of the statute gives them too much discretion to seek a 20-year maximum sentence "for acts Congress saw fit to punish only with far shorter terms of imprisonment.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was disappointed with the ruling but insisted it was not a body blow to the overall investigation and prosecution of the riot at the U.S. Capitol.  

“The vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision,” he added, noting that not a single Jan. 6 defendant was charged solely with the crime at issue in the Fischer case. “For the cases affected by today’s decision, the Department will take appropriate steps to comply with the Court’s ruling.”

What overall impact this will have is not clear. The dissent by Amy Coney Barrett — joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — said the court’s reading of the obstruction statute is too limited and requires the majority to do “textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach” of the law. Narrowing the reach of the law for radical right authoritarians is to be expected for this radical Republican court.