Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickle?”

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / (More Than Ever) TGIFriday Open Thread: Another Month Almost Over

(More Than Ever) TGIFriday Open Thread: Another Month Almost Over

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It’s gonna be a bumpy ride…

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286Comments

  2. 2.

    New Deal democrat

    I just want everyone to know that Twitter has now made it impossible to read tweets unless you have an account and log on to it.

    So if you are still posting there, nobody who is not on Twitter can see what you say.

    Those of you who have accounts there, please spread the word, because otherwise posters there won’t know. And now is the time, if you haven’t already, to activate your Mastodon or other account!

  3. 3.

    Baud

    @New Deal democrat:

    Yep. We were talking about that downstairs.

    Question regarding Mastodon. If you sign up with one instance and later port to another, does your post history port? And what if someone else on the other instance has your username?

  4. 4.

    Baud

    Government agencies need to find Twitter alternatives if it’s become a closed shop.

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    My eldest granddaughter turns 15 today. All together now,

    Happy birthday to you,
    Happy birthday to you,
    Happy birthday dear Cora,
    Happy birthday to you!

  8. 8.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:

    It’s not just government agencies in the US, it’s agencies all over the world and the public they serve.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @New Deal democrat: I just want everyone to know that Twitter has now made it impossible to read tweets unless you have an account and log on to it.

    I still can (just checked, stonekettle) I have an account but have never logged in. I open a specific person’s twitter feed and read that. I don’t “follow” anybody. I never mark “favorites”, I doubt I even count as one who “views” a specific tweet unless I want to post up a link to it. I don’t know how or why this works for me. If it ever stops working for me, it will be the last of twitter for me.

    Oh yeah, I also have a very aggressive ad blocker so they make no revenue off me that way either.

  10. 10.

    Anne Laurie

    Question to readers: If you don’t have a twitter account, can you still see the tweets I’ve embedded here? Can you play the videos in those embeds?

  11. 11.

    Freemark

    Was on GOS and Fox has a poll of the top 6 Republicans no Republican will vote for. Pence was number 1. Haley,  Ramaswamy, and Scott were the next three. Wonder what they could have in common? Just can’t put my finger on it. Maybe Will from last night would know.

  13. 13.

    AWJ

    @Anne Laurie: I don’t have a Twitter account and I can still see embedded tweets on this and other websites, including videos in those embedded tweets.

  14. 14.

    Jess

    @Freemark: Name recognition. That’s it, really. No one even knows what the GOP stands for anymore beyond owning the libs. (And yes, I know you were being snarky.)

  15. 15.

    Scout211

    @Anne Laurie: If you don’t have a twitter account, can you still see the tweets I’ve embedded here?

    Yes, at least right now.

    Can you play the videos in those embeds?

    Yes, they all worked just now.

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: She’s the one who rides steeplechase, plays defensive end on her school’s boys football team, wrestles on the girls wrestling team, plays the viola, shows real artistic talent, is very smart and very much a no nonsense type. Oh yeah, she is also drop dead beautiful and scares the pants off every boy she meets. In fact, she is so much like my sister Peggy (who died in ’94), it is scary.

    I tell my son, “You don’t have to worry about that one.” but of course he does, she’s still Daddy’s girl.

  19. 19.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Seems like the Democrats continue to play Jefferson to the Republican’s Adams/Marshall (Adams appointed judges right up to his last day in power. Marshall orchestrated Marbury v Madison, thus handing TJ his ass).

    It’s pretty to think that the judicial branch isn’t political.

  20. 20.

    Percysowner

     

    @New Deal democrat: Good to know. I have an account and am signed in. I’m just waiting for Pitchbot to settle permanently somewhere and then I’ll figure out that platform and drop Twitter. My biggest problem is that I use RSS feeds for everything and I don’t know if the new services support that. I guess I may end up missing Zillow Goes Wild, but so is life.

  21. 21.

    Anne Laurie

    Thanks, guys!

    Hope we (I) can keep this limping along until BluSky or Post or one of the other alternatives can, at the least, attract more news media accounts (and hopefully enable embed functions that will work with FYWP!)

  27. 27.

    Scout211

    Uh Oh, Tim Scott is sounding woke?

    Tim Scott calls on universities to end legacy admissions

    Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said now that the Supreme Court has limited the use of race as a factor in college admissions, colleges should eliminate legacy-based admissions next.

    “I think the question is how do you continue to create a culture where education is the goal for every single part of our community? One of the things that Harvard could do to make that even better is to eliminate any legacy programs where they have preferential treatment for legacy kids, not allow for the professors — their kids to come to Harvard as well,” Scott said on Fox’s “The Faulkner Focus.”

  30. 30.

    Betty

    @Chief Oshkosh: It has reached the point with this Court that it is laughable to believe it is not political. Biden won’t give up on certain out of date beliefs. It is just who he is, for better or worse.

  32. 32.

    Suzanne

    @Freemark: DOOD. Yesterday, I was doing a Peloton ride, and someone (who I passed) on the leaderboard had “#vivek4presdient2024” (sic) as their first hashtag! LMAO.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    While I disagree with Biden’s framing here, people pushing him to expand SCOTUS need to understand that Congress has that power, not the President. FDR was actually in a position that he might have been able to get it done; Biden isn’t.

  35. 35.

    Birdie

    @Scout211: Tim Scott’s 2020 remarks on his experiences as a Black man were also on point. It makes me a little sad – this guy clearly has insight from his lived experience, but his political ambitions depend on him mostly hiding them, from others if not from himself.

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    Turkiye has a Pride Week. A Pride March in Istanbul attracted “hundreds” of marchers last weekend, according to Reuters. Police in riot gear blocked the marchers from their traditional destination, Taksim Square. Fifty marchers were arrested in Istanbul, and 43 Pride marchers were arrested in the coastal city of Izmir.

  37. 37.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud:

    538 has upgraded polling averages shoved its head up a horse’s ass long ago! 

    Fixed.  Hope it helps.

  38. 38.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    While I disagree with Biden’s framing here

    Some people do this thing where, if a Dem messages liberal themes, they’re just pandering for votes and don’t really mean it, but if a Dem messages centrist or institutional themes, it reflects what’s truly in their hearts.  It’s a filter for confirmation bias.

    I don’t know what Biden really believes in his heart about this court, but given where we are electorally, I am inclined to view  aggressive rhetoric on court reform as not a winning issue in the near future.

  39. 39.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Ryan J. Reilly
    @ryanjreilly
    Donald Trump recently posted a screenshot featuring Barack Obama’s DC address.

    A Jan. 6 participant who has been living in a van by the DC jail and has creeped out other J6 supporters saw it.

    “Got them surrounded!” he reposted.

    Arrested near the home.

    NBC News

  41. 41.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Betty: Yes, it is laughable. And if our point people continue to engage in that fantasy, voters will never see the need vote Democratic based on judicial nomination power. We all get frustrated that “normies” don’t see the importance there, but by their actions, our leadership doesn’t advertise how critical it is to have judicial nomination power. If a situation is really dire, if fixing something is absolutely crucial, then behave that way. Sometimes the correct moral path is to be decisive in pursuing a just goal.

  42. 42.

    mrmoshpotato

    @New Deal democrat: Oh hooray!  First they wrecked the ability to click on a hashtag without an account, and now they’ve totally yelled GFY at anyone without an account.

  44. 44.

    sdhays

    @Scout211: LOL, yeah, all those legacy admissions are the kids of professors!

    Welp, he’s definitely not going to be the VP candidate (narrator: he was never going to be a nominee for President or Vice President). Jared will see to that!

  51. 51.

    Baud

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    OTOH, the worse Twitter gets, the harder it will be for Musk to use it to sway the 2024 election.

    ETA: This is similar to what Reddit is doing — trying to force everyone to use their official app rather than third-party apps.  Although reddit hasn’t blocked content for non-subscribers yet.

  53. 53.

    Scout211

    Long read, but well worth a few minutes of your time.

    He’s The Trans Son Of An Anti-Trans Influencer. It’s His Turn To Speak.

    Renton Sinclair’s mother is a former Miss Illinois who wants to force trans people out of public life. That’s exactly what makes her a rising star in MAGA World.

    . . .

    Renton doesn’t talk to Tania anymore. But Tania is always talking about Renton these days, on podcasts and livestreams and stages across the country, from California to South Dakota to Pennsylvania. She often tells the story of how God appeared to her in a dream before her first child was born, telling her what to name her child, a name with Biblical origins.

     

    Renton is not that name. Tania refuses to call her son that name. In fact, she refuses to call her son her son. “It’s demonic,” Tania said about the existence of transgender people. “My daughter is in there, my daughter who was born and prophesied over and given the name from God is in there, but the Devil has taken and twisted her mind…”

     

    In Tania’s telling, she is a victim, a mother who lost her child to the woke cult of “gender ideology.” She once told a crowd of 4,000 people that the gender-affirming care Renton and other trans people receive is the work of the literal devil, a scheme of mass sterilization to steal the “seed” of humanity.

  54. 54.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @sdhays: I don’t know the policies of the schools involved, but a lot of private schools do forgive tuition for professors’ children. It can be a big boost to the compensation. When I was at General Motors Institute, they did that.

  55. 55.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    It’s pretty to think that the judicial branch isn’t political.

    Indeed.  And that’s especially true now that the Rethugs have basically engineered a coup of the Court.

    Biden’s basically saying we can’t do anything about this Court until Thomas and Alito kick the bucket sometime in the 2030s, and even that assumes that the Dems have the White House and a Senate majority when that happens.

    I understand where he’s coming from, but I don’t think we can afford to be hands-off for that long.

  63. 63.

    CaseyL

    I can see Tweets posted here, but can’t access them on Twitter, nor the few remaining people on Twitter I read.

    Ah, well.

    I thought “Wouldn’t a public sector-run Twitter-type thing be fantastic?”, but moderating it would be an absolute nightmare, so that’s not going to happen.  Not to mention having to scale up constantly.

    People will find the next thing.  Young people already have, a couple of “next things” (Instagram, TikTok).

  66. 66.

    Scout211

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Mr. (Dr.) Scout’s private university gives a tuition reduction  to children of professors and also is part of a larger network of private universities on the west coast with a reciprocal benefit.

    But it does not give preferential admission to children of professors.

  67. 67.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: It looks like moving to another instance is easy, and it’s easy to leave pointers to the new site.  I don’t think previous toots move with you though.

    E.g. https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/103393780267601137 (but that’s from 2019).

    https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/ seems to be the official information about moving.

    A hackery work-around is to use nitter in a browser.  E.g. the first Reuters tweet above is:

    https://nitter.net/Reuters/status/1673256032162791424

    NOTE – Be patient – it’s slow.

    HTH!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  68. 68.

    Betty Cracker

    Regarding the Twitter foofaraw, are we sure this is deliberate gatekeeping, or could it be a fried API (or whatever)? If the former, it’s entirely possible Beluga Boy* will walk it back once the negative implications are explained.** If the latter, maybe they’ll fix it. Eventually.

    *Apologies to the noble cetaceans, but I can’t unsee what I’ve seen.

    **There’s probably an unfortunate soul at that company whose entire job is to communicate to Musk that a Musk fuck-up has occurred, using language so flattering and deferential and non-confrontational that it’s possible Himself will see fit to rectifying it instead of going off on another culling/defamation spree. 

  71. 71.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @CaseyL: My editor would like me to be on both Instagram and TikTok. I find Instagram boring. I like TikTok but it’s a bigger bar to post there because I have to make a video. That doesn’t come as easily to me as it does to the young ones! Especially since I’m not sure I want to show off how, uh, seasoned I am to a YA audience.

  73. 73.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud:

    I don’t know what Biden really believes in his heart about this court, but given where we are electorally, I am inclined to view aggressive rhetoric on court reform as not a winning issue in the near future.

    And yet many are upset that normies failed us by not voting for Hillary based on the importance of judicial nomination power. This has been a problem for decades, but our elected leaders don’t treat it as such. If something is really important, don’t just tell me it’s important – show me by your actions that it’s important.

    Every signal coming from elected Democrats, for decades, has been that the judicial nomination process and judicial activities are supposed to be magically pure and therefore they will treat them as magically pure. The reality is that the entire concept of judicial review was created by a cynical, power-hungry malcontent (Marshall). It’s never been magically pure. It was born of and has always been a rankly political process producing rankly political outcomes.

    I think that we got the progressive outcomes from the Warren court because some Democrats at that time treated the judicial nomination process, and subsequent interactions between the Executive and Judiciary, as fundamentally political. Democratic leaders today need to at least start viewing it this way, and hopefully, acting in leadership this way, in order for “normies” to have it demonstrated to them that this is actually important.

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker: They’ve done this “force signup” stuff in the past (e.g. January 2022).  It was temporary then.  Who knows what’s going on in that little “brain” of Melon this time, though…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  75. 75.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: The Court is really, really unpopular right now and generally perceived as a partisan body. But since that’s the objection, any political counter to it has to be framed as trying to make it less partisan, rather than as partisan escalation.

  76. 76.

    Anyway

    @Scout211:

    Mr. (Dr.) Scout’s private university gives a tuition reduction  to children of professors and also is part of a larger network of private universities on the west coast with a reciprocal benefit.

    But it does not give preferential admission to children of professors.

    many universities have reduced  tuition reduction for children of all staff, not just profs … which I support. Don’t know how admission works …

  78. 78.

    twbrandt

    @Betty Cracker: It could be bug, it could be deliberate, who knows? It may be fixed, it may not be, who knows? It’s all Calvinball over there. I deleted my account not long it was Muskified and I haven’t looked back.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    If something is really important, don’t just tell me it’s important – show me by your actions that it’s important.

    Couldn’t disagree more.  That way lies a myriad of individualized coalition-shattering litmus tests.

    Every signal coming from elected Democrats, for decades, has been that the judicial nomination process and judicial activities are supposed to be magically pure and therefore they will treat them as magically pure.

    I don’t see this at all, especially given the priority Biden has given to filling lower court judgeships.

     

    I think that we got the progressive outcomes from the Warren court because Democrats treated the judicial nomination process, and subsequent interactions between the Executive and Judiciary, as fundamentally political. Democratic leaders need to at least start viewing it this way, and hopefully, acting in leadership this way, in order for “normies” to have it demonstrated to them that this is actually important.

    Um, no. Brennan and Warren were Ike appointees.  Others were appointed by FDR when the Dems had a massive Senate advantage.  Nothing “political” about it.

  80. 80.

    sdhays

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m just laughing at the emphasis. Tim Scott emphasizes the professors because he’s framing ending legacy admissions as another way to stick it to liberals rather than the Tucker Carlsons and Jared Kushners of the world.

  81. 81.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin: That’s my sense of the political environment, but as frustrating as it is, the “let’s do what the Republicans are doing but for the side of good!” argument doesn’t sell with enough people IMHO.

  82. 82.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The Court is really, really unpopular right now and generally perceived as a partisan body.

    Maybe. But for “normies” it may well be that the USSC is unpopular right now because it’s making decisions that they don’t like.

  84. 84.

    Another Scott

    @Chief Oshkosh: Unfortunately, there’s a huge history of the SCOTUS being a hugely conservative, sometimes reactionary, body.  Yeah, you don’t want the courts playing Calvinball with the laws of the land, but you don’t want them holding back needed progress either.  I recall seeing some story that in all of history the SCOTUS was only really “liberal” during the  20-25-ish years of the Warren court.

    Biden knows how to find the center of where the Democratic Party and the country are at any given time.  He’s not going to waste political capital and energy chasing windmills that have no chance of success at the moment. I also think that he won’t stand in the way of SCOTUS reforms, so we need to give him (and Kamala) a Senate (and House) that can get things done.

    It’s maddening, but politics is slow, and the way to make progress is knowing when and how to pick one’s battles.

    I’ll, personally, keep yelling Fight for 15!! to try to improve the playing field in the meantime.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  85. 85.

    Baud

    @Chief Oshkosh: My guess is that normies didn’t like the abortion decision and don’t like the Thomas/Alito corruption.  If ISLT had gone the other way, I think normies would have paid attention.  I don’t think any other decision this term, including affirmative action yesterday, will have a big impact on normies.

  87. 87.

    Anyway

    @sdhays:

    I’m just laughing at the emphasis. Tim Scott emphasizes the professors because he’s framing ending legacy admissions as another way to stick it to liberals rather than the Tucker Carlsons and Jared Kushners of the world.

    I totally missed that – man, I suck at decrypting Rethug-ese…

  88. 88.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Anyway:

    many universities have reduced  tuition reduction for children of all staff, not just profs … which I support. Don’t know how admission works …

    Most colleges and universities aren’t very selective, so the admission process doesn’t matter that much.  The problem is several dozen elite colleges and universities that can afford to turn people away in droves.  They’re the places that the vast majority of our society’s movers and shakers graduated from, so who they admit really matters.

    The problem with preferential admission to legacies and the children of big donors and the children of professors is that the professors, the parents of legacies, and the big donors, are the people who were admitted to those elite colleges 30-40 years ago, and are distinctly whiter (and WASPier, for that matter) than the population as a whole.  It perpetuates a system where the children and grandchildren of the elites of yesteryear will be the elites of tomorrow.

    It’s a nice ‘colorblind’ system of excluding minorities and other newcomers from those elites.

  89. 89.

    Jinchi

    @Anne Laurie: I can see the text you’ve embedded here, but I don’t see any videos and clicking on the links takes you straight to the log in page.

    I assume Elon is tired of all the moochers reading his site without so much as giving him their personal information.

  90. 90.

    Layer8Problem

    @Baud:  Nope, post history (at this time anyway) does not transfer, just followers, followed, bookmarks, mute lists, block lists, and blocked domains.

    You can request an archive of your stuff, but it isn’t uploadable to other places.

    Usernames are unique to the server you’re on.  @[email protected] is different from @[email protected].  If you are trying to join at the mastodon.online server and somebody already has Baud on mastodon.online you’re stuck.  However, the Display Name, shown at the top of your posts, is different and I’m pretty sure it can be Baud even if your username is TheRealBaudDammit on that server because some inconsiderate clod already grabbed Baud there.

  94. 94.

    Another Scott

    @lowtechcyclist: I mentioned in a thread downstairs that my mom was a secretary at my private college (the University of Chicago).  The secretaries were unionized by the Teamsters and one of the benefits was free tuition for children and it was part of their negotiated compensation.  That was a huge benefit for us (and me).

    It’s not just professors.

    Your larger point about legacies and big donors is true, but one has to be careful about lumping everyone who gets preferential treatment (for all kinds of reasons) in with the Kushners of the world to make the percentages look bigger.  Colleges and universities have always considered more than applicant test scores, for all kinds of reasons, and employee compensation has been part of that equation for a very long time.

    [eta:] Oh, and I was admitted before she got the job there.  Admissions and tuition benefits were separate decisions (there at least).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    Jinchi

    @Jess: @Freemark: Name recognition.

    I think Freemark meant that Haley, Ramaswamey and Scott are the three who many people would never vote for. (Along with that traitor Pence).

    If name recognition is a problem, then no-one will win the Republican primary.

  97. 97.

    Martin

    @Chief Oshkosh: Shorter version: Trump wasn’t an institutionalist and that was extremely attractive to a lot of voters.

    Democrats are too inclined to institutionalism when those institutions are obviously broken. Nobody wants to side with the cops in Uvalde that stood outside when the scene commander told them to hold their position, and Democrats give off that energy a bit too often.

  99. 99.

    karen marie

    @Anne Laurie: I can see the tweeets you embed. The problem comes when there’s an embed in the embedded tweet – those are often cut off and not entirely visible without going to twitter – something I hate to do.

    I haven’t checked today but typically my experience of going there without an account is I can look at the tweet what brung me there, the thread (if any), and the trail of trolls. I cannot search without an account. I’m not sure that wasn’t the case pre-Impacted Molar.

  101. 101.

    Baud

    @Martin: Here’s the Gordian knot: Whatever Dems do, some group of fringe voters we need will find it wanting.  The challenge is to fine the right balance to create, and hopefully increase, a majority. And I haven’t seen a magic formula that gets us there, no matter who many people have a ChatGPT type confidence that their way is the right way.

  102. 102.

    Jeffro

    per that Connard tweet: it can’t be repeated often enough that when one party is off the rails, both parties will say that the other party is off the rails.  but only one of them will be right.  we should never stop expressing just how shocking and radical and weird and in some cases murderous the Republican Party has become.

  103. 103.

    karen marie

    @Anne Laurie: I don’t know anything about Post but I doubt Bluesky is going anywhere. I’ve heard it’s so empty it has tumbleweed blowing around.

  104. 104.

    Haroldo

    @Anne Laurie:

    1. I can see the embedded tweets but I cannot read them in Twitter because of needing an account
    2. I can look at the embedded videos
  105. 105.

    James E Powell

    @Betty:

    Biden won’t give up on certain out of date beliefs. It is just who he is, for better or worse.

    I would be surprised to learn that his belief about expanding the court is not the majority view. It is no doubt the consensus in The Village, which has yet to be destroyed.

    @Baud:

    I don’t know what Biden really believes in his heart about this court, but given where we are electorally, I am inclined to view  aggressive rhetoric on court reform as not a winning issue in the near future.

    Agreed. In the current environment, it looks like complaining about the referees. We need to win elections, several consecutive elections. This issue does not help. See also, Expanding the House of Representatives, one of my favorite hobby horses.

  106. 106.

    Martin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: For a lot of schools it’s any staff. A lot of janitors that never made it through high school got their kids through college that way.

    But this may or may not be part of that. There’s a difference between ‘your kid needs to get through the admission process like anyone else, but if they get in, tuition is free’, and ‘your kid is treated like a legacy and gets tuition covered’.

    The former is basically like any employer providing a scholarship to their employee’s kid, and that didn’t used to be that uncommon either, but there’s no favoritism in terms of being accepted.

    Publics don’t have either of these.

  107. 107.

    PBK

    @Anne Laurie: I can see the tweets and play the videos.  Do not have a Twitter account so when I click through it brings me to the sign-in/sign-up page.

  110. 110.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Sadly, I have no grandchildren either, and it doesn’t look like any are on the horizon. (And I keep my mouth firmly shut with my offspring on the topic; their choices are theirs.) So I’m volunteering at the city animal shelter for “Kitten Social Club,” which entails socializing, aka playing with, kittens to help make them adoptable.

    ETA: Happy Birthday to Cora!

  111. 111.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @karen marie: ​
      Bluesky is still a beta application. It is only allowing people to get in off of its waiting list or by limited invitation from people already there. Its interface, etc., is very similar to Twitter, so I would not be surprised if many Twitter users feel comfortable using it once it opens up.

  112. 112.

    Adam Lang

    @Anne Laurie: As of about three hours ago, there is no way for me to view tweets ON Twitter without logging in.

    I can still see the minimalist text-only embedded tweet on BJ, but it doesn’t let me see what is being retweeted, replied to, linked to (and if I click on a link to say WaPo embedded in a tweet it will ask me to log in because of the Twitter tweet shortener), etc.

    Basically, unless I want to log in, the vast majority of embedded tweets are now random noise to me.

    And I DO NOT want to log in.

  113. 113.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud:

    Others were appointed by FDR when the Dems had a massive Senate advantage. Nothing “political” about it.

    So, nothing political there. Got it.

  114. 114.

    Steeplejack

    Probably old news now, but Twitter is blocked on my computer, too (Windows 11, Firefox). Non-member, browser mode. Normally I would check Twitter to get the hot takes, funny quips and Elon hate surrounding this, but . . . uh. Yeah, no.

  115. 115.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    I don’t think any other decision this term, including affirmative action yesterday, will have a big impact on normies.

    I have doubts that anything the court does has any impact on how normies will vote in the next election.

  117. 117.

    Jinchi

    @sdhays: ​
     Tim Scott emphasizes the professors because he’s framing ending legacy admissions as another way to stick it to liberals

    That’s how I read it too. Especially since he singled out “Harvard” in his comments, and we all know that Harvard is the conservative’s go-to proof that liberals are elitist.

  119. 119.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Chief Oshkosh: Was in the middle of edited to say:

    ETA: Uh no. Arguably Ike nominated Warren, who up to then was viewed as somewhat conservative, to ride herd on the FDR appointees. Didn’t turn out that way. Warren was a bit of a surprise to the Republicans once JFK became president. So, again, much of it was political, which is neither good nor bad in and of itself. What is bad is not recognizing, or worse, pretending that it is otherwise.

    Happy to be corrected; my formative education was in a tiny progressive bubble, so I do get things wrong sometimes.

  120. 120.

    Martin

    @Baud: That’s fair, but I don’t think the criticisms that Democrats are disinclined to fight are entirely unfounded. We saw this with the 2022 midterm ‘democracy is under attack’ line only to ultimately do nothing. If not for Jack Smith, I think we’d still be in that spot. I mean, if this is so critical that you want me to give you $100, the least you can do is fucking vote on something.

    But the bigger tension is that my kids generation have turned very strongly from capitalism as being a functional economic system. They won’t vote Republican, but Democrats need them to vote, and that’s where a lot of apathy comes from right now. Biden can tout the economic record all he wants, but if you’re making $100K at a new semiconductor factory, that can still feel pretty shitty if your landlord is bleeding you dry, if some billionaire is destroying your online community, if we can’t get meaningful action on climate change because 6,000 lb SUVs are just too profitable to give up, etc.

    That’s really the intersection of the attacks from the left – please for the love of god fight for people, and make this economy fair and working for what the country needs. You can do that without going full socialist, but you gotta really pull out some big sticks and push them hard. Getting 4 days of sick leave for one union is a good statement of values, but that doesn’t really get the ball over the line for everyone else.

  124. 124.

    Spanky

    This just in! Chapter the Millionth of Fucking George Will:

    The court did not ‘end’ affirmative action. This was just a skirmish.

    Aka “it’s just a flesh wound”.

    WaPo Opinion page, of course.

  127. 127.

    OzarkHillbilly

    For whatever it is worth, I still have no problem viewing specific people’s twitter accounts w/o logging in.

  129. 129.

    Martin

    @Anne Laurie: BlueSky’s moderation approach is a goddamn disaster. It’s too early to see how that will manifest but it’s going to be abused like crazy once it gets to scale.

    BlueSky is doing everything they can to shift moderation responsibility off of their plate. It’s just Musks expressions at Twitter but with a different set of mechanisms implementing it.

  130. 130.

    Baud

    @Martin:

    We saw this with the 2022 midterm ‘democracy is under attack’ line only to ultimately do nothing. If not for Jack Smith, I think we’d still be in that spot.

    We just disagree factually there.

    iden can tout the economic record all he wants, but if you’re making $100K at a new semiconductor factory, that can still feel pretty shitty if your landlord is bleeding you dry, if some billionaire is destroying your online community, if we can’t get meaningful action on climate change because 6,000 lb SUVs are just too profitable to give up, etc.

    That’s really the intersection of the attacks from the left – please for the love of god fight for people, and make this economy fair and working for what the country needs. You can do that without going full socialist, but you gotta really pull out some big sticks and push them hard.

    If the current Dem fights are good enough, then they’re not good enough.  Just like if the Dems are too aggressive, we lose other groups we need.  Talking about the kids is no solution to the Gordian knot problem.

    Maybe the kids will be better off if the GOP sweeps and there is a clean slate of Dems in 2028.  I don’t know, and it’s not my place to make the decision for them.

  131. 131.

    Baud

    @Martin:

    We saw this with the 2022 midterm ‘democracy is under attack’ line only to ultimately do nothing. If not for Jack Smith, I think we’d still be in that spot.

    We just disagree factually there.

    iden can tout the economic record all he wants, but if you’re making $100K at a new semiconductor factory, that can still feel pretty shitty if your landlord is bleeding you dry, if some billionaire is destroying your online community, if we can’t get meaningful action on climate change because 6,000 lb SUVs are just too profitable to give up, etc.

    That’s really the intersection of the attacks from the left – please for the love of god fight for people, and make this economy fair and working for what the country needs. You can do that without going full socialist, but you gotta really pull out some big sticks and push them hard.

    If the current Dem fights are good enough, then they’re not good enough.  Just like if the Dems are too aggressive, we lose other groups we need.  Talking about the kids is no solution to the Gordian knot problem.

    Maybe the kids will be better off if the GOP sweeps and there is a clean slate of Dems in 2028.  I don’t know, and it’s not my place to make the decision for them.

  132. 132.

    dww44

    @New Deal democrat: ​
      While a registered user for years, now Twitter wants me to create a profile of myself “so people will know who I am”. Why would I do that? Not only do I not trust the site, I already get tweets posted to my iPhone from anti liberal posters. The feed continues to veer to the right and I hate it. Nothing I do seems to make it possible for me to make them go away.

  135. 135.

    Baud

    @Martin:

    We saw this with the 2022 midterm ‘democracy is under attack’ line only to ultimately do nothing. If not for Jack Smith, I think we’d still be in that spot.

    We disagree factually there.

    Biden can tout the economic record all he wants, but if you’re making $100K at a new semiconductor factory, that can still feel pretty shitty if your landlord is bleeding you dry, if some billionaire is destroying your online community, if we can’t get meaningful action on climate change because 6,000 lb SUVs are just too profitable to give up, etc.

    That’s really the intersection of the attacks from the left – please for the love of god fight for people, and make this economy fair and working for what the country needs. You can do that without going full socialist, but you gotta really pull out some big sticks and push them hard.

    This is just the Gordian knot problem again.  We lose the kids or we lose some other group of voters. If we’re not good enough, then we’re not good enough.

    Maybe the kids will be better off if the GOP sweeps and there is a clean Dem slate in 2028.  I don’t know, and it’s not my place to make the decision for them.

  139. 139.

    karen marie

    @Anne Laurie: I initially replied to your query that I could click through without an account. Turms out, Melon did change it – now I get a sign-in demand.

    It will be interesting to see how long that lasts.

    It’s problematical when a tweet you embed has not-fully-visible-but-relevant content.

  141. 141.

    Kathleen

    @OzarkHillbilly: Happy Birthday, Cora! You have a wonderful Grandpa but you knew that already! May you all live long and prosper!

    Today is also my youngest grandson’s 25th birthday! Grandkids are the absolute best!

  147. 147.

    rikyrah

    Cortney Lamar Charleston (@bardsbesidebars) tweeted at 10:59 AM on Thu, Jun 29, 2023:
    Let’s keep it a buck about what this Supreme Court decision is about: the objective is to keep the most “prestigious” academic institutions for social elites who are primarily and overwhelmingly white and wealthy (and male) those demos even more so than they already are today.
    (https://twitter.com/bardsbesidebars/status/1674447387870257152?s=02)

    Cortney Lamar Charleston (@bardsbesidebars) tweeted at 10:59 AM on Thu, Jun 29, 2023:
    There are simply certain “tables” that Black and brown (and Asian!) folks are not supposed to sit at and this court decision bolsters a racist order that had been strongly challenged. That Asian(-American) students were used as the shield for this is the saddest thing to me.

  148. 148.

    kindness

    I’m curious.  What would happen if a college/university continued to use race based affirmative action in selecting students?  I get that with this Supreme Court decision they would leave themselves open to being sued, but currently there is no law against it.  I’m wondering what kind of penalties a law suit would expose them to.  It’s not like government attorneys have any law to go after them with.

    Kind of a case of ‘OK Supreme Court, you made your ruling, now you enforce it.’

  149. 149.

    Elizabelle

    Quelle surprise.  LA Times.

    Oh well.  My religion is “Don’t do business with bigots.  And make sure others know what is hiding behind that little stylized fish on the door.”

    Supreme Court rules Christian web designer can turn away business related to same-sex weddings

    The Supreme Court ruled Friday that conservative Christians have a free-speech right to refuse to provide some business services for same-sex marriages, even in states like California where civil-rights laws forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation.

    The justices by a 6-3 vote sided with a graphic artist in Colorado who said she wants to expand her business to design custom websites that celebrate impending marriages, but not for same-sex couples. She cited her belief as a Christian that marriage is limited to a man and a woman.

  151. 151.

    rikyrah

    Black Doctors save Black Lives EVERYDAY!

     

    Dominique Jean-Louis (@DominiqueJL15) tweeted at 10:57 AM on Thu, Jun 29, 2023:
    Affirmative action 🧵:

    Yesterday I had to look up my endocrinologist’s office info to get a referral.

    I happened upon the fact that she graduated Columbia 5 years after I did. Which meant I was part of the team that admitted her, a team that regularly acted affirmatively.

    I specifically chose her as my doctor because she is a Black woman. Race was a primary factor, but she’s also a terrific physician.

    Last year, she’s looking through my most recent testing and asks me why my cholesterol is going up.

    I repeated what my (white, male) PCP told me:

    It’s typical for patients like me whose “lifestyle catches up with them as they get older.”

    She says that we just talked (kiki’d actually) about my lifestyle, which is very active and overall mostly healthy. *SHE BELIEVES ME* and recommends I go see a cardiologist.

     

    The cardiologist is quickly able to diagnose me with familial hypercholesterolemia. Very easy to treat, a pill a day with zero side effects.

    But it’s one of those diseases that if untreated, healthy people can drop dead of a heart attack before age 50.

    Black women make up less than 3% of all doctors. The ones in the field, save lives, ESPECIALLY those of other Black women.

    So it makes sense, if we care about Black lives, to employ and protect methods that ensure more Black doctors.

    If. We. Care. About. Black. Lives.

     

    This is not “why are you surprised?” This is not “here’s why it basically won’t make a difference.”

    It’s literal more Black death by a thousand cuts and I’m so mad and I’m so scared and I’m informed enough to know that is a perfectly appropriate response.

    (https://twitter.com/DominiqueJL15/status/1674446959845822464?s=02)

  152. 152.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Bupalos: Yeah, no shit. But if you read the article you will find that climate change is not the point of it. Labor law is. Labor law in Texas sucks donkey dick (as in all but nonexistent). They are focused on the extreme heat wave there now and how it is affecting workers (it is the elephant in the room) but more on how they have been abandoned to the fates by Texas law.

    Back when I was still working, from time to time I would work with someone who spent time working in Texas and they always had a few horror stories to tell.

    All I could say was, “I’ll never take a job in Texas.”

    FTR, I long ago lost count of the number of 100+ degree days I worked but heat stroke was always taken serious and we had access to water any time we needed it. If somebody started feeling faint they were sent straight to the job site trailer to cool down.

  153. 153.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: I agree about the abortion decision. I wonder, though, about the Affirmative Action decision, if only because I see the mainstream media hammering on it so much, including emphasizing that this is yet another decision by this court that just tosses decades of precedent out the window. That emphasis by those players, specifically, has me wondering.

    And agreed, the corruption aspect is being noticed by the normies I encounter.

    Will any of this affect the next presidential election? Again, I agree with you. Overall, I’d say the abortion ruling will. Everything else will move people at the margins, but not much else.

  154. 154.

    Bupalos

    With M.Obama’s statement, combined with thinking about the actual state of play in higher ed and relative ease of workarounds, I’ve worked myself around to seeing the decision as pretty meh. Not a nothingburger, but pretty close to a neutralburger. I think race will functionally still play a near identical role in admissions, and some of the stigma of a loudly race-based policy will be eased by a quieter one. It may give some ammunition or cover to individual racists in admissions offices, but my guess is there are like 5 of those and 4 of them are at Hillsdale. I think it changes very little. It’s largely SC fan service for the racist right.

  156. 156.

    Spanky

    Franky, I think we should continue taking a sledgehammer to the ingrained notion that Ivies are where all the brilliant people go. We’ve seen time and again how those Ivy-bred GOP politicians think, and it’s not pretty.

    And as for producing brilliant people who make our world better, I’d take the Big 10 schools, the PAC 10 schools, the HBCUs over the Ivies. And those are just the ones I have a good idea of what and who they produce. I know there are many more.

  158. 158.

    twbrandt

    Alan Arkin has died. I loved pretty much everything he was in. I think The In-Laws is one of the funniest movies ever made.

  159. 159.

    Betty Cracker

    @Elizabelle: I am your co-religionist then. I was reading something earlier about the fishy origins of this case. The person who allegedly requested the website to celebrate his same sex marriage says he 1) didn’t make the request, and 2) is a cishet guy who’s been married to a woman for 15 years.

    He’s a designer who used to have his email, name and phone number on a business site online, so maybe a wingnut who was eager to get this case before the corrupt SCOTUS jacked his data. According to the article, no one ever informed the guy he was a party to this case in any capacity.

  160. 160.

    sdhays

    @lowtechcyclist: The really tricky thing for these elite universities is that having the chance to share a dorm room with the children of the already-elite is really what they’re selling. You don’t get a significantly better education at Harvard undergrad than a decent public school, but your social network will be very different. If you exclude them, the whole value proposition changes.

    That’s why I don’t think Yale or Harvard or Princeton or any of the Ivies will ever get rid of legacy admissions. It would fundamentally change their place in the system, and why would they want to give that up?

  161. 161.

    Josie

    @Spanky: ​
     This is something I have been thinking about lately. We need to move away from thinking that our leaders should come from a few highly touted schools. There are good schools all over the country that turn out people with leadership qualities. The ivies do not have a lock on excellent students or professors. They also have turned out some real duds–see examples in our current political arena.

  163. 163.

    Ken

    @Baud: This is just the Gordian knot problem again.  We lose the kids or we lose some other group of voters.

    I think a better metaphor would be Scylla and Charybdis.

    It is left as an exercise for the reader to decide which of the two voter groups is the multi-headed monster slavering for human flesh, and which is the sucking whirlpool dragging down everything that approaches.

  164. 164.

    Elizabelle

    @Betty Cracker:  Interesting.  I will read up on the background of this one.

    Did make me wonder, how is business for that guy who did not want to make the gay wedding cakes a few years back?  Do these businesses survive?  Maybe not.

    Also, hugs to Badger and Pete.

  165. 165.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Bupalos: One thing I forgot to mention. TX labor law sucks so badly because so much of their work force are immigrants, and everybody in Texas knows immigrants aren’t real people.

    Please insert Jim Wrights emergency “Not all” because yes there are good people there. I should know, I have cousins living there. One of whom is married to an, you guessed it, immigrant from Mexico.

  166. 166.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    From what I can tell, Colorado made some poor litigation choices leading up to the Supreme Court, making the GOP majority’s work a bit easier than it should have been.

  167. 167.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Elizabelle: I wonder about that too. Why drive business away? If a MAGA person wants to buy my book, I say hand over the money.

    I suppose people may not know about this person’s bigotry. Or there are enough other bigoted person to support it.

  168. 168.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Elizabelle: Yep. It’ll be great to see every elected Republican being tossed out of restaurants and bars due to “religious” differences with the owners and employees. Remember how they whined when just ONE of them got the bum’s rush?

  169. 169.

    Baud

    Legally, 303 Creative could be a nothingburger or it could be a watershed case.  It’s more about signaling than actual law.  Later cases will determine how broadly it’s interpreted.

  170. 170.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @twbrandt: Sad news. He was great in everything.

    Serpentine! Serpentine!

     

    ETA: I know that that was Falk’s line, but Arkin’s straight man made the movie.

  171. 171.

    Elizabelle

    @Josie:  I was thinking how the political Republican “elite” of Ivy alumni are already taking a jackhammer to their university’s reputations.

    “We educate fascists.”  Doesn’t look too good.

    Ted Cruz.  Josh Hawley.  Ron DeSantis. Thomas Massey of Kentucky (MIT; who had his family brandishing AR-15s on a Christmas card).

    Too many of them to count, unfortunately.

  174. 174.

    Rusty

    The reactionary six justices just undid 59 years of public accomodation law, effectively wiping out much of the Civil Rights Legislation of 1964.  We are back to forms of Jim Crow.  What a low point for this country, what damage have they done.  They are horrible, horrible people.

  175. 175.

    scav

    @Betty Cracker: Their worldview is increasingly indifferent to — if not defiantly proud of and boastful of! — being founded on and maintained by lies. Potemkin case for a Potemkin Court.

  176. 176.

    Betty Cracker

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Yeah, I don’t understand that impulse either. There’s a antique/junk shop in my town that is just the type of business my mother-in-law and I like to ransack looking for treasures, but because the store has been flying a MAGA flag since 2016, we’ve never set foot in the place. Even in this Trumpy-ass shithole, 30% of the citizens are Democrats. Why alienate them unnecessarily?

  177. 177.

    JPL

    CNN had an interesting discussion on what does OPEN mean.   It used to be open to the public, but now appears to be unless I have a religious reason not to serve you .

    we are so fked.  Who will be the first chef that refuses to serve, a muslim, a jewish person because of religous reasons.

  182. 182.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: My private university did that. All the music professors kids went there, it was a huge benefit to them. Pretty sure it was for staff too, the music secretary’s kids went to school with me.  Eta I assume they had to meet the admission standards to get the benefit.

  184. 184.

    cain

    @New Deal democrat: Join us in the fediverse or post or whatever it is that you’re into. If you are using android – highly recommend you use ‘trunks’ where you can set it to be like a twitter experience including quote tweets and the like.

  185. 185.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: Yeah, I think the the result would have been the same even if CO hadn’t stipulated that what the website person was doing was expression under the 1st Amendment, but it would have been harder.​

  187. 187.

    RaflW

    @Baud: “Maybe the kids will be better off if the GOP sweeps and there is a clean Dem slate in 2028.  I don’t know, and it’s not my place to make the decision for them.”

    Not intended to pick on you in particular, but I am very much in the camp that thinks if the GOP sweeps in ’24, the USA is done as a democracy. Republicans have been at work on a 50 year plan to unmake our system and replace it, since they know in general that their policies are unpopular (which, I hope, means no clean sweep in ’24!).

    If they manage to regain trifecta control, the flurry of legislating will be shocking. And the Supremes – who are already wildly radicalized – will see a sweep as a mandate to get their Mullah decrees out at double the output.

    There are no course corrections coming for the GOP if they sweep. It’s an 8 lane self-driving expressway to hell on earth. I can’t imagine what ‘the kids’ will have to vote on in ’28 if your hypothetical comes to be.

  188. 188.

    Rusty

    @JPL: The decision is much broader than a religious reason.  It was decided as a straight first amendment free speech case.  Under the decision a business could decide to not serve a mixed race couple because they oppose mixing races.  They could refuse to serve anyone of color.  They can refuse service for any reason really.

  189. 189.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @zhena gogolia: I just did.

    I have no idea of how or why I am able to bypass all the BS because I am an extreme luddite and normally if anyone is attacked by a bug, I’m the first one. Maybe it’s my IP address. maybe it’s my wife’s techy wizardry has made our computers immune.

    Maybe, just maybe, I’m special. //s

  191. 191.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    They can burn in hell.

    Mr. Roberts can burn in hell. Mr. Alito can burn in hell. Mr. Thomas can burn in hell. Mr. Kavanaugh can burn in hell. Mr. Gorsuch can burn in hell. Mrs. Barrett can burn in hell.

    I hope that they all suffer, and that Mr. McConnell suffers, and that Mr. Trump suffers, right alongside them.

    It’ll take more than a lifetime to undo the damage they’ve done. I fear nobody now living in the commentariat here will live long enough to see it all set right.

  193. 193.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Geminid: ​
     we were surprised by the number of gay people we saw in Istanbul a few months ago. Especially since Erdogan has pushed the country farther into conservative Islam. Good for them for their tolerance.

  194. 194.

    Baud

    @RaflW: I agree with you 100%.*  That’s why I vote blue in every election.  But I’m responding to Martin’s comment that many young people do not.  They are adults and they will have to make their own decisions.

    ETA: Actually not 100%, because I don’t make predictions about what the long-term future of the country is.  But the risk is there and it is real.

  195. 195.

    Kelly

    I slept terribly. Always getting a good night’s sleep was my super power until this, my 67th year. My darigold milk carton has shrunk from 64 to 59 ounces. Twitter wants me to create an account on Elon’s enshtified platform. How the hell will I find things to be pissed off about without my traditional access to twitter. Blech

  196. 196.

    cain

    @Scout211: I think Tim Scott definitely woke the fuck up. It was performative bullshit prior for the rubes – but this shit will affect his family and people he knows. Never mind things like the HBCUs. That’s something hard for a black politician to ignore.

    It’s apparently something someone like Nikki Haley who fondly remembers her uncomplicated life in the south. ::eyeroll::

  197. 197.

    RaflW

    @Rusty: Yup. This is an incredibly broad, absolutely reckless decision.

    Of course the insipid NYT subhed is “The decision appeared to suggest that the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people, including to same-sex marriage, are on more vulnerable legal footing, particularly when they are at odds with claims of religious freedom.”

    • “appeared to suggest” Such bold coverage!
    • “more vulnerable legal footing” Sure. Also, we’re gonna get gay bashed, tossed out of hotels and apartments, and all sorts of other immediate and potentially violent shit. But our ‘footing’ in law is ‘more vulnerable’.

    I fucking hate how newsrooms have learned nothing about how accelerating fascism works.

  198. 198.

    Elizabelle

    I think whoever suggested that Biden is actually running against the Supreme Court 6 in 2024 has it right.

    You cannot trust Republicans one goddamned bit.

  200. 200.

    owlbrick

    @Anne Laurie: I can see the text of a tweet, but not what it’s replying to or quoting, or any video or images , or any links from the tweet.  Mostly it looks like a bunch of out-of-context random statements.  Even more than usual, I mean.

  202. 202.

    Suzanne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I can’t help but think that, looking at yesterday’s opinion and today’s, the overarching goal is to reclaim college for white dudes, especially elite colleges.

  205. 205.

    Wolvesvalley

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: And it isn’t just professors’ children who get tuition benefits. It’s the kids of all employees, including support staff, who are often paid very low salaries.

  207. 207.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    And Warren oversaw the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II. He morphed into a “liberal” after he got on the Supreme Court.

  208. 208.

    Another Scott

    @Elizabelle: +1

    Things can change quickly.

    I remember election night 1980 – none of the political reporters were expecting the GQP to flip the Senate that night (they picked up 12 seats in 34 contests).

    We have to do what we can to make the GQP monsters lose in November 2024.

    We are still a self-governing democracy.  We can write our future.

    Eyes on the prizes.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  211. 211.

    Rusty

    @RaflW: The reporting has been abysmal.  The decision is very broad, so racism, antisemitism, homophobia and every form of bigotry are now constitutionally protected in the provision of services (which will be defined very broadly).   This isn’t a step back, this is a triple jump back to pre-1964.

  213. 213.

    Nelle

    @sdhays: I had a friend who did undergrad studies at a provincial university in Canada, then to Columbia, then Harvard.  He later got a MacArthur Genius grant.  He said that the quality of education at the provincial university was equal to the others,  but what he got at Columbia and Harvard were the connections to be noticed for the MacArthur.

  214. 214.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    Read Kagan’s dissent on the Student Loan case and Barrett’s concurring(Barrett’s a shitty writer BTW.)  They’re coming after the administrative state. This fucking court is dangerous.

  215. 215.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: I personally think he should have just canceled all of the interest that accrued. From what I have read, that would have been more likely to be acceptable, and probably would have had a bigger impact.

    But with this court, who the fuck knows. They’re not following logic or the law. They’re doing whatever the fuck they want.

  216. 216.

    Citizen Alan

    @Rusty:

    Oh I doubt that’s true. I feel quite certain that refusing service to a fundamentalist Christian because you are offended by their bigoted beliefs is still forbidden.

  217. 217.

    Another Scott

    Kagan’s dissent on Biden v Nebraska (the student loan case) (77 page .pdf) is worth a read as well:

    In every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper, limited role in our Nation’s governance.

    The RWNJs love being unelected super-legislators. They need to keep in their lane.

    Fight for 15!!

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  218. 218.

    Citizen Alan

    @Mai Naem mobileI:

    Oh, yeah. The holy grail of the federalist society is to utterly destroy the regulatory state and take us back to the lochner era. I am genuinely glad that my old con law professor did not live to see this degenerate court in operation. I genuinely wonder at this point if brown versus board of education is on the chopping block and we will end up with separate but equal again.

  221. 221.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

     I personally think he should have just canceled all of the interest that accrued. From what I have read, that would have been more likely to be acceptable, and probably would have had a bigger impact.

    No chance he would have gotten political benefit from such limited relief.

  222. 222.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Elizabelle:

    You cannot trust Republicans one goddamned bit.

    Actually, you can trust Republicans. They absolutely, positively will always live down to your lowest expectations. Always. Sure, don’t trust anything they say. Heck, you don’t even need to pay attention to what they say; just know that they are going to be shitty.

  223. 223.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: For me personally, as well as almost everyone else I know, canceling the interest would have been an order of magnitude better than $10K.

  224. 224.

    James E Powell

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    The student loan decision should help with turning out young people

    It’s possible that I’m too cynical, but I think it’s just as likely that young people will blame Biden more than they blame Republicans.

  225. 225.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    @Nelle: yes, i believe you’re right. Higher education,most of the time, is what you make out of it. If they’re offering the courses the college is going to have the resources to competently teach them.  I’ve read/heard of a lot of successful people from modest backgrounds  who were roommates in college with privileged people. Kind of where these people started their rolodexes.

  226. 226.

    John S.

    @Another Scott:

    It’s always projection with these assholes. For years they screamed “ACTIVIST JUDGES” at anyone who didn’t come from Leonard Leo’s judge factory.

    In reality, the Sleazy 6 are the activist judges they accused everyone else of being.

  228. 228.

    MC

    My approach to life has been YOLO for a couple years now, and I see that there’s no reason to change this.

  229. 229.

    Jeffro

    Fox News dot com: SCOTUS delivers blow to Biden’s multibillion dollar taxpayer-funded student loan handout.

    And that, friends, is how they both spin and celebrate pure malice on the right.

    I’m going for a walk…

  231. 231.

    Scout211

    Finally, the online media is noticing. (From The Verge).

    But no one knows if this move is a glitch or on purpose.

    Twitter has started blocking unregistered users

     

    Now, regardless of how you try to access the website — be that the homepage or a direct link to a tweet or profile — you’re immediately met with a sign-in prompt that completely obscures your view. It doesn’t even tease the content with a swift redirect. You simply can’t see anything.

     

    Twitter has yet to make a public announcement, so it’s currently unclear if this is an intentional update or another technical mishap. If Twitter stands by the changes, however, they both contradict andsupport other actions that owner Elon Musk has taken in the past year. In 2022, Musk hired noted iPhone hacker George Hotz to fix its search feature and get rid of the login prompt that prevents unregistered users from browsing the website. Hotz resigned less than halfway through his 12-week internship with the company, claiming he “didn’t think there was any real impact I could make there.” In April this year, Twitter then eliminated the platform’s search feature for unregistered users entirely.

  233. 233.

    RaflW

    @Mai Naem mobileI: They’re coming after the administrative state, and to some extent even taking steps to curtail legislative power. I don’t think that’s well enough appreciated. I do see some analysts noticing the radical six are moving to position the Supreme Court as higher than the other stool legs, but it’s creeping in and — like so much else about rising authoritarianism — the methodical pace masks the sweeping nature of the power grab.

  235. 235.

    Steeplejack

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    It’s because you have an account, as you stated above at #9, even if you don’t think you “use” it. And, by the way, Twitter can harvest plenty of useful information from you despite your ad blocker.​

  236. 236.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Betty Cracker: So, in short, the vaunted six ruled in favor of religious accommodation for a hypothetical business with a fabricated client. Great!

    ETA See that Rikyrah got here first but bears repeating!

  238. 238.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    It’s when I saw they were taking two cases that I was pretty sure student loans were screwed.  This is the kind of thing you do when you want to do the sort of “balanced” crap that pundits cream their pants over – rule the liberal way on one case, then rule the conservative way anyway on the other, thus effectively ruling the conservative way on substance.

  239. 239.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Dear Joe: the politicization ship has sailed.  Like 40 years ago.  You were there.  You should remember.

  246. 246.

    Bill Arnold

    @Baud:

    OTOH, the worse Twitter gets, the harder it will be for Musk to use it to sway the 2024 election.

    Yeah. Twitter is willingly traveling down the path of self-destruction, the best sort of destruction.

  247. 247.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I know some people will mock this as a plea for people to “vote harder,’ but, with a regained House majority and an increased margin in the Senate, we can fix a lot of this.

  248. 248.

    Chris

    @James E Powell:

    Early to say, but my anecdotal experience is that even low-information voters with student loans who weren’t wild about Biden and even complained about SL back when he hadn’t done anything about it yet noticed and credited him when he did.  I doubt if any of them will blame him for being prevented from following through.

    The media will do everything to ensure otherwise, of course.

  252. 252.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Kyle Griffin
    @kylegriffin1
    ·
    35m
    Reuters: BIDEN WILL ANNOUNCE NEW ACTIONS TO PROTECT STUDENT LOAN BORROWERS -WHITE HOUSE SOURCE

    No link since Twitter is borked musked.

  253. 253.

    Scout211

    Senator Schumer accuses the SCOTUS 6 of hypocrisy.  It might be a bit of a stretch, but I approve. Link

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized conservative justices who accept “lavish” gifts for themselves and ruled against President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan for middle-income borrowers.

    Schumer’s comment may be a preview of how Democrats will respond politically to the recent court decisions.

    “This disappointing and cruel student debt ruling shows the callousness of the MAGA Republican-controlled Supreme Court,” he wrote in a separate tweet.

  254. 254.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    Thanks for laying that out. I want this to become a big damn deal, because it stinks to high heaven. And I hope we expose who manufactured the whole case.

  255. 255.

    Baud

    Skimming both majority opinions, it’s more evidence that conservatives really get offended when faced with strong criticism from liberals.

  256. 256.

    hrprogressive

    I think this website, and all other leftish websites need to be “all-in” on SCOTUS Expansion after 2024.

    If we can’t force Biden to get on board with it, it almost doesn’t matter who POTUS is.

    The Stolen Fascist SCOTUS will ruin our lives for the rest of theirs if they cannot be neutered.

    Seriously, start organizing and fundraising *now*. It is the defining issue of our time.

  258. 258.

    different-church-lady

    @Suzanne: ​
      The thing about cancelling the interest is that it actually seems more fair. The government is cancelling the thing its in control of, as opposed to “giving away” part of the (obscene) purchase price of college education.

  260. 260.

    Cacti

    Biden on this particular issue is the wrong man for the moment. I’m grateful that he saved the country from a fascist takeover at the ballot box.

    I wish he could see that now they’ve just shifted to accomplishing it by judicial fiat.

  262. 262.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @hrprogressive: ​
      I would be willing to bet that Biden wouldn’t veto a Court expansion bill if it came to his desk. I would even say that if expanding the Court becomes a grassroots Democratic priority, he will sign on.

  264. 264.

    Bill Arnold

    Regarding the Twitter foofaraw, are we sure this is deliberate gatekeeping, or could it be a fried API (or whatever)? If the former, it’s entirely possible Beluga Boy* will walk it back once the negative implications are explained.**

    They’ve been blocking search for non-logged-in users, e.g. for twitter hashtags, for a while now. It is intentional. There may, however, be a stupid but charismatic (to Musk) underling driving these changes. That’s my guess; e.g. the changes so that replies to not link the tweet they are replying to makes it much harder to navigate the twitter graph without using the API. (I think; haven’t looked at the page source code.)
    I literally had a browser with 30 unread twitter tabs that I loaded up yesterday, and this is a browser that for reasons (opsec) I do not want linked to any of my twitter accounts. All those links are now broken. All the hundreds/thousands of twitter links posted over the last decade in a few venues are now broken for most people. It is a vile act of erasure.

  265. 265.

    Eolirin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Unless we get Texas and/or Florida, the best we can hope for over the next 4 years is to hold even in the senate.

    Although without Manchin or Sinema being a blocking vote.

  266. 266.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    I expect a flood of tweets today by people who have just that aim in mind.

    I used to try to explain things to such people. Now I just ignore them.

  268. 268.

    Another Scott

    @different-church-lady: Not to be trite, but the thing about self-government is that things can change with enough people voting for it.

    Let’s fix today’s problems now and worry about some hypothetical thing by the other side when it happens.

    With that said, any SCOTUS fix will be difficult and we won’t get everything that is obvious to us is needed.  That’s the way politics works.  We do the best we can with the tools available.

    tl;dr – If the RWNJs have the votes to tit-for-tat a sensible expansion and reform of the SCOTUS, then we’ve got bigger problems.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  269. 269.

    Marc

    @Wolvesvalley: And it isn’t just professors’ children who get tuition benefits. It’s the kids of all employees, including support staff, who are often paid very low salaries.

    This does vary quite a bit from school to school, at Stanford after 5 years of service employees and faculty get up to 50% of Stanford’s current tuition as a tuition (only) grant for their children at any US undergraduate college.  On the other hand, my sister works at CMU, and they get a 100% tuition grant, but only if the children attend CMU.  And, there are many institutions where tuition grants are only provided to faculty children, not all employees.

  270. 270.

    Martin

    @Baud: I’m not convinced by the polling that you lose other voters. A majority of Republicans oppose extending the Trump tax cuts.

    There is clearly a desire for economic populism. What the form of that is can be debated of course, but the GOP right now is pushing tax cuts and cuts to entitlements, and the latter is supported by 8% of voters.

    One mistake I think Democrats are making is messaging around homelessness, rather than housing affordability. If you fix the latter, you take a huge bite out of the former, but a LOT of the current economic concerns are really just housing access and affordability. And there’s so much you can do on affordability if you’re willing to tell some donors to pound sand. Nobody is out there saying ‘won’t someone think of the private equity landlords and developers?’ Just fucking lay into them. And it’s not hard to bring climate change, jobs, and whatnot into that kind of a message. You’re not going to fully appease the leftists, but you’ll get enough of their interest to turn out, and that’s your goal.

    We’re winning now because of young voters turning out. Nobody else is changing their team, so it’s purely a function of getting those voters to bother to show up.

  271. 271.

    James E Powell

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I know some people will mock this as a plea for people to “vote harder,’ but, with a regained House majority and an increased margin in the Senate, we can fix a lot of this.

    100% agreement. Our focus must be on making sure our people can vote & do vote.

  275. 275.

    James E Powell

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I can’t recall this level of butt hurt in the opinions. I’m sure there are some who focus on the supreme court who have examples.

  276. 276.

    Baud

    @Martin:

     I’m not convinced by the polling that you lose other voters. A majority of Republicans oppose extending the Trump tax cuts.

    I don’t pretend to know.  Yes, we need young voters, but that’s not all we need.  The issue isn’t people changing teams but not turning out.

  278. 278.

    geg6

    @kindness:

    They would lose Title IV funding which means a lot of those students would not have the means to attend.  Title IV funding encompasses all federal financial aid, including loans.  It would also bar using GI Bill education benefits.

  280. 280.

    sdhays

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes. This is the kind of thing that’s wise to let build from the grassroots and in Congress and then come in to bring over the finish line when the opportunity arises. Biden personally coming out for Court reform right now doesn’t really accomplish anything.

  281. 281.

    Eolirin

     

    @Baud: If we can’t turn people out on “The Republicans are attacking the fundamental basis of our democratic society and trying to impose a religiously based theocracy while undermining necessary efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change, threatening women’s health care and the broad civil rights of everyone that isn’t a straight white man, all while funneling the entire nation’s wealth to the ultra rich”, we deserve the death we’ll be getting as a society.

  284. 284.

    Quiltingfool

    This is extremely OT, my apologies.  I just finished baking 13 dozen cookies for our annual 4th of July bbq on Saturday.  If I could transmit a cookie across the internet,  I’d send one to everyone.  We all need a cookie right now.  Well, what we REALLY need is the Supreme Court to stop being complete dicks, but here we are.

    After we eat a cookie, it’s time to get serious.  Time to be staunch and unrelenting supporters for all the groups who are in danger from the Court’s racist and undemocratic rulings.

    Another OT note:  I am not one of those people who are great hostesses (or hosts).  I can fake it, but, hoo boy, it takes a lot of mental energy!  I hate doing these large get-togethers, but the “love of my life, my reason for living,” aka my husband, loves these gatherings.  He IS my favorite, so I do it as cheerfully as possible and look forward to it being over for a year.

  286. 286.

    RaflW

    @Baud: Relatedly ~ Jen Rubin “You cannot teach or predict any outcome other than by asking what the favored conservative position is. That is the tell, the affront to democracy and why the court loses legitimacy.”

    It’s a court run entirely by six Hot Air bloggers + Catturd level resentiment.

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