Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

Just a personal opinion. I don't think Roe will be overturned. Frankly I think any hypothetical ends in 6-3. I guess one could be worried about death by erosion but that would have been there with Kennedy anyway.

The moral of the story here is YOU SHOULD HAVE FOUGHT HARDER FOR GARLAND. ugh.

I thought the only reliable intersection of Kennedy's vote with the liberal bench was on abortion and gay rights? He functioned a little in the shape of a Blue-Dog Democrat in the Senate. A Doug Jones is worth rather little [n.b. Doug Jones fits well because IIRC he's pro-abortion rights), becomes worth a lot when set against a Roy Moore.

Casey v Planned Parenthood is the ruling we should have our eye on, being as it, while not superseding Roe exactly, did remodel and expand it considerably. So, I agree that it won't be overturned outright, too unpopular and on-the-nose. Republican SOP is death by a thousand cuts, with plausible deniability toward people who aren't paying much attention and don't realize the stakes. After many rulings under the solid 5-4 court, Roe and Casey will still be good law, but really dead letters. Substantively, any state that wants to can effectively reduce legal abortion to ~0.

Think about the fetal-heartbeat limitation in Iowa (?) recently - that's damn near a total ban on abortion, and they'll keep approaching that limit without explicitly meeting the line.


Edit: If I'm wrong and the reactionaries want to be totalitarian about it, they could move to rule somewhere that abortion in general is a human rights or Constitutional violation and so make it vulnerable to criminalization on a FEDERAL level. But that would only reinforce the case for permanently removing the GOP from any position of power.

[Strike For The South]

I thought the only reliable intersection of Kennedy's vote with the liberal bench was on abortion and gay rights? He functioned a little in the shape of a Blue-Dog Democrat in the Senate. A Doug Jones is worth rather little [n.b. Doug Jones fits well because IIRC he's pro-abortion rights), becomes worth a lot when set against a Roy Moore.

He had that Guantanamo case too. He sided with liberal wing on a lot of things. Of course, not with the money, but that has more to do with the hellscape in which we currently reside. Doug Jones is very good for the dems because it is Alabama.

Casey v Planned Parenthood is the ruling we should have our eye on, being as it, while not superseding Roe exactly, did remodel and expand it considerably. So, I agree that it won't be overturned outright, too unpopular and on-the-nose. Republican SOP is death by a thousand cuts, with plausible deniability toward people who aren't paying much attention and don't realize the stakes. After many rulings under the solid 5-4 court, Roe and Casey will still be good law, but really dead letters. Substantively, any state that wants to can effectively reduce legal abortion to ~0.

Casey expands Roe because it upholds the right to privacy. From that right, a strict scrutiny can be applied. I don't know how you get rid of Casey without getting rid of Roe. If you can apply a rational basis, there is no right to privacy.

Think about the fetal-heartbeat limitation in Iowa (?) recently - that's damn near a total ban on abortion, and they'll keep approaching that limit without explicitly meeting the line.

This is their best bet and the strategy most serious anti people choose to take. Before the point of viability you need an invasive medical procedure to check for a heartbeat. Surley, one would consider that an undue burden?

Gut feeling, Roberts is not going to gut 50 years worth of upheld precedence. The man is very concerned with the prestige and gravitas of the court. Upholding a bill that works around a constitutional right would be a stain on that. There is a right to privacy, it can not be undone by making the right too burdensome to exercise. Precedence, popular opinion, and expert opinion are all on the side of choice.

Edit: If I'm wrong and the reactionaries want to be totalitarian about it, they could move to rule somewhere that abortion in general is a human rights or Constitutional violation and so make it vulnerable to criminalization on a FEDERAL level. But that would only reinforce the case for permanently removing the GOP from any position of power.

Never say never I guess.

[Montmorency]

You're optimistic.

Even in the simplest case, it could be (selectively, mildly) reevaluating the government interest against privacy rights wrt abortion, and already almost any state law or butterfly-effect practice can be licensed. If Ginsburg or Breyer goes, it could be as simple as refusing to hear appeals cases when anti-abortion laws or practices are upheld in lower courts (you need 4 justices for certiorari).

Every conservative SCOTUS nominee, at their Senate interviews, has protested that they will seek to neutrally apply or interpret the law, or else avoided the question, when asked about their attitude on Roe. This despite all of them harshly criticizing Roe earlier in their careers, some calling it incorrectly ruled, some calling for it to be overturned. It's pretty clear they're just tactically evasive.

Antonin Scalia (1986): “I assure you, I have no agenda. I am not going onto the court with a list of things that I want to do. … There are doubtless laws on the books apart from abortion that I might not agree with, that I might think are misguided, perhaps some that I might even think in the largest sense are immoral in the results that they produce. In no way would I let that influence my determination of how they apply.”

Clarence Thomas (1991): “I believe the Constitution protects the right to privacy. And I have no reason or agenda to prejudge the issue or to predispose to rule one way or the other on the issue of abortion, which is a difficult issue. … Senator, your question to me was did I debate the contents of Roe v. Wade, the outcome in Roe v. Wade, do I have this day an opinion, a personal opinion on the outcome in Roe v. Wade; and my answer to you is that I do not.”

John G. Roberts Jr. (2005): “Well, beyond that, [Roe v. Wade is] settled as a precedent of the court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis. And those principles, applied in the Casey case, explain when cases should be revisited and when they should not. And it is settled as a precedent of the court, yes.”

Samuel A. Alito Jr. (2006): “That [a document in which he declared that the Constitution provides no right to abortion] was a statement that I made at a prior period of time when I was performing a different role, and as I said yesterday, when someone becomes a judge, you really have to put aside the things that you did as a lawyer at prior points in your legal career and think about legal issues the way a judge thinks about legal issues.”

Neil M. Gorsuch (2017): “I’m not in a position to tell you whether I’d personally like or dislike any precedent. That’s not relevant to my job … Precedent … deserves our respect. And to come in and think that just because I’m new or the latest thing I’d know better than everybody who comes before me would be an act of hubris.”

In contrast, when the liberal justices were asked the same question in their confirmation hearings, they were perfectly forthright, saying that yes, under the Constitution there is a right to abortion and they’d vote to uphold Roe.

As for Robert's respect for precedent, it seems to be more personal and situational than uniform. So far this year he's helped overrule a lot of precedent. He can also take the long road, such as helping this Court gradually strike down key portions of the Civil Rights Act during the course of the Obama admin - "narrow" rulings beget future narrow rulings, until... Maybe it's not a sure thing that Roberts will fall in, but there's plenty of reason to be anxious.

Here's a good article on these things, on Roberts' resolve, on Kavanaugh and his stances, and on the possible processes for disassembling abortion rights and protections.

Casey expands Roe because it upholds the right to privacy. From that right, a strict scrutiny can be applied. I don't know how you get rid of Casey without getting rid of Roe. If you can apply a rational basis, there is no right to privacy.

Strict scrutiny was Roe, and rational basis is I guess one basic or default court metric in evaluating laws. Casey replaced strict scrutiny with "undue burden". Note that Kavanaugh ruled recently, as a federal judge, that an ICE detention center holding a teen immigrant and preventing her from going to get an abortion without first being sponsored by a family would not place an undue burden on her abortion/privacy right. (At least not as extreme as his fellow judge in that panel majority, who later wrote that there is neither a constitutional right to abortion, nor a right of aliens to Constitutional protections. Dayum.)

Now, look at how effective states and courts have already been at degrading the substantive precedent. In the Vox article above,

And “incremental” would still be plenty: Simply overturning the two-year-old Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, for example, would eliminate access in swaths of the country and close the last abortion clinic in Mississippi.

As Litman writes, this could take the form of weakening the standard of review for determining if a regulation is an “undue burden.” In Whole Woman’s Health, the Court ruled that “the ‘undue burden’ standard is more demanding than rational basis review, and requires a state to establish that a law actually furthers its stated purposes,” to quote Litman.

But in a future ruling, the Court could simply require that regulations have a rational basis, and not require the state to prove that they further their stated purposes. That would effectively weaken the right to abortion dramatically to the point of de facto overturning Roe and Casey, because, as Litman says, “when a court applies rational basis review, the law being challenged will almost always be upheld.”

Mississippi recently approved a 15-week abortion ban (already blocked in federal court); Kentucky passed a ban applying to dilation-and-evacuation abortions after 11 weeks and Ohio and South Carolina are weighing “total prohibitions.” Just this past May, Iowa adopted a law banning abortions after fetal heartbeats, which again, usually occur at six weeks of pregnancy.
[...]
The incrementalist 20-week approach has been quite successful, with 21 states adopting them. (Of those, Arizona and Idaho’s bans have been blocked by courts.) Twenty-week bans apply about four weeks before Roe has historically allowed states to ban abortions, enabling a future Supreme Court ruling that effectively weakens Roe.

A conservative circuit court of appeals panel could rogue and decide to disobey Roe and Casey. (This would most likely happen after the post-Kavanaugh Court allows some less dramatic regulations like a 20-week ban to go forward, after which the circuit judges could argue that Roe and Casey no longer apply in the wake of more recent Supreme Court jurisprudence.) And then the Supreme Court would likely be forced to take up the issue.

This is what happened in 2014 to 2015 with same-sex marriage: Circuit courts split on the issue, forcing the Supreme Court to resolve the disagreement.

That eventuality would bring the possibility of overturning Roe entirely to the Court’s door, and it would have little choice but to hear the case. After that point, all bets are off.

Anyway, you could certainly eliminate, directly or indirectly, enough of Casey that Casey is neutralized, and the rump Roe (Roe's Rump?) has minimal substantive content left. Killing Casey could then leave Roe vegetative, and accomplish the anti-abortion movement's goals, except for that literal goal of overturning the named rulings.

Actually, think about the political implications to the anti-abortion movement, of not fully overruling Casey or Roe. It's becomes a double victory like so: Judicially, it allows states free reign as a matter of fact, AND it keeps the abortion issue alive in the minds of Republican single-issue voters who can later be told that "darned baby-killing Roe still hasn't been defeated yet! Keep voting Republican! They're breaking the spines of 9-month-old babies and drinking the soup whargbargl!". Christ, it would be sick and brilliant. To sum up, not having to say that "Roe is overturned" will help Republicans maintain Republican turnout, while preventing a surge in Democratic turnout. Sheer genius. Hopefully they don't follow this track and shoot themselves in the foot.

[Pannonian]

Are American presidents normally given to telling their British allies which government we should have, and what policies we should follow?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Are American presidents normally given to telling their British allies which government we should have, and what policies we should follow?

Normally no. The current occupant has nothing resembling discretion.

[Beskar]

Trump addressing the British public.

[Montmorency]

Today, Mueller shored the investigation up by indicting a dozen Russian GRU officers in connection to election cybercrimes.

One of the more interesting tidbits in the indictment was that

On or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.

Trump infamously made this statement on July 27, 2016:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Ironically, since Clinton's private email was not breached - the implication that everybody around Clinton was getting their emails compromised, except Hillary herself. Cybersecurity!

[Husar]

Trump addressing the British public.

There's a little photo story here.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Are American presidents normally given to telling their British allies which government we should have, and what policies we should follow?

Underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower.

(and more recently: https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...t-plea/479469/)

[HopAlongBunny]

Pruitt may be gone at the EPA but his legacy will likely last a long time:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...onment-agency/

Transformation baby