United States: Joe Biden hits the iron wall of the Supreme Court | International

Problems arise for the President of the United States: to the disaster of the departure from Afghanistan was added the fury of Hurricane Ida and the Delta variant of the coronavirus appeared at the end of August as a real threat to the economic recovery of United States . While it seemed like Joe Biden’s presidency couldn’t take more setbacks to darken its energetic debut, the conservative Supreme Court born under the Donald Trump administration has proven to be an insurmountable wall against Democratic policy.

The legislative hell in the White House, with a recalcitrant Senate that prevents it from advancing its agenda, had just been joined by the highest court, which seems destined to do the job Congress cannot do, unable to push through immigration reform, enact laws that do not restrict minority voting or maintain the moratorium on deportations in times of pandemic. The Supreme Court demolished the social pillars promoted by the Democratic president on the basis of emergency procedures known as the ghost files, a legal term that describes actions taken by the court without an oral presentation of its arguments.

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Under the Trump administration, the nation’s highest judicial authority made many sweeping decisions using this method, quickly, and sometimes late at night, sealing substantive issues that critics across the spectrum ideological considered lacking in transparency in the forms. When this happens, the outcome is often attributed to a Supreme Court friend of the White House.

However, with this tactic, the court – extremely conservative after Trump’s latest appointments – inflicted a serious setback on Biden’s executive in late August, reaching an agreement with a Texas judge who asked for the program to be reinstated. Controversial Stay in Mexico, It came out of the Trump ideology and for which tens of thousands of asylum seekers had to wait for the resolution of their request south of the Rio Grande.

Days later, that first Supreme Court assault on the White House Biden was joined by another ruling in which the court, by six votes to three, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, for its acronym)) did not have the power to declare the suspension of evictions, imposed in early August, which provided protection to some 3.5 million Americans in places with high incidence of coronavirus.

The latest blow to the Supreme Court came last week when magistrates, who remain in office for life, barred by five votes to four stopping the new abortion law approved in Texas, which virtually cuts fees women to paper to terminate pregnancy in this state. The rule, known as Texas Heartbeat Law [”Texas heartbeat”, en referencia a la supuesta pulsión del feto], entered into force on the first day of September and prevents women from having an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy.

In addition, the law promotes the possibility of bringing a civil complaint against any person who assists in the termination of a pregnancy and rewards this charge of 10,000 dollars. In the words of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her scathing dissent from the highest court ruling, Texas “has delegated the state’s citizens the task of chasing bounties, offering them cash prizes for suing civil medical procedures of their neighbors. “

Six against three

John Roberts, the chief justice, along with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and the judges Donald Trump appointed during his presidency – Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Barrett – form the conservative wing of the court. Opposite them are Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, who at 83 is the oldest member of the court. His longevity makes Breyer the subject of a strong campaign by Democrats to step down and Biden to nominate his successor, to prevent his nomination from passing through the hands of a possible Republican administration.

Since 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled that election financing limits should be removed, allowing private companies to donate unlimited funds to support or oppose different political candidates, the court has become more important to the Democratic voter. . How all the judgments of the highest judicial authority can affect the future of the 2022 election and the fate of Joe Biden’s party may then be linked to this unwritten rule by which voters who declare themselves dissatisfied with the decisions of officials in the Supreme Court are more motivated to go to the polls compared to those who are.

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