SCOTUS flunks Separation of Powers again by Ann Telnaes
Supposedly only Congress has the power to abolish the Department of Education Read on Substack
This is the result by the majority Supreme Court’s expansion of presidential power and a Congress who long ago failed to uphold its constitutional oath of office.
Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, is quoted in the Economist that there is “no rhyme or reason” in these rulings other than “enabling lawless behaviour by the Trump administration”. Vladeck has a substack about the U.S. Supreme Court I recommend following.
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Tanks For Nothing by Clay Jones
SCOTUS says Trump can dismantle the Education Department and Grok goes to war Read on Substack
It’s frustrating to watch Trump get everything he wants, from media outlets settling bogus lawsuits, to social media caving into his demands, to FIFA giving him a trophy while making the winners celebrate with a duplicate (he was even caught stealing a medal), to FIFA (again) renting office space in Trump Tower to kiss his ass, to the Supreme Court of the United States allowing him to deport whoever he wants and destroy any federal agency he wants.
Congress created the Department of Education by law, and Trump acted to destroy it. He was sued, and a lower federal court paused it. Now, SCOTUS ruled, 6-3 as usual, that Trump can continue to destroy it as the case makes its way through the lower courts. Even if SCOTUS says Trump can’t destroy the department by the time the case returns from the lower courts, it will probably be too late.
It will be like reversing the death penalty after the execution.
These rulings are partisan. When the Biden administration asked SCOTUS to unpause a lower court’s freeze on forgiving student loans, SCOTUS refused. But for Trump, they’re bending over backward. SCOTUS is officially saying, “It’s OK if a Republican does it.”
I thought SCOTUS was on a break. They are, but they figured it was an emergency, so they came back to help Trump destroy education. This shit doesn’t make America great again. They wouldn’t have done this for Biden, nor would they have ruled that Biden is immune from prosecution.
Hmmmm, what else happened yesterday? Oh, yeah. Grok, Elon’s AI product, has been given a $200 million contract with the Defense Department. This came one day after Grok went on an antisemitic rant on Twitter/X. Of course, only Elon could teach a robot to be a Nazi.
It’s bad enough we got Drunky Hegseth leading the department while spilling classified information and pausing arms shipments to Ukraine, and now we’re going to trust Artificial Intelligence.
The Pentagon also gave contracts to Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI. The federal government is hiring robots while the Education people are being dumped.
Did none of these bozos watch The Terminator? At what time does Skynet become self-aware? We’re all doomed. Doooooomed, I tell you. (snip-MORE)
Also, I want to mention that I’ve been publishing here at Scottie’s Playtime since 7/10 or 11, and normally, have posted one of these each day. There hasn’t been much change or updating for a while; the newsletter and history website is Carl Bunin’s labor of love, depending upon the sales of buttons, pencils, and other merch. I’ve been reading these since 2001, and have noted it feels as if we here may have seen some of these before, and definitely will have by next month. So: should I continue after July 10th, or has everyone seen these, and enough is enough for a while? I don’t mind either way, but I don’t want to use up space and give people repeats. Just let me know in comments over the next few days, OK? And thanks for visiting Scottie’s Playtime!
June 1, 1845 Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree, but went by the name she believed God had given her as a symbolic representation of her mission in life) set out from New York City on a journey across America, preaching about the evils of slavery and promoting women’s rights. She had been a slave with several owners but was legally free when slavery was abolished in New York state. Read more about Sojourner Truth (There’s a very cool yet somewhat incendiary comment there on this page; go see it.)
June 1, 1932 Gay rights organizer Henry Gerber published an article in Modern Thinker magazine attacking the view that homosexuality is a neurosis. In 1924, Henry Gerber, a postal worker in Chicago, started the Society for Human Rights, America’s first known gay rights organization. “The Society for Human Rights is formed to promote and protect the interests of people who are abused and hindered in the legal pursuit of happiness which is guaranteed them by the Declaration of Independence, and to combat the public prejudices against them.”
After having created and distributed a newsletter called “Friendship and Freedom,” Gerber was arrested and held for 3 days without a warrant or being charged with any infractions. Upon release he lost his job for “conduct unbecoming a postal worker.” Following the last of his three trials, in which the charges were ultimately dismissed, Gerber moved to new York City and re-enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving another 17 years. He lived until 1972, passing away at the the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home in Washington, D.C., living long enough to see the Stonewall Rebellion [see June 28, 1969], the beginning of the modern gay rights movement. More on Henry Gerber
June 1, 1942 On the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats. The following month 13,000 French Jews were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps.
June 1, 1950 Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), then the only woman in the Senate, and just the second in U.S. history, denounced Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and his “red-baiting” tactics on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in a speech called “A Declaration of Conscience.” “Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism—the right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought.” Text of the Senator Smith’s Declaration
June 1, 1963 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and readings from the Bible in public schools violated the establishment clause of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution in School Dist. Of Abington Township v. Schempp. The Court reasoned that the daily practice was unconstitutional because a public institution was conducting a religious exercise and “that public funds, though small in amount, are being used to promote” a particular religion. “It is not the amount of public funds expended; as this case illustrates, it is the use to which public funds are put . . . .” The decision
June 1, 1967 The Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW) was founded in New York City after six Vietnam vets marched together in a peace demonstration. The group was organized to give voice to the growing opposition to the escalating war in Indochina among returning servicemen and women.
VVAW, through open discussion of soldiers’ first-hand experiences, revealed the truth about the nature of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. VVAW demonstrating against Iraq war 2004 The VVAW today
May 27, 1940 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled a sit-down strike was not a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act even if it interfered with interstate commerce. The company had sued for treble damages (triple their financial loss) under the Act. The Court said that if the strike were found to be a restraint of trade, then “practically every strike in modern industry would be brought within the jurisdiction of the federal courts under the Sherman Act.” The American Federation of Full Fashioned Hosiery Workers under its president, William Leader, had declared a strike at Apex Hosiery Co. in Philadelphia, and had organized support among other workers in the city. When Apex refused to recognize the union, he declared a sit-down strike and led an occupation of the factory which lasted for seven weeks. Unlike the UAW sit-down at the GM plant in Flint, however, violence was committed against the management personnel and significant damage was done to manufacturing equipment. Summary and full text of the Supreme Court decision
May 27, 1963 The record album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which featured the song “Blowin’ in the Wind,” was released. The song warns of the perils of nuclear war.“ …how many times must the cannon balls fly Before they’re forever banned?” The song and the lyrics
At 1 a.m. today, the Supreme Court paused the deportation of immigrants who are subject Donald Trump’s abuse of the Alien Enemies Act (a measure that’s only supposed to be used during an invasion or times of war), just as the Trump regime was on the verge of flying a group of Venezuelans from Texas to El Salvador to rot in that nation’s hellhole of a prison.
Breaking news at 1 a.m. is usually about an explosion, an invasion, a tsunami, a tweet from Trump containing an incomprehensible new word, but rarely a Supreme Court ruling.
SCOTUS had previously told the regime that it’d be OK if they used the illegal Alien Enemies Act, just so long as each immigrant (and maybe US citizen) received due process first. The regime apparently ignored that last part about due process and was about to go all-skippy with deporting more Venezuelans.
The court ordered the Trump administration to respond to the emergency appeal once a federal appeals court in Louisiana takes action in the case. The court said, “The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court.” That means the regime will probably go ahead and do it.
SCOTUS did not explain the ruling, maybe because it was 1 a.m. and a rumor started that Denny’s was about to close, and Sotomayor is a real grouch if she doesn’t get her Moons Over My Hammy.
But we probably don’t need an explanation for why the only two dissenters were (be ready to be surprised) Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (OK, that wasn’t surprising).
Why would those two oppose delaying the deportation of immigrants without due process and support the regime violating the last order from SCOTUS? There are several possible reasons, and I’m sure none of them are good.
The first reason could, they’re fascist goons.
The second one could be that they just don’t give a shit about the Constitution and know this is the side they’re supposed to be on.
The third reason could be that they don’t care what the issue is and all they need is to be pointed in the direction Trump’s going, and they will follow.
The fourth reason could be that it’s booty night, Clarence doesn’t want to upset Ginny Thomas, and Samuel is hoping Mrs. Alito will help raise his flag.
The fifth reason could be that they’re both corrupt and were bought off to vote this way.
Even Trump’s justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, voted for this delay.
These guys would deport Jesus, especially since he’s not a blue-eyed blonde like White Christians make him out to be.
This part of the blog is short because I want to clean my apartment before I fly to Chicago on Monday. I like coming home to a clean apartment.
I have a beef, and it’s not the Italian beef sandwich I’m planning to try in Chicago: I may be starting a fight I don’t want to fight, but dammit. Somebody has to.
A caption contest is where a cartoonist draws a cartoon, but doesn’t finish writing it. He creates an image and leaves a blank speech bubble/balloon. He then invites the readers to fill in the bubble and makes a contest out of it. It’s fun for the readers, gets them to engage with the cartoonist and the publication, and brings more hits and views to the publication’s website. I always felt it was a cheap way to make readers come back to look at other same page, and I openly admitted that when I did a caption contest for The Free Lance-Star. I hated the caption contest, but knew my readers loved it and my editors liked the views. I don’t see anything wrong ethically with the caption contest because I don’t see it as political cartooning. I saw it as a newspaper feature similar to the crossword puzzle, the jumble, or today’s Wordle. I’ll occasionally bump into a reader who’ll bring up the caption contest…that I hated.
My friend Walt Handelsman is doing a caption contest, and he does it well.
I saw something similar last night that’s kinda similar to the caption contest, but it’s entirely unethical, diminishes political cartooning, lazy, and is screwing readers over.
This is what I saw, and it’s by Daryl Cagle, who operates the largest syndication company for political cartoons.
If this were just a game for his website, I’d think nothing of it, but it’s not a game.
Daryl is shopping for his reader to write his ideas, and then he plans to sell them. If he does manage to sell them, they won’t be next to a crossword puzzle, but on the opinion page. It’s not like editors will care if they suck, and they will. And if he sells them, he’s not sharing the money with the person who wrote the idea. They’ll just get an “attribution.”
Remember my blog about why I don’t use cartoon ideas I didn’t write? The reason boils down to ethics, which Daryl doesn’t have. Even though I might be the goofiest guy in this industry, I take this industry seriously. I care about my work. Obviously, Daryl doesn’t care about his. He once drew two versions of a cartoon, one version from the Right and the other from the Left. It was a total hack job. He doesn’t care.
I commented on Daryl’s Facebook page, telling him to write his own cartoons. He replied, “According to the Pulitzer people, we’re all just illustrators now, Clay.” That’s pretty much true as the Pulitzers have taken away the contest category for political cartoons and combined it with “illustrated reporting” or some shit like that, but I wasn’t going to let Daryl use it as an excuse.
I replied to Dayl’s reply, saying, “Then why are you helping the Pulitzers diminish us? You already used the anonymous cartoonist to tell editors and publishers that we’re not journalists. Most political cartoonists have too much integrity to take ideas submitted by readers, and here you are shopping for them. Do you not care about your work? If you don’t want to be a political cartoonist, then get out of the political cartoon business. And then on top of all that, you’re not going to pay the person who writes the cartoon you’re going to sell.”
Daryl previously syndicated an anonymous cartoonist who signed his work as Rivers. Rivers is a lying racist idiot MAGAt in Canada (that was a secret too). By syndicating Rivers, Daryl was telling editors and publishers that political cartoons didn’t have to abide by their ethics policies, thus cartoonists aren’t journalists anymore. That’s a weird position for a cartoonist to take. Even letters to the editor must be signed. When asked to justify this a couple of years ago, Daryl replied to me, “I don’t see a problem with this,” which wasn’t answering the question.
I first met Daryl in 1997 when I was in Hawaii. He flew out and bought me a burrito. I liked him. He’s a nice guy personally, and I thought at the time with his website, that he was a huge advocate for our entire industry, but over the years, he started doing shit like this, shit I can’t remain silent about. Other cartoonists have told me to shut up and not make noise, but you know I’m not good at that. I’m a noisy motherfucker. I rock a Gibson. And then others send me private messages encouraging me on, but won’t add their voices to my one-man protest. Those cartoonists are smarter than I am.
I would rather support other cartoonists than criticize them. I try to make any criticism about the message in it, like if it’s lying or racist, never just because I think it sucks. I don’t want to go after Daryl, but here I am.
Daryl could come after all my clients and try to chase me out of the business, but there’s no sign he’s ever tried that, though I have lost newspapers to his syndicate, which sells dozens of cartoons in one package for a flat fee. It’s hard to compete against that. Once, every cartoonist could submit to USA Today, but then Daryl made a deal with Gannett that shut out every cartoonist from their entire chain except for his cartoonists. Now, Gannett doesn’t publish political cartoons at all.
But he can’t come after my Substack. To all you paid subscribers, this is one of the things you’re helping me fight, and you’re giving me more freedom to speak out. So I thank you again.
I’m going to open the comments today to be fair, to give Daryl a chance to respond to this. I don’t think he will, but I’m trying to be fair.
I’m not going to fight a war or carry a torch for this. I’m going to move on and focus on my work, but somebody had to say something. I’ll end this with one more message to Daryl: Write your own fucking cartoons.
Creative note: I already did one Easter cartoon, which has a higher chance of being published than this one. I wanted to do something like this cartoon just to rouse up the conservatives on Easter Sunday. It’s so much better than the he-has-risen bullshit from the fake Christians like Gary Varvel.
This one address the mistaken idea that anti-trans stuff worked to win the presidency for tRump. In fact it was not a factor according to surveys however the only ones talking about it were the tRump people. Harris never mentioned trans except for one time saying that they followed the law on treating trans prisoners with the hormone care they were prescribed or needed before incarceration. Again it is the law and tRump also did it in his first term. Hugs
More on the trans issues and the bathroom ban for trans people in the capital. Trans issues in the 2022 midterms showed that trans issues was a losing issue for them. It was the same this election. The larger problem is the democrats being too cowardly to stand up for the abused minority. Hugs
We hear about the genocide by Israel of the Palestinians. He talks about hate on the internet by right wing forced paid for and encouraged by people who want to normalize this level of violence and convince people it is good to be this bloodthirsty. Hugs
I have so much to say about today’s case, legal analysis, and more.But the most powerful thing today was watching Chase Strangio argue in front of the court as the first trans attorney to do so.You could feel history, and nobody will ever take that away.
I just ran into the main plaintiff and their family in the hallway of the Supreme Court in the skrimetti case today, and we all hugged and now I’m in tears in the press room.I thanked them profusely.Trans people deserve equal protection. We deserve to live like anyone else.
Chase Strangio walks out of the court to cheers after he becomes the first trans attorney to present a case to SCOTUS.Video too big in size but will post later.
I also can't get over the conservative justices favorably citing European laws about transgender health care when they vociferously refuse to consider other nation's laws and traditions when dealing with issues on which the U.S. is an outlier, like gun violence and the death penalty.
Ran into what I assume was one of the far right people in the bathroom line who said “I thought the men’s bathroom was on the other side” at SCOTUS.Thankfully the rest of the line were people who knew me and my reporting and I didn’t even dignify it with a response.
This should be said everywhere. Allowing discrimination like this against trans people undermines bedrock principles of constitutional rights across the board.
Chris is correct. Everyone stop saying landslide or mandate now. And let’s get to work blocking their most extreme plans.[Repost: https://buff.ly/41pxuOu%5D
"Repeat after me: there was no 'landslide'. There was no 'blowout'. There was no 'sweeping' mandate given to Trump by the electorate. The numbers don’t lie."My new Guardian op-ed on the new GOP election lie – and why it's important to rebut it! I brought (lots of) receipts:
"Trump won the crucial blue wall states… by 231,000 votes? So if just 116,000 voters across those three swing states – or 0.7% of the total – had switched from Trump to Harris, it is the vice-president who would have won the electoral college … and the presidency" – me for the Guardian:
“Both Tesla and SpaceX quite likely would not exist as successful businesses if it were not for the use of public funding, either through subsidies, through the electric car industry, or through actual government contracting in the case of SpaceX,” Ramaswamy said in 2022 on a Fox News podcast.
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