While The House Handles Impeachment, The Senate Handles Federal Bench | Greenhouse Wonders Whether SCOTUS Can Save Itself
November 21, 2019
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
|While it’s been all impeachment news all the time, a major shift was quietly solidified in the courts this week. Lawrence Hurley with Reuters reports, “The impeachment drama unfolding in the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives has not stopped PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S fellow Republicans who control the Senate from helping him build on one of the biggest achievements of his presidency — making the federal judiciary more conservative.” The president has now managed to make ideological flips happen in three of the 13 federal appeals courts. And as Hurley notes, “When Trump took office, only four of the 13 had more Republican-appointed judges than Democratic selections. Now seven do.”
HOLD YOUR HORSES
|Martin J. Siegel in The New York Times says liberals shouldn’t freak out about all of Trump’s appointees on the federal bench — at least not just yet. For perspective, Siegel provides, “If the courthouse cloud is dark for liberals, there are silver linings. Most of the new judges are replacing Republican-appointed predecessors, and the regional circuits are nearly even, seven Republican majority and five Democratic, with the three flipped Republican courts closely split. The overall number of Republican-appointed circuit judges has edged ahead of Democratic-appointed ones, but the difference isn’t vast. For the moment, the courts are more mixed, not irretrievably lost.”
GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN
|Can the Supreme Court save itself? That’s the question Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times seeks to address in her latest. She argues that recent disputes before the high court — one regarding the future of DACA and the president’s ongoing effort to deny Congress and a New York prosecutor access to his financial records — could provide the justices opportunity to dispel concern that they are a “political captive of the Trump administration.” Greenhouse writes, “These are extraordinary cases, to be sure, but they easily — even obviously — lend themselves to resolution by ordinary rules. And that would be the point: business as usual, no matter who’s in the White House.”
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY
|John Kruzel with The Hill reports the Supreme Court tomorrow will consider whether to take on a case that “pits climate scientists against the free speech rights of global warming skeptics.” Kruzel explains the dispute is between prominent climatologist Michael Mann and the National Review, and it’s led to some strange bedfellows. The Center for Investigative Reporting, The Washington Post, and the ACLU are all siding with the National Review. Arthur Spitzer, ACLU D.C.’s legal director, told The Hill, “The only way to protect free speech for our allies is to protect it for our adversaries. Today it’s unacceptable to deny climate change, but yesterday it was unacceptable to deny that homosexuality was sinful, and tomorrow it may be unacceptable to deny that robots are better parents than humans.”
OTHER NEWS
Why Some Unions Are Losing Members
The Wall Street Journal“Some public-workers unions are experiencing steep losses of members and fees, dips largely triggered by a 2018 Supreme Court ruling that gave members an out. The Washington Federation of State Employees lost fees from nearly 7,000 nonmembers after the ruling. Nearly 5,000 workers resigned their membership and stopped paying dues in the year that ended June 30, compared with the prior year, according to filings with the Labor Department.”
California’s Top Court To Decide Whether State Can Force Trump To Disclose Tax Returns
Los Angeles Times“California’s highest court will decide Thursday whether the state can require presidential candidates, including President Trump, to disclose their tax returns in order to appear on the state’s primary ballot. The California Supreme Court, weighing a new state law that requires such disclosures, will rule on a challenge by the California Republican Party. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the requirement into law in July, the first of its kind in the nation. Although the law did not single out Trump, it was clearly aimed at the president. Trump, unlike other recent presidential candidates, has refused to make public his tax returns.”