We begin today with the Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Sun-Times Lynn Sweet who was visiting her sister in Highland Park, Illinois, on July 4.
You know why I’m writing this.
I was at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade.
Not as the Sun-Times Washington bureau chief. As a civilian. I’m staying with my sister over this holiday. She lives in Highland Park, which is approximately 25 miles north of Chicago’s downtown. More than 30,000 people live there.
I just wanted to go to this parade and enjoy the day. Hang out with friends. Maybe after the parade, go to one of the stunning Lake Michigan beaches that hug this North Shore suburb. Or maybe have a swim at the Highland Park pool, next to the fire station. That fire station transformed into an emergency operations center after the unimaginable — is this a cliché? — happened. [...]
I’ve been reporting on gun massacres for years — since the 1999 Columbine school shootings. But always from a distance. I wasn’t there when the killing happened.
Until this July Fourth.
Renée Graham of the Boston Globe describes the horror of Black people and “minor” traffic stops.
If mass shootings are a uniquely American horror, so, too, are minor traffic stops that end with Black people killed by police. What happened to Jayland Walker, 25 and unarmed when he was shot, isn’t an anomaly. It’s a pernicious fact of Black life, and death, in America.
Walter Scott was reportedly stopped for a non-functioning brake light in South Carolina in 2015. That same year, Samuel DuBose was pulled over in Ohio for a missing front license plate. In 2016, Terence Crutcher was walking near his stalled car on an Oklahoma roadway. Marquintan Sandlin and Kisha Michael were unconscious in their car in California. In a Minnesota suburb, Philando Castile was stopped by police looking for a robbery suspect.
Every one of them was ultimately killed by police. Black people aren’t issued tickets. They get death notices. All that changes is the location, the number of shots fired, and how much time activists will have to catch their breath before the next Black motorist dies in a hail of police gunfire.
Graham is 100% right, of course. I only wish that Graham devoted a paragraph for those Black “minor traffic stops” of people that lived yet may have been traumatized by the police or met financial ruin because of “minor” traffic offenses. Why is it that the nation’s attention is only drawn to the systemic racism of Black “minor traffic stops” when Black people die?
Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post says that “pundits” should put away their political crystal balls because they are so frequently wrong.
Pundits, by tradition and definition, are supposed to have expertise in a particular field and the scholarship to back it up. Although we’ve come to know them as journalists, academics or former political players who hold forth in print or on TV, the Sanskrit-derived term originally referred to a wise and learned person who counseled kings or advised judges on Hindu law.
But recent events suggest that a lot of today’s pundits are a far less lofty breed: They are bad-take artists — especially when it comes to making political predictions.
And their flagrant wrongness seems to draw virtually no repercussions, unless you count being mocked on Twitter. That’s why it was so delightful to see my colleague Erik Wemple catalogue some of the confident predictions that, never fear, Roe v. Wade certainly would not be overturned.
Howard University law Professor Lisa A. Crooms-Robinson writes for NBC News that a basis for a woman’s right of bodily autonomy can be found in the 13th amendment to the United States Constitution.
Introducing the health protection act without taking seriously how the current court’s majority is likely to respond is a path that is ultimately more performative than substantive. Rather than comb the Constitution for an express textual basis for the rights Roe protected, members of Congress have chosen to resurrect an analysis that, more than 20 years ago, proved unable to protect women.
We need a new plan, and the 13th Amendment might be the answer. To satisfy the most ardent originalists who demand some textual basis for both individual rights and congressional authority to legislate, this plan would have to put Black people at the center of their legislative efforts in ways that Roe’s original privacy-based right did not.
Since the court decided Slaughter-House Cases in 1873, it has been accepted that the original intent of the framers of the 13th Amendment was to benefit those who were formerly enslaved. The 13th Amendment not only establishes declaratory freedom but also grants Congress all the power it needs to enact legislation that undoes slavery, as well as its “badges and incidents,” as the court has put it. Although neither the court nor Congress has set forth an exhaustive list of those badges and incidents, in 1968, the court found Congress has the authority to enact legislation aimed at alleviating the institution’s “burdens and disabilities.”
Oh. Well alrighty, then.
Anyway, I typed “badges and incidents of slavery” into Google. There are a lot of law review articles on the subject. For the record, I get the argument that Crooms-Robinson is making. I simply would not be comfortable with any white lawyer—or even a Black male lawyer—making this argument. And considering the composition of this Supreme Court, now is not the time to make it.
New York University law Professor Melissa Murray writes for The New York Times, asserting that today’s conservatives are enforcing a rigid conformity over “rugged individualism” in a way that is “profoundly un-American.”
It is curious, then, to see today’s conservatives celebrating the prospect of overruling privacy rights. Such rights have for years protected Americans who have chosen the path less traveled — those who have bucked traditional ideas about sex and family. Without those rights, it would be much harder for Americans to make choices about some of the most intimate aspects of their lives, like whether and when to have children and with whom to partner and make a family.
There is something profoundly un-American about challenging these cases and the principles that underlie them, at least according to the American ideals that liberals and conservatives alike used to profess. In a 1928 presidential campaign speech, for instance, Herbert Hoover, a Republican, invoked “the American system of rugged individualism” — the notion that America was a place of free markets, individual thought and a dogged skepticism of state-imposed conformity.
It’s obvious that many of those on today’s right do not think of L.G.B.T.Q. rights and abortion protections as a matter of individualism, in the old-school conservative mold. They see departures from the traditional heterosexual family and traditional gender roles as aberrant and wrong. But that’s odd, because the freedom to define oneself — to not conform — has deep roots in the American traditions of pluralism, independence and resistance to the prospect of government compulsion.
Dulcie Lee and Andre Rhoden-Paul of BBC News report that the resignations of cabinet members from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government continues.
Even late into the night, the resignations continued, with Welsh Secretary Mr Hart standing down just before 23:00 BST.
Mr Hart said he had "no other option left", adding that colleagues had done their utmost in private and in public "to help you turn the ship around, but it is with sadness that I feel we have passed the point where this is possible".
He had been among a group of cabinet members who attempted to persuade the prime minister to stand down, which also included Mr Johnson's former close allies Home Secretary Ms Patel, Transport Secretary Mr Shapps and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.
Mr Johnson - who is facing his most serious leadership crisis of his premiership - now has around 20 ministerial posts it needs to fill after an unprecedented number of resignations.
“Slated” in the informal British meaning of the word, of course.
Andrew Marr of The New Statesman believes that we’ve reached the last days of Boris Johnson as British prime minister but that BoJo the Clown will refuse to go down quietly.
We may sneer and despise politicians. We may hate them. But the country needs governance and an effective government. Somebody must be chancellor of the exchequer. Somebody must run the NHS. Step forward, Nadhim Zahawi and Steve Barclay respectively. But the sad truth is that Johnson’s last gift to his party is likely to be a chaotic transition rather than a smooth one. Certainly, at the time of writing and as his cabinet started to come apart, he seemed determined to hang on. Loyalists were begged not to desert him. One by one the junior ministers fled. Tory party office holders resigned on live television. But still a zombie cabinet struggled on.
The question is, to what end? After a day spent in the Westminster coffee bars and corridors, it was clear to me on 5 July that this time Conservative backbenchers had had it up to the back teeth. I have never heard such anger – not against Tony Blair in the aftermath of the Iraq War, not against Margaret Thatcher as she was falling. No 10’s lies over the promotion of Christopher Pincher after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him – exposed in a stinging public letter by the former head of the Foreign Office, Simon McDonald, one of the most respected public servants in Britain – genuinely revolted MPs who had up to then reluctantly stuck with the Prime Minister.[...]
But we know “Boris”. He will keep on jigging. He might very well try to stave off a parliamentary vote against him by bringing forward the House of Commons summer recess (the House only has a couple of weeks or so to sit before breaking). He has dangled the threat of an early general election to try to scare off his opponents. Looking at the record of his past behaviour, you would have to conclude that there is almost nothing he won’t try in order to stay in office.
The independent Russian media organization Meduza writes about what may come next after the Russian capture of the city of Lysychansk and the Ukrainian recovery of Snake Island.
As in any war of attrition, everything depends on which side is better able to build up its resources while destroying the enemy’s resources. Both Moscow and Kyiv’s limitations are well known:
- The Kremlin has yet to announce general mobilization, which limits the army’s ability to increase its manpower. At the same time, a shortage of infantry is precisely what makes it impossible for Russian forces to successfully conduct operations to encircle Ukrainian positions. As a result, these operations are fraught with heavy losses for Russia. If the Ukrainian authorities continue to successfully mobilize new troops and Russia does not initiate full mobilization, the Ukrainian army’s numerical advantage may sooner or later turn the tide in favor of Kyiv.
- A lack of heavy weapons, particularly artillery, is preventing Ukraine from realizing its numerical advantage at the front. Western deliveries of howitzers and multiple-launch rocket systems are (so far) not enough to rearm the entire Ukrainian army. However, if the Ukrainian Armed Forces command were able to concentrate available resources in one area (for example, near Kherson), it could launch a successful offensive in the coming weeks.
That said, rather than pursuing active offensives fraught with losses, both sides are increasingly using long-range weapons to wear down the enemy and destroy its resources. For several weeks now, the Russian army has been targeting Ukrainian ammunition depots and control headquarters with operational-tactical missiles and cruise missiles. Since receiving HIMARS missile launchers from the West, Ukraine has started doing the same. In the last ten days, Ukraine’s high-precision missiles have destroyed at least four of the Russian army’s large ammunition depots located tens of kilometers from the front. Ukrainian artillery has also targeted cannon artillery depots, including one in Donetsk. However, this wasn’t enough to stop Russian artillery in the attack on Lysychansk.
Jennifer Holleis of Deutsche Welle reports that Saudi Arabia’s “hajj lottery” has angered many Muslims in Europe, Australia, and the Americas.
Even if everything goes according to plan, preparing for and performing the hajj is an emotional journey for many Muslims. However, for thousands of prospective pilgrims from about 50 countries in Europe, Australia and the Americas, the preparation for this year's hajj season has turned into a financial drama, as well.
In June, Saudi Arabia's Hajj Ministry announced that, effective immediately, Muslims from those regions would have to apply for tickets for the pilgrimage at a fixed price through a newly introduced lottery system on the government-backed website Motawif. The new system is said to protect pilgrims from "fake" tour organizers, who have offered hajj visa for varying prices online and offline. However, the move also sidelined long-established operators who had already sold tickets for the 2022 hajj season, which starts on July 7.
The pilgrimage to the Kaaba (House of God) in Saudi Arabia's Mecca is mandatory for Muslims who are physically and financially capable and are younger than 65.
"After the pandemic and everything we have been through the past couple of years, I felt the need to revive my connection with God," said Omar, a Lebanese man who lives in the United States and had already applied for his hajj visa through a US-based online travel agency. He asked that DW not publish his full name, as he feared negative consequences on future hajj applications.
Finally today, The Grammarian writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer that Lauren Boebert’s description of the separation of church and state as “junk” is dangerous.
The hyperconservative firebrand, who handily won last week’s Republican primary in Colorado, just a few days earlier told a church congregation, “I’m tired of this ‘separation of church and state’ junk,” adding, “It was not in the Constitution, it was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say it does.”
She’s right about that phrase not appearing in the Constitution. Part of the problem is that the establishment clause — the part of the Bill of Rights that actually does separate church and state — is referred to as such: a clause, a nerdy grammatical term that causes many to tune out of the conversation. To make things harder, our understanding of establishment has changed in the last 250 years, making the establishment clause more inscrutable than it needs to be.
And difficult-to-understand things are much easier to misinterpret and weaponize.
The clause in question reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” — and then it goes on about some other assorted freedoms (press, speech, assembly) that, if the justices of the Supreme Court haven’t dismantled them by the time you read this, don’t worry; they’re working on it.
Have a good day, everyone.