U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

"Vetting"? Just put a bunch of progressives in there. GOP under Trump approved judges willy-nilly with terrible ratings from the ABA. (One of them scrapped masks on airplanes.)

Judge William Nilly was one of the better Trumps appointees, sadly

Schumer needs to get the Senate moving. For Circuit Court vacancies it should be easier (as Republicans got rid of the blue slip custom at that level that allowed Senators from either party to object to a nominee). Blue slip process apparently still exists at District court level. I think Republicans must not have followed it under Trump at District Court level, or lame Dems didn't object enough to all of the terrible people who became District Court judges under Trump

Schumer is a terribly ineffective majority leader. He's not a wartime consigliere. McConnell still eats his lunch daily.

what are the realistic chances of expanding the court to 13? who gets to decide who those extra judges are, if they succeed?

― politics is about vibes and the vibes are off (stevie), Wednesday, June 29, 2022 10:05 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Congress. Court size varied widely during the 19th century.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 29, 2022 10:13 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

My take on this: (1) the Court is currently cemented at extremely horrific for the next two decades or so, therefore even things seesawing back and forth between parties would be an improvement and worth the gamble (2) nine justices is just too few for a country this large - it leads to grossly distorted outcomes, like a one-term president who lost the popular vote selecting 1/3 of the court and deciding its bent for the next two decades, and (3) stop calling it "court packing" because that sounds bad and come up with some better branding that actually makes it sound like the obviously necessary and sensible idea that it is and not some angry radical revenge scheme.

I guess we can start sarcastically saying “thanks, Supreme Court” in reference to various bullshit

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/06/28/police-brutality-display-protesters-rail-against-post-roe-world?fbclid=IwAR3sjS_tp3yVNDaSnYkd_zw7zissaVlo703L84OX3X3L28M3oisxKj930eQ

the Court is currently cemented at extremely horrific for the next two decades or so

One motivated sniper could solve this problem. And the justices are heading home at the end of the week...

Not sarcastically

Sorry, all of this is doing me in a little

xxxpost Plus you've got a guy placed on the court by a President elected before anyone under 33 was even born taking away the rights of current and future generations of women

yea whoever said this feels worse than the Trump era was right, at least then you had the hope that things would turn around in 2020. Dems got all 3 houses and welp here we are. obviously I have a lot of frustration towards this current administration but I'm not sure what they even could do if Manchin and Sinema remain uncooperative, sure as hell feels like America is set up to reward bad actors

the other part is just seeing up front that the GOP really is that bad. I was holding onto hope that people on here and on Twitter were mostly overreacting, that surely the Trump administration wouldn't ACTUALLY try to overturn an election through a violent coup, that surely these SC justices wouldn't ACTUALLY try to overturn something as widely popular as Roe, especially after giving sworn testimony they wouldn't

it sucks because I had this sense of dread when RBG died, it felt nearly as bad as when Trump won somehow. but I realized I had been despairing too much, I just didn't have any more room to feel bad about it, and that for once you just gotta hope things will be alright. instead everything bad we thought was gonna happen wound up happening. I'm too exhausted to care anymore.

I had that same dread. I hoped somehow we'd avoid an overturn but it felt inevitable. Esp when Loony Barrett was nominated

Why, I'd even go so far to say that she's more "notorious" than her predecessor!

And the capper we all knew was coming...

The Supreme Court's first decision of the day is West Virginia v. EPA. In a 6–3 decision by Roberts, the court strictly curbs the EPA's power to mandate carbon emissions from existing power plants. https://t.co/EaPGix54LE

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) June 30, 2022

Biden should’ve said it an hour after the Court ruled.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) June 30, 2022

at least to my reading they decided it somewhat narrowly (the EPA can't use the Clean Ar Act to curb carbon emissions because carbon dioxide is not classified as a pollutant) rather than completely gutting delegation.

The Supreme Court's second and final opinion of the day—and the term—is Biden v. Texas, the Remain in Mexico case. The Biden administration wins, 5–4, with Roberts and Kavanaugh joining the liberals. Biden can rescind the policy. https://t.co/QIo8hJybz1

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) June 30, 2022

Not so fast tho...

I think this right. Today's decision is a victory for the Biden administration, but it gives Trump judges in the lower courts space to retake control of border policy on remand. Very troubling. https://t.co/wuKSlgRtLk

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) June 30, 2022

all of this is obviously very bad, but in a way is this a challenge to congress? to be more creative? to be more "activist" and prescriptive?

oh wait

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

if the Dem party was functional at all they'd be working on clear legislation to solidify these laws but I am guessing they see saving the planet we all live on as a divisive issue

It costs too much.

I recently read a Stanford study which tried to estimate the cost of converting every nation on the planet to 100% renewables, landing on a number around $60 trillion

that's a lot, but they also estimated the planet would save $11 trillion or so every year, meaning it would pay for itself within 5 1/2 years. not to mention the massive impacts on the environment and public health

so of course our dumb species won't do it, we won't even try

In his dissent, Thomas claims that COVID vaccines were developed with the use of "aborted children." https://t.co/43cSrepGNn

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) June 30, 2022

jesus christ

clarence thomas i wish you a very die

I still own isclarencethomasdeadyet.com. anybody wanna help me develop it?

I had a static page up on there that just said "unfortunately no" but idk maybe we can do better.

Just in: In an election case out of North Carolina, SCOTUS agrees to review the "independent state legislature" theory next term. Under that theory, state legislatures have broad power to set rules for federal elections, even if state courts say those rules are unconstitutional.

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 30, 2022

^^ very bad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o593zZyfFfc

yea that seems to lay the groundwork to make the attempted coup in 2020 actually successful this time

From here it looks like a majority of the court would vote in favor of a ruling based on the legal theory that "might makes right".

“Supreme Court Rules That Supreme Court Lacks Legal Reason to Exist”

There’s a spoken word Godspeed You Black Emperor quote that suits how I feel about life in this country lately, let’s see, what was it?

It occurred to me yesterday: Bloom County devoted dozens of strips to Reagan, Poppy, and the legislative branch. Guess the Burger Court was too boring to satirize.

They did!

ooh! Do show!

Oh, no, I meant: you’re right.

They are telegraphing their intentions this far out and yet we can all rest assured that the Dems will not do one fucking thing to stop it. Time to get the fuck out of the country.

It feels almost inevitable that the deciding vote in the House on overturning the popular vote in '24 will come from a far-right firebrand elected in '22 thanks to Democratic support in the primary.

I have great-grandparents who came over on the boat from Finland, maybe it's time to start learning the language and exploring my options.

will Geir take us in

Not that there is any realistic plan for getting the fuck out of Dodge, I'm just completely out of hope after the last two weeks. We've got a rogue SCOTUS completely crippling our democracy for the foreseeable future, the Dems are too busy fundraising to spend on far-right primary candidates to do a fucking thing to stop it and voting rights are being completely gutted. Hard to imagine how anything turns around at this point.

My only option for grandparent-citizenship in Europe is fucking Poland (sorry Poles).

"The left needs to stand down so we can stop fascism!"
*funds fascism*

Back in 2017, I predicted, only partly tongue in cheek, that Trumps' Court would not rest until it had reversed those pesky child labor laws. I really don't think it's out of the question.

I have great-grandparents who came over on the boat from Finland, maybe it's time to start learning the language and exploring my options.

Finnish isn't an actual language; it's something they made up to disorient and terrify the Russians during the war, and then it just kind of stuck.

maybe we'll get lucky and some of these justices will live long enough to perish in one of the future natural disasters they directly caused with their epa decision

or Kavanaugh can get eaten by something

My grandmother spoke it before she spoke English; her parents spoke little English and never learned much in their small community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We hosted a Finnish exchange student about a dozen years ago. I saw an email he wrote to his parents--it looked like long strings of random vowels and consonants with the occasional umlaut thrown in.

Reminds me of a story my grandfather used to tell about the rural Illinois town he grew up in; a Czech guy moved to town and assumed he was learning English from his neighbors, but he was actually learning Swedish.

I feel like this EPA decision could be catastrophic

I feel like this EPA decision could be catastrophic

Honestly, I don't. Big Industry has figured out that there's money to be made in doing things in a cleaner and more efficient manner. They'll make changes on their own (have already been doing so for years) and Republicans (and Joe Manchin) will scrape their knuckles on the ground and mutter "But we got the judges t'say y' didn't hafta!"

Yeah I mean a decade ago this would’ve been really frightening but the entire energy sector does seem to be making a lot of strides right now