“It is not at all clear what the Biden administration is supposed to do in order to comply with the Court’s decision in Biden v. Texas. That decision suggests that the Department of Homeland Security committed some legal violation when it rescinded a Trump-era immigration policy, but it does not identify what that violation is. And it forces the administration to engage in sensitive negotiations with at least one foreign government without specifying what it needs to secure in those negotiations.
One of the most foundational principles of court decisions involving foreign policy is that judges should be extraordinarily reluctant to mess around with foreign affairs. The decision in Texas defies this principle, fundamentally reshaping the balance of power between judges and elected officials in the process.
The central issue in Texas is the Biden administration’s decision to terminate former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required many asylum seekers arriving at the United States’ southern border to stay in Mexico while they awaited a hearing on their asylum claim. Although the policy was formally ended under Biden, it hasn’t been in effect since March 2020, when the federal government imposed heightened restrictions on border crossings due to Covid-19.
Nevertheless, a Trump-appointed federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the policy, and he gave the administration exactly one week to do so. The Supreme Court’s order effectively requires the administration to comply with Kacsmaryk’s order, at least for now, with one vague and confusing modification.
Technically, this case is still on appeal. The Biden administration requested a stay of Kacsmaryk’s order while its appeal is pending. But the administration is now under an immediate obligation to comply with that order.
And the Supreme Court’s decision to deny the stay bodes very ill for the ultimate outcome of that appeal. The Court did not disclose every justice’s vote, but liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan did disclose that they dissent.”
…
“Kacsmaryk’s opinion, it should be noted, was dead wrong. It effectively claimed that a 1996 law required the federal government to implement the Remain in Mexico policy permanently. That policy didn’t even exist until 2019, so the upshot of Kacsmaryk’s opinion is that the government violated the law for nearly a quarter-century and no one noticed.
The Supreme Court does not go that far. Instead, it suggests that the Biden administration did not adequately explain why it chose to end the Remain in Mexico policy. In theory, that’s a solvable problem. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas could comply with the Supreme Court’s decision by issuing a new memo providing a more fleshed-out explanation.
Except that the Supreme Court does not even offer a hint as to why it deemed the Biden administration’s original explanation insufficient.”
…
” without an explanation as to how it could comply with the conservative justices’ understanding of the law, the administration is left with two untenable choices. The first is that it can try to guess what, exactly, the justices want them to say in a new memo explaining its policy. The second is to make what could be a futile effort to reinstate Trump’s policy.”
“Mexico is likely to have strong opinions about this abrupt policy shift. The original Remain in Mexico policy came about only after the United States secured Mexico’s cooperation, and it is unlikely that the United States could successfully reimplement this policy without Mexico’s permission.
So one of the upshots of the Supreme Court’s order is that the administration must now go, hat in hand, to the Mexican government and beg them to cooperate again.
For decades, the Supreme Court warned the judiciary to avoid “unwarranted judicial interference in the conduct of foreign policy.” Judges, the Court explained in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (2013), should be “particularly wary of impinging on the discretion of the Legislative and Executive Branches in managing foreign affairs.”
Apparently that’s all out the window now: Unless the Biden administration can figure out what it needs to put in a new memo explaining its policy, it must reopen diplomatic negotiations with Mexico (and possibly with Central American nations whose citizens are seeking asylum in the United States) in order to reinstate a policy that it does not agree with, and that it believes, in Mayorkas’s words, will leave untold numbers of immigrants without “stable access to housing, income, and safety.””
…
“The decision upends the balance of power between the elected branches and the judiciary. It gives a right-wing judge extraordinary power to supervise sensitive diplomatic negotiations. And it most likely forces the administration to open negotiations with Mexico, while the Mexican government knows full well that the administration can’t walk away from those negotiations without risking a contempt order.
With this order, Republican-appointed judges are claiming the power to direct US foreign policy — and don’t even feel obligated to explain themselves.”
“Apple’s aggressive lobbying efforts in Georgia, the extent of which were previously unreported, highlight a pattern that has played out with little national attention across the country this year: State lawmakers introduce bills that would force Apple and its fellow tech giant Google to give up some control over their mobile phone app stores. Then Apple, in particular, exerts intense pressure on lawmakers with promises of economic investment or threats to pull its money, and the legislation stalls.”
“In the final days before the Taliban finally managed to force their way into the central part of the city, many of Kandahar’s roadsides, rickshaws and storefronts were adorned with images of a famously brutal provincial police commander who had been assassinated three years before by the group.
The Taliban had loathed him like few others.
During his lifetime, Abdul Raziq Achakzai was accused by both international human rights organizations and Afghan-led ones of abuses including torture and extrajudicial killings. But during my visit of over a week between late July and early August, I heard significant nostalgia for both him and his harsh but allegedly effective ways.
“If Raziq had been here, the Taliban would not have dared to get this close to Kandahar” was a common refrain I heard from city inhabitants ranging from drivers to an adviser to the governor.”
…
“Unlike in Kabul or some other areas that were handed over after “negotiations” with local officials, people in Kandahar fought hard against the Taliban. A highly trained intelligence unit involved in the fighting known as “03” with men from other areas of the country also put up a major fight. But without U.S. air support, the city fell.”
“Six years ago, the European Union descended into in-fighting as it struggled to process asylum seekers fleeing war-torn Syria. Over 1 million refugees and migrants crossed the sea to reach Europe in 2015.
Officials vowed to reform, to create a system that would process and distribute asylum seekers efficiently across the Continent. Next time, they wanted to be prepared.
“support for the Republican presidential candidate has steadily grown by 12-to-15 percentage points since 2012 among white Americans who think there’s at least a moderate amount of anti-white discrimination in the U.S.”
“Meanwhile, the reverse is true among white Americans who don’t think there’s much anti-white discrimination: Support for the Republican presidential candidate has steadily dropped. The same pattern holds even after accounting for several factors that are also strongly correlated with presidential vote choice, such as partisanship, ideology and racial resentment.”
…
“In fact, white grievance politics now explains more than just vote choice. Sides, Vavreck and I found in a 2021 working paper that perceived anti-white discrimination increasingly predicts public opinion of people and policies connected to the former president, like Pence or repealing the Affordable Care Act. We also find that perceived anti-white discrimination is increasingly associated with Americans’ partisan attachments”
…
“These findings dovetail with the important research of Duke University political scientist Ashley Jardina. Her book, “White Identity Politics,” argues that white racial grievances more strongly influence political beliefs when white people perceive themselves as under threat, which is one reason why Trump was so effective in his many appeals to the cultural, economic and physical threats that they were supposedly facing. And Republican attacks on critical race theory follow the same playbook, framing its teachings as an anti-white “existential threat to the United States.””
“There have been 435 seats in the House for so long now that it might seem as if the Founding Fathers had foreseen it as a natural ceiling for the chamber’s size. But that isn’t the case: 435 is entirely arbitrary. The House arrived at that number because of political expediency — and it has stayed there because of it, too.
Up until 1910, when the chamber expanded from 391 to 435 seats,4 the size of the House had experienced a mostly unchecked pattern of growth. Only once, after the 1840 census, did the number of seats in the House not increase; 1910, however, marked the last time the House grew, even though the U.S. population has more than tripled since then, from over 90 million in 1910 to over 330 million today.”
…
“In 1910, the largest state, New York, had about 9 million more people than the smallest — that is, least populous — state, Nevada. But today, the largest state, California, has nearly 39 million more people than the smallest, Wyoming.
This staggering gap makes it far more likely for states to end up with wildly unequal district populations thanks to the Constitution’s requirement that each state have at least one congressional district. The Supreme Court requires districts to have equal populations, but this applies only to the districts within a state — not between states. So even though the average House district will have just over 760,000 people after this round of reapportionment, each state’s average district will vary quite a bit, especially as states get smaller in size.
Take the smallest and largest states with only one representative: Wyoming and Delaware, respectively. Wyoming, with just under 578,000 people, winds up overrepresented because it’s guaranteed a seat despite falling well short of that 760,000 national average. Conversely, Delaware has nearly 991,000 people, which leaves it underrepresented because it isn’t quite large enough to earn a second seat. Meanwhile, Montana has only about 95,000 more people than Delaware, but that’s enough for the apportionment formula to eke out a second seat, meaning Montana will have two districts to Delaware’s one and an average district size of just over 542,000, making its constituents the most represented in the country.
State lines make perfectly equal districts across the country impossible, but there’s no question that increasing the size of the House would help reduce how unequal district sizes among states have become. Expanding the House could also make districts smaller, which in turn could help with representation, as the average number of people living in a congressional district has grown by about 520,000 people from 1920 to 2020 — three times more than the total shift from 1790 to 1910.”
…
“each member of the House represents far more people on average than legislators in most other large, developed — or developing — democracies.”
…
“Regardless of the potential benefits of a bigger House, though, there would likely be steep opposition to expanding it because of some of the tradeoffs — and potential downsides — involved. For instance, a larger House would by necessity mean a bigger government and more spending. House members make $174,000 per year, and after five years of service they are also eligible for a pension. Combine that with new staff, new construction for office space, perhaps even a roomier House chamber and you’re talking about many millions or even billions of dollars.
There could also be consequences for governing, too, such as more gridlock and partisanship. “By increasing the number of players who have to be satisfied in the legislative game, you make arriving at the kind of majorities — or, in most cases, supermajorities — that you need to pass legislation more difficult,””
…
“a bigger House might produce fewer competitive seats thanks to partisan sorting and fewer representatives open to compromise. “You would have even less of an incentive as an individual member of Congress to try to do things on a bipartisan basis,” said Overby, “because your district would be increasingly homogeneous — increasingly Democratic or increasingly Republican.””
“some states legalized it, hoping to put an end to the black market. But legalization hasn’t ended the violence.
Why? Because many states impose so many unnecessary rules.
California is one of the worst.
“The illicit market is approximately two to three times the size of the legal market,” says cannabis industry lawyer Tom Howard in my new video.
Illegal sales thrive in California because politicians make distribution pointlessly difficult.
Howard advises clients who want to open a dispensary, “You have to have a $50,000 safe, a $200,000 security system, and a $100,000 consultant help you make an 800-page application.”
Every single plant must be weighed, tagged, and tracked from seed to sale.
This information is “not being used to benefit anybody,” complains grower Jason Downs. “It’s just a waste of everybody’s time, money.”
While legal sellers struggle, clueless California Gov. Gavin Newsom complains: “Illegal cannabis grows! They’re getting worse, not better.”
His solution: California taxpayers now will spend $100 million to bail them out!”
…
“Illinois’ rules are probably the worst.
“Only ‘social equity veterans’ in Illinois can get a license,” explains Howard. In other words, new licenses are supposed to go to prior “victims of the drug war.”
But the bureaucrats’ rules are so complex that a full year after legalization, zero new licenses have been issued.
Meanwhile, politically connected people grabbed every existing license.
One billionaire from the Wrigley gum family “paid $155 million for six dispensary licenses,” says Howard. Illinois is “creating a cartel.””
…
“Other states have bad rules, too.
“Florida and Arizona are millionaires’ clubs,” says Howard. “You have to not only grow it; you have to be able to produce it and process it. You have to own your own dispensary. If you have $40 or $50 million, it’s great.”
Massachusetts requires all dispensaries to black out windows lest anyone see the marijuana. Stores must also check everyone’s IDs multiple times.
Legalization doesn’t have to be stupid.
Oregon and Colorado have reasonable rules, and in Oklahoma, “anyone can get a cannabis license,” says Howard, “provided you’ve lived in Oklahoma for two years.”
The result?
“You get a lot more innovation—more entrepreneurs coming into market. Some go out of business, and some do very well….It’s free market capitalism.”