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The justices say they are nonpartisan. Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center puts that to the test.
The justices are feeling insecure.
Four members of the Supreme Court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett — all gave speeches in the last several months complaining that they are often perceived, as Barrett put it, as “a bunch of partisan hacks.”
Justice Thomas summarized these justices’ complaints at a mid-September speech at the University of Notre Dame: “The media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference. So if they think you are anti-abortion or something personally, they think that’s the way you always will come out.”
As it turns out, the Court will hear a case on Tuesday, Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center, which tests the hypothesis that the justices are “always going right to [their] personal preference” in abortion cases.
On the one hand, Cameron involves a Kentucky state law that restricts certain kinds of abortions — and it also involves an effort by Kentucky’s Republican attorney general, Daniel Cameron, to undo the pro-abortion work of his Democratic predecessor-turned-current-governor Andy Beshear. It is a classic partisan dispute over reproductive rights, with high officials from both parties maneuvering to get the policy outcome they prefer.
On the other hand, the specific legal issue before the justices has little to do with abortion. It’s a hyper-technical procedural case asking whether Cameron may appeal a particular court order directly, or whether he must instead file a motion seeking “relief from a judgment or order” in a federal trial court. (The Cameron case should not be confused with another case being heard in December, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which is an existential threat to Roe v. Wade.)
Viewed through a partisan lens, in other words, one would expect Cameron to end in a 6-3 decision with all six Republican appointees siding with Cameron and all three Democratic appointees voting against him. This is, after all, an abortion case. We know where each party stands on abortion.
But seen through the eyes of a nonpartisan judge, Cameron is exactly the sort of case where the justices’ votes are difficult to predict and where the final vote could break down on unconventional lines. Even in an era of extreme polarization, it’s not like the national leadership of either party has strong feelings about whether the proper vehicle for Cameron to seek relief is a petition for rehearing en banc, or a motion filed under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5).
Each justice will need to make a decision about how they approach this case. Will they analyze the procedural question presented by Cameron with the same objective neutrality that most justices would apply to a similar case that did not involve a politically charged issue like abortion? Or will their personal preferences overcome their legal analysis?
There’s good reason to fear that at least five of the justices will fail this test. Just last month, in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the Supreme Court considered a Texas ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, which was drafted specifically to evade judicial review.
It’s hard to imagine that the Court would have tolerated a similar effort to undermine the judiciary’s own authority if a different right were at stake, such as the right to own a gun or the right to criticize President Joe Biden. And yet, five members of the Court allowed this Texas law to take effect. Now, a Texas statute that unquestionably violates decisions such as Roe v. Wade prohibits the overwhelming majority of abortions in that state.
In Cameron, the stakes are much lower. No one questions that Attorney General Cameron is allowed to press his anti-abortion arguments in court, even though the parties in Cameron disagree about which court should hear those arguments.
But the case is worth watching nonetheless, not because it is likely to end in a landmark decision fundamentally reshaping abortion rights, but because it could tell us a great deal about whether the justices are capable of thinking in a nonpartisan way whenever they are confronted with an abortion case.
The plaintiffs in Cameron challenge a Kentucky law that prohibits doctors from using the standard method to perform “dilation and evacuation” abortions. A left-leaning panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck this law down. They held that it violates the Supreme Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), which required courts to balance “the burdens a law imposes on abortion access together with the benefits those laws confer” in determining whether a restriction on abortion is unconstitutional.
According to the Sixth Circuit, the Kentucky law effectively required many abortion patients to undergo a medical procedure that exposes them to “additional risks and burdens” without there being any evidence that the procedure is “necessary or provide any medical benefit to the patient.” (Disclosure: The Sixth Circuit’s opinion was authored by Judge Eric Clay, whom I clerked for in 2007-2008.)
About a month after the Sixth Circuit ruled, however, the Supreme Court handed down a new decision in June Medical Services v. Russo (2020). Chief Justice John Roberts’s controlling opinion in June Medical rejects Hellerstedt’s balancing test, and thus casts a cloud of doubt over the Sixth Circuit’s decision.
Cameron, in other words, has a strong argument that the Sixth Circuit’s decision striking down Kentucky’s law should be revisited because it is at odds with the new rule announced by Roberts in June Medical.
Which brings us to the specific, extraordinarily technical procedural question before the Supreme Court in Cameron. Ordinarily, if the attorney general of a state disagrees with a lower court’s decision striking down a state law, they would simply file an appeal in a higher court (or, perhaps, ask the same court that struck down the law to rehear the case). But it is unclear whether Cameron can appeal the Sixth Circuit’s decision because of an action taken by Cameron’s Democratic predecessor.
The anti-abortion law at issue in Cameron was signed in 2018 by then-Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican. The next year, Bevin lost his reelection bid to current Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat who served as the state’s attorney general for most of Bevin’s term as governor. Yet, while the 2019 election flipped the Kentucky governorship from red to blue, that same election made Cameron attorney general — meaning that the attorney general’s office flipped from blue to red.
All of this matters because the plaintiffs in the Cameron suit initially sued four state officials in their effort to block the Kentucky law, including then-Attorney General Beshear and then-interim health secretary Scott Brinkman. (Indeed, when the case was originally filed in a federal district court, it was known as EMW Women’s Surgical Center v. Beshear.)
Shortly after the lawsuit began, Beshear successfully sought to be removed from the lawsuit as a defendant — and he agreed that “any final judgment in this action . . . will be binding on the Office of the Attorney General, subject to any modification, reversal or vacation of the judgment on appeal.” This agreement initially had little practical impact because a Republican health secretary remained a defendant, and his office continued to defend the state law in court after Beshear was taken off the case.
But Beshear’s agreement to step away from the case took on new significance after the 2019 election. Shortly after becoming governor, Beshear appointed current health secretary Eric Friedlander, and Friedlander — who by this point was the only defendant who remained a party to the case — decided not to appeal the Sixth Circuit’s decision striking down the anti-abortion law.
Cameron, meanwhile, asked the Sixth Circuit to grant him “intervenor” status — which would enable him to appeal the Sixth Circuit’s decision without having to get permission from Friedlander first. The issue now before the Supreme Court is whether the Sixth Circuit acted properly when it denied Cameron’s request to intervene. Cameron is opposed by the original plaintiffs in the case, an abortion clinic and two abortion providers.
It should be noted that, even if Cameron cannot appeal the Sixth Circuit’s decision directly, that decision is unlikely to be the final word on whether Kentucky’s law is constitutional. Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Horne v. Flores (2009), Kentucky may ask a trial court to lift the previous order blocking the anti-abortion law if “‘a significant change either in factual conditions or in law’” renders continued enforcement ‘detrimental to the public interest.’”
Thus, Cameron could file a motion in the appropriate federal trial court at any time, claiming that the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical made “a significant change” to the law governing abortion rights — and therefore that the court order blocking the Kentucky law should be lifted.
Yet, rather than taking this step, which even the plaintiffs in the Cameron case concede that Cameron could do, the attorney general decided to take the case to the Supreme Court to fight for his ability to intervene.
The Sixth Circuit’s order denying intervenor status to Cameron is persuasive, but not completely airtight under existing law. It faults Cameron for waiting until the last possible moment to file his motion to intervene — nine days after the Sixth Circuit had already issued its decision striking down the Kentucky law.
As the Sixth Circuit explains, if nonparties to a lawsuit are allowed to intervene this late in the process — after a trial court and an appeals court have both ruled on the case — such nonparties could game the system. “Potential intervenors,” the Sixth Circuit warns, would have “every incentive to sit out litigation until we issue a decision contrary to their preferences, whereupon they can spring to action.”
Just as importantly, while the Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on whether a nonparty to a lawsuit may intervene this late in the process — Cameron concedes in his brief that the Supreme Court “has said very little about how to judge the timeliness of a post-judgment motion to intervene, especially one filed in a court of appeals” — the overwhelming weight of lower court decisions indicate that very late motions to intervene are disfavored.
The Sixth Circuit is not the only court to weigh in on this issue. A few other appeals courts agree with the Sixth, including the Tenth Circuit, which held that “‘only in an exceptional case for imperative reasons,’ may a court of appeals ‘permit intervention where none was sought in the district court’” — in an opinion by now-Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
These decisions are not particularly surprising. Judges of all political persuasions understand that judicial economy is an important value. At some point, litigation needs to come to an end. And that may not happen if nonparties can inject themselves into a case at a very late stage and insist that a new panel of judges should hear the case.
The best argument for Cameron’s position, meanwhile, was articulated by the Ninth Circuit in Day v. Apoliona (2007), a case where the state of Hawaii waited until after that circuit court had ruled on a case before it filed a motion to intervene. Although Day faulted Hawaii for waiting so long when it could have intervened “in this matter at any time during these proceedings, both before the district court and before this Court on appeal,” it ultimately decided to excuse Hawaii’s delay because of the court’s “discomfort with what will occur at this stage of the proceedings if its motion is not granted.”
If Hawaii was not granted intervenor status in Day, the Ninth Circuit explained, “no petition for rehearing can be filed in this Court, and there will be no opportunity for the Supreme Court to consider whether to” hear the case. Thus, Day granted intervenor status to Hawaii so that it would “not foreclose further consideration of an important issue.”
Day also captures an important judicial value which is shared by many judges across the political divide. When possible, litigation should be resolved based on the best reading of the law. And states shouldn’t have their laws permanently enjoined by a federal court because of technical procedural errors by the state’s lawyers.
At this point I will pause to note that, if I were a justice, I would vote to affirm the Sixth Circuit’s decision denying intervenor status to Cameron. While I agree with Day that state laws should not be subject to unappealable permanent injunctions because their lawyers filed a motion too late, that problem does not exist in the Cameron case. Under Horne, Cameron may still challenge the court order blocking Kentucky’s law by filing the appropriate motion in a federal district court.
But a reasonable judge could also conclude that the state’s interest in being able to directly appeal an adverse court order overcomes the ordinary rule that motions to intervene should be denied if they are filed too late.
All of which is a long way of saying that, if you ignore the fact that Cameron happens to involve an anti-abortion statute, the specific legal question presented by the case is both fairly difficult and not especially political. A truly nonpartisan Supreme Court could come down either way in the case, with liberal justices potentially siding with Cameron and conservative justices siding against him.
Cameron, in other words, is a kind of lie detector test for the Supreme Court. The justices tell us that they are capable of deciding politically charged cases in a nonpartisan way. But if this case ends with all six of the conservatives voting for the anti-abortion attorney general, and all three of the liberals voting against him, we will know that they aren’t telling the truth.
Children are at much lower risk of Covid-19 than adults. But what does that actually mean?
Kids are back in school. The federal government seems to be on the verge of approving vaccines for younger children. And as more adults are fully vaccinated, much of the US is slowly returning to normal.
But there remains a lingering question, particularly for parents of young children: What is the risk of Covid-19 to kids, especially after the rise of the delta variant?
There were reports this summer of more children under 18 falling ill with Covid-19, and some pediatric hospital wards filling up, leading many to believe that the pandemic is now a serious threat to children, too. At the very least, it’s abundantly clear now that children can be infected by and transmit the coronavirus.
But experts maintain that the risks most children face from Covid-19 are low, even with the delta variant. “The risk in children has not changed with the new variant as far as we can tell,” Betsy Herold, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told me.
Herold estimates that less than 2 percent of children known to be infected by the coronavirus are hospitalized, and less than 0.03 percent of those infected die. It’s difficult to draw direct comparisons to American adults now that two-thirds in the US are vaccinated, while most kids aren’t. But before widespread vaccination, about 10 percent of people infected with Covid-19 were hospitalized, and around 1 percent died.
While there isn’t as much research on children and Covid-19 as experts would prefer, the data we do have suggests the risk of longer-term consequences, like long Covid or MIS-C (in which several organs become inflamed), is also very low.
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Paul Bersebach/Orange County Register via Getty Images
The delta variant is both more transmissible and more widespread than earlier variants, which has meant that even a low-risk disease has filled up many pediatric wards. But while delta has made more children sick, it has not made infected children sicker — it doesn’t appear to be linked to worse disease among kids, experts said.
That’s still a public health problem. If the risk of death for children is around 0.01 percent and 1,000 children are infected, you would expect no deaths. But if 1 million are infected, you would expect 100 deaths. Increased transmission, not a deadlier virus, helps explain why pediatric wards are more crowded now than they were earlier in the pandemic, and shows that even a low-risk disease could lead to many deaths if enough children catch it. With nearly 5 million children with confirmed infections in the US so far, we are seeing that in the real world.
We also don’t know exactly why children are at much lower risk of Covid-19, and the situation could still change — a variant could evolve that proves more dangerous to children.
But experts, on the whole, are optimistic so far that children’s natural defenses against the virus have held up. That resilience isn’t just good news for parents; it’s a hopeful sign for the future of Covid-19. As the virus becomes endemic, future generations might be regularly exposed to SARS-CoV-2 at a young age. But children’s natural defenses are likely to crush it, building immunity, piece by piece, that could help shield them for a long time. Coupled with the vaccines, the generational buildup in natural immunity could, over time, defang the virus.
Compared to other age groups, people under 18 are at much lower risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19. The death rate for Americans under 18 who are infected is about 0.01 percent, compared to 5 percent for 65- to 74-year-olds, 12 percent for 75- to 84-year-olds, and 25 percent for people 85 and older. In total, people 50 and up make up 94 percent of Covid-19 deaths in the US, based on federal data.
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German Lopez/Vox
“We’ve known from the beginning that Covid is relatively mild in children compared to adults — and especially older adults,” Shamez Ladhani, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at St. George’s Hospital in London, told me.
The risk is even lower for children under 10, experts told me. Infants under 1 year old might be at higher risk than slightly older children due to their immature immune systems, but the data is way too thin to draw any conclusions for infants.
Another way to gauge risk is to compare Covid-19 to other significant causes of death. Covid-19 has killed 280 children under 18 from January through September 2021, the time span in which the alpha and delta variants were active. Flu and pneumonia, heart disease, drowning, guns, and motor vehicles were all deadlier to children during the same time periods annually from 2015 to 2019 (the latest years with available data).
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As one example: The number of children under 18 who died in vehicle crashes from January through September in recent years was nearly six times higher than the number of children who died of Covid-19 from January through September of this year.
These numbers can help contextualize risk. “One of the best ways to communicate risk — and for me, personally, to even think about risk — is to compare the risk of something I don’t understand to the risk of something I do,” Stephen Kissler, an infectious disease researcher at Harvard, told me.
Covid-19 deaths are likely lower than they would be if people had not engaged in social distancing and other precautions, meaning they could increase as the country shifts back to a pre- pandemic normal. But many parts of the country already have undergone that shift with only a relatively small increase in Covid-19 deaths among children, with surges concentrated among older adults, even as the delta variant spread.
One concern is multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, which appears in some children after a Covid-19 infection. But the risk of MIS-C is also very low: Around 4,700 MIS-C cases and 41 deaths were confirmed in the US as of August 27, 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At that point, there were 3.7 million total Covid-19 cases among children 17 and under in the US.
Long Covid is also a concern. A huge problem is that the research on long Covid in kids is very thin — so thin that some experts didn’t feel comfortable talking about the issue much, if at all.
Still, the research we do have, experts said, suggests long Covid is not a big threat to kids. Looking at a sample of 1,700 children ages 5 to 17 in the UK, a study in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health found that less than 2 percent experienced symptoms for at least eight weeks, and symptom severity appeared to decrease over time.
One possible explanation: Long Covid seems to happen more often after severe illness, which is less common for children. A study analyzing private health care claims, by the nonprofit FAIR Health, found hospitalized Covid-19 patients were almost twice as likely to develop “post-Covid conditions” as patients who were symptomatic but not hospitalized.
Finally, there’s the risk children’s transmission may pose to others. “If kids continue to get infected, others will continue to get infected who are unvaccinated — and the virus will continue to mutate,” Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “It’s not just that we need to protect the kids. It’s this larger question.”
Children do appear to transmit the coronavirus less than adults do, Ladhani said. One possible explanation: Kids are less likely to develop symptoms than older groups, and have those symptoms for shorter periods. And the coronavirus is less likely to spread if it’s not being coughed or sneezed out into the world.
The coronavirus, thankfully, remains a small threat to children overall. What’s less clear is why kids haven’t been hit harder by Covid-19.
The explanations so far are largely speculative.
One possibility is children’s immune systems are better built to deal with novel viruses. After all, to young immune systems, most viruses are novel. Outside of some defenses passed down by parents and the protection from childhood vaccines, kids adapt to the pathogens around them through repeated exposure. So when a new coronavirus began to spread, the theory goes, children were better able to deal with the threat. But for adults, especially older ones, encountering a new pathogen is rarer, and so their immune systems perhaps haven’t been able to deal with a novel threat to the same degree as their younger counterparts.
Two studies, by Herold, point in that direction, finding that the adaptive part of the immune system appears to be more active in adults than children. Herold suggested that’s because kids’ “innate response is better at dealing with Covid and perhaps other novel pathogens in general.” (For more on this research, I recommend Smriti Mallapaty’s recent article in Nature.)
Another possibility is that children, generally, have fewer health problems that put them at risk of severe illness from Covid-19. A range of comorbidities are known to make the virus a much bigger threat, including asthma, obesity, cancer, and heart disease. Some of these are more or as likely during childhood, but many, like cancer and heart disease, are more likely to happen with older age. As a result, kids “will cope better when they are infected,” Ladhani said.
There are other theories, from social and biological differences in coronavirus exposure to potential side effects of non-Covid vaccines. But, again, this field of research is just starting, and no one has a sure explanation — the ultimate contributor could be something we don’t even know about yet.
Given the uncertainty, experts also can’t say that kids’ protection against Covid-19 will hold true forever. It’s possible a future variant will end up more dangerous for children, even if that hasn’t been the case with delta. It’s yet another reason to mitigate the spread of the virus as much as possible: to deny it more chances to replicate and mutate into something that children’s defenses might not so easily conquer.
The data isn’t going to lead every parent to the same conclusions. Some people want to wait to return to normal until Covid-19 cases decline, after the current wave of delta fully eases (as is already starting to happen), or until everyone can get vaccinated, including kids. Others see higher vaccination rates in their community or nationwide as a prerequisite to easing up on precautions. Many are already moving on, at least to some degree, ready to put the virus and its impacts on day-to-day life behind.
Among the experts I’ve spoken to over the past several months, there are still divisions on when the time is right to ease up. “These are really hard, personal decisions,” Crystal Watson, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me. “There’s not a one-size-fits- all.”
There have been some points of agreement. For one, some places with lots of children, particularly schools, should do what they can to stop transmission, such as widespread testing, masking, and better ventilation. As soon as a vaccine is available, children should get the shots for an extra layer of protection, not just for themselves but also to prevent wider coronavirus spread and to block new variants.
At the same time, experts also widely agree the general risk of Covid-19 illness will likely never be zero again. The virus will be weakened over time through natural immunity and vaccination, but it will become endemic — continuing to spread in some form, perhaps in new variants, and potentially causing waves of severe illness and death on occasion. That suggests people will have to tolerate some level of risk going forward. And at least for kids, Covid-19 already isn’t too far from the risks people widely accepted before the pandemic.
As the world transitions from the pandemic to endemic stage of this coronavirus, children’s natural defenses against Covid-19 could prove crucial — providing a relatively safe route to much higher levels of natural immunity across the population.
“Over time, as SARS-CoV-2 becomes an endemic virus, basically everybody is going to get exposed to it multiple times by the time they turn 5 or 10,” Kissler, the infectious disease researcher, said. The repeated exposure — and build-up of immunity it produces — could turn the virus into something more like the common cold or seasonal flu than the pathogen that’s warped our lives since the spring of 2020.
Obviously, the continued spread among children would be a big problem if kids generally got very sick with Covid-19. Since that’s not the case, the process can play out with few risks to kids themselves — especially if it’s bolstered by childhood vaccines.
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Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Washington Post via Getty Images
There are some lingering questions: How durable is natural and vaccine-induced immunity to Covid-19? What will be the earliest age at which someone can get vaccinated? Will a new variant overcome the effectiveness of the population’s immunity that’s been built up? The answers could shape, or completely alter, how the transition to endemic Covid-19 plays out.
But other viruses have followed this path. Earlier strains of the flu that killed up to millions of people worldwide are still present in some form today. But as humans have over time been repeatedly exposed to these viruses, they’ve built population-level immunity to what once was a more vicious threat. And a deadly pandemic in 1889, originally believed to be caused by the flu, may have actually been caused by a coronavirus that is still with us as one of the many pathogens causing a common cold.
Coupled with vaccines and potential medical breakthroughs in treatment, Covid-19 could follow a similar trajectory. The wonder of vaccines is they can speed up this process, giving people the immunity that they once had to earn through a serious — and at times deadly — bout of sickness.
In short: The world has been fortunate, throughout the pandemic, that kids aren’t hit hard by Covid-19. But that luck also may extend to the pandemic’s aftermath — to ensure we can move past the coronavirus once and for all.
Republicans are using the debt ceiling to send a political message.
Every couple of years, Congress finds itself standing at the same precipice: If lawmakers don’t agree to suspend or raise the debt ceiling, the federal government risks defaulting on its loans, likely causing a massive economic crisis.
Lawmakers are now back at the brink, scrambling to pass a suspension to the debt limit — a legal cap to how much the country can borrow — even as they wrestle over an expansive infrastructure package and social spending bill. According to estimates from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, lawmakers have until October 18 to avoid a potential default.
For weeks, Republicans plainly refused to support legislation addressing the debt ceiling because they want to paint Democrats as big spenders who’ve racked up the debt — and as hypocrites who are willing to pass a larger social spending bill on party lines, but unwilling to raise the ceiling the same way.
“Republicans’ position is simple. We have no list of demands,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote to President Joe Biden on Monday. “For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well.”
But on Wednesday, McConnell said that Republicans would not block a short-term increase of the debt limit until December, as long as Democrats met certain conditions.
Republicans’ position on the debt ceiling is the latest attempt to use it for political leverage. Debt has been accrued under both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, and both political parties have used looming debt crises to argue that the other side is being fiscally irresponsible. In more recent years, the GOP, in particular, has used such disagreements to extract policy concessions. In the current fight, Republicans’ willingness until now to oppose a suspension without any requests was more novel, and a clear indication that the GOP primarily hoped to gain ammunition it could use against Democrats in the future.
“This is a very dangerous game of chicken we’re playing,” says Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute.
It seems as though Republican leaders have now swerved for the time being, wanting to avoid economic collapse. If lawmakers move forward with a short-term increase, however, it’s likely they’ll find themselves in the same stalemate in a few months.
Raising or suspending the debt limit, much like approving government appropriations, is a routine issue that Congress is tasked with. As Vox’s Dylan Matthews has explained, the United States is unique in having a debt limit that lawmakers need to suspend or raise every few years; since the 1960s, Congress has raised or suspended the debt limit roughly 80 times, according to the Associated Press.
The last time lawmakers suspended the debt limit was in 2019, when both the House and Senate did so on a bipartisan basis.
This time, however, Republicans had refused to allow even a short-term measure to move forward until this week. They argued that it wasn’t because they didn’t want one, but because they feel that Democrats, who control both houses of Congress and the White House, should be responsible for approving it on their own.
“The debt ceiling will be raised, as it always should be. But it will be raised by the Democrats,” McConnell has said. (In the past, if a party held both the White House and Senate, data shows that its members have made up the bulk of the votes for such efforts, political scientist Sarah Binder explained in the Washington Post. It was less common, though, for the minority party to filibuster such attempts.)
Republicans’ refusal to act for weeks was largely political: Republicans broadly want to make sure that Democrats get the blame for accepting new debt while also trying to pass a large social spending package along party lines. The debt that would be addressed includes spending that took place during the Trump administration, like the $2.2 trillion CARES Act and more than $1.5 trillion in tax cuts.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), the head of Republicans’ Senate campaign arm, recently acknowledged the party’s political motives. “Oh, you better believe it,” Scott told NBC News when asked about whether he’d be using Democratic votes in favor of raising the debt limit to attack them in campaign ads during the 2022 midterms.
So far, Republicans have already filibustered, or blocked, an attempt by Democrats to approve a suspension to the debt ceiling in a short-term spending bill that would have also funded the government through mid-December. This week, they’re poised to do so again when lawmakers consider a standalone suspension into next year. When filibustered, legislation requires 60 votes to pass, meaning the 50-person Democratic caucus would need to find 10 Republican lawmakers to join them.
As a concession, McConnell has promised that Republicans won’t filibuster a short-term debt limit increase into December and he suggested that the party wouldn’t slow attempts to approve an increase via budget reconciliation. Thus far, Democrats have been reluctant to use budget reconciliation because of how long and convoluted the process could be. Taking this approach could require proposing a specific increase to the debt ceiling, which Democrats wanted to avoid as well.
Political threats about the debt ceiling have been around for a long time.
In the 1950s, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower navigated standoffs with Democratic members of Congress about increasing the debt ceiling. At the time, Senate Democrats argued that the federal government should focus on reducing its expenditures rather than raising the debt cap. By withholding their support for a higher ceiling, lawmakers forced the administration to consider serious spending cuts.
Since then, the debt ceiling has been weaponized by members of both parties: Because a suspension or increase is a must-pass measure, lawmakers have tried to push for their demands to be addressed in exchange for votes. And many have opted to vote against debt increases as a way to portray the opposing party as involved in irresponsible spending. Republicans, for instance, like to point out that Biden was among the senators who opposed raising the debt limit in 2006 when Republicans had congressional control. (Democrats did not filibuster the final vote on the debt limit that year, however.)
“My vote against the debt limit increase cannot change the fact that we have incurred this debt already, and will no doubt incur more,” Biden said that year. “It is a statement that I refuse to be associated with the policies that brought us to this point.”
A recent fight in 2011 was a turning point; some lawmakers actually seemed open to a possible default.
That year, Republicans balked on suspending the debt limit and refused to do so until President Barack Obama agreed to key spending cuts, concessions they ultimately secured. The US got so close to default that year that it led Standard and Poor’s to downgrade the country’s credit rating.
Political experts note that this disagreement marked one of the first times it seemed like lawmakers were actually willing to go over the edge, despite the economic chaos that could ensue.
“I’d definitely say 2011 was a step forward in how aggressively the debt ceiling was weaponized to secure partisan policy goals,” said Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute. “I’d say 1995 was also important; [House Speaker Newt] Gingrich threatened this but didn’t take it as far as the GOP did in 2011.”
In the years since, lawmakers, specifically Republicans, have become more aggressive in holding debt ceiling increases hostage in order to either elicit a policy demand or make a point. In 2013, Republicans did not support ending debate on the debt ceiling, a practice that had been uncommon beforehand. The willingness to filibuster the debt ceiling, experts say, is a sign of how partisan many legislative fights — including this one — have become.
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the use of a filibuster … you need 60 votes for everything,” says Shai Akabas, the director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “It’s not unique to the debt limit.”
Because majorities in Congress have narrowed in recent years for both parties, experts note that there’s greater incentive to stymying the other party’s efforts, since it could offer an advantage in the upcoming elections — and allow the minority to retake control.
“It’s much more common to exert all procedural options to something like appropriations or the debt ceiling. There’s much more brinksmanship. It’s expected that every September 30, we’ll be approaching a shutdown. It’s expected that every October, we could approach a default,” says Josh Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute. “It’s using all of the legislative tools to put the majority party in a bad position, for electoral gain.”
The US government doesn’t have to work this way.
Congress could pass legislation doing away with the debt ceiling, and the president has options to ignore it as well, though they’d likely prompt legal challenges. As Vox’s Dylan Matthews has reported, options range from the president invoking the 14th Amendment and ignoring the debt limit to Congress approving an increase to the debt cap that’s so high it basically nullifies the ceiling.
Abolishing the debt limit altogether would prevent either party from using this process as political leverage and eliminate the risk of the US defaulting on its obligations. Doing so would greatly reduce the uncertainty that comes around every time there’s a deadline like this and prevent significant market volatility that results.
“There are zero downsides to getting rid of the debt ceiling. It is utterly meaningless as a policy guide or institution; it is good only for grid-locking government. And, in the modern age, gridlock is an enormous problem, given the huge pressing needs policymakers should be addressing,” says Bivens, of the Economic Policy Institute.
Others note that it could take away an opportunity for Congress to debate fiscal policy. But many feel like that’s a moot point, given debt ceiling standoffs are rarely about any specific spending anymore, but rather about weakening the electoral advantage of the party in power.
“The debt limit was one of those stoppage points that has encouraged and allowed for conversations over how to address health care costs, tax policy, how to address fiscal reforms,” says Marc Goldwein, policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “We haven’t seen that in any of the recent increases. An argument against repealing it is you lose that stoppage point.”
Rather than do away with the debt limit altogether, some experts have proposed options like giving the president the ability to propose a suspension that Congress would need to override if it disagreed, making it tougher for legislators to jam up that process. A proposal that Akabas of the Bipartisan Policy Center supports would pair this proposal with a mandatory debate on fiscal policy to force Congress to confront spending issues.
Whether there’s enough political will to make any of these changes is heavily in doubt; both parties have used this must-pass legislation to make political statements when it suits them.
“I’m not sure there’s all that much desire to take it off the table in terms of members of the minority losing this political thing they have to fight with,” University of Texas Austin government professor Alison Craig told Vox.
Instead, it seems as though lawmakers are comfortable getting right up to the brink — and running the risk of a default again and again.
Stokes has second operation on finger, big doubt for Ashes - He made a comeback in July, after a first operation.
UEFA sets date for Euro 2024 qualifying draw in Frankfurt - The Euro 2024 lineup will likely be completed in March 2024 by three playoff brackets involving teams based on their standings in the Nations League groups played next year.
AUS-W vs IND-W | Jemimah smashes 49 before first India-Australia WT20I abandoned due to rain - Invited to bat, India were 131/4 in 15.2 overs when rain disrupted the proceedings, leading to the match being eventually called off
IPL 2021 | Still uncertain whether I will be playing next year, depends on retention policy, says Dhoni - “There are a lot of uncertainties,” said the CSK captain
‘Bubble’ fatigue, mental health of players at World Cup on ICC radar - Players will have 24-access to a psychologist.
Have we lost ground intelligence or enemy has become sharper: Bukhari on civilian killings - Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) chief Altaf Bukhari said the killing of Bindroo was a setback to efforts to convince Kashmiri Pandits to return to their homes
Bengal BJP leader Sabyasachi Dutta returns to TMC - Mr. Dutta lost the Bidhannagar seat to TMC’s Sujit Bose in the April-May Assembly elections
BJP-JD(U)’s differences will force mid-term polls in Bihar: Chirag Paswan - LJP(R) leader predicts JD(U)’s defeat in the upcoming by-polls on Oct. 30
Reopen temples in 10 days or face protests, Annamalai tells TN government - The BJP leader led a protest on Thursday outside the Kalikambal Temple; he also said the State could not decide on the conversion of temple gold into gold bars
Lakhimpur Kheri violence | Union minister’s son summoned by police; two people being questioned - IG Singh, however, said that there was no time limit in the summons sent to Ashish Mishra
Nazi trial: 100-year-old SS guard in court in Germany - Josef S is accused of complicity in the murder of 3,518 prisoners at Sachsenhausen near Berlin.
Germany and Denmark repatriate 37 children and 11 ‘IS women’ from Syria - The women who arrived in Germany face a criminal investigation, the German foreign minister says.
Czech elections: Billionaire PM asks voters for more time at top - Prime Minister Andrej Babis is facing a strong opposition challenge in a closely fought election.
Brexit: New NI Protocol proposals to be brought by EU - The proposals will be “very far reaching”, says European Commission Vice President Maros Šefčovič.
France to send ambassador back to Australia amid Aukus row - Paris recalled its envoy last month after Australia cancelled a submarine deal to join a US-UK pact.
The best part of Windows 11 is a revamped Windows Subsystem for Linux - WSL is finally easy to install—and offers automatic sound/graphics support. - link
Citing liberty, Idaho Lt. Gov. McGeachin bans vaccine mandates in power grab - Gov. Brad Little will reverse all McGeachin’s actions when he gets back to state. - link
WHO recommends malaria vaccine for use in children - While the efficacy is under 50 percent, it should still save numerous lives. - link
One America News founder claimed he started network at AT&T’s request - AT&T “told us they wanted a conservative network,” OAN founder said in court. - link
Nobel awarded for making common, cheap chemicals into catalysts - Common chemicals can often work better than pricey metal catalysts. - link
They all have contractions.
submitted by /u/Crafty-Bedroom8190
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George will pay anyone $5000 cash to anyone who can bring him something absolutely harder than his dick.
One man brings a basketball-sized boulder. George easily smashes the boulder with his dick. The man picks up the boulder pieces and angrily walks off.
A second man brings a huge diamond. George gracefully slices through the diamond with his dick. The man takes the diamond and leaves frustrated.
A third man brings a thick bulletproof glass window. George forcefully thrusts right through it with his dick like theres no tomorrow. The man cleans up the shattered glass and scurries off in a huff.
“Can nothing pose a challenge to the Worlds Hardest Dick?” George yelled.
Suddenly, A thin but very attractive woman comes along. Long hair, toned legs, supple breasts, and an ass that won’t quit, carrying a somewhat big box that seemed to be heavy, as she was carrying the box below her waist, with both hands.
“Worlds Hardest Dick, huh?” She says, with a wink. “Hell Yeah baby, you wanna see?” George asks, joyfully as he gets even harder just by seeing this sexy woman. She replies “I’d rather see $5000. Take a look inside, cutie pie!”
Excited, George quickly opens up her box as she holds it against her waist. His face flushes. He slowly pulls out $5000 cash, gives it to the woman and she happily dances away. The 3 other men return in disbelief to see a defeated George, dismayed and distraught.
“Whoa! You got beat by that hot chick! How embarrassing! Oh man, but what was in the box?” The men asked.
George answers “The Second Hardest Dick in the World.”
submitted by /u/CrossGuy2020
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Don’t Kid Yourself.
submitted by /u/SofaKingOnPoint
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Dave was bragging to his boss one day, “You know, I know everyone there is to know. Just name someone, anyone, and I know them.” Tired of his boasting, his boss called his bluff, “OK, Dave, how about Tom Cruise?” “No dramas boss, Tom and I are old friends, and I can prove it.” So Dave and his boss fly out to Hollywood and knock on Tom Cruise’s door, and Tom Cruise shouts, “Dave! What’s happening? Great to see you! Come on in for a beer!” Although impressed, Dave’s boss is still skeptical. After they leave Cruise’s house, he tells Dave that he thinks him knowing Cruise was just lucky. “No, no, just name anyone else,” Dave says. “President Biden,” his boss quickly retorts. “Yup,” Dave says, “Old buddies, let’s fly out to Washington,” and off they go. At the White House, Biden spots Dave on the tour and motions him and his boss over, saying, “Dave, what a surprise, I was just on my way to a meeting, but you and your friend come on in and let’s have a beer first and catch up.” Well, the boss is very shaken by now but still not totally convinced. After they leave the White House grounds he expresses his doubts to Dave, who again implores him to name anyone else. “Pope Francis,” his boss replies. “Sure!” says Dave. “I’ve known the Pope for years.” So off they fly to Rome. Dave and his boss are assembled with the masses at the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square when Dave says, “This will never work. I can’t catch the Pope’s eye among all these people. Tell you what, I know all the guards so let me just go upstairs and I’ll come out on the balcony with the Pope.” He disappears into the crowd headed towards the Vatican. Sure enough, half an hour later Dave emerges with the Pope on the balcony, but by the time Dave returns, he finds that his boss has had a heart attack and is surrounded by paramedics. Making his way to his boss’ side, Dave asks him, “What happened?” His boss looks up and says, "It was the final straw… you and the Pope came out on to the balcony and the man next to me said, ‘Who the fuck is that on the balcony with Dave?’
submitted by /u/bagged___milk
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She just couldn’t take it any longer.
submitted by /u/blackshadowed
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