Six months into the Covid-19 crisis, the president is boasting that the US economy is back on its feet. While the figures show that some job losses have been cut, there is little room for optimism.
The US president has relentlessly attacked the ACA since taking office. While more costly than hoped, the law has cut the number of Americans without insurance in half, more than meeting its goals.
Republicans won the recent battle over nominations to the US Supreme Court with the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett. The loser might be the court itself.
Democrats are outraged at what they say is the hypocrisy of allowing a president to appoint a new Supreme Court justice near the end of his term. One of their biggest practical concerns is the ACA.
While our judges may prefer their anonymity, the process for choosing who sits on the highest court must be more transparent. Our system is beginning to look outdated.
If successful, Barrett would become the seventh current Supreme Court justice to be raised a Catholic, but more importantly the sixth conservative Christian.
Special interests use the court as a public policy battleground. Here’s a rundown of how that works and which groups are likely to appear before a conservative court with Amy Coney Barrett on it.
Lawsuits are being argued in courthouses across the country over the conduct of the election. That could lead to the public losing confidence in the election’s legitimacy.
With Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination, Trump has fulfilled his pledge to replace the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a woman. But female judges don’t all decide alike any more than male judges do.
In the 1860’s, the Supreme Court was a ‘partisan creature’ and President Lincoln and the Republican Party remade it so that it reflected the party’s priorities.
Barrett has written 15 opinions in cases involving employment law that offer a window into her nuanced approach to disputes between workers and employers.
Amy Coney Barrett may be a woman, but Trump’s other judicial appointments are 85% white and 76% male – the least diverse group of federal judges since Ronald Reagan.
The Supreme Court will again consider the fate of the Affordable Care Act next month. But Trump’s record and a reading of his health executive order make it unlikely that he can offer a meaningful alternative to the ACA.
To overhaul an election redistricting process tainted by gerrymandering, Michigan has adopted a governance mechanism prominent 2,500 years ago in ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy.