Barrett’s authored opinions give no reason to believe she automatically accepts or rejects a government agency’s interpretation of the law. //

The executive branch of George Washington’s presidency was but a pale image of what we have today. The 91 members of the first Congress outnumbered the executive branch officials empowered to implement congressional acts and presidential orders. Since Congress chartered the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, however, the number, reach, and power of executive officials have grown exponentially, creating our contemporary Leviathan administrative state.

A major criticism of the administrative state is that it consists of unelected officials with the power to govern virtually every aspect of modern life without serious oversight by the federal courts. //

The opinions Barrett wrote or joined are reasoned analyses of the relevant statutory provisions, the applicable case law, and the pertinent aspects of the administrative record. These cases suggest Barrett is prepared to do the hard work of statutory interpretation and not simply declare that a statute or regulation is ambiguous and, therefore, the court should defer to the applicable agency’s interpretation.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Oracle v. Google, a landmark case that considers whether application-programming interfaces can be protected by copyright. We first published this article about the case in early 2019, when Google asked the Supreme Court to consider the case. It has been edited to reflect the fact that oral arguments are this week.

Did you watch our weird baseball playoffs instead? I can’t blame you, but don’t worry: you can get all caught up with the best tweets of the night here.

'When you don't try, you're creating an inhumane death, and you're creating an absolute certain death,' said Amanda Finnefrock, a mother whose twins were refused medical care after birth at 22 weeks and 5 days. //

While many corporate media outlets painted Trump’s Born Alive E.O. as another “appeal to religious voters,” or an “appeal to the right,” moms like Finnefrock see it not as a political stunt, but a “glimmer of hope.”

“We’ve been waiting so long, three years, for justice, or even an attempt at justice,” Finnefrock said. “We feel like for the first time in three years our sons’ death wasn’t in vain.”

On Wednesday Russia's state space corporation, Roscosmos, unveiled plans to develop a new "Amur" rocket.

The booster will be powered by new and as yet undeveloped rocket engines that burn methane. Just as significantly, for the first time, Russia is seeking to build a reusable first stage. And Roscosmos is targeting a low price of just $22 million for a launch on Amur, which is advertised as being capable of delivering 10.5 tons to low-Earth orbit.

"We would like our rocket to be reliable, like a Kalashnikov assault rifle," said Alexander Bloshenko, executive director of Roscosmos for Advanced Programs and Science.

What is perhaps most striking about the Amur rocket design, however, is how much it resembles a smaller version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which can lift about twice as much payload into orbit.

Attacking the Trump administration for what she called a “pattern” of racist behavior, California Democrat Harris said, “[Trump], on the issue of Charlottesville, where people were peacefully protesting the need for racial justice where a young woman was killed, and on the other side, there were neo-Nazis carrying tiki torches, shouting racial epithets, antisemitic slurs. And Donald Trump, when asked about it, said there were fine people on both sides.” //

“You know, I think this is one of the things that makes people dislike the media so much in this country,” Pence replied. “That you selectively edit, just like Sen. Harris did, comments that President Trump and I and others on our side of the aisle make. Sen. Harris conveniently omitted after the president made comments about people on either side of the debate over monuments, he condemned the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists, and has done so repeatedly.” //

“You had some very bad people in that group,” Trump said of the violent Antifa thugs, white nationalists, and neo-Nazis. “But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. … You had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.”

Trump was clear, but it didn’t matter. The media spliced part of his quote to paint him as a racist and then blared it all over the headlines, saying Trump called white supremacists “very fine people.”