HAS SCOTUS GONE SOFT? | Mass Polling Place Closures In Southern U.S. | RBG Ready To Get Back To Business
September 13, 2019
YOU OLD SOFTY
|“Has the Supreme Court become a soft touch for the Trump administration? Or are the justices sending a message to lower courts not to become a part of the ‘resistance’ to the president’s legitimate powers?” Robert Barnes with The Washington Post reports on the high court’s allowance of Trump’s asylum ban to go into effect, and he notes that it marked the second time since SCOTUS adjourned in late June that it approved an emergency request from the administration to overrule a lower court on a border security issue.
THE JIG IS UP
|Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern thinks the Supreme Court’s recent asylum ruling follows a “troubling pattern” of allowing the Trump administration to “leapfrog” over appeals courts to get SCOTUS to save the day. He writes, “On Wednesday, SCOTUS short-circuited the appellate process to let it take effect, a ‘shortcut’ that will subject thousands of migrants to persecution. If the Supreme Court keeps letting the Trump administration play by a different set of rules, it will become difficult to avoid the conclusion that the game is rigged.”
PRO'S PERHAPS
|POLITICO’s Ted Hesson reports on remarks from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli in which he suggested that the Supreme Court’s asylum ruling could lead to a boost in refugee admissions. Hesson notes, “With a reduction in asylum cases, Cuccinelli suggested, resources might be redirected to processing refugee claims. Asylum applies to migrants who seek refuge at the border or inside the U.S.; refugee status is sought by applicants from their home countries.”
SHUT THE WHOLE THING DOWN
|A new report from the Leadership Conference Education Fund showed a surge in poll closures after the Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013 that gutted a section of the Voting Rights Act requiring certain states and cities obtain federal approval before changing voting laws or practices. The report revealed that from 2012 to 2018, a total of 1,688 polling locations closed — many in black or Latino communities. Nicquel Terry Ellis with USA Today reports.
A SIDE OF SASS
|David French with The National Review responds to the latest piece from Linda Greenhouse which was on the Supreme Court’s handling of cases on religion. He rebuffs Greenhouse’s position saying she left some words out of her article and that “a brief history lesson is in order.”
KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON
|Yesterday, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG said she’s eager to get back to business and start another term on the Supreme Court. Speaking before a crowd of first-year law students at the Georgetown University Law Center, the justice “cracked jokes and critiqued the country’s polarized politics.” She said, “We have seen in recent years a kind of division that is not serving the country well. Some day, we will get back to the way it should be. And I think it will take courageous people who care about the country on both sides of the aisle, who say: Enough of this dysfunction, let’s do the job that we were elected to do, govern the United States.” Tucker Higgins for CNBC reports on the justice’s appearance.