“LAWYERS SPEAK OUT ON SUPREME COURT: ‘THIS IS A REVELATION OF THE FUTURE’ ”, July 4, 2022, Margaret Flowers, “Clearing the Fog” (podcast), interview by Flowers of Shahid Buttar & Marjorie Cohn, Popular Resistance, at < https://popularresistance.org/
And
“SCOTUS EPA Ruling Signals Court Will Strike Down Rules Limiting Corporate Profit”, July 1, 2022, Marjorie Cohn,Truthout, at < https://truthout.org/articles/
And
“The Supreme Court’s Shock-and-Awe Judicial Coup: The rolling judicial coup coming from this court is by no means over”, June 30, 2022, The Intercept, at < https://theintercept.com/2022/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista:
The discredited Partisan Hack 6 member super majority of, the already discredited, U.S. Supreme Court fired the opening salvo of overt fascism in U.S. with its series of rulings that; stripped women of the right to reproductive healthcare ending a national standard and instituting a state by state standard; stripped New York State of the ability to regulate the carrying and use of guns ending a state by state standard and instituting a national standard (in reality the lack of any sort of standard); over ruled a state law that prohibited governmental subsidies for Religious Schools; overuled another state law that had prohibited prayer in public schools; and ruled that a bevy of reactionary run Red States do not have to obey EPA rules that mandated reductions in CO2 emissions at existing electrical generation stations. All of these decisions have major implications for the way the U.S. will be run in the future. To put it succinctly these rulings, and many more to come, will turn the U.S. into a vicious and cruel Capitalist Theocracy in which the great majority populace will be stripped of all their personal freedoms. Of course a small cabal of corporate oligarchs will profit handsomely from these changes, and a larger but still minority part of the population, who are religious fanatics, will be empowered to impose their Medieval beliefs and social norms on the rest of the population.
This is not a time to be passive. These rulings and their consequences must be stoutly resisted with methods that make business-as-usual impossible and that cut deeply into the profits of the corporations and the oligarchs who own them. Make no mistake, the Court has already accepted a case that would allow State Legislatures to pick the electors for the next presidential election. That would allow another monster, either Trump himself, or the even more dangerous Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, to accede to the throne, regardless of how badly they lose the Actual Vote (the so-called Popular Vote).
The podcast features discussions between Margaret Flowers and two left-leaning attorneys. They both make the case that this is not really some sort of nightmare, because we cannot wake up and find out it was just a dream. The U.S. is being pushed rapidly down the road to an overtly fascist regime and if the decent people do not wake up it will be too late.
Shahid Buttar effectively points out that the foundations for a fascist regime were laid by the right as far back as 2007 and 2008. The Heller Decision, for instance, that legalized the general ownership of guns was rendered in 2008. He further notes that Rehnquist, who seemed like a far-right extremist when he first was confirmed for the Court, ended up being a centrist. Not because he moved to the left, but rather because the overall tenor of the court had moved far to the right.
Marjorie Cohn notes in both her interview and in her Truthout article that the right-wing members of the court (she said she no longer calls them Justices because they are 180 degrees opposed to anything resembling justice) have acted as loyal agents for the Fossil Fuel interests in a long series of rulings and skirmishes over the years. She quotes Elena Kagan's dissenting opinion, in the Truthout article where she writes that: “Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change,” Kagan wrote. “And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions.”
Naomi Klein hits the nail on the head concerning the sort of response the Democrats could make in her Intercept article, writing: “This is it. The moment for President Joe Biden and Congress to challenge the underlying legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court and advance an aggressive climate action agenda. There will be no better moment to take this stand for a transformed court, nor a more fateful one.” (Emphasis added). A bit farther on she writes that the W. Virginia v. EPA ruling is the result of: “ ... decades of 'plotting against environmental regulations' by Koch Industries, .... this entire court has been shaped by the dark-money-bankrolled Judicial Crisis Network, ... ”
She points out later that: “The first rule of an emergency is that you do what it takes to end the emergency and get to safety. You don’t throw up your hands because the task is too hard. You certainly don’t let a gang of unelected, lifetime appointed political operatives — several of whom only have their seats because of trickery and lies — get in your way. (Emphasis added).
“The Democrats’ base would take tremendous heart from seeing this kind of emergency footing response, but it would be most meaningful for young people, many of whom can vote. And those voices should not be discounted.”
Just what the likelihood is of a determined and clever Democratic response to the outrageous attacks on our freedoms and our lives by this dangerous extremist court is, I do not know. I certainly do not expect to see the dismal duopoly DNC leadership types do anything so intelligent, as to take a strong stand. They are worried about losing the upcoming midterm elections. The best prospect they have to avoid an electoral debacle is to take a strong leadership stand on the ending the power of the fascistic Supreme Court. The Republicans have made themselves easy targets with these extremist rulings. The Religious Right members of the Republican Party, and their minions on the Supreme Court: “ ... aren’t worried about the world burning because they think we are in the End Times and that their faith will protect them (and failing that, that their wealth and their guns will, which is the way Republicans enact the Rapture without divine intervention).” These people are dangerous crazies and vicious exploiters. We must defeat them and there is no time to lose. As Joe Hill said shortly before the Capitalist murdered him (after another sham judicial proceeding btw), Don't mourn, ORGANIZE!!
LAWYERS SPEAK OUT ON SUPREME COURT: ‘THIS IS A REVELATION OF THE FUTURE’
- By Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG.
- July 4, 2022
- Featured Campaign, Podcast
The recent US Supreme Court rulings set legal precedents that will further erode human and civil rights and empower corporations as well as open the door for more cases that will advance Christian and capitalist ideologies. Clearing the FOG speaks with two legal experts, Shahid Buttar and Marjorie Cohn, about the specifics of the recent decisions on abortion, gun rights, school prayer, and the EPA and how they fit into the bigger picture. They also provide guidance on what we need to do to stop growing fascism in the United States.
Listen here:
Review us on iTunes! Click here … Then click on “View in iTunes … Then click “Ratings and Reviews.”Guests:
Shahid Buttar
Marjorie Cohn
SCOTUS EPA Ruling Signals Court Will Strike Down Rules Limiting Corporate Profit
On the last day of its term, the Supreme Court handed down a case no less impactful than its shameful ruling a week earlier that overturned Roe v. Wade. In West Virginia v. EPA, the court’s right-wing members confirmed they are in the pockets of the fossil fuel companies. The 6-3 majority sided with coal companies and Republican-led states to restrain the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) power to regulate carbon emissions.
“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of himself, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. But “it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme.”
This frightening decision could preempt new regulations the Biden administration’s EPA is developing to fight climate change. It will be nearly impossible for President Joe Biden to meet his climate goal that half of all new cars sold in the United States be electric by 2030, and all electricity come from solar, wind and other zero-carbon sources by 2035.
“Today, the Court strips the [EPA] of the power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,’” Elena Kagan wrote in the dissent joined by Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
In 2015, President Barack Obama’s EPA adopted the Clean Power Plan (CPP) to enforce the Clean Air Act. The CPP aimed to combat climate change by reducing carbon emissions from power plants through the “best system of emissions reduction” — by shifting the production of electricity to solar, wind power or fracked gas plants. It sought to transition from 38 percent coal to 27 percent coal by 2030. The Supreme Court suspended the implementation of the CPP in 2016 after several states and private plaintiffs challenged the plan.
The Trump administration repealed the CPP in 2019 and replaced it with the Affordable Clean Energy Rule (ACE Rule), a much weaker program. It granted states the ability to set regulations and gave power plants flexibility in complying with them.
Last year, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit halted both President Donald Trump’s repeal of the CPP and the ACE Rule and sent the case back to the EPA. The appellate court took issue with the Trump administration’s narrow interpretation of the EPA’s authority.
On June 30, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals’s ruling. For the first time, the majority explicitly used the “major questions doctrine,” which requires that Congress clearly spell out the powers of an administrative agency to make “decisions of vast economic and political significance.”
The court however, has increasingly utilized the rationale of the “major questions doctrine” without using those words, recently reversing the Biden administration’s attempts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an unsigned majority opinion that denied the authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop evictions, the court stated, “We expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.”
And the court struck down a rule promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to mandate vaccines or periodic testing of employees in large companies. Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion in that case, “The agency claims the power to force 84 million Americans to receive a vaccine or undergo regular testing. By any measure, that is a claim of power to resolve a question of vast national significance. Yet Congress has nowhere clearly assigned so much power to OSHA.”
Kagan wrote in dissent in the EPA case that Congress “broadly authorized EPA” to choose the “’best system of emission reduction’ for power plants…. The ‘best system,’ full stop — no ifs, ands, or buts of any kind relevant here.” She noted that the parties didn’t dispute that the EPA’s method “is indeed the ‘best system’ — the most effective and efficient way to reduce power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions.”
“Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change,” Kagan wrote. “And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions.” She adds, “The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”
Kagan cites the likelihood that, “If the current rate of emissions continues, children born this year could live to see parts of the Eastern seaboard swallowed by the ocean.” She cautions, “Rising waters, scorching heat, and other severe weather conditions could force ‘mass migration events[,] political crises, civil unrest,’ and ‘even state failure.’”
EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan responded to the court’s ruling: “At this moment, when the impacts of the climate crisis are becoming ever more disruptive, costing billions of dollars every year from floods, wildfires, droughts and sea level rise, and jeopardizing the safety of millions of Americans, the Court’s ruling is disheartening.”
Fewer than half the states have passed substantial climate change policies. California leads the country in requiring that by 2035, all new cars sold there be electric or zero-emission. Seventeen other states are slated to follow suit. By 2045, 100 percent of electricity in California must be generated from zero carbon sources. Twenty-one additional states have clean electricity requirements and others are considering even stricter standards.
In her dissent, Kagan pointed out that the majority opinion and particularly Gorsuch’s concurrence are suffused with an “anti-administrative-state” analysis. Indeed, when Gorsuch was nominated to the Supreme Court, the nonprofit group Alliance for Justice warned of the danger of Gorsuch’s practice of second-guessing agency experts: “It is difficult to overstate the damage [Gorsuch’s] position would cause. Judge Gorsuch would tie the hands of precisely those entities that Congress has recognized have the depth and experience to enforce critical laws, safeguard essential protections, and ensure the safety of the American people.”
The court’s decision sends an ominous signal that it will use the major questions doctrine to strike down other regulations that limit corporate profits. It could restrict the ability of federal agencies to regulate workplace safety, health care, product safety, water protections, vehicle safety, telecommunications and the financial sector.
By eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, and curtailing the authority of the EPA to halt climate disruption, the conservative members of the court have proven they are loyal foot soldiers in the right wing’s 50-year crusade to create a capitalist theocracy.
With the right-wing majority entrenched on the high court, we can expect to see future rulings affirming fewer regulations on industry and more regulation of personal privacy rights.
The Supreme Court’s Shock-and-Awe Judicial Coup
The rolling judicial coup coming from this court is by no means over.
People walk past the Supreme Court on June 28, 2022, in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty Images
THIS IS IT. The moment for President Joe Biden and Congress to challenge the underlying legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court and advance an aggressive climate action agenda. There will be no better moment to take this stand for a transformed court, nor a more fateful one. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right: “We need to reform or do away with the whole thing, for the sake of the planet.”
Over the last few days, we have witnessed a shock-and-awe judicial coup, from stripping people of the right to terminate pregnancies (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization), to weakening the sovereign right of Indigenous tribes to enforce the law on their lands (Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta), to interfering with the rights of states to regulate the carrying of firearms (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen), to enabling a return to Christian prayer in public schools (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District).
And now this: a decision that eviscerates the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate a major source of the carbon emissions destabilizing our planet. The EPA can still regulate CO2, but its capacity to regulate under the Clear Air Act is significantly reduced. It represents the culmination, as my colleague Sharon Lerner reports, of decades of “plotting against environmental regulations” by Koch Industries, and as The Lever has reported, this entire court has been shaped by the dark-money-bankrolled Judicial Crisis Network, which is is surely gearing up to toast the bountiful return on their patient investments this July 4 weekend.
History contains crossroads when a single set of decisions can alter the trajectory of a people — or even a planet. The Biden administration’s response to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 EPA ruling, hot on the heels of the other outrageous power grabs, is a moment like that. No juncture offers greater opportunity for courageous, transformational leadership, should such a thing be on offer anywhere in Washington, D.C.
Biden came to office promising an “all of government” approach to the climate crisis. It was a defining issue in the Democratic Party primaries and a winning issue for Biden in the general election. Why? Because voters are now fully engaged with the climate crisis — and they reliably are most engaged in the summer, when our warming world speaks loudest. But last fall, Biden let Sen. Joe Manchin push climate action way down his political agenda — and suddenly we stopped hearing much about it at all. I suppose the smartest guys in the room thought it was starting to smell like defeat. Thanks to great advice like that, Biden managed to demoralize much of his base, and some of his best appointees resigned.
With the court’s EPA ruling, Biden now has a chance to put climate back at the top of the agenda. He should seize it. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the dissent, “The court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision maker on climate policy.” she wrote. “I cannot think of many things more frightening.” A great many voters, if the stakes are clearly explained and kept top of mind through consistent messaging, will agree.
In fact, no issue gives the Democrats a platform for a more powerful or more unifying message than this Supreme Court ruling — both to radically reform the court and to communicate the dire urgency of the climate crisis and the need for bold policy. Moreover, by using the court’s EPA ruling to finally do more than send out opportunistic fundraising emails — and instead to draw the line and move to transform an obviously out-of-control, extremist court — Biden and the Democrats would be doing precisely what they have never done and what young climate activists have been pleading with them to do for years: Treat the climate emergency like an emergency.
The first rule of an emergency is that you do what it takes to end the emergency and get to safety. You don’t throw up your hands because the task is too hard. You certainly don’t let a gang of unelected, lifetime appointed political operatives — several of whom only have their seats because of trickery and lies — get in your way.
The first rule of an emergency is that you do what it takes to end the emergency and get to safety.
The Democrats’ base would take tremendous heart from seeing this kind of emergency footing response, but it would be most meaningful for young people, many of whom can vote. And those voices should not be discounted. This extremist court has positioned itself as an advocate for youth, children, and the unborn — from abortion to school prayer. Its willingness to light the future on fire for all kids alive today and yet to come puts the lie to this absurd claim. If the Democrats turn the EPA decision into a pivot point, not just for speeches and poems and yoga poses but for decisive action in defense of the future, it would upend the debate.
They should, moreover, connect the dots between the individual rulings and their underlying logic. For several of these justices, their casualness about climate apocalypse is inextricable from their Christian fundamentalist takes on abortion and prayer (and soon, given the chance, gay marriage and trans rights). They aren’t worried about the world burning because they think we are in the End Times and that their faith will protect them (and failing that, that their wealth and their guns will, which is the way Republicans enact the Rapture without divine intervention). Biden should get biblical on these theocrats and call them on flouting the duty to care for all of creation.
The rolling judicial coup coming from this court is by no means over. Next term, the Supreme Court will hear a redistricting case that could well make it far easier to concoct a legal pretense for overriding the popular vote in elections in favor of state-appointed electors — the very thing that Donald Trump attempted but failed to do, because enough people were afraid of ending up in jail. There is no reason to believe that a group of people whose very presence on the bench required grotesque abuses of democracy would somehow draw the line at thwarting it. The moment to stop them from getting the chance is right now.
Biden and the Democrats are currently careening toward a wave of defeats. But it’s not too late to get back on track. They have just been handed a winning platform: Use the Supreme Court’s attack on urgent carbon control as a catalyst to build a more meaningful democracy and take transformational climate action at the same time. If they decide to run with it, everybody on this planet wins. If they refuse, they deserve every loss coming their way.
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