United States Politics Thread 47

[Raphael]

OK, I guess it's "Repost stuff from Bluesky" day for me. Since people mentioned the Supreme Court, here's user @beijingpalmer.bsky.social , aka James Palmer, one of the deputy editors of Foreign Policy magazine, getting snarky:

https://bsky.app/profile/beijingpalmer. ... je6jwoz22p

me talking to magically resurrected founding father: and so sir you can see how the supreme court has become a deeply illegitimate institution that threatens the very republic you created
founding father: there are *how many* papists on it???

Some of my favorite replies:

https://bsky.app/profile/wes-brooks.bsk ... jn4rfwps2x

“Surely Boston remains a bastion of Protestantism?”

https://bsky.app/profile/jfeej.bsky.soc ... jh745uns26

*Several hours later* "And this pope, he was born at WHICH French trading post?"

https://bsky.app/profile/larryskorke.bs ... jjrugeus2w

"I dunno if I'd call them papists exactly, the pope hates them"

https://bsky.app/profile/jaconthebrazos ... jkptirnk25

"The Pope is from the Northwest Territory of the Ohio Wilderness by way of New Orleans. No, he is not French. But the Average citizen would rather follow him than the President and most of them are not practicing Catholics. I know it's confusing."

https://bsky.app/profile/elkmovie.bsky. ... jgigulfc2i

Fun fact: the first Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court was Roger Taney

https://bsky.app/profile/onedishwasher. ... jlkjcwak2h

James Madison or whatever would spit out their wooden teeth if you told them "yeah, and one of the good supreme court justices we hired directly from her job teaching law at notre dame*"

[Nortaneous]

I've been spending the last few months going down the list of utilities I wish I had the time to write and having Claude knock each one out in an hour or two.

Such as what?

Automated performance profilers, tools for extracting information from performance traces, Puppeteer automation, scraping GitHub issue trackers for bugs of certain types to build an input corpus for testing, etc.

The only task for which I have ever thought "maybe I wish I could use an AI for this" is software design document generation, because SDD generation is a dreadful, unloved job and no one who actually cares about things really looks at SDD's anyways, so SDD's get very out-of-date because no one bothers to update them, but at the same time it has little impact if an AI hallucinates while updating them because, again, no one really looks at them.

Keeping SDDs in sync is something they'd be good at, although it would take a few iterations of human review to get a good skill written.

Having an AI work on a complex codebase is currently a misapplication. They can navigate in them, but they don't have the tacit knowledge (and getting tacit knowledge written down is a highly nontrivial project) and they're conservative to the point of refusing to ever refactor. They're good at one-off scripts, "insert tab A into slot B" glue code, and information-dense scutwork (our CTO was opposed to browser automation testing on the grounds that it's unmaintainable, which was defensible until Nov 2025), and fast enough that I'll sometimes throw reviews into them as a quick first pass.

IMO it's likely that AI will become capable of building and maintaining complex greenfield projects before it becomes productive at a senior engineer level in pre-existing codebases, which have both the previously mentioned "tacit knowledge debt" and a totally different pipeline. Generation is cheap and unreliable, so verification is the bottleneck. It's even possible that, once we know more about maintainable AI-native development workflows, it'll actually be cheaper to port the legacy codebase with extensive differential testing, as with the Bun Rust port. (This was talked about a lot, but it's practically the ideal case for an agentic development megaproject: differential testing -- running the Zig original against the Rust port and asserting that they do the same thing -- provides an ideal oracle, porting to Zig-accented Rust with huge unsafe blocks to clean up later is what a team of human developers would do anyway, and after the Anthropic acquistion the Bun developers would've had access to unlimited Mythos tokens.)

[Richard W]

Some grim news ahead tomorrow as the supreme court will rule on whether the 14th amendment guarantees citizenship for people born here. It will almost certainly rule against it, overturning generations of precedent and taking away citizenship from numerous people born here. If we're lucky, the opposition will begin drafting plans to address this crisis after the ruling, although they really should have planned for this sooner.

Well the Supreme Court ruled against Trump on birthright citizenship today...

So the verdict was 5-4 that the constitution mandates citizenship by jus soli. (It was 6-3 that the current US law provides for it.)

One thing I am missing is how certain US government officials (under the executive branch) can be required to certify that a specific US citizen is indeed a US citizen. Do US citizens happen to have the right to buy a US passport? By contrast, British citizens merely have the right to enter the UK other than at a port unless individually forbidden, in which exceptional case they have the right to enter at a port by appointment.

I am somewhat puzzled by the claim that the US system of government follows the 'rule of law'. Doesn't the ability of the its Supreme Court to overturn its own rulings go against that, making the 'law' of the country subject to the whim of the majority of the Supreme Court?

[malloc]

I am somewhat puzzled by the claim that the US system of government follows the 'rule of law'. Doesn't the ability of the its Supreme Court to overturn its own rulings go against that, making the 'law' of the country subject to the whim of the majority of the Supreme Court?

Quite. Common law, at least as I've always heard it described, honestly sounds rather like the customary law of pre-modern societies combined with Mornington Crescent.

[Raphael]

I am somewhat puzzled by the claim that the US system of government follows the 'rule of law'. Doesn't the ability of the its Supreme Court to overturn its own rulings go against that, making the 'law' of the country subject to the whim of the majority of the Supreme Court?

I have many, many issues with the current US Supreme Court, but being able to overturn earlier decisions is not one of them. Courts can, and do, get things wrong.

[zompist]

One thing I am missing is how certain US government officials (under the executive branch) can be required to certify that a specific US citizen is indeed a US citizen. Do US citizens happen to have the right to buy a US passport? By contrast, British citizens merely have the right to enter the UK other than at a port unless individually forbidden, in which exceptional case they have the right to enter at a port by appointment.

Citizenship is like marriage; it has so many perks that it's hard to explain. Yes, it means you can get a passport. Also vote, live in the country, be fully protected by the law, access the social safety net, etc. (Some of these are partially available for permanent residents.)

I am somewhat puzzled by the claim that the US system of government follows the 'rule of law'. Doesn't the ability of the its Supreme Court to overturn its own rulings go against that, making the 'law' of the country subject to the whim of the majority of the Supreme Court?

Even on a purely cynical level, having people who can tell a would-be tyrant no is a good idea. They've shot down several of Trump's worst ideas. Of course it's scandalous that they didn't shoot down more.

I've heard defenses of the UK system, where Parliament can basically do anything, but the last dozen years don't seem like an advertisement for it.

[jcb]

Another note: the Republican dominance of the Supreme Court is in part due to long-time Republican insistence, part due to sheer bad luck, part due to at least one serious mistake by a Democrat. None of it is Trump's cunning. In particular it is not due to the God-Emperor's unstoppable cunning in his second term. It has fuck all to do with the reflecting pool.

Thomas was nominated by Bush I; Roberts and Alito by Bush II; Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett by Trump in his first term. It's of course bad luck that Trump got to name 3 justices in just 4 years.

Obama nominated Merrick Garland in February 2016, but McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings. Probably this is unconstitutional.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused, despite being asked, to resign while Obama was in office and Democrats held the Senate. That handed a seat to the GOP.

Indeed, Trump cannot be blamed for Supreme Court, but the Republicans who launched a decades-long campaign to seize it can, and so can the Democrats who didn't counter it.
(1) They could've pushed Ginsberg harder to resign.
(2) They could've pushed harder to fill Scalia's seat.
(3) They could've not bungled the 2016 election in the first place.
(4) They could've pushed to enlarge the court so the loss of a single justice wasn't as important.
(5) They could've pushed to make the court elected.

They should've realized long ago that the unelected court has almost always been a reactionary thorn in the side of the country, and created and enacted a long-term plan to reform it.

[Raphael]

and so can the Democrats who didn't counter it.
(1) They could've pushed Ginsberg harder to resign.

Fair enough.

(2) They could've pushed harder to fill Scalia's seat.

Nonsense. They. Didn't. Have. The Votes. The Democrats can't just wave a magic wand and make Republicans vote for either their proposals or their ideas.

(3) They could've not bungled the 2016 election in the first place.

Fair enough.

(4) They could've pushed to enlarge the court so the loss of a single justice wasn't as important.

That would be a fair point if there would really be a single entity called "The Democrats". But if you keep in mind that the term "The Democrats", in practice, means, among other things, a whole lot of different officeholders with a hold lot of political positions, then it becomes clear that there wasn't a majority for something like that back then.

(5) They could've pushed to make the court elected.

They should've realized long ago that the unelected court has almost always been a reactionary thorn in the side of the country, and created and enacted a long-term plan to reform it.

That would have required a constitutional amendment. I guess it's the Democrats' fault that they couldn't get, checks notes, two thirds of both the House and the Senate and three quarters of all states to go along with your plan.

[malloc]

Bleak as our current situation has become, the rise of democratic socialism over the past year does give me some hope. It seems unlikely that they will succeed against the mainstream liberals, let alone the MAGA regime. Nonetheless they are meaningful opposition with a clear and appealing vision, something we really need these days.

[WeepingElf]

Bleak as our current situation has become, the rise of democratic socialism over the past year does give me some hope. It seems unlikely that they will succeed against the mainstream liberals, let alone the MAGA regime. Nonetheless they are meaningful opposition with a clear and appealing vision, something we really need these days.

At least there is something that gives you some hope; that is good news. There are many people in the United States who think the MAGA regime was bad, and even some Republicans think that Trump was doing a bad job, but unfortunately, the Democrats seem to be divided among themselves, too. But keep one thing in mind: Trump is not an invincible God-Emperor, but merely a buffoon and a lame duck who can't run again; also, he is not the cause of what currently plagues the United States and the whole world, only a symptom. There is more wrong than just a cranky president; the main problem is IMHO that the United States have no major progressive party, only a centrist one which encompasses the entire democratic part of the political spectrum (the Democrats) and a rightist party which encompasses all sorts of right-wing authoritarian currents from Bible-thumpers to techbros (the Republicans). Neither is a monolith; both are highly heterogenous. Democrats in the White House did enact some progressive reforms (though they often had to be driven to them by pressure from the streets) but Republicans did yank the country further towards dictatorship whenever they were in power, and in the long run, while the country has made some progress in some areas, the overall trend has been a move more towards than away from authoritarianism.

[Torco]

he can't legally run again, but he very well might try to. i totally agree that he is incompetent and clownish, but surely we must keep in mind that the guy, and relevantly his coalition, have a history of a) just doing illegal things and b) judicial capture. and of course he might also get himself a medvedev.

like, yeah, the god emperor meme is funny and all, but deeming him entirely mightless is as delusional as deeming him allmighty.

[malloc]

like, yeah, the god emperor meme is funny and all, but deeming him entirely mightless is as delusional as deeming him allmighty.

Quite. I definitely expect that he will run again if he's still alive and the courts could easily contrive some reason why he can run again. The 22nd amendment says nothing about running for a third term or even receiving the nomination, only that one cannot be elected for more than two terms. That seems like all the justification the courts would need to let him appear on the ballot while following the letter of the law.

[Torco]

Yeah, i mean... the fascists lost the jus solis vote, but they didn't lose it by a vast margin. a single more judge, bought or blackmailed or replaced by a loyalist, would have been enough right?

[Ketsuban]

I definitely expect that he will run again if he's still alive and the courts could easily contrive some reason why he can run again. The 22nd amendment says nothing about running for a third term or even receiving the nomination, only that one cannot be elected for more than two terms. That seems like all the justification the courts would need to let him appear on the ballot while following the letter of the law.

I almost want this to happen now. If nothing prohibits him from running but he's incapable of winning the split of the chud vote would be epic and I'd have enough salt to last me the rest of my life.

[Richard W]

So the verdict was 5-4 that the constitution mandates citizenship by jus soli. (It was 6-3 that the current US law provides for it.)

The narrowly minority view seems to be that the jus soli right should only apply if one is born domiciled in the US. If jus soli derived its force only from the constitution, would Barrack Obama have been born a US citizen? From British principles, he would have been born with British domicile! Now, US law may be different - and the British law of domicile is quite complicated, with problems for British citizenship in legacy cases of legitimacy.

[Richard W]

Yeah, i mean... the fascists lost the jus solis vote, but they didn't lose it by a vast margin. a single more judge, bought or blackmailed or replaced by a loyalist, would have been enough right?

The verdict would even then have upheld jus soli, but it could be overturned by an ordinary change to the law. And US citizenship by birth has been subject to lots of chops and changes.

[lëtzeshark]

The narrowly minority view seems to be that the jus soli right should only apply if one is born domiciled in the US. If jus soli derived its force only from the constitution, would Barrack Obama have been born a US citizen? From British principles, he would have been born with British domicile! Now, US law may be different - and the British law of domicile is quite complicated, with problems for British citizenship in legacy cases of legitimacy.

The concept of "domicile"/state citizenship in US law (inherited from British law) is also equally complicated, maybe in part because domicile is the principal determiner of taxation status under US state tax law. (Funnily enough, I have no idea what my domicile would be under US law anymore, or if I even would be considered to have a US-based domicile, but that's maybe a separate story.)

[malloc]

Note, though, that the right-wing media in many ways is singing to the choir, as those who listen to it are very likely to be deeply right-wing to begin with. Also, despite its size and influence, it has failed to keep Trump from getting very unpopular.

Well kind of. Right wing propaganda has definitely been quite successful over the past decade in many respects. Young men in particular are flocking to anti-feminist and far right circles. Popular culture has become noticeably more conservative in recent years as well. Not that long ago, you could find openly LGBT characters even in children's media like Steven Universe and large corporations regularly touted their commitment to diversity and inclusion.

You oversell the supposed "advantages in propaganda", and the superiority of modern military technology is only really relevant in an all-out civil war, and look at how well said superiority has recently served the US against a vastly inferior adversary...

Overthrowing a dictatorship would require civil war or else the credible threat of such. There have been many attempts to overthrow dictatorships that failed because the state had an overwhelming military advantage and simply massacred the protesters. Consider the well-known example of Tiananmen Square massacre or more recently Iran successfully crushing protests that seemed poised to overthrow the theocracy.

[Travis B.]

Note, though, that the right-wing media in many ways is singing to the choir, as those who listen to it are very likely to be deeply right-wing to begin with. Also, despite its size and influence, it has failed to keep Trump from getting very unpopular.

Well kind of. Right wing propaganda has definitely been quite successful over the past decade in many respects. Young men in particular are flocking to anti-feminist and far right circles. Popular culture has become noticeably more conservative in recent years as well. Not that long ago, you could find openly LGBT characters even in children's media like Steven Universe and large corporations regularly touted their commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Most of that involves things such as corporate "fair weather friends" who were never real allies to begin with.

You oversell the supposed "advantages in propaganda", and the superiority of modern military technology is only really relevant in an all-out civil war, and look at how well said superiority has recently served the US against a vastly inferior adversary...

Overthrowing a dictatorship would require civil war or else the credible threat of such. There have been many attempts to overthrow dictatorships that failed because the state had an overwhelming military advantage and simply massacred the protesters. Consider the well-known example of Tiananmen Square massacre or more recently Iran successfully crushing protests that seemed poised to overthrow the theocracy.

What about things such as the fall of Suharto or Marcos or Estado Novo or the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc... those didn't require civil wars despite the military having a distinct advantage on paper?

[Ketsuban]

Popular culture has become noticeably more conservative in recent years as well. Not that long ago, you could find openly LGBT characters even in children's media like Steven Universe

I think that's a failure of your ability to research more than anything else. There's a sequel series to Steven Universe in development at the moment, for example.

and large corporations regularly touted their commitment to diversity and inclusion.

They still do, they just only do it visibly in June because Pride Month is in the calendar and their commitments are as empty as their soul. Conversely they've been exploiting the right's propensity to lose its shit over absolutely nothing and generate free publicity for them for years.