Overnight Regulation: Supreme Court green lights partial travel ban | Schumer wants robocall crackdown | Google faces record EU fine | Justices to look at Dodd-Frank whistleblower protections

Welcome to Overnight Regulation, your daily rundown of news from the federal agencies, Capitol Hill, the courts and beyond. It’s Monday evening, and the Supreme Court is ending its June session with a bang.

 

THE BIG STORY: Supreme Court green lights partial travel ban

The Supreme Court delivered a win to President Trump on Monday, allowing his travel ban to take effect, albeit on a limited basis, before it hears a lawsuit against the policy this fall.

While lower courts had blocked the ban since February, the Supreme Court cited precedent to allow parts of it to take effect, stating that preserving national security is “an urgent objective of the highest order.”

“To prevent the government from pursuing that objective by enforcing [the ban] against foreign nationals unconnected to the United States would appreciably injure its interests without alleviating obvious hardship to anyone else,” the court said.

Trump, who had predicted he would triumph at the Supreme Court, hailed the court’s decision as a “clear victory for our national security.”

{mosads}”Today’s ruling allows me to use an important tool for protecting our nation’s homeland,” he said.

The travel ban can take effect in 72 hours and will block many travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days. The countries affected are Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

But rather than lifting the injunction against Trump’s policy wholesale, the justices crafted an exemption that allows nationals from those six countries to enter the U.S. if they have a “bona fide” relationship to a person or entity in the country.

In practice, that means that students and business travelers, as well as people with close family members, might be granted entry.

Enforcement of the policy, though, will largely be left to the Trump administration.

The Hill’s Lydia Wheeler has the details on the decision here.

Click here for more on the fallout and what’s next.

For more on Trump’s reaction, click here.

  

ON TAP FOR TUESDAY

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta will testify before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee at 10:30 a.m. on his department’s 2018 fiscal budget request.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is back before Congress, this time for a hearing at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on his agency’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal, at 9:30 a.m.

The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on reauthorizing key sections of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, at 9:30 a.m.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry speaks at the U.S. Energy Information Administration Energy Conference.

The House Agriculture Committee is holding a hearing at 10 a.m. on financial market clearinghouses.

A House Financial Services Committee Subpanel will hold a hearing on the “U.S. equity market structure” and look at ways to update the Securities Act to deal with modern automated trading at 10 a.m.

A House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. to look a slew of legislation dealing with self-driving cars.

A Senate Appropriations Subcommittee will hear from Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo about their agencies’ fiscal 2018 budget at 10 a.m.

  

REG ROUNDUP

Tech: Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block telemarketers from leaving ringless voicemails, a new technology for sales calls.

“With billions of robocalls made to cellphones each year, the feds should be doing more to rein in annoying telemarketers, not throw gas on the problem and add fuel to cellphone spam,” said Schumer.

Robocalls, or automated calls to consumers soliciting their information or business, have increased in recent years. Lawmakers and the federal government have taken note and ramped up efforts to curb them. In 2016, Schumer railed against the practice, noting that in two New York ZIP codes alone consumers had received 50 million robocalls in a single month.

Ringless voicemails, unlike traditional calls, go straight to a recipient’s voice mailbox.

Read more from The Hill’s Ali Breland here.

 

Energy: With “infrastructure week” and “tech week” over, the Trump administration is turning to “energy week” this week.

At a handful of events during the week, President Trump and his administration will push their quest for “energy dominance,” a term officials are using for their goal to become the world’s energy superpower.

“President Trump is committed to utilizing our abundant domestic energy resources both to create jobs and a growing, prosperous economy at home and to strengthen America’s global influence and leadership abroad,” a White House spokeswoman said Monday.

The president’s week-long policy focuses have been sidelined by other news in national headlines, including healthcare reform and the investigations into Russian involvement in last year’s election.

Read more from The Hill’s Timothy Cama here. 

 

Tech: The European Union is planning to hand Google what could be a record $1.2 billion fine this week after a years-long battle with the internet giant over its search practices, according to multiple reports.

European regulators have accused Google of favoring its own shopping services over those of competitors in its search results.

According to the Financial Times, which first reported the news, Brussels is likely to hand down the fine on Wednesday.

Read more from The Hill’s Harper Neidig here. 

 

Finance: The Supreme Court announced Monday it will weigh whether corporate whistleblowers who don’t report wrongdoing to federal authorities are protected by anti-retaliation laws.

The high court will hear a San Francisco company’s appeal of a lower court ruling that it violated federal whistleblower protections in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act when it fired Paul Somers, a former employee who reported a manager for hiding excessive spending. Somers had reported misconduct internally but not to federal authorities.

The court decided unanimously to review the case in October, when their second session of the year begins.

The Hill’s Sylvan Lane explains it here.

 

Mergers: Two outdoors companies have given federal trade regulators more time to review their proposed $5 billion merger.

In a securities filing Monday, Cabela’s Inc. said it had agreed to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) “timing agreement” that gives the government until July 5 to consider Bass Pro Shops’ proposed takeover of the company.

The two companies had previously aimed to finalize their merger by the end of June.

Bass Pro Shops said in October that it would buy Cabela’s for $5.5 billion, creating a new giant outdoors gear chain consisting of nearly 200 locations across the U.S.

But the terms of the deal have changed amid financial and regulatory scrutiny.

The Hill’s Devin Henry has more here.

 

Energy: The Senate on Monday confirmed the chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a new five-year term.

Senators voted 88-9 to confirm Kristine Svinicki to the position less than one month after President Trump announced her renomination. The Senate fast-tracked her confirmation because her current term at the NRC ends at the end of the month.

Svinicki has served on the NRC since 2008 after a decade-long career as a Senate staffer working on security, science and technology issues. She also worked as a nuclear engineer at the Department of Energy and spent time as an energy engineer for the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.

The Hill’s Devin Henry has more on the nuke regulator here.

 

Church and state: The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can’t exclude religious organizations when distributing grant funding for state programs when the money is for a nonreligious purpose.

In a 7-2 ruling, the court sided with Trinity Lutheran Church in the case challenging Missouri’s decision to bar it from receiving funds in a state program that reimburses nonprofits for resurfacing their playgrounds with recycled rubber tires.

Though Trinity operates a preschool and day care center on its property, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources said the state constitution prohibits it from using public funds to support a church.

The court said the state’s policy violated the rights of Trinity Lutheran under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause by denying the church an otherwise available public benefit on account of its religious status.

Read more from The Hill’s Lydia Wheeler here.

 

More SCOTUS: The high court has agreed to hear a case challenging whether a Colorado cake shop has to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

The justices are being asked in the case — known as Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights — whether shop owner Jack Phillips has to make a cake for Charlie Craig and David Mullins’s same-sex marriage under Colorado’s public accommodations law.

Phillips claims that requiring him to provide the wedding cake violates his constitutional rights to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion.

Craig and Mullins claim Phillips discriminated against them based on their sexual orientation by refusing to make the cake they requested in 2012, in violation of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA).

The Hill’s Lydia Wheeler has more here.

 

A BREAK FROM REGS

In today’s other big story, Senate Republicans’ ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill would result in 22 million more uninsured people over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The analysis is a hurdle for Republicans as they look to pass their bill this week.

The bill would result in a $321 billion deficit reduction over 10 years, the CBO found.

There would be 15 million more uninsured people next year, the report finds, largely due to the mandate to buy insurance being repealed. The number of uninsured would then rise in later years as smaller subsidies to buy private insurance and Medicaid cuts kick in.

The Hill’s Peter Sullivan breaks down the report’s numbers here.

Also on Monday, GOP leaders insisted they would push ahead with a vote this week.

And to see where Republican senators stand on the bill, check out The Hill’s latest Whip List.

  

ALSO IN THE NEWS

US Mayors back renewable energy plan

Poll: Voters want US to seek new climate pact to replace Paris

Lawsuit targets firm that failed to secure 198 million Americans’ data 

Industry ‘surprised’ by DOJ appealing data warrant case to the Supreme Court 

 

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