WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday to protect same-sex and interracial marriages amid concerns that the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade abortion access could jeopardize other rights criticized by many conservatives.

In a robust but lopsided debate, Democrats argued intensely and often personally in favor of enshrining marriage equality in federal law, while Republicans steered clear of openly rejecting gay marriage. Instead leading Republicans portrayed the bill as unnecessary amid other issues facing the nation.

Tuesday’s election-year roll call, 267-157, was partly political strategy, forcing all House members, Republicans and Democrats, to go on the record. It also reflected the legislative branch pushing back against an aggressive court that has raised questions about revisiting other apparently settled U.S. laws.

Wary of political fallout, GOP leaders did not press their members to hold the party line against the bill, aides said. In all, 47 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting for passage.

“For me, this is personal,” said Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., who said he was among the openly gay members of the House.

“Imagine telling the next generation of Americans, my generation, we no longer have the right to marry who we love,” he said. “Congress can’t allow that to happen.”

While the Respect for Marriage Act easily passed the House with a Democratic majority, it is likely to stall in the evenly split Senate, where most Republicans would probably join a filibuster to block it. It’s one of several bills, including those enshrining abortion access, that Democrats are proposing to confront the court’s conservative majority. Another bill, guaranteeing access to contraceptive services, is set for a vote later this week.

House GOP leaders split over the issue, with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Whip Rep. Steve Scalise voting against the marriage rights bill, but the No. 3 Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York voting in favor.

In a notable silence, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell declined to express his view on the bill, leaving an open question over how strongly his party would fight it, if it should come up for a vote in the upper chamber.

Key Republicans in the House have shifted in recent years on the same-sex marriage issue, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who joined those voting in favor on Tuesday.

Said another Republican, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, in a statement about her yes vote: “If gay couples want to be as happily or miserably married as straight couples, more power to them.”

Polling shows a majority of Americans favor preserving rights to marry, regardless of sex, gender, race or ethnicity, a long-building shift in modern mores toward inclusion.

A Gallup poll in June showed broad and increasing support for same-sex marriage, with 70% of U.S. adults saying they think such unions should be recognized by law as valid. The poll showed majority support among both Democrats (83%) and Republicans (55%).

Approval of interracial marriage in the U.S. hit a six-decade high at 94% in September, according to Gallup.

Ahead of Tuesday’s voting, a number of lawmakers joined protesters demonstrating against the abortion ruling outside the Supreme Court, which sits across from the Capitol and remains fenced off for security during tumultuous political times. Capitol Police said among those arrested were 16 members of Congress.

“The extremist right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has put our country down a perilous path,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., in a floor speech setting Tuesday’s debate in motion.

“It’s time for our colleagues across the aisle to stand up and be counted. Will they vote to protect these fundamental freedoms? Or will they vote to let states take those freedoms away?”

But Republicans insisted the court was only focused on abortion access in June when it struck down the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling, and they argued that same-sex marriage and other rights were not threatened.

In fact, almost none of the Republicans who rose to speak during the debate directly broached the subject of same-sex or interracial marriage.

“We are here for a political charade, we are here for political messaging,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

That same tack could be expected in the Senate.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said, “The predicate of this is just wrong. I don’t think the Supreme Court is going to overturn any of that stuff.”

As several Democrats spoke of inequalities they said they or their loved ones had faced in same-sex marriages, the Republicans talked about rising gas prices, inflation and crime, including recent threats to justices in connection with the abortion ruling.

For Republicans in Congress the Trump-era confirmation of conservative justices to the Supreme Court has fulfilled a long-term GOP goal of revisiting many social, environmental and regulatory issues the party has been unable to tackle on its own by passing bills that could be signed into law.

The Respect for Marriage Act would repeal a law from the Clinton era that defines marriage as a heterogeneous relationship between a man and a woman. It would also provide legal protections for interracial marriages by prohibiting any state from denying out-of-state marriage licenses and benefits on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity or national origin.

The 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act, had basically been sidelined by Obama-era court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the rights of same-sex couples to marry nationwide, a landmark case for gay rights.

But last month, writing for the majority in overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito argued for a more narrow interpretation of the rights guaranteed to Americans, noting that the right to an abortion was not spelled out in the Constitution.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas went further, saying other rulings similar to Roe, including those around same-sex marriage and the right for couples to use contraception, should be reconsidered.

While Alito insisted in the majority opinion that “this decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” others have taken notice.

“The MAGA radicals that are taking over the Republican Party have made it abundantly clear they are not satisfied with repealing Roe,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., referring to Trump’s backers.

He pointed to comments from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who said over the weekend that the Supreme Court’s decision protecting marriage equality was “clearly wrong” and state legislatures should visit the issue.

But Schumer did not commit to holding a vote on the marriage bill.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post House passes same-sex marriage bill in retort to high court appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court waded into a political clash Wednesday between the Biden administration and Republican-led states seeking to defend a signature Trump-era immigration rule that the new administration has abandoned.

Conservative and liberal Supreme Court justices acknowledged during arguments at the high court that when a new administration comes in, it can change policy. That’s what the Biden administration did with the Trump-era “public charge” rule that denied green cards to immigrants who use food stamps or other public benefits.

The question for the court is not the legality of the now defunct Trump-era rule, just whether a group of states led by Arizona should be able to pick up the legal fight over it.

Justice Elena Kagan suggested to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, arguing for the group of states, that allowing the group to intervene in a case “that’s completely dead that never applied to you in the first place” is not the answer. “Whoever the federal government is, there’s always going to be a state that thinks it’s done the wrong thing,” she said. Other justices suggested a limited right to intervene might be possible.

Kagan, for her part, did question whether the Biden administration had erred by maneuvering to quickly jettison the Trump-era rule rather than going through a longer process. Justice Samuel Alito said the administration had devised a strategy to quickly set aside the rule and he wasn’t “aware of a precedent where an incoming administration has done anything quite like this.”

Kagan and other justices suggested that if Arizona objected to the way the Biden administration ended the previous policy, however, it should have brought that issue to a court rather than attempting what Kagan described as a “quadruple bank shot” strategy to intervene in other cases.

Another issue for several of the justices: geography. Stephen Breyer, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor were among the justices who questioned why Arizona belongs in a case that has its origins in California and Washington. “I’ve seen how Los Angeles has spread, but I don’t think it’s yet spread to Arizona,” said Breyer, who last month announced his plans to retire from the court.

At the center of the case before the justices is a federal law says that green card applicants can’t be burdens to the country or “public charges.” But the Trump administration significantly expanded the definition, saying the use of public benefits including food stamps or Medicaid could be disqualifying. That led to court challenges, but the Supreme Court allowed the policy to take effect while those continued.

The Biden administration rescinded the rule and has since announced new guidelines. The administration says that in practice, in the year the rule was in effect, it only affected about five out of some approximately 50,000 applications it was applied to. The Biden administration and immigration groups have said the bigger impact of the rule was scaring immigrants, causing them to drop benefits or not enroll in them because of fears doing so could affect their applications to become legal permanent residents.

Despite the political nature of Wednesday’s arguments, they did underscore one point of agreement between the Trump administration and the Biden administration. In the case of the public charge rule, a single federal judge in Illinois ruled to block the policy nationwide. The Trump administration had criticized similar nationwide injunctions by a single judge blocking a policy nationwide, calling them unlawful. Attorney Brian Fletcher, representing the Biden administration, said that view is shared by the new administration.

In addition to Arizona, the states involved in the case are Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post High court wades into clash over Trump-era immigration rule appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is preparing to hear a case about the government’s ability to get lawsuits thrown out of court by claiming they would reveal secrets that threaten national security.

The case before the high court Monday involves a group of Muslim men from Southern California. They filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that the FBI spied on them and hundreds of others in a surveillance operation following 9/11. The group, represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and others, claimed religious discrimination and violations of other rights, saying they were spied on solely because of their faith.

A lower court dismissed almost all their claims after the government said allowing the case to go forward could reveal “state secrets” — whom the government was investigating and why. But an appeals court reversed that decision, saying the lower court first should have privately examined the evidence the government said was state secrets to see if the alleged surveillance was unlawful.

The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, is telling the justices that decision is wrong.

The case involves a confidential informant, Craig Monteilh, the FBI used from 2006 to 2007. Monteilh pretended to be a new convert to Islam as a way to become part of Southern California’s Muslim community.

Monteilh told people he was a fitness consultant, but he was really working as part of a surveillance program known as Operation Flex. Monteilh regularly attended the Islamic Center of Irvine in Orange County and has said that he was told to collect as much information on as many people as possible. He gathered names and phone numbers and secretly recorded thousands of hours of conversations and hundreds of hours of video using a camera concealed in a shirt button.

Ultimately Monteilh’s handlers told him to ask about jihad and express a willingness to engage in violence. Those questions caused members of the community to report him to the FBI and other authorities and seek a restraining order against him.

The FBI has acknowledged Monteilh was an informant, and the story was covered in the news media including on the National Public Radio show “This American Life.”

Three of the men Monteilh allegedly recorded sued seeking damages and asking the government to destroy or return the information it had gathered.

This is the second case the court has heard involving the state secrets privilege since beginning its new term in October. Last month the court heard a case involving a Guantanamo Bay detainee that also involved the states secrets privilege.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post High court to hear secrets case over Muslim surveillance appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.