There’s a whole lot of messing with Texas on today’s BradCast. Some of it is actually good news. The rest? Well… [Audio of full show follows this summary.]
FIRST UP… The outlook is getting pretty grim for Republicans in this year’s critical midterm elections. With new lows in support for Donald Trump, recent polling now finds more Americans say their financial outlook is getting worse than at any time over the last 25 years. That includes during both the 2008 Great Recession and the COVID pandemic. Energy prices continue to rise (even as Trump uses your tax dollars to pay two more wind energy companies to not produce wind energy), and he continues to take the blame for skyrocketing gasoline prices in the wake of his ridiculous, unpopular war on Iran.
The GOP can still take some solace in the fact that their Super PACs and party committees are reportedly banking $600 million more than Democrats. But the polling news out of Texas today, finding Democratic State Rep. James Talarico leading both of his potential opponents, Sen. John Cornyn and the state’s corrupt A.G. Ken Paxton, in this November’s U.S. Senate race has got to have Repubs very nervous as they are now looking at the serious possibility that they could lose their Senate majority as well as in the House.
NEXT… Speaking of Texas (and their corrupt Attorney General), last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — the most rightwing appellate court in the nation — narrowly ruled in a 9 to 8 decision that the state’s new law, mandating the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom in the state, somehow does not violate the First Amendment‘s prohibition against a government establishment of religion.
The majority ruling, overturning a lower U.S. District Court judge who determined that S.B. 10 violates the Constitution’s separation between Church and State, was written by Judge Kyle Duncan. Before being nominated by Trump for a lifetime position on the federal bench, Duncan was a prominent Christian activist culture-warrior. He is, apparently, continuing that activism from the bench.
We’re joined today by JAY WILLIS, editor-in-chief of the excellent legal website Balls and Strikes. Last week, after the 5th Circuit’s 181-page ruling [PDF] was handed down, Willis wrote a piece about it headlined “Originalist Judges Are Spitting On the Constitution and Think You Won’t Notice”.
After explaining the definition of “originalism” — a word now very much in vogue for Republican judges and Supreme Court Justices — Willis cuts to the chase. “The real purpose of originalism is to allow conservative judges and justices the leeway they need to arrive at outcomes in cases that just happen to align with the Republican policy agenda.”
In this case, Willis says, Judge Duncan has come up with — and/or overlooked and/or cherry picked — all matter of history and logic to reach his favored conclusion that the state government’s requirement that a 20″ x 16″ laminated or framed poster in every single public school classroom declaring “I am the Lord thy God. Though shalt have no other gods before me.,” is somehow not unlawfully or unconstitutionally coercive to school children in any way.
Duncan’s ruling argues that the law can’t be indoctrinating kids into a religion, because it doesn’t require anyone to read the posters or obey its mandates. So how could the law be considered coercive in any way?
“Only the brightest minds that the Federalist Society has ever produced could look at a list of things that are literally called the ‘commandments’ and decide there is nothing coercive about that,” quips Willis.
Would Judge Duncan and his fellow rightwing activist Christian travelers feel the same way if a state or local government or school district in Texas adopted a statute that mandated the posting of a 20″ by 16″ poster of the Quran’s Throne Verse, declaring: “Allah! There is no god ‘worthy of worship’ except Him, the Ever-Living, All-Sustaining. … For He is the Most High, the Greatest.” Would that be similar cool? Why not? Would it be any different than posting “I am the Lord thy God. Though shalt have no other gods before me” to Texas’ 5.5 million public school kids every day?
Tune in for Willis’ thoughts on that and much more, including on the ridiculous news that broke just before airtime today that Trump’s former FBI Director James Comey has been revenge-indicted again by Trump’s weaponized DOJ, this time for having posted a photo on social media of a rock formation he came across on the beach that read “8647”. (That, apparently, is being considered a direct threat to the life of Donald Trump. But “I am the Lord thy God” in thousands of public school classrooms every single day is hardly worth even noticing.)
FINALLY… Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with some encouraging news on the first global conference, now underway in Colombia, to begin the discussion of phasing out fossil fuels entirely; disturbingly intense and unusual Spring weather; and Trump’s twisted taxpayer payoffs to wind energy companies to go away, rather than provide clean, cheap renewable energy to millions of Americans…
