The Supreme Court is due to release a ruling this week that could potentially restrict the power of federal regulatory agencies, and President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump square off in their first scheduled debate.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, House Republicans will continue advancing fiscal 2025 appropriations bills that take fresh whacks at non-defense spending, including in the bills for funding the Labor and Interior departments, and the EPA.
The Supreme Court has left some of its most significant opinions for the very end of its term, raising the question of whether it can finish its work by the end of June, as is traditional.
One pending decision involves how much authority regulatory agencies have to interpret the laws passed by Congress. The court’s 1984 Chevron decision says that when Congress is unclear, courts should defer to interpretations of federal agencies, so long as they’re reasonable.
The court is expected to limit that authority when it decides a case involving a National Marine Fisheries Service rule requiring fishing companies to pay part of the cost of at-sea monitoring.
The long-term impacts of the decision are not entirely clear; the Supreme Court has moved away from citing Chevron in recent years, relying more lately on the “major questions doctrine,” which essentially tells courts not to assume Congress has given federal agencies the authority to decide questions of major economic and political significance.
That reasoning was used in 2022 to limit EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association cites the doctrine in its challenge to EPA’s latest power plant regulations.
The first presidential debate is being hosted by CNN on Thursday, much earlier than normal and ahead of both party conventions. A second debate, on ABC, is scheduled for Sept. 10.
On the basis of a coin flip, Trump won the right to go last, while Biden got to pick his podium position; he will be on the TV viewer’s right side, according to CNN. CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will host the debate.
The FiveThirtyEight average of polls shows the race nationally to be a statistical dead heat, with 40.7% of voters for Biden to 40.5% for Trump.
Back on Capitol Hill, the Senate is in recess through next week, but the House GOP is looking to make more progress on its FY25 spending bills.
The House is scheduled to debate three FY25 bills on the floor this week, including the State-Foreign Operations spending bill that includes funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which plays a critical rule in providing international food aid and agriculture assistance.
The House Rules Committee meets Tuesday to prepare the bill for floor debate. Among the amendments that have been proposed for debate include one filed by Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., that would cut the State Department’s general administration account to increase funding for “food security and agriculture.”
Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, is seeking to get the Biden administration to push for a resolution to a water dispute with Mexico. Texas lawmakers claim Mexico isn’t fulfilling critical commitments for water in the Rio Grande Valley. The issue has forced the shutdown of the last sugarcane mill in south Texas. Under a 1944 treaty, Mexico is supposed to deliver 1.75 million acre-feet of water over a five-year period.
An amendment proposed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., would zero out USAID funding.
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Meanwhile this week, House Appropriations subcommittees will release and vote on additional FY25 bills, including the measures funding the departments of Labor, Transportation and Interior, as well as the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers.
Republicans are proposing to slash funding for several FY25 bills by at least 10%, including State-Foreign Operations as well as Interior-Environment and Labor-HHS. The Interior-Environment bill was allocated $36.9 billion, down from the $41.3 billion provided for FY24.
The Democratic-controlled Senate has yet to announce its FY25 funding allocations or to start work on its bills. North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, the top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, told Agri-Pulse the FY25 bill that funds USDA and FDA could be debated right after lawmakers return from the July 4 recess.
Also this week, with the issue of food price inflation continuing to dog Biden’s campaign the left-leaning Center for American Progress is looking to highlight the administration’s efforts to increase competition in food and agriculture markets.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who heads the Justice Department’s antitrust division, will keynote an online event that focus on the “administration's actions are lowering costs, promoting fairer and more competitive markets, improving conditions for U.S. consumers and producers, and making the domestic food supply chain more robust and resilient,” CAP says.
On Wednesday, Friends of the Earth and other groups opposed to the use of manure biogas for energy generation are delivering a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters. Organizers say the petition has been signed by more than 33,000 people.
The Biden administration has been strongly supportive of the role of methane capture in livestock agriculture to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from farming. The critics organizing the event want EPA to instead regulate emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations. Instead, EPA and USDA jointly promote the capture of biogas through their AgStar program.
Here is a list of agriculture- or rural-related events scheduled for this week in Washington and elsewhere (all times EDT):
Monday, June 24
4 p.m. – USDA releases weekly Crop Progress report.
Tuesday, June 25
9 am. – USDA releases monthly Food Price Outlook.
11 a.m. – Center for American Progress webinar, Increasing Competition and Fairness in Food and Agricultural Markets.
2 p.m. – House Rules Committee meeting to consider rules for the fiscal 2025 Homeland Security, State-Foreign Operations and Defense appropriations bills, H-313 Capitol.
Wednesday, June 26
8:30 a.m. – House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee meeting to consider its FY25 spending bill, H-140 Capitol.
Thursday, June 27
8 a.m. – House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee meeting to consider its FY25 bill, 2358-C Rayburn.
8:30 – House Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee meeting to consider its FY25 bill, 2358-A Rayburn.
8:30 a.m. – USDA releases Weekly Export Sales report.
9 p.m. – First presidential debate, Atlanta.
Friday, June 28
8 a.m. – House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee meeting to consider its FY25 bill, 2008 Rayburn.
8:30 a.m. – House Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee meeting to consider its FY25 bill, 2358-C Rayburn.
Noon – USDA releases annual Acreage and quarterly Grain Stocks reports.
3 p.m. – USDA releases Agriculture Census Operators by Race report.
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