Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch secured eight pages of FOIA emails showing the CIA panicking over Hunter’s laptop. They wanted to make sure all hands were on deck to stop the Hunter Biden laptop from hell spreading like wildfire. This was very shortly before the 2020 election. In October of 2020 – just days before […] The post Proof of CIA & 51 Spies’ Interference in the 2020 Election appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

The federal government engaged in a stunning deception by secretly shaping a medical association’s transgender policy for political aims — then arguing in court that red states were not allowed to diverge from that policy, because it would be putting politics over scientific expertise. The findings could deal a crippling blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to stop Republican-led states from banning the genital mutilation of children, and prove embarrassing for the judges — including an appointee of Donald Trump — who appeared to accept the argument that medical associations are above politics and should be deferred to by red-state politicians. The Biden administration sued states including Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky, with transgender guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) as its key piece of evidence. But the documents obtained via discovery in an Alabama lawsuit show that, in fact, the WPATH guidance was crafted in close collaboration with the Biden administration specifically with an eye to influence such lawsuits and block legislation. Rachel Levine, a transgender Biden political appointee in the Department of Health and Human Services, pressured WPATH not to recommend that gender surgeries be limited to a specific age, fearing that spelling out the age — which would be low — would make it easy for citizens to object to them as radical and lead to a backlash. “She liked the SOC-8 very much but she was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to health care for trans youth and maybe adults too. Apparently the situation In the USA is terrible and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse. She asked us to remove them,” a WPATH email said. WPATH complied, with officials noting that they were still suggesting surgeries for minors, just making it more difficult to get a “headline” out of it by obscuring it. Some in WPATH chafed at letting politics govern a medical document, with one noting that it was a “global document” that should not be contorted for one country’s politics and saying, “I am a little surprised that we would be asked to do this after all the care and endless discussion by experts to reach this consensus on ages for surgeries.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP “I’m concerned about the headline: SOC 8 changes at last minute at request of USA official,” one wrote. Another said: “It is frustrating to have to have politics in our brains as we make these decisions. But it is what it is!” After Tennessee state lawmakers voted to ban the gender conversion of minors, private individuals sued the state in federal court, and the Biden administration intervened, taking their side. The administration argued that “Standards of care for treating transgender youth diagnosed with gender dysphoria have been published by several well-established medical organizations, including the World Professional Association for Transgender Health” and, “The standards of care published by these organizations provide a framework that is based on the best available science and clinical experience.” Of 60 footnotes, eight cite directly to WPATH. Judge Eli Richardson, a Trump appointee hearing the case in the Middle District of Tennessee, relied on WPATH’s SOC to block enforcement of the law, saying that the state only has a compelling interest in banning something if it is harmful, and WPATH says transgender procedures are safe. “WPATH is the leading association of medical and mental health professionals in the treatment of transgender individuals. … The guidelines are based on scientific research and clinical experience,” he wrote. “The Court thus evaluates Defendants’ evidence in light of the prevailing standards of care and conclusions contained in the WPATH and Endocrine Society guidelines.” Tennessee argued that children may regret not being able to procreate as a result of their gender surgeries, but Richardson relied on WPATH, writing, “Indeed, the WPATH guidelines explain that ‘there is evidence that fertility is still possible for individuals taking estrogen and testosterone…’ The Court is therefore not convinced that possible negative impacts on fertility warrant an outright ban on procedures used to treat gender dysphoria in minors.” He noted that he is not the only judge who has made law based on the SOC, saying, “The Court finds further support for its reliance on information contained in the guidelines in the fact that several courts in cases similar to this have relied on these guidelines.” Tennessee lawmakers similarly explained, as an example of harms averted by a ban, that people undergoing gender surgery are often unable to have sexual function, but Richardson said that the WPATH guidelines say that “gender affirming care can help [transgender individuals] improve their sexual function and increase their sexual pleasure and satisfaction.” (Richardson might have been embarrassed to know that in leaked documents, WPATH President Marci Bowers said she had never seen a single boy whose puberty was blocked achieve orgasm as a transgender woman.) Richardson’s ruling was ultimately overturned by an appeals court. But the Supreme Court has agreed to take up the Tennessee case, a move that the DOJ is attempting to use to stall a similar ban in Alabama, where a lawsuit resulted in the unearthing of the WPATH documents. Stanley Goldfarb, a longtime professor of medicine and chairman of Do No Harm, a group that opposes injecting leftist politics into medicine, told The Daily Wire, “It is shameful and wrong that Levine and allies manufactured the outcome they needed to corner politicians into endorsing dangerous and experimental medical treatments for children” and “used the power of the federal government to bully WPATH into disguising bad politics as independent, evidence-based science.” Attorneys general in the conservative states argued that WPATH standards were based on flimsy science. The emails obtained in discovery in the Alabama case showed that WPATH members themselves agreed. One reason some members were willing to give into Levine’s demands to remove recommended ages for surgery was because, they acknowledged, there was little medical evidence supporting WPATH’s recommendations in the first place. “I’m concerned about the headline: SOC 8 changes at last minute at request of USA official. The one reason I might be ok changing is we don’t have exact data/studies in recommending the ages,” one WPATH member said. “I do wonder how they will be defended in court cases, but it should be done.” Jon Arcelus Alonso, the co-chair of the SOC initiative, chided WPATH President Marci Bowers for internally acknowledging that the group’s recommendations were often based on scant scientific evidence. Instead, Bowers said they were based on the “consensus” of members. “In the last few days I have heard from Marci that the ages don’t have any scientific backup. Our guidelines are not only evidence based but they are primarily consensus based. There are many recommendations in the SOC that don’t have direct evidence,” he wrote. He urged WPATH to confidently profess to be the embodiment of medical science regardless. “We need to believe that we are the experts and we know what we are saying and no being shaken by others,” he added. Another WPATH member dismissed the need for scientific precision, writing, “My hope with these SoC is that they land in such a way as to have serious effect in the law and policy settings that have affected us so much recently; even if the wording isn’t quite correct for people who have the background you and I have.” Meanwhile, Loren Schechter, an expert witness in some of the lawsuits who was involved in WPATH, advocated for removing language in which the group characterized how strong the scientific evidence was for each of its statements. “I am concerned about language such as ‘insufficient evidence,’ ‘limited data,’ etc… I say this from the perspective of current legal challenges in the US. Groups in the US are trying to claim that gender-affirming interventions are experimental and should only be performed under research protocols (this is based on two recent federal cases in which I am an expert witness). In addition, these groups already assert that research in this field is low quality (ie small series, retrospective, no controls, etc…). My specific concern is that this type of language (insufficient evidence, limited data, etc…) will empower these groups,” she wrote.

Thursday night was the first and probably only debate between Donald Trump, former President of the United States, and Joe Biden, the current President of the United States. Before this debate, I said it was going to be one of the only debates in my lifetime that really, really mattered; it was going to be a turning point because there has been no new information added to this process for legitimately a year. It would go one way or the other. The worst possible thing that could happen for Joe Biden was for him to show up on stage and fall apart. And that is precisely what happened. Trump was disciplined, gave the best debate performance of his career, and did it on a night when Biden assumed room temperature. Joe Biden effectively died on the stage last night. I don’t even mean that in terms of a figurative performance. I mean that he looked as though he was physically going to die on the stage. It was pretty horrifying on an emotional level to watch an 81-year-old man being trotted out by his team, the Democratic Party, and his family to be humiliated on national television in front of the whole world. As an American, it was deeply depressing and disturbing because the most evil people around the world are looking at this and licking their chops. They believe they have a window between now and when Trump presumably takes office in January where they have to go ahead. The world just became a much more dangerous place. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show The feeling everyone experienced when watching this was stunned disbelief, just absolute stunned disbelief. I think everybody thought, “Ok, they’ll shoot Biden full of some cocktail, and he’ll probably just make it through. It’ll probably be OK. And then the question will be about whether Trump is too volatile or blew right past the moderators or whatever.” But Trump’s performance was outstanding. This was easily the best performance of his life. He kept himself contained. He kept himself restrained. He was pointed when he needed to be. But this debate was not about Donald Trump. It was all about Joe Biden. And that is why this race is now all about Joe Biden. The sheer panic breaking out among Democrats this morning is astonishing to watch. Nearly every major Democrat in the media, including public officials, are talking openly — not just behind closed doors — about whether they have the capacity to remove Biden from the ticket. We are less than two months out from the Democratic National Convention. All the delegates have already been pledged. They would have to force Biden to either resign the office to Kamala Harris, declare that he is not going to run again, and thereby free up his delegates, or they would have to wrest it from him in some sort of coup. And by the way, it really isn’t the Democratic National Committee; the DNC is all for optics. They have a somewhat fake DNC, a virtual convention, where they are going to ensure the nominee is nominated 40 days from now. There is no time for any of this. The state of insane panic that is breaking out in the Democratic Party is amazing. The conclusion after last night is that Trump absolutely crushed Biden because Biden is not alive. He is not with it. He is senile. Which brings about another subject: The media are some of the most abject liars in modern history. We all knew this already. We knew this about COVID, Black Lives Matter, the 2016 election, and the 2020 election. The legacy media should be ashamed of themselves. What the legacy media have done is humiliating and sick. They have spent three years declaring Biden is mentally fit, doing back handsprings, and reciting Virgil in Latin. They have declared Biden is definitely “with it.” They’ve been telling you not to believe your eyes, not to believe your ears, not to believe your brain, that the things that you are seeing are all fake; they’re just “cheap fakes.” When clips surfaced of Biden wandering off into the woods, falling upstairs, or spacing out as he stared into the darkness like Simon and Garfunkel, they continued to proclaim that it was all fake. It was all in your minds, all in your brains, all in your head, because you were the crazy one. After a Wall Street Journal article expressed concern over Biden having become “slower now,” a variety of Democratic commentators ran to praise Biden’s mental stability and fitness. A few include: MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth. And eff you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden is the best Biden ever. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been.” Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman: “President Biden has a photographic memory. His understanding and mastery of a complicated geopolitical situation, remarkable.” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas: “He is sharp, intensely probing, and detail-oriented and focused.” But during the presidential debate, we were all watching Biden fall apart in real time. And all these people had been telling us that we were crazy. Abjectly destroyed by their own lies, they are now in a state of panic, not just because they think Trump is going to win or that it’s obvious to everyone that Joe Biden is senile. They’re panicking because their own credibility just exploded into tiny bits of shrapnel last night. All of which means the threat the media posed to the country is very real because it is clear someone else has, in fact, been running the country for the past several years. The person we saw on stage last night is not capable of running a country. He is not capable of walking to the bathroom. Someone else has been running the country. It is not Joe Biden. It might be Jill Biden, Edith Wilson-style. Maybe it’s all the Obama holdovers. Whoever it is, it is not Joe Biden. And you know who knows that? All of America’s enemies. The world became so much more dangerous — regardless of the election — when the President of the United States performed like a befuddled Alzheimer’s patient at an early bird dinner at the nursing home. Do you think Iran is more scared now or if Trump were president? Right now, Iran is going to accelerate the process of seeking a nuclear weapon dramatically before January. If China is thinking about blockading Taiwan, they’re going to do it before January. If Russia is considering a massive war move, they will do it before January because the President of the United States is non compos mentis, of unsound mind. The media are actively seeking Biden to be removed from the ticket, which is insane. It is currently the end of June. Only July, August, September, and October remain. That’s it. There are four months until the election. And the people who are talking about removing the incumbent president and major party nominee from the ticket are not those of us on the Right; they are the people on the Left. The rest of the world is looking. Our enemies are licking their chops. We are entering an exceptionally dangerous period in American history. But Democrats won’t change course. They won’t change course because they’re ready to play. They’ve got the brake on the accelerator, but this sucker is headed for the cliff.

The TV ratings for President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump’s first presidential debate plummeted from where they were four years ago when the two men faced off in September 2020. Numbers from Nielsen show that a total of 51.27 million people tuned in on Thursday to watch the CNN-hosted Presidential Debate on TV, which was broadcast over 17 networks including CNN, Telemundo, Univision, BET, as well as Fox News Channel, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and PBS, Variety reported. In the key demographic of ages 25-54, an average of 12.6 million viewers tuned in to see Biden and Trump debate, the outlet noted. CNN is touting the debate as giving the network its largest audience on record for its new CNN on Max streaming service, but did not release the numbers. “Across CNN’s digital platforms, the debate was CNN’s biggest debate ever and tied with our biggest live stream event ever with 2.3 million concurrent live views at 9:47 p.m,” the network said, noting it generated more than 30 million views on YouTube and its digital platforms. CNN Says 47.9 Million Watched Presidential Debate; TV Viewership Is Down From First Event Of 2020 https://t.co/dkFnnnYyGe — Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) June 28, 2024 The previous most-watched event on CNN was in 2015 when Republican candidates debated Trump as they vied for the party’s nomination, averaging 23.1 million viewers, CBS noted. While the network is celebrating the ratings, compared to four years ago, the numbers are down. The ratings for the first presidential debate are down by 30 percent on TV and cable from the 73 million plus who tuned in to watch the same two candidates spar in 2020. Thursday’s numbers also pale in comparison to how many people tuned in for the first presidential debate in 2016 between Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, which scored a record 84 million viewers. CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP During the 90 minute debate, viewers watched Biden have a rough night, looking frail compared to Trump, as the president rambled and stumbled his way through. Comments after the debate ranged from Democrats being in a panic to podcast hosts like Megyn Kelly stating that “it’s over for Joe Biden.” During Kelly’s 2024 Post-Debate Special, she said Biden’s “presidential campaign came to an end tonight, whether he knows it or not. There will be meetings tonight, first thing tomorrow amidst Democratic Party leaders about how to get him off the ticket.” “How to change into someone else. There have to be,” she added. “Already, we are seeing some reaction from top Democrats, who rarely criticize the president, suggesting he needs to have a serious look at this performance tonight and assess for himself whether he can go forward.”

'Not a sustainable equilibrium'

'It wasn’t a good night'

Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York insisted that Biden was "sharper than anyone [he's] spoken to"

The Supreme Court decided a case Friday that will affect the prosecutions of around 350 individuals charged in connection with the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And the decision could also well affect two of the four charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that are pending against former President Donald Trump in federal court in Washington, D.C.  The case arose from the prosecution of Joseph Fischer, who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and subsequently entered the Capitol with hundreds of others. Fischer claims that he was inside the Capitol for less than four minutes and that he was pushed into the police line by the surging crowd, but prosecutors contend that Fischer was among those who urged the crowd to “charge” and was part of a mob that pushed the police. A grand jury returned a seven-count indictment against Fischer, charging him with assaulting police officers, entering and remaining in a restricted building, and engaging in disorderly and disruptive conduct within the Capitol. Although Fischer did not contest the sufficiency of six of the charges returned against him, he filed a motion to dismiss the charge that he violated 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) by corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding—in this case, Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote. Fischer argued that this code section only applies to evidence tampering designed to impair an inquiry or investigation.  This is significant because, as previously stated, approximately 350 other Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with violating this provision, and Count Three of the four-count indictment against Trump alleges a violation of this code section. At its core, Fischer v. United States is about the meaning of a law passed in the wake of the Enron accounting scandal in the early 2000s—not whether the events of Jan. 6 were a riot or insurrection. When Enron discovered that its financial practices were being investigated by federal regulators, executives at the company’s auditor, Arthur Andersen, ordered the destruction of countless documents. They even brought in multiple shredders so they could destroy around 7,000 pounds of documents per hour for two weeks straight. At the time, federal law forbade directing another person to destroy evidence of financial wrongdoing. But it didn’t ban a person from acting alone to destroy evidence. Congress subsequently enacted 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), violations of which can result in a sentence of up to 20 years’ imprisonment, as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to close that loophole. Section 1512(c) contains two clauses. The first—§ 1512(c)(1)—imposes criminal penalties on anyone who corruptly “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object” with an intent “to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.”  The second—§ 1512(c)(2)—does the same for anyone who corruptly “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding” or attempts to do so. The district court granted Fischer’s motion to dismiss that count of the indictment, but that ruling was overturned by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which held that the word “otherwise” in § 1512(c)(2) is unambiguous and refers to obstructing proceedings in different ways than those described in § 1512(c)(1). Consequently, the provision could apply to any act “committed in furtherance of an attempt to stop Congress from performing a constitutionally required duty.” Judge Gregory Katsas dissented, arguing that the majority’s sweeping interpretation—that § 1512(c)(2) banned any obstructions of an official proceeding—rendered other provisions that criminalized a variety of acts that obstruct official proceedings, as well as their different penalties, pointless. In his view, “otherwise” indicated similarity, not difference. He therefore concluded that “otherwise” limited the scope of § 1512(c)(2) to prohibit only obstructions that “impair the integrity or availability of evidence.” Since Fischer’s actions were not designed to impair the integrity or availability of any evidence connected to an inquiry or investigation, Katsas opined that the trial judge acted properly by dismissing that count of the indictment. The Supreme Court by a 6-3 vote agreed with Katsas.  Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The court agreed with Fischer’s argument that the word “otherwise” should be understood in light of its context. Applying the rules of statutory interpretation that a term or phrase is given a more precise meaning by the surrounding words or by specific terms preceding it in a list, Roberts explained that “otherwise” is limited in scope. Here, that meant that the first clause of Section 1512(c)—which focuses on the availability and integrity of evidence—limits the scope of the second clause that prohibits “otherwise” obstructing official proceeding. The history of the clause, Roberts added, further supports this reading: it would be odd for Congress to hide a “catchall” provision, as the government described it, in the middle of Section 1512 if that provision did far more than plug the loophole exposed by the Enron financial scandal. Turning to the government’s objections, Roberts observed that a broad reading would make this “residual” clause swallow the preceding statutory language. Indeed, he added, the government’s reading would make the clause so broad that it would make several other statutory provisions superfluous. Prosecutors could also seek a 20-year penalty for crimes that Congress saw fit to punish with lesser penalties. A broad reading of subsection (c)(2), Roberts further emphasized, “would criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct,” including actions by “a peaceful protestor,” as the solicitor general conceded at oral argument. Responding to the dissent’s argument that the majority’s reading suffered from its own problems with superfluity, Roberts pointed out that if it did, it created less than the dissent’s—and government’s—broad interpretation. In sum, the majority concluded, “[a]though the government’s all-encompassing interpretation may be literally permissible, it defies the most plausible understanding . . . .” Jackson, concurring with the majority’s opinion, wrote separately to highlight that the legislative history of Section 1512(c)(2) supported a narrow reading. While making it quite clear that she disapproved mightily with the conduct Fischer is alleged to have done, this case, she emphasized, was not about “the immorality of those acts” that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, but rather “the scope of the particular crime” outlined in Section 1512(c)(2). Reviewing the legislative record, Jackson underscored that Congress was concerned with the destruction or fabrication of evidence, and that nothing suggested Congress intended to create a “sweeping, all-purpose obstruction statute.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented, criticizing the majority for doing “textual backflips” to reach its narrow reading of Section 1512(c)(2). A plain reading of the statute, Barrett stated, shows that it prohibits “[b]locking an official proceeding from moving forward.” At the end of the day, Fischer might have won at the Supreme Court, but he and other Jan. 6 defendants still have a long road of litigation ahead of them. The Supreme Court sent Fischer’s case back to the appeals court so it can reassess whether Fischer’s conduct actually is covered by Section 1512(c)(2) in light of this opinion. Although it is doubtful that his conduct and that of the other Jan. 6 defendants will fall within the parameters of that statute, Fischer still faces numerous other charges that he will need to defend against in the trial court. On top of that, the Department of Justice declared that if it suffered a loss at the Supreme Court—as it did in Fischer’s case—it would seek more prison time for convictions under other statutes. Significantly, Fischer’s win Friday at the Supreme Court will likely impact Special Counsel Jack Smith’s D.C. prosecution of Trump. Smith charged Trump with obstructing the electoral vote certification in violation of Section 1512(c)(2), as well as engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding in violation of Section 1512(k). Smith will now have to show that Trump impaired, attempted to impair, or conspired with others to impair the availability or integrity of documentary or testimonial evidence used in an official proceeding. Regardless of whether he can make that showing, which seems doubtful, additional court proceedings over whether Smith can even continue prosecuting Trump under these code sections will likely ensure that this case against Trump will not reach a trial before the election. And, of course, we will still have to assess the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in the presidential immunity case, which the court will likely issue on Monday. The post Supreme Court Rules for Jan. 6 Defendant, Implications for Trump Case appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A few fishermen just brought about a sea change in administrative law. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce, herring boat owners took aim at a mainstay of the Supreme Court’s administrative law jurisprudence: the doctrine of Chevron deference that required judges to defer to executive branch agency interpretations of ambiguous laws. On Friday, the fishermen prevailed before the high court in a 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts which was joined by all the Republican appointees. Roberts’ holding was as pithy as it was clear: “Chevron is overruled.” Now, federal judges will steer a different course when interpreting laws in agency cases: to “exercise independent judgment in determining the meaning of statutory provisions.” Chevron was a “cornerstone of administrative law,” as Justice Elena Kagan noted in her dissent, which was joined by the other two Democratic appointees. And however contestable the rest of her opinion is, on that at least point she is surely correct. The doctrine held sway in administrative law for nearly forty years, developing from the 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council into a distinctive two-part test: (1) if the language of the statute in question is clear, then courts apply that clear reading; but (2) if the statute is ambiguous or silent on the disputed question, then courts must defer to any reasonable interpretation the agency gives to resolve the ambiguity, even if the same agency in different administrations interprets that statute differently. Chevron deference rested on a theory that whenever Congress left a gap or ambiguity in a law, Congress would prefer that agencies rather than courts resolve the open question. Why? Supposedly because agencies were subject-matter experts and, unlike federal judges, agencies were politically accountable by dint of presidential control. For decades, Chevron deference was the jurisprudential equivalent of fertilizer for the administrative state, with agency interpretations enjoying a 70% win rate in cases filed by regulated parties challenging the agency’s statutory interpretation. The doctrine’s highwater mark came in 2013, when the late Justice Antonin Scalia authored a majority opinion in City of Arlington v. FCC holding that agencies’ determinations of their own jurisdiction were entitled to Chevron deference. Roberts authored a dissent in that case in which he vigorously contested the majority’s extension of Chevron: “[T]he question whether an agency enjoys that authority must be decided by a court, without deference to the agency,” he maintained. From that point onward, Chevron encountered headwinds. Judicial paeans to agency expertise and accountability failed to obscure the reality that agencies operated without much oversight and that their sometimes wild shifts in policy had nothing to do with changes in expert knowledge. While lower courts continued to defer under Chevron, the Supreme Court last did so eight years ago in 2016 despite myriad invitations and opportunities to do so.  Then, into the picture sailed the fishermen behind these cases, challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. That law requires fishermen to allow federal monitors aboard their boats during fishing trips. When federal funding for the monitor program ran dry, the Fisheries Service determined that a gap or silence in Magnuson-Stevens permitted the agency to require the fishermen to pay the salaries of the federally required monitors aboard their vessels. A divided panel of the D.C. Circuit invoked Chevron deference to uphold that interpretation, reasoning that the Fisheries Service offered a reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous law. The Supreme Court, which had kept its distance from Chevron for years, decided that these cases afforded the opportunity to scuttle the doctrine. Chevron, Roberts explained, bound courts to accept the executive branch’s legal interpretations even when judges believed that a more faithful interpretation was available. That prompted the majority to hold that Chevron was irreconcilable with Congress’ command in the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act that courts decide “all relevant questions of law.” That command followed naturally from deep rooted understandings of the judicial power to interpret law dating back to the nation’s founding. Roberts suggested that deference is in tension with the very nature of the judicial power vested by Article III of the Constitution, but only Justice Clarence Thomas, who concurred separately, was willing to say so explicitly. The majority also took dead aim at the popular pro-Chevron argument that agencies ought to resolve ambiguities in the laws that apply to them because agencies, unlike courts, have expertise in the policies covered by the statutes. But as Roberts explained, the ambiguities on which agencies rely often have nothing to do with technical matters. Moreover, courts, not agencies, are experts in legal interpretation. Given his City of Arlington dissent, it’s not surprising that Roberts assigned himself the task of writing Friday’s opinion. The themes animating that dissent reappear in his Loper Bright majority, specifically his assertion that courts fulfill their judicial duty by “fixing the boundaries of [the] delegated authority,” to agencies and by “polic[ing] the outer statutory boundaries of those delegations, and ensur[ing] that agencies exercise their discretion consistent with the APA.”  Roberts has finally won the debate he lost in 2013. To non-lawyers, the proposition that judges should use their best independent judgment to interpret a law will sound utterly unremarkable. That is, after all, exactly what judges do in most every case where an agency is not a party. The preferential treatment agencies received as parties to litigation prompted some commentators to argue that Chevron deference violated the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee. The court did not need to take up that argument to set Chevron aside. But the commonsense appeal of the notion that judges should be impartial when ruling makes it harder to make sense of the complaints lodged by Kagan and her fellow dissenters, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan excoriates her colleagues in the majority for overturning longstanding precedent. This critique has lately become a mainstay of the dissents authored by the court’s three Democrat-appointed justices. But that supposed disregard for precedent takes on greater significance here, because Kagan sees the decision as merely one instance of motivated reasoning in the majority’s broader project of dismantling the administrative state. She has made similar accusations before, for instance, in her dissent from the court’s major-questions holding in West Virginia v. EPA. Despite the strident debate over stare decisis, the heart of Kagan’s argument is more pragmatic than legal. Kagan sees deference to policy experts as the very essence of modern government. Formal restraint on the flexible dynamism of the executive branch is intolerable because it represents an outmoded view of government that she thinks should be consigned to the nineteenth century.  Kagan is far from alone. Just one day prior, when the court held in SEC v. Jarkesy that administrative agencies are bound to respect the 7th Amendment’s jury guarantee, Kagan joined Sotomayor’s dissent rejecting that constitutional protection as an unnecessary constraint on “modern-day adaptable governance.” At bottom, the three Democrat-appointed justices saw Chevron as a doctrine of judicial “humility” that kept courts out of the policy arena reserved to the political branches. But a view of humility that treats restraint as the judge’s paramount virtue intentionally deprives the court of any role in the maintenance of the separation of powers.  In the last forty years, executive branch agencies have accrued an impressive array of prerogatives often with judicial assistance or at least judicial acquiescence. For some, Chevron came to represent the sum of all those dubiously legal acquisitions. In reality, it was but one facet of the broader project of governance by the executive branch.  In the wake of this decision, Congress can still delegate broad swathes of authority to executive agencies provided it does so clearly. Still, the importance of Friday’s ruling should not be gainsaid. With Chevron gone, one can hope to see greater stability, a little more modesty in agency interpretations of law, and perhaps a little more clarity from Congress.         Loper-BrightDownload The post Supreme Court Charts New Course in Sea Change for Administrative Law appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The longtime media and Democratic Party gaslighting over President Joe Biden’s health decline has finally imploded. The mask fully came off Thursday night as the narrative about Biden being A-OK collapsed in an excruciating 90-minute “debate” with former President Donald Trump. By now, you’ve likely at least seen some video clips of it, so I won’t belabor the point. It was nothing less than a debacle for Biden and his Democratic allies. The Big Lie about the president’s health has been completely exposed, and it’s virtually impossible to hide that truth from the American people now. Adding to the realization that Biden likely isn’t running the White House and that we have a president in name only is the complete reversal of the vast media messaging machine. If you had been listening only to corporate and left-wing media for the past four years, you would think that Biden was just fine. Any story about his physical and mental decline was deemed false, just a mean-spirited Republican talking point. Sure, the president is a little slower now, but that means he has more wisdom. Age is Biden’s superpower! One night changed a whole lot. You could see in real time during the debate as the gears of the Democratic-media complex ground to a halt and reversed course. There’s just no way to deny what everyone saw Thursday without a total loss of credibility. Suddenly all those media outlets and talking heads have to just roll with the painfully obvious truth that Biden appears to be in severe age-related mental decline. More than a few Democratic commentators are now openly talking about how Biden needs to be replaced at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. Isn’t it interesting how the party that always insists it’s fighting for “our democracy” is willing to jettison the nominee through elite-led machinations at the upcoming nominating convention? I don’t know how they will wiggle out of this crisis. It’s certainly one of their own making. Maybe they shouldn’t have lied to Democratic voters and the American people over the past five years. Before the full flip to “actually, Biden is unwell; let’s replace him with candidate X” becomes the dominant story—or they all just slip back into denial mode after Biden refuses to step aside—here, for the record, is a quick retrospective on some notable media gaslighting incidents since the first of the year.  1. Joe Scarborough Says Biden’s Better Than Ever MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said in March that Biden has reached a final, magnificent form. Biden’s not just cogent, he said, but “intellectually, analytically” better than ever. Joe Scarborough goes full state TV:"Biden is far beyond cogent. He is better than he has EVER been intellectually, analytically. He is the best Biden ever." pic.twitter.com/QxgYVINQrV— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 6, 2024 And here he is Friday, sounding like he’s reading Biden’s obituary. Joe Scarborough’s heartfelt reaction to President Biden’s debate performance. Worth a watch. (Video: MSNBC) pic.twitter.com/V6bbWd85Qs— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) June 28, 2024 2. Paul Krugman: Democracy Too Important to Think About Biden’s Health In February, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a pleading article begging the media to pay absolutely no attention to Biden’s health—which Krugman said is fine, immaculate even. Krugman wrote that “hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election.” He then blasted special counsel Robert Hur for saying in his report about Biden mishandling classified documents that the president is a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The New York Times columnist then wrote that we should just trust him when he says  Biden is totally fine. There’s perception and there’s reality: As anyone who has recently spent time with Biden (and I have) can tell you, he is in full possession of his faculties — completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail. Of course, most voters don’t get to see him up close, and it’s on Biden’s team to address that. Here’s Krugman on Friday. I’m in Warsaw talking about the future of the European economy, so I’m late to this party. But I’ll have a blog post up soon very reluctantly making the case for Biden — the best president of my adult life — to step aside in favor of Harris.— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 28, 2024 But it’s not just Krugman. Look at the entire Times editorial page now: New York Time Opinion section…. pic.twitter.com/3ct5PyLrr8— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) June 28, 2024  3. N.Y. Times Reporters: Video of Biden Looking Bad ‘Misleading’ It wasn’t just liberal commentators who have been covering for Biden. News reports from corporate media outlets have joined in on the spin that questions about Biden’s health are fake news—or in the newspeak parlance—“cheap fakes.” Less than a week before the debate, this was The New York Times’ headline on a piece about all those crazy videos of Biden seemingly out to lunch that you might have seen: “How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts.” Here’s the subheadline on the piece, which is also a subtle but no less absurd spin: “A flurry of recent clips, many of them edited or lacking context, laid bare a major challenge for the president as he tries to persuade voters he has the energy for a second term.” Again, don’t let your lying eyes deceive you. Don’t you dare watch those videos without the contextualizers telling you how to think. There’s nothing to see here. These are just “challenges” for the president to overcome. 4. AP ‘Fact Checks’ Biden’s Freeze at Fundraiser Here’s a piece from an Associated Press reporter who has been put on the “contextualize all the videos of Biden looking awful” beat. She attempts to correct the record on an incident in which Biden appears to freeze on stage during a Democratic fundraiser before former President Barack Obama leads him off the stage by the arm as if he’s a child. This is the best she could come up with: “CLAIM: Biden froze onstage during his fundraiser in Los Angeles on Saturday night and had to be led away by Obama. “THE FACTS: Biden paused amid cheers and applause as he exited the stage with his predecessor following an interview moderated by late-night host [Jimmy] Kimmel.” There’s nothing remarkable about this. But it fails to debunk what people saw in the video. It’s just a careful, bland, but subtly misleading rewrite of a story to obscure what the actual controversy was. The story was posted on X by White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, who wrote, “Rightwing cheap fakes keep being cut apart by nonpartisan fact checkers.” Again, nothing here was debunked in any way. The article is virtually pointless, except as an example of how the media and Democratic Party tag team to serve as information gate-keepers. If there’s a lesson to be learned with all this, it’s that the media will absolutely spin the most absurd narratives to ensure the Left remains in power. The post Gaslight: 4 Times the Media Tried to Tell You Biden’s Health Wasn’t a Problem appeared first on The Daily Signal.