just to put my own very simplified two cents in:

Alito wrote, “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled … The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.”

And here is why that is not only a lie, but an unprecedented chipping away at the Bill of Rights not only for abortion, but possibly for gay marriage (Gibbons v Ogden) and gay relations (there’s a better way to phrase that hit its eluding me, sorry) (Lawrence v Texas), along with any other Supreme Court case that was decided based on an assumed right to privacy:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” - literally the ninth amendment of the Bill of Rights

The Supreme Court wrapped up this term with a pair of completely arbitrary and capricious rulings, based on lies and controversies manufactured by far-right political actors, restricting LGBTQ protections and striking down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. Both cases were deeply flawed procedurally, but that wasn’t going to stop the six far-right extremists on the court from imposing their will. This illegitimate court has once again wreaked untold future damage on this country. It has to be stopped.

The Supreme Court is out of control and must be reformed

SCOTUS is dominated and controlled by unelected right wing christian nationalists who are so thoroughly corrupt they present a real and direct threat to every marginalized, Othered, protected class in America.

These are the exact same type of people who supported Dread Scott, and they will do it again if we don’t stop them.

What do you think of the movement to vote "uncommitted" in the primary? Personally I think it's a good idea as a protest vote, while not "allowing Trump to win" since it's, ya know, the primary. You're voting for "the Democrat you want to be the candidate for president" not who you actually want to be president. Most of the arguments I've seen against it seem to forget primaries exist...

Well, since you came to me and presumably do want my honest opinion on this topic, I'll share it with you. However, this will also be very blunt and candid, including some things which I haven't yet said in the 4+ months since the whole Israel/Hamas situation kicked off, and therefore also frustrated. This frustration should not be read as/taken as being directed at you personally, but since you're the conduit for this question, that's just something I want to highlight.

So. Why should you vote for Biden in the primary, and not "uncommitted" or whatever else?

First of all, what I desperately want to ask all these self-righteous VOTE UNCOMMITTED IN THE PRIMARY TO SEND BIDEN A MESSAGE types is: what exactly the fuck do you want this message to be, and what action do you expect Biden will take as a result? Is this actually based on an expectation of what he can/and or will actually do, or is it just a froth of misguided Online Leftist "rah rah this Bad Thing Happening Is All Biden's Fault," as we also notably went through when Roe was overturned by the Trump-stacked SCOTUS selected precisely for the purpose of overturning Roe? My god, the amount of bad "THIS IS BIDEN/THE DEMOCRATS' FAULT" posts that appeared, and are still circulating on the particularly idiotic corners of this site. Nothing could ever be Trump/the Republicans' fault in that case; it was the same old same old "DEMOCRATS DON'T CARE ENOUGH TO STOP THIS!!!" puerile fantasy. That's what we are getting now with Israel/Hamas. This isn't Hamas's fault for attacking Israel on October 7 (god forbid; the online left loves Hamas) and it isn't even the state of Israel and Netanyahu's fault for responding with full-scale genocide on Gaza. Or it is, somehow, but not so much that Biden personally couldn't magically reach in and stop it "if he really wanted to." I'm sick and fucking tired of this bullshit sixth-grade bad-faith disingenuous approach to playing Super Moral Social Justice Yahtzee and refusing to acknowledge the thousands of complex factors at play, especially when it involves blaming literally anyone other than Biden, personally (just like the Trump cultists, for whom "IT'S BIDEN'Z FAULT" is the beginning and end of their political theory, just like the Online Leftists). I'm sure this will get me called a genocide apologist by the Very Smart Moral Twitter Thinker types, but I don't think "Biden has failed to magically single-handedly solve this crisis, which stems from one of the most major and long-running issues in post-WWII and indeed pre-WWII world history, in four months" is actually a good reason to vote against him.

Likewise: withholding your vote might make more sense as a strategy if Biden was still only blindly supporting Israel and refusing to do anything to pressure them, which is demonstrably untrue. I know it's hard for some of these people to actually read the news and/or anything outside their ultra-curated Twitter feed, but it's been well-reported and well-documented that he is. If the US was directly involved in the bombing campaign on Gaza, sure, tell Biden that you will vote uncommitted to increase pressure on him to pull out. None of that is actually true, and the "information" about Biden's action in re: Gaza on both Twitter and Tumblr is basically just entirely malicious lies. So again: what message are you sending when you decide to be all precious and announce you're not voting for him? You don't want him to pressure Israel? You're willing to blow this up entirely and increase the media nonsense about BIDEN WEAK DEMOCRATS DIVIDED and give Trump an opening to exploit? You really want to announce to the Trump/Putin/Netanyahu axis of evil that their anti-Biden propaganda is working (since all three of them are working as hard as they fucking can to get Biden out of office, and as someone who opposes all three of them, I think this is a good idea to vote for Biden!) and they need to hammer harder on this wedge issue? Because that's all your oh-so-moral Uncommitted vote is doing. It's not a protest. It's not leverage. It is the withdrawing of leverage. If you want Biden in office so he can be pressured to listen to you and take action that you agree with, you will vote for him. Yes, in the primary. Yes, when it's not directly against Trump.

You want a ceasefire, you say? GREAT! WE ALL WANT A CEASEFIRE AND/OR ACTUAL PEACE AND RECOGNITION OF A PALESTINIAN STATE! That's in fact why you should be busting your fucking ass to make sure Biden gets re-elected, and to give him a strong show of support in the primary. Biden is the only candidate with a credible long-term (and like, baseline functional sane adult) plan for Gaza. Biden is the one who has been pressuring Netanyahu in every single contact to tone it down and stop acting like an insane murderous maniac and therefore torching any remains of sympathy for the attack Israel suffered in October. Biden is the one who has his entire diplomatic team working on high-level contacts with the Israeli government and the Hamas representatives via Qatar, while sufficiently threatening Iran to back down from frothing at the mouth to destroy Israel (once again, just like the rest of the antisemitic western left). Biden is the one who is pushing for this not to be World War III, and yet we get Baby's First Social Justice Activist screaming at him for being GENOCIDE JOE and blaming him personally for not, as I keep putting it, shapeshifting into Netanyahu's body and making this stop. "He should publicly call for a ceasefire!" Or, and this is just a suggestion, he should DO HIS FUCKING JOB and continue to work on serious problems that don't have instant socially media marketable catchphrases and won't come with instant gratification. Also, please tell me how you plan to get both Hamas and Israel to accept the same terms for a ceasefire, abide by it, and do exactly what Big Daddy Biden told them, because you, the dedicated anti-western anti-imperialist, think that's the best course of action?

Like. I mean. As vice president and now as president, Biden is actually one of the least foreign-intervention-happy leaders the US has ever had. He was originally against the Abbottabad raid to take out Osama bin Laden in 2011; he wound down the overseas drone assassination program (at which the Online Leftists screamed bloody murder at Obama, ignored in Trump, and then refused to give Biden any credit for ending) to almost nothing, he pulled the US out of Afghanistan, and even though he's been supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, he's also been extremely slow and cautious (in my opinion, too slow and cautious) at giving them all the military hardware they need, even before this latest blockade of aid in the House by Putin's favorite little bitch Mike Johnson. He has already presided over a historic shift in US policy toward Israel, in terms of conditioning the use of lethal aid, imposing reporting requirements, starting to criticize them publicly, and calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state and more humanitarian aid to get into Gaza. Yet in the Online Leftists' mind, because he is not personally out there Captain America-ing away the Israeli bombs and/or calling for Israel to be totally destroyed "from the river to the sea" as the Tumblr activists are fond of using no matter how often Jews ask them to stop, there is nothing he's actually doing! GENOCIDE JOE!!!!! Like, I thought the anti-western anti-American crowd thought all overseas American influence was evil (but all overseas Russian and/or Chinese influence is fine). When Biden actually doesn't recklessly intervene in foreign conflicts like Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon/Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2/pretty much every American president in the latter half of the twentieth century, you'd think that would get him plaudits? NAH.

"Biden should stop selling Israel weapons without Congressional approval!" Okay, sure, he should. Which he did one time, and he also repeatedly promised to veto and/or not pass any only-Israel aid package that didn't also help Ukraine and Taiwan. He's also not beholden to the frothing antisemitic Online Leftists position that Israel should just lie down and let all of its citizens be killed and its state wiped from existence. Like. We also remember that Jewish voters exist in America, right? And that Jewish lives are something which are repeatedly and demonstrably under threat in the rest of the world, including from Hamas and the Houthis (who are genuinely terrible people and the western left's warm embrace of them as principled anti-Israel actors is all we need to know about their inherent brainrot and moral vacancy). We know that maybe going full masks-off antisemite (which Biden isn't going to do anyway, for any number of reasons) isn't the greatest plan and nothing to which you should be conditioning your vote? Likewise, please tell me how you plan to make Congress (especially the GOP-led clown car House) "do what Biden wants," since you're still beholden to that being the be-all-and-end-all of moral action? Or how you account for Congress at all, and not just think The President is An Almighty King?

Aside from all this, I am sick to my fucking back teeth of the Precious Moral Princesses (gender neutral) who have spent four years lying about everything Biden has done. We had the personally blaming him for Roe ending (he could unilaterally overturn SCOTUS if he really wanted!) We had the endless bashing about student debt, only to ignore him actually making the most major effort to forgive student debt in all the post-Reagan years. We have had a complete ignoring and/or distortion of his domestic policy accomplishments, which are some of the most momentous since FDR and LBJ. We have had an utter ignoring, revision, and downplaying of the damage Trump did in one term and how very much worse his second would be. We have had to endure "WELL YOU CAN'T ASK ME TO VOTE FOR BIDEN" at every single second for every single thing, because this is such a terrible onerous thing to ask them to lift one single fucking finger to give us some more time to come up with a better solution. And yet, as astutely pointed out by one of my anons yesterday, they utterly don't care whether the obvious outcome of this action is to help Trump get back into power. Apparently that's not a moral reach too far, but straining their delicate tender moral sensibilities to fucking do the goddamn bare minimum to help us out -- both in America and around the world -- no, no. We can't have that.

Like. These people allegedly want a ceasefire, and they want it to come about by asking literally nothing more of them then posting snide anti-Biden diatribes on social media. That's the extent of the effort they're willing to put in. They can't even trouble themselves to take the first step of voting for people who want to address this crisis in a constructive way. So yeah, I have a hard time believing this is anything deeply felt in regard to opposing genocide, and just wants what makes them look morally superior. Also: I don't care if your feelings are genuinely pure and strong and you obviously oppose what's happening in Gaza (we all do!) and want it to end. In that case, why the fuck aren't you throwing your support (yes! Even in the primary!) behind the one guy who's actually working to fix it and not just posting empty platitudes on Twitter? It likewise does not excuse you from the harmful consequences of your rhetoric and actions, if you decide that the best way to act on your deep-seated and genuine desire to stop the genocide is just to blindly bash Biden all day every day. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not excuse the fact that this election is against Trump and everything horrible that he represents, and that we are in this situation largely because the online left has learned literally fucking nothing from 2016 and is eager to do it all over again. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not give you a special Gold Star Moral Activist sticker announcing that you were too virtuous to engage in the process now, but if you're sufficiently placated, you maybe will do it in November. Miss me with that bullshit. I've spent eight years pleading with people to help us fix this mess, by -- yes! engaging with the flawed process that makes partial changes!!! -- and all I hear is that same fucking nonsense. That is a large part of why this response is so steamed.

Anyway. In short, I don't think voting "uncommitted" is a good idea, I think it only helps Trump in the short and long term, I think it protests nothing, I think it represents the same old tired anti-voting schlock that I have had more than fucking enough of, and I don't endorse it by any means. However, you will see that while I can strongly and unequivocally give you my opinion that it is a bad idea, I cannot actually reach through the screen, take control of your body, and force you to obey me one way or the other. So maybe, just maybe, Biden can't do the same with Netanyahu. Weird.

Comments correct themselves.

Original comment uses Red State homophobia and Conservative SCOTUS' destruction of precedent as Biden critique. #TypicalTroll

Most of the situations people are having a problem with are based in conservative politics.

Likud Party in Isreal? Conservative. Colonialism/racism? Conservative. Industrial military complex? Conservative. Genocide? Conservative. Fascism? Conservative. Anti-LGBT? Conservative. Anti abortion rights? Conservative. Legislating womens' bodies? Conservative. Antisemitism? Conservative. Christofascism? Conservative. Anti Islam? Conservative. SCOTUS activism? Conservatism.

Trump and his sycophants have destroyed the Republican Party. They are no longer conservatives either fiscally or on foreign policy. They are a party of chaos beholden to the right-wing culture warrior oligarchs. They are the derogatory agents of those oligarchs and the corporations owned by them. They make decisions based on the whim of a deranged madman.

They have gone from being closet racists/bigots to being full blown Nazis that call for the extermination of their culture war scapegoats they call “vermin” (marginalized people/political rivals). They take this term directly from Hitler who they openly embrace in speech and writing. They no longer care about tax cuts for all but just for the 1% and corporations. They want endless wars to profit from and to distract and rally their deplorable base. They no longer want small, limited government but opt for a massive government that intrudes into its citizens private lives and tramples their freedoms.

The party of law and order is now a party of criminals, sex offenders, grifters, traitors, and murderous street thugs. They are proud of this and fund raise and merchandise from their lawlessness. They have bought control of what is now an illegitimate SCOTUS which never allows them to be held accountable.

They use the KKK, Neo-Nazi groups, armed right-wing militias, Neo-Confederates, and white supremacists to persecute their opponents and victims in the streets and inside the Capitol itself. They tell us to “get over it” when mindless gun violence decimates our families in every public venue from churches, to schools, to 4th of July celebrations, movie theaters, shopping malls, and even a Super Bowl parade.

The police, courts, and legislatures are infested with their white nationalist/supremacists and Christo-fascists. They openly take money from Russia and others to influence our foreign policy and economic policy. Money from Russia is funneled into the NRA and Congress to allow a massive proliferation of gun violence on our streets that destabilizes our society.

They claim to be the party of the military but they degrade and insult our troops and cast our veterans into the streets. They abandon our allies and our treaty obligations at the behest of foreign dictators that bribe them.

They bust our unions and pass laws to weaken or prevent organized labor. They are forcing society to become wage slaves with no security, insurance, or pensions. They force our workers into the “gig economy” where everyone works incredible hours 7 days a week at multiple jobs and still are left unable to afford rent or mortgages. Nearly the entire population is one or two paychecks away from being homeless.

Decades of trickle down economics has seen our tax dollars poured into the accounts of billionaires, millionaires, and corporations with not a penny trickling down to the working class. The middle class has been practically wiped out by cruel Republican legislation written by political think tanks established and funded by oligarchs. The only thing these pseudo-conservatives conserve is their own wealth.

This is late stage capitalism run amok. The economy has been drained and now the oligarchs and corporations are plundering the government. They have taken advantage of decades of right-wing propaganda proliferated by Fox News, conservatives talk radio, and internet podcasts that have brain washed the rural areas into blaming the Democrats that are trying help them while convincing them to vote for the Republicans who have impoverished them. The French Revolution in reverse.

They see the Orange Dictator as their last best chance to completely take over the government and create a kleptocracy that pulls the strings behind an autocracy that pretends to be a republic.

The chaos of the Republican puppets is to distract everyone from the takeover by the oligarchs, corporations, and deep pocketed foreign adversaries.

This is an illegitimate and deeply corrupt Supreme Court.

“I must respectfully decline your invitation," Roberts wrote in the letter to Dick Durbin (D-Ill), which was released by a spokesperson for the high court.

Durbin responded to the refusal in a statement Tuesday.

“Make no mistake: Supreme Court ethics reform must happen whether the Court participates in the process or not,” Durbin said in the statement.

He also noted that he was surprised that the chief justice had amended his letter with a statement meant to provide “clarity” to the public about how the justices consider ethics issues.

Durbin dismissed the statement as a “recounting of existing legal standards of ethics” and said that Roberts’ suggestion that current law is adequate “ignores the obvious.”

“It is time for Congress to accept its responsibility to establish an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court, the only agency of our government without it,” Durbin said.

👉🏿 https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/25/politics/john-roberts-congress-supreme-court-ethics/index.html

Unsurprisingly, this is not the first time that the malfeasance of SCOTUS has been a problem.

Flashback 2012:

Roberts rejects calls that the justices should be subject to the basic code of ethics that governs all other federal judges and must provide some transparency to their recusal decisions. His argument seems based on the proposition that the justices are good people and able jurists — so they don’t have to be officially bound by a code or explain decisions governing their conduct or recusal.

In Roberts’s view, these good jurists should not have to explain how their decisions conform to the law. Yet the courts’ fundamental legitimacy rests on the notion that judges apply the facts to the law impartially and explain what they have done in reasoned opinions for all to read. Roberts’s position mocks that.

👉🏿 https://www.politico.com/story/2012/01/roberts-to-america-trust-us-071895

tags update: US politics is 5th on trending. with supreme court, scotus, and kosa trending under it. also "kids online safety act" is trending

edit: non of them are front page anymore... still trending tho

reason? kosa has been introduced in the house of representatives, a closer step towards becoming constitutional

Tl;dr on kosa(go read eff or watch sog for more details)

the "kids online safety act" is a bill in the US senate by senators richard bulmenthal and marsha blackburn originally introduced in feb 2022 with the goal of "protecting kids from dangerous or harmful content online", enabling local state attorney generals the power to enforce it. except the "duty to care" which is handled by the federal trade commission as of feb 2024

the bill is, at core, an act of censorship forced through even more invasive spyware. the vague language used in the bill enables wide scale censorship up to the wimps of state attorney generals and the FTC. subjects that are potentially under rest of censorship include suicide, eating disorders, self harm, substance abuse, bullying, violence, sexuality, sex ed, mental health, ect.

censorship of such subjects doesn't solve those issues

they only limit accessibility to useful resources for people suffering from mental illness, experiencing suicidal thoughts, addicts, people looking for info on sex-ed(that their school should have provided), transgender people struggling with gender diaspora, lgbt people, people belonging to minority groups trying to look up or spread awareness of their history and prosecution, online activists and educators trying to do their job(you know.. the kind of thing we are trying to do here concerning an on going ethnic cleansing). the "it is for the kids" excuse is bullshit

this is bad even to non americans?

sense most of the big social media sites we uses, like tumblr for example, are US based they will be affected by the bill. and if this bill is based it could work as an example for other countries to introduce similar bills. if you want to help go to stopkosa or badinternetbills. and send a complaint through them

DON'T STOP TALKING ABOUT INJUSTICE

S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON — A presidential order to the military to conduct a coup to keep him in office “might well be an official act,” Donald Trump’s lawyer told the Supreme Court Thursday on the question of whether Trump’s attempted coup is immune from prosecution. The extraordinary exchange was among several in lengthy oral arguments before the justices, who will now decide whether the former president will stand trial on federal charges based on his actions leading up to the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has been claiming that all his actions as president were “official acts” and therefore immune from prosecution entirely. While justices seemed skeptical of that assertion, most expressed concern that former presidents could be prosecuted in bad faith and for political reasons in the years to come.

“Reliance on the good faith of the prosecutor may not be enough,” Chief Justice John Roberts told Department of Justice lawyer Michael Dreeben. “I take that concern,” added Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “I think it’s a real thing.” How justices decide to protect future presidents from prosecutions based on their legitimate official actions could decide whether Trump faces a trial at all before the November election on the Jan. 6 indictment. If the court orders trial judge Tanya Chutkan to hold an evidentiary hearing to weed out the “official” components of Trump’s actions versus the ones for his private or political gain, that hearing and potential appeals of her ruling could consume many more months. And if Trump wins back the White House, he could order prosecutors to drop all unresolved federal charges against him.

While Dreeben did not refer to the coming election at all, he repeated his boss special counsel Jack Smith’s request that the case be sent back to Chutkan with instructions that concerns about not punishing “official” acts be dealt with in jury instructions, rather than a separate hearing. “We would like to present that as an integrated picture to the jury so that it sees the sequence and the gravity of the conduct and why each step occurred,” Dreeben said. Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, meanwhile came in for even more pointed questioning from most of the justices, but none more on point than Elena Kagan’s question about 40 minutes in.

“How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?” Kagan asked. “That might well be an official act,” Sauer answered. Sauer also claimed that a presidential assassination of a political rival as well as the sale of nuclear secrets to a foreign power could also be defended as official acts immune from prosecution. Trump was not at the Supreme Court during the oral arguments Thursday but rather was in a different courtroom, in lower Manhattan, in the early phase of an unrelated criminal trial.

During the oral arguments for the Trump v. United States presidential immunity case at SCOTUS on Thursday, Trump lawyer John Sauer told the court that even a military coup would be immune from prosecution as an "official act."

See Also:

HuffPost: Trump Lawyer Argues He Could Legally Order Assassination Of Political Rival

15 questions for 15 friends

Tagged by @gingerniiiija. Thanks, friend! This was super fun.

Were you named after anyone? I was. In good Southern (US) fashion, I have a double name that incorporates my grandmother's maiden name, which was also my mom's middle name and is now one of my niece's names.

When was the last time you cried? Today. I took one of my dogs to board at the same time that a pup was coming for their last vet visit and watching him surrounded by his crying family while an instrumental version of a Brandi Carlile song played over the vet speakers broke me. Managed to keep it together until I got to the car. Before that, Thursday during Critical Role.

Do you have kids? I do not. I do have wonderful nieces, and being their aunt is one of the best things in my life.

What sports have you played/do you play? I played church basketball and soccer when I was little. As an adult, I've played rugby but I tend toward activities like running, yoga, swimming, and hiking/wandering with my dogs.

Do you use sarcasm? Yes, in a dry humor way. My entire family is dry as hell, so it's a big part of my sense of humor, although I rein it in with strangers so as not to be a tool. I'm typically called a golden retriever gay, but one of the highest compliments I have ever received was one of my oldest friends telling me that Sister Michael from Derry Girls reminded her of me.

First thing you notice about people? I genuinely don't think I have a pattern here. Voice, maybe? Or smile? I do often appreciate and take note of people's style as well, especially shoes.

What is your eye color? Green

Scary movies or happy endings? Whichever has the better queer storyline

Any talents? I come in clutch in the following trivia categories: pop culture (non-reality tv); 90s country music/modern women of country; name that song; US history and politics and/or law; and queer things. Per my nieces, I am very good at the "funny faces" feature on FaceTime, a solid water slide escort, and an acceptable makeshift jungle gym. I have been told that I'm an excellent driver; I enjoy driving and have driven both a passenger van and a U-Haul up most of the East Coast of the US.

Where were you born? A military base in the United States.

What are your hobbies? I love writing, feeding/spending easy time with friends, reading (preference for fiction, poetry, and comics, although I do love some philosophy and theory as well), exploring good food and new places (solo or with friends, my own city or others), live music and theater, playing board games and Switch, watching tv and movies (my oldest niece and I see a movie every time I visit them in person and it brings me great joy), and being silly with my nieces. I'm a lawyer and a law nerd, so I also spend time following SCOTUS and listening to legal/political podcasts.

Do you have any pets? Two dogs, Annie and Buffy, a big doofy retriever mix and a tiny poodle-ish terror respectively.

How tall are you? 5' 8"

Favorite subject in school? Growing up, English/Lit, closely followed by History. At university, I majored in History and Gender & Sexuality Studies.

Dream Job? Obligatory note that I do not dream of labor. But I'm actually currently working on a career shift, so I'm giving this a lot of thought. I'd love to be a writer, journalist, professor, or preacher (last one is more complicated, for probably obvious reasons).

Would love to see answers from anyone who wants to do this! Tagging @korralone, @kasadilla11, @antlereed, and @overnighttosunflowers. Pls forgive me/disregard if you hate this, ha.

Do you know about Project 2025?

In the state of Texas, they are now blocking roadways that travel to New Mexico (https://jezebel.com/texas-republicans-are-targeting-highways-now-to-stop-ou-1850796179) where Texan women have been seeking abortions.

Additionally, concertina wire has been erected on the New Mexico-Texas border under the guise of preventing illegal citizens from entering Texas (https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/17/texas-border-new-mexico-concertina-wire-abbott/). The placement is suspect as it is also the same border the women would need to cross through to get to New Mexico for services.

To that, the MAGA Republicans have drafted their outline for when they "take back America" and it, quite frankly, reads like the Handmaid's Tale (https://www.project2025.org/).

Recently, the Circus Peanut who looks primed to be the Republican candidate has been telling his voters not to vote in 2024 because "it's in the bag."

Having spent the better part of 40 years fighting against this mindset, with efforts spear-headed on education spending, securing abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights, and the legalization of marijuana (along with the erasure of legal proceedings against those imprisoned on marijuana charges), I wish I could adequately express how important it is to vote in the 2024 election.

I know the candidates won't be the greatest. As an extreme Leftist, I haven't been represented in American politics but for a scant number of candidates who are seen as "too extreme" to make it out of primaries.

But this election will be different. This is the one that truthfully determines where America goes as a country.

I get that it isn't a bed of roses. I understand, having lived the majority of my life at the poverty line working for non-profits, how much capitalism, late-stage capitalism, is screwing over all of us.

Please understand... this election will determine whether they start rounding up the "different" people, whether medications are taken off the market, whether people will be forced into camps.

SCOTUS favors the Republicans. The Constitution is so outdated, it doesn't account for situations like should anti-depressants be pulled off the market (yes, there are now Christo-Fascists saying they should be pulled) leaving SCOTUS to "interpret" Constitutional law based on their own interests.

I want to see all of you wonderful people living in a freer America where equity exists. I hope you'll join me at the ballot box.

Even though the percentage of fundamentalist Christians has declined in the United States, the influence of Christian nationalists has increased.

55% of Republicans have Christian nationalist views. That includes House Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson who thinks our planet is just over 6,000 years old.

Poll: Most Americans cool to Christian nationalism as its influence grows

Republicans (55%) are more than twice as likely as independents (25%) and three times more likely than Democrats (16%) to hold Christian nationalist views, the survey found. Majorities of two religious groups hold Christian nationalist beliefs: white evangelicals (66%) and Hispanic evangelicals (55%). Both groups are strong supporters of former President Trump, other polls have indicated. Between the lines: Christian nationalism is a set of beliefs centered around white American Christianity's dominance in most aspects of life in the United States. Many Christian nationalists believe the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation. Many also believe U.S. laws should be based on Christian values and that God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society. What they're saying: "It's really a claim for an ethno-religious state, and so there's nothing democratic about that worldview," Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells Axios. Jones said some Christian nationalists view political foes as evil or demonic rather than as fellow citizens with different opinions, and see them as needing to be conquered.

We saw an example of Christian theocracy in the Alabama Supreme Court Decision on in vitro fertilization. The 2022 SCOTUS Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling was theocratic in spirit.

If you think the US should be governed by the Constitution rather than by fundamentalist extremists, Vote Democratic NOT Theocratic.

Hi! This isn’t legal advice

So the U.S. Department of Education has a proposed rule out right now (ID number ED-2021-OCR-0166-0001) which, among other things, clarifies that the Department will interpret discrimination “on the basis of sex” as including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Obviously I’m in favor of that happening, and I would encourage other people that are to leave a comment on the proposed rule.

The Department is a federal agency, meaning a section of the executive branch that has been delegated rule-making authority by Congress. Part of their rule-making process is publishing a proposed rule and then having a comment period where the public gets to weigh in. You can read more about notice and comment rule-making here.

I left a comment myself last week, and I’ve also looked through a fair amount of the comments currently published. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be conservative folks using a template to express their displeasure at the idea of federal protection for LGBT students.

I do want to reassure y’all by saying that even if that remains the case, notice and comment rule-making isn’t a vote; the agency is required to read and consider the comments, but a high volume of non-support doesn’t mean they can’t make their proposed rule official. You should leave a commend regardless, because this is an excellent way to support LGBT students and the sections of the American government that are trying to protect them. You don’t have to be American to leave a comment, and there is an option to leave an anonymous comment.

Really all the Department is doing here is adopting the interpretation of “on the basis of sex” that the Supreme Court made law for Title VII (employment law) purposes in a 2020 case called Bostock v. Clayton County. In Bostock, SCOTUS said yes, discrimination on the basis of sex includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Department of Education deals with Title IX, a different federal statute with the same language: on the basis of sex.

Statutory interpretation isn’t an exact science, but the general rule is that if you have the same language in two different federal statutes, that language should be interpreted the same way. So if SCOTUS says the language in Title VII protects LGBT employees, that would mean that the same phrase in Title IX protects LGBT students. I don’t view this as legally controversial at all, though it is, very obviously, politically controversial.

To leave a good, useful comment you would want to (1) not use a template and (2) give the Department facts to support the proposed rule. It might be a good idea to mention Bostock, for example, or describe any personal experiences you might have of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation/gender identity within the American education system-- but for the love of God remember not to out anyone in a publicly accessible comment. You could also cite studies about LGBT discrimination, or similar statistics.

It doesn’t have to be long or professional. Thank y’all for your time and effort.

-C

So, not asking this to be down on Biden or his admin, they have legit done some INCREDIBLE things, but because I know I don't have enough understanding or info to judge for myself. With how much of a threat the current SCOTUS is to... everything, what are the reasons Biden hasn't pushed to expand the number of judges to what it could be based on the precedent of the last time it was expanded and then staffed it with progressives, do you think?

I have written many posts about SCOTUS and SCOTUS expansion, which I can't be arsed to go find right now. In short, it does not require a constitutional amendment to expand the court (which would be impossible since iirc constitutional amendments require 2/3 of the Senate to vote in favor, and you'd have a hard time getting one Republican to vote to expand SCOTUS, let alone 17). In 2021, the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee introduced the Judiciary Act of 2021 to expand SCOTUS (that page explains the rationale and also has a link to the actual text of the legislation, should you be interested in reading it). The plan is to introduce four new justices to expand the court to 13 seats, to match the 13 federal judicial circuits. The last time it was expanded was in 1869, when there were 9 circuits. You can say, uh, that things have changed.

However, obviously, the Republicans have played a long game to hijack and reshape SCOTUS to do exactly what it's now doing, and the last thing they want is anything that makes it more equitable or takes away that automatic and near-absolute power. As far as they are concerned, SCOTUS is now pretty much perfect, and they would howl bloody murder about any attempts to change it, even when McConnell brazenly cheated in plain sight to force Gorsuch and Barrett onto the bench and Kavanaugh's confirmation was also brimful with shady shit. They don't care about fairness, they care about their power, and as you say, SCOTUS in its current incarnation is basically a perfect system for unaccountable right-wing minority autocratic rule, even as the American electorate continues to reject it in actual democratic institutions. So indeed, why hasn't Biden come out more vocally in favor of court reform?

First, as I have said before, SCOTUS reform is still (for better or worse) regarded as political kryptonite for Democrats, especially a student of American politics like Biden. I have mentioned Franklin D. Roosevelt's brief attempt to expand SCOTUS in 1934, to help with getting the New Deal through, but which went down in flames so badly that all of his successors were leery of trying it again. Biden is, as noted, also a fairly orthodox old-school American politician who believes that American institutions can still (mostly) do the job, and is reluctant to drastically reshape them. I do think he's getting there; he started his term full of pointless platitudes about Bipartisanship and Our Republican Friends, whereas his more recent public rhetoric is basically "fuck those guys, we'll do it ourselves if we have to."

I don't agree with his recalcitrance on aggressively pushing for SCOTUS reform, and I think he should take a firmer stand on it. But at the moment, it's pretty much moot. The Republicans are going to take over the House in January, so there goes any chance of starting new legislative efforts in favor of utterly pointless Hunter Biden cosplay investigations. And even with Warnock's seat in the Senate making a 51-49 Democratic majority, there would have to be filibuster reform to ram SCOTUS expansion through (since as I said, not one single Republican would vote for it). With Joe God-King Manchin and Kyrsten The Traitor Sinema still steadfastly refusing to support any filibuster changes, SCOTUS expansion would die the same death as the rest of Biden's thwarted legislative priorities. (Once again, considering the circumstances he is working with, it is ASTONISHING that he has done as much as he has.)

So basically: SCOTUS reform can be achieved with an act of Congress, but in less than a month, Republicans will hold the House and will inflict all their enraging clown nonsense on us. The Democratic Senate majority is still very thin and saddled with the two worst "Democrats" in existence, though we are in fact no longer obliged to pretend that Sinema is a Democrat. For the next two years, what Biden can do is executive orders and confirm judges. He can maybe cut a deal with the House GOP for minor bills here and there, but there's absolutely zero, zip, nada, zilch chance that SCOTUS expansion could go anywhere before 2024 at least.

So should Biden talk about it more obviously and openly? Maybe, especially if SCOTUS inflicts us with more terrible decisions in 2023, as they are almost bound to do. But at the moment, what Biden can actually, practically do about it is very limited, and about to be even more so. So while I wish he would draw attention to it, I also reluctantly understand that there is, at this point, not much use in harping on a problem that cannot be fixed for another two years at the very least. The Democrats in Congress are very, VERY aware of the problem, and they're the ones who, even in a theoretical blue-wave election in 2024, would have to take the initiative in starting it. So that, overall, is probably more important.

Look closely enough and you’ll find that Eric Johnson was always a Republican, or at least very susceptible to becoming one. Conservative “Democrats” are one bribe or one hurt feeling away from switching parties.

This highlights the significance of how much more important primaries are, because after the primaries are over, then it becomes an endless chorus of, “vote for the lesser evil” and “vote blue no matter who,” and we have more than enough bad examples of where that can lead to, right??

Honestly, always vote for the most leftist, progressive candidate you can in the primary elections, before it comes down to voting for a Republican vs. Republican-lite in the general election.

I don’t think there are primary elections for mayoral races, but I still love the idea that if a candidate switches political parties (any time after the primaries, I’d suggest), then they should A) not be allowed to hold the office they ran for until they run + win as a member of their new party, B) pay heavy fines from their personal funds, C) they should be forced to resign, and D) the election should be re-done.

The Democratic Party needs to tighten up and make some rules regarding who can and cannot run as a Democrat.

Literally months before SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, Nancy Pelosi was backing a homophobic, anti-abortion, “Democratic” 🙄 candidate named Henry Cuellar, saying that a candidate’s stance on abortion wasn’t important. And Cuellar’s opponent was a young pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ immigration attorney named Jessica Cisneros! And it was a relatively safe blue district, meaning that whichever Democrat the DNC backed, they were likely to win and a Republican hadn’t won that district in forever. AND before that, Pelosi and the DCCC threw their weight behind another openly homophobic “Democrat” named Dan Lipinski.

Could you even imagine Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy openly throwing their support behind a pro-abortion candidate who wanted gun control? No? So why tf does Democratic leadership constantly foist GOP-lite candidates onto the Democratic Party when other viable options exist?

Just a guess on my part, but if you want fewer anti-abortion laws getting passed, then you should probably back fewer anti-abortion candidates. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“Vote blue no matter who” has bitten Democrats in the ass wayyy more than any converse slogan has bitten Republicans. Because Republicans actually vet their candidates and make sure that those candidates want the same deplorable things that their deplorable base wants.

And just for clarity, because I know how the internet works and how sycophants love twisting words: I am NOT saying don’t vote for Biden in 2024. I’m not even saying to support a third party candidate. I want Trump and all Republicans gone in the next few election cycles. What I am saying is, once the election is over and hopefully Trump/DeSantis have been vanquished, we need to seriously rework how the Democratic Party has been run. Losing Roe v. Wade is indicative of how poorly it’s been mismanaged.

Anyway, new laws can be made, so especially after the Supreme Court has ignored and undone so many standing legal precedents, I don’t wanna hear jack shit about “pie-in-the-sky” or “be realistic.”

This centrism bullshit ain’t working, yo.