https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...bf468485fcdb4&ei=162

Story by Thom Hartmann •
9h

epublicans on the Supreme Court are, it appears, planning to gut most of America’s regulatory agencies, in what could be the most consequential re-write of the protective “deep state” since it was largely created during the New Deal in the 1930s.

If they pull it off, they could destroy the ability of:

— the EPA to regulate pollutants,

— the USDA to keep our food supply safe,

— the FDA to oversee drugs going onto the market,

— OSHA to protect workers,

— the CPSC to keep dangerous toys and consumer products off the market,

— the FTC to regulate monopolies,

— the DOT to come up with highway and automobile safety standards,

— the ATF to regulate guns,

— the Interior Department to regulate drilling and mining on federal lands,

— the Forest Service to protect our woodlands and rivers,

— and the Department of Labor to protect workers’ rights.

Among other things on the rightwing billionaire wish list: virtually the entirety of America’s ability to protect its citizens from corporate predation rests on what’s called the Chevron deference (more on that in a moment), which the Court appears prepared to overturn with a case they just accepted this year.

Declared Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants to eliminate the Department of Education “on day one” if he’s elected president. If the Supreme Court has its way, he wouldn’t have to bother. It’ll become impotent.

Far-right conservatives and libertarians have been working for this destruction of agencies — the ultimate in deregulation — ever since the first regulatory agencies came into being with the 1906 creation of the Pure Food and Drugs Act, a response to Upton Sinclair’s bestselling horror story published that year (The Jungle) about American slaughterhouses and meat-packing operations.

Gutting these agencies is what Steve Bannon meant when Trump brought him into the White House and he said one of the main goals of that administration was to “deconstruct the administrative state.” If there’s any coherent explanation of the phrase “deep state” as used by Republicans, it’s our nation’s regulatory agencies.

The modern effort to destroy or at least neuter America’s protective agencies began when Ronald Reagan put Anne Gorsuch in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

She directed the agency to dial back restrictions on expansion of factories and other operations that were already polluting the atmosphere. That provoked a challenge to the Supreme Court, Natural Resources Defense Council, v. Gorsuch, where the Court overruled the Reagan administration.

Gorsuch nonetheless continued her efforts to gut the EPA. In her first year heading the agency, there was a 79 percent decline in enforcement cases, and a 69 percent drop in cases the EPA referred to the Justice Department for prosecution. She pushed a 25 percent cut in her own agency’s funding into Reagan’s first budget proposal.

It took Congress years to overturn her cuts to the Clean Air Act “on everything from automobiles to furniture manufacturers,” according to Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.

She took a meat axe to President Carter’s renewable energy programs and “set solar back a decade” according to Clapp.

Gorsuch finally resigned her office to avoid prosecution for what Newsweek described as “a nasty scandal involving political manipulation, [Super]fund mismanagement, perjury, and destruction of subpoenaed documents, among other things.”

Her son, Neil Gorsuch, was devastated by his mother’s resignation. In her memoir Are You Tough Enough? she tells the story of how Neil confronted her when she resigned:

“Neil,” she wrote, “got very upset. Halfway through Georgetown prep and smart as a whip, Neil knew from the beginning the seriousness of my problems. He also had an unerring sense of fairness, as do so many people his age.

“‘You should never have resigned,’ he said firmly. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. You only did what the president [Reagan] ordered. Why are you quitting? You raised me not to be a quitter. Why are you a quitter?’

“He was really upset,” she added.

Now, it appears, her son is preparing his revenge.

(continued)

===============================================

quote:

Originally posted by Magine Enigam:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...fptaskbarhover&ei=16

https://www.msn.com/en-us/vide...cid=socialshare&t=20

(One small excerpt - there's much mpre)

And now the Court is gutting the EPA—the agency Justice Gorsuch's mother infamously ran into the ground before resigning in disgrace during the Reagan administration—using Gorsuch's own BS "textualist" rationale to go after the agency today.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry...4b06e4b0f800ce213c32

The Supreme Court’s Conservatives May Be Set To Kneecap Federal Regulations
The increasing invocation of the "major questions doctrine" could imperil a wide swath of federal government regulatory actions.

https://slate.com/technology/2...smantle-the-epa.html

Remember When Neil Gorsuch’s Mother Tried to Dismantle the EPA?
It happened under Reagan.
BY LISA HYMAS
JAN 31, 2017

"major questions doctrine"

https://www.natlawreview.com/a...r-questions-doctrine

Major Questions About the Major Questions Doctrine
Thursday, July 13, 2023

https://www.vox.com/scotus/237...oans-gorsuch-barrett

How the Supreme Court put itself in charge of the executive branch
The major questions doctrine, explained.

By Ian Millhiser Jul 17, 2023, 6:30am EDT

(excerpt)

This major questions doctrine, at least as it is understood by the Court’s current majority, emerged almost from thin air in the past several years. And it has been wielded almost exclusively by Republican-appointed justices to invalidate policies created by a Democratic administration. This doctrine is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. Nor is it mentioned in any federal statute. It appears to have been completely made up by justices who want to wield outsize control over federal policy.

And the implications of this doctrine are breathtaking. In practice, the major questions doctrine makes the Supreme Court the final word on any policy question that Congress has delegated to an executive branch agency — effectively giving the unelected justices the power to override both elected branches of the federal government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...nts_in_mouseholes%22

Major questions doctrine

The major questions doctrine is a principle of statutory interpretation in United States administrative law which states that courts will presume that Congress does not delegate to executive agencies issues of major political or economic significance.

In the years since the Supreme Court adopted the broader version of the major questions doctrine, legal scholars have criticized the doctrine along various lines.[3] These include arguments that the major questions doctrine is a symptom of "judicial self-aggrandizement," that it is inconsistent with both textualism and originalism, and that it is at odds with normal tools of statutory interpretation.[4][5][6] In an article for the Harvard Law Review summarizing this transformation in the major questions case law, Professor Mila Sohoni wrote that the "first crucial thing to understand about the major questions [doctrine] is what it did to administrative law."[7] She continued, "[w]hile ostensibly applying existing major questions case law, the [Supreme Court] in actuality altered the doctrine of judicial review of agency action in its method and content, in ways that will have momentous consequences."

More rubbish selling fear. Pandering to constituents, whether on the left or the right, with fear-mongering rhetoric is just pathetic. That litany of everything agencies will “lose” the authority to protect is nothing more than yellow journalism. Shameful.

Total removal is not good.

But all of our regulatory agencies have pretty consistently pushed their boundaries and often get out of hand.

No one wants a polluted environment… but it seems there isn’t agreement on just what that means. One can make a logical argument that people are pollution… do you think that the EPA should be able to cull humans based on that argument?

The legal wrangling essentially is how much the legislature needs to be involved in setting rules.

An example is the ATF. They change their minds, and retroactively ban things. Congress could write a law and do the same thing, and folks could fight it. Not so much so regulation. It’s a part of the long running separation of powers arguments.

Well, any time or thing that has Steve Bannon's approval, or even resembles his stated goals, is alarming.

It's about the long-term conservative ideology of small govt. And if small isn't achievable, dysfunctional will do. And it's about total control of the cultural, legal, societal direction of the country.

It's also part of a long-term plan, well developed, that the conservative think tanks have devised.

In fact, it was well advertised before Trump was elected that in part the appointment of three Justices would change everything. It was also McConnel's goal, clearly. That's why they denied Obama the op to appoint. That's why conservatives cheered when the three were appointed. They knew what it meant.

It's part of the 20,000 shock troop loyalist plan.

It's MAGAlosaurus Insidious Creep.

I talk about reality, resistance is futile. Well, IMO, the Right ideology (Lane's for example) has already won. We just don't know it yet.

quote:

Not so much so regulation. It’s a part of the long running separation of powers arguments.

It's really the argument for small govt.

As a substitute, dysfunction is a second choice. Still waste of TP money, but ideologically satisfying.

In theory, congress is the legislative authority, to pass laws. Nowadays, that's tough enough, but to make detailed regs by the legislators is absurd.

Imagine if they tried to make IRS regulations through the legislature!!

That's what Rightists want, specifically to achieve dysfunction.

The legislature HAS to delegate the authority to enforce laws they pass, which includes the authority to develop regulations. That's the way it has worked for a long time, yet with significant interference from the Right.

Now the SCOTUS wants to gut the regulatory authority, if not the agencies themselves.

It's a complete trespass on the legislative branch.

Does anyone think SCOTUS can develop and administer regulations?

And it's hypocritical for Rightists to say out one side of their mouth they are opposed to legislation from the bench, yet approve this.

This is an example of the end justifies the means.

quote:

Originally posted by MJines:
More rubbish selling fear. Pandering to constituents, whether on the left or the right, with fear-mongering rhetoric is just pathetic. That litany of everything agencies will “lose” the authority to protect is nothing more than yellow journalism. Shameful.

AMEN! -- and stating "planning" as if there is a published "plan" available for review ---

One thing i've learned, is that when one side makes declarative statements about the "subtle plans" of the other side, they are full of agenda and stuffing

quote:

Originally posted by Magine Enigam:


It's about the long-term conservative ideology of small govt. And if small isn't achievable, dysfunctional will do.

please CITE your "conservative" sources stating this as fact, that dysfunctional will do

quote:

Originally posted by Magine Enigam:

And it's about total control of the cultural, legal, societal direction of the country.

dude, this is literally in direct opposition of your previous sentence, where conservatives want small government -- you might check your compass on who's trying to force speech and who says "nah"

quote:

Originally posted by Magine Enigam:

It's also part of a long-term plan, well developed, that the conservative think tanks have devised.

...cite..sources.. see above

quote:

Originally posted by Magine Enigam:

In fact, it was well advertised before Trump was elected that in part the appointment of three Justices would change everything.

demonstrable lie - show me a source, dated prior to 1/20/2017, from a conservative source, saying THREE is the right number.. while RBG passing could have been forecast, it wasn't set in stone -- dude, i get it, you hate everything about everyone that disagrees with you, but do try to stick to actual facts

quote:

Originally posted by Magine Enigam:


I talk about reality, resistance is futile.

funny, as the "left" and the "establishment" literally posted themselves as "Resistance" in 2017 - you obviously don't recall all the little EXECUTIVE agencies flying the resistance icon and lexicon on their websites

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/0...zwjSasXiE7BUA5DdihMI

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025
The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

================================================

https://www.washingtonpost.com...mp-authoritarianism/

https://wapo.st/3P5eUVj

Trump wants no limits on presidential power. That’s not new for the GOP.
Republicans have embraced this idea for more than 40 years

July 27, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

“When I get back into the Oval Office,” former president Donald Trump told the annual gathering of the conservative group Turning Point USA recently, “I will obliterate the deep state.” While this may sound like simply more of the same authoritarian bombast that he is known for, it is no idle threat. Indeed, it is deeply rooted in a Republican imperative that predates Trump, one that has a political traction that probably will outlast him.

Trump’s plan, outlined on the former president’s campaign website, is to bring every part of the federal government under his personal control. This includes stripping employment protections from “deep state” civil servants, making independent federal agencies directly answerable to the White House, blocking funds that have already been appropriated by Congress for programs he opposes and eliminating any legal accountability for presidential actions.

Trump seems more likely to succeed the second time around because his allies have spent the past few years making plans and training staffers to overcome the obstacles they faced during Trump’s term — barriers that thwarted many of his authoritarian impulses.

While it is tempting to see this well-planned assault as uniquely Trumpian, it is actually just a maximalist version of a proposition that dates to the early days of the Reagan administration. Trump’s ideas might be extreme, but they’re foundational to the modern conservative project and embedded in the DNA of the modern Republican Party.

The presidency of Richard M. Nixon, especially Watergate and Nixon’s handling of the Vietnam War, marked the peak of what scholars were beginning to call the “imperial presidency,” to describe an expansion of executive power that began with the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Congress forced Nixon from office and undertook in the years that followed a mission to claw back its authority, beginning with a wave of investigations into the activities of the CIA and other intelligence agencies during the presidency of Gerald Ford.

A key figure in this story is Dick Cheney. As a former Nixon administration official and Ford’s chief of staff, Cheney thought that increasingly aggressive congressional actions had dangerously weakened the presidency in ways that violated the Constitution. In 1979, Cheney entered Congress himself, and during the Reagan presidency, he bristled at attempts by a Democratic-dominated House to control the president.

Asserting that Reagan didn’t need congressional approval to fund the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua, Cheney accused Congress of a tendency “to act as if we are the fount of all political virtue in this society.” It was then that Cheney met David Addington, a powerful staff lawyer in the Reagan White House who shared his views on executive power, particularly regarding intelligence and military matters.

Addington, along with colleague Samuel A. Alito and their boss, Reagan’s second attorney general, Edwin Meese, began promoting a unique interpretation of Alexander Hamilton’s assertions about the role of the executive in Federalist 70. They argued that the executive was meant to be the dominant branch of government, that it was designed to function autonomously from the other branches and that the “vesting clause” of Article II of the Constitution gave the president sole authority over all aspects of it.

However, the Reagan administration’s bold attempt to defy and circumvent congressional authority was checked in what came to be called the Iran-contra scandal by an independent counsel and nationally televised congressional hearings in 1987. Although Reagan himself was spared, the investigation of the illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua resulted in the indictments of several senior White House officials.

In 1989, Cheney became secretary of defense for Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, bringing Addington with him. In 1990, he tried to convince the president to invade Kuwait without congressional approval. Cheney received support from Assistant Attorney General William P. Barr — another staunch proponent of expansive executive power. Earlier, as head of Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel, Barr had drafted a memo permitting the FBI to detain fugitives without agreement from the countries in which they were seized.

But Bush didn’t embrace this expansive definition of presidential power. Instead, it was his son, George W. Bush, who became the president to do so after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. With the vigorous support of Cheney, who was now vice president, and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld — another veteran of the Nixon White House — Bush authorized the illegal wiretapping of phones by the National Security Agency, suspended habeas corpus for both U.S. and foreign citizens and forcibly abducted terrorism suspects and brought them to a third country for aggressive interrogation and torture. The administration justified these actions with what was now known as the “unitary executive theory.” Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote the notorious “torture memos” under this theory.

Conservative legal scholars and activists, once principally opposed to big government, began to warm to the expansion of presidential power because of their anathema toward the federal bureaucracy. They saw the proliferation of executive agencies — many overseen by congressional committees — as constraints on their agenda.

And they were correct, as agency missions like protecting consumers, the environment and individual rights clashed with conservative beliefs about the rights of the private sector and promoting the traditional nuclear family. They reasoned that concentrated presidential power would enable them to bypass federal rules, bring executive agencies to heel and circumvent congressional checks.

This understanding meant that when Trump — a Republican who brazenly claimed authoritarian power — came along, conservatives were well primed to support his efforts with an exaggerated theory of presidential governance they had already long been peddling.

And once Trump left office, conservative organizations, scholars and activists began working to build an apparatus to make future Republican presidents much more powerful. Former White House officials, including Stephen Miller, Mark Meadows and Russell Vought — who learned a great deal from the obstacles they faced during Trump’s presidency — have helped launch overlapping initiatives that are laying groundwork for a radical reorganization of the executive branch. The most prominent of these are part of “Project 2025,” a well-funded umbrella effort by conservative groups that are drafting position papers, writing legal briefs, drawing up blueprints and vetting and training thousands of potential staffers.

The effort reflects a perilous synergy between Trump’s far-right allies and mainstream conservatives when it comes to presidential power. Driving this effort is the flagship of establishment conservative policy, the Heritage Foundation. “The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president, Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts said recently, “violates the very foundation of our democratic republic.”

But while Roberts tried to cloak the mission in lofty, principled rhetoric, today’s proponents of the unitary executive no longer need invoke Hamilton to justify this radical shift in national governance. They now simply claim it as a political tool. “There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner,” John McEntee, a former Trump staffer and leading figure in Project 2025 flatly told the New York Times. “What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Should Trump or another Republican win the 2024 election, there will no doubt be pushback from independent agencies, the federal bureaucracy and congressional Democrats. But this dilated vision of the American presidency has formidable bases of support. The Supreme Court has been shifting toward a more capacious view of executive power for decades, and Republicans in Congress have increasingly chosen party loyalty over their own institutional authority during Republican presidencies.

Perhaps the most potent source of support is the vast number of voters for whom the multiple indictments of Trump are evidence both of a thoroughly corrupted government and the need for a savior. “In the end, they’re not coming after me,” Trump likes to say on the stump. “They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.”

This authoritarian project didn’t begin with Trump, nor will it end with him. Instead, Trump supercharged antidemocratic tendencies at the heart of the GOP that had existed for decades. Regardless of whether a Republican wins the presidency in 2024, the institutional and ideological apparatus is now in place for future GOP incumbents, and it would be foolish to imagine that they would not avail themselves of it. Indeed, Trump has created a durable template for executive authoritarianism in his party that is being tested at the state level by the likes of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) to promote his own presidential bid.

As if to redeem Nixon’s failed attempt at an imperial presidency, Trump recently compared himself to the former president, saying, “I think he always regretted that he didn’t fight.”

We are now in a dangerous political moment, but it has been a long time coming.

"please CITE your "conservative" sources stating this as fact, that dysfunctional will do"


Start right here

Freedom Caucus: Let Trump Walk or We Shut Down the Government

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/0...tage-foundation.html

Heritage Foundation Makes Plans to Staff Next G.O.P. Administration
No matter the Republican, the effort has set a goal of up to 20,000 potential officials in a database akin to a right-wing LinkedIn.

https://www.the-independent.co...s-rant-b1932144.html

Steve Bannon pledges 20k ‘shock troops’ ready to go as he rants that ‘we control this country’
Donald Trump’s former strategist has called on GOP to ‘deconstruct’ the state

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/p...hristian-nationalism

Former Trump adviser Michael Flynn ‘at the center’ of new movement based on conspiracies and Christian nationalism

quote:

Originally posted by wymple:
"please CITE your "conservative" sources stating this as fact, that dysfunctional will do"


Start right here

Freedom Caucus: Let Trump Walk or We Shut Down the Government

Good. Let them do it. The republicans are in total meltdown.