07/01/24

Good morning! It’s Monday, July 1st.

International Joke Day.

My dream day!

Hey, why was Cinderella so bad at soccer?

(I’ll tell ya at the end.)

And now, the news.

Chevron

-via AP News, Oyez, Vox, and Jacobin

Let’s start with news that was news on Friday, but it’s very important and still needs to be talked about.

As you may, or may not, have heard, on Friday the Supreme Court overturned a forty-year-old decision known as Chevron.

The original Supreme Court case’s full name is Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council and the 1984 case asked: Does the Clean Air Act permit the EPA to define the term "stationary source" to mean whole industrial plants only and ended with a ruling saying judges should defer to the executive branch when Congress passes ambiguous laws.

And so for the last forty years, courts deferred to federal agencies, like the EPA, when it came to policymaking.

Makes sense – the EPA is made up of people who have spent their entire adult lives studying what can be in the water and what’s be, and courts are made up of Historic Badman Justice Thomas and Justice Aleako.

…I trust the EPA when it comes to my water.

To try and explain how important this case is, Vox compared the importance of Chevron for federal administrative law to how important Brown v Board of Education is to the development of the law of racial equality.

Cut to last year, when the Court agreed to hear a case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. In it, fishers sued over federal rules that required them to pay for independent observers to monitor their catch. Have you seen Coda (if you haven’t seen Coda – watch Coda!)? Part of the storyline in Coda is the family dealing with them having observers on their boats. That’s what we’re they were suing over.

But by the time it got to the Supreme Court, the case didn’t ask if the observers could go away. Instead, the case specifically asked to overturn Chevron.

And on Friday, on a 6-3 decision, the court which has insurrection flag-flying justices and justices that leak decisions to rich donors and fly on private jets with other donors… overturned Chevron.

I used the EPA as an example, and even if it were just the EPA, this ruling would be awful.

But it’s not just the EPA.

Student loan forgiveness. Overtime pay. Workplace safe standards. Tailpipe emissions. Food safety. Guns. Cigarettes. The internet. These are just five examples of the way that federal rules touch nearly every single thing in our lives. These are now all things that can be now taken to the court and overturned without any actual consultations from experts. Well, I mean I’m sure experts will be heard in the cases, but let’s draw a map…

In 2010, billionaire Harlan Crow bankrolled a dark money group led by Historical Badman Justice Thomas’ wife, Ginster that paid her $120,000. Leonard Leo, another billionaire, was on the group’s board of directors.

Two years later, Leonard Leo’s money began making undisclosed consulting payments to Ginster. That same network has funded several Republican politicians and nonprofits that were looking for a case that would overturn Chevron.

While that was going on, Harlan Crow was treating the Thomas’ to fancy trips for decades. Neither the trips, nor the fact that Crow bought Thomas’ mom’s house, letting her live there for free. Crow also paid for Thomas’ grandnephew’s boarding school.

All undisclosed. All while Crow was using Leonard Leo’s network to overturn Chevron.

Remember that I said a 6-3 decision. That’s nine justices! You will be shocked, I’m sure, to hear that Thomas did not recuse himself.

And now Chevron has been overturned, shifting governmental power away from the Executive and Legislation branches and giving more weight to the Judicial.

The purpose of this show is never to make things scary. But I also think anyone who isn’t being wildly clear about how dangerous this decision is doing a disservice. Because we need to know what we’re up against, so that we know exactly how to form the best possible gameplan.

We have a terrible, terrible court.

We got this court through a few different avenues, including low voter turnout that gave us horrors like Donald Trump and, hundreds of years ago, Mitch McConnell.

Let’s not make that mistake again.

And speaking of gameplans… today is the last day it’s in session. Which means we are finally going to get the presidential immunity ruling.

When it comes down remember that it’s July. We have so much work to do.

But we always have.

We have a terrible, terrible court.

We got this court through a few different avenues, including low voter turnout that gave us horrors like Donald Trump and, hundreds of years ago, Mitch McConnell.

Let’s not make that mistake again.

 And that’s it. That’s the news.

I mean, that’s not all of the news but sometimes some stories are so important, that we just do the one because we need to stay focused.