June 30—Reuters sums up how the Supreme Court has "trained its legal firepower this term on curbing federal regulatory authority, cementing its critical role in a longstanding effort by business interests and others to defang the 'administrative state.'" At stake is everything from the EPA's authority to regulate pollution, the Securities and Exchange Commission's pursuit of crooked stock trading, worker protections or safe food and drugs.

June 30—After his centrist party suffered a resounding defeat against France's nationalist party, National Union, in recent elections for the European Union parliament, French president Emmanuel Macron dissolved France's own parliament and called for new elections, hoping to clarify the nation's political future. A victory of the National Union, whose popularity is largely driven by the same kind of anti-immigration sentiment that motivates much of Donald Trump's base in the United States, would bring a far-right government to France for the first time since World War II's Nazi-controlled Vichy regime. AP News summarizes the situation in this article.

June 28—Showing their true colors, House Republicans have proposed legislation blocking the Department of Labor from enforcing recently enacted provisions limiting miners exposure to silica dust, the cause of black lung disease. Union Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts rightly labeled the legislators' action "morally reprehensible."

June 28—The Supreme Court has overturned a ruling of the San-Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which had declared unconstitutional a Grants Pass, Oregon, law making it illegal to camp on public property. The TSD take: of course a municpality can regulate whether public spaces can be used for overnight camping or not. The 9th Circuit's reasoning, that citing individuals for violating such ordinances is "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the U.S. Constitution's 8th Amendment, was an egregious example of "legislating from the bench." Elected legislators should make laws, not serving-for-life unelected judges, whose role is merely to adjudicate whether the laws made by legislators have or have not been broken. Homelessness is a serious problem, but turning public parks into unsanitary and dangerous encampments is not the solution.

June 27—In another blow to the authority of the federal government to regulate business activity for the common good, the Supreme Court has ruled that defendants in securities fraud civil cases are entitled to jury trials, rather than in-house proceedings by SEC administrative judges.

June 27—The Supreme Court has granted a suit from three Republican-controlled states and steel and fossil fuel industry groups to halt enforcement of EPA's "Good Neighbor" plan, a program designed to protect neighboring states from downwind pollution, while a lower court rules on the plan's merits. This ruling is one in many instances of the Trump court restricting the federal government's authority to regulate business activity for the common good.

June 20—Online retailing giant Amazon, which used 85,916 metric tons of single-use plastic in 2022, has announced that it will replace plastic air pillows in its packaging with paper filler in North America this year. The move will remove 15 billion non-biodegradable air pillows worth of plastic from the consumption cycle annually and, according to Amazon, the paper filler performs better. TSD's take: (1) What took you so long?; (2) What about your operations in rest of the world?; (3) Now, about those plastic envelopes . . .

June 18—The Senate on Tuesday joined the House of Representatives in passing legislation to jump start the nuclear power industry in the United States with more streamlined permitting procedures and incentives for developing advanced technologies. Experts argue that nuclear power must be a major component in any effort to decarbonize the U.S. and world economies and prevent further global warming. President Biden is expected to sign the bill into law.

June 18—If you're one of those who feels that children spend too much time staring at cell phones, the Los Angeles School Board agrees. The Board voted on Tuesday to ban the use of cells phones and to restrict access to social media platforms in Los Angeles schools.

June 17—Maryland governor Wes Moore has pardoned over 175,000 convictions for marijuana possession. The pardons will remove the stigma of a criminal record from thousands who harmed no one, but only sought a few hours of chemically induced escape from the rigors of life. TSD, which supports an end to the criminalization of drug possession, applauds this instance of sanity.

June 13—The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's leading trade association, is suing in federal court to prevent the application of the EPA's recently enacted tailpipe emission rules, designed to encourage the shift away from fossil-fuel burning cars to electric vehicles. Republican attorneys general from 25 states, committed to more fossil fuel burning and more global warming, joined in the suit. 

June 12—As of next month the European Union will require all new cars to include a system providing audio and visual warnings when drivers exceed posted speed limits. With speed a significant factor in a high proportion of the tens of thousands of deaths occurring each year on American roads (40,990 deaths in 2023 and millions more injured), a new survey conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety finds that 60% of U.S. drivers would support the introduction of such a system in the U.S. (the other 40%, presumably, have no interest in following the law nor in ensuring the safety of themselves or their fellow motorists). TSD advocates for future systems that will track posted speed limits electronically and prevent vehicles from exceeding them.

June 4—Claudia Sheinbaum, Mayor of Mexico City since 2018, has been promoted in a landslide election victory to the Mexican presidency. Sheinbaum is a longtime associate of the current president, Manuel Lopez Obrador, and a member of the Left political party he founded, Moreno.

June 4—AP News reports that in 2023 CEO compensation increased 12.6% to an average of $16.3 million, while the wage and benefit package of the average private-sector worker rose only 4.1%, just keeping up with inflation.

June 1—In this AP article, Jason Lange and James Oliphant write that Joe Biden is "hemorrhaging support among voters without college degrees—a large group that includes Black people, Hispanic women, young voters and suburban women—producing a far tighter rematch against his Republican predecessor Donald Trump than seen in 2020." TSD's take: the Democratic Party must shift its emphasis from grievance groups and avant garde culture war issues dear to the graduate seminar set and address the "kitchen table" needs of the average worker: jobs at living wages, safe communities and affordable health, child and elder care.