Last Call For Black And White

Marriage between Black and white people is...perfectly normal in 2021, despite all the screaming racism that still accompanies being a mixed-race kid, and I know several couples in fact. The latest Gallup poll finds 94% of Americans are okay with it, about as close to universal approval as anything race-related in this country will ever possibly get.

Ninety-four percent of U.S. adults now approve of marriages between Black people and White people, up from 87% in the prior reading from 2013. The current figure marks a new high in Gallup's trend, which spans more than six decades. Just 4% approved when Gallup first asked the question in 1958.

The latest figure is from a Gallup poll conducted July 6-21. Shifts in the 63-year-old trend represent one of the largest transformations in public opinion in Gallup's history -- beginning at a time when interracial marriage was nearly universally opposed and continuing to its nearly universal approval today.

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage nationwide in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case. A year after that decision, Gallup found support for the practice increasing, but still only a small minority of 20% approved.

Approval of interracial marriage continued to grow in the U.S. in periodic readings Gallup took over the following decades, finally reaching majority level in 1997, when support jumped from 48% to 64%. Support has increased in subsequent measures, surpassing 70% in 2003, 80% in 2011 and 90% in the current reading.

Non-White Americans have been consistently more approving of interracial marriages than White Americans -- but that gap has narrowed over time and, in the latest reading, has nearly closed.

Previous measures from 1968 to 2013 found double-digit gaps in approval between White and Non-White adults. Today, the three percentage points that separate approval among White (93%) and Non-White adults (96%) is within the poll's margin of error.

Recent growth at the national level has been driven by increasing approval among White Americans, as approval among Non-White Americans has been unchanged over the past decade.

Majorities of non-White adults since 1968 have approved of interracial marriage. It was not until 1997 that a majority of White adults held that opinion.

 

The reason it's now broadly acceptable, much like same-sex marriage, is that we all know people who are an interracial couple and have great kids and are good people and they are very much a part of our friends and families and this has become true all over the country.

So yeah, 94%? I'm actually kind of shocked it's that high, but there you are.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Attorney General Merrick Garland is suing Texas over its ridiculous abortion law that looks to get around Roe v. Wade by deputizing citizens to flood abortion providers and women with civil lawsuits, and despite the Supreme Court pretending to be too shocked to actually block the law last week, the Justice Department isn't letting this one go unchallenged.

The Justice Department has filed suit against the state of Texas to block its law banning most abortions, Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Thursday, setting up a high-stakes legal battle after the Supreme Court allowed the law to go into effect earlier this month.

"That act is clearly unconstitutional under long-standing Supreme Court precedent," Garland said at a news conference. "Those precedents hold, in the words of Planned Parenthood versus Casey, that 'regardless of whether exceptions are made for particular circumstances, a state may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability.'"

He accused Texas Republicans of crafting a "statutory scheme" through the law "to nullify the Constitution of the United States."

"It does not rely on the state's executive branch to enforce the law, as is the norm in Texas and everywhere else. Rather, the snatcher deputizes all private citizens without any showing a personal connection or injury to serve as bounty hunters authorized to recover at least $10,000 per claim from individuals who facilitate a woman's exercise of our constitutional rights," he said.

As part of its lawsuit, Garland said the DOJ is seeking an immediate court order preventing the enforcement of SB8 in Texas.

Garland also made clear that the Justice Department won't hesitate to take similar legal action against other states that might pursue a similar route to restrict abortions.

"The additional risk here is that other states will follow similar models," Garland said, and he denied that the decision to file the suit now was in any way based on political pressure from Democrats or the White House.

The lawsuit accuses Texas lawmakers of enacting the law "in open defiance of the Constitution."

"The United States has the authority and responsibility to ensure that Texas cannot evade its obligations under the Constitution and deprive individuals of their constitutional rights by adopting a statutory scheme designed specifically to evade traditional mechanisms of federal judicial review," the lawsuit says. "The federal government therefore brings this suit directly against the State of Texas to obtain a declaration that S.B. 8 is invalid, to enjoin its enforcement, and to protect the rights that Texas has violated."

 

We'll see how quickly the courts act upon this, but yes, this is going to get ugly fast would be my guess. After all, the Roberts Court has already signaled the end of Roe and the end of abortion for about half of American women. States will be able to legislate it out of existence, and I'm expecting for states like Florida and Texas to make crossing state lines to get an abortion illegal as well, although that goes directly to the Commerce Clause having a hole blasted in it too by the Roberts Court.

It won't be long, either way.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

President Biden has finally stepped up with a major, national, federal vaccine mandate for American employers that will affect the vast majority of US workers: get vaccinated or else.

 

President Biden is announcing sweeping new vaccine mandates Thursday that will affect tens of millions of Americans, ordering all businesses with more than 100 employees to require their workers to be inoculated or face weekly testing.

Biden also will require all health facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to vaccinate their workforces, which the White House believes will impact 50,000 locations.

And the president plans to sign an executive order that would require all federal employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus — without an option for those who prefer to be regularly tested instead — in an effort to create a model he hopes state governments and private companies will adopt.

The cluster of new policies comes as the country grapples with the highly contagious delta variant, which has sent cases surging to more than 150,000 a day and is causing more than 1,500 daily deaths. The White House has struggled to convince hesitant Americans to get vaccinated and has been increasingly shifting toward requirements.

The changes also come as Biden’s approval rating has fallen in recent weeks, with Americans less supportive of his handling of the pandemic. Defeating the pandemic was among his central promises, and White House aides believe that his ability to deliver on it will be critical to the success of his presidency.

The White House released an 11-page memo Thursday entitled “Path Out of the Pandemic” that outlined six key areas where Biden is either shifting or hardening his strategy on the virus.

The most far-reaching is a new regulation to be written by the Labor Department that will requires all businesses with more than 100 employees either to mandate vaccinations for all their workers, or require them to take weekly coronavirus tests. The White House estimates that the policy will impact about 80 million workers, or two-thirds of the country’s workforce.

Businesses that ignore the policy, once it’s in place, could trigger penalties of up to $14,000 per violation, according to a senior Biden administration official, who briefed reporters on the plan ahead of the president’s speech under the condition that his name would not be used.

Businesses also will be required to give workers paid time off to get vaccinated, according to the new rules.

“This plan will ensure that we are using every available tool to combat COVID-19 and save even more lives in the months ahead, while also keeping schools open and safe, and protecting our economy from lockdowns and damage,” according to a copy of the memo.

 

It's a great plan.

 

It will be blocked by a federal judge before it ever goes into effect, however.

I guarantee that.

Best case scenario, businesses decide to err on the side of caution and mandate anyway, but they will run afoul of red state anti-mandate laws (which also may or may not be blocked).  The point it, the legal morass will not appreciably increase the number of vaccinated Americans by any significant amount.

This plan too will be made to fail by the GOP. And Biden will be blamed.

StupidiNews!

• Los Angeles County Schools will mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for all eligible students 12 and over by December 31, or students will not be able to attend school after winter break.
• Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio went into lockdown Thursday night after reports of an armed gunman and a shooting.
• President Biden spoke directly with Chinese President XI Jinping on Thursday, the two discussed economic and security concerns for about 90 minutes.
• Democrats are moving ahead with 12 weeks of paid parental leave in the House among other safety net provisions as part of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure package.
• The LAPD is getting social media information from those detained by police, the data is being fed into analysis systems powered by controversial data surveillance company Palantir.