Chief Justice John Roberts announced on Oct. 7 that the Supreme Court had ended its 2023-2024 term and was starting anew. The court heard two oral arguments on the bounds of state jurisdiction and released a lengthy orders list granting and denying various cases.
The court is expected to hear cases on a variety of hot-button topics this term—including gender, guns, nuclear waste storage, the death penalty, immigration, and potentially former President Donald Trump.
Today, for example, the court is expected to hear oral argument in Garland v. VanDerStok, which questions the legality of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ attempt to regulate so-called “ghost guns.” A day after that hearing, the court is scheduled to hear arguments in Glossip v. Oklahoma, which involves a death penalty case.
Looming over the court are its landmark decisions, issued just months prior, overturning the decades-old Chevron doctrine and ruling that presidents enjoy different levels of immunity from criminal prosecution. These decisions and others from last term could impact how they decide cases in the upcoming term.
Some currently unscheduled cases involve one challenging Texas’ age-verification requirement for porn sites and another over the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of e-cigarette products.
Besides legal cases, calls for reform are expected to play a significant part in the upcoming term as Democrats respond to ongoing ethics controversies and the justices’ decisions in the prior term.
So far, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the current Democratic presidential nominee, have called for term limits on justices, a binding ethics code, and a constitutional amendment reversing the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.
The immunity decision in Trump v. United States appears to be fostering a prolonged pre-trial process in Trump’s federal election interference case, where Special Counsel Jack Smith just filed his “oversized” brief on the immunity issue.
D.C. Judge Tanya Chutkan has been tasked with applying the Supreme Court’s immunity decision to Smith’s indictment – something that will likely entail her making determinations about which of Trump’s alleged acts were official or unofficial.
Depending on how she rules, the case could work its way back up to the Supreme Court this term. Percolating in the lower courts is another legal conflict over the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment, which the special counsel is attempting to defend after Florida Judge Aileen Cannon held in Trump’s classified documents case that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.
—Sam Dorman
RFK Jr.’s CHRONIC DISEASE PLAN
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has dropped out of the race for president, but that doesn’t mean he plan to sit idle. Kennedy has turned his attention to his Make America Healthy Again initiative, a plan to end chronic disease in America.
“I prayed to God every day for the past 19 years that America’s health crisis would be solved for the next generation,“ he said. ”That is a major reason why I ran for president,” he told the Epoch Times in September.
While campaigning for president, he said the “corporate capture of government agencies” was to blame for the epidemic of chronic illness across the nation, especially citing the FDA, CDC, and USDA.
Kennedy also said that patient outcomes like chronic illness, childhood obesity, and life expectancy are accurate metrics for the state of our national healthcare system.
But the U.S. lags behind other industrialized nations in this area, especially in light of our country’s spending on healthcare.
“Today, we are an average of six years behind our European neighbors. Are we lazier and more suicidal than Italians, or is there a problem with our system? Are there problems with our incentives? Are there problems with our food?”
Kennedy also noted that health outcomes in the U.S. have seriously declined over the decades.
“When my uncle was president [1961-63], about 1 percent of the children in this country had a chronic disease. That number may be as high as 60 percent in America today,” he said.
He especially noted an increase in childhood obesity, placing the blame on too much processed food filled with chemical additives. Many of the chemicals commonly found in American kids’ diets are banned in Europe, he said.
“About 18 percent of American teens now have fatty liver disease. When I was a boy, this only affected late-stage alcoholics who were elderly.”
After pointing out a 79 percent increase in juvenile cancer, Kennedy turned his attention to the epidemic of psychological problems impacting American teens.
“Forty percent of teens have a mental health diagnosis; 15 percent of high schoolers are on Adderall. No other country has anything like this,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump announced at an Aug. 23 rally in Arizona that if elected, he would appoint Kennedy to a panel investigating the causes of chronic childhood illnesses.
He’s also planned an Oct. 8 town hall featuring Kennedy and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard under the Make America Healthy Again headline.
There is some speculation that if Trump wins, Kennedy will be named Secretary of Health and Human Services.
—Jeff Louderback, Stacy Robinson
BOOKMARKS
Los Angeles police managed to arrest 6 of 12 suspects involved in a “flash mob” mall robbery at a Valentino clothing outlet. The “smash and grab” robbery is just the latest in a rising trend among malls and storefronts in California.
In 2022, NASA deliberately crashed a spaceship into an asteroid in an attempt to shift its orbit. On Monday, the European Space Agency launched a follow-up probe to measure the results as part of a larger plan to deal with asteroids that may pose a danger to Earth.
Another top official connected to New York City Mayor Eric Adams has resigned; this time, it’s Philip Banks, the deputy mayor for public safety. Banks is one of many aides who have jumped ship following a federal investigation and indictment of Mayor Adams on corruption and bribery charges.
One hundred three organizations linked to a Chinese espionage project have been embedded in Sweden, according to a report by Washington-based think tank The Jamestown Foundation. The groups are connected to China’s “United Front Work Department,” a network of groups aiming to promote CCP interests worldwide.
The first round of vaccinations against a new, deadly strain of monkeypox (MPOX) have begun in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The new strain is especially harmful to children, but the vaccination campaign will focus first on healthcare workers and those in danger of being exposed.
—Stacy Robinson