The Commentariat -- July 2, 2021
Sean Sullivan & Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "During his trip to a grief-stricken stretch of Florida beachfront on Thursday, [President] Biden summoned two defining features of his political identity: empathy and bipartisanship.... The visit in many ways marked a return of norms and expectations for a president in times of national crisis after the awkward and sometimes ham-handed responses of ... Donald Trump. Where Trump often kept his distance from suffering and seemed to prefer focusing on strength, Biden spent hours addressing the emotionally fraught tragedy on Thursday." The AP's story is here.
Pete Williams of NBC News: "Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a temporary stop Thursday to scheduling further federal executions. In a memo to senior officials, he said serious concerns have arisen about the arbitrariness of capital punishment, its disparate impact on people of color, and 'the troubling number of exonerations' in death penalty cases." The Washington Post's report is here. The Attorney General's memorandum is here.
Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "The Biden administration issued rules Thursday to shield Americans from large, unexpected medical bills after patients wind up in emergency rooms or receive other care they did not realize lay outside their insurance networks. The rules, to begin in January, are the first in a series of coordinated steps that four federal agencies are required to take to set in motion a law Congress adopted last year to protect health-care consumers against a practice known as surprise billing. Thursday's rules spell out that, if a health plan provides for any emergency services, those services must be covered without requiring permission from an insurer ahead of time. And ... patients cannot be billed ... for the difference between what the hospital charges and what an insurance company pays for out-of-network care."
Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: "The U.S. military has vacated its most significant airfield in Afghanistan, three defense officials said, underscoring that the Pentagon expects to complete its withdrawal from the country within days after 20 years of war. The departure from Bagram air base, about 45 miles north of Kabul, ends the U.S. military presence at Afghanistan's most significant airfield. It has long been used to launch strike aircraft against the Taliban and other militant groups, and was once the headquarters for U.S. Special Operations troops in the war."
Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has named Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to serve on the select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump supporters.... House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) will serve as the select panel's leader. Pelosi's other Democratic picks include Administration Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (Calif.), Pete Aguilar (Calif.), Stephanie Murphy (Fla.), Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Elaine Luria (Va.)." Update: The Washington Post's story, by Felicia Sonmez & Marianna Sotomayor is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ MEANWHILE. Jamie Gangel of CNN: "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday issued a blanket threat during a meeting with freshmen members of his caucus that he would strip any Republican member of their committee assignments if they accept an offer from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve on the select committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection, according to two GOP sources with knowledge of the matter." MB: So we'll see if Kevin strips Cheney of her committee assignments, while he leaves reprobates like alleged sex offender Matt Gaetz & confirmed white supremacist Paul Gosar on House committees. (Also linked yesterday.)
Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "The federal deficit will hit $3 trillion in 2021 for the second consecutive year, primarily because of the national spending blitz in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday. The deficit represents a slight decrease from last year but is triple that of 2019, and amounts to one of the biggest imbalances between federal spending and revenue in American history, the nonpartisan budget office said. But the CBO also projected faster-than-expected economic growth, with unemployment falling more sharply than previously predicted...."
A Bad Day for Democracy
Harper Neidig of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a California regulation requiring nonprofits to disclose their donors to state officials is unconstitutional. The court sided with a pair of conservative groups challenging the disclosure requirement in a 6-3 split along ideological lines. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, ruling that the disclosure regulations have a chilling effect on donors' First Amendment rights." The New York Times report, by Adam Liptak, is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
John Kruzel of the Hill: “The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a pair of Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions do not run afoul of federal law, rejecting a Democratic challenge and dealing a blow to voting rights advocates.... One Arizona policy at issue in Thursday's case requires provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct to be discarded. The second measure makes it illegal for most third parties to deliver ballots for others, a practice critics refer to as 'ballot harvesting.'... Developing." MB: According to CNN, the decision was 6-3, with the more liberal justices dissenting. Update: The New York Times report, by Adam Liptak, is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
What is tragic here is that the Court has (once again) rewritten -- in order to weaken -- a law that stands as a monument to America's greatness and protects against its lowest impulses. What is tragic is that the court undermined a law designed to end discrimination in voting. I respectfully disagree. -- Justice Elena Kagan, dissent in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee
~~~ Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Justice Elena Kagan ripped her conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court on Thursday in a blistering 41-page dissent, accusing them of ignoring the legislative intent of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as well as the high court's own precedents. Kagan's fiery dissenting opinion in a voting rights case, which was joined by the two other liberal members of the court, Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, accused her conservative colleagues of undermining Section 2 of the landmark Voting Rights Act and tragically weakening what she called 'a statute that stands as a monument to America's greatness.' 'Never has a statute done more to advance the nation's highest ideals. And few laws are more vital in the current moment. Yet in the last decade, this court has treated no statute worse,' she wrote, in what is likely to become a rallying cry for Democratic lawmakers and progressive activists pushing for election reform laws, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, in Congress." ~~~
~~~ ** President Joe Biden, in a statement: "I am deeply disappointed in today's decision by the United States Supreme Court that undercuts the Voting Rights Act, and upholds what Justice Kagan called 'a significant race-based disparity in voting opportunities.' In a span of just eight years, the Court has now done severe damage to two of the most important provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- a law that took years of struggle and strife to secure. After all we have been through to deliver the promise of this Nation to all Americans, we should be fully enforcing voting rights laws, not weakening them. Yet this decision comes just over a week after Senate Republicans blocked even a debate -- even consideration -- of the For the People Act that would have protected the right to vote from action by Republican legislators in states across the country.... Democracy is on the line."
~~~ A Court "Hostile to American Democracy." Richard Hasen, in a New York Times op-ed: "In two disturbing rulings closing out the Supreme Court's term, the court's six-justice conservative majority, over the loud protests of its three-liberal minority, has shown itself hostile to American democracy.... The court is putting our democratic form of government at risk not only in these two decisions but in its overall course over the past few decades.... Rather than focus on whether a law has a disparate impact on minority voters, as Justice Elena Kagan urged in her dissent, the court [in the Arizona voting rights case] put a huge thumb on the scale in favor of restrictive state voting rules.... Minority voters have a high burden: They must show that the state has imposed more than the 'usual burdens of voting.'... If you put the [two] ... cases together, the court is making it easier for states to pass repressive voting laws and easier for undisclosed donors and big money to influence election outcomes.&" ~~~
~~~ E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post: "You wonder if July 1, 2021, might come to be known as Oligarchy Day.... The decisions in both cases could have been written by the Republican National Committee, attorneys for the Koch brothers and advocates of voter suppression.... The conservative justices also showed -- yet again -- that the right's oft-stated commitment to 'states' rights' is situational. Arizona was free to make it harder to vote, but California was not free to let citizens know who is financing entities enmeshed in their state's politics.... [For] senators still reluctant to overturn or reform the Senate's filibuster rules[, t]heir choice really is between defending the filibuster and defending democracy.... Court enlargement must now be on the agenda of anyone who cares about protecting voting rights and our increasingly fragile system of self-rule." ~~~
~~~ Steve M.: "... there are two kinds of Republicans: those who want to steal elections by any means necessary, including by means of embarrassingly implausible stunts like the January 6 riot and the Arizona audit, and those who want to steal election the [s]ubtle way, by creating a legal framework that favors the GOP at every turn while retaining the appearance of fairness and impartiality, at least to those who aren't paying close attention. Donald Trump and MAGA Nation belong in the former category, while many Republican officeholders, including the Republicans who refused to 'find' votes for Trump after Election Day 2020 or otherwise reject Joe Biden's obvious victory, belong in the latter category. The Republicans on the Supreme Court belong in that category too. They want the GOP to win every future election just as much as Trump and his crew do, but they want the GOP victories to have the patina of legitimacy. Hence today's decisions and the ones that came before them." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Exactly. Jim Crow lives! I heard Sherrilyn Ifill, director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, say today that the Supremes had taken the U.S. back to pre-1965, when the country was not a true democracy because so many Americans were excluded from voting. And that's where Johnny & the Dwarfs have taken us by gutting the transformational Voting Rights Act. Moreover, Alito's decision not only specifically sanctions Trump's "big lie" -- Alito writes about how the Arizona law ensures against "voter fraud" -- it also provides a legal excuse for all the nutcases who stormed the Capitol (and who will make similar forays in the future). Yes, yes, violence is a shame, but those ole boys who delayed certification of the Electoral College vote were fighting for a certain kind of "democracy" where the "real winner" is determined by a particular genre of voter. When the majority of Republicans tell pollsters Biden "stole" the election, what many of them mean is that too many Black votes counted.
** Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: "The Trump Organization, the real estate business that catapulted Donald J. Trump to tabloid fame, television riches and ultimately the White House, was charged Thursday with fraud and tax crimes in connection with what prosecutors said was a 15-year-long scheme to compensate a top executive off the books. The Manhattan district attorney's office, which has been conducting the investigation, also accused the executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, Mr. Trump's long-serving and trusted chief financial officer, of avoiding taxes on $1.7 million in income. He faced grand larceny, tax fraud and other charges. The charges were revealed at an arraignment in State Supreme Court in Manhattan for the Trump Organization and Mr. Weisselberg. More details about the allegations were set to be laid out in an indictment to be unsealed after the court proceeding." This is an update of a story linked yesterday.
Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump has offered to give House Democrats a peek at financial statements related to his complex business empire from before his 2016 presidential bid and eight years of contracts with his accounting firm, but refused to divulge more sensitive source data or internal communications, his lawyers told a federal judge Thursday. The disclosure of the offer, made in late June in unsuccessful court-ordered mediation, came as Trump urged a federal judge in Washington to end a stalemate and toss out a 2019 House subpoena for eight years of his financial records, calling the congressional demand unconstitutional and unenforceable.... Douglas Letter, general counsel for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Trump lawyers' in mediation 'never offered to produce a single document.' Instead they proposed that a handful of committee aides and lawmakers view a small sample of records in private; take notes instead of copy or photograph them; and keep the information confidential to the committee, Letter said. He called the limitations on reviewing complex and voluminous financial data 'ridiculous.'... U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta ... promised to 'work very hard to get everyone an expedited decision,' saying he knew any ruling would be appealed."
California. Jeremy White of Politico: "California's elections chief certified the gubernatorial recall Thursday, setting up a likely mid-September election to consider whether Gov. Gavin Newsom should remain in office. It officially marks the state's second-ever gubernatorial recall after the 2003 ouster of then-Gov. Gray Davis, whom voters replaced with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Accidents can happen. -- Ross Pietro, building inspector at a Miami Shores dog track building that collapsed in 1997 ~~~
~~~ Florida. Frances Robles of the New York Times: "Ross Prieto, the chief building official in Surfside, Fla..., told residents of Champlain Towers South [in 2018] that their building appeared to be sound nearly three years before its deadly collapse last week.... The city of Doral, where Mr. Prieto has worked as a consulting building engineer since May, announced this week that Mr. Prieto was on leave for undisclosed reasons, and that it was reviewing the eight projects he had worked on in that city.... Mr. Prieto, 54, who has a master's degree in construction management, has more than 25 years of experience as a building and roofing inspector in at least six South Florida cities, including Miami, Miami Beach and Hialeah."
News Ledes
CNBC: "Job growth leaped higher in June as businesses looked to keep up with a rapidly recovering U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls increased 850,000 for the month, compared to the Dow Jones estimate of 706,000 and better than the upwardly revised 583,000 in May. The unemployment rate, however, rose to 5.9% against the 5.6% expectation."
The New York Times is liveblogging developments today in the Surfside, Florida, condominium collapse.
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TRACKING THE MAJOR SUPREME COURT DECISIONS THIS TERM:
The NYT's gives us this nifty run-down with optics. The latest decisions yesterday leaves no question as to what we are dealing with re: this court. We are teetering on the brink of disaster and as Ifill says, the court has taken us back to pre-1965 when the country was not a true democracy. And that dark money? Bring it on, say the six dwarfs, while the snow white lady in the group sings her song of money well spent.
We cannot let this stand! We have got to pass the voting right's bill––if not, we can all sing that song about "the day democracy died" while waving our American flag!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/01/us/major-supreme-court-cases-2021.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Really, it should be that hard, but it seems to fine legal scholars we've placed on the SCOTUS continue to have trouble with determining which speech should be really, really free.
But yesterday's decisions suggest six of them are figuring it out; they seem to believe money oughta be more free than votes. Three liberals disagreed.
Really, though, it's not that complicated. This morning Everett Eclectic in a comment on the Dionne column tried to help those liberals out.
"A lot of cat-skinning goes on in our nation's highest court, much of it lately about the limits states can impose on speech.
Money is speech, we've already been told, and corporations are people--which would seem a leap to some readers of the Bill of Rights, but then those who look for money and corporations in the Constitution and can't find those dollar signs or bloodless entities therein must be the kind of old-fashioned hide-bound Originalists that are not worth listening to.
Because money is speech, Dark or Light, it's protected on all fronts at all times in all circumstances, even when its origin and motive is unknown.
But voting--which would seem a kind of speech, an aye or nay expressed by the kind of people those silly Originalists have no trouble finding in the First Amendment-- it seems doesn't deserve the same protections. Unlike with money, states have a right to question a vote's origin, track its path, determine its legitimacy. and overall fiddle with it at will, .
So where is this speech cat-skinning going? Conservative logic would say the SCOTUS will in the interest of efficiency soon cut out the middle men and women, tell them to stay home, stop worrying their little heads about it, and just let their bank accounts vote, maybe at the rate of one vote/grand...
That oughta clarify things for everyone."
Make that SHOULD NOT, since my fingers didn't.
Yesterday I mentioned I was off to get my annual physical that has been put off for almost two years due to Covid and was wondering how I was going to reply to my doctor's question "so how are you?" When he walked in the examining room I was stunned to see how he had aged– looked so tired–and I was more concerned about how HE was. He has lost four patients to Covid–-has not been able to take any vacation out of the country as he has done for years plus his patients have more systems of depression. And then came the whopper! After he had examined me throughly (I had already had my EKG) he said:
Now I have to examine your breasts but I am now required to have a second person to observe."
"What! " I said, "when did this start?" He told me Yale Health now requires all breast, genital and prostate exams monitored by a second person.
Have any of you encountered this new requirement? Of course I imagine if you are operating privately and not part of a health care conglomerate you can bloody well do what you want?
As I bid my doctor farewell I shook his hand and told him to take care of himself–--he smiled––finally–-and said, "Now, that's a switch."
@PD Pepe: For at least the past 5 years and probably longer, there has always been a female in the room when a male doctor has examined any part of my body. If a woman isn't there initially, when he gets to the touching part, he calls her in. I recall a young male doctor asking me once if I'd like to have someone else in the room when he had to touch me in some wholly non-sexual way (can't remember what the touching involved, but something as sexy as taking my blood pressure).
I have a female family doctor, and even she may have asked me on occasion if I wanted someone else in the room. These doctors are covering themselves from charges of sexual harassment or abuse, and I don't blame them at all for doing so.
At this point, I'd be more surprised if a doctor didn't bring in a "witness" when he was conducting some exam.
Marie
@Ken Winkes: For those who are jaded enough to argue that money is speech, I agree it's hard to see the difference between (1) using that money to support a political candidate or cause, and (2) voting for a candidate or cause. Both acts are strong forms of advocacy.
However, Roberts' argument was "Ooh, ooh! What if somebody gets harassed for their contribution? That would be wrong." So if you're going to liken (1) and (2) above, then you have to look at public disclosure of each of these so-called forms of speech. And the fact is that we still have a secret ballot. That is, Roberts is saying that monetary contributions to politicians must be as secret as the ballot box.
@PD Pepe: There's always a witness with all of my doctor visits,
my husband. We were only denied once, last year when I had
the camera thingy down the throat to check out stomach. This
was a referral from my family doctor. I reported to her about his
comments and advised her not to refer any LGBTQ patients to
him.
As I was going under from the anesthesia, one of his questions was
"why would two men get married?" I could see all eyes in the room
rotating to the ceiling. I had lots of answers but unfortunately
didn't have time to get them out.
I had another referral just last Wednesday, to a doctor I didn't know
and thought it was another stomach check. I was relating my
symtoms to him when he said "that's not what I do."
He looked at me kinda strange when I asked "what am I here for
then?" It's your PSA, which has been going up for the last 15
years. It's tough getting old and trying to keep track of doctors and
medications!
We all were wearing masks but he said "I know where you live
and your garden since I live 3 blocks away. So he took off the
mask and sure enough I've seen him wandering the garden but
had no idea he was the doctor I would someday visit.
Small world.
@Marie: Thanks for the clarification so looks like Yale was behind the times. I certainly understand the "covering themselves" due to previous sexual deviancy, especially in the sport's world. But for my doctor who has been my doctor for twenty some years it came as a shock. Since I no longer go to a GYN I would not have known the new procedure but when I did, no second person was ever in the room–-but again, that was years ago.
Marie,
Good point, but I find it more than a bit disingenuous on Robert's part to find that possible harassment of financial contributors to campaigns might do more harm to the polity than all the harassment voter suppression laws and regulations deliberately visit on voters...
The ballots may be "secret" (except in Arizona and some other crazy places where they only used to be), but how they are delivered and who can deliver them most definitely are not.
In sum, money must be protected, but voters? Not so much.
We have a court that wants to protect the country from the power that too many voters might exert but won't protect its citizens from the power of money.
Dionne had it right. This is oligarchy.
My dudgeon is riding high this morning.
@ Marie: A big problem with (1) and (2) being treated the same is that secret money has no citizenship filter of voter registration. For all of the noise the Right makes about voting citizenship requirements not being sufficient, they seem perfectly happy for the NRA and other organizations to be funneling foreign money into our elections.
@Ken Winkes: Absolutely agree. Both rulings made public yesterday were abominable. BTW, I'm only half-right about the secret ballot. In most states, you have to declare a party preference to vote in the primaries. While many people's declared preference is tactical and not a reflection of how they're likely to vote in the general election, it's still on the books and available for anyone to see.
@Nisky Guy: While I won't disagree that the right is perfectly happy to accept foreign contributions, in most cases they're illegal. BTW, the NRA claims it does not use any of its foreign donations for election work. You don't think anyone at the NRA would lie, do you? (Besides, I don't see how it makes much of a difference. If the NRA gets millions of dollars from abroad, that frees up million of dollars from Americans to use in elections.)
If you were John Adams, you would be kvetching that TODAY should be Independence Day, as he wrote in a letter to Abigail on July 3, 1776, which ends:
"... The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.
I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."
But, the paperwork and clearance process delayed it, so we do the Fourth.
Enjoy it. No loud booms, please.
@Forrest Morris: I assume the purpose of the doctor who asked you why two men would want to get married was to prove he was rude and obnoxious. Mission accomplished. Now, I'll admit I asked myself (not someone else & definitely not someone who was anesthetized) that same question about 40 years ago. It took me less than a minute to answer my question: "Why, pretty much for the same long list of reasons a woman & a woman or a man & a woman want to get married." That answer seems to have held up over the decades.
@Patrick: Thank you. We must have some young scholars in our town because, even tho it is raining cats & dogs, I've already heard some fireworks today.
BTW, You have inadvertently discovered that Donald Trump has Something in Common with John Adams. They both capitalize a lot of the Best Words.
MB: Another thing shared but John Adams and Donald Trump: They both failed in their re-election bids.