Monthly Archives: June 2024

‘Gift to Corporate Greed’: Dire Warnings as Supreme Court Scraps Chevron Doctrine

Leave a reply

“Make no mistake—more people will get sick, injured, or die as a result of today’s decision,” said one advocate.

By Jake Johnson. Published 6-28-2024 by Common Dreams

The Supreme Court. Photo: Public Domain

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority delivered corporate polluters, anti-abortion campaigners, and other right-wing interests a major victory Friday by overturning the so-called Chevron doctrine, a deeply engrained legal precedent whose demise could spell disaster for public health and the climate.

The high court’s 6-3 ruling along ideological lines in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce significantly constrains the regulatory authority of federal agencies tasked with crafting rules on a range of critical matters, from worker protection to the climate to drug safety.

Continue reading →
Share Button

‘Unfathomably Cruel’: Billionaire-Backed Justices Rule in Favor of Criminalizing Homelessness

Leave a reply

“Maybe the right-wing justices could empathize with the most vulnerable Americans if they spent less time jet-setting on luxury vacations on their wealthy benefactors’ dime,” said one critic.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-28-2024 by Common Dreams

Homeless encampment in Downtown Los Angeles over the freeway in 2021. Photo: Levi Clancy/Wikimedia Commons/CC

“SCOTUS just criminalized homelessness.”

So said numerous legal experts and advocates for the unhoused Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority ruled that local governments can enforce bans on sleeping outdoors, regardless of whether municipalities are able to offer them shelter space.

In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the justices ruled in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson that officials can criminalize sleeping and camping on public property including parks, even when housing options are unavailable or unaffordable.

Continue reading →
Share Button

Supreme Court Puts Countless ‘Lives at Risk’ by Ruling Against Clean Air

Leave a reply

“With this decision, the Supreme Court has abandoned any pretense of neutrality in cases involving environmental regulations,” an expert said.

By Edward Carver. Published 6-27-2024 by Common Dreams

The John E. Amos Power Plant is a three-unit coal-fired power plant in West Virginia
owned and operated by Appalachian Power, a subsidiary of American Electric Power (AEP). Photo: Cathy/flickr/CC

Health and environmental groups decried a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday that suspended an air pollution rule with far-reaching implications set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The justices ruled 5-4 in Ohio v. EPA to nullify the rule, designed to protect people in states downwind from smog-forming pollution, until the case can be decided on its merits in federal court, siding with the industrial polluters and upwind states who’d petitioned them to do so.

Continue reading →
Share Button

‘Democracy Must Be Respected’: Bolivian Leader Replaces Military Chiefs Over Coup Attempt

Leave a reply

Leftists and political leaders around the world slammed the coup effort as Bolivia’s trade union federation called for an emergency mass mobilization and a general strike.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 6-26-2024 by Common Dreams

Military members stand guard with an armored truck outside the government palace at Plaza Murillo on June 26, 2024 in La Paz, Bolivia. Photo: S.L. Kanthan/X

Bolivian President Luis Arce replaced top military leaders on Wednesday in response to an attempted coup d’état in which troops took over Plaza Murillo in La Paz and rammed an armored vehicle into the doors of the presidential palace so soldiers could storm the building.

“We denounce irregular mobilizations of some units of the Bolivian army,” Arce, a member of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party, said on social media. “Democracy must be respected.”

Continue reading →
Share Button

Oklahoma Supreme Court Blocks First US Religious Public Charter School

Leave a reply

One coalition said the ruling “safeguards public education and upholds the separation of religion and government.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 6-25-2024 by Common Dreams

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic Charter School on June 25, 2024. Photo: Brian J. Matis/CC

Faith leaders, parents, and educators on Tuesday applauded the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling against the establishment of the first U.S. taxpayer-funded religious charter school—which was widely seen as a test case for Christian nationalists’ broader efforts to break down the barrier between church and state as well as further undermine public education.

The court’s decision against St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic Charter School came in a case filed last October by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond. Unlike some fellow Republicans, he argued that the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s approval of the online institution violated the state and federal constitutions.

Continue reading →
Share Button

‘Julian Assange Is Free’: WikiLeaks Founder Strikes Plea Deal With US

Leave a reply

“We thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom,” said WikiLeaks. “Julian’s freedom is our freedom.”

By Common Dreams. Published 6-24-2024

Free Julian Assange protest in Raleigh, NC April 2021. Photo: Anthony Crider/flickr/CC

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday reached a deal with the U.S. government, agreeing to plead guilty to one felony related to the disclosure of national security information in exchange for his release from Belmarsh Prison in the United Kingdom.

A related document was filed in federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth. Under the plea agreement, which must still be approved by a judge, the Department of Justice (DOJ) will seek a 62-month sentence, equal to the time that the 52-year-old Australian has served in the U.K. prison while battling his extradition to the United States.

Continue reading →
Share Button

Sotomayor: Ruling Against Foreign Spouses Will ‘Most Heavily’ Harm Same-Sex Couples

Leave a reply

“The majority’s failure to respect the right to marriage in this country consigns U.S. citizens to rely on the fickle grace of other countries’ immigration laws.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-21-2024 by Common Dreams

United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaking to attendees at the John P. Frank Memorial Lecture at Gammage Auditorium at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. in 2017. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned Friday that her right-wing colleagues’ finding that American citizens have no right to have their foreign spouses admitted to the United States will disproportionately harm same-sex couples—and could foreshadow a future reversal of federal LGBTQ+ marriage equality.

The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Department of State v. Muñoz that Sandra Muñoz, a civil rights attorney and U.S. citizen, “does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country.”

Continue reading →
Share Button

Brazilian rape victims who have abortions may face longer in jail than rapists

Leave a reply

Proposed law would further limit access to abortion for the 75% of reported rape victims in Brazil who are under 18

By Diana Cariboni. Published 6-20-2024 by openDemocracy

Demonstrators gathered in front of Brazil’s National Congress in Brasilia on Wednesday to protest a bill that would further criminalise abortions. Screenshot: Euronews

Abortion is illegal in Brazil with only three exceptions: risk to the life of the pregnant person, fetus anencephaly (a condition in which parts of the fetus’ skull and brain don’t develop) and rape. In these cases, people can seek an abortion with no time limits.

But a new bill that Brazilian conservatives are attempting to push through seeks to declare all abortions performed after week 22 of the pregnancy as homicide – and punishable with prison terms of up to 20 years.

Continue reading →
Share Button

‘Truly Evil’ Clarence Thomas Offers Defense of Guns for Domestic Abusers

Leave a reply

“The Thomas dissent is only further proof that he is simply a threat to America,” said the father of a mass shooting victim.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 6-21-2024 by Common Dreams

Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Screenshot: Library of Congress

“Thank goodness. Also, Clarence Thomas is truly evil.”

That’s how one progressive pollster responded Friday to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 8-1 ruling in United States v. Rahimi, which upheld a law prohibiting individuals subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm.

Critics across the political spectrum called Thomas’ lone dissent in the case “insane” and blasted the right-wing justice as “fucking awful,” a “corrupt lunatic,” and a “contemptible POS” who “continues to undermine the safety of women and disgrace the court.”

Continue reading →
Share Button

Project 2025: How Trump Win Would Imperil Worker Organizing Gains Under Biden’s NLRB

Leave a reply

The right-wing agenda “offers a playbook for how an administration could jeopardize the NLRB’s ability to protect organizing workers.”

By Julia Conley. Published 6-20-2024 by Common Dreams

Just before oral arguments in an American Federation of Government Employees’ lawsuit against the Trump administration, AFGE and other unions rally to protest the Trump administration’s anti-union executive orders. in 2018. Photo: AFGE/flickr/CC

With longtime labor lawyer Jennifer Abruzzo at the helm of the National Labor Relations Board, serving as general counsel, the Biden administration has worked to reverse the decadeslong trend in the U.S. of weakened labor laws—achieving a high rate of workers voting to join unions, requiring thousands of workers to be reinstated at their jobs after being illegally fired for organizing, and increasing the number of workers who are eligible to unionize.

But as the Center for American Progress (CAP) warned in an analysis published on Thursday, all that progress and more could be erased if former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the November election, were to win a second term in the White House—enabling him to put the right-wing plot Project 2025 into action.

Continue reading →
Share Button