Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• The Year in Labor Strife - COVID-19 appears to have lit a match beneath at least a decade’s worth of late-stage-capitalist tinder. - link

• The Long Afterlife of a Terrible Crime - Decades after her mother was killed, Regina Alexander reached out to the son of the people who did it. - link

• The Relentless Ego of Ghislaine Maxwell - The British socialite, who has been convicted of conspiring with her late partner, Jeffrey Epstein, to groom minors for sexual abuse, continues to act like she has nothing to be ashamed of. - link

• Why Scientists Become Spies - Access to information only goes so far to explain the curious link between secrets and those who tell them. - link

• How I Proposed to My Girlfriend - The two lives of a wedding ring. - link

From Vox

• The GOP’s masculinity panic -

  

  David French on the cult of toughness on the Trumpist right.

  If you follow conservative politics, you know that the state of masculinity in America has been a hot topic this past year.

  Republicans like Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri and a star of the New Right, have made masculinity a signature issue. In a recent speech at the National Conservatism Conference, for example, Hawley argued that the progressive left is trying to “deconstruct” the American man. That’s quite a statement, and whether you agree with it or not, it’s crucial to grapple with its appeal and how it’s shaping our politics.

  I reached out to David French, a senior editor at The Dispatch — a center-right publication that’s been critical of the Trumpist turn in conservatism — and now a contributing writer for the Atlantic, for the latest episode of Vox Conversations. French tracks conservative politics as closely as anyone, and recently wrote about what he calls “the cult of toughness” on the American right.

  We discussed how Trump became the model of masculinity for Republicans, what exactly the right thinks the left is doing to the American man, and how the anger and response to that has helped pave the way for eruptions of political violence like the assault on the Capitol last January.

  Below is an excerpt from our conversation, edited for length and clarity. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so subscribe to Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

  ---

  Sean Illing

  I grew up in a culture of traditional masculinity, and for all the excesses and blind spots, I do think there’s something good and useful there, and we can get into some of that later. But there are excesses and blind spots and yes, toxicities, and it’s not anti-male to explore them honestly.

  I say all that because I want to at least try to steelman the conservative point of view here, and you’re better positioned to do that since you’re a conservative.

  So what exactly does the right think the left is doing to the American man?

  David French

  This is a good example of the kind of thing that a lot of folks are worried about on the cultural right, and I think justifiably so: The American Psychological Association, back in late 2018, early 2019, put out these guidelines for psychological practice with boys and men. Essentially, what it says is traditional masculinity is harmful, and this is one of the ways that a person defined it on their website: that traditional masculinity, marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression, is on the whole harmful.

  The guidelines themselves say that traditional masculinity ideology — which is defined with socializing boys toward anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence — limits their psychological development. I have real problems with that formulation.

  Now, there are some characteristics in there that they mention, like dominance, that are, I think, actually problematic in almost all forms. Or “anti-femininity” — I’m not even sure exactly what that means, it might be a “you know it when you see it.” But other things such as achievement, stoicism — I mean, believe you me, there are times in life when stoicism is an absolute virtue, especially in times of crisis. Going back to my military experience — I served with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment — and I saw men react in moments of incredible crisis with an unbelievable degree of calm. That was a virtue.

  Aggression can be virtuous, or it can be deeply problematic. These things are characteristics, not vices, by and large. So what does a healthy masculinity do? It channels these characteristics toward virtue and away from vice. Not to get too stereotypical, but that’s essentially what you’re talking about when you’re talking about, say, how a Marine Corps boot camp turns a boy into a man.

  Sean Illing

  There’s a real danger in this kind of warrior mindset — which I think is necessary and has its place — when it’s severed from any ethos of restraint and compassion, and when it’s just about destroying the enemy or owning the libs or defying norms, that’s very bad.

  David French

  Well, that’s the difference between character formation and indulgence. So if you’re talking about people who might have aggressive instincts or they might be highly achievement-oriented and you just indulge all of that, you give in to that id, then two things end up happening at once, which is interesting: This is the stereotypical bully — the bully at the one end is intimidating where he can intimidate, but cowardly where he’s in danger.

  This is the essence of the Trump persona himself. I mean, Trump is a guy, for example, who when he can feel like he can intimidate and bully, he’s all in. When there’s real risk to himself, he’s all out.

  Sean Illing

  I guess my big worry is that a lot of this masculinity panic feels rage-driven, and there’s no real positive content. It’s all negation, it’s all rejection, and I hear the rhetoric from people like Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance about defending order and affirming this or that virtue, but on the ground, Fox News-level, it’s mostly about hating the enemy and wanting to extinguish it. And that leads to anti-politics, to violence as a substitute for politics.

  You expressed something similar when you wrote that the “logic of this movement presses toward direct action.” What did you have in mind there?

  David French

  I had in mind January 6. I had in mind what might happen in the next election cycle. I had in mind the avalanche of threats directed toward public officials. I had in mind the fact that we’ve had people who’ve had to essentially go into hiding because of the stands they’ve taken, stands of real integrity, to defend the very existence of our democracy.

  That’s not just Twitter trolling. It’s not just posturing online anymore. It’s the logic of a movement centered around aggression divorced from virtue that indulges in apocalyptic rhetoric. It’s heading exactly where such movements head, and everyone who in 2015 or 2016 was dismissing the alt-right and Trump’s Twitter trolls says, “Oh, that’s just Twitter. That’s just Twitter.” There was an inexorable moral logic that was going to lead to action in the streets.

  I’ve been a pessimist about this for some time. I’ve been warning about violence for some time. In December, I was jumping up and down on The Dispatch saying violence is a real threat. Even as a pessimist, I didn’t imagine the capital being overrun on January 6.

  To argue that, “Well, that was a one-time thing. Everybody got carried away” — no. No, no, no. That was the result of rhetoric and conduct that put a specific group of people together on January 6 to provide cover for an attempted coup. Many of the architects of that exact plan are still some of the most revered figures in Republican life right now.

  So when you tell people their country is at stake, when you tell people the other side hates them, wants to see you dead, hates you, puts you in camps, then some people are going to believe that, and act accordingly.

  Look, it’s easy for somebody who’s on the left to decry all that [and say], “The other team is being bad.” I mean, you’re born to say the other team is being bad in a highly tribalized culture. But where the real moral courage comes is when you’re on the right and you say to the right, “This is wrong. This is wrong.”

  That’s where people I know have had to go under FBI protection because they have said, “This is wrong.” People have endured death threats that you wouldn’t believe because they’ve said, “This is wrong.” Then to have people turn around and say, “Well, you’re just weak,” no.

  What Liz Cheney is doing with the January 6 commission takes courage. What Mitt Romney did when he was the first person to vote to impeach a president of his own party takes courage. That takes courage. When you call that cowardice, you’re turning virtues upside down. You’re turning morality upside down.

  Sean Illing

  I’m glad you went there, because these may seem like separate issues for a lot of people, but I don’t think they are. The support for the kind of violent illiberalism we saw on January 6, the justification for it, stems from the contempt for the perceived weakness of the left, and the belief that there’s a poison in our culture that has to be exterminated at all costs.

  I remind people that Trump himself stepped to the podium a few hours before the Capitol was sacked and said, “Our country is under siege. You’re the people that built this nation and we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” That’s dangerous.

  David French

  Extremely dangerous. I think a lot of folks, because we live in highly bubbled cocoon lives, we often just don’t understand each other’s cultures, the separate cultures that are being created. I’ve lived in the deepest blue areas and I’ve lived in the deepest red areas.

  In red world, being called a racist — that accusation has no purchase, really. Here’s what’s the terrifying thing on the right that can be a career- and reputation-ending allegation: “You’re weak. You’re a coward.”

  So the transformation, this flipping upside down of morality, turning bullying into strength, turning restraint into vice, all of that, what has then happened is it enables the Trumpists and the Trumpist world. They’re wielding this sword that is very sharp culturally in red spaces, this accusation of weakness and cowardice, as a weapon to keep people in line, because they’ve defined support for this movement as evidence of your strength.

  In that world, capitulation to the mob is seen as courage, is seen as strength, and that’s upside down and backward.

  Sean Illing

  You’ve been called weak and cowardly as much as anyone on the right for your criticism of Trumpism. I won’t ask how that makes you feel, since I’m sure it pisses you off, but what’s your response to it?

  David French

  At this point, you just have to laugh at it, to be honest, because if you had walked in my family’s shoes over the last six years, that’s not an allegation that you would make. I’ve written about this going all the way back to 2015, when the first attacks on our family started rolling in, and the things we’ve walked through in the last six years are just absurd, just an absurd level of not just moral or peer pressure, but outright acts of intimidation and threats and harassment.

  It’s just unbelievable, and then to turn around and say, “The strong thing to do, David, the courageous thing to do would be to give in to these bullies.” That makes no sense at all.

  Sean Illing

  I really do believe the ultimate choice is between conversation and violence. But I don’t think it’s too late, I really don’t. Things have been much, much worse than they are now. But we have to pull back and we have to do it soon. How does that start?

  David French

  Well, let’s say bad news, good news. So I think the bad news is this idea that we might reach a point where millions of Americans who were all-in for Trump will essentially give some version of mea culpa — I don’t think that something like that is in the cards.

  I think the way things change is people move on. It’s not necessarily that they’ll sit there and they’ll say, “I never should have been on this guy’s team.” They’ll just say something like, “Well, let’s not do that again,” or, “I like this other person better.” I think there’s a lot of room for that kind of transformation.

There’s something telling in one of the text messages that was released that the Fox News hosts sent to Mark Meadows on January 6. Laura Ingraham said, “This is hurting all of us.” What you have is this group dynamic on Trumpism where part of the appeal, actually, is they’re all in this together, they’re really all in this movement.

One of the reasons why it’s so hostile toward dissent is, I think, they know their own vulnerability. I think they know that they’re vulnerable to a better vision.

So one of the reasons why people who are “never Trump” politicians, or politicians who once supported Trump now don’t support him anymore, are so viciously attacked is because these people are the threat. Because they offer an alternative conservative vision for this country that is not based on hatred and animosity and aggression and cruelty. They offer an alternative to the J.D. Vance version, which says, “I think our people hate the right people.”

An alternative version of conservatism says, “There are no right people to hate. You don’t hate people. You believe what you believe out of conviction that this is a worldview and a set of policies and ideas that contribute to the flourishing of all of the American people, not just your tribe, and your goal is not to pit American against American.”

There is a vision and a version of conservatism that stands in total contradiction to what the Trumpist right is. I think it still has appeal, and it’s one of the reasons why there is such aggression directed at those who dissent. Because they have memories, most of them except the very youngest, they have memories of a different version of conservatism, one that could motivate people through inspiration rather than aggression, and they know they’re vulnerable to it.

So my optimistic take is that if enough conservatives, enough conservative politicians, enough conservative public intellectuals, enough conservative pop culture figures offer this alternative, don’t expect some mass American repentance. But some mass Republican turning away from Trump is very, very possible, and it’s the very possibility of that which makes the aggression of the other side seem so urgent and necessary to them.

To hear the rest of the conversation, click here, and be sure to subscribe to Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• The great population growth slowdown -

  

  The pandemic has only accelerated a decline in US birth rates, even as immigration has plummeted.

  At the stroke of midnight on January 1, New York City welcomed its first new inhabitant of 2022: Leyla Gessel Tzunun Garcia, born as the new year began at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn.

  Given changing trends around population and fertility, though, there’s less competition to become the first baby of the new year than there used to be. Fewer babies were born in New York City in 2020 than any year on record, while the US population grew by just 0.1 percent in the year between July 2020 and July 2021, with the country adding just 392,665 people from net migration and births over deaths.

  That’s the lowest numeric increase since the Census Bureau began making annual population estimates at the beginning of the 20th century. On a percentage basis, it’s the lowest growth in the nation’s history.

  Increased deaths from the pandemic plays a role, as do inevitably creeping mortality rates in an aging population. But the primary cause is declining fertility rates, as fewer Americans have children, and those that do tend to have smaller families. The total fertility rate in the US — an estimate of the average total number of children a woman will have over her lifetime — has declined from 2.12 in 2007 to 1.64 in 2020, well below the 2.1 needed for a population to replace itself without immigration.

  Nor is this merely an American phenomenon. By one estimate, half the world’s population lives in countries with below-replacement-level fertility, and nations like Japan — with very low birth rates and little immigration — are already experiencing population decline.

  China, which became a symbol for population control with its coercive one-child policy, now has a fertility rate even lower than Japan’s, and the government is struggling to convince shrinking numbers of young people to have more children — or any children at all.

  Overpopulation isn’t what you think

  Despite that, global population at the start of 2022 was nearly 7.87 billion, and should cross the 8 billion mark over the next few years. For those worried about climate change, fewer people — especially in some of the richest and most carbon-intensive countries in the world — might seem like an unmitigated good.

  Indeed, there’s evidence that a growing number of young people are opting out of having children specifically because they’re worried about what life would be like for their offspring in a hot and chaotic world. Such concerns may be more intense these days, but they aren’t new — human overpopulation has been a major concern for the environmental movement for decades.

  The freedom to choose desired family size should be a human right, but there’s some evidence that many people aren’t having as many children as they would like to. Surveys in the US show that the stated ideal number of kids in a family has stayed a little above 2.5 since the mid-2000s, even as actual fertility rates have declined. Whether because of delayed partnership and marriage, economic concerns, or changing lifestyle preferences, there are forces keeping population growth below the level that people say they want.

  And while population growth plays a role in climate change — it’s called anthropogenic warming for a reason — it’s not as big a factor as we might expect, as Sigal Samuel wrote for Future Perfect in 2020. Consumption of the resources that lead to carbon emissions matters more to climate change than population growth on its own, and those resources are primarily consumed by a relatively small number of wealthy people around the world.

  Change those consumption patterns — through a mix of better efficiency and new technologies that don’t emit carbon — and there’s room enough to keep growing the population without cooking the planet.

  The reality of slower population growth

  Slower population growth might paradoxically make it harder to pull off that transition, however. Fewer babies make for aging countries, which slows down economic growth and holds back innovation. It can be harder to build support for future-focused policy in a country with fewer children — just look at the gerontocracy that is the US government, with its 79-year-old president and its octogenarian legislative and judicial branches.

  And while it might seem as if slowing or even declining population would at least reduce crippling housing prices, that might not be the case. Conor Sen notes in Bloomberg that as people flee dozens of shrinking metros like Toledo or Syracuse, they’re likely to crowd into those cities that are still growing, like Austin or Raleigh, further pushing up housing prices there.

Crafting policies to encourage people to have more children is difficult and expensive, as country after country has learned. That’s why for nations like the US that have historically boosted their population with immigration, encouraging more migrants is likely the fastest and most resilient way to keep population growth vibrant.

But while last year marked the first time in US history that net international migration added more people to the population than net births, the number of people moving to America has still fallen drastically over the last several years, from over 1 million in 2016 to fewer than 250,000 between July 2020 and July 2021. That’s a function of both Trump-era immigration restriction policies and the lasting effects of the pandemic. Reversing that decline should be a national priority, and one that, unlike increasing births, is absolutely within reach.

We may have averted the dystopian, crowded future prophesied in books like The Population Bomb or films like Soylent Green (the latter, featuring a world so overpopulated that dead bodies are converted into food, set in none other than the year 2022). But a good future is still an abundant one — and that should include people as well.

A version of this story was initially published in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to subscribe!

• The stakes in the Supreme Court’s vaccine cases are even bigger than they seem -

  

  The Court doesn’t just threaten the public health, it threatens democracy itself.

  Governments make choices that shape millions of lives. Workers and businesses are taxed to provide health care to the elderly and to the least fortunate. Men and women are incarcerated or even killed for crimes defined by the state. Wars are fought. Refugees are given a place of safety or turned away at the border.

  If you believe in democracy, such power is justified only because it flows from the will of the people. “Governments,” the United States declared in its formational document, “are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The premise of any democratic republic is that there are some decisions that must be made collectively, and that these decisions are legitimate because they are made by elected officials.

  On Friday, the Supreme Court will hear two sets of cases that test the justices’ commitment to the idea that the right to govern flows from the will of the people, and both involve challenges to President Joe Biden’s efforts to encourage vaccination against Covid-19.

  The first bloc of cases, which is likely to be consolidated under the case name Biden v. Missouri, challenges a federal rule requiring nearly all health care workers to become vaccinated. The second bloc, which is likely to be consolidated under the name NFIB v. Department of Labor, challenges a rule requiring workers at companies with 100 or more employees to either get vaccinated or be regularly tested for Covid-19.

  Even on their faces, the stakes in Missouri and NFIB are enormous. These cases ask what steps the United States can realistically take to quell the spread of a disease that has already killed more than 820,000 Americans. But the full stakes in these cases are even higher.

  Someone has to decide how the United States will respond to a global pandemic, and the Biden administration’s argument essentially boils down to a case for democracy. An elected Congress authorized the executive branch to take certain steps to encourage vaccination, and Joe Biden was elected to lead that branch. So that means that President Biden and his duly appointed subordinates get to make difficult decisions, even if some Americans don’t like those decisions.

  The parties challenging Biden’s policies, meanwhile, effectively argue that the Supreme Court should decide America’s vaccination policy. They couch their arguments in arcane legal doctrines, with weighty-sounding names like the “Major Questions Doctrine” or “nondelegation,” But these doctrines are vague — so vague that they are easily manipulated by justices who disagree with the Biden administration’s policies and wish to conceal their desire to halt those policies behind a patina of legal reasoning.

  I don’t want to minimize the significance of the policies at issue in Missouri and NFIB. In creating these policies, the Biden administration determined that its fundamental duty to preserve human life overrides many individuals’ interest in refusing medical treatment. This is a weighty decision, placing the collective health of the nation before the individual liberties of many of its citizens.

  But the Biden administration estimates that its two vaccine regulations will save hundreds or even thousands of lives every month. And it decided that saving those lives is worth requiring some Americans to do something they don’t want to do. This decision is no more significant than many of the decisions governments make — to send troops to a distant conflict, to tax and to spend that money in service of a nation’s people, to save lives, or to take them. This is what governments do.

  Again, someone needs to decide what America’s vaccination policy will be. It will either be made by the man chosen by the American people, or the Supreme Court will wrest that decision away from him and give it to themselves.

  Administrative law, briefly explained

  The specific legal questions in Missouri and NFIB concern Congress’s power to delegate authority over public health matters to the executive branch, and the Biden administration’s power to wield this authority against the pandemic.

  In the Missouri case, Congress passed a law giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services broad authority to set rules for hospitals and other health providers that accept Medicare and Medicaid funds. No health provider is required to take these funds. But if they do, such providers are bound by rules that the Secretary “finds necessary in the interest of the health and safety of individuals who are furnished services in the institution.”

  Meanwhile, in NFIB, Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act), which gives a similarly named agency — the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) — sweeping authority to protect workers from health hazards. Among other things, Congress gave OSHA the power to issue binding rules that provide “medical criteria which will assure insofar as practicable that no employee will suffer diminished health, functional capacity, or life expectancy as a result of his work experience.”

  Ordinarily, OSHA must complete a lumbering process that requires years of study and consulting with employers before it can hand down a new rule, but a provision of the OSH Act permits OSHA to issue an “emergency temporary standard” if the agency determines that “employees are exposed to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful,” and that such a standard is “necessary to protect employees from such danger.”

  The striking thing about these statutes is that they are quite open-ended. Congress could not possibly have anticipated every single problem that could threaten the health and safety of Medicare and Medicaid patients, or that could endanger workers’ health. So the men and women elected to Congress chose to give the power to respond to these unforeseen problems to federal agency heads, who are themselves appointed by an elected president.

  As I’ve written, there are plausible, but far from airtight, arguments that the broader OSHA regulation exceeds that agency’s power to issue an emergency temporary standard. But the Court has historically warned judges against being too quick to embrace such arguments. As Judge Julia Gibbons wrote in a lower court opinion explaining why she voted to uphold the OSHA regulation, “reasonable minds may disagree on OSHA’s approach to the pandemic, but we do not substitute our judgment for that of OSHA, which has been tasked by Congress with policymaking responsibilities.”

  That’s in line with a foundational principle the Court laid out in Mistretta

22. United States (1989), that “in our increasingly complex society, replete with ever changing and more technical problems, Congress simply cannot do its job absent an ability to delegate power under broad general directives.”

    Other cases urged the judiciary to defer to federal agencies even when the statute authorizing an agency was unclear about whether a specific regulation was permitted. The reasons for this deference, as the Court explained in Chevron

23. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), were two-fold.

    “Judges,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in Chevron, “are not experts” in the complex policy areas where agencies regulate. So they are more likely to make unwise decisions if allowed to substitute their own judgment for those of an agency leader.

    Additionally, “while agencies are not directly accountable to the people, the Chief Executive is.” Thus, “it is entirely appropriate for this political branch of the Government to make such policy choices.” If an agency makes a bad decision, the voters can punish the president for that decision at the next election. But if a court does so, the public has no recourse.

    But decisions like Mistretta and Chevron are out of favor with the current Supreme Court. Beginning in the Obama administration, the conservative Federalist Society grew obsessed with proposals to strip federal agencies of their ability to regulate. Its annual convention became a showcase of ideas to disempower these agencies, many of them championed by conservative, then-lower court judges like Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

    Not long after Gorsuch and Kavanaugh became justices, the Supreme Court signaled that it had five votes to gut decisions like Mistretta and Chevron and to give the judiciary a sweeping veto power over any federal regulation.

    And now the parties challenging the Biden administration’s vaccination policies ask the justices to exercise that veto power in order to kill those policies.

    How vague legal doctrines become a weapon wielded by judges

    As the Supreme Court grew more hostile to the earlier era’s deferential, pro-democracy approach, it invented new doctrines or revived long-dead ones that could be used to block rules that the justices do not like.

    The “Nondelegation Doctrine,” for example, claims that there are strict constitutional limits on Congress’s power to delegate power to federal agencies. This doctrine would come as a huge surprise to the framers — as law professors Julian Davis Mortenson and Nicholas Bagley explain in an important paper, the first Congress gave federal agencies expansive authority to govern federal territories, to issue patents, to regulate trade with Native Americans, and to exercise other broad powers. But at least five of the current justices nonetheless support the Nondelegation Doctrine.

    According to Justice Gorsuch, nondelegation requires judges to strike down any federal law delegating authority to a federal agency if that law does not put “forth standards ‘sufficiently definite and precise to enable Congress, the courts, and the public to ascertain’ whether Congress’s guidance has been followed.”

    Similarly, a handful of mostly recent decisions rest on the “Major Questions Doctrine,” a judicially created doctrine that limits federal agencies’ power to solve significant problems. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA (2014), “we expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance.’”

    The striking thing about both of these doctrines is that, like the OSH Act and the federal law governing Medicare regulations, they are quite open-ended. The Court has never adequately explained just how “definite and precise” a statute must be to survive contact with the justices. Or what constitutes a matter of “economic and political significance.” Or how “clearly” Congress must “speak” if it wants to delegate such matters to a federal agency. The doctrines are vague enough to justify striking down — or upholding — nearly any federal regulation.

    But, unlike the OSH Act and the Medicare statute, neither of these doctrines have any democratic legitimacy. They cannot be found in any statute, and Gorsuch relies only on dubious history and vague provisions of the Constitution in his opinion advocating for nondelegation.

    The thrust of decisions like Chevron and Mistretta is that, when judges are unsure how to resolve a difficult legal question, they should err on the side of the elected branches. Good governance requires expertise, and it requires government officials to make difficult moral decisions. So we should want these decisions to be made by experts who are accountable to an elected official.

    Doctrines like nondelegation and major questions, by contrast, turn this reasoning on its head. They presume that an elected Congress cannot be trusted to delegate important powers to expert agencies, and that an unelected judiciary must step in to prevent those agencies from making important decisions.

    This is not democracy. It is a decision to replace the judgment of men and women elected to make life-and-death decisions with the views of a few unelected lawyers.

From The Hindu: Sports

• The Ashes | Australia 126-3 after rainswept Day 1 of 4th test - Australia’s Steve Smith was unbeaten on six and Usman Khawaja was on four not out when rain ended play for the day

• SA vs Ind, day 3 | South Africa set to chase 240 after bowling India out for 266 - Resuming at 85 for two, India called the shots with Cheteshwar Pujara (53) and Ajinkya Rahane (58) striking half- centuries

• Mominul hails Bangladesh’s ‘unbelievable’ win over NZ - It was Bangladesh’s first win in any format of the game in New Zealand

• Ebadot Hossain takes six wickets as Bangladesh gets first test win over New Zealand - Bangladesh’s first win in any format of the game in New Zealand gave them a 1-0 lead in the two-match series with the second match starting in Christchurch on Sunday.

• Australian Open | No special treatment in Djokovic exemption, say officials - The decision to grant Djokovic an exemption sparked sharp criticism in Australia, where more than 90% of people over 16 have had two vaccine doses against COVID-19

From The Hindu: National News

• Agro-industrial corridor project to commence next year, says T.N. Governor - ‘A medical devices park and the nation’s first large-scale furniture park will also be established to generate employment in the State’

• Reconstitution of board of studies at Kannur University prima facie not in accordance with law, says Kerala HC - Notice issued to Registrar and board members

• COVID-19 | India reports its first death due to Omicron in Rajasthan - Speaking about the booster or precautionary dose the Ministry said that persons will receive the same vaccine as the previous two doses

• Covid-19 third wave: Fourth flower show in Bengaluru cancelled - Flower shows to mark Independence Day 2020, Republic Day 2021 and Independence Day 2021 had been cancelled

• PM security breach: Amarinder Singh calls for President’s rule in Punjab - The Prime Minister was scheduled to lay the foundation stones for several projects.

From BBC: Europe

• Covid: French uproar as Macron vows to ‘piss off’ unvaccinated - The president vows to make life difficult for the unjabbed, but opponents condemn his language.

• Kosovo bans cryptocurrency mining after blackouts - The Balkan country is enforcing blackouts amid an electricity shortage caused by high global prices.

• Dakar Rally: France opens terrorism probe into Saudi Arabia blast - The explosion in Saudi Arabia last week badly wounded French rally driver Philippe Boutron.

• Novak Djokovic: Australian Open vaccine exemption ignites backlash - It is a “disgrace” that Novak Djokovic can enter the country for the Australian Open, locals say.

• Europe’s tattoo artists fear for future after EU ink ban - Thousands of chemicals are banned by EU for safety reasons, but tattooists say it will hit business.

From Ars Technica

• Sony confirms PlayStation VR2’s specs, first official game - Sexy specs include dedicated eye tracking, over 4 million pixels per eye. - link

• Virtual 3D models of ammonite fossils show their muscles for first time - Also: Bringing a 400-million-year-old fossilized armored worm to virtual life. - link

• The OnePlus 10 Pro is official, sports 80 W charging - We’re already seeing the effects of the Oppo merger on OnePlus’ next flagship. - link

• Tracking Facebook connections between parent groups and vaccine misinfo - Tracking connections pre and post COVID also shows the pull of conspiracy groups. - link

• LG’s new 2022 OLED TVs add new sizes and better peak brightness - LG is looking to up its game in the face of more OLED rivals. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• Guy says to a Blonde girl. -

  I bet I can guess when you were born just by fondling your tits,

  no way says the Blonde, go on then, so 20 minutes later the

  Blonde says OK when was I born?

  Guy says: Yesterday.

  submitted by /u/Buddy2269
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• What’s more dangerous than running with scissors? -

  Two girls scissoring with the runs.

  submitted by /u/Cat_Dad_123
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• We’re not Grammar Nazis anymore. -

  Now we’re the Alt-Write.

  submitted by /u/Disguspitated
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• 6 Life Lessons -

  Lesson 1:

  A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbour. Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.” After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob.

  After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 dollars and leaves. The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks,…

  “Who was that?” “It was Bob the next door neighbour,” she replies. “Great!” the husband says, “Did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”

  Moral of the story:

  If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

  Lesson 2:

  A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says, “I’ll give each of you just one wish” “Me first! Me first!” says the administration clerk. “I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.” Poof! She’s gone. “Me next! Me next!” says the sales rep. “I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.” Poof! He’s gone. “OK, you’re up,” the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, “I want those two back in the office after lunch.”

  Moral of the story:

  Always let your boss have the first say

  Lesson 3:

  A priest offered a lift to a Nun. She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg. The priest nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg. The nun said,”Father, remember Psalm 129?” The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again. The nun once again said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?” The priest apologized “Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.” Arriving at the convent, the nun went on her way. On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129. It said, “Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.”

  Moral of the story:

  If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity

  Lesson 4

  A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A rabbit asked him, ”Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?” The crow answered: “Sure, why not.” So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested.

  A fox jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

  Moral of the story:

  To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very high up

  Lesson 5:

  Power of Charisma

  A turkey was chatting with a bull “I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree,” sighed the turkey, but I haven’t got the energy.” “Well, why don’t you nibble on my droppings?” replied the bull. “They’re packed with nutrients.” The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

  Moral of the story:

  Bullshit might get you to the top, but it wont keep you there

  Lesson 6

  A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground into a large field. While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.

  Moral of the story:

  1. Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy
  2. Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend
  3. And when you’re in deep shit, it’s best to keep your mouth shut!

  submitted by /u/NinjaNoob99
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• NSFW, A guy walks home with a duck under his arm. -

  He walks into the kitchen, and sees his wife sitting at the table.

  He says, “I want to show you the pig I’m fucking”.

  Wife says, “That’s not a pig. That’s a duck.”

  Guy says, “I wasn’t talking to you.” ’

  submitted by /u/Ginny-Sacks-Mole
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