Here
7mo ago
Realistically, what, if anything, is going to change from a culture war perspective because of this? Will the DNC conduct an election "autopsy" to determine what they got wrong here? They outspent and our raised Trump, a convicted felon with a negative approval rating, and still could not win. Will the Democratic party take a hard look in the mirror? Will the Republican party completely abandon moderates/the establish in favor of the winning populist rhetoric? Will nothing change at all?
Here
11mo ago
US Election Updates – Democratic Infighting + Project 2025
Some “top” House Democrats met yesterday to discuss the ongoing situation within the party. Besides an Asian Congressman being confused for another Asian Congressman, nothing really happened – House Democrats remain divided on how to proceed. Biden reaffirmed that he was running in a spicy letter to House Dems and told Dems to challenge him at the convention if they had a problem. Biden refused to acknowledge himself as “the elite,” using populist rhetoric to separate himself from the establishment that has defined his career. One Congressperson is pissed about leaks from the call, having wanted the opportunity to speak candidly amongst peers.
Some Senate Dems were supposed to meet today, but concerns over leaks led to Warner cancelling the tentative plans. Speculation grows they will instead discuss at the caucus meeting tomorrow. Schumer told Manchin to back off of publicly calling for Biden to drop out. Manchin, generally a maverick, obeyed, for reasons that are unclear.
Horseshoe theory is validated in real time. Biden’s misstating polls. Convicted felon Hunter Biden supposedly gatekeeps access to his father. Democrats are increasingly frustrated with the media and pundits are reluctantly acknowledging health issues that they previously called conspiracy theories. New conspiracy theories around Biden potentially having Parkinson’s have popped up. Democrats seek to redirect anger to Project 2025 to keep the heat off Their Guy, even as Trump disavows Project 2025 and instead seeks looser abortion restrictions in the Republican party platform - a direct contradiction of what Project 2025 seeks.
The hysteria over a think tank’s wish list astonishes me on a personal level; the involvement of previous members of Trump’s administration by no means indicates Trump signed onto the project or even knew about plans to direct his platform. Trump isn’t really one who likes to be controlled. But the rhetoric from the Twitteratti (X-eratti?) from “vote blue no matter who” to “vote against Project 2025 at all costs” – even though Project 2025 isn’t actually on the ballot.
I don’t see the Democratic party going as far as invoking the “in all good conscious” clause at the Convention to pick a different candidate, as that hits a level of party disunity I don't think we've seen from either side in recent memory. There’s funding issues that make Kamala the easiest option to continue campaign machinery, and Kamala isn’t very popular. Kicking both Kamala and Biden off the ticket makes it unlikely either one of them will direct their campaign funds back into the DNC. There’s also still enough DEI vibes floating around the Dems to maybe not want the optics of kicking a Black woman off the ticket. A brokered convention is messy, and it feels, in this moment, inevitable that Trump wins. Polls skew towards Democrats, after all, and Biden is still behind. Further intra-party chaos won’t help.
At the same time, Trump is only leading by an average of three points, and he beat Clinton when she was only ahead by four. There’s another debate on Sept. 10 (maybe), during which time Biden can possibly turn it around (so long as the debate is held between Biden's "good hours" of 10 am and 4 PM). Eight days after the second debate, Trump’s sentencing is set to proceed (pending evidentiary issues spawning from the SCOTUS immunity ruling); jail time will surely mess with the campaign, although polling around the impact of Trump's convictions is mixed.
Is there enough time before the election for Democrats to rally around Biden and wipe this mess from the minds of voters? Will Dems rally around Biden, or will the Lord Almighty Himself come down and remove Biden from the ballot? (as a side note - invoking God as the head of an increasingly a-religious party is an interesting choice). Is Project 2025 enough of a Bogeyman to overcome the very valid concern that Biden might not even be currently running the country? Is the average voter’s goldfish brain enough to move on from this mess in time for the election? While the conversation around replacing Biden has become a 24/7 media circus, extending over a week since the debate itself went down, how much is the average voter actually paying attention to any of this?
The most fascinating part of this, to me, are the Democratic attacks on a media that skews left. Turning against one’s historical allies is fascinating at a time when large Democratic donors are demanding Biden drop out. What a fun few months of culture war ahead.
Here
1yr ago
A (potentially former?) staffer for allegedly Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) is making news for filming gay sex in the Senate hearing room. He also, allegedly, yelled "Free Palestine" at Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio).
I include the last sentence only to clarify the full context for a statement the staffer posted on his LinkedIn about the matter:
This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda. While some of my actions in the past have shown poor judgement, I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace. Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated and I will be exploring what legal options are available to me in these matters.
As for the accusations regarding Congressman Max Miller, I have never seen the congressman and had no opportunity or cause to yell or confront him.
I'm struggling with his statement because it seems like the "filmed sex tape at work in the Senate hearing room on Amy Koobuchar's desk" is more of the issue here than the staffer's sexuality itself, but the language used insinuates that he is using his sexuality as a defense for an act that straight people also probably could not have "gotten away" with.
The utter lack of understanding of consequences is also throwing me a little bit. Culture war discussions about sexuality dip into accusations of degeneracy and pleasure-seeking not associated with, necessarily, love that this video emulates. This video will of course be used to further those accusations onto "all gays" instead of the particularly privileged ones who work in the Senate.
Here
1yr ago
I'm in grad school at Penn, which has recently hit the news for former Penn president Liz Magill's responses to the congressional hearing on anti-Semitism (even making it to the SNL cold open!!). The question about genocide wasn't even supposed to be the "gotcha" question in the hearing; the follow up was going to be "is the river to the sea advocating for genocide", which was where things were going to get dicey. Instead, Liz and the presidents of Harvard and MIT did not get past the first question.
Liz was under fire for a bit, starting with the "Palestine Writes" festival back in September. The recent confessional hearing was more so the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were. Since September, we've lost almost $1b in donations, from donors with names adorning buildings such as Huntsman, Lauder, and more. The most recent is $100m joint venture that included a non-discrimination clause, and a lawsuit by two Penn students about their experiences (which, even before Oct. 7, included swastikas drawn on campus buildings and an individual breaking into the Jewish center on the campus; we had a day of solidarity on campus to stand against antisemetic hatred, and the progressives who participated have all quietly removed those pictures from their social media).
Liz's administration has also refused to show the pro-Palestine movie "Israelism" and has changed certain policies to make an ongoing pro-Palestine "teach in" more difficult at Houston Hall. The middle east director resigned in protest. It isn't that Liz is pro-Palestine; she's just... Not doing a good job of attempting neutrality.
Penn is ranked the second worst school for freedom of speech by FIRE, a ranking that focuses less on stated policies and more on students' subjective experiences. Liz will stay on until a replacement is announced, and remains a tenured law professor at Penn regardless.
The new YikYak, known as sidechat, has provided a not-so-scientific look into the undergrads' anonymous processing of events. The following stand out to me:
- how upset they are that donors influence the selection of President of the University, whose main role is to create more donations (donors are trying to get their money's worth)
- how concerned they are about how much "worse" free speech will get on campus with Liz's removal (it's already pretty bad, but this may be the first time that they're experiencing any pushback for their speech/views)
- the constant refrain that "Jewish students have no reason to feel unsafe here" (I want to note that buildings on campus have been tagged with "intifida" and Jewish owned businesses are being "charged with genocide" by chanting mobs)
- a discussion around Jews being too white/privileged to claim that they're being discriminated against/should stay out of the "oppression Olympics"
- how convinced they are that Liz only said what she said to avoid committing "perjury" (I don't think they understand what perjury means)
- how unfair it is that certain companies are reserving internship spots for Jewish students
- several jokes that people will now, finally, be able to tell Penn and Penn State apart.
It baffles me how much students (specifically, students without a personal connection to the conflict; those with a personal connection I completely understand) are getting so emotionally frothy about a conflict halfway around the world that Penn has zero influence over. Instead, we are able to influence how students, here on campus, are treated, and we are willing to sacrifice that to rant about the Middle East. Why?
Here
3mo ago
A third year Skadden associate sent out a firm-wide - including overseas offices in Europe and Asia - email with her "conditional" resignation, where she laid out her terms not to quit. The terms were basically to fight Trump better. She also posted the email on her LinkedIn.
A few hours later, she could no longer access her firm email - it appears Skadden accepted her resignation. She is now making news appearances talking about #resisting in the face of authoritarianism. It's unclear how many firms want a corporate associate that desires to "fight" so badly - in the few firms interested in disrupting client work for challenging the administration, social justice is reserved for the litigators.
Ultimately, all BigLaw is soulless, putting profits over justice. It's about dealwork and defense, not upholding the law itself - that's more plaintiff-side work that very few BigLaw firms can swing litigating. Not many clients wants to hire a law firm that paints a target on their back, not when NGOs and civil rights firms exist - there are more appropriate "mechanisms" in the legal world to fight these fights, and those mechanisms are in play. It is not the duty, nor the skill set, of BigLaw.
I admire her confidence that the world-wide firm would care about a junior leveraged finance associate's opinion regarding the rule of law in the United States. Posting an internal email on her LinkedIn also feels concerning from a disclosure perspective - associates have been fired for filming tiktoks in their offices before because of the risk of showing client materials.
She has previously circulated an anonymous statement "signed" by BigLaw associates listing their firm name and class year, because she believed it would pressure BigLaw firms into Doing Something.
It seems that statement culture is no longer a tool of the culture war - firms don't really seem to care. Being willing to resign is a step in the right direction, I think, although I wonder if she really thought she would be considered so valuable to the firm that they would meet her conditions. She seems to truly believe that she Accomplished Something, and I wonder if that's a residual impact of the COVID corporate social justice era, in which empowering employees to Defend The Current Thing took off.
I'm waiting to see if she's going to try to file a workplace retaliation claim or anything crazy for Skadden accepting her resignation, because that kind of feels like the vibe of things. Realistically, I know that this is going to be like when random tech workers quit over how their employers "handled" Palestine - it will be swept under the rug and forgotten about.
Here
1yr ago
Why is this war "different?" Is the Israel-Hamas conflict is the first time that many young progressives have been on the opposite side from "public" opinion? How will that loss of popular support impact culture wars forward, or will it all?
I remember the mantra of "silence is violence" during the BLM protests. "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." But there has been a lot of silence- probably because speaking up has led to job offers being revoked, although some of those who lost their offers are not backing down:
Davis also asked "Do you condemn Hamas' actions on Oct. 7?" In response, Workman said "I think what I use my platform for and who I condemn was pretty clear by my message."
And Davis asked several times if there was room for empathy for the Israelis who died.
"I will continue to use my voice to uplift the voices of Palestinians and the struggles they're going through," Workman said.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/nyu-student-criticized-lost-job-offer-israel-hamas/story?id=104235399
Reddit removed this post for violating community guidelines, but it was a plea to Black women to stay silent about the conflict and not get involved (the comments are still up for some context of reactions): https://old.reddit.com/r/BlackWomenDivest/s/8IU6rXCvle
Why was there so much pressure for everyone to rise up and speak out during other injustices (Ukraine, Uyghurs, BLM, etc) but for this one, the advice is to shut up, sit down, stay out of it? Why did the rhetoric around social justice and activism drastically change overnight? BLM (the organization, not the movement) has gotten in trouble for antisemitism and/or support for Palestine in the past - why is it suddenly going quiet now? Is this the first real consequence to some of the progressive left's views, the first line in the sand?
Here
4mo ago
The most recent executive order is little c conservative regarding the law, in that it takes Loper Bright a step further in curtailing unelected legislating by bureaucrats.
It does not put the executive over the legislative or judicial branch, despite fear mongering. Instead, it puts the White House/AG over "independent" agencies. All regulations must be reviewed by the White House/AG's office, and agencies must defer to their interpretation of vague laws.
The judicial branch still has the ability to overturn those interpretations (they actually have more power to overturn those interpretations after the death of Chevron).
The legislative branch can avoid the issue by making more specific laws. This will never happen, because Congress has been fine with passing the buck to the executive branch to avoid reelection fights for a long time now. The legislative branch can also move certain agencies (or agency functions) into the legislative branch. Congress can make ALJs specialty Article III courts, to increase their independence from the President. Congress can move regulation-making functions underneath relevant subcommittees in the legislature, but that would increase their workload in reviewing what agencies are up to. Congress has delegated a lot of power to the executive, and the most recent EO is an example of how that can go sideways. If they didn't want the executive to have the power to interpret vague laws, they should've made less vague laws. The three branches were always supposed to be at war with each other, not casually handing over powers such as the tariff power.
It doesn't really impact what a Democratic president would or would not do - it's logical to think that Democrats, who are a fan of letting "experts" use their expertise, will return decision-making to independent agencies instead of wading through regulations at the Presidential level.
But the hyperbole around all of this is... Weird. If things are so bad, why do people/legacy media feel the need to exaggerate the impact? Idk. The language part of the culture war has always gotten to me.
Here
7mo ago
Random theories about this election I’ve seen discussed so far:
We have left-wing musings that the failure to reach low-propensity voters comes from a “lack” of a left-wing media ecosystem, which makes me scratch my head somewhat, given the disproportionate skew of media to the left. There doesn’t appear to be any introspection or soul-searching here. The issue might not be a lack of left-wing media, but a lack of trust in that media; becoming more online creates a healthy level of skepticism about what we consume, especially as AI becomes more prevalent.
Some pundits are decrying the existence of right-wing echo chambers as corrupting our young men while fleeing to Bluesky and Threads so they don’t have to interact with conservatives. Bluesky “block lists” of conservative voices appeared almost overnight, to overcome the lack of algorithmic protections.
And, of course, everyone’s bringing up their favorite culture war issues as the “reason” why Trump won, but I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s not that factory workers in the rustbelt are transphobic, it’s that factory workers in the rustbelt are tired of someone’s pronouns being given more attention than their grocery bills. Abortion received a ton of support on referendums while their states still went to Trump; is it because we made having children a “women’s issue” instead of an economic one? Telling women they should lie to their husbands who they voted for isn’t a great way to win over men who already feel scorned by today’s society.
I also don’t understand how the party who claim to be championing women and minorities is also the party fighting so hard for mail-in ballots. Secret ballots are a feature of the system, not a bug. Filling out the ballot at your kitchen table makes it really hard to hide it from your husband, or your employer. The weird creepy ads about “people can look up your voting record and won’t date you if you don’t” also don’t help with this, especially when several of these ads didn’t clarify that while whether you voted is public, who you voted for is not. The social stigma of voting Trump is still high, as people get uninvited from Thanksgiving with their own families for leaning conservative.
In the meantime, my guilty pleasure is watching liberal election-denier conspiracy theories. arr “SomethingIsWrong2024” displays a shockingly bad grasp of data analysis, because “all my neighbors had Kamala signs!!” and the like. I feel like I’m in an alternate reality when I see things stated “Vance was a bad pick, no one was excited about him” because I remember the enthusiasm for having someone young and capable on the ticket. Maybe I’m just stuck in my own echo chamber, and don’t realize it; I should do my own introspection.
Here
6mo ago
I find it interesting that the people celebrating the "vigilante justice" of the UHC assassin are the same people upset about the Daniel Penny verdict.
Here
7mo ago
Biden just set a precedent of pardoning future crimes.
It's minimal - the pardon was issued during the day Sunday and covered up until Sunday at midnight - and probably accidental; it feels like someone leaked the pardon news so Biden just ripped the bandaid off and pardoned Hunter a day early.
Pardoning for future crimes - however minimal - is still improper. Ex parte Garland states that presidential pardons are only for crimes after the crime's commission. But the Hunter pardon wasn't written to be severable (i.e., if a part is deemed invalid, the whole can still stand). Is Hunter Biden's pardon thus entirely invalid, because the couple of hours of future pardon is "against the rules?"
Or will we as a country accept the pardoning of future crimes moving forward? Can Trump now walk into the Oval Office day one and issue pardons for his entire administration for any federal crimes committed during his tenure? He can point to the Hunter pardon as allowing this kind of power, and he wouldn't necessarily be incorrect.
Social media marked all of this up as jokes - "Hunter can go on a one man purge tonight!!" and "hookers and crack for Hunter tonight!" I haven't seen it floating around legal blogs or anything of the like quite yet, although in the grand scheme of things, a few hours of future immunity isn't that big of a deal.
For the party of "Defending Democracy™️", pardoning crimes not yet committed is not really what they should be going for. The culture war discussion will focus on Biden being a liar yadda yadda, but the scarier part of this is the few hours of future immunity until midnight yesterday remaining unchallenged.
Here
4mo ago
Penn is rescinding some PhD offers as part of cuts to graduate programs in light of DOGE funding changes. Vandy, USC, and Pitt are pausing PhD admissions for now, which feels slightly more reasonable than rescinding.
It's interesting that the cuts are occurring to the "next generation" of incoming talent, although it somewhat makes sense - Penn PhDs are funded, with very nice stipends. Rescinding is still a big move, though, when Penn could cut administrative bloat or decrease the full funding such that potential candidates decide not to join the program in the first place. The whole point of the Ivy, I mean, Ivory Tower is to strengthen their own prestige and little robots, so rescinding feels weird. There's also the ability to dip into the endowment, but I know that gets complicated fast.
I am also wondering how they're deciding who to rescind from. Are any international future students getting the boot? Are there DEI level decisions being made after the fact, as a way of getting around affirmative action? Are they going to change their minds if funding frees up if lawsuits throw down or the DOGE pause ends?
I'm a law student, and firms talk a lot about lessons learned from the financial crisis. An entire "generation" of talent was lost from cutting start classes during the crisis, and firms really feel it now - it had longer term impacts down the road to not just take the financial hit of having a few new associates bumbling around. I wonder if academia is about to undergo the same learning experience?
Or will academia, particularly STEM, turn to embrace private funding more thoroughly? Private influence in STEM academic research could increase innovation and development, and solve the "funding crisis" presented from the withdrawal of government funds. The influence of private interests in nonprofits/educational institutions is an old culture war argument, but one that might start playing out among graduate programs.
It's also interesting that undergraduate programs, for now, aren't getting hit. Maybe they're more lucrative/cash cows, although many are moving to full need-based funding. Maybe it's the demographic cliff.
Here
1yr ago
I'm at Penn Law.
I went to the protests tonight as a legal observer because there were reports that arrests were "imminent." While I was there, the encampment organizers designated a "red" group- those who WANTED to be arrested - from a "yellow" group - those WILLING to be arrested. The distinction concerns me; there are people actively SEEKING to get arrested.
We didn't currently have an active police presence, so it would take some time for a police force large enough to arrest anyone to show up. By the time enough police had gathered, those unwilling to get arrested could leave.
The admin has been clear they will only arrest non-Penn affiliates. The majority of protestors are not Penn affiliated - we are the meeting point for Temple and Drexel SJPs also, as our campus gets the most national attention because people sometimes realize we aren't Penn State. In addition, there are plenty of "community members" who are non-students heavily involved. I'd estimate approx. 15% of the total people were Penn affiliates, and maybe 50% were students at all.
Arrests have still not been made (there was a pro-Israel dude who walked through earlier with a pocket knife who got a citation but that's about it). I left after the chants shifted to "Al-Qassim make us proud, kill another soldier now" and "we don't want no two state, we want '48." I think the protestors are genuinely upset that the police have left them alone this entire time. I don't know if it's a resume line item checklist - "getting arrested for social justice ❤️💙" might play well for a political career? - or just people making reckless decisions. I'm scared, and tired, and finals start tomorrow.
Only 14 people in the encampment of 200 paused for the call to prayer at dusk. None of the prayer individuals were masked. The leaders of the protest, from what I could tell, were a Latino and a white woman (with purple hair, not that that really matters). The Latino led everyone in a chant of "we are all Palestinian." What happened to cultural appropriation?
There was a "protest against hate speech" or whatever earlier by the Pro-Israel crowd. The pro-Israel crowd were the first time I had seen American flags brought into this at all. They remembered where we were, what we actually had power over. None of them were masked, either.
Almost the entire pro-Palestine group was masked (I hesitate to call them pro-Palestine instead of pro-Hamas after the Al-Qassik chants). The three exceptions in the pro-Palestinian group were those who engaged in the call to prayer, the Latino leader, and the "red" group. If you aren't willing to show your face for a cause, to have your name associated with it, do you really believe in it at all?
I don't know anything anymore. One of the 19 year olds who stood next to me as the first tents were going up a few days ago, James, asked me what "encampment" meant. I thought he was joking, or at least asking what it meant in this specific context. No, actually. He, a sophomore at Penn, genuinely has never heard the word before. These are our best and brightest.
Here
7mo ago
After the election, the president of the Student Advisory Committee of Harvard’s Institute of Politics insinuated that the IOP’s longstanding commitment to non-partisan civic engagement would be put aside to stand against the “threat” of Trump.
The Director of the IOP quickly rebuked the student, as did alumni. The original op-ed was modified to clarify that this was a student proposal, and not an official act of the IOP that could potentially endanger its tax status as a nonprofit in association with the school.
I was more shocked by the quick response than by the student’s comments; it’s taken for granted that the academy is the stronghold of Democrats. As friends and I contemplate government service, we’ve talked often about what doors we’d be closing off entirely by entering the administration now, and how that would impact our trajectory. Mentors have suggested waiting until certain milestones to provide easier routes back into the private sector, but we all agree that academia is DOA outside of like Hillsdale.
Part of these discussions included off-handed references to China’s “loyalty pledges” for students attending plum universities or receiving scholarships to study abroad. Given the academy’s existence as another wing of the Democratic Party, is there a possibility of colleges or universities ensuring students meet certain political beliefs in order to attend their institution? Would it impact their tax status to do so, and if yes, is that the only thing stopping them?
Private non-profit Christian institutions make their students sign statements of faith in order to attend. BYU is an example, although their agreement is slightly more complicated than faith, per se (as TracingWoodgrains has spoken about before). Patrick Henry College includes a bit about the number of books in the Bible to keep out Catholics. It’s not a stretch to thing secular colleges could have students sign statements about their culture war/social beliefs in order to attend. Will the privileges of Ivy League degrees be gatekept for the “woke?”
Is that, in a way, what diversity statements have been doing for years? Maybe diversity statements weren’t about meeting racial categories, but instead to ensure a certain level of “buy-in” to DEI ideology. As an aside, in the post-SFFA world, the number of students interested in the Federalist Society doubled at my law school. It could just be an “election year” thing (the last data point we are able to access easily is 2020, which doesn’t count due to the remote education) or it could be a “freeing” of conservatives entering the upper echelons of professional education. More data is needed here to support this anecdata.
Purity testing at schools is, of course, nothing new. For instance, we had a professor banned from teaching first-year mandatory courses because he donated to the Republican party in 2012, a thing that still doesn’t sit quite right to me. Why are people looking through their professor’s donation records? As people uninvite family members to Thanksgiving due to who they voted for, can universities deny students on the same grounds? Would some universities feel inclined to?
I’m not entirely sure. The demographic cliff means that universities have to start making themselves more enticing somehow. Degrees are too expensive for their value, nowadays, and many are choosing to forego higher education in favor of the trades or other endeavors. Schools like America University saw their acceptance rate almost double and yet still didn’t hit their enrollment targets. Can schools (even elite schools) afford to have an ideological purity test for entry?
Here
6mo ago
The killer left behind bullet casings, which was at first viewed as “oh, this was an amateur – what kind of professional doesn’t police their brass?” even with the suppressor on the gun. Then it was revealed the three bullet casings each contained a different word: one said deny, one said defend, one said depose. Some speculated it was related to a book titled “Delay, Deny, Defend” about the evils of insurance companies, although the title doesn’t quite add up.
Other speculate the word “Depose” has to do with the recent DOJ probe into Brian Thompson for insider trading.
I was stunned watching many on social media celebrated the murder like they were celebrating the death of a terrorist. UHC is the largest provider of Medicare advantage in the country. We need better insurance, absolutely - but insurance is the only reason many can even afford basic care in the first place. UHC isn't even one of the insurance companies that yesterday decided to stop covering anesthesia in the middle of surgeries if the surgeries took too long (although UHC has the highest percentage of denied claims, in part because of their share of the Medicare advantage market).
If people don't like denials of coverage now, I think they'd hate rationed healthcare under a "Medicare 4 All" system even more; the government-run V.A. shows exactly how bad we are at those kinds of systems. Some coverage and cheaper procedures is better than wait times or tribunal refusals due to resource shortages or determined societal need.
Although I can't expect the people celebrating his death to understand that. Most Americans have a loose grasp, at best, of how health insurance works; I had recently seen an Xcretement with the following sentiment:
A Starbucks worker on the @organizeworkers call saying that working in a union Starbucks in the South could become the only way for some young people to get gender affirming care under Trump has me crying in the club 😭
Which is... bafflingly incorrect. Insurance covering a surgery doesn't suddenly make that surgery legal in whatever state? It's just... not how any of this works, although I don't know why I expected a Starbucks unionization attempt to know any better.
Does the United States have it in us to engage in vigilantism? Will all CEOs, billionaires, etc., start to show up on the chopping block? Is "eating the rich" leaving electoral politics behind and instead taking matters into their own "hands?" Will this change the gun control debate at all? How dystopian are we about to get? Or, like everything else, is this tapping the sign of "nothing ever happens?"
I believe it's the latter; this will get forgotten about quickly. Billionaires et. al. can afford private security, but there's been a recent movement attacking small business owners as the "petit bourgeois," who are less likely to be able to afford that kind of stuff. Those grievances are likely more local, though, and less likely to make the news. Local level "activism" doesn't generate attention, so maybe it's less of a concern. Idk. I don't think Americans have it in us to truly seek a revolution. Even the "Insurrection" would have continued the status quo of the government system, just with a different person at the top.
Here
6mo ago
So the conspiracy theory I'm currently hearing bounce around is that this is an "I am Sparticus" situation. I'm not advocating this position, but solely sharing for its potential cultural implications.
The theory goes something like this: Luigi, being an engineer with a 3D printer, made himself a copy of the New Jersey fake ID, the gun, and wrote up a manifesto to turn himself, banking on the recent results of the Daniel Penny case to show that the popular support for the UHC shooter ensures jury nullification of the assassination.
They cite to things like the hair line (?) and the fact he had the gun and manifesto on him while chilling in this random McDonald's. Idk. I don't follow the logic.
Here
1yr ago
What's disturbing me is that the conversation around this isn't "is Biden fit to lead" it's "does Biden look presidential enough?" Competence at the top of a ticket should pale in comparison to competence as President. The country should be considering the 25th Amendment, not just the ballot. The punditry seems more concerned with the appearance of the thing than the thing itself, and that thing is that Biden maybe shouldn't continue to serve in the current moment - far less the next four years.
Here
2yr ago
The way Tyre Nichols murder has been handled by the media/internet feels... Weird?
The rhetoric around his killers have used the word "gang" more often than other police killings, and I can't help wonder if that is because his killers are Black. It's an odd form of racist dog whistling from the "woke" denizens of reddit.
In spite of that, there still seems an effort to claim the killing was racially motivated - that these cops were Black-hating Black men. It doesn't seem possible for the discourse to accept that police brutality isn't always a racial issue. Sometimes, it is just abuse of power by terrible people, and skin color has nothing to do with it.
Finally, the video release process is... Uncomfortable. We don't give terrorist videos this kind of air time, and we actively scrub videos of mass shootings that get posted online. Why does the public need to see the horrific last moments of this man's life? The video will surely get played at the cops' trials; cops who have already been charged, so there is no need for public pressure to get the prosecutor to do their job. But the media is hyping up the release schedule like it's a silver screen movie, and his mom got put on a press tour today in anticipation of the video, which feels like an exploitation of her pain. Biden is encouraging protests (peaceful, of course). What are we protesting? The cops are charged with murder, and very quickly. What does protesting accomplish here?
First time posting a parent comment, sorry if this isn't fleshed out to the quality of standards y'all normally utilize!
Here
7mo ago
The University of Michigan Central Student Government voted to impeach their president and vice president for (i) incitement to violence (an instagram post on the "SHUT IT DOWN" account encouraging students to pack a CSG budget meeting in early October); (ii) cybertheft of CSG property (changing the password on the student government instagram account and voicing support for the student protestors; and (iii) dereliction of duty (attempting to defund student orgs at Michigan and attempt to send the money to Gaza).
The student leaders had explicitly run on a "shut it down" ticket, receiving 47% of the vote back in March (granted, less than 20% of the student body voted). The leaders had pledged to "halt all CSG activity and associated funding until the University fully divests from companies profiting off Israel’s military campaign in Gaza," were voted in, and then proceeded to do... exactly what they had promised. But living up to their promises is, apparently, enough to impeach them for.
There were some challenges to their campaign, citing unfair election tactics, but they were ultimately sworn in to their posts back in April - and only now has impeachment been brought forth, eight months later.
Is this a window into a changing tide of how culture war issues are discussed on college campuses, or do students just get frustrated when they start feeling the actual impact of their actions (no funding for their organizations)? Is "support" for Gaza dying, and if yes, what is the new cause de jour that will rise to take its place?
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1mo ago
He's also a Peruvian citizen who spent most of his career in Peru and gave a portion of his speech in Spanish.
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7mo ago
I'm not 100% that this is pissing all over his legacy, per se.
An interesting "culture war" piece of this is why it was a blanket pardon stretching back to when Hunter first joined Burisma. The "innocent" argument is that even if Biden simply pardoned Hunter for the gun/IRS charges, there would be continued lawfare trying to tie the Bidens to shady backroom dealings in Ukraine.
The less innocent argument - the one that will spawn a thousand conspiracy theories - is that there's a lot of "there" there and Biden is protecting himself, not just his son. And seeing how much rationality gets expensed towards the "innocent" theory will be interesting to watch unfold.
The discussion along party lines have also been eye raising. The three things I've seen from Dems have been "Trump pardoned/will pardon worse!!!", "guess I won't vote for Biden again, hurr hurr" and "wow cons are melting down!!" The three things I've seen from cons are "I'm a father, I get it," "well, Biden lied," and the aforementioned "so... Why ten years?"
There's a reason why exit polls had voters listing Democracy as their #1 issue had those voters breaking 50/50. "Democracy" is not a winning issue for Dems when their messaging on this stuff sucks. The cons are acting more conciliatory about this than they are.
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7mo ago
Why? Because she is a recent convert to the Republican party, or are there other concerns with her?
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11mo ago
Why is the debate about dropping out of the campaign and not about stepping down as president? A man unfit to campaign is a man unfit to hold the nuclear codes. His cabinet should be the ones asking for a medical test in preparation for invoking the 25th Amendment.
It's our final SCOTUS day, and the surprisingly heated decision of Corner Post was released. There's a fair amount of juicy goodness in the decision, as well as the other decisions released today, but I specifically want to focus on the following lines in the dissent:
But Congress still has a chance to address this absurdity and forestall the coming chaos. It can opt to correct this Court’s mistake by clarifying that the statutes it enacts are designed to facilitate the functioning of agencies, not to hobble them. In particular, Congress can amend §2401(a), or enact a specific review provision for APA claims, to state explicitly what any such rule must mean if it is to operate as a limitations period in this context: Regulated entities have six years from the date of the agency action to bring a lawsuit seeking to have it changed or invalidated; after that, facial challenges must end. By doing this, Congress can make clear that lawsuits bringing facial claims against agencies are not personal attack vehicles for new entities created just for that purpose.
The Court, for its entire existence, has steadfastly refused to provide advisory opinions such as this comment. The Court does not weigh in on proposed statutes, let alone propose statutes itself, viewing it as a violation of both separation of powers and as outside the scope of the "case and controversy" requirement. Interpreting an amendment of a statute before the statute is even written goes strongly against the Court's norms and its powers. For all the discussion that overturning Chevron generated about moving power around between the branches, the Corner Post dissent is a shocking example of attempted judicial over-reach. Justices do not get to use the Court to urge Congress to enact legislation that meets the Justices' policy preferences.
However, an obscure APA case is a lot less interesting than the other decisions made today, and I doubt Corner Post's dissent will get much airtime with everything else going on. It's difficult to square with the liberal Justices' current discourse on other matters, but in a 6-3 I doubt that will matter much either.
I remember the Obama era narratives of the “Coalition of the Ascendent.” If demographics were truly destiny, Republicans wouldn’t touch the Presidency again. Obama’s “resounding” 2012 victory prompted the infamous Republican “Autopsy.”
This narrative ignores the numbers, though. 2012 wasn’t a triumph for Democrats, but a warning – while the Republican candidate had gained just under 1 million more votes than the 2008 Republican candidate, the Democrat had lost a little over 3.5 million voters. While Hillary Clinton eked out a plurality of the popular vote,* this trend continued in 2016: the Republican candidate gained about 2 million more votes than in 2012, while the Democratic candidate lost ~60k votes. A minor number, to be sure, but a trend nonetheless. 2012 wasn’t a victory lap, but instead a demonstration that the “Obama coalition” was a mirage, a flash in the pan – a demonstration that we all missed at the time.
As the 2024 election is mulled over by pundits to see what, exactly, went wrong, I wonder if we are missing similar “warning signs” in trends. The Bernie-Bro-turned-Trump-supporter pipeline a la Joe Rogan could be symptomatic of voters aligning more along an axis of “insiders vs. outsiders” instead of policy preferences, education, age, or race; while there are correlations with each of those things to an “insiders vs. outsiders” axis, none of them are definitive. Are we similarly looking at the 2024 election the wrong way, especially as we make judgment calls while several million votes have yet to be counted?
Some of the most prominent Republicans right now identified as Democrat-aligned during the Obama era (Trump, Vance, Elon, Tulsi; I’d throw RFK in there too but I’m not sure that he views himself as a Republican). Republicans are winning over tech bros and unions, and bleeding college-educated voters. There’s talk about this just being a Trump thing, it’ll go away. It was a big anti-incumbency year, worldwide. The elite will reclaim their rightful place as the only right, correct, egalitarian way forward. Etc.
*Talking heads bicker about how Trump “only” receiving a plurality of the popular vote decreases his significance, even while clinging to Clinton “winning” the popular vote in 2016 despite also receiving a plurality, and not a majority. The semantics are amusing from a culture war perspective – the war on language continues – but ultimately meaningless.
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