Amy Coney Barrett Breaks Ranks on Supreme Court’s Dangerous EPA Ruling

The Supreme Court on Thursday halted the Environmental Protection Agency’s “good neighbor” rule intended to combat air pollution. In a 5–4 decision, the conservative majority of the court upheld a stay against an EPA regulation that requires states limit their emissions to offset the effects in states downwind of their pollution, claiming the rule would cause “irreparable harm.” In a stunner, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett broke from the conservative bloc and wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by liberal justices.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh led in the court’s decision against the EPA, arguing that the good neighbor policy was too difficult to reasonably implement because who would be included is dependent on the winds. Barrett ripped that finding to shreds, writing that the court’s decision “enjoins the enforcement of a major Environmental Protection Agency rule based on an underdeveloped theory that is unlikely to succeed on the merits” and that the Supreme Court’s decision “downplays EPA’s statutory role in ensuring that States meet air-quality standards.”

The EPA issued its good neighbor rule in response to several states failing to create their own plans for implementing federal ozone pollution reduction rules issued in 2015 under the Clean Air Act. As Barrett notes, the 23 states that either didn’t submit any plans or submitted ones that didn’t meet EPA standards have been found by the agency to have “significantly contributed to ozone pollution in downwind states.” Twenty-one states “proposed to do nothing to reduce their ozone emissions,” the dissent adds. The EPA is statutorily required to ensure states comply with federal air quality standards, and to create a federal implementation plan if they don’t: In this case, it created the good neighbor plan. Upwind states promptly sued to prevent the EPA from rejecting their plans and to keep the good neighbor plan from going into effect, joined by regulated industries.

The Supreme Court’s decision to stay the good neighbor rule follows lower court rulings that deterred its implementation in 12 of the 23 states included in the ruling. Lawyers for the EPA noted during oral arguments that which states are included in the rule isn’t fixed, since wind patterns change.

The concept behind the policy takes into consideration states that are downwind of other states emitting pollutants. If, for example, states are buckets on a slope, and they’re all limited to filling a gallon bucket with water, the buckets further down the slope will inherently end up overflowing with the water poured into buckets further up slope from them. The good neighbor rule intends to reduce the amount of water poured into buckets further up the slope so those further downstream aren’t overloaded. Except in this case, the water is toxic pollutants and the buckets are giant industrial manufacturers toxifying our air and soil, with downwind states getting choked by pollutants emitted by their upwind neighbors.

The Supreme Court’s decision halting the implementation of the good neighbor rule is another step by the court’s conservative majority to curtail the EPA’s regulatory power, and, according to Barrett, it’s a step that’s not going to hold up on its merits if the case comes back to the Supreme Court.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp admitted that he didn’t vote for Donald Trump in the state’s primary elections last week, only one day before the presumptive Republican nominee takes the stage in a presidential debate in Atlanta.

While Kemp had previously condemned Trump’s claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, and even supported his subsequent indictment, the spineless conservative governor said he will still vote for Trump in November.

Now it seems his voting record is equally contradictory: Kemp couldn’t be bothered to back Trump in June. But he didn’t exactly take a stand, either.

“I didn’t vote for anybody. I voted, but I didn’t vote for anybody,” Kemp told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on The Source Wednesday, noting that the race “was already over when the primary got here,” as Trump is already the party’s presumptive nominee.

It seems that Kemp has been suffering from the same lack of enthusiasm many voters are experiencing in the lead-up to November. Backing a convicted felon who you believe attempted to overthrow the results of your state’s democratic election will do that.

“I always try to go vote and, you know, play a part in it, but look, at that point, it didn’t really matter,” Kemp said.

The governor maintained, though, that he would “support the ticket” come November. To Kemp, it seems the only thing that matters is turning Georgia red again.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing dissent Thursday, arguing that the court’s decision to gut the Security and Exchange Commission’s power to seek civil penalties was a threat to the separation of powers.

In a 6–3 majority opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court held that when the SEC seeks civil penalties, the defendant is entitled to a jury trial in federal court.

This decision was a major hit to a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, which allowed the SEC to impose civil penalties during administrative proceedings against those who break the law. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Roberts.

In her dissent, Sotomayor brutally rebuffed the majority opinion as “plainly wrong” and slammed her conservative colleagues for undermining Congress’s authority to impose rules that entitle the government to civil penalties. She warned that the decision came as a result of ignoring a “mountain of precedent against it.”

“Beyond the majority’s legal errors, its ruling reveals a far more fundamental problem: This Court’s repeated failure to appreciate that its decisions can threaten the separation of powers,” she wrote. “Here, that threat comes from the Court’s mistaken conclusion that Congress cannot assign a certain public-rights matter for initial adjudication to the Executive because it must come only to the Judiciary.”

“The majority today upends longstanding precedent and the established practice of its coequal partners in our tripartite system of Government. Because the Court fails to act as a neutral umpire when it rewrites established rules in the manner it does today, I respectfully dissent.”

The decision has the potential to significantly weaken the ability of federal agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission, to enforce fines against those who break laws, as those agencies lack the resources to pursue complaints in federal court. Functionally, the court’s decision will allow financial fraudsters to get off scot-free.

Donald Trump may be happy that the gag order in his hush-money case has been partially lifted as he awaits sentencing, but it could backfire on him, one legal expert says.

Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor, said Tuesday night that the gag order change “may and probably will come back to bite” the former president and convicted felon. It could even lead to prison time.

Judge Juan Merchan altered the gag order Tuesday, allowing Trump to talk about the witnesses and jurors in the case. Trump is still barred from speaking about the prosecutors, court staff, and their families, though.

During the latest episode of his YouTube series Justice Matters, Kirschner said that the order’s changes are “in accordance with the law,” but he noted that there is a legitimate fear for the safety of the witnesses and jurors now that Trump can speak freely about them. Still, he believes that there could be a “silver lining.”

“How many of you think Donald Trump will begin posting and saying things about the witnesses that are harassing and intimidating and threatening and perhaps even violence-inducing?” Kirschner asked. In the likely event that Trump does this, it could result in a harsher sentence.

Even before the gag order was lifted, Trump attempted to skirt it in different ways. He had his political allies act as surrogates to criticize the people he couldn’t, even editing their words at times. Some politicians, such as Representatives Bob Good and Lauren Boebert, even admitted that they traveled to Trump’s Manhattan trial for this reason. Trump also criticized one of the prosecutors in the case without mentioning his name. And there are the 10 documented violations of the gag order, which Merchan has already punished Trump for to the tune of $10,000 in fines.

Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts in May for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime in the first degree for paying off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up their affair before the 2016 election. The crime carries a sentence of up to four months in prison, and sentencing is scheduled for July 11, only four days before the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Merchan already has some alleged gag-order violations to consider before Trump’s sentencing hearing. The question is whether Trump will add to them between Thursday’s debate and July 11.

The Supreme Court on Thursday officially dismissed a challenge to Idaho’s medical emergency abortion clause, noting that it was “improvidently granted,” meaning that the high court should never have accepted the case in the first place.

The decision, which comes after the ruling was accidentally posted to the court’s website on Wednesday, restores the right to emergency abortion in Idaho—but only for now. The ruling will send the case back to a lower appeals court to be retried.

The case, Moyle v. United States, concerned whether pregnant people in the Gem State were allowed to get abortions when receiving lifesaving, critical care at hospitals—as required by federal mandate under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA—or whether they and their fetus would have been considered two separate people.

Idaho already has a near-total abortion ban, but the Alliance Defending Freedom, the far-right Christian legal advocacy group that argued the lawsuit on behalf of the state, utilized the case to advance the idea of fetal personhood. Under the stipulation, doctors would have been legally required to treat a fetus—no matter how underdeveloped—with the same medical care as the person carrying it, even if it posed a potentially life-threatening medical risk to the pregnant patient.

But drafting a state law that directly conflicts with medical care considered to be a minimum for Medicare-funded hospitals around the country was outside the realm of legal possibilities, wrote Justice Elena Kagan in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“EMTALA requires hospitals to provide abortions that Idaho’s law prohibits. When that is so, Idaho’s law is preempted,” Kagan wrote. “The Court’s ruling today follows from those premises.”

Justice Samuel Alito, joined in a dissenting opinion by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, plainly disagreed with Kagan’s description, arguing that EMTALA does not “unambiguously” require Medicare-funded hospitals to provide abortions. The conservative justices also claimed that EMTALA, a federal statute, does not supersede state law or its control of local medical practices—even if that local restriction has skyrocketed the rate at which pregnant women are airlifted from hospitals to receive out-of-state care, increasing the burden and cost of care on neighboring states.

“Idaho never consented to any conditions imposed by EMTALA and certainly did not surrender control of the practice of medicine and the regulation of abortions within its territory,” Alito wrote.

In her own opinion, Jackson disagreed with the court’s decision to duck a final say on the matter, especially after allowing a stay that prevented critical abortion access to linger in the state while it deliberated its decision.

“It is too little, too late for the Court to take a mulligan and just tell the lower courts to carry on as if none of this has happened,” Jackson wrote. By failing to make a decisive ruling on EMTALA’s protections, Jackson warned that “storm clouds loom ahead.”

This story has been updated.

Republicans are still working to buffer the impact of President Joe Biden’s performance in Thursday’s debate, expanding the conspiracy that the executive leader is relying on “mind-altering” drugs in case he hits hard against Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles took the inane idea a step further, touting his recently introduced bill dubbed “No Juicing Joe Act,” which his office said would require the White House to inform Congress any time Biden takes a drug “that could alter his alertness, judgment or mood.”

“‘No Juicing Joe’ would require him to divulge, to report to the American people, every time he takes a mind-altering stimulant like we know he’s gonna have to do before this debate,” Ogles told Newsmax’s Joe Pinion Wednesday. “They’re gonna have him juiced up and jacked up on some sort of cocktail so he can be lucid and take on or at least try to debate Donald Trump.”

Republicans have aggressively pushed the idea in recent weeks, attempting to frame Biden as the weaker, more feeble-minded option of the two. But that goes against myriad reports of Trump’s cognitive decline, dozens of examples of the former president nonsensically rambling at rallies, and a Pentagon report that Trump’s White House medical unit operated like a pill mill, indiscriminately doling out large prescriptions of modafinil, Adderall, fentanyl, morphine, and ketamine to staffers, with insiders claiming it was “awash in speed.”

Presidential prescriptions aren’t exactly unusual: John F. Kennedy, Jr. used his White House doctors to fight off back pain, and Richard Nixon relied on his doctors to treat bad moods. But no previous administrations have matched the level of debauchery of Trump’s, when in-office pharmacists unquestioningly handed out highly addictive substances to staffers who needed pick-me-ups or energy boosts—no doctor’s exam, referral, or prescription required.

In another attempt to superficially broaden the conspiracy’s credibility, Trump pressed the teetotaler president to take a drug test prior to the debate. But it wasn’t the first time that Trump has baselessly accused his opponents of drugging up before their debates. In 2016, Trump levied similar accusations against Hillary Clinton, and in 2020 he called on Biden to take a drug test after he told a North Carolina rally crowd that Biden gets a “big fat shot in the ass,” a claim that he revived this week.

Trump supporters are outraged that Thursday’s presidential debate will be fact-checked. On Wednesday, CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale posted that he’d be live fact-checking the debate, an extension of the work he already does fact-checking things Biden and Trump say.

Dale’s post sparked immediate outrage from Trump supporters, who insinuated that facts aren’t real if they come from CNN. Stephen Miller, Trump’s white nationalist former adviser, went so far as to claim the process of fact-checking the debate is an effort to “smear and spin for Biden.”

One user who described CNN as the “Communist News Network” asserted that CNN gave “Joe robbin’ ya Biden” the questions and that makeup artists will be implanting a “listening device” on Biden to help him remember his answers.

It’s a charming fable, but pretty far outside the bounds of reality. Debate questions tend to focus on each campaign’s platform, recent news items, and public statements. In addition, there’s no indication from Dale’s post that CNN will be interrupting the debate to provide the fact-checks or altering on-screen information to publicize a fact-check, just that one of the best fact-checkers in the business will be posting fact-checks as the debate happens.

Trump has a track record of lying prolifically, but that doesn’t mean Biden never gets fact-checked on CNN or that doing the heavy lifting of catching all of Trump’s lies in real time is a bias for Biden. It’s just that a leaky faucet isn’t as noticeable when placed next to an exploded water main. The simple truth is if Trump said fewer factually untrue things, he wouldn’t get fact-checked all the time.

This latest outrage over live fact-checking comes after weeks of Team Trump insisting Trump’s going to lose the debate, with excuses ranging from claims Biden will be doped up on hard drugs and that moderators are biased against him as he struggles to not be a “raging asshole.”

The New Republic will also have a live watch party for the debate. You can tune in at 9 p.m. E.T. here.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, while attempting to call out the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, inadvertently owned herself and fellow supporters of Donald Trump.

Speaking in Congress Wednesday night about 2025 State Department and foreign operations spending, Greene proposed reducing USAID chief Samantha Power’s salary to $1, slamming her as a “globalist, left-wing activist who uses government positions to force the regime’s views on the American people and the rest of the world.

“A person who abuses her position in government to meddle in democratic elections should be nowhere near public office,” Greene said, the reality of the remark whistling over her own head.

According to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the House January 6 committee, Greene had asked the Trump administration for a pardon after the Capitol insurrection. What did she think she needed a pardon for, if not for attempting to meddle in the 2020 presidential election?

Plus, there are the charges that Trump faces for election interference in Georgia, as well as for January 6 in Washington, D.C. By Greene’s logic, that means Trump should be kept far away from the White House. And there’s the myriad of Trump allies who are charged for election interference in places including Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. Does Greene think that all of those officials should be barred from public office?

Greene probably wasn’t thinking. She freaks out if anyone insinuates she’s less than adored by the former president and convicted felon. Her words and actions have alienated her from her colleagues in Congress, and she’s pushing conspiracies ahead of Thursday night’s presidential debate. It’s funny that she thinks Samantha Power should be far away from government, when Greene is trying so desperately to keep Steve Bannon out of prison for contempt of Congress charges directly related to election interference.

One day, the contradictions in Greene’s head will drive her insane. Then again, there are a lot of people who think that’s been the case for a long time.

It seems like Taylor Swift isn’t the only one with a grudge against Kim Kardashian: The former president seems to have bad blood with the billionaire multihyphenate, as well.

In the soon-to-be released book Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, the presumptive Republican nominee told Ramin Setoodeh, Variety’s co–editor in chief and the author of the book, that he was “disappointed in Kim.”

“With Kim I did a lot of prison reform that she couldn’t get done with anybody else, and I let people out of prison that I thought were deserving to be let out,” Trump said.

“And then after it was all over she announced that she’s not supporting me,” he continued. “She only did that to be cool in Hollywood.”

Kardashian has been an outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform, and championed the former president’s work on the issue. In 2018, Kardashian was a central figure in advocating for clemency for Alice Johnson, who was sentenced to life in prison plus 25 years for her involvement in a drug conspiracy. Once freed, Trump touted Johnson at political events as proof of his so-called commitment to prison reform—until she eventually refused to endorse him.

According to ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl’s book Tired of Winning, Trump agreed to help Kardashian get commutations in return for getting NFL players to appear at the White House.

Trump’s relationship with Kardashian supposedly soured after the 2020 election, when—although she’s never publicly stated whom she voted for—Trump became convinced she’d voted for President Joe Biden. That seems to be the one crime Trump just can’t forgive.

Months after Trump left office, he reportedly hung up on the reality TV star when she called him for a favor with a clemency case. Kardashian hasn’t let Trump spoil her advocacy, though, and recently appeared at the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris to celebrate Biden pardoning 11 people and commuting the sentences of five others convicted of nonviolent drug offenses.

Trump’s comments about Kardashian stand in sharp contrast to his fawning over Swift. In Setoodeh’s book, he gushed over the popular singer’s looks, calling her “beautiful” multiple times.

Swift and Kardashian are known to have a long-standing beef with each other, after the singer alleged she’d been secretly recorded by Kardashian, who posted videos of their conversation on Snapchat in support of her then-husband Kanye West. West had brutally humiliated Swift at the 2009 Grammys, and then years later went on to say that he might “still have sex” with the singer in a song.

Swift claims she was bullied by the former couple and never received an apology, and she has referred to the feud in multiple songs. Meanwhile, Kardashian has said she likes a lot of Swift’s music.

Trump literally phoned it in for a roundtable event with Black business leaders in Atlanta on Wednesday. The Trump campaign held a “roundtable” of six barber chairs lined up next to each other as part of a “Black Americans for Trump” event. Trump skipped the event, instead calling in to ramble about the tax cuts he’s looking to give the ultrarich and their billion-dollar corporations.

The roundtable setup featured Representative (and Trump V.P. wannabe) Byron Donalds, former Trump Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, and Representative Wesley Hunt in attendance. The seats were positioned in a semi-arc facing a gaggle of cameras and sea of white people, and everyone looks abundantly unenthused to be there.

The event highlights Trump’s lackluster attempts to bolster support among Black voters, a voting bloc that played a pivotal role in Biden’s victory in 2020 and still favors Biden over Trump. In May, Trump hosted a small rally in the Bronx to gin up the Black vote after an even smaller appearance at a Harlem bodega in April. And in June, Trump appeared at a Black church in Detroit before skipping off to a white nationalist convention. The church stunt was a flop: At least half the audience was white, none of the attendees reporters spoke with were actual congregants, and the megachurch’s pastor said people laughed in his face when he scrambled to find people to fill the pews for the event.