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630 lines
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<title>20 February, 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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<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>CNN’s Problems Are Bigger Than Jeff Zucker</strong> - How an upcoming merger at Time Warner could upend life at the cable news network. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/cnns-problems-are-bigger-than-jeff-zucker">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Sandy Hook Settlement with Remington and the Road Ahead on Gun Violence</strong> - Gun manufacturers had considered themselves all but immune, thanks to a 2005 law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-sandy-hook-settlement-with-remington-and-the-road-ahead-on-%20gun-violence">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Ukraine Transparency Initiative</strong> - The Biden White House is releasing intelligence assessments, reports, and information about Russia’s military moves that in the past would have stayed classified. Is it working? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/the-ukraine-transparency-initiative">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Benedict XVI and the German Church He Served Seek Forgiveness in Very Different Ways</strong> - The Church hierarchy has been signalling a new openness to change, but a plea from the Pope emeritus, following the release of a report on abuse, follows an old path. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/benedict-xvi-and-the-german-church-he-served-seek-forgiveness-in-%20very-different-ways">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sunday Reading: Great Interviewers</strong> - From the magazine’s archive: a selection of pieces about talented interviewers over the decades. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/sunday-reading-great-interviewers">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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<ul>
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<li><strong>How Congress’s dependence on short-term funding keeps us stuck in the past</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, flanked by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House and
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Senate Appropriations Committee chairs, speaks to reporters after a meeting in the US Capitol on February 1, 2022, in
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Washington, DC." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/h7IIwfx7D1wSZ1pjsATNGE_9a-U=/633x0:5812x3884/1310x983/cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70529951/1368045486.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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(L-R) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Appropriations Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) talk to reporters after a meeting in the US Capitol on February 1, 2022, in Washington, DC. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The latest continuing resolution means we’re still on a Trump- era budget.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cvb7KP">
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Congress passed a continuing resolution (CR) Thursday to fund the government through March 11, averting a possible shutdown ahead of a Friday deadline. But it’s the third CR since the October 1, 2021, start of the 2022 fiscal year, exemplifying Congress’s habit of procrastinating on the annual budget appropriation process.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NpTJim">
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/2/17/22933441/congress-government-shutdown-continuing-
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resolution">Thursday’s CR</a> is mostly good news, since shutdowns are harmful and a CR gives Congress more time to strike an appropriations deal, at least in theory. But it’s also a legislative punt which prevents the government from moving forward with a new set of priorities, and instead leaves it stuck with an outdated budget from the Trump era.
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</p></li>
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</ul>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AHOzbq">
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Despite the obvious drawbacks to short-term funding measures, they’re commonplace in Congress. With a few exceptions, at least one has been enacted almost every fiscal year since 1977, with the exceptions of 1989, 1995, and 1997. That means that Congress has failed to pass a budget by October 1 almost every year for 45 years.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RniBNG">
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All CRs, however, aren’t created equal. Some are short-term measures to buy Congress a bit more time to put the finishing touches on appropriations bills; others can stretch for months over the course of back-to-back, short-term funding measures, keeping funding levels frozen long past the beginning of the new fiscal year.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MVJgmi">
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That’s the case with Friday’s measure — the third of this fiscal year, following <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/30/politics/government-shutdown-deadline-congress-votes/index.html">two</a> <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061199740/congress-biden-signs-cr-shutdown-senate-house-debt-limit-bbb">other</a> short-term measures signed by President Joe Biden last year — and Congress has even passed back-to-back CRs covering an entire fiscal year before, in 2007, 2011, and 2013, according to a <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R42647.pdf">Congressional Research Service report</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fFMNSa">
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There are consequences to Congress’s procrastination: those back-to-back, multi-month CRs can create serious funding problems and program freezes for government agencies, and in such a divided Congress, it’s not clear when a new appropriations bill will pass.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pdqNDf">
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Part of the problem is that the CR mechanism has become ingrained into the budget process, Mark Harkins, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, told Vox. At this point, he said, CRs are “seen as standard operating procedure,” although “nobody likes them, they’re not positive.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eY9N0q">
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“It’s almost as if, every October 1, you’re essentially furloughed at your current salary,” Harkins said, making it difficult to plan for the future.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CLnnAP">
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As <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/2/17/22933441/congress-government-shutdown-continuing-resolution">Vox’s Li Zhou</a> pointed out Thursday, the latest CR means that government agencies are still operating on a budget from December 2020. Not only is that budget insufficient to meet the funding needs of major portions of the government, such as the Defense and Transportation departments, but the use of the CR prevents the implementation of new programs from legislation Congress has already passed, like the infrastructure bill. Without individual appropriations bills or an omnibus bill that accounts for all of the programs and funding needed for different agencies, the government can’t get started on a number of major projects despite the clear need for infrastructure upgrades and bipartisan support for the legislation.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZS3msK">
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In addition to holding up already-passed legislation, appropriations bills can have secondary, but serious, policy repercussions in their own right. One major issue with the current bill, for example, is the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/6/22/18713603/joe-biden-hyde-amendment">Hyde Amendment</a>, a ban on using federal funds for abortion care. The amendment has been included in the appropriations process every year for decades, but Democrats hope to cut it from an eventual fiscal year 2022 funding deal.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LdHiPJ">
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As Alice Miranda Ollstein and Jennifer Scholtes <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/15/ban-federal-funds-abortion-
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democrats-00008761">reported for Politico</a> last week, the amendment’s defeat is looking less likely — despite a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/27/biden-hyde-amendment-abortion-rights-491030">campaign promise</a> from President Joe Biden — as Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, exerts his leverage in an evenly divided Senate. But the Hyde Amendment’s fate shows just what’s at stake when Congress doesn’t hammer out a new appropriations package.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kg879w">
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The partisan divide in Congress is part of the problem; though Democrats have unified control of Washington — both chambers of the Congress and the presidency — they “don’t control the money,” Harkins told Vox.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MlVfUe">
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That’s because appropriations bills require <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/2/17/22933441/congress-government-shutdown-continuing-resolution">60 votes in the Senate</a>, and because Democrats have such a slim majority in the Senate — 50 seats, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaking vote — there’s no way for them to pass an appropriations measure without the cooperation of ten Republican senators.
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</p>
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<h3 id="6FtjEM">
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Continuing resolutions have become increasingly common since the 1970s
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5jzDUy">
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Part of the point of a CR, as Politico explained in a <a href="https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/10/congress-federal-budget-continuing-resolution-000270/">2015 investigation</a> into “CR hell,” is that it’s supposed to be so restrictive and unpleasant that it forces legislators to come up with a longer-term solution — either the 12 appropriations bills that Congress is supposed to pass each fiscal year to fund the government, or an omnibus package that wraps up all of those bills into one.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XNgEpe">
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As the Center for American Progress <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/reflections-
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congressional-budget-act/">documented in 2018</a>, the process by which Congress is supposed to pass and enact those bills is outlined in the 1974 Congressional Budget Act.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0axYM1">
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Theoretically, each of 12 separate appropriations bills <em>should </em>get passed before the October 1 deadline. The last time that all of the appropriations bills were <em>actually </em>passed on time, however, was <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R42647.pdf">fiscal year 1997</a> (there were 13 separate appropriations bills at the time).
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q6Twti">
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More commonly, Congress now uses <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
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tank/2018/01/16/congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/">omnibus bills</a>, which bundle multiple appropriations measures into one package, to fund the government. But even those can be difficult to achieve, resulting in yet more short-term funding measures.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ynQEw7">
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In the political reality of 2022, Harkins told Vox, there’s little impetus make sure that the appropriations process works as intended in the Congressional Budget Act, because there are no consequences for legislators who stymie that process.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="os0y2c">
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“It’s not a systemic problem, it’s an operator problem,” Harkins said. “And those operators” — members of Congress, and specifically senators — “have to be willing to compromise.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iNVUP6">
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This year, Harkins told Vox, the stakes are particularly high. Given the likelihood that Republicans will take back <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/politics/enthusiasm-republican-
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midterms-high/index.html">at least one chamber of Congress</a> in the midterm elections in November, the 2022 appropriations package “could be the only appropriations Democrats get. That’s why this battle has been so pitched,” he said.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ol6tiG">
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It’s unclear, however, what — if anything — can convince Congress to return to something more closely resembling normal order for the appropriations process. One possibility is the <a href="https://www.axios.com/congressional-earmarks-new-constraints-44b0551d-bdfc-4e1e-b465-e1d2962c90b7.html">imminent return of earmarks </a>— the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/03/17/earmarks-are-back-and-americans-
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should-be-glad/">“pork barrel” spending</a> that members of Congress could request for projects in their districts and add to the appropriations bills. The practice was banned in 2011, but it did give legislators “a little skin in the game,” Harkins said, a reason to pass the appropriations bills.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HWOzB6">
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The current deadlock over this year’s omnibus package, however, casts that into some doubt, and Harkins said that there’s a sense, too, that there has to be an undeniable reason — a trigger — to overhaul the process. In 1974, that trigger was President Richard Nixon’s overly heavy hand in the budget process and his impounding of nearly $12 billion in funds that had already been appropriated by Congress, according to the <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/reflections-congressional-budget-
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act/">Center for American Progress</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FoOiwd">
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Despite the problems that Congress’s reliance on continuing resolutions can cause, Harkins said, “I’m not sure we have that trigger yet.”
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</p>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>What the world got right during the Covid-19 pandemic</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/thumbor/Xv_e4HsNzqho2MbulG1JpKpw234=/304x0:5168x3648/1310x983/cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70528764/1238438789.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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A staff member shows a vial of Covid-19 vaccine at Vacsera factory in Giza, Egypt, on February 3, 2022. | Ahmed Gomaa/Xinhua via Getty Images
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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A new report finds that, for all its flaws, the Covid-19 vaccination rollout has been a historic win for humanity.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m0EmIz">
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Two years ago this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-
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disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it">gave a name</a> to the mysterious new disease caused by a novel coronavirus then about to rip through the world: Covid-19.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sO5XPc">
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One year ago, the rollout of the <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-did-we-develop-a-covid-19-vaccine-so-quickly">vaccines</a> created to fight Covid-19 was well on its way.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JccLKt">
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For all the frustrations over vaccine <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22872438/covax-omicron-covid-19-vaccine-global-inequity">inequity</a> and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01459-7">hesitancy</a>, that one-year gap between the pandemic’s start and the rollout of the vaccines is nothing short of a historic success.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7FOBiQ">
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A new report underscores just how miraculous it was. The <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/publication/covid-19-vaccine-development-and-rollout-
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historical-perspective">study</a>, from the Center for Global Development (CGD), found that the Covid-19 vaccination campaign “has been the most rapid in history,” outpacing landmark achievements in vaccination for diseases like smallpox, measles, and polio.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8coyqz">
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The feat is even more impressive because while most global vaccination campaigns to date have targeted children specifically, Covid-19 vaccination efforts are aimed at the entire global population. Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at CGD and one of the co-authors of the report, told Vox that it was unprecedented for a global vaccine campaign to focus on “every adult in a single year for the great majority of countries.”
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/thumbor/c04SZ7CO2X9_MHMd8s60ADyThg0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
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cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23252246/figure_1.png"/> <cite>The Center for Global Development</cite></figure></li>
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</ul>
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<figcaption>
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The time from a microbe (pathogen) being identified to widespread vaccination for different infectious diseases.
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</figcaption>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9yZY6y">
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Still, there are caveats. The biggest one is that the speed of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout primarily applies to high- and middle-income countries. Our World in Data <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations">reports</a> that while 61.9 percent of the globe has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, only 10.6 percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="awZ9QB">
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As the CGD report shows, this rate is actually slower than campaigns to vaccinate for diseases like tuberculosis and diphtheria in low-income countries. In other words, we know we can vaccinate at a faster rate in those areas — we just haven’t been able to do it with Covid-19.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NOCfwC">
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Josh Michaud, associate director for Global Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said in an email, “Our benchmark for success shouldn’t necessarily be ‘faster than what we did decades ago.’ Rather it should be, ‘what’s the best we can do right now with existing technology and know-how?’”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="abQw9W">
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Kenny doesn’t disagree, and argues that the report is a sign of optimism with an asterisk. “’Did we do as well as we could?’ is a separate question. I think no, not nearly as well as we should have,” he said. “It is still sort of interesting and important to recognize that we are in a better place than we … have been historically with vaccine rollouts.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ppCWih">
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That progress is indeed encouraging. While the Covid-19 vaccine rollout highlights how inequities continue to leave the most marginalized populations of the world underprotected, the campaign’s broader success is promising for both the current pandemic and for pandemics that may arise in the years and decades to come. Humanity now knows how fast it can get a global vaccination program up and running, and that sets a standard for the future.
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</p>
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<aside id="kGXemf">
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<div>
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</div>
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</aside>
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<h3 id="zYLuVI">
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The Covid-19 vaccine rollout, in historical context
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Eop5u3">
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One lesson we have absorbed from Covid-19 is that when it comes to infectious disease, speed — or the lack of it — kills.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hFOPfF">
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The longer a pathogen is able to spread through a population without being checked by a vaccine, the more people it can infect. The CGD study reports that prior to Covid-19, aside from smallpox, the average period between identifying the disease-causing pathogen behind a disease (such as poliovirus for polio) and development of a vaccine was 48 years. After the pathogen had been identified, the average time between vaccine development and vaccine rollout sufficient to reach 20 percent global coverage was 36 years; for 40 percent coverage, 42 years; and for 75 percent coverage, 53 years.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cWLLDk">
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For the Covid-19 vaccines, however, the period between identifying the disease-causing pathogen and developing a vaccine was <em>less than a year</em>. And the time between vaccine development and 20 percent global coverage was just under eight months, while getting to 40 percent coverage took another three months.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SC0lXM_RzLhkPcBhWfMD0rjUqZk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23252270/figure_2.jpg"/> <cite>The Center for Global Development</cite></p>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Speed and progress of different global vaccination campaigns.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TjTPa1">
|
||
The CGD report also put the Covid-19 vaccine development and rollout in the context of three major global vaccine initiatives: smallpox, routine childhood vaccinations (against diseases like pertussis and tetanus), and annual influenza.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GBrROF">
|
||
There were lessons to be learned from each of them. With smallpox, the improved technology and vaccination <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21493812/smallpox-eradication-vaccines-
|
||
infectious-disease-covid-19">strategies</a> (particularly the use of disease surveillance and ring vaccination — vaccinating those most likely to be infected) were crucial to its gradual eradication. Routine childhood vaccination against diseases like polio proved the necessity of having good financing and a<strong> </strong>global infrastructure for universal immunization. Global influenza vaccination efforts revealed the importance of building capacity for recurring vaccination.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0FQpNQ">
|
||
Those and other lessons paved the way for the rapid development and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B67VLn">
|
||
“It helped that much of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/15/health/mrna-vaccine.html">technology</a> had already been primed and ready to go based upon a foundation of existing research, including the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/2/2/22262226/covid-19-vaccines-mrna-adenovirus">viral vector and mRNA vaccine</a> platforms,” Michaud said.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OozYUp">
|
||
In addition, high- and middle-income countries alike had much more of the health financing and infrastructure today to develop, manufacture, acquire, and get shots into the arms of their populations. Before Covid-19, the annual influenza shot was the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X15012359">world’s largest regular vaccination program</a>. Yet as of 2013, it reached only about 7 percent of the global population, with a majority of coverage in richer countries, according to the CGD report.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bLjZJA">
|
||
Meanwhile, the number of Covid-19 vaccinations delivered annually is 9.4 times that of influenza vaccines given in 2019, with much greater coverage in both higher- and lower-middle-income countries. (In this case, “annual” Covid-19 vaccinations are “derived by taking the total Covid-19 doses delivered as of this publication and dividing by two,” per the report.)
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="aCKUOn">
|
||
Where the world fell short
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ziz14o">
|
||
That doesn’t mean there weren’t hiccups in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oKTcZP">
|
||
The campaign against <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21493812/smallpox-eradication-vaccines-
|
||
infectious-disease-covid-19">smallpox</a> is worth zooming into for one aspect in particular that has been in short supply during the Covid-19 pandemic: global cooperation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B68na0">
|
||
The WHO, then as now, attempted to coordinate a joint global response. And crucially, despite the tensions of the Cold War, the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, engaged in “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5444589/">vaccine diplomacy</a>” that would prove crucial to the global eradication of smallpox. This collaboration contributed to the vaccination of “significant proportions of populations even in some of the world’s poorest countries within 18 months,” the CGD study states.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/thumbor/8VM4OP76v8kkdcheddri3-pYj5Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23252274/Vaccine_Rollout_Blog_Figure_One.png"/> <cite>The Center for Global Development</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Speed of Covid-19 vaccine rollout in 2020 by country income group compared to the first three years of rollout data for vaccines against diseases including polio, tetanus, measles, HPV, and rotavirus.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cpU3wJ">
|
||
That kind of global cooperation, especially between the US and China, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/08/27/the-us-cooperated-with-the-soviets-on-smallpox-it-
|
||
should-do-the-same-with-china-on-covid-19-vaccine-distribution/">hasn’t been in evidence</a> during this pandemic. The US and China certainly ought to have cooperated on vaccinating the world against Covid-19, as they had <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00734-0/fulltext">collaborated previously</a> on crises like the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MnnxcN">
|
||
However, relations between the two have only <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/how-2020-shaped-us-china-relations">deteriorated</a> during the Covid-19 pandemic. On top of this, countries with strong vaccine manufacturing capacity — <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/05/america-vaccine-success-world-covid-
|
||
equity/618839/">including the US</a> — engaged in <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/vaccine-nationalism-
|
||
threatens-global-plan-distribute-covid-19-shots-fairly">vaccine nationalism</a>, prioritizing their own populations over the global community, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22872438/covax-omicron-covid-19-vaccine-global-
|
||
inequity">failed to properly fund and support Covax</a>, the primary vehicle for ensuring vaccine equity for both high- income and low-income countries.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DZxZXb">
|
||
In the end, as Kenny told Vox, “no government did particularly well” when it came to collaborating to make sure the world was equitably vaccinated — “to everybody’s loss.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Obu0fD">
|
||
This leaves us with dueling assessments of the global response to Covid-19 — astonishingly fast in the context of human history, but still wanting in the face of what we could have done. That we now know what we’re capable of, and what we need to work on when the next one rolls around, is one indisputable takeaway from humanity’s response to this pandemic.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dK30bH">
|
||
<em>A version of this story was initially published in the </em>Future Perfect<em> newsletter. </em><a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/d/A2BA26698741513A"><em><strong>Sign up here to subscribe!</strong></em></a>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>The Supreme Court is not being honest with you</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="Amy Coney Barrett Is Sworn-In As New Supreme Court Justice At The White House" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Lj-3ZSFjwiTAyhmrQIj3ZzFgSyE=/46x0:2571x1894/1310x983/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70528662/1282404579.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her husband Jesse Barrett look on during her ceremonial swearing-in on the South Lawn of the White House October 26, 2020 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Justice Amy Coney Barrett appears to be quite unfamiliar with her own judicial record, and that of her colleagues.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="biJ9HZ">
|
||
Justice Amy Coney Barrett <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0LA-z-SW5w">delivered a speech this week</a> that echoed decades of conservative talking points about the proper, limited role of judges in a democracy. But that restrained vision is completely divorced from Barrett’s own conduct as a conservative justice — not to mention that of the Republican majority she consistently votes with.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5u3UiU">
|
||
Her remarks, which were offered at an academic symposium hosted by Notre Dame Law School, were grounded in the rhetoric of judicial restraint that Republican politicians have used to talk about the proper role of the courts <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/how-conservatives-abandoned-
|
||
judicial-restraint-took-over-the-courts-and-radically-transformed-3da3115c81c0/">at least as far back as Richard Nixon</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jQjDZq">
|
||
The Court’s youngest justice drew a distinction between “pragmatists,” judges who “tend to favor broader judicial discretion,” and “formalists,” who “tend to seek constraints on judicial discretion” and “favor methods of constitutional interpretation that demand close adherence to the constitutional text, and to history and tradition.” She placed herself in the latter camp.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HQkqbh">
|
||
As a justice, however, Barrett has behaved as an unapologetic pragmatist. Along with the Court’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/11/26/20981758/brett-kavanaughs-
|
||
terrify-democrats-supreme-court-gundy-paul">other Republican appointees</a>, Barrett <a href="https://www.vox.com/22883639/supreme-court-vaccines-osha-cms-biden-mandate-nfib-labor-missouri">supports flexible</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/7/8/21317323/supreme-court-obamacare-little-sisters-clarence-thomas-
|
||
pennsylvania-birth-control">legal doctrines</a> that give her Court maximal discretion to veto federal regulations that a majority of the justices disagree with — especially regulations promoting <a href="https://www.vox.com/22883639/supreme-court-vaccines-osha-cms-biden-mandate-nfib-labor-missouri">public health</a> or <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/3/22758188/climate-change-epa-clean-power-plan-supreme-court">protecting the environment</a>. And she’s joined her fellow Republican justices in imposing novel limits on the Voting Rights Act that <a href="https://www.vox.com/22575435/voting-rights-supreme-court-john-roberts-shelby-county-constitution-brnovich-
|
||
elena-kagan">appear nowhere in the law’s text</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CMHfWK">
|
||
The rhetoric of judicial restraint is potent, so it is understandable why Barrett wants to tap into that potency. Formalist rhetoric enables the justices to claim that they didn’t <a href="https://www.vox.com/22575435/voting-rights-supreme-court-john-roberts-shelby-county-constitution-
|
||
brnovich-elena-kagan">roll back voting rights</a> or <a href="https://www.vox.com/22883639/supreme-court-vaccines-osha-
|
||
cms-biden-mandate-nfib-labor-missouri">strike down a key prong of President Joe Biden’s efforts to promote vaccination</a> because they prefer weaker voting laws and a flaccid public health system — they <a href="https://www.vox.com/21497317/originalism-amy-coney-barrett-constitution-supreme-court">simply did what the law requires</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GkWfzu">
|
||
And Barrett is hardly the only justice to engage in such rhetoric. Justice Neil Gorsuch recently <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586597/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-by-neil-gorsuch-with-
|
||
jane-nitze-and-david-feder/">published an entire book</a> claiming that judges should rely almost exclusively on the text of a statute or constitutional provision while interpreting it. Justice Clarence Thomas frequently <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/clarence-thomas-most-important-legal-thinker-in-america-c12af3d08c98/">calls for radical shifts in the law</a>, claiming they are necessary to restore the “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1260.ZC1.html">original understanding</a>” of the Constitution. Even Justice Samuel Alito, the Court’s <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-most-partisan-supreme-court-justice-of-
|
||
all-fd31c58a25aa/">most partisan justice</a>, recently attributed his new, entirely atextual limits on the Voting Rights Act to having taken “<a href="https://www.vox.com/22575435/voting-rights-supreme-court-john-roberts-shelby-county-
|
||
constitution-brnovich-elena-kagan">a fresh look at the statutory text</a>.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jx63EE">
|
||
The problem with this rhetoric, in short, is that it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the current Supreme Court’s actual behavior.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="UthLxz">
|
||
“Pragmatism” v. “formalism,” briefly explained
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VTXDbK">
|
||
Barrett was at Notre Dame to deliver the keynote address at a symposium on “<a href="https://law.nd.edu/news-events/events/2022/02/14/law-review-symposium-the-
|
||
nature-of-the-federal-equity-power/">The Nature of the Federal Equity Power</a>,” a topic that, as Barrett wryly acknowledged in her speech, “sounds like one that only a law professor could love.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L06AgN">
|
||
As Barrett explains, “equity” is a legal concept that arose in England as a way of mitigating harsh outcomes that were required by inflexible legal rules. The English system even had a special court, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chancery-Division">Court of Chancery</a>, which was a “place for litigants to come” when ordinary legal rules were “too harsh.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZYQNku">
|
||
This dual court system, Barrett explained, highlighted a “tension between the demands of the law, which constrains, and the demands of fairness, which is flexible.” Ordinary judges were more akin to mechanical dispensers of legal rules, while judges applying equitable principles had more leeway to reach results they deem fair.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="STZhMG">
|
||
If that tension sounds familiar, Barrett told an audience of mostly law students that it should. “It’s the same dispute that we see in a context that’s probably more familiar to you — the context of constitutional interpretation.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4KPWhY">
|
||
According to Barrett, there are two opposing sides in this dispute. “Formalists,” such as herself and the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who “favor methods of constitutional interpretation that demand close adherence to the constitutional text, and to history and tradition.” Meanwhile, Barrett claims that “pragmatists” favor a more flexible approach that is less concerned with applying consistent legal rules, and more concerned about the harsh results that can arise from a too-rigid adherence to legal texts.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rqjzNI">
|
||
Most of what Barrett said at Notre Dame is uncontroversial. She fairly summarizes the development of English courts of equity. She is also correct that modern-day judges frequently divide into what she describes as the formalist and pragmatic camps.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3EBTyW">
|
||
But Barrett is wrong to label herself a formalist. In her brief tenure on the Supreme Court, she’s shown extraordinary willingness to join other Republican-appointed justices in opinions that bend the rules of the law in order to achieve results they deem to be just.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="752Jce">
|
||
No one who joined the Court’s opinion in <em>Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson</em> can claim to be concerned about the rule of law
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="E07iVk">
|
||
Flexibility — what Barrett labels judicial “pragmatism” — is the hallmark of the Roberts Court, and especially the new, proudly conservative majority that Barrett’s confirmation brought into being. The Court’s most high-profile decisions will sometimes <a href="https://www.vox.com/22575435/voting-rights-supreme-
|
||
court-john-roberts-shelby-county-constitution-brnovich-elena-kagan">ignore the text of the Constitution, or of a major statute, altogether</a>. And the Court frequently <a href="https://www.vox.com/22889417/supreme-court-religious-liberty-
|
||
christian-right-revolution-amy-coney-barrett">applies harsh legal rules to disfavored litigants</a> that it would never apply to political conservatives.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Il1aOH">
|
||
As Scalia once explained, the formalistic demand that legal rules must apply universally to all similarly situated litigants is one of the most important constraints on judicial discretion. “When, in writing for the majority of the Court, I adopt a general rule,” the late justice wrote in 1989, “I not only constrain lower courts, <a href="https://cyber.harvard.edu/bridge/Philosophy/rollor.txt.htm">I constrain myself as well</a>.” Because “if the next case should have such different facts that my political or policy preferences regarding the outcome are quite the opposite, I will be unable to indulge those preferences.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WbI6vg">
|
||
And yet, the current Court doesn’t seem to just indulge such a preference, it revels in it. The most blatant example is the 5-4 decision in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-463_3ebh.pdf"><em>Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson</em></a> (2021), which Barrett joined in full.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0aAshA">
|
||
<em>Jackson</em> involved Texas’s anti- abortion law SB 8, a law that effectively bans all abortions after six weeks, in violation of the fetal viability standard established in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/505/833"><em>Planned Parenthood v. Casey</em></a><em> </em>(1992). And SB 8 was, in Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s words, designed to “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/21a24_8759.pdf">evade judicial scrutiny.</a>”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EGKcNM">
|
||
Ordinarily, when someone wishes to challenge an unconstitutional state law in federal court, they are not allowed to sue the state directly. Rather, such a plaintiff must sue the state official charged with enforcing that unconstitutional law. But Texas tried to design SB 8 so that no state official would be empowered to enforce its anti- abortion provisions — and thus no one could be sued to block the law.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CHWTgI">
|
||
SB 8 <a href="https://www.vox.com/22653779/supreme-court-abortion-texas-sb8-whole-womans-health-jackson-roe-wade">relies on a bounty hunter system</a>. Under SB 8, “any person” except for an employee of the state of Texas may bring a lawsuit against any abortion provider accused of performing an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. If an abortion provider loses such a suit, they must pay the plaintiff a bounty of <em>at least</em> $10,000 — and there is no upper limit on this bounty.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jpr2bE">
|
||
SB 8, in other words, terrorizes abortion providers by potentially subjecting them to hundreds or even thousands of lawsuits if they are suspected of violating SB 8’s terms.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d8vb38">
|
||
As Chief Justice John Roberts explains in a dissenting opinion in <em>Jackson</em>, Texas did not actually succeed in writing a law that is not enforced by state officials — and is therefore immune from federal judicial review. Because “the mere threat of even unsuccessful suits brought under SB 8 chills constitutionally protected conduct,” Roberts wrote, “court clerks who issue citations and docket SB 8 cases are unavoidably enlisted in the scheme to enforce SB 8’s unconstitutional provisions, and thus are <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-463_3ebh.pdf">sufficiently ‘connect[ed]’ to such enforcement to be proper defendants</a>.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lw7TMf">
|
||
But the five most conservative justices, including Barrett, all backed Texas’s play. Barrett joined an opinion by Gorsuch that effectively <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/12/10/22827899/supreme-court-texas-abortion-law-sb8-decision-whole-womens-
|
||
health">immunized SB 8 from any federal lawsuit challenging Texas’s bounty hunter system</a>. (Technically, Gorsuch’s opinion allowed suits to move forward against state health officials who play a minor role in enforcing the law, but their role in doing so is so small than a hypothetical court order against these officials would be basically useless.)
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r0A5Bp">
|
||
The implications of this decision are staggering. As Roberts writes in dissent, quoting from an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11643047656481314023&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr">1809 Supreme Court opinion</a>, “if the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery.” <em>Jackson</em> provides every state with a roadmap that it can use to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/12/14/22832257/supreme-court-gavin-newsom-abortion-guns-assault-weapons">neutralize virtually any constitutional right</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XT5O9u">
|
||
So what’s really going on here? Would Barrett really vote to uphold a state law <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/12/14/22832257/supreme-court-gavin-newsom-abortion-guns-assault-
|
||
weapons">subjecting all gun owners</a> to SB 8-style lawsuits? That seems unlikely. Among other things, Barrett is an <a href="https://www.vox.com/21446700/amy-coney-barrett-trump-supreme-court">outspoken proponent of more expansive gun rights</a>. And a majority of the justices appeared inclined to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/3/22761240/supreme-
|
||
court-second-amendment-rifle-bruen-heller-amy-coney-barrett">expand the scope of the Second Amendment significantly</a> during a separate case that was argued last November.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7sCYIW">
|
||
But the disagreement between the majority and dissenting opinions in <em>Jackson</em> can be explained by the distinction between formalism and pragmatism that Barrett draws in her Notre Dame speech.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6BMMLt">
|
||
In <em>Jackson</em>, Chief Justice Roberts — a conservative who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12719084930434459940&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr">typically opposes abortion rights</a> — nevertheless takes the formalists’ position: The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. States must follow it. They also must follow Supreme Court decisions, like <em>Roe v. Wade</em>, that interpret the Constitution.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yQ1ELC">
|
||
Meanwhile, Justice Barrett, an <a href="https://www.vox.com/21446700/amy-coney-
|
||
barrett-trump-supreme-court">outspoken opponent of abortion rights</a>, takes the pragmatist’s approach. The opinion she joined in <em>Jackson</em> makes no sense as a matter of legal formalism — taken seriously, it would allow a state government to nullify nearly any constitutional right, including rights that Barrett no doubt wishes to enforce. But the lead opinion in <em>Jackson </em>makes perfect sense if you believe that abortion is murder, and so the interests of justice must bend to the formal demands of the law.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="46ge42">
|
||
The Court’s Republican majority is giving itself a flexible power to veto federal regulations
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rbKnmp">
|
||
Barrett’s pragmatic approach to the law, and that of her Republican colleagues, is also on display in their decisions weighing the Biden administration’s power to protect public health.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iAhSob">
|
||
Recall that Barrett defined a pragmatic judge as one who tends “to favor broader judicial discretion,” and formalistic judges as those who “tend to seek constraints on judicial discretion.” Since joining the Court, Barrett has sought to maximize her own discretion to veto federal regulations, while eliminating longstanding constraints on judicial power. And she’s largely succeeded in these efforts because she has five colleagues who share the same goal.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OUGQL1">
|
||
Consider the Court’s recent decisions in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21a244_hgci.pdf"><em>National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) v. Department of Labor</em></a> (2022), which struck down the Biden administration’s rule requiring most workers to either be vaccinated against Covid-19 or be regularly tested for the disease, and <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/21a23_ap6c.pdf"><em>Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services</em></a> (2021), which struck down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium in areas with substantial levels of Covid transmission.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="czlxSF">
|
||
Both cases questioned the power of federal agencies to write binding national regulations under long-existing federal statutes empowering those agencies to do just that. Before former President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
|
||
politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges">started remaking the judiciary</a>, the Court’s decisions governing such rules urged judges to be deferential to both the agencies themselves and to the Congress that delegated such power to an agency.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dOiTV0">
|
||
In <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10855858816503634838&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"><em>Mistretta</em></a></p></li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10855858816503634838&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"><em>
|
||
</em></a></ul><a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10855858816503634838&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"><em>
|
||
</em></a><ol start="22" type="a"><a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10855858816503634838&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"><em>
|
||
</em></a><li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10855858816503634838&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"><em>United States</em></a> (1989), for example, the Court held that judges should be <a href="https://www.vox.com/22276279/supreme-court-war-joe-biden-agency-regulation-administrative-neil-gorsuch-epa-
|
||
nondelegation">exceedingly reluctant</a> to strike down an act of Congress giving a federal agency the power to regulate. And <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14437597860792759765&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"><em>Chevron</em></a></li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14437597860792759765&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"><em>
|
||
</em></a><li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14437597860792759765&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"><em>Natural Resources Defense Council</em></a> (1984) held that courts should typically defer to federal agencies, regarding the scope of the agency’s authority to regulate, if the statute permitting the agency to issue binding rules is ambiguous.
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"></p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vZ2XPk">
|
||
Thus, under Barrett’s distinction between formalist and pragmatic judges, both <em>Mistretta</em> and <em>Chevron</em> are formalistic decisions. <a href="https://www.vox.com/22865247/supreme-court-
|
||
vaccination-covid-omicron-osha-missouri-biden-nfib">Both impose “constraints on judicial discretion,”</a> by requiring that judges defer to federal agencies.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m2vnMv">
|
||
In <em>NFIB</em> and <em>Alabama Association of Realtors</em>, however, the Court walked away from this more restrained approach to judging — with Barrett joining the majority in both decisions. Both cases relied on the so-called “major questions doctrine,” a doctrine that was <a href="https://www.vox.com/22883639/supreme-court-vaccines-osha-cms-biden-mandate-nfib-labor-missouri">invented entirely by judges</a>, and that has no basis in any statute or in the Constitution’s text.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n4dXRH">
|
||
This doctrine places vague limits on federal agencies’ power to issue regulations that are likely to have a significant impact. “We expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of ‘vast economic and political significance,’” the Court stated in both the <em>NFIB</em> and the <em>Alabama Association of Realtors </em>cases.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
</ol>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w1fTO5">
|
||
The problem with this major questions doctrine is, as federal appellate Judge Jane Stranch wrote in a lower court opinion upholding the Biden administration’s vaccination rules, “the doctrine itself is hardly a model of clarity, and its precise contours—specifically, what constitutes a question concerning deep economic and political significance—remain undefined.” The Court also hasn’t explained just how “clearly” Congress must “speak” if it wishes to delegate important powers to a federal agency.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8dLcxA">
|
||
The major questions doctrine, in other words, is an <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/11/26/20981758/brett-kavanaughs-terrify-democrats-supreme-court-gundy-paul">invitation to pragmatic judging</a>. The major questions doctrine maximizes judicial discretion because it is so vague, and thus permits judges to invoke it whenever they disagree with a federal regulation and wish to strike it down. After all, if no one can say for sure “what constitutes a question concerning deep economic and political significance,” then the ultimate answer to this question will rest with Barrett’s court.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="54WeiA">
|
||
The same can be said about the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/11/26/20981758/brett-kavanaughs-terrify-democrats-supreme-court-gundy-paul">nondelegation doctrine</a>, a similarly vague constraint on federal agencies advanced by Barrett’s five Republican colleagues. (The Court’s most recent majority opinion discussing this doctrine, <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-431_5i36.pdf"><em>Little Sisters v. Pennsylvania</em></a>, was decided a few months before Barrett joined the Court in 2020. So there is still a little uncertainty regarding Barrett’s views on nondelegation.)
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Il564Y">
|
||
The nondelegation doctrine would scrap the deferential approach that the Court advocated in <em>Mistretta. </em>In Gorsuch’s words, nondelegation calls upon judges to strike down federal laws permitting agencies to regulate, unless those laws were “‘sufficiently definite and precise to enable Congress, the courts, and the public to ascertain’ whether Congress’s guidance has been followed.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bMNgCp">
|
||
Thus, like the major questions doctrine, the nondelegation doctrine is so vague that it maximizes the discretion of judges to restrict federal agencies. It is a fundamentally pragmatic doctrine under Barrett’s distinction between pragmatic and formalistic judges.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="Uk3PKU">
|
||
The Court needs to be more honest about what it’s actually doing
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZutNR5">
|
||
Opinions like <em>Jackson</em>, <em>NFIB</em>, and <em>Alabama Association of Realtors</em> are quite disingenuous about what the Court is actually up to in those decisions.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gzxPE8">
|
||
Gorsuch’s opinion in <em>Jackson</em>, for example, tries to present his Constitution-destroying approach as a simple application of a formalistic rule prohibiting federal courts from issuing court orders against state courts. “If it caught on and federal judges could enjoin state courts and clerks from entertaining disputes between private parties under this state law,” Gorsuch wrote, “what would stop federal judges from prohibiting state courts and clerks from hearing and docketing disputes between private parties under other state laws?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fZiQUZ">
|
||
Similarly, the Court often justifies doctrines like nondelegation and major questions by <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-6086_2b8e.pdf">claiming</a> that they are necessary to restore the framers’ vision for how power would be shared between Congress and the executive branch. But, as law professors Julian Davis Mortenson and Nicholas Bagley explain in an <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3512154">important paper</a>, this justification is ahistorical. The first Congress — a Congress made up of many of the Constitution’s drafters — enacted several laws <a href="https://www.vox.com/22865247/supreme-court-vaccination-covid-omicron-osha-missouri-biden-nfib">delegating sweeping authority to federal agencies</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="13ARy1">
|
||
I could list more examples of the Court disguising pragmatic legal decisions with a patina of formalistic rhetoric. In <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf"><em>Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee</em></a> (2021), for example, the Court <a href="https://www.vox.com/22575435/voting-rights-supreme-court-
|
||
john-roberts-shelby-county-constitution-brnovich-elena-kagan">fabricated a bunch of new limits on the Voting Rights Act</a> that appear nowhere in the law’s text — including a strong presumption that voting restrictions that were in place in 1982 are lawful, or a similar presumption favoring state laws purporting to prevent voter fraud. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, <em>Brnovich</em> “mostly inhabits a law-free zone.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="477Ure">
|
||
But that didn’t stop Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote <em>Brnovich</em>, from claiming that his opinion would “start with a careful consideration of the text” of the Voting Rights Act. Nor did <em>Brnovich</em>’s profoundly pragmatic approach stop Barrett from joining Alito’s opinion.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MEB4tL">
|
||
It would be one thing if this Supreme Court were honest about what it is doing. It could write explicitly pragmatic opinions — which emphasize the justices’ desire to reach results that a majority of them deem to be fair, and which admit openly that these results cannot be justified by any provision of the Constitution or any federal statute.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="euImJS">
|
||
But the Court is not being honest about what it is doing. Rather than admitting that they are engaged in an unfettered, pragmatic approach to judging, the conservative<strong> </strong>justices continue to <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/clarence-thomas-most-
|
||
important-legal-thinker-in-america-c12af3d08c98/">wrap</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/">themselves</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/21497317/originalism-amy-coney-barrett-constitution-supreme-
|
||
court">in the rhetoric</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/22431044/neil-gorsuch-nihilism-supreme-court-voting-rights-lgbt-
|
||
housing-obamacare-constitution">of judicial formalism</a>. Barrett’s Notre Dame speech is only the most recent example.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<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>Pujara slams 91 to bail out Saurashtra against Mumbai</strong> - Elite Group D match ended in a draw with Saurahtra making 372 for nine in their second innings on the fourth and final day.</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>Aah Bella, Jubilant Journey and Pisa catch the eye</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>Dravid told me I won't be picked henceforth, suggested retirement, reveals Wriddhiman Saha</strong> - The Indian wicketkeeper who was dropped from the Test squad, also hit out at BCCI president Sourav Ganguly whom he claimed had assured him that he shouldn't worry about his place in the team</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>Meet Saurabh Kumar, the new face in India’s Test squad</strong> - The Uttar Pradesh left-arm spinner quit the Air Force to pursue his ambition of playing professional cricket</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>Aus vs SL T20 | Mendis, Shanaka guide Sri Lanka to 5-wicket win in 5th T20</strong> - Australia won the T20 series 4-1</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>Protesters demand new district with Markapur as headquarters</strong> - They accuse the ruling YSRCP MLAs of being ‘indifferent’ to their demand</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>Chinese funding: worry about empty airports, ports, Jaishankar tells Bangladesh FM</strong> - Minister’s response to Abdul Momen’s question if Quad can offer same kind of financial assistance</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>FICCI to help A.P. achieve energy efficiency targets</strong> - State given a target of 6.68 Mtoe of energy savings by 2030, says BEE</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>Vedanta moves High Court fearing a loss of ₹150 crore due to “arbitrary” deadline fixed by DGFT</strong> - Firm also insists on utilising duty credit certificate to set off IGST and GST compensation cess</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>Andhra Pradesh: CM should lead all-party delegation to PM against privatisation of steel plant, says TDP leader</strong> - ‘Trade union leaders are being threatened by the YSR Congress Party’</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 crisis: Russia keeps troops in Belarus amid Ukraine fears</strong> - The decision fuels renewed fears that Russia plans to invade Ukraine, despite denials from Moscow.</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 crisis: Criss-crossing the country with Zelensky</strong> - The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford travels with Ukraine’s leader amid his efforts to prevent a Russian invasion.</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>Lufthansa to suspend flights to Ukraine capital</strong> - The German airline will also halt services to Odessa as fears grow over a Russian invasion of Kyiv.</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>Ferry fire: Missing Euroferry Olympia passenger found alive off Corfu</strong> - “Tell me I’m alive” - the first words of a truck driver rescued from a ferry burning off Greece.</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>The Queen tests positive for Covid</strong> - She has mild cold-like symptoms and expects to continue “light duties” at Windsor, Buckingham Palace says.</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>Researchers want to create “universal donor” lungs</strong> - Changing the blood type of donated organs could shorten transplant wait times. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1835330">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Review: Space Force S2 retains the comedic magic, but it’s starting to lose its luster</strong> - A sadly shortened season is still a welcome celebration of STEM nerd culture - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1830245">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The best Presidents’ Day deals we’re seeing this weekend</strong> - Dealmaster has discounts on new MacBook Pros, Bose headphones, microSD cards, and more. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1835235">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A little bit of everything: The Short Story of Science</strong> - A beautiful volume that gives you a brief taste of most of science’s key advances. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1835202">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Is Firefox OK?</strong> - Mozilla’s privacy-heavy browser is flatlining but still crucial to future of the web. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1835337">link</a></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>There was an old man who lived by a forest. As he grew older and older, he started losing his hair, until one day, on his deathbed, he was completely bald. That day, he called his children to a meeting…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
He said, “Look at my hair. It used to be so magnificent, but it’s completely gone now. My hair can’t be saved. But look outside at the forest. It’s such a lovely forest with so many trees, but sooner or later they’ll all be cut down and this forest will look as bald as my hair.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“What I want you to do…” the man continued. “Is, every time a tree is cut down or dies, plant a new one in my memory. Tell your descendants to do the same. It shall be our family’s duty to keep this forest strong.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
And so they did.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Each time the forest lost a tree, the children replanted one, and so did their children, and their children after them.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
And for centuries, the forest remained as lush and pretty as it once was, all because of one man and his re-seeding heirline.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ThatOnePogger"> /u/ThatOnePogger </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swse8x/there_was_an_old_man_who_lived_by_a_forest_as_he/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swse8x/there_was_an_old_man_who_lived_by_a_forest_as_he/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>My mom said that if I don’t get off my computer and do my homework, she’s gonna slam my head on the keyboard.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
But I don’t give a fuskhhkxkhdkhhskhd
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/the_orca_jungle"> /u/the_orca_jungle </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swpapf/my_mom_said_that_if_i_dont_get_off_my_computer/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swpapf/my_mom_said_that_if_i_dont_get_off_my_computer/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>A good percentage of my friends are nazis</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
That percentage is zero. That’s a good percentage of nazi friends to have
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</p>
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</div>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/whywee"> /u/whywee </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swsg3h/a_good_percentage_of_my_friends_are_nazis/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swsg3h/a_good_percentage_of_my_friends_are_nazis/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The first mathematician orders a beer
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The second orders half a beer
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“I don’t serve half-beers” the bartender replies
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“Excuse me?” Asks mathematician #2
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“What kind of bar serves half-beers?” The bartender remarks. “That’s ridiculous.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“Oh c’mon” says mathematician #1 “do you know how hard it is to collect an infinite number of us? Just play along”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“There are very strict laws on how I can serve drinks. I couldn’t serve you half a beer even if I wanted to.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“But that’s not a problem” mathematician #3 chimes in “at the end of the joke you serve us a whole number of beers. You see, when you take the sum of a continuously halving function-”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“I know how limits work” interjects the bartender “Oh, alright then. I didn’t want to assume a bartender would be familiar with such advanced mathematics”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“Are you kidding me?” The bartender replies, “you learn limits in like, 9th grade! What kind of mathematician thinks limits are advanced mathematics?”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“HE’S ON TO US” mathematician #1 screeches
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Simultaneously, every mathematician opens their mouth and out pours a cloud of multicolored mosquitoes. Each mathematician is bellowing insects of a different shade. The mosquitoes form into a singular, polychromatic swarm. “FOOLS” it booms in unison, “I WILL INFECT EVERY BEING ON THIS PATHETIC PLANET WITH MALARIA”
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The bartender stands fearless against the technicolor hoard. “But wait” he inturrupts, thinking fast, “if you do that, politicians will use the catastrophe as an excuse to implement free healthcare. Think of how much that will hurt the taxpayers!”
|
||
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The mosquitoes fall silent for a brief moment. “My God, you’re right. We didn’t think about the economy! Very well, we will not attack this dimension. FOR THE TAXPAYERS!” and with that, they vanish.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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A nearby barfly stumbles over to the bartender. “How did you know that that would work?”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“It’s simple really” the bartender says. “I saw that the vectors formed a gradient, and therefore must be conservative.”
|
||
</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
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the joke.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ThatOnePogger"> /u/ThatOnePogger </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swcqsr/an_infinite_number_of_mathematicians_walk_into_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swcqsr/an_infinite_number_of_mathematicians_walk_into_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>A flight is on its way to Paris when a blonde in economy class gets up, and moves to the first class section and sits down The flight attendant watches her do this, and asks to see her ticket.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
She then tells the blonde that she paid for economy class, and that she will have to sit in the back.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The blonde replies, “I’m blonde, I’m beautiful, I’m going to Paris, and I’m staying right here”.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The flight attendant goes into the cockpit and tells the pilot and the co-pilot that there is a blonde bimbo sitting in first class, that belongs in economy, and won’t move back to her seat.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The co-pilot goes back to the blonde and tries to explain that because she only paid for economy she will have to leave and return to her seat.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The blonde replies, “I’m blonde, I’m beautiful, I’m going to Paris, and I’m staying right here”.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The co-pilot tells the pilot that he probably should have the police waiting when they land to arrest this blonde woman who won’t listen to reason.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The pilot says, “You say she is a blonde? I’ll handle this, I’m married to a blonde. I speak blonde”.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
He goes back to the blonde and whispers in her ear, and she says, “Oh, I’m sorry” and gets up and goes back to her seat in economy.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The flight attendant and co-pilot are amazed and asked him what he said to make her move without any fuss.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
I told her, “First class isn’t going to Paris “
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/YZXFILE"> /u/YZXFILE </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swdxqb/a_flight_is_on_its_way_to_paris_when_a_blonde_in/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/swdxqb/a_flight_is_on_its_way_to_paris_when_a_blonde_in/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
|
||
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