In the lay-off case we have two opinions, one going along from Sotomayor and one saying no from Jackson. Since they are both nearly always right, some thought is required. Sotomayor has obviously been there a lot longer, and is fine with 'the real issue isn't actually before us just yet' while Jackson is all 'wtf are you talking about, look at what is actually going on here!'
It's completely wild that the SC does not view it as an irreparable harm to illegally deprive people of a livelihood for months or years (or, say, to be transported to South Sudan) while the suit wends it's way through the system. It takes some terminal Econ 101 brain to arrive at that conclusion.
Does OBBB do anything to retroactively justify any of the DOGE cuts? Did it formally terminate USAID?
They limited the scope of district court injunctions. As Supreme Court, they can do anything they please.
3.1 Even if an action is going to cause irreparable harm, you don't get an injunction where you can't prove likelihood of success on the merits.
3.2 I haven't checked. But the government surely knows, and they'll be filing suggestions of mootness in various cases all week if this is so.
5: IANAL but the fact that one or more lower courts thought there was a likelihood of success suggests it would be helpful for the SC to at least explain why they are mistaken
Great thread from Senator Whitehouse on KBJ and SCOTUS
https://bsky.app/profile/whitehouse.senate.gov/post/3ltk652nanc2a
7: Anne Applebaum said something along the lines of: part of fighting fascism is leaning in to the popular understanding of the Constitution rather than the technical precedents.
7: Whitehouse wrapping with the last line from "Lift Every Voice and Sing" is a nice touch.
It takes some terminal Econ 101 brain to arrive at that conclusion.
Isn't the simpler explanation that they're Republican and Trump partisans and think that whatever the Republicans want to do is either fine on a permanent basis or fine for as long as they can possibly delay ruling against it (in cases where the justification is too thin for all of the current majority to go along with)?
Yeah, Econ 101 includes the time value of money. Or, you know, losing your house is pretty comprehensible to anyone. They just don't care.
Senator Whitehouse's thread is interesting but hard to read. I don't understand why he choose to use so many rhetorical questions instead of just making statements. Or maybe I'm just out of practice reading long threads, since Bluesky doesn't do them as much as Twitter did.
3,10,11: Somehow it is both tediously obvious but also strangely difficult -- even in this forum -- to acknowledge that we are dealing with a consistent and coherent intellectual framework, and the word for it is "fascism."
To say about SCOTUS ...
They just don't care.
... lacks a certain precision. It's like saying the framers of the Nuremberg Laws didn't care about the rights of the Jews.
Yes, it's more precise to say they're malevolent than uncaring.
The end of Whitehouse's thread steps into the shaky territory of calling in an historical figure to support a contemporary position.
(P.S. Harlan was alone in dissent, too, and that aged well.)
Which is true for Plessy. Harlan also dissented in Wong Kim Ark, though he wasn't alone on that one, and that didn't age well.
And in his Plessy dissent, Harlan wrote:
There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the state and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race.
History's kind of messy is all I'm saying.
Yeah, the record of anti-Asian racism is bleak and way underappreciated, imo, by the population at large.