USA

Student loan forgiveness is 'good policy' and 'also good politics,' Rep. Pressley says

Aarthi Swaminathan

·Reporter

Mon, May 2, 2022,

President Joe Biden has said he's considering canceling some student loan debt for millions of Americans, and one lawmaker who played a key role in pushing him to consider debt forgiveness says that the move would make sense for several reasons.

"Democrats win when we deliver, and we have to deliver in ways that are impactful, tangible, and transformative, like canceling student debt," Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) said in a Yahoo Finance Presents interview (video above). "This is good policy, and it is also good politics."

Payments on federal student loans are currently paused through August 31, 2022. The pause was set to expire on May 1 after being enacted by former President Donald Trump amid the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 and extended multiple times by Biden.

Last week, President Biden said he was considering "some debt reduction" and would make a decision in "the next couple of weeks." Biden is reportedly weighing income caps on who receives loan forgiveness.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden campaigns for Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock at a rally ahead of runoff elections in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. January 4, 2021. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

'Next couple of weeks'

The president's change of heart on the issue is noteworthy.

Biden backed the forgiveness of $10,000 in student loan debt on the campaign trail in 2020. During his administration, prominent Democrats — including Pressley — have repeatedly urged a seemingly skeptical Biden to enact broad-based cancellation of up to $50,000 via executive action (as opposed to legislation passed by Congress).

On Thursday, he changed his tune.

"I am considering dealing with some debt reduction," Biden said during a press conference. "I am not considering $50,000 debt reduction. But I’m in the process of taking a hard look at whether or not there are going to — there will be additional debt forgiveness, and I’ll have an answer on that in the next couple of weeks."

The change of heart was welcome news for Pressley, as well as many advocates and student debtors who have been pushing for debt cancellation for years.

"I thank the President for heeding the cause of this broader movement and coalition, both to express an openness to canceling student debt at some level, and ... [for] the several pauses that we have been able to get during this pandemic," Pressley said.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., speaks during a news conference reintroducing a resolution calling on the President to take executive action to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for federal student loan borrowers in Washington on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. (Photo by Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

'This is about the president keeping his word'

Student loans were a big topic during the 2020 general election. A recent poll by Harvard found young Americans overwhelmingly favor some form of action by the federal government on student loans while only 38% favored total debt cancellation.

"At the end of the day, we want to uplift and alleviate the burden for as many people as possible," Pressley said. "And that is why we need broad based student debt cancellation. He has the authority, and I think he has a mandate from this electorate."

The basic argument for broad cancellation, as detailed by the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, is that the Education Secretary has the power “to cancel existing student loan debt under a distinct statutory authority — the authority to modify existing loans found in 20 U.S.C. § 1082(a)(4).” (Toby Merrill, who founded the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School and co-authored the legal analysis, currently works for the Education Department.)

Pressley also stressed that student debt is also a multi-generational issue since many borrowers include parents who took out Parent PLUS loans for their children.

"This is about being responsive to the multi-generational, multiracial coalition, which decisively elected him," she stressed. "This is about the president keeping his word."

—

Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.

Student loan forgiveness: New analysis highlights who cancellation would help most

Aarthi Swaminathan

·Reporter

Tue, May 3, 2022,

Student loan forgiveness would significantly help Black borrowers and reduce racial inequality, according to a new analysis by academics at UC Merced and Princeton University.

The analysis, prepared for and released by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), showed that canceling $10,000 in student debt would zero out loan balances for two million Black borrowers, reduce the share of Black individuals with student debt, and improve Black households' net worth.

"As this analysis clearly shows, cancelling student debt is a matter of racial justice and about providing relief to millions of hardworking people who invested in their education but are now drowning in debt," Warren said in a press release. "The more President Biden cancels, the more we narrow the racial wealth gap among borrowers and the bigger the boost to Americans' economic futures. This is the right thing to do."

Washington, D.C. On Saturday, May 7 at Howard University Upper Quandrangle University Campus, graduates celebrate, at the 148th Commencement Convocation. (Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Prominent Democrats, including Warren, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), have repeatedly called on Biden to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt immediately via executive order on the premise that there is sufficient legal backing for the administration to do so.

Pressley has stressed that women and people of color hold significant levels of student loan debt and that cancellation would represent a massively impactful form of relief given the disproportionate burden.

“Our new analyses show that every level of student debt cancellation will provide relief to millions of borrowers who have experienced financial distress from their student loans," stated Charlie Eaton, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California Merced and the study's primary author. "But bigger is better with higher levels of cancellation completely zeroing out debts for most of these borrowers, a disproportionate share of whom are Black and lack inherited household wealth."

Student loan forgiveness by the numbers

The analysis broke down the impact of debt cancellation of $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 and $50,000.

According to the academics, canceling $10,000 would erase the full balance of 32% of all borrowers:

• $10,000 zeroes out balances for 32% of borrowers (13 million in total)

• $20,000 zeroes out 50% of borrowers (20 million in total)

• $30,000 zeroes out 61% of borrowers (24 million in total)

• $40,000 zeroes out 71% of borrowers (28 million in total)

• $50,000 zeroes out 76% of borrowers (30 million in total)

That breakdown was similar to a previous analysis of student loan data.

The $10,000 forgiveness level "reduces the share of Black individuals with student debt from 24% to 17% and closes the Black-white gap in the share of individuals with student debt from 9 percentage points to 6 percentage points," the analysis stated.

The research noted that about 66% of Black borrowers owe more than they originally borrowed 12 years are they started school, compared to 37% Latinx borrowers and 30% of white borrowers.

(Source: Charlie Eaton, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California Merced, et. al)

The study found that:

• $10,000 zeroes out 14% of borrowers who owe more after 12 years.

• $20,000 zeroes out 32% of borrowers who owe more after 12 years.

• $30,000 zeroes out 46% of borrowers who owe more after 12 years.

• $50,000 zeroes out 67% of borrowers who owe more after 12 years.

For borrowers in distress, $10,000 cancellation would zero out five million borrowers' balances — around 45% of the total number of debtors who are in default.

(Source: Charlie Eaton, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California Merced, et. al)

'The more debt we cancel, the more people we will help'

Warren's press release quoted NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson as saying that amid rising inflation, "the more debt we cancel, the more people we will help."

President Biden, who backed broad student loan forgiveness of $10,000 on the campaign trail in 2020 amid more generous proposals from then-rivals Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Warren, had heretofore been reluctant to forgive debt through executive action.

Recently, however, Biden said he was "considering dealing with some debt reduction." Bloomberg reported that he was considering canceling "at least $10,000" per borrower, and the president is also reportedly considering introducing income caps to limit the benefit to certain borrowers.

—

Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.

Snarled-up ports point to worsening global supply chain woes - report

Marc Jones
Tue, May 3, 2022

* Major ports in China, U.S. and Europe facing long delays

* Shipping fuel cost up 66% in refuelling hub Singapore over last year

* Russia-Ukraine war risks pushing up ship insurance costs


LONDON, May 3 (Reuters) - Global supply chain problems look to set to worsen, a new report published on Tuesday said, as China's COVID-19 lockdowns, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and other strains cause even longer delays at ports and drive up costs.

The study by analysts at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) found that one-fifth of the global container ship fleet was currently stuck in congestion at various major ports.

In China, ships awaiting berth at the Port of Shanghai now tally 344, a 34% increase over the past month, while shipping something from a warehouse in China to one in the United States currently takes 74 days longer than usual.

In Europe too, ships from China are showing up an average of four days late, causing a number of knock-on effects, including a shortage of empty containers to take European-made goods to the U.S. east coast.

"Global port congestion is worsening and becoming increasingly widespread," RBC's Head of Digital Intelligence Strategy, Michael Tran, and colleague, Jack Evans, said in the report, acknowledging it was hard to say when things would improve.

Ships and containers must both be available at the right time and place to prevent cancelled bookings. Any mismatch results in ships running below full capacity, hence, more are then required to move the same amount of freight.

RBC said the plethora of problems was having a "domino-like negative compounding effect across various markets".

SHIP DELAYS

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February and the sinking of several ships in the Black Sea meant insurers had hiked premiums to between 1% and 5% of the value of the ship compared to pre-war levels of 0.25%.

Marine fuel prices in Singapore, the world’s largest refuelling port, meanwhile, have jumped 66% over the past year.

"Many market participants thought that supply chains would be untangled by now, but this scenario has failed to materialize," the report said.

Though vessel delays have improved fractionally over the last couple of months, the average global delay of a ship's arrival was still 7.26 days in March, a figure that rarely tops 4.5 days in normal times, RBC noted.

On the U.S. West Coast, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach continue to struggle to keep up.

A queue of 19 vessels in Los Angeles and port level inefficiencies have seen Time of Turnaround (ToT) jump to 6.9 days from 5 days a month ago, although it is still down from the peak of 8.7 days during last year's pre-Christmas rush.

In Europe, what Russia calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine has meant several major shipping lines have suspended transport into the Baltic and Black Seas.

Several key European countries have also banned Russian-flagged vessels from their ports. This has re-routed flow and is pushing increased container ship activity into European ports.

The aggregate ToT for the three largest European container ports, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg, are 8%, 30% and 21% respectively above their five-year normal levels.

"Significant compression of ToT times are required before we can confidently suggest a path toward normalizing shipping costs," RBC's analysts said. "The problem? Things are getting worse".

(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Op-Ed: How heat pumps can help save Ukrainians from Putin and the rest of us from climate change

Jacques Leslie
Tue, May 3, 2022,

The Yamal-Europe pipeline carries gas from Russia to Germany and Poland through Belarus. To cut European dependence on Russian oil, provide it with U.S.-made heat pumps.

(Sergei Grits / Associated Press)

Heat pumps aren’t usually considered war-fighting materiel, but these heating-and-cooling appliances could be almost as crucial to the defense of Ukraine as antitank and antiaircraft missiles.

Heat pumps are basically air conditioners that can also run in reverse; they can heat or cool a house. As heaters, they are three to four times more energy efficient than conventional furnaces (essentially because they move hot air around rather than generating it). And because they are powered by electricity, not fossil fuels, they offer a cost-effective path toward decarbonization. Commercial and residential buildings account for 13% of U.S. and 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions; eliminating heating and cooling emissions is an essential step toward tempering climate change’s accelerating ferocity.

At the beginning of the Ukraine war, author and climate activist Bill McKibben wrote a Substack column calling on the U.S. government to launch a massive program to manufacture millions of heat pumps and send them to Europe, as a way of countering both the European Union’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels and the global climate crisis. The Biden administration is reportedly seriously considering the idea, the International Energy Agency included it in a 10-point plan to reduce the EU’s Russian fuel consumption, and more than 200 U.S. environmental groups, along with five U.S. senators, endorsed it.

The idea makes sense because replacing gas furnaces and conventional air conditioners with heat pumps is a no-brainer. My family’s new home, now under construction in Vermont, will include three heat pumps — a large one for the main house and two smaller ones for an exterior studio and a residential unit above the garage — along with solar panels and strong insulation. Including installation, the three pumps will cost roughly $25,000 — about a third more than conventional heating — but we figure our energy bills will be so low that within about seven years the system will pay for itself, and air conditioning will be a bonus.

McKibben is calling on President Biden to invoke the Defense Production Act to spur U.S. manufacturers to make heat pumps, then provide them at or below cost to the European Union, just as the U.S. government provided food, fuel and weapons to Europeans under the pre-World War II Lend-Lease Act. Rewiring America, a pro-electrification nonprofit, soon added another element: Set in motion a Peace Corps-like program to train Americans in heat pump installation (which requires knowledgeable technicians) and send them to Europe to install the units there.

Summing up the potential impact of this plan is easy: win-win-win-win.

Win 1. Heat pumps would help end Europe’s indirect support for Vladimir Putin’s war machine. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2021 the EU relied on Russia for nearly 40% of its total natural gas consumption. From the beginning of the war until early April, the EU paid 35 billion euros into Putin’s coffers for energy and gave Ukraine 1 billion euros for its defense, according to Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat.

The IEA estimates that a suite of decarbonization measures including heat pumps could result in a reduction of EU demand for Russian gas by more than a third within a year, with lasting emissions benefits for generations.

Win 2. The U.S. economy would benefit. Given enough incentives, manufacturers of climate-unfriendly gas boilers⁠ and air conditioners could easily transition to making heat pumps, according to Leah Stokes, a UC Santa Barbara decarbonization expert. (It doesn’t hurt the plan’s political attractiveness that many of these manufacturers are based in swing states.) And installers who are trained and sent to Europe could, when they return, jump-start the process here too.

Win 3. As heat pumps proliferate, Americans’ health would improve correspondingly. Unvented gas heaters and gas stoves emit harmful pollutants including nitrogen dioxide, a toxic gas that even in low concentrations increases the risk of respiratory infections, particularly in young children. A 2013 meta-analysis of 41 international studies found that children in homes with gas stoves have a 42% increased risk of asthma. A 2020 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine advocated a ban on sales of new gas appliances and new residential and commercial gas hookups.

Win 4. Finally, soaring heat pump production and sales here could mean that the U.S. is finally getting serious about combating climate change’s dire threat. While it’s true that in the next few years some of the electricity to power heat pumps would come from fossil fuels — about 40% of California’s electricity, for example, still comes from nonrenewable sources — concerted decarbonization campaigns would hasten a shift to renewable sources such as wind and solar. Part of that effort includes banning or discouraging gas hookups in new buildings (more than 50 California cities or counties have already enacted such policies) and incentivizing the installation of heat pumps that could begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions immediately.

The Ukraine war and the climate crisis are inextricably intertwined: The oil and gas industry, which generated 60% of Russia’s export earnings before sanctions, finances its war machine and also fuels the climate crisis. Let President Biden know: A national push for heat pumps offers the U.S. a welcome chance to take righteous action on a scale big enough to reduce both threats at once.

Jacques Leslie is a contributing writer to Opinion.

Jill Biden's Pre-Met Gala Speech Today Marked Another First Lady Honor That Passed Melania Trump 

By Kristyn Burtt

Mon, May 2, 2022



When First Lady Dr. Jill Biden opened the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s latest exhibition, it was clear that the ongoing snub of former First Lady Melania Trump was still in full effect. The current exhibit, “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” is curated by Vogue‘s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and Jill Biden speaking hours before Wintour’s biggest event of the year — the Met Gala — was an honor also enjoyed by Michelle Obama in 2014 when she was the first lady. This was not the type of engagement extended to Melania while she was in the White House, however, because her relationship with the magazine was known to be quite frosty.

In addition to not inviting Melania to speak before the Met Gala, Vogue has a Melania-shaped hole in one other notable area. The publication’s “First Ladies in Vogue” feature glaringly omits Melania because she never posed for the magazine while husband Donald Trump was in office — but it didn’t have to turn out that way. According to longtime Vogue staffer and former friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff in her tell-all book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady, Melania was offered a feature interview, but there was no “guarantee that Melania would appear on the cover,” she wrote. That may sound unfair to Trump fans, but not every First Lady was given the cover of the magazine.

“For the record, not all First Ladies are put on the cover of Vogue. Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, yes. Laura and Barbara Bush, no,” Winston Wolkoff added. “Melania wasn’t going to do anything for Vogue or any other magazine if she wasn’t going to be on the cover. ‘Give me a break!’ she texted. ‘Forget it.’” That’s exactly why we don’t see Melania in the First Lady photo archives in Vogue.

It’s evident that she was also skipped for the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition opening that Jill did on Monday, May 2 and that Michelle attended in 2014. These omissions may seem small, but they speak volumes about the tumultuous Trump era — places where we often see the First Ladies, like Vogue and Sesame Street, were not a part of Melania’s time in Washington, D.C. In the end, it was Wintour’s decision to make, despite the criticism from Trump supporters. “You have to stand up for what you believe in,” she told CNN in 2019. “And you have to take a point of view.”

Democrat upsets candidate who made controversial rape comments in bid for Michigan House


Clara Hendrickson and Arpan Lobo, Detroit Free Press
Wed, May 4, 2022

In an upset win Tuesday, Democrat Carol Glanville defeated Republican Robert “RJ” Regan in a special election for a Michigan House seat that had only ever been held by a Republican.

Results remain unofficial, but with all precincts in the district reporting, Glanville led Regan by more than 1,500 votes as of 10:30 p.m. She topped 51% of the total votes cast; Regan garnered 40% and 7.9% went to write-ins.

The district was one of four House districts with special elections to fill vacant seats on Tuesday. A number of municipalities also had local proposals on the ballot.

See local elections results here

Regan made national headlines in March for suggesting rape victims "lie back and enjoy it," after he promoted conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and shared antisemitic rhetoric. He was favored to win in the heavily Republican district.

Glanville is a Walker city commissioner who previously worked as a teacher and administrator, according to her campaign website. On the website, three campaign priorities are listed: education, good-paying jobs and the environment.

"West Michigan values of integrity, decency, and care for the common good won tonight," Glanville tweeted. "The people of the 74th District have spoken, and I hear you. We are united in fundamental ways, and I will take our values and concerns to the Capitol to affect positive change. Thank you!"

She will represent the current 74th District in Kent County. The district encompasses suburban communities outside of Grand Rapids, including Grandville, Rockford, Walker and surrounding municipalities. The district was left vacant when former state Rep. Mark Huizenga, R-Walker, won a special state Senate election last year.

Glanville’s term will expire on Dec. 31, along with the district, as new district maps go into effect. Glanville has filed to run in the new 84th House District this fall. Regan has also filed to run in the same district.

The current 74th District had only ever been represented by a Republican — Huizenga first was elected to office in 2016. In 2020, he defeated Democrat Meagan Hintz by 24 points, earning a third term in the heavily Republican district.

Before Huizenga, former Rep. Rob VerHeulen and current Kent County GOP chair represented the district from 2012 to 2016.

Regan’s comments in March drew condemnation from Michigan Republican Party Chair Ron Weiser, although Weiser did not call on Regan to withdraw from the race.

Robert "RJ" Regan

"Mr. Regan’s history of foolish, egregious and offensive comments, including his most recent one are simply beyond the pale," Weiser said in a March statement following Regan's primary win.

More: Michigan GOP doesn't disavow candidate who suggested rape victims 'lie back and enjoy it'

Special elections for vacant House seats also took place in Wayne, Macomb and Oakland counties on Tuesday. Those elected will serve in the state Legislature until Dec. 31. The elections were held using the older, GOP-drawn districts based on the 2010 census.

Entering Tuesday, Republicans held 55 seats while Democrats held 51 seats in the state House. The upcoming August primary and November general state House elections will be held using new voting districts drawn by a citizen-led, independent redistricting commission.

The state House map drawn by the new commission still gives Republicans an advantage, but nowhere near the same extent as the map currently in place, according to partisan fairness measures used by the commission.

More: Michigan Supreme Court tosses partisan fairness lawsuit challenging state House map
43rd House District

In the 43rd House District, Republican Mike Harris defeated Democrat Kent Douglas by 13 percentage points, with 100% of precincts reporting around 9:40 p.m.

The Oakland County district won by Harris includes Independence Township, Lake Angelus, Clarkston and part of Waterford. The seat was held by former state Rep. Andrea Schroeder, R-Independence Township, who died after battling a rare form of stomach cancer.

Harris retired last year from the Waterford Township Police Department after 25 years, according to The Oakland Press.

"My family was blessed to be in a community that loved its first responders," Harris states on his campaign website. "The care and outreach from the area citizens only pushed me to be a better officer and person. This community has made me realize that even after a rewarding law enforcement career, I am not done serving."

Harris won a four-way Republican primary in March, getting 48% of the vote compared to the next-closest candidate's 31%.

Election results for the 15th District and 36th District races in Wayne and Macomb counties, respectively, were not available as of 10:15 p.m. In the 15th, Democrat Jeffrey Pepper was running against Republican Ginger Shearer. In the 36th, Democrat James Diaz was facing Republican Terence Mekoski.

Clara Hendrickson fact-checks Michigan issues and politics as a corps member with Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support her work at bit.ly/freepRFA. Contact her at chendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743. Follow her on Twitter @clarajanehen.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Carol Glanville upsets Robert Regan in bid for Michigan House

Clip resurfaces of Donald Trump saying women who get abortions should face 'some form of punishment'



Hannah Getahun
Mon, May 2, 2022

A 2016 clip resurfaced of then-candidate Donald Trump being interviewed in an MSNBC town hall.

When questioned about his pro-life stance, Trump said women should face "punishment" for having abortions.

A leaked draft opinion on Monday suggested that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade.

A 2016 clip of Donald Trump saying that "some form of punishment" should befall women who choose to get an abortion has resurfaced after a draft opinion hinting at the overturning of the landmark abortion ruling Roe v. Wade was leaked and published by Politico.

Insider has not independently verified or obtained the apparent draft.

Chris Matthews, then with MSNBC, pressed then-candidate Trump on his position on abortions during a March 2016 Town Hall and asked if there should be punishments for undergoing the procedure.

"The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment."

"For the woman?" Matthews asks.

"Yeah, there has to be some form," Trump continued.

Trump also said that, under the law, said punishments should not apply to the person who got the woman pregnant.

Matthews also asked Trump what would happen if he banned abortions. Trump replied: "You'll go back to a position like they had, where people will perhaps go to illegal places. Yeah, but you have to ban it."

Roe v. Wade granted the constitutional right to obtain an abortion in 1973.

Opinion | Alito’s Case for Overturning Roe is Weak for a Reason


Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Aziz Huq
Tue, May 3, 2022

If the draft majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito disclosed by POLITICO Monday night is any guide, the constitutional right to abortion has only a few days or weeks left to go. The most conservative majority of the Supreme Court that was, already a decade ago, arguably the “most conservative in modern history” has singled out Roe for excoriation and oblivion. But what marked out Roe to this fate, and not many other decisions? It is not the reasons provided in the draft Alito opinion: The explanation for Roe’s demise is to be found not in law, per se, but in the court’s entanglement in our pernicious moment of partisan hyperpolarization and the Republican Party’s inextricable link to anti-abortion politics.

Chief Justice John Roberts has acknowledged the document is authentic, and its style certainly suggests it is indeed by Alito. So, how does his rationale for overturning Roe stack up as a justification for a large, and likely convulsive, change in American society? The reasons flagged by the draft opinion fall painfully short. In fact, their profound weakness highlights precisely why Roe and abortion rights have been singled out. Go down the list of contentious legal questions, and it quickly becomes clear that conservatives do not follow Alito’s approach anywhere else besides Roe.

For instance, the draft majority opinion spills a good deal of ink on the history of abortion regulation in England and the United States (skimming over, as it does it, the considerable periods in which abortion was left to the free choice of women). But precisely this kind of appeal to a history of close regulation can be made in respect to the Second Amendment right to bear arms. As the legal scholars Reva Siegel and Joseph Blocher documented in extensive detail, there is a “centuries” old tradition of common law rules regulating weapons, especially when they are carried into the public sphere. This has not stopped the conservative justices from creating a novel individual right to bear arms and extending that right against both the federal and the state governments.

Next, the Alito opinion spends a good deal of energy shellacking the reasoning of Justice Harry Blackmun’s 1972 opinion in Roe v. Wade. The opinion, says Alito, is “hard to defend” and “egregiously wrong.” But by the very standards that Alito himself brings to bear, there are many opinions that are so “egregiously wrong” that they should be chucked out. And yet they awake nary a peek from our most conservative of courts.


To see this, it is helpful to see why Alito says Roe is wrong. The core of Alito’s argument is the idea that the Roe Court defined the “liberty” protected by the 14th Amendment at too high, and too abstract, a level of generality. It is, in other words, unanchored from the text of the Constitution. But let’s say we took seriously the idea that the court should avoid readings of the Constitution pitched at too high a level of generality, and not anchored in the text of the Constitution. What else would have to go?


The first thing to go would be the Roberts Court’s rulings on the so-called removal power of the president to oust agency heads, which has been used to attack the regulatory state. Next to go would be the court’s rulings that an ambient, unwritten principle of “state sovereign immunity” precludes all sorts of damages claims against the federal government. This despite the fact no such principle is mentioned in the Constitution. Ironically, Alito himself authored one such opinion almost exactly a decade ago. And third, consider all of the court’s campaign finance opinions: They interpret the word “speech” in the First Amendment at a highly abstract level to sweep in not just speaking but spending — a sleight of hand that would have seemed absurd in 1791.

Is the Supreme Court about to throw out its campaign finance jurisprudence, its special solicitude for the government’s purse, or raw presidential power? Don’t get your hopes up.

There’s more, but it’s embarrassing in its meagerness. Abortion, Alito says by way of example, is just different from other fundamental rights — including the right to marry and the right against involuntary sterilization — because it raises a “critical moral question.” The suggestion here is that miscegenation laws and state eugenics programs raise no “critical” moral issue. This is worse than absurd; it’s morally obscene.

The reasons Alito himself gives, in short, for singling out Roe cannot explain the decision to overrule that case. All apply equally to opinions that Alito and colleagues have embraced and enforced with vigor.

So what then is going on? The answer is embarrassingly clear. When Alito cautions against the injection of the justices’ own “ardent views” into the law, he skips over a fateful step. The problem with Roe and the draft Dobbs opinion alike is not that they are tainted with the tincture of the justices’ own views. Of course they are: Just notice Alito’s loaded pejorative talk of “abortionists” if you were doubtful on this score.

No, the problem is that the sole explanation for the disparate anger and disdain targeted at Roe is that that right to abortion has been the ardent target of key factions within the Republican Party for years. And the untimely death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg allowed former President Donald Trump to deploy judicial appointments to deliver Roe’s execution notice in late 2020. When Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed this out at oral argument in Dobbs, she was only stating what every single participant in the confirmation battles of the last several years well understood, and only the willfully blind could deny.

Indeed, what is striking about the modern Supreme Court is not so much that its members have “ardent views” but that those views reflect the immediate priorities of the Republican Party. Abortion, of course, is central to key religious elements of the Republican coalition, and thus an election issue of singular importance. But to make my point, a non-abortion example may be helpful: Until the Obama presidency, there was broad agreement among both liberal and conservative justices over the idea that courts should generally give federal regulatory agencies a great deal of leeway. But in 2016, the Republican National Committee included in its platform item an attack on such deference. In short order, the legal historian Craig Green has demonstrated, the attack was taken up by conservative think tanks, and then by conservative justices. On this issue, as on abortion, the arguments professed as law have nakedly partisan origins.

The tight linkage between the Republican Party and the conservative faction of the Court is not distinctive to these issues. But it is without precedent in recent American history. Political elites have long sought to appoint fellow travelers to the bench. But the present moment is fundamentally different because of the extraordinary combination of once-in-a-century partisan polarization with the unprecedented growth of an ecosystem of Republican interest groups and academics that have the justices’ ear.

Ironically, one of the reasons that Alito gives for killing Roe is that it had “damaging consequences.” Although the reader is left to guess what Alito thinks he’s talking about here, the very same can and will be said of this Dobbs opinion: It will serve as a proof text that this is no longer the Roberts Court; it serves quite another master.

'Stench' at the Supreme Court: Politically motivated leak over abortion shatters innocence

Jonathan Turley

Tue, May 3, 2022, 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor surprised many court watchers in December during the oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization when she complained about the "stench" of politics pervading the case over abortion rights.

The stench became overwhelming Monday night when Politico published a leaked copy of a working draft of the majority opinion in Dobbs. Chief Justice John Roberts verified the draft's authenticity Tuesday and launched an investigation.

The leak was a despicable act that shocked even the most cynical in Washington.

The draft opinion, if left unchanged, would sweep away Roe v. Wade and decades of precedent.

The author, Justice Samuel Alito, declares, "We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives."

This draft and the alignment of justices can change. What will not change is that stench. The court has lost a type of institutional innocence in maintaining confidentiality through decades of hard-fought and heated legal disputes.

Court was island of confidentiality

Even in a city that floats on a rolling sea of leaks, the Supreme Court has long been an island of integrity and confidentiality. It was an inviolate rule that members and clerks do not leak either the deliberations or decisions of the court.

Indeed, for those of us who have covered and written about the court for decades, we never thought this day would come.

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The U.S Supreme Court building is seen at dusk in Washington on Oct. 22, 2021.

This was clearly a politically calculated act by someone who was willing to abandon every ethical and professional principle for a political cause. There is no obvious reason to leak other than to unleash outside pressure on the court and to try to push Congress to pass the Women's Health Protection Act to codify Roe v. Wade.

If that was the purpose, it seems quickly realized as figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., used the leak to call for not just the passage of the federal law but for killing the filibuster as well: "Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW. And if there aren't 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not, we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes."

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It is doubtful the leaker expected to coerce a change in votes on the court. It is certainly true that a tentative opinion can change dramatically over the countless drafts sent between chambers. It is common for majority opinions to become dissents or to fracture in a plurality decision as justices work through the issues.

However, this leak makes such second thoughts less likely, not more.

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According to Politico's reporting, Alito was initially joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Any change in the vote would now leave the impression that the court could be manipulated through outside pressure. Indeed, if Roberts was on the fence, this leak, if anything, might push him back toward the right of the court.

Faced with such a raw political act, justices are more likely to dig in than abandon their initial votes.

Political motivations make leak worse

This leak was a move directed at Congress and the midterm elections. In some ways, that makes it even worse.

Politics is the forbidden fruit of judicial ethics. Yet it is a temptation that has been resisted through the years despite the Supreme Court being located across the street from Congress in the middle of a city where politics is the primary industry.

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Abortion protest at the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 1, 2021.

Sotomayor's complaint of the "stench" of politics in December was viewed by some of us as a departure from the decorum of the court. She was referring to how the three new members were widely viewed as having been nominated to reverse Roe and other cases by sheer force of numbers. It was itself the injection of politics into the deliberations.

Before the argument, Sotomayor shocked many in calling upon students to campaign against abortion laws in anticipation of pending abortion cases before the court. She declared in October, "You know, I can't change Texas’ law, but you can and everyone else who may or may not like it can go out there and be lobbying forces in changing laws that you don’t like."

It now appears that someone with access to internal deliberations of the court decided to find a way to be an instrument of change in a way that will leave a stench for many years to come. Few of us believe that any of the justices would countenance such an unethical act. The investigation instead will focus on the judicial clerks and staff of the court – an investigation that will shatter the court's collegial and sheltered culture.

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One thing is now certain. The court will never be the same. There is a loss of innocence in all of this, a realization that the court is no longer immune from politics.

It is a moment like the one described by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer at the realization of the atomic bomb: "In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, (we) have known sin; and this is a knowledge which (we) cannot lose."

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @JonathanTurley

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Abortion leak hits Supreme Court with overwhelming political stench