Politics

In overturning a half-century of nationwide legal protection for abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Roe v. Wade had been wrongly decided and that it was time to “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives” in the states.

Whether those elected officials are truly representative of the people is a matter of debate, thanks to another high court decision that has enabled control of state legislatures to be skewed to the right or left.

In June 2019, three years before its momentous abortion ruling, the Supreme Court decided that it has no role in restraining partisan gerrymandering, in which Republicans or Democrats manipulate the boundaries of voting districts to give their candidates an edge.

The result is that many legislatures are more heavily partisan than the state’s population as a whole. Gerrymandering again flourished as politicians used the 2020 census data to redraw districts that could benefit their party both for this year’s elections and the next decade.

In some swing states with Republican-led legislatures, such as Michigan and Wisconsin, “arguably gerrymandering really is the primary reason that abortion is likely to be illegal,” said Chris Warshaw, a political scientist at George Washington University who analyzes redistricting data.

Meanwhile, “in states where Democrats have gerrymandered, it’s going to help probably make abortion laws more liberal than people would like,” he added.

A majority of Americans support abortion access in general, though many say there should be some restrictions, according to public opinion polls.

States have sometimes been viewed as laboratories for democracy — institutions most closely connected to the people where public policies are tested, take root and potentially spread.

Writing for the Supreme Court’s majority in its June 24 abortion decision, Justice Samuel Alito noted that 30 states had prohibited abortion when the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling “short-circuited the democratic process,” usurped lawmakers and imposed abortion rights nationwide.

“Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office,” Alito wrote.

Abortion already is an issue in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial and legislative elections. A recent Wisconsin poll showed a majority supported legal abortion in most or all cases. But a fight is brewing over an 1849 state law — which had been unenforceable until Roe v. Wade was overruled — that bans abortion except to save the life of the woman.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is backing a court challenge to overturn the law, enacted just a year after Wisconsin gained statehood. He also called a special legislative session in June to repeal it. But the Republican-led Assembly and Senate adjourned in a matter of seconds without taking action.

Wisconsin’s legislative chambers had one of the nation’s strongest Republican advantages during the past decade and are projected to continue to do so under new districts in place for the 2022 elections, according to an analysis by PlanScore, a nonprofit that uses election data to rate the partisan tilt of legislative districts.

“Democracy is distorted in Wisconsin because of these maps,” Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer said.

In 2018, Democrats won every major statewide office, including governor and attorney general, races where gerrymandering isn’t in play. But they have not been able to overcome heavily gerrymandered state legislative districts since Republicans won control of the statehouse during the midterm elections in 2010.

“If we had a truly democratic system in Wisconsin, we would be in a different situation,” she said. “We would be overturning this criminal abortion ban right now”

Republican state Rep. Donna Rozar, a former cardiac nurse who backs abortion restrictions, said gerrymandering shouldn’t stop political parties from running good candidates to represent their districts. She expects a robust abortion debate during the campaign to carry into the 2023 legislative session.

“This is an issue that is so critical to come back to the states, because each state then can elect people that will represent their values.” Rozar said.

The 2010 midterms, two years after former President Barack Obama was elected, were a pivot point for control of statehouses across the country. Coming into that election, Democrats fully controlled 27 state legislatures and Republicans 14, with the rest split. But sweeping GOP victories put the party in charge of redistricting in many states. By 2015, after two elections under the new maps, Republicans fully controlled 30 legislatures and Democrats just 11.

That Republican legislative advantage largely persisted through the 2020 elections, including in states that otherwise are narrowly divided between Democrats and Republicans, such as Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In New Mexico, it’s Republicans who contend the Democratic-led Legislature has pushed beyond the will of many voters on abortion policies. The New Mexico House and Senate districts had a sizable pro-Democratic edge during the past decade that got even more pronounced after districts were redrawn based on the 2020 census, according to the PlanScore data.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation last year repealing a dormant 1969 law that banned most abortions. After Roe v. Wade was overruled, she signed an executive order making New Mexico a safe harbor for people seeking abortions. Unlike most states, New Mexico has no restrictions on late-term abortions.

“I don’t think that the majority of New Mexicans support New Mexico’s abortion policy at this time,” Republican state Sen. Gay Kernan said. “New Mexico is the late-term abortion capital of the United States, basically.”

The Republican nominee for governor, Mark Ronchetti, has proposed to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest and when a woman’s life is at risk. But the legislative proposal has been described as dead on arrival by Democratic state Senate Whip Linda Lopez.

Michigan could provide one of the biggest tests of representative government in the nation’s new abortion battle.

Republicans drew Michigan legislative districts after the 2010 census and created such a sizable advantage for their party that it may have helped the GOP maintain control of the closely divided House, according to an Associated Press analysis. As in Wisconsin, Democrats in Michigan won the governor’s race and every other major statewide office in 2018 but could not overcome legislative districts tilted toward Republicans.

The dynamics have changed for this year’s elections. The GOP’s edge was cut in half under new legislative districts drawn by a voter-approved citizens’ redistricting commission, according to the PlanScore data. That could improve Democrats’ chances of winning a chamber and influencing abortion policy.

Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial challengers generally support a 1931 state law — temporarily placed on hold by a judge — that bans abortions unless a woman’s health is at risk. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is running for reelection, wants to repeal that law.

Republican state Rep. Steve Carra said lawmakers are looking to replace it with “something that would be enforceable in the 21st century.”

“It’s more important to protect life than it is a woman’s right to choose to take that life,” said Carra, who leads a coalition of 321 lawmakers from 35 states that had urged the Supreme Court to return abortion policy to the states.

Unsure about their legislative prospects, abortion rights advocates are gathering signatures for a November ballot initiative that would create a state constitutional right to abortion, allowing its regulation only “after fetal viability.”

“It’s the best shot that we have at securing abortion access,” Democratic state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky said. “I think if this is put in voters’ hands, they will want to see this ballot measure succeed.”

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — Last Fourth of July, President Joe Biden gathered hundreds of people outside the White House for an event that would have been unthinkable for many Americans the previous year. With the coronavirus in retreat, they ate hamburgers and watched fireworks over the National Mall.

Although the pandemic wasn’t over yet, Biden said, “we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” Across the country, indoor masking requirements were falling as the number of infections and deaths plummeted.

Within weeks, even some of the president’s allies privately admitted that the speech had been premature. Soon the administration would learn that the delta variant could be transmitted by people who had already been vaccinated. Masks went back on, then came polarizing vaccination mandates. The even-more-contagious omicron variant would arrive months later, infecting millions and causing chaos during the holiday season.

“We were hoping to be free of the virus, and the virus had a lot more in store for us,” said Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The number of people in the United States who died from COVID-19 nearly doubled, from 605,000 to more than 1 million, over the past year.

That sunny speech one year ago marked a crossroads for Biden’s presidency. The pandemic appeared to be waning, the economy was growing, inflation wasn’t rising as quickly as today and public approval of his job performance was solid.

As Biden approaches his second Fourth of July in the White House, his standing couldn’t be more different. A series of miscalculations and challenges have Biden struggling for footing as he faces a potentially damaging verdict from voters in the upcoming midterm elections.

The pandemic’s resurgence was swiftly followed last summer by the debacle of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on President Biden’s watch, when the Taliban seized control of the country faster than the administration expected as the U.S.-backed regime collapsed. Then, negotiations over Biden’s broader domestic agenda stalled, only to collapse altogether in December.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February helped drive up already increasing  gas prices, exacerbating inflation that reached a 40-year high. Another blow came last month, when the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. Wade and curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Suddenly a reactive president, Biden has been left trying to reclaim the initiative at every step, often with mixed results. The coronavirus is less of a threat than before and infections are far less likely to lead to death, but Congress is refusing to supply more money to deal with the pandemic.

He signed new gun restrictions into law after massacres in New York and Texas, and he’s leading a reinvestment in European security as the war in Ukraine enters its fifth month. But he has limited tools at his disposal to deal with other challenges, such as rising costs and eroding access to abortion.

“People are grouchy,” said Lindsay Chervinsky, a presidential historian.

The latest poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that his approval rating remains at 39%, the lowest since taking office and a steep slide from 59% one year ago. Only 14% of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction, down from 44%.

Douglas Brinkley, another historian, said Biden suffered from a case of presidential hubris after a largely successful run in his first five months in office, which included an overseas trip to meet with allies excited about welcoming a friendly face back to the international scene. He compared Biden’s Fourth of July speech last year to President George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” moment during the second Iraq War.

“He was trying to deliver good news but it didn’t pan out for him,” Brinkley said. “Suddenly, Biden lost a lot of goodwill.”

White House officials reject the comparison, noting that Biden warned about the “powerful” delta variant in his 2021 speech. Chris Meagher, a spokesman, said deaths from the virus are at a record low now, reducing disruptions in workplaces and classrooms.

The promise to competently address the COVID-19 pandemic is what helped put Biden in the Oval Office and send President Donald Trump to defeat. From the start of Biden’s tenure, his public pronouncements were sober and cautious, wary of following his predecessor in predictions that went unfulfilled. The nation’s vaccination program found its stride under Biden, and by April 19, 2021, all adults were eligible to be vaccinated.

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, was an adviser to Biden’s transition team. But as the Fourth of July approached last year, he was worried and felt that the administration wasn’t heeding his warnings.

“Everyone was in this position of wanting to believe it was over with, and not fully understanding or appreciating the potential of the variants,” he said.

Even now, a full year later, Osterholm is reluctant to say what the future holds.

“I want answers too,” he said. “But I don’t know what the variants are going to bring us. I don’t know what human immunity is going to look like.”

Biden said the virus “has not been vanquished” in his Fourth of July speech, and he held another event two days later to talk about the delta variant.

“It seems to me that it should cause everybody to think twice,” he said as he appealed to people who had not yet been vaccinated.

Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University, said there’s more reason to be optimistic this year than last. Immunity from vaccines or previous infections is much more widespread, and antiviral treatments are effective at preventing hospitalization and death in vulnerable patients.

“It was premature to declare independence from COVID-19 last year,” she said. “But this year the country is in a totally different place, and in a much better place.”

But Wen said Biden might be wary, given how things went before.

President Bill Clinton stumbled through his first two years in office, then faced a wave of Republican victories in his first midterm elections. But he later became the first Democratic president to be reelected since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Chervinsky cautioned that today’s political polarization could make such a rebound more difficult for Biden.

A key question, she said: “Is our partisan system so inflexible that it won’t allow for him to go back?”

source

(Reuters) – New York lawmakers revamped the state’s gun laws after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision established an individual right to carry handguns in public for self-defense.

The court ruled New York’s restrictive gun-license system was unconstitutional, as were similar regimes in California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and the District of Columbia.

Here are some key provisions in New York’s proposed gun-license law https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/s51001:

* NO MORE NEED TO PROVE “PROPER CAUSE” TO HAVE A GUN

The Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional to give government officials the discretion to deny a law-abiding person a permit to carry a concealed handgun in self-defense if they could not show “proper cause,” or cite some special reason. The bill removes the “proper cause” requirement, although it still requires an applicant show they are of “good moral character.”

* ‘SENSITIVE PLACES’ WHERE GUNS ARE BANNED

The court said lawmakers could restrict guns from “sensitive places,” giving as examples courthouses, schools and government buildings, but warned lawmakers against applying the label too broadly.

New York’s proposed list of such places includes: government buildings, medical facilities, places of worship, libraries, playgrounds, parks, zoos, schools, summer camps, addiction-support centers, homeless shelters, nursing homes, public transit including the New York City subway, places where alcohol or marijuana is consumed, museums, theaters, stadiums, polling places and New York City’s Times Square.

Private businesses will be presumed to be gun-free zones unless their owners say otherwise.

* SOCIAL MEDIA REVIEW

The bill would require applicants for concealed-carry permits to submit their current and former social media accounts from the last three years to review by the licensing officer, usually a judge or police official, to weigh the applicant’s “character and conduct.”

* INCREASED TRAINING

Applicants must complete at least 16 hours of in-person firearms safety training, and at least two hours of training at a firing range, where they must prove their shooting proficiency according to standards to be developed by state police.

* INCREASED SCRUTINY OF APPLICANTS

Applicants must meet for an in-person interview with the licensing officer and provide the names and contact information of their spouse or domestic partner, any other adults they live with and say whether children are in their home. They must provide four character references.

* REVIVING AMMUNITION SALES DATABASE

The bill revives a dormant effort to create a state database tracking ammunition sales to license-holders buying certain kinds of ammunition.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Donna Bryson and William Mallard)

source

By Jeff Mason and Rami Ayyub

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden predicted on Friday that some U.S. states will try to arrest women for crossing state lines to get abortions after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to the procedures nationwide.

Thirteen Republican-led states banned or severely restricted the procedure under so-called “trigger laws” after the court struck down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling last week. Women in those states seeking an abortion may have to travel to states where it remains legal.

Convening a virtual meeting on abortion rights with Democratic state governors on Friday, Biden said he thinks “people are gonna be shocked when the first state … tries to arrest a woman for crossing a state line to get health services.”

He added: “And I don’t think people believe that’s gonna happen. But it’s gonna happen, and it’s gonna telegraph to the whole country that this is a gigantic deal that goes beyond; I mean, it affects all your basic rights”.

Biden said the federal government will act to protect women who need to cross state lines to get an abortion and ensure their access to medication in states where it’s banned.

New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, told the meeting her state “will not cooperate” on any attempts to track down women who have had abortions to punish them. “We will not extradite,” she said.

Abortion rights groups have filed legislation in multiple states seeking to preserve the ability of women to terminate pregnancies.

Judges in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Utah have since issued decisions preventing those states from enforcing new restrictive abortion laws, while Ohio’s top court on Friday declined to block the Republican-led state from enforcing an abortion ban. [L1N2YI1AD]

New York Governor Kathy Hochul told the group that “just a handful of states” are going to have to take care of health of women across the country.

“There is such stress out there,” Hochul said. “It is a matter of life and death for American women,” she added.

Biden also told the group there were not enough votes in the Senate to scrap a supermajority rule known as the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade’s protections into law.

He had proposed that senators remove the filibuster but the suggestion was shot down by aides to key Democratic lawmakers.

“(The) filibuster should not stand in the way of us being able to (codify Roe),” Biden said.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub, Jeff Mason and Susan HeaveyEditing by Alistair Bell)

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — Abortion, guns and religion — a major change in the law in any one of these areas would have made for a fateful Supreme Court term. In its first full term together, the court’s conservative majority ruled in all three and issued other significant decisions limiting the government’s regulatory powers.

And it has signaled no plans to slow down.

With three appointees of former President Donald Trump in their 50s, the six-justice conservative majority seems poised to keep control of the court for years to come, if not decades.

“This has been a revolutionary term in so many respects,” said Tara Leigh Grove, a law professor at the University of Texas. “The court has massively changed constitutional law in really big ways.”

Its remaining opinions issued, the court began its summer recess Thursday, and the justices will next return to the courtroom in October.

Overturning Roe v. Wade and ending a nearly half-century guarantee of abortion rights had the most immediate impact, shutting down or severely restricting abortions in roughly a dozen states within days of the decision.

In expanding gun rights and finding religious discrimination in two cases, the justices also made it harder to sustain gun control laws and lowered barriers to religion in public life.

Setting important new limits on regulatory authority, they reined in the government’s ability to fight climate change and blocked a Biden administration effort to get workers at large companies vaccinated against COVID-19.

The remarkable week at the end of June in which the guns, abortion, religion and environmental cases were decided at least partially obscured other notable events, some of them troubling.

New Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in Thursday as the first Black woman on the court. She replaced the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, who served nearly 28 years, a switch that won’t change the balance between liberals and conservatives on the court.

In early May, the court had to deal with the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion in the abortion case. Chief Justice John Roberts almost immediately ordered an investigation, about which the court has been mum ever since. Soon after, workers encircled the court with 8-foot-high fencing in response to security concerns. In June, police made a late-night arrest of an armed man near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home, and charged him with attempted murder of the justice.

Kavanaugh is one of three Trump appointees along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett who fortified the right side of the court. Greg Garre, who served as former President George W. Bush’s top Supreme Court lawyer, said when the court began its term in October “the biggest question was not so much which direction the court was headed in, but how fast it was going. The term answers that question pretty resoundingly, which is fast.”

The speed also revealed that the chief justice no longer has the control over the court he held when he was one of five, not six, conservatives, Garre said.

Roberts, who favors a more incremental approach that might bolster perceptions of the court as a nonpolitical institution, broke most notably with the other conservatives in the abortion case, writing that it was unnecessary to overturn Roe, which he called a “serious jolt” to the legal system. On the other hand, he was part of every other ideologically divided majority.

If the past year revealed limits on the chief justice’s influence, it also showcased the sway of Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving member of the court. He wrote the decision expanding gun rights and the abortion case marked the culmination of his 30-year effort on the Supreme Court to get rid of Roe, which had stood since 1973.

Abortion is just one of several areas in which Thomas is prepared to jettison court precedents. The justices interred a second of their decisions, Lemon v. Kurtzman, in ruling for a high school football coach’s right pray on the 50-yard line following games. It’s not clear, though, that other justices are as comfortable as Thomas in overturning past decisions.

The abortion and guns cases also seemed contradictory to some critics in that the court handed states authority over the most personal decisions, but limited state power in regulating guns. One distinction the majorities in those cases drew, though, is that the Constitution explicitly mentions guns, but not abortion.

Those decisions do not seem especially popular with the public, according to opinion polls. Polls show a sharp drop in the court’s approval rating and in people’s confidence in the court as an institution.

Justices on courts past have acknowledged a concern about public perception. As recently as last September, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.” Barrett spoke in at a center named for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who engineered her rapid confirmation in 2020 and was sitting on the stage near the justice.

But the conservatives, minus Roberts, rejected any concern about perception in the abortion case, said Grove, the University of Texas professor.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion that “not only are we not going to focus on that, we should not focus on that,” she said. “I’m sympathetic as an academic, but I was surprised to see that coming from that many real-world justices.”

The liberal justices, though, wrote repeatedly that the court’s aggressiveness in this epic term was doing damage to the institution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor described her fellow justices as “a restless and newly constituted Court.” Justice Elena Kagan, in her abortion dissent, wrote: “The Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed.”

In 18 decisions, at least five conservative justices joined to form a majority and all three liberals were in dissent, roughly 30% of all the cases the court heard in its term that began last October.

Among these, the court also:

— Made it harder for people to sue state and federal authorities for violations of constitutional rights.

— Raised the bar for defendants asserting their rights were violated, ruling against a Michigan man who was shackled at trial.

— Limited how some death row inmates and others sentenced to lengthy prison terms can pursue claims that their lawyers did a poor job representing them.

In emergency appeals, also called the court’s “shadow” docket because the justices often provide little or no explanation for their actions, the conservatives ordered the use of congressional districts for this year’s elections in Alabama and Louisiana even though lower federal courts have found they likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters.

The justices will hear arguments in the Alabama case in October, among several high-profile cases involving race or elections, or both.

Also when the justices resume hearing arguments the use of race as a factor in college admissions is on the table, just six years after the court reaffirmed its permissibility. And the court will consider a controversial Republican-led appeal that would vastly increase the power of state lawmakers over federal elections, at the expense of state courts.

These and cases on the intersection of LGBTQ and religious rights and another major environmental case involving development and water pollution also are likely to result in ideologically split decisions.

Khiara Bridges, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, law school, drew a link between the voting rights and abortion cases. In the latter, Alito wrote in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that abortion should be decided by elected officials, not judges.

“I find it to be incredibly disingenuous for Alito to suggest that all that Dobbs is doing is returning this question to the states and that people can battle in the state about whether to protect fetal life or the interest of the pregnant person,” Bridges said. “But that same court is actively involved in insuring that states can disenfranchise people.”

Bridges also said the outcomes aligned almost perfectly with the political aims of Republicans. “Whatever the Republican party wants, the Republican party is going to get out of the currently constituted court,” she said.

Defenders of the court’s decisions said the criticism misses the mark because it confuses policy with law. “Supreme Court decisions are often not about what the policy should be, but rather about who (or which level of government, or which institution) should make the policy,” Princeton University political scientist Robert George wrote on Twitter.

For now, there is no sign that either the justices or Republican and conservative interests that have brought so many of the high-profile cases to the court intend to trim their sails, Grove said.

That’s in part because there’s no realistic prospect of court reforms that would limit the cases the justices could hear, impose term limits or increase the size of the Supreme Court, said Grove, who served on President Joe Biden’s bipartisan Supreme Court commission on court reforms.

___

Associated Press writer Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.

source

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has shown in its blockbuster abortion ruling and other high-profile decisions in recent days that it is fearless when it comes to overturning – and even ignoring – historic precedents.

And the conservative justices, with a 6-3 majority, may just be getting started, even as their current term came to a close on Thursday.

Among the cases the court already has taken up for its next term, starting in October, are two that give its conservative bloc an opportunity to end college and university policies considering race in admissions to achieve more student diversity – an approach the court upheld in a 2003 precedent and reaffirmed in 2016. Another case in the coming term involving federal protections for waterways will put a further precedent to the test.

The court in a flurry of recent rulings has overturned or undermined its own decades-old precedents.

“I think the most conservative justices dislike much of modern American law and are actively changing it. They aren’t going to let precedent get in their way,” University of Virginia Law School professor Douglas Laycock said.

The conservative justices have become increasingly assertive since the addition of former President Donald Trump’s third conservative appointee Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. Democratic President Joe Biden’s appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, sworn in to replace retiring fellow liberal Justice Stephen Breyer on Thursday, does not change the court’s ideological balance.

In the abortion ruling, called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure nationwide, as well as one from 1992 that reaffirmed it. The conservative majority also consigned to oblivion rulings from 2016 and 2020 that struck down Republican-backed state abortion restrictions.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has been forthright about his willingness to ditch Supreme Court precedent.

“When faced with a demonstrably erroneous precedent, my rule is simple: We should not follow it,” Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion in a 2019 case.

That Thomas opinion focused on “stare decisis,” a Latin term referring to the legal principle that courts should not overturn precedents without a special reason. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito seemed to take the same view in the June 24 abortion ruling https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf, writing that the Roe landmark was “egregiously wrong.”

Thomas in the abortion case caused considerable alarm on the left by writing in his concurring opinion that the court should consider overturning other precedents protecting individual freedoms including the 2015 ruling that legalized gay marriage, the 2003 ruling that ended state bans on same-sex intimacy and the 1965 decision that protected access to birth control.

RELIGIOUS RIGHTS

In a June 27 religious rights ruling, the court took a slightly different approach to precedent when it further narrowed the separation of church and state in a decision in favor of a public high school football coach who was suspended by the local school district for leading prayers on the field with players after games.

The court effectively overruled a 1971 precedent that had outlined how to determine if a government has violated what is called the “establishment clause” of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which prohibits governmental endorsement of religion, although it did not explicitly say so.

Instead, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the court “long ago abandoned” the prior ruling and subsequent decisions that had built upon it. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion that nothing in the court’s previous cases “support this court’s decision to dismiss that precedent entirely.”

David Gans, a lawyer at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, said the court did not appear to want to acknowledge a “sea change” in the law.

“It’s very flippant,” Gans added.

Conservatives have long complained about affirmative action policies used by many colleges and universities to increase their numbers of Black and Hispanic students. The cases the court will hear involve Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

The court also will consider limiting the scope of a landmark federal environmental law that regulates waterways in a case in which the challengers have asked the court to reconsider a 2006 precedent.

Among other major cases next term, the court will hear an appeal by North Carolina Republicans that could give state legislatures far more power over federal elections by limiting the ability of state courts to review their actions.

Another case could further weaken the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act enacted to protect Black and other minority voters in a dispute over Republican-drawn U.S. House of Representatives districts in Alabama.

The court throughout its history has occasionally explicitly overturned its precedents, starting in 1810 when it threw out a ruling from just two years earlier, according to a federal government database that lists 234 such cases.

In recent years, the court was most willing to overturn precedent in 2019, when it did so four times.

The court has found over time “lots of ways to evade, distinguish or overrule precedent,” Laycock said, adding that a liberal majority likely would do the same thing.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

source

By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to limit the powers of the nation’s top environmental regulator to curb carbon emissions will force the Biden administration to take more creative measures to reach its ambitious goals to combat climate change.

The conservative court’s 6-3 ruling restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal- and gas-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act anti-pollution law.

That is bad news for U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, who came into office with the aim of slashing power sector emissions to net zero by 2035, using the EPA as his key tool in doing so. The EPA has been working on a proposal to advance the decarbonization goal.

Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and former EPA enforcement chief, said the Supreme Court decision will force “EPA back to drawing board.”

Without broad authority to carry out a nationwide shift from coal generation to cleaner sources like wind and solar, the EPA may focus on individual plants, setting new efficiency rates that could force the dirtiest plants to shutter.

The agency may also consider regulating greenhouse gases indirectly as a co-benefit of other air pollutant or water rules – a step that could face stiff legal challenges.

Targeting power plants with new tough standards for other pollutants or waste, for example, could require expensive retrofits that hasten the closure of old, inefficient coal plants.

Karen Sokol, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, agreed: “The agency is going to have to work around and dance around hitting carbon head-on, which is really the only meaningful way to respond to the climate crisis.”

Biden said in a statement that his administration was reviewing the Supreme Court ruling and studying its options.

“While this decision risks damaging our nation’s ability to keep our air clean and combat climate change, I will not relent in using my lawful authorities to protect public health and tackle the climate crisis,” he said.

There are currently no regulations in force to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, source of about a quarter of the nation’s greenhouse gases. The Obama-era Clean Power Plan was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2016 and a narrower replacement crafted by Republican former President Donald Trump’s administration was blocked by a federal appeals court in 2021.

The high court decision did not affect EPA’s ability to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles or methane from the oil and gas sector – a current focus of the agency.

LIFELINE FOR COAL?

With more constrained executive authority, the Biden administration’s options to tackle power industry emissions also include pursuing legislation in Congress – but that has proven a tough proposition given its partisan divisions.

The court decision affirms that “EPA and other agencies need explicit authorization to proceed in addressing major questions that have profound effects on the economy,” said Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA official and partner at Bracewell.

Even so, carbon emissions from the power sector have dropped in recent years, as coal-fired power plants have been retired and replaced by cleaner-burning natural gas plants, and renewable sources like wind and solar.

That shift has been driven in part by a period of low gas prices, alongside declining costs and state and federal subsidies for renewable energy sources.

Surging prices for natural gas this year, however, have raised some concerns that utilities will switch to burning more coal, or extend the lives of coal plants, to save money. The prospect of light future EPA regulation could also boost coal.

“This is a lifeline to extending the use of coal,” wrote Harvard environmental and administrative law professor Jody Freeman. “The shift to clean energy may happen more slowly as a result of the Court protecting the industry via this ruling.”

The United States, behind only China in greenhouse gas emissions, is a pivotal player in global efforts to combat climate change. But without a clear plan to tackle emissions from the power sector, the Biden administration could face a credibility crisis on the global stage as it seeks to rally international ambition to fight global warming.

Biden’s climate credentials have already been hit in recent months as his administration seeks to expand exports of liquefied natural gas to help Europe cut its dependence on Russian supply, and calls on the oil industry to pump up production to ease soaring consumer energy costs.

“U.S failure to deliver on its emissions reductions target will only worsen the pressures caused by the softening stance on fossil fuels,” said Yamide Dagnet, director of climate justice at Open Society Foundations, and former climate negotiator for the UK and EU.

The EPA said in a statement that it was reviewing the Supreme Court decision.

(Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Marguerita Choy)

source

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa (AP) — Stunning new revelations about former President Donald Trump’s fight to overturn the 2020 election have exposed growing political vulnerabilities just as he eyes another presidential bid.

A former White House aide this week described Trump as an unhinged leader with no regard for the safety of elected officials in either party as he clung to power on Jan. 6, 2021. The testimony from the congressional panel investigating the Capitol attack provided a roadmap for prosecutors to potentially charge Trump with a crime, some legal experts say.

Republican voters — and Trump’s would-be rivals in the 2024 presidential race — took notice.

Here in Iowa, the state expected to host the first presidential nominating contest in roughly 18 months, several voters signaled Thursday that they were open to another presidential candidate even if Trump were to run again. At the same time, some conservative media outlets issued scathing rebukes of the former president. Aides for multiple GOP presidential prospects also indicated, publicly and privately, that they felt increasingly emboldened to challenge Trump in 2024 following the explosive new testimony.

Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, drew roughly 350 conservative activists to a congressional fundraising barbecue on Thursday in Sioux County, where Trump won 82% of the vote in 2020. There was ample evidence of Trump fatigue. Interviews with a dozen attendees revealed strong interest in a 2024 alternative, even if Trump is on the ballot.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find people in this area who support the idea that people aren’t looking for someone else,” said Dave Van Wyk, a transportation company owner. “To presume that conservative America is 100% behind Donald Trump is simply not the case.”

For some Republican voters, that was the feeling even before this week’s stunning new testimony.

Former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson on Tuesday offered previously unknown details about the extent of Trump’s rage in his final weeks of office, his awareness that some supporters had brought weapons to the city on Jan. 6 and his ambivalence as rioters later laid siege to the Capitol.

Upset at the size of the crowd at his “Stop the Steal” rally — many supporters avoided entering because they were armed and didn’t want to go through metal detectors — Trump said words to the effect of, “I don’t care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me,” according to Hutchinson. She recalled hearing about a separate incident after the rally in which Trump tried to grab at the steering wheel of the presidential vehicle to go to the Capitol to join his supporters.

That detail has caused some pushback. The agent who was driving the vehicle and another official were reportedly prepared to testify under oath that Trump never lunged for the wheel.

But the renewed concern was evident,

The conservative Washington Examiner’s editorial board said Hutchinson’s testimony “ought to ring the death knell” for Trump’s political career. “Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again.”

The often Trump-friendly New York Post blasted the headline: “Tyrant Trump.” And the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Just when it seems as if Donald Trump’s behavior after his 2020 loss couldn’t possibly look worse, a new piece of wild testimony arrives.”

To be sure, conservatives have shared serious concerns about Trump repeatedly in recent years. And in every case, the former president has emerged largely unscathed, sometimes stronger. He has been caught on video bragging about sexual assault; he instigated a violent attack on the Capitol; and he has been twice impeached.

Yet Trump is sitting on campaign funds that exceed $101 million and remains deeply popular with many Republican voters. Lest there be any question, Republican candidates from Arizona to Pennsylvania to Georgia have been battling one another this midterm season for his support.

“The American people remain hungry for his leadership,” Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich said, citing Trump’s strong endorsement record and fundraising success. “And as another witch hunt is blowing up in the faces of Democrats, President Trump is in a stronger position now than at anytime before.”

But even before this week’s revelations, a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 48% of U.S. adults say Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Views on Trump’s criminal liability break down predictably along party lines, with 86% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans saying Trump should be charged. Still, the fact that nearly half the country believes he should be prosecuted is a remarkable position for the former president, pointing to the difficulties he could face if he makes another run at the White House.

Meanwhile, Trump’s fundraising has fallen off dramatically over the last two months. He reported raising just over $19,000 in May and June combined after taking in nearly $9 million in March and April.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, eyeing a presidential bid in 2024, says he was hearing concerns about Trump from donors and voters alike before this week’s testimony, which adds to the “cumulative weight” of the former president’s political shortcomings.

“People are concerned that we could lose the election in ’24 and want to make sure that we don’t nominate someone who would be seriously flawed,” Christie said.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who is also considering a 2024 run, said he considers Trump beatable in a GOP primary even if Republican voters aren’t paying close attention to the congressional hearings, as he suspects.

“His approval among Republican primary voters has already been somewhat diminished,” Hogan said in an interview. “Trump was the least popular president in American history until Joe Biden.”

Aides for other Republican presidential prospects said privately this week that Trump may still be the overwhelming favorite to win the next GOP presidential nomination, but they believe his standing with Republican voters has been in steady decline. There was a broad sense — or at least a hope — that Hutchinson’s testimony would accelerate that decline among voters and donors in a way that would open opportunities for others.

Marc Short, a senior adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, another likely 2024 presidential contender, was blunt when asked about Trump’s political strength.

“Republican activists believed Donald Trump was the only candidate who could beat Hillary,” Short said. “Now, the dynamic is reversed. He is the only one who has lost to Joe Biden.”

Indeed, Trump’s would-be Republican competitors are leaning in.

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who serves on the Jan. 6 commission and has not ruled out a 2024 presidential bid, cast Trump as a direct threat to American democracy in a Wednesday night speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

“Republicans cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution. We must choose,” she said.

Haley, who has said she would not seek the 2024 GOP nomination if Trump ran, declined to say Thursday whether the testimony has given her reason to rethink that plan. Instead, she sounded an upbeat note.

“If it looks like there’s a place for me next year, I’ve never lost a race, I’m not going to start now,” Haley told reporters. “I’ll put 1,000% in and I’ll finish it. And if there’s not a place for me, I will fight for this country until my last breath.”

Farmer Bob de Koning said he remains devoted to Trump. He plans to support him in Iowa’s leadoff caucuses no matter who runs.

But his wife, Kathy de Koning, said, “We can do better.”

“I just don’t know if he’s electable anymore,” she said.

___

Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

source

By Lawrence Hurley and Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday imposed limits on the federal government’s authority to issue sweeping regulations to reduce carbon emissions from power plants in a ruling that undermines President Joe Biden’s plans to tackle climate change and could constrain various agencies on other issues.

The court’s 6-3 ruling constrained the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal- and gas-fired power plants under the landmark Clean Air Act anti-pollution law. Biden’s administration is currently working on new regulations.

The court’s six conservatives were in the majority in the decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, with the three liberals dissenting.

Biden called the ruling “another devastating decision that aims to take our country backwards.”

“While this decision risks damaging our nation’s ability to keep our air clean and combat climate change, I will not relent in using my lawful authorities to protect public health and tackle the climate crisis,” Biden said in a statement https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/30/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-supreme-court-ruling-on-west-virginia-v-epa.

The Democratic president said he directed his legal team to work with the Justice Department and affected agencies to review the ruling and find ways under federal law to protect against pollution including emissions that cause climate change.

The ruling is likely to have implications beyond the EPA as it raises new legal questions about any big decisions made by federal agencies. The court’s conservative majority has signaled skepticism toward expansive federal regulatory authority. Conservative legal activists have long advocated reducing agency power in what has been called a “war on the administrative state.”

The justices overturned a 2021 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that had struck down Republican former President Donald Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy rule. That regulation, which Biden’s administration does not plan to retain, would impose limits on a Clean Air Act provision called Section 111 that provides the EPA authority to regulate emissions from existing power plants.

Trump’s rule was meant to supplant Democratic former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan mandating major reductions in carbon emissions from the power industry. The Supreme Court in 2016 blocked implementation of Obama’s plan, which used Section 111 to spur an electric-generation shift from coal to cleaner energy sources, without ruling on its lawfulness.

Amanda Shafer Berman of law firm Crowell & Moring, a senior environmental attorney in Obama’s Justice Department, said the ruling was “about the best that EPA could have hoped for given the current composition of the court.” Berman said the EPA can now proceed to issue a new rule that regulates power plant carbon dioxide emissions “albeit in a more limited way than envisioned” under Obama’s plan.

Thursday’s ruling was based on what is called the “major questions” legal doctrine that requires explicit congressional authorization for action on issues of broad importance and societal impact. The justices in January appeared to embrace that theory when it blocked the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test policy for larger businesses, a key element of its plan to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

The court’s invocation of this doctrine sends a signal that the justices will be a major obstacle to federal agencies seeking to implement broad policies of national importance.

The decision will constrain the EPA’s ability to issue any regulations on power plants that push for an ambitious a national shift in energy policy toward renewable sources. As such, it will hamstring the administration’s ability to curb the power sector’s emissions, about a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases.

‘FEDERAL OVERREACH’

A group of Republican-led U.S. states led by major coal producer West Virginia asked the justices to limit the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. Other challengers included coal companies and coal-friendly industry groups. Coal is among the most greenhouse gas-intensive fuels.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey called the ruling a “huge victory against federal overreach and the excesses of the administrative state.”

Roberts wrote that while capping carbon emissions at a level that would force a nationwide energy transition might be sensible “it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme.”

Writing in dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan noted that the court chose to hobble Biden’s climate agenda before his administration even issued its rule.

“The limits the (court’s) majority now puts on EPA’s authority fly in the face of the statute Congress wrote,” Kagan said, adding that the court “deprives EPA of the power needed – and the power granted – to curb the emission of greenhouse gases.”

Kagan said the court has a clear goal: “Prevent agencies from doing important work, even though that is what Congress directed.”

Democratic-led states and major power companies including Consolidated Edison Inc, Exelon Corp and PG&E Corp sided with Biden’s administration, as did the Edison Electric Institute, an investor-owned utility trade group.

Biden’s administration wants the U.S. power sector decarbonized by 2035. The United States, behind only China in greenhouse gas emissions, is a pivotal player in efforts to combat climate change on a global basis.

Thursday’s decision came on the final day of rulings for the court’s current nine-month term.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Will Dunham)

source

By Joseph Ax and Alexandra Ulmer

(Reuters) -This week’s testimony at congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol assault portrayed an enraged Donald Trump throwing food against a White House wall, voicing support for threats against his vice president, and dismissing the news that some of his supporters had come armed with rifles.

Democrats hope the revelations will remind voters why they didn’t reelect the former president in 2020. But the biggest political beneficiary may be Trump’s fellow Republican, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his top potential rival for the 2024 presidential nomination.

Neither Trump nor DeSantis has yet declared a 2024 run for the White House, the first nominating contests are more than 18 months away, and the nation still needs to get through the Nov. 8 midterm elections that will determine control of Congress for the next two years. Trump has proven remarkably resistant to political damage and remains his party’s most popular figure.

But still, there are signs that DeSantis’ star is rising.

Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor, estimated three-quarters of roughly 150 fellow donors with whom he regularly interacts backed Trump six months ago, with a quarter going for DeSantis. Now, the balance has shifted: about two-thirds want DeSantis as the 2024 nominee.

“The donor class is ready for something new,” said Eberhart, who supports both politicians but says he’s much more excited about DeSantis. “And DeSantis feels more fresh and more calibrated than Trump. He’s easier to defend, he’s less likely to embarrass, and he’s got the momentum.”

DeSantis has emerged as a fundraising giant, with a political war chest similar to Trump’s in size. He has raised more than $120 million since winning office in 2018, with recent financial disclosures showing his political accounts had over $110 million in cash in mid-June, with a November reelection campaign ahead.

By comparison, Trump’s Save America group – his main political committee – had just over $100 million in cash at the end of May, according to a federal disclosure.

Should DeSantis run for president, federal election rules would bar him from transferring leftover gubernatorial race money to a presidential campaign. He could, however, refund donors and resolicit the money for a White House bid.

EASIER TO ‘INCH AWAY’

It remains to be seen whether the Jan. 6 hearings, which have presented evidence that Trump and his inner circle pushed conspiracy theories about voter fraud they knew to be false, will mar Trump’s standing among his supporters. The twice-impeached Trump has defied conventional wisdom many times in the face of prior scandals.

In posts on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, Trump lambasted a former White House aide who testified about his behavior on Jan. 6 and denied her most explosive allegations.

His reaction proved that he recognized how damaging the testimony was, said Douglas Heye, a Republican strategist.

“It’s beneficial for anybody who’s looking at running for 2024,” Heye said. “This is making it easier for Republicans – candidate and voter – to inch away from Trump.”

An opinion poll released last week in the state of New Hampshire, traditionally the site of the first presidential primary, showed Trump and DeSantis in a statistical tie among likely Republican voters.

The University of New Hampshire poll found 39% supported DeSantis, with 37% backing Trump. That’s a dramatic swing from October, when Trump had double DeSantis’ support.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is weighing a 2024 campaign after breaking with Trump following the Capitol riot, was in a distant third at 9%.

There have been other signals suggesting Trump’s power over Republican voters is not absolute. He has seen mixed results for his most high-profile endorsements in key swing states during this year’s midterm elections.

Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich said Trump was in a “stronger position” than ever. “The American people remain hungry for his leadership,” Budowich said.

A DeSantis spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

DeSantis, 43, owes his political rise in part to Trump, who endorsed him for governor in 2018 when DeSantis was a relatively obscure congressman. Trump’s backing helped propel DeSantis to an upset victory in the Republican primary, and he edged out a scandal-damaged Democratic candidate, Andrew Gillum, that November.

After the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, DeSantis was aggressively skeptical on containment policies, relaxing restrictions on businesses and schools in defiance of federal guidelines and overruling local officials who sought to preserve mask mandates.

He has also enacted numerous conservative bills with the help of the Republican-controlled legislature, including an election “police force” dedicated to investigating voter fraud, new voting limits, and a ban on teachers discussing gender identity with young children – decried by critics as the “don’t say gay” law.

In an unprecedented move, he effectively took over the redistricting process from Republican lawmakers, vetoing their congressional map and substituting his own proposal that eliminated two majority-Black districts while delivering four additional seats to Republicans.

“He’s taking on every culture war fight that he can to demonstrate to the base that he’s a fighter,” Heye said.

(Additional reporting by Jason Lange in Washington, Editing by Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)

source