Peter

"When the Supreme Court allows the president to act in ways contrary to statutes… that is seizing power from Congress. And maybe it is time to start taking a little power back." John Oliver on Shadow Dockets argues that Congress should use its leverage over SCOTUS, including its budget.

I don’t know how many times I’ll have to repeat this, but here we go. The money he keeps ranting about was Iran’s money that we owed for military equipment the Shah bought but we never delivered (plus interest). We repaid it to settle a dispute before the Iran-US Claims Tribunal because we would’ve had to pay far more if the tribunal had ruled in that case. The cash he’s talking about was delivered in Swiss Francs and Euros because we could not actually transfer dollars to Iran.

You’d think that corrupt as fuck Samuel Alito using cooked data to justify killing the Voting Rights Act - would be enough to nullify that decision.

#BREAKING: MY Nicolle: “I’ve not heard you this angry in a long time.” Marc Elias: “…have we learned nothing?…has the broader legal community not leaned anything?…have people not learned that when you do this to Black voters it turns out bad for democracy for everybody? So yeah, I’m angry. I’m angry because of the appalling SILENCE that is going on right now around this case and the aftermath.”😳

There's an obvious reason why the Republican Supreme Court Justices sound so nervous. During their confirmation hearings, these justices sat under oath and promised that Roe v. Wade was settled law. They lied. They told us they were independent. Then they quietly accepted luxury mega-yacht vacations from right-wing billionaires, flew insurrectionist flags outside their homes, and used shadow dockets to dismantle decades of worker and environmental protections. Now, trying to persuade the public that a Republican-controlled Court issuing Republican-friendly decisions is not a Republican body has never been more difficult. Now that their public approval has cratered, they are showing up to fancy think tanks to complain that Americans are being unfair to them. They are desperately demanding to be treated like impartial umpires who simply call balls and strikes. But, ultimately, you do not get to strip away the bodily autonomy of millions of women, pocket millions in undisclosed gifts from conservative mega-donors, and then cry about a lack of respect.

This photo is real and was not edited. The stone is real, the trees are real, the soil is real and the sky is real. Now, the only thing you have to do is change your point of view. Look at the photo, upside down!

@Amy_Siskind @WhimsyTX It’s all about a manufactured image that he’s doing/did something great.

Trump is sticking banners around D.C., thanking himself, for stuff he is doing in that city that no one wants. Just unbelievable. I gifted this so you can read it. wapo.st/42rWvrR

If President Trump cannot admit he lost in 2020, how can we expect him to honor the results of the upcoming midterm elections? His refusal to accept basic reality endangers our democracy.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito leaned on an erroneous claim that Black voter turnout now tops white voter turnout, in his Callais v. Louisiana ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act, reports The Guardian. democracydocket.com/news-alerts/sc…

The Supreme Court just ruled that a racial gerrymandering claim must include intentional discrimination. Tennessee Republicans have immediately responded by stopping early voting in order to split apart the only majority black district in the state. What more do you need to show intentional discrimination? This is Jim Crow 2.0 and cannot stand.

Susie Wiles’ Email Demanding WH Staffers Stop Leaking to Press Is Leaked to Press mediaite.com/media/news/sus…

I am the reporter here — and imho the question should be asked more often. More than 100 children were reported killed at Minab.

The president handed a $6.9 million no-bid contract to his own “pool guy” to turn it blue. thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-…

The sharpest thing in the Roberts memos isn't the outcome. It's the distance between the public performance and the private reasoning. Roberts spent years cultivating a reputation as a careful institutionalist. The memos show that in February 2016 he wrote, in his own hand, that the Obama climate plan was "highly unlikely to survive" before lower courts had touched it. Before full briefing. Before oral argument. He wasn't assessing the pitch. He had already decided where it was going to land and was building the procedural route to get it there. Kagan called the move "unprecedented." Breyer noted compliance wasn't required for years and asked why speed was necessary. Roberts responded the next day, the memos show, "irritated and blunt." The answer was cost to industry. Not constitutional law. Not procedural principle. Cost. Kennedy wrote three sentences. We'll get there anyway. Five votes. The shadow docket since that night has become the court's primary tool for consequential decisions issued without explanation. That's not drift. It's a feature that was built in that February exchange by a chief justice whose public face and private memos read like two separate documents.

You might want to sit this one out champ.

The decision by the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn the will of more than three million voters will not stand.

The White House ballroom lawsuit just escalated. The preservation group suing Trump says DOJ made multiple “false statements” in court and delivered this brutal line: “All of this may be standard fare for a social media post. But in a federal court filing, it is neither appropriate nor permitted.”

@davidaxelrod Maybe if the press STOPPED asking him questions on the regular he might tell the truth. These questions are kinda pointless if you’re looking for accurate truthful answers.

Say WHAT?!??

NEW: Virginia AG Jay Jones, on behalf of the state, asks the Commonwealth’s Supreme Court to delay issuing its mandate so it can seek review from SCOTUS.