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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Lakeville Village Planning Study Presentation. On March 18, at an open meeting sponsored by the Planning & Zoning Commission, Colliers Engineering and Design of Madison presented ideas and got feedback on planning ideas for Lakeville village. The presentation was followed by a brainstorming session with residents. Colliers is a multi-disciplinary professional services firm with expertise in land-use planning, civil engineering, landscape architecture, traffic engineering, environmental services, and surveying. The engineering firm is being paid with federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to study and evaluate potential improvements for pedestrian access and safety, bicyclist access and safety, accessibility and utility of public greenspaces, traffic circulation, parking, and stormwater management. The documents from the meeting are available on the town website.
As Hospital Labor and Delivery Wards Close, A New CT Bill Would Permit Birth Centers. Governor Lamont has proposed legislation aimed at allowing birth centers to open and operate independently, as an alternative to hospitals for low-risk pregnancies and deliveries. Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz said that if passed, S.B. 986: An Act Protecting Maternal Health, will fill the gaps left by labor and delivery unit closures at hospitals statewide. Read the story from Connecticut Public Radio.
CT Gun Safety Bill Advances. The day after a mass shooting in Nashville, Connecticut lawmakers voted this week to advance gun legislation that would ban the open carry of firearms and the bulk purchase of handguns, as well as raise the minimum age for purchasing long guns to 21. House Bill 6667 was approved by the legislature’s Judiciary Committee 23-to-14, advancing it to the full legislature. The bill, proposed by Governor Lamont, still has to pass through both the House and Senate to become law. Read more in CT Mirror.
Senator Blumenthal and CT Health Advocates Call on Walgreens to Reverse Decision On Selling Abortion Pill. US Senator Richard Blumenthal, along with CT health advocates, including Planned Parenthood and Pro Choice CT, are asking Walgreens to reverse what these groups say is its decision to put profits and politics over people, by denying millions of people access to abortion pills in their stores. On March 2, Walgreens announced that it would not sell mifepristone in 21 states after threats of legal action from those states’ Republican attorneys general. Connecticut is not one of those states. Blumenthal said he plans to organize his colleagues in Washington to protest what he calls a “truly craven surrender to the hard right ideological opponents of reproductive rights.” He said, “Let’s be very clear. The FDA, 20 years ago, approved mifepristone, medication abortion, as safe and effective. The FDA says medication abortion through mifepristone is safe and effective. That is the federal law and it supplants any state restrictions under the Constitution. Nobody can deny that federal law is supreme.” Read more from the Hartford Courant.
Federal Judge Orders Reinstatement of Medicaid Benefits Lost under Trump Rule.
A federal judge has ordered the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to reinstate Medicaid coverage for people who lost it as a result of a rule instituted by the departing Trump administration. The ruling from Judge Michael P. Shea of the US District Court of Connecticut said that the secretary of CMS must follow the rules that were previously in place and which prohibited people from being removed from state Medicaid rolls during the COVID-19 public health emergency. The entire Connecticut congressional delegation had previously signed a letter urging CMS to tell states that they had to reinstate Medicaid coverage to people who had lost it under the Trump rule and that they receive retroactive coverage. Read the full story in The Register Citizen.
2024 Trump is Even Scarier Than 2020 Trump. On the Republican side, no potential candidate has registered in the national polls as anything close to a Trump-toppler, and that includes, so far, the much-touted governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. When the front-running ex-President campaigns on a platform of “retribution” and “termination,” it’s best to take him seriously. Read this article by Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker.
Social Security Needs Fixing. Fortunately, It Doesn’t Have to be Painful - By the Editorial Board of The Washington Post. Social Security, now almost a century old, epitomizes modern America’s commitment to a more humane democratic capitalism. Americans aged 65 and up were once the poorest age group in the country; they now have the lowest poverty rate, thanks largely to Social Security. Contrary to common misconception, Social Security does, indeed, contribute to federal debt and deficits. The good news is that there is still sufficient time before the actuarial day of reckoning to take the necessary measures to stabilize Social Security. The even better news is that there are plenty of plausible ways to do it. Read the full editorial in The Washington Post.
Ron DeSantis’s Plan to Strip First Amendment Rights From The Press. Florida’s governor wants to eliminate the First Amendment safeguards that prevent lawsuits seeking to strong-arm the press into silence. He’s been very clear about this goal: In February, DeSantis led a roundtable discussion brainstorming ideas to weaken the press’s First Amendment protections. Flanked by a panel dominated by defamation plaintiffs and lawyers, the governor attacked the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) for, in his words, empowering a media that will “find a way to smear you.” Read the full article in Vox.
How the North Carolina GOP Completely Changed Its Mind on Medicaid Expansion.
Ten years ago, Republicans in the North Carolina state House were lining up to vote against opening up Medicaid to anybody with income below or just above the poverty line. The federal government would have picked up most of the cost through the Affordable Care Act. Republicans argued that the existing Medicaid program was too expensive. They warned that the federal government might reduce its contributions in the future, and that offering more people Medicaid would give them less incentive to work. And they said that voting for expansion was tantamount to voting for “Obamacare,” which was politically toxic among Republicans, and even some non-Republicans as well. Things have changed: In March, most Republicans in the North Carolina House lined up to vote for Medicaid expansion, helping it pass the House by a total margin of 87-to-24. The vote came a week after the GOP-controlled Senate approved the same proposal by an even more-lopsided 44-to-2 margin. Find out how and why things changed in this article from HuffPost.
‘Back to One Meal a Day:' SNAP Benefits Drop as Food Prices Climb.Teresa Calderez is 63 and lives in Colorado Springs. Disabled and unable to work for years, she used to get a little over $20 a month in food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. That would run out very quickly. But as one of the millions of Americans who got extra federal assistance during the pandemic, her balance jumped to $280 a month. She said she was finally able to eat whenever she felt hungry. But that extra money is gone now as the government winds down its pandemic assistance programs. The boosted benefits expired this month and payments are dropping by about $90 a month on average for individuals, and $250 or more for some families, according to an analysis by a nonpartisan research institute, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Read the full story from NPR.
New Report Finds Untapped Opportunity for Federal Agencies to Promote Voting Access. On March 7, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14019 Promoting Access to Voting, a visionary executive order that has the potential to make registration and voting more accessible for millions of Americans, including many communities historically excluded from the political process. Two years later, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a nonpartisan group, joined a diverse coalition of advocates in issuing a report to highlight the initial progress that has been made, and to explain what actions still need to be taken to fulfill the executive order’s promise. Overall, the report finds that while a few agencies have made noteworthy progress, most have either made minimal progress or have left important opportunities on the table. The report estimates that if these agencies integrate voter registration programs for the people they serve, they could collectively generate an additional 3.5 million voter registration applications per year. Click here to read the CLC’s report.
Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on College Campuses.
Alarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box, Republican lawmakers in a number of states have been trying to enact new obstacles to voting by college students, who tilt heavily Democratic and whose turnout has surged in recent elections. Read the story in The New York Times.
The Conservative Legal Movement’s Latest Target. In March, a voting rights case in Texas headed to court in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Vote.org, the nation’s largest voter registration nonprofit, brought the lawsuit, but was joined by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). Why is the DOJ so invested in the outcome of a case challenging a technical element of Texas’ voter registration policy? It is because Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is arguing that a key voting rights protection is not privately enforceable, meaning that individuals and organizations like Vote.org do not have the ability to bring lawsuits under this provision. Without the validity of the legal concept known as a “private right of action” only the DOJ – not individuals or groups -- can file a lawsuit under a statute, making the given statute largely unenforceable. The vast majority of cases safeguarding the right to vote today come from individuals, political parties, and their affiliated groups or civil rights organizations, so an adverse ruling from the court would severely undercut the efficacy of numerous federal laws. Read the entire analysis from Democracy Docket.
The Supreme Court Conservatives’ Favorite New Weapon for Kneecapping the Administrative State. Over the last two years, the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices have wielded tremendous power over federal decision-making by striking down a wide range of consequential policies, including the Centers for Disease Control’s national eviction moratorium, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Covid-19 testing mandate, and a moribund Obama-era rule on power-plant emissions. If the justices likewise nullify President Biden’s executive order on student debt relief, they will use the same mechanism as in those prior examples: the major questions doctrine. That doctrine, which allows the justices to overturn a federal regulation if they think Congress didn’t “speak clearly” enough to authorize it, has seen a meteoric rise amid the court’s increasingly conservative tilt. And unlike most legal doctrines frequently cited by the court, this one does not have a long and distinguished history. Read the full story in The New Republic.
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