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4d ago
The 4B movement has already been disavowed by the American Left for not being inclusive of trans ideology (i.e., transwomen who may still have their initial bits and parts are not getting laid by a 4B chick; transmen are also encouraged not to do the same; it inherently focuses on reproductive functions; it started on a message board that includes anti-trans sentiment), which makes all of this somewhat odd to me - the gender divide isn't going to swing back to the Democrats by Democrats telling biological women that they can't have feminists movements without biological men being lifted up within those movements.
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7d 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?
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7d 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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7d ago
Why? Because she is a recent convert to the Republican party, or are there other concerns with her?
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10d ago
NYC is ending their voucher program, although it's not clear that Trump has anything to do with it. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4980386-new-york-city-ending-migrant-debit-card-program/
Previously, illegal migrants were given ~$1k a month ($350 a weeks) for groceries via prepaid debit cards while they were staying in hotels. It started in part because the free food vendor previously used by the city wasn't cutting it, so it was viewed as more cost efficient to switch to the cards.
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14d ago
There's about 16 million votes cast but not yet counted as of right now, with a reasonable expectation of 55% of those votes going to Harris. Trump will still handily win the popular vote, but turnout almost rivals 2020. I wouldn't be shocked to see Harris hit 75 million, which, even if it's not quite Biden numbers, is still better than how Trump did in 2020.
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14d ago
I think that also came out in those ads and texts about "your friends can see whether you dated" or the like "Men, women won't want you unless you're a voter, and she can check" stuff. Our Democracy assumed that anyone engaged in the civic process for the sake of their peers would be on the side of Our Democracy. They could not understand that the social pressure to vote may actually involve the exercise of democracy against Our Democracy.
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15d 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?
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16d ago
The Chinese voter in Michigan: https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/30/politics/michigan-chinese-citizen-charged-after-illegally-voting/index.html
Charged with the crime, but the vote still is getting counted.
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16d ago
Felons CAN vote - depending on their state. Different states have different rules.
Even if someone can no longer vote because they became a felon after breaking the law in a state that does not allow felons to vote, they still have the ability to challenge the law - a successful challenge would make them no longer felon, thus meeting redressability and other standing requirements.
It isn't actually that hard to get IDs, and I respect the states that allow things like university IDs to count. The main mechanism is cost - should first time IDs be covered by the government? While not prohibitively expensive, the amount of friction that can be lessened doesn't hurt. Also, DMVs suck.
Asking others to sign your picture leads to perhaps more racism, because people with accents who may very well be citizens will face more battles convincing someone to sign their picture. However, it's not that hard to get an ID. I have trouble believing the vast majority of Americans have never opened a bank account, bought alcohol, bought a cigarette, gotten on an airplane, picked up certain medications, or any of the myriad of things that require an ID. IDs are required in so much of our lives here.
It's unlikely we can have a federal voter ID law unless we tie some form of federal funding to the request (example: raising the legal drinking age by tying road funding to the request). The methods by which states conduct their elections is inherently the province of the states and not the purview of the federal government. It's why each state does things so differently from its neighbors, and why we have wacky things like hanging chads or what not. It's why we included poll taxes as an amendment to the Constitution. It's why certain attempts to standardize voting have failed or have been chipped away at in court.
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23d ago
You can't register day-of in PA; registration has closed for this election.
First time voters are required to show ID, but it doesn't have to be a government issued ID - school IDs count, for instance.
Our "early voting" is basically picking up a mail-in ballot at certain locations and then immediately sticking it in the mailbox there. I'm not sure if an ID is needed for that or not, though. Our early voting stuff is weird.
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24d ago
MSNBC played footage of Nazis from their 1930's rally in MSG while covering Trump's rally. Coverage of the event has conveniently ignored other events at MSG, including a bunch of DNCs.
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1mo ago
Harris released an "Opportunity Agenda for Black Men." Highlights include:
"(1) Providing 1 million loans that are fully forgivable to Black entrepreneurs and others to start a business.
(2) Championing education, training, and mentorship programs that help Black men get good-paying jobs in high-demand industries and lead their communities, including pathways to become teachers.
(3) Supporting a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets so Black men who invest in and own these assets are protected.
(4) Launching a National Health Equity Initiative focused on Black Men that addresses sickle cell disease, diabetes, mental health, prostate cancer, and other health challenges that disproportionately impact them.
(5) Legalizing recreational marijuana and creating opportunities for Black Americans to succeed in this new industry."
There feels like no kind of focus-grouping on what Black men actually would like to see. It also feels like it was released without any kind of cost-benefit analysis on how literally any other group would respond to these proposals, which seem blatantly terrible even if unfeasible. We already tried (1) with the PPP, which went kind of off the rails. None of this would survive strict scrutiny before the courts, and it's a bad look to the majority of voters. What was the perceived benefit in releasing this? How did this get approved?
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4mo ago
Couldn't Trump just pardon himself for all federal cases and render them effectively moot? He'd still be on the hook in Georgia (if they ever pull themselves together, cuz imo that is actually the strongest legal arg they have) and would have to finish out the fight in NY, but none of the federal cases would matter anymore.
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4mo ago
J.D. Vance, a young freshman senator from Ohio, is Trump’s VP. Vance wrote Hillbilly Elegy, which some Democrats read after 2016 to understand what happened (Obama even put it on his suggested reading list, lol).
At first blush, Vance brings nothing new to the ticket. Ohio seems safely red, and if anything, a graduate from THE Ohio State University isn’t going to play well in Michigan (I only sort of joke; football team rivalries might trump political team rivalries). Vance doesn’t have high name ID, and he’s significantly further right than Trump is while the party is supposedly trying to court suburban women. Vance also once compared Trump to Hitler. Sure, Vance is 39 and a Marine Veteran, which is Something, given geopolitical circumstances. But the man has even less experience governing than Obama did when Obama ran.
I wonder if Vance is a pick not to reach moderates or swing voters, but to calm down the populist elements of the base. Trump is upsetting party insiders by distancing himself from Project 2025 and by removing abortion from the platform (which anti-abortion groups quietly decided not to contest during the convention today). In an era where VP picks haven’t seemed to matter, quieting a core constituency is not nothing. The left seems almost thrilled about Vance as the VP pick, viewing it as a change to get back in the game after their past few news cycles.
But this is also the most geriatric American election, and Trump has to be even more brutally aware that his VP is a heartbeat away from the presidency after this weekend. There's a modest undertone in political discourse that this election is really VP vs. VP instead of about the Presidential candidates at all (especially since the shooting has quashed all conversation around Biden potentially dropping out). Is it possible that Trump truly believes that Vance is the future of the party? Trump likes to play kingmaker, after all. This choice defines where the party is trudging towards in the future – turning away from the center, doubling down on populism. The establishment is dead. Long live MAGA.
Choosing JD Vance also underscores the continued party re-alignment we’re watching unfold before us. Blue-collar Midwesterners have traditionally held up the Blue Wall, but now one is Trump’s running mate. Vance came from generational poverty as a straight white male and Has Made It; I’ve found few Democrats who can resonate in the same way, as both parties attempt to distance themselves from the “elites,” even as Vance holds a Yale law degree. The Democrats have unequally become the wealthy, stodgy cultural controllers, and the Republicans have become the edgy, gritty protesters against The Way Things Are. I'm only 30, so my understanding of where parties have historically stood is skewed, but this feels very different from previous messaging about wealth and power in America; please correct me if I am wrong.
Vance is also fascinating to me in general. He met his wife in law school, and had their wedding separately blessed in Hindu tradition. He later converted to Catholicism in 2019 (same time I did, actually); it’s unclear if his (very hot, but that’s not important) wife also did. He worked at the same law firm as the Obamas did (Sidley) (obviously years later).
Here
4mo ago
I wonder if Vance being a veteran will help Trump feel better, or at least provide optics.
Here
4mo ago
I mean, there are mechanisms to remove him, they're just not super likely to be invoked. The dem electors can hypothetically invoke the "in all good conscience" clause at the election and remove him. He could be impeached and convicted and thus cannot hold public office ever again. The cabinet invokes the 25th amendment and all hell breaks loose, although it's unclear if invoking the 25th would remove him from campaigning as well.
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4mo ago
Ohio moved the date back to Aug. 23; Dems still want the roll-call vote early because they don't really trust Ohio (which is fair but Ohio changing the date again would also create easy litigation re: promissory estoppel concepts that would likely still protect Aug. 23 as the date).
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4mo ago
There's a thing called neglect deaths that float around the conservative circles I interact with. There's also some rhetoric around the six states that do not have any term limits on abortion, mostly from some conservatives twisting "all stages of pregnancy" (the usual language used in the laws) into "up to and including birth."
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4mo 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.
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4mo 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.
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4mo ago
But it does also mean that the media circus has moved on from the debate. Why talk about Biden's declining health when the media is instead pushing declining democracy?
Volokh conspiracy generally has a good breakdown of stuff, but they're not a media outlet per se and they also take a day or two to write stuff up. Vox's deep dives became useless long ago. Nuance and readability does not get clicks.
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.
He was left with quite an inheritance/trust fund at Gringotts.
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