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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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The worst fears of every pundit from 2015-2017 of Trump came nowhere close to manifesting, so this makes me disinclined to take them seriously at anything.

Klein tries to counter this argument from history by pointing out that 4 years of learning and prep by the Trump reelection team makes one of their high-priority goals be vetting top-level staff for compliance with Trump's desires and personal loyalty. Separately, his attempt at moving federal workers to Schedule F to remove protections against firing them and rehiring for loyalty and obedience late in his prior presidency tried and failed to do the same thing in medium- and low-level roles. Klein claims that this would remove the moderating factors that prevented pundits' fears from manifesting.

I don't know how the tension will resolve over time, between the need to maintain continuity in low-level staffing to enable daily operations versus the need to overwrite existing loyalty and power structures, but separately I worry about the damage the attempt will do to tacit institutional knowledge rather than procedural knowledge; cf the various worries about the shallower bench of talent on the right.

Wait Klein wants us to be scared that Trump might fire a bunch of entrenched bureaucrats with whom I have extreme disagreements and thinks that’s a bad thing?

Every time I see this ad on tv, I feel like Kamala is threatening me with a good time. Like I'm supposed to be upset that the young, well-groomed, attractive, upper-middle class white couple has to start having kids? or that old people should get less free money?

how does the federal government ban abortion? that seems beyond their power. i presume the FDA can ban / regulate abortion drugs but the FDA doesn't have the power to regulate surgical procedures. but it looks like commerce clause strikes again. just mention the magic words 'affecting interstate commerce' and the federal government can regulate anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Carhart

(a) Any physician who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both. This subsection does not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself. This subsection takes effect 1 day after the enactment.

the other hilarious thing is if they argued against the federal government having the power to regulate abortion they would have been probably more likely to succeed given the make up of the court.

The 14th Amendment gives the federal government the power to protect the right to life.

Ah but the unborn are not "citizens of the united states" yet are they?

For the right to life part, the relevant question is only whether they are persons: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

So in theory all that's needed then is for congress to modify 1 U.S. Code § 8 to include the unborn or to add a clause that includes them for some specific purposes?

Federal law already considers murdering a pregnant woman and her unborn child to be two murders. It was slightly controversial at the time, but hasn't quite (yet) been read the way you suggest.