APRIL 7 IT’S HAPPENING PEOPLE | Clean Power No More | We Talkin’ Terms

March 29, 2017

Next Friday, April 7 is a very, very important day. It’s when SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL says the Senate will have a final vote on the nomination of JUDGE NEIL GORSUCH to the Supreme Court. McConnell’s comment yesterday came in the midst of growing Democratic opposition to the nomination — so far, about 25 of 48 Dems in the Senate have publicly announced opposition to Gorsuch.

Chris Geidner, Sarah Mimms, Zoe Tillman and Tarini Parti with Buzzfeed report on why Republicans are so confident that NEIL GORSUCH will be confirmed. Next Monday at 10AM, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider the nomination and by week’s end, he will be confirmed as the next justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Find out why.

“Everyone agrees that Jae Lee pleaded guilty to a drug charge and now faces deportation to South Korea because of bad lawyering. The Tennessee restauranteur, who came to the United States as a child in 1982, was told if he took the plea he’d serve a year in prison. But his lawyer Larry Fitzgerald told him there was no chance that a longtime legal permanent resident like him would be deported. Fitzgerald was wrong.” Robert Barnes with The Washington Post reports on Lee’s case, which came before SCOTUS yesterday, and notes that the outcome could have considerable importance as the Trump administration continues to ramp up its promises to deport immigrants convicted of crimes.

The president yesterday followed through on his promise to dismantle Obama-era regulations of greenhouse gas emissions aimed at combatting the growing threat of climate change. The order doesn’t say whether the U.S. will remain in the Paris Agreement, the international pact to address climate change, but it does promise to dismantle PRESIDENT OBAMA’S Clean Power Plan (CPP). Robinson Meyer with The Atlantic write, “Trump cannot reverse the Clean Power Plan immediately, but he can tell the EPA what goals to pursue. The EPA must then revisit the science and policy justifying that rule and go through the arduous process of drafting a new one. (It took the Obama administration more than six years to issue the first version of the rule.) And throughout all that time, the Clean Power Plan will likely stay out of effect: It has been on pause since the Supreme Court stayed it in February 2016.”

The Trump administration yesterday also asked a federal appeals court to halt its review of the CPP and let the earlier ruling stay so that the CPP can be dismantled before ever getting a final ruling on its legality. Andrew M. Harris and Jennifer A. Dlouhy with Bloomberg say this is “the strongest sign yet that the U.S. may back away from Obama’s commitment to a 197-national climate change accord, though the White House hasn’t taken that step.” Yet.

“We have nothing to lose from posing questions about, and conducting further study into, the possibility of Supreme Court term limits. The court is too important an institution for its composition and operation to be left entirely up to historical contingency and inertia.” That’s David Lat with Above the Law urging for serious consideration of 18-year term limits on Supreme Court justices.

Mac Schneider with Vox takes us back to basics with a video that explains how exactly a case makes its way up to the United States Supreme Court.