The New York Times speculates that the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to forge a “grand bargain” in dealing with the legal travails of Trump: a win in the Colorado case, a loss in Trump’s claim of sbsolute immunity. That would be a good outcome, on balance, as there might be time for Trump to be tried in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s court before the election. That is, if the high court renders a speedy decision in the immunity case.
There’s every reason to expect or hope that the Supreme Court will refuse to hear the immunity case, the one where Trump claims that he is immune from any liability, civil or criminal, for actions that he took as president.
The District Court—Judge Chutkan—ruled against him. The Appeals Court wrote a unanimous, stinging critique of his claim.
The Times wrote that his victory in the Colorado case would be balanced by his loss in the immunity case.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his colleagues seemed ready on Thursday to start to rebuild the court’s reputation by presenting themselves as unified and apolitical.
He has had a bumpy ride of late, what with the leak of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, an inconclusive investigation into that breach, a lonely concurrence in the decision itself and ethics scandals followed by a toothless code meant to address them.
All of this has contributed to dips in the Supreme Court’s approval ratings, as large segments of the public have increasingly viewed it as swayed by politics rather than committed to neutral principles and the rule of law.
Judging by the justices’ questions in arguments on Thursday over former President Donald J. Trump’s eligibility to hold office again, they will rule that Mr. Trump can remain on the primary ballot in Colorado and on other ballots around the nation — and by a lopsided, if not unanimous, vote.
But if the chief justice’s project of evenhanded nonpartisanship is to prevail, the court will have to rule against Mr. Trump in a separate case heading to the court, the one in which he claims absolute immunity from prosecution for his conduct leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021.
Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in Slate that the outline of a “grand bargain” was coming into view.
“The Supreme Court unanimously, or nearly so, holds that Colorado does not have the power to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, but in a separate case it rejects his immunity argument and makes Trump go on trial this spring or summer on federal election subversion charges,” he wrote.
Will the Trump trial happen before the election? That’s the question.
Twenty-five of the nation’s leading historians submitted an amici curiae brief in support of the decision by Colorado’s Supreme Court to disqualify Donald Trump as a candidate for the Presidency. The signers are scholars of the Reconstruction era, when the Fourteenth Amendment was written. They address with admirable clarity the issues in the case.
The issue they did not address is the one the Supreme Court justices focused on: can one state remove a candidate from its ballot? Would this create incentive for Trump states to remove Biden? Would this lead to chaos, a Trump specialty?
This is the language at the center of the case:
Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and Other Rights
Section 3 Disqualification from Holding OfficeNo person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The lower court in Colorado ruled against disqualification on the grounds that the President of the United States is not “an officer” of the federal government. As it happens, the issue was discussed by members of Congress when they wrote Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Some of Trump’s defenders claim that Congress never passed any enabling legislation. This issue was debated by Congress at the time.
Imagine this scenario: the hard-right president of the country warns that his upcoming re-election campaign will be rigged against him. He loses the election. He refuses to concede. He rallies his followers against the election, insisting it was stolen. His followers storm government offices in protest. His attempted coup fails. He was just arrested along with his top aides.
But it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Jair Bolsonaro, who looked up to Trump as his model.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil oversaw a broad conspiracy to hold on to power regardless of the results of the 2022 election, including personally editing a proposed order to arrest a Supreme Court justice and call new elections after he lost, according to new accusations by Brazilian federal police unveiled on Thursday.
Mr. Bolsonaro and dozens of top aides, ministers and military leaders coordinated to undermine the Brazilian public’s faith in the election and set the stage for a potential coup, the federal police said.
Their efforts included spreading information about voter fraud, drafting legal arguments for new elections, recruiting military personnel to support a coup, surveilling judges and encouraging and guiding protesters who eventually raided government buildings, police said.
Apparently justice is swifter in Brazil than in the United States.
I received a fundraising letter for a teacher who is running for the Legislature. It was forwarded to me by a friend who lives in the district. I read his letter and immediately sent Derek Reich a donation to his campaign.
Dear Friend,
I’m Derek Reich, a local high school government teacher here in Sarasota. I’m now the Democrat running to be your state representative in District 73 so I can fully fund our children’s public schools, lower homeowner’s insurance, and restore a woman’s freedom to control her body.
I was born and raised in Sarasota County, and never envisioned myself running for office. But when Fiona McFarLand, our current representative, voted to cut $12 million in funding from our public schools, I was outraged. What representative would go to Tallahassee to cut funding from their own community’s children? She also voted for no exceptions for rape or incest in Florida’s new abortion law. Enough is enough. I will fight for my hometown and for all of my neighbors in Sarasota County who are being ignored by Tallahassee politicians.
This is the most competitive state house race in Florida. In 2020, Biden and Trump practically tied it at 49% each. I am going to flip this seat, and I hope to earn your support to do it. If you want to learn more about my campaign and the issues I’m fighting for, you can visit my website: https://derekforflorida.com/.
We’re working to build the campaign needed to get our message out by the voters, and any support you can give would help us knock doors and let voters know what our opponent is doing in Tallahassee. If you’re able to help, you can donate securely online at this link.
Let’s send this #TeacherToTallahassee
Sincerely, Derek Reich Teacher, Candidate for State Representative
The latest jobs report was released a few days ago, and economists were astonished. The economy added 353,000 jobs in the past month, and unemployment remained low at 3.7%. This should be good news for Biden, But consumers are still concerned about inflation, which hits them in their pocketbook.
President Biden came into office in the midst of a global pandemic. Supply chains were disrupted, and prices were soaring in response. After the chaos of the Trump years, Biden set about hiring seasoned Cabinet officers and a strong economic team. Although the experts predicted that the instability of the COVID years would be followed by a deep recession, that’s not what happened. Throughout Biden’s term, unemployment remained low; the stock market reached historic records; manufacturing revived; and the U.S. economy outperformed nations in Europe and Asia. Yet public opinion polls showed a different picture: Consumers knew that the price of gasoline and grocery store staples went up and didn’t go down. Biden got no credit for the healthy economy because of the price of eggs, cereal, and other staples.
Joe Biden’s opponents focus on his age as something that makes him doddering, confused and ultimately unfit for office. So the great paradox of the 81-year-old’s first term is that he has presided over perhaps the most energetic American government in nearly half a century. He unleashed a surge in spending that briefly slashed the childhood poverty rate in half. He breathed life into a beleaguered union movement. And he produced an industrial policy that aims to reshape the American economy.
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There is plenty to debate about the merits of all of this. A steep rise in federal spending has aggravated the country’s worrying fiscal trajectory. Subsidies for companies to invest in America have angered allies and may yet end up going to waste. But there is no denying that many of these policies are already having an impact. Just look at the boom in factory construction: even accounting for inflation, investment in manufacturing facilities has more than doubled under Mr Biden, soaring to its highest on record.
What would he do in a second term? Mr Biden’s re-election motto—“we can finish the job”—sounds more like a home contractor’s pledge than the rhetoric of a political firebrand. Yet to hear it from the president’s current and former advisers, Bidenomics amounts to little short of an economic revolution for America. It would be a revolution shaped by faith in government and a mistrust of markets.
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Five elements stand out. The first is a desire to boost workers, mostly through unions. The second is more social spending, especially on early-childhood education. Third is tougher competition policy to restrain big business. Fourth, a wave of investment intended to make America both greener and more productive. Last, Mr Biden wants to tax large firms and the wealthy to pay for much of this.
As with any president, Mr Biden’s agenda thus far has been limited by Congress. The five elements were all present in the $3.5trn “Build Back Better” bill that Democrats in the House of Representatives backed in 2021, only to run smack into a split Senate. The result is that the most prominent part of existing Bidenomics has been the investment element, comprising three pieces of legislation focused on infrastructure, semiconductors and green tech. Signing three big spending bills into law nevertheless counts as a productive presidential term. They add up to a $2trn push to reshape the American economy.
If Mr Biden returns to the White House for a second term but Republicans retain control of the House or gain the Senate, or potentially both, advisers say that his focus would be on defending his legislative accomplishments. Although Republicans would be unable to overturn his investment packages if they did not hold the presidency, they could chip away at them.
Take the semiconductor law. Along with some $50bn for the chips industry, it also included nearly $200bn in funding for research and development of cutting-edge technologies, from advanced materials to quantum computing. But that giant slug of cash was only authorised, not appropriated, meaning it is up to Congress to pass budgets to provide the promised amount. So far it is falling well short: in the current fiscal year, it is on track to give $19bn to three federal research agencies, including the National Science Foundation, which is nearly 30% less than the authorised level, according to estimates by Matt Hourihan of the Federation of American Scientists, a lobby group. If Congress refuses to work with Mr Biden, these shortfalls will grow.
The funding directed at infrastructure and semiconductors is more secure, but much of it will run out by 2028, before the end of a second term. Without Republican support for funding, the investment kick-started over the past couple of years may ease off. High-cost producers will struggle to survive. Critics may see no reason to devote so much treasure to manufacturing when a modern economy based on professional, technical and scientific services already generates plenty of well-paying jobs.
But Mr Biden will have some leverage if Republicans try to water down his policies. Many of the big tax cuts passed during Donald Trump’s presidency expire at the end of 2025. Republicans want to renew them, to avoid income-tax rates jumping up. So one possibility is that Mr Biden could fashion a deal in which he agrees to an extension of many of the tax cuts in exchange for Republicans in Congress backing some of his priorities, including his industrial subsidies—never mind that such an agreement would be fiscally reckless.
The White House is also hoping that Mr Biden’s investment programmes will develop momentum of their own. “We are very pleasantly surprised by the extent to which private capital has flowed in the direction of our incentives,” says Jared Bernstein, chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. Much of the money is going to red states, spawning constituencies of businesses and local politicians who would object to cuts. Meanwhile, there is, in principle, bipartisan support for federal spending on science and technology as a way of safeguarding America’s competitive edge over China. That is why a few dozen Republicans in the House and Senate, albeit a minority, voted for the semiconductor package. Given this constellation of interests and leverage, the industrial policies that defined Bidenomics in the president’s first term would probably survive his second term, albeit in somewhat more limited form.
But what if Mr Biden is less constrained? To really understand the potential scope of Bidenomics, it is worth asking what the president would do if the Democrats end up controlling both houses of Congress. Once they come down from their elation at such an outcome, the team around Mr Biden would know that they have a limited window—probably just two years, until the next set of midterm elections—to get anything of note done.
For starters they would turn to the social policies left on the Build Back Better cutting-room floor. These include free pre-school for three- and four-year-olds, generous child-care subsidies, spending on elderly care, an expanded tax credit for families with children and paid parental leave. Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, has described this agenda as “modern supply-side economics”. She argues that investments in education would make American workers more productive, while investments in care would free up people, especially women, to work, leading to a bigger labour force. But it would also be costly, running to at least $100bn a year of additional spending—adding half a percentage point to the annual federal deficit (which hit 7.5% of gdp in 2023). And implementation would be challenging. For instance, funding for child care would fuel demand for it, which in turn would exacerbate a chronic shortage of caregivers.
Mr Biden’s desire to strengthen unions would also receive fresh impetus. The president describes himself as the most pro-union president in American history—a claim that may well be true. In his first term support for unions was expressed most clearly through words and symbolic actions: when he joined striking auto workers near Detroit in September, he became the first president to walk a picket line. Mr Biden would have liked to have done more. He had at first wanted to make many industrial subsidies contingent on companies hiring unionised workers, a requirement that did not make it into law. The labour movement’s big hope for a second Biden term is passage of the pro Act, which would boost collective bargaining by, among other things, making it harder for firms to intervene in union votes. That would represent a gamble: the flexibility of America’s labour market is a source of resilience for the economy, which has been good to workers in recent years.
The flipside of Mr Biden craving approbation as a pro-union president is that he has also come to be seen as anti-business. Members of his cabinet bridle at this charge, noting that corporate profits have soared and that entrepreneurs have created a record number of businesses during his first term. Yet the single biggest reason why Bidenomics has got a bad rap has been his competition agenda, led by Lina Khan of the Federal Trade Commission (ftc). Although her efforts to cut down corporate giants have spluttered, with failed lawsuits against Meta and Microsoft, she is not done. The ftc has introduced new merger-review guidelines that require regulators to scrutinise just about any deal that makes big companies bigger, which could produce even more contentious competition policy. Excessive scrutiny of deals would also use up regulators’ scarce resources and poison the atmosphere for big business. An alternative focus, on relaxing land-use restrictions and loosening up occupation licensing, would provide a much healthier boost to competition.
Captain of Industry
At the same time, Mr Biden may double down on the manufacturing policies of his first term. The $50bn or so of incentives for the semiconductor industry has been a start, but it is small relative to how much investment is required for large chip plants. Advisers talk of a follow-on funding package. There would also be a desire to craft new legislation to smooth out bumps in the implementation of industrial policy. Todd Tucker of the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think-tank, advocates a national development bank, creating a reservoir of cash that could be channelled to deserving projects.
How to pay for it all? Mr Biden has long made clear that he wishes to raise taxes on the rich, in particular on households earning over $400,000 a year and on businesses. The president’s advisers argue that he truly believes in fiscal discipline. His budget for the current fiscal year would, for instance, cut the deficit by $3trn over a decade, or by 1% of gdp a year, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (crfb), a non-profit outfit. That, however, is predicated on Democrats exercising restraint as tax receipts increase—something that is hard to imagine, says Maya MacGuineas of the crfb….
Most of the action, then, would be in the domestic arena—the battleground for everything from child-care spending to semiconductor subsidies. Supporters argue that these policies would make America more equal, propel its industry and tilt the playing-field towards workers and away from bosses. To many others, they look like a lurch back to bigger government, with an outdated focus on both manufacturing and unions, which may strain ties with allies. Mr Biden was a most unlikely radical in his first term. If the polls head his way, he may go further yet in a second. 7
Many educators have worried about the pernicious agenda of “Moms for Liberty,” which arrived on the scene in 2021 with a sizable war chest.
What is that agenda? Defaming public schools and their teachers. Accusing them of being “woke “ and indoctrinating students to accept left wing ideas about race and gender. Banning books they don’t like. Talking about “parental rights,” but only for straight white parents who share their values.
M4L got started in Florida, as do many wacky and bigoted rightwing campaigns, but it has been shamed recently by the sex scandal involving one of its co-founders, Brigitte Ziegler. The two other co-founders dropped her name from their website, but the stain persists.
CNN reports that this rightwing group is encountering stiff opposition from parents who don’t share their agenda and who don’t approve of book banning.
The story begins:
Viera, FloridaCNN —
In Florida, where the right-wing Moms for Liberty group was born in response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates, the first Brevard County School Board meeting of the new year considered whether two bestselling novels – “The Kite Runner” and “Slaughterhouse-Five” – should be banned from schools.
A lone Moms for Liberty supporter sat by herself at the January 23 meeting, where opponents of the book ban outnumbered her.
Nearly 20 speakers voiced opposition to removing the novels from school libraries. One compared the book-banning effort to Nazi Germany. Another accused Moms for Liberty of waging war on teachers. No one spoke in favor of the ban. About three hours into the meeting, the board voted quickly to keep the two books on the shelves of high schools.
“Why are we banning books?” asked Mindy McKenzie, a mom and nurse who is a member of Stop Moms for Liberty, which was formed to counter what it calls a far-right extremist group “pushing for book banning and destroying public education.”
“Why are we letting Moms for Liberty infiltrate our school system?”
Donald Trump has delayed his trial on charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election by claiming that he enjoys “presidential immunity” for everything he did while in office. The federal district judge hearing his case—Judge Tanya S. Chutkan— ruled against him. Today a three-judge federal appeals court ruled against him. The three judges were two appointed by Democratic presidents and one appointed by a Republican president.
It is a stirring defense of democracy and the rule of law.
A few citations:
For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution…
We have balanced former President Trump’s asserted interests in executive immunity against the vital public interests that favor allowing this prosecution to proceed. We conclude that ‘Concerns of public policy, especially as illuminated by our history and the structure of our government’ compel the rejection of his claim of immunity in this case…
We also have considered his contention that he is entitled to categorical immunity from criminal liability for any assertedly ‘official’ action that he took as President—a contention that is unsupported by precedent, history or the text and structure of the Constitution. Finally, we are unpersuaded by his argument that this prosecution is barred by ‘double jeopardy principles.’
The justices ruled that what Trump sought (immunity from prosecution) was an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government…
We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results. Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count…
It would be a striking paradox if the President, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to “take Care that the laws be faithfully executed,” were the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity…
The quadrennial Presidential election is a crucial check on executive power because a President who adopts unpopular policies or violates the law can be voted out of office.
We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power—the recognition and implementation of election results. Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count.
Former President Trump’s alleged efforts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election were, if proven, an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government. He allegedly injected himself into a process in which the President has no role—the counting and certifying of the Electoral College votes—thereby undermining constitutionally established procedures and the will of Congress …
At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches. Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter. Careful evaluation of these concerns leads us to conclude that there is no functional justification for immunizing former Presidents from federal prosecution in general or for immunizing former President Trump from the specific charges in the Indictment. In so holding, we act, “not in derogation of the separation of powers, but to maintain their proper balance.”
The judges pointed out that other presidents have recognized that they were not immune from prosecution after they left office. That’s why President Ford pardoned President Nixon and why President Clinton accepted a deal to pay a fine and surrender his law license when he left office.
They noted the irony that the President is sworn to Take Care that the laws are faithfully executed yet was appealing to be immune from those laws.
The Orlando Sentinel editorialized about the DeSantis administration’s effort to kill a voter referendum that would put reproductive rights into the state constitution. Last year, Governor DeSantis signed a highly restrictive ban on abortion—that it was prohibited after six weeks of pregnancy, when few if any women realize they are pregnant.
Next week, Attorney General Ashley Moody will come before the state Supreme Court and argue that Floridians can’t be trusted to understand a ballot initiative that would protect abortion rights in Florida — and because of that, they should be stripped of the right to demand them.
Moody is asking the state’s high court to crush an abortion rights initiative that’s already supported by nearly 1 million Floridians (and counting). If it makes the ballot, it’s likely to pass: Most polls show that voters support abortion rights, regardless of party. Without this amendment, the Legislature has already shown it will do everything in its power to destroy those rights.
Voters in six states, including solidly conservative Kentucky and Kansas, have already voted to project abortion rights. At least a dozen other states could vote on abortion this year.
That’s why Florida voters deserve to have their say — and why Florida’s anti-reproductive-rights leaders are so desperate to make sure they don’t.
Here’s what voters will see on the ballot:
No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.
The DeSantis administration insists that voters won’t understand this amendment so should not be allowed to vote on it.
One million Floridians have already signed a petition to put it on the ballot.
The DeSantis administration is afraid that voters will understand it and pass it.
Will the conservative state Supreme Court of Florida allow the people to decide?
Florida blogger Billy Townsend was delighted to see Ron DeSantis get booted from the Republican primaries after the Iowa caucuses. DeSantis had large ambitions, thinking that the nation wanted his harsh rightwing policies. But he made the mistake of thinking he could run to the right of Trump. There’s no space there.
Billy hopes that voters saw through the hype about “the Florida Blueprint” and DeSantis’s promise to “Make America Florida.”
Before the primaries, in March 2023, he predicted that DeSantis would flounder, and he was right:
We don’t know who will command Florida’s invasion yet — tiny Emperor Ron DeSantis (with his pseudo VP Jeb Bush) or Florida-ism’s Pope Donald Trump. But it makes no difference. Whoever wins their gross song of ice and fire will then lead Florida’s army of the dead right toward Colorado and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Florida’s political and cultural invasion of the country should be laughable. The Florida “blueprint”has made us a hollowed out shell of a state — pleasantly livable for people with capital (like me) because a few big private interests team up to “govern” our warm spaces enjoyably for customers who can pay. And a few cities, like mine (Lakeland), which is blessed with a money-belching socialist power utility, create a nice and warm urban experience.
If America fully grasps that Florida Blueprint by 2024, I feel quite certain that we will repulse this absurd invasion-by-mafia. The referendum on Florida should not be a close run affair.
But our worst American billionaires and mouthiest showboating sheriffs like hollowed out states; and they far prefer mafias to unions or citizens mobilized politically around public good.
Florida is their model state for decadent capital cut free from any public oversight, public good, or sense of shared citizenship. And they will try to impose that Florida on everybody else by pretending that Florida is not Florida. Anti-civic capital is often dumb. But it’s heavily armed; and it has great sway — although not total away — over what the public is told.
Crushing Florida’s invasion — explicitly rejecting the failed “Florida Blueprint” at the national level — is crucial to any effort to reform Florida at home. The Florida Blueprint must culminate, in the military sense, as an expansive political force. That’s the sine qua non of Florida’s future…
The MAGA Pope thrashed the Tiny Emperor
Well, MAGA Pope Trump’s GOP smashed the tiny emperor’s irrationally cocky army of Pushaws and private jet jockeys as easily as Trump gropes unwilling women. (Sorry Trumpers, he is who he is. I can’t make your citizenship choices for you. But you will own them. Expect no moral mercy or understanding from me this time around.)
Trump’s formally adjudicated sexual abuse and Capitol Lynch Mob leadership aside, his defenestration of DeSantis is a useful first step. It’s good for Florida and America.
Even better, when America as a whole saw the “Florida Blueprint” personified by Gov. High Heels, America as a whole rejected Gov. Pudding Fingers thoroughly and humiliatingly, with the national contempt growing almost by the moment. Watching DeSantis in the polls has been like watching the Enron stock price circa October 2001 (go Google it, youngs).
Yes, in large part, that’s because he’s personally very weird and off-putting and cruel in the way that people who torture cats are weird and off-putting and cruel.
But it was also because Florida, as a model for America, got a thorough thrashing — including by Trump himself. Of all people, Florida Man Bonesaw Jesus himself attacked the Florida Model of “governing” a week or two after I published my piece.
The GOP primary campaign ended that day, with the Trump campaign’s unanswered dismantling of Florida as an expansive idea. A loooooonnnnnng, slow humiliation ensued, tempered only by extensive luxury travel.
In some ways Trump is now running as the ultimate Florida man — full of gross indulgence and utterly devoid of any concern for the state where he lives. Only a Florida Man would have the chutzpah to run against Florida from Florida when the party he owns has been in power here for a generation…
Anyway, ya’ll will generally share my mirth for now in laughing at DeSanctimonious. We can do that together. Trump gives you permission.
But then you’re all gonna try to convince yourselves it’s fine to line up behind a more senile version of the Zieglers writ large — the Capitol Lynch Mob leader with a terrible economic record, a jury-adjudicated sexual abuser, a criminal openly running on “retribution” and “dictatorship on Day 1,” who you all know would rape your wife and daughter and force them to have an abortion after getting rid of Roe v. Wade.
Last May, I wrote about a punitive law in Texas that terrified the state’s 300 or so independent bookstores. The law, House Bill 900, required bookstores to rate every book they sold—now and in the past— to school libraries.
The bookstores sued to overturn to the law, arguing that the administrative burden of complying would put most of them out of business.
Their suit succeeded at the District Court level. Then it advanced to the very conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the plaintiffs were fearful. [A sign of the times: Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when the federal courts were constantly challenged to enforce the Brown decision of 1954, the Fifth Circuit was considered highly liberal in facing down segregationists.]
The lawsuit, which was filed by Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop and Austin-based BookPeople, along with a group of free speech organizations, argued that HB 900’s requirement essentially compelled the private businesses to engage in speech by requiring them to create a rating system for the materials they sold.
…the Fifth Circuit issued an uncommon ruling against the state, rejecting arguments from the Texas Education Agency—the suit’s lead defendant—that claimed that requiring booksellers to rate books was a mere administrative task. “This process is highly discretionary and is neither precise nor certain,” the court’s opinion read. “The statute requires vendors to undertake contextual analyses, weighing and balancing many factors to determine a rating for each book,” a process the opinion said was “anything but the mere disclosure of factual information.”
The plaintiffs had several issues with the law—tasking short-staffed booksellers with reading every single book any customer wanted to order would be an impossible task, for instance—but, according to Blue Willow owner Valerie Koehler, the real sticking point was being required by law to offer opinions on the contents of the books she sold. “I think common sense has prevailed,” she told Texas Monthly. “It’s not really up to the vendor to rate these books, where they’re compelling us to rate a book that they could then say, ‘No, that’s not a good rating.’ They were making us take a stand, and then were still in charge of whether our standards were right or not.”
The future of the law is still undecided—representatives from the office of the attorney general and the Texas Education Agency did not return requests for interviews—but the state would face an uphill battle with the Supreme Court after losing at the typically reliable Fifth Circuit. Koehler is accordingly optimistic—and reflective—about the struggle.
“We’ve never said, ‘We’re not going to carry that book because we don’t believe in it.’ We’ll carry it on our shelves if we think someone is going to come in and ask for it. That’s what we do as a business,” she said. “I didn’t take a stand against Greg Abbott; I took a stand as a business, for common sense, and my First Amendment rights as a bookseller.”
