Villainy

In just one of a series of despicable decisions, the Supreme Court gutted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions.

The court ruled that EPA regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions under a specific provision of the 1970 Clean Air Act are not permissible because Congress did not specifically authorize the EPA to regulate carbon emissions.

According to the court, the EPA’s regulation of power plant emissions amounts to a large enough new regulatory proposal targeting a large enough segment of the economy to require specific congressional authorization.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent. 

Today, the court strips the EPA of the power Congress gave it to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time. The Court appoints itself— instead of Congress or the expert agency— the decision-maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.

Robert Rohde notes the greater implication. 

The immediate issue is the limits of the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases. The broader issue is the ability of federal agencies to regulate anything at all.

Update (July 4):  Thom Hartmann notes the worst may be yet to come in a Fall case before the Court.

[The Independent State Legislature Doctrine]—the basis of John Eastman and [Dear Leader's] effort to get states to submit multiple slates of electors—asserts that a plain reading of Article II and the 12th Amendment of the Constitution says that each state's legislature has final say in which candidate gets their states' Electoral College vote, governors and the will of the voters be damned.

Republicans point out that the Constitution says that it's up to the states—"in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct"—to decide which presidential candidate gets their Electoral College votes.

But the Electoral Count Act requires a governor's sign-off, and half [of the battleground] states have Democratic governors. Which has precedence, the Constitution or the Act?