The U.S. Senate Might Be About to Kill 

Biden's Clean Energy Plans

Alejandro de la Garza

Thu, June 30, 2022 

Deepwater Wind installing the first offshore wind farm at Block Island, Rhode Island, August 14, 2016. Credit - Mark Harrington/Newsday RM—Getty Images

You might not expect to see fireworks in congressional debates over offshore energy worker regulations. But in a little-noticed March meeting of the House transportation and infrastructure committee, things got heated between Rep. Garret Graves (R., La.) and Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D., Mass.) as they argued over an amendment to the 2022 Coast Guard reauthorization bill that would ban foreign flagged ships with multinational crews from working off the U.S. coast. The back-and-forth ended on a sour note. “If my friend wants to keep hiring Russians, that’s fine,” Graves said.

“If my friend from Louisiana wants to thwart the clean energy industry in the United States,” Auchincloss responded, “then that’s fine.”

Committee chairman Peter DeFasio (D., Ore.) stepped in to note his support for the amendment and it ultimately passed. While not yet enacted—the bill will likely come up before the Senate commerce committee in the next month—wind energy proponents are worried. American Clean Power, a renewables industry group, said the new provision would “cripple” the offshore wind industry and stymie President Joe Biden’s efforts to build 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. (Unlike Europe and Asia, the United States has almost no offshore wind power at present, and even Biden’s aspirations lag far behind the ambitions of other countries.)

The crux of the debate comes down to certain kinds of highly specialized ships needed to perform mega-construction tasks like erecting huge turbine components and laying miles of underwater cables, which will be needed as offshore construction on the U.S.’s few approved ocean wind projects actually gets underway. The provision would mandate that only U.S. ships with American crews be allowed to work on offshore energy projects, including those big lift jobs, or, if foreign ships are used, they must be crewed either by Americans, or by sailors and workers that match the vessel’s flag of origin: for example, a ship flying the Norwegian flag should be crewed only by Norwegians.

There’s American boats to do a lot of the smaller supporting tasks around that construction, and the bill’s proponents say there’s a big problem of foreign boats with low paid workers taking American jobs. Of the few ships designed to do the specialized heavy lift work, most are registered in different countries than where the crew is from because of financial or regulatory expediency. Lower foreign wages give those ships an unfair advantage, say supporters of the new provision, effectively thwarting the U.S. shipbuilding industry from getting financing to roll out ships capable of building offshore wind turbines. “If the law continues to allow foreign entities to enjoy cost advantages we don’t have, and an unlevel playing field, we simply cannot compete with them,” says Aaron Smith, president of the Offshore Marine Service Association, an industry group that advised on the provision in the Coast Guard bill.

But that situation is also why the bill could mean big problems for offshore wind projects planned up and down the East coast: the U.S. simply doesn’t have many of those types of specialized ships, and the U.S. offshore wind market is so small that even blocking foreign ships from coming still might not make a good enough financial case to get American versions built.

“Every wind turbine installation vessel that is not able to come to the United States because of this provision would eliminate 1,460 megawatts of offshore wind from being installed a year, which would be 4.9 million tons of carbon dioxide,” says Claire Richer, federal affairs director at American Clean Power. Instead, she suggests subsidies to build U.S. offshore wind vessels, rather than mandates that block ships from working here.

In theory, foreign ships could switch their registrations and crews to comply with the law, though that could be difficult since some highly specialized personnel can’t be easily swapped out. Of some essential ships, like the nine worldwide designed to place wind turbine foundations on the seafloor, every single vessel is registered in countries like the Bahamas where the entire crew is permitted to be from somewhere else. And the harsh reality is that there’s so much offshore wind work to be done around the world that the owners of the ships are likely not to bother with the hassle, and just stick to construction jobs in Asia and Europe, leaving the fledgling U.S. offshore wind industry high and dry. And even if protectionism eventually helps build up a domestic offshore construction fleet, some in the offshore wind industry say that the result, free from international competition, would be inferior to the ships building wind power in Europe or Asia, meaning a slower offshore wind rollout.

The whole issue points to an uncomfortable opposition in the green energy transition: we need to decarbonize the economy as fast as possible to avert the worst effects of climate change, but the quickest and most efficient way of doing so sometimes means dropping politically popular protectionism in favor of free trade. The balance between efficiency and protectionism has been long established—things get cheaper when you open the doors to the foreign market, and some domestic industry suffers—and for decades the balance of U.S. policy was weighted firmly toward globalism. Then, around the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s campaign invoked the evils of the North American Free Trade Agreement (“The worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere.”) so many times as to make the position politically radioactive.

There’s lots of good reasons to prioritize U.S. green industry—and there’s an argument to be made that sometimes a bit of protectionism is necessary to get the ball rolling. But there are also trade-offs to blocking foreign competition. Usually, it means higher prices: more expensive steel and socks. In the case of offshore wind, it could mean even more delay in developing a desperately-needed source of green power as we wait for our own industry to catch up—assuming it ever really does. There’s a lot of jobs around offshore wind, and only some of them involve manning the ships that come by for a few months to drop components in the water. If the price of those additional American crews means tipping the climate balance even further in the wrong direction, our leaders should think carefully about if it’s really worth it for the rest of us.

Jon Stewart: Supreme Court is ‘the Fox News of justice’

Natalie Prieb
Fri, July 1, 2022

Comedian Jon Stewart blasted the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on his podcast Thursday, arguing that the ruling was based in ideology rather than constitutional reasoning.

“In my mind, the idea that this was based in any kind of reasoned debate or philosophical education — the Supreme Court is now the Fox News of justice in my mind,” Stewart said on an episode of “The Problem with Jon Stewart.”

“It is a cynical pursuit in the same way that Fox News would come out with ‘we’re fair and balanced’ under the patina of what would be a high-status pursuit to the betterment of society, journalism. They are a cynical political arm,” the comedian argued.

Stewart went on to criticize the process by which justices are confirmed, which involves nominees going through rounds of televised questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — who all voted to overturn Roe — have been criticized for dodging questions about the landmark 1973 decision or saying they regarded it as an important precedent during the confirmation process.

“When you look at the ridiculous kabuki theater now of justice confirmation, where they can just go out there and just f—— lie, like if this were about debate, then they would’ve understood what perjury meant,” the former “Daily Show” host argued.

“But they are now the Fox News of justice. I mean, there is no consistency. States can’t regulate guns, but they can regulate [uteruses], you know?”

Stewart continued by referencing the Martin Luther King Jr. quote, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“I think the thing that struck me was, you know, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ Right? And I think we’re all sort of steeped in that ethos. What you don’t realize is there is a goodly amount of individuals who are trying to bend it back.”

Stewart’s comments come amid a strong backlash from Democrats and abortion rights advocates following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, with recent polling showing that a majority of Americans are concerned the ruling will be used to overturn other rights.

Atlantic City Casino Workers Seal 

Labor Pacts With MGM, Caesars

Shivani Kumaresan

Fri, July 1, 2022 

• The Atlantic City, New Jersey, casino workers union has reached an agreement with MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) and Caesars Entertainment Inc (NASDAQ: CZR).

• The agreements reached are likely to prevent strikes at MGM Resorts’ Borgata casino and Caesars Entertainment’s Caesars, Harrah’s, and Tropicana properties.

• Unite Here Local 54 union organizers have been asking for a pay raise and had voted in favor of a strike if no deal comes through, the WSJ reported.

• The union workers include housekeepers, bartenders, cooks, cocktail servers, and doormen.

• From January through May, casinos in Atlantic City reported $1.08 billion in slot machine and table game revenue, versus $1.03 billion in 2019 period, the report added.

• The union reportedly sought to set the minimum wage for workers at $18 per hour from the current wage of $13 per hour.

• Price Action: MGM shares closed lower by 0.75% at $28.95 on Thursday.

• Photo Via Unite Here Local 54 Union

Strike averted: 4 Atlantic City casinos reach deal with union
Associated Press - 


ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The main union for Atlantic City casino workers reached agreements on new contracts with four casinos on Thursday, providing for what one worker called “big raises” and labor peace that will avoid a strike on Fourth of July weekend, one of the casinos’ busiest of the year.

Local 54 of the Unite Here union reached tentative agreements with the Borgata, which is owned by MGM Resorts International and three Caesars Entertainment casinos: Caesars, Harrah’s and the Tropicana.

A Sunday strike deadline remains against the Hard Rock casino, but the new pacts appear to greatly increase the likelihood of a deal getting done with Hard Rock as well.

“I’m super excited,” said Ronnette Lark, a housekeeper at Harrah’s. “I’ve been here 24 years and we’ve never gotten a raise like this. We got big raises.”

The union did not reveal the terms of the settlement, saying they need to be presented to the full union membership and ratified before taking effect. But it said it had been seeking “significant” raises to help employees keep pace with rising costs.

The settlements come at a crucial time for Atlantic City and its casino industry, which is striving to recover from losses caused by the pandemic and exacerbated by inflation and a labor shortage.

Yet those same factors were the driving force behind the union seeking a much larger raise than it had in past years; the exact amount has not been made public. In past contracts, the union concentrated on preserving health care and pension benefits, but this time sought what it termed “significant” raises for workers to help them keep pace with spiraling prices for gasoline, food, rent and other living expenses.

The deals avoided what would have been the city’s first casino strike since 2016, when the union rejected demands by billionaire Carl Icahn that the Trump Taj Mahal casino operate without health care and pension benefits that were terminated by a bankruptcy court.

The union went on strike on July 1, and the casino shut down on Oct. 10. It was sold months later to Hard Rock International, which gutted it and reopened it as the new Hard Rock Atlantic City in June 2018.

The finances underlying the current dispute are complex.

Including internet gambling and sports betting revenue, the casinos and their online partners have won $1.8 billion over the first five months of this year. That’s up more than 49% from the same period in 2019, before the coronavirus hit.

But the casinos claim those figures are misleading because third-party partners keep about 70% of internet and sports betting revenue, leaving little for the brick-and-mortar casinos.

They say a more accurate metric is money won from in-person gamblers. By that measure, the casinos have won only 5% more than they did from in-person gamblers over the first five months of 2019. Only three casinos — Borgata, Hard Rock and Ocean — have won more from in-person gamblers in that time frame.

Ecuador: Government, Indigenous leaders reach agreement ending strikes

Ecuador's government and indigenous groups' leaders on June 30 reached an agreement to end more than two weeks of protests against the social and economic policies of President Guillermo Lasso which left at least eight dead, indigenous leaders said.

Ecuador: Agreement ends 18 days of strikes






Indigenous leaders, Leonidas Iza, left, and Marlon Vargas, center, revise an agreement document with Monsignor David de la Torre during a dialogue session with the government, with Catholic Church representatives as mediador, at the Episcopal Conference headquarters in Quito, Ecuador, Thursday, June 30, 2022. The two groups are discussing solutions that could lead to the end of a strike over gas prices that has paralyzed parts of the country for two weeks. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)More

Thu, June 30, 2022

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuador’s government and the country’s main Indigenous group reached an agreement Thursday to end 18 days of often-violent strikes that had virtually paralyzed the country and killed at least four people.

The deal, which includes a decrease in the price of fuel and other concessions, was signed by Government Minister Francisco Jiménez, Indigenous leader Leonidas Iza and the head of the Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Luis Cabrera, who acted as mediator.


Ecuador protests: Indigenous leaders agree to call off strikes


Ecuador's government, indigenous leaders reach agreement ending protests

The agreement sets out that gasoline prices will decrease 15 cents to $2.40 per gallon and diesel prices will also decline the same amount, from $1.90 per gallon to $1.75.

The deal also sets limits to the expansion of oil exploration areas and prohibits mining activity in protected areas, national parks and water sources.

The government now has 90 days to deliver solutions to the demands of the Indigenous groups.

“Social peace will only be able to be achieved, hopefully soon, through dialogue with particular attention paid to marginalized communities, but always respecting everyone’s rights,” Cabrera said.

He went on to warn that “if state policies do not resolve the problem of the poor, then the people will rise up.”

“We know we have a country with a lot of divisions, a lot of problems, with unresolved injustices, with important sectors of the population that are still marginalized,” Jiménez said.

The two sides had started negotiations on Monday and an agreement appeared to be within reach until an attack allegedly carried out by Indigenous people against a fuel convoy killed one military officer and left 12 others wounded, leading the government to abandon talks.

Authorities have directly attributed four deaths to the 18-day strike.

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities had launched an indefinite national strike on June 13, demanding a decrease in the price of fuel and increase in the health and education budget as well as price controls on certain goods, among other demands.

Amid increasing shortages of food and fuel and millions in losses for farmers and business leaders, the two sides agreed to start negotiations.

The protests have been characterized by stringent road blockades that prevented the transportation of food, fuel and even ambulances. As a result, there has been a sharp increase in the price of the food that did manage to reach the cities, particularly in the Andean north, which has been one of the areas most affected by the strike.

Ecuador Protest Ends With Indigenous Groups, Government Deal

Stephan Kueffner
Thu, June 30, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Representatives of indigenous organizations and Ecuador’s embattled government signed an agreement Thursday to end more than two weeks of nationwide protests over fuel prices and the high cost of living.

Mediated by the Catholic Bishops Conference, the government of President Guillermo Lasso agreed to increase subsidies at the pump. With other measures pledged by the conservative administration, the total is close to $1 billion, said Leonidas Iza, president of indigenous confederation CONAIE.

“We are going to continue our fight, but at this moment, according to the document that we’ve signed, comrades, at the national level we are going to suspend the de-facto measure,” said Iza, referring to road blocks that have strangled transport across large parts of the country.

“We have reached the supreme value we all aspire to: Peace in our country,” said Lasso via Twitter. “Now together we will start on the task of transforming this country in progress, wellbeing, and opportunities for all.”

Social pressures are unlikely to permanently go away, however. Lasso “is going to face very persistent threats of social unrest and demands for spending along with potential renewed efforts to remove him from office,” Risa Grais-Targow, Latin America Director at Eurasia, said. “He is getting squeezed.”

The protests slashed output of crude oil, the former OPEC member’s main export, and hit retail sales. The damage to the economy “evidently will be superior to the $800 million” of a previous indigenous protest in 2019, said Guillermo Avellan, Ecuador’s central bank chief, in an online press conference. “Close to 2.1 million barrels of oil have not been produced.”

The bank therefore no longer expects to increase the full-year gross domestic project growth outlook from the previous 2.8% for 2022, he added.

Subsidies, Agreement

The signing of the agreement, which the Church brokered in just hours, was delayed by last-minute demands and haggling over details amid the indigenous organizations, who finally publicly approved it through shows of hands.

“Our democracy is complicated,” said Iza.

The government agreed to extend offers made during the course of the 18-day often violent protests that included attacks on military convoys transporting food, fuel, and medicines, leaving one soldier dead and dozens of police and military wounded. At least two civilian deaths have been reported.

On Thursday, the government pledged to further cut diesel and gasoline prices accounting for close to 97% of demand by another 5 cents per gallon. This reduction comes on top of the 10-cent cut enacted earlier this week, which will increase fuel subsidies by a total of roughly $340 million in 2022 in addition to the $3 billion cost of the subsidy program, the Finance Ministry said.

The government also pledged to lift a state of emergency issued just 24 hours earlier and to cancel an executive decree aimed at increasing oil output. A decree to spur mining development will be changed to add additional environmental protections and to respect archaeological remains.

It will also maintain a public health emergency aimed at improving the distribution of medicines and subsidize fertilizers.

An unspecified list of further demands will be negotiated over coming weeks, with the Church continuing to mediate the talks. To sign the deal, the indigenous organizations had to relent on some items on their 10-point list of demands, including an end to privatizations planned by the administration of the former banker Lasso.

The deal came on the second day after Lasso obtained enough support in Ecuador’s fragmented National Assembly for him to survive an impeachment attempt by a major leftist opposition party.

“It feels like a fragile peace,” said Eurasia’s Grais-Targow.

Student-loan borrowers shouldn't have to pay off debt Biden 'has promised to cancel,' 180 organizations say — and they're calling for another payment-pause extension



Ayelet Sheffey
Thu, June 30, 2022 

President Joe Biden says he's nearing a decision on broad student-loan-debt forgiveness.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

• Over 180 organizations wrote to Biden urging him to extend the student-loan payment pause.

• They said borrowers should not have to make payments until debt cancellation is "fully implemented."

• Payments are set to resume on September 1, and no announcement of broad relief has yet been made.

Almost 200 organizations want to ensure that federal student-loan borrowers don't pay a penny on their debt until President Joe Biden cancels some of it.

On Thursday, 180 organizations led by the advocacy group Student Borrower Protection Center signed a letter urging Biden to cancel student debt and extend the current pause on most federal student-loan payments that's set to expire after August 31.

With recent reports suggesting Biden is considering $10,000 in relief for borrowers making under $150,000 a year, advocates have worried that targeting the relief will cut out the borrowers who need it the most — and they want to ensure payments do not resume before loan forgiveness hits all federal borrowers' accounts.

Groups, including the NAACP and trade unions such as AFSCME, wrote: "We strongly urge your administration not to threaten the financial security of people with student debt as a tactic to fight inflation. Instead our organizations urge you to enact robust student debt cancellation that is not means tested and does not require an opt-in for participation and to fully implement this policy before any student-loan bill comes due."

"People with student debt cannot be required to make payments toward loans your administration has promised to cancel," they added.

Mike Pierce, the executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, previously spoke with Insider regarding the bureaucratic hurdles that would accompany targeting student-loan relief. As seen in the past with income-driven repayment plans and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, simple errors with paperwork could block borrowers from relief they were eligible for, and Pierce said the same could happen should borrowers need to take individual action to access broad debt cancellation.

"You're not making the policy more progressive because of how hard it's going to be for folks to demonstrate that they have a low enough income to benefit," Pierce said.

Biden is likely to announce broad student-loan forgiveness in July or August, but another extension of the payment pause doesn't seem as likely given his administration's concerns with inflation. Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, previously told The New York Times that "the key economic fact here is that if debt payment restart and debt relief were to occur at roughly the same time, the net inflationary effect should be neutral."

Republican lawmakers have also cited inflation as a reason not to extend the pause and cancel student debt, with some even introducing legislation to resume payments and block any broad debt relief. But advocates and Democratic lawmakers have maintained that now is the time for Biden to go big on relief and ensure it's a smooth process that all federal borrowers can access.

"It is important that borrowers get relief quickly and aren't hampered by unnecessary roadblocks and obligations," Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar recently wrote to the Education Department. "The American public will depend on your agency's ability to deliver debt cancellation quickly and efficiently, no matter the effort and resources required."

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

Abortion ruling by Attorney General 

Mark Brnovich sets Arizona women 

back to 1864

EJ Montini, Arizona Republic

Thu, June 30, 2022 

In order to file a dispatch on Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s latest ruling on abortion law, I feel I must first saddle up a horse and head to the telegraph office where a friendly operator will tap, tap, tap a message in Morse Code that will travel by wire to the towns and hamlets throughout the territory, letting the women-folk of Arizona know they are now living in 1864.

A time when inhabitants of our majestic desert paradise didn’t have indoor plumbing, and we were years away from telephones and those newfangled horseless carriages, let alone air conditioning.

Women were expected to be mothers and housekeepers in those days, with perhaps an outside job sewing, washing, cleaning houses or doing laundry in order to supplement the family income.

And they could not vote.

And abortion is outlawed.

A pre-statehood abortion law is back on the books

Brnovich announced in a tweet: “Our office has concluded the Legislature has made its intentions clear with regards to abortion laws. ARS 13-3603 (the pre-statehood law) is back in effect and will not be repealed.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has allowed states to craft new anti-abortion laws or revert to those still lingering on the books. Like Arizona’s 13-3603.

It originated in early territorial days and was codified later.

The law says: “A person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years.”

How about hoop dresses and corsets?

No word if female Arizona residents also will be required to don long-sleeved hoop dresses that cover the wearers from neck to the floor. And corsets, of course, to accentuate the “S” shape of the female form.

I have not heard if Brnovich consulted with any women on his staff about his latest ruling.

Most abortion services paused: What you should know about alternatives

Then again, women couldn’t vote in the 1800s, so why would he ask their opinion?

When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a woman’s right to abortion back in 1973, ARS 13-3603 became unconstitutional. But the Legislature never voted to repeal it.

So Brnovich says it is now the law of the land.

The Republican-controlled Legislature will not change that.

Ballot initiative could get us back to the present

However, a group of citizens calling themselves Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom is giving it a try. They’re working on an initiative drive that would give women autonomy over their bodies once again.

Sort of the way it was, once upon a time, in the 21st century.

It’s not going to be easy. The group must collect 350,000 valid signatures by July 7. Here’s how you can find a place to sign their petition.

People like Brnovich might want to turn the clock back 158 years, but things have changed.

Women do all kinds of work now. They are independent. They are educated. They have hopes and dreams. They have daughters and granddaughters.

And, yes, they can vote.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Attorney general's abortion ruling sets Arizona women back to 1864

ABOLISH SCOTUS

Supreme Court's dramatic rightward turn may undermine its political distance: Experts

NADINE EL-BAWAB
Fri, July 1, 2022 


PHOTO: Democracy in Peril (ABC News Photo Illustration)

This story is part of ABC News' series "Democracy in Peril," which examines the inflection point the country finds itself in after the Jan. 6 attacks and ahead of the 2022 election.

On June 24, the Supreme Court's smallest-possible majority struck down the long-standing Roe v. Wade ruling, which had for five decades guaranteed a right to access abortion. It was a rare instance of the court -- whose transformative power on society stretches back to the early 19th century -- restricting rights it had previously extended via the Constitution.

Roe's reversal was partly possible because of the votes of the court's three most recent justices, all of whom were appointed for life by President Donald Trump -- himself elected by a minority of the population though he lost the popular vote -- and confirmed by Senate Republicans representing roughly 43 percent of the country.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who has helmed the court for 17 years after being appointed by George W. Bush and has emerged as a swing voter, lamented the court's landmark opinion in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization as going too far, too fast, and the ruling touched off instant, passionate reactions from both sides.

The ruling also brought renewed attention to the Supreme Court's insulated role in government; its power to review and upend legislative and executive action; and the anti-majoritarian makeup of its members.

MORE: Biden calls overturning of Roe a 'sad day' for Supreme Court, country

While there have been many far-reaching and consequential decisions by the high court and accusations on both sides of politicization, especially in recent decades, critics argue that the Supreme Court's current trajectory is running outside the American mainstream.

"They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had ... They just took the last of it and set a torch to it with the Roe v. Wade opinion," Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, told ABC News on "This Week" on Sunday.

But some experts interviewed by ABC News said the court is doing what it is supposed to do -- operating detached from the pull of public opinion -- even when that is deeply polarizing.

"I don't think most people would want judges or justices making decisions based on what's politically expedient, or politically popular. That's what the legislative branch of government is supposed to do," said Jared Carter, a professor of constitutional law and director of Cornell's First Amendment Clinic.

PHOTO: People carry images of Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts during protests against the overturning of Roe v. Wade, in New York City, May 14, 2022. (Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)

Is the court out of touch with most of the country?

While Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion in Dobbs that Roe "has remained bitterly divisive for the past half century," an ABC News/Washington Post poll completed in May shows that 58% of Americans believe abortions should be legal in all or most cases.

Striking down Roe then inherently undermined the will of the majority, Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney and a constitutional law lecturer at the University of California, told ABC News.It is not the only issue on which the court and the public have split.

In a decades-long study comprised of three surveys, two researchers from Stanford University and the University of Texas looked at Americans' views on issues before the court and compared them to decisions issued by the court.

The study found a gap between the court and the public that has grown since 2020, with the court's position shifting "significantly to the right," study co-author Stephen Jessee, an associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, told ABC News in an interview.

The study, published in June, found the justices moved to a position that is more conservative on all issues than an estimated 75% of the public.

"Our best estimate is that the court has almost exactly the position of the average Republican-identifying American," Jessee said.

"I wouldn't say our finding necessarily points to the court doing something wrong so much as it's just important to assess how the public's views compared to the performance of the court," he added.

According to Jessee, not every case that the Supreme Court decides favors the conservative viewpoint. Despite the politics of the presidents who appoint the justices, their ideologies don't always map neatly onto the spectrum of Democrats to Republicans. Indeed, a majority of Supreme Court rulings in the term that ended last summer -- many of them not on major social or political issues -- were unanimous or with only one dissent.

"There have been cases, for example in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which conservative justices have voted for things like protections for gay and transgender employees against employment discrimination," Jessee said.

It was a Republican-appointed justice who wrote the majority opinion in Roe just as it was the Trump-appointed Gorsuch and the Bush-appointed Roberts who provided crucial support for the majority in Bostock. Before that, Roberts narrowly upheld the Affordable Care Act, the signature domestic achievement of Democrat Barack Obama.

Roberts, the chief justice, has long taken pains to insist the court is not a partisan force and does its best to adhere to its interpretation of the Constitution. While he has been a key vote for some seismic decisions -- most notably the Citizens United ruling undoing campaign finance restrictions and Shelby County, which removed key provisions in the Voting Rights Act -- on other major cases he has counseled an incremental approach to avoid swings beyond what society might tolerate.

His view does not always win out, though, as was seen last week in the Dobbs decision.

PHOTO: Anti-abortion demonstrators rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 21, 2022 in Washington as the country awaits a major case decision pertaining to abortion rights. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

'Greatest function is protecting rights'

While the court's recent history shows it moving rightward, according to the Stanford University and the University of Texas study, it has of course used its same power to advance other goals in the past -- drawing fierce condemnation from different groups in America.

"The framers, for all their faults, designed the U.S. Supreme Court to be insulated from political whims of the day, as much as is humanly possible," said Carter, the constitutional law professor.

Litman, the lecturer and former federal prosecutor, agreed and said the court's "greatest function is protecting rights set out under the Constitution as against efforts by a majority, say the legislature, to abridge them."

He pointed to the civil rights era of the 20th century, when the Supreme Court found through its rulings that the Constitution extended equality under the law to Black Americans nationwide, including in the Jim Crow South -- leading to pitched battles there over school desegregation and more.

But as the court's membership shifted, so too has its approach to what rights the Constitution does and does not provide versus what states can and cannot regulate.

Litman said there were other cases that have provided Americans with protections for unenumerated rights, which are freedoms not explicitly written in the Constitution, that cannot be distinguished from Roe. Many of those decisions were fiercely criticized by conservatives who said they stretched the boundaries of the court's ability. The late Justice Antonin Scalia summarized this view in dissenting from the 2015 ruling that granted the right to same-sex marriage:

"This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves."

Scalia was in the minority then. But three of the justices on the court have changed since, all of them replaced by President Trump and all three of whom went on to overrule Roe.

The opinion in the Dobbs case threatens other unenumerated rights, Litman said -- a possibility suggested by Justice Clarence Thomas' opinion last week concurring with the majority in which he wrote that the court should turn its attention to overruling the case on same-sex marriage and the guarantee to contraception, among others.

"What's really wrong with the [majority] opinion, for lawyers, is it sort of pretends that there's something special or different about abortion in legal doctrine, when there isn't," Litman said.

What is to come

Carter said overturning federal protections for abortion could pose a risk to the esteem of the court, which has broader implications.

"The Supreme Court has no way to enforce its own decisions," he said. "It's just its credibility and our society's acceptance, whether we agree or disagree with the ruling of the court, that that is the law of the land."

He also said the court's current position highlights the importance of elections and of people voting; Republicans were able to appoint three justices in four years because they had the number of seats in Congress and a president in power which allowed them to do so. By contrast, President Obama could not move forward with his final nominee, Merrick Garland, because of the Republican majority controlling the Senate.

Carter said the solution is not to "tear up" the court -- rather, those who disagree with its interpretation of the Constitution should organize, litigate or challenge its decisions.

Other suggested changes include changing how long justices remain on the court -- via term limits rather than a lifetime -- or appointing more justices to the court.

Jessee, who has been studying the ideology of the court's decisions, said there are worries that recent polling indicates trust and approval in the court have decreased.

"The court doesn't have the power of the purse, and they don't have an army," Jessee said, "and therefore they sort of rely on the respect and prestige of the court in order to have their decisions followed."

"When that disappears," Carter said, "then I think we are in real trouble."

Supreme Court's dramatic rightward turn may undermine its political distance: Experts originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

A CONFEDERATE COURT
US Supreme Court ruling expands states’ authority to prosecute crimes on tribal land

Keith Schubert, Daily Montanan
June 30, 2022

The United States Supreme Court building. (Shutterstock.com)

The United States Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that states can prosecute non-Native people who commit crimes against a Native person on tribal lands, a dramatic move for tribal sovereignty that undoes decades of practice.

Victor Manuel Castro-Huerta, who is non-Native, was sentenced to 35 years in prison stemming from a 2015 child neglect conviction in Oklahoma against his Native American stepdaughter within the state’s Cherokee Reservation. Castro-Huerta challenged the conviction, citing the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which held states cannot prosecute crimes committed on Native American lands without federal approval.

In this case, Oklahoma argued that because Castro-Huerta is non-Native, McGirt does not bar his prosecution by the state, and the Supreme Court agreed.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the court’s majority opinion, raised questions about the eastern part of Oklahoma, including Tulsa, being labeled as “Indian Country.”

“About two million people live there, and the vast majority are not Indians,” he wrote.”The classification of eastern Oklahoma as Indian country has raised urgent questions about which government or governments have jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed there.”

Kavanaugh listed multiple decisions going back to 1845 to support the argument that Indian reservations are “part of the surrounding state” and are subject to the state’s jurisdiction “except as forbidden by federal law.”
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“In short, the court’s precedents establish that Indian country is part of a state’s territory and that, unless preempted, states have jurisdiction over crimes committed in Indian Country,” Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.

Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito Jr., and Amy Coney Barrett joined Kavanaugh in the majority. At the same time, Neil Gorsuch joined the three liberal justices — Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor — in dissent.

In his dissent, Gorsuch praised the 1832 decision Worcester v. Georgia, which ruled state law had no power in Indian country without congressional authorization.

“The decision established a foundational rule that would persist for over 200 years: Native American Tribes retain their sovereignty unless and until Congress ordains otherwise,” Gorsuch wrote.

He argued that Wednesday’s ruling was reneging on a promise made to the Cherokee after their exile to what became Oklahoma.

“The federal government promised the tribe that it would remain forever free from interference by state authorities. Only the Tribe or the federal government could punish crimes by or against tribal members on tribal lands,” he wrote. “Where this Court once stood firm, today it wilts … Where our predecessors refused to participate in one state’s unlawful power grab at the expense of the Cherokee, today’s Court accedes to another’s. Respectfully, I dissent.”

Gorsuch pushed back on the majority’s argument that a state possesses “inherent” sovereign power to prosecute crimes on tribal reservations until and unless Congress “preempts” that authority.

“The Court emphasizes that states normally wield broad police powers within their borders absent some preemptive federal law,” he wrote. “But the effort to wedge tribes into that paradigm is a category error. Tribes are not private organizations within state boundaries. Their reservations are not glorified private campgrounds. Tribes are sovereigns.”

Keaton Sunchild, political director at Western Native Voice, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for Native rights in Montana, said the ruling sets a dangerous criterion going forward.

“Obviously we fear that this starts a dangerous precedent of stripping tribal sovereignty and blurring the lines between the treaties made between the federal government and the tribes across the country,” he said. “This is something that we have long just assumed is settled on between state governments, federal governments and tribal governments … I guess the five justices thought differently and now we have to worry about what happens next with tribal rights, who knows what else could be under attack and potentially stripped next.”

He added that the decision is expected to have a harmful impact going forward. “We will likely see more states meddling in tribal affairs and the taking away of autonomy that tribes have had available to them for decades.”

The Native American Fund said in a statement that the ruling “strikes” against the sovereignty of tribal nations and the consequences of the decision for tribal nations, the federal government, and states will take time to unravel.

“The Supreme Court’s decision today is an attack on tribal sovereignty and the hard-fought progress of our ancestors to exercise our inherent sovereignty over our own territories,” said National Congress of American Indians President Fawn Sharp in the release. “It was only a few months ago that Congress loudly supported tribal sovereignty and tribal criminal jurisdiction with the passage of the Violence Against Women’s Act, reaffirming the right of Tribal Nations to protect their own people and communities, but make no mistake, today, the Supreme Court has dealt a massive blow to tribal sovereignty and Congress must, again, respond.”


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