#latest supreme court rulings

[vaspider]

I cannot stress enough how important it is that whatever you think of anything else, Trump Cannot Be President Again.

The "rip apart democracy and install an autocrat" group was not Ready for him in 2016. They didn't think he'd win.

They're ready now. They're teeing up for a second Trump president. Whatever your favorite current Thing, it would be worse under Trump, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they're going to try to make sure that they stay in power forever, by any means necessary.

SCOTUS basically just said, "If Trump sends the Army in to murder protestors, that's okay. If Trump assassinates a political rival with the armed forces of which he is the Commander In Chief, that's an official act, and there's no recourse."

Anything he can even vaguely justify as "an official act" - including installing people in the Justice Department to support his coup, including pressuring his VP to support his coup - is no longer a crime.

This isn't just me saying this, btw. Here's Robert Reich, lifelong public servant (and yes, dad of @samreich, since I know what's important to y'all):

Finally, the Republican-appointed justices have given a dangerous amount of discretion to presidents — broad enough, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her dissent, to protect presidents from prosecution for bribes and assassinations. A president already has the authority under the Insurrection Act to order troops into American streets. After today’s ruling, those troops would be under the command of a person who would almost certainly enjoy absolute immunity for the orders he gives them.

This is unbelievably terrifying.

[headlinehorizon]

Supreme Court Ruling Boosts Representation for Black Voters in Alabama

Read about the recent Supreme Court ruling that mandates a new congressional map in Alabama for better representation of Black voters. Explore the potential impact on the balance of power and the ongoing battle for control of the House.

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #29

July 26-August 2 2024

President Biden announced his plan to reform the Supreme Court and make sure no President is above the law. The conservative majority on the court ruled that Trump has "absolute immunity" from any prosecution for "official acts" while he was President. In response President Biden is calling for a constitutional amendment to make it clear that Presidents aren't above the law and don't have immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. In response to a wide ranging corruption scandal involving Justice Clarence Thomas, President Biden called on Congress to pass a legally binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court. The code would force Justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political actions, and force them to recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have conflicts of interest. President Biden also endorsed the idea of term limits for the Justices.

The Biden Administration sent out an email to everyone who has a federal student loan informing them of upcoming debt relief. The debt relief plan will bring the total number of a borrowers who've gotten relief from the Biden-Harris Administration to 30 million. The plan is due to be finalized this fall, and the Department of Education wanted to alert people early to allow them to be ready to quickly take advantage of it when it was in place and get relief as soon as possible.

President Biden announced that the federal government would step in and protect the pension of 600,000 Teamsters. Under the American Rescue Plan, passed by President Biden and the Democrats with no Republican votes, the government was empowered to bail out Union retirement funds which in recent years have faced devastating cut of up to 75% in some cases, leaving retired union workers in desperate situations. The Teamster union is just the latest in a number of such pension protections the President has done in office.

President Biden and Vice-President Harris oversaw the dramatic release of American hostages from Russia. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan held since 2018, Russian-American reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Alsu Kurmasheva convicted of criticizing the Russian Military, were all released from captivity and returned to the US at around midnight August 2nd. They were greeted on the tarmac by the President and Vice-President and their waiting families. The deal also secured the release of German medical worker Rico Krieger sentenced to death in Belarus, Russian-British opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, and 11 Russians convicted of opposing the war against Ukraine or being involved in Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption organization. Early drafts of the hostage deal were meant to include Navalny before his death in Russian custody early this year.

A new Biden Administration rule banning discrimination against LGBT students takes effect, but faces major Republican resistance. The new rule declares that Title IX protects Queer students from discrimination in public schools and any college that takes federal funds. The new rule also expands protections for victims of sexual misconduct and pregnant or parenting students. However Republican resistance means the rule can't take effect nation wide. Lawsuits from Republican controlled states, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, means the new protections won't come into effect those states till the case is ruled on likely in a Supreme Court ruling. The Biden administration crafted these Title IX rules to reflect the Supreme Court's 2020 Bostock case.

The Biden administration awarded $2 billion to black and minority farmers who were the victims of historic discrimination. Historically black farmers have been denied important loans from the USDA, or given smaller amounts than white farmers. This massive investment will grant 23,000 minority farmers between $10,000 and $500,000 each and a further 20,000 people who wanted to start farms by were improperly denied the loans they needed between $3,500-$6,000 to get started. Most payments went to farmers in Mississippi and Alabama.

The Biden Administration took an important step to stop the criminalization of poverty by changing child safety guidelines so that poverty alone isn't grounds for taking a child into foster care. Studies show that children able to stay with parents or other family have much better outcomes then those separated. Many states have already removed poverty from their guidelines when it comes to removing children from the home, and the HHS guidelines push the remaining states to do the same.

Vice-President Harris announced the Biden Administration's agreement to a plan by North Carolina to forgive the state's medical debt. The plan by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper would forgive the medical debt of 2 million people in the state. North Carolina has the 3rd highest rate of medical debt in the nation. Vice-President Harris applauded the plan, pointing out that the Biden Administration has forgiven $650 million dollars worth of medical debt so far with plans to forgive up to $7 billion by 2026. The Vice-President unveiled plans to exclude medical debt from credit scores and issued a call for states and local governments to forgive debt, like North Carolina is, last month.

The Department of Transportation put forward a new rule to bank junk fees for family air travel. The new rule forces airlines to seat parents next to their children, with no extra cost. Currently parents are forced to pay extra to assure they are seated next to their children, no matter what age, if they don't they run the risk of being separated on a long flight. Airlines would be required to seat children age 13 and under with their parent or accompanying adult at no extra charge.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it is giving $3.5 billion to combat homelessness. This represents the single largest one year investment in fighting homelessness in HUD's history. The money will be distributed by grants to local organizations and programs. HUD has a special focus on survivors of domestic violence, youth homeless, and people experiencing the unique challenges of homelessness in rural areas.

The Treasury Department announced that Pennsylvania and New Mexico would be joining the IRS' direct file program for 2025. The program was tested as a pilot in a number of states in 2024, saving 140,000 tax payers $5.6 million in filing charges and getting tax returns of $90 million. The program, paid for by President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, will be available to all 50 states, but Republicans strong object. Pennsylvania and New Mexico join Oregon and New Jersey in being new states to join.

Bonus: President Biden with the families of the released hostages calling their loved ones on the plane out of Russia

[saywhat-politics]

A federal appeals court struck down net neutrality on Thursday, ending the widely popular regulatory doctrine that mandated internet service providers to treat all internet traffic equally.

The ruling from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ends a federal rule prohibiting broadband providers from throttling internet speeds or blocking traffic to specific sites.

“The FCC lacks the statutory authority to impose its desired net-neutrality policies,” the judges wrote, overturning what they called the Federal Communication Commission’s “heavy-handed regulatory regime.”

The pro-consumer policy of net neutrality was implemented by President Barack Obama and gutted during Donald Trump's first term. It was reinstated in April of last year by the Biden administration. The now-defunct policy holds that internet carriers are akin to telecom providers and must comply with common carrier regulations governing those services.

Telecom giants like Verizon and AT&T have opposed the policy for nearly a decade, spending big money to back anti-regulation candidates. 

[robertreich]

How We Take Back the Supreme Court

Where do you see yourself in 2060? What about your kids or grandkids? Will Donald Trump be affecting your life even then?

Here’s why he might be.

This November, the future of the Supreme Court is on the ballot.

Trump appointed three justices in his first term — more than any president since Ronald Reagan. And thanks to them, Trump was able to get rid of Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, and gun safety laws — even after he left office.

If Trump is reelected, 76-year-old Justice Clarence Thomas and 74-year-old Justice Samuel Alito could retire, giving Trump a chance to appoint a fourth and fifth justice. That’s five out of nine justices. Trump would be the first president in more than a half century to appoint a majority of the Supreme Court.

And not just a "conservative" majority — but a MAGA majority that would work in lockstep with an authoritarian president.

Several other justices are also getting up there. Chief Justice John Roberts will turn 70 in 2025, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be 71. So it’s possible that Trump could even appoint a sixth (or even a seventh) justice.

If Trump sticks with appointing justices in their 40s, as he did with Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, his justices could dominate the court past the year 2060 — or longer if he appoints even younger justices.

In the court’s latest term, the extremists now dominating the bench made it harder to combat racial gerrymandering. They limited the power of federal agencies to implement health, safety, and environmental regulations. They ruled that homeless people can be punished for being homeless. They gave the greenlight for state and local politicians to accept bribes for past actions. And I didn’t even mention how the court granted presidents the power of kings by giving them broad immunity from prosecution.

All of this because one man, Donald Trump, was elected in 2016. If he’s reelected in 2024, just imagine the damage a MAGA supermajority Supreme Court could unleash.

Your remaining reproductive freedoms, marriage equality, gun reform, climate change policy, and what’s left of the Voting Rights Act…

Wherever you imagine yourself and your family forty years from now, you will still be feeling the effects of this year’s election.

[crag-dreams]

I need y’all to be serious and think critically about the TikTok “ban.” Trump initiated the whole thing back in 2020 because he was butthurt about being made fun of on there. That’s when he was talking about using light and drinking bleach to fight covid. As cover, Congress pitched the narrative of Chinese propaganda, national security, blah blah bullshit. The TikTok ban was passed by Congress. More Republicans voted for it than Democrats. The ban was repeatedly pushed back until it finally came time for the Supreme Court to rule on it, a court that was packed by Trump during his first term. It passed *unanimously*. Yes, Biden shares blame for letting it get to this point, but it has been politically beneficial for both parties this entire time. But now, it’s the most stupid own goal by Democrats in a long history of stupid own goals. Biden and Democrats will shoulder the blame for something they didn’t even start, Trump will swoop in and get all the credit for restoring it. He’s only doing so because it’s financially beneficial to him now. China is throwing billions at him through his latest meme coin, he’ll (sadly) gain support from younger people, and it will harm Democrats in the 2026 midterms.

With TikTok on his side, Trump starts his second term with the support of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and now TikTok. With the majority of “traditional” journalism also failing to meet the challenge of Trump 2.0, it’s more important than ever to actually think and question what you’re presented with on social media.

It was beneficial for Trump to start the narrative to ban TikTok. Now it’s beneficial for him to control that narrative that he saved it. He is a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, a con man, and he doesn’t do anything other than look out for himself. We cannot do four more years of just blindly accepting this shit.

[captainjonnitkessler]

While unsurprising, the rhetoric being spewed by Louisiana's lawmakers is fucking terrifying to me.

I feel so lucky that I was raised by a bunch of atheist because honestly I managed to go the majority of my childhood happy, without being shamed or acquiring a persecution complex...but now looking out at the current climate we live in...damn, they really hate us, don't they? I mean "godless" is one of the main insults getting thrown around on most campaign trails, which isn't new it just hurts.

I feel like I am a bad person because I only just found out about what's going on in Louisiana.

Sorry, just screaming into the void a bit. I hope you have a good day

For anyone who's not aware, Louisiana just passed a law requiring every single public classroom in the state, from kindergarten to college, to display the Ten Commandments.

Unfortunately, this is just the latest in the rapidly-escalating war between Christofascists and secularism. Multiple states have proposed this law, Louisiana is just the first to actually pass it. Oklahoma's Department of Education is claiming that they're going to force teachers to start teaching from the Bible. Seven states have passed laws requiring schools to display "In God We Trust" signs.

Here's the thing I think a lot of people on this site are too young to remember or weren't involved enough in religious politics to notice, and the reason the "edgy atheist who just hates religion" stereotype has gained so much traction on here: The New Atheist movement was very much a response to constant barrages of shit like this. Getting America to be even as secular as it is has been a constant struggle. Conservatives have been openly blaming atheists for school shootings, mass murders, and serial killers for decades. People who stand up and try to get religion taken out of schools and government immediately become targets for massive hate and harassment campaigns. People - conservatives and liberals alike - react with hatred and anger whenever someone stands up to get religion out of places where it doesn't belong. I think the past fifteen years or so have gotten a lot of people believing that separation of church and state is an obviously "safe" position that almost everyone is in favor of, but it very much is not and never has been.

I believe that conservatives are going to try to use the current Supreme Court to essentially abolish the separation of church and state, largely because many of them are openly stating their intent to do so. Louisiana is already being sued about this - if it makes its way to the Supreme Court, I think there's a decent chance of the current court ruling in favor of Louisiana, which is going to unleash the floodgates of Christian propaganda in public schools. It is frankly a dire situation, so I'm sorry if you were here looking for reassurance lol.

As always, the best action I can recommend is to get involved. You're definitely not a bad person for not knowing about this! But if you want to stay on top of religious news, I recommend the Friendly Atheist blog. The Freedom From Religion Foundation fights to get laws like this taken down. You can check your local city for secular humanist meetups. You don't want to burn out or enter a doom spiral by only ever dwelling on bad news, but I find that having people to talk to or action you can take is a good way to ward off despair.

And please, please, vote. Vote in federal and state elections, vote in your local city council elections, vote in your school board elections. A LOT of this is happening at local levels, and being involved in your local politics is possibly the most effective thing you can do!

[reasonsforhope]

Humanity is making progress on reproductive rights

"As the US Supreme Court prepares to hand down its latest batch of rulings, here is your periodic reminder that the United States is an outlier. Some 60 countries around the world have made their abortion laws more liberal in the past 30 years; only a small handful, which includes the United States, have made their abortion laws more restrictive. Source: Think Global Health"

Access to Abortion Has Increased Globally

-via Fix The News, Newsletter #53, June 13, 2024

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - September 11, 2023

Sorry for not sending last week's issue as I got covid again :/ I passed it, so here's the best things that happened last week :)

1. The IRS plans to crack down on 1,600 millionaires to collect millions of dollars in back taxes

The IRS announced on Friday it is launching an effort to aggressively pursue 1,600 millionaires and 75 large business partnerships that owe hundreds of millions of dollars in past due taxes. The newly announced tax collection effort will begin as soon as October. “We have more hiring to do,” Werfel said. “It’s going to be a very busy fall for us.”

2. The NGO African Parks announced it would purchase the world’s largest population of privately owned white rhinos

Africa’s beleaguered rhinos have been thrown a significant lifeline with the announcement that nearly 2,000 semi-wild rhinos owned by South African rhino breeder John Hume will be “rewilded” into reserves across South Africa and other parts of the continent over the next 10 years.

3. Mexico supreme court decriminalizes abortion across country

Mexico’s supreme court has unanimously ruled that state laws prohibiting abortion are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights, in the latest in a series of victories for reproductive rights activists across Latin America.

Wednesday’s ruling came two years after the court ordered the northern state of Coahuila to remove sanctions for abortion from its criminal code, a decision which prompted a tortuous state-by-state process of legal battles. So far 12 of Mexico’s 31 states have decriminalized the procedure.

4. The first human organ created inside an animal opens the door to manufacturing ‘spare parts’ for people

It is a historic image. A team of researchers in China has successfully generated a blueprint of a human organ in another animal for the first time. The experiment, conducted with humanized kidneys in pig embryos, represents a step toward the still-distant dream of using other mammals as source of organs for transplants.

5. Study Shows a Single Dose of Psilocybin's Astonishing Impact on Depression and Could Change Medical Treatments of Mental Health Forever

Psychedelics are making a comeback, and this time, they're dressed in the respectable garb of clinical research. Recent studies have reignited interest in these substances, particularly psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, as a potent treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD).

6. Missing cat reunited with owner after it disappeared during Alaska flooding

Twenty-six days after he went missing, an adorable black and white cat named Leo has been reunited with his family. Brave Leo went missing after historic glacial flooding swept away his home and all his owner's belongings.

7. Dogs perform Mozart with orchestra in Denmark

A classical music festival in Copenhagen, Denmark, has opened with some canine additions to the orchestra.

---

That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation here:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Also don’t forget to reblog this post with your friends.

[andy-wm]

Did you hear about South Korea's latest Supreme Court ruling?

I did indeed! 🏳️‍🌈🥰🏳️‍⚧️🫰🏳️‍🌈🥰🏳️‍⚧️

For those that don't know...

Today the South Korean Supreme Court upheld a ruling that same-sex couples qualify for the same spousal benefits as heterosexual couples, from the national health insurer.

Heres a link to an article on the insta page for the organisers of Seoul's Pride Parade, Sustainable Movement for Diversity Daum or Daum_t4c

Go support them!! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

The fact that the national health insurer took it as far as they did makes me wonder what type of health they care about- certainly not mental health.

But this is a huge win!

A relationship between a same sex couple being validated at the highest level is a massive step forward for love and equality.

Let's hope a wave of positive change follows this landmark ruling!!!

❤️🩷🧡💛����💙

🩵💜🤎🖤🩶🤍

Edited because the link may not work, so heres the URL

https://www.instagram.com/p/C9jollNpJ5d/?igsh=bDZybG41NHRjMmg1

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

The Supreme Court just essentially legalized crime, as long as the President of the United States is the one doing it. This morning the six conservative justices released their decision stating that Trump, or any President, has "absolute immunity" from criminal prosecution for all "official acts" he took while in office. In Judge Sotomayor's dissent she explicitly says that as a result of this ruling "the president is now a king above the law."

This ruling is, in itself, a horrific blow to any semblance of democracy in the United States, and unfortunately it comes in the context of the court also seizing more power for itself, enabling more corporate power, and legalizing political bribery all within the last week. Sotamayor’s dissent goes on to reveal just how monumental and destructive this latest ruling is, “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”

[mswyrr]

I've seen people dismiss Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship as impossible. But this analysis has me reconsidering that:

"Many of the most vocal advocates for restricting citizenship to only those born to the children of lawful permanent residents hail from, or have some tie, there.

They make versions of the same argument: The historical record from the 1860s, when the 14th Amendment was enacted, suggests that birthright citizenship should only have been extended to the children of legal, permanent residents. The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the amendment limits it to only those with allegiance to the United States, they argue — a reading that they say would exclude undocumented immigrants. Though a 1898 Supreme Court ruling, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, is widely understood to find that nearly all U.S.-born children of immigrants are citizens under the 14th Amendment, it in fact only dealt with the children of permanent residents, the argument goes, and has been misinterpreted for more than a century."

And this legal podcast too:

Article here with the same core info for people who prefer text:

I think Trump et al are going to come for everything and see what they can take. A Blitzkreig strategy. Whether or not people stand against them and how effectively is a major question though:

[contemplatingoutlander]

This is a gift🎁link so anyone can read the entire NY Times article, even if they don' subscribe to the Times.

Jamelle Bouie does another excellent job of looking at current events through the perspective of American history. In this column, he compares the current Roberts Court with the infamous late 1850s/ early 1860s Taney Court--the Court that lost all credibility with its Dred Scott decision. Below are a few excerpts.

If the chief currency of the Supreme Court is its legitimacy as an institution, then you can say with confidence that its account is as close to empty as it has been for a very long time. Since the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization nearly two years ago, its general approval with the public has taken a plunge. [...] In the latest 538 average, just over 52 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court, and around 40 percent approved. [...] At the risk of sounding a little dramatic, you can draw a useful comparison between the Supreme Court’s current political position and the one it held on the eve of the 1860 presidential election. [color emphasis added]

[See more below the cut.]

NOTE: Remember that back in the 1850s/1860s the Democrats were the party that supported slavery. The Democrats and Republicans switched positions on civil rights in the late 20th century.

It was not just the ruling itself that drove the ferocious opposition to the [Taney] Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which overturned the Missouri Compromise and wrote Black Americans out of the national community; it was the political entanglement of the Taney court with the slaveholding interests of the antebellum Democratic Party. [...] Five of the justices were appointed by slave owners. At the time of the ruling, four of the justices were slave owners. And the chief justice, Roger Taney, was a strong Democratic partisan who was in close communication with James Buchanan, the incoming Democratic president, in the weeks before he issued the court’s ruling in 1857. Buchanan, in fact, had written to some of the justices urging them to issue a broad and comprehensive ruling that would settle the legal status of all Black Americans. The Supreme Court, critics of the ruling said, was not trying to faithfully interpret the Constitution as much as it was acting on behalf of the so-called Slave Power, an alleged conspiracy of interests determined to take slavery national. The court, wrote a committee of the New York State Assembly in its report on the Dred Scott decision, was determined to “bring slavery within our borders, against our will, with all its unhallowed, demoralizing and blighted influences.” The Supreme Court did not have the political legitimacy to issue a ruling as broad and potentially far-reaching as Dred Scott, and the result was to mobilize a large segment of the public against the court. Abraham Lincoln spoke for many in his first inaugural address when he took aim at the pretense of the Taney court to decide for the nation: “The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.” [color/ emphasis added]

[formatting edited]

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil Threatens to Block X in Escalating Clash With Musk

Brazil’s top judge issued an order on Wednesday to block Elon Musk’s X if the social media platform doesn’t appoint a legal representative in the country within 24 hours, escalating a clash between the billionaire and Latin America’s largest economy.

The decision came days after the platform formerly known as Twitter said it would close its operations in Brazil, while keeping the service available to its estimated 20 million active users in the country.

The supreme court published the ruling on its official X account Wednesday, in a reply to a post detailing X’s plan to pull out of Brazil. It’s the latest twist in a clash between the world’s richest man and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is spearheading efforts to combat fake news and hate speech in Brazil.

Brazil’s supreme court has issued a plethora of rulings suspending social media accounts since thousands of supporters of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro broke into major government buildings in early 2023. It ordered the suspension of prominent users, forced the removal of posts, and even cautioned to temporarily shut down entire platforms such as Telegram and X.

Continue reading.

[saywhat-politics]

A New York judge rejected Monday President-elect Trump's latest attempt to halt sentencing for his felony hush money case conviction.

Why it matters: Judge Juan Merchan has already indicated Trump will not face jail time when he is sentenced just 10 days before his inauguration. But the president-elect's legal team is still trying to walk back his historic conviction.

Merchan has repeatedly rejected Trump's attempts to toss his conviction based on presidential immunity claims, writing in a filing last week that the Supreme Court's ruling that presidents have immunity from prosecution for "official acts" does not apply to this case.

Driving the news: The court found that Trump's points are, for the most part "a repetition of the arguments he has raised numerous times in the past," Merchan wrote in a Monday filing.

The move effectively strikes down Trump's defense attorney's argument that sentencing should be paused pending the president-elect's appeal.