U.S. Supreme Court refuses to block the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's mandate that the legislature redraw legislative districts by mid-month. This is not a tremendous surprise, since the PA Court said the current map violates the state constitution, not the U.S. Constitution, but I bet state Republicans were counting on Justice Alito (who hears emergency appeals from the Third Circuit, covering Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands) to be a sympathetic ear. If they continue to stall, the state Supreme Court will redraw districts on its own.
Atlanta city council passes ordinance preventing city from requiring cash bail for folks arrested on nuisance offenses. The ordinance would leave in place a cash bail system for more serious crimes, which of course isn't enough for bail-bond corporations, who think people who pee on the wall in public should be unconstitutionally kept in jail before being convicted of a crime, simply because they can't pay their way out. Freedom isn't freedom if it has a price tag attached to it.
Dept. of Labor Inspector General's office says it'll investigate the process of creating its tip-pooling proposal. You know, the one that "forgot" to require that bosses actually distribute pooled tips to their employees? Turns out the Department had actually studied the effects of their proposed plan, finding that employees would lose craploads of money if they enacted the rule -- and promptly buried the study. Inspectors General will continue to be a thorn in Mr. Trump's side -- even if he doesn't replace them as they leave, which has been his default setting so far. I presume the next Republican President will figure out how to get rid of Inspectors General entirely.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen, on her way out of office, issues an unexpectedly tough consent order on Wells Fargo, preventing it from getting larger via mergers or other significantly large transactions until it replaces a quarter of its governing board and implements other reforms. That's the first time the Fed has ever done this, and who better to feel its wrath than Wells Fargo, which opened checking accounts its customers didn't want so it could collect unearned fees, and then sold them car insurance they didn't want so it could collect more unearned fees and repossess cars. Of course I wish this happened a lot more often -- banksters like Wells Fargo did ruin our economy nine short years ago, after all -- and of course I also worry that President Trump's new Fed Chair won't follow through.
Finally, don't be tempted to think that just because Republicans are stuck with an actual Nazi in Illinois's 3rd district that he can't win. Democrats do routinely win this district -- not just in the House, but in the Presidential elections, where Hillary Clinton's 15-point margin over Donald Trump was actually the Democrats' worst showing since 1996 -- but the district is actually fairly right-of-center socially, and the candidate with more enthusiastic voters always has an edge. The good news? Bernie Sanders actually won this district by eight points in the 2016 Presidential primary. The bad news? I doubt incumbent Dan Lipinski or his Democratic challenger Marie Newman can project that Sanders-like appeal.
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