Climate change is happening now

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was before the Supreme Court for the third time. This time the decision for preserving the law was 7-2, even in a conservative majority court. Perhaps now it is here to stay. Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan, tweeted an explanation of the ruling. The suit was brought by individual plaintiffs saying they were coerced by the individual mandate of the ACA that required them to have health insurance. But a few years ago the GOP in Congress zeroed out the penalty for not having insurance. So the law says you must, but the consequences for disobeying the law are nothing. So, explained Bagley, “they can't be coerced by something that ... doesn't coerce them.” Since they experienced no harm, they have no standing to bring the suit. Case dismissed. Even though Justice Clarence Thomas agrees with the dissent, he still voted to toss the case for lack of standing. Those two dissenting votes were Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. I’ll let you wade through their reasoning. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos, included late night commentary, including one appropriate for the topic.

Today the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare again. The court decided Texas didn’t have standing to sue because nobody was forced to pay a penalty for not getting insurance. Why? Back in 2017 the GOP-controlled Congress passed a bill cutting the individual mandate penalty to zero. The Republicans' previous attempt to kill Obamacare killed this attempt to kill Obamacare. Turns out the GOP is its own worst enemy. Also: everybody else's. —Stephen Colbert

Walter Shaub, a former director of the Office of Government Ethics, tweeted a thread that begins:

Here’s the complete list of all the changes that will outlast Biden’s term and are cause to rejoice that democracy has been protected against the next authoritarian assault: Here’s the complete list all the legislative reforms to protect democracy on which Biden has spent any political capital at all:

The Shaub lists how busy the GOP is in passing voter suppression laws. Leah McElrath tweeted:

Our Democratic leaders appear to view accountability as divisive. Impunity for inciting and collaborating with insurrection, impunity for negligence leading to mass death, impunity for colluding with a foreign enemy to gain office...

Kos of Kos discussed the latest thing being discussed by the GOP: If they retake the House in 2022 they want to declare the nasty guy to be Speaker. According to the Constitution the Speaker does not have to be a member of the House and doesn’t have to be elected to anything. According to one scenario, the nasty guy will serve 100 days, then turn the job over to current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (yeah, the nasty guy will surely give up power). Then the nasty guy will launch his campaign for the 2024 election. And in those 100 days he’ll impeach Biden. Kos wrote we should encourage this talk. Because over the last four years Democrats turned out to vote to get rid of the nasty guy. And many nasty guy supporters only show up to vote when he is actually on the ballot. The GOP has come up with several alternate lists of who was responsible for the Capitol Attack: It was Antifa. They were really just tourists. Mark Sumner of Kos reported the latest scapegoat: The FBI. You expected this reason to make more sense than any of the others? Sumner also reported that five years after Lake Meade was at record high levels, it is at record lows. Lake Meade is behind Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. The low water is a result of a drought across the West, which, at the moment, is also experiencing record high temperatures. Low water means the dam has a harder time generating electricity for cities across the West, such as nearby Las Vegas. Low water also means irrigation for farming is starting to be cut. Climate change is happening now. Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced a plan to attack the problem of domestic terrorism. David Neiwert of Kos said it is actually quite good. There was fear the plan would call for new laws (which would be used to harass people of color). It doesn’t. Another fear it would be a “war on terror” type of response. It isn’t that either. Instead, it is built around enforcing the laws already on the books, and around removing extremists from law enforcement. We have a new federal holiday! It was passed just in time to celebrate it this year. It is Juneteenth, marking the day the last slaves in Texas were freed. Telushk tweeted:

Juneteenth is not just a holiday about the end of slavery in general, it’s specifically about how white slaveowners lied to preserve slavery even after it had already been abolished for several years. An important detail with lessons for the present.