Background Briefing: January 17, 2024

A Supreme Court Poised to Gut the Administrative State

We begin with today’s argument before the Supreme Court in a case known as “Chevron deference” being heard after 40 years in which government agencies were given deference to experts’ rulings on public health, the environment and consumer protection issues etc. But now an ideological right wing court appears to want to decide these critical matters themselves. Joining us to discuss today’s hearing is Jody Freeman, the Archibald Cox Professor at Harvard Law School and the founding director of the Law School’s Environmental Law and Policy Program. The coauthor with Michael Gerrard of Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, she also served as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama White House and advised the Biden transition team.

 

Should Bitter, Angry Justices in the Thrall of Billionaires and Corporate Power Decide What We Eat, Breath, How Long We Live and What Kind of World We Live in?

Then we speak with James Goodwin, a Senior Policy Analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform. He previously worked as a legal intern for the Environmental Law Institute and EcoLogix Group, Inc and has published a number of articles on human rights and environmental law and policy appearing in the Michigan Journal of Public Affairs and the New England Law Review. We discuss this power grab under way by bitter, angry Supreme Court justices in the thrall of billionaires and corporate power about to rule on whether citizens will have any say in how long they live and what kind of world they live in.

 

Testing US Foreign Policy Assumptions on the Brink of a Wider War in the Middle East

Then finally, with the Biden administration on the brink of being further bogged down in Middle East wars, we speak with Christopher Preble, the Senior Fellow and Director of the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center. Prior to joining the Stimson Center, he served as Co-Director of the Atlantic Council’s New American Engagement Initiative. He is the author of The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free and he co-edited, with John Mueller, A Dangerous World? Threat Perception and U.S. National Security and we discuss his article at the Stimson Center “Testing Assumptions About US Foreign Policy in 2024.