Latest news with #Roberts
Los Angeles Times
18 hours ago
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
‘Still a threat.' Why Shohei Ohtani needs to remain a two-player for the Dodgers
The day after he pitches, Shohei Ohtani turns into Michael Conforto. Ohtani has played four games on days following his starts, and he's taken a total of 15 at-bats in them. He's collected just one hit. He's struck out six times. Ohtani pitched three innings in the Dodgers' 5-2 victory over the Minnesota Twins on Monday night, which led to manager Dave Roberts being asked about Ohtani's anticipated Confortization on Tuesday. 'In the batter's box, he's certainly still a threat,' Roberts said. 'So I don't think right now we're giving that too much thought.' Good. Suspicions that Ohtani's pitching has negatively affected Ohtani's hitting have become almost immaterial. Ohtani will remain a two-way player. He will remain a two-way player for the remainder of the regular season, and he will remain a two-way player in October. He should provide more than a couple of innings here and there. He should be a full-blown starter. Because he wants to. Because the Dodgers need him to. Ohtani is the best hitter on a team that can't hit much of anything lately. He is the best pitcher on a team with an injury-ravaged pitching staff that sustained another likely loss on Monday night when closer Tanner Scott departed the game with forearm pain. His value as a two-way player was evident in the opening game of the three-game series against the Twins, as he gave up a leadoff homer to Byron Buxton and returned the favor by crushing a two-run homer in the bottom of the first inning. The 2-1 lead was gradually extended, by a pair of solo home runs by Will Smith and another bases-empty shot by Andy Pages. Ohtani pitched three innings, the damage inflicted against him limited to Buxton's homer even though he was plagued by control problems. Ohtani struck out three batters and was charged with four hits and a walk while throwing 46 pitches. 'I thought I wanted to go four innings, but my pitch count was piling up,' Ohtani said in Japanese. He will be extended to four innings in his next start, Roberts said. The Dodgers might need every one of them, considering they have lost 10 of their last 13 games. Ohtani didn't know it at the time, but he spent six seasons preparing for something like this. On the Angels, he was a great player on a horrible team, which is what the Dodgers are at this moment. The sorry state of the team didn't stop Ohtani from trying to carry it then, and that's not stopping him from trying to carry it now. 'I think he's very mindful of where our team is right now,' Roberts said. 'I feel he's trying to will his way to kind of getting us over the hump. He's competing. He's taking really good at-bats. And he's fighting. So I love what he's doing.' Ohtani has homered in each of the last three games. 'There's just an extra level of focus I see in the decision-making at the plate,' Roberts said. Roberts observed that Ohtani wasn't driven by personal glory. He pointed to how Ohtani offered no resistance when he said he wanted to switch him and Mookie Betts in the batting order, with Ohtani dropping from the leadoff to No. 2 spot. Ohtani batted first in every game until Sunday when Roberts moved a slumping Betts to the top of the lineup with hopes of jump-starting his season. When Roberts texted Ohtani his thoughts the previous night, Ohtani replied by telling him to do whatever was best for the team, even if that meant batting him ninth. 'I have absolutely no problem with it,' Ohtani said. 'What's most important is that everyone can hit comfortably.' Ohtani's homers in the last two games came right after Betts reached base in front of him, with a single on Sunday against the Milwaukee Brewers and with a walk on Monday against Twins starter David Festa. 'He wants to win,' Roberts said of Ohtani. 'I think that him playing every day, him pitching, him taking walks when needed and switching spots with Mookie in the order, whatever is in the best interest of the ballclub, that's what he's doing.' Ohtani is now 31. There are questions about whether his body can still withstand the workload required to play both ways, and rightfully so. But as the Dodgers have trudged through this midseason slump, Ohtani has revealed the spirit that was fundamental in making him the best player in the world. Roberts will wager the season on it. He has no other option.
Toronto Sun
a day ago
- Climate
- Toronto Sun
Wildfires force more residents to flee in Saskatchewan, rain needed: Officials
Published Jul 21, 2025 • 2 minute read Helicopters deliver water over a closed Highway 106 as wildfires burn near Smeaton, Sask., on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. Photo by Liam Richards / THE CANADIAN PRESS PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. — Wildfires in Saskatchewan have forced hundreds more people out of their homes, and officials are hoping for a bout of rain to contain the blazes. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Steve Roberts with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency said Monday there are 2,800 evacuees in the province, up from 1,700 late last week. Roberts told a virtual news conference more communities have issued evacuation notices, including La Loche, Ile-a-la-Crosse and Cole Bay, where heavy smoke is affecting those with health issues. 'The fires have been a little more sedate and we've been able to make more progress because they haven't been extremely volatile,' Roberts said. 'The big solution would be significant rainfall in the vicinity of the fires themselves.' The province reported 52 active wildfires Monday, including 13 uncontained. Roberts said crews from Australia, Mexico, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are providing extra assistance to help control the fires. Those crews are also replacing existing firefighters who need a break. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Read More He said the fire near Beauval, 400 km northwest of Saskatoon, is a high priority. The blaze in Prince Albert National Park has not posed a larger threat, he added. The agency is working with Parks Canada to fight that fire. A fire ban for much of northern Saskatchewan remains in effect. Meanwhile, parts of northern Manitoba saw scattered rainfall in recent days, but flames driven by hot, dry conditions over the weekend are encroaching on several communities. Manitoba officials said Monday less than 1 mm of rain has recently fallen in fire areas. If more doesn't come, fire activity will remain active in those areas over the coming days, they said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The province is keeping an eye on the communities of Leaf Rapids, Snow Lake and Garden Hill First Nation, where blazes are in proximity to those areas. Officials said Leaf Rapids is surrounded by fires but that a fire guard was built up around the town and crews were ready to go should any of the fires reach the community. Smoky conditions over the weekend hampered firefighting abilities in some areas by grounding aircraft, they added. Despite this, they said crews were still able to make progress on one of the blazes close to Thompson, which is home to 13,000 people. RECOMMENDED VIDEO 'Definitely the smoky conditions are impacting our ability to action from the air specifically. But the good thing, too, is that sometimes very smoky conditions also lessen fire behaviour, so we don't see the fires as active those days either,' said Kristin Hayward, with the province's wildfire service. 'We have rain moving into the Thompson area hopefully (Monday) and into (Tuesday) so that should help to keep fire activity pretty low. We are not concerned for Thompson at this time.' There are currently roughly 13,000 people displaced across the province due to wildfires. Evacuees are staying in close to 2,500 rooms and 840 shelter beds are being used in Winnipeg. There are 120 active wildfires burning in Manitoba. Canada Columnists Celebrity Canada Celebrity
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
From a day off to the leadoff spot, Dodgers try unraveling mystery of Mookie Betts' slump
The day off was unanticipated. The change to the lineup was even more of a surprise. In what has become a season-long struggle by Mookie Betts and Dodgers coaches to get the slumping superstar back on track, this weekend brought the most glaring examples of experimentation yet. First, on Saturday, manager Dave Roberts gave Betts an unexpected off day and providing what he felt was a needed mental reset after sensing Betts — who missed the All-Star Game for the first time in a decade this year — was still off despite his week-long break. Then, on Sunday, Roberts gave the veteran slugger an unexpected challenge: Bumping him up from the two-hole to the leadoff spot in the batting order in hopes it would trigger something amid a career-worst season at the plate. 'Looking at how things are going, where Mookie is at emotionally, mechanics-wise, all in totality,' Roberts said, 'I felt that giving him a different look in the lineup, hitting him at the top, something he's obviously been accustomed to throughout his career, will put him in a mindset of just [trying] to get on base and just trying to take good at-bats.' 'There's a lot of internal kind of searching that goes on with the mechanics and things like that,' Roberts added. 'But I personally do feel that the external part of it — hitting at the top of the order, having a mindset to get on base — I think will help move this along better.' It all served as the latest confounding chapter in what has been a trying season for Betts and his once-potent swing, the newest effort by the club to ease the frustration that has weighed on his mind amid a summer-long slump — while waiting for his mechanics to finally get back in sync. 'This is a process I've never been through,' said a clearly-dejected Betts, who entered Monday sporting a .240 batting average (ranking 120th out of 158 qualified MLB hitters), .684 OPS (132nd) and 11 home runs (tied for 89th), to go along with well-below-league-average marks in underlying metrics like average exit velocity (29th percentile among MLB hitters), hard-hit rate (20th percentile) and bat speed (12th percentile). 'I don't have any answers,' he continued. 'I don't know how to get through this. I don't know. I'm working every day. Hopefully it turns.' The leadoff exercise started with mixed results Sunday. Betts singled in the third inning, one at-bat before new No. 2 man Shohei Ohtani hit a home run. But, in a failed ninth-inning rally that sent the Dodgers to a series sweep against the Milwaukee Brewers, he finished a one-for-five day by lining out sharply to center field, ending the game with Ohtani stuck in the on-deck circle. Betts will continue to lead off for the foreseeable future, with Roberts committing to keeping him at the top of the order — and Ohtani, the team's previous leadoff hitter, in the two spot — at least until Max Muncy makes his expected return from a knee injury sometime next month. 'The only way we'll know, we'll find out, is once we do that for an extended period of time,' Roberts said. 'I do think that there will be some fallout from that kind of external mindset of, 'Hey, I'm hitting at the top of the order. My job is to get on base, set the table for Shohei and the guys behind him.' I think that will lead to better performance.' Until such a turnaround actually materializes, however, the search for answers to Betts' struggles will go on, with the Dodgers continuing to try to unravel the mystery behind a sudden, unsettling slump no one saw coming. 'I just got to play better,' Betts said. 'I got to figure it out.' Indeed, while his superstar teammates were at All-Star festivities in Atlanta last week, Betts spent the break back home in Nashville, working on his swing at a private training facility. In one clip that emerged on social media, Betts was seen doing one of the many drills that have helped him maintain offensive excellence over his 12 big-league seasons: Taking hacks with a yellow ball pressed snuggly between his elbows, trying to promote the fluid and connected motion that has eluded him this year. 'With Mookie, a lot of it has to do with how his arms and hands work, and getting his arm structure properly lined up,' hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said. 'It sets up how the bat slots, and how his body sequences.' For Betts, a 5-foot-10 talent who has long exceeded expectations as one of the sport's most undersized sluggers, such mechanical efficiency has always been paramount. As he noted early this season, when his slump first came into focus in early May, he has never had the same margin for error as some of the sport's more physically gifted star hitters. He can't muscle doubles or hit home runs off the end of his bat. He can't afford to have a bad bat path or disjointed swing sequence and be the same hitter who, just two years ago, batted .307 with 39 home runs. 'I can't, unfortunately, not have my A-swing that day but still run into something and [have it] go over the fence or whatever,' Betts said back then. 'Even when I have my A-swing, if I don't get it, it's not gonna be a homer. If I don't flush that ball in that gap, they're gonna catch it.' And this season, much to his chagrin, flushing line drives and cranking big flies has become a frustrating rarity. Identifying the reason why has led to countless potential theories. At the start of the year, Betts believed he created bad swing habits while recovering from a March stomach bug that saw him lose 20 pounds and some of his already underwhelming bat speed. But as he tried reverting to mental cues and mechanical feels that had recalibrated him in the past, nothing seemed to click in the same way they once did. 'The cues and feels that I've used my whole life, in Boston and L.A., just don't work anymore,' he said this weekend. 'So I'm just trying to find out who I am now, what works now.' Some of that, of course, could be attributed to age. Betts will be 33 by the end of this season. He is coming up on 1,500 career games. Inevitably, even players of his caliber eventually start to decline physically. Roberts, however, framed it more through the lens of evolution. On the one hand, he said of Betts, 'I know he's still in his prime. I know he's as strong as he's been in quite some time.' However, the manager added, 'his body has changed and will continue to change,' requiring Betts to find new ways to maximize the power the team still believes he possesses. 'That's the nature of hitting,' Van Scoyoc said. 'He has to find something for him that works organically, that gets him lined up again.' This dynamic is why, to both Betts and the Dodgers, his full-time move to shortstop this season hasn't been to blame. Betts has repeatedly pushed back against that narrative, pointing to the MVP-caliber numbers he posted while playing the position during the first half of last year (before a broken hand cost him two months and forced him to return to right field for the Dodgers' World Series run) and the two-week tear with which he started this season (when he batted .304 with four home runs over his first 15 games). And though his new defensive role has come with some added challenges — Betts said on his Bleacher Report podcast last month that his daily pregame workload has increased while playing shortstop, to the point 'it probably does weigh on you a little bit hitting' — he has also emphasized the confidence he has gained from his defensive improvements; his shortstop play serving as the one thing that has gone right in a season of offensive misery. 'I just can't see that you go out there and stick him in right field tonight and he's going to throw out two hits or three hits, or he goes to second base and he's going to go on a heater,' Roberts echoed earlier this month, before reiterating Sunday that the team has not considered changing Betts' position. 'That's hard for me to kind of imagine. It's a fair ask. But I just don't see that as the case.' Instead, the focus has remained not only on Betts' flawed swing mechanics, but the resulting side effects it has had on his approach at the plate. One stat that jumped out to Roberts recently: In Betts' last 99 plate appearances, he has walked only one time — a shockingly low number for a hitter with a walk rate of nearly 11% over his career. To Roberts, it's a sign that Betts, in his ongoing search to get his swing synced up, is failing to accomplish the even more fundamental task of working good counts and waiting out mistakes. 'If you're 'in-between' on spin versus velocity, and [getting in bad] counts, you're not as convicted [with your swing],' Roberts said, tying all of Betts' problems into one self-fulfilling cycle that has only further perpetuated his lack of results. 'So my eyes tell me he's been 'in-between' a lot.' Which is why, in recent weeks, Roberts had started to mull the idea of moving Betts into the leadoff spot. After all, the manager hypothesized, if Betts can't find his swing by grinding in the batting cage and analyzing his mechanics — as he did during his off day on Saturday — then maybe reframing his mindset in games can better help him get there. 'It speaks to how much faith I have in him as a ballplayer,' Roberts said. 'To, where he's scuffling, not move him down but ironically move him higher in the order. 'I think that kind of support, and the different way that he'll see the lineup as it's presented each day, will kind of lead into a different mindset and I think that'll be a good thing for all of us.' For now, the Dodgers can only hope. With Muncy still out, Freddie Freeman having his own recent slump compounded by a ball that hit him in the left wrist on Sunday, and the Dodgers stuck in a current 2-10 spiral that has seen their once-comfortable division lead dwindle leading up to the trade deadline, they need the old Betts more than ever right now. Thus far, the search for answers has met no end. 'It's hard,' Betts said, 'but I got to figure it out at some point.'
Atlantic
2 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
How John Roberts Built the New American Presidency
No one on the Supreme Court has gone further to enable Donald Trump's extreme exercise of presidential power than the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts. Associate justices have also written some important opinions shaping executive power, and the Court has issued ever more important unsigned orders, but the most transformative opinions—the opinions that directly legitimize Trump's unprecedented uses of power—are Roberts's handiwork. This is not happenstance. Under Supreme Court practice, the most senior justice in the majority—which is always the chief justice when he so votes—determines who will write the main opinion. Roberts reserved these milestones for himself. And what milestones they have been. Roberts upheld the first Trump administration's 'Muslim ban' on the grounds that the president's national-security role precludes courts from taking account of the bigotry undergirding an immigration order. He remanded a lower court's enforcement of a congressional subpoena for Trump's financial information, writing that 'without limits on its subpoena powers,' Congress could exert 'imperious' control over the executive branch and 'aggrandize itself at the President's expense.' He has come close to giving the president an untrammeled right to fire any officer in the executive branch at will. And he took the lead in inventing a presidential immunity from criminal prosecution that could exempt the president from accountability for even the most corrupt exercises of his official functions. Going beyond the precise holdings in these cases, Roberts's superfluous rhetoric about the presidency has cast the chief executive in all-but-monarchical terms. The upshot is a view of the Constitution that, in operation, comes uncomfortably close to vindicating Trump's: 'I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.' Trump's confidence is surely bolstered also by the Roberts Court's unsigned per curiam opinions blocking even temporary relief from his sweeping actions. In May, the Court held that Trump orders removing two federal officials at key independent agencies could remain in place while the issue of their legality makes its way through the judiciary. In June, it allowed the administration to proceed with so-called third-country deportations—that is, deporting undocumented noncitizens summarily to countries to which they had no prior connection, but where they might well face torture. On July 8, the Court effectively allowed Trump to proceed with a massive restructuring of the federal executive branch, notwithstanding that the power over executive-branch organization belongs to Congress, not the president. On July 14, the conservative majority allowed the sabotaging of the Department of Education to proceed. Trump's use of executive power is not a distortion of the Roberts Court's theory of the presidency; it is the Court's theory of the presidency, come to life. Adam Serwer: Why Trump thanked John Roberts What America is witnessing is a remaking of the American presidency into something closer to a dictatorship. Trump is enacting this change and taking advantage of its possibilities, but he is not the inventor of its claim to constitutional legitimacy. That project is the work of John Roberts. Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 while Roberts was clerking for then–Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist, who represented, at the time, the far right on the Burger Court. Following his clerkship year, Roberts joined the Reagan administration as a special assistant to the attorney general, and then in short order was recruited in 1982 to join Reagan's White House staff as an associate counsel to the president. That same year, the Federalist Society was founded, and those two entities together—the Reagan administration and the Federalist Society—accelerated the mainstreaming of what until then had been a marginal view of presidential authority under the Constitution: 'unitary-executive theory.' The core idea of the unitary executive was that the president, as the single head of the executive branch, was entitled to direct how all discretionary authorities of that branch would be exercised. On every question, the president would be, as George W. Bush later said, 'the decider.' In practical terms, debates over unitary-executive theory have centered on how far the president can go in firing people: Can he fire anyone at will, or may Congress protect at least some officials from discharge unless the president can show good cause for dismissal? Good cause is most often specified in the law as 'inefficiency, malfeasance, or neglect.' At-will removal power would allow a president to purge the government of any resistance to his agenda. Roberts has all but made at-will removal the president's constitutionally guaranteed prerogative, and his rhetoric goes further yet. His opinions taken together create a dangerously authoritarian and largely ahistorical narrative about the constitutional presidency. In Roberts's story, the president 'alone composes a branch of government' and holds the 'entirety' of executive power. All of the federal civil service—the thousands of administrative officers who wield executive power—do so on the president's behalf. What gives this system 'legitimacy and accountability' is that 'We, the People' get to vote for president. The thousands of subordinate officers involved in administering the federal government are accountable to 'We, the People' only because they are tied to the president through ' a clear and effective chain of command.' The point of absolute-removal power is precisely to enable the president to keep his underlings in line. The powers of removal and supervision, Roberts writes, are ' conclusive and preclusive.' That is to say, at least in Roberts's narrative, Congress may not regulate the president's supervisory powers by statute, and courts may not examine their exercise. The alternative to this narrative—the understanding of the constitutional presidency that, at least in broad strokes, had represented conventional wisdom until the advent of the Roberts Court—is an account of executive power woven into a system of checks and balances. Article II vests executive power in a president, to be sure. It assigns the president a number of exclusive roles, such as the negotiation of treaties and serving as commander in chief of the Army and Navy. But Article II also envisions a branch that includes 'executive departments.' These departments have 'duties,' most of which are to be set forth in statutes. Fulfilling statutory duties is the job of the agencies, which, in doing their work, act not on behalf of the president, but on behalf of Congress. The president's role in this scheme is one of supervision, not command. He is charged to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' The Constitution underscores the president's supervisory position by providing that he may 'require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices.' This is not at all a one-person branch of government, and its design is not the prerogative of the president, but of Congress. Aziz Huq: The Court's liberals are trying to tell Americans something In 1980 and perhaps even now, unitary-executive theory would seem an odd position for conservatives and libertarians—the Federalist Society base—to adopt. But by then a strong presidency seemed the best and perhaps only route for yanking the American government in a much more conservative direction. During the 1960s and '70s, Congress, prodded on by a host of different social movements, enacted a panoply of statutory authorities that enabled ambitious liberal presidents to advance significant progressive policies. A president intent on rolling back that agenda would find doing so difficult. There exists no general statutory authority for shrinking government, and deregulation on a rule-by-rule basis is slow going and often legally vulnerable. Conservatives found their solution in Article II of the Constitution, which, if creatively reinterpreted, might give the president more authority to unilaterally undermine the regulatory state. Over the next two decades, the conservative legal movement further developed its arguments for the unitary executive, the Federalist Society grew and became a powerful credentialing institution for the right, and Roberts's career soared, culminating in 2005 with his appointment as chief justice. Roberts has not approached his work timidly. In the two decades of his tenure thus far, his opinions on executive power have created what might be called a proto-authoritarian canon, lending constitutional legitimacy to a kind of presidency that brooks no dissent, treats Congress as a subordinate institution, and need answer to no one except possibly to the Supreme Court itself. It is hard to overstate how much is wrong in Roberts's narrative of the presidency. It muddles constitutional text. It flouts constitutional history. It is willfully ignorant of the risks of authoritarianism in a polarized, populist age. Its very premise—that the Constitution creates a one-person branch of government—is provably untrue by just reading the Constitution, which, again, refers to 'executive departments.' The president's constitutional role does not require at-will removal power, except in the cases of those few officials who directly assist the president in fulfilling specific Article II roles. For all others—the overwhelming majority of government officers and employees—the president needs only the power to discharge persons who have failed to faithfully execute the law, thus providing 'good cause' for their removal. The conditions under which the president may fire such officials is a matter for Congress to decide. The idea that vesting the president with 'the executive power' means 'all' of the executive power is likewise not in the Article II text, which does not contain the word all. Where the word all does appear is in the Constitution's vesting in Congress the power to 'make all laws which shall be necessary and proper ' for executing its role and all others in the government. Far from signaling a wide swath of 'conclusive and preclusive' executive authority, the text suggests a sweeping legislative power to prescribe how executive power is to be exercised. The Roberts Court narrative fares no better on history than on text. The Court claims to be originalist and to be implementing a vision of the presidency that matches that of the Framers. The best that can be said about its opinions in this respect is that they have launched a scholarly renaissance among constitutional historians whose work demonstrates that the Court has the history wrong. One characteristic of several of the Court's most executive-indulgent opinions is the inclusion of blazingly incorrect statements of history. Arguably the strangest of the Court's departures from history appears in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in which Roberts wrote, 'The Framers made the President the most democratic and politically accountable official in Government.' That statement, unfortunately, captures the precise opposite of the Framers' plan. Under the original Constitution, the president was the least electorally accountable official. House members were elected by voters. Senators would be chosen by state legislatures. The president would be chosen by presidential electors, and those temporary officials would be chosen in a manner to be determined by the legislature of each state. Acknowledging the relative insulation of the original presidency from electoral politics underscores that the Roberts narrative of administrative 'legitimacy and accountability' is also wrong. What would legitimize executive power in the Framers' scheme would not be electoral accountability, but the quality of government, the character of officeholders, and the fidelity of officeholders to the law. Seila Law is not an isolated example of ignoring or inventing history. Roberts's presidential-immunity opinion has not a word to say about either the Richard Nixon pardon or Bill Clinton's nonprosecution deal during his last weeks in office—incidents obviously relevant to understanding how earlier presidents assessed the scope of immunity. Likewise, the per curiam opinion keeping in place for now Trump's unlawful firings of two independent administrators purports not to threaten the independence of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. 'The Federal Reserve,' the Court says, is not the same as other independent agencies; it is instead 'a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.' The problem with that assurance is that there is virtually no resemblance between the 19th-century Banks of the United States, on one hand, and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, on the other. If the president is constitutionally entitled to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board, there is no obvious principled reason he cannot also fire members of the Fed. The Court has presumably shown concern for the Fed's independence because giving presidents direct control over the monetary supply would predictably lead to greater inflation, which would be bad for investors. Decision makers serving at a president's pleasure may be driven less by long-term price and employment trends—their assignment from Congress—and more by the president's short-term political concerns. But in one way or another, Congress has similarly determined for a host of other major agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, that the quality of their decision making will be best served if directed by a bipartisan group of experts, any of whom may express policy disagreement with the president without fear of reprisal. Under the system of checks and balances that the Constitution was intended to enable, administrative agencies thus shoulder accountability to the Congress that created them and the courts that review them, not just to a president who believes, 'I hold all the levers, and have all the cards.' The nation is now just six months into the experiment of what happens when a knows-no-bounds president takes office under a Court committed to a unitary executive. The results are alarming. As a matter of principle, anyone concerned with preserving robust constitutional checks and balances should be disturbed by a president's overweening unilateralism, regardless of that president's policy agenda. In Trump's case, however, the threat to democracy is at its zenith because unitary-executive theory is being pushed to enable an authoritarian agenda on every front. Trump seems to believe he is effectively the unitary head not just of government, but of the nation. He appears determined to squelch any resistance within the government—and to force submission to his program by the media, universities, the legal profession, and apparently even entire cities. Roberts's assurance that elections render the unitary president 'directly accountable to the people' for so blatant an antidemocratic program appears meaningless against the backdrop of Trump's authoritarian tactics. The Roberts Court so far has been mostly generous to the administration, handing it a set of technically narrow procedural wins that, for the moment at least, have blocked relief in the lower courts. When the Court must finally resolve the controversies concerning birthright citizenship, the capricious withholding of government grants, the unauthorized dismantling of government agencies, or the use of extortionate tactics to secure the submissiveness of independent institutions, John Roberts will likely again write opinions for a majority. Ideally, he will be open to rethinking his extreme version of what the presidency represents and what the chief executive may do without meaningful legal accountability. But given the path he has taken so far, optimism seems naive.
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Sport
- San Francisco Chronicle
Slumping Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts benched against Brewers
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles Dodgers star Mookie Betts, mired in one of the worst slumps of his career, was benched for Saturday night's game against the Milwaukee Brewers, and manager Dave Roberts said he may hold the veteran shortstop out of Sunday's lineup as well. 'No, this wasn't scheduled,' Roberts said of the rare day off for Betts. 'In talking to him, seeing where his head's at and seeing where he's at mechanically, I just felt tonight was a night that he needed to be down. He wanted to be out there, but I wanted to take it out of his hands, give him a day to just watch a baseball game. 'I understand that we just had four days off for the (All-Star) break, but showing up to the ballpark and not participating, watching, that's a different mindset, a different psyche, than being at home. I think for the mind, it will be beneficial.' Betts, the 2018 AL Most Valuable Player with the Boston Red Sox, entered Saturday with a .241 average, .688 OPS, 11 homers, 13 doubles and 45 RBIs in 116 games, production far below his career .291 average and .884 OPS. But the 32-year-old's struggles have worsened since early June. Betts, who made the transition from right field to shortstop this season, has hit .188 (23 for 128) with a .527 OPS, two homers, two doubles and four RBIs in 32 games since June 8, including two strikeouts and two groundouts in Friday night's 2-0 loss to the Brewers. 'He wants to do well — he's not used to struggling like this,' Roberts said. 'I think he's playing great defense, but there's a part of you that feels like you're letting people down, letting the team down. That weight that is natural for him to carry is there. You could kind of see that (Friday) night.' Betts has hit second — behind leadoff man Shohei Ohtani and ahead of first baseman Freddie Freeman — all season, but Roberts doesn't think dropping Betts in the order would help break his funk. 'If I felt a different look would help performance, I would do it,' Roberts said. 'But in talking to Mookie, I just don't know if hitting him first or ninth or anywhere in between changes where he's at mechanically. He's very sold on the fact that he's got to clean some things up mechanically, and where he hits in the order isn't going to change that.' ___
