Most People Believe A President Must Obey Court Rulings

 

The charts above are from the Marquette Law School Poll -- done between May 5th and 15th of a nationwide sample of 1,004 adults, with a 3.6 point margin of error.

Courts Have Already Made It Clear That Trump Is Unfit

The media seems bent on determining whether voters will change their minds about trump if he is convicted of the crimes in three remaining locations - federal crimes in Florida and Washington, D.C. and state crimes in Georgia. I say we should already know the answer - it will not really make a difference.

I say that because courts have already, numerous times, determined that Trump has committed an assortment of crimes. If that hasn't already convinced voters that Trump should not be elected, why would a couple more convictions make a difference.

Consider what courts have already determined that Trump has done:

RACISM: In the 1970's, Trump was determined to be in violation of laws preventing discrimination in housing. He was refusing to rent any of his apartments to Blacks. The Department of Justice filed suit against him. A settlement was reached where Trump agreed to stop the illegal discrimination, and was court-ordered to run ads in the Black community. 

FRAUD: One of the best examples of this was "Trump University". It was supposed to educate students on how to make money in real estate, but it turned out to be just a front for taking their money. A court ordered it be shut down and student money refunded.

THEFT: Trump, and his sons, created a charity that was supposed to help the needy. But the charity turned out to be just another way to enrich himself. Trump used the charity's funds to buy things for himself (including for a portrait of himself). A court ordered the charity to be dissolved and for Trump to disseminate the funds to several real charities.

DEFAMATION: Trump lied and slandered E. Jean Carroll. He was found guilty (twice) and ordered to pay her millions of dollars.

SEXUAL ABUSE: In the defamation trial, it was judged that Trump was actually guilty of sexual abuse (rape) of Ms. Carroll.

ELECTION INTERFERENCE: In the most recent case, Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of trying to interfere with an election by paying a porn star to remain silent about their sexual liaison.

If Trump committed the remaining crimes of which he is accused, he should be tried and convicted. But that should not make anyone change their mind. There is already plenty of evidence that Trump is guilty of continuing criminal activity. There is already enough to show that he is unfit to serve in the presidency - or any other government position! 

NY Appeals Court Gives Trump A Break He Doesn't Deserve

Donald Trump was supposed to put up a bond before appealing the nearly half a billion dollars judgement today. He had been convicted of fraud. But on the last day, a New York Appeals Court stepped in and lowered the bond to $175 million, and then gave him another 10 days to post it.

Frankly, I'm baffled as to why the appeals court lowered the bond to less than half of the judgement. The trial judge issued a detailed and well thought out decision on why he had set the original verdict amount. Is the appeals court thinking of lowering the judgement amount - without even hearing the case?

This smells of favoritism - that we have a two-tiered justice system - one for the rich and famous (or infamous) and another for the rest of us. Do you think a normal person would have received this kind of break from the appeals court (even if they could not afford to post a bond)? Of course not!

Trump is still claiming that no one was hurt by his criminal activity. That is not true. By inflating his property values, he received a much lower interest rate on loans - cheating the banks out of millions of dollars. And by deflating those same property values when paying taxes, he cheated the state of New York (and its citizens) out of many millions of dollars.

Trump was found to have engaged in fraud - and that fraud garnered him hundreds of million dollars in ill-gotten gains. He should be forced to pay the entire amount. Anything less is not justice! 

GOP Created The IVF Ban - And They Have No Way To Fix It

For five decades, most in the Republican Party opposed the right for women to choose to have an abortion. Why? What was their reasoning? It couldn't be that they didn't believe women should have the same rights as men, since the Constitution guarantees equal rights for all citizens. The only justification they had was the belief that life did not begin at birth, but at conception (which meant the embryo was a child and aborting it was murder). But they didn't think that argument through to its logical conclusion.

Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were "children". That's because in the process known as in vitro fertilization (IVF) an egg is removed from a women and fertilized with a man's sperm. This means conception has occurred.

This decision (which was correct if one believes in life beginning at conception) has had a chilling effect on IVF, and IVF clinics have stopped operating in Alabama. IVF is not foolproof and doesn't always work the first time. Many embryos are created so a woman can have a better chance at having a real baby born, and the extra embryos are frozen for future use if the first time results in failure.

But not every embryo survives the freezing and thawing process. If the embryo does not survive the process, has a "child" been murdered? Yes, if the Alabama decision is correct. And even if an embryo survives the process, not all will be used. What about the unused ones. If they are disposed of, has a "child" been murdered? Yes, if the Alabama decision is correct. Are the unused embryos to be kept in perpetuity? Wouldn't that be denying "children" the right to be born?

This is now a mess! The decision, based on life beginning at conception, is going to effectively ban IVF procedures in every state that bans abortion. And the Republicans have stated their desire to ban abortion in all 50 states because of their belief that life begins at conception.

Even most Republicans don't want IVF procedures banned. They know it is the only way for many families to have a child or children. 

How are Republicans going to fix this mess? There is no fix if they truly believe life begins at conception. And if they don't, then there is no reason to deny a woman the right to control her own body.

This is not going to play well for them in the coming election. A majority of Americans already support the right to an abortion, and even more support the right to have an IVF procedure.

Donald Trump has been bragging to his followers that he is solely responsible for overturning Roe vs Wade (which led to abortion being banned in many states). He says he's responsible because he chose three anti-abortion Supreme Court justices. That makes him also responsible for banning the IVF procedure in Alabama (and in many other red states in the future).

The Republicans created this mess, and they have no way to fix it. 

Right-Wing Claims Of Abortion Ban Exceptions Are A LIE!

Anti-abortion proponents have claimed that their abortion bans have exceptions that will protect women. That is not true. As the Texas Supreme Court has shown, those exceptions don't actually exist. Michelle Goldberg explains in this excellent post in The New York Times:

Soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, horror stories started emerging of women denied medically urgent abortions for pregnancies gone dangerously awry. In response, the anti-abortion movement developed a sort of conspiracy theory to rationalize away the results of their policies.

Pro-choice activists, they argued, were deliberately misconstruing abortion laws, leading doctors to refuse to treat women who obviously qualified for exceptions. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women,” said a report by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute. The Catholic conservative Richard Doerflinger accused “pro-abortion groups” of spreading “false and exaggerated claims in order to ‘paralyze’ physicians and discredit the laws.”

Whether this argument stemmed from genuine denial or a cynical desire to mislead the public, a shattering case in Texas shows how absurd it is. Late last month, Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, learned that her latest, much-wanted pregnancy was doomed due to a severe genetic disorder. If the pregnancy continued, she was likely to have a stillbirth, and if she didn’t, the baby had virtually no chance of surviving long outside the womb.

Meanwhile, she’d made multiple trips to the emergency room for severe cramping and what seemed to be leaking amniotic fluid. Her doctor told her that carrying the pregnancy to term could jeopardize her future fertility, and Cox very much wants more children. So she, her husband and her doctor sued the state, seeking a court order to allow her to terminate her pregnancy in Texas. If the Texas abortion ban had workable medical exceptions, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t apply to Cox. But it doesn’t, and the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, fought the Cox family and their doctor every step of the way.

This case is unusual for Cox’s willingness to wage a legal fight while suffering a medical catastrophe, but not for the cruel bind the state placed her in. The day Cox received the terrible news about her fetus, the Texas Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments in Zurawski v. Texas, a suit brought by two doctors and 20 women who had been denied medically necessary abortions and were seeking to clarify the scope of emergency exemptions to the state’s ban. Among the plaintiffs is Amanda Zurawski, who was 18 weeks pregnant after a year and half of fertility treatments when her water broke. Although her pregnancy had no chance of surviving, she was denied an abortion until she became septic. Zurawski ended up spending days in an intensive care unit, and has been left with damage to her reproductive tract that will most likely make it harder for her to become pregnant again.

Turning to Google in the midst of her own crisis, Cox learned about the Zurawski case and got in touch with the legal organization representing the 20 women, the Center for Reproductive Rights. That group quickly filed suit on her behalf, and last week, a Texas judge sided with Cox, issuing a temporary restraining order that would have allowed her doctor to end the pregnancy without facing criminal or civil penalties. But Paxton appealed the order and warned three hospitals where Cox’s doctor holds admitting privileges not to let the abortion go forward. The restraining order, he wrote, “will not insulate you, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws, including first-degree felony prosecutions.” On Friday, Texas’ Supreme Court blocked the lower court ruling, pending its decision on the merits of the case.

In desperation, Cox finally traveled out of state for an abortion, though the Center for Reproductive Rights is not disclosing where she went. It can’t have been easy, and not just because Cox has two young children at home. Even for people with financial resources, it’s painful to endure a medical trauma in an unfamiliar place.

As Molly Duane, the Center for Reproductive Rights attorney representing Cox, points out, abortion procedures at 15 weeks of pregnancy or later are generally done over two days, with patients sent home in between. Most people would rather not endure this process in a hotel room. “Truly, she just wanted to get health care in Texas,” Duane said on Friday. But she couldn’t. Late on Monday, the Texas Supreme Court declared that Cox wasn’t entitled to an abortion and vacated the lower court’s order.

“I think it’s the clearest message you could have possibly received from an anti-abortion state that they never meant the medical exemption to mean anything at all,” said Duane.

An irony here is that if the State Supreme Court had allowed Cox to end her pregnancy in Texas, it might have benefited hard-line abortion opponents. Were the state to codify clear exemptions for people in extreme medical distress, offering a sliver of mercy to women like Zurawski and Cox, its callous abortion ban might seem slightly more politically palatable. That, after all, is why abortion opponents falsely insist that such clarity already exists.

But right-wing politicians and those who support them would rather inflict unimaginable suffering on women than relax the tiniest bit of control over their medical decisions. I asked Duane if any anti-abortion groups had filed amicus briefs on Cox’s behalf. I wasn’t surprised that the answer was no.

What's The Appropriate Punishment For Fox News?

The trial of Fox News is about to start. Dominion has asked for $1.6 billion in actual damages (and possibly more in a punitive judgement). There is no doubt that Fox owes that money, but is that all it owes? Doesn't it also owe its viewers the truth? Here's what Robert Reich thinks should happen:

The trial of Fox News begins today. If Dominion Voting Systems wins, I have a suggestion for what the court should demand of Fox News, in addition to paying damages for the harm to Dominion.

The judge has already ruled that on-air statements by Fox News hosts, asserting that Dominion’s voting machines played a role in causing Donald Trump to lose the 2020 election, were false. The task for the jury is to decide whether Fox made those false statements with actual malice.

If Dominion wins, it will be because Fox’s own internal emails, text messages, and depositions revealed that its hosts (and owner, Rupert Murdoch) knew that the allegations of election fraud by Trump and his allies were baseless but kept airing them anyway, in part because they feared that another right-wing network, Newsmax, would otherwise steal their audience. When Fox News reporters shot down the allegations publicly, the network’s big personalities complained internally that telling their viewers the truth was hurting the network’s brand.

To this day, Fox News viewers still don’t know the truth — neither about Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, nor about Fox News’s role in promoting Trump’s big lie. This is the real damage of the Fox News propaganda feedback loop: After inflaming right-wing conspiracy theories, Fox has a financial incentive to continue to push them in order to retain its inflamed audience, which further inflames them. 

The case that starts today raises a fundamental question: Will there be a penalty for profiting from the spread of dangerous misinformation?

Think of the poison Fox has knowingly been pumping into America as analogous to the poison cigarette manufacturers pumped into Americans’ lungs. Part of the remedy for the cigarette poison has been warning disclosures on every pack. Why not an analogous remedy for Fox News’s poison?

If Dominion wins, the court should order Fox News hosts — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and all other hosts similarly implicated — to tell their viewers every half hour, at least until the end of 2024: 

“When we told you the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, we lied. Trump lied, too. He continues to lie. The 2020 election wasn’t stolen. Biden won fair and square.”

As on cigarette packs that must vary their warnings, the court should require alternative disclosures, perhaps every other week: 

“We apologize for lying to you about the 2020 election. There was no fraud. Biden won. We lied because we were afraid of losing ad revenue if we told the truth. Shame on us.”

And every third week: 

“The 2020 election wasn’t stolen from Trump. Trump made that up, and we repeated his lie because we’re greedy and unscrupulous. And that’s the truth.”

What do you think? Should Fox News be required to issue any other disclosure messages?

61% Of Voters Oppose Supreme Court's Abortion Decision

 

The chart above is from the recent NBC News / Hart Research Poll -- done between September 9th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Alex Jones Must Finally Pay For His Depraved Lies

One of the biggest liars on radio (and other media) has been Alex Jones. Finally, a court is making him pay for those lies. A jury has awarded the parents of murdered children about $4.1 million in actual damages. Now they will determine how much he must pay in punitive damages, and that is likely to be a lot more.

Here is what the editorial board of The Washington Post says about it: 

Try to imagine the horror of your six-year-old son gunned down at school. Think about what you would feel as you sat in a local firehouse and waited for hours to learn of your child’s fate. Try to envision holding the body of your son, a bullet in his head. Then imagine what it would be like, as you are grieving, to have lies spread about your child’s murder — that the shooting never happened, that it was an elaborate hoax and you were an actor playing a role in a government plot to advance gun control. And think what it would be like to be hounded, harassed and threatened by zealots pushing unhinged conspiracy theories.

That Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, whose six-year-old son Jesse was one of the 20 children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting 10 years ago, endured all that — the unimaginable and the unspeakable — makes all the more remarkable their resolve in trying to ensure no other parent has to suffer from the added torment of malicious lies. The couple, along with several other families, sued conspiracy theorist and media provocateur Alex Jones for using his online platform and broadcast to spread the lies to millions of people worldwide. On Thursday, a jury in Austin awarded Jesse’s parents $4.1 million in compensatory damages; punitive damages are still to be decided. Mr. Jones already had been found liable for defamation by courts in Texas and Connecticut, which issued rare default judgments for his failure to respond to court orders and turn over documents.

Testimony during the civil trial left no doubt of Mr. Jones’s mendacity. During harsh cross-examination of Mr. Jones on Wednesday, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook parents revealed that Mr. Jones’s lawyer had accidentally sent the plaintiff’s counsel two years of data from Mr. Jones’s cellphone, including emails and text messages thatshowed Mr. Jones had apparently perjured himself during sworn testimony. “This is your 'Perry Mason' moment,” Mr. Jones responded dismissively. No, Mr. Jones, this is not made-up TV drama and no one is entertained. “Jesse was real. I’m a real mom,” said Ms. Lewis in her heart-wrenching testimony. She challenged Mr. Jones to think about how his lying and fear-mongering have poisoned U.S. politics and distorted reality for the hundreds of thousands of people who follow him. In addition to his Sandy Hook lies, Mr. Jones has peddled fantasies about 9/11 and covid-19.

The $4.1 million is far less than the $150 million sought by the parents, but much more than the $8 recommended by Mr. Jones. The truth is that no amount of money can compensate for what Mr. Heslin described to the jury as the “living hell” that has been made of their lives. What is important is that Mr. Jones has been called to account, in an indictment of today’s culture in which the spread of misinformation is tolerated and even encouraged. “Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for,” Mark Bankston, the parents’ lawyer, told the jury in his opening statement. “This is a case about creating change.The $4.1 million is the first of possible jury awards; we hope that puts on notice others who knowingly traffic in lies to advance their political and financial interests.

The 3 Major Untruths In The Decision Overturning Roe Vs. Wade

The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade was terrible. And it was nonsense -- because it contained statement in the majority opinion that simply are not true. In this op-ed for The Washington Post, David Von Drehle list the three biggest untruths in that decision:

“Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views.” The Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization begins with this truth. The path ahead for a troubled America would be easier if it continued in this candid vein.

Instead, the decision to substitute today’s court majority for the majorities of the past half-century — thus ending the right to abortion — quickly declines into a web of untruths and evasions.

One cannot arraign the entire dishonesty of the ruling in a single column. Dobbs suffers massively from the pandemic disease of the high court: verbosity. Nothing is said once that can instead be said half a dozen times. Justices have too many clerks and too little work, and so they spend months in their chambers swooning to the sound of their own voices.

But three major deceptions are enough to give a flavor of the whole.

First, the Dobbs holding — written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and joined by four other justices — repeatedly asserts the untrue claim that Roe v. Wade in 1973 usurped the role of state legislatures in regulating abortion and robbed states of the freedom to craft laws reflecting diverse views. “Roe abruptly ended that political process,” Alito asserted. “It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation.”

Not even Alito can sustain this canard for more than a few hundred words. Very soon, he stumbles onto the truth: “Americans continue to hold passionate and widely divergent views on abortion, and state legislatures have acted accordingly.”

Obviously, legislatures cannot be highly restricted and widely divergent at the same time.

The court’s abortion rulings never foreclosed debate. The rulings merely structured the debate as a search for those regulations that successfully express the values of a state’s majority while protecting a limited zone of self-determination for women. Dobbs is not about restoring power to the states that was wrongly seized by the courts. It is about taking power away from individuals and giving it to government.

A second deception follows directly from the first. Dobbs attempts to mislead its readers into believing that stripping people of power somehow enhances democracy. Abortion, Alito wrote, is “a question of profound moral and social importance that the Constitution unequivocally leaves for the people.” And later: “We thus return the power to weigh those arguments to the people.”

But that is what Roe did, and what Dobbs undoes. Roe, in all its imperfections, grappled honestly with the “profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views” — and placed those profound decisions directly in the hands of those closest to the issue. It’s true that a state legislature is, by some measures, closer to the people than a court of nine justices in Washington. But far, far closer to this profound and difficult issue are the individuals who must wrestle with the many implications of an unwanted pregnancy, perhaps aided by their families, friends, doctors or counselors.

Dobbs strips decision-making from those closest to the moral struggle and most deeply invested in it. It gives that power to people and institutions that are not directly involved. Then, with shocking dishonesty, Alito presents this as some sort of magnificent restoration of self-determination. He reads the Constitution — which begins “We the People” — and finds no actual people in it. Only legislatures.

Thirdly, Alito and his co-signers claim that the Dobbs decision in no way threatens other rights that have been determined by using exactly the same reasoning as Roe. The line of cases that led to Roe, and led from it to other rights, is “inapposite,” Alito wrote primly.

Freedom from forced sterilization, the right to choose one’s spouse, access to contraception, privacy in the bedroom — these rights stand on precisely the same ground as the right to abortion. And according to Dobbs, the right to abortion is groundless. Yet somehow, those other rights aren’t threatened “in any way.”

That howler didn’t even survive the huddle of the Gang of Five. Justice Clarence Thomas called bullfeathers in his concurring opinion — a document that confirmed two truths about this singular figure: Thomas is the most radical justice in U.S. history, and he is scrupulously honest about it.

He did not pretend, along with his colleagues, that abortion could be surgically plucked from the intimate rights handed over from state power to individual choice by a century of jurisprudence. Unlike Alito, Thomas told the truth: Individual autonomy over intimate decisions is up for grabs.

I said I would discuss three deceptions — but they lead me to a fourth. Dobbs pretends to be the very model of judicial modesty, even as five mandarins in Washington erase the work of their predecessors. Judges should not have such power! the judges declare, as they hurl their lightning bolt.

Most Say NO To Overturning Griswold, Loving, Obergefell, & Roe Supreme Court Decisions

The chart above is from the 19th News / Momentative Poll -- done between May 9th and 16th of a nationwide sample of 8,723 adults, with a 1.5 point margin of error. 

This Could Be A Disastrous Supreme Court Term

Much has been said about the Supreme Court possibly overturning Roe vs Wade as they consider a Mississippi abortion law. That is a worry. But it's not the only thing to worry about in this new term of the Supreme Court. Vox.com gives us nine areas where the Supreme Court could make radical changes to the country's laws -- and most of them could be very bad. Here are the nine areas:

1) Roe v. Wade could be ended

2) The Court could eviscerate America’s gun laws

3) The Court could seize significant new authority to veto federal policies

4) The Court is likely to carve a new hole into the wall between church and state

5) The Court will reveal whether its sympathy for “religious liberty” claims extends to death row

6) The Court could further dismantle anti-discrimination laws

7) The Court will decide whether Puerto Ricans can be denied benefits

8) The Court will decide whether the US can hide evidence that it tortured people

9) The Court could make partisan gerrymandering even worse

Cruz Wins Court Battle To Legalize "Quid Pro Quo" Corruption

Did you think it's illegal to give a congressional candidate an expensive gift to get him/her to listen to your point of view on bills before Congress? It is supposed to be, but members of Congress (and their rich donors) are very good at finding ways around that. Ted Cruz recently went to court (and won) to allow donors to send him money after he won an election -- money that goes directly into his personal bank account. It's a devious way to legalize quid pro quo corruption!

The following is part of an article about this by Richard W. Painter at MSNBC.com:

Thanks to a win for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in a lawsuit last week against the Federal Election Commission, campaign contributors now have a foolproof way to make sure the money they donate goes right into a winning congressional candidate's personal bank account.

Post election contributions are included in the $2900 maximum per donor contribution per election cycle and can be made to a candidate who wins or loses. But post-election contributions are particularly appealing to donors who prefer to know that a candidate has won before they contribute.

Contributors may want their money to go to the winning candidate's personal funds, ensuring maximum gratitude and maximum probability of reciprocity (the Latin phrase for this is "quid pro quo," but we're not supposed to talk about that).

Thanks to Cruz's successful lawsuit, candidates now can make unlimited use of a mechanism that gives these contributors a bigger voice in Washington.

In the suit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that candidates for federal office and their campaign contributors have a constitutional right to deploy a scheme that works around both campaign finance laws and restrictions on personal gifts to members of Congress. . . .

Here's how it works:

A member of Congress is running for re-election. He raises $6 million for his campaign by Election Day, but he wants to spend more. So he lends his campaign $1 million more from his personal funds. After he wins the election, he continues to raise money for the same campaign from donors who contribute money not for the purpose of winning that election or the next one but solely for the purpose of paying back the congressman. Their contributions go into his campaign bank account and out again into his personal bank account. Dollar for dollar, every post-election contribution these donors make goes directly to the congressman.

The potential for corruption in this scenario is obvious. The economic reality of the transaction is that the post-election campaign contribution is a gift to the congressman. The congressman was willing to spend $1 million of his own money on his campaign, which is permissible under current campaign finance laws. But then, after he won the election, he solicited more contributions so he could get paid back by people willing to donate for the sole purpose of paying him back.

If we want to allow unlimited gifts to members of Congress, this post-election contribution and loan repayment should be allowed. But that's not the rule. Both the Senate and the House have strict rules about gifts. Gifts to members from registered lobbyists are flatly prohibited, members may not solicit gifts as they do campaign contributions, and gifts from people other than members' families and a few other sources are generally limited to no more than $50. . . .

Post-election political fundraising and candidate loan repayment are potentially massive workarounds for the gift rules. This is one more way politicians and their campaign contributors, like some businesspeople, come up with clever ways to avoid the law. . . .

Explicitly saying there is a quid pro quo is a great way to book an extended stay in federal prison. So, as with a great many campaign contributions, it's "wink-wink, nod-nod." But in these situations, the usual professed motive for campaign contributions — the donor's desire to help a good candidate win — is absent. The candidate has already won.

Another difference is that this campaign contribution goes directly into the candidate's pocket and benefits him personally. Yes, there is a dollar limit on individual contributions to campaigns, but corporations and other entities can establish political action committees that raise massive amounts of individual contributions from their employees, customers, suppliers and others for political campaigns, including, now, a campaign war chest that can be used for an unlimited dollar amount of post-election payoffs of loans from the candidates themselves. . . .

Either this line of cases will be reversed, whether by a less activist federal judiciary or by constitutional amendment, or we will cease to live in a representative democracy. We will have the best elected officials that money can buy. And now the money need not be given solely for the purpose of electing a candidate, but simply to pay off the candidate after he has already won and is ready to do what is expected in return.

Supreme Court Supports DACA Program (For Now)

During his administration, President Obama signed an executive order that would allow "Dreamers" (those brought to the U.S. as young children and grew up here) to stay in this country. The program he created was called DACA -- and if these young Americans had served in the military or gotten an education, and stayed out of legal trouble, then they could qualify. It was a good program, and is supported by a majority of Americans.

But Donald Trump doesn't like the program, and to appeal to his xenophobic and racist base, he signed an order that would end the DACA program and deport these young people (even though most of them have only known this country).

Trump's order was stopped by a U.S. District Judge. Trump then appealed that all the way up to the Supreme Court -- where he thought the new conservative majority would support him and let him deport the Dreamers. He was wrong!

On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued their decision on Trump's attempt to end DACA. In a 5 to 4 decision, they said Trump could not end DACA. Chief Justice Roberts joined four other justices (Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan) in striking down the attempt to end DACA, and wrote the decision. Four justices opposed the decision (Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas, Kavanaugh).

The decision doesn't totally protect DACA. It just ruled that Trump had tried to end it without giving good reasons for doing so, and that was a violation of the law. Roberts wrote:

We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies. “The wisdom” of those decisions “is none of our concern.” Chenery II, 332 U. S., at 207. We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural re- quirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its ac- tion. Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous is- sues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients. That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner. The appropriate recourse is therefore to remand to DHS so that it may consider the problem anew.

The Trump administration could always try again to end the program by giving legitimate reasons for ending it (if such reasons exist). But it is unlikely to happen before the November election. That's because the program, while hated by Trump's base, is supported by most voters.

Supreme Court Rules Against Government On Census

It looks like Chief Justice John Roberts really is going to be the swing vote on the current Supreme Court. On Thursday, He joined the four liberal justices (Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor) in rejecting the Trump administration's desire to put a citizenship question on the official 2020 census form. The vote was 5 to 4, with the court's conservatives (Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch) voting to allow the question to be included.

The court said the government might have the right to include the citizenship question, but had failed to provide adequate justification for it. Since there are only a few weeks before the printing of the census forms must begin, it is unlikely that the justification could be provided in time.

Here is how Pete Williams of NBC News reported the court's decision:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration cannot include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census form that goes to every U.S. household, giving a win to mostly Democratic populous states that said the question would discourage legal and illegal immigrants from responding and make the population count less accurate.

The court was deeply fractured on the issue, but on the section that essentially eliminated the citizenship question, the vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the four-member liberal wing of the court.

The court's majority said the government has the right to ask a citizenship question, but that it needs to properly justify changing the long-standing practice of the Census Bureau. The Trump administration's justification was "contrived," Roberts wrote, and did not appear to be the genuine reason for the change, possibly implying that the real reason was political.

The decision makes it highly unlikely that the Commerce Department will now have time to justify the question and make it part of the census before the forms have to be printed in only a few weeks.

The ruling was a setback for the Trump administration's tough position on immigration. It was also a surprise, because it appeared in April when the case was argued that the court's five-member conservative majority was prepared to rule that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted within his authority to add the question.

A census is required every 10 years by the Constitution, and the results determine the size of each state's congressional delegation. The data is also used to calculate a local government's share of funds under many federal programs.

A total of 18 states, several of the nation's largest cities and immigrant rights groups sued to block the question, saying it would make immigrants reluctant to respond to the census mailer. As a result, states with large immigrant communities could lose seats in Congress and suffer cuts in government aid programs, their lawsuit said.

Citizenship questions were asked during every census between 1820 and 1950. But from 1960 on, the government sent households a short form that contained only a few questions and did not inquire about citizenship. Both the Census Bureau and the groups behind the lawsuit agreed that the question will reduce the census response rate, especially in immigrant communities. By one government estimate, as many as 6.5 million people might not be counted.

Trump Administration Wants To Pull The Plug On Sick People

(Cartoon image is by Ed Hall at artizans.com.)

The cartoon above shows Donald Trump unplugging the life support system of a sick person. Some of you may think that's over-the-top. I don't. The latest move by the Trump administration would do exactly that -- by abolishing Obamacare and taking health insurance away from many millions of Americans. For many of them, that would amount to a death sentence.

A handful of Republican-controlled states have filed suit to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional and abolished -- and they got a right-wing judge in Texas to rule in their favor. The case is now pending before an appeals court. The federal government had stayed out of the case -- until Monday.

On Monday, the Trump administration filed in federal court, agreeing with the red states and the decision of the Texas judge. Trump wants Obamacare to be declared unconstitutional.

During his campaign for president, Trump said he wanted to provide affordable health care for all Americans. That was a lie. After being elected, he tried to abolish Obamacare -- even though neither he nor congressional Republicans had a plan to replace it. Obamacare was saved by Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans.

Failing to abolish Obamacare in Congress (and knowing he could never get it through the House since it is now controlled by Democrats), Trump has now decided to go to the courts. On Tuesday, he said he would become known as the "health care president". If he succeeds, it is more likely he will be known as the "death panel president".

Obamacare was signed into law in March of 2010. It wasn't perfect, but it did result in millions of Americans getting health insurance who could not get it before. It needs to be improved -- not abolished. But the Republicans (and Trump) don't care. For them, health care is not a right but a product to be sold to those who can afford it.

Abolishing Obamacare would mean millions of Americans could no longer afford health insurance. Millions more would be priced out of the market because of a pre-existing condition. Students would no longer be able to be on their parents insurance until age 26. Health insurance companies would be able to cap benefits and refuse to pay for medical care over a certain amount. Women would lose their right to free pregnancy prevention prescriptions. And insurance companies would no longer have to spend 80% of the premiums they receive on medical care.

Trump and his Republican cronies will tell you they will fix our broken health care system. They are lying. They've had nine years to come up with a better plan, and they haven't been able to come up with any plan at all! The only thing they will accomplish is to revert the health care system back to what it was before Obamacare -- a terrible system that kills far too many people unnecessarily.

The only upside to this action by the Trump administration that I can see is that he has handed Democrats a great issue for the 2020 campaign. Health care was an issue that helped Democrats take control of the House in 2018. Now it could help them to take the Seante and the White House in 2020.