We are on the road this week, so there will be no new BradCasts or Green News Reports until after the July 4th holiday.
So, I’ve got only a moment right now to share the quickest of thoughts on today’s latest momentous opinions handed down by the corrupted, activist, Republican U.S. Supreme Court majority. Given the speed with which I am sharing these, and the lack of deeper research I usually try to do before offering such thoughts, I reserve the right to revise and extend these remarks in the days ahead as warranted.
I am assuming here that you will be able to get the important details and contours of these rulings, their reasons (such that there are legitimate ones) and their dissents elsewhere, and that we’ll cover them in more detail after the holiday.
We usually try to spend time culling through Opinions and well-informed expert opinions about Opinions before rushing to judgement with hot takes on this blog. But, for now, due to unavoidable circumstances, here are my hottest of hot takes on today’s rulings, below which you may feel free to consider this an Open Thread in comments…
• SCOTUS allows late-arriving mail-in ballots to be counted
This 5 to 4 decision is obviously correct. It’s somewhat pathetic that it was only 5 to 4, but nothing keeps Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch from presiding as entirely partisan, activist jurists for the moment.
Voters who fill out and cast their ballot by mail on, or before, Election Day, should obviously have their ballots tallied. It should not be up to the speed of the U.S. Postal Service — or any particular corrupt Postmaster General appointed by a President — to decide which ballots should or should not be tallied, based on the speed at which they are delivered to County headquarters.
A vote known to have been cast by Election Day is a vote that should be counted. Period. There is no wiggle room here. Claims made by Trump and other Republicans hoping to disenfranchise voters for electoral advantage, arguing that a late change in results after Election Day due to slowly arriving and tallied ballots in any particular election will undermine confidence in those elections are no more than disingenuous arguments that are meant to undermine confidence in elections.
For the record, that is exactly how Republicans managed to enact strict (read: disenfranchising) Photo ID restrictions at the polling place. They claimed they needed to do so to enhance confidence in elections…after years of advancing false claims about in-person ballot fraud at the polling place, in order to manipulate public opinion in favor of such laws, no matter how many millions of American voters without sufficient ID might be prevented from voting under the strictest of Republican ID requirements.
In a rare win for voters in this case, for a happy change, the Court’s three Democratic-appointees were joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the majority, allowing the centuries old practice used in a majority of states to continue. For now. Thus, protecting against even further chaos for voters in this year’s critical midterm elections and, hopefully, beyond.
The irony, of course, for anyone who has followed this blog for years, is that we are no fans of Vote-by-Mail, generally speaking. We strongly recommend either voting in person, if your jurisdiction allows you to fill out a paper ballot by hand, or filling out a Vote-by-Mail ballot at home but, if at all possible, hand-delivering it to a polling place, a town/county voting center or election headquarters (check local laws) rather than mailing it in. If not, get your vote in however you possibly can! Including by mailing it in or casting it on a 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting system if that is all that you are able to do, for whatever reason!
A major electoral bullet has been dodged here today. For now. Be happy about it.
• SCOTUS expands Presidential power to allow the firing of independent Executive Agency board members (Except at the Fed for no actually legitimate reason)
This is a more typically corrupt 6 to 3 partisan ruling from the corrupted Roberts Court’s corrupted rightwingers. Despite centuries of independent Agencies created by Congress to purposely insulate bipartisan leadership boards and their decision making process from partisan politics — and decades upon decades of SCOTUS upholding that practice and establishing clear precedent with their rulings — the activist partisan Court has now decided to allow Donald Trump to fire whoever he wants, without cause (other than political cause), at all federal agencies lead by independent Boards, such as the FTC, SEC, FEC, FCC, CFPB and more.
Well, at all such Agencies other than the Federal Reserve, where SCOTUS has managed to imagine up an incoherent exception to this rule.
It’s an awful ruling that will have devastating consequences on decades of federal regulations and protections for the American people.
Upside: the next Democratic President to take office will be able to fire every single one of Trump’s corrupt (or non-corrupt) appointees on such Agency Boards on Day One as part of our coming, inevitable Reconstruction and Reform Era after Trump is gone. Until then, we must all continue to hunker down, protect ourselves and neighbors as best as possible, and continue to fight for good and democracy over evil corruption and attempted autocracy.
The other upside: the terrible, corrupt Opinion serves as yet another reminder that Democrats must unpack and reform the Court at the very next opportunity they have, and that any Democrat running for federal office must be in full support of such obviously-needed reform, including — but not ending with — unpacking the corrupted High Court.
• SCOTUS allows $5 million ruling against Trump for his sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll to stand
Good.
See you after the holiday, if not before…
