The Supreme Court this week continued to disappoint congressional Democrats and activists with a long line of embarrassingly unanimous, non-ideological rulings. After all, the court is supposedly (to use President Biden Joe Biden Putin says he's optimistic about working with Biden ahead of planned meeting How the infrastructure bill can help close the digital divide Biden meets Queen Elizabeth for first time as president MORE ’s words) “out of whack” due to its irreconcilable ideological divisions. Indeed, the court is allegedly so dysfunctionally divided that many, including Democratic leaders, have called for sweeping changes — from packing the court with new justices, to changing its voting rules, or even creating an alternative court. That is why these weeks have so frustrated those who insist the court is a hopeless case of rigid ideologues. While next week could well bring some welcomed ideological divisions, the court is not making it easy on its critics. Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer Stephen Breyer Gorsuch, Thomas join liberal justices in siding with criminal defendant Senate confirms Biden's first judicial nominee Overnight Defense: Supreme Court declines to hear suit challenging male-only draft | Drone refuels Navy fighter jet for the first time | NATO chief meets with Austin, Biden MORE recently chafed at the claim that the court is “conservative” and condemned the calls to pack it with a liberal majority. A liberal group, “Demand Justice,” responded with billboard ads calling for Breyer’s resignation and warned him that he was risking his legacy. However, Breyer appears undeterred in ruling with his conservative colleagues when he considers that to be appropriate. ADVERTISEMENT In the latest decision, Borden v. United States , the lineup of justices was strikingly non-ideological. Justice Elena Kagan Elena Kagan Gorsuch, Thomas join liberal justices in siding with criminal defendant ...
Opinion
The man who resisted Trump is worth listening to
Michael D'Antonio is the author of the book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" and co-author, with Peter Eisner, of the book "High Crimes: The Corruption, Impunity, and Impeachment of Donald Trump." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN. (CNN) Think about this: The president of the United States demands that you tell the acting attorney general to get rid of a special prosecutor. Not just any special prosecutor, but the one investigating the campaign that got the president elected in the first place. How would you feel? Michael D'Antonio "Frustrated, perturbed, trapped," is how former White House counsel Don McGahn described it when President Donald Trump told him -- for the second time -- to direct Rod Rosenstein to get rid of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He revealed this reaction and how he dealt with Trump's request in his testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary last week. The Justice Department under Trump had blocked a subpoena for McGahn's testimony in a protracted, two-year battle and in May, the Judiciary Committee and the Biden administration finally struck a deal to allow McGahn to testify behind closed doors. Although many Americans want to put the past behind us and forego this kind of exercise, McGahn's answers to the committee revealed truths that need telling. Mindful of the impact of Watergate and President Richard Nixon's attempt to control the fallout, McGahn told the committee that Trump's directives brought to mind Nixon's so-called Saturday Night Massacre . In that instance, both the attorney general and deputy attorney general refused Nixon's orders to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and resigned in protest, leaving the job to Solicitor General Robert Bork, who carried out Nixon's order. When Trump tried to get rid of Mueller, McGahn understood the risk and recognized it could be used as ...
Banning My Book Won’t Protect Your Child
When I was in my early 20s, I was in an abusive relationship with another woman. Soon after it ended, I did what I always did when I was heartbroken: I looked for art that spoke to my experience. I was surprised to find shockingly few memoirs of domestic violence or verbal, psychological and emotional abuse in queer relationships. So I wrote into that silence: a memoir, “In the Dream House,” which describes that relationship and my struggle to leave it. This year, a parent in Leander, Texas — livid that “In the Dream House” appeared on high school classes’ recommended reading lists — took a pink strap-on dildo to a school board meeting. Voice trembling with disgust, she read excerpts from my book — including one where I referred to a dildo, inspiring the prop — before arguing that letting a student read my book could be considered child abuse. She and the other parents like her demanded the removal of my book and several others from district reading lists for high school English class book clubs, from which students were allowed to select one of 15 titles. The school board ultimately decided to remove a number of books, including “V for Vendetta” and a graphic novel version of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and is currently considering whether it should remove more, including mine. I have teamed up with Margaret Atwood, Jodi Picoult, Jacqueline Woodson and many other authors whose works have been targeted for removal from class reading lists in Leander. In conjunction with PEN America, a group that promotes free literary expression, we wrote a letter to the school district demanding that our books remain available to students. While our books may contain passages that are potentially uncomfortable, challenging or even offensive, exposure to our books is vital to expanding minds, affirming experiences, creating appreciation for the arts and building empathy — in short, respecting the adults that the students in Leander, Texas, will soon become. Schools ...
The U.S. May Never Hit the Herd Immunity Threshold. That’s OK.
Half of Americans have now received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine , and with children ages 12 to 15 now eligible for immunizations, the United States appears to be getting the coronavirus pandemic under control. But despite the tremendous progress, it’s still not clear that the nation will ever truly reach the herd immunity threshold — the point at which enough people in a population are immune to a pathogen to limit its spread. More important, we may not need to achieve that goal in order to escape the pandemic. Reaching the herd immunity threshold doesn’t guarantee that people cannot be infected by a pathogen. But the closer a community gets, the more transmission slows down, which benefits everyone. The current rate of new Covid-19 cases in the United States right now shows this phenomenon in action. Forty percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and the number of new cases of Covid-19 reported each day is now one-tenth of what it was at the pandemic’s apex in January. Last year many scientists suggested the herd immunity threshold would be reached when 60 to 70 percent of the population was immune, either because of vaccination or exposure to the virus. Scientists have now revised this number upward , to at least 80 percent. But there is no single, universal herd immunity threshold. The number depends on the transmissibility of a disease, its variants and the characteristics of the population it’s invading. Opinion Conversation Questions surrounding the Covid-19 vaccine and its rollout. When is it still important to wear a face mask? Three health experts address readers’ questions about mask guidelines. Who isn’t getting vaccinated, and why? Sema K. Sgaier, a researcher who uses data to address health problems, looks at the motivations of the unvaccinated. What can I do while my children are still unvaccinated? David Leonhardt writes about the difficult safety calculations families will face. ...
Editors’ Note; The Letters Editor and the Reader: Our Compact, Updated
Last September, as letters editor of The Times, I used some of this space for an essay called ''To the Reader,'' introducing myself and outlining the mission and the mechanics of the letters page. It seemed to strike a chord, and scores of readers wrote back. Many were pleased to learn that the anonymous editor had a name. Some were grateful for the advice; others were amused, acerbic, occasionally even dyspeptic. I had my 15 minutes of fame: a flurry of dissection on the Internet; an interview on TV that lasted, well, about 15 minutes. We printed two letters in response -- pro and con, naturally. But readers, new and old, send in questions (and even complaints!) about the letters page almost every day, and so a refresher course may help. This is an attempt to answer some frequently asked questions. I've submitted many letters, but none have been published. How can I improve my chances? Thanks largely to the ease and ubiquity of e-mail, letters submissions (and a lot besides) come in relentlessly, round the clock, from around the country and around the world, at a rate of roughly a thousand a day. My small staff and I try to read them all, but we can publish only about 15 letters a day. While the odds are long, some letter writers seem to know how to shorten them. Here are some tips: Write quickly, concisely and engagingly. We're in an age of fast-moving news and virtually instant reaction; letters about an especially timely topic often appear within a day or two (and almost always within a week). At times, some big stories generate hundreds of letters a day -- Sept. 11 (at one point we were getting hundreds an hour), the war in Iraq, politics, to name a few. When you write about a particularly contentious issue, bear in mind that many others do so as well. We can try to capture a sense of what's on readers' minds, but we can't be comprehensive. Your suggested length for letters is about 150 words. Why so short? (Or, as one writer put it after I ...
