#us courts

[short-wooloo]

Every time you hear about a judge blocking one of 49% eo's you better look up which judge it was, because odds are it was one of the TWO-HUNDRED THIRTY PLUS judges Joe Biden appointed as president and were confirmed by Chuck Schumer and the Democrat controlled Senate (with tie breaking votes from Kamaa Harris) of 2021-2025

Yall fucking owe them

[corporationsarepeople]

“He has attacked the judicial system, our system of justice and the rule of law his entire life,” said J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former federal appellate judge and one of the founders of the recently formed Society for the Rule of Law. “And this to him,” Luttig told me, “is the grand finale.”

The 2024 presidential election, in the estimation of Paul Rosenzweig, a senior counsel during the investigation of President Bill Clinton and an assistant deputy secretary in the Department of Homeland Security in the administration of George W. Bush, isn’t a referendum on Joe Biden. It isn’t even a referendum, he said, on Donald Trump. “This election,” he told me, “is a referendum on the rule of law.”

More unnerving, though, than even that is an idea that has coursed through my conversations over these past several months: That referendum might already be over. Democracy’s on the ballot, many have taken to saying — Biden just said it last week — but democracy, and democratic institutions, as political scientist Brian Klaas put it to me, “can’t function properly if only part of the country believes in them.” And it’s possible that some critical portion of the population does not, or will not, no matter what happens between now and next November, believe in the verdicts or other outcomes rendered by those institutions. What if Trump is convicted? What if he’s not? What if he’s not convicted and then gets elected? What if he is and wins anyway? More disquieting than what might be on the ballot, it turns out, is actually what might not.

“Our democracy rests on a foundation of trust — trust in elections, trust in institutions,” Bassin said. “And you know what scares me the most about Trump? It’s not the sledgehammer he’s taken to the structure of our national house,” he told me. “It’s the termites he’s unleashed into the foundation.”

[obsessore]

NEPA just got fucked 😭😭😭

us court rulings are ruining everything 😭

[uboat53]

Sigh

Another day, another time we find out that courts are using psuedoscience to adjudicate vitally important disputes.

I feel like a science literacy class should be a requirement for becoming a judge.

[zenosanalytic]

reading the article, the ruling was apparently that broadband cable doesn't count as "telecommunication" which: How the does THAT work???

Hey do y'all remember several years ago when we were all freaking out about net neutrality being overturned? Well despite net neutrality's win in 2024, a federal court just overturned it.

For those who aren't aware, net neutrality is the simple principle that companies like Verizon and Comcast should treat all web traffic equally – not pick and choose based on who is willing to pay more or who they like best. Big Tech companies obviously don’t like that – which is why they spent millions lobbying against it over the years.

Now, these megacorporations will be able to seize control back over our Internet. The likely result? Throttled access to streaming services, monopolistic pricing that cuts out competition, and a slower, walled off, and less free Internet for all of us.

And unfortunately, rulings like this will only get more common now that the Supreme Court has overturned the “Chevron deference” – giving judges, rather than qualified public servants, a blank check to toss out protections like net neutrality, environmental safeguards, or food safety standards.

When Trump’s FCC repealed net neutrality back in 2017, they gave big corporations total control over our Internet – putting free and open access at risk.

Internet providers responded by exploiting their newfound power to speed up certain websites, and slow down – or even block – others. They failed to provide crucial Internet infrastructure in rural areas, low-income communities, and communities of color. They even slashed firefighters’ Internet access during severe wildfires.

But over 126,000 people spoke out and we were able to reinstate net neutrality – until now.

The time has come again to take action: please sign this petition from Common Cause so we can reinstate net neutrality.

[reesiereads]

I need ya’ll to realize running back to TikTok like nothing fucking happened is exactly what this motherfucker wants. He wants you to run back and to be grateful. He wants you to forget that the Supreme Court has just passed something that indicates they can pursue intense censorship and remove our access to free speech and non-propagandized/monitored spaces whenever they want. He wants you to be so focused on all this that you completely forget that he’s about to pass at least a hundred horrific policies stripping us of our rights as soon as this week. He wants you to stop talking about Palestine who is still in danger and is in desperate need of aid despite the ceasefire. He wants you to turn your attention away from all the people in LA suffering thanks to the fires.

I don’t want to say it’s just an app, because it’s not. I was incredibly sad about losing TikTok yesterday. Many of us had a community that meant a great deal to us torn away suddenly and I am not saying we shouldn’t be upset about that. But I am saying that as much as the Supreme Court has more important things they should be focusing on over banning TikTok we have more important things to do then run back to an app that was obviously used for a publicity stunt by Trump and will inevitably be influenced by him and his fascism.

We’ve been discussing boycotting Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, and other Meta platforms due to their connections to Trump and his posse of billionaires. TikTok must be treated the same way so long as the CEO and company is in Trump’s pocket.

[apple-pie-42]

NBC News: Daniel Penny found not guilty in chokehold death of Jordan Neely

[zenosanalytic]

We're increasingly seeing US monopolists using our courts to quash competition, so I'd bet there's not even any evidence of theft; they're just trying to get DeepSeek banned in the US so they dont have to compete with it.

There is something deliciously funny about AI getting replaced by AI.

tl;dr: China yeeted a cheaper, faster, less environmental impact making, open source LLM model onto the market and US AI companies lost nearly 600 billions in value since yesterday.

Silicone Valley is having a meltdown.

And ChatGTP just lost its job to AI~.

[oxytocinatrocities]

A comic I drew about leaving the Mormon church.

Can also apply to other things. Ex. constitutional originalism in the US

[uboat53]

Want to hear a tale of deliberate misinformation? I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear it's the anti-abortion movement doing it.

In 2000, the FDA approved mifepristone, a medication that is used in medicated abortion. Specifically, mifepristone blocks a hormone called progesterone which helps the body maintain the inside of the uterus so that pregnancy can continue. It did so after a 4 year review in which it was shown that the drug had incredibly minor risks and was extremely effective.

However, when the FDA approved mifepristone, it decided to put a bunch of restrictions on it. These restrictions were not studied during the 4 years and were put in place through a process known as "accelerated approval". Many of those restrictions have since been removed as 23 years worth of data have shown that the drug is safe (safer than Tylenol and Viagra, in fact) and effective for much longer than initially supposed.

There is a case, however, in federal court, where an anti-abortion group known as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is arguing that the FDA authorization for mifepristone should be revoked because it was approved under the "accelerated approval" process.

As you can see from the above, this is false. The drug was approved normally and the restrictions were accelerated. In fact, the group has filed hundreds of pages of FDA documents into evidence that, if read accurately, actually disprove their own case!

The problem is that this case was filed in Amarillo, Texas. Due to a quirk in the 5th Circuit Court, all cases filed in this courtroom are assigned to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a far-right jurist who had strongly fought against abortion, contraception, and LGBTQ rights before becoming a judge. He has become the go-to judge of choice for far-right conservatives these days who file cases in Amarillo specifically so that they can get him to do things like authorize discrimination against LGBTQ people in health care, employment, and education and limit access to birth control, all in violation of Supreme Court precedent. He has also previously seized control of border policy and some aspects of US foreign policy in an attempt to force the Biden Administration to continue the Trump era "remain in Mexico" policy, another far-right ruling that was overturned by the Supreme Court.

I'm sure it will not surprise you, then, that Judge Kascmaryk, in a hearing on Wednesday, accepted without question the fiction that mifepristone's approval was rushed under the "accelerated approval" process.

Far-right groups are increasingly relying on false arguments like this in court and, increasingly, they are finding far-right judges who are willing to accept them.

Source for the details of mifepristone

Source for the false argument and court details

[nando161mando]

[zenosanalytic]

just to give you a Crystal Fucking Clear idea of what the Republicans in charge of Georgia are doing I want to surface this from the first paragraph of the article:

The state has also admitted to releasing the personal information of Georgia's six million voters, including birthdates, driver's license and social security numbers.

So they 1)create a site where you can cancel ANOTHER PERSON'S registration, then they 2)~Accidentally Leak~ their citizens' voter registration info. I also remember, tho I don't have a link to verify, that on release there was a super-simple exploit that allowed you to bypass the verification check so you could cancel a registration even WITHOUT the information they'd just ~leaked~ to the public.

And at the same time Republicans in Georgia are doing this, Republicans in Arizona Are Trying to CANCEL the Registration of 40k+ Arizonans. Before the SC weighs in I just want to be clear: they have FOR YEARS allowed illegal district maps to stand in elections because "changing them so soon before an election would cause chaos"... up to 15 months before said elections. For them to allow Arizona to RETROACTIVELY(retroactive legislation is unconstitutional) CHANGE VOTER REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS 3 MONTHS BEFORE AN ELECTION would be against all precedent, contradict numerous rulings the sitting justices themselves handed down, and be JUST the sort of lawless, partisan hypocrisy they've shown themselves capable of time and time again.

The state of Georgia did what with voter registrations?!

[enjymemink]

Thank you Yemen 🇾🇪

Despite being one of the poorest countries in the world, they showed more empathy than those so-called civilized developed countries.