Brandon Admin Considers Executive Action On Abortion, Gas Production

Remember how Biden yammered about Trump being a dictator and an authoritarian for doing things by executive order? How’s that working out?

Bracing for the End of Roe v. Wade, the White House Weighs Executive Actions

President Biden’s top aides are weighing whether he can or should take a series of executive actions to help women in Republican-controlled states obtain abortions if the Supreme Court eliminates a woman’s right to end her pregnancy, according to senior administration officials.

Some of the ideas under consideration include declaring a national public health emergency, readying the Justice Department to fight any attempt by states to criminalize travel for the purpose of obtaining an abortion, and asserting that Food and Drug Administration regulations granting approval to abortion medications pre-empt any state bans, the officials said.

In fairness, this is mostly being done by his people, not Biden, because Joe’s typically in La La Land. Or at the beach in Delaware.

No executive order can re-establish a constitutional right. It would take an act of Congress to restore a national legal standard barring states from outlawing abortion, and proponents currently lack sufficient votes in the Senate, where Republicans can filibuster such a bill. But Mr. Biden has signaled that he wants to move on his own.

“I don’t think the country will stand for it,” Mr. Biden told the talk show host Jimmy Kimmel last week in discussing the likely end of Roe v. Wade, adding: “There’s some executive orders I could employ, we believe. We’re looking at that right now.”

Well, you just go ahead and waste the time of the DOJ.

In the past, Mr. Biden has adopted a position that his legal team warned him was unlikely to stand up in court, betting that the political benefits of his executive actions outweighed the legal risks. In August, as House Democrats urged him to reverse course on letting a pandemic-related ban on evicting renters expire, Mr. Biden unilaterally extended the measure.

The move won praise from the left, at a moment when he needed to hold his coalition together in order to advance his legislative agenda. But while Mr. Biden’s decision bought a little more time for pandemic assistance funds to reach renters, its practical impact was limited because courts, as predicted, swiftly struck it down — and his critics accused him of lawlessness.

Hmm.

But administration officials see other suggestions as extremely risky. One calls for Mr. Biden to invite abortion doctors to work at federal enclaves, like military bases, inside states that criminalize abortion. State prosecutors lack jurisdiction in such zones, so the federal government handles crimes there, and it is not always clear whether criminal laws at the state level apply.

Doctors might still face challenges to their state medical licenses. And while the Justice Department under Mr. Biden could decline to pursue charges as a policy matter, control of the department could flip in the 2024 presidential election, and federal prosecutors could then charge people with crimes, like abortion, retroactively.

Realistically, if a state bans abortion the feds could allow them to occur on federal property, and there is nothing a state could do. They could bring in doctors from states that allow abortion. But, then, there’s that pesky thing called the Hyde Amendment, which restricts the federal government from paying for abortions. Whomever obtained an abortion on federal property would have to pay for the entire thing, which would go beyond just the procedure. And the government would not be able to pay for travel. This all just goes to show that Democrats are crazy about abortion on demand. Perhaps if they hadn’t pushed to use it as contraception it wouldn’t have become such a problem

Biden Open to Using Cold-War Era Law to Ramp Up Gasoline Output

The White House is willing to use the same emergency wartime law it invoked to increase the production of baby formula and bolster solar manufacturing to boost the nation’s supply of gasoline.

President Joe Biden is open to using the Cold War-era Defense Production Act to increase gasoline output “and lower costs at the pump,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing Wednesday.

“Already, the President has demonstrated his willingness to use that emergency powers to lower costs for families,” Jean-Pierre said, in response to a question about using the law to expand refining capacity. “We’re saying that the President has used it before and he’s willing to do that again.”

Jean-Pierre’s comments come as Biden asks oil refiners to take “immediate action” to increase capacity as soaring gasoline prices top more than $5 a gallon on average nationwide.

Where will this be done? Refineries are already running at close to 100% capacity.

More than 1 million barrels a day of the country’s oil refining capacity — or about 5% overall — have shut since the beginning of the pandemic.

And refineries were already closing beforehand, and not being replaced. This is what Joe wanted. Less gas. Pain at the pump.

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