Tag: Healthcare

National News Roundup: Week 41 (October 29 — November 4)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Well, okay, this week wasn’t the worst we’ve ever seen — but it’s been a deeply surreal (and intermittently horrifying) week nonetheless. Between two deadly attacks in New York and Texas, the ill-advised DNC infighting, and the GOP Tax Cut Opus, we’re sort of cruising along on the Why Is This Reality Highway. But that’s better than stewing in Darkest Timeline juices literally all week, so I guess I’ll take it.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a tax person! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

For a second week in a row, the Russia Collusion Investigation remains the biggest news of the week. We saw a lot of different interrelated developments:

And of course, we also saw several Threats to Human Rights this week:

  • Divergery Lottery. Despite barely being able to pronounce the program, Trump had a lot to say about the Diversity Visa lottery program this week after a terrorist attack in New York City. In a tweet that literally CCed Fox and Friends, Trump announced that he “wanted merit-based” immigration instead of “democrat lottery systems.” This reflects a, shall we say, imperfect understanding of how the diversity visa system actually works; the program underpinnings were created in the 1960s in response to older quota systems and the system does have rigorous vetting already built into the process. Also, and most importantly, Trump can’t scrap the current diversity lottery program because it was created by Congress twenty-seven years ago (which, by the way, was during a Republican majority and a Republican presidency, not that it matters). Presidents don’t have constitutional authority to scrap laws created by legislatures, however much they might pretend otherwise.
  • Disturbing “Justice” Statements. Trump also had a lot to say about people’s criminal defense rights, by which I mean he thinks nobody has any. He wanted the suspect of Tuesday’s terrorist attack, a lawful permanent resident of the United States who committed crimes on United States soil, sent to Guantanamo Bay because — and I quote — “we … have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now” (emphasis mine). I sincerely hope everyone reading this is already aware, but any time a formal statement from public officials involves calling human being ‘animals’ it is not a great sign for civil rights. After he walked that one back, Trump moved onto saying that the suspect in custody should be put to death, which is troubling on multiple fronts because the suspect hasn’t had a trial yet (and, ironically, Trump’s statements might make it harder for prosecutors to do their jobs). All these statements are, of course, on top of the various other fascist things Trump has said in this week and past weeks, which include everything from trying to block the Russia investigation to demanding criminal investigation of political opponents. It’s… not a great look for any administration, let alone one with a 59% disapproval rating.
  • ‘Give Me a Lawyer Dog’. Trump’s blatant disregard for our justice system is made even more concerning by a slip opinion concurrence from the Louisiana Supreme Court this week; the concurrence was on a decision to not to hear the case, so this was presumably this judge’s way of getting his $0.02 in even though the court wasn’t going to write anything with legal value. The concurrence stated that a defendant saying “Give me a lawyer, dog” did not count as invoking his sixth amendment right to an attorney because — and I quote — “defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a ‘lawyer dog’ does not constitute an invocation of counsel.” Though in this particular instance there were repugnant charges involved, I seriously cannot stress enough how little that should matter when we’re discussing someone’s constitutional right to ask for an attorney while answering police questions. And claiming that he might have been asking for a canine who has passed the bar is just insulting to the rest of us; it’s like the judge isn’t even trying to hide that he’s giving the questioning officers blatant cover. Do you want a police state, Louisiana? Because this is how we get police states.

Your “Normal” Weird:

  • DNC vs HRC. Okay, y’all. We have multiple major elections this upcoming Tuesday, including two gubernatorial races, and the Virginia race in particular is reported to be particularly close and nasty. So hopefully the DNC is mobilizing to support the Democratic candidates who are running in these important interim elections, right? LOLNOPE, they’re too busy erroneously crucifying Hillary Clinton because she formed some fundraising committees with the DNC and may have therefore gotten strategic advantage in 2016! Because that super matters over a year later, and our fascist administration definitely won’t latch onto that to call for the arrest of people you later announce are law-abiding citizens after all. Thanks, Donna Brazile! Maybe you should let Tom Perez take things from here.
  • Rick Perry’s Strange View of Lightbulbs.* Rick Perry made the baffling claim this week that fossil fuels help with sexual assault because of the “light that shines. . . [of] righteousness” on the act. Though he was specifically talking about power in Africa, and there is some evidence to suggest that bringing power to developing countries can lower instances of assault, that still doesn’t explain why fossil fuels would be better or more tenable than other forms of electricity. As my researcher put it: “I guess if conservatives think that fossil fuels shine with the light of righteousness, that explains a lot about why they prefer it over greener energy.”
  • Mercy, Mercer.* News broke this week that business tycoon and Trump patron Robert Mercer is stepping down from his hedge fund and selling his share in Breitbart News. Though this likely at least in part due to increasing investor discomfort with supporting an actual white supremacist, it may also have something to do with the $6,800,000,000 the company owes the IRS in taxes (and that’s not a typo; yes, that number really does say six point eight billion). At any rate, it will be interesting to see what other shoes drop from Renaissance from here.

The Bad:

The Good:

  • MA Bans Bump Stocks. My home state of Massachusetts made the news this week by passing the nation’s first law banning use, sale, and ownership of bump stocks, which were used in the Las Vegas shootings to turn semi-automatic weapons into makeshift automatic firearms. Though I’ll be the first to acknowledge that Massachusetts gun laws create some unique prosecutorial issues and are far from perfect, I also feel strongly that no one should have the capacity to build their own automatic weapons, so I’m pretty okay with this development.
  • Feeding Puerto Rico. Chef José Andrés, who leads a food security activist group called World Central Kitchen, has been undertaking extensive efforts to make sure Puerto Ricans have food. At the time that I write this, Mr. Andrés’s kitchen network has served over 2.3 million meals and sandwiches to the residents of Puerto Rico in a four-week period — which would be a very impressive number even without the power issues present there. The organization relies heavily on food trucks for door-to-door distribution, bringing food to remote locations on an island with damaged infrastructure. Efforts are now winding down, but presence will remain on the island in more remote locations for the foreseeable future.
  • Rogue Twitter Folk Hero. A random and recently-let-go Twitter employee won hearts this week by deleting Trump’s account on their way out the door, though it took Twitter quite some time to admit that — they initially chalked the issue up to “human error.” Predictably, Trump’s followers were incensed and the rest of Twitter had a field day. If I ever have occasion to meet this employee, I’m totally going to buy them a thank-you coffee.

And that’s what I have this week. We could go on either direction from here, and I personally am going to keep fingers crossed for a better news week next week. But in the event that it’s terrible, I’ll still be here, snarking all about it!

National News Roundup: Week 40 (October 22–28)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

FOTO:FORTEPAN / Saly Noémi, via Wikimedia Commons

Happy Manafort Monday, y’all! But don’t let the name fool you, because the real news of the week is that I got you news of an unsealed Papadopoulos conviction for Halloween. I super hope you like it, because we have a strict No Return policy here on game-changing secret convictions.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a uranium miner! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation is, without a doubt, the biggest news of the week:

  • Mueller Indictments Monday. The first two indictment lists have been issued to former Trump campaign staffers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, totaling twelve indictments between them (mostly relating to money laundering and tax fraud). Both Manafort and Gates have turned themselves in and pled not guilty on all counts. (Fun fact: Manafort is actually facing investigations on three different fronts right now.) But the biggest news of the day is that former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos secretly pled guilty a few weeks ago, and both the charges and the deal are really, really significant. The charges were lying to the FBI about collusion with Russia — I believe the words “dirt on Hillary Clinton” literally appear multiple times in the documents. And the plea deal itself provides that “the Government agrees to bring to the Court’s attention at sentencing the defendant’s efforts to cooperate with the Government, on the condition that your client continues to respond and provide information regarding any and all matters as to which the Government deems relevant” (emphasis mine). In other words, “as long as he tells us literally everything we’ll make sure he never goes to prison.” Manafort may be the bigger name, but Papadopoulos is the bigger story for today. (If/when Mueller manages to flip Manafort, though, that will definitely change.)
  • Uranium What Now?* In a (probably vain) attempt to distract from news that Mueller was about to announce indictments, the Trump administration began trying to claim that actually Hillary Clinton was colluding with Russians during the 2016 election (not Trump). As far as I can tell, this involved conflating the fact that the Clinton Foundation received a donation from some people who are tangentially tied to a uranium mining company and the fact that Bill Clinton was once paid by Russia for a speaking engagement in Moscow. It’s all… pretty flimsy at best. I recommend reading the Washington Post demystification article, because the whole thing is attenuated and ridiculous.
  • Bill Browder Appreciation Hour.* The other Russia-related news of the week is that Bill Browder, a famous critic of Putin’s human rights abuses who disclosed the horrors that led to the Magnitsky Act, was briefly barred from the United States this week. Though he had originally been granted a visa application, U.S. officials revoked it when Russia had him placed on an Interpol list — and yes, that would be the same Russian officials on whom Browder is famous for blowing the whistle. Browder did eventually get his visa reinstated, and the administration is maintaining that the first decision was an automatic response to the listing. But since it was changed after a massive bipartisan outcry, it’s hard to tell if that was accurate. At any rate, it appears to be mostly fixed now, and it’s probably a good thing that happened before the Mueller news broke.

And honestly, the Russia news can’t come soon enough, because we also saw more Threats to Human Rights this week:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

  • 401k Shuffle. Despite repeated promises from Trump, Congress is considering limiting 401k retirement contributions as part of its tax reform package. This is odd, not only because it’s unpopular with Wall Street, but also because it appears to discourage saving for retirement at all — and we already have problems with people saving too little. The 401k saga is likely unfolding the way it is because it’s an obvious way to offset tax cuts, and probably ultimately will result in more incoming government money than other options. But if everybody stops saving for retirement, it has the capacity to start costing the government large amounts in the long-term unless Medicare and social security are dismantled as well, because those are entitlement benefits — once people reach a magic age, they’re all allowed to ask for it and a lack of retirement planning means they’re more likely to need it. This is sort of like saying “we need people to buy our candy bars, let’s make it harder to pay for dental visits” and then hoping somebody else has to pay for all the dentures.
  • EPA Blocked Its Own Scientists from Speaking. The headline kind of says it all on this one; the EPA canceled its own scientists’ presentation at a conference on climate change. When pressed for an explanation, the agency said that the scientists were attending; they just wouldn’t be presenting because “it wasn’t an EPA conference.” But it sounds like everyone attending understood what was really happening; other scientists (fairly) described it as “a blatant example of . . . scientific censorship.”
  • Too Big to Sue.* The Senate voted this week to repeal a landmark Consumer Federal Protection Bureau regulation that limited mandatory arbitration clauses in bank account agreements. For those of you reading this who haven’t tangled with mandatory arbitration clauses before, they are a common corporate tactic to limit suits and force people through a “negotiation” process when they have grievances. It sounds good on its face, except that the deck is often stacked in the company’s favor because they have a relationship with the arbiters and the consumers don’t. In fact, it is because these clauses heavily advantage businesses and disadvantage consumers that the newly-repealed law was put in place in July in the first place; though Republican talking points suggest otherwise, the regulation merely required banks to draft user agreements that allowed consumers to retain the option to organize class action lawsuits. Adding insult to injury, it was a 50–50 tie, meaning that Pence cast the tiebreaking vote.
  • Opioid Not-Actually-An-Emergency. Despite earlier promises to the contrary, the Trump administration failed to declare an opioid national emergency this past week. What they did instead was declare a “public health emergency,” which sounds similar — except there’s no money attached (as there would be for a national emergency), because the public health fund is empty. And Trump appears to think we can solve this by Just Saying No. Basically, it’s the difference between “The house is on fire, let’s call firefighters” and “The house is on fire, let’s call my buddy Steve.” Except in this scenario, Steve thinks you can put out house fires by telling the fire to stop burning things.
  • Budget Proposal Movement. The House passed last week’s budget proposal by a very narrow margin this week; just like in the Senate, every single Democrat voted against it. Though the budget vote does not create fully-formed law — they still need to write the actual tax reform — this is a concrete first step, and that is not necessarily a good thing. But as mentioned last week, it might prove to be the bribe that makes the Republican party actually move to oust Trump, so it might be a mixed thing. We’ll have to see what happens from here.

The Good:

And that’s what I have for now! But the news is still moving very quickly, so daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. We tend to see a rough week after we get inspiring news, because this administration does not take lumps gracefully — and some are still worried that Trump’s about to fire Mueller — so let’s batten down the hatches and prepare for more storms. And hopefully we’ll meet under sunny skies again next week!

National News Roundup: Week 39 (October 15–21)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

I saw an article that described this week as a “terrible week for Trump.” Needless to say, as a general rule, a bad week for Trump is a good week for the rest of America, and this week appears to be no exception. Though we’re not out of the woods by any means — in fact, some really concerning things did happen this week — we reached a bit of a summit in the slow slog back to a healthy country. It’s nice to have some news to report this week that’s actually good.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not Facebook staff! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation was pretty all over the map this week — the short version is that the investigation is working, kind of, but what we’re learning is not awesome:

This has really not been a good week on the Threats to Civil Rights front either:

Your “Normal” Weird:

  • The Trump Reality Show Continues. I’m not going to dwell, simply because the most sensationalist chest-thumping seems like a vacuous distraction rather than a credible threat. But this week Trump continued the ongoing reality show, issuing more threats to McCain after the latter criticized his bonkers foreign policy and badly botching condolence calls after several soldiers were lost in Niger. Adding to the surreal reality-show feel of current politics, Dubya also said his piece about Trump (although he declined to mention him by name at any point). It’s been strange, y’all.
  • Tax Reform News.* The Senate passed a tax reform initiative this week along partisan lines, squeaking out the bare minimum of votes needed despite bloc opposition from Democrats (and Rand Paul). I place this under the ‘weird’ column rather than the ‘bad’ column for several reasons: First of all, few people have even seen the bill, despite its success on the floor; as this first fact suggests, the bill is being rushed for a variety of reasons (which I can only hope to speculate about, since the Hill is a such bizarre quagmire right now). But they are using the reconciliation process — which you may remember from the summer’s ACA Repeal Greatest Hits — to pass Go and collect their $200 without working with Democrats. And that process is inherently kind of tricky and complicated, which makes it odd that they are trying to rush and also use it. Senator Corker’s recent outbursts have caused some pundits to speculate that tax reform is the only thing keeping the GOP on board with Trump’s egregious and dangerous Presidency; if they’re right, the tax reform efforts are also odd because they’re being treated like a final hurdle to impeachment.

The Bad:

The Good:

And that’s what I have; some good, some bad, overall a bit less horrifying than normal. But the news is still moving very quickly, so daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Let’s see if we can keep this streak going!

National News Roundup: Week 38 (October 8–14)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Still Life — A Boot on a Newspaper, by Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Preparing a draft on Sunday night, I turned to my editor and unironically said, “Oh wait, I’m not done with the Constitutional Crisis section yet, because I need to add a note about Larry Flynt under the Russia Investigation header.” As a friend of mine observed to me today, “This may or may not be the darkest timeline, but it’s sure as hell the weirdest.” (Although my money’s on both being true, for the record. I recommend comfort foods.)

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a firefighter! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation was unfortunately pretty stymied this week:

  • What Russian Sanctions? Trump missed his own deadline for implementing Russia sanctions this week, deeply aggravating the members of Congress who drafted the sanctions bill. The sanctions, as you may remember, were designed to force Trump to punish Russia for tampering in the election, but since he so obviously benefited from said tampering it’s unsurprising that he dragged his feet on this. Still very frustrating, though.
  • Social Media Scarpering. This week we learned that Twitter deleted data that would be relevant to the Russia investigation, which is frustrating to say the least. But there was evidence that Facebook isn’t really cooperating either, and took down thousands of posts that could have helped the investigation to minimize their role. So, uh… thanks, guys. That was helpful.
  • Yes, That Larry Flynt Ad Really Happened. You didn’t have a Nyquil-induced fever dream; Larry Flynt really did take out a full-page ad in the Washington Post this week offering $10M for “information leading to the impeachment and removal from office of Donald Trump.” Putting aside how fascinating it is that the guy who literally runs Hustler finds Donald Trump distasteful, I haven’t yet heard anything about leads from the ad. I promise I’ll keep y’all posted.

This has really not been a good week on the Threat to Free Speech front:

But on the plus side, there is a new dark horse in the Why Is He Still President? corner:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

  • ACA Lawsuits. The silver lining to this past week’s ACA shenanigans is that there is already a growing pile of lawsuits filed on both executive orders and the subsidy announcement. The ACLU, Washington Attorney General, and California Attorney General are all suing Trump over rolling back the contraceptive mandate, arguing (probably correctly) that it violates the Establishment and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution. Meanwhile, eighteen states and the District of Columbia are suing over the subsidies, seeking an injunction that would force the President to keep paying them. The National Governors’ Association issued a statement on the topic as well, indicating that they will be coordinating with Congress directly to facilitate a bipartisan fix on the subsidy issue. There are clearly a number of moving parts on the board already to try to fix both of these issues.
  • Animal Kingdom News. Homo sapiens is not exactly a shining star species right now, but several other members of the animal kingdom popped up in the news in better contexts! In particular, for your dose of warm fuzzies, you can read about this octopus who wanted to thank their rescuer in person. Erm, make that “in octopus.” Also, a duck in Devon got into a drunken bar brawl with a local dog. On the plus side, the duck pulled through! Which is my new catchphrase for annoying my editor. I’ve already used it on her four times.

And that’s what I have, in all its terrible and deeply strange glory. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping that next week brings better tidings!

National News Roundup: Week 36 (September 24–30)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Still life — a boot on a newspaper, by Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The news is a horrible, toxic trash fire this past week, and I don’t think I’m even capable of sugar coating that. Puerto Rico’s in a bad way, over 500 people were seriously injured (and 59 were killed) by one dude with way more automatic weapons than any one dude should ever have, and Trump still hasn’t been to the Caribbean but he somehow found time to go to the golf course. I recently posted an article about how to deal with weeks like this, and that’s about the best I got for you right now; I’m really sorry, folks. No judgment if your comfort food this week is an entire bag of Cheetos.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not an accountant! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation was mostly pretty quiet this week, but we did have a little bit of movement:

  • But Her Emails. The big story of idiocy this week was the news that at least six White House advisers used private servers for sending and receiving emails in their official White House capacity. Some of the advisers, such as Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, are already gone — but several, such as Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Gary Cohn, and Steven Miller, are still present. Kushner in particular is estimated to have sent and received about a hundred emails between January and August, which is kind of horrifying when you consider that he went on several diplomatic trips in that time. The White House, as you can imagine, was just shocked to discover that — nope, sorry, that’s what would happen if we weren’t living in the darkest timeline. As it happens, the same administration that crucified Hillary Clinton over this hasn’t issued statements or censures of any kind to its own people — the best we’ve gotten on this so far is an internal probe being led by White House counsel’s office — and if you’re currently sitting here asking “But isn’t Don McGahn, current White House counsel, rumored to be about to quit over Jared Kushner?” Why yes, yes he is.

We also are still in a stalemate on the Threat to Free Speech front:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

Just like last week, the news required multiple drafts this week — the news cycle is still pedals-to-the-metal at the moment. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping that next week brings better tidings!

National News Roundup: Week 35 (September 17–23)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

It’s cold season Chez Roundup, and only my live-in editor escaped the plague. (You may note, by process of elimination, that this means your favorite news compiler did not.) I mention this because I feel a great temptation to conclude that this past week was a terrible fever dream — it’s been a strange, dark week. Sadly, no matter how much I nap, the news doesn’t seem to improve.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a tech guru — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

As we’ve come to expect, there were some developments in The Russia Collusion Investigation this week:

  • Walls Closing In on Manafort.* There was a lot of news about everybody’s favorite sketchy campaign manager this week. To begin with, Mueller apparently warned him to expect an indictment when they raided his home in July. But the more pieces of the puzzle fall into place, the more this just makes perfect sense — we also learned this week that the investigation of Manafort stretches back eleven years; that Manafort has been monitored by the FBI since summer 2016; and that the FBI discovered Manafort offered to give a Russian oligarch private briefings on the Trump campaign during that same window of time. So, basically, the surprising thing is that no indictment has been issued yet — though some analysts think Mueller is setting a tone, and that is probably true, I also think Mueller is just being extremely thorough and does plan to indict Manafort soon.
  • Facebook Now Cooperating with Congress.* It took them months, but they got there eventually: Facebook is now cooperating with congressional investigations into the ads they sold to Russian troll farms. (Facebook had already shared some information with Mueller, though this development was fairly recent as well.) Incredibly, Facebook had been claiming that it violated user privacy to share what ads had been stuck on their feeds without their consent — because we all know that Facebook is extremely good at figuring out what we want to see on our walls. (Though it is absolutely true that the company treats users like data mines, but that’s kind of besides the point on multiple levels here.) At any rate, it’s good that they are cooperating now.
  • Anti-Leaking Classes.* News broke this week that EPA staff have been ordered to attend anti-leaking classes as a condition of their employment, per a general Trump administration policy that everybody in federal government will eventually be required to attend. I can’t help but wonder if anybody is going to make Trump’s attorneys go. (Or Trump.)

We also saw some significant movement on the Threat to Free Speech front in the past week:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

  • Maverick Maine and McCain (Maybe). John McCain announced this week that he won’t vote for the Graham-Cassidy bill, which is a bit confusing because when the bill first came on people’s radars he was one of the first to say he would. But his announcement was followed by Susan Collins announcing the same thing once she had reviewed the CBO report. So assuming McCain is accurately reporting, his decision puts the bill in serious jeopardy (as well as pissing off the President, which is always a nice bonus). If as few as three Republican senators vote ‘no’ on the initiative, it definitely won’t become law, and there are a lot of potential third ‘nos’ in the current landscape. (Though new versions of the bill court Lisa Murkowski, she hasn’t yet issued a final statement either way, and Rand Paul has been vocal in his opposition as well.) This is far from a done deal, and we need to keep calling our Senators! But the Graham-Cassidy bill may very well go the same route as the July bills.
  • Paris Accord Gains a Participant. (Just not us.) President Ortega announced that Nicaragua will join the Paris Accord this past week, leaving only two final holdouts from the world agreement — Syria and us. In statements on the topic, Ortega cited recent climate change natural disasters as his reasoning, saying, ““We have to be in solidarity with this large number of countries that are the first victims, who are already the victims and are the ones who will continue to suffer the impact of these disasters.” Nicaragua’s support makes the accord stronger, and might serve as an impetus for private entities in the United States to continue efforts to support the accord.

This week’s news changed so much that I had to draft it three times since yesterday — if anything, the news cycle is getting faster, which I frankly did not think was possible. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Until next week, good night and good luck!

National News Roundup: Week 29 (August 6-12)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Good Lord, this news cycle was like being whacked repeatedly with a bag full of oranges. Or possibly doorknobs. You know what, let’s go with doorknobs, on account of I want to still like oranges after I’m done writing this. And speaking of oranges, this is definitely a comfort food week, y’all; we’re deep in Bad News Cycle country. Get your tasty item at the ready.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — still a lawyer, not a wartime strategist — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Most of the Russian Collusion Investigation seemed to involve Manafort this past week. That’s really interesting, for a lot of different reasons, and we’ll have to see where it leads us.

  • The raid is at Manafort’s Home. (And Bank Records. And Relatives.) Federal investigators staged a pre-dawn raid on Paul Manafort’s home on July 26th, and more recently spoke with his son-in-law and subpoenaed his bank records. It’s harder to get a search warrant than a summons, and it requires a judge to agree that there is a likely cause for a crime to be committed. Manafort has already provided documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the election, so the search warrant is an unusually aggressive step. Ordinarily I would have something to say about this kind of aggression when a suspect is already apparently cooperating with the investigation, but in this case, I’m just hoping Manafort wasn’t shredding documents in the study while they were searching the kitchen.

Your “Normal” Weird:

  • Trump vs The GOP. Trump has spent a considerable amount of his vacation so far slagging on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and gosh, it couldn’t be happening to a nicer Yertle the Turtle. It looks like McConnell might actually have started it, which would maybe be relevant if this were a third-grade recess brawl, but fellow Republicans clearly don’t want to hear it; they’re increasingly sharing just whose side they are taking in the whole thing. At the apparent root of all of this is the fact that Trump wants to get rid of the filibuster, which is a move that doesn’t appear to have Republican support (so far). In an ideal world, that will stay the case.
  • Premium Pile-Up. A study this week suggests that Trump’s horrible will-he-or-won’t-he regarding the payment of healthcare subsidies has caused double-digit premium increases in individual health insurance. On the one hand, insurers are struggling with an increasingly uncertain situation, and it’s sort of understandable that this is impacting the market. On the other hand, right now it’s still a legal requirement, per the still-existing ACA, that he has to pay the damn subsidies. So it would be nice if we could accept business as usual until something actually changes in some way. At any rate, I’m sure Trump will use this premium hike as evidence that the ACA is broken, even though he’s the one who’s breaking it at the moment. THANKS, TRUMP.

The Bad :

  • Murder and White Supremacy in Charlottesville. Probably the biggest and most important headline to know this week was that white supremacists gathering in Charlottesville, VA murdered someone and injured thirty-five more people in a sustained and highly organized act of violence that ultimately lasted two days; while monitoring the violence, two police officers also died in a helicopter crash of unknown cause. Conflict actually began on Friday night, when white supremacists armed with (tiki) torches cornered students under a statue on campus and trapped several counterprotesters who had gathered at a local Black church. On Saturday morning, hours before a “Unite the Right” rally was scheduled to begin at noon, protesters and counterprotesters clashed in what Charlottesville police chief Al Thomas later referred to as “premeditated violence that our community experienced,” prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency and city officials to order the supremacists’ dispersal as an unlawful assembly. But what began as an assault and battery with fists, water bottles, and pepper spray escalated dramatically soon after the crowd dispersed, when a protester photographed earlier among the white supremacy crowd (and sporting a Vanguard America shield, suggesting official affiliation) drove a car into a crowd of peaceful protesters as they were leaving. The driver was ultimately identified as a twenty-year-old white man from Ohio, who is now in custody and charged with second-degree murder (among other things). The Associated Press has put together a decent timeline outlining Saturday’s events.
  • Let’s Have Elections Where Ohioans Can’t Vote.* Under the Obama administration, it was illegal for Ohio to remove tens of thousands of inactive voters from the voting rolls. Surprisingly absolutely nobody, the Jefferson Beauregard Sessions Department of Justice (for White People) has reversed course on this position, insisting that the state’s actions are legal under federal law. So now this question is going to the Supreme Court. Ohio’s procedure checks in with voters and requires them to confirm their voter registration by mail after two years of voting inactivity; voters who neither respond nor cast a vote over the next four years are removed from voter registration. This has obvious implications in an era fraught with voter suppression, particularly if the policy is not well-publicized; if you can’t show up and you don’t know you need to mail in confirmation, how are you supposed to stay on the voter rolls? But even without the threat of widespread suppression, given the sharp dip in voting during non-presidential election years — only 36% of registered US voters cast ballots in 2014 — this does not bode well for the voting future of Ohio.
  • Better Yet, Let’s Not Have Elections. Better Yet, Let’s Not Have Elections. In response to Republican assertions about voter fraud, the Washington Post ran a survey to investigate the question: If Donald Trump said that the 2020 election should be suspended in order to make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote, would you support his proposal? Among Republican-affiliated respondents, a whopping fifty-two percent thought this was a good idea — and the number went up to fifty-six percent if Republicans in Congress said they would back this play. Fortunately, this was a hypothetical situation that has not been floated publicly in the GOP. Unfortunately, if the Washington Post thought of it, Trump will probably think of it too. Especially because there’s a survey now giving him the idea. Way to spill the free election beans, Washington Post.
  • Ratcheting Tensions with North Korea.* The last couple of days of interaction with North Korea have been increasingly tense, as North Korea threatens America and nearby countries like South Korea and Japan in response to new sanctions from the United Nations Security Council. Adding depth to the threat, American analysts concluded on Tuesday that North Korea has successfully produced a nuclear warhead capable of fitting inside missiles. Trump responded to the threats with threats of his own, saying that the United States would respond to a missile strike “with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” North Korea responded within a few hours by threatening to send “an enveloping fire” around Guam. Then Trump said some asinine stuff about “military solutions” being “locked and loaded,” which appeared to simply refer to standard (and preplanned) American cooperation with South Korea. It’s important to note that experts still doubt that North Korea has mastered all of the technologies needed to deliver a nuclear payload on an intercontinental ballistic missile. The July test resulted in an ICBM that might reach California, and it stands to reason that if a reliable strike were within reach, Kim Jong-un would have included that in his threat to Guam. But more importantly, South Korean news sources are noting that “North Korea is likely to continue its bellicose threats as Seoul and Washington will conduct their annual joint military drills starting in late August.” Though this is a delicate time, to be sure, and South Korea and Japan are considering improving their military capabilities, experts do not appear to believe war is imminent. But Trump’s bluster doesn’t help anything. When Congress returns, they will potentially be considering a bill that would limit Trump’s ability to unilaterally use nukes, so now is a great time to call your representatives.

The Good :

  • Opiates Declared A National Emergency. In response to urging from the Governors of Arizona, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia, the CDC, the FDA, Congress, physician groups, the insurance industry, and just about everyone else paying attention, the White House eventually declared a national emergency over the opiate epidemic this week. This action could have a whole range of possible results, and some of them (such as more draconian drug laws or crackdowns on prescribers) definitely don’t go in the ‘good’ column. But at minimum, it’s likely it will make the anti-overdose drug known as naloxone more available and inexpensive, and create groundwork for legislators to authorize additional funding for the issue; if he follows the precedents set by the six states that have already declared an emergency, he could potentially do a lot of good. We’ll just have to keep an eye out and see what develops from here, and for the moment I’m cautiously optimistic.
  • NYC Dismisses 644,000 Warrants for Minor Charges. In a coordinated effort to address a black cloud lingering over NYC police (as well as the people being haunted by old warrants), New York City prosecutors dismissed over half a million warrants this week for very minor offenses like drinking in public or riding a bike on a sidewalk. The move is particularly beneficial to immigrant populations who had old warrants for these very minor offenses — though it’s by no means full insulation from ICE activity, a clean criminal record can dramatically reduce liability to exposure. Even for people with no immigration exposure, as NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio noted, old warrants from decades ago “can derail lives, disrupt families and lead to job loss” without real contribution to public safety. This is only a necessary first step to address decades of stop and frisk abuses, but it’s a welcome one.
  • Charlottesville Responses. Though the President and White House’s astoundingly lackluster (and delayed) response to this tragedy has been jaw-dropping, it’s equally striking just how many varied voices immediately condemned the attack. At least three major GOP figures have referred to Saturday’s events as “domestic terrorism,” a completely new characterization of white perpetrators of crime as far as I know; the DOJ also has declared an investigation (though I’ll believe that one when I see it). Even the tiki company that made the torches has scrambled to distance themselves from Saturday’s events, and Kenneth Frazier, Merck CEO, resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council over the events of the weekend and Trump’s non-response. But more importantly, a number of people are doing things in response. Several different medical funds organized for the 35 people injured and the deceased have been wildly successful as I write this, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in only one day. I’ve also seen multiple articles outlining concrete steps people can take to help, and a huge number of organizations have been organizing vigils, rallies, and other events to show solidarity in addition to concrete steps of support. America is listening, and America is responding.

And that’s the week’s news! We’re all a bit shell-shocked and the hits are coming in fast, but I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points every week no matter how bad and frenetic it gets. In the meantime, daily news summaries like WTFJHT are an excellent resource until we meet again. (Today in Resistance is a pause while Storm enjoys a much-earned vacation, although its summary of news sources is still worth reading.)


National News Roundup: Week 26 (July 16–22)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

You know how I said last week that I didn’t think the good news cycle would last? …yeah, I have some bad news about that. Literally. (I promise I didn’t jinx it!)

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This news continues to contain multiple headlines each week outside my area as a legal generalist — still a lawyer, not a spy! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Nearly half the total news this week relates in some way to The Russia Collusion Investigation — way more than is ordinary, even as we navigate growing constitutional crises. It’s a whole new brand of weird and scary, and I’m not yet sure what is going to happen from here.

And just like last week, we have some horrifying news about Emoluments, or at the very least about personal enrichment.

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

  • Reporter Ignored White House Streaming Rules. This past week, a reporter named Ksenija Pavlovic said “screw this” and streamed a White House press conference like it’s 2015. Pavlovic, who runs her own news site, simply ran Periscope during the conference, which is such a simple and elegant solution that I’m surprised it took the press this long to try it. It’s unclear what consequences will fall on Pavlovic’s head from this; I hope nothing too serious happens to her, though I can’t imagine she’ll be welcome at the White House anytime soon.
  • Travel Ban Minor Win. The Supreme Court put out an extremely brief order this week clarifying that they weren’t going to touch last week’s Hawaii District Court holding about which relatives should qualify to make a traveler exempt from the President’s travel ban. (They did, however, stay the court’s holding as it pertained to refugees with ties to resettlement programs.) As with the Supreme Court’s first order, all of these provisions are simply discussing what will be the policy while the case is pending; oral arguments will be heard on the merits of the order on October 10. By refusing to put a stay in order, the Supreme Court has effectively required the administration to add most family members (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews) to the list of qualifying relationships while the case is pending.

This is a disorienting, strange, and scary time, and I’m afraid knowing all the news this week doesn’t necessarily help with that. It’s vital that we make as much sense of it as we can, and stay informed and engaged in the coming weeks.

National News Roundup: Week 25 (July 9–15)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well it’s not quite porcine pilots, but we appear to have a net-positive news week when I’m writing this on Sunday evening, which by this point is strange in its own way. At any rate, enjoy for now, and I’ll try not to jinx it! I can’t imagine positive news is long for this world.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This news continues to contain multiple headlines each week outside my area as a legal generalist — still a lawyer, not a spy! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

As news on Donald Trump Jr’s now-infamous Russia meeting continued to unspool, we gained new insight into The Russia Collusion Investigation, though it’s still hard to make heads or tails of much of it.

And just like last week, we have some miscellany I’m calling a Constitutional Crisis Grab Bag. They’re all symptoms of a larger, more serious threat, which I’ll talk more about below.

  • State Department Spending. This past week, we learned through a Freedom of Information Act request that the State Department paid $15,000 for board at a Trump hotel in Vancouver in February. The costs apparently were to cover secret service people’s stay in the hotel, which was necessary as a form of protection detail because several family members were visiting to attend its grand opening. Given that the travel appeared to have had absolutely nothing to do with political obligations, and the family still billed the State Department for staying at the hotel to provide security relating to business obligations, this may be the single biggest instance of personal enrichment to be officially reported since Trump took office.
  • Sessions Speech Revealed. This week, Sessions gave a speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — a conservative Christian law firm that was designated a “hate group” in 2016 by the Southern Poverty Law Center — and refused to release the text of his speech. Weirdly, The Federalist is here for us, and released a transcript of the entire thing. (Note: While the text of that speech certainly could be worse, it’s still full of dog whistles like “Western heritage,” “religious freedom,” and “enshrined in the Constitution,” and I recommend exercising caution if that sort of thing is triggering for you.) As several advocates have noted, the speech itself suggests an aggressive agenda of discrimination, which is certainly in keeping with the rest of what we’re seeing from him.

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

  • “Healthcare Fraud” DOJ Sweeps. You can probably tell what I think of this from the title, but I feel I owe readers some context: The opioid crisis is an issue extremely near to my heart, because I worked to connect people addicted to substances to treatment every day for several years. I absolutely do not dispute that we have a terrible epidemic in this country, and that people are exploited every day in service of selling a dangerous and highly addictive substance. I also cannot tell you how many times I verified that people with drug-related criminal charges had been originally prescribed medications for pain, and traced their addiction back to a reliance on those medications. But this administration’s official statements blend together real descriptions of an actual epidemic and bizarre rhetoric about “fraudsters” and “hard-earned tax dollars,” and more to the point, these charges are a way to keep down costs. For that reason alone, I would be suspicious of anything being billed as “the most sweeping enforcement to date” and “the biggest takedown of health-care fraud in U.S. history” with an allegation of $1.3 billion in damages. Though the administration insists that the 400 people charged are defrauding health care, some of the charges, such as “prescribing unnecessary opioids,” sound less like healthcare fraud and more like… doctors prescribing things that the administration says aren’t needed. If this administration really wanted to address the opioid epidemic in this country — and I wish they would — we wouldn’t be cutting the funding for opioid treatment built into the Affordable Care Act, and we wouldn’t be returning to mandatory minimums for possession of substances, a policy that has been shown over and over again to be ineffective, costly, and exacerbate substance use.

The Good:

And that’s all the news this week, like a slightly tarnished oasis in a desert of suck. Drink it in, folks! The news so rarely grants us any respite, we all need to enjoy it while we can.

National News Roundup: Week 22 (June 18–24)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Holy monkeys, the news this week was horrible even by our current low standards. I suggest you have your comfort food of choice at the ready, y’all, because this week’s a really rough ride. But we’ll keep fighting to make next week better.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This news continues to contain multiple headlines each week outside my area as a legal generalist — still a lawyer, not a spy! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Still in the ring and even more horrible than usual: The Russia Collusion Investigation, which somehow manages to be gaining ground in both directions this week.

  • Russian Hacker Highlights.* There has been a huge amount happening on this front, and I’m not even convinced I understand all of it, but here’s a good faith stab at a summary. After hearings this week on the 2016 election cyberattacks, a bunch of further information has come out on the topic. We now know that Vladimir Putin personally ordered an “influence campaign” to harm Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances and “undermine public faith in the US democratic process.” The resulting hacking campaign impacted at least twenty states, and we found at least one instance of a voting log being successfully altered by the campaign (though not much further evidence of systemic changes to voting rolls). We also learned that President Obama knew of this order, but feared undermining the integrity of the elections further by reporting on it. Also, Trump has done very little to prevent a repeat attack, but is now saying that Russia hacked the DNC and criticizing President Obama for not doing more. For a surprisingly thorough and good secondary-source summary as far as I can tell, by the way, check out the wikipedia page on this (which has 332 citations!).
  • No Tapes, Just Obstruction of Justice.* Trump announced this week that there were no tapes of Comey, after a week of build-up and self-imposed deadline that the New York Times correctly identifies as designed to shift attention away from the healthcare bill in the Senate. (The same article also notes that legal experts rightly identify “I bluffed to threaten you not to testify” a classic example of obstruction of justice, because it is.) Then as an encore he inexplicably said that it was “bothersome” that Mueller has ties to Comey — both men were career FBI investigators, and it’s not like there are two FBIs — and insinuated that Mueller should step down. Because when you publicly admit you just engaged in obstruction of justice, it’s definitely the biased investigator’s fault when he investigates you.
  • Our Attorney General Now Has an Attorney. Since getting your own defense counsel is de rigueur for all sketchy members of the Trump Administration, the latest person to hire one is Attorney General Jeff Sessions. I’m going to repeat that, because it bears repeating: The current Attorney General of the United States — the highest prosecutor in the land — now has a defense attorney representing him in an ongoing investigation. Folks, I seriously cannot stress enough how incredibly strange and jarring that should be for all of us; regardless of whether he has anything to hide or not, an Attorney General retaining defense counsel is really seriously not normal and it’s a measure of the strange times we find ourselves in, regardless of what happens from here.

I genuinely can’t believe where we are with regard to the Emolument Clause this week — though there’s only one news item this week, it’s more than enough all by itself.

And on top of all that, we’re back to battles on three fronts, because there’s also bonus Suppression of the Press.

Your “Normal” Weird:

  • Iowa Rally Nonsense. Trump held a rally in Cedar Rapids, IA — what appears to be a campaign rally, in fact, though the next election isn’t for another 1200 days — and spoke for seventy rambling minutes about his various achievements and virtues. I swear my ability to even went down about ten points permanently just by reading articles on this, but it’s so bizarre that I need to report it anyway — I recommend checking out Fact Check’s writeup if you want to source this, though you may suffer as I did. Highlights include promising to bar immigrants from access to cash welfare benefits for five years after their arrival (which Bill Clinton already did back in 1996); falsely claiming the Paris Agreement is a binding agreement; and exaggerating how much the U.S. has spent in the Middle East by about five trillion dollars. Murrica.

The Bad:

  • AHCA: Second Verse, Worse than the First. Okay. So. The Senate released its version of the AHCA this week, which it’s calling the “Better Care Reconciliation Act” or BCRA (spoiler: It’s not actually better care in the slightest.) The CBO also issued its report on the bill today, and estimates it would leave 22 million people uninsured by 2026. It does a lot of the same things the House version does to the private insurance market (ends the personal insurance mandate, ends the employer mandate, drops health care essentials, refuses coverage of abortions, defunds Planned Parenthood for one year, expands use of health savings accounts, and uses all the money this saves to create a big ole’ tax cut for the rich), but it does them generally more slowly and, over time, more harshly. In particular, people with pre-existing conditions may be priced out of most markets. As Vox put it: “It’s not complicated. Just cruel. Poor people pay more for worse insurance.” (For a very good, very comprehensive comparison of the Senate version, the House version, and current law, check out this NASHP chart.) But, as the New York Times correctly points out, the really big story of the BCRA is that it’s also a rollback of Medicaid as we know it. In the program’s current form — the form it has had since its inception in the 1960s — Medicaid is an entitlement program, which means anyone who qualifies for it can expect coverage for their medical bills as they accrue. But under the BCRA, states are heavily restricted both in terms of amount of funding and in terms of how many people they can help; in fact, states have a penalty imposed if they help more than a national average of people even if they don’t overspend doing it. This is some pretty Dickensian stuff, and it’s a really major change.
  • Immigration Instigation. This was a really rough week on the immigration front. Between ICE showing up at a human trafficking court, an emergency care organization getting raided in the desert, and a mixed outcome at best from the Supreme Court on the travel ban, it’s all a little bit dizzying. That said, though, the show is far from over on that last one, and it’s not all bad — I’ll do a bit of unpacking here. The Supreme Court decided to remove the stay on Trump’s travel ban today, which means this administration can start enforcing it again. However, the court also held that the travel ban may not be imposed on anyone who can show “a bona fide relationship with any person or entity in the United States.” Which will be double plus unfun for CBP to try to enforce, and also hard to interpret, which is a thought that keeps me warm and cozy at night. (Incidentally, this is just a temporary measure before the case is heard on the merits; the case is on for oral arguments in October, which means we’ll hear more then if not before.)
  • Ossoff lost special election. The Georgia Sixth District election came and went, and ended in victory for Karen “my faith calls me to prevent gay families from adopting” Handel by less than four points. The press has been all over the map in its reactions— I’m seeing everything from “this is a major loss” to “this is still a victory for Dems” to “let’s blame Nancy Pelosi for this for some inexplicable reason” — so I’m going to take a page out of my very wise researcher’s book and just provide you with some election statistics. It happened, it was no fun, and we’ll keep working towards a better House in 2018.
  • ADAPT Protests and Police Response. Disability advocates from ADAPT, a disability rights organization, staged a die-in on Thursday in front of Mitch McConnell’s office on Capitol Hill to protest the draconic BCRA — which, as noted above, experts believe really is likely to result in deaths for many disabled persons. Countless activists were carried out by police, many without necessarily health devices like wheelchairs needed for mobility or ventilators needed to breathe safely. All told, forty-three disability advocates were arrested and removed.

The Good:

  • Go Home BRCA, Nobody Likes You. About the only good thing I can say about the Senate’s healthcare bill is that nobody likes it (and that might end up being a saving grace). Just like last time, Congressional lawmakers find themselves stuck courting several ultra-conservative Senators and more moderate counterparts as well as the entire list of Dems; a total of fifty-six senators have indicated they will not vote for the bill in its current form. Even more damning is the low number of Senators who have actually expressed support — only seventeen so far, with the remaining twenty-eight making noncommittal statements leaving us guessing. If the current numbers hold, the bill will not have a majority to pass (which some news outlets are speculating is McConnell’s real plan). Outside of Capitol Hill, the laundry list of prominent and relevant figures who have condemned the bill is even more staggering — vocal opponents include former President Obama, the Koch network, several pediatrics organizations, a coalition of ten insurance organizations, several governors of states that took the Medicaid expansion, the American Hospital Association, and the American Psychiatric Association.
  • SCOTUS Still (Mostly) Works. There were several cases out of the Supreme Court in the past week that were encouraging or noteworthy, so I’m throwing in a few highlights for your perusal. In Maslenjak v. United States, a 9–0 court decided that denaturalization (the process for stripping a naturalized citizen of citizenship) should not be a penalty for misrepresentation of nonmaterial facts on a citizenship application. (Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, who are rapidly becoming The Alt-Right Triplets, filed a concurrence but did not dissent). In Pavan v. Smith, a 6–3 court decided that same-sex married people have a constitutional right to list both names on a birth certificate for any children of the marriage, regardless of the fact that both parents are not biological contributors to the child. (The dissenters were, you guessed it, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch.) It’s a bit strange recognizing Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy as a new-order moderate and liberal, respectively, but we live in strange times indeed.

And that’s all for now, but tomorrow’s a new day. (And so’s the next day. And the next day…) Stay tuned for more updates and anecdotes next week!