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The Most Blistering Lines From Dissents in the Trump Immunity Case
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. In response to the Supreme Court’s momentous decision ruling that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for “official” acts, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson issued blistering dissents. They blasted the reasoning of the six conservative justices who essentially created a new power for presidents. Each contended this decision poses a fundamental threat to American democracy and the rule of law.
The Supreme Court Just Put Trump Above the Law
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that presidents have broad criminal immunity for official acts, effectively placing the presidency beyond the reach of criminal law for the first time in the country’s history. The 6-3 decision along ideological lines sends the federal case over Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election back to the district court to determine whether Trump’s actions fall outside the court’s sweeping new grant of immunity—but the effects will stretch far beyond Trump’s possible trial by fundamentally changing the nature of the presidency and, by extension, American democracy.
NTSB Says Norfolk Southern Threatened Staff as They Investigated the East Palestine Derailment
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board called Norfolk Southern’s conduct during the board’s investigation of the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine “unconscionable” at a meeting this week to finalize the NTSB’s findings.
A Terrifying Hurricane Is Brewing in the Atlantic
The Caribbean is bracing for an epic storm, as residents of Barbados and other southeastern islands have rushed to prepare for its onslaught early this week. By the time the storm makes landfall Sunday night or Monday morning, the winds are likely to reach up to 113 mph. Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines warned, “Please take this very seriously and prepare yourselves. This is a terrible hurricane.”
Steve Bannon Has a Lot to Say Before Going to Prison Monday
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Donald Trump confidante and far-right agitator Steve Bannon talks for nearly four hours most days of the week on his show, War Room. But starting Monday, the only people who will be listening to Bannon will be other inmates at a low-security federal prison in Danbury, Conn.
Polls Show Nearly Half of Democrats Believe Biden Should Drop Out
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Over the past year, voters have consistently said that they believe 81-year-old President Joe Biden is too old to serve as president. When CBS News asked registered voters in early June whether they thought Biden had the mental and cognitive health necessary to serve as president, 65 percent of them said no. And that was before Thursday’s disastrous debate when Biden froze, lost his train of thought, provided incoherent responses, and otherwise mumbled through his first debate with former president Donald Trump.
“Things Are Moving So Quickly” as Scientists Study This “Very Scary” Climate Strategy
This story was originally published by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2006, a group of preeminent scientists met for a two-day conference at the NASA Ames Research Center in California to discuss cooling the Earth by injecting particles into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight into space.
The Surprising Way Some Farms Are Helping Cool the Environment
This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The world is awash with greenhouses growing fresh vegetables year-round for health-conscious urbanites. There are so many of them that in places their plastic and glass roofs are reflecting sufficient solar radiation to cool local temperatures—even as surrounding areas warm due to climate change.
The Endless Pursuit of Equality Through College Admissions
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Admissions Granted, a documentary set to premiere on MSNBC on Sunday at 9 pm ET, gets at a central question about equality in the United States. “Everyone is treated the same, or equality demands that people be treated differently in order to produce the equality,” Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard law professor, says in the film. “This has been there since the beginning of the country and was there at the inception of the Fourteenth Amendment. And it’s one that is unresolved.”
The Supreme Court’s January 6 Decision Was a Win for Progressive Protesters, Too
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. On Friday, the Supreme Court upended the convictions of a group of January 6 defendants, ruling that the Justice Department had improperly prosecuted them under a statute that prohibits obstruction of an official proceeding. The justices found that the provision—which carries an extremely punitive sentence of up to 20 years in prison—applies to people who did things like alter or destroy documents or other evidence, not to people who disrupted a session of Congress by storming the Capitol.
Why the Supreme Court Blew Up the Purdue Opioid Settlement
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. When the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that members of the Sackler family can’t be shielded from future lawsuits related to the opioid crisis, the justices threw into question a massive, carefully crafted settlement involving the states, local governments, tribes, and individuals that had sued flagship opioid maker Purdue Pharma.
The Government Broke Its Promise to Freed People. There’s a Price to Pay.
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Fourteen trillion dollars. That’s the total amount of money that the federal government owes to Black people in America for the legacy of slavery, according to economist William Darity and his colleagues.
After EPA Ruling, Environmentalists Deem Supreme Court “No Longer Neutral”
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In a ruling that court observers said was “really extraordinary” and achieved through “a procedural strangeness,” the Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a federal plan to reduce air pollution that blows across state lines.
Supreme Court Limits Obstruction Charges Against January 6 Attackers
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Justice Department had improperly wielded a federal obstruction law in prosecuting hundreds of people for their roles in the January 6 attack on Congress. The...
Supreme Court Conservatives Just Dealt a Massive Blow to the Administrative State
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. In one of the most highly anticipated decisions this term, the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old legal doctrine, so-called “Chevron deference,” under which judges had been expected to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of laws that are ambiguous. The ruling, split 6-3 along ideological lines, will have far-reaching consequences, experts say, and could impact all sorts of federal policies, from health care and taxes to climate change.
How the ACLU Is Planning for the Return of Trump
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. During the four years of the Trump presidency, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed more than 430 legal actions against the Republican administration. In preparation for the possibility of Trump winning a...
Charging Oil Firms With Homicide Would Not Be Unreasonable, Lawyers Say
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Prosecutors in Arizona could reasonably press homicide charges against Big Oil for deaths caused by a July 2023 heatwave, lawyers wrote in a new prosecution memorandum. “[T]he case for prosecuting fossil...
Trump Turned “Palestinian” Into a Slur
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Five months ago, during a GOP presidential debate, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis whether he’d endorse ethnic cleansing. “Do you support the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza?” Tapper inquired.
Trump Was the Trump We Know. Biden Was the Biden We Feared.
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Joe Biden had his shot—a chance to dispel concerns about his age and his abilities. But in his first debate with Donald Trump, he stumbled through 90 minutes, muffing answers, often looking uncertain, speaking in a low, gravelly voice that did not convey strength. This was not only a missed chance. It was a disaster. Afterward Democrats had good cause to be in despair and to wonder if disarray was on its way.
Donald Trump Was Asked (Twice) If He’d Do Anything on Climate. He Dodged.
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. During Thursday’s presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, moderator and CNN anchor Dana Bash asked Trump what, if anything, he’d do to address climate change. Last...
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