SCOTUS scuttle

 

And I wouldn't be surprised if this is the reason they're not taking up the case: they don't WANT to be forced to contradict their stance on reproductive rights.

SCOTUS: when they're needed, they stay silent

The Supreme Court decided not to hear arguments in a case involving Texas that could have provided an answer about whether a state abortion ban conflicts with a federal emergency care law.

The decision is a significant victory for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and comes just three months after the court dismissed a similar case involving Idaho, a move that was criticized as a preelection punt that offered no clarity on the issue.

Dismissing the Idaho case did not resolve the underlying legal questions, so the decision not to hear arguments in the Texas case was unexpected.

  The Hill

I don't know. I expect them to do the worst possible thing these days.

The Texas case centers on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires federally funded hospitals to provide stabilizing care to emergency room patients no matter their ability to pay.

The Biden administration invoked EMTALA in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. The administration said state laws or mandates that employ a more restrictive definition of an emergency medical condition are preempted by the federal statute.

Texas sued the administration shortly after the guidance was issued, arguing the law was improperly applied, and the administration did not follow the appropriate rulemaking process.

A lower court ruled in favor of Texas, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed.

Oh, well, my guess is they would have upheld those decisions anyway.

This way, they don't have to have the negative headlines.

And in related news...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Texas is going for full out Handmaid's Tale

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Lubbock, targets medical privacy regulations that were issued in 2000, and takes aim at a rule issued in April that specifically bans disclosing medical records for criminal or civil investigations into “the mere act of seeking, obtaining, providing or facilitating reproductive health care.”

Texas bans abortions in almost all circumstances. Women are not subject to criminal prosecution for obtaining abortions, but state law imposes penalties of as much as life in prison for those who aid in obtaining abortions.

The lawsuit claims that the privacy rules ignore federal law that lets states view medical records “for law enforcement purposes.”

  NYT

Time for Texans to get rid of Paxton and Abbott and return to the 21st century.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Not what you were taught in school

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

At the Supreme Court

This is a biggie, so I have no doubt SCOTUS will oblige.

UPDATE:  In a nutshell...

UPDATE:  During arguments...

Alas.

UPDATE:

That would certainly be interesting since they were both involved in the Bush v. Gore case arguing in favor of the right to set aside a state's high court decision.

What happens when federal money goes to states for aid to the poor?

I bet you already guessed it, but ProPublica has the receipts, as the younguns say.

When Congress passed welfare reform in 1996, states were given more autonomy over how they could use federal funding for aid to the poor. They could demand welfare recipients find work before receiving cash assistance. They could also use their federal “block grants” to fund employment and parenting courses or to subsidize childcare.

Twenty-five years later, however, states are using this freedom to do nothing at all with large sums of the money.

According to recently released federal data, states are sitting on $5.2 billion in unspent funds from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF. Nearly $700 million was added to the total during the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years, with Hawaii, Tennessee and Maine hoarding the most cash per person living at or below the federal poverty line.

  ProPublica

Each year, the federal government awards states a block grant, or lump sum, of funding, with the intention that the money be spent to help poor people meet their basic needs, become employed and start two-parent families. States have discretion in how they can use, or not use, the money and have increasingly used it to fill unrelated budget gaps.

[...]

The coronavirus pandemic and accompanying economic travails did not make a dent in states’ TANF reserves. Between June and November 2020, the national poverty rate made its largest jump since the government began tracking it 60 years ago, from 9.6% to 11.7%. Other parts of the federal government’s social safety net increased aid to help some of the 7.8 million Americans who fell into poverty, with stimulus packages and expanded unemployment benefits. TANF, conversely, is helping fewer people.

[...]

“During the COVID pandemic, when unemployment rates and hunger rates were skyrocketing nationwide, TANF funds were still sitting unused,” said Ashley Burnside, a policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a national advocacy organization for low-income Americans. The devastation wrought by the pandemic “is as much of a ‘rainy day’ as states could have had. If funds are still left unused, it makes me question what states are waiting to use this money for.”

[...]

“Many families living below the poverty line are deciding that the benefits TANF provides are not worth the onerous upfront requirements to get on and stay on the program,” said LaDonna Pavetti, a welfare expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Reserves are going up because caseloads are going down.”

If they qualify for TANF, applicants also risk losing any child support they might receive from a noncustodial parent.

[...]

According to its “TANF to poverty ratio,” many states, including Tennessee, are largely failing to meet the needs of poor families. In 2019, the state assisted only 18 out of 100 poor families with children, down from 67 when the program began in 1996, according to the analysis.

A report this year found that TANF serves only one in four Maine children living at or below the federal poverty level, and that 84% of families in the state leaving the cash assistance program in 2019 were still living in poverty.

And with the anti-abortion laws going into effect, there will undoubtedly be more people - and specifically children - who need this assistance. Oh, well, they shouldn't have been bore poor and lazy, I guess. 

Destroying America from within

Over the course of the past week, the court handed down three landmark decisions, each disastrous in its own right. But taken together they reveal a dangerously hidebound court intent on turning the constitution into an instrument of obstruction, a formidable obstacle to solving some of the nation’s most pressing problems.

First, in New York State Rifle v Bruen, the court, by a 6-3 vote, struck down a New York law that required a person demonstrate “proper cause” to carry a concealed handgun.

[...]

A day after its emphatic defense of a right never recognized in over 200 years of constitutional jurisprudence, the court brazenly eliminated a constitutional right that had stood for half a century. In its decision in Dobbs v Women’s Health, overturning Roe v Wade, the court demonstrated how inaptly the label “conservative” applies to the present six-person majority. There is nothing conservative about a court willing to upset established precedent and to radically purge the constitution of a right that had been recognized and affirmed by numerous justices over the course of decades.

Roe, for whatever its weaknesses, recognized that while states have an interest in protecting unborn life, women have a right to “bodily integrity” and “personal autonomy in matters of family” that includes the right to terminate a pregnancy. Roe demanded a delicate act of balancing the state’s interest against a woman’s right, a balance that the court has now eliminated. [...] How a woman deals with an unwanted pregnancy is no longer an issue of personal choice; it is a matter of state control.

Those who defend the Dobbs decision as simply returning the abortion issue to the democratic process (the same democratic process that cannot be trusted when it comes to matters of gun control), overlook the fact that the court has simply eliminated the kind of balancing act often demanded of our most sensitive social problems.

[...]

Finally, in West Virginia v EPA, the same six-person majority held that in passing the Clean Air Act, Congress never granted the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to aggressively regulate the energy industry. While the text of the Clean Air Act authorizes the agency to implement the “best system of emission reduction”, the court concluded that when it comes to “major questions” of “economic and political significance”, Congress must “speak with particular clarity” in authorizing bold regulatory action.

[...]

Never mind that the court invented the “major questions” doctrine out of whole cloth. And never mind that Congress has more than sufficient means for reining in a wayward agency, by, if need be, amending the authorizing statute.

[...]

Congress broadly delegates regulatory power precisely because it lacks the institutional expertise to implement granular and effective policy, and now the court, with even less institutional expertise, installs itself as the last say on the delegated powers of agencies. Most catastrophically, the court’s decision limits the power of the executive branch to address the climate crisis, handing the matter back to a dysfunctional Congress stocked with partisans who continue to deny the very existence of the problem.

[...]

If all this were not bad enough, the court ended its present term by announcing that it had agreed to hear Moore v Harper in the fall. It is widely feared that the case, which involves a North Carolina redistricting plan, will provide the court’s reactionary core the opportunity to adopt the so-called “independent state legislature theory”, a previously fringe notion that the constitution gives state legislatures plenary control over elections, free from the oversight of state courts and regardless of contrary provisions in state constitutions. Adopting this dangerous theory could, for example, give legislators spouting the big lie in swing states the power to determine the outcome of a presidential election.

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Feds v Missouri

The Department of Justice has asked a federal judge to block a Missouri law that allows private citizens to sue law enforcement agencies and officers for $50,000 if they can show their state gun rights were infringed upon. Gov. Mike Parson signed the Second Amendment Preservation Act last year, and since then, counties, cities and dozens of Missouri police chiefs have challenged it.

The law, known as H.B. 85, invalidates in Missouri five specific federal gun law categories, such as ones prohibiting the gun ownership by some felons, confiscation orders, and registration laws.

The complaint filed in federal court in Jefferson City, Mo., on Wednesday says "the overall purpose and effect of H.B. 85 are thus to nullify federal firearm laws and to affirmatively interfere with their enforcement."

[...]

Member station KCUR reports that more than 12 local law agencies have ended partnerships with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is running in the Republican primary for an open Senate seat, said he'd challenge the suit.

[...]

Parson, who noted at the bill signing in June that he was once a sheriff, framed the law as a tool for the state to stand up to the federal government.

[...]

But the complaint alleges the law violates the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. "A state cannot simply declare federal laws invalid," said Brian Boynton, head of the Justice Department's Civil Division. "This act makes enforcement of federal firearms laws difficult and strains the important law enforcement partnerships that help keep violent criminals off the street."

  NPR

GOP: States' rights!

Except when it comes to abortion, immigration, and anything else we don't like.

Also...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Abortion rights: Winning a battle, but losing the war

On Monday, when the [Supreme] court heard oral arguments in two challenges to the law, Texas found itself in trouble. Five — and perhaps as many as six — justices seemed to have grave concerns about Texas’ strategy to nullify the right to abortion. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for example, said the law was designed to prevent abortion providers in Texas from presenting a “full constitutional defense.”

But if you’re starting to think the justices’ concerns with S.B. 8 might mean they are committed to protecting abortion rights, don’t. The objections we heard on Monday, especially from the justices whose votes will be crucial in any case where abortion rights are at stake, had much less to do with abortion than with the Court’s desire to protect its own power.

  Politico

Congress seems to be the only branch that isn't all about protecting its own powers.  And perhaps the one that should do it most of all.

[C]onservative groups pleaded with the court that states could use the same strategy to gut other rights, including ones about which the court’s conservatives care a great deal. The justices seem intent on expanding the right to bear arms and the free exercise of religion. States could use S.B. 8-style laws to frustrate those ambitions. If the court held that abortion providers could not sue Texas, that would be a way of surrendering some of the court’s own authority. And as much as this court may be ready to reverse Roe, allowing Texas to make this kind of power grab is another thing entirely.

[...]

In fact, abortion rights barely appeared in the justices’ questions in the two cases, one brought by abortion providers, a second brought by the Justice Department. “There’s a loophole that’s been exploited here or used here,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. “It could be free speech rights. It could be free-exercise-of-religion rights. It could be Second Amendment rights.”

[...]

That means that Roe v. Wade, which could be on the chopping block as soon as next year, is nowhere close to safe, no matter what happened on Monday — and in fact that Monday could be just the first step of many on the way to overturning Roe.

[...]

[T]he court’s conservative supermajority still seems to be gunning to curtail abortion rights. The justices have a perfect opportunity to take a shot at Roe this term in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center, a Mississippi case involving a ban on abortion at 15 weeks.

[...]

Roe protects a right to choose abortion until viability. Mississippi bans abortion before viability. To side with the state, the court has to say that Roe was wrong about viability — or that there is no right to choose abortion.

[...]

It will then take time to get a decision holding that S.B. 8 is unconstitutional; an order blocking it will be appealed to the conservative Fifth Circuit, which will likely side with the state and force abortion providers to appeal to the Supreme Court again. All of this will take time. In the meantime, pregnant women in Texas will have to travel out of state for abortions or other forms of reproductive health care.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The royal "we" again

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What a maroon

Somebody told him he was wrong about having total authority to tell the governors when to "reopen" their states.

LOL.  He knew he was going to be defied if he tried to tell governors what to do.  So he's pretending he has the "total authority".  "At the time of their choosing."  LOL.

He's just taking credit for whatever they do.  He will have "authorized" it.  LOLOLOL.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

GOP, the party of states' rights

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Deconstructing America

Elsewhere in our rapidly blossoming authoritarian state, the president* is planning to demonstrate the Republican Party's devotion to the 10th Amendment by trying to strip the states of their rights to regulate pipelines that pass through them. From CNBC:

The effort was spurred by the blockage of the construction of the 125-mile Constitution Pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York. A protracted legal battle over the project has been underway since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, gave a greenlight in 2014 and 2016, because the state of New York has refused to issue a water permit. According to four current and former administration officials, the order directs the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency to clarify Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, the law that gives states authority over permits where water quality is concerned.

This is of dubious legality, which is no surprise to anyone. And because this administration* is good only at firing people, and doing that by remote control, it's undoubtedly important that it left itself an escape hatch.

The executive order is currently slated to be signed on Wednesday, with Texas as one suggested location for the event. Administration officials caution the plans could change.

As they generally do, without warning, and to the detriment of the republic.

  Charles P Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Shrink that Federal Government!

States' rights! States' rights!

The Trump administration will seek to revoke California’s authority to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions -- including its mandate for electric-car sales -- in a proposed revision of Obama-era standards, according to three people familiar with the plan.

The proposal, expected to be released this week, amounts to a frontal assault on one of former President Barack Obama’s signature regulatory programs to curb emissions that contribute to climate change. It also sets up a high-stakes battle over California’s unique ability to combat air pollution and, if finalized, is sure to set off a protracted courtroom battle.

  Bloomberg

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Federal pressure on the Governor of Mississippi

If you bought the GOP claim that they want to keep the Federal government out of State's business, you've got yourself a bag of wind.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) urged Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) to consider appointing himself to Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-Miss.) seat if Cochran decides to resign, according to The Washington Post.

McConnell reportedly spoke directly to Bryant about potential Senate plans, while the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson confirmed that President Trump also discussed those plans with the governor.

  The Hill

Because Mitch McConnell told him to, no doubt about it. And how is this possible? Hopefully, it's just a temporary thing until an election is held.

But sources told the Clarion-Ledger that Bryant isn’t interested in a Senate seat.

And in an emailed statement to the Post, Bryant touted Cochran’s service in the Senate and called the rumors about the senator resigning “insensitive.”

[...]

McConnell wants to protect Republicans’ slim 51-seat majority ahead of this year's midterm elections. By appointing himself, Bryant would present a roadblock for state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R), who has reportedly expressed interest in the seat if Cochran resigns.

And, why would Mitch not want McDaniel in the Senate, you might well ask.

McDaniel, a Tea Party favorite, drew the ire of McConnell and GOP leadership when he challenged Cochran in a vicious 2014 GOP primary.

I see why Trump and McConnell get along these days. They both believe in punishing anyone who crosses them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Net neutrality and States' rights

Lawmakers in at least six state governments have introduced legislation to preserve the rules, and legislators in other states are in the process of considering their own net neutrality bills.

[...]

As of Friday, California, Washington, New York, Rhode Island, Nebraska and Massachusetts have all introduced net neutrality. North Carolina and Illinois are mulling similar legislation.

[...]

The push comes after the FCC voted in December in favor of Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to roll back the regulations, which prevented internet service providers like AT&T and Verizon from slowing down certain content or requiring websites to pay for faster speeds.

[...]

Lawmakers in these states say the bills have been inspired by frustration at an FCC that they feel has ignored the public, which overwhelmingly supports net neutrality.

[...]

Despite the groundswell of support for net neutrality in state legislatures, though, the legislation still faces obstacles.

Pai’s order rolling back net neutrality includes language that specifically preempts any attempts that states could make to create their own net neutrality regulations.

"A state can only regulate communication within its state," said Roslyn Layton, a visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank.

  The Hill

So...sites can already be slowed down if the servers pushing them are in states without net neutrality? I'm not sure how this works.

“The FCC’s attempt to preempt state rules appears questionable,” said Pantelis Michalopoulos, a telecommunications lawyer at the firm Steptoe and Johnson.

Michalopoulos noted that while the legality of the situation is not completely clear yet, federal agencies generally have to offer some type of regulation to preempt state regulation. In this case, there are almost no rules, because the FCC got rid of them.

[...]

Some state lawmakers are trying to dodge legal disputes completely by introducing “side door” legislation that doesn’t regulate tech firms directly, but would prevent telecommunications companies who violate net neutrality principles from getting contracts in the state.

The best I'm getting from this is that net neutrality isn't dead yet.

What's obvious is that the Trump administration is going to hand everything to corporations, no matter what the public wants. That's not new, it's just really, really obvious.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

State's Rights

Always sounds good till you think about it for a minute.

The other day, Willard Romney proposed his energy plan for the United States. I was driving through other mountains, these in Pennsylvania, when he did, so I missed the news as it happened. I have been catching up, little by little, but the one part that has stuck with me is Romney's proposal to hand federal lands over the states to do with what they will in their common illusion that everything in this country is limitless. There are practical political reasons not to do this. I know it's an article of faith among conservatives that government is best the "closer" it gets to the people, because it is allegedly more accountable to them. Therefore, state governments are better than the federal government. Following that logic, we inevitably find ourselves in the sovereign-citizens movement, where all power resides in the county sheriff.

Sometimes, I wonder if the people propounding this axiom ever actually lived in any of the states themselves. The abiding characteristics of state governments is that they tend to be more prone to ignorance and much more cheaply bought. (This is why The Blog has a regular weekly feature entitled, "This Week in the Laboratories of Democracy." Because it will never run out of material. It is also why, apropos of nothing, there is a new push to go back to having U.S. senators selected by the state legislatures, where the process can be corrupted more easily and more inexpensively.)

Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

States Rights? Only If We Say So

Since President Barack Obama took office, “more than 200″ state-approved medical marijuana facilities have been raided, according to Kris Hermes, spokesperson for Americans for Safe Access (ASA), who spoke to Raw Story on Thursday.

“That exceeds the number of raids his predecessor, George W. Bush, oversaw during his entire eight years in office,” he said.

The startling statistic wasn’t lost on [House Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi either, whose statement comes just days after she received a petition by marijuana patients in her district.

“I have strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medicinal marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California, and undermine a policy that has been in place under which the federal government did not pursue individuals whose actions complied with state laws providing for medicinal marijuana,” she said.

[...]

“The fact that a Democratic congressional leader like Nancy Pelosi is willing to call out a president from her own party over the huge gap between his administration’s actions and its previous written pledges shows just how important and popular an issue medical marijuana really is,” added Nate Bradley, a former California police officer and current medical marijuana patient who works for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Hopefully other elected representatives from California and other medical marijuana states will soon call on the president to get control of his federal agencies and stop breaking his campaign promises. It sure would be nice to hear Gov. Jerry Brown finally stand up in defense of our state’s duly enacted laws.”

[...]

The San Francisco Democratic Party passed a resolution (PDF) last week calling for Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to curb the raids, and nine other members of Congress wrote the administration late last year demanding more respect for states’ rights with regards to marijuana. There’s also a bill in the house, put forward by Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX), that would allow individual states to set their own policies with regards to marijuana.

They’ve got the American people behind them, too

  Raw Story

And that's a powerful group whose voices are sacrosanct at the White House.

Where's that sarcasm font when you need it?