By Russell Clark of the Capital Flows and Asset Markets substack

Australia as a colony, and then after independence, operated as part of the British armed forces, sending substantial number of troops to World War I and II to fight in Europe. However during World War II, the collapse of Singapore saw Japanese forces attack the mainland Australia. Only the US was able to offer military support, and from this moment on, Australia military was reconfigured to ally with the US rather than British Armed Forces. The military bond between the US and Australia is so close, that Australia reintroduced conscription during the Vietnam war. Even today songs like “Khe Sanh” and “I was only 19” that describe the trials and tribulations of Australian soldiers in Vietnam are well known.

After the Vietnam war, for years Australian defense policy was centered on a “large country to the north” aka Indonesia. Military fears were driven by the invasion and annexation of West Papua by Indonesia in 1969 that saw a number of Australian journalists perish. Papua New Guinea was ruled by Australia until 1975, meaning that Australia was already protecting a land border against Indonesia. As an Australian military map shows, only Indonesia is close enough to possibly invade the populated East Coast. A military policy focused on stopping a potential Indonesian threat was both logical and sensible.

The isolation of Australia with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of democracy in Indonesia has led Australia to have defense policy of “strategic warning time”, which in essence meant that Australia had 10 years to respond to any real military threat. The most recent review argues that this period is over, and Australia needs to commit to a much more rigorous defense strategy. In particular it is looking to work much more closely with other nations in the Indo-Pacific region to counteract the influence of China. The landmark agreement of AUKUS where Australia will acquire nuclear submarines from the UK. The problem is that Australia now seems to be investing heavily to protect itself from its largest trade partner (memorable parodied here).

Given the distances involved, and China’s dependence on Australian raw materials, the likelihood of China invading Australia seems very low. Australia already spends around 2% of GDP on military, which is enough to make it the dominant power in Oceania.

Militarily Australia looks like its spends more than enough to resist any possible invasion, and to project power near its borders. So what exactly is the aim of Australia’s more robust defence posture, and the AUKUS treaty. The most controversial feature of the AUKUS treaty was Australia cancelling the contract to buy Collins class submarines from France, and buying nuclear powered submarines from the UK. There is much debate over whether these submarines are actually better, for Australia, but it is very clear that the nuclear submarines can travel much further than conventional submarines.

The conclusion I make from all of this is that Australia has decided to participate in the potential defense of Taiwan. The reunification of Taiwan to the mainland has been government policy since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. If that is the unstated aim of this policy, then the question has to be whether this is correct strategy. If the aim is to bolster Taiwanese defences, then it would make more sense to bolster spending in areas near a potential conflict. Why not have Australia send more military equipment to Taiwan? Or why not give Japan nuclear submarines? The AUKUS plan has Australia building 8 submarines coming into service in 2030s and 2040s. Given the current mismatch between Chinese and Taiwanese navies, what is the point?

Plainly Australia’s military plans are sending a political signal, but at the cost of $10bn a year for 30 years. Other problems included the lack of nuclear industry in Australia means developing the know how to deal with nuclear material from scratch, as well as making mainland Australia a legitimate target if China did invade Taiwan. While the Vietnam war is still remembered in song, the failures of British military strategy in World War I are remembered even more keenly in Australia (ANZAC day is a more important that either Australia Day or Federation day – and commemorates the loss of Australian and New Zealand soldiers lives in a badly planned military campaign in Turkey). Some historians saw the debacle in Turkey in World War I was the true beginning of Australian independence from Britain. Confused strategy regarding Taiwan could have the same effect. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has already spoken out against this new military strategy, and he makes a valid point.

As the parody video linked above makes clear, Australian military strategy would benefit from clearer objectives, and perhaps refraining from throwing money at projects until it can clearly state those objectives.

Society needs to have a national discussion regarding the lengths social media influencers go to produce outrageous and dangerous content in pursuit of more views and sponsorship deals. 

The story of Olympic snowboarder turned YouTube influencer Trevor Jacob is a prime example of the ridiculousness on social media. He admitted to federal prosecutors that he deliberately crashed his small plane into a mountain in Southern California to boost views for a sponsorship deal.

Jacob pleaded guilty to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct an investigation, the US Attorney’s office for Central California wrote in a press release. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars. 

According to his plea agreement, Jacob is an experienced pilot and skydiver who had secured a sponsorship from a company that sold various products, including a wallet. Pursuant to the sponsorship deal, Jacob agreed to promote the company’s wallet in a YouTube video that he would post. – federal prosecutors

Jacob admitted in his plea agreement that he intended to make money through the video. 

Recall the video was posted on YouTube in late 2021 titled “I Crashed My Airplane,” which shows Jacob parachuting out of the plane as the engine appeared to have stalled. 

We noticed the video about a week after it went live and pointed out a large number of folks who believed the social media influencer staged the air emergency. 

As of Friday afternoon, the video has more than 3 million views. The ratio on the video of likes versus dislikes is horrendous: 33k likes/207k dislikes. 

Months after Jacob posted the video, the Federal Aviation Administration sent him a letter on April 11, 2022, indicating he violated the agency’s regulations and operated his small plane in a “careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.” His pilot license was revoked shortly after. 

Now he faces jail, all because he wanted more views. 

Authored by Hans Mahncke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reinstated a grant that had been terminated by President Donald Trump in April 2020. However, a document first obtained by the House Oversight Committee reveals that the NIH’s conditions for reinstatement have not been met.

The grant, titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” was originally awarded in 2014 by Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Under the terms of the grant, EcoHealth Alliance, a government-funded nonprofit that purportedly engages in research to prevent pandemics, was awarded $3.8 million over five years to assess the spillover potential of bat viruses “using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments in cell culture and humanized mice.” Put in simple terms, NIAID was paying EcoHealth to genetically engineer and manipulate bat viruses in labs.

In May 2016, the grant was suspended after Erik Stemmy, a NIAID program officer, noticed that federal government funds may have been used for prohibited gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. At the time, the Obama administration had put in place a moratorium on gain-of-function experiments. However, for reasons that remain unclear, the suspension was lifted in July 2016. At the time, EcoHealth’s president, Peter Daszak, thanked NIAID in an email for lifting the gain-of-function funding pause.

As part of the conditions of the grant, EcoHealth had to file regular activity reports. However, starting in 2018, EcoHealth stopped submitting these reports. EcoHealth would later blame technical difficulties for their failure to submit. The missing reports comprised the critical 2018–2019 timeframe right before the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan.

Despite EcoHealth’s delinquency in filing the status reports, NIAID did not stop funding the project. It was only after a Freedom of Information Act request for the reports was filed in 2021 that EcoHealth was prompted by NIAID to provide the reports. The reports, which were finally submitted by EcoHealth at least two years too late, in 2021, revealed that the NIAID grant had been used by EcoHealth and the WIV in part to create laboratory-engineered bat viruses. Had this fact been reported in a timely manner, the experiments would likely have been shut down by NIAID.

When the connections between the WIV and NIAID’s grant became known in April 2020, Trump terminated the grant. Trump’s decision caused an outcry among the media and his critics. However, the NIH, which is NIAID’s parent body, appears to have been well aware that Trump’s actions were merited.

On July 8, 2020, Michael Lauer, the NIH’s deputy director for extramural research who was in charge of “ensuring scientific integrity, public accountability, and effective stewardship of the NIH extramural research portfolio,” wrote a letter to EcoHealth, listing seven demands that needed to be fulfilled as a condition for reinstatement of the grant.

NIH Issued 7 Demands

First, EcoHealth needed to provide a sample of the COVID-19 virus which it used to determine the virus’ genetic sequence. The ostensible purpose of this demand was to compare this original sample with other samples in order to assess when it first emerged.

Second, EcoHealth was required to “explain the apparent disappearance of Huang Yanling, a scientist / technician who worked in the WIV lab but whose lab web presence has been deleted.” Huang Yanling has long been thought to be patient zero. Her profile was scrubbed from the WIV’s website shortly after the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019 and she has not been seen since.

Third, EcoHealth was asked to share the “WIV’s responses to the 2018 U.S. Department of State cables regarding safety concerns.” These cables had warned of a “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate” the WIV’s high-level containment laboratories. They also warned that the National Health and Family Planning Commission, a state agency of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), had denied a request to conduct coronavirus experiments at biosafety level 4. The actual experiments were carried out in low biosafety level 2 facilities.

Fourth, EcoHealth was required to “disclose and explain out-of-ordinary restrictions on laboratory facilities, as suggested, for example, by diminished cell-phone traffic in October 2019, and the evidence that there may have been roadblocks surrounding the facility from October 14-19, 2019.”

Read more here…

A 54-year-old federal prohibition on the sale of guns to Americans between 18 and 20 years old has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in Richmond, Virginia. The Justice Department is expected to appeal and ask for the ruling to be put on hold as the case is further adjudicated. 

The case has three plaintiffs, all between 18 and 20 years old. One, John “Corey” Fraser, was refused when he attempted to buy a Glock 19x from a Federal Firearm Licensed Dealer (FFL). The other two want to buy a handgun but haven’t tried, in light of Fraser’s experience.

The challenged provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968 didn’t prohibit possession by 18- to 20-year-olds, it only made it illegal for FFL’s to sell handguns to them. Rifles and shotguns have no such federal restriction. 

The ruling is the latest in a string of defeats for gun-control measures. The trend is driven by the application of a new constitutionality test prescribed in the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision.

This week’s ruling is particularly significant because it’s one of the first that uses Bruen to kill a federal law, as opposed to a state one. In February, a federal court applying the Bruen test shot down a 30-year-old law banning gun ownership by people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders

Using the Bruen test, a gun-control law can only be upheld if the government demonstrates that it’s “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Further, when examining the record, judges are compelled to give the most weight to historical sources from the era of the Second Amendment’s 1791 ratification. 

In Thursday’s ruling, Judge Robert E. Payne of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia concluded the government’s defense of the age-21 law failed the Bruen test: 

“The government has not presented any evidence of age-based restrictions on the purchase or sale of firearms from the colonial era, Founding or Early Republic,” wrote Payne in a 71-page decision. 

While the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision found that the right to ‘keep arms’ isn’t exclusively tied to militia service, Payne scrutinized the history of militia laws — and particularly, age stipulations in those laws — as part of his review of the historical tradition of gun regulation relative to the challenged law.

Those laws blew holes in the government’s case. “At the time surrounding ratification of the Second Amendment, 16 or 18 was the age of majority for militia service throughout the nation,” wrote Payne, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush.  

Elsewhere, he noted that, “if the Court were to exclude 18-to-20-year-olds from the Second Amendment’s protection, it would impose limitations on the Second Amendment that do not exist with other constitutional guarantees.” 

Gun control advocates railed against the decision. “Research shows us that 18- to 20-year-olds commit gun homicides at triple the rate of adults 21 years and older,” said Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at Everytown Law. She added that the age-21 handgun-purchase law “is not just an essential tool for preventing gun violence, it is also entirely constitutional.” 

This decision is very important, but it doesn’t yet settle the issue nationally, as judges have been ruling in both directions where age restrictions are concerned:

• In December, a federal judge in the Western District of Louisiana upheld the same federal restriction that Payne found constitutional this week.
• Florida’s age-21 law for any gun purchase was upheld in March by an Eleventh Circuit panel.
• A federal judge ruled in March against a Minnesota law establishing a minimum age of 21 to qualify for a handgun-carry permit.
• Last year, the Ninth Circuit ruled against California’s age-21 rule for buying centerfire semiautomatic rifles.

The patchwork of decisions could make the issue ripe for Supreme Court consideration. In the meantime, amid all that judicial inconsistency, state legislatures have been actively installing or considering new age-21 restrictions. For example: 

• In April, Colorado set age 21 as the minimum for buying any firearm. 
• Earlier this month, the Oregon House passed a bill that would raise the minimum age for buying semiautomatic weapons to 21.
• This week, a Texas legislative committee advanced a bill setting 21 as the minimum for buying semiautomatic rifles.  

Authored by Joe Gomez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The COVID-19 pandemic-era immigration policy Title 42 came to an end just before midnight on May 11 and thousands of illegal immigrants are anticipated to surge to the U.S. border when that happens, according to migrants and Mexican charity workers who spoke with The Epoch Times.

“We all want to reach the United States as quickly as we can,” Anna Maria Estrada told The Epoch Times in Mexico City. Estrada traveled from Guatemala into Mexico illegally with a group of dozens of other migrants.

They’ve been given visas by the Mexican government called Forma Migratoria Multiple, which translates as Multiple Immigration Forms, so they can travel freely through the country.

Estrada said that she and others are trying to get to the United States while there is still “time” to possibly take advantage of the chaos in the change of immigration regulations.

This idea has been spread widely by transnational criminal organizations to induce migrants to pay to smuggle them into the United States.

“DHS expects that encounters at the Southwest Border will increase as smugglers spread disinformation, which will place a strain on our immigration system, our communities, and our dedicated workforce,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement in early May.

Estrada says her group and others are willing to risk everything to get to the United States even if it means taking the dangerous train called “la bestia,” which translates as “the beast” or the “train of death.” The train travels from Guatemala to the outskirts of Mexico City and then up to various parts of the U.S.–Mexico border. Hundreds die every day by falling off the train onto the rails below, with the hope of making it to the border.

“We are going to the train to see if we can make it if there is still time,” Estrada said.

Mexico City has provided shelter and aid to migrants traveling through, as have local churches like the Basilica of Guadalupe.

“Mainly the migrants are devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe so they will come here to pray for them and their families,” Arturo Duran, who works at the church, told The Epoch Times. “They have always gathered here as their safe place.”

Duran said the migrants are mostly peaceful as they head to the border, wanting only to seek a better life, but some have other intentions.

“Some brothers are very angry about what happened in the Juarez prison [a migration center that burned to the ground, killing at least 40 people in March] and are seeking revenge.”

Estrada’s group is part of thousands of other migrants trying to cross into the United States illegally.

10,000 illegal immigrants have been captured daily on Monday and Tuesday of this week, according to Reuters.

End of Title 42

Title 42 allowed border authorities to quickly expel certain immigrants who illegally crossed into the United States seeking asylum, but it did not prevent them from doing so again.

Now that it has ended, a stricter rule entitled Title 8 will be enforced, which would ban illegal immigrants who are captured crossing the border for up to five years.

The new rule would encourage illegal immigrants who are traveling to the United States from Central America to first seek asylum in other countries.

“We’ve gotten overwhelming cooperation from Mexico. We also are in the process of setting up offices in Colombia and other places where someone seeking asylum can go first,” President Joe Biden said at a White House press conference on May 9. “But it remains to be seen. It’s going to be chaotic for a while.”

Read more here…

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The United States Department of Defense (DOD) is seeking nearly $30 billion in its $680 billion Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) budget request for missile defeat and defense programs across all branches of the military.

Right now, the DOD is in a race to develop its own hypersonic missiles and engineer effective defenses against the high-velocity, maneuverable missiles being developed by Russia and, particularly, by the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

During questioning by Senate Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chair Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) in a May 9 budget hearing, four flag officers said some existing systems have “capabilities” against hypersonic weapons but did not know for sure until they are tested against the evolving missile systems.

King was not happy. “It seems to me that we are spending a lot more money to developing hypersonic missiles than we are developing capabilities to defend against them,” he said.

King asked Missile Defense Agency Director Vice Adm. Jon A. Hill if an aircraft carrier could be defended against a hypersonic missile attack.

“We have the capability to stop it in two places, in the boost-glide phase” and when the missile re-enters the atmosphere, Hill said, noting the Navy’s SM-6 missiles are “cruise missile killers” designed to track and kill fast-moving, maneuverable targets that can fly high and skim the surface. “It would be defeated by a destroyer defending a carrier.”

Noting Ukrainians claim they shot down a Russian hypersonic weapon last week with a Patriot anti-air missile provided by the U.S., Hill said the Patriot systems, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles (THAAD), and Aegis ballistic defense system all have “capability” demonstrated in tests against hypersonics.

“THAAD operates on the edge of the atmosphere,” he said. “We haven’t tested it against hypersonic, but I’m willing to bet there are capacities that we can leverage there.”

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John F. Plumb said the budget request “makes substantial investments in regional ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missile defense capabilities,” including $1.2 billion for PAC-3 Patriot missile “interceptors,” $1 billion for Aegis and THAAD interceptors, and $259 million for regional hypersonic and ballistic missile defense space sensors and the development of a G

21st Century Missiles vs. 1980s Technology

King said these ant-missile systems are based on technologies from the 1980-90s and asked why DOD is not experimenting with using direct energy weapons to knock down missiles.

At $4 to $10 million each, using missiles in a “bullet on bullet approach is an expensive proposition” in defending against other missiles.

Developing a “directed energy” weapon for missile defense has been “a target for a period of time,” Hill said with prototypes being tested in the fleet. “It is scaling its way there. That work is being done today.”

Read more here…

A disruptive El Nino pattern might impact rice production in Thailand, the world’s second-biggest exporter of the grain that feeds half the world’s population. 

Bangkok Post reported farmers are being asked by the Office of the National Water Resources “to grow only one rice crop this coming season as rainfall will be below average because of the El Nino weather pattern.” 

Surasee Kittimonthon, the ONWR secretary-general, said the rainy season, which usually begins in late May, will be delayed with periods of intermittent rain in June. 

Kittimonthon said ONWR had devised a plan for increased water preservation within the country’s reservoir system. 

“We can provide water to farmers for the first rice crop, starting in the rainy season.

“But for the second or third crops, we would like farmers’ cooperation to grow other plants that need less water to help limit the water shortage,” he said.

Rice production requires substantial amounts of water and relies heavily on irrigation systems and sufficient rainfall. It’s an early warning sign of how El Nino is set to wreak havoc on the global food system this year. 

We told readers last month the weather-altering phenomenon had a high probability of forming. We said, “If El Niño does form, it could result in heavy rainfall and heatwaves in specific regions across the globe, potentially causing disruptions in the agricultural industry.” 

And days ago, we informed readers about record-breaking heatwaves in Asia and Europe in a note titled “Is El Nino Supercharging Heatwave Across Asia?” 

Separately, earlier this month, Fitch Solutions published a report that forecasts this year’s global rice production will log its biggest shortfall in two decades. 

“At the global level, the most evident impact of the global rice deficit has been, and still is, decade-high rice prices,” Fitch Solutions’ commodities analyst Charles Hart told CNBC. 

Sliding rice production causes grain prices to increase for 3.5 billion people, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region — this region of the world accounts for 90% of the world’s rice consumption. 

“Given that rice is the staple food commodity across multiple markets in Asia, prices are a major determinant of food price inflation and food security, particularly for the poorest households,” Hart said.

He said this year’s global shortfall would be around 8.7 million tons, the largest global rice deficit since 2003/2004 of 18.6 million. 

As a result of tightening global supplies, rough rice futures trading on the CBoT have soared above $18 per cwt, the highest level since September 2008. Cwt is a unit of measurement for certain commodities such as rice.

Recall in the late summer of 2022. We told readers:

• The Stage Is Being Set For A Massive Global Rice Shortage
• “Situation Is Really Precarious”: World’s Largest Rice Exporter Faces Output Decline Amid Heatwave

… and just recently. 

• Thai Rice Prices Jump As Global Food Crisis Reignites

El Nino appears set to decrease precipitation levels, potentially causing disruptions in the global food industry. Persistently high food inflation could increase the likelihood of societal unrest in developing economies. 

Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

After weeks of buildup, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled its strictest-ever rules for power produced using natural gas, coal, and oil that could spur the use of carbon capture technologies.

The standards released on May 11 would impact new and old power infrastructure, including new natural gas turbines and the country’s existing coal fleet. Though the United States still has hundreds of coal plants, the number of such installations has fallen sharply during the past decade.

“We will see some coal retirements,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters on May 10.

He added that individual states and companies would have significant discretion in terms of implementation.

U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry in 2021 said America simply “won’t have coal” on its grid by 2030.

The EPA thinks its proposals will induce American power plants to boost their use of certain technologies, including the co-firing of fossil fuels with what it calls low-greenhouse gas (GHG) hydrogen and, in particular, the capture, sequestration, and storage of carbon.

More Details from EPA

Regan told reporters that the standards are about “clean air to breathe,” claiming they would yield “substantial health benefits” as well as “regulatory certainty” for the energy sector.

The agency projects that the standards will help America avoid thousands of premature deaths, tens of thousands of lost workdays, and over 300,000 asthma attacks just in the year 2030.

Regan and others with the EPA repeatedly stressed that they do not believe their vision runs afoul of West Virginia v. EPA.

That landmark Supreme Court decision, decided 6 to 3, concerned a carbon emissions plan for existing power plants put forth by the EPA under former President Barack Obama.

The court found that Congress hadn’t given the agency the authority to issue such emissions caps, referencing the plan’s “generation shifting approach” from coal to natural gas and other sources.

“The proposed limits and guidelines follow EPA’s traditional approach under the Clean Air Act to control pollution from stationary sources by relying on control technologies that are cost-effective and can be applied directly to power plants to reduce CO2,” an EPA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in a May 10 email.

In its 681-page notice, the agency argued that co-firing hydrogen as a substitute for natural gas can qualify as a “system of emission reduction” under the Clean Air Act. It specified that hydrogen would have to be low-GHG, “the availability of which is expected to increase significantly and the cost of which is expected to decline significantly in the near future.”

“The EPA recognizes that even though the combustion of hydrogen is zero-GHG emitting, its production entails a range of GHG emissions, from low to high, depending on the method,” the proposal reads.

The agency claims that technologies to capture 90 percent of carbon dioxide have become “adequately demonstrated” and “cost reasonable” while realizing “substantial emissions reductions.”

2035 Target for Carbon-Free Electricity Still Viable: Officials

The EPA said their proposal offers “ample lead time and substantial compliance flexibilities.” That might appear to conflict with President Joe Biden’s aim of achieving “a carbon pollution-free electricity sector by 2035,” as expressed in a 2021 executive order.

EPA officials and staff told reporters on May 10 that the ambition was still within reach.

Read more here…

Authored by Rob Natelson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Supreme Court will not be announcing its decisions in most of this year’s big cases until June or early July. But the court recently agreed to consider a case that could trim the power of the “deep state.”

The “deep state” is a web of federal administrative agencies, career politicians, lobbyists, and compliant mass media. It acts as a shadow government that largely sets the nation’s political agenda.

The deep state has been around for decades, but is more powerful than ever because the federal government is larger and more intrusive than ever. Most Americans witnessed deep state power for the first time during the Trump administration, when it publicly resisted the authority of an elected president.

One prop of the deep state’s power is the 1984 Supreme Court’s ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (pdf). That ruling is called the “Chevron doctrine.” On May 1, the justices granted certiorari in (that is, agreed to review) a new case in which they may overrule the Chevron case and its “Chevron doctrine.”

The ‘Deep’ Background

The Constitution created a democratic federal republic. It instituted an elected Congress to make laws, an elected president to enforce laws, and an appointed judiciary to resolve disputes under those laws.

In addition to empowering the new government, the Constitution also limited it. The Constitution included some specific exceptions to federal authority, such as the first eight amendments in the Bill of Rights. It also reserved most governmental functions to the states, a reservation encapsulated in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

People who wield power are seldom happy with limits on their power. Federal officials and those who cater to them always pushed back against the Constitution’s limits. Those limits began to fall in earnest during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Instead of resisting the assault, liberal majorities on the Supreme Court “reinterpreted” the Constitution to accommodate the assaulters. I described the court’s decisions during that era in my Epoch Times series, “How the Supreme Court Re-Wrote the Constitution.”

This process of constitutional distortion slowed after 1944, but it didn’t end. It continued for the entire six decades that liberal justices comprised a majority—that is, until late in the 20th century.

In Epoch Times essays published in 2021 and 2022, I described the major themes of the liberal jurisprudence that prevailed throughout most of the 20th century. That jurisprudence is now embedded in the court’s case precedent.

Liberal justices enormously increased the authority of Congress. For example, they transformed Congress’s power to regulate Commerce (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) into authority to oversee the entire national economy. They changed Congress’s power to tax (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1) into a license to spend for almost any purpose. These and other changes rendered the federal government supreme in American life.

Not only did liberal justices permit Congress to exercise almost unlimited power, they also permitted Congress to delegate it to unelected administrative agencies. Congress may (and frequently does) pass a statute creating an agency and telling it to regulate some broad swathe of activities, and—voilá!—Americans are saddled with a new set of bureaucratic masters.

It’s true that the court has stated restrictions on Congress’s ability to delegate, but those statements are mostly empty words. The justices readily approve vague and undefined delegations such as “this agency may regulate the airwaves in the public interest.”

Liberal Supreme Court majorities also stacked the rules heavily against any citizen challenging federal power. Outside of a few areas (such as freedom of speech) a citizen claiming a federal law is unconstitutional must prove that there’s no possible constitutional reason for the law. (This was why Obamacare’s insurance mandate was upheld on the silly (pdf) theory that it was a “tax.”)

How Chevron Fits In

Just as the court imposed an almost impossible burden of proof on citizens challenging a law’s constitutionality, the Chevron doctrine imposes a similar burden on citizens challenging the power of federal agencies. The doctrine says that an agency almost always has the final word on whether federal law gives it the powers it claims. Courts must defer to these self-interested agency decisions unless they are “unreasonable.” In constitutional law, it’s exceedingly difficult to prove that a government decision is “unreasonable.”

The Un-Conservative Supreme Court

As I have explained in several Epoch Times essays, contrary to the mainstream media narrative, the current Supreme Court doesn’t have a 6–3 conservative majority. Rather, the bench is highly fragmented: It contains three liberal activists, one nearly pure originalist, one justice who usually defers to government decisions (liberal or conservative), and four others in between.

As a result, the current court has left almost all the liberal case precedents in place. (The principal exception, Roe v. Wade, was an unusually weak decision but even so it was overruled by only a bare 5–4 majority.) When the media characterize a ruling as “conservative,” it’s often because the court has applied a liberal precedent that liberals no longer find convenient.

Thus, the current composition of the court suggests that, just as it has preserved other liberal precedents, it may well preserve Chevron.

Criticisms of the Chevron Doctrine

On the other hand, there’s some evidence the justices may overrule Chevron. Several justices have been critical of the Chevron doctrine. They and other commentators point out that:

• The doctrine makes an agency a judge in its own cause, thereby violating the Constitution’s guarantee of due process of law;

• it encourages agencies to expand their power;

• administrative agencies are part of the executive branch, so allowing them to make legislative or judicial decisions violates separation of powers; and

• the Chevron decision was not well considered, and over time the Supreme Court has had to carve out exceptions.

Another reason for believing that Chevron’s days are numbered is that the court didn’t refer to it when adjudicating recent cases on the limits of agency authority.

The Present Case

The case the court agreed to hear is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (pdf). Loper Bright Enterprises is the plaintiff. It operates fishing vessels in the Atlantic Ocean.

The defendant, Gina Raimondo, is the Secretary of Commerce. Part of her department is the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which Congress created to regulate fishermen.

Federal law allows NMFS to require fishing boats to carry official observers to ensure compliance with federal regulations. That much is undisputed. But the NMFS also claims federal law allows it to force fishermen to bear the cost of paying the observers. Loper Bright disputes that.

The appeals court held that under the Chevron doctrine, the fishermen lose because the agency’s interpretation isn’t completely “out-to-lunch.” But if the Supreme Court overrules Chevron, the fishermen will have a chance to persuade a judge that the NMFS exceeded its power.

The case probably will be argued in the fall and decided before June 30, 2024.

California is now facing a $32 billion budget deficit, as the state faces a much deeper hole than previously projected, Bloomberg reports.

“We are walking into a budget where we need to maintain our prudence,” said Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday, warning that a recession could worsen the financial situation in the years to come.

“That is an uncertainty that we must take very soberly and seriously as it relates to macro economic headwinds,” he added.

The expected shortfall is $9.5 billion worse than a $22.5 billion January estimate, according to figures released today, and will be the biggest deficit since 2010…

Newsom proposed a $224.1 billion general-fund budget for the fiscal year starting on the 1st of July, according to the report.

Revenue has been hurt by the sinking fortunes of California’s wealthiest residents, who shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Roughly half of the state’s personal income taxes coming from the top 1% of earners.

Thousands of workers have been laid off from California-based tech giants including Alphabet Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Twitter. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which mainly catered to the tech and venture capital sectors, along with two other California-based regional lenders earlier this year adds to the economic turbulence. -Bloomberg

That said, the deficit is comparatively small vs. the cash crunch faced by the state during the last session, but this time Newsom will need to persuade Democrat lawmakers to make deep cuts – something which doesn’t come naturally to tax-and-spend liberals.

Meanwhile, deadlines to file and pay taxes were extended by six months to October 16 in most counties in the state due to the severe winter storms earlier this year.

State legislators – who must now negotiate over potential cuts to the budget – have until June 15 to pass one or they forfeit their pay for each day they are late.

Earlier this year Newsom touted ‘transformative investments’ in housing, education, childcare, health care and climate programs as part of his preliminary spending plan.

“This was not an easy budget, but I hope you see we will try to do our best to hold the line and take care of the most vulnerable and most needy, but still maintain prudence,” said Newsom.

Is it any wonder, Newsom is quickly (and carefully) sidestepping the $800 billion in reparations costs that he has implicitly promised California’s black residents, preferriung instead to remind citizens that “its about more than just cash payments.”

We suspect, there may well be a few (million) disillusioned voters who feel like they were promised cash for being black.

As one minister declared at the hearing last week, “Tell Governor Newsom we’re coming. He knows me.”

Did the virtue-signaling golden-boy just hit a reality wall?