Weaponizing The First Amendment

NY Times reporter Adam Liptak follows up on Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's end-of-term warning that the the right is "weaponizing" the FIrst Amendment in order to use it against classic liberalism in order to curtail labor, civil, voting, and human rights.

“The left was once not just on board but leading in supporting the broadest First Amendment protections,” said Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer and a supporter of broad free-speech rights. “Now the progressive community is at least skeptical and sometimes distraught at the level of First Amendment protection which is being afforded in cases brought by litigants on the right.”

Many on the left have traded an absolutist commitment to free speech for one sensitive to the harms it can inflict.

Take pornography and street protests. Liberals were once largely united in fighting to protect sexually explicit materials from government censorship. Now many on the left see pornography as an assault on women’s rights.

In 1977, many liberals supported the right of the American Nazi Party to march among Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Ill. Far fewer supported the free-speech rights of the white nationalists who marched last year in Charlottesville, Va.

There was a certain naïveté in how liberals used to approach free speech, said Frederick Schauer, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

“Because so many free-speech claims of the 1950s and 1960s involved anti-obscenity claims, or civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests, it was easy for the left to sympathize with the speakers or believe that speech in general was harmless,” he said. “But the claim that speech was harmless or causally inert was never true, even if it has taken recent events to convince the left of that. The question, then, is why the left ever believed otherwise.”

Some liberals now say that free speech disproportionately protects the powerful and the status quo.

“When I was younger, I had more of the standard liberal view of civil liberties,” said Louis Michael Seidman, a law professor at Georgetown. “And I’ve gradually changed my mind about it. What I have come to see is that it’s a mistake to think of free speech as an effective means to accomplish a more just society.”

To the contrary, free speech reinforces and amplifies injustice, Catharine A. MacKinnon, a law professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in “The Free Speech Century,” a collection of essays to be published this year.

“Once a defense of the powerless, the First Amendment over the last hundred years has mainly become a weapon of the powerful,” she wrote. “Legally, what was, toward the beginning of the 20th century, a shield for radicals, artists and activists, socialists and pacifists, the excluded and the dispossessed, has become a sword for authoritarians, racists and misogynists, Nazis and Klansmen, pornographers and corporations buying elections.”

And that's where we are.  The right constantly uses the rights of free speech and religious freedom to justify actions taken against others, and then to prevent the government from curtailing those action, no matter who is harmed in the process.  It's patently ridiculous, and yet it's where we are.

It's not an accident that the right constantly conflates being able to discriminate and preventing the government from censorship as "First Amendment rights".  They've been doing it for decades, guys.  Their entire legal framework is built on it.  It's also no mistake that they are constantly conflating the right to discriminate and the right to not be discriminated against too.  They believe in both, but only if it applies to themselves.

And not anyone else.

Your Even A Stopped Clock Can Be Right Alert

For the first time in years, Dana "Dickwhisperer" Milbank actually wrote something that I didn't want to use a wrapping paper for fish and chips as he notes that Orange Julius's "hell no" 2010 speech on Obamacare warning the Dems what was coming is where Mitch McConnell and the GOP are now as the blue wave roars towards them.

Now I think I know how Boehner felt in 2010. We see Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowing to ram through the Senate the confirmation of the decisive fifth hard-right justice on the Supreme Court, quite likely signaling the end of legal abortion in much of the United States and possibly same-sex marriage and other rights Americans embrace, in far greater number, than they ever did Obamacare.

One wants to cry out: Hell no, you can’t! But Republicans can. They have the votes. Democrats can and should fight, but the GOP controls the schedule, sets the rules and already eliminated the procedures that gave the minority a say in Supreme Court confirmations.

If anything, the fury should be far more intense on the Democratic side right now than it was for Boehner in 2010. The Affordable Care Act was the signature proposal of a president elected with a large popular mandate, it had the support of a plurality of the public, and it was passed by a party that had large majorities in both chambers of Congress and had attempted to solicit the participation of the minority.

Now we have a Supreme Court nomination — the second in as many years — from an unpopular president who lost the popular vote by 2.8 million. The nominee will be forced through by also-unpopular Senate Republicans, who, like House Republicans, did not win a majority of the vote in 2016.

Compounding the outrage, each of the prospective nominees is all but certain, after joining the court, to support the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, which has held the nation together in a tenuous compromise on abortion for 45 years and is supported by two-thirds of Americans . For good measure, the new justice may well join the other four conservative justices in revoking same-sex marriage, which also has the support of two-thirds of Americans. And this comes after the Republicans essentially stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.

You can only ignore the will of the people for so long and get away with it.

In a way Milbank is right, but frankly the Republicans have been getting away with it through incrementally tightening the screws on Democrats and making it harder and harder to resist them at the ballot box that voting alone isn't going to stop the GOP at this point.

We're going to be in the streets this summer, and long after I suspect as the Mueller investigation reaches its conclusion.  This is the part where we have to step in and do things, guys.

The conflict is coming.  It's been coming for years, but at this point it's time to admit that it's finally here.

 

Meanwhile In Bevinstan, Con't

Some rare good news here out of the Christian Republic of Bevinstan for once as a federal judge has struck down GOP Gov. Matt Bevin's Medicaid work requirements as "arbitrary and capricious".

A federal judge in Washington D.C. has struck down Kentucky's plan to start requiring some Medicaid recipients to work or volunteer in order to continue receiving benefits.
The ruling blocks Gov. Matt Bevin's administration from implementing the change, which was scheduled to start Monday in one Northern Kentucky county and extend to most of the rest of the state by the end of the year. 

Sixteen Kentucky Medicaid recipients sued the federal government in January to block Bevin's planned changes to the state's Medicaid program. The plaintiffs claim that Bevin's plan — known as Kentucky HEALTH — should not have been approved; they say it violates the 1965 law establishing Medicaid because it will reduce poor people's access to health care. 

Simultaneously, to uphold Kentucky HEALTH, Bevin is suing those same 16 Medicaid recipients in Frankfort before U.S. District Judge Gregory VanTatenhove. 

The Frankfort lawsuit is about a month behind its Washington counterpart, setting up the possibility that a judge in one federal circuit could strike down Bevin's Medicaid changes while a judge in another could say that he had every right to make them. 

Bevin says that if he loses in court and cannot prevail on appeal, he will end expanded Medicaid in Kentucky, which has extended health coverage to about 400,000 people with incomes just above the poverty line. 

"Kentucky HEALTH was developed in Kentucky for Kentuckians, and its validity ought to be decided in Kentucky," Bevin's attorney, Stephen Pitt, wrote in a May court filing before VanTatenhove. "This matter should be decided quickly so that the commonwealth can move forward with Kentucky HEALTH or withdraw from expanded Medicaid." 

While much of the controversy over Kentucky HEALTH has focused on Bevin’s 80-hour-a-month "community engagement" requirement, which could be satisfied by work, school or volunteering, the Washington-based suit also called attention to other new hurdles that Medicaid recipients will have to jump in order to keep their coverage. 

Those hurdles include monthly premiums, initially from $1 to $15, although they eventually top out at $37.50; monthly check-ins to report employment and income status; annual re-enrollments; and ongoing verification of extra tasks people must complete if they want to win back the vision and dental coverage they previously had as part of their basic coverage. 

Missing a payment or notification could trigger a six-month lockout on basic health coverage. Missing the enrollment window could mean waiting nine more months for the next opportunity. 

The Bevin administration estimates 95,000 people will lose their coverage over the next five years out of the more than 400,000 Kentuckians just above the poverty line who are currently enrolled in expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Bevin made this bluff back in January that if the courts blocked these work requirements, that he'd end Medicaid for 10% of the state or so.  He's locked into that now, as that bluff has been called.

What will he do?

We'll find out.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

As I keep telling folks, the Trump regime's goal is not to end illegal immigration, it's to end legal immigration as well as to revoke citizenship from undesirables.  Trump and his white supremacists want to roll back as much of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act as possible.  Part of that goal is to stop as many people as possible from entering the US, and that means ending asylum.

The Department of Justice, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is drafting a plan that would totally overhaul asylum policy in the United States. 

Under the plan, people would be barred from getting asylum if they came into the US between ports of entry and were prosecuted for illegal entry. It would also add presumptions that would make it extremely difficult for Central Americans to qualify for asylum, and codify — in an even more restrictive form — an opinion written by Sessions in June that attempted to restrict asylum for victims of domestic and gang violence. 

Vox has confirmed that the regulation is in the process of being evaluated, and has seen a copy of a draft of the regulation. 

When the regulation is ready, it will be published in the Federal Register as a notice of proposed rulemaking, with 90 days for the public to comment before it’s enacted as a final regulation. 

The version Vox saw may change before it’s finalized, or even before the proposal is published in the Federal Register. (The Department of Justice declined to comment.)
But as it exists now, the proposal is a sweeping and thorough revamp of asylum — tightening the screws throughout the asylum process. 

One source familiar with the asylum process but not authorized to speak on the record described the proposed changes as “the most severe restrictions on asylum since at least 1965” — when the law that created the current legal immigration system was passed — and “possibly even further back.” 

The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the attorney general, along with the Department of Homeland Security, discretion over asylum standards — saying that the government “may grant asylum” to an applicant who they determine meets the definition of a refugee. But the proposed regulation would make it nearly impossible for Central Americans, including families, to earn the government’s approval. 

It would eliminate the path that thousands of Central Americans, including families, take every month to seek asylum in the US: entering between ports of entry and presenting themselves to Border Patrol agents. It would make it all but impossible for victims of domestic or gang violence to qualify for asylum — going even further than a June decision from Sessions that sought to limit asylum access for those groups. It would create a presumption against Central Americans who travel through Mexico on their way to the US.

The endgame is to reduce the non-white population of the country.  Keep that goal in mind when you take a look at every immigration move that this regime makes.  All of that serves this overarching purpose: to not just to stop the ethnic diversification of America, but to significantly reverse it.

We have to get these assholes out of power.

The Actual President Weighs In

If we had all remembered "Don't boo, vote" we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place, but Barack Obama is more than happy to 100% rightfully remind us that we messed up.

Former President Barack Obama, re-emerging into the political fray for a Democratic National Committee fundraiser here on Thursday, had a message for troubled Democrats: Do more than just mope. 

Obama peppered his 45-minute appearance with subtle knocks for despondent Democrats, warning that it is not enough to lament Donald Trump's presidency or complain about the impact he is having on the country. Instead, a tie-less and visibly relaxed Obama urged Democrats to back up those concerns with action and avoid the belief that the party is bound to defeat Republicans in November. 

"If what you are doing requires no sacrifice at all, then you can do more," Obama told the tony crowd at a sweeping multi-million-dollar Beverly Hills home. "If you are one of these folks who is watching cable news at your cocktail parties with your friends and you are saying 'civilization is collapsing' and you are nervous and worried, but that is not where you are putting all your time, energy and money, then either you don't actually think civilization is collapsing ... or you are not pushing yourself hard enough and I would push harder." 

At one point, he turned to the crowd and declared, "Enough moping, this is a mope-free zone." 

And the former President even suggested to the roughly 200 donors in attendance, who also enjoyed a performance from Christina Aguilera, that Democrats can't get fixated on the glitz and personality of politics. 

"We shouldn't expect (politics) to be entertaining all the time -- and Christina Aguilera was wonderful -- but you don't need to have an amazing singer at every event," he said. "Sometimes you are just in a church basement making phone calls and eating cold pizza."

In other words, we have a lot of work ahead of us, and the time to get going on the heavy lifting: getting people registered, getting people to the polls, phone banking, turning out for marches and protests, all the way down to local county party meetings and door knocking?  The time for that was 24 months ago.

We have to do that now more than ever.  Don't mope, vote.  Help others to vote.  Double check your registration with your secretary of state's website, hell even Kentucky has that capability.  Double check your precinct voting site.  Don't take anything for granted anymore.

Let's get the work done.

Kennedy's Lagacy Will Be Justice Denied

As Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo point out at Rewire News, Justice Anthony Kennedy's decision this week to retire is basically dunking on his own legacy over the last 20-plus years and it's all but assured that Trump's pick will destroy it.

Let’s be fair, shall we? His votes in favor of LGBTQ rights from Lawrence v. Texas to Obergefell v. Hodges undeniably advanced the cause of equality for LGBTQ people. And the way that he writes about LGBTQ people would give the impression that he is deeply concerned about LGBTQ rights. 

For example, this is what he wrote in the majority opinion in Obergefell:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. 

Lovely, right? Certainly we thought so at the time, lauding Kennedy for recognizing that love is love and that gays, lesbians, and everyone else should be able to marry. Sure, it’s a conservative vision of love, rooted in patriarchal institutions. Still, though: It remains an important decision, and that passage makes us tear up. 

But given his retirement announcement and his abominable performance during this year’s Supreme Court term, those words have proven ultimately toothless. Because by retiring now—before the 2018 midterms—he has ensured that Senate Republicans will try to ram a Trump nominee through the confirmation process before the new congressional session begins in January. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has already promised as much. And that nominee is not going to be a friend to the LGBTQ community. It’s more likely than not that open hostility to LGBTQ rights will be an important qualifier for anyone Trump chooses to replace Kennedy. 

By retiring now, Kennedy has almost certainly thwarted Democrats’ chance to wrestle control of the Senate from Republicans and therefore keep them from confirming another right-wing extremist this year. He basically screwed us all. It seems purposeful, not to mention hurtful to the LGBTQ people in the United States who have come to rely on him to advocate for them. 

And yes, the Court is not supposed to be partisan or to concern itself with who is president and who might replace them. But the truth of the matter is that is bullshit: When a Supreme Court justice chooses to retire says a lot about their priorities. Whatever Kennedy’s priorities are, saving his legacy doesn’t seem to be one of them.
If Kennedy truly cared about LGBTQ rights, he would have stayed on long enough to ensure that he would be replaced by someone who shared that (somewhat feckless, let’s be honest) commitment. 

But he didn’t.

Either he doesn't care about his legacy now, or he never cared about it then.  Either way, that legacy will be gone as Obergfell and Lawrence and his many other 5-4 decisions are wrecked within a few short years.

When abortion, same-sex marriage, and even birth control options are unavailable in half the states and only "nearly impossible" to get in the other half, will Kennedy still be around to give a damn?

StupidiNews!

• Democratic NJ Sen. Cory Booker says that the Senate should "push pause" on confirming any Trump nominee to the Supreme Court until after the Mueller investigation wraps up.
• The Senate has overwhelmingly passed a farm bill in an 86-11 vote without the steep cuts to SNAP benefits in the House GOP version, the bill now faces an uncertain future in conference.
• California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a data privacy law into effect similar to recent EU privacy laws that went into effect this year, data firms warn of unintended consequences.
• Amazon's foray into health care continues with a $1 billion offer to buy online pharmacy service Pillpack, the online retail giant is directly going after pharmacy chains like CVS and Walgreens.
• Grocery retailer Kroger is working with autonomous delivery vehicle startup Nuro for grocery delivery by driverless vehicle trials in late 2018.

Last Call For Another Day In Gunmerica

A gunman is in custody in Annapolis, Maryland after five people were shot at the newsroom of the Capital Gazette newspaper.

At least five people were killed and several others were “gravely injured” in a shooting Thursday afternoon at the Capital Gazette in Anne Arundel County, authorities said.

A shooter is in custody, police said. Police would not name the suspect, but said he was a Maryland resident in his late 30s and had specifically targeted the Capital.

“This was a targeted attack on the Capital Gazette,” said Anne Arundel County Deputy Police Chief William Krampf. “This person was prepared today to come in. He was prepared to shoot people.”

Police said a shotgun was used in the incident. They said officers did not exchange gunfire with the suspect, who was now being interrogated. They said officers had recovered “smoke grenades” used by the suspect in the building, located at 888 Bestgate Road. About 170 people were inside at the time of the shooting, police said.

The Capital Gazette is owned by The Baltimore Sun.

Phil Davis, a Capital Gazette crime reporter who was in the building at the time of the shooting, said multiple people were shot, as others — himself included — hid under their desks. He said there was a lone male gunman.

“Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees. Can’t say much more and don’t want to declare anyone dead, but it’s bad,” Davis wrote on Twitter as he waited to be interviewed by police.

“There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload.”

In a subsequent interview, Davis said it “was like a war zone” inside the newspaper’s offices — a situation that would be “hard to describe for a while.”

The suspect is a white male from nearby Laurel, Maryland in his 30s who filed a defamation claim against the paper in 2012, but the case was dismissed.  Police are calling this a "targeted attack" as the paper received numerous threats over social media.

Let's not forget that three days ago, Donald Trump once again called the media "enemies of the people" at his rally in South Carolina on Monday, and called them "very dishonest" last week in a rally in Duluth.

Let's not forget that just yesterday, white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos literally said "I can't wait for vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight" and somebody sure as hell took him up on that offer, huh?

This is where we are in 2018, journalists are being gunned down by maniacs and the goddamn leader of the country and his white supremacist buddies are cheering them on while they kill reporters.

I'm livid.  This is horrific.

We are at war already, as several of you have pointed out.

A Poll Arising America, Con't

Two new polls this week capture the zeitgeist of 2018 pretty succinctly, first an Axios/Survey Monkey poll finds nearly three-quarters of Americans now believe major news outlets intentionally broadcast "fake news".

Seventy-two percent of Americans believe "traditional major news sources report news they know to be fake, false, or purposely misleading," according to a new poll from Axios and SurveyMonkey released on Thursday.

The poll of nearly 4,000 adults shows that 92 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents "say that traditional news outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories at least sometimes," a finding in line with other recent polls conducted by Pew Research and Gallup.

It found the sentiment extends to those who identify as independents and Democrats, with 79 percent of independents also saying traditional outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories at least sometimes. Democrats agree by a slight majority of 53 percent.

The poll also found that almost two-thirds of those polled say fake news "is usually reported because people have an agenda." About one-third of those polled say false information is reported because of "poor fact-checking" or laziness.

A very small percentage, or three percent, say fake news "makes headlines by accident."

Fifty-seven percent of Democrats say they use Google searches to verify facts. Less than half of Republicans, or 48 percent, do the same.

In terms of using fact-checking websites such as FactCheck.org or Snopes.com, 43 percent of Democrats say they utilize such resources, while only 30 percent of Republicans and 29 percent of independents do the same.

Trust in media was once at 74 percent in 1976 in the post-Watergate reporting era, according to Gallup.

That number dropped to 32 percent in 2016, the last time Gallup polled on the question. Just 14 percent of Republicans said they trusted the media in that poll.

Even half of Democrats admit that they believe major news outlets intentionally report false stories.   Same goes for nearly 80% of independents. And Republicans?  Over 90%.  We're way past the era where hard-hitting journalism is going to stop Trump's abuses of power, Republicans don't believe a single word of news stories anymore that are critical of the regime.

The right-wing noise machine has won a resounding victory.  The free press is irrelevant if nobody believes it.

Oh, but it gets worse.  Paranoia is becoming far more rampant.

Most voters fear that political violence is coming from opponents of the president’s policies, just as they did in the second year of Barack Obama’s presidency, and nearly one-in-three think a civil war is next.

Thirty-one percent (31%) of Likely U.S. Voters say it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years, with 11% who say it’s Very Likely. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 59% consider a second civil war unlikely, but that includes only 29% who say it’s Not At All Likely. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Democrats (37%) are more fearful than Republicans (32%) and voters not affiliated with either major party (26%) that a second civil war is at hand.

But 59% of all voters are concerned that those opposed to President Trump’s policies will resort to violence, with 33% who are Very Concerned. This compares to 53% and 28% respectively in the spring of Obama’s second year in office. Thirty-seven percent (37%) don’t share that concern, including 16% who are Not At All Concerned.

Fifty-three percent (53%) are concerned that those critical of the media’s coverage of Trump will resort to violence, with 24% who are Very Concerned. Forty-two percent (42%) are not concerned about violence from media opponents, including 17% who are Not At All Concerned.

It's easy to say the ignorance on display in the first poll leads to the paranoia in the second, but there's also the very real calls by Donald Trump for violence against his critics and the media, on a number of occasions.

I don;t believe things are getting that violent yet, but I certainly think it can happen, and quickly.

A Supreme Labor Of Ignorance

As widely expected, the final day of the 2018 SCOTUS term brought a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Samuel Alito that invalidated union dues sharing rules in 22 states, and all but signed the death blow of organized labor in the US.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Wednesday that non-union workers cannot be forced to pay fees to public sector unions. 

"Compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates that cardinal constitutional command, and in most contexts, any such effort would be universally condemned," wrote Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the court's opinion in the case, Janus v. AFSCME. 

The case, one of the most hotly anticipated of the term, is the second in two days to hand a major victory to conservatives, following Tuesday's holding by the court that President Donald Trump's travel ban is constitutional.

Some experts have said that a holding in favor of Janus would be the most significant court decision affecting collective bargaining in decades. 

Trump hailed the ruling immediately after it was handed down. In a post on Twitter, the president wrote that the decision was a "loss for the coffers of the Democrats."

And that of course is the real reason this case was decided as it was.  Alito's opinion overturned the 1977 Abood vs Detroit Board of Education ruling that allowed public sector unions to exist in the first place.  Now they are effectively subject to right-to-work laws and will be dismantled.

Organized-labor groups strongly disagree with Janus’s interpretation and opposed efforts to reconsider the 1977 precedent. Unions use the term “fair-share payments” because, they argue, the fees prevent non-members from free-riding on the collective-bargaining services from which they benefit. “At its core, Abood acknowledged that certain labor-relations interests justify the small intrusion on employees’ First Amendment interests that fair-share payments represent,” AFSCME Council 31 told the Court earlier this year. 

If Janus prevails and Abood is overturned, the Court’s ruling could effectively act as a nationwide right-to-work law for the country’s public-sector workers, with potentially crushing implications for the funding and resources of the unions that represent them. AFSCME officials told Bloomberg that they estimated in 2015 that only about a third of the workers they represent would pay fees “no matter what,” and that about half were “on the fence” about it. In other words, if given the option to leave the union and avoid paying dues, many could take it and still be supported by collective-bargaining efforts. 

“The Janus case is a blatantly political and well-funded plot to use the highest court in the land to further rig the economic rules against everyday working people,” Lee Saunders, the president of AFSCME, said in a statement. “The billionaire CEOs and corporate interests behind this case, and the politicians who do their bidding, have teamed up to deliver yet another attack on working people by striking at the freedom to come together in strong unions.” 

The Court’s conservative members, led by Justice Samuel Alito, have also fired off signal flares on Abood in recent years. Writing for the majority in the 2012 case Knox v. Service Employees, Alito called the 1977 precedent “something of an anomaly” for its First Amendment implications. Two years later, in Harris v. Quinn, he criticized the Abood decision’s reasoning at length before concluding it was “questionable on several grounds.” The five-justice majority in Harris effectively telegraphed that they would be willing to overturn Abood in the future.

Today, that's exactly what happened.  Public unions will be a thing of the past within a few short years now.  State unions have been able to stay afloat because of dues collected in strongly unionized states to keep coffers full for national unions, but now that's done for.  Alito's ruling ends that practice, and national unions and labor groups are going to be broke within a couple of years.

And of course, this means unions won't have money to donate to pro-union Democrats, either.

Which is the point.  There's no way Democrats will be able to stay on the same playing field as Republicans in donations thanks to this ruling, and both sides know it.

Democrats are in mortal trouble heading into 2020 and beyond.

Again, this is the point.  Don't expect the courts to save us from the party of Trump.  We have to choose to save ourselves, and we're almost out of time.

StupidiNews!

• Satellite images show North Korea is expanding its nuclear test facilities, despite promises made during the summit earlier this month between Donald Trump and Leader Kim Jong Un.
• Eleven states and the District of Columbia are suing the Trump EPA over rolling back climate protections without going through any public review process.
• Trump's global trade war could be expanding to the UK, British Trade Minister Liam Fox says that London may have to raise tariffs of its own to protect its steel industry.
• Amazon is looking for owner-managers of its delivery service as it wants to create an army of package trucks to compete with FedEx, UPS, and the USPS.
• FDA approval for a one-dose flu drug could come by December, the drug is already available in Japan an could shorten flu symptoms by more than one day.

Last Call For Wheels On Fire

Where I say there's nothing Donald Trump can do that will cause his cult of followers to abandon him, I mean that Trump can casually destroy the livelihoods of his voters and they will gladly hand him the ax to chop their own heads off.

It is time for a smoke break at the Harley-Davidson power-train facility in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, and the talk is all about tariffs. 

The men and women who build these famous American motorcycles are weighing the latest unintended consequence of Donald Trump’s presidency: the possibility they could lose their jobs because of a tit-for-tat trade war that has caught the Harley in its crossfire. 

The century-old Wisconsin company that Mr Trump has called “an American icon” — and which he has praised as a symbol of stubborn survival against the decline of the American Rust Belt — said on Monday that it would have to move some US production overseas to avoid EU tariffs. The motorcycle maker was the first US manufacturer to scale down domestic production in response to the levies, which were imposed as retaliation for US steel and aluminium duties. 

The workers gathered outside the factory gate could end up as collateral damage, but most are sticking by their man regardless. Wearing earphones draped around their necks and safety blinders on their glasses, most happily volunteer that they voted for Mr Trump and would do so again — tariffs or no tariffs.

“He wouldn’t do it unless it needed to be done, he’s a very smart businessman,” said one Harley employee whose name is embroidered on his work shirt — though he asks not to be quoted by name. “I think he’s playing poker: I’ll hit you with this, you’ll hit us with that, I think this will bring them to the table — unless he’s completely crazy,” chimed in another, who also declined to be quoted on the grounds that he could get into trouble with the company for speaking out.

Asked whether they blame the president or the EU for causing Harley’s offshoring decision, most say emphatically that they blame only the Europeans. “The president was just trying to save the US aluminium and steel industry,” said one approvingly. 

Harley-Davidson said on Monday that it maintained a “strong commitment to US-based manufacturing”, but that its facilities in India, Brazil and Thailand would increase production to avoid paying the EU tariffs that would have cost it as much as $100m. 

When asked whether the latest news could make him vote against Mr Trump if he runs for a second term in 2020, one worker, who gave his name only as Tod, replied: “No, I don’t think so. It’s going to take a little bit more than that. He’s doing good things. We’ll just have to see who runs on the other side, that might change my vote.” 

Mark, another Harley worker sitting astride his motorbike during the afternoon shift change at this plant that employs about 1,000 workers, said: “I think Harley is just using it as an excuse” to move more production overseas, after a recent decision to close the company’s Kansas City plant. “They will just blame it on Trump.” 

Mr Trump later appeared to echo that argument, castigating the company for using the tariffs as a pretext. “Surprised that Harley-Davidson, of all companies, would be the first to wave the White Flag,” he tweeted, highlighting the irony that such a symbol of made-in-the-USA greatness would be one of the first casualties in his trade battle. 

Several workers said they thought they could find other employment if they lost their Harley jobs — partly because the US economy is booming.

 I can't think of anything that falls so squarely into the category of "economic anxiety" quite like "stupid and unnecessary global trade war that will lead to me being laid off" but they are happy with Trump for doing this, if not thrilled.

The "Kenyan Muslim terrorist and the Clinton bitch were going to destroy our jobs" so they voted for Trump, and when Trump specifically takes action to destroy their jobs, they say they'll vote for him again anyway.

Can we finally bury the "Trump won the Rust Belt because of  economic anxiety" lie now?

A Blockbuster Bronx Bombshell

The Democratic primary in NY-14 turned into a stunning upset for the DSA as 56-year old Joe Crowley, 20-year veteran lawmaker representing the Bronx and the Dems' number 4 in the House leadership and Caucus chair, found himself losing by double digits last night to 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Rep. Joe Crowley, one of the top Democrats in the House of Representatives, lost his New York primary in a shocking upset on Tuesday night to community organizer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Crowley, having fundraised nearly $3 million for the race in New York’s 14th District, fell easily to a first-time candidate with a viral introduction video, a Democratic Socialists of America membership card, and a proudly leftist agenda. She ran on Medicare-for-all, a federal jobs guarantee, and getting tough on Wall Street. The race was called just before 10 pm for Ocasio-Cortez.

For those who closely watch elections, this is the biggest primary upset since then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated by David Brat in 2014. Brat ran on a campaign of depicting Cantor as a creature of Washington rather than a true representative of the district.

Likewise, Crowley, who has been in Congress since 1999, is the No. 4 Democrat in the House and was widely viewed as an eventual successor to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Though he was a stalwart progressive on nearly every issue, he also had close ties to Wall Street. This made him a formidable fundraiser, something that Ocasio-Cortez turned against Crowley in the primary. She eventually fundraised about $600,000 through small-dollar donors.

The district, which spans parts of the Bronx and Queens, is heavily Democratic, so Ocasio-Cortez is all but guaranteed to be a new member of Congress in November. 

That would make Ocasio-Cortez the youngest woman elected to Congress if she wins, and there seems to be no chance that she doesn't.  And as far as her platform, well, you know what?  An 80% Democratic district is exactly the kind of place we need to have a card-carrying Socialist.

I'm alright with that.  More power to her.

As far as Crowley goes, yeah, he was definitely going for Nancy's job, but then again he was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong 20-year career under his belt.  Crowley hadn't faced a primary challenge since 2004 and it showed.  He got sloppy, skipped debates, and took his opponent for granted.

And he lost because of it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think for a second that this is the Rise Of The Berniecrats, and the comparison to Dave Brat beating Eric Cantor is lazy at best.  This was "all politics are local" 101 and Crowley flunked the test, and it cost him any shot he had at Nancy Pelosi's job.

The question is who will succeed Pelosi.  Crowley was a smart pick, but the reality is if the Dems do take back the House, Pelosi may not have 218 votes.

We'll see.

Breaking: Justice Kennedy Retires

Donald Trump will get a second SCOTUS pick, GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has dropped all pretense of "the people must get a voice in this nomination" and assures the vote will come in the fall before midterm elections.

Democrats of course cannot filibuster, as McConnell ended that months ago.  There's nothing they can do.  Any Republican senator who defies Trump on this will have Trump calling for their blood.  Literally.

By the way, kiss abortion, affirmative action, same-sex marriage and a whole lot else goodbye.

What will change are rulings on issues where Kennedy has helped maintain a shaky 5-4 center-left consensus. Because of the court’s longstanding principle of stare decisis, or obeying past precedent barring a compelling reason not to do so, some liberal Court achievements are likely to stay. But a Court without Kennedy is substantially more likely to:

• Overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states (and maybe the federal government too) to ban most or all abortions.
• Reject challenges to capital punishment and solitary confinement.
• Rule in favor of religious challenges to anti-discrimination law, and perhaps, in an extreme case, reverse some past Supreme Court rulings on gay rights.
• Bar government actors from engaging in explicit race-based affirmative action.

And there are likely to be more aftershocks that are hard to anticipate this far in advance.

At this point, we tried to warn you.

A Supreme Disappointment

Yesterday's 5-4 Supreme Court ruling upholding Trump's Muslim travel ban is yet another historical cow flop in the punchbowl of American jurisprudence, one that Bloomberg's Noah Feldman says will take generations to fix.

In what may be the worst decision since the infamous Korematsu case, when the Supreme Court upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the court today by a 5-4 vote upheld President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban.

Like the Korematsu decision, Trump v. Hawaii elevates legal formalities as a way to avoid addressing what everyone understood is really at issue here — namely, prejudice. Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion downplays Trump’s anti-Muslim bias, focusing instead on the president’s legal power to block immigration in the name of national security.

The decision will be a stain not only on the legacy of the Roberts court, but on that of the Supreme Court itself. The court tried to compensate by saying how bad the Korematsu decision was. And Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a separate concurrence in which he hints that perhaps the lower courts could reconsider the question of anti-religious animus. But these efforts are far too little to save the court, or Kennedy, from the judgment of history, which will be harsh.

Roberts’s opinion focuses mostly on the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the president the authority to exclude foreigners if he finds that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” Yet to focus on Roberts's analysis would be to make the same crucial error as Roberts himself — that is, treating one of the most outrageous acts of presidential bias in modern U.S. history as though it were an ordinary exercise of presidential power, taken by an ordinary president acting in good conscience.

When Roberts comes to the topic of bias, he recounts Trump’s anti-Muslim statements and the history of the travel ban (this is the administration’s third version). Then he balks. “The issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements,” Roberts writes. Rather, Roberts insists, the court’s focus must be on “the significance of those statements in reviewing a presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing the matter within the core of executive responsibility.” 

That is lawyer-speak for saying that, despite its obviousness, the court would ignore Trump’s anti-Muslim bias. Roberts is trying to argue that, when a president is acting within his executive authority, the court should defer to what the president says his intention is, no matter the underlying reality. 

That’s more or less what the Supreme Court did in the Korematsu case. There, Justice Hugo Black, a Franklin D. Roosevelt loyalist, denied that the orders requiring the internment of Japanese-Americans were based on racial prejudice. The dissenters, especially Justice Frank Murphy, pointed out that this was preposterous. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s most liberal member, played the truth-telling role today. Her dissent, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, states bluntly that a reasonable observer looking at the record would conclude that the ban was “motivated by anti-Muslim animus.”

She properly invokes the Korematsu case — in which, she points out, the government also claimed a national security rationale when it was really relying on stereotypes. And she concludes that “our Constitution demands, and our country deserves, a Judiciary willing to hold the coordinate branches to account when they defy our most sacred legal commitments.”

Indeed, Sotomayor makes it painfully clear that the man in the Oval Office making these "national security decisions" is a screaming, inchoate bigot in her dissent.

As the majority correctly notes, “the issue before us is not whether to denounce” these offensive statements. Ante, at 29. Rather, the dispositive and narrow questionhere is whether a reasonable observer, presented with all “openly available data,” the text and “historical context” of the Proclamation, and the “specific sequence of events” leading to it, would conclude that the primary purpose ofthe Proclamation is to disfavor Islam and its adherents by excluding them from the country. See McCreary, 545
U. S., at 862–863. The answer is unquestionably yes. 

Taking all the relevant evidence together, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was driven primarily by anti-Muslim animus, rather than by the
Government’s asserted national-security justifications. Even before being sworn into office, then-candidate Trump stated that “Islam hates us,” App. 399, warned that “[w]e’re having problems with the Muslims, and we’re having problems with Muslims coming into the country,” id., at 121, promised to enact a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” id., at 119, and instructed one of his advisers to find a “lega[l]” way to enact a Muslim ban, id., at 125.3 The President continued to make similar statements well after his inauguration, as detailed above, see supra, at 6–10. 

Moreover, despite several opportunities to do so, President Trump has never disavowed any of his prior statements about Islam.4 Instead, he has continued to make remarks that a reasonable observer would view as an unrelenting attack on the Muslim religion and its followers. Given President Trump’s failure to correct the reasonable perception of his apparent hostility toward the Islamic faith, it is unsurprising that the President’s lawyers have, at every step in the lower courts, failed in their attempts to launder the Proclamation of its discriminatory taint.

I mean when's the last time you can recall a Supreme Court Justice saying, like this, that the current leader of the the US was a bigoted asshole like this?

But that's where we are.  And you'd better believe that Trump will use this green light to determine that other groups of people present "national security threats" and must be dealt with.