Supreme Court OKs Fee That Subsidizes Phone, Internet Services in Schools, Libraries and Rural Areas
The justices, by a 6–3 vote, reversed an appeals court ruling that had struck down as unconstitutional the Universal Service Fund, the charge that has been added to phone bills for nearly 30 years. At arguments in March, liberal and conservative justices alike expressed concerns about the potentially devastating consequences of eliminating the fund, which has benefited tens of millions of Americans. The Federal Communications Commission collects the money from telecommunications providers, which pass the cost on to their customers. A Virginia-based conservative advocacy group, Consumers' Research, had challenged the practice. The justices had previously denied two appeals from Consumers' Research after federal appeals courts upheld the program. But the full 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, among the nation's most conservative, ruled 9–7 that the method of funding is unconstitutional. The 5th Circuit held that Congress had given too much authority to the FCC, and the agency, in turn, had ceded too much power to a private entity or administrator.
The last time the Supreme Court invoked what is known as the nondelegation doctrine to strike down a federal law was in 1935. But several conservative justices have suggested they are open to breathing new life into the legal doctrine. The conservative-led court also has reined in federal agencies in high-profile rulings in recent years. Last year, the court reversed a 40-year-old case that had been used thousands of times to uphold federal regulations. In 2022, the court ruled Congress has to act with specificity before agencies can address major questions in a ruling that limited the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to combat climate change. But the phone fee case turned out not to be the right one for finding yet another way to restrict federal regulators. President Donald Trump's Republican administration, which has moved aggressively to curtail administrative agencies in other areas, defended the FCC program. The appeal was initially filed by President Joe Biden's Democratic administration.
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Arab News
3 hours ago
- Arab News
Trump blames renewable energy for rising electricity prices. Experts point elsewhere
WASHINGTON: With electricity prices rising at more than twice the rate of inflation, President Donald Trump has lashed out at renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, blaming them for skyrocketing energy costs. Trump called wind and solar power 'THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!' in a social media post and vowed not to approve wind or 'farmer destroying Solar' projects. 'The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!' he wrote on his Truth Social site. Energy analysts say renewable sources have little to do with recent price hikes, which are based on increased demand, aging infrastructure and increasingly extreme weather events such as wildfires that are exacerbated by climate change. The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has fueled demand for energy-hungry data centers that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems. Increased use of electric vehicles also has boosted demand, even as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans move to restrict tax credits and other incentives for EV purchases approved under the Biden administration. Natural gas prices, meanwhile, are rising sharply amid increased exports to Europe and other international customers. More than 40 percent of US electricity is generated by natural gas. Trump promised during the 2024 campaign to lower Americans' electric bills by 50 percent. Democrats have been quick to blame him for the price hikes, citing actions to hamstring clean energy in the sprawling tax-and-spending cut bill approved last month, as well as regulations since then to further restrict wind and solar power. Advocates say renewables provide the extra energy needed 'Now more than ever, we need more energy, not less, to meet our increased energy demand and power our grid. Instead of increasing our energy supply Donald Trump is taking a sledgehammer to the clean energy sector, killing jobs and projects,' said New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The GOP bill will cost thousands of jobs and impose higher energy costs nationwide, Heinrich and other critics said. A report from Energy Innovation, a non-partisan think tank, found the GOP tax law will increase the average family's energy bill by $130 annually by 2030. 'By quickly phasing out technology-neutral clean energy tax credits and adding complex material sourcing requirements,' the tax law will 'significantly hamper the development of domestic electricity generation capacity,' the report said. Renewable advocates were more blunt. 'The real scam is blaming solar for fossil fuel price spikes,' the Solar Energy Industries Association said in response to Trump's post. 'Farmers, families, and businesses choose solar to save money, preserve land, and escape high costs of the old, dirty fuels being forced on them by this administration,' the group added. As technology improves, wind and solar offer some of the cheapest and fastest ways to provide electric power. More than 90 percent of new energy capacity that came online in the US in 2024 was clean energy, said Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, another industry group. States with the highest share of clean energy production have seen prices decline in the past year, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration, while prices have gone up in states with the least renewable energy use. 'By slowing clean energy deployment, the Trump administration is directly fueling cost increases,' Grumet said 'Blocking cheap, clean energy while doubling down on outdated fossil fuels makes no economic or environmental sense,' added Ted Kelly, director of US clean energy for the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group. Partisanship anchors debate over rising energy prices Energy Secretary Chris Wright blamed rising prices on 'momentum' from Biden-era policies that backed renewable power over fossil fuel sources such as oil, coal and natural gas. 'That momentum is pushing prices up right now. And who's going to get blamed for it? We're going to get blamed because we're in office,' Wright told POLITICO during a visit to Iowa last week. About 60 percent of the state's electricity comes from wind. Not all the pushback comes from Democrats. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican who backs wind power, has placed a hold on three Treasury nominees to ensure wind and solar have 'an appropriate glidepath for the orderly phase-out of the tax credits' approved in the 2022 climate law under former President Joe Biden. Grassley said he was encouraged by new Treasury guidance that limits tax credits for wind and solar projects but does not eliminate them. The guidance 'seems to offer a viable path forward for the wind and solar industries to continue to meet increased energy demand,' Grassley said in a statement. John Quigley, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Republican tax law will increase US power bills by slowing construction of solar, wind, and battery projects and could eliminate as many as 45,000 jobs by 2030. Trump administration polices that emphasize fossil fuels are 'an extremely backward force in this conversation,' Quigley said. 'Besides ceding the clean energy future to other nations, we are paying for fossil foolishness with more than money — with our health and with our safety. And our children will pay an even higher price.'
Arab News
3 hours ago
- Arab News
Can empathy lead to sin? Some conservative Christians argue it can
WASHINGTON: Empathy is usually regarded as a virtue, a key to human decency and kindness. And yet, with increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that it has become a vice. For them, empathy is a cudgel for the left: It can manipulate caring people into accepting all manner of sins according to a conservative Christian perspective, including abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration and certain views on social and racial justice. 'Empathy becomes toxic when it encourages you to affirm sin, validate lies or support destructive policies,' said Allie Beth Stuckey, author of 'Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.' Stuckey, host of the popular podcast 'Relatable,' is one of two evangelicals who published books within the past year making Christian arguments against some forms of empathy. The other is Joe Rigney, a professor and pastor who wrote 'The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits.' It was published by Canon Press, an affiliate of Rigney's conservative denomination, which counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among its members. These anti-empathy arguments gained traction in the early months of President Donald Trump's second term, with his flurry of executive orders that critics denounced as lacking empathy. As foreign aid stopped and more deportations began, Trump's then-adviser Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan: 'The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.' Even Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, framed the idea in his own religious terms, invoking the concept of ordo amoris, or order of love. Within concentric circles of importance, he argued the immediate family comes first and the wider world last — an interpretation that then-Pope Francis rejected. While their anti-empathy arguments have differences, Stuckey and Rigney have audiences that are firmly among Trump's Christian base. 'Could someone use my arguments to justify callous indifference to human suffering? Of course,' Rigney said, countering that he still supports measured Christ-like compassion. 'I think I've put enough qualifications.' Historian Susan Lanzoni traced a century of empathy's uses and definitions in her 2018 book 'Empathy: A History.' Though it's had its critics, she has never seen the aspirational term so derided as it is now. It's been particularly jarring to watch Christians take down empathy, said Lanzoni, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. 'That's the whole message of Jesus, right?' Arguing empathy can be good — and bad The word empathy appeared in English for the first time in 1908, taken from a German word, meaning 'in-feeling.' Though the word is relatively new to English, the impulse behind it — to feel for or with another — is much older. It forms a core precept across many religions. 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' reads a common version of the Golden Rule. Stuckey admits Jesus is an empathetic figure. In her book, the Southern Baptist from Texas writes, 'In a way, Jesus embodied empathy when he took on flesh, suffered the human experience, and bore the burden of our sins by enduring a gruesome death.' She's clear that empathy can be good. But she writes it has been co-opted 'to convince people that the progressive position is exclusively the one of kindness and morality.' 'If you really care about women, you'll support their right to choose,' she writes of this progressive line of thinking. 'If you really respect people, you'll use preferred pronouns. … If you're really compassionate, you'll welcome the immigrant.' Rigney doesn't think empathy is inherently wrong, either. He finds fault with excessive or 'untethered empathy' that's not tied to conservative biblical interpretations. He has been talking publicly about these ideas since at least 2018, when he discussed the sin of empathy on camera with conservative Pastor Doug Wilson. Since 2023, Rigney has worked at Wilson's Idaho church and seminary, affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Rigney said initially he experienced pushback from 'certain corners of evangelicalism, that at the time were very dialed into questions of the #MeToo movement and abuse or critical race theory, social justice kind of stuff.' This debate over empathy often devolves into arguments over word choices or semantics. Rigney prefers older terms like compassion, sympathy or even pity. The Rev. Albert Mohler leads the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest US Protestant denomination. He featured Rigney and Stuckey on his podcast this year and agrees with their empathy critiques. Mohler prefers the word sympathy over empathy. 'There's no market so far as I know for empathy cards,' he said. 'There is a long-standing market for sympathy cards.' The role of race and gender in anti-empathy arguments In 2014, Mohler did encourage his audience to have empathy. His words came after a white police officer killed Michael Brown, a Black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. 'I look back at that statement now, and I would say it's nowhere near as morally significant as I intended it to be at the time,' Mohler said. Though expressing empathy for hurting people appeared to be 'close to the right thing to do,' he sees it as less helpful now. Stuckey traces her own anti-empathy awakening to the summer of 2020, when racial justice protests roiled the nation. She saw other Christians posting about racism out of an empathy she found misguided. 'I reject the idea that America is a systemically racist country,' she said. When she said as much in the months after George Floyd's murder, her audience grew. Rigney echoes this critique of systemic racism but reserves most of his ire for feminism, which he blames for many of empathy's ills. Because women are the more empathetic sex, he argues, they often take empathy too far. He found an encapsulation of this theory at Trump's inaugural prayer service, where a woman preached from the pulpit. During a sermon that went viral, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde pleaded with the Republican president to 'have mercy' on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, prompting a conservative backlash. 'Budde's attempt to 'speak truth to power' is a reminder that feminism is a cancer that enables the politics of empathetic manipulation,' Rigney wrote for the evangelical World magazine. Progressive Christian leaders respond 'Empathy is not toxic. Nor is it a sin,' said the Rev. Canon Dana Colley Corsello in a sermon at Washington National Cathedral, two months after Budde's plea from that sanctuary. 'The arguments about toxic empathy are finding open ears because far-right-wing, white evangelicals are looking for a moral framework around which they can justify President Trump's executive orders and policies,' Corsello preached. 'Empathy is at the heart of Jesus' life and ministry,' Corsello wrote in a recent email exchange about the sermon. She added, 'It's so troubling that this is even up for debate.' In New York, the Rev. Micah Bucey first noticed Christian anti-empathy messages after Budde's sermon. In response, he proposed changing the outdoor sign at Judson Memorial Church, the historic congregation he serves in Manhattan. 'If empathy is a sin, sin boldly,' he proposed it say, a catchphrase that borrows its last clause from the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. A photo of the resulting church sign was shared thousands of times on social media. 'Our entire spirituality and theology at Judson are built around curiosity and empathy,' Bucey said. 'We've always considered that our superpower.'
Arab News
3 hours ago
- Arab News
Trump plans to patrol streets of US capital with troops
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said he plans to patrol Washington's streets on Thursday with troops he deployed to the US capital in a show of force against what he claims is a 'crime emergency.' Trump ordered hundreds of National Guard to deploy in Washington last week vowing to 'take our capital back,' despite protests by some residents and statistics showing violent offenses falling. 'I'm going to be going out tonight I think with the police and with the military of course... We're going to be doing a job,' the Republican told Todd Starnes, a host for right-wing media outlet Newsmax. He spoke one day after his vice president, JD Vance, was greeted by boos and shouts of 'Free DC' — referring to the District of Columbia — on his own meet-and-greet with troops deployed in the city. The DC National Guard has mobilized 800 troops for the mission, while Republican states Ohio, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia are sending a total of around 1,200 more. They have been spotted in major tourist areas such as the National Mall and its monuments, the Nationals Park baseball stadium and others. In addition to sending troops onto the streets, Trump has also sought to take full control of the local Washington police department, attempting at one point to sideline its leadership. Some residents have welcomed the crackdown, pointing to crime in their areas — but others have complained the show of force is unnecessary, or has not been seen in parts of the US capital where violence is concentrated. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller visited troops at Washington's Union Station Wednesday. Loud boos could be heard from outside as Vance walked into a fast-food restaurant at the train station. People also shouted expletive-laden jeers and slogans including 'Free DC! Free DC!' Vance dismissed the hecklers as 'a bunch of crazy protesters.'Several incidents involving the surge of law enforcement have gone viral as capital residents voice their discontent, including the arrest of one man who was caught on camera throwing a sandwich at an agent after a night out. Banksy-style posters honoring the so-called 'sandwich guy' have popped up around the city. The National Guard troops have provided 'critical support such as crowd management, presence patrols and perimeter control in support of law enforcement,' according to statements on their official X account. The overwhelmingly Democratic US capital faces allegations from Republican politicians that it is overrun by crime, plagued by homelessness and financially mismanaged. But data from Washington police showed significant drops in violent crime between 2023 and 2024, though that was coming off the back of a post-pandemic surge. The deployment of troops in Washington comes after Trump dispatched the National Guard and Marines to quell unrest in Los Angeles, California, that was sparked by immigration enforcement raids.
