So the Iowa caucuses happened, and the New Hampshire primary is tomorrow. Ordinarily, this is one of the hottest periods of the political calendar, but this year it’s kind of a sideshow, because Biden and Trump each seem to be steaming towards an inevitable rematch. There are tea leaves to be read about how much enthusiasm Democrats have for Biden and what segments of the GOP might turn against Trump in the general election, but it doesn’t look like the results are going to say anything about the two parties’ nominations. Even if Haley pulls an upset tomorrow, the most interesting question will be Trump’s response: Will he have such an extreme temper tantrum (at a moment when everybody is watching) that it will raise doubts about his fitness for office in some of his previously unshakeable supporters ?
The Gaza War continues, with enormous suffering for the people of Gaza and with rising frustration from Israelis whose main goal is to get the hostages back. Cracks are starting to form in the unity government, as well as cracks in US support for Israel.
The thing I’m going to focus on this week, though, is far less sexy than elections or wars: The Supreme Court seems to be on the verge of reversing a long-standing legal principle called the Chevron Doctrine. Discussions of Chevron quickly turn into arcane legalese and people tune out, so the challenge is to explain not just what’s happening, but why you should care enough to learn the details. At the risk of sounding alarmist, this is the two-line explanation I’ve come up with: You know how government regulations keep corporations from making more money by killing people like you? Well, the Court is about to screw that up.
That screwing-up is part of a decades-long program that involves a couple of other arcane bits of legalese: the nondelegation principle and the major questions doctrine. I’ll unpack all that in “Monkey-wrenching the Regulations that Protect Our Lives”, which should appear around 10 EST.
The weekly summary will look at Iowa and New Hampshire, all the stuff we’re waiting for in the Trump trials, and the Gaza War, then give you a hopeful quote about climate change from the editor of Heatmap News, before closing with a very convincing photo of a place that doesn’t actually exist, but should. I’ll try to get that out by noon.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
Chevron case moved power and obligation of Congress to unelected bureaucrats to decide what law means
That’s fascism
Congress only makes laws and you can kick Congress members out if you don’t like law but you can’t kick out bureaucrat
Must end and will end as not constitutional
Laws get interpreted, not by the Constitution, but by people. The question is by whom. Under Chevron, it’s ostensibly by subject matter experts in the relevant regulatory agency, who can be overturned by electing s new executive. If Chevron is overturned laws will be interpreted by business interests who will interpret laws to their own advantage, not yours.
No fascism here. Just long-standing law, well-settled over time and now, like Roe, the Court is invited to toss precedent and redeclare what the law should be.
Since well before Chevron (the case is 30 tears old), this kind of delegation has been the law for decades (more like 60 years). It is an intentional delegation by Congress (and in some instances, by the Executive branch) to administrative agencies and executive departments, to formulate more detailed rules. This leaves/expects intentionally relies on a group with [ostensible] expertise to interpret and apply the rules. It makes sense. Congress can be drawn to a stalemate with details, as we are seeing now with the right wing bombarding the courts.
Are we invariably happy with the results? No, but they are challengeable, as the case now before SCOTUS shows. Tossing out Chevron will generate a huge amount of traffic to courthouses, just the void-of-government outcome the Federalists so earnestly desire. That deck-clearing, an abnegation of long-standing processes that have worked well, is the pathway to real fascism.
This time around both sides are aware of malfeasance in elections and no COVID to use as reason to not vote in person with ID like the rest of the civilized world does
I vote in US elections, by mail, with no ID. As a British expat, I also vote in UK elections, by mail, with no ID. Your comment is pure misinformation.
I’m not aware of any significant malfeasance in US elections.
If governments want to require ID to vote, they need to make the ID zero-cost, and make the process easy for voters. It should be illegal, for example, to make married, or divorced, women (who have changed their names) jump through extra hoops that men never need to worry about.