Reuters:
Opponents of California's new law tightening school vaccination rules said on Wednesday they had put together a team of attorneys to challenge the measure, which was prompted by a measles outbreak at Disneyland that sickened more than 100 people.
The lawyers are strategizing ways to seek an injunction against the law, signed on Tuesday by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, said Melissa Floyd, a spokeswoman for the California Coalition for Health Choice.
“The California Legislature just created a brand new group of second class citizens, innocent healthy children who will permanently be barred from schools and day care because they haven’t received all doses of the vaccines on the schedule," Floyd said. "This is discriminatory."
The new law eliminates exemptions from vaccine requirements based on parents' personal beliefs, but allows unvaccinated children to attend school with medical waivers.
It prompted a vociferous response from parents who fear side effects from vaccinations, including a now-debunked theory that inoculating children against childhood diseases can lead to autism.
Because why shouldn't debunked theories and nutters like Jim Carrey determine public health policy?
Harold Cook:
I get it – you’re really really PO’ed that gay people now have a Constitutional right to have, or be, an ol’ ball and chain too, and now you’re pretty much just impatiently awaiting the rapture with great annoyance.
Believe me – when it comes to the Supreme Court, I’ve been there. I was dismayed at the Citizens United decision that gave your ilk all that dark money to play with. I was downright angered when they handed George W. Bush the Presidency by halting the Florida recount. I was disgusted when they gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. There is no doubt that no matter where one is on the political spectrum, we can all agree that the Supreme Court makes mistakes. We might disagree on which specific decisions constitute those mistakes, but we would all agree that they make them.
You have every right to whine and rant. We are a proud nation of whiners and ranters. I fully support your rantitude and your whinarrhea. It’s the American way.
But what you don’t get to do — and I’m talking primarily to you, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and US Senator Ted Cruz — is advise people to feel free to disregard a United States Supreme Court decision. It is unpatriotic, and it’s un-American.
Let that sink in: what you are doing is un-American.
More politics and policy below the fold.
USA Today:
As a woman climbed a pole in South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag, her parents slept soundly in their Cincinnati home.
The nation debated her motivations and criminal charges. Her surprised father worried about her safety.
Bree Newsome, 30, was arrested after she climbed a 30-foot flagpole on South Carolina Statehouse grounds and removed the Confederate flag on Saturday morning.
Dr. Clarence Newsome, president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, didn't know about his daughter's actions until a friend called him and his wife, Lynne, Saturday morning.
"We yelled, we almost fell out of bed and then we collected ourselves and went to the TV," Newsome said. "We found out like the rest of the world."...
Her father was humbled by the lesson his daughter was teaching him.
"She took a moral stand for justice and harmony and progress," Clarence Newsome said, remembering his daughter's lifelong passion for helping others. "She has helped me understand how all of us need to be more courageous in promoting social change in our society."
For Clarence Newsome, the Confederate flag is not a symbol of Southern heritage, but is a reminder of racism and injustice that he and others have suffered for years.
To be clear, individuals have every right to own and wave the Confederate battle flag but it does not belong on state grounds, Newsome said.
Portland Press Herald:
The Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to initiate an inquiry into Gov. Paul LePage’s threat to withhold state funds from a school for at-risk children.
The fact-finding inquiry will focus specifically on how state money is sent to Good Will-Hinckley and the effects of the LePage administration’s decision to yank funds from the institution. The probe, conducted by the Legislature’s nonpartisan watchdog agency, the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, or OPEGA, will not make a determination of wrongdoing. However, the Legislature could ultimately use the OPEGA findings to pursue sanctions against the governor or his administration.
Texas Tribune:
In light of the Supreme Court's ruling on Friday that same-sex marriage is protected by the U.S. Constitution, the Texas attorney general's office has conceded a separate legal challenge to the state's ban on same-sex marriage. That challenge had been left pending in federal appeals court.
The Supreme Court's ruling legalized same-sex marriage nationwide when it decided four cases out of a Cincinnati-based court. But a separate legal challenge to Texas' ban, brought by two same-sex couples, had yet to be decided by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 5th Circuit should affirm a lower court ruling that overturned Texas' longstanding ban on same-sex marriage, Scott Keller, the state's solicitor general, wrote in a letter to the appellate court. That letter was in response to the appellate court's request that the state and the plaintiffs advise the court on the next steps in the Texas case.
Chris Geidner:
A federal appeals court on Wednesday afternoon directed the district courts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas to issue final orders ending enforcement of the states’ respective bans on same-sex couples’ marriages.
In the Texas case, in which the trial court had struck down the ban, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Jerry E. Smith, wrote that “the injunction appealed from is correct in light of Obergefell, the preliminary injunction is AFFIRMED.”
In the Louisiana case, in which the trial court had upheld the ban, the appeals court, in a second opinion by Judge Smith, wrote that “the judgment appealed from is REVERSED, and this matter is REMANDED for entry of judgment in favor of the plaintiffs.” Notably, Smith added: “The district court must act expeditiously on remand, especially in view of the declining health of plaintiff Robert Welles,” a plaintiff in the case.
In the Mississippi case, the court issued a similar opinion, stating that “the injunction appealed from is correct in light of Obergefell” and, therefore, “the preliminary injunction is AFFIRMED.” The Mississippi opinion came last, likely a result of the fact that Gov. Phil Bryant initially had opposed the plaintiffs’ motion to put a quick end to the case after the June 26 Supreme Court ruling striking down marriage bans.
This is all part of the process it will take to institute the SCOTUS decision. There's a lot of posturing in TX and elsewhere, but as SCOTUS gets their administrative act together, a lot of it will fade.
That, of course, won't help the Republican candidates, who are posturing even more than the Governors and AGs.
Kaiser Family Foundation:
Just over six in 10 Americans (62%) say they approve of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week to continue allowing low- and moderate-income people in all states to be eligible for government subsidies to buy health plans through Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance marketplaces, finds the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest tracking poll. About one third (32%) say they disapprove of the ruling.
Although Democrats are more likely to approve of the King v. Burwell decision, and Republicans are more likely to disapprove, about three in 10 Republicans (29%), and a similar share of those who view the law unfavorably (30%), approve of the ruling.
Philip Rucker:
David Axelrod, a former campaign strategist for President Obama, said Republican candidates must develop “a Trump strategy.”
“You heard his opening salvos, many of which clanked and created some discomfort among Republicans,” Axelrod said. “Every Republican candidate now has to calculate how they deal with him, particularly in the debates. If he says something outrageous and no one challenges him, that’s bad for them and bad for the Republican Party.”
The prospect of such a Trump moment in a debate invites memories of 2012 Republican primary debates that ended up becoming obstacles for the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney. In one debate, when audience members booed a gay soldier, neither Romney nor any other candidate came to his defense.
Erik Smith, a Democratic strategist who worked on Obama’s campaigns, said the danger for Republicans is that Trump becomes “an anchor” weighing down the party’s brand, especially with Latino, millennial and independent voters.
“The truth is this entire field is currently reinforcing their party’s worst perceptions among the voters they need the most,” Smith said. “Trump simply super-charges it. He turns the volume up to 11.”
Politico:
Bernie’s big-crowd strategy
Bernie Sanders will speak in front of thousands of admiring progressives Wednesday evening. But since the event is in Wisconsin, none of them will actually be voting in the early states where Sanders hopes to put a scare into Hillary Clinton.
Rather than single-mindedly chasing votes across New Hampshire and the 99 counties of Iowa, Sanders has instead embarked on a swing through the progressive heartland, designed to generate big crowds and a national liberal groundswell behind his candidacy.
NY Times:
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin spent months persuading influential Republicans that he alone had the impressive conservative achievements and mainstream American appeal needed to not only win the party’s nomination but also to recapture the White House.
Breakout performances on the stump in Iowa early this year vaulted Mr. Walker, who is expected to officially enter the presidential race next month, into the lead in polls in the state with the nation’s first nominating contest, and cemented him among the top three Republican contenders in most national surveys.
But the expectations created by that early prominence, as well as a growing threat from conservative firebrands like Senator Ted Cruz, have taken a toll. To protect his lead in Iowa, a state with a heavily conservative Republican electorate, Mr. Walker has taken a harder line on a number of issues than his allies had anticipated.
Now a growing number of party leaders say Mr. Walker is raising questions about his authenticity and may be jeopardizing his prospects in states where voters’ sensibilities are more moderate.
Walker's always been hard, hard right. People are now realizing he was lying about that, not the other way.
Walker's fading. He may win IA but he will not be the nominee.