SCOTUS ruling could upend Jan. 6 charges for some, including Trump | The Excerpt

On Saturday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: The U.S. Supreme Court issued a number of substantive decisions on Friday. Among them was a ruling on the obstruction charges that hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters face or have faced; a couple of rulings that will significantly weaken enforcement of federal regulations; and lastly, one that will effectively sanction laws that make being homeless a crime. USA TODAY Justice Correspondent Bart Jansen explains. After a disastrous debate performance with former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden remains defiant, saying he has no plans to end his reelection campaign. But influential Democratic donors are calling for him to drop out of the race. Meanwhile, House Republicans, are considering asking Biden’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to oust him from the White House. Hard rains have pummeled much of the north-central U.S. in June, breaking records. A woman with a rare brain disease is not just fighting it, she's helping herself and potentially millions of others along the way. USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub has the story.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.  This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Sara Ganim:

Good morning. I'm Sara Ganim, filling in for Taylor Wilson. Today is Saturday, June 29th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, more consequential Supreme Court rulings as the court's term comes to an end. Plus, Democrats are in a full panic after President Joe Biden's performance at Thursday night's debate. And we bring you an inspirational story that has brought hope to millions of families.

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Yesterday was another big day for the Supreme Court. There were several consequential decisions, one related to the insurrection on January 6th. Here to help me dig into the rulings is USA TODAY Justice Correspondent Bart Jansen. Bart, thanks so much for being on the show.

Bart Jansen:

Thanks for having me.

Sara Ganim:

Bart, let's start with the January 6th case. What did the justices rule and how will this affect the hundreds of people who are already convicted for participating in the riot that day?

Bart Jansen:

The Supreme Court basically sent the interpretation of the obstruction law at issue in hundreds of cases against January 6th defendants back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to narrow how much that law can be applied to. When Congress approved the law in 2002, they aimed for document destruction. Well, most of these folks are not accused of destroying documents. They're accused of entering the building, attacking police, doing things like that. So a single defendant, Joseph Fischer appealed the charge saying that he didn't destroy paper, he didn't think it should apply to him.

The court basically agreed with much of his argument on Friday by saying the D.C. Circuit has to look at that statute and say, okay, who should it apply to? And if defendants aren't accused of destroying paperwork, perhaps those charges will be dropped against them. We'll have to see how the D.C. Circuit review goes. But Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that 1,400 people charged in the January 6th attack, none of them face charges of just the obstruction alone. So as with Mr. Fischer, who also faces charges of resisting officers and entering a restricted area, he'd still face other charges, but they're fighting over the obstruction charge.

Sara Ganim:

And what does this mean for the pending charges against former President Donald Trump for his role in what happened that day?

Bart Jansen:

Legal experts think that there might be less effect on him. Two of the four federal charges in his election interference case are based on this obstruction law. One is this specific provision that Fischer is fighting. So he definitely had an interest in this case. But among the accusations in his election interference case is that he tried to have fake presidential elector ballots submitted to Congress as they were counting and certifying the 2020 election. And that was what they were doing when the riot interrupted them on January 6th, so that his charges could theoretically be called more to do with paperwork. And so again, we'll have to see how the D.C. Circuit interprets the law, but there are former prosecutors and legal experts that think that probably the charges will continue to stand against Trump.

Sara Ganim:

SCOTUS also ruled on a pair of cases that were brought by herring fishermen who were objecting to being forced to pay for federal inspections of their catch. These were big cases. What was at issue here and what will this decision mean for regulations going forward?

Bart Jansen:

This wasn't just a Monty Python skit. This is much bigger than herring fishermen. Basically, it's a fight over how authoritative are federal agency regulations? Okay, that sounds boring. But for 40 years, since 1984, there's been a doctrine called the Chevron Doctrine, which is that the courts defer to federal agencies in interpreting how laws should be applied; because Congress can't get into every nitty-gritty detail about whatever law they approve. They say, you ought to regulate the catch of herring in the ocean off of Maine. Well then the National Marine Fisheries Service decides, well, how many fish? How do we count them? They go through all the details through regulations. These fishermen were challenging that the agency basically had the final say over this instead of either Congress or the courts. It's a potentially wide-ranging decision that is going to change the interpretation of how powerful federal regulations are going forward.

Sara Ganim:

The Supreme Court also issued a controversial ruling yesterday about homeless encampments. The case originated in a small town in Oregon that wanted to reclaim public parks where about 600 homeless were living. Basically, the city made it illegal to sleep there or to set up temporary living spaces. And anyone who violated the rule more than twice in a year faced a fine of up to about $1,200 and even possibly jail time. What happened there?

Bart Jansen:

So homeless advocates challenged the law saying it was unfair to penalize the homeless for sleeping in public areas. Well, the city, Grants Pass, took this to the federal courts, and on Friday the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that it was not cruel and unusual punishment to enforce these laws. Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the penalties are relatively minor with fines only for first-time offenders, and that that can't be considered cruel and unusual punishment. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor had a very fierce dissent in this case; she called sleep a biological necessity, not a crime, for some people sleeping outside as their only option. And she said this would potentially bring charges against people doing as little as sleeping in their car under a blanket or using a shirt as a rolled-up pillow. She says this law will punish them for being homeless, that it's unconscionable and unconstitutional, but of course, she lost. And so this is a signal that laws against the homeless or to restrict where the homeless take up space in public areas can be regulated by cities across the country.

Sara Ganim:

Bart Jansen covers the Supreme Court for USA TODAY. Bart, thank you so much.

Bart Jansen:

Thanks for having me.

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Sara Ganim:

Democrats are now fully panicking over President Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance on Thursday night. Democratic donors and other influential members of Biden's own party are calling for him to drop out of the race. But Biden speaking at a rally in North Carolina on Friday was defiant, saying that he still has no plans to end his reelection campaign. The President seemed to have more energy at this event and spoke more clearly than he did at the debate where he struggled to put together coherent sentences, frequently got lost in his answers and failed to rebut many of Trump's falsehoods. But despite the intense criticism, he's holding firm with one of his advisors going as far as to tell USA TODAY that Biden plans to take part in a second debate against Trump.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, lawmakers were swarmed by reporters on this issue. Many Democrats stood by the President while also admitting that his performance was poor. House Republicans, however, were much more aggressive saying that they are considering asking Biden's cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment to declare him unable to serve. That would allow Vice President Kamala Harris to assume the presidency. The 25th amendment has never been invoked, but it was also floated during the Trump Administration in the wake of the January 6th Capitol attack.

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Flooding in Southern Minnesota is bad. In fact, it got so bad this week that raging waters pulled a family home into the Blue Earth River as members of the community watched in horror. In just three days, the river's water flow had tripled. It carved a new path around a river dam threatening to collapse it. It's a sign of devastating floods that are happening across the region. Hard rains have pummeled much of the North Central US in June. The rainfall is breaking records, cascading at intense rates, and it's brought on by the warmer climate. Warmer air allows the atmosphere to hold more water, and storms are often supercharged by the flow of moisture from warming oceans. Because of this, a federally commissioned report has found that the government's calculations for maximum potential rainfall are just no longer valid. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expects to issue the first updated estimates by 2030 if the program is fully funded.

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And finally, we bring you the inspirational story of Sonia Vallabh, a woman with a rare brain disease who bucked the odds to fight it and is helping herself and potentially millions of others along the way. My colleague, Taylor Wilson, spoke with USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub, to bring you this story.

Taylor Wilson:

Hi there, Karen.

Karen Weintraub:

Hello.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today. So can you just start by telling us about Sonia and her mother's story?

Karen Weintraub:

Sonia had just finished law school at Harvard when her mother was diagnosed with this crazy disorder, nobody knew what was going on. At 51, she began developing dementia, really rapidly progressing, and she died less than a year later. It turned out that she had this prion disease, this protein misfolding in her brain, that rapid fire just demolished her brain from the inside out. It turned out to be a genetic disorder that Sonia had as well. And there are different forms of it, but Sonia had a deterministic form. There was no way she wasn't going to get it.

Many people would've had a diagnosis like this and said, "That's the end. Forget it, I'm doomed." And Sonia and her husband, Eric, said, "No way. We're not taking this sitting down." The two of them are both extremely smart and hugely motivated, and they both dropped their professions, took a couple of years, but ended up going back to school for biology. They both now have PhDs in Biology, and they're working at a genetics research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and they're pursuing a cure for Sonia. And in the process, they may have discovered a way to treat potentially millions of other people.

Taylor Wilson:

It's so impressive, Karen. So what research findings have she and Eric uncovered and how does the science work here?

Karen Weintraub:

This latest paper that's coming out on Thursday in this prestigious journal called Science is A New Way Of Editing Genes. They've come up with a method to silence this gene, to turn it off before it turns on, hopefully. So far it's only working in mice, so it hasn't cured her yet. But the idea is that if they can turn this gene off in enough brain cells, it will stop the disease process before it even starts. And the same kind of disease process is at work in a disease like Huntington's disease, potentially in ALS, in Parkinson's disease, and even in Alzheimer's.

Where what happens is a normal protein in the brain gets misfolded. And when that happens, it's like Dominoes falling. When one protein misfolds, a lot of them misfold, and then they get clumped in the brain, and that stops the brain from functioning properly. And so if they can stop that cascade of events, they can stop the disease or prevent it from happening. Now they just have to keep trying until they can get it to work in humans. Theoretically, by finding a way to shut off these genes. If they can deliver it properly, they can also shut off genes in the liver and muscles, in other tissues in the body, and treat other diseases as well.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Karen, how does this compare with previous gene editing approaches?

Karen Weintraub:

So others have been described as scissors or erasers. This one, somebody described to me as like a tuner on a stereo, turning the volume up or down. And so their idea is to turn down the volume on the genes rather than getting rid of the gene. And the idea here is to quiet it, to silence it. It's not cutting it out, so it reduces the other errors that might happen in cutting a gene.

Taylor Wilson:

So what's next for both Sonia and this research?

Karen Weintraub:

Now they obviously have to go through the process of trying to make this work. First in larger animals and then in people. They have a large federal grant that has a five-year timeline. So they're going to be in people hopefully within the next five years to see if this works. Fingers crossed that it does. Then once they try it in this brain condition, they can try it in others. But the idea of starting here is they have a very clear target. If they fixed it, they know they've solved the problem, and so then they can go on to other diseases.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Karen Weintraub covers Health for USA TODAY. Thank you, Karen.

Karen Weintraub:

Thank you.

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Sara Ganim:

Child Care in America is simply unaffordable, costing families on average more than $10,000 a year. What's the solution? Tune in tomorrow morning at 5 A.M Eastern Time when Dana Taylor is joined by Julie Kashen, the Director for Women's Economic Justice at The Century Foundation to share her ideas.

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Thanks as always for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Sara Ganim, filling in for Taylor Wilson, who will be back on Monday with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SCOTUS ruling may upend Jan. 6 charges, including Trump | The Excerpt