The Supreme Court has decided to bring back a Trump-ERA,
environmental regulation.
Funny way of putting it,
that actually limits the state's role in enforcing the Clean Water Act.
So essentially the regulation is meant to,
tie up the state as they engage in efforts to keep their water clean and
safe for human use, essentially.
Now, of course Trump would do something like that and
it shouldn't surprise you that, this conservative Supreme Court, where
three of trump's nominees were confirmed, would do what I'm about to describe.
Because they didn't carry out this process in the typical way
where the hear arguments, they debate that didn't happen.
They did this in what's referred to as a shadow docket and
they did it through an emergency order without oral argument.
Because does the court really need to hear any oral arguments when
it comes to something as small and insignificant as clean, safe water?
Who knows now, New York times reports that the, so called Liberal justices,
Elena Kagan for instance, dissented with the majority decision.
The court made this decision in a five to four vote,
meaning the majority was in favor of implementing Trump's rules.
That would essentially allow for
industries to pollute the water without the states being able to stop them.
Justice Kagan said this, the applicants have given us no good reason to think that
in the remaining time needed to decide the appeal, they will suffer irreparable harm.
By nonetheless, granting relief, the court goes astray.
That renders the courts emergency docket, not for emergencies at all.
The docket becomes only another place for
merits determinations except made without full briefing and argument.
And so she's really weighing in John, on the fact that they did this through
the shadow docket without hearing oral arguments.
And also notably without giving any reasoning for why they voted this way.
>> Almost as if they don't wanna go on the record as to what the reasons are, but
thankfully for us and for our audience who follows this.
I think we understand the reasoning quite well.
If you're keeping score shadow banning bad shadow docket good I guess.
And but let's be fair, it's not that they didn't hear any oral arguments.
They didn't hear oral arguments before the court.
But they did hear the oral arguments made in terms of supporting business that
they've heard from people like Donald Trump, Fox News.
Or I don't know their spouses maybe weighed in at some point and
talk to them about what they wanted.
And that is unfortunately enough.
And so we get this horrendous decision.
And you were pointing out earlier in the show how important and
significant elections are.
All of these Supreme Court decisions are reminders of that.
And we get to decide is it more offensive when it's at 63 because it's such
an overwhelming victory for the conservatives.
Or is it worse when it's 5-4 because it's a reminder of how close we were just with
Merrick Garland to potentially flipping a good number of these.
Not everything, they would still have the other seats,
but some of these could have gone the other way.
And these are incredibly consequential decisions as I'm sure we'll get into,
that are gonna affect any number of different businesses as well
as literally millions and millions of Americans.
>> Yeah, and
we're gonna see a lot more decisions like this from the Supreme Court.
One of the cases that they have agreed to here, which is not a good sign has
to do with the regulations that were passed in the state of California
pertaining to factory farms and the way that they treat livestock.
Right, so there were some regulations put in place to treat animals humanely or
as humanely as you can.
That has been challenged and all of these appeal courts have upheld the regulations,
but now it's made its way to the Supreme Court.
And the fact the Supreme Court is willing to hear it, means that they are of
course open to basically striking down the regulations in California.
>> Yeah.
>> Because again, at the end of the day,
it's not about what's moral what's constitutional, what's right.
It's really just about upholding the best interests of corporations.
>> Yeah. >> And in this case,
we're talking about the polluters in the country,
industries that pollute our water.
And in the case of the animal related regulations in California it's
about these massive factory farms and their ability to maximize profit
while treating animals very poorly and also in a pretty disgusting way.
>> Exactly.
>> But let's get into what the Clean Water Act is and what this really means.
So first, a little bit of context, the Clean Water Act envisions a role for
states in issuing permits for discharges into the nation's waters.
Industry groups have long been frustrated by what the application called,
incongruities and ambiguities in an earlier regulation in place for 50 years.
Which they said had allowed states to drag out and
effectively veto projects that make them a lot of money,
on the grounds other than the consideration of water quality.
The groups welcomed the new regulation adopted in 2020 by Donald Trump.
Which narrowed the criteria for state certification, tightened deadlines and
stop states from imposing what they called project killing conditions.
So look at the end of the day, this isn't about protecting clean water.
This isn't about serving the best interests of the American people and
keeping them safe.
This is really about carrying out the best interests of corporations who don't want
any red tape when it comes to their projects that could pollute water.
>> Yeah.
Exactly, although I think we can add a little bit of nuance to it.
This is certainly a pro-corporate decision, but
not necessarily in the way that it might seem.
This is not about protecting all business,
because not all business makes a ton of money by polluting waterways.
Certain businesses make a lot of money by not having to abide by environmental
regulations.
So if you're a fossil fuel company, if you're producing coal and
the various waste products that come from that big pharma pollutes a ton,
a lot of agricultural companies do pollution as well.
On the other hand, there's a lot of smaller businesses that have a massive
vested interest in access to clean water.
Of course we're setting aside that well over 100 million people,
their access to clean water will be affected by the future of this.
We're just ignoring that I guess.
No, but it's totally true.
But think about big businesses in terms of food service and tourism, recreation,
there's a lot of different industries that want and need access to clean water.
And the thing is really big business is always going to be able to pay to
get access to the clean water they need.
We're reminded of that in flint.
So while the regular people off flint were drinking polluted water.
But the manufacturers that needed clean water, including car manufacturers, they
were just paying more to get what they needed and then potentially polluting.
They'll always have access,
small businesses that need access to clean water aren't necessarily gonna be
able to bare the financial burden of going to alternative sources of water.
So this is a decision that is biased towards business, but
not even business large.
Honestly, it's like the top swath of business.
This is truly like a 1% decision here.