#Chevron Doctrine

[nuadaargetlamh]

One is a convicted criminal that wants to institute a dictatorship “on day one only” (with majority support from his party!), would give a greenlight to Project 2025, use a weakened Schedule F to install THOUSANDS of cronies, was just given immunity for “official acts” (what counts as “official”? whatever his Project 2025-instituted judges want, of course), wants to institute military tribunals for his enemies (and allies!), will 100% support Russia in wiping Ukraine off the map, will use the combo of the removal of the Chevron deference/the Supreme Court allowing people to openly bribe them/Schedule F to extend the far-right’s reach into every government agency and deregulate everything to the benefit of his rich capitalist buddies, has already taken away so many freedoms from racial minorities/queer people/women/anyone-that-isn’t-a-rich-white-man that it would take hours to list them all in this post, and so so so so SO MUCH MORE.

The other is a typical neoliberal politician.

Remember also, you’re not just choosing a president, you’re choosing their cabinet, potential Supreme Court justices, federal employees as well. With Project 2025 ALONE, Trump would do so much more damage than just what he can do himself. That’s not including everything else his Federalist Society Supreme Court would and have given him on a silver platter.

Project 2025 really deserves a part to itself just to list some of what it includes: complete abortion/contraceptive ban (no exceptions), destroying worker’s unions and protections, remove Social Security/Medicare/Affordable Care Act, eliminate the ENTIRE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, end civil rights protections in government, ban teaching the history of slavery, remove climate protections while gutting the EPA, end equal marriage and enforce the “traditional family ideal”, use the military to gun down protests, mass deportation of legal immigrants (especially Muslims), ending birthright citizenship, pack the lower courts, and plenty more. The far-right wasn’t able to take full advantage of Trump’s presidency the first time since it was so unexpected. They’re preparing so that they won’t make the same mistake again. THERE ARE OVER 900 PAGES OF POLICIES AND PLANS THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL IMPLEMENT IF THEY WIN. READ IT.

Not to mention, if you care about Palestine (like I do, a lot), Trump would be MUCH WORSE for Palestine than the other candidate, supporting Bibi going “from the river to the sea” and already cut off millions in aid to Palestine in 2018 (which Biden reversed!). If you support a free Palestine and don’t vote blue, you have categorically hurt them more than if you did. There is no quick and bloodless peace deal that both Palestine and Israel would ever agree to. The road to an end of the Palestine-Israel conflict is going to be long and difficult, probably decades of dedicated de-radicalization in both states, and will involve far more than one person’s decisions in the end. Unless Trump takes power, and avoids all that by sending enough bombs to turn the Gaza Strip into dust.

There are a few reasons you would choose to vote third party in a FPTP system (support ranked choice voting btw) or not vote “in protest” while ignoring all the state and local elections that affect your area more than the president. Either you’re privileged enough to not be affected by what Trump would bring, you’re ignorant of the consequences, or you care more about doing nothing perfectly rather than doing something, anything that isn’t 100% ideologically “pure” to fight against the far-right fascist movement.

Every voter that still supports Trump is energized by every cruelty he enacts, while thousands of Democrats care more about purity tests and manifesting socialist revolution tulpas than avoiding a fascist dictatorship.

Have a brain, touch grass, and vote blue all the way down that fucking ballot.

[my-midlife-crisis]

[liberalsarecool]

This court is off the rails.

They delivered for the Koch Brothers.

[odinsblog]

Elena Kagan issued a devastating dissent to the decision of her hard-right fellow supreme court justices to overturn the Chevron doctrine that has been a cornerstone of federal regulation for 40 years, accusing the majority of turning itself into “the country’s administrative czar”.

Kagan said that in one fell swoop, the rightwing majority had snatched the ability to make complex decisions over regulatory matters away from federal agencies and awarded the power to themselves.

“As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar,” she wrote.

For 40 years, she wrote, the Chevron doctrine, set out by the same supreme court in a 1984 ruling, had supported regulatory efforts by the US government by granting federal experts the ability to make reasonable decisions where congressional law was ambiguous. She gave a few examples of the work that was facilitated as a result, such as “keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest”.

Now, the hard-right supermajority had flipped that on its head.

Instead of federal experts adjudicating on all manner of intricate scientific and technical questions – such as addressing the climate crisis, deciding on the country’s healthcare system or controlling AI – now judges would make those critical calls.

Kagan, displaying no desire to pull her punches, portrayed Friday’s ruling as a blatant power grab by the chief justice, John Roberts, and his five ultra-right peers, three of whom were appointed by Trump – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” she wrote.

Not for the first time, her most caustic comments relate to stare decisis – the adherence to legal precedent that is the foundation stone of the rule of law. Respect for the previous judgments of the supreme court is a reminder to judges that “wisdom often lies in what prior judges have done. It is a brake on the urge to convert every new judge’s opinion into a new legal rule or regime.”

By contrast, she went on: “It is impossible to pretend that today’s decision is a one-off, in its treatment of precedent.”

It has become an unquestionable pattern: the new hard-right supermajority has a fondness for tearing up their own court’s precedents stretching back decades. They did it when they eviscerated the right to an abortion in 2022, upending 50 years of settled law; they did it again last year when they prohibited affirmative action in university admissions, casting out 40 years of legal precedent; and now they’ve done it once more after 40 years to Chevron.

“Just my own defenses of stare decisis, my own dissents to this court’s reversals of settled law, by now fill a small volume,” Kagan said, her final words as plaintive as they were defiant.

(continue reading)

[lordgolden]

hi I know shit is really bad right now but can I ask what the effects of the chevron decision will be

Hi! I'll try to explain it as thoroughly as I can so you can get a full understanding of the issue without getting too legal with it. Starting from the beginning - federal agencies are an arm of the executive branch; they're tasked with everyday enforcement and administration of federal laws. To make an agency, Congress passes a founding statute that delegates authority and tasks the agency with a broad mandate to regulate a certain thing. Obviously, Congress can't contemplate every single thing that that agency is going to have to regulate, right? So there's a lot of ambiguity regarding what exact agency power is and what they can do under their statute/s. Congress can pass laws to clarify ambiguity that give an agency more specific power, but we all know how dysfunctional Congress is.

Agencies promulgate rules and regulations under their statutory mandate and interpret ambiguous language in their statutes based on their technical expertise (ex: environmental scientists at the EPA). However, some of those rules get challenged in court by various groups who say that that agency doesn't have the power to regulate x. That's where the Chevron doctrine comes into play.

The case Chevron v. National Resources Defence Council from 1984, involved an advocacy group who challenged an interpretation of the term "stationary source," which the EPA redefined. The regulation had something to do with air pollution sources, and I can't even comprehend the complexities of all that went into that. Why, do you ask? Well, because I'm not an expert! And that is along the lines of what the court found - the judicial branch cannot substitute its authority for the technical expertise of agency officials.

The Court held that Congress implicitly delegates authority to agencies if not explicitly, and it is not the place of the judiciary to substitute their interpretation for that of experts. Other reasons included the fact that Congress is an elected, accountable body and the judiciary is not. This established 40 years of precedent that is a bedrock principle in administrative law and a doctrine called Chevron Deference. Under Chevron Deference, the courts had a very clear test: (1) Is the statutory provision ambiguous? and (2) Is that agencies interpretation reasonable/permissible?

The effect was that almost always, the judiciary deferred to an agencies interpretation except under limited circumstances. Since that has been overturned, it opens up so many agency rules and regulations to legal challenges. Now, judges get to decide whether THEY think the agency has authority and their interpretation is reasonable. The effect of that will be conservative justices in the federal judiciary will say "no, I don't think that's reasonable" to something they think is too liberal and ignore agency expertise on the issue.

Federal regulations touch every aspect of our lives - workplace safety, public health, student loan forgiveness, the environment, and essentially anything else you can think of. The Executive Branch relies on federal agencies to get anything done due to how polarized Congress is. Agencies are responsible for the day to day functions of our government. The effect is that allllll the rules and regulations that govern us can be challenged without deference to expertise. There is a lot of uncertainty in the realm of administrative law right now.

[shinygemstone]

THEY FUCKING OVERTURNED THE CHEVRON DOCTRINE WHAT THE FUCK

WE KIND OF NEED THAT

It's only, like, the ruling that gives the EPA (and all other federal agencies) the power to define environmental law when actual laws aren't specific enough. Tell me, do you want lead in your water?

If not, you'd better move out of the US!!!

This is appalling. We want experts handling our water and air quality, not politicians who have no idea what they're talking about!!

Call your senators. Call your house representatives. Hell, send hate mail to the asshats who overturned Chevron (John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Niel Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh). This is appalling.

Source 1 | source 2

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

It’s been barely a week since conservatives on the US Supreme Court radically upended the balance of power between the branches of government, giving the federal courts the exclusive power to interpret statutes rather than deferring to agency experts. And we’re already seeing impacts on the ground. Right-wingers have been in the habit of running to their preferred courts to get regulations overturned, but the decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which officially destroyed agency deference, will make it easier — even routine — to block every Biden administration rule they don’t like.  Lawsuits to invalidate specific rules had been proceeding through the federal courts before Loper Bright, generally arguing that agencies exceeded their authority in promulgating a rule. These lawsuits exist in no small part because the Supreme Court made it clear they would destroy Chevron deference for years now, with Justice Neil Gorsuch having led the way well before his appointment to the Court. 

Trump appointee Sean Jordan, who sits in the reliably hard-right Eastern District of Texas, was so eager to block a Biden administration’s overtime rule that he dropped his decision the same day Loper Bright came out. It runs 36 pages and mentions Loper Bright multiple times, which means either Jordan was so confident of the Supreme Court decision that he either wrote it in advance or he hurried to stuff Loper Bright into his already-written opinion. Jordan’s opinion also rests heavily on dictionary definitions rather than expertise from the Department of Labor, which issued the rule. So now, the rule that would have made 4 million more Texas workers eligible for overtime, and thus more pay, is blocked thanks to a hurried read of a SCOTUS opinion and Webster’s Dictionary. 

What this mean is that anytime a business doesn’t like a federal rule, it can just sue. It promises to be a free-for-all. Three hospitals in New Jersey sued HHS the day Loper Bright came down, saying the agency’s interpretation of a statute governing Medicare reimbursement is unlawful. In another case, filed before Loper Bright, a trucking company challenging the Biden administration’s rule that addressed misclassification of independent contractors filed a memorandum on July 2 arguing that Loper Bright means the court should not defer to the Department of Labor’s interpretation of the law. The next day, Trump appointee Ada Brown of the Northern District of Texas enjoined enforcement of the Biden administration’s rule prohibiting non-compete agreements but limited the injunction to the plaintiffs, which are various pro-business groups like the Chamber of Commerce. 

[...]

Bigotry from the bench

Unsurprisingly, much of the assault on administration rules relates to any regulation that would protect transgender people. Four days after Loper Bright was handed down, another Trump appointee, Judge John W. Broomes in Kansas, enjoined the Department of Education from enforcing its Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs rule in Kansas, Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming. The Department of Education spent two years finalizing the rule, which would have prohibited discrimination based on gender identity under Title IX.  The unofficial text of the rule, which runs 1,577 pages with supporting material, is jam-packed with legal analysis. Hundreds of pages are spent explaining how the DOE considered and addressed public comments and the document details the mental health impact of discrimination against LGBTQ students. 

Broomes’s expertise is in natural resource law, a background that does not lend itself to a detailed understanding of Title IX, sex discrimination, or gender identity. But none of that matters. His opinion sneers about “self-professed and potentially ever-changing gender identity” and insists that things like using correct pronouns for students and allowing them to use the bathroom that conforms with their gender identity is an issue of “vast economic” significance. Given that the only costs of the rule are things like updated administrative guidance and perhaps hiring additional Title IX staff, the idea it is a vast economic question is, to put it politely, a reach. Instead, Broomes sided with the conservative plaintiffs, including Moms for Liberty and an Oklahoma student who asserted that using the correct pronouns for other students violated her religious beliefs. Because of this mix of conservative state litigants, private anti-trans groups, and an Oklahoma student, the extent of Broomes’s injunction is even weirder than the patchwork blocking of the HHS rule.

Besides blocking the rule entirely in four states, the rule is also blocked for the schools attended by the members of two private plaintiffs, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United, and all schools attended by the children of members of Moms for Liberty. So now, if you are a transgender student unlucky enough to attend school anywhere in the country where a child of a Moms for Liberty student also attends, you’re out of luck. If your school is free of children of book-banners, you get the protection of the federal rule — unless you live in Kansas, Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming, in which case it doesn’t matter what school you go to.  Over at Law Dork, Chris Geidner has a good rundown of not just how the courts are sledgehammering LGBTQ rights, but also how having courts, rather than regulators, make these decisions results in an uneven patchwork of rulings over a Health and Human Services rule that prohibited health care providers from discriminating based on gender identity. Only five days after Loper Bright was issued, three separate federal courts issued rulings blocking parts of the HHS rule. There’s no chance that William Jung, a Trump appointee to the federal district court for the Middle District of Florida, hadn’t already written most of his decision before Loper Bright was issued, but the case gave him far more ammunition. Fung’s ruling in Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services blocked part of the Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities rule from going into effect — but only in Florida. 

The Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo ruling by the judicial activist MAGA Majority on the Supreme Court is having devastating consequences.

[rjzimmerman]

Many of you know that I'm a lawyer, retired, but still a member of the bar. I don't practice law (can't), but I still read professional articles and media reports about environmental law and other laws that interest me. From my humble perspective, some of the recent decisions of the US Supreme Court are invalid because the decisions were issued by the Court acting not in its constitutional capacity of a court of appeals, but acting as a court of original jurisdiction. If I'm correct (and I'm sure I can find a slew of right wing lawyers who are laughing at me), then the executive branch of the US government, i.e., the President, is not obligated to enforce those decisions. Plus, the ethical issues of Justice Thomas.......what the fuck is he doing participating in a decision on trump's January 6 sins when Thomas' wife was furiously clicking away on e-mails encouraging the rioting and insurrection? Wishful thinking, but somehow sometime somewhere something dramatic has to happen to smack down the Supreme Court, or at least create some sense of doubt in their tiny little pointed heads.

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

A spate of decisions over the past two years by the Supreme Court has significantly impaired the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to limit pollution in the air and water, regulate the use of toxic chemicals and reduce the greenhouse gasses that are heating the planet.

This term, the court’s conservative supermajority handed down several rulings that chip away at the power of many federal agencies.

But the environmental agency has been under particular fire, the result of a series of cases brought since 2022 by conservative activists who say that E.P.A. regulations have driven up costs for industries ranging from electric utilities to home building. Those arguments have resonated among justices skeptical of government regulation.

On Friday, the court ended the use of what is known as the Chevron doctrine, a cornerstone of administrative law for 40 years that said that courts should defer to government agencies to interpret unclear laws. That decision threatens the authority of many federal agencies to regulate the environment and also health care, workplace safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more.

But more remarkable have been several decisions by the court to intervene to stop environmental regulations before they were decided by lower courts or even before they were implemented by the executive branch.

On Thursday, the court said the E.P.A. could not limit smokestack pollution that blows across state borders under a measure known as the “good neighbor rule.” In that case, the court took the surprising step of weighing in while litigation was still pending at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The court also acted in an unusually preliminary fashion last year when it struck down a proposed E.P.A. rule known as Waters of the United States that was designed to protect millions of acres of wetlands from pollution, acting before the regulation had even been made final.

Similarly, in a 2022 challenge to an E.P.A. climate proposal known as the Clean Power Plan, the court sharply limited the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, even though that rule had not yet taken effect.

That kind of intervention has little in the way of precedent. Usually, the Supreme Court is the last venue to hear a case, after arguments have been made and opinions have been rendered by lower courts.

“This court has shown an interest in making law in this area and not having the patience to wait for the cases to first come up through the courts,” said Kevin Minoli, a lawyer who worked in the E.P.A.’s office of general counsel from the Clinton through the Trump administrations. “They’ve been aggressive on ruling. It’s like, we’re going to tell you the answer before you even ask the question.”

Collectively, those decisions now endanger not only many existing environmental rules, but may prevent future administrations from writing new ones, experts say.

“These are among the worst environmental law rulings that the Supreme Court will ever issue,” said Ian Fein, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. “They all cut sharply against the federal government’s ability to enforce laws that protect us from polluters.”

The march of environmental cases is not over: The court has agreed to hear a case next term that could limit the reach of National Environmental Policy Act, the 1970 law that requires federal agencies to analyze whether their proposed projects have environmental consequences. Businesses and industries have long complained that the reviews can take years, inflate costs and be used by community groups to block projects.

[kp777]

By Olivia Rosane

Common Dreams

June 29, 2024

"I plan to introduce legislation to protect the government's policymaking ability that existed under Chevron that has worked for the last 40 years," Sen. Ed Markey said.

Following the Supreme Court's ruling on Friday overturning the so-called Chevron doctrine—which instructed courts to defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretations of laws passed by Congress as they regulate everything from food safety to labor rights to climate pollution—progressive lawmakers vowed to take action to protect the power of these agencies to shield the public from toxic chemicals and unscrupulous employers.

Legislators expressed concerns about the impacts of the court's 6-3 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, which ended a 40-year precedent established by Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council in 1984.

"Now, with this ill-advised decision, judges must no longer defer to the decisions about Americans' health, safety, and welfare made by agencies with technical and scientific expertise in their fields," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement. "MAGA extremist Republicans and their big business cronies are rejoicing as they look forward to creating a regulatory black hole that destroys fundamental protections for every American in this country."

"This unhinged Supreme Court needs to stop legislating from the bench, and we must pass sweeping reform to hold them accountable."

"I plan to introduce legislation to protect the government's policymaking ability that existed under Chevron that has worked for the last 40 years," Markey said.

Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called the ruling "dangerous" and urged Congress to "immediately pass" the Stop Corporate Capture Act, which she introduced in March 2023.

In a statement Friday, Jayapal said the act was "the only bill that codifies Chevron deference, strengthens the federal-agency rulemaking process, and ensures that rulemaking is guided by the public interest—not what's good for wealthy corporations."

The act would codify Chevron by providing "statutory authority for the judicial principle that requires courts to defer to an agency's reasonable or permissible interpretation of a federal law when the law is silent or ambiguous."

In addition, it would:

Require anyone submitting a study as part of a comment period on a regulation to disclose who funded it;

Only allow federal agencies to take part in the negotiated rulemaking process;

Create an Office of the Public Advocate to increase public participation in the process of crafting regulations;

Make public companies that knowingly lie in the comment period on a proposed regulation liable for a fine of at least $250,000 for a first offense and at least $1 million for a second; and

Empower agencies to reissue rules that were rescinded under the Congressional Review Act.

The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, a group of more than 160 organizations mobilizing for stronger public protections, also called on Congress to pass the Stop Corporate Capture Act.

"The bill is a comprehensive blueprint for modernizing, improving, and strengthening the regulatory system to better protect the public," the coalition wrote in response to Friday's ruling. "It would ensure greater public input into regulatory decisions, promote scientific integrity, and restore our government's ability to deliver results for workers, consumers, public health, and our environment."

Jayapal also called on Congress to "enact sweeping oversight measures to rein in corruption and billionaire influence at the Supreme Court, whose far-right extremist majority routinely flouts basic ethics, throws out precedent, and legislates from the bench to benefit the wealthiest and most powerful."

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) similarly recommended congressional action to address court corruption. In a statement, she called the decision "a power grab for the corrupt Supreme Court who continues to do the bidding of greedy corporations."

"The MAGA Court just overruled 40 years of precedent that empowered federal agencies to hold powerful corporations accountable, protect our workplaces and public health, and ensure that we have clean water and air," Tlaib continued. "This unhinged Supreme Court needs to stop legislating from the bench, and we must pass sweeping reform to hold them accountable."

In the meantime, the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards said that the ruling did not strip regulatory bodies of their authority to pass new rules to protect the public and the environment.

"This decision is a gift to big corporations, making it easier for them to challenge rules to ensure clean air and water, safe workplace and products, and fair commercial and financial practices," said Public Citizen president and coalition co-chair Robert Weissman. "But the decision is no excuse for regulators to stop doing their jobs. They must continue to follow the law and uphold their missions to protect consumers, workers, and our environment."

[contemplatingoutlander]

One terrible possibility is that, while Judge Cannon is hearing arguments today that the whole system of Special Counsels (like Smith for J6 and Weiss for Hunter Biden) is illegal, so SCOTUS is putting the finishing touches on a decision ripping up Smith’s entire mandate (and possibly undermining all the indictments he has obtained against Trump) while it considers ending the so-called Chevron doctrine making the administrative state possible. That would make the Federalist Society’s “unitary executive” theory a Bannon-like wrecking ball of gigantic proportions that would explain but not justify the delay in handing down these rulings. --Laurence Tribe

[lasseling]

BREAKING: Supreme Court in a 6-3 Vote Overturns ‘Chevron Doctrine,’ Limiting the Power of the Federal Government

The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 vote, overturned the Chevron deference, a bureaucracy-empowering judicial doctrine that critics say led to the explosive growth of the U.S. government in recent decades.

[dosesofcommonsense]

Additional commentary:

Gutting the power of federal agencies will go down in history as one of the greatest accomplishments of Trump presidency. We are only beginning to understand the ramifications of this.

Meanwhile global health scammers were getting their bird flu & new vaccine mandates ready, in case it’s needed to defeat Trump.

SCOTUS appears to have just outmaneuvered them while they were looking the other way.

Suddenly the Marxist scum planted all over our federal government’s agencies, ready and eager to do it all again (if needed)… just got the rug pulled out from under them in a big way.

——-

The defeat of the Chevron Doctrine isn’t just about the CDC using it to validate its decisions (forced vaccination) into laws; it’s about gutting power from the Administrative State (aka: Big Government, Deep State, Globalists) acronyms making up the laws as they go.

Congress is supposed to make the laws. The Judiciary evaluates the efficacy of the laws as they relate to the Constitution. The acronyms are supposed to follow the laws as stated and not operate in the grey area or make laws in the grey area. They are unelected persons of any president. None of those people has been voted in. As such, they don’t get to make laws. The CDC can’t force vaccines. The NIH can’t create bioweapons under the guise of medical research. The EPA can’t mandate car manufacturers follow carbon emission standards, etc.

Striking down Chevron is huge.

Now, will Congress actually legislate? Who knows.

[thoughtlessarse]

The former president’s crude appeals to masculinity culture clash with his lax approach toward PFAS and pesticides, which have been linked to lowered testosterone and sperm count. This month, the U.S. Air Force made a surprise announcement that it is refusing to comply with an order to clean up drinking water that it contaminated with PFAS “forever chemicals”—substances that have been linked to hormone disruption, liver damage, and a range of other health problems. The rationale for halting the cleanup was this year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the Chevron doctrine, in which courts typically deferred to the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies’ authority to interpret and enforce environmental and consumer safety rules. Overturning Chevron was one of the most consequential moves that former President Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees have made to date. But there’s now strong evidence that the former president would go further than his own justices in a second term, giving industry a freer hand to pollute with PFAS, pesticides, microplastics, and other toxic substances that have been shown to have, among other severe health effects, significant negative impacts on male fertility. Trump is positioning himself as the candidate of unbridled masculinity. He’s depending on strong electoral support from young men. The former president sauntered into the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to the tune of “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” and accepted the nomination following a speech in which Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt and declared him a “gladiator.” J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, has cited falling fertility rates as an existential threat to the nation’s future. Yet—in the name of reducing bureaucratic red tape—Trump is proposing to deregulate substances that could make it harder to conceive children and could cause Americans’ testosterone levels to plummet. In seeking to shrink the administrative state, Trump could also shrink the testicles of American men. 

continue reading

On par for the anti-science folks. And some of them want to ban IVF, because real babies can only be conceived by a man dominating a woman or some such illogical shit. The Master Race, indeed.

[odinsblog]

The Supreme Court fundamentally altered the way that our federal government functions on Friday, transferring an almost unimaginable amount of power from the executive branch to the federal judiciary. By a 6–3 vote, the conservative supermajority overruled Chevron v. NRDC, wiping out four decades of precedent that required unelected judges to defer to the expert judgment of federal agencies. The ruling is extraordinary in every way—a massive aggrandizement of judicial power based solely on the majority’s own irritation with existing limits on its authority. After Friday, virtually every decision an agency makes will be subject to a free-floating veto by federal judges with zero expertise or accountability to the people. All at once, SCOTUS has undermined Congress’ ability to enact effective legislation capable of addressing evolving problems and sabotaged the executive branch’s ability to apply those laws to the facts on the ground. It is one of the most far-reaching and disruptive rulings in the history of the court.

In Chevron, the court unanimously announced an important principle of law that governed the nation until Friday: When a federal statute is ambiguous, courts should defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of it. Why? Congress delegates countless important calls to agencies—directing the EPA, for instance, to limit harmful benzene emissions, rather than providing the precise formula to determine what level of benzene emissions is harmful to humans. Congress writes statutes broadly because it expects these agencies to respond to new facts and adjust their enforcement accordingly.

Crucially, these agencies are staffed with experts who have deep knowledge and experience in the area where Congress seeks to regulate. Such experts can understand and execute regulations more proficiently than federal judges, who are, at best, dilettantes in most fields of regulation. For example, an EPA scientist is unlikely to confuse nitrous oxide (laughing gas) with nitrogen oxide (a smog-causing emission), as Justice Neil Gorsuch did in a Thursday opinion blocking an EPA rule. Moreover, most agencies are staffed with political appointees whom the president can appoint and remove at will. That makes them far more accountable to the citizenry than federal judges, who are guaranteed life tenure no matter how badly they butcher the law.

Since 1984, federal courts have applied Chevron in about 18,000 decisions in every conceivable area of the law: energy policy, education, food and drug safety, labor, the environment, consumer protection, finance, health care, housing, law enforcement—the list is pretty much endless. It has become the background principle against which Congress enacts all legislation.

That all ends now.

(continue reading)

[planetdoodlesforchange]

The Chevron doctrine was a principle by which, in cases where legislation was worded ambiguously, federal experts would be trusted to interpret. For example, EPA scientists defining “harmful” chemicals in environmental regulations. The doctrine has been referred to as a “bedrock” of administrative law for 40 years.

Last week, the precedent was overturned by the Supreme Court, stripping the government’s teeth when regulating our drinking water, air quality, food safety, and industries that worsen climate change, via deforestation, overfishing, carbon emissions and pollution. It will all have to be decided by courts; not experts within agencies like the EPA and USDA.

Basically, this is an impediment to the enforcement of policies that will curb the forces killing our earth, and empowers conservative judges who wish to support polluting industries.

[bakedtarot]