Category Archives: Libertarian

A Google Deep Mind project (Democratic AI) ended up redistributing virtual wealth in ways that were voted as the most popular methods, according to a vote taken by human players participating in an online game-based experiment.

The research was based on an algorithm that learned from different models of human behavior via an online investment game. Participants (biological and silicon) had to decide whether to keep or give away monetary gains from a communal pot. The AI ended up gradually redistributing the wealth it won and redressing some of the imbalances in economic fortunes among the players. But it achieved this in a way considered by participants to be the fairest way possible.

The reason for the research was not, as our clickbait headline suggests, to prove that computers, software, or AI researchers are inherently socialists but instead to develop better value alignment between self-learning computer models and their human bosses. Because theres a wide range of behaviors exhibited by humans, an AI should be able to align its behavior in such a way that it appeals, on balance, to a majority of the population.

The researchers aimed to maximize a democratic objective: to design policies that humans prefer and thus will vote to implement in an [] election.

The study measured human monetary contributions during the game under three redistribution principles: strict egalitarian, libertarian and liberal egalitarian. In political; terms, these might translate into socialism, free market-ism, and social democracy hard left, hard right, and somewhere in between.

The egalitarian model divided funds equally between players regardless of their contribution, while the libertarian returned a payout proportional to the monetary contribution those with the most gained the most. The liberal egalitarian measured contributions proportional to any inherent imbalance in wealth that players entered the game with.

It was found that generally, humans disliked the extremes of each model. The pure egalitarian model was seen as aggressively taxing the wealthiest and supporting freeloaders. The libertarian model saw money flow to the wealthiest disproportionately. Researchers wanted to know whether an AI system could design a mechanism that humans preferred over these alternatives and that would be more acceptable than the liberal egalitarian modeling that one might think was the natural middle ground.

The AI was trained to imitate behavior during the game, voting the same way as human players over the course of many rounds. The model was optimized using deep RL (reinforcement learning) and then took redistribution decisions with a new group of human players. Players voted on the AIs suggestions for redistribution. Iterating on these processes obtained a mechanism that we call the Human Centred Redistribution Mechanism, the papers authors state.

Throughout the experiments, radical redistribution of wealth from the top down was found to be unpopular as it eventually led to the wealthiest players not wishing to contribute collectively at all. Nor were those at the bottom of the virtual economic pile happy with seeing just a few players gain disproportionally.

The report states, the redistribution policy that humans prefer is neither one that shares out public funds equally, nor one that tries to speak only to the interests of a majority of less well-endowed players.

Smart AI systems learning from the full gamut of human behaviors mean systems can be trained to satisfy what researchers called a democratic objective, that is, to find the most popular way forward. The AIs winning model was voted the best by a few percentage points, beating the liberal egalitarian, pure egalitarian, and pure libertarian. In brief, the AI found a better compromise than any humans could devise by simply learning to imitate all available human behavior.

AIs learning from human behavior is a fiercely complex area of study, and some of the more public experiments have ended in, at best, derision. Earlier experiments, like the very public disgrace of the Microsoft Twitter personality, ended badly. Given a cross-section of the cauldron of human opinion expressed by an opaque algorithm, Tay learned to be racist, sexist, and generally unhinged after a few hours. As a Microsoft spokesperson told CNN at the time, [Tay] is as much a social and cultural experiment, as it is technical.

When biased learning materials are given to an AI, it simply recreates that bias and, in some notable cases, exaggerates by being given similar input often. However, improving methods of machine learning are helping matters, as is the awareness of inherent human bias in just about every expression and utterance. Economics is one area where the nuances of human behavior can literally be quantified and, therefore, are a fertile ground for research.

In 50 years, will we refer to AIs decision-making abilities to decide human affairs? Having AIs making decisions over human conduct is a standard trope in science fiction, where silicon rulers can be fully benign (The Polity series of books, by Neal Asher, for example) or something very much more malevolent (Terminator et al.). If there is a better way that pleases most of the people most of the time, it may have just germinated.

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The AI algorithms that believe in equality, from Google's Deep Mind - TechHQ

Is there a pro-freedom progressivism? Im not certain, but Matthew Yglesias sure seems to think so. In the past hour, he has tweeted the following:

1. Criticism of a Really outrageous attack on free speech by law enforcement in Arizona.

2. Argued Lets make it easier to get permits to build houses An hour earlier he made the pitch more overtly political, Own Ron DeSantis by making it easier to build houses in California.

3. Argued Lets make clean energy deployment easier

4. Argued Lets increase the supply of doctors and other medical professionals by weakening the AMA cartel.

5. Five hours ago he suggested that freedom was the best way to sell the pro-choice argument:

As Ive said many times, theres no such thing as public opinion. It depends how you frame the question. I.e., the question creates the opinion.

6. Six hours ago, he tweeted, YIMBY is about freedom, not apartment buildings.

7. Twenty hours ago he tweeted on vaccines and nuclear power. In both areas he has written more extensive essays, sometimes advocating the removal of regulatory barriers that slow the development of vaccines and prevent the construction of (low carbon) nuclear power plants.

Matt Yglesias is certainly not a libertarian. But hes also not a typical progressive. Rather he advocates something called popularism, which is roughly the achievement of progressive goals via popular means (and in some cases compromises.) This differs from populism, which often aims at non-progressive policy goals such as trade barriers, immigration barriers, and the weakening of criminal justice protections. In Yglesiass view, unpopular woke excesses actually end up hurting the progressive cause.

I find it interesting that Yglesias often sees the freedom message as a way of making public policies more palatable. He spends part of the year in Texas, and seems to have a pretty good grasp of how middle Americans think, especially when compared to the typical coastal progressive.

PS. If I were pro-life, Id be infuriated by this misleading and manipulative video. But as Yglesias correctly suggests, it is probably quite effective.

PPS. Warning: If progressives keep using the freedom message because it works, they might eventually find themselves beginning to believe in freedom. Handle with care!

Here is the original post:

Popularism and freedom - Econlib

A broken clock is right twice a doomsday, I suppose.

After a ground-breaking Supreme Court Term eviscerating precedent and cementing novel legal theories invented from whole cloth in my own lifetime, many see the conservative legal movement triumphant. But Harvard Law Schools arch-conservative Adrian Vermeule took to the Washington Post to throw some water on that opinion.

Rather than the triumph of conservative legal thought, Vermeule is left wondering what the conservative legal movement even means:

But that framing rests on an error: In reality, as this case [West Virginia v. EPA] makes clear, there is no conservative legal movement, at least if legal conservatism is defined by jurisprudential methods rather than a collection of results.

Yeah well, thats not wrong.

Hes just pointing out what everyone (a) not in on the grift or (b) possessed of two working brain cells has said since at least the 1980s. But Vermeule is now starting to actually question the course of the movement hes danced with for decades. Its cute the same way you enjoy watching a child say, Hey, I dont think any of those three cards are the one I picked!

The conservative legal movement distinguishes itself from other approaches by declaring itself united not around results-oriented jurisprudence but rather around a set of supposedly neutral methods for interpreting legal texts. Conservative jurisprudence again, as advertised has four pillars: originalism, textualism, traditionalism and judicial restraint. Although different conservatives emphasize one or the other approach, all are staples of Federalist Society events and lauded in the opinions of conservative justices.

The use of the phrase as advertised is almost tragically on point. Conservative legal theory is and has always been a public relations campaign designed to dupe ordinary folks into thinking radical judicial activism is ordained by some connection to mythologized and infallible Framers. But at all times the movements lodestone remained whatever aligned with the policy preferences of the contemporary Republican Party.

When semantic games got there, its a highly stylized brand of textualism. Failing that, it beckoned to a cherry-picked account of the original public meaning at the Founding. When the history of the Founding proved inconvenient, they started basically only for gun laws reconfiguring originalism around the public meaning four score and seven years after the fact. Consistency is the hobgoblin of honest actors, and the conservative legal movement jettisoned those folks years ago for getting high on their own supply and actually believing this stuff.

But grounding the partisanship in a theory that sounds superficially reasonable bestowed a quasi-apolitical shield.

To Vermeules credit hes been complaining about the conservative legal movement for a while now. Though from his perspective, the big problem is that concepts like originalism arent compatible with his integralist worldview that the United States should junk the Constitution in favor of the eventual formation of the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and ultimately the world government required by natural law. Basically a transnational government of vaguely Catholic authoritarianism.

Which makes this jeremiad kind of rich: a guy who publicly dumps on originalism as an inconvenience on the road to theocracy is suddenly annoyed that conservatives dont seem moored to originalism?

So whats going on here?

If there is no conservative legal movement, what is there? The answer is not mysterious: There is a libertarian legal movement, a consistent opponent of federal regulation, supported and rationalized by an entrenched network of richly funded, quasi-academic and advocacy institutions in essence, a resurrection of the Liberty League of the 1930s.

Ah, the Court hiding beneath all these artificial theories is simply too libertarian!

Frankly, its impossible to watch the Supreme Court write the Establishment Clause out of existence and think thats the result of a libertarian legal movement. Barry Goldwater, Americas proto-libertarian was outspokenly pro-choice and yet we got Dobbs, an opinion so steeped in pre-Founding traditionalism that it cited witch hunters approvingly. These are the opinions that lay the groundwork for Vermeules preferred order.

But originalism and textualism are conceits pliable enough to open the door to religio-fascism, but also invite too much championing the individual to the party to reliably get all the way there.

Unless hes wildly naive, Vermeule isnt really offended that this Court treats established conservative legal theories as playthings as much as he sees an opening to pierce the apolitical veil protecting jurists he considers too libertarian.And if accepted legal theories are a mirage wielded by right-wingers who dont really appreciate a good auto-da-f, maybe this is a chance for conservatives to try his own common-good constitutionalism on for size. Its just as intellectually bankrupt but its just a little harder to be one of those RINOs justifying heliocentrism!

Because Im not buying that the guy who titles his works Beyond Originalism is really shedding tears that the Court isnt appropriately deferential to original public meaning and no one else should either.

But Vermeules specifically writing for the audience that bought into originalism in the first place, so he knows hes got a bunch of easy marks.

There is no conservative legal movement [Washington Post]

Earlier: Hey, Can Someone At Harvard Law School Check In On Adrian Vermeule?

Joe Patriceis a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free toemail any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him onTwitterif youre interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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Arch-Conservative Law Professor Starting To Suspect Conservative Legal Movement Just A Bunch Of Pseudo-Law Made Up For Partisan Goals - Above the Law

Just as villains can be more compelling than heroes, are dissidents more intriguing than the leaders of history?

Ive been interested, in some ways, in the history of losers, Justus Doenecke tells The American Conservative.

Doenecke, who taught at New College of Florida from 1969 to 2005, made his reputation in the historical profession through an open-minded reappraisal of arguably the most prominent group of American losers in the twentieth century: the pre-World War II anti-interventionists. These were the middle Americans who saw Franklin Roosevelts foreign policy as the path to bankruptcy, chronic overseas war, and presidential dictatorship.

Its a story he was practically born to narrate.

I grew up in Brooklyn. People always think of New York as very liberal, but there are pockets of extreme conservatives, in fact you would call them reactionaries, Doenecke explained. My father was a building estimator, and he hated Roosevelt. He didnt like the regulations of the New Deal, he didnt like trade unions. You know, son of a bitch ruined America. And he had all these conspiracy theories. Every single book that came out trying to prove that Franklin Roosevelt planned the Pearl Harbor attack, my father owned.

Emerging from this heavy dose of Old Right upbringing, where his parents worshiped the newspaper columns of Westbrook Pegler and George Sokolsky, Doenecke sought to prove that the America First movement was not the bund of kooks, knaves, and antisemites theyd been smeared as ever since the Eastern press saw fit to label them isolationists.

In a series of extensively researched and balanced books, starting with Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era (1979) and culminating in Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941 (2000), Doenecke found the anti-interventionists to be astute American patriots, with coherent strategy and cogent criticism of Roosevelts path to war.

In the words of libertarian scholar Ralph Raico, Students of the greatest antiwar movement in American history, revisionists and nonrevisionists alike, are permanently in Justus Doeneckes debt.

Although he hasnt written on them as extensively, Doeneckes interest in losers extends to the Confederacy and the Loyalists of the Revolutionary War. When I first started teaching at New College I taught a course called Dissent in American History. Im also interested in all kinds of socialist and left-wing groups for that reason too. Things that deviate from the vital center, in a way, he said.

This focus on nonconformity is the through-line between his previous work and his newest arrival, More Precious Than Peace: A New History of America in World War I, published in March. Its the anticipated sequel to his 2011 book, Nothing Less than War: A New History of Americas Entry into World War I. The first book covers the years 1914-1917 and the second 1917-1918.

The past decade has seen numerous books related to the First World War published in conjunction with its centennial. What separates Doeneckes from its predecessors is his willingness to give a podium to dissent.

As one who has spent much of his career examining Americans who took a dim view of U.S. foreign policy from 1931 to the early Cold War, I am now continuing to examine foes of U.S. intervention, this time scrutinizing their opposition to the way the nation waged World War I, he writes in the introduction.

Almost every page is interspersed with opinions and objections from a broad cast of characters challenging the Woodrow Wilson administration as either too lenient or too harsh: the newspaper chain of iconoclast tycoon William Randolph Hearst; Socialist and New York City mayoral candidate Morris Hillquit; former president and Wilsons bitter bte noir Theodore Roosevelt; prolific and lifelong Germanophile George Sylvester Viereck; Wisconsin progressive and anti-imperialist Senator Robert La Follette; and magazine editor George Harvey, whose loathing of the German nation crossed into the genocidal.

This uproarious chorus reminds the reader that no public policy is made in a vacuum. From the enforcement of the Espionage and Sedition Acts to the pronouncement of war aims and his Fourteen Points, Woodrow Wilson wasnt having a one-way conversation but was both reacting to and attempting to lead a contentious and discordant body politic.

More than half the book concentrates on the homefront and domestic developments, the most engrossing of which is the American publics shift from being unsure of its participation in the European war to a frothing hysteria that could be satisfied with nothing less than unconditional surrender.

Despite a lopsided vote in favor of waronly fifty congressmen and six senators voted againstthere was uncertainty about how much involvement voters would countenance, and even whether the United States would meet Germany on the field of battle. Three out of every ten army conscripts were illiterate, many having no idea who the Kaiser was. When someone from the War Department appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to request the first appropriations for an American Expeditionary Force, Majority Leader Thomas S. Martin of Virginia (who voted for war) responded, Good Lord! You arent going to send soldiers over there, are you?

But as spring turned to summer, censorship carefully curtailed access to information through propaganda organs like George Creels Committee on Public Information and new laws like the Espionage Act of 1917. As Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler approvingly told his faculty, What had been tolerated before became intolerable now. What had been wrongheadedness is now sedition.

Postmaster General Albert Burleson, universally considered a man of profound ignorance, was given unilateral authority to decide what material constituted obstruction of the war effort and the ability to suspend it from second-class mailing rates; that way, actual publication was not barred but circulation would be impractical beyond a small local area. Thus the Wilson administration successfully shuttered the most popular socialist, Irish-American, and German-language dailies and journals without requiring armed men to smash printing presses.

Public attention was mobilized by semi-private organizations like the American Defense Society and the American Protective League, which Doenecke says have been neglected by historians and secondary sources. These quasi-military structures, led by elite members of business and former politicians, possessed hundreds of thousands of members each. The former was a project of Theodore Roosevelt, the latter nurtured by Wilsons Attorney General Thomas Gregory.

Vigilantism wasnt uncommon. Ordinary citizens rounded up draft dodgers (slacker raids), tapped phones, rifled bank accounts and medical records, and even entered neighbors homes in search of spies and Teutonic agents. In April 1918, when a German-born baker in Illinois was assaulted by a group of drunks who wrapped him in the American flag and hanged him, the Washington Post responded that enemy propaganda must be stopped, even if a few lynchings may occur. More did occur.

In many ways, the domestic repression of World War I was more participatory and grassroots than during any other conflict in American history.

Critical industries were cartelized and economically directed out of Washington, D.C., although in a much more rudimentary way than would occur during World War II. Doenecke relates a decision where, in order to cope with a coal shortage, Harry Garfield, son of the assassinated president and designated fuel administrator, decreed the closure of all non-essential factories east of the Mississippi River for a week in January 1918.

It was a heyday for political demagoguery. Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico, later of Teapot Dome infamy, feared that if the Germans reached Paris, theyaccompanied by 15 million Mexicanswould next reach Chicago and cut your great United States in two. Later on, Senator William S. Kenyon joked that if the Germans captured New York, his fellow Iowans would rejoice.

Even Warren G. Harding, known today as a laissez-faire conservative, said in August 1917, Not only does this country need a dictator, but in my opinion is sure to have one before the war goes much further.

By October 1918, when Wilson was attempting to hammer out an armistice based on his Fourteen Points and a vision of peace without victory, most newspaper editors were clamoring for unconditional surrender even if it meant driving the Boche all the way to Berlin.

On the military side, Doenecke covers all bases in this well-rounded account. General Black Jack Pershing competes with Wilson as the predominant figure in the last third of the book, which details both his determination to keep American doughboys independent of the European command structure and his inability to adapt to mechanized warfare. An early chapter summarizes the war at sea against German U-boats, while two enthralling chapters relate the United States extreme ineptitude and lack of perception toward the Russian Revolution and our subsequent decision to intervene militarily. This was the most difficult section to write, says Doenecke, because Russia is just a tangle of confusion.

The book concludes with the armistice on the Western front in November 1918. Although the negotiations at Versailles and Wilsons final pitch for the League of Nations are left up to other authors, the closing tone leaves no ambiguity of what direction the peace will take.

It has become a meme among portions of the political right, particularly libertarians, to label Woodrow Wilson the worst president, the man responsible for every ill of the twentieth century. Contemporaries both left and right, militarist and pacifist, expose this conclusion as simplistic and exaggerated.

I would say of people who would have a chance of being elected president, who would get enough mass support, I think Wilson far and away stands above the others, Doenecke tells TAC, eliminating non-viable alternatives he personally admires such as Robert La Follette and Frank Cobb, chief editorial writer for the New York World.

Its difficult to argue with his assessment. Charles Evans Hughes, the bearded iceberg and Wilsons 1916 opponent, had no experience or interest in diplomatic matters; Theodore Roosevelt favored outright martial law and would have gone much farther than Wilson toward a presidential despotism; Henry Cabot Lodge, the cornerstone of Republican foreign policy in the U.S. Senate, favored a Carthaginian peace as harshly as Lloyd George or Clemenceau.

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The reality of these circumstances is something any serious libertarian or conservative critic must address when reassessing the Wilson presidency.

Like in all his past work, Doeneckes method of historiography leans heavily toward the descriptive, eschewing any attempt to psychoanalyze or mentally deconstruct people nearly a century after their deaths. Ive never been taken with psychohistory at all. There are too many variables, too many things we dont know. What do we know about a person between the ages of three to five, for example? he asks. You can only go so far with this kind of stuff.

Most of my work is sheer narrative. And in that sense Im somewhat old-fashioned. I think narrative history is the only way were going to recover the discipline of history from the maelstrom it seems to be in now. And the most popular history, the history that the lay-person reads, is narrative history, he concludes. They want the story.

Go here to see the original:

The Dean of Non-Interventionism - The American Conservative

Below are a selection of responses from the candidates who filled out Ballotpedias Candidate Connection survey since July 1, 2022. To read each candidates full responses, click their name at the bottom of the article.

AJ Exner is running for election to the Missouri House of Representatives to represent District 135 and the Republican primary is on Aug. 2. Heres how Exner responded to the question What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I am passionate about Education, our law enforcement, and finding ways to alleviate the pressures that are plaguing our families across the region.

Click here to read the rest of Exners answers.

John Hartwig is running for Missouri State Auditor and the Libertarian primary is on Aug. 2. Heres how Hartwig responded to the question What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

As a Certified Public Accountant, I maintain my independence and seek the truth. These are two qualities that have always served me well.

Click here to read the rest of Hartwigs answers.

If youre a Missouri candidate or incumbent, click here to take the survey. The survey contains over 30 questions, and you can choose the ones you feel will best represent your views to voters. If you complete the survey, a box with your answers will display on your Ballotpedia profile. Your responses will also populate the information that appears in our mobile app, My Vote Ballotpedia.

If youre not running for office but you would like to know more about candidates in Missouri, share the link and urge them to take the survey!

Additional reading:

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28 Missourian candidates completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in the first week of July Ballotpedia News - Ballotpedia News

On 9 August 2022, Kenyans will vote for their fifth president. It will be the countrys seventh general election since the resumption of multiparty electoral democracy 30 years ago.

This year will see the lowest number of presidential candidates on the ballot since 1992. The countrys Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has cleared four contenders. They are Deputy President William Ruto of the Kenya Kwanza coalition, former prime minister Raila Odinga of the Azimio la Umoja coalition, law professor George Wajackoyah of the Roots Party and lawyer David Waihiga of the Agano Party.

While Ruto and Odinga are the frontrunners, Wajackoyah and Waihiga are fringe presidential aspirants. Generally, fringe candidates are aspirants whose chances of passing a frontrunner are slim to none.

They play a significant role, however, in testing democratic spaces for maturity. They also accrue personal benefits, such as grooming for future political careers.

A look at fringe candidacy in established democracies shows that marginal aspirants are more significant than we might think. In the United States, for example, the 2020 elections had Jo Jorgensen (Libertarian Party) and Howie Hawkins (Green Party) as fringe candidates. The 2016 elections had four such contenders: Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party), Jill Stein (Green Party), Evan McMullin (Independent) and Darrell Castle (Constitution Party).

While Kenyas 2022 general election will have just two fringe candidates, previous elections have had between three (in 2002) and 13 (in 1997).

Read more: Money, influence and heroism: the allure of political power in Kenya

Kenyas 2010 constitution changed the outcome for presidential candidates after an election. Under the old constitution, the president had to be a member of parliament. This meant presidential candidates also vied for a parliamentary seat, raising their chances of being in government even if they failed to clinch the top seat.

The 2010 constitution changed this requirement. Presidential candidates cannot vie for any other seat, drastically reducing their political options should they not get elected.

Despite this change, fringe candidates continue to throw their hats in the ring. This means there are other motivations.

Read more: Odinga is running his fifth presidential race. Why the outcome means so much for Kenya

Fringe candidates serve four main functions. First, their presence in an election offers proof of a stable or steadying democracy. Political systems, institutions and politicians learn to accommodate alternative candidates as equal players with the right to contest elections.

Second, fringe candidates give the media a break from horserace journalism. This is the kind of reporting that focuses on powerful, influential and popular political players.

Third, fringe candidacy can serve as a political nursery for politicians. They gain name recognition from media coverage of presidential aspirants, and showcase their political ambitions through campaigns, interviews and debates. This builds their political profile.

They also go down in history as having contested the presidency, regardless of their performance in the elections.

For presidential candidate Wajackoyah, a peculiar manifesto that includes popularising marijuana and snake farming to offset Kenyas public debt seems to be working for him. His campaign speeches are often a trending social media topic in Kenya and his manifesto launch got prime news coverage.

There was similar excitement among voters in 2013 and 2017 when Mohammed Abduba Dida appeared in presidential debates with unusual ideas on how to better govern Kenya.

Fringe candidates often atypical ideologies and beliefs give democracies a break from regular political themes.

Fourth, fringe candidates can front a third force that unseats a powerful regime. This played out in Kenyas 2002 elections when fringe candidates from the 1992 and 1997 polls formed a coalition that nominated Mwai Kibaki as their flagbearer. He won the election against Daniel Mois preferred successor, Uhuru Kenyatta who is Kenyas current president.

There are aspirants who hope to one day replicate the luck Kibaki and Kenyatta had, and are happy enough to seek the presidency as fringe candidates.

Read more: William Ruto, the presidential candidate taking on Kenya's political dynasties

Waihigas presidential campaign seeks to infuse a moralist voice into Kenyan politics. He has hit out at Wajackoyahs plan to legalise marijuana and accused him of insulting church leaders. He is running a campaign that revolves around easing taxes, lowering the prices of basic foods and bringing back to Kenya money illegally obtained and stashed abroad.

Not all fringe candidates play a positive role in elections. Some have been accused of using their candidacy to split votes and give a frontrunner the advantage. This can be viewed as a well-orchestrated political move.

For instance, in 2007, former vice-president Kalonzo Musyokas bid for the presidency split the 2.4 million votes in the countrys eastern region. At the time, Kenya had just over 14 million registered voters. The eastern region is a significant constituency in elections and has traditionally supported Odingas presidential candidacy.

When Musyoka set out on his own, he ended up with 8.91% of the total votes cast. Odinga obtained 44.07% of the votes against a victorious Kibakis 46.42%. Had Odinga and Kalonzo remained united, the presidential poll results might have been different.

Another former vice-president, Musalia Mudavadi, fell out with Odinga in 2013 and decided to launch his own campaign. Mudavadis presidential candidacy split the votes in the western region which includes vote-rich counties like Vihiga, Kakamega and Bungoma.

Western Kenya is Mudavadis ethnic base and has often supported Odinga. In the 2013 election, however, Kenyatta won with 50.51% of the votes against Odingas 43.7%. Mudavadi came in third with just under 4% of the vote.

In developed and developing democracies, fringe candidates have a constitutional right to contest. Since their presence can often be a sign of a maturing democracy, the media and allied cultural institutions need to give them attention.

Additionally, its possible that those who vote for these candidates might not have exercised their right of suffrage had they not had the option on the ballot. For this reason, fringe contenders can help entrench a culture of voting and counteract voter apathy.

See the rest here:

Kenyas fringe presidential candidates: what they offer in elections - The Conversation

Good morning everybody,

Today is the 5th of July, and this is The Tuesday Pillar Post.

Todays the feast of St. Zoe of Rome, a third-century noblewoman whose husband maintained the Roman jail in which was imprisoned St. Sebastian, a prophet who would become a martyr.

Zoe couldnt speak; she apparently suffered an illness that left her unable to talk for more than six years until Sebastian, the holy prisoner overseen by her husband, prayed over her.

After Sebastians blessing, Zoe began to speak and soon found herself praising Sebastians God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Zoe and her husband were converted, baptized, and - for that - Zoe was soon martyred. She was apparently suffocated by smoke in 286, after she was suspended over a fire pit amid the Christian persecution of Diocletian.

May the Lord give us healing, may he open our lips, and may we praise God no matter the cost.

St. Zoe of Rome, pray for us.

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Heres whats happening in the world:

Pope Francis on Monday appointed Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Bishop of London, to become apostolic visitor for the Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Ireland.

Why? Well, because nearly 40,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in the Emerald Isle in recent months war-weary and often in poverty and the sole Ukrainian Catholic parish in Dublin faces a daunting task to provide pastoral care for them.

Nowakowski told The Pillar yesterday that hell look into the prospect of establishing new Ukrainian Greek Catholic missions in Ireland, while he takes care of his growing flock at home more than 65,000 Ukrainian refugees have already arrived in the U.K., where the bishop already exercises pastoral care.

I think the Church always has to be seen as a lighthouse, where those beacons of hope are there, and that its not just an electronically manned lighthouse, but theres actually a human being there able to provide a compassionate ear, prayers, and the ability for people to know that God loves them, the bishop told The Pillar.

The big thing - and I emphasize that time and again - is to keep us in prayer, to remember Ukraine, dont let it slip off the horizon because its become, perhaps, old news. Its very important, he said.

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Albanys Bishop Edward Scharfenberger on Friday proposed a plan to settle outside the courtroom more than 400 claims of sexual abuse in his New York diocese.

The bishop told The Pillar that mediated settlements would ensure more fair compensations for abuse victims, and help the diocese avoid filing for bankruptcy.

Albany is the not only diocese to propose mediation with victims; some dioceses have established large victims compensation funds administered by third parties.

But Scharfenberger talked openly last week about the real challenge of providing monetary compensation to victims in a diocese with a declining population and limited cash:

The thing, I think, that's not been understood is that there is a limited amount of money, the bishop told The Pillar.

I dont want any hidden corners whereby we say we've got this pot over there saving for a rainy dayIll throw everything out there, but the thing is, the pot is limited.

Scharfenberger said he believes mediation would provide settlements for a higher number of victims than would litigation. He said he thinks thats just. But the bishop said he knows victims will find it difficult to trust him:

I understand that my efforts are naturally difficult to trust. It will be hard for many to believe that I am acting or speaking from my heart, or that what I do or say is credible, he told The Pillar.

Its not yet clear that the attorney leading lawsuits against the Albany diocese has actually brought the offer to his clients - or whether he intends to.

But Scharfenberger spoke strongly for serious ecclesial accountability during the 2018 McCarrick scandals he was a leader among bishops pushing for serious reforms - and transparency. And as the Church continues to address a just resolution to clerical sexual abuse, one victims advocate told The Pillar that Scharfenbergers views are worth discussion.

Read all about it.

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The Catholic Church in Liechtenstein is going through a moment of serious upheaval the tiny countrys archbishop has declined to participate in the synod on synodality, and is under fire for his handling of a priest accused of sexual assault. And Liechtensteins Church leaders have had some tangles with both prince and parliament in the small country.

With all that going on, its possible that the archdiocese in Liechtenstein might well be eventually folded back into the Swiss diocese from which it was carved. Its an unusual situation but one from which the entire Church can draw some lessons.

Luke Coppen reports on Big Trouble in Little Liechtenstein.

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And while hes spending time on small European countries, Luke brings you this profile of Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, one of Europes most influential Churchmen.

You might remember Hollerich from some controversial comments he made a few months ago, which called into question the Churchs doctrine on homosexuality. But you might not know that the cardinal plays a very big role in the universal synod on synodality and in the confederation of European bishops conferences.

Hollerich has a lot of influence over the direction of the Church in much of Europe. So if you want to understand how the business of the Church gets done in Europe and who will be influential in guiding the shape of a future conclave the cardinal is worth reading about.

Check it out.

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Heres some more news that might be of interest:

Cardinal Blase Cupich said yesterday that gun violence is a life issue, after 6 people were killed in an Illinois suburb, and nearly two dozen more were treated in hospitals, most for gunshot wounds. They were shot during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, just north of Chicago.

Whatever one makes of the right to bear arms, there is plenty of room for prudential judgment in interpreting the Second Amendment so as to enact serious, broadly popular gun-safety measures. The Senate finally passed a significant, yet modest, gun-safety bill last month. But clearly more must be done, the cardinal said in a statement.

The right to bear arms does not eclipse the right to life, or the right of all Americans to go about their lives free of the fear that they might be shredded by bullets at any moment.

May the Lord of mercy embrace in love those who have died, bring healing to the wounded, comfort to their loved ones, and courage to all of us, so that we may respond to this tragedy united as Gods children to build a path to safety and peace.

Pope Francis sent a telegram Tuesday morning to Cardinal Cupich, conveying prayers that Almighty God will grant eternal rest to the dead and healing and consolation to the injured and bereaved with unwavering faith that the grace of God is able to convert even the hardest of hearts, making it possible to depart from evil and do good.

For more on what the Church has to say about guns, read my May interview with Bishop Dan Flores, who talked with The Pillar after the Uvalda school shooting about guns, public discourse, and a crisis of hope.

Brazilian Cardinal Cludio Hummes, who encouraged the pope to take the name Francis, has died at the age of 87.

Police in Nigeria have rescued a kidnapped Italian priest, while two other priests were abducted in Nigeria on Saturday.

Myanmars military is reportedly continuing to target churches.

Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes has expressed deep regret after Nicaraguas government ordered the closure of Mother Teresas Missionaries of Charity apostolates in the country. (Spanish report).

Chinese Bishop Paul Lei Shiyin has celebrated the birth of Chinas Communist Party in Leshan cathedral.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx has said that the time is ripe for women deacons (German report).

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Much will be made in the news this week about a long interview Pope Francis gave this month to Reuters Vatican correspondent.

The interview covers a lot of ground, but doesnt offer much new: The pontiff told Reuters that he has no plans to resign, denied rumors he has cancer, and said he hopes the Vaticans deal with China will be renewed in October.

The pope was asked about the prospect of denying pro-abortion Catholic politicians the Eucharist.

When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem, Francis said. That's all I can say.

That comment will be taken in the press mostly as a rebuke of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileones decision to deny Rep. Nancy Pelosi the Eucharist in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Perhaps it was intended that way although the pontiff, in Francis fashion, could be understood differently, since last year he talked about the importance of pastoral ministry before, during, and after a denial of Holy Communion, while affirming that there are times when the Eucharist should be denied.

In short, the pope was cryptic on the question, and much ink will be wasted by pundits aiming to show that Francis meant exactly what theyd like him to have meant.

I suspect most readers of The Pillar know that such exercises are rarely illuminating.

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So while everyone talks about that interview, Id like to draw your attention to another one a fascinating - and precisely formulated - set of reflections on the German synodal path, the nature of heresy, and the life of the Church, from Fr. Karl-Heinz Menke, a German dogmatic theologian who won the prestigious Ratzinger Prize in 2017, and whom Pope Francis appointed to the International Theological Commission back in 2014.

The interview includes this important discussion of freedom:

The teaching of the Church presupposes that God has given man real freedom; for in contrast to the animal he can voluntarily be what he should be. When a person is what his Creator intended him to be, he realizes and develops his freedom. And vice versa: if a person is not what God made him to be, he misses being himself - and becomes unfree - a slave to sin.

Seen in this way, freedom is not freedom of choice, but self-commitment to the good. And what is good is not determined by each individual. Ultimately, the content of freedom is love; and what love is, we recognize in creation, with a look at Jesus Christ and the scriptures and traditions that interpret him.

The libertarian concept of freedomis quite different. Freedom understood in a libertarian way determines its content itself [According to this view], whoever wants to be free contradicts himself if he does not in turn grant every other person the recognition he expects from every fellow human being. But what exactly this recognition means is not determined by any external authority such as nature, Scripture or the Magisterium.

A Catholic who thinks as a libertarian will not let bishops dictate whether or not he may receive the Eucharist as a divorced person who has remarried or as a Christian of different denominations. He decides that himself. And he also decides himself whether his sexual relationships - in or outside of marriage, heterosexual or homosexual - correspond to love and thus to the recognition of the freedom of the other person or not.

A libertarian-minded church knows no decreed unity from above, but only unity based on conviction. A church that thinks in a modern way does not sacrifice diversity for unity, but understands unity as a service to diversity. There are - so the libertarians conclude - many interpretations of the recognition of freedom (of love), different interpretations of gender identity; multi-denominational interpretations of the Christ event; dogmas and norms are historically conditioned and can therefore be revised.

Heres the warning:

The vast majority of Catholics in Germany have not alienated themselves from the Church because they have adapted too little, but because they have adapted too much. She no longer has anything to say to the people because she fits her caritas into the structures prescribed by the state.

And heres Menkes sense of the solution:

The future does not lie in the implementation of libertarian freedom thinking, but - for example in the small communities or movements that exemplify their Christian faith in an unabridged and inviting way. From them one can see that attachment to the truth proclaimed by the Church does not bind, but liberates.

Read the whole thing. Use Google Translate if you need to Its not perfect, but itll give you a sense of the text.

This interview lays out the foundation of challenges the Church is experiencing around the globe and the pernicious challenge of a libertarian, non-Christian vision of what it means to be free.It draws from the documents of the Second Vatican Council, aiming to interpret culture through their lens.

Yesterday, many of us toasted our freedom, and watched fireworks memorialize it in the sky.

Today, lets commit to a vision of freedom that sees Christ at the center of history, and knows that he is the object of our liberty.

Have a good week.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

JD Flynneditor-in-chiefThe Pillar

Continued here:

Christ: The center of history, and the source of our freedom - The Pillar

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Two prominent figures have resigned in protest from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraftthe only major think tank to promote a skeptical view of US power and military interventionism. In announcing their departures, Joe Cirincione and Paul Eaton criticized the organizations dovish response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

They take this indefensible, morally bankrupt position on Ukraine, Cirincione said in an interview Thursday with Mother Jones. This is clearly an unprovoked invasion, and somehow Quincy keeps justifying it.

Cirincione, who was until recently a distinguished non-resident fellow at Quincy, tweeted news of his resignation on Thursday, citing the institutes position on the Ukraine War as his reason. Formerly the head of the Ploughshares Fund, an influential grant-giving foundation in the small progressive foreign policy world, Cirincione helped raise money for Quincy in its early days and connected it with key donors. But Ukraine proved to be his breaking point.

In articles posted online and in media appearances, other Quincy experts have called for the Biden administration to press Ukraine to reach a peace deal that allows Russia to keep some of the territory it has seized, arguing the alternative is a prolonged war and increased risk of direct conflict between the United States and Russia. That position has little public backing from prominent Democrats in Washington, who support the administrations efforts to aid Ukraines military.

In an interview Thursday night, Cirincione said he fundamentally disagrees with Quincy experts who completely ignore the dangers and the horrors of Russias invasion and occupation and focus almost exclusively on criticism of the United States, NATO, and Ukraine.

Cirinciones exit comes just days after Eatona retired Army major general who has long been an adviser to Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groupsresigned from Quincys board for similar reasons. When asked why he left the organization, Eaton said on Twitter, I support NATO, an apparent reference to the strain of thought among anti-interventionists that Russias invasion was motivated by the expansion of the NATO alliance.

The fissures within Quincy reflect a deeper conflict among skeptics of US military power. Russias invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated that conflict, with some backers of the Biden administrations Ukraine policy accusing critics of being Putin apologists.

For Cirincione, the Ukrainian resistance to Putins unprovoked invasion is a just war deserving of US financial and military support. He disputes the view that the United States is engaged in a proxy war with Russia or attempting to bleed Russia dry. (Many international relations experts, not just at Quincy, have said the conflict is edging closer to a proxy war.)

OnResponsible Statecraft, Quincys online magazine, you cannot find a criticism in depth of Russias foreign policy pronouncements justifying the war, Cirincione said.

Trita Parsi, the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, called Cirincione a friend, but said that Cirincionescriticisms were not only false but bewildering.

A quick glance at our website would show that that statement is just simply not true, Parsi said. It is true that we are pushing for diplomatic solutions. We are not going along with the idea that its a good thing to change the objectives in Ukraine towards weakening Russia, because we believe that could lead to endless war.

Parsi said that Cirincione had been encouraged to disagreein private and and in publicwith other Quincy experts. But Cirincione wanted Quincy as a whole to adopt his position, Parsi said, adding that such a move would be incompatible with the think tanks mission and not necessarily compatible with progressive foreign policy either.

A particularly knotty issue for some progressive thinkers is the question of military aid, which is the main forum through which the United States has supported Ukraine. Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), used a recent piece in the New Republic to appeal to progressives on this point, arguing that the Left should not let prior US misadventures abroad blind us to the instances when provision of military aid can advance a more just and humanitarian global order.

There is not much division among congressional Democrats on that question. Not a single Democrat in the House or Senate voted against President Joe Bidens request for $40 billion in weapons and humanitarian aid for Ukraine. But outside of theDemocratic Party, a collection of prominent figuresspanning the progressive left and libertarian righthave been vehemently opposed to such a huge aid package, which is one of the largest sums of foreign aid in US history.

Many of these critics view the source of the conflict as broader than Putin himself. Taking their lead from John Mearsheimer, an influential international relations professor and non-resident fellow at Quincy, they argue that the United States gravely miscalculated at the end of the Cold War by expanding NATO to include several Eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. Mearsheimer has argued that the US government should have expected Russia to perceive the expansion of NATO as a security threat.

Many of these critics do not think the US governments aims in Ukraine are necessarily noble. As examples, they have seized on comments from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin,who said that he wants to see Russia weakened, and media leaks that claiming that US intelligence is helping Ukraine kill Russian generals. (I think the Biden administration has done an exemplary job of aiding Ukraine, but its not flawless, Cirincionetold Mother Jones.)

While functionally a debate about means and endsno different from many arguments in the national security spacethe fractious conversation about Ukraine on the Left also speaks to the kinds of questions that remain out of bounds in the elite world of US foreign policy. Quincy was a unique entry in to the debate from the start. The institute is proudly not progressive; it prefers to call itself transpartisan. Its experts often align with the anti-militarist worldview shared by many progressive Democrats and libertarians, a coalition that is reflected in the organizations primary funders: George Soros and Charles Koch.

Outside of Quincy, there is not much money on the anti-militarism side, making the institute even more important as a rare voice of dissent from foreign policy orthodoxy. Even as figures like Cirincione and Eaton find substantial support from Democrats in Congress, their views have encountered backlash among the wider progressive community. Whether there continues to be room for a progressive foreign policy that includes skepticism of NATO expansion or the wisdom of a prolonged war against Russia is still an open question. For Cirincione, there remains a glaring need for a truly progressive think tank. A lot of us thought Quincy was going to be it,he says. But its just not.

Link:

America's Top Anti-War Think Tank Is Fracturing Over Ukraine Mother Jones - Mother Jones

As gas prices continue to increase nationwide, one group is staging promotions that involve temporarily lowering prices at the pump at individual stations across the country.

Gas prices have hit record highs in the U.S. for the last several months. According to data from the American Automobile Association, the national average price of gas on Wednesday is $4.868. In comparison, on the same day last year, the national average gas price was $3.109.

Now, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a libertarian conservative political advocacy group that is funded by David and Charles Koch, has started The True Cost of Washington Tour, which plans to hit 100 cities in a little over 90 days. In collaboration with the group, participating stations across the U.S. are lowering the price of gas, most for limited amounts of time, to $2.38the average cost of a gallon of gas on January 20, 2021, the day that President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

The first stop on the tour, which is still going on, was on May 3 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Several gas stations in Illinois slashed prices to $2.38 over the Memorial Day weekend. For a two-hour event, AFP paid stations the difference while they offered customers cheaper gas.

On June 17, an Exxon gas station in Wilmington, North Carolina, dropped its prices as well for the day, and WECT News reported that a line of cars stretched for over a mile to fill up for $2.38 a gallon.

While stations are slashing prices, they are also choosing how long to offer the deal to customers. On Tuesday, a gas station in Lansing, Michigan, offered the deal with AFP for only one hour, whereas a station in Forest, Mississippi, rolled back prices on Tuesday and plans to continue to offer gas at $2.38 until supply runs out.

The Forest station owner, Vance Cox, told WLBT, "Inflation is hurting everybody and costing everyone more money, but [Americans] are not making any more money. So it's really cutting into people's budgets and we're excited to be cutting the gas prices down for a little while and give people a break on some of the prices."

A station in Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania, discounted the fuel only to the first 150 cars in line on June 22, and the tickets being handed out to those in line were sold out 45 minutes before the event began.

And AFP is continuing the tour across the states and posting updates of each location it hits on its website.

Newsweek has reached out to Americans for Prosperity for additional comment.

More here:

Gas Prices Are Being Lowered Across U.S. by Conservative Group - Newsweek

WASHINGTON The Supreme Court ruling in the Environmental Protection Agency case on Thursday was a substantial victory for libertarian-minded conservatives who have worked for decades to curtail or dismantle modern-style government regulation of the economy.

In striking down an E.P.A. plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, the court issued a decision whose implications go beyond hobbling the governments ability to fight climate change. Many other types of regulations might now be harder to defend.

The ruling widens an opening to attack a government structure that, in the 20th century, became the way American society imposes rules on businesses: Agencies set up by Congress come up with the specific methods of ensuring that the air and water are clean, that food, drugs, vehicles and consumer products are safe, and that financial firms follow the rules.

Such regulations may benefit the public as a whole, but can also cut into the profits of corporations and affect other narrow interests. For decades, wealthy conservatives have been funding a long-game effort to hobble that system, often referred to as the administrative state.

This is an intentional fight on the administrative state that is the same fight that goes back to the New Deal, and even before it to the progressive era were just seeing its replaying and its resurfacing, said Gillian Metzger, a Columbia University professor who wrote a Harvard Law Review article called 1930s Redux: The Administrative State Under Siege.

When the United States was younger and the economy was simple, it generally took an act of Congress to impose a new, legally binding rule addressing a problem involving industry. But as complexity arose the Industrial Revolution, banking crises, telecommunications and broadcast technology, and much more this system began to fail.

Congress came to recognize that it lacked the knowledge, time and nimbleness to set myriad, intricate technical standards across a broad and expanding range of issues. So it created specialized regulatory agencies to study and address various types of problems.

While there were earlier examples, many of the agencies Congress established were part of President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal program. Wealthy business owners loathed the limits. But with mass unemployment causing suffering, the political power of elite business interests was at an ebb.

The Eisenhower-style Republicans who returned to power in the 1950s largely accepted the existence of the administrative state. Over time, however, a new backlash began to emerge from the business community, especially in reaction to the consumer safety and environmental movements of the 1960s. Critics argued that government functionaries who were not accountable to voters were issuing regulations whose costs outweighed their benefits.

In 1971, a lawyer who had represented the tobacco industry named Lewis F. Powell Jr. whom President Richard M. Nixon would soon put on the Supreme Court wrote a confidential memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled Attack on American Free Enterprise System. It is seen as an early call to action by corporate America and its ideological allies.

Mr. Powell acknowledged that the needs and complexities of a vast urban society require types of regulation and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times. But he declared that the United States had moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism and that business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late.

His memo set out a blueprint to fund a movement to turn public opinion against regulation by equating economic freedom for business with individual freedom. In line with that vision, wealthy elites financed a program to build political influence, including steering funding to organizations that develop and promote conservative policies like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

In 1980, the billionaire David H. Koch ran a quixotic campaign as the Libertarian Partys nominee for vice president on a platform that included abolishing the range of agencies whose regulations protect the environment and ensure that food, drugs and consumer products are safe.

His ticket failed to win many votes. But with his brother Charles G. Koch, he would become a major funder of like-minded conservative causes and candidates and built a campaign funding network that pushed the Republican Party further in a direction it had already started to move with the election in 1980 of President Ronald Reagan.

The Reagan Revolution included appointing officials to run agencies with a tacit mission of suppressing new regulations and scaling back existing ones like Anne Gorsuch Burford, the mother of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, whom critics accused of trying to gut the E.P.A. when she ran it.

In parallel, the conservative legal movement, whose origins also trace back to the 1970s and spread with the growth of the Federalist Society in the 1980s, has focused its long game as much on a deregulatory agenda as on higher-profile goals like ending abortion rights.

That movement has now largely taken control of the federal judiciary after President Donald J. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices. The chief architect of Mr. Trumps judicial appointments, Donald F. McGahn II, the first Trump White House counsel and a Federalist Society stalwart, made skepticism about the administrative state a key criterion in picking judges.

Adherents of the movement have revived old theories and developed new ones aimed at curbing the administrative state.

To give (usually Republican) presidents more power to push deregulatory agendas in the face of bureaucratic resistance, they have put forward the unitary executive theory under which it ought to be unconstitutional for Congress to give agencies independence from the White Houses political control even though the Supreme Court upheld that arrangement in 1935.

A 2020 ruling by the five Republican appointees then on the Supreme Court was a step toward that goal. They struck down a provision of the law Congress enacted to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that had protected its head from being fired by a president without a good cause, like misconduct.

And to invalidate regulations even when (usually Democratic) presidents support them, movement conservatives have argued for narrowly interpreting the power Congress has given or may give to agencies.

Some of those theories have to do with how to interpret statutes. The E.P.A. ruling, for example, entrenched and strengthened a doctrine that courts should strike down regulations that raise major questions if Congress was not explicit enough in authorizing such actions.

In certain extraordinary cases, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, the court needed something more than a merely plausible textual basis to convince it that an agency has the legal ability to issue specific regulations. The agency, he wrote, instead must point to clear congressional authorization for the power it claims.

The strict version of that doctrine signaled by the ruling will give businesses a powerful weapon with which to attack other regulations.

The ruling was foreshadowed by short, unsigned rulings last year in which the court blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions moratorium on evictions to prevent overcrowding during the coronavirus pandemic, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations requirement that large employers get workers vaccinated or provide testing.

But both of those decisions involved tangential exercises of authority by agencies trying to address the pandemic emergency: The C.D.C., a public health agency, was getting into housing policy, and OSHA, a workplace safety agency, was getting into public health policy.

The ruling on Thursday involved the E.P.A.s primary mission: to curb pollution of harmful substances, which the court previously ruled included carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, the text of the Clean Air Act empowers the agency to devise the best system of emission reduction. Even so, the majority ruled that the agency lacked authorization for its Clean Power Plan.

In dissent, one of the courts three remaining Democratic appointees, Justice Elena Kagan who once wrote a scholarly treatise about the administrative state accused the majority of having discarded the conservative principle of interpreting laws based closely on their text to serve its anti-administrative state agenda.

The current court is textualist only when being so suits it, she wrote. When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the major questions doctrine magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards. Today, one of those broader goals makes itself clear: Prevent agencies from doing important work, even though that is what Congress directed.

Conservatives have also developed other legal theories for attacking the administrative state.

They have argued, for example, that the Supreme Court should end so-called Chevron deference, named for the case that established it. Under that doctrine, judges defer to agencies interpretations of the authority that Congress gave them in situations where the text of a law is ambiguous and the agencys interpretation is reasonable.

Conservatives have also argued for a more robust version of the so-called nondelegation doctrine, under which the Constitution can bar Congress from giving regulatory power to agencies at all even if lawmakers unambiguously sought to do so.

Chief Justice Robertss majority opinion, in keeping with his preference for incremental approaches to major issues, left those other theories and arguments for another day. But a concurring opinion by Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., discussed the nondelegation doctrine with apparent relish.

While we all agree that administrative agencies have important roles to play in a modern nation, surely none of us wishes to abandon our Republics promise that the people and their representatives should have a meaningful say in the laws that govern them, Justice Gorsuch wrote.

In theory, undercutting the administrative state does not necessarily subtract from the governments ability to act when a new problem or a better way of solving an old one arises. Rather, it shifts some of the power and responsibility from the agencies to Congress.

For example, lawmakers could theoretically enact a law explicitly declaring that the E.P.A.s power to curb air pollution under the Clean Air Act includes regulating carbon dioxide pollution from power plants in the way the agency had proposed. Congress could even pass a law directly requiring the detailed system for reducing emissions.

As a matter of political reality, however, agencies issuing of new rules based on old laws is often the only way the government remains capable of acting.

Congress is increasingly polarized and dysfunctional, sometimes too paralyzed to pass even basic spending bills to keep the government operating. And the ideology of the contemporary Republican Party, combined with the Senates filibuster rule, which allows a minority of senators to block votes on substantive legislation, means that it is unlikely that Congress will enact new laws expanding regulations.

The prospect that the Republican-appointed supermajority on the court may be just getting started in assaulting the administrative state over the coming years is alarming those who say the United States needs regulations to have a civilized society.

If you dont have regulations, then the only people who will benefit will be those who, with no rules, will make more money, said Marietta Robinson, a former Obama appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission who teaches about administrative agencies at George Washington Universitys law school. But it will be to the great detriment to the rest of us.

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E.P.A. Ruling Is Milestone in Long Pushback to Regulation of Business - The New York Times