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<title>23 October, 2022</title>
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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<body>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What Would a Nation of Sports Gamblers Look Like?</strong> - A well-worn maxim in gambling says you should assume everyone is lying to you at all times. This rule also seems to apply to debates about online sports betting. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-would-a-nation-of-sports-gamblers-look-like">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Joe Biden’s Walk-and-Chew-Gum Campaign</strong> - The President says the midterms are “the most consequential” elections in recent history, but he’s not acting like he means it. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/joe-bidens-walk-and-chew-gum-campaign">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>After Liz Truss’s Resignation, Britain Urgently Needs a General Election</strong> - Common sense, basic decency, and the U.K.’s reputation as a healthy democracy demand one. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/after-liz-trusss-resignation-britain-urgently-needs-a-general-election">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Fight for Haiti’s Future</strong> - Prime Minister Ariel Henry has requested outside forces to help deal with humanitarian crises and gangs, but Haitians have little faith in foreign intervention. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-fight-for-haitis-future">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks on “Topdog/Underdog,” and a Conversation with Martin McDonagh</strong> - Parks reflects on the revival of her groundbreaking play, and McDonagh talks about his new film, set in Ireland. Plus, an expert on voting machines discusses their real, and imagined, risks. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/the-playwright-suzan-lori-parks-on-topdogunderdog-and-a-conversation-with-martin-mcdonagh">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<li><strong>A wonky Arizona ballot measure could unlock a new path to easing medical debt</strong> -
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FE4CJhSdj_mvpOtBEQcHs6EORVo=/230x0:2897x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71532325/arizona.0.jpg"/>
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Amanda Northrop/Vox
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Is going straight to voters the way to fix America’s medical debt crisis?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YAEIaP">
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/5/20847950/2020-presidential-election-bernie-sanders-platform-medical-debt">Pervasive medical debt</a> is one of the US health system’s signature failings. About 4 in 10 Americans have debt resulting from their medical or dental expenses, according to <a href="https://www.kff.org/report-section/kff-health-care-debt-survey-main-findings/">recent estimates</a>. Attempts to reduce the burden of medical debt have been halting, with special interests mucking up the legislative machinery both <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paulmcleod/surprise-billing-deal-richard-neal">in Congress</a> and <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-01/hospital-lobby-surprise-billing-legislation">in statehouses across the country</a>.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m6UNRV">
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That stasis makes a ballot initiative coming up for a vote next month in Arizona worth watching closely. <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Arizona_Proposition_209,_Interest_Rate_Limit_on_Debt_from_Healthcare_Services_and_Collection_Exempt_Property_and_Earnings_Increase_Initiative_(2022)">Arizona Proposition 209</a> would put a cap on the interest rates that can be charged for medical debt:<strong> </strong>3 percent. It would also limit debt collectors’ ability to seize a person’s house, belongings, automobile, or wages if they owe money for medical services by exempting more of a household’s assets from forfeiture or garnishment.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9GKNNl">
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The policy itself shares key provisions with <a href="https://www.nclc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/model-medical-debt-protection-act-082017.pdf">model legislation produced by the National Consumer Law Center</a> and addresses some of the crueler debt collection practices, which policy experts say should help to relieve the burden of medical debt, particularly for people who have been taken to court by their debtors and face wage garnishment or the possibility of their house or car being possessed.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ifuro6">
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“For those people in the most desperate circumstances, this rule change is going to make the process a little bit less cruel for them,” said Joe Gerald, a health services researcher at the University of Arizona.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gBsxL6">
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What’s equally interesting is the manner in which these proposals may become law. Through the work of Healthcare Rising Arizona, which drafted the ballot initiative and collected signatures to put it on the ballot, voters will get the chance to decide directly whether to put these new consumer protections in place. In a state currently governed by a Republican legislature that is largely sympathetic to the business community, the prospects for legislation like this have been dim, Gerald said.
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According to <a href="https://medicaldebtpolicyscorecard.org/">the Medical Debt Policy Scorecard</a>, a project that evaluated states’ laws for protecting their residents from medical debt, Arizona rated as “poor,” 32nd out of the 50 states. In 2015, <a href="https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/88586/past_due_medical_debt.pdf">the most recent state-level numbers available</a>, the state had a slightly higher share of adults under 65 reporting medical debt than the national average. Advocates had to overcome <a href="https://www.kgun9.com/news/local-news/judge-rejects-challenge-to-arizona-predatory-debt-initiative">an attempt to block the initiative</a> from getting on the ballot in the first place — and more legal challenges may still await if it ends up passing — but for now, they are cautiously optimistic about enshrining new protections when voters go to the polls in November.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yX7srL">
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“The fact is when you have a less-government approach in a poor state, people get run over by businesses all the time,” Rodd McLeod, a Democratic political operative who is advising the campaign, said. “This will be a way we can have an effect on the number of families who are stuck with medical debt.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UEQ2ra">
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National groups that focus on medical debt issues are watching the Arizona initiative closely. It is undeniably in the weeds — fixed interest rates and rules governing wage garnishment are not exactly bumper sticker material — and yet if even these proposals succeed at the ballot box, it could open up a new avenue for tackling medical debt outside of the conventional legislative process.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5H89cz">
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“Would it be easier to get medical debt provisions passed by the ballot initiative?” said Berneta Haynes, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “Starting out with something very weedy like this, if it has success, does that mean we could have success with simpler ballot measures?”
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</p>
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<h3 id="IrUYQH">
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Medical debt is a burden for tens of millions of Americans
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</h3>
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There is a lot to be done. Estimates of the number of Americans with medical debt vary considerably, but recent figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation put the number at <a href="https://www.kff.org/report-section/kff-health-care-debt-survey-main-findings/">41 percent of all US adults</a>. One in 10 adults owed more than $5,000 for medical or dental services. The people who carry medical debt <a href="https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/#Share%20of%20adults%20who%20have%20more%20than%20%24250%20in%20medical%20debt,%20by%20demographic,%202019">tend to have</a> lower incomes, poorer health, and higher rates of disability, and they are more likely to be Black. Medical debt negatively affects mental and physical health, too, due to stress and people skipping care for fear of the cost.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4Uok-zshNtaZ5vtGuUjXR-tq8kg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24124610/1four_in_ten_adults_currently_have_debt_due_to_medical_or_dental_bills.png"/> <cite>Kaiser Family Foundation</cite>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="38GKWp">
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While there have been incremental efforts to expand health coverage (the Affordable Care Act) and restrict predatory hospital billing practices (the No Surprises Act) at the federal level, huge holes in the US health system’s safety net remain. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/business/nonprofit-hospitals-poor-patients.html">Recent reporting by the New York Times</a> laid bare the lengths to which hospitals are still willing to go to try to force patients to pay for care, even if they may qualify for free services, and to collect on those payments if they are past due.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XL9dqn">
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States have been more active — North Carolina has been <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/06/21/1106307307/north-carolina-considers-new-laws-to-de-weaponize-medical-debt-and-protect-patie">considering a medical debt reform bill</a>, and legislation has <a href="https://www.coloradopolitics.com/legislature/colorado-house-passes-bill-to-ban-medical-debt-collection-without-price-transparency/article_70e9fcca-c57f-11ec-8453-f320fb047570.html">passed in Colorado</a> in recent months — but progress can be difficult. For example, a bill in New York that would have prohibited collectors from putting liens on homes or from wage garnishment <a href="https://trackbill.com/bill/new-york-assembly-bill-7363-protects-patients-from-certain-penalties-due-to-money-judgments-arising-from-actions-brought-by-hospitals-or-health-care-professionals/2112530/">stalled out this year</a>, though advocates hope it will be revived in 2023.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="H4w90Y">
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Even with more recent action, the Medical Debt Policy Scorecard classified only three states as having “good” consumer protections from medical debt. The rest were either weak or poor; Arizona falls into the latter category, though the reforms being put before voters could improve its standing.
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The campaign has relied on testimonials from Arizonans who have been saddled with medical debt, people like Liz Gorski, who has volunteered to collect signatures and stump for Proposition 209. Gorski was in a car accident at age 15 that put her in a coma and has left her with long-term care needs. She is 33 now and still sees a pulmonologist about once every three months. She also will see a neurologist every couple of months.
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Gorski estimates that, over the years, she has accrued up to $50,000 in debt, a combination of her initial hospitalization and struggles to pay for her care in the years since. She has tried to make medical decisions that she feels are best for her — such as going to nerve therapy instead of taking pain medication for chronic pain — but her insurance does not always cover those services, adding to her personal cost.
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The debt that was left on her record after her initial stay at the hospital made it harder for her to buy a car or a house as an adult; she says that without Habitat for Humanity, she may have ended up homeless. So when she saw an ad for Proposition 209, she reached out to the organizers and asked how she could help.
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“We were all just teenagers. None of us would have been prepared for that,” Gorski said. She has supported the ballot measure “because of my own journey and what me and my friends went through and how it destroyed us.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aqHqyG">
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The Arizona initiative is meant to help people who are in a situation like Gorski’s, where they have already incurred a lot of medical debt and are trying to minimize the consequences. According to Gabriela Elizondo-Craig, a postgraduate fellow at the University of Arizona who led the scorecard project, the policy experts they interviewed cited improving the experience for people going through the legal process without a lawyer and reducing the consequences for people after court as the most consequential actions that a state could take. Policies that prevent people from accruing medical debt in the first place — expanded coverage, more financial assistance, presumptive eligibility for health coverage, etc. — are another option for policymakers.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TqtwCL">
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According to Elizondo-Craig, 26 states have rules around wage garnishment or property seizure, but just 14 states cap interest rates for medical debt, as the Arizona ballot measure would.
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“These policies do focus on people in the most extreme circumstances, but they are also the most in need of protection,” she said.
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It is also possible, Gerald said, that a more stringent policy landscape for debt collectors could more generally make them less aggressive — a kind of beneficial chilling effect. That is speculative for now, but Elizondo-Craig said that, anecdotally, she has heard from people who work in hospital debt collection that the bigger the administrative burden on providers or collectors, the less likely they will be to pursue outstanding debts.
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The problem isn’t going away, but legislative progress has been halting. Arizona will be a test case: Are voters willing to intervene to relieve the burden of medical debt if lawmakers are not?
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“I think we’re going to continue to see an uptick in activity,” Eva Stahl, vice president of public policy at RIP Medical Debt, said, “given the frustration of not being able to address it at the federal level.”
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<li><strong>What the Constitution actually says about race, explained</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sVW4sVs-PNAn2Xdj0k61rZU901s=/444x0:5169x3544/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71532135/GettyImages_1429048113t.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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US Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Chief Justice John Roberts walk down the steps of the Supreme Court following her investiture ceremony on September 30, 2022. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
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There’s a glaring flaw in the Supreme Court lawsuits attacking affirmative action.
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was hearing only the third case of her career as a Supreme Court justice when she went after one of her conservative colleagues’ most sacred cows: the idea that the Constitution requires all US laws to be colorblind.
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The Court’s right flank — now in the majority — has long argued that US laws cannot draw distinctions on the basis of race. As Chief Justice John Roberts argued in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-908.ZO.html"><em>Parents Involved v. Seattle School District</em></a> (2007), a case about whether public school districts may take voluntary steps to racially integrate its schools, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
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But, as Jackson pointed out earlier this month during oral arguments in <em>Merrill v. Milligan</em>, an <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/10/4/23387283/supreme-court-merrill-milligan-alabama-racial-gerrymandering-voting-rights-act">important case about racial gerrymandering</a>, Roberts’s colorblind narrative is at odds with the Constitution’s history.
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Roberts and his ideological allies derive the colorblindness principle from the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that all individuals will receive “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">the equal protection of the laws</a>.” But Jackson explained that the framers of this amendment did not strive for colorblindness. Instead, they were “trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against” — that is, formerly enslaved Black people — “were actually brought equal to everyone else in the society.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KUrAvQ">
|
|||
|
|
And Jackson brought receipts. Among other things, she cited the <a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-civil-rights-act-of-1866/">Civil Rights Act of 1866</a>, a law enacted by the very same Congress that wrote the 14th Amendment, which provides that all Americans shall have the same contracting and property rights as “white citizens,” and that any non-white person convicted of a crime shall be punished the same way as “white persons.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-wide-block">
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nwkJKtyMGSckRHYF7FnpgZf9yic=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24126455/GettyImages_1241630923t.jpg"/> <cite>Fred Schilling/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via Getty Images</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Chief Justice Roberts looks on as Justice Brown Jackson signs the Oaths of Office on June 30, 2022.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RvMnAU">
|
|||
|
|
The Congress that wrote the 14th Amendment, in other words, rejected the “colorblind” theory, and instead wrote a landmark civil rights statute that explicitly requires the government to consider race when deciding whether a non-white individual’s rights were fully respected. And the Civil Rights Act of 1866 is <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306&context=faculty-articles">only one of many such laws</a> enacted by Reconstruction-era lawmakers.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V13bBw">
|
|||
|
|
Now, the Supreme Court is about to decide whether Roberts or Jackson is correct about the Constitution and “colorblindness.” Given that Republicans appointed two-thirds of the justices, it would be shocking if a majority of the justices do not side with Roberts — even if Jackson is correct about how the Constitution was originally understood.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Xd2VKc">
|
|||
|
|
But, lest there be any doubt, the <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306&context=faculty-articles">overwhelming weight of historical evidence</a> suggests that Jackson is correct.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="hyV8hb">
|
|||
|
|
Two cases about affirmative action in college admissions tee up a showdown over the “colorblindness” question
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
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|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D0ceDp">
|
|||
|
|
This debate will be on full display in two cases the Supreme Court will hear at the end of October. The plaintiff in <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/students-for-fair-admissions-inc-v-president-fellows-of-harvard-college/"><em>Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College</em></a> and <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/students-for-fair-admissions-inc-v-university-of-north-carolina/"><em>Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina</em></a><em> </em>asks the Court to overrule nearly a half-century worth of Supreme Court decisions holding that universities may, under limited circumstances, have affirmative action programs that consider race in student admissions.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6uCjZw">
|
|||
|
|
Specifically, Students for Fair Admissions — which is led by Ed Blum, a white man who is a <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/10/18/17995270/asian-americans-affirmative-action-harvard-admissions-lawsuit">perennial opponent of the Voting Rights Act</a> and other efforts to correct America’s legacy of race discrimination — seeks to banish affirmative action from university admissions.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Z0vp0L">
|
|||
|
|
Because Republican appointees control two-thirds of the seats on the Supreme Court, virtually no one expects the Court’s pro-affirmative action precedents to survive. And yet, to reach that decision, many of the Court’s Republican appointees would need to abandon another principle that they claim to hold dear: <a href="https://www.vox.com/21497317/originalism-amy-coney-barrett-constitution-supreme-court">originalism</a>.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1Qjw42">
|
|||
|
|
Many of the Court’s most conservative members claim to believe that the <a href="https://www.vox.com/21497317/originalism-amy-coney-barrett-constitution-supreme-court">only legitimate way to interpret the Constitution</a> is to read its words as they were understood when they were written or ratified. As Justice Clarence Thomas said at a 2019 conference at Yale Law School, reading the Constitution any other way “<a href="https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/rosenkranz-originalism-conference-features-justice-thomas-74">usurps power from the people</a>” because it gives too much power to judges.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3CbzbH">
|
|||
|
|
And yet, neither Thomas, who may be the Court’s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-241.ZX1.html">most outspoken opponent of affirmative action</a>, nor any other justice who identifies as an originalist, has ever offered a substantial originalist defense of the colorblind thesis that racial preferences are always impermissible. Conservative originalist scholars themselves recognize this: As University of San Diego law professor Michael Rappaport wrote in 2013, “Justice Thomas, like Justice Scalia, <a href="https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1700&context=ndlr">has not made a serious effort to show that the colorblindness approach is consistent with the original meaning</a>.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TV22VyNb-x4mkJRndja5XDOwiTU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24126489/GettyImages_1237976172t.jpg"/> <cite>Suzanne Kreiter/Boston Globe via Getty Images</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
A student walking at Harvard University on January 24, 2022.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TJoKIK">
|
|||
|
|
I want to be clear that the full story of how the generation that framed the 14th Amendment understood racial equality is far more nuanced than “they thought affirmative action was fine.” Many of their views on questions of race — and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/01/us/politics/abortion-brown-board-education.html">especially on public school segregation</a> — are so wildly out of step with modern values that no justice embraces those views. And some prominent conservative originalists have <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/173457/20210331122210147_210128a%20Amicus%20Brief%20for%20efiling.pdf">poked holes in some of the originalist evidence</a> supporting affirmative action.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KnJgtC">
|
|||
|
|
But these same conservatives have barely even attempted to show that the Constitution, as originally understood, forbids affirmative action. In a world where Supreme Court justices decide cases based on their previously stated views about how the Constitution must be interpreted, the lawsuits challenging affirmative action should be doomed.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="D2TQ9i">
|
|||
|
|
The originalist case for affirmative action
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kqlVLu">
|
|||
|
|
The originalist argument that the Constitution permits affirmative action programs — and does not mandate colorblindness — has been around for a very long time.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FqEK8g">
|
|||
|
|
In <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/438/265"><em>Regents of the University of California v. Bakke</em></a> (1978), a majority of the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action is permitted in some limited circumstances. Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote a separate opinion that would have given universities more leeway to consider race in admissions, and he supported that argument with historical evidence much like the civil rights law Justice Jackson cited.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u7ZcIi">
|
|||
|
|
“The Congress that passed the Fourteenth Amendment,” Marshall wrote, “is the same Congress that passed the 1866 Freedmen’s Bureau Act, an Act that provided many of its benefits only to Negroes.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jYtgJB">
|
|||
|
|
Seven years later, in 1985, civil rights lawyer and future law professor Eric Schnapper published a <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306&context=faculty-articles">seminal paper</a> arguing that the 14th Amendment was originally understood to permit affirmative action. “From the closing days of the Civil War until the end of civilian Reconstruction some five years later,” according to Schnapper, “Congress adopted a series of social welfare programs whose benefits were expressly limited to blacks.” These race-conscious programs, moreover, “were supported by the same legislators who favored the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zhkaZh">
|
|||
|
|
In total, Schnapper documented “eight Reconstruction measures establishing programs limited, in varying degrees, to blacks.” They include the Freedmen’s Bureau Act invoked by Justice Marshall, as well as less significant legislation providing targeted benefits to certain groups of African Americans. Often, this legislation was written in explicitly racial terms that leave no doubt that Congress intended to provide benefits exclusively to members of a disadvantaged race.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lFU9rz">
|
|||
|
|
One such law, for example, appropriated $15,000 “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=t8Fcn0xXd-sC&pg=RA2-PA120&lpg=RA2-PA120&dq=%22for+the+relief+of+freedmen+or+destitute+colored+people%22&source=bl&ots=8OTFqAn6BL&sig=ACfU3U1ElMpexOg8zwGct1G2kzulCvo-ZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjx4c7-leD6AhVOEVkFHTKNCD0Q6AF6BAgFEAM#v=onepage&q=%22for%20the%20relief%20of%20freedmen%20or%20destitute%20colored%20people%22&f=false">for the relief of freedmen or destitute colored people in the District of Columbia</a>.” Another provided safeguards specifically to Black veterans of the Union army.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MH3yUc">
|
|||
|
|
The Reconstruction-era federal government was especially active in providing educational benefits specifically to Black people. As Schnapper notes, “the Freedmen’s Bureau educated approximately 100,000 students, nearly all of them black.” Howard University, the elite, historically Black school in Washington, DC, was founded after it received land and financial assistance from the Freedmen’s Bureau, as were about a dozen other colleges and universities formed to provide education to Black students.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DD5rM8">
|
|||
|
|
All of this is significant evidence that the 14th Amendment, at the time of its drafting and ratification, was understood to permit the government to enact race-conscious programs intended to benefit a disadvantaged racial group.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="59LBdz">
|
|||
|
|
So, do conservatives have any response to this originalist evidence?
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DAU62q">
|
|||
|
|
The plaintiffs’ briefs in the <em>Harvard</em> and <em>UNC</em> cases read like the sort of documents a lawyer might file if they are so assured of victory that it’s not worth the effort to support their legal arguments with actual evidence.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lXrIxv">
|
|||
|
|
Their <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/222325/20220502145522418_20-1199%2021-707%20SFFA%20Brief%20to%20file%20final.pdf">opening brief</a> to the justices devotes only a single paragraph to the argument that affirmative action has “no support in the Fourteenth Amendment’s ‘historical meaning.’” And the only historical evidence they provide for this claim is a single quote from a single senator, Sen. Daniel Pratt, who said in 1874 that “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=c7ViAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA4083&lpg=PA4083&dq=%E2%80%9Cfree+government+demands+the+abolition+of+all+distinctions+founded+on+color+and+race.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=xik6oe8_Mw&sig=ACfU3U3OZQ9uwqmoQu9_Fmgxu7J7DBg_uA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiar7OVuOD6AhWYFVkFHZ5KCpAQ6AF6BAgFEAM#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cfree%20government%20demands%20the%20abolition%20of%20all%20distinctions%20founded%20on%20color%20and%20race.%E2%80%9D&f=false">free government demands the abolition of all distinctions founded on color and race</a>.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-wide-block">
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sXqZFwfjGOBPyLUM-rvpXSTUJnQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24126602/glimpses_at_the_freedmen_the_freedmens_union_industrial_school_richmond_vat.jpg"/> <cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://loc.getarchive.net/media/glimpses-at-the-freedmen-the-freedmens-union-industrial-school-richmond-va" target="_blank">Library of Congress</a></cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
A woodcut illustration of a class at the Freedmen’s Union Industrial School in Richmond, Virginia, circa 1866. The US Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands funded educational institutions to transition freed slaves during the Reconstruction era.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xJ9eBi">
|
|||
|
|
The 14th Amendment was proposed by Congress in 1866 and ratified by the states in 1868. And Pratt, who served only a single term in the Senate from 1869 to 1875, wasn’t even a member of Congress when the amendment was debated.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OaUrb6">
|
|||
|
|
The <em>Harvard </em>and <em>UNC</em> plaintiff also filed a second brief in the <em>Harvard</em> case, which replied to Harvard’s arguments for affirmative action. And that reply brief does provide some additional historical evidence for the colorblind position. Specifically, it <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/234416/20220824170445364_20-1199%20Reply%20Brief%20Harvard%20Final.pdf">quotes a single member of the Pennsylvania state legislature</a>, who said in 1867 that “justice” should be “blind.” And it also quotes a <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/thaddeus-stevens-speech-introducing-the-fourteenth-amendment-1866#:~:text=This%20amendment%20supplies%20that%20defect,and%20to%20the%20same%20degree.">speech by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens</a> saying that the 14th Amendment would ensure that “the law which operates upon one man shall operate equally upon all.” (The <em>Harvard</em> reply brief also claims, falsely, that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 “imposed strict colorblindness.”)
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="80wTDH">
|
|||
|
|
The first of these briefs is signed by nine different attorneys, three of whom clerked for a Supreme Court justice, and the reply brief is signed by eight of these nine lawyers. The fact that this team of elite litigators presented such a thin originalist argument, despite having months to prepare one, is strong evidence that there is no good originalist argument against affirmative action.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J6whes">
|
|||
|
|
Former Attorney General Edwin Meese also filed an <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/173457/20210331122210147_210128a%20Amicus%20Brief%20for%20efiling.pdf">amicus brief</a> making a longer originalist case, but his primary argument rests on arguably colorblind language that was part of an early draft of the civil rights law — and that, as Meese admits, “was stricken from the 1866 act.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BVawYy">
|
|||
|
|
And then there’s Rappaport’s 2013 essay, <a href="https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1700&context=ndlr"><em>Originalism and the Colorblind Constitution</em></a>. That essay seems to have been written because, in the then-35 years since <em>Bakke </em>deemed affirmative action legal<em>, </em>none of the Court’s self-avowed originalists had “made any real effort to justify” their opposing view “based on the Constitution’s original meaning.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cqqE7d">
|
|||
|
|
Rappaport’s affirmative case for a colorblind Constitution is difficult to summarize, but it boils down to this: Two other scholars, John Harrison and Melissa Saunders, both published papers arguing that the 14th Amendment’s “equality component” was originally understood in a manner that is vastly different from the way the Supreme Court currently reads it. Rappaport argues that either Harrison’s or Saunders’s theory “can be read to support a colorblindness approach.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="orG62E">
|
|||
|
|
So, to be clear, the originalist case against affirmative action appears to consist of three quotes from 19th-century lawmakers — one of whom played no role in the creation of the 14th Amendment and another who played only a very limited role. It also includes proposed statutory language that never became law, and one scholar’s assertion that the iconoclastic work of two other scholars “can” be read to support colorblindness.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lWTebJ">
|
|||
|
|
I should note as well that all of these sources — the Supreme Court briefs and Rappaport’s essay — also make a negative case against Marshall’s and Schnapper’s evidence. That is, they also accuse the pro-affirmative action side of overreading some of the historical record.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Mv0iNA">
|
|||
|
|
Rappaport, Meese, and the anti-affirmation action litigation team all argue, for example, that the fact that Congress created race-conscious federal programs does not mean that a state government (or a state university) may do so. The 14th Amendment, after all, provides that “no state” may deny anyone the “equal protection of the laws.” So, in the 1860s, federal lawmakers may have believed that they have more authority to enact race-conscious policies than their counterparts in state legislatures.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1jOt9K">
|
|||
|
|
That’s a plausible argument, although not one that provides any affirmative evidence that the 14th Amendment was originally understood to mandate colorblindness.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aLvYwYxBi5Mfff6oHlQqI1CPOeI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24126705/GettyImages_1392750403t.jpg"/> <cite>Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Former American soldier Silas Herbert Hunt stands outside the sign above the entrance of the University of Arkansas’s School of Law building in Fayetteville, Arkansas. When Silas enrolled in 1948, he became one of the first Black students to enroll at a white Southern university since the Reconstruction era in the mid 1800s.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sAF1Ol">
|
|||
|
|
Additionally, the conservative sources argue that at least some of the Reconstruction-era statutes creating race-conscious programs should not be read that way. Meese, for example, argues that an 1866 law providing relief to poor Black women and children should not be read as a race-conscious statute because the law <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/173457/20210331122210147_210128a%20Amicus%20Brief%20for%20efiling.pdf">actually provided a grant to a private organization</a>. “Because thousands of private organizations receive federal appropriations every year,” Meese claims, “it would make little sense to use this appropriation as evidence that the Reconstruction-era Congress believed that the Fourteenth Amendment allowed race-specific benefit conferral.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sDktJN">
|
|||
|
|
The name of the private organization that Congress provided funding to in 1866, by the way, was the “National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="au8M5c">
|
|||
|
|
There were many supporters of the “colorblindness” theory in the 1860s. They lost.
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TTOXZw">
|
|||
|
|
Had the <em>Harvard </em>and<em> UNC </em>plaintiffs wanted to do so, they could have cited many statements from Reconstruction-era figures who embraced the colorblindness theory — including the president of the United States.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6L0zLy">
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|
President Andrew Johnson <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306&context=faculty-articles">twice vetoed legislation extending the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau</a>. In his first veto message, Johnson claimed that no “good reason” can be offered for a federal agency “founded for one class or color of our people more than another.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1afcXg">
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|
He also vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, complaining that it would “establish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race.” And Johnson had <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306&context=faculty-articles">allies in Congress who made similar statements supporting the colorblindness theory</a>.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fjl6dz">
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|
Yet, while proponents of colorblindness were well-represented in the debates surrounding the 14th Amendment and related legislation, they ultimately lost the argument. Congress overrode Johnson’s veto of the civil rights law. And, after Johnson’s first veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau bill, Congress modified the bill in ways that, if anything, <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306&context=faculty-articles">made it more explicitly race-conscious</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uar5DM">
|
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|
Though Johnson vetoed this bill a second time, Congress overrode his second veto — by a vote of 104 to 33 in the House and 33 to 12 in the Senate.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YDEzFs">
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Cases like <em>Harvard </em>and <em>UNC</em>, in other words, seek to relitigate a fight that supporters of the colorblind theory lost in the 1860s. A fight they lost by veto-proof margins.
|
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</p>
|
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<h3 id="rhSQ0N">
|
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|
No sensible person would want to live under the original understanding of the 14th Amendment
|
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</h3>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CYK3Rq">
|
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|
Lest there be any doubt, the original history of the 14th Amendment reveals at least as many pitfalls for racial liberals as it does for conservatives. Perhaps the most glaring is the framing generation’s understanding of school segregation.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qDERAS">
|
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|
|
As originalist Justice Amy Coney Barrett admitted in an article she co-authored shortly before she became a judge, “adherence to originalism arguably requires … <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1619&context=jcl">the reversal of <em>Brown v. Board of Education</em></a>,” the landmark Supreme Court decision declaring that racially segregated public schools are unconstitutional. Indeed, the evidence that Civil War and Reconstruction-era Americans believed that segregated schools should be allowed is quite substantial.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Z1amID">
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In 1862, four years before the 14th Amendment was drafted, Congress enacted a law “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UYoXAtBf00sC&pg=PA265&lpg=PA265&dq=%22initiating+a+system+of+education+of+colored+children%22&source=bl&ots=Uuc_57BGq5&sig=ACfU3U0nT3Ij4nGV_RjOwn9_GFtGDX4dHQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_76_8xef6AhWOGlkFHWY4CPsQ6AF6BAgjEAM#v=onepage&q=%22initiating%20a%20system%20of%20education%20of%20colored%20children%22&f=false">initiating a system of education of colored children</a>” in the District of Columbia. Initially, these schools were funded through a tax specifically on property owned by people of color, although that tax was abolished in 1864. Still, federal law in 1864 provided that white children in DC shall be educated “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=87kWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA221&lpg=PA221&dq=%22That+any+white+resident+of+said+county+shall+be+privileged+to+place+his+or+her+child+or+ward+at+any+one+of+the+schools+provided+for+the+education+of+white+children+in+said+county+he+or+she+may+think+proper+to+select,+with+the+consent+of+the+trustees+of+both+districts,+and+any+colored+resident+shall+have+the+same+rights+with+respect+to+colored+schools.%22&source=bl&ots=FG009iplMU&sig=ACfU3U3Kuy5qQVy3u6rQHUqoMg7zecJLJQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijq-OUxuf6AhXAEVkFHZSTBIEQ6AF6BAgKEAM#v=onepage&q=%22That%20any%20white%20resident%20of%20said%20county%20shall%20be%20privileged%20to%20place%20his%20or%20her%20child%20or%20ward%20at%20any%20one%20of%20the%20schools%20provided%20for%20the%20education%20of%20white%20children%20in%20said%20county%20he%20or%20she%20may%20think%20proper%20to%20select%2C%20with%20the%20consent%20of%20the%20trustees%20of%20both%20districts%2C%20and%20any%20colored%20resident%20shall%20have%20the%20same%20rights%20with%20respect%20to%20colored%20schools.%22&f=false">at any one of the schools provided for the education of white children</a>,” and “any colored resident shall have the same rights with respect to colored schools.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jGmpOj">
|
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|
|
This provision remained in effect long after the 14th Amendment was ratified, and the same Congress that drafted that amendment <a href="https://casetext.com/case/people-ex-rel-king-v-gallagher">appropriated funding to DC’s segregated school system in 1866</a>. The 1866 Congress also did so against a legal backdrop in the states that strongly supported segregated schools. According to legal historian Michael Klarman, 24 of the 37 states in the union during the congressional debates over the 14th Amendment “<a href="https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2236&context=mlr">either required or permitted racially segregated schools</a>.”
|
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|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yAUs1N">
|
|||
|
|
All of this is powerful evidence that the 14th Amendment, as originally understood, permitted the very kind of school segregation declared unconstitutional in <em>Brown</em>. (There is one well-known paper, by former federal judge Michael McConnell, which argues that <em>Brown </em>is consistent with originalism. McConnell’s argument is sufficiently convoluted that I won’t even attempt to summarize it — but if you are interested in his paper, <a href="https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12624&context=journal_articles">you can read it here</a>.)<strong> </strong>
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GCOsZr">
|
|||
|
|
An originalist approach to racial equality, then, would most likely lead to results that few Americans would find acceptable. And yet, some members of the Court’s right flank have claimed that judges nevertheless must adhere to an originalist approach, even when the results are upsetting.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1EzUcE">
|
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|
In a <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586597/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-by-neil-gorsuch-with-jane-nitze-and-david-feder/">2019 book</a>, for example, Justice Neil Gorsuch echoed Thomas’s argument that non-originalist interpretation gives judges too much discretion to impose their preferences on the nation. “Our separation of powers makes clear that a judge’s task is not to pursue his own policy vision for the country,” Gorsuch wrote, before arguing that “respect for the separation of powers implies originalism in the application of the Constitution.”
|
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|
|
</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RCW3IM">
|
|||
|
|
Originalism supposedly serves this goal of preventing judges from substituting their own policy preferences for the law by insisting that the Constitution has one fixed meaning, determined at the time that a particular provision is drafted or ratified, and that this fixed meaning can be discovered by examining objective sources such as the words of the Constitution, the way they were originally understood, and the provision’s “historical context.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IgHuYU">
|
|||
|
|
As his model, Gorsuch named Justice Scalia, whom he praised for his supposed ability to set aside his personal preferences in favor of objective evidence. “Bring [Scalia] evidence about what the written words on the pages of the law books mean — evidence from the law’s text, structure, and history,” Gorsuch wrote, “and you could win his vote.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mciJUK">
|
|||
|
|
If Gorsuch is serious about living up to this (rather idealized) image of his idol, then he is in a terrible bind when the Court takes up affirmative action later this month. Only one side in the <em>Harvard </em>and <em>UNC</em> cases has made a meaningful attempt to argue that the words of the 14th Amendment were originally understood to support their position. For 44 years since Justice Marshall’s opinion in <em>Bakke</em> and 37 years since Schnapper laid out the originalist case for affirmative action at length, no originalist justice has even attempted to rebut that case.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1itBry">
|
|||
|
|
And, if the thin evidence offered by the <em>Harvard </em>and <em>UNC</em> plaintiff’s briefs is any sign, there’s a very good reason why highly intelligent originalists like Scalia, Thomas, and Gorsuch have never attempted an originalist case against affirmative action. It’s because there isn’t a good one to make.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-wide-block">
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oikdVUu977DHWmLOwhOOuHWBBFo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24126665/GettyImages_1243695642t.jpg"/> <cite>Stefani Reynold/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
A line of people holding umbrellas wait outside the US Supreme Court on the first day of the new term, October 3, 2022.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
</div></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Russia’s destroying infrastructure in Ukraine, and the consequences are dire</strong> -
|
|||
|
|
<figure>
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="Traces of war in Ukrainian city of Sviatohiersk" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JD_x15it2p-Vhap28IxDQg9PtVg=/248x0:4252x3003/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71530637/1244108932.0.jpg"/>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Ukrainian civilians queue for humanitarian aid provided by the Red Cross as people try to survive amid the wave of Russia’s missile strikes in Sviatohiersk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on October 20, 2022. | Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Moscow’s next target may be a massive dam in Kherson.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a8mEGD">
|
|||
|
|
Ukrainians in the south of the country are bracing for the likely <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/is-kakhovka-dam-ukraine-about-be-blown-2022-10-21/">destruction of a major dam</a> that would have immediate and catastrophic consequences for civilians in the area. Ukraine has pointed to the likely attack on the dam, located in Kherson Oblast, as part of Russia’s increasing use of an illegal but practiced tactic — attacking civilian infrastructure.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fonx4W">
|
|||
|
|
Though Russia has used this strategy before, both in Ukraine and in previous wars in <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/3/5/22962869/ukraine-russia-urban-warfare-tactics-siege-artillery">Chechnya and Syria</a>, there has been a notable uptick in the rate at which Russian forces have been attacking civilian infrastructure including<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-least-half-ukraines-thermal-power-capacity-hit-by-russian-strikes-2022-10-21/"> energy facilities </a>and water supplies after Ukraine’s stunning counteroffensive in <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/9/11/23347304/ukraine-russian-war-kharkiv-liberation">Kharkiv Oblast in September. </a>
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1FQQiw">
|
|||
|
|
The Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, which spans the Dnipro River in the southern port city of Nova Kakhovka is a particularly sensitive target. Russian forces are expected to attack the dam as part of their withdrawal from Kherson Oblast and then pin responsibility on Ukraine,<strong> </strong>according to a report on Friday from the <a href="https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-21">Institute for the Study of War (ISW)</a>. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/is-kakhovka-dam-ukraine-about-be-blown-2022-10-21/">pointed out Thursday</a>, attacking the dam will cause severe flooding to populated areas along the Dnipro River, including the city of Kherson itself.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vMwk9Q">
|
|||
|
|
It could also seriously jeopardize the functioning of the embattled <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/9/3/23335504/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-ukraine-iaea">Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant</a> (ZNPP), which is Europe’s largest and depends on water from the Khakhovka plant to cool the nuclear fuel there. Without water to cool the fuel and electricity to pump the water into the facility, nuclear fuel overheats and can cause disasters like a spent fuel fire.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gs0fwF">
|
|||
|
|
ZNPP has been in an extremely vulnerable position since Russia took over the plant in March; the Ukrainian staff operating the facility have been essentially held hostage and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/8/20/23314161/ukraines-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-russia-united-nations">heavy shelling in the vicinity of the plant</a> raised international concern of a possible nuclear disaster.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UWiQ98">
|
|||
|
|
The potential attack on the Khakovka facility, which is likely tied to Russia’s retreat from the area according to the ISW. “Russia… has every reason to attempt to provide cover to its retreating forces and to widen the Dnipro River, which Ukrainian forces would need to cross to continue their counteroffensive,” thus impeding the Ukrainian forces’ ability to push further into Russian-held territory, the ISW’s Friday report assessed.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nzYqI3">
|
|||
|
|
But such an attack, like so many others Russia has been executing throughout the war, will have serious, long-lasting consequences for the civilians left in its wake, in addition to slowing down Ukrainian troops.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="kzDTRu">
|
|||
|
|
This tactic is creating a dire humanitarian crisis that could last for years
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wgV4FF">
|
|||
|
|
As winter arrives in Ukraine, Russia’s attacks on energy facilities like Khakovka will put civilians at risk; without power to heat their homes and prepare food, they’ll be vulnerable to conditions like frostbite and malnutrition — injuries that are already occurring, Aaron Epstein, the president of the <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.gsmsg.org_&d=DwMFaQ&c=7MSjEE-cVgLCRHxk1P5PWg&r=Sian2sHiGU4vJvpIPZ0LRaCU4YNw_0HnnvTpx3Zxp3k&m=YlpobDuhE2klu59f-QgzL7TqBuk10r8Td7FO2kS7OW4LkHQq-_6K9sD2NHkglO0y&s=6m6v8s5fwgqDwhT1O8Al45uqQFtRudkr8Vc5m27BCY4&e=">Global Surgical and Medical Support Group</a> (GSMSG) and a surgical resident at the University of Buffalo, told Vox in an interview Saturday.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DudraI">
|
|||
|
|
“It’s not so much direct impacts of [Russian forces] attacking a certain area,” Epstein, whose group provides training and technical assistance to medical professionals and civilians in war zones, told Vox. Now, the illnesses and injuries civilians are sustaining are likely due to the loss of infrastructure, he said. Civilians are certainly still being injured in attacks like the kamikaze drone strikes in Kyiv, but the broad effects of infrastructure attacks are unfolding in less dramatic, but no less critical ways.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RGGcD0">
|
|||
|
|
“I think we’re starting to see a much larger scale of problems from a health standpoint that may not be a direct blast, penetrating injuries, burn injuries — it’s now population-wide in terms of loss of infrastructure problems, so I think that’s the more noticeable impact of what’s been going on lately,” he said.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="khsFA9">
|
|||
|
|
Before Russia ramped up the attacks on civilian infrastructure, “we would see military-aged males, injured in combat with blast and shrapnel injuries,” Epstein said. “You would occasionally see the civilian population — the usual spread, women, children, and elderly — that may have gotten hit with just a missile, or something that hit a civilian area. Or, if it was a town that was being attacked by the Russians and they were trying to obliterate everything within the town, then it was just a spread of everybody coming in with blast and shrapnel and burn injuries.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RkPO3n">
|
|||
|
|
Now, though, “frostbite, or cold, or malnutrition, or even just GI [gastrointestinal] related illness that goes prolonged and untreated” are becoming more common, likely due to lapses in critical infrastructure, Epstein said. Many victims now look like “the elderly grandmother who’s sitting in her apartment, just trying to wait out the war [and] suddenly has no power for a week, or suddenly has no clean water,” he told Vox.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vF7fWc">
|
|||
|
|
Epstein’s group, he said, is helping teach civilians and medical professionals in Ukraine about treating injuries like frostbite, and will likely incorporate wilderness survival training like starting fires and purifying drinking water to help civilians prepare for life without reliable heat, electricity, and clean water, he told Vox.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pFenoV">
|
|||
|
|
The knock-on effects that such destruction has — illness from a lack of sanitation facilities or clean drinking water, for example, or disrupted access to medical care due to power outages — can persist in conflict zones, often due to displacement, Sahr Muhammadally, director for MENA & South Asia at Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), told Vox. “The subject matter [and] technical expertise leaves,” so there’s no one to repair the damaged infrastructure. Ukrainian cities have demonstrated quite a bit of resilience so far, she told Vox, repairing damaged facilities and restoring access to critical services as quickly as possible, “but as this goes on it will be interesting to see what continuing toll is going to be on the response.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1cP5Ie">
|
|||
|
|
A critical component of the Ukrainian war effort — and Western nations’ support for it — is nonlethal aid. The US has so far given $17 billion in tactical and weapons system aid for Ukraine, which is undoubtedly crucial in helping the armed forces repel Russian troops from their territory. But nonlethal aid like medical supplies is equally important, as medical professionals involved in the Ukrainian war effort told reporters at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aXkf1piYGo">a panel discussion held by the American College of Surgeons on October 19</a>.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gNpJBC">
|
|||
|
|
Hnat Herych, chief of surgery department, Multidisciplinary Clinical Hospital of Emergency and Intensive Care, Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University hospital said that his staff had to re-sterilize needles for sutures because they lacked sufficient supplies. “Before the war, I want you to understand, we [did] modern operations, we [had] a <a href="https://www.davincisurgery.com/">da Vinci robot</a>,” he told the panel on Wednesday. “But the war changed everything.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="klxxSB">
|
|||
|
|
Attacks on critical infrastructure are part of the Russian playbook
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oKxn5E">
|
|||
|
|
Russia’s blueprint for the escalated attacks on civilian facilities is clear from campaigns in <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/3/5/22962869/ukraine-russia-urban-warfare-tactics-siege-artillery">Chechnya and Syria</a>; Grozny, the Chechen capital, was so devastated after the 1999 Battle of Grozny against Russian forces that the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6414603.stm">UN called it the most destroyed city on earth</a>. In Syria, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/world/middleeast/russia-bombing-syrian-hospitals.html">Russian forces deliberately hit medical targets like hospitals</a>, and even medical workers themselves.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DYQedL">
|
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|
|
Civilian infrastructure like energy facilities can be legally complex targets under international humanitarian law, though, because they can be considered dual-use facilities. As Muhammadally told Vox, “critical infrastructure or civilian objects should not be targeted under the law of armed conflict, under IHL.” But services and facilities that civilians rely on — like a power station “can be dual-use, they can be used by the military and then they could qualify as a military objective under IHL because by their nature and location, they’re making a contribution to military action.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YhQMNT">
|
|||
|
|
But even if such a facility can reasonably be considered a legitimate military target, aggressors still have to make proportionality calculations and consider the effect that the weapons used could have on civilians. So it might be permissible to blow a fuse or otherwise cause technical damage to a power plant that an opposing force is using, but destroying it with an electrical charge or a rocket attack could reasonably cause civilian casualties. “[Military actors] should not be trying to degrade critical infrastructure, unless that’s part of your war strategy,” Muhammadally said; but if that’s the case, “you run afoul of the legal principles.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y5KJKB">
|
|||
|
|
Despite likely violations of international humanitarian law, Russia doesn’t seem likely to stop doing this; it’s a psychological tactic, meant to destroy Ukrainians’ will to keep fighting, as well as a siege-like method of depriving them of essential services.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5qYco4">
|
|||
|
|
But according to Epstein, though Russian forces continue to target medical facilities, the medical professionals he’s worked with have gotten adept at operating inconspicuously; they’re housing medical facilities underground or in nondescript buildings and eschewing ambulances in favor of low-profile SUVs. Medical personnel and civilians are also bringing their families to GSMSG’s trainings.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ubkJv8">
|
|||
|
|
“We’re literally training kids how to put on tourniquets because enough people wanted the rest of their family to know how to take care of them in case they were injured, or their kid was the only one left alive in a building,” Epstein said.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DW3EVg">
|
|||
|
|
“These people feel like they’re facing an existential threat, and they want something better for their kids — they want their kids to survive.”
|
|||
|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Forest Flame and Successor impress</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Knotty Dancer, Evaldo, Caesars Palace, Tactical Command and Last Wish excel</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>ISL 2022/23 | Jamshedpur FC claim point against Mumbai City FC; Hyderabad extend unbeaten run</strong> - Hosts Hyderabad FC remained unbeaten in the tournament after a narrow 1-0 victory over Bengaluru FC</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Casemiro’s injury-time header grabs point for Man United against Chelsea</strong> - Jorginho had looked like giving Graham Potter his first standout win against a major team in the league when converting an 87th-minute penalty</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Aman Sherawat wins men’s 57kg freestyle World title</strong> - First Indian to be crowned champion at the World under-23 wrestling championships</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Migratory birds start arriving early at Kaziranga National Park</strong> - Kaziranga Park is one of the largest homes of migratory birds, originating from Russia, the Netherlands, and Europe</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>With focus still on COVID, authorities seem to ignore influenza epidemic sweeping the population</strong> - Though respiratory illnesses have been soaring amongst children, they are rarely tested for influenza that has the potential to turn serious</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sugarcane farmers threaten State-wide road blockade on October 27</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Gujarat BJP targets Kejriwal over cracker ban in Delhi, dubs such people ‘anti-religious’</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Political parties unite for march seeking action against local ‘god man’</strong> - Panchayat authorities also seek action to shut a worship centre allegedly set up to facilitate black magic</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: The cost of occupation in Kherson region</strong> - As Ukraine retakes territory, villagers tell the BBC about their precarious survival under Russian rule.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Massive Russian strikes target energy grid - Zelensky</strong> - Ukraine’s president says the attacks were on a “very wide” scale, but power was restored in many areas.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Russian fighter plane crashes in Siberian city of Irkutsk</strong> - The Sukhoi Su-30 military jet was on a test flight when it came down in Irkutsk, authorities say.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dietrich Mateschitz: Red Bull co-owner & energy drink giant dies aged 78</strong> - Red Bull co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz, a major global business figure as a result of his energy drinks empire, dies aged 78.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How the first report from Belsen concentration camp shocked the world</strong> - In April 1945, the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby was the first reporter to enter the liberated Belsen concentration camp.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The weekend’s best deals: Google Pixel 7, Apple MacBooks, 4K TVs, and more</strong> - Dealmaster also has iPads, Nest smart home, and some of our favorite wearables. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1892146">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hydrogen-powered startups shine at the Paris Auto Show</strong> - An SUV with removable hydrogen-filled pods and a stylish sedan caught our attention. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1891960">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>VMware bug with 9.8 severity rating exploited to install witch’s brew of malware</strong> - If you haven’t patched CVE-2022-22954 yet, now would be an excellent time to do so. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1892156">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New AI tool colorizes black-and-white photos automatically [Updated]</strong> - Automatically add color to old photos, then refine the colors with a written caption. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1892071">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Myth, busted: Formation of Namibia’s fairy circles isn’t due to termites</strong> - Plants are “ecosystem engineers” that survive by forming optimal geometric patterns. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1891663">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Communism jokes aren’t funny.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Unless everyone gets them.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Sherpnagerp"> /u/Sherpnagerp </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yb7lub/communism_jokes_arent_funny/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yb7lub/communism_jokes_arent_funny/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Are my testicles Black?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
A male patient is lying in bed in the hospital, wearing an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. A young student nurse appears and gives him a partial sponge bath.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“Nurse,”’ he mumbles from behind the mask, “are my testicles black?”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Embarrassed, the young nurse replies, “I don’t know, Sir. I’m only here to wash your upper body and feet.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
He struggles to ask again, “Nurse, please check for me. Are my testicles black?”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Concerned that he might elevate his blood pressure and heart rate from worrying about his testicles, she overcomes her embarrassment and pulls back the covers.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
She raises his gown, holds his manhood in one hand and his testicles in the other.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
She looks very closely and says, “There’s nothing wrong with them, Sir. They look fine.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The man slowly pulls off his oxygen mask, smiles at her, and says very slowly, "Thank you very much. That was wonderful. Now listen very, very closely:
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Are - my - test - results - back?"
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Buddy2269"> /u/Buddy2269 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yayoho/are_my_testicles_black/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yayoho/are_my_testicles_black/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Devil: This is the lake of lava you will be spending eternity in</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Me: Actually, since we’re underground, it would be magma
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Devil: You understand this is why you’re here, right?
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/crazyfortaco"> /u/crazyfortaco </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yaraah/devil_this_is_the_lake_of_lava_you_will_be/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yaraah/devil_this_is_the_lake_of_lava_you_will_be/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Son: Dad, I’m so excited. I got a B in reading!</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Dad: That’s a D, moron.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/porichoygupto"> /u/porichoygupto </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yandod/son_dad_im_so_excited_i_got_a_b_in_reading/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yandod/son_dad_im_so_excited_i_got_a_b_in_reading/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>A woman was cheating on her husband. Her husband came home early.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Her paramour had to quickly hide in the closet. When the husband and wife leave the bedroom together, the paramour thinks he’s gotten away with it, but then he hears:
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“Blimey, ain’t it dark in here!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
( This happened to be in England. )
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
He realizes that their kid is also hiding in the closet. He says to the kid, “What are you doing in here?”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“Just playing.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“Look, get out of here and don’t tell anyone you saw me. Here’s a quid. Take it and go!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The kid is walking about, looking at his brand new quid, when his father sees him holding it.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“Where’d you get that?”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“Oh, this man in the closet give it me.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“You’re lying! You stole it! Get off to confession, now! I won’t have you lying! Get to confession!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The boy goes to confession. He has to wait in line, but when he finally gets into the chamber, he says:
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
“Blimey, ain’t it dark in here!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
The priest says, “Bloody Hell, not you again!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/LadeeAlana"> /u/LadeeAlana </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yb61nz/a_woman_was_cheating_on_her_husband_her_husband/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/yb61nz/a_woman_was_cheating_on_her_husband_her_husband/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
<script>AOS.init();</script></body></html>
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