Daily Archives: January 23, 2024

The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two companion cases,Relentless Inc. v. U.S. Dept. of CommerceandLoper Bright v. Raimondo on Wednesday. The bottom-line question before the court concerned whether Congress authorized the Department of Commerce to charge fishing businesses the cost of government-mandated observers on their rigs.

But answering that question requires the Supreme Court to first decide whether to overturn the landmark case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the namesake for the Chevron doctrine, which requires courts to defer to an agencys interpretation of an ambiguous statute so long as the agencys interpretation is reasonable. Thats what Wednesdays arguments were all about Chevron and whether the Supreme Court should do away with Chevron deference.

Here are your top takeaways from the hours-long arguments.

A blackletter law definition of Chevron deference is easy to provide. As noted above, it is a legal principle that requires courts to defer to an agencys reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. But Wednesdays hearing showed the contours of the doctrine are far from clear, with the justices jousting with the solicitor general, who represents the Department of Commerce, over the meaning of ambiguous.

A statute is ambiguous, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said, when the court has exhausted the tools of interpretation and hasnt found a single right answer. But as Justice Gorsuch noted in response, just the prior year, a government attorney claimed he could not define ambiguous.

The meaning of ambiguous is key to the doctrine of Chevron deference, which requires two steps. At step one, a court is to employ[] traditional tools of statutory construction to determine whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue. According to Chevron, [i]f the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter, and the court must enforce the clear meaning. But if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, then the court proceeds to step two, which requires the court to defer to an agencys interpretation so long as it reflects a permissible construction of the statute.

So defining ambiguous matters, several of the justices stressed, pointing to the confusion of the lower courts on the question something that would justify overturning Chevron.

Heading into Wednesday, court watchers knew three justices had already expressed disagreement with Chevron, including Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. To date, Gorsuch has made some of the most resounding attacks on Chevron deference. And while Gorsuch landed some blows during oral argument, it was Kavanaugh who seemed to throw haymaker after haymaker.

Kavanaugh returned to ground zero the Chevron decision and pushed the solicitor general on what he saw as an internal inconsistency in Chevron itself.

It related to footnote 9, he explained. That footnote provides that the judiciary is the final authority on issues of statutory construction and must reject administrative constructions which are contrary to clear congressional intent. Accordingly, the Chevron court continued, [i]f a court, employing traditional tools of statutory construction, ascertains that Congress had an intention on the precise question at issue, that intention is the law and must be given effect.

Referencing that footnote, Kavanaugh continued, if you use all the traditional tools of statutory interpretation, youll get an answer, and therefore, there is no step two and no deference. And we know you get an answer, the Trump appointee stressed, because, in cases where we dont have an agency involved and we use those same traditional tools, we get an answer.

Kavanaugh reiterated that point several times throughout the argument, namely that courts interpret statutes regularly, both ambiguous and unambiguous ones, implying that if judges did the tough work of statutory interpretation, there would be no step two deference required.

Another notable theme from Wednesday was the effect of reversing Chevron.

Soon after arguments in Relentless began, Justice Elena Kagan monopolized the questioning by peppering the fishing companys attorney with hypotheticals. What was most striking, though, were not the difficult scenarios posed, but her assertion that the court is very rarely in the situation in which youre talking where it thinks the law means X and instead it says Y, because of deference under Chevron. If it thinks it means X, under Chevron, as weve understood it and made clear and reigned it in a little bit over these last few years, its supposed to say X, Kagan continued. Chevron really only applies, the Obama appointee suggested, when the law runs out and theres a genuine ambiguity.

Kagans efforts to portray Chevron as a tie-breaker contrasted sharply with the sky-is-falling arguments the government presented. Overruling Chevron would shock the legal system, the solicitor general argued in her opening comments to the court. Yet later in her argument, she too seemingly acknowledged that many of the cases are resolved at the first step of Chevron, meaning deference is not even required. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to take seriously the worst-case-scenario prognoses presented by Chevrons champions.

Another common theme pushed, especially by Kagan, concerned the question of who decides? If there is an ambiguity, Kagan posed several times, do we want the agency or the courts to make the policy decision?

The correct answer, however, is neither: Congress should make policy decisions and draft statutes that provide clarity on the law. When Congress delegates authority to administrative agencies, such authority should similarly be clear.

Chevron deference has allowed Congress for far too long to avoid making tough calls, and while some of the justices seemed fine with that approach, it is inconsistent with our constitutional structure.

The prudential principle of stare decisis also featured heavily in oral arguments, with the government arguing it cuts against overturning the Chevron doctrine. Businesses need certainty, the solicitor general argued, and overturning Chevron would destroy the predictability of the law.

On the contrary, the fishing businesses attorneys stressed, what creates uncertainty is Chevron deference, which allows for each new administration to reverse prior regulations. Several justices seemed to share that viewpoint as well. Further, as several of the justices noted, the unworkability of a legal rule can justify its reversal, notwithstanding stare decisis and several of the exchanges on Wednesday showed Chevron deference, in its current iteration, is unworkable.

Another key exchange originated when Kagan pushed Paul Clement, attorney for the fishermen in Loper Bright, on humility.

Chevron is a doctrine of humility, Kagan began, noting that in that doctrine the court recognize[s] that there are some places where congressional direction has run out, and we think Congress would have wanted the agency to do something rather than the courts.

We accept that because thats the best reading of Congress and also because we know in our heart of hearts that Congress that agencies know things that courts do not, she continued.

On top of that, Kagan noted that overturning Chevron conflicted with the principle of stare decisis another doctrine of humility which, as she put it, says we dont willy-nilly reverse things unless theres a special justification. Then came her talking point: And youre saying blow up one doctrine of humility, blow up another doctrine of humility, and then expect anybody to think that the courts are acting like courts.

Kagans comments suggest she sought to sell Chevron to her fellow justices based on concerns over institutional integrity, while implying a vote to overturn that landmark case could only come from hubris.

Gorsuch, who filled the vacancy on the court left by Justice Antonin Scalias death and was having none of Kagans argument, called on his predecessors name in retort: One lesson of humility is [to] admit when youre wrong. Justice Scalia, who took Chevron, which nobody understood to include this two-step move as originally written, turned it into what we now know, and late in life, he came to regret that decision.

From oral argument, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh seem definite votes for reversing Chevron deference. Thomas, given his past writings, seems a likely vote for reversal. In one exchange, Justice Samuel Alito seemed to mirror much of Kavanaughs thinking, namely that the courts already interpret statutes in other areas, and can do so here too, without needing to defer to agencies.

Both Justices Roberts and Barrett were more coy in their questioning, creating uncertainty about their positions. Conversely Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson all favored the Chevron framework.

Bottom line: There is no sure-fire forecast of the outcome. But something Gorsuch said might provide the best insight into the likely result.

During one exchange, the solicitor general suggested that the court merely reiterate to the lower courts the importance of undertaking a robust step-one inquiry. Gorsuch pointedly protested that the court had already on multiple occasions reminded the lower courts of their responsibility under Chevron to conduct an extensive analysis of the statute to resolve the question prior to deferring to the agencies. What good is another reminder likely to do?

Right there could be the reason two undecided justices join to form a majority to overturn Chevron it is just not workable because the lower courts wont do the work required.

Disclosure: Margot Cleveland isOf Counselwith the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which representsRelentlessand which filed an amicus curiae brief inLoper Bright. The views expressed here are her own.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalists senior legal correspondent. Margots work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Privethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishmentsher dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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7 Takeaways From SCOTUS Case That Could Slay The Bureaucracy - The Federalist

Is Nikki Haley a creation of the Washington establishment and its consultant class, a regime-picked candidate being groomed as a possible replacement for Biden as Tucker Carlsonsuggestedlast week or does she really have broad electoral appeal?

One curious argument going around for the latter view is that a surprising number of Democrats and independents say theyre planning to vote for Haley in upcoming primaries. We already saw this last Monday at the Iowa caucuses, where almost half of Haleys supporters 43 percent said theydvote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

In one Iowa precinct, so many Democrats showed up and requested forms to change their party affiliation so they could participate in the caucus and vote for Haley, they ran out of forms.

Its shaping up to be the same story in New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Tuesday. New Hampshire has an open primary, meaning independents or unaffiliated voters (who make up 40 percent of all registered voters in the state) can cast ballots in the GOP primary election. Because the Democrat Party isnt holding a primary, and because New Hampshire voters had until Oct. 6 to change party registration, a lot of Democrats are expected to be voting in the Republican primary this week. Thousands of New Hampshire Democrats have reportedly changed their registration, either to unaffiliated or to Republican, and will likely be voting Tuesday.

Who will these non-Republicans being voting for? Nikki Haley, of course. One poll found that among Haley supportersonly 28 percent were Republicans, versus 53 percent who said they were Democrats. Another New Hampshire poll this week found that among voters who consider themselves left-leaning or moderate,Haley is beating Trump 56 to 27 percent. The same poll also found that a staggering 37 percent of likely Haley voters say their support for the former U.N. ambassador isnt so much a voteforHaley butagainstTrump.

Despite all this polling data, the argument among the pro-Haley crowd is that all this crossover primary voting shows how strong she might be in the general election, that she appeals to a broad voter base, and that her moderate views will expand the GOP tent in November. Haley herself has pushed this line,telling a reporter last month, If we get independents, if we get conservative Democrats, thats what the Republican Party should pursue. Our goal is to get as many people in the tent as we can. Stop pushing people away from the party. Instead, bring people in.

But will the new voters shes supposedly bringing in vote Republican in November? Probably not. Indeed, polling suggests that very few of the Democrats planning to vote for Haley next week in New Hampshire would choose her (much less Trump) over Biden in a two-way race. A sizeable number of them even admit theyre animated by anti-Trump sentiment, which means they likely support Democrat policies and priorities and arent coming over to the GOP side so much as infiltrating the Republican primary to skew the results against Trump.

Whats more, I suspect Democrats who are inclined to support Haley arent doing so for the same reasons the millions of blue-collar Democrats in the Rust Belt supported Trump in 2016. Back then, Democrat crossover voting in the general election had a lot to do with how very different Trump was from the other GOP candidates. He took policy positions sharply at odds with the Republican establishment, mercilessly criticized his Republican primary opponents, and upended what had appeared to be the GOP leadership consensus on a host of issues, from the border to trade to foreign policy.

In other words, it was all the ways Trump stoodin contrastto the Republican establishment and the Democrat establishment, for that matter that attracted so many disaffected Dems and disillusioned independents to his candidacy. Its why people who hadnt voted in a presidential election in 30 years came out to vote for him. Its also why he was able to expand the Republican partys tent by increasing the number of black and Hispanic voters.

In light of all that, consider whether the same thing is happening with Democrat support for Haley. Is she really bringing disaffected liberals into the GOP, or is she merely an establishment tool to draw out the primary season, sap the Trump campaign of resources it might otherwise devote to the general election, and give the appearance that Republicans havent really united behind Trump?

Biden and the Democrats, after all, would like nothing more than to spin a narrative that theres a sizeable cohort of Never Trump GOP voters out there yearning for a return to the moderate social views and hawkish neocon foreign policy of the Republican Party before Trump. But there isnt. Just take New Hampshire as an example. If you take away Democrat crossover voters and independents, her support among actual Republicans is too small to take her campaign seriously.

On Thursday, Haley tweeted out a montage of Trump praising her when she was serving his administration as U.N. ambassador, and added the comment: Why is Donald Trump spending so much time and energy attacking me? Because he knows Im a threat.

Maybe the explanation is simpler than that. Maybe Trump doesnt see Haley as a threat but as a stalking horse for Democrats, who make up most of her base of support. The other part of her base is of course the globalist elites whose neocon warmongering Haley consistently champions. The reality of Haleys candidacy in this regard was masterly summed up ina recent column by former Trump official John Ullyot: Unfortunately for Haley, this week her real base of political supporters is 3,798 miles away from New Hampshire in Davos, Switzerland, wheels-down in its private jets attending the annual self-congratulatory World Economic Forum confab of globalist elites.

The other big thing to note here is that given the polarization in our politics right now, and given the ideological sorting thats taken place over the last 15 years or so (and especially since 2016), theres a very real sense in which appealing to the other side is a liability, not an asset. Democrats have rushed so far to the left since Obama won the White House in 2008 that there are very few self-identified moderate or conservative Democrats, or even independents, left.

In this context, leftist Democrat support for a GOP candidate isnt exactly something to brag about. Its like Confederates bragging about Native American warlords being on their side during the Civil War. They joined the Confederates because theysupported slavery. Much the same could be said for courting voters who support abortion, transgenderism, endless foreign wars, and open borders.If they support your candidacy, maybe youre on the wrong side.

The blunt truth is that the much-vaunted independent vote shrinks every cycle, as the parties come more into alignment with their animating ideologies. When Haley talks about appealing to conservative Democrats, who exactly is she talking about? Those would be Trump supporters, who have already been brought into the GOP by Trump himself. Whats left are liberals, leftists, and neocons Haleys actual constituency.

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Haley Woos Her Real Constituents In New Hampshire: Democrats - The Federalist

A self-described Catholic accelerationist writer on X just earned 2 million views with his hot take on finding a traditional complementarian wife. Justin Murphy writes:

Men, just marry a hot lower-IQ girl from a rural church, one who is simple and practical and faithful.

You dont need or want impressive opinions about foreign films. A little retarded but I love em words spoken by many happy husbands (and many happy wives no less)

Like Mr. Murphy here, I, too, want bachelors to find hot wives. Trying to find a hot, faithful wife is already difficult in modern America. If you want to make it even harder, try deliberately eliminating smart women from your prospects. Imagine the struggle of young men attending competitive colleges. Attractive ladies everywhere and all too smart to date.

Diminishing the value of intelligence in wives in even the most complementarian arrangement is just really bad advice. Its not intelligence thats the real threat some men perceive (men who probably follow Murphys account), its the bossiness, godlessness, arrogance, and strong focus on career over home and family life that are often found in smart, educated women. Especially given the countrys limited dating pool of hot chicks, bachelors would do well to parse intelligence from other characteristics they dont like, because intelligence in a wife is advantageous, particularly to the man who has the brains and ambition to really make a splash in the world.

Everyone across the IQ bell curve deserves a chance at marital happiness, of course, and many near the tail ends do find it. Young men should stop and think, however, about the fruit Murphys advice might have yielded if given 200 years ago, when food and warmth in the winter depended on shrewd calculations and using ones intellect to make the most with what you have. Very stupid women would have jeopardized their familys welfare, not enhanced it.

Particularly in this globallyturbulent environment when we dont know whats coming next, intelligence is an asset that shouldnt be overlooked by bachelors. Im not saying one should marry for purely survivalist reasons far from it. But also consider who you want by your side when the proverbial crap hits the fan.

Still today, even with all our technology and food security, running a household well and forging a way through life requires some brain power. When making important life decisions, two non-stupid people will fare better than one or two who arent too bright. Husbands need wives who will not try to boss them around, but bring in another perspective and help identify solutions. But what about this? What about that? Could we approach it this way?

Intelligence doesnt always manifest in college diplomas or how fast a girl can multiply in her head. But men should know that even a nurturing wife who doesnt bring her creativity and problem-solving to bear on domestic affairs will create a home life that is bland and uncomfortable. This also takes practice, but simple things like where to put an end table, what color and fabric the drapes are, and what you choose to leave on your kitchen counter (you think Im exaggerating Im not), make a difference in how the home itself feels, whether it promotes calm and enjoyment or restlessness and irritation.

Emotional intelligence should also be prized in wives, especially if they hope to be mothers, as strife arises easily when children and stress are day-to-day realities. Emotional intelligence is correlated with general IQ.

Not to mention, an intelligent man would likely tire of having a wife who cant think even close to his level.As it turns out, research and likely your own observations of couples around you show that people of similar intelligence tend to match up with one another. This is not something that should be discouraged based on the mistaken idea that smart, educated women have all adopted character traits you dislike, such as bossiness, pretentiousness, and metropolitan taste (as opposed to the supposed tastes of women in rural churches) or high-powered career ambition.

If men begin to take this advice that dumber is better, it will have consequences for how women perceive a traditional complementarian role in fact removing even more ladies from the courtship pool. Turning low-IQ into a desirable trait promotes the very silly idea that if a wife stays home, she doesnt have to challenge her brain. This is false, and I can speak from personal experience. Smart women who think theyll be bored to death at home will certainly set their sights on full-time work and pass on the rich and challenging home life you just downplayed as a lifestyle for dimwits.

None of this is to say a womans intellectual weakness cant be vastly outweighed in marital happiness by her faithfulness, good nature, and love. It certainly can. We should encourage women to use the gifts Godgave them, whether intelligence or kindness or grace, to serve their families and the world.

Indeed, whats more important than finding a woman who is smart on paper is finding a woman who is wise. For he who finds wisdom finds life and obtains favor from theLord(Proverbs 8:35). Wisdom doesnt always correlate to intelligence, and in the end, the wise woman will support her husbands ambitions and well-being in ways a discontented and worldly Harvard graduate cannot.

Men, find yourselves hot wives, but dont let bad internet advice deceive you into thinking the one youre most compatible with isnt just as smart as you are.

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Men, Ignore The Bad Advice To Seek A 'Low-IQ' Wife - The Federalist

When regime-approved journalists arent pretending election illegalities dont exist, theyre fomenting unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Republican voters.

In the months leading up to and following the 2022 midterms, legacy media have run story after story decrying the avalanche of alleged threats levied against election workers by GOP voters, whom they cast as extremists seeking to disrupt democracy. Predictions of such widespread interference in the 2022 contests have (unsurprisingly) never materialized and numbers from President Bidens own Justice Department have undermined such a narrative. But nevertheless, the scaremongering from the Democracy Dies in Darkness crowd persists.

This seemingly coordinated effort has prompted Democrats in state legislatures throughout the country to base legislation on such election falsehoods. In Virginia, for example, a Democrat state senator filed a bill this month that would classify threatening an individual because of his roles as a current or former election official as a hate crime. The bill could also result in a net increase in periods of imprisonment for Virginians charged with crimes related to threatening election officials.

Threatening election workers is already explicitly prohibited under both Virginia and federal law. SB 364 is currently awaiting action from the Senate Courts of Justice Committee.

Despite Democrats insistence, evidence does not support the notion that election workers everywhere are facing constant threats from conservatives.

During hisAugust 2022 testimonybefore the U.S. Senate, Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the DOJ, claimed the agencys Election Threats Task Force which waslaunchedin July 2021 to address this alleged rise in threats against election workers had reviewed and assessed roughly 1,000 allegedly threatening and harassing communications directed toward election officials. But two days before Polites testimony, the DOJ issued apress releasedisclosing that only about 11 percent of those 1,000 communications met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation and that the remaining reported contacts did not provide a predication for further investigation. According to an agency press release a year later, the Justice Departments Election Threats Task Force had charged 14 cases involving threats against the election community and secured nine convictions as of Aug. 31, 2023.

Got that? In a country with a population of more than335 million people, only about 100 individuals were investigated by the DOJ for supposedly threatening election workers, and only 14 of them were officially charged.

Virginia isnt the only state where Democrats are pushing legislation based upon the medias phony election workers are under siege! narrative. Leftist legislators in Florida, Missouri, and Washington introduced bills in recent weeks seeking to increase penalties for those convicted of threatening election officials.

Even worse, some elected Republicans have lent credence to this baseless talking point by prioritizing Democrat proposals. GOP legislators in New Jersey and Nebraska joined their respective Democrat colleagues in cosponsoring legislation cracking down on threats towards election workers this year. In South Dakota, Secretary of State Monae Johnson, a Republican, is spearheading a bill that would deem Any person who, directly or indirectly, utters or addresses any threat or intimidation to an election official or election worker with the intent to improperly influence an election guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

The measure unanimously passed the Senate State Affairs Committee (8-0) on Wednesday, even after Deputy Secretary of State Tom Deadrick told senators that South Dakota hasnt yet experienced threats against poll workers.

Meanwhile, GOP governors such as Joe Lombardo of Nevada and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma signed respective bills last year into law that similarly increased penalties for threatening election officials. The Oklahoma bill was sponsored by three Republicans.

Other states that have passed laws inspired by Democrats election lies include California, Colorado, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont.

Much like Democrats war against basic election security measures like voter ID, their lying about widespread threats against election officials is a strategy aimed at bringing less not more integrity to U.S. elections.

Their strategy of using anecdotal incidents to cast a broader narrative about Republicans isnt just crafted to scare away independents and moderate voters from the GOP. Its also designed to dissuade conservatives from partaking in legitimate forms of election oversight, such as poll watching.

Ahead of the 2022 midterms, for example, the Republican National Committee recruitedmore than 70,000new poll watchers and workers ahead of Election Day to help deliver the election transparency that voters deserve. And of course, Democrats went berserk,parrotingthe same threat to democracy talking point.

Federal law already prohibits individuals from threatening and harassing election workers. Performative proposals to enhance state charges against such crimes are less about protecting people and more about furthering Democrats unsubstantiated talking points and scaring away conservatives engaged in the elections process.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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By 'Protecting Election Workers,' Democrats Mean Protecting Control Over Election Administration - The Federalist

Fresh off winning the national college football championship, University of Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh championed the right to life in the nations capital on Friday. Speaking before thousands of marchers gathered for the annual March for Life rally on the National Mall, Harbaugh introduced former NFL tight end Benjamin Watson.

Its a great example that youre setting. Its testimony for the sanctity of life, Harbaugh said to demonstrators crowded in the snow. Its a great day for a March! Its a great day. This is football weather!

Harbaugh gave the podium to Watson, who encouraged pro-lifers to advocate for unborn children in the new fight for life following the milestone Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Roe is done, Watson said, but we still live in a culture that knows not how to care for life.

Roe is done, Watson added, but abortion is still legal and thriving in too much of America.

This years gathering marks the second annual March for Life since the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization overturned the 1973 precedent claiming a constitutional right to kill preborn children. An analysis from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics last fall found about 32,000 babies have been saved in states that implemented the strictest abortion bans since the reversal of Roe in 2022.

Harbaugh expanded on his commitment to life in an interview on the sidelines of the rally.

Theres no right without the right to be born, Harbaugh said. No other rights matter if you dont have the right to be born.

Harbaugh also spoke about his teams religious revival after 70 players were baptized into Christianity this season.

Theres a spiritual mission to our team, Harbaugh said, and Im inspired by them.

The head football coach made headlines in summer 2022 just one month after the Dobbs decision when he pledged to raise any babies his staff or players couldnt.

Ive told [them] the same thing I tell my kids, the boys, the girls, same thing I tell our players, our staff members, Harbaugh said. I encourage them if they have a pregnancy that wasnt planned, to go through with it, go through with it. Let that unborn child be born. And if at that time, you dont feel like you can care for it, you dont have the means or the wherewithal, then Sarah and I will take that baby.

See the article here:

Harbaugh Champions Right To Life After Football Championship - The Federalist

The Houthis, Ansar Allah, [are] doing what [Monkey D.] Luffy would do, streamer Hasan Piker gleefully cheered during a recent livestream interview with a Yemeni influencer seemingly aligned with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, likening the Shia terrorist groups attacks on Western cargo ships in the Red Sea to the romantic idealism of anime characters locked in nautical combat against an evil global government.

If that sounds stupid, I promise it gets worse.

Timhouthi Chalamet, aka Rashid Al Haddad, the individual being interviewed by Piker, became an online sensation after sharing a TikTok of himself sailing around and walking aboard the Galaxy Leader, a Houthi-seized cargo ship.

In a show of solidarity with residents of the Gaza Strip, following Israels response to Hamas Oct. 7 attack, the Yemeni Houthis began firing upon and seizing ships in the Red Sea associated with the Jewish state or heading toward its ports. The U.S. and its allies subsequently provided the Houthis with an ultimatum: Stop the attacks, or else. Naturally, or else occurred, and according to The Wall Street Journal, the Western allies responded by striking Houthi weapons caches and bases of operation.

But this deals with the facts of the matter, not the ideologically poisoned topic at hand.

Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, Piker (who has millions of viewers across multiple platforms) has routinely used his time to run cover for Hamas and the atrocities carried out by radical Islamists.

[Read: Leftist Streamer Hasan Piker Justifies Hamas Baby Beheadings As Both Legal And Moral]

This interview was no different. It was nothing more than glad-handing the literal piracy of a probable terrorist whose cause is to cause destruction to the shipments that Americans have interest in until [Israel] stops bombing Gaza.

What is the mood in Yemen overall since America started bombing positions in Sanaa and other places? and What do you think about [how] American media, in general, keeps claiming that Yemeni militants are intercepting vessels is for completely belligerent reasons and not for Palestine? Piker asked.

Most of the time, Timhouthi would simply respond by expressing his solidarity with Palestine.

Pikers interview, along with the overwhelming majority of the discourse surrounding Israel and Hamas, is steeped in and poisoned by the faux messianic oppressor-oppressed worldview of leftism.

For these people, the world is cleanly split into good (oppressed) and bad (oppressor). Anything resembling Western civilization, as it is the hegemonic model for society and culture, is deemed oppressive. Anything not outwardly presenting as excellent within this system is deemed oppressed. No other factors are taken into account.

It is a profoundly unserious way of perceiving reality that presents real consequences. Its only mechanism for salvation correcting historical injustice is through revolution. The oppressed must cast off their oppressors shackles and implement their ideal version of society.

Ibram X. Kendi even acknowledged this when he wrote, The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

The goal isnt an end to whatever the intersectional coalition is currently bemoaning, such as so-called occupation, systemic racism, etc. The goal has always been to destroy the metaphysics through which people perceive reality and implement new hierarchies that allow for seamless friend-enemy distinctions to be made, subsequently facilitating perpetual animus until they can actually oppress (realistically, kill) those they hate.

Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.

Samuel Mangold-Lenett

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Oppressor Matrix Gives Leftists Like Hasan Piker Brain Worms - The Federalist

Have you ever met a college admissions officer? Who does he or she remind you of?

The answer is: someone who works at the DMV. Put nicely, theyre people whove done the best they could with limited options. Put cruelly, theyre midwits on a power trip. Perhaps a tad less cynical. A little skinnier. Glasses a bit higher end. But platonically speaking, college admissions officers and DMV workers emanate toward the same form: the ultimate low busybody.

DMV workers afflict the immense class of drivers with their mediocrity. Admissions officers victims are a smaller set people who go (or dont go because of them) to college. An even smaller set are those who go to colleges that matter, usually measured at about 200 or 300 schools in the mass field of 4,000 predatory loan farms that offer college degrees. And even smaller still are those who go to the best of the best, the places that supposedly mint the leaders of the Western World, the Ivy League.

All higher education institutions share more or less the same middle layer: admissions officers and an army of related bureaucrats that effectively run the institution. Stanford, for instance, has 15,750 non-teaching employees nearly double the amount of undergraduates at the school and almost seven times the number of faculty.

The responsibility for the destruction of the Ivy League lies not with wokeness nor diversity hires nor a naive donor class, but with the people who are supposed to be keeping the lights on. Middle management.

Robert Conquest, an eminent historian and funnily enough, a longtime research fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, coined three laws that go as follows:

Taken as a whole, these laws depict the decomposition process of institutions. They reveal why they inevitably swim left, at least in countries like America, where explicitly right-wing internal policy has been all but abandoned, even in supposedly right-wing organizations.

This covers the first two Conquest Laws, but its the third incomprehensible at first glance where the real magic lies. Its a modified Occams Razor: Institutions decline along the same leftward course so reliably that, when they arrive into our perceptive field, the simplest way (the best way) to understand them is to assume theyve been taken over by such parasites.

What hes saying, put simply, is that most operating non-reactionary institutions are zombies. They might look alive, going about their business making widgets, but in reality, they seek only to survive long enough to bite another institution and spread their disease.

Another way to think of this is POSIWID, an acronym used by systems engineers that stands for the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. Essentially, the idea is outcomes are a more reliable way to determine what a system is about than the stated intentions of the people who created it.

An example of POSIWID is what happens with most SaaS (software as a service) companies. Founders create SaaS companies because they earnestly want to make systems cheaper and more efficient. But what happens over time? Does their product actually make anything or anyone more efficient? If youve ever worked at a major corporation, you know the answer is almost never. Many corporations that adopt expensive software systems find that over time, things arent any more efficient than back when they used paper for everything. People work more hours in the day, and its all more expensive than it used to be.

What most SaaS companies do is make things less efficient while costing more money. This isnt because the company has failed, its because the company has succeeded in its true purpose, which is to serve as a blood feast for the enemies of its original founders those who want things to be more expensive and less efficient because they dont have the ability, knowledge, or desire to do better.

If theres ever been an institution more clearly run by a cabal of its enemies, its Americas elite universities. Harvards original 1636 mission statement was:

Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.

Quite obviously, Harvard exists today to do precisely the opposite. If we take this as its true mission, then its run by its worst enemies. But lets take a more practical view, which is that Harvards 1836 motto VERITAS is the purpose of the institution. Even then, it would appear that Harvard exists mostly, if not entirely, to obfuscate the truth, rather than reveal it. This is because its enemies, who run it, cant determine the truth and resent anyone who can.

I dont mean woke diversity hires like Claudine Gay, as she (in some ways) still benefits from VERITAS, at least insofar as speaking her truth as a black woman is concerned. Its also not cynical elitist donors looking for ways to one-up each other at dinner parties, nor is it even wokeness itself, with all its manipulative agitprop. The true enemies of Harvard University are exactly the people Conquest warned us about the midwit managers in charge of the institution itself: the admissions department.

DMV workers hate you. You know it. They know it. Its obvious. Similarly, the Harvard admissions department hates Harvard students. The elite students are (or were) the class enemies of the admissions officers, who are always middles, lower middles, or even proles. Thus the admissions officers did what middle managers always do to institutions over time, actively dismantling the reactionary rules that gave the institution its original form. There are no greater explicitly right-wing rules than extremely high admissions standards. They kept the Ivy League important for a long, long time, but inevitably the rot became too great, and the managers, the enemies of the institution of truth, found a way to destroy those standards and open the floodgates to their own class.

The result is not the mass elevation of proles to elite status, which is of course impossible, but chaos. And chaos has a certain look. It looks like this:

In a recent Atlantic article, the reader learns that members of ultra-elite Yale secret society Skull and Bones ripped down posters of old white guys and replaced them with woke apologia. Then you learn that Skull and Bones classes have been exclusively non-white since 2020. Then you learn that on a visit to Skull and Bones alumni George Bushs home, this new cohort confronted and denigrated the ex-president, accusing him of war crimes and racism.

An institution run by its enemies.

Chaos is not random. It has a look of its own. Its poop on the street. Its open-air drug markets. Its food deserts and bread lines. Chaos is not a sandwich. Its not the Chicago Bears. Its not just anything. Chaos is the shape of things when a better shape isnt forced, isnt mandated by people who care.

This is Conquests point about institutions. If we dont enforce reactionary right-wing rules such as elitism and meritocracy inside them, they wont just dissolve into nothing. They will become the undead, hellbent on turning every institution into hideous monsters like themselves. Its happened in almost every experiment with communism the world over. And its quite obviously happening here.

Theres a bitter irony in the fact that Conquest became famous as a historian for exposing the mass murder and atrocities when communists took over governments. But he was also a poet of some note, and aside from his famous laws about institutional decline, it was in verse where he explicitly warned what would happen when bureaucrats came to dominate academia:

Those teach who cant do runs the dictum, But for some even thats out of reach: They cant even teach so theyve picked em To teach other people to teach. Then alas for the next generation, For the pots fairly crackle with thorn. Where psychology meets education A terrible bullsh-t is born.

See the rest here:

How And Why The Ivy League Will Die - The Federalist

In Wednesdays oral arguments, the right-wing legal world reached an inflection point it had been working towards for decades.

The 6-3 supermajority conservative Supreme Court got the chance to scrap Chevron deference, a pillar of agency power. Chevron deference is the principle that when laws are silent or ambiguous on the particulars of how they should be enacted, courts should let regulatory agencies and their experts fill in that gap, as long as their interpretation is reasonable.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, whose past writing formed the spine of the briefs for those fighting to hobble agency power, abandoned any pretense at neutrality Wednesday in even his earliest colloquies with the lawyers.

Who decides? Gorsuch asked, interrupting the lawyer opposing the government to better make his argument for him. Is the judge persuaded at the end of the day, with proper deference given to a co-equal branch of government, or does the judge abdicate that responsibility and say, automatically, whatever the agency says wins?

Its not hard to tell where Gorsuch comes down, as he twists agency deference into a heads big, scary government wins, tails judges are hamstrung and ordinary citizens lose proposition.

Chevron has long been an obstacle to these right-wing forces efforts to unspool and defang regulation, to create an even friendlier legal environment for business. Unwinding it has been the driving thrust of the movement, the source of its endless funding and resources.

Gorsuch, son of a mother who boasted about eliminating Environmental Protection Agency regulations while she was the agencys Reagan administration chief, is the perfect face for the nearly successful effort and served as its spokesperson during the oral arguments. With his abstract libertarianism, the justice maintained that Chevron means the government never loses a surprise to those of us who have watched Biden agency actions from student debt forgiveness to power plant regulations fall at the hands of this Court. With Chevron in hand, Gorsuch waxed, the tyrannical government can run roughshod over Congress, judges and the citizens pitted against its might.

Flanked by his right-wing colleagues, many of whom were incubated in the same environments, Gorsuch is poised to lead the Court in overturning or at least, fatally weakening Chevron and fulfilling the promise for which they were chosen.

The right-wing justices strained credulity Wednesday in their argument that its the little guys who Chevron hurts, the everyday Americans who supposedly keep getting ensnared in an aggressive regulatory scheme.

This is what niggles at so many of the lower court judges: the immigrant, the veteran seeking his benefits, the social security disability applicant, who have no power to influence agencies, who will never capture them and whose interests are not the sorts of things on which people vote, Gorsuch bemoaned (switching out his earlier preference for the word alien for the more sympathetic immigrant). I didnt see a case cited perhaps I missed one where Chevron wound up benefiting those kinds of peoples.

He added that the other side, which makes the argument powerfully, asserts that Chevron has a disparate impact on different classes of persons.

Again, he leaves out certain details. This case, for example, is nominally about federally mandated monitors on commercial fishing vessels to prevent environmentally damaging overfishing. The lawyers for that side made much of the thin margins in the fishing industry, the struggle for those blue collar workers to keep afloat. If thats what this case was truly about, we would have heard much more about herring Wednesday and much less philosophical debate over agencies place in society.

This case, like all of those gunning for strong regulatory agencies, is backed by the much less pitiable interests of big business, powerful corporations who want to dump waste in rivers or underpay their workers without threat of government-inflicted punishment. These lowly, maligned fisherpeople are backed by the might of Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch. Lawyers working for the nonprofit he funds are arguing the case for free, hidden behind a shell law firm, according to New York Times reporting.

Gorsuch himself also has reported close and long-standing personal ties to an oil and gas billionaire who has given money to the Koch-funded right-wing nonprofit for whom these lawyers work.

The right-wing justices hit talking points that have grown very familiar to anyone who has listened to recent oral arguments.

Empowering agencies, they argued, shifts power to unelected agency staff from Congress, the peoples branch. If Congress had wanted to afford the agencies the option to interpret a given law in a range of possible ways, the lawmakers would have said so explicitly. This vein of argument has helped the conservatives spin up the major questions and nondelegation doctrines: the first of which demands a level of specificity rarely present in congressional delegations of power in matters of great economic and political significance, and the second of which holds that Congress cant outsource its legislative responsibilities. In this Courts hands, these largely made-up and embellished notions have become tools to beat back Obama and Biden administration actions the conservatives dont like.

What Gorsuch and co. dont say is that weakening agencies does not actually empower Congress. The legislature, hamstrung by the Senate filibuster, a polarized Congress and a lack of interest in policymaking on the right, can barely fund the government each year, much less pass a bill every time the Occupational Safety & Health Administration wants to tweak a factory workplace regulation or the Food and Drug Administration has to decide if a new product qualifies as a dietary supplement or a drug. It also lacks the expertise to do those things, given that much of what agencies do is highly technical. This is the reason justices devised Chevron in the 1980s the recognition that neither Congress, nor the courts, had the ability and expertise to speak to all questions in American federal policy.

What went unsaid in Wednesdays arguments is what a post-Chevron administrative state would look like. With a handicapped Congress and handcuffed agencies, the remaining branch the judiciary is itself the arbiter of what agencies can do.

Im worried about the courts becoming uber-legislators, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said. If were talking about a policy question there are several reasonable meanings why should courts make that determination? Couldnt we be in a world where Congress intended for the agency to actually decide which choice is best?

Gorsuch and his peers, completing the trifecta of disingenuousness, feigned great distress at the chaos Chevron had introduced into the legal system, as agency actions change based on which party currently holds the White House.

The reality is you say dont overrule Chevron because it would be a shock to the system but the reality of how this works is that Chevron itself ushers in shocks to the system every four or eight years when a new administration comes in, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, talking over Biden administration Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

The justices seemed less interested in Prelogars recurring point, that overturning Chevron could reopen dozens of Supreme Court cases and thousands of lower court cases that rest on the judges showing some level of deference to agencies experts. Doing away with Chevron would also, she reminded the Court, not sweep away the many cases arising from statutory ambiguity, and would deprive judges of a useful tool for deciding them which also serves as a check against judges acting in accordance with their own partisan preferences.

Jackson questioned the merits of stability itself.

I suppose judicial policy making is very stable but precisely because we are not accountable to the people and have lifetime appointments, she said.

Whether Gorsuchs bloodlust or Chief Justice John Roberts mealy-mouthed hand waving the Court barely uses Chevron deference anymore, he said the right-wing, decades-long quest to kill Chevron seems very near victory.

The issue were deciding here is more like the countless policy issues that are going to confront this country in the years and decades ahead, Justice Elena Kagan said. Will courts be able to decide these issues as to things they know nothing about, courts that are completely disconnected from the policy process, from the political process and that just dont have any expertise and experience in an area? Or are people in agencies going to do that? Thats what this case is about.

Read the original here:

Gorsuch Gleefully Leads Right-Wing Cohort In Fulfilling Their Federalist Society Quest - TPM