Ron Brownstein/The Atlantic:
Curtailing Affirmative Action Is a Blow Against a Rising Generation
The gap between a more diverse America and less diverse elite colleges will only grow.
In the broadest sense, the Republican-appointed justices have moved to buttress the affluence and status that allow white people to wield the most influence in society, and to diminish the possibility that accelerating demographic change will force a renegotiation of that balance of power. In that way, the ruling is a judicial extension of the proliferating red-state laws meant to constrain the potential influence of younger generations through measures making it more difficult to vote, banning books, and censoring how teachers talk about race and gender inequities.
All of these conflicts reflect the mounting tension between what I’ve called the brown and the gray: the racially and culturally diverse younger generations who are becoming the cornerstone of the Democratic political coalition, and the mostly white older generations who provide the foundation of Republican electoral strength.
The Mysterious Case of the Fake Gay Marriage Website, the Real Straight Man, and the Supreme Court
In filings in the 303 Creative v. Elenis case is a supposed request for a gay wedding website—but the man named in the request says he never filed it.
Here is what we know—though, to be frank, I do not know what we have learned from this yearslong mystery, other than it looks like Smith and her attorneys have, perhaps unwittingly, invented a gay couple in need of a wedding website in a case in which they argue that same-sex marriages are “false.”
When Smith and her attorneys, the Christian right group Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, brought this case for the first time, it was to the United States District Court in Colorado in 2016, and they lost. Smith and ADF filed the case on September 20 of that year, asking the court to enjoin the state anti-discrimination law so that Smith could begin offering her wedding website design services to straight couples only. Up to this point, Smith had never designed any wedding website. (In fact, her website six months prior to the lawsuit being filed in 2016 does not include any of the Christian messaging that it did shortly afterward and today, archived versions of the site show.) The initial lawsuit did not mention the “Stewart” inquiry, which was submitted to Smith’s website on September 21, according to the date-stamp shown in later court filings, indicating that she received it the day after the suit was originally filed.
Rebecca Traister/New York magazine:
RFK Jr.’s Inside Job
How a conspiracy-spewing literal Kennedy posing as a populist outsider jolted the Democratic Party.
He is running a surprisingly potent campaign that, thanks to the lurid dynamics of social media and the boosts he is receiving from some of the wealthiest, most listened-to people in America, stands to grow even more disruptive, his deep thoughts on Rogan’s podcast translating into overflow crowds at his rallies. Lesser threats than Kennedy have played spoilers in elections before, and if he succeeds in helping burn us all to the ground, it will not be because he is an outsider, as he claims, but because of a political and media culture that has protected and encouraged and fawned over him his whole life — handing a perpetual problem child, now 69 and desperate for attention, accelerant and matches.
[…]So he gets traction where no one else would. His relationship with the political media, which has published him, written about him, and seen him as a full and flawed and interesting human, has always been guided by his core identity as an insider, a member of the family that this country was taught to love above all others and to pity in their many public tragedies. As a journalist who has been told for decades that my empathy for the female candidates I often cover is probably overemotional and built too strongly on personal identification, let me just tell you that you should never stand between a white male political journalist over the age of 40 and his feelings about the Kennedys.
Chris Christie says McCarthy spoke correctly about Trump the first time
McCarthy has back pedaled after he said he was not sure if Trump is the best candidate to beat Joe Biden
Mr Christie said that Mr McCarthy did so because he has to deal with a contentious Republican conference, with only a slim majority in the House of Representatives. Mr McCarthy had to endure a marathon 15 rounds of votes earlier this year before he became speaker.
“Because he needs to count to 218 every day, every day, given the rules that he’s operating under,” Mr Christie said, citing the number needed to reach a majority in the House. “So it’s not an excuse for Kevin, but it’s an explanation as to what he’s up to. He’s trying to get things done in the House of Representatives. He’s managing a very difficult caucus, and a very slim majority.”
David Rothkopf/The Daily Beast:
New State Department Report Admits Mistakes Were Made in the U.S.’ Chaotic Withdrawal From Afghanistan
The “After Action Review on Afghanistan” self-critiques the Biden administration’s errors, and also recommends sweeping changes to better handle future crises
In my view, as I have written before, the Biden administration deserves great credit for finally ending America’s longest war. Getting out of Afghanistan was the right thing to do. Being able to redeploy resources to priorities in the Indo-Pacific region is a positive consequence of this. Being better able to handle a crisis like that in Ukraine is, as well.
But the loss of life and heartache associated with that exit has haunted senior officials at the very highest level in the Biden administration since the events took place in Aug. 2021.
Rather than simply moving past those events or sweeping them under the rug as other administrations might have done or as might have been easier for them, they have sought to learn from the experience. That required frankness and a degree of political courage.
But, as General [John F.] Kelly rightly indicated after critiquing former President Trump, taking such steps is what real leaders do. They are the essence of public service. The efforts to produce this report and implement its recommendations are examples of how it is and should be done.
Steven Beschloss/”America, America” on Substack:
The Arrogance of Power
This current Supreme Court and their GOP allies may be accelerating the move toward oligarchy, but their rejection of democratic traditions and the will of the people need not define our future
You might assume the Court would notice and care about the declining trust and favorable opinion of the public. The collapse of this institution in the last four years, as documented by Pew Research, is stunning: 69 percent favorable/30 percent unfavorable in 2019, 48 percent favorable/50 percent unfavorable in 2023.
A Gallup poll from last September provides further confirmation: As I noted in a Saturday prompt earlier this year on trust in the Supreme Court, that survey found only 47 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the judicial branch—a 20 percentage-point-drop from two years ago. And then there’s this: After the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, a national poll conducted by Marquette University Law School found that public approval of the Supreme Court plummeted from 60 percent a year before the decision to 38 percent afterward.
Chief Justice John Roberts, rather than owning up to the challenges, has chosen to complain haughtily about the Court’s critics, asserting that “simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for questioning the legitimacy of the court.” As I put it in January, “Never mind that at least three recently installed members of the court—Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch—lied about their acceptance of precedents like Roe v. Wade in their quest to gain lifetime appointments.”
Greg Dworkin
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