I Have Questions

Under subpoena, the far Left fundraiser ActBlue gave up documents to the House Administration Committee that showed that ActBlue did not begin automatically rejecting foreign donations (which I take to mean the organization made no serious effort at all) until last September.

Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R, WI):

The documents provided to the Committee also confirm that ActBlue still accepted these concerning payment methods in July, a period when Democrats raised a record number of campaign money before implementing these safeguards.

My questions: to which Progressive-Democrats did ActBlue forward the money?

How much of those illegally accepted and then forwarded funds have those Progressive-Democrats returned to the donors, either directly or through ActBlue?

Not Necessarily

The Supreme Court has the case of Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v Eagle County, which concerns an 88-mile railway bringing oil and farm goods out of rural Utah. It’s wholly contained within Utah. Colorado’s Eagle County is suing to block the Utah railway on the claim that the National Environmental Policy Act required the Surface Transportation Board to

analyze possible impacts as far away as the Gulf Coast, where the exported oil might be refined, and the environmental effects of “long-term employment and commercial activity” resulting from the railway.

The DC Circuit (! not the 10th Circuit, which includes both Utah and Colorado) agreed with Eagle County, which is why the case now is in front of the Supreme Court.

The Seven County argument is that

it shouldn’t have to analyze the environmental impact of anything not directly associated with railroads. It should be responsible only for the “proximate effects” of development over which it has regulatory authority.

The WSJ editors went on at length about why and how circuit ruling should be reversed, but they began with this:

[E]stablishing a predictable principle to guide future decisions about infrastructure development and prevent further litigation will be difficult. Litigants will have to parry a barrage of unpredictable hypotheticals….

Not necessarily. The guiding principle is clearly laid out by the Seven Counties: if the alleged environmental impact of a thing isn’t directly associated with that thing, there’s no analysis needed of that allegation. Full stop.

Regarding those “unpredictables,” there already is case law barring speculative lawsuits. Indeed, the Supreme Court already has repeatedly held that agencies needn’t consider indirect and unpredictable impact, most recently in Department of Transportation v Public Citizen. If litigation still gets out of hand, SLAP sanctions are available.

Eagle County’s case is just another of those quibbles for interference’s sake that the Court needs to stoutly chastise along with reversing the DC Circuit’s ruling.