POSTMODERN COLD WAR 2.0

Germany shrugs off Putin comments on US missiles

Germany's government said it had "taken note" of comments over the weekend from Vladimir Putin, saying Russia might take countermeasures if the US deployed more longer-range missiles in Germany as planned.

PRODUCT PLACEMENT FOR BRAND RECOGNITION

The changes would include stationing more Tomahawk cruise missiles in Germany, likely starting in 2026Image: Everett Collection/picture alliance

Germany's government on Monday downplayed comments from Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend, threatening to change Russia's military posture if the US installs more medium-range nuclear-capable cruise missiles on German soil in the coming years as planned.

"We will not allow ourselves to be intimidated by such comments," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer told a Berlin press conference.

The government's deputy spokeswoman, Christiane Hoffmann, was also asked to respond.

She said "we have taken note" of the comments from Putin, but also said that the proposed changes would serve "solely" as a deterrent, and one that had been made necessary by recent Russian actions.

"Namely, because Russia has changed the strategic balance in Europe and is threatening Europe and Germany with cruise missiles — and we have to establish a deterrent," she said.

What had Putin said?

Putin said at a naval parade in St. Petersburg that if the US went ahead with plans to station additional weaponry in Europe that could in theory target Russia, then Moscow would consider "mirror measures."

He evoked the arms race of the early 1980s, late in the Cold War, when a core Soviet grievance had been the deployment of Pershing missiles in then-West Germany. Putin alleged the US was risking a similar repeat phenomenon.

Likely not by accident, Putin brought up an era where even German soldiers took part in protests against the US and NATO plans, which faced major resistance in Germany despite being approved

Image: Heinz Wieseler/picture alliance

"If the US implements such plans, we will consider ourselves free from the previously imposed unilateral moratorium on the deployment of intermediate and shorter-range strike weapons, including increasing the capability of the coastal forces of our navy," Putin said.

Here, Putin was referring to the terms of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 — which the US and then Russia withdrew from in 2019.

Both sides blamed the other for violating the terms of the treaty.

But Putin also claimed that Russia had been keeping to its terms anyway since leaving the deal — an assessment the US and Germany would likely dispute — and warned that this might stop if more US weaponry was stationed in Germany.

These disputes were already taking shape prior to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but the tone and urgency from both sides has probably hardened since then.

What are the planned changes, and are they anything new?

According to a joint statement from Washington and Berlin, by 2026 the US will start to station weaponry including SM-6 missiles, improved Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be nuclear-capable, and some "developmental hypersonic weapons" in Germany.

The US and Germany argue that the move is a response to developments such as Russia stationing comparable Iksander missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave bordering Poland and Lithuania.

"What we are now planning is a response to deter these weapons from being used against Germany or other targets," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer said on Monday.

Germany agrees to host long-range missiles: DW's Michaela Küfner  03:53

There are already a series of US military bases in Germany, a legacy of the aftermath of World War II and then of the Cold War.

There are various US missiles, albeit with shorter ranges, formally positioned in the country.

It's also an open secret — albeit one never formally acknowledged by either government — that the US still stations nuclear weapons at one of its bases in Germany, a reduction from two sites in the years and decades prior to 2005.

The numbers that remain stationed in Germany and some other European countries are however drastically reduced when compared to the height of the Cold War.

msh/wmr (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

SPACE

US Space Systems Command’s 2,000 mile cyber screwdriver

Col. Craig Frank, the CIO of the Space Systems Command, said to reduce cyber risks satellites and ground control systems are using zero trust capabilities.

Jason Miller@jmillerWFED
July 29, 2024 

The Space Systems Command in the Space Force is bringing zero trust to the final frontier.

From the satellites that orbit the earth to the ground stations that control the flow of data, the goal is to protect each piece of the system through these concepts.

The challenge, of course, is Space Systems Command can’t go and touch the satellites to upload software or change the settings, said Col. Craig Frank, the chief information officer of the Space Systems Command

.

Col. Craig Frank is the chief information officer of the Space Systems Command in the Space Force. (Photo courtesy Space Systems Command)

“We’re just looking at keeping control of them from a distance, what we’d like calling the IT world, the 2,000 mile screwdriver, where you might have a ground station in Nevada, but the person who’s doing all the work on it is sitting in Florida, we got to make sure that that connection is secure,” Frank said on Ask the CIO. “It’s good to have a system that can help us do what I like to call wrapping it in a zero trust envelope. A lot of the challenges we’re having is that we’re going to be putting this on birds that have been in the sky for decades. We can’t just send someone with a screwdriver up there to put a zero trust module in it. So instead, we have to go after the ground segment and securing that by putting the devices in line that will provide that zero trust envelope without disrupting the usability of the system.”

Are agencies getting enough bang for their cyber buck? See how tech leaders feel about the state of their organization and budgets in our new survey, sponsored by Axonius.

An example of this challenge is with global positioning satellite (GPS) systems. Frank said GPS has been around for several decades and it’s now something that is part of everyone’s daily usage.

“At the same time, we have to keep it secure, not just the customer facing version of the system itself, which is the ability to track yourself when you’re moving around the world or moving around your neighborhood, but also for the actual command and control of the satellites themselves,” he said. “Some of those birds are just a few years old, but the system itself is decades old. So, we have to try to figure out how to make that system more modern and secure. without messing up stuff that’s been working for decades.”
Space Systems Command legacy IT challenge

Geoffrey Mattson, the CEO of Xage Security, which is working with the Space Systems Command to implement the zero trust capabilities, said the organization’s challenges are similar to other remote customers.

He said the approach to zero trust consists of two things: A policy engine, which can authenticate users or devices, and distributed ledger technology to securely store the credentials that are associated with those users.

“The problem of integrating zero trust with legacy equipment means you have to have a transparent enforcement point that sits right in front of that component and is able to enforce that policy,” Mattson said. “Our fabric is providing that the extension for that 2,000 mile screwdriver. What it consists of are the principal technologies of software-defined networking, which is the idea of instead of having a network follow the hardware map of the network itself, we create a virtual network on top of actual network, and use that to actually control and secure connections. The other key element is this distributed ledger keystore, which allows us to store keys in such a way that if one of the devices were to be compromised, the bad actor would not be able to extract the credentials. They would need to be able to compromise a certain number of these devices, and the odds of them being able to do that are incalculable.”

Frank said Space Systems Command faces an added challenge that many of the satellite and related support systems are not using the same standard protocols. He said 99% of all communications today rely on the TCP-IP format, but because some of the systems are decades old, they may use a protocol developed by a specific company or something that doesn’t mesh with TCP-IP well.

“We have to have that software-defined system that can do that translation and basically take those packets and wrap them in a good packet wrap, and then send it off without messing up the original data and allowing it to transmit clearly,” he said. “What we’re looking for is how do we integrate those already existing zero trust capabilities into systems that aren’t Windows based or something like that. So that’s really where I think [Xage Security] comes in as that makes that connection between those. The other thing was what you don’t want because one part of zero trust is that every single user, every single machine gets verified every single time it tries to access a website, a file, data, data repository and really everything. However, what you don’t want is where every single time a user opens an email or open something else, they have to reauthenticate, so a big push for DoD is we have of course, the single sign-on capability where the user certificate is verified through Active Directory domain controller. Once that connection is made, the system can do that constant re-verification on the back end because the user has already logged into the system.”

Mattson said implementing zero trust with operational technology in addition to traditional IT is become more important than ever as organizations has seen an increase attacks over the last few years.

Read more: Ask the CIO

Mattson said Space Systems Command, like many others across the government, face constant threats from criminally-oriented ransomware to nation state level mass campaigns to infiltrate their infrastructure.

“This concept of an envelope of zero trust that can sit in front of any type of equipment. We do have a ruggedized hardware appliance that we can deploy transparently in front of any of this equipment, and then a distributed fabric that allows access control with a secure with secure credential storage,” Mattson said. “In this way, we’re able to protect operational technology assets in the private sector as well as the public sector. We’re also securing standard IT applications as well as the same principles and solutions apply.”

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.


Jason Miller is executive editor of Federal News Network and directs news coverage on the people, policy and programs of the federal government.
Follow @jmillerWFED

Disgraced NRA head tells judge proposed punishment would be 'putting a knife' into group

YES, YES IT WOULD

David Edwards
July 29, 2024 

RAW STORY


Wayne LaPierre speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Wayne LaPierre, the former head of the National Rifle Association, told a judge that appointing a financial monitor would be "equivalent to putting a knife straight through the heart of the organization and twisting it."

According to The Associated Press, LaPierre made the remarks Monday on the final day of arguments in a case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The attorney general is seeking an independent monitor for the NRA after LaPierre and another deputy were found guilty of misspending millions of dollars of the organization's funds.

The AP said that LaPierre told the judge in Monday's hearing that a monitor would be an "existential threat to the group because it would send a message to prospective members and donors that the NRA was 'being surveilled by this attorney general in New York.'"

"General James will have achieved her objective to fulfill that campaign promise of, in effect, dissolving the NRA for a lack of money and a lack of members," LaPierre claimed.

The former head of the organization also argued against a ban on his future participation in the gun group. However, NRA attorney Sarah Rogers told the judge that the organization had no plans to rehire LaPierre.

In a statement, James said, "LaPierre used charitable dollars to fund his lavish lifestyle, spending millions on luxury travel, expensive clothes, insider contracts, and other perks for himself and his family."

"LaPierre and senior leaders at the NRA blatantly abused their positions and broke the law," she added.

WISCONSIN

Opinion: 

People over polluters. The JFC must release PFAS funding

(Pixabay/Pexels/Canva)

By Peter Burress
July 29, 2024

It is time for the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee (JFC) to release funding and protect families from toxic PFAS contamination in drinking water.

Imagine having the means to protect kids and families from cancer risk, but denying them that protection because you’re too afraid of losing influence with corporate polluters.

It’s absurd. It’s callous. And it’s dangerous. But, it’s happening right here in our communities and right here in our state legislature. It’s far past time for the legislature to get serious about PFAS chemicals in our water.

Two-thirds of Wisconsin communities rely on groundwater for their drinking water. We depend on clean groundwater to keep us alive – to keep our kids fed, to keep our communities prosperous. Some of our communities, our families, and our children have been waiting for relief for seven years – we even have the funding available to act.
What are PFAS?

PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals” have been detected in our surface and groundwater across the state – impacting more than 120 communities and posing a significant risk to our health, especially to the health of our kids. This group of highly toxic human-made chemicals are resistant to heat, water, and oil. For decades, PFAS have been used for industrial applications, in firefighting foam, and in consumer products.

PFAS do not break down in the environment and have been linked to serious health effects. These effects include testicular cancer, increased cholesterol levels, thyroid disease, high blood pressure, lower infant birth weight, decreased fertility in women, and ​​decreased body response to vaccines.

How’d we get here?

More than a year ago, Gov. Evers signed the state biennial budget, locking in $125 million allocated to remediate PFAS contamination. But in order to use that money, the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee (JFC) must release the funding.

Instead of utilizing those already approved funds, the JFC is holding them hostage on behalf of their corporate polluter donors. In the meantime, Wisconsin communities are suffering. And while the legislature did pass a PFAS-related bill during the 2023-24 legislative session, it didn’t allocate any money or have any explicit tie to the $125 million allocated in the budget.

Additionally, the bill included a “poison pill” that would have let polluters off the hook by attaching new restrictions on how the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) can test and take enforcement actions. Those limitations would have undermined the state’s battle-tested “spills law,” an enduring protection against corporate malfeasance that leads to pollution.

Thankfully, Gov. Tony Evers used his veto power to reject that bill. And protected the “spills law” from being eroded by a cheap political stunt that serves no one but moneyed special interests and their supporters – like Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC).

Failing Wisconsin to protect polluters

It’s disappointing that any elected official would not take protecting our water resources, especially our drinking water, seriously. As JFC Republicans have failed to release the PFAS funding, they are undermining progress on a problem their own constituents are struggling with every day.

It’s not the first time these types of political maneuverings have stalled keeping families safe from toxins, unfortunately. Time and again, politicians have said one thing to their constituents, then in committees or with their votes, did the exact opposite of what they claim to care about.

It’s time these legislators do the right thing for Wisconsin – and the people they were elected to serve.

Get the money out the door – now

It’s time to refocus our efforts on the need immediately in front of us – getting funding to communities impacted by PFAS contamination as quickly as possible. That means supporting funding for impacted municipalities and private well owners, without polluter loopholes tied to those programs.

There are ready-made solutions from Gov. Evers that the JFC – which is still currently at work – could approve and immediately help Wisconsin families being harmed by its own inaction.

It’s time for decision makers to say “no” to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and their corporate polluter pals, and “yes” to making sure communities have safe, clean drinking water for all.

Let’s put the people of Wisconsin first.

Pete Buttigieg shades 'Trump’s personality cult,' says MAGA has a 'warped reality'

MAYOR PETE FOR HARRIS VP

NAME RECOGNITION


BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg appeared on Fox News Sunday to tell conservatives on their own airwaves that they're in a cult.

Ryan Adamczeski
July 29 2024 

ADVOCATE

The glaring difference between Republicans and Democrats is in how they view their candidates, according to Pete Buttigieg.

The Secretary of Transportation appeared on Fox News Sunday to tell conservatives on their own airwaves that they're in a cult. After anchor Shannon Bream asked if Democrats were aware of President Joe Biden's performance abilities, Buttigieg responded: "We don’t have that kind of warped reality on our side."


“Unlike Republicans, who in Trump’s personality cult will take a look at Donald Trump and say he’s perfectly fine, even though he seemed unable to tell the difference between Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, even though he’s rambling about electrocuting sharks and Hannibal Lecter, even though he is clearly older and stranger than he was when America got to know him, they say he’s strong as an ox, leaps tall buildings in a single bound,” he said.



Buttigieg praised Biden's decision to withdraw from the presidential race as "one of the most difficult decisions a president could make — ever,” saying it is one that is" something that I don’t think Donald Trump could even conceive of doing, which is putting his own interests aside for the country.” He then noted that Trump has repeatedly gone back on his promises to voters.

“He didn’t keep his promise of six percent economic growth. He didn’t keep his promise to drain the swamp. Even before the pandemic, America went into a manufacturing recession," Buttigieg continued. "He broke his promise to pass an infrastructure bill, right? He said he would do that, he failed to do it. The Biden-Harris administration got it done. He even broke his promise to that Jan. 6 mob when he said, ‘I will be at your side when you march down to the Capitol.'"

There are some policies Trump followed through on, as Buttigieg noted: "He actually did keep two promises: He kept his promise to destroy the right to choose in this country, and he kept his promise on tax cuts for the rich.”

Watch Pete Buttigieg Explain the GOP's New Anti-LGBTQ+ Culture Wars ›
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Pete Buttigieg roasts JD Vance and his gay tech bro billionaire ›
Pete Buttigieg once again leaves Republicans flustered by citing facts ›

 Dating app Grindr hires Tom Daschle’s firm to lobby on HIV prevention, IVF

By Nicholas Florko  and Sarah Owermohle July 29, 2024

Reprints

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr is tapping into the Washington lobbying world amid legislative battles over reproductive health care access.

The “Global Gayborhood” has hired The Daschle Group, founded by former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, to lobby on “HIV prevention; LGTBQ family formation challenges including surrogacy and IVF,” according to federal disclosures filed last week.

There are competing bills in the Senate designed to protect in vitro fertilization after Alabama’s initial abortion ban inadvertently barred IVF care. Democrats forced a vote on the Right to IVF Act in June, with only two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) — voting for the legislation. Other Republicans argued the measure is a “scare tactic” and “fearmongering” from Democrats on a major issue heading into the election cycle, and have pushed their own version that would deny Medicaid funds to states that bar IVF.

Yet Democrats say that bill allows for states to introduce other restrictions on IVF care and support.

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Washington has also seen increased lobbying around access to HIV prevention medicines known as PrEP after a federal court case questioning whether a volunteer, national panel of doctors and scientists can require no-cost coverage.

Grindr’s foray into lobbying is notable for the platform, which officially calls itself a “social networking app,” but is known for helping users locate potential sex partners in their area. In a 2022 article, Vice News described the app as “a 24/7 merry-go-round of sex in your immediate locale.” No other popular dating apps have registered to lobby on health care issues, according to STAT’s review of federal disclosures. Match Group, which owns the popular dating apps Tinder and Hinge, spent $650,000 last quarter lobbying on digital privacy issues.

It is unclear how much Grindr is paying the Daschle Group to lobby on its behalf. Grindr and the Daschle Group did not respond to requests for comment.

The Daschle Group represents a variety of health care companies ranging from the hospital chain Ballad Health to vaccine makers Bavarian Nordic and Valneva. The firm is especially known for lobbying on issues related to infectious diseases, and serves as a lobbying firm for the ​Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, the Coalition to Stop Flu, and the Antimicrobials Working Group.

Daschle, who serves as The Daschle Group’s CEO, has a complicated personal history with the gay community. In 1996, he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which denied same-sex couples the same legal rights as gay couples. He also vocally attacked gay marriage from his perch in the Senate, telling the Associated Press in 2004: “Marriage is a sacred union between men and women. That is what the vast majority of Americans believe. It’s what virtually all South Dakotans believe. It’s what I believe.”

However, Daschle also played an integral role in defeating a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as a union between a man and woman. Daschle was ultimately honored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force for his role in defeating that measure. In 2013, he also joined several former lawmakers in urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, writing: “Gay families have proven stable, healthy environments for children and valuable members of our communities. There is no evidence that extending legal recognition to same-sex marriages has discouraged heterosexual marriage or encouraged fathers to abandon their children.”

Daschle himself is not registered to lobby on behalf of the company, according to the filing. The company has instead hired the firm’s lobbyists Charlie Panfil and Joe Hack.

Panfil, according to his official biography, was the “youngest person to become a member of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund National Campaign Board,” which works to elect LGBTQ+ politicians.

Hack most recently served as chief of staff to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), who herself has a mixed record on gay rights. Following the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage, Fischer issued a statement that people of all sexual orientations should be treated with respect but that “there are good people with strongly-held beliefs on both sides of this issue.” In 2023 she voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which formally repealed the Defense of Marriage Act.

About the Authors

Nicholas Florko
Reporter, Commercial Determinants of Health
Nicholas Florko reports on the commercial determinants of health.
nicholas.florko@statnews.com
@NicholasFlorko

Sarah Owermohle
Washington Correspondent
Sarah Owermohle reports on the administration’s health care initiatives, federal health policy, and its intersection with politics and the courts. She joined STAT in 2022 after covering health policy at Politico. She is also the co-author of the free, twice-weekly D.C. Diagnosis newsletter.
sarah.owermohle@statnews.com
@owermohle

Biden pivoting to his legacy with speech at LBJ Presidential Library

A RELAXED LOOKING POTUS

A WEIGHT LIFTED 

July 29, 2024 3:14 PM
By Associated Press

President Joe Biden waves as walks to board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, July 29, 2024, on his way to Austin, Texas, for the commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.


Washington —

President Joe Biden, who belatedly opted against seeking reelection, will pay a visit on Monday to the library of the last president to make the same difficult choice, more than a half-century ago.

Biden's speech Monday at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, is designed to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, enacted under President Lyndon Johnson. While there, he'll call for changes to the Supreme Court that include term limits and an enforceable ethics code for justices, as well as a constitutional amendment that would limit presidential immunity.

But the visit has taken on very different symbolism in the two weeks it took to reschedule it after Biden had to cancel because he got COVID-19.

The speech, originally set for July 15, was once seen by the White House as an opportunity for Biden to try to make a case for salvaging his sinking presidential campaign — delivered in the home district of Representative Lloyd Doggett, the 15-term congressman who was the first Democratic lawmaker to publicly call for Biden to step aside.

Two weeks later, the political landscape has been reshaped. Biden is out of the race. Vice President Kamala Harris is the likely Democratic nominee. And the president is focused not on his next four years, but on the legacy of his single term and the future of democracy.

No American incumbent president has dropped out of the race as late in the process as did Biden. Johnson announced he would not seek reelection in March of 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War.

Biden has drawn a lot of comparisons to Johnson of late. Both men spoke to the nation from the Oval Office to lay out their decisions. Both faced pressure from within their own party to step aside, and both were ultimately praised for doing so.

But their reasons were very different. Johnson stepped away in the heat of the war and spoke at length about his need to focus on the conflict. Biden, 81, had every intention of running for reelection until his shaky June 27 debate performance ignited fears within his own party about his age and mental acuity, and whether he could beat Republican Donald Trump.

Biden has called Trump a serious threat to democracy, particularly after the ex-president's efforts in 2020 to overturn the results of the election he lost and his continued lies about that loss. The president framed his decision to bow out of the race as motivated by the need to unite his party to protect democracy.

“I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. That’s the best way to unite our nation,” Biden said in his Oval Office address. “Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. And that includes personal ambition.”

Biden decided to seek the presidency in 2020 after witnessing the violence at a 2017 “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where torch-wielding white supremacists marched to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, chanting “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!”

Biden said he was horrified by Trump’s response, particularly when the Republican told reporters that “you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

During his presidency, Biden has often put equity and civil rights at the forefront, including with his choice for vice president. Harris is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to have the job. She could also become the first woman elected to the presidency.

Biden's administration has worked to combat racial discrimination in the real estate market, he pardoned thousands of people convicted on federal marijuana charges that have disproportionately affected people of color and provided federal funding to reconnect city neighborhoods that were racially segregated or divided by road projects, and also invested billions in historically Black colleges and universities.

His efforts, he has said, are meant to push the country forward — and to guard against efforts to undermine the landmark legislation signed by Johnson in 1964, one of the most significant civil rights achievements in U.S. history.

The law made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It was designed to end discrimination in school, work and public facilities, and barred unequal application of voter registration requirements.

Johnson signed the act five hours after Congress approved it, saying the nation was in a “time of testing” that “we must not fail.” He added: “Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole.”

Eight years later, Johnson convened a civil rights symposium bringing together those who fought for civil rights to push for more progress.

“The progress has been too small; we haven’t done nearly enough," he said in 1972 during the symposium. “Until we overcome unequal history, we can’t overcome unequal opportunity ... There is still work to be done, so let’s be on with it.”

Biden has said he is “determined to get as much done” as he can in his final six months in office, including signing major legislation expanding voting rights and a federal police bill named for George Floyd.

“I’ll keep defending our personal freedoms and our civil rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose," Biden said from the Oval Office. “I’ll keep calling out hate and extremism, make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever, period.”

Later Monday, Biden will also travel to Houston to pay his respects to the late Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who died July 19 at age 74.

Biden calls for term limits, enforceable ethics rules for Supreme Court justices

President Biden speaks to the media on July 1 following the 

Supreme Court's ruling ruling on presidential immunity. 

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

 NPR Washington Desk, NPR

July 29, 2024 

President Joe Biden, in an op-ed Monday, said “no one” including “a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States” is above the law, as he called for term limits and an enforceable ethics code for Supreme Court justices in what would be sweeping changes to the high court and the way it operates.

“I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers,” Biden wrote in the op-ed. “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”

Biden is expected to call for the changes to the court during remarks later in the day at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. He is expected to offer his support to a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service of the Supreme Court.

Additionally, he is expected to call on Congress to pass binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require justices on the high court to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.

Biden is also expected to call for a constitutional amendment that would limit the broad immunity presidents now enjoy following a recent Supreme Court decision.

Justices to the high court enjoy a lifetime appointment and can decide on their own whether to adhere to the court’s newly adopted ethics rules. Scrutiny of the court has heightened amid scandals involving Justice Clarence Thomas, who took free trips and received gifts from a conservative mega donor, and Justice Samuel Alito, whose wife flew two flags associated with the far-right movement loyal to former President Donald Trump.

The proposals are a long shot because a constitutional amendment or congressional action — two routes that would likely be needed — are next to impossible in the current political climate. But the plans themselves mark a sea change for Biden who had previously resisted any changes to the court. Although it is unclear if Biden can make headway on the issue in his remaining months in office, the White House believes the issue of Supreme Court reform polls well among independent voters, Republican voters, and a large swath of important demographic groups.

In 2021, soon after he was inaugurated, Biden set up a presidential commission on the Supreme Court, keeping a campaign promise he made when repeatedly pressed on whether he would expand the Supreme Court to pack it with justices more aligned with his worldview. Candidate Biden said he opposed expanding the court but said he favored the kind of bipartisan commission that the White House set up.

In December of that year, the panel – comprising legal éminence grise – issued a report that said Congress has the power to enlarge the court, but the panel took no position on doing so. On term limits, it appeared to suggest that a constitutional amendment was likely necessary, and pointed to the practical difficulties of implementing term limits at the same time that there are sitting justices with life terms on the court.

Copyright 2024, NPR

The Volokh Conspiracy

Thoughts on Biden's Proposed Supreme Court Reforms

The proposals include term limits for Supreme Court justices, a binding ethics code, and a constitutional amendment limiting the president's' immunity from prosecution. All 3 are potentially good ideas. But devil is in details.

Ilya Somin | 7.29.2024 

REASON.COM

(Joe Ravi/Wikimedia/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
About The Volokh Conspiracy

Today, President Joe Biden announced his support for three reforms: term limits for Supreme Court justices, a constitutional amendment denying the president immunity for crimes committed while in office, and a binding ethics code for Supreme Court justices. He laid out these ideas in a Washington Post op ed. My general reaction is similar to that outlined in my previous post on this topic: all three ideas are potentially good. But Biden is short on details, and term limits can only be properly adopted by a constitutional amendment. As noted in my earlier post, there is also an obvious political dimension to this announcement:

The Supreme Court has become highly unpopular. Currently, it only has an approval rating of about 36% in the 538 average of recent polls, with about 56% disapproving. Targeting the Court might be good politics…. Moreover, if reports about the proposals are correct, Biden has focused on ideas that are generally popular, such as term limits, while avoiding the much less popular (and very dangerous) idea of court-packing.

While I have been highly critical of several of the Court's recent decisions, I also think the conservative majority has many many good rulings, and that much of the left-wing criticism of the Court is overblown. But majority public opinion has a significantly more negative view of the Court than I do, thereby creating potential political momentum for various reforms.

When these ideas were first floated a couple weeks ago, Biden was still trying to salvage his own presidential campaign. Now, they could help bolster that of VP Kamala Harris (who has endorsed them). Josh Blackman is almost certainly right to note the proposals have virtually no chance of being enacted while Biden is still in office. But I think he goes too far in labeling them "pointless." Now that they have been endorsed by the current and future leaders of the Democratic Party, the chance they might eventually be enacted in some form has significantly increased. That's true of any policy idea adopted by one of the two major parties.

Below are a few comments on each of the three proposals.

Here's Biden on the amendment stripping presidential immunity:

I am calling for a constitutional amendment called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment. It would make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office. I share our Founders' belief that the president's power is limited, not absolute. We are a nation of laws — not of kings or dictators.

I agree. The Supreme Court's badly flawed recent ruling in Trump v. United States goes way too far in granting such immunity to the president. Biden is wrong to suggest that, in the wake of the ruling, "there are virtually no limits on what a president can do." In reality, the decision is vague on several key points, thereby making it difficult to figure out exactly how much immunity it actually gives the president.. Also, there are non-criminal constraints on presidential power (e.g.—people can go to court to get an injunction against illegal executive orders). Still, broad presidential immunity is a bad thing, and enacting a constitutional amendment to abolish all or most of it would be good.

However, Biden tells us next to nothing about the details of such an amendment. I think the version recently proposed by 49 Democratic members of Congress is very good. Not clear whether Biden—and, more importantly, Harris—would support it, or some other approach. In addition, as I previously noted, the odds against enacting any controversial constitutional amendment are extremely long.

Biden on term limits:


Second, we have had term limits for presidents for nearly 75 years. We should have the same for Supreme Court justices. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court. Term limits would help ensure that the court's membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary. It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come. I support a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.

Here, I have little to add to what I said before. Term limits for SCOTUS justices are a good idea, with broad support from both experts and the general public. A system of 18-year terms is also good, and similar to that proposed by various legal scholars. But any term limit plan must be enacted by constitutional amendment, not merely by a congressional statute. The latter would be unconstitutional, and would set a dangerous precedent, if it succeeded.

Annoyingly, Biden doesn't tell us whether term limits should be enacted by amendment or statute. He also doesn't address the difficult issue of how to handle current justices. Including them in the term limit plan (effectively forcing some to retire soon) would anger the right. Not doing so would likely offend the left.

Biden on a binding ethics code:


I'm calling for a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. This is common sense. The court's current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced. Justices should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt.

Unlike with term limits, Congress has broad (though not unlimited) power to enact ethics restrictions on the Supreme Court. I'm fine with requiring justices to disclose gifts (though there should be an exemption for small ones; no need to disclose every time a friend takes a justice out to dinner or the like). Indeed, I would go further and suggest large gifts should be banned outright. It also makes sense to require justices to "recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest." Justices already routinely recuse when there are financial conflicts. However, much depends on what qualifies as an "other conflict of interest." I don't think the mere fact that a spouse has been active on an issue in the political arena qualifies.

As for refraining from "political activity," it depends on what counts as such. Justices should not endorse or campaign for political candidates (to my knowledge, no modern justice has done that). On the other hand, it's fine for them to express views on various law and public policy issues. Both liberal and conservative justices routinely do so in variety of writings and speeches. For example, both Justice Gorsuch and Justice Sotomayor have publicly advocated policies to expand access to legal services. Such advocacy is a useful contribution to public discourse, and should not be banned, though I am no fan of Sotomayor's proposal to impose "forced labor" on lawyers (her term, not mine).

Finally, Biden doesn't say how the ethics code would be enforced, or what the penalties for violations would be. For obvious reasons, those details are extremely important.

In sum, all three of these proposals potentially have merit. But the details matter, and Biden hasn't given us much on that score.


Ilya Somin is Professor of Law at George Mason University, and author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom and Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter.

The US Supreme Court’s Attacks on Democracy Are Now a Chilling Yearly Ritual

What used to be an annual release of nuanced legal decisions has become a predictable assault against the nation’s core institutions.


Geoff Livingston (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Protest in front of the U.S. Supreme Court

by Kevin Welner
July 29, 2024
THE PROGRESSIVE

An ancient Chinese legend tells of Nian, a fierce beast that emerged from the sea on the last day of the lunar year, hungry for people and livestock. Similar myths appear in other cultures. Japanese myth features Yamata no Orochi, an eight-headed dragon that surfaced each year to demand a sacrifice of one of the daughters of two earthly deities. And King Minos of Greek legend demanded an annual tribute of seven young men and seven young women.

This idea of an annual terror, lurking in the recesses of daily existence, is not something I felt for most of my life. But as a legal scholar who closely follows the U.S. Supreme Court, I am no longer so sanguine.

I have been thinking of Nian in particular because the Chinese lunar year usually begins in late January or early February, around the same time SCOTUS begins issuing decisions. Those releases begin as a whisper and build in a deafening crescendo that ends on June 30 or (like this year) July 1. The Supreme Court’s decisions, much like Nian’s arrival, are cyclical and are now agonizingly predictable in their outcomes.

According to the Chinese myth, villagers would flee their coastal communities when the new year approached, hurrying off to the nearby mountains to avoid the beast. While I don’t have mountains to seek haven in when SCOTUS unleashes its decisions, I practice rhythmic breathing and tell myself that karma will surely catch up with Mitch McConnell, in his next life, for his theft of two seats on the Court while serving as the Senate Majority Leader. Would it be too on-the-nose, I ask myself, if he came back as a tortoise?

When I began my career as a legal scholar, I approached each SCOTUS term with nominal trepidation. I viewed the Court’s steady release of its opinions as just an interesting season of legal analyses. Whether I found myself more in agreement with the majority or the dissent, I appreciated and learned from the Justices’ reasoning. Back in those days, the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo had not yet begun mass producing their distinctive brand of pre-fabricated right-wing politicians in robes.

Alexander Hamilton viewed the courts as the “least dangerous” branch of the federal government because, without power of the purse and no army, it could not directly enforce its decisions. But we learned this term that the Supreme Court could upend the ability of Congress to pass functioning laws and establish a king who is free to commit crimes.

In my field of education law, the Court has deflated the establishment clause and supercharged the free exercise clause, leaving us to legitimately wonder whether a system of district-run public schools with no religious proselytizing will survive into the next generation. The Court has already forced religious private schools onto Maine’s taxpayers, and it’s only an appeal or two away from forcing states to allow those schools to engage in faith-motivated bigotry.

As terrifying as the monster was, Nian did have a weakness—it was scared away by the color red, firecrackers, and bright lights. None of those, alas, are likely to work on Justices shielded by a combination of marble, billionaires, and shocking indifference to their rapidly crumbling institutional legitimacy.

Perhaps installing term limits, such as eighteen-year terms of active service for each Justice, is the best way to tame SCOTUS. Or maybe adding seats to the Court, or implementing congressional oversight and a meaningful and enforceable ethics code would do the trick.

In her dissent in the Trump immunity case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson eschewed the usual sign-off of “I respectfully dissent,” opting instead for, “because the risks (and power) the Court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms, I dissent.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor similarly omitted the often-used “respectfully,” writing, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

From the outset, the U.S. experiment with a democratic republic was much more fragile than we were taught in school. The U.S. Constitution, we were told, establishes three equal branches of government, ingeniously creating a system of checks and balances. That’s a comforting thought, but only until Nian emerges again next year.
TagsDispatches Supreme Court Democracy Courts Government

Kevin Welner is a professor in the education school and the law school at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also the director of the National Education Policy Center.