Bits 'n pieces from east, west and beyond

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:

The Trump Administration’s negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices for seniors — intended for an “October surprise” — collapsed, according to The New York Times. Administration plans would have seen drug companies sending out $100 cash cards to seniors before November. PhRMA trade group officials said the industry did not want to be positioned as teaming up with the President Donald Trump right before the election. They also argued the savings cards would “not provide lasting help.”

The White House halted plans to send 650 million cloth face masks to everyone in the U.S. early-on in the pandemic, under the reasoning that “receiving masks might create concern or panic,” the Washington Post reported. Had the masks been sent and used, a study by the Center for Economic Policy estimated that 40,000 lives could have been saved in April and May.

Wildfire smoke could increase the intensity of COVID-19 symptoms, according to UC San Francisco; of particular concern are microscopic particles that injure lung linings.

At a recent campaign stop in Nevada, Trump mused about holding office for 12 years, U.S. News and World Report stated. Doing so remains impossible under the Constitution.

A federal judge ruled that the U.S. Postal Service must reverse changes made by the U.S. Postmaster General that slowed the mail, calling those actions “politically motivated” in that it could “disrupt” mail-in voting for the election.” Fourteen states sued, The Washington Post reported, after a US Postal Service sent a warning to 46 states that the agency could not guarantee mail-in ballots would arrive on time for counting.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at age 87 on Sept. 18 after serving 27 years on the U.S. Supreme Court as an associate justice (she had been confirmed in a 96-3 Senate vote). She was known for strict adhesion to her belief in equality under the law, for cases involving both men and women.

Shortly after Ginsburg’s death, Trump and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said they will move rapidly to replace her. But past and present statements by Republicans muddy those plans: “It’s been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in 2016; “If there’s…a vacancy [that] occurs in the last year of the first term … let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stated in 2016; “I would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. We are 50 some days away from an election,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said after Ginsberg’s death.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (D-Vt.) explanation for haste in this case: the “goal, maybe above all others, is to pack the courts with partisan ideologues who will protect corporations at the expense of workers, will suppress people’s right to vote, and will allow the wealthy to buy our elections.”

A week after the election the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a Republican-led challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The court upheld the legality of the law in 2012 by a 5-4 vote.

To pass Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, 51 votes are needed in the Senate, which now has 53 Republicans. In 2016, when Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, McConnell did not allow a vote on President Barrack Obama’s nominee, citing it being an election year as his reasoning.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicated on ABC News that Democrats will explore ways to prevent another politicized Supreme Court appointment.

Since mid-March the total net worth of the nation’s billionaires has risen by $850 billion, a 29 percent increase, according to a new study from the Institute for Policy Studies.

Blast from the past: While numerous Republicans said four years ago there should be no Supreme Court justice replacement made in an election year, that is not a rule, said historian Heather Cox Richardson. In the nation’s history, at least 14 Supreme Court justices were nominated and confirmed during an election year. Three others were nominated after a presidential election.

The current controversy stems from the Senate refusing to vote on Obama’s nominee in 2016, and in former President Ronald Reagan’s use of judicial nominees to undo the works of justices appointed by prior Republican presidents, justices who focused on equality under the law. Under those prior justices, decisions were made to desegregate public schools, create voting districts of equal population, grant the right for suspects to have their rights read to them, ban criminalization of interracial marriage and end of laws against contraceptives.

Reagan’s nomination process was politicized with questions about views on abortion and affirmative action. In 1992, when then-Senator Joe Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, he proposed that if a Supreme Court vacancy should occur, it should not be filled until after the upcoming election, to avoid further nominee politicization that had occurred under Reagan and President George H.W. Bush. McConnell calls that the “Biden Rule.”

A number of Republicans who said four years ago that they opposed election-year replacements of justices are now reversing their stance.