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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/01/naomi-klein-us-midst-shock-and-awe-judicial-coup
"The rolling judicial coup coming from this court is by no means over," warned the author of "The Shock Doctrine."
Jake Johnson July 1, 2022
Renowned environmentalist and author Naomi Klein argued Thursday that over the past week, the United States experienced the early stages of a "rolling judicial coup" as the Supreme Court took a sledgehammer to abortion rights, gun control laws, and the federal government's authority to tackle greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling the global climate emergency.
"We have witnessed a shock-and-awe judicial coup," Klein wrote in a column for The Intercept, pointing also to the right-wing high court's decisions to weaken Indigenous sovereignty and further undermine the separation of church and state.
"Biden and the Democrats are currently careening toward a wave of defeats. But it's not too late to get back on track."
"And now this: a decision that eviscerates the Environmental Protection Agency's power to regulate a major source of the carbon emissions destabilizing our planet," wrote Klein, who for years has explored the ways in which reactionary political forces and corporations have taken advantage of crises to impose their will—a method she has dubbed "The Shock Doctrine."
West Virginia v. EPA marks a seismic win for such forces, which have spent decades coordinating and taking legal action against the federal government's regulatory authority, particularly when it comes to challenging the ability of corporations to pollute and degrade the environment as they please.
"The rolling judicial coup coming from this court is by no means over," Klein warned Thursday. "Next term, the Supreme Court will hear a redistricting case that could well make it far easier to concoct a legal pretense for overriding the popular vote in elections in favor of state-appointed electors—the very thing that Donald Trump attempted but failed to do, because enough people were afraid of ending up in jail."
"There is no reason to believe that a group of people whose very presence on the bench required grotesque abuses of democracy would somehow draw the line at thwarting it," she added. "The moment to stop them from getting the chance is right now."
Klein argued that to combat the right-wing justices' sweeping attacks on basic freedoms and the climate, President Joe Biden and the narrowly Democratic Congress must "challenge the underlying legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court and advance an aggressive climate action agenda."
"History contains crossroads when a single set of decisions can alter the trajectory of a people—or even a planet," Klein continued. "The Biden administration's response to the Supreme Court's 6-3 EPA ruling, hot on the heels of the other outrageous power grabs, is a moment like that."
In the wake of the court's decision Thursday, climate groups and progressive lawmakers made clear that Biden and Congress have at their disposal numerous executive and legislative tools to rein in fossil fuel use, slash planet-warming emissions, and bolster renewable energy production. Whether they opt to use them is a matter of political will.
"Biden and the Democrats are currently careening toward a wave of defeats," Klein wrote. "But it's not too late to get back on track. They have just been handed a winning platform: Use the Supreme Court's attack on urgent carbon control as a catalyst to build a more meaningful democracy and take transformational climate action at the same time. If they decide to run with it, everybody on this planet wins. If they refuse, they deserve every loss coming their way."
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/07/02/pers-j02.html
Andre Damon
@Andre__Damon
1 July 2022
This week, the United States and its NATO allies pledged to increase their troop presence in Europe seven-fold in order to prepare for what they called “warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors”–that is, war against Russia and China.
The NATO members declared that they would increase their “high readiness forces” from 40,000 to 300,000. Biden announced the US would send another 20,000 troops to Europe amid the escalating war with Russia, accompanied by the permanent deployment of guided missile destroyers and F-35 aircraft.
Biden, flanked by Gen. Andrew Poppas and Gen. Mark Milley, in 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Ruark)
The US, which spends more on its armed forces than the next 10 largest militaries combined, has increased its military spending for six years in a row. Biden’s military budget for 2023, already the largest on record, was boosted another 6 percent by a vote in the Senate Armed Services Committee, bringing the total to $858 billion.
Since the start of the Biden administration, the US has pledged over $50 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Zelensky stated that the country needs at least $60 billion a year in aid to continue its war effort, a figure equivalent to nearly half of Ukraine’s pre-war economic output.
Last year, when Biden announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, he said, “We’ve been a nation too long at war. If you’re 20 years old today, you have never known an America at peace.” He declared, “It’s time to end the forever war.”
Now Biden is committing the American population to a new perpetual war, asserting that there are no limits to the resources that must be devoted to it.
Asked Thursday at a news conference at the NATO Summit in Madrid to “explain what that means to the American people” and whether he was pledging “indefinite support from the United States for Ukraine,” Biden said “We are going to support Ukraine as long as it takes.”
Another reporter asked about the “high price of gasoline in the United States and around the world,” inquiring, “How long is it fair to expect American drivers and drivers around the world to pay that premium for this war?”
Biden reiterated, “As long as it takes.”
No one thought to ask Biden an obvious question: How long will “it” take? What will be the cost of this open-ended war, and what will be the consequences?
The United States is spearheading a global conflict that threatens the lives of millions of people and, if it develops into a nuclear exchange, the fate of humanity itself.
Can anyone imagine, moreover, that a war against Russia, the aim of which is to overthrow the government of the world’s largest country, coupled with a war against China, the world’s second-largest economy, can be achieved without totally impoverishing the American population?
The social and economic consequences of the militarization of society pledged by the US and its allies at the NATO summit are incalculable. In every country, government spending on public health and social infrastructure is to be gutted to free up resources for the war effort.
The costs of the war are to be imposed onto the working class through the dismantling of social programs and the demand that workers accept a reduction in real wages in the name of the “national interest.”
The eruption of the war has been accompanied by the total abandonment of any efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19. According to US government estimates, there will be 100 million new cases of COVID-19 this fall, more than the number of all COVID-19 cases previously reported to date. And Congress has refused to pass any additional pandemic funding, meaning that uninsured people will be forced to pay for COVID-19 vaccines, testing and treatments out of pocket.
This week, New York City announced that it is slashing public school funding by $215 million in what is expected to be a surge in austerity measures around the country.
Already, the war has fueled demands for slashing “entitlement” spending. “NATO Needs More Guns and Less Butter,” Glenn Hubbard, the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, demanding cuts in spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “Spending offsets to accommodate higher defense spending would surely require slowing the growth in social insurance spending,” he wrote.
While out-of-control military spending against the backdrop of decades of Wall Street bailouts has contributed to the inflationary crisis, the US political establishment is seeking to impose the full burden of the crisis on the working class. The Federal Reserve has initiated a program of seeking to deliberately increase unemployment by raising interest rates, hoping to restore “balance” to the labor market by throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work.
The intensification of the war will take place against a tidal wave of layoffs, beginning in the technology and real estate sector and spreading through the auto industry. According to one tracker, there were 26,000 layoffs in the technology sector alone last month, up from 20,000 the month before.
The global war being initiated by the Biden administration is at one and the same time a war against the working class of the United States. Through war, the US ruling class is seeking to at once divert internal tensions outward through the creation of an external enemy and build up the forces of repression to crush strikes and social struggles.
Biden’s commitment to unlimited American involvement in the war with Russia enjoys the support of the entire US political establishment. The outcome of the NATO summit was hailed by the editorial boards of the major US newspapers, from the Democratic-aligned New York Times and Washington Post to the Republican-aligned Wall Street Journal.
“Whatever else happens in President Biden’s tenure, and no matter how long that tenure lasts, the events this week in Europe will ensure that his presidency is a consequential one,” the Post proclaimed.
Not a single Democratic member of Congress has criticized Biden’s pledge of endless resources for the war effort.
Despite the unending barrage of propaganda aimed at exciting public hated of Russia and China, the war in Ukraine is broadly unpopular. In a YouGov poll published this week, 40 percent of respondents said the US should be “less militarily engaged in conflicts around the world,” compared with 12 percent who said it should be more engaged.
Asked what Biden’s top priority should be, 38 percent said the White House should seek to address the surging cost of living, compared with 8 percent who said the US should “ensure a defeat of Russia in Ukraine.”
Forty-six percent of respondents said they “oppose the United States military becoming directly involved in combat in the Russia-Ukraine war,” compared to just 23 percent who support such a move.
The American population has not forgotten the crimes carried out by American imperialism against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and dozens of other countries subjected to US destabilization campaigns, proxy wars and murderous economic sanctions.
There does not, outside of the International Committee of the Fourth International, exist any organized political opposition to the war plans of US imperialism. The social basis for the building of a new anti-war movement is the working class. Just as imperialist war abroad is at the same time a war on the working class at home, so too the fight against war is at the same time a fight of the working class against inequality, exploitation and the capitalist profit system.
https://www.afsc.org/newsroom/general-mills-divests-israel-following-campaign-led-quaker-organization
Jun 1, 2022
Photo: Pittsburgh BDS coalition
Oakland, CA (June 7, 2022) Following a two-year campaign calling on General Mills to stop making Pillsbury products on stolen Palestinian land, the company announced yesterday that it had divested its Israeli business altogether.
According to its announcement, General Mills divested its 60 percent stake in its Israeli subsidiary and sold it to Bodan Holdings, which until now only held the other 40 percent. After this divestment, General Mills’ operations in Israel are fully owned by Bodan Holdings, whose owners are Israeli businesspeople Danny Nagel and Boaz Raam.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) – a Quaker organization that has worked for decades to promote a world free of violence, inequality, and oppression – launched the No Dough for the Occupation campaign to boycott Pillsbury products two years ago. The campaign was endorsed by members of the Pillsbury family and included the Palestinian Boycott National Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, SumOfUs, Women Against Military Madness, and many other local groups.
This campaign targeted General Mills because it manufactured Pillsbury products in the Atarot Industrial Zone, an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. In 2020, the United Nations included General Mills in its database of companies doing business in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory. The company’s announcements indicate that following this divestment, General Mills does not source products from the settlement factory.
“General Mills’ divestment shows that public pressure works even on the largest of corporations,” said Noam Perry of AFSC’s Economic Activism program. “With this move, General Mills is joining many other American and European companies that have divested from Israel’s illegal occupation, including Microsoft and Unilever just in the last couple of years. We call on all companies to divest from Israel’s illegal and brutal occupation of Palestine, and from the apartheid system it is part of. We congratulate General Mills on this decision and hope this is the first step in cutting all its ties to Israeli apartheid.”
You can read more about the No Dough for the Occupation campaign here.
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The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) promotes a world free of violence, inequality, and oppression. Guided by the Quaker belief in the divine light within each person, we nurture the seeds of change and the respect for human life to fundamentally transform our societies and institutions.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/end-unrwa/35786
Is this the end of UNRWA?
Dalal Yassine The Electronic Intifada 30 June 2022 
Analysts worry that UNRWA’s perpetual cash crunch signals the beginning of the end for the agency. Ashraf Amra APA images
In his April 2022 message to Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said the agency is “cash-strapped” and that it has become “almost customary” for the person in his position to “beg for help if we want the services to continue.”
Throughout the message, he emphasized the “chronic underfunding” of UNRWA only to note that the agency is exploring how to “maximize partnerships within the broader UN system.”
This cryptic statement – what does it mean, exactly, if UNRWA were to maximize partnerships within the broader UN system? – has raised concerns among Palestinians that UNRWA will be disbanded – its services dispersed among other UN agencies or nongovernmental organizations.
UNRWA was established in December 1949 to provide relief to Palestine refugees created by the Nakba, or the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland to create the state of Israel.
Today, some 5 million refugees are “eligible,” according to UNRWA, to receive its social services, education and health care. However, the agency has been forced to steadily reduce those services due to lack of funds.
Yet Lazzarini said in his April message that “such partnerships” – as in, those “within the broader UN system” – “have the potential to protect essential services and your rights from chronic underfunding.”
Without UNRWA’s services, Palestine refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza face a potential (or, in some cases, even more dire) humanitarian crisis.
In Syria, 82 percent of Palestine refugees live on less than $1.90 a day. In Lebanon, 86 percent of Palestine refugees live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza have been under siege and persistent attacks by Israel for almost two decades. UNRWA reports that 1.2 million Palestinians in Gaza need food assistance.
Although Palestinian refugees’ right of return is enshrined in international law, Palestinians fear that their rights will be further diminished without a UN agency to provide basic services.
Disappearing donors
UNRWA’s mandate, which is renewed every three years by the UN General Assembly, includes a commitment to assist and protect Palestine refugees until a “just resolution” to the Palestine refugee “question” is reached.
In December 2019, the General Assembly extended UNRWA’s mandate until June 2023. The measure was passed with overwhelming support despite the lone objections of the United States and Israel.
As UNRWA prepares for a new General Assembly vote at the end of 2022 to renew its mandate, the agency faces a financial deficit of roughly $100 million.
This is not a new dilemma for UNRWA.
Donor pledges to UNRWA totaled approximately $412 million in 2022, a drastic decrease from years prior, such as in 2018, when pledges to UNRWA totaled $1.3 billion – and that was despite the Donald Trump administration’s elimination of approximately $300 million of its anticipated contributions to UNRWA that year.
While Arab states have typically provided a quarter of UNRWA’s budget, those contributions have also declined, with Arab donations falling to less than 3 percent of UNRWA’s budget in 2022.
This decline in Arab funding appears to be a consequence of several Arab states – the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan – signing the so-called Abraham Accords in 2020 and thus “establishing diplomatic relations” with Israel.
In 2018, the United Arab Emirates contributed nearly $54 million, helping to allay UNRWA’s budget deficit after Washington cut off funding. The following year, its contributions decreased to $51.8 million. However, the UAE only donated $1 million in 2020, the year the accords with Israel were signed. Last year, it did not offer any financial support.
It also reflects how, for decades, Israel and its supporters in the United States have targeted UNRWA.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously called for UNRWA to be dismantled because it “perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem.”
The Trump administration adopted similar rhetoric and sought to change the definition of a Palestinian refugee.
At the beginning of the 2021-22 academic school year, the European Parliament blocked 20 million euros in aid to UNRWA, demanding changes be made to textbooks used in UNRWA schools for assistance to resume.
Although the Joe Biden administration resumed US contributions to UNRWA, it has set conditions on the funding.
Last year, the United States signed a “framework for cooperation” with the agency that linked funding to a number of issues related to the identity and national rights of the Palestinian people.
Services will not be “outsourced”
UNRWA claims that the partnerships referenced by Lazzarini are neither new nor will they replace the agency.
In a 5 June email interview, Hoda Samra, UNRWA’s senior media and communications adviser in the Lebanon field office, said that “partnerships” were a reference to “partnerships between UNRWA and other UN agencies/funds/programmes.”
The partnerships “have been a part of operations since UNRWA was first established,” she said, adding that “UNRWA will engage with key stakeholders (UN agencies, hosts, donors) during the coming months to discuss the partnerships option, and [it] expects to reach a collective agreement on the way forward within 2022.”
Samra said: “The idea of expanding partnerships is still at an early stage, with initial consultations taking place between the UNRWA commissioner-general and his senior counterparts within the UN system.”
Yet outside observers are concerned that UNRWA’s weak financial state and lack of political support will only worsen in time.
Palestinian author and historian Salman Abu Sitta told the author by email at the beginning of June that the United States and Israel are “trying to eliminate UNRWA altogether by transferring its activities to other agencies.”
“This means that Palestinians will not have a right of return and they can only seek food and shelter elsewhere, away from their homeland,” he added.
UNRWA’s Samra dismissed the notion that the agencies’ services will be “taken over” or “outsourced.”
“Any service-delivery to Palestine refugees that falls under the UNRWA mandate is also under its responsibility,” she said.
Samra emphasized that support from UN partners will be “on behalf of UNRWA and not in replacement of it.”
Dalal Yassine is a non-resident fellow at the Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @Dalal_yassine. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/omar-karmi/israeli-impunity-intact-despite-abu-akleh-killing
Omar Karmi Rights and Accountability 30 June 2022 
A memorial event for Shireen Abu Akleh on 19 June. Ahmed Ibrahim APA images
A memorial service for Shireen Abu Akleh in London this week provided yet another reminder that despite a large and growing body of evidence regarding Israel’s culpability for the Al Jazeera correspondent’s death, no one has yet been held accountable.
The service was held at the St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street. Due to its location, on a central London road traditionally home to the UK’s print media, the church has long been associated with journalists.
The service followed a separate memorial event in the occupied West Bank on 19 June, 40 days after her slaying.
In between, the United Nations became the latest body to conclude that Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian American journalist, was killed by Israeli gunfire.
On 24 June, the UN’s Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights announced that “all information we have gathered – including official information from the Israeli military and the Palestinian attorney-general – is consistent with the finding that the shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Samoudi came from Israeli security forces.”
That statement also described it as “deeply disturbing” that Israel had not yet conducted a criminal investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing.
Israel has ruled out a criminal investigation. Its authorities have decided that the killing was a “combat event.”
In the US, 24 senators have called for the US to take an active role in that investigation, but so far, the US State Department has rejected such calls and maintains that Israel can conduct its own probe.
Israel’s flimsy narrative
Such faith in Israeli due process is puzzling.
On 20 May, Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group, published data it had collected on Israel’s military law enforcement system.
The findings were damning: Only 2 percent of complaints received in 2019-2020 resulted in prosecution.
Of the investigations opened, only 7.2 percent resulted in indictment in what the group said amounted to a system designed to “grant soldiers near total immunity from prosecution.”
Israel initially denied that any of its soldiers had fired the shot that killed Abu Akleh, blaming instead Palestinian fighters and “crossfire.”
But that story soon looked flimsy and has only gotten flimsier as a number of organizations began picking holes in Israel’s version of events.
At least seven separate media outlets, and investigative and rights groups, in addition to the Palestinian Authority and United Nations, have so far conducted investigations. All, without exception, point to Israeli guilt.
In chronological order:
On 11 May, the day Abu Akleh was killed, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem concluded that contrary to a video released by the Israeli military, claiming Palestinian gunfire in the vicinity, the group’s own investigation concluded that such gunfire could not have harmed Abu Akleh because of the location shown by the military’s own video.
On 12 May, the Palestinian organization Al-Haq followed with an initial field investigation that also laid the blame squarely at the door of the Israeli military.
On 14 May, Bellingcat, an investigative group based in the Netherlands that analyzes open source material, concluded that while both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters were present at the time, the latter were too far away and the weight of evidence suggests Israeli troops were culpable.
On 24 May, The Associated Press conducted its own investigation, supporting assertions by the Palestinian Authority and Abu Akleh’s Al Jazeera colleagues who were present when she was shot, that “the bullet that cut her down came from an Israeli gun.”
On 26 May, CNN went a step further with its own investigation. This found that “new evidence” supported the accusation that Abu Akleh was killed not only by an Israeli soldier, but in a targeted attack.
Consequences, shmonsequences
Also on 26 May, the PA wound up its two-week probe, concluding that Abu Akleh was intentionally killed by Israeli sniper fire.
On 12 June, The Washington Post sent some of its reporters to investigate. They too came to the conclusion that it was an Israeli soldier that “likely shot and killed” Abu Akleh.
Finally, on 20 June, The New York Times chimed in with its own investigation, finding, with the others, that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh could be traced to an Israeli military convoy.
None of this has in any way impacted Israel yet. Indeed, while the European Union has called for an independent probe, the US and the UK have merely requested an investigation, despite Israel’s record of whitewashing its own military.
Although rights organizations are united, and media outlets clearly understand the reality, governments – especially, but not confined to, western governments – continue to protect Israel.
Thus it has been for nearly 75 years. Even though Israel has engaged in and is engaged in ethnic cleansing, assassinations, occupation, land grabs, war with its neighbors, population transfers, colonial settlement construction and apartheid – all well-documented – the country has yet to be held to account for any of it.
The signs are not promising that the slaying of a veteran journalist doing her job will change that situation.
If anybody is interested in changing Middle East dynamics, holding Israel accountable for its many and repeated crimes and transgressions of international law might be a useful place to start.
https://popularresistance.org/instagram-and-facebook-remove-posts-offering-abortion-pills/
By Amanda Seitz, Associated Press. July 1, 2022
Facebook and Instagram have begun promptly removing posts that offer abortion pills to women who may not be able to access them following a Supreme Court decision that stripped away constitutional protections for the procedure.
Such social media posts ostensibly aimed to help women living in states where preexisting laws banning abortion suddenly snapped into effect on Friday. That’s when the high court overruled Roe v. Wade, its 1973 decision that declared access to abortion a constitutional right.
Memes and status updates explaining how women could legally obtain abortion pills in the mail exploded across social platforms. Some even offered to mail the prescriptions to women living in states that now ban the procedure.
Almost immediately, Facebook and Instagram began removing some of these posts, just as millions across the U.S. were searching for clarity around abortion access. General mentions of abortion pills, as well as posts mentioning specific versions such as mifepristone and misoprostol, suddenly spiked Friday morning across Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and TV broadcasts, according to an analysis by the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.
By Sunday, Zignal had counted more than 250,000 such mentions.
The AP obtained a screenshot on Friday of one Instagram post from a woman who offered to purchase or forward abortion pills through the mail, minutes after the court ruled to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.
“DM me if you want to order abortion pills, but want them sent to my address instead of yours,” the post on Instagram read.
Instagram took it down within moments. Vice Media first reported on Monday that Meta, the parent of both Facebook and Instagram, was taking down posts about abortion pills.
On Monday, an AP reporter tested how the company would respond to a similar post on Facebook, writing: “If you send me your address, I will mail you abortion pills.”
The post was removed within one minute.
The Facebook account was immediately put on a “warning” status for the post, which Facebook said violated its standards on “guns, animals and other regulated goods.”
Yet, when the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun,” the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up and not considered a violation.
Marijuana is illegal under federal law and it is illegal to send it through the mail.
Abortion pills, however, can legally be obtained through the mail after an online consultation from prescribers who have undergone certification and training.
In an email, a Meta spokesperson pointed to company policies that prohibit the sale of certain items, including guns, alcohol, drugs and pharmaceuticals. The company did not explain the apparent discrepancies in its enforcement of that policy.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed in a tweet Monday that the company will not allow individuals to gift or sell pharmaceuticals on its platform, but will allow content that shares information on how to access pills. Stone acknowledged some problems with enforcing that policy across its platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram.
“We’ve discovered some instances of incorrect enforcement and are correcting these,” Stone said in the tweet.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday that states should not ban mifepristone, the medication used to induce an abortion.
“States may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy,” Garland said in a Friday statement.
But some Republicans have already tried to stop their residents from obtaining abortion pills through the mail, with some states like West Virginia and Tennessee prohibiting providers from prescribing the medication through telemedicine consultation.
https://popularresistance.org/supreme-court-restricts-epas-ability-to-fight-climate-crisis/
By Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. July 1, 2022
The Supreme Court has restricted the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fight the climate crisis.
In a 6 to 3 ruling on Thursday, the nation’s highest court ruled that the Clean Air Agency does not empower the EPA to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants without prior Congressional approval. Yet the decision comes on the heels of a global sweep of early heat waves that have made the necessity of climate action ever more apparent.
“Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change,” Justice Elana Kagan wrote in a scathing dissent. “And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”
The decision could have wide-ranging implications for the federal government’s ability to regulate not just greenhouse gas emissions but other matters of public and environmental health, yet it all revolves around a policy that is no longer in place.
The initial case, West Virginia v. EPA, was a response to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan requiring states to reduce power emissions by transitioning away from coal plants, as AP News explained. West Virginia and other Republican-led states argued that the EPA should not be able to impose a major economic shift by targeting coal plants without the say-so of elected officials, as The Guardian explained. The Supreme Court blocked the plan from going into effect while the lawsuits continued, and the Trump administration’s EPA then jettisoned it entirely and took a more limited approach, according to AP News. This, in turn, was challenged by mostly Democratic states and struck down by a federal appeals court in Washington. In the end, market forces ultimately achieved the emissions reductions that the Obama administration had sought with its initial plan, as coal plants shut down on their own.
“West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency is a case about an environmental regulation that no longer exists, that never took effect, and that would not have accomplished very much if it had taken effect,” Vox’s Ian Millhiser wrote.
Yet the decision could have major impacts for the regulatory state. In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts agreed that major social or economic shifts should be dictated by Congress, not federal agencies.
“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’” he wrote. “But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme. A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.”
The decision was entirely along ideological lines, with the five other conservative judges siding with Roberts and the two other liberals siding with Kagan, as CNBC reported.
The Biden administration has set a goal of eliminating power sector emissions — which are currently around 30 percent of the U.S. total — by 2035, according to AP News. Its plan to actually deal with those emissions is supposed to be completed by the end of this year.“This is another devastating decision from the Court that aims to take our country backwards,” White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan said in a statement reported by Reuters. “While the Court’s decision risks damaging our ability to keep our air clean and combat climate change, President Biden will not relent in using the authorities that he has under law to protect public health and tackle the climate change crisis.”
The decision also comes as Congress has consistently failed to enact meaningful climate legislation, as a recent attempt was stymied by Republican Senators and Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, The Guardian noted.
“By insisting instead that an agency can promulgate an important and significant climate rule only by showing ‘clear congressional authorization’ at a time when the court knows that Congress is effectively dysfunctional, the court threatens to upend the national government’s ability to safeguard the public health and welfare at the very moment when the United States, and all nations, are facing our greatest environmental challenge of all: climate change,” Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus told The New York Times.
The decision is part of a broader trend by the current court to limit the regulatory authority of federal agencies. In recent decisions, it also shot down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ability to halt evictions during the coronavirus pandemic and the ability of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to enforce COVID-19 vaccination mandates for large employers.
“This court in one term has basically dismantled the administrative state,” City University of New York law professor Rebecca Bratspies told Vox.
In response to the ruling, environmental groups urged both the EPA and Congress to keep working to reduce emissions.
“EPA has no choice. It must make do with the authority it retains to quickly advance as robust a set of power plant standards as it can,” Union of Concerned Scientists President Johanna Chao Kreilick said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. “However, climate action cannot stop there. Congress must expeditiously enact robust and equitable clean energy and climate legislation. As the mounting toll borne by communities across the country and around the world makes clear, climate change is here, today, and there’s no time left to waste.”
