For the second time in as many days, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy watched Thursday as his best effort to prevent a government shutdown collapsed in humiliating fashion, the result of entrenched opposition from extremists within his own party. As Congress tries to get a stop-gap funding measure through both chambers to keep the federal government open past September 30, McCarthy can only afford five vote defectors from among his Republican colleagues and still pass a bill.

Faced with unwavering opposition from the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, a frustrated McCarthy admitted defeat by ending the legislative week early and sending his colleagues home later on Thursday. McCarthy now plans to try again next week, with the hope of cooler heads prevailing. Good luck with that!

That McCarthy’s best effort wasn’t actually very good hardly matters. Former President Donald Trump had already made clear to his loyalists that he expected them to reject any continuing resolution to fund the government. In today’s MAGA-fied Republican Party, Trump’s directive proved more than enough to derail the legislative process.

Republicans’ latest shutdown drama will surely play into the GOP’s tired trope that “government is broken.” Ambitious Republicans like presidential contender Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor, have spent years bemoaning the inefficiency of the federal government. Sure, government could be better. But the government isn’t broken. The reality is that Republicans are broken. After all, this type of shutdown drama seems to occur only when Republicans get control of one of the houses of Congress.

HOUSTON (AP) — The family of a Black high school student in Texas who was suspended over his dreadlocks filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Saturday against the state’s governor and attorney general, alleging they failed to enforce a new law outlawing discrimination based on hairstyles.

Darryl George, 17, a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, has been serving an in-school suspension since Aug. 31. Officials with the Houston-area school say his dreadlocks fall below his eyebrows and ear lobes and violate the district’s dress code.

George’s mother, Darresha George, and the family’s attorney deny the teenager’s hairstyle violates the dress code, saying his hair is neatly tied in twisted dreadlocks on top of his head.

Darryl George’s supporters allege the ongoing suspension by the Barbers Hill Independent School District violates the state’s CROWN Act, which took effect Sept. 1.

The lawsuit also alleges that Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, in their official duties, have failed to protect George’s constitutional rights against discrimination and against violations of his freedom of speech and expression. George “should be permitted to wear his hair in the manner in which he wears it ... because the so-called neutral grooming policy has no close association with learning or safety and when applied, disproportionately impacts Black males,” Allie Booker, the family’s attorney, wrote in the lawsuit.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Former firearms executive turned gun industry critic Ryan Busse is seeking the 2024 Democratic nomination to challenge first-term Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte in Montana.

Busse told The Associated Press about his intentions in advance of a planned public announcement Thursday. It’s his first run for public office.

If the 53-year-old from Kalispell makes it past next June’s primary, he faces an uphill battle in trying to unseat Gianforte, who is able to draw from immense personal wealth to bankroll his campaign and whose party has dominated Montana during recent election cycles. Former President Donald Trump won the state in 2020 with a 16-point advantage over Joe Biden.

Margaret Workman is watching Wisconsin Republicans threaten Justice Janet Protasiewicz with impeachment from several states away. But she can relate to Protasiewicz like very few can.

Workman sat on West Virginia’s supreme court in 2018—one of the three Democratic justices in the court’s majority—when Republican lawmakers decided to impeach that entire court. The GOP had flipped the legislature in 2014 for the first time in decades, and it had seized the governorship in 2017; only the supreme court stood in the way of one-party rule in the state.

“All of a sudden, we had this right-wing legislature wanting to impeach everybody,” she recalls, “and they wanted in my opinion to get rid of us so they could put their own.”

When Workman read this summer that Protasiewicz may be impeached, shortly after her victory flipped Wisconsin’s high court to the left, she was struck by the parallels with what she herself went through. “The Wisconsin situation is a complete power grab to undermine democracy,” she told Bolts. “It shocks me because it even goes further than the one that I experienced.”

She added, “It’s this whole thing that’s scary going on in this country, that if you can’t defeat people’s votes then you do it in some other way.”

Protasiewicz won Wisconsin’s supreme court election in April, giving liberals a 4-3 majority on the court, their first in 15 years. But Republicans began to float impeaching Protasiewicz before the results were even known. The party has already locked down control of the legislature, using aggressive gerrymanders to protect itself from election defeats. It has also deflated the powers of the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, undercutting his authority to appoint people to executive branch positions.

The plaintiffs’ arguments in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association, which the justices will hear on October 3, are simultaneously some of the silliest and some of the most dangerous ideas ever presented to the Supreme Court of the United States.

They claim that an entire federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), is unconstitutional. And they do so based on an interpretation of the Constitution that would invalidate Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and countless other federal programs. As the Justice Department notes in one of its briefs, the 2022 legislation funding the federal government contains more than 400 provisions that are invalid under these plaintiffs’ reading of the Constitution.

Perhaps recognizing that the justices are unlikely to declare the majority of all federal spending unconstitutional, the Community Financial plaintiffs then spend much of their brief suggesting arbitrary limits the Court could place on these plaintiffs’ already arbitrary interpretation of the Constitution. Without citing any legal authorities, for example, the Consumer Financial plaintiffs claim that Social Security might be excepted from the new legal regime so long as Congress is careful about how it pays for the Social Security Administration’s staff.

But even with these completely fabricated limits to their completely fabricated reading of the Constitution in place, the Consumer Financial plaintiffs — who are represented by former Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco — would still do unimaginable harm to the United States of America.

As a brief filed by the banking industry explains to the justices, if the Supreme Court agrees with Francisco’s claim that the CFPB is unconstitutional, the entire US mortgage market could seize up, as banks will have no idea what rules they need to comply with in order to issue loans. Moreover, because home building, home sales, and other industries that depend on the mortgage market make up about 17 percent of the US economy, a decision invalidating the CFPB could trigger economic devastation unheard of since the Great Depression.

Fifty Shades of Whey
@davenewworld_2

An Oklahoma judge was arrested in Texas for firing a gun at several cars during a road rage incident and slamming his SUV into the back of a woman's car multiple times. Brian Noel Lovett was released from jail after posting a $10,000 bond. This is what a thug looks like.

Democratic Representative Angie Craig is taking aim at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the looming Republican-prompted government shutdown with an excellently named bill.

Craig introduced the “My Constituents Cannot Afford Rebellious Tantrums, Handle Your Shutdown Act,” or the “MCCARTHY Shutdown Act,” Wednesday afternoon. The bill would temporarily block the paychecks of Congress members during a government shutdown. Currently, shutdowns do not affect pay for lawmakers, but they stop pay for all other federal employees.

“It’s ridiculous that we still get paid while folks like TSA workers are asked to work without a paycheck,” Craig said in a statement announcing the bill.

The bill is unlikely to pass (or even make it to a floor vote in) the Republican-controlled House, but it makes a major point as the shutdown looms ever closer.

Gabriel Malor
@gabrielmalor

Fed. judge (again) rules California's ban on high capacity magazines violates the Second Amendment.

Held: [High capacity magazines] are protected arms and there was no historical tradition of banning them (or an historical analogue) in the Nation's early decades.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.casd.533515/gov.uscourts.casd.533515.149.0_1.pdf