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Open Thread: SCOTUS Decisions, Wednesday Edition [UPDATE-2]

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. Updates appear at the bottom of this post. /~Rayne]

Yet again a week later we’re still counting down to the Supreme Court’s term ending on June 28; SCOTUS delivers a few more decisions today with the remainder spread across tomorrow Thursday, and Friday the last day of the term.

Once more we ask: will SCOTUS finally decide the question of presidential immunity posed in Trump v. United States? Or will we not see a decision until tomorrow or Friday?

Decisions released today follow in an update at the bottom of this post.

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Time-killing observations:

Trump’s case for presidential immunity was the first sub-topic when I searched Google News for “supreme court.” Apparently corporate news media is concerned about this and willing to invest a little human capital about it.

This, however, is just plain disturbing. Who knew House Speaker Mike Johnson would be a minion for that dirtbag Bannon after Bannon refused to comply with a Congressional subpoena? Doesn’t Johnson expect persons his Congress might subpoena to comply?

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Today’s decisions —

First decision: Murthy v. Missouri

Justice Coney Barrett wrote the 6-3 decision; Justice Alito wrote the dissent.

This is the First Amendment case about the Biden administration’s efforts to stem disinformation on social media. The states and individual plaintiffs were found to lack standing and the Fifth Circuit erred in lumping the states and the plaintiffs together. The Fifth Circuit’s decision is reversed.

A little statistical analysis:

“Vaccine” and “vaccines” appear (65) times in total in the decision and dissent.

“Misinformation” appears (91) times.

“Disinformation” appears (3) times and not at all in the dissent.

“Ivermectin” does not appear at all.

Second decision: Snyder v. United States

Justice Kavanaugh wrote the 6-3 decision; Justice Brown Jackson wrote the dissent.

In essence this was a case about public corruption; is an amount of money paid to a public official after goods/services have been rendered a bribe or a gratuity if there’s no quid pro quo?

You’ll be shocked, SHOCKED at which way the GOP-appointed jurists went.

Third decision: That’s it, there isn’t a third one today, and definitely not a presidential immunity decision.

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Updates with news related to the SCOTUS decisions today will appear at the bottom of this post. This is an open thread.

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UPDATE-1 — 1:15 P.M. —

Bloomberg got the scoop on a decision which wasn’t released today: Supreme Court Poised to Allow Emergency Abortions in Idaho

Kimberly Robinson who is on Bloomberg’s byline, posted this on the dead bird app:

Kimberly Robinson @KimberlyRobinsn

BREAKING: #SCOTUS inadvertently released its opinion in EMTALA abortion case earlier this morning. The Justices are poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho, suggesting the Court shouldn’t have gotten involved in the early litigation.

12:49 PM · Jun 26, 2024

Bloomberg’s article is paywalled; you can read similar coverage at The Guardian: US supreme court set to allow emergency abortions in Idaho – report

So…is this accidental leak a head fake of some sort? A means to relieve pressure? Will it come up in the presidential debate if the decision isn’t formally released until Friday?

(h/t community member c-i-v-i-l for the heads up)

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UPDATE-2 — 6:10 P.M. —

The Washington Post has a story now about the briefly posted decision in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States. The decision was accidentally published ahead of schedule and quickly removed from SCOTUS’s website, but not before a copy was obtained.

I’m not going to elaborate on this now because it’s not formally a decision until it is published. When it finally is, it’s going to be a must-read based on the concurrences — the tea leaves to be read ahead of future cases about reproductive health care.

A Fine Crop of Golf

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks! /~Rayne]

I’m fried. I’m mentally and emotionally burnt right out, which is probably the aim of Agent Orange Chaos — to grind us all down until we roll over and allow this country to be a haven of corruption.

Imagine everything you need becoming even more transactional than it is now — systematically corrupt. Need a new cable TV line installed? Pay a bribe for access. Need to move to a different apartment? Pay a bribe to access a better list of buildings. Need a specialty item for your health, something that can’t be obtained through Amazon? Pay a bribe.

Sure, we’re used to paying fees for access in many different ways. But Americans are not used to the kind of petty and persistent corruption which is endemic in other parts of the world. Instead we pay taxes to support a legal system which is supposed to ensure fair dealing. Imagine paying these taxes and not having any expectation of justice AND paying bribes or extortion all along the way.

We’re so unused to and under-educated about the idea of corruption touching everything we do that I think we suffer from cognitive dissonance. It’s right there in front of us and yet we fail to recognize for what it is and for the slide in our ethical standards it represents.

One example niggling at me is Trump and his goddamned golf. You’ve probably read some of my posts about golf before in which I spell out the possibilities for corruption if one owned a golf course and how normative the golf life is to a class of people.

Our country is drowning right now, staring at multiple crop failures across a huge expanse of farm land, and our fearless leader is surely off golfing on our dime instead of looking into how to help farmers weather both the affects of the deepening climate emergency and the fallout from fearless leader’s hacktastic tariffs.

Corruption. Skimming money off us while farms and farm land drowns.

And too many farmers who will receive federal aid are not universally single family owned farms but mega corporate oligarchs — like the crooked Brazilian meat packing billionaires who will receive $62 million in aid for distribution to the farms supplying them meat.

But you know in your gut this won’t happen. And it’s corruption.

Journalists have covered the Brazilians raking in cash from our tax dollars, fortunately. They saw the problem and reported on it. But the public hasn’t mustered adequate outrage because this hasn’t yet hurt them in the wallet.

Wait until winter when holiday baking begins.

I don’t need to wait that long to feel it. I’m plenty pissed off because it’s another Saturday, another day at the golf course, and we’ve completely lost count of that orange mooch’s sponging. Which of his courses is he at, with our Secret Service personnel renting more golf carts to follow him around while he plays another round cheating both at the game and at life?

Ah, and there it is, he’s leeching us dry yet again with each crappy swing of his club:

As of the end of the day he’s been in office 876 days — which means he has spent 29.7% of his total time at one of his properties, 22.2% of his time in office play golf at one of his clubs.

Corruption. Just makes me want to puke.

We’re just supposed roll over and let them grab our taxpaying pussy while they tee off on our dime. They’ll argue our legitimately-elected representatives don’t have the right to oversight when he’s manipulating our tax system for his own personal gain to our collective detriment.

Like the New York park land he donated after he was refused permits to develop a couple million dollars of property into golf courses — Trump org declared them worth $26 million to write off the capital loss and reduce the taxes paid.

What really pisses me off is the story no reporter has yet covered as far as I can tell: if Trump’s Bedminster NJ golf course is classified as farm land for tax purposes so he can avoid paying tens of thousands of dollars in property taxes, is Trump org going to claim federal relief for this farm, too?

It’s right there under our noses. So corrupt and he and his oligarchic sponsors want this to become the norm.

Fuck that. If this guy was your direct employee you’d have fired his ass  already.

This is an open thread.