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649 lines
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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>Should Gig Work Be Government-Run?</strong> - The labor reformer Wingham Rowan wants to reimagine labor markets for the digital age. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/should-gig-work-be-government-run">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Humanitarian Challenge of Unaccompanied Children at the Border</strong> - A lawyer who met with children held in Border Patrol custody describes the urgency of expediting their release. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-humanitarian-challenge-of-unaccompanied-children-at-the-border">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>On the Overnight Shift with the Amazon Union Organizers</strong> - At around 4 A.M., two veteran union reps whipped votes outside the Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, and swapped stories of past organizing efforts at Piggly Wigglys and a condom factory in Eufaula. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/on-the-overnight-shift-with-the-amazon-union-organizers">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Historians Under Attack for Exploring Poland’s Role in the Holocaust</strong> - To exonerate the nation of the murders of three million Jews, the Polish government will go as far as to prosecute scholars for defamation. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-historians-under-attack-for-exploring-polands-role-in-the-holocaust">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Presidential Press Conference in the Biden Era Is as Awful as Ever</strong> - Under Trump, we had to listen. But now? There must be a better way. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-presidential-press-conference-in-the-biden-era-is-as-awful-as-ever">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>A world without trust</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="A Q sign and an American flag seen outside the US Capitol." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6iGYRJDj_gJ0K8QW3ZtCoaPYYpg=/0x0:3556x2667/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69029753/1230447910.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg 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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How the public loss of faith in institutions has brought us to the brink of crisis.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3U4IA6">
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One of the greatest challenges facing democratic societies in the 21st century is the loss of faith in public institutions.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a9l5QJ">
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The internet has been a marvelous invention in lots of ways, but it has also unleashed a tsunami of misinformation and destabilized political systems across the globe. Martin Gurri, a former media analyst at the CIA and the author of the 2014 book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143/?ots=1&slotNum=1&imprToken=f6bc32cb-fcb4-fa89-39b&ascsubtag=%5B%5Dvx%5Bp%5D20768838%5Bt%5Dw%5Br%5Dgoogle.com%5Bd%5DD"><em>The Revolt of the Public</em></a>, was way ahead of the curve on this problem.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qIY0Dj">
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Gurri spent years surveying the global information landscape. Around the turn of the century, he noticed a trend: As the internet gave rise to an explosion of information, there was a concurrent spike in political instability. The reason, he surmised, was that governments lost their monopoly on information and with it their ability to control the public conversation.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="36QNwa">
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One of the many consequences of this is what Gurri calls a “crisis of authority.” As people were exposed to more information, their trust in major institutions — like the government or newspapers — began to collapse.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y7A16s">
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Gurri’s book became something of a cult favorite among Silicon Valley types when it was released and its insights have only become more salient since. Indeed,<strong> </strong>I’ve been thinking more and more about his thesis in the aftermath of the 2020 election and the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22217822/us-capitol-attack-trump-right-wing-media-misinformation">assault on the US Capitol</a> on January 6. There are lots of reasons why the insurrection happened, but one of them is the reality that millions of Americans believed — really believed — that the presidential election was stolen, despite a complete lack of evidence. A Politico poll conducted shortly after the election found that <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/09/republicans-free-fair-elections-435488">70 percent</a> of Republicans thought the election was fraudulent.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aNH50J">
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That’s what a “crisis of authority” looks like in the real world.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Lyiqe7">
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And it’s crucial to distinguish this crisis from what’s often called the “epistemic crisis” or the “post-truth” problem. If Gurri’s right, the issue isn’t just<strong> </strong>that truth suddenly became less important; it’s that people stopped believing in the institutions charged with communicating the truth. To put it a little differently, the gatekeeping institutions lost their power to decide what passes as truth in the mind of the public.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eggEgU">
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So where does that leave us?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9XM1Rk">
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I reached out to Gurri to explore the implications of his thesis. We talk about what it means for our society if millions of people reject every claim that comes from a mainstream institution, why a <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22252171/qanon-donald-trump-conspiracy-theories">phenomenon like QAnon</a> is fundamentally a “pose of rejection,” and why he thinks we’ll have to “reconfigure” our democratic institutions for the digital world we now inhabit.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xHa3Vp">
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A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
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</p>
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<h4 id="tcWo6F">
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Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j0Umud">
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Have elites — politicians, corporate actors, media and cultural elites —<strong> </strong>lost control of the world?
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</p>
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<h4 id="RxGCXg">
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Martin Gurri
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vyMrI0">
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Yes and no. It’s a wishy-washy answer, but it’s a reality.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TPTiib">
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They would have completely lost control of the world if the public in revolt had a clear program or an organization or leadership. If they were more like the Bolsheviks and less like QAnon, they’d take over the Capitol building. They’d start passing laws. They would topple the regime.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S9O7av">
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But what we have is this collision between a public that is in repudiation mode and these elites who have lost control to the degree that they can’t hoist these utopian promises upon us anymore because no one believes it, but they’re still acting like zombie elites in zombie institutions. They still have power. They can still take us to war. They can still throw the police out there, and the police could shoot us, but they have no authority or legitimacy. They’re stumbling around like zombies.
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</p>
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<h4 id="xfcIjW">
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Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SPR7pC">
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You like to say that governments have lost the ability to dictate the stories a society tells about itself, mostly because the media environment is too fragmented. Why is that so significant?
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</p>
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<h4 id="QLkSbT">
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Martin Gurri
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JAqcV1">
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When you analyze the institutions that we have inherited from the 20th century, you find that they are very top-down, like pyramids. And the legitimacy of that model absolutely depends on having a semi-monopoly over information in every domain, which they had in the 20th century. There was no internet and there was a fairly limited number of information sources for the public. So our ruling institutions had authority because they had a very valuable commodity: information.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IIhiRO">
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So I was an analyst at the CIA looking around the world at open information, at the global media. And I can tell you, it was like a trickle compared to today. If a president, here or somewhere else, was giving a speech, the coverage of it was confined to major outlets or television stations. But when the tsunami of information hit around the turn of the century, the legitimacy of that model instantly went into crisis because you now had the opposite effect. You had an overabundance of information, and that created a lot of confusion and anarchy.
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</p>
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<h4 id="WSFUoH">
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<strong>Sean Illing</strong>
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="08emuz">
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I’m curious how you weigh the significance of material factors in this story. It’s not just that there’s more information, we’ve also seen a litany of failures in the 21st century — from Hurricane Katrina to the forever wars to the financial crisis and on and on. Basically, a decade of institutions failing and misleading citizens, in addition to the deepening inequality, the deaths of despair, the fact that this generation of Americans is doing materially worse than previous ones.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T8K6RU">
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How big a role has this backdrop of failures played in the collapse of trust?
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</p>
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<h4 id="8oEbyY">
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<strong>Martin Gurri</strong>
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZaXAJW">
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I would say that what matters is less the material factors you mention than the public’s perception of these factors. Empirically, under nearly every measure, we are better off today than in the 20th century, yet the public is much angrier and more distrustful of government institutions and the elites who manage them. That difference in perception arises directly from the radical changes in the information landscape between the last century and our own.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WCdgwa">
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With few exceptions, most market democracies have recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. But the public has not recovered from the shock of watching supposed experts and politicians, the people who posed as the wise pilots of our prosperity, sound and act totally clueless while the economy burned. In the past, when the elites controlled the flow of information, the financial collapse might have been portrayed as a sort of natural disaster, a tragedy we should unify around our leadership to overcome. By 2008, that was already impossible. The networked public perceived the crisis (rightly, I think) as a failure of government and of the expert elites.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S3VbGf">
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It should be a truism that material conditions matter much less than expectations. That was true during the Great Depression and it’s true today. The rhetoric of the rant on the web feeds off extreme expectations — any imperfection in the economy will be treated as a crisis and a true crisis will be seen as the Apocalypse.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HrC09x">
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Take the example of Chile. For 40 years, it had high economic growth, rising into the ranks of the wealthiest nations. During this time, Chile enjoyed a healthy democracy, in which political parties of left and right alternated in office. Everyone benefited. Yet in 2019, with many deaths and much material destruction, the Chilean public took to the streets in revolt against the established order. Its material expectations had been deeply frustrated, despite the country’s economic and political successes.
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</p>
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<h4 id="nhqTz3">
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Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NNXsnV">
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Just to be clear, when you talk about this “tsunami” of information in the digital age, you’re not talking about more truth, right?
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</p>
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<h4 id="KbczaU">
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Martin Gurri
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wWIRQB">
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As <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812979680/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0812979680&linkCode=as2&tag=farnamstreet-20&linkId=KYTDXK3BDQQF3YS3" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Nassim Taleb</a> pointed out, when you have a gigantic explosion of information, what’s exploding is noise, not signal, so there’s that.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D20IS9">
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As for truth, that’s a tricky subject, because a lot of elites believe, and a lot of people believe, that truth is some kind of Platonic form. We can’t see it, but we know it’s there. And often we know it because the science says so.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VzkJCw">
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But that’s not really how truth works. Truth is essentially an act of trust, an act of faith in some authority that is telling you something that you could not possibly come to realize yourself. What’s a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/quark">quark</a>? You believe that there are quarks in the universe, probably because you’ve been told by people who probably know what they’re talking about that there are quarks. You believe the physicists. But you’ve never seen a quark. I’ve never seen a quark. We accept this as truth because we’ve accepted the authority of the people who told us it’s true.
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</p>
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<h4 id="nunjSE">
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Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2bXmCH">
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I’m starting to hate the phrase <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/post-truth">“post-truth”</a> because it implies there was some period in which we lived in truth or in which truth was predominant. But that’s misleading. The difference is that elite gatekeeping institutions can’t place borders on the public conversation and that means they’ve lost the ability to determine what passes as truth, so now we’re in the Wild West.
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</p>
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<h4 id="Zo587B">
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Martin Gurri
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LR9en1">
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That’s a very good way to put it. I would say, though, that there was a shining moment when we all had truth. They are correct about that. If truth is really a function of authority, and if in the 20th century these institutions really had authority, then we did have something like truth. But if we had the information back then that we have today, if we had all the noise that we have today, nothing would’ve seemed quite as true because we would’ve lacked faith in the institutions that tried to tell us.
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</p>
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<h4 id="oEew2u">
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Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5zinp0">
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What does it mean for our society if an “official narrative” isn’t possible? Because that’s where we’re at, right? Millions of people will never believe any story or account that comes from the government or a mainstream institution.
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</p>
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<h4 id="o6owxV">
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Martin Gurri
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="X35FUP">
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As long as our institutions remain as they are, nothing much will change. What that means is more of the same — more instability, more turbulence, more conspiracy theories, more distrust of authorities. But there’s no iron law of history that says we have to keep these institutions the way they are. Many of our institutions were built around the turn of the 20th century. They weren’t that egalitarian or democratic. They were like great, big pyramids.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8UA6Mj">
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But we can take our constitutional framework and reconfigure it. We’ve done it once already, and we could do it again with the digital realm in mind, understanding the distance we once had between those in power and ordinary citizens is gone forever. It’s just gone. So we need people in power who are comfortable in proximity to the public, which many of our elites are not.
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</p>
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<h4 id="TxT449">
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Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="265KpH">
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I do want to at least point to an apparent paradox here. As you’ve said, because of the internet, there are now more voices and more perspectives than ever before, and yet at the same time there’s a massive “herding effect,” as a result of which we have more people talking about fewer subjects. And that partly explains how you get millions of people converging on something like QAnon.
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</p>
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<h4 id="YjtLWC">
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Martin Gurri
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ahiOpo">
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Yeah, and that’s very mysterious to me. I would not have expected that outcome. I thought we were headed to ever more dispersed information islands and that that would create a fragmentation in individual beliefs. But instead, I’ve noticed a trend toward conformism and a crystallizing of very few topics. Some of this is just an unwillingness to say certain things because you know if you said them, the internet was going to come after you.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FJstI4">
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But I think Trump had a lot to do with it. The amount of attention he got was absolutely unprecedented. Everything was about him. People were either against him or for him, but he was always the subject. Then came the pandemic and he simply lost the capacity to absorb and manipulate attention. The pandemic just moved him completely off-kilter. He never recovered.
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</p>
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<h4 id="WPXc3O">
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Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3jI2H7">
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But we’re in a situation in which ideas, whether it’s QAnon stuff or anything else, are getting more hollow and more viral at the same time — and that seems really bad moving forward.
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</p>
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<h4 id="S39gE5">
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Martin Gurri
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a8PA7Z">
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I’m not quite that pessimistic. You can find all kinds of wonderful stuff being written about practically every aspect of society today by people who are seeing things clearly and sanely. But yeah, they’re surrounded by a mountain of viral crap. And yet we’re in the early days of this transformation. We have no idea how this is going to play out.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="caE05Q">
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There has always been a lot of viral crap going around, and there have always been people who believe crazy stuff, particularly crazy stuff that doesn’t impact their immediate lives. Flat earthers still get on airplanes, right? If you’re a flat earther, you’re not a flat earther enough to not get in an airplane and disrupt your personal life. It’s not really a belief, it’s basically giving the finger to the establishment.
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</p>
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<h4 id="e3r1oH">
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Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UoUnja">
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It’s a pose.
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</p>
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<h4 id="Y87lxK">
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Martin Gurri
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ILktfy">
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Yeah, it’s a pose of rejection. QAnon is a pose of rejection. There are very many flavors of it, but what they have in common is they’re saying all these ideas you have and all the facts you’re cramming in my face — it’s all a prop for the powerful and I’m rejecting it.
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</p>
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<h4 id="ouJcfA">
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Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="taZJcJ">
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It’s an important point because a lot of us treat QAnon like it’s some kind of epistemological problem, but it’s not really that at all. It’s actually much more difficult than that. And even if we set aside QAnon, the fact that the vast majority of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was fraudulent speaks to the breadth of the problem.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h4 id="rurz5D">
|
||
Martin Gurri
|
||
</h4>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9nKJWN">
|
||
Right, it’s a problem of authority. When people don’t trust those charged with conveying the truth, they won’t accept it. And at some point, like I said, we’ll have to reconfigure our democracy. Our politicians and institutions are going to have to adjust to the new world in which the public can’t be walled off or controlled. Leaders can’t stand at the top of pyramids anymore and talk down to people. The digital revolution flattened everything. We’ve got to accept that.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AsxBXG">
|
||
I really do have hope that this will happen. The boomers who grew up in the old world and can’t move beyond it are going to die out, and younger people are going to take their place. That will raise other questions and challenges, of course, but there will be a changing of the guard and we should welcome it.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>The Senate primary in Ohio is a race to see which Republican can be the Trumpiest</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="Jane Timken speaks into a microphone." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W44I-swXf73HZmXJjwKHvi5vUHQ=/0x0:2048x1536/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69029683/822876478.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Then-Ohio GOP Chair Jane Timken speaks at a Trump rally in July 2017. Timken is now running for US Senate. | Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via Getty Images
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Trump wants the GOP to be all about him. The campaign to replace Rob Portman indicates he’s getting his way.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yEWqlo">
|
||
The race to fill retiring Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s Senate seat currently features one unofficial candidate and two official ones: a person flirting with QAnon-style conspiracy theories, someone whose Twitter account was recently suspended because of bigoted tweets, and a third person who’s calling for Rep. Anthony Gonzalez’s (R-OH) resignation simply because he voted to impeach then-President Trump.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c0bHlE">
|
||
If this primary serves as a window into what the Republican Party will look like heading into the 2022 midterms, it’s not a pretty picture — and one dominated by the divisive, conspiratorial politics favored by Trump. Other midterm races are still taking shape, but in Ohio, it’s becoming clear that Trump’s hold on the party is firmer than ever.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0roehS">
|
||
Portman announced his retirement in late January, <a href="https://www.timesgazette.com/news/54276/portman-on-not-seeking-re-election-its-harder-to-break-through-the-partisan-gridlock-and-make-progress">saying</a> “it has gotten harder and harder to break through the partisan gridlock and make progress on substantive policy, and that has contributed to my decision.” He did his best to avoid talking about Trump during the second of his two terms in the Senate, going as far as to claim he didn’t read his incendiary tweets during national television appearances.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="sw4xFv">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
|
||
“I haven’t seen the tweet” says <a href="https://twitter.com/senrobportman?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span class="citation" data-cites="senrobportman">@senrobportman</span></a> on Trump’s tweet attacking intel leaders. But he adds “They’re not always right….but that’s the best we have. We need to rely on them.” <a href="https://t.co/cu2gkiJsfZ">pic.twitter.com/cu2gkiJsfZ</a>
|
||
</p>
|
||
— Kate Bolduan (<span class="citation" data-cites="KateBolduan">@KateBolduan</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/KateBolduan/status/1090681011262885888?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2019</a>
|
||
</blockquote></div></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q2xHK2">
|
||
While never exactly a Trump ally, Portman was largely supportive of the former president’s agenda, though he was <a href="https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/portman-statement-2020-presidential-election">mildly critical</a> of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rEMNmz">
|
||
Portman did his best to pretend Trump didn’t exist, but the candidates running to be his successor are employing the opposite strategy: The race to fill his seat looks increasingly like a competition to see which candidate can talk about Trump the most.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="YbNeNd">
|
||
J.D. Vance has gone full Tucker Carlson
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TMznp0">
|
||
The QAnon-curious figure in the race is J.D. Vance, author of the bestselling memoir <em>Hillbilly Elegy</em>, which was released in June 2016 and was “praised <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2016/08/17/jd-vance-hillbilly-elegy-donald-trump-usa-today-best-selling-books-book-buzz/88862854/">by some publications</a> as a skeleton key to Trumpism,” as my colleague Alissa Wilkinson recently <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21547861/hillbilly-elegy-review-netflix">put it</a> in her review of the film adaptation of the book.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LcP7qs">
|
||
<em>Hillbilly Elegy </em>detailed the cultural milieu in which support for a populist demagogue like Trump could thrive. But Vance didn’t try to hide the fact that he wasn’t a Trump fan during the 2016 campaign, <a href="https://thebulwark.com/j-d-vance-joins-the-jackals/">saying</a>, “I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F1x2lV">
|
||
But now that Trump has made it nearly impossible to function in Republican politics without unyielding support for him — recent <a href="https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/16/trump-gop-support-impeachment-poll/">polling</a> indicates a majority of Republicans would support him in a hypothetical 2024 Republican primary — the 36-year-old Vance is singing a different tune.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="alpOXd">
|
||
In recent months, Vance has approvingly retweeted the likes of Donald Trump Jr. and Dinesh D’Souza; done softball interviews with Tucker Carlson and far-right former Trump administration official <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/25/15505180/sebastian-gorka-out-resign">Seb Gorka</a>; tweeted Trump-style attacks on the media (for instance <a href="https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1361525600888963072">asking</a>, “Why are so many members of the press such incredible babies?”); and promoted a <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/1/17253444/qanon-trump-conspiracy-theory-4chan-explainer">QAnon</a>-inspired conspiracy theory by suggesting a group of unrelated sexual misconduct cases is evidence of a cabal.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f0OJcv">
|
||
“Someone should have asked Jeffrey Epstein, John Weaver, or Leon Black about the CRAZY CONSPIRACY that many powerful people were predators targeting children,” Vance tweeted on February 11.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="iV2tQ2">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
|
||
Someone should have asked Jeffrey Epstein, John Weaver, or Leon Black about the CRAZY CONSPIRACY that many powerful people were predators targeting children.
|
||
</p>
|
||
— J.D. Vance (<span class="citation" data-cites="JDVance1">@JDVance1</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1360243143883554820?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 12, 2021</a>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fWiTAj">
|
||
To the extent that Vance has expressed interest in policy, his platform has largely centered on immigration restrictionism, complaining about Trump being banished from Facebook and Twitter, calling out alleged liberal hypocrisy, and trying to make hay out of Trumpist culture war wedge issues like the supposed cancelation of Dr. Seuss.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="7Eq809">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
|
||
eBay removes all listings of the six canceled Dr. Seuss books<br/><br/>Just a normal day in our totally free and healthy country <a href="https://t.co/NlOaHciyjh">https://t.co/NlOaHciyjh</a>
|
||
</p>
|
||
— J.D. Vance (<span class="citation" data-cites="JDVance1">@JDVance1</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1367579343980011530?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 4, 2021</a>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3f7C4U">
|
||
In short, Vance has gone full Tucker Carlson.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zVxSJZ">
|
||
Vance hasn’t officially entered the Ohio Senate race yet, but he already has a super PAC supporting him called Protect Ohio Values that recently <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22332045/peter-thiel-jd-vance-ohio-senate-donation">received $10 million</a> from tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YXJCVp">
|
||
Vance’s brand of Trumpism isn’t necessarily as stark as that of the other two candidates in the race — though he’s only posted 98 tweets, just one of them mentions Trump by name. But his soft-pedaling of conspiracy theories, embrace of conspiracy theorists, focus on stoking division with culture war grievances, and attacks on the “<a href="https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1373662583975215106">elites</a>” (despite his Yale Law School background) indicates whatever reservations he once had about Trumpism have fallen by the wayside.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="Rw0kR8">
|
||
The other two candidates are working even harder for Trump’s endorsement
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="H4Agdt">
|
||
The two candidates who have officially launched campaigns to replace Portman are former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel and former Ohio GOP chair Jane Timken. And, like Vance, neither of them has exactly bathed themselves in glory so far.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="v56ssC">
|
||
Mandel’s Twitter account was recently restricted for “hateful conduct,” as the Cincinnati Enquirer <a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/18/twitter-temporarily-blocks-ohio-senate-candidate-josh-mandel-over-hateful-conduct/4755165001/">explains</a>:
|
||
</p>
|
||
<blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nxHT2j">
|
||
Mandel’s account created a poll [on March 18] about which type of “illegals” would commit more crimes, “Muslim Terrorists” or “Mexican Gangbangers.” His campaign later shared that the account was temporarily suspended for 12 hours for violating Twitter’s policies on “hateful conduct.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gbQJNV">
|
||
While Mandel’s tweet was racist in multiple respects, he’s unrepentant. After his account was unrestricted, he posted a tweet claiming, “Just like President Trump, I was canceled by <span class="citation" data-cites="twitter">@twitter</span> <span class="citation" data-cites="jack">@jack</span> yesterday.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V9BSk6">
|
||
“I wear this as a badge of honor as Big Tech thugs & elites target those who they are most afraid of,” he added. “Our movement of steel-spined Constitutional Conservatives & Trump Warriors will not be silenced.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="8N9fEF">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
|
||
Just like President Trump, I was canceled by <a href="https://twitter.com/Twitter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span class="citation" data-cites="twitter">@twitter</span></a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jack?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span class="citation" data-cites="jack">@jack</span></a> yesterday.<br/><br/>I wear this as a badge of honor as Big Tech thugs & elites target those who they are most afraid of.<br/><br/>Our movement of steel-spined Constitutional Conservatives & Trump Warriors will not be silenced: <a href="https://t.co/SxHlgmq2xf">pic.twitter.com/SxHlgmq2xf</a>
|
||
</p>
|
||
— Josh Mandel (<span class="citation" data-cites="JoshMandelOhio">@JoshMandelOhio</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/JoshMandelOhio/status/1372906802673819650?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2021</a>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6rAYZV">
|
||
Beyond Trump-style bigotry, Mandel’s platform largely seems to be that he loves Trump more than anyone else. His Twitter bio boasts that he was the “1st Statewide Official in Ohio to support President Trump.” When he officially launched his campaign on February 10, he said he’s “going to Washington to fight for President Trump’s America First Agenda.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="yD073q">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
|
||
Criss-crossing Ohio today & love seeing all the Trump flags still being PROUDLY flown!<br/><br/>We will never back down & we will never give up.<br/><br/>America First!
|
||
</p>
|
||
— Josh Mandel (<span class="citation" data-cites="JoshMandelOhio">@JoshMandelOhio</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/JoshMandelOhio/status/1373360940138258432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2021</a>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ook4GC">
|
||
But all this fawning over Trump apparently hasn’t been enough to give Mandel pole position for Trump’s endorsement. That distinction reportedly belongs to Timken, whom Trump wanted to endorse before being talked out of it late last month on the grounds that doing so would be premature, according to <a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-endorsement-ohio-senate-2022-d7ef0b0d-c993-485f-af08-1990ed6fdd11.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=politics-trumpmidterms">Axios</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q0rmWd">
|
||
Timken made headlines a few weeks ago for calling on her Congress member, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, to resign. Gonzalez was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vMtlfu">
|
||
“President Trump is the leader of our Party and we must have conservative leaders committed to the team if we are going to keep Ohio red and win back majorities in the U.S. House and Senate in 2022,” Timken said in a statement. “Gonzalez should put his constituents and the Republican Party first by resigning from Congress.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5Zwx9c">
|
||
But Timken gave very different comments about Gonzalez before she announced her campaign in February, with her later remarks apparently an indication of what she thinks it’ll take to win the race.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x8gWzd">
|
||
Speaking to Cleveland.com, Timken <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/open/2021/02/will-the-ohio-gop-move-on-from-trump-a-qa-with-chairman-jane-timken.html">praised</a> Gonzalez, describing him as “a very effective legislator” and “a very good person.” That interview was conducted after the impeachment vote, so the only thing that changed between then and the statement Timken released calling for Gonzalez’s resignation is that she announced she’s running for office.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="HdfUEv">
|
||
The Ohio race is playing out just the way Trump wants it to
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rKtX57">
|
||
Trump’s decisive loss in November to Biden and subsequent campaign to overturn the result — an effort lowlighted by the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22220746/trump-speech-incite-capitol-riot">January 6 insurrection</a> at the US Capitol — provided the Republican Party with its latest opportunity to turn the page from Trumpism. But, as has repeatedly been the case since Trump won the Republican primary in 2016, the party refused to take it.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nsdaPl">
|
||
A total of 17 Republicans in the House and Senate voted for Trump’s impeachment or removal in connection with the insurrection. But those Republicans were quickly ostracized from the more powerful MAGA faction of the party. For instance, Trump loyalist Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) traveled to Wyoming to give a speech denouncing House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (WY) for her yes vote for impeachment, and Trump denounced Republicans who voted against him by name to applause during his February speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which doubled as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/2/28/22306318/trump-cpac-2021-speech-election-lies">a weekend-long celebration of all things Trump</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="CdeJWL">
|
||
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
|
||
Trump puts Mitt Romney, “Little Ben Sasse,” Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Tomney, and all the House Republicans who voted for his impeachment on blast by name – concluding with Liz Cheney <a href="https://t.co/Me5JvoIslq">pic.twitter.com/Me5JvoIslq</a>
|
||
</p>
|
||
— Aaron Rupar (<span class="citation" data-cites="atrupar">@atrupar</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1366163498661785610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 28, 2021</a>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Op9EZh">
|
||
It’s more than just rhetoric. Trump is <a href="https://www.vox.com/22321215/trump-rnc-cease-and-desist-fundraising-feud-purge">attempting a hostile takeover</a> of the GOP by asking his supporters to donate to him instead of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and other prominent Republican groups. He’s also made clear that he thinks “RINOS” (Republicans in name only) like Gonzalez who supported his impeachment should be purged from the party.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tMJvq2">
|
||
And Trump has already <a href="https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/politics/elections/candidates/former-president-trump-max-miller-gop-primary-northeast-ohio-rep-anthony-gonzalez/95-f3423394-209b-4726-91e4-f37b8e6afa62">endorsed</a> the candidacy of Max Miller, a former White House aide of his who is primarying Gonzalez.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="zACKE0">
|
||
This is partly a story about Ohio, but mostly one about the Republican Party
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SeSiSp">
|
||
Ohio is traditionally thought of as a purple, bellwether state, but it has been trending redder since 2012, when then-President Barack Obama carried the state with a slim majority.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rOLzxM">
|
||
In 2016, Trump easily won there, besting Hillary Clinton by more than 8 percentage points. But Trump’s margin looked downright slim compared to Portman’s, who won reelection by more than 20 percentage points over Democratic ex-Gov. Ted Strickland. Trump again carried Ohio easily last November, beating Biden by about the same margin as he beat Clinton four years earlier.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sKb4M2">
|
||
This isn’t to say that Democrats can no longer win in Ohio. The other US senator from the state, Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown, won reelection for his third term in 2018 over ex-Rep. Jim Renacci by a comfortable margin of about 7 percentage points. But all else being equal, whoever prevails in the Republican primary — particularly if they have Trump’s blessing — will likely be the favorite to fill Portman’s seat.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jxlA0G">
|
||
Ultimately, however, the story of the primary to replace Portman is more about the direction of the Republican Party than it is about Ohio. The defining issue of the race is Trump — how much a candidate supports him, whether he has endorsed them, and how like him they are. Losing reelection and presiding over the GOP’s loss of both chambers of Congress wasn’t enough to shake his hold on the party.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>The Supreme Court showdown over whether colleges should pay their athletes, explained</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="USC v Kansas" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/imoMDkC7fmhMCl4eP25G4DKR8mI=/10x0:3165x2366/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69029660/1308544518.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Isaiah White of the USC Trojans takes a shot against the Kansas Jayhawks in the second half of their second round game of the 2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament at Hinkle Fieldhouse on March 22, 2021, in Indianapolis, Indiana. | Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Sports leagues enjoy some exemptions from antitrust laws; the question in <em>NCAA v. Alston </em>is how those exemptions apply to player compensation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dzb0xs">
|
||
College sports are a massive industry. In the 2015-’16 academic year, Division I basketball and Division I-A football <a href="https://casetext.com/case/alston-v-natl-collegiate-athletic-assn-in-re-natl-collegiate-athletic-assn-athletic-grant-in-aid-cap-antitrust-litig-1">generated $4.3 billion in revenue</a>. The question of whether these basketball and football programs need to use some of this revenue to provide more compensation to players is now before the Supreme Court in <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/national-collegiate-athletic-association-v-alston/"><em>NCAA v. Alston</em></a>, which the justices will hear next Wednesday.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rhvdee">
|
||
The case was brought by several college football and basketball players (the basketball players include men and women) who allege that “the NCAA and its members have <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.278299.60.0.pdf">unlawfully agreed that no college will pay an athlete</a> any amount for his or her work that exceeds the value of a grant-in-aid,” the mix of athletic scholarships and similar compensation provided to many of the nation’s top college athletes. All of the plaintiff athletes play (or, at least, played — the case was filed in 2014) at the elite Division I level.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gA8SP6">
|
||
If you watch a college football or basketball game on television, you’re watching the product of a long list of workers who are all paid market salaries or wages.<strong> </strong>Coaches in top programs <a href="https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/salaries/">earn millions of dollars a year</a>. Such programs also employ an array of athletic directors, assistant coaches, and athletic trainers. Stadiums need janitors to clean up after games. Football fields need groundskeepers. Basketball programs require workers to maintain the court’s surface. And all of these workers are generally paid whatever compensation they are able to secure in the open market.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oLxS6e">
|
||
But the players are not. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) enforces a strict set of rules limiting player compensation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bOJmgH">
|
||
College athletes aren’t necessarily uncompensated. At the elite level, many receive scholarships that cover the cost of attending college, including expenses such as room and board. And some players <a href="https://casetext.com/case/alston-v-natl-collegiate-athletic-assn-in-re-natl-collegiate-athletic-assn-athletic-grant-in-aid-cap-antitrust-litig-1">even receive small cash stipends</a> to cover their living expenses, as well as other perks such as meals and medical care for sports-related injuries.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ANHZek">
|
||
Of course, some of these players will go on to make a lot of money as professional athletes, but that’s only a rare few. As Judge Milan Smith pointed out in his opinion in this case, “<a href="https://casetext.com/case/alston-v-natl-collegiate-athletic-assn-in-re-natl-collegiate-athletic-assn-athletic-grant-in-aid-cap-antitrust-litig-1">fewer than 5% of Student-Athletes will ever play at a professional level</a>, and most of those lucky few will stay in the pros only a few short years.” So “the college years are likely the only years when young Student-Athletes have any realistic chance of earning a significant amount of money or achieving fame as a result of their athletic skills.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xoR78D">
|
||
But these players cannot negotiate for a salary. And they often can’t benefit financially from the fame they earn while playing. The NCAA’s bylaws strip players of eligibility “for intercollegiate competition in a particular sport if the individual … <a href="https://web3.ncaa.org/lsdbi/bylaw?ruleId=7300&refDate=20200906">uses athletics skill (directly or indirectly) for pay in any form in that sport</a>.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NfTLcf">
|
||
In virtually any other industry, this arrangement would violate federal antitrust laws. Vox Media, for example, could not form a cartel with its competitors where they all agree to pay depressed salaries to reporters.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9dU5Ed">
|
||
But that brings us to why <em>Alston</em> is actually a difficult case. Having laid out the facts of <em>Alston</em> in fairly pro-worker terms, I should now acknowledge that the NCAA has a reasonably strong case under existing precedents. And it has a strong case because the Supreme Court has long recognized that sports leagues must have some exemptions from federal antitrust law in order to function.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RC9373">
|
||
As the Court explained in <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/468/85.html"><em>NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma</em></a> (1984), sports leagues necessarily require individual teams to collude with their competitors. The teams that make up a football league, for example, must all agree upon “rules affecting such matters as the size of the field, the number of players on a team, and the extent to which physical violence is to be encouraged or proscribed.” They also have to agree on even more basic things such as which teams play which other teams at what times, and where those games will take place. Without this kind of collusion, organized competitive sports could not exist.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mTGVoH">
|
||
Yet, while there’s widespread agreement that the NCAA needs to have some leeway to set rules that would ordinarily violate antitrust laws, this leeway is not absolute. The fundamental question in <em>Alston</em> is just how much freedom the NCAA should have to set rules that limit players’ compensation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<div id="IFdk7O">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<h3 id="pZuE9U">
|
||
Why sports are different
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zc1sw0">
|
||
In the parlance of antitrust law, the NCAA’s rules limiting player compensation are what is known as a “<a href="https://definitions.uslegal.com/h/horizontal-agreement/#:~:text=Horizontal%20Agreement%20is%20an%20agreement,regarding%20pricing%2C%20production%20and%20distribution.">horizontal agreement</a>” among competitors — that is, they are an arrangement among multiple businesses that compete at the same level within the college sports industry.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CvzDKM">
|
||
As the Court explained in the <em>Board of Regents </em>case, “horizontal price fixing and output limitation are <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/468/85.html">ordinarily condemned as a matter of law under an ‘illegal per se’ approach</a> because the probability that these practices are anticompetitive is so high.” This is why media companies couldn’t collude with one another to underpay their writers.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xGSeTB">
|
||
But this strong rule against horizontal price fixing is relaxed for what antitrust lawyers call “joint ventures.” Sometimes, multiple competitors are able to work together to produce a product that could not exist without such collusion. As Robert Bork, the former judge and <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/even-the-late-robert-bork-thought-the-tea-party-was-out-of-its-mind-b8bb8d5e7769/">failed Supreme Court nominee</a>, wrote in an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox">extraordinarily influential 1978 book</a>, the “leading example” of such a venture “is league sports.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pwNVM6">
|
||
Few people are going to watch a single sports team show off its skills in isolation. The essence of team sports is that two or more teams go up against each other in a prearranged competition. As Bork wrote, such competition is the very sort of activity that “can only be carried out jointly.” If Duke cannot collude with UNC to decide when their two teams will meet on a basketball court, fans of both teams will lose a cherished tradition.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hYlhy6">
|
||
Yet, while <em>Board of Regents</em> acknowledged that sports teams must have some ability to enter into arrangements that would ordinarily violate antitrust laws, the Court did not give the NCAA free rein to do whatever it wants.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7g5vyX">
|
||
<em>Board of Regents</em> involved the NCAA’s efforts to control which games could be broadcast on television at which times. Under the NCAA’s terms, only two networks (ABC and CBS) were allowed to broadcast college football games, and those networks were required to “schedule appearances for at least 82 different [teams] during each 2-year period.” No team, moreover, was “eligible to appear on television more than a total of six times and more than four times nationally, with the appearances to be divided equally between the two carrying networks.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EN9Yeo">
|
||
The apparent purpose of this arrangement was to prevent television broadcasts of games from having “an adverse effect on college football attendance.” The NCAA feared that if too many games were broadcast, fans would choose to watch college football at home rather than buying tickets and watching them in the stadium.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KlHsX7">
|
||
In any event, the Court held that this sort of arrangement was not allowed. Limits on which games can be televised, the Court explained, do not “fit into the same mold as do rules defining the conditions of the contest, the eligibility of participants, or the manner in which members of a joint enterprise shall share the responsibilities and the benefits of the total venture.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5poyp7">
|
||
A sports league cannot exist unless every team plays by the same rules, and it cannot exist unless the teams agree to a set schedule. But college football is perfectly capable of thriving without the limits on televised games imposed by the NCAA in the <em>Board of Regents </em>case. Indeed, college football is a successful industry right now, even though the Court struck down the NCAA’s restrictions on televised games.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="72QoNB">
|
||
The NCAA claims that “amateur” athletes are an essential part of its product
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7L7XHN">
|
||
The core insight of <em>Board of Regents</em> is that antitrust law may not prevent competitors from colluding with one another — even if such collusion involves activity like horizontal price fixing that is typically illegal — if such collusion allows those competitors to offer a product to consumers that otherwise could not exist.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sfpUBP">
|
||
But what exactly is the “product” offered by the NCAA and the various schools that belong to it?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cuSATX">
|
||
The NCAA argues in its brief that “the ‘product’ of college sports” is “different from professional sports <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-512/167853/20210201165312803_20-512%20ts.pdf">because the participants are not only students but also amateurs</a>, i.e., not paid to play.” Competition among “amateurs,” which in this context appears to mean players who can receive scholarships and small stipends but not salaries, the NCAA claims, is a fundamentally different product than competition among athletes who are paid whatever they can earn in the free market.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M5DMIA">
|
||
One problem with this argument is that if it can be applied to other industries, it could eviscerate antitrust protections for workers.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qOkap1">
|
||
Think again of a cartel of media companies that all collude to depress salaries for their employees. Imagine that this cartel announces it has created an exciting new product — “amateur journalism!” — and that the members of the cartel will now employ entire newsrooms of college students who are compensated solely with college credit or maybe a small stipend similar to the ones offered to some college athletes.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BYZ40n">
|
||
Imagine as well that the cartel starts laying off professional reporters because at least some of the work done by those professionals can also be performed by “amateurs” for far less money. And the laid-off workers are unable to find work at a professional rate because anyone who might hire them is part of the cartel. This is the very sort of collusion and price fixing that antitrust laws are supposed to prevent.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R4EbKz">
|
||
But while workers everywhere should hope that the Court won’t tolerate the NCAA’s “amateurism” argument in any other industry, the NCAA does have a fair amount of case law on its side.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c5UFhI">
|
||
In <em>Board of Regents</em>, for example, the Court did suggest that “amateur” competition among college students is <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/468/85.html">different in kind from professional competition</a>:
|
||
</p>
|
||
<blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SCPpwF">
|
||
[T]he NCAA seeks to market a particular brand of football — college football. The identification of this “product” with an academic tradition differentiates college football from and makes it more popular than professional sports to which it might otherwise be comparable, such as, for example, minor league baseball. In order to preserve the character and quality of the “product,” athletes must not be paid, must be required to attend class, and the like. And the integrity of the “product” cannot be preserved except by mutual agreement; if an institution adopted such restrictions unilaterally, its effectiveness as a competitor on the playing field might soon be destroyed.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F9zNdu">
|
||
The <em>Alston </em>plaintiffs, for what it’s worth, dismiss <em>Board of Regents’ </em>suggestion that college athletes “must not be paid” as mere “dicta” — that is, a part of a<strong> </strong>judicial opinion that is <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obiter_dictum">not necessary to resolve a case</a> and is not considered to be binding on future judges. But many judges have treated <em>Board of Regents’</em> paean to amateurism as a fixture of antitrust law.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RL9W3c">
|
||
One federal appeals court, for example, held in 2018 that rules “meant to preserve the amateur character of college athletics” are “<a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/17-1711/17-1711-2018-06-25.html">presumptively procompetitive</a>” and therefore should typically be upheld. Emboldened by decisions like this one, the NCAA asks the Supreme Court to give it a rather sweeping exemption from antitrust laws.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sRUGWm">
|
||
A joint venture, the NCAA claims, “‘must have the discretion to determine’ the defining features of its products, even if that means forming an agreement that might otherwise be unlawful.” So if the NCAA says that undercompensating athletes is an essential feature of its product, courts must defer to the NCAA’s judgment.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a8LXxh">
|
||
But at least one federal appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, rejected this argument — which takes us to the case now before the Supreme Court. The <a href="https://casetext.com/case/alston-v-natl-collegiate-athletic-assn-in-re-natl-collegiate-athletic-assn-athletic-grant-in-aid-cap-antitrust-litig-1">Ninth Circuit’s decision in the <em>Alston</em> case</a>, didn’t so much deny that “amateur” sports are different from professional sports as reject the NCAA’s definition of amateurism as incoherent.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xK0kcg">
|
||
“Though the NCAA defined amateurism during the litigation as ‘not paying’ the participants,” the Ninth Circuit explained, a trial court determined that “this purported pay-for-play prohibition is riddled with exceptions.” Players can receive stipends, “athletic participation awards,” “personal and family expenses,” and other forms of compensation from their schools, and still meet the NCAA’s definition of an “amateur.” So why would these players cease to be amateurs if they received additional compensation?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SxmsUl">
|
||
And yet the Ninth Circuit’s approach to student-athlete compensation is no less incoherent than the NCAA’s. Under the appeals court’s decision, most of the NCAA’s restrictions on paying student-athletes remain in place, but schools would be allowed to compensate athletes with educational materials such as computers or musical instruments (if the athlete is studying that instrument), as well as benefits such as “post-eligibility scholarships to complete undergraduate or graduate degrees at any school; scholarships to attend vocational school; tutoring; expenses related to studying abroad that are not included in the cost of attendance calculation; and paid post-eligibility internships.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n9Lk93">
|
||
So the Ninth Circuit’s approach doesn’t so much draw a bright line that separates amateurs from professionals as come up with a new set of rules that are no less arbitrary than the NCAA’s rules.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="v5JrvI">
|
||
It’s a huge mess. Though the <em>Board of Regents</em> decision does suggest that the antitrust laws must bend somewhat to ensure that “amateur” college sports leagues exist, no one can figure out a coherent definition of the word “amateur.” And the NCAA’s proposed solution to this problem is to ask a conservative Supreme Court to let it do whatever it wants with respect to player compensation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="USq7iw">
|
||
<em>Alston </em>is really a case about what antitrust laws are supposed to accomplish
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z74Uop">
|
||
As mentioned above, the idea that sports teams should be given a fair amount of freedom to collude with their competitors derives from Judge Bork’s 1978 book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox"><em>The Antitrust Paradox</em></a>. Though a bipartisan majority of the Senate voted to reject Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, Bork remains one of the most significant figures — if not <em>the </em>most significant figure — in modern antitrust law.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jiLw7P">
|
||
Bork’s core belief was that antitrust law should exist solely to benefit consumers. So companies should be allowed to collude, or even form monopolies, so long as such behavior <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/31/16021844/antitrust-better-deal">did not lead to higher consumer prices</a>. And sometimes, Bork claimed, less competition can even be <em>good</em> for consumers.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CRkyYQ">
|
||
Mega-retailers like Amazon and Walmart, for example, benefit from economies of scale. As they capture more and more of the retail market, they can also drive harder and harder bargains with their suppliers — because those suppliers cannot afford to lose their ability to sell to Amazon’s or Walmart’s customers. And companies that dominate a market can fire reductant workers and potentially pay much lower wages than a company that has to compete with multiple other retailers for employees.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JHZ55z">
|
||
In the short term, this kind of market dominance really can benefit consumers, because all these efficiencies allow Amazon or Walmart to charge lower prices. The long-term implications of Bork’s model, however, are far less clear. Yes, Amazon can charge lower prices because it squeezes every possible penny out of its suppliers, but that’s cold comfort to a worker at one of those suppliers who is laid off because the company can no longer afford to pay them.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bARpbD">
|
||
And what happens if Amazon <a href="https://prospect.org/justice/supreme/">manages to crush all its competitors</a>? With no one to compete against, Amazon will be free to raise prices because it no longer needs to worry about having its prices undercut by someone else — and, with Amazon’s total dominance of the retail sector, workers in that sector will have nowhere to go if they want higher wages.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q2IIFR">
|
||
Because of these concerns, a new liberal consensus is forming that <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/31/16021844/antitrust-better-deal">Bork’s ideas are wrong</a>. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in 2016, “<a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/2016-6-29_Warren_Antitrust_Speech.pdf">for markets to work, there has to be competition</a>.” Without robust antitrust enforcement, a few big companies consolidate both economic and political power. And workers and consumers risk having no alternative when the big players decide to pay them very little and charge them a great deal.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C52Fdg">
|
||
Bork’s approach to antitrust law infuses decisions like <em>Board of Regents. </em>The fundamental premise of judicial decisions carving out a special role for “amateur” sports is that, so long as consumers get to watch a particular kind of competition, it doesn’t matter what happens to the workers who make that competition possible.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d4qUYU">
|
||
And in a Court dominated by Republican appointees, Bork’s views are likely to remain ascendant for many years to come.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Lead-up to Tokyo Olympics most important part of my life, need to improve in finals, says Sanjeev Rajput</strong> - In Friday’s final, the Indian combo of Rajput and Sawant beat Ukraine’s Serhiy Kulish and Anna Ilina 31-29 in the gold medal match</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>Ind vs Eng 2nd ODI | Stokes uses saliva on ball, gets warning from on-field umpires</strong> - This is the second time that Stokes has been warned on this tour for applying saliva on the ball</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>Shooting World Cup: Indian men win gold in 50m rifle 3 positions team event</strong> - In Wednesday’s qualification, the Indian team led the field with an aggregate score of 875.</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>Ind vs Eng 2nd ODI | Rahul, Pant steer India to competitive total against England</strong> - Three changes in the England playing XI</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>NZ vs Bangladesh | New Zealand wins 3rd ODI by 164 runs</strong> - Maiden centuries to Devon Conway and all-rounder Daryl Mitchell lifted New Zealand to a 164-run win over Bangladesh in the third one-day cricket Inter</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>Parra paid ₹ 5 crore to Geelani’s son-in-law to keep Kashmir in turmoil after Burhan’s death: NIA</strong> - Parra got in touch with Altaf Ahmad Shah, alias Altaf Fantoosh, and asked him to ensure that the Valley was kept on the boil.</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>TN Assembly polls | Elections not on a level playing field, says N. Ram</strong> - N. Ram said Ambedkar had warned against internal threat to democracy by “bakthi or hero worship.”</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>In pictures | Farmers observe Bharat Bandh</strong> - The bandh had a minimal impact in Delhi. Shops remained closed at several places in Punjab, Haryana. Four Shatabdi trains were cancelled as protesters squat on tracks. Partial impact in Bihar while demonstrations were held in Bundelkhand.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nikita Tomar murder case: Two convicts sentenced to life imprisonment</strong> - Both the convicts in the Nikita Tomar murder case — Tosif and his friend Rihan — were sentenced to life imprisonment and imposed fine by the District</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Supreme Court reserves orders on Navlakha bail plea</strong> - Does 34 days in house arrest count as period in custody, asks Justice Lalit</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
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<ul>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Coronavirus: EU stops short of vaccine export ban</strong> - The bloc tells AstraZeneca to honour its EU contracts but backs global supply chains.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rwanda genocide report to focus on French links</strong> - Rwanda has long accused France of complicity in the 1994 mass killings.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Turkey Erdogan: Women rise up over withdrawal from Istanbul Convention</strong> - Turkey’s president appeased conservatives by quitting a treaty aimed against domestic abuse.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>UK professor shared info with fake Russian agent</strong> - Paul McKeigue shared information with a man who hinted he was a Russian agent, to discredit an NGO.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Prince Albert II: Harry and Meghan interview ‘did bother me’</strong> - Prince Albert II of Monaco has weighed in on the controversial interview that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle gave to Oprah Winfrey.</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Falcon 9 rocket making an uncontrolled reentry looked like an alien armada</strong> - Typically, a Falcon 9 rocket makes a more controlled return to Earth. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1752372">link</a></p></li>
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||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rocket Report: Russia developing a space plane, Europe frets about SpaceX</strong> - “Development of a multi-use civilian complex with an orbital plane is in full swing.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1752203">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How a “Switch Pro” leak may point to Nvidia’s megaton mobile-gaming plans</strong> - Op-ed: Reading the RTX tea leaves in light of recent Switch-related reports. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1752164">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Buffer overruns, license violations, and bad code: FreeBSD 13’s close call</strong> - 40,000 lines of flawed code almost made it into FreeBSD’s kernel—we examine how. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1751073">link</a></p></li>
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||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support</strong> - Qualcomm ended support for the phone after Android 6, but Fairphone is still going. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1752192">link</a></p></li>
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||
</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>A girl tells her mother after school ‘Mum, I got a gold star today for reciting the whole alphabet! The rest of my class only knows 3 or 4 letters!</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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‘Well done darling’ the girl’s mother replies. ‘That’s because you’re blonde.’ After returning from school the next day the girl tells her mother ‘I am the smartest student in my maths class! I can count up to 15! Everyone else stopped at about 5’ ‘Well done’ replies the mother again. ‘That’s because you’re blonde.’ The following day, the girl says to her mother. ‘Mum, today we measured our chests in class and mine is the largest! Is that because I’m blonde?’ ‘No darling, that’s because you’re 18.’
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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/Thestupidmonkeystick"> /u/Thestupidmonkeystick </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/mdiwhs/a_girl_tells_her_mother_after_school_mum_i_got_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/mdiwhs/a_girl_tells_her_mother_after_school_mum_i_got_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>What generation is Forrest gump from?</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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Gen A.
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/lighting828"> /u/lighting828 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/mdez4k/what_generation_is_forrest_gump_from/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/mdez4k/what_generation_is_forrest_gump_from/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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||
<li><strong>My Crush just sneezed and I accidentally said “bless you”</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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Now she’s staring at the bushes confused, wondering who said that.
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||
</p>
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||
</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/JesusSaves002"> /u/JesusSaves002 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/mcyl6j/my_crush_just_sneezed_and_i_accidentally_said/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/mcyl6j/my_crush_just_sneezed_and_i_accidentally_said/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>They say 1 million monkeys with 1 million keyboards can produce the entire works of Shakespeare…</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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…Thanks to the internet we now know that’s not true
|
||
</p>
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||
</div>
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||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Wolfy_warriors"> /u/Wolfy_warriors </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/md8iux/they_say_1_million_monkeys_with_1_million/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/md8iux/they_say_1_million_monkeys_with_1_million/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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||
<li><strong>My wife and I had this long pointless argument as to which vowel is the most important.</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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I won.
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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/porichoygupto"> /u/porichoygupto </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/mddka0/my_wife_and_i_had_this_long_pointless_argument_as/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/mddka0/my_wife_and_i_had_this_long_pointless_argument_as/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
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||
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