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The Supreme Court delivered surprising wins to liberals this week in a pair of blockbuster decisions that forbade businesses from firing workers base on their sexual orientation or gender identity and halted the Trump administration's efforts to end the Obama-era DACA program, which shields the young migrants known as "Dreamers."

But those on the left still see potential danger ahead. In the coming days, the top court is expected to hand down a decision in a high-profile abortion dispute that could provide signals about how the panel, which counts two appointees of President Donald Trump in its conservative majority, will treat reproductive rights in the years to come.

"Kind of feels like we're being softened up for the blow, huh?" Sasha Samberg-Champion, a liberal civil rights lawyer and former Justice Department attorney, wrote in a representative post on Twitter on Thursday, after the DACA decision was released.

"Progressives must keep their guard up,"Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, a Supreme Court activist group, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the decisions have unsettled those on the right, who have criticized even the Republican-appointed justices for their votes. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called it the "most disappointing week at #SCOTUS in years."

The fight over abortion has animated clashes over the Supreme Court for decades, and continues to be a battleground in the 2020 presidential race between Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

The case, June Medical Services v. Russo, No.18-1323, concerns a Louisiana law that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic. A federal district court found that it would limit Louisiana, a state of nearly five million people, to just one doctor providing abortions.

June Medical Services was the subject of outsized political attention even before the top court handed down its opinions in the LGBT worker and DACA cases.

As a result of those decisions, though, the case has gained even more weight as a loose barometer of the court's conservatism during a high-stakes election year in which Trump has sought to make both abortion and his right-leaning court picks major elements of his campaign.

The case is the first abortion case to be argued at the court since Trump's nominees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, joined the bench.As a candidate, Trump pledged to nominate justices who would "automatically" overturn the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade.

Among the reasons that the case has caused so much alarm among reproductive rights activists is that the law in question is nearly identical to a Texas abortion measure that the Supreme Court struck down just four years ago.

The fact that the court agreed to hear a case involving a law so similar to the one it struck down in 2016 suggests that the court, with its new conservative majority, could be ready to pare back abortion precedents set when the top court was more liberal.

It's quite possible, though, that the court hands another win to liberals.

During oral arguments in March, Chief Justice John Roberts signaled that he was open to striking down the law, though such questions are not always predictive of how a justice will vote. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh provided few clues about their thinking at the time. In an unusual move, Gorsuch asked no questions at all.

A decision in the case will likely be handed down by the end of June, though it could be delayed as a result of precautions taken in response to Covid-19.

The unpredictability of the high court showcases the difficulty of Trump's efforts to make his Supreme Court nominees a campaign talking point. While Trump often boasts of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh at speeches and campaign rallies, his tone was far more sour this week.

"These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives," Trump wrote in a post on Twitter shortly after the DACA decision was released on Thursday.

"The recent Supreme Court decisions, not only on DACA, Sanctuary Cities, Census, and others, tell you only one thing, we need NEW JUSTICES of the Supreme Court," he wrote in another. "If the Radical Left Democrats assume power, your Second Amendment, Right to Life, Secure Borders, andReligious Liberty, among many other things, are OVER and GONE!"

To some extent, Trump's attacks on the court are in line with his tangles, dating back years, against Roberts, an establishment Republican who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush.

Carrie Severino, who leads the conservativeJudicial Crisis Network, an influential activist organization, said in an interview that decisions like the DACA decision, written by Roberts, "are part of the reason that we have President Trump."

"The chief justice has created a real pattern of being complicit in efforts to weaponize the court as a tool against the Trump administration," Severino said.

Complicating Trump's maneuvering, however, is the role played by his own justices in the legal defeats.

While both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were in the minority in the DACA dispute, Gorsuch was the author of the court's Monday decision applying Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act to LGBT workers. The vote in that case was 6-3, with Roberts joining Gorsuch and the court's liberals, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

In the sanctuary case the president appeared to cite, the administration failed to garner even four votes to have the court review the administration's challenge to a California law limiting state and local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Likewise, it only would have taken four votes for the court to agree to hear any of 10 Second Amendment cases that the court rejected onMonday, in a move that disappointed gun-rights activists. Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the most conservative judges on the top court, dissented from his colleagues' decision not to hear one of the cases.

While the vote tallies were not published in those disputes, it would not have required Roberts or any of the court's liberals to vote to take them up in the court's next term.

Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University and the co-host of the Supreme Court podcast Strict Scrutiny, called Trump's messaging around the Supreme Court "a little idiosyncratic and perhaps incoherent."

"There is at once some dissatisfaction that his conservative majority isn't acting in the way he wants, but also a realization that judges helped get him elected," she said.

Of the most recent week at the Supreme Court, Murray pointed out that the legal issues at play in June Medical Services are distinct from those that were argued in the LGBT rights and DACA cases.

But, she said, "one thing you might glean from this week is that the chief justice remains very much an institutional steward of the court and its legacy."

In that sense, it is possible thatRoberts' shepherding of the court's reputation could play some role in all three cases.

"He might be concerned with the perception that the court is in the pocket of the Trump administration," Murray said.

More here:
Abortion case could end or add to streak of liberal wins at Supreme Court - CNBC

Jon Stewart made his reputation as a smart political comedian and commentator on Comedy Centrals The Daily Show on TV, before quitting in 2015 to develop movie projects, of which the first was his excellent Rosewater. But this heartsinkingly is the follow-up. Its a flaccid, toothless, supercilious political non-satire for liberals too fastidious to take sides or take action. The film perches on a fence of wry disdain and makes droll gestures of disapproval at the wasteful big-money awfulness of everyones political campaign. And its leading to a big tortuous plot twist which frankly isnt convincing, despite the talking-head expert interviewee who is wheeled on over the closing credits to assure us that it is. What were left with is a bland cop-out, which incidentally wont worry anyone yearning for Donald Trumps second term.

Steve Carell finds some of his dullest form playing Gary Zimmer, a Washington DC political strategist for the Democratic party, desperately searching for the next big thing after the debacle of 2016. (Stewart may have been inspired by Stanley Tuccis media-manipulator in the small-town political satire Swing Vote.) To Zimmers astonished delight, one of his minions finds a viral YouTube video of a retired Marine Corps veteran called Colonel Jack Hastings, played by Chris Cooper, giving a passionate speech about caring community values at a town-hall meeting somewhere in Wisconsin, where folks have been financially stricken by the recent army-base closure. The holy grail: a tough guy whos also a progressive.

Cunning Zimmer duly shows up in hicksville (wrinkling his nose at all the niceness thereabouts) to persuade the grumpily authentic Hastings to run as a Dem for mayor and maybe something more if it all works out. Soon the top brass in Washington are excited; the cash rolls in for his campaign and the Republicans get fired up too bringing in their ice-queen spin-doctor Faith Brewster, played by Rose Byrne, who seems to have some history and toxic sexual chemistry with Zimmer.

There are, arguably, one or two reasonable touches, such as the observation about punctuation on billboard ads, inspired by the notorious Jeb! campaign for the hapless Jeb Bush. But really, any single TV episode of Veep or Parks and Recreation has far more wit, fun and political zap than this great big laugh-free feast of self-congratulatory dullness. Zimmer himself never has any funny lines and the rules about making the leading man relatable and making the Democratic guy basically nice mean that he is never allowed to have any of that Satanic political glamour of pure wickedness that might have made his character interesting. The movie never permits itself the forbidden fossil-fuel of cynicism that might have given it some movement.

The talents of Topher Grace and Natasha Lyonne are thrown away in the tiny roles of pollsters and online number-crunchers that Zimmer has brought in. It could be that much of their characters were lost in the edit, but certainly the film is not especially interested in the hot-button issues of Facebook and data-harvesting. The eerie absence of race as an issue in the film is also naive.

The story runs on predictable lines, with the underdog Hastings making exciting gains on the Republican incumbent; then his momentum stalls and theres a dilemma how nasty are his team prepared to be to clinch their win? And theres that very exasperating ending, to which I can only say that in the real world, Zimmer, having raised serious amounts of cash from hedge-funders and the like, would take a pretty close interest in the bottom line.

The real finale, however, comes in the typography: the word RESIST is eye-catchingly picked out in the middle of the title, in fine Michael-Moore-lite style. Resist? Really? How? The movie has signed off with a pert little flourish to the effect that the whole system is broken, so maybe we should wish a plague on both their houses or neither. Either way, the supposed satirical attitude of Irresistible cant conceal the fact that its contrived, unfunny and redundant.

Released on 26 June on digital formats.

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Irresistible review Jon Stewarts political non-satire for liberals is as dull as it gets - The Guardian

The Conservatives spent nearly to the limit in the 2019 federal election more than the Liberals did and almosttriplethe amount shelled out by the New Democrats.

Campaign returns filed by most parties and posted to Elections Canada's website show the Conservatives spent $28.9 million during the fallelection campaign, nearly hitting the $29.1 million limit. This was narrowly more than the $26.1 million theLiberals spent.

Both parties spent significantly more than the New Democrats. The NDP's election expenses totalled $10.3 million barely a third of what the party was allowed to spend during the campaign.

The Green and People's parties requested and were granted filing extensions by Elections Canada. The filings for the Bloc Qubcois had not been posted as of Monday evening.

The numbers show that the Conservatives and Liberals were fighting on alevel playing field as far as money is concerned. This parityextended to the pre-election period, when the Conservatives spent $1.8 million and the Liberals spent$1.7 millionon partisan advertising. The NDP spent only $66,000 on partisan advertising over the pre-election period. (The legislatedlimit on that spendingwas just over $2 million.)

The Conservatives shelled out most of their pre-election spending on television ads $1.2 million of their pre-election advertising went on TV. The Liberals spent just $344,000 on pre-election TV advertising, optinginstead to spent nearly half of their pre-election dollars on online ads.

During the campaign period itself, the Conservatives spent $15.9 million on advertising. About $9.3 million of that went to TV spots,$4.6 million was spent online and $1.7 million went to radio ads.

In all three categories, the Conservatives outspent the Liberals.The Liberals spent $14 million on ads during the campaign, including $5.2 million for TV ads and $3.8 million for online ads. The Liberals spent another$3.8 millionon ads categorized as "other" in the election filings.

Nearly all of the $3.9 million the NDPspent on ads went online and on television. In both total dollars and as a share of their total election expenses, the New Democrats spent far less on advertising than either the Liberals or the Conservatives. The two bigger parties spent just over half of their money on ads. Ad spending represented just 38 per cent of the total for the NDP.

One reasonfor this may be that the New Democrats appear to have run a top-heavy campaign. The party spent about $2.9 million on the national office, professional services and salaries and benefits about 28 per cent of all the expenses it booked during the campaign.

While the Conservatives and Liberals both spent more on these line items ($4.8 million and $3.7 million, respectively), the percentage of theircampaign budgets going to theseexpenseswasabout half the share of the NDP budget that went tostaffing.

The NDP's overall financial disadvantagewas felt in other areas. The Conservatives and Liberals each spent more than twice as much as the NDP did on polling and research. While the NDP spent $2.1 million on Jagmeet Singh's campaign tour, the Conservatives spent $4.9 million sending Andrew Scheer across the country and the Liberals spent $6.7 million on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's tour.

The money the NDP spent on the campaign is not money they would have had in the bank, either. Throughout 2019, the New Democrats raised just $8 million, compared to $21 million for the Liberals and $31 million for the Conservatives.

It's difficult to compare the spending in the 2019 election to what was spent in the 2015 campaign, since the 2015 campaignwas nearly twice as long. On a per-day basis, however, both the Conservatives and Liberals spent more in 2019 than they did in 2015. The NDP, which entered the last campaign as the Official Opposition, spent significantly lesson every expense category except non-leader travel and "other expenses."

The Conservatives spent less on a per-day basis in 2019 on voter contact services and on their national office, while they spent more on everything else. The biggest jump in Conservative spendingwas for advertising outside ofradio and TV suggesting a bigger shift of ad dollarsto theonline market in 2019 than in 2015.

The Liberals spent more on a per-day basis on everything except radio and TV ads their spending on those two itemsactually dropped between the two campaigns. The Liberals'biggest increases in spending were for the leader's tour and for non-traditional advertising.

In raw dollars, however, the 2015 campaign was far more expensive. Both the Liberals and Conservatives spent over $40 million in that campaign, while the NDP spent nearly $30 million.

Nevertheless, the Conservatives still spent $2.9 million more in 2019 on non-radio or TV advertising than they did in 2015, despite the campaign being half as long. They also spent more on professional services and travel that was unrelated to the leader's tour. The only thing theLiberals spent more on in 2019 than in 2015 was election surveys (an increase of $34,000).

Elections Canada also hasposted the campaign returns for hundreds of local campaignswhose expenses are tracked separately from those booked by the national campaigns. The filings are incomplete, so it isn't possible to do a full accounting of what was spent by each party across the country just yet.

But the filings do give us a glimpse of a few key local contests.

After leaving the Liberal Party over the SNC-Lavalin affair, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott each ran as independent candidates in their ridings.

Wilson-Raybould was not hurting for money in her successful bid for re-election. The filings show she received $222,000 in contributions during the campaign double the spending limit in her Vancouver Granville riding. She spent $97,203 in election-related expenses.

Her Liberal opponent's return has yet to be filed, but the Conservatives' Zach Segal spent $98,740 on his third-place showing in the riding.

Philpott, running in the Ontario riding of MarkhamStouffvile, was not as fortunate as Wilson-Raybould. While she had a fully-stocked warchest after receiving $148,000 in contributions during the campaign, and spent $101,000 onher re-election bid, she fell over 11,000 votes short of the Liberals' Helena Jaczek, who spent $102,000.

In ReginaWascana, where the Conservatives unseated long-time Liberal MP Ralph Goodale by 7,000 votes, the party spent just $75,000 against Goodale's $92,000.

People's Party Leader Maxime Bernier outspent the Conservatives' Richard Lehoux in his riding of Beauce by a margin of $92,000 to $89,000, but finished 6,000 votes behind.

Money helps in politicsbut it can't buy you love or votes.

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Conservative election spending outpaced Liberals by a little and the NDP by a lot - CBC.ca

(Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

So today is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayors birthday. Happy birthday to the first Hispanic Latina Justice! Her birthday comes on a day that pushes her jurisprudence and that of the entire left of the Supreme Court into stark relief.

As many Court watchers are aware, today the decision in Department of Homeland Security vs. Thuraissigiamwas released. It was a 7-2 decision denying habeas corpus and due process relief to immigrants, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer concurring in the decision. Thats right, two of the more supposedly staunchly liberal members of the Court agreed with the administration, while Sotomayor penned a pointed dissent.

This comes right after Sotomayors concurrence in DHS v. Regents where she alone refused to dismiss the equal protections concerns of DACA recipients, and well, it really makes you wonder who deserves to be lionized as the liberal anchor of the Court, as a contemporaneous chat with my colleague, Joe Patrice reveals.

And I was not alone in this opinion.

Its become increasingly clear if liberals want a quick gut-check to see just how bad a decision is, they need to see where Sotomayor voted. And yet, RBG remains the cultural touchstone for what it means to be a liberal. But we know she isnt perfect, far from it.(Though I think we can all admit that when there are nine is a bad ass quote.) For her birthday, I want more cultural ephemera celebrating Sotomayor. Im here for the Sonia hoops or nail polish. And yes, t-shirts and posters and laptop stickers and all the trinkets that get churned out for RBG. Its high time pop culture pays attention to who is really holding down the Court.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email herwith any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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Happy Birthday Sonia Sotomayor, The Real Liberal Queen Of The Court - Above the Law

Protesters march in New York to demand an end to police violence after George Floyds killing at the hands of a police officer. (Ragan Clark / AP Photo)

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As The Nations designated liberal hand-wringer, I admit Ive been concerned about the rapid spread of the demand to defund the police, which sociologist Alex S. Vitale argued for persuasively in our digital pages last week. I have worried that its radicalism jeopardizes the growing mainstream support for police reform in the wake of George Floyds apparent murder by Minneapolis police two weeks ago, and the subsequent police violence against those protesting that crime. It has, of course, become a simplistic gotcha question for some reporters and news anchors to shoot at Democratic politicians, especially since a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to disband its police department Sunday.Ad Policy

But Ive decided to calm down and trust the wisdom of the activists, as well as some of the leading politicians, whove been working on this issue far more closely, and with far more on the line, than I have. There is right now a productive tension between liberalism and radicalism, as well as establishment insiders and activist outsiders, the kind we talk about in history: labor unrest in the 1930s (and earlier) helping to lead to New Deal reforms; civil rights unrest in the 60s culminating in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

Of course, the white backlash to 60s civil rights progress, as well as sometimes-destructive protest and rising crime, led to the election of Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reaganand now Donald Trump. And some of us older folks are still living in the shadow of those traumas.

Ive come to realize part of the problem is that much of the liberal Democratic establishment came of age politically, as I did, in the shadow of the Reagan revolution, when Republicans came to dominate not only policy but language itself, especially around crime, welfare, and the role of government. After Republicans won the White House in five out of six elections, with a brief pause for Jimmy Carter, some Democrats worried that theyd never get it back. President Bill Clinton led us out of that wilderness, partly by making the many compromises with the dominant GOP worldview that progressives now loathe, or at least lament. But even Barack Obama, like me, graduated from college into cramped, fearful Reagan-era political activism. That partly accounted for his (justified) fear of a GOP backlash and (futile) determination to work with Republicans. Now, some of us cringe at every slogan that might potentially frighten off the elusive swing voter, from Medicare for All to Abolish ICE to, now, Defund the police.

But remember when Abolish ICE was going to doom Democrats in 2018? And they took the House?

Even Scott Walker, not the GOPs brightest bulb, framed the issues on Twitter this way Sunday night:

Thus making reform the default conservative position. (Georgetown public policy professor Don Moynihan immediately demonstrated the authoritarian Walkers deep hypocrisy.)

But the ever-centrist Politico Playbook reported Tuesday morning that some congressional Republicans say they are seriously considering whether they can support any of the police reform tenets of the bill proposed by the Democratic House along with Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker on Monday. Senators Mitt Romney and Tim Scott are said to be looking at what they might back, and even some House Republicans are, too. Politico reports:

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The low-hanging fruit for Republicans includes a ban on chokeholds, declaring lynching a federal crime, creating a national reporting mechanism for police officers who get in trouble and beefed-up training programs for law enforcement. Republicans are even holding open the possibility that they could rework liability protections for police officers.

Ill believe it when I see it, but its not nothing.

Im not going to pretend I dont still worry about the slogans being confusing and potentially chasing away Americans who are otherwise open to serious police transformation. (So does Senator Bernie Sanders, by the way.) But I also worried that the violence on the fringe of the George Floyd protests last week would alienate the publiconly to see public support for the demonstrators, and police reform, soar in that same period. Part of that is thanks to cops themselves: The violent police riots we saw in cities from New York to Minneapolis to Austin to Los Angeles opened the nations eyes, belatedly, to the lawlessness of too many of the men and women who are paid to enforce the law.Defund the Police

And I think liberal and progressive Democrats are mostly handling the question well. The Views Meghan McCain tried to corner Senator Kamala Harris on Monday by professing support for police reform but opposition to defunding the police, and insisting that Harris say whether she supports that demand, yes or no. Harris did something deftI think she learned a lot from her failed presidential campaignand turned the question around on McCain: How are you defining funding the police? Of course, McCain couldnt answer. Noting that many cities spend more than one third of their budgets on police, Harris said she thought the actual task was reimagining how we do public safety in America, which I support. Incidentally, thats the same formulation used on Sunday by Representative Ilhan Omar, who is to Harriss left. For now, Im going to let those running for and holding public office sort it all out.

And theres a lot to sort out. Even those who profess to support defunding the police mean different things. For many, it starts with demilitarizing urban police forces by not investing in the armaments of war. For others, its putting significant chunks of police budgets into social services treating homelessness, mental health issues, and substance abuse. It can also mean disbanding police forces, as the Minneapolis City Council seems to envisionbut even that proposal remains admittedly vague. And though he only uses the word reform, Minneapolis SEIU leader Javier Morillo laid out seven tough moves to break the power of conservative, often brutal police unions that have blocked attempts at change in many cities, including his own.

In an interview last week, The End of Policing author Vitale acknowledged this:

Im certainly not talking about any kind of scenario where tomorrow someone just flips a switch and there are no police. What Im talking about is the systematic questioning of the specific roles that police currently undertake, and attempting to develop evidence-based alternatives so that we can dial back our reliance on them. And my feeling is that this encompasses actually the vast majority of what police do. We have better alternatives for them.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden, elected to the Senate in 1972, grew up in the shadow of Nixon, which was in some ways more withering to the political soul than Reagan, especially on racial issues. Biden says forthrightly that he doesnt support defunding the police. Of course he doesnt. But the former vice president is coming along on these and other issues. Can we move him to systemic questioning of the roles police perform? Or even reimagining the police? Well see where Biden lands.

The only remaining worry I have is if it becomes a litmus test for activists, and they spurn a presidential candidate like Biden who wont go that faryet. But Ill worry about that later. Ive finally realized: Its time for those of us who grew up in the shadow of the Reagan revolution either to shut up and listen, or exit stage left.

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Liberals: Dont Be Afraid of Calls to Defund the Police - The Nation