Tag: posts

NSA’s call detail records program

The NSA’s effort to use call detail records to spot cross-border terror plots has a long history. It began life in deepest secrecy, became public (and controversial) after Edward Snowden’s leaks, and was then “reformed” in the USA Freedom Act. Now it’s up for renewal, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, or PCLOB, has weighed in with a deep report on how the program has functioned – and why NSA has suspended it.

In this episode I interview Travis LeBlanc, a PCLOB Member, about the report and the program. Travis is a highly effective advocate, bringing me around on several issues, including whether the program should be continued and even whether the authority to revive it would be useful. It’s a superb guide to a program whose renewal is currently being debated (against a March 15 deadline!) in Congress.

And, uh, asking for a friend: Do the early stages of covid-19 infection make you more susceptible to persuasion?

Download the 305th Episode (mp3).

Take our listener poll at steptoe.com/podcastpoll!

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!

As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, families or friends.

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SCOTUS Grants Cert in the Catholic Adoption Services Case

The Roberts Court has been on a tear in church-and-state cases lately. Last term, the Court decided an important case on public religious displays, The American Legion v. American Humanist Association. This term, the Court will decide a case on Blaine Amendments, Espinoza v. Montana Dep’t of Revenue (which I discussed in an earlier post); yet another case on the Contraception Mandate, Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania; a pair of cases on the ministerial exception, St. James School v. Biel and Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru; and a case on the personal liability of government officials under RFRA, Tanzin v. Tanvir. For a purportedly minimalist bench, the Court seems quite ready to rule on controversial law-and-religion issues.

Late last month, the Court granted cert in another church-and-state case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which has the potential to overshadow all the others. In Fulton, Catholic Social Services (CSS) challenges Philadelphia’s decision to exclude the charity from the city’s adoption program because of CSS’s policy of refusing to place children with same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples. Philadelphia argues, among other things, that CSS’s policy violates the city’s non-discrimination ordinance. In response, CSS argues that the city’s action violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. In essence, CSS maintains that its religious convictions make compliance with the anti-discrimination ordinance impossible and that the city should grant it an exemption, or accommodation, for that reason.

What makes Fulton so significant, potentially, is this. The cert petition specifically asks the Court to revisit its landmark 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith, which held that the Free Exercise Clause does not entitle religious believers to exemptions from “neutral” and “generally applicable” laws. Under Smith, religious believers have an obligation to comply with such laws, just like everybody else. Only where laws are not “neutral” and “generally applicable”—where, for example, laws target religious believers for disparate treatment—can religious believers make claims for accommodations. Even then, accommodations are not assured. The state can still burden the exercise of religion if it passes the so-called “compelling interest” test: The state can burden the exercise of religion where it has a compelling reason for doing so and has chosen the least restrictive means.

Smith is widely understood to have narrowed the circumstances in which religious believers can claim accommodations under the Free Exercise Clause. The fact that the Court has granted a petition that specifically asks the justices to reconsider the case is thus very significant. Even more: in a statement last term, four justices—Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh—hinted strongly that they were ready to revisit Smith, which, they said, had “drastically cut back on the protection provided by the Free Exercise Clause.” Quite possibly, the Court’s grant in Fulton signals that the Court is ready to overrule Smith.

If the Court were to overrule Smith, it would most likely hold that the compelling interest test applies to all claims for religious accommodations, including CSS’s. (This was, in fact, the law for decades before Smith). This, too, makes Fulton a significant case. The Court would have to decide whether Philadelphia’s interest in ending discrimination based on sexual orientation, in this context, outweighs the right of CSS to conduct itself according to its sincere religious convictions. So far, the Court has carefully avoided such questions, which could take the Court where it would rather not go. The Court had a chance to address a similar issue two years ago in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the wedding vendor case, but ultimately ruled on narrow grounds that made resolution of the issue unnecessary.

The Court might find a way to avoid the issue in Fulton as well. In that event, Fulton will be another one of the Court’s narrow, fact-bound church-and-state rulings. But it’s also possible that the case will be a major decision that makes other Roberts Court church-state cases pale in comparison. The Court won’t hear the case until next term, so there’s plenty of time to speculate! Meanwhile, for more on what the Fulton grant may mean, have a listen to the latest Legal Spirits podcast I recorded this week with my colleague at the St. John’s Center for Law and Religion, Marc DeGirolami.

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NSA’s call detail records program

The NSA’s effort to use call detail records to spot cross-border terror plots has a long history. It began life in deepest secrecy, became public (and controversial) after Edward Snowden’s leaks, and was then “reformed” in the USA Freedom Act. Now it’s up for renewal, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, or PCLOB, has weighed in with a deep report on how the program has functioned – and why NSA has suspended it.

In this episode I interview Travis LeBlanc, a PCLOB Member, about the report and the program. Travis is a highly effective advocate, bringing me around on several issues, including whether the program should be continued and even whether the authority to revive it would be useful. It’s a superb guide to a program whose renewal is currently being debated (against a March 15 deadline!) in Congress.

And, uh, asking for a friend: Do the early stages of covid-19 infection make you more susceptible to persuasion?

Download the 305th Episode (mp3).

Take our listener poll at steptoe.com/podcastpoll!

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!

As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, families or friends.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3cQiT36
via IFTTT

SCOTUS Grants Cert in the Catholic Adoption Services Case

The Roberts Court has been on a tear in church-and-state cases lately. Last term, the Court decided an important case on public religious displays, The American Legion v. American Humanist Association. This term, the Court will decide a case on Blaine Amendments, Espinoza v. Montana Dep’t of Revenue (which I discussed in an earlier post); yet another case on the Contraception Mandate, Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania; a pair of cases on the ministerial exception, St. James School v. Biel and Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru; and a case on the personal liability of government officials under RFRA, Tanzin v. Tanvir. For a purportedly minimalist bench, the Court seems quite ready to rule on controversial law-and-religion issues.

Late last month, the Court granted cert in another church-and-state case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which has the potential to overshadow all the others. In Fulton, Catholic Social Services (CSS) challenges Philadelphia’s decision to exclude the charity from the city’s adoption program because of CSS’s policy of refusing to place children with same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples. Philadelphia argues, among other things, that CSS’s policy violates the city’s non-discrimination ordinance. In response, CSS argues that the city’s action violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. In essence, CSS maintains that its religious convictions make compliance with the anti-discrimination ordinance impossible and that the city should grant it an exemption, or accommodation, for that reason.

What makes Fulton so significant, potentially, is this. The cert petition specifically asks the Court to revisit its landmark 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith, which held that the Free Exercise Clause does not entitle religious believers to exemptions from “neutral” and “generally applicable” laws. Under Smith, religious believers have an obligation to comply with such laws, just like everybody else. Only where laws are not “neutral” and “generally applicable”—where, for example, laws target religious believers for disparate treatment—can religious believers make claims for accommodations. Even then, accommodations are not assured. The state can still burden the exercise of religion if it passes the so-called “compelling interest” test: The state can burden the exercise of religion where it has a compelling reason for doing so and has chosen the least restrictive means.

Smith is widely understood to have narrowed the circumstances in which religious believers can claim accommodations under the Free Exercise Clause. The fact that the Court has granted a petition that specifically asks the justices to reconsider the case is thus very significant. Even more: in a statement last term, four justices—Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh—hinted strongly that they were ready to revisit Smith, which, they said, had “drastically cut back on the protection provided by the Free Exercise Clause.” Quite possibly, the Court’s grant in Fulton signals that the Court is ready to overrule Smith.

If the Court were to overrule Smith, it would most likely hold that the compelling interest test applies to all claims for religious accommodations, including CSS’s. (This was, in fact, the law for decades before Smith). This, too, makes Fulton a significant case. The Court would have to decide whether Philadelphia’s interest in ending discrimination based on sexual orientation, in this context, outweighs the right of CSS to conduct itself according to its sincere religious convictions. So far, the Court has carefully avoided such questions, which could take the Court where it would rather not go. The Court had a chance to address a similar issue two years ago in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the wedding vendor case, but ultimately ruled on narrow grounds that made resolution of the issue unnecessary.

The Court might find a way to avoid the issue in Fulton as well. In that event, Fulton will be another one of the Court’s narrow, fact-bound church-and-state rulings. But it’s also possible that the case will be a major decision that makes other Roberts Court church-state cases pale in comparison. The Court won’t hear the case until next term, so there’s plenty of time to speculate! Meanwhile, for more on what the Fulton grant may mean, have a listen to the latest Legal Spirits podcast I recorded this week with my colleague at the St. John’s Center for Law and Religion, Marc DeGirolami.

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via IFTTT

Rocker Nick Cave Defends Old Songs From ‘Perpetually Pissed Off Coterie of Pearl-Clutchers’

The last time Reason wrote about Australian musician and genre-bending Goth heartthrob Nick Cave, he was making a bold statement in favor of free speech and creative expression while slamming “woke” culture and what he saw as its analogs on the far right:

Antifa and the Far Right…with their routine street fights, role-playing and dress-ups are participants in a weirdly erotic, violent and mutually self-sustaining marriage, propped up entirely by the blind, inflexible convictions of each other’s belief systems. It is good for nothing, except inflaming their own self-righteousness.

This time I want to quote him in a discussion with a fan who asks the (good) question, “Do you ever feel the need to change lyrics, when performing live, which may be problematic in 2020, for example ‘a fag in a whalebone corset dragging his dick across my cheek’? Or are you happy to preserve the lyric as a product of its time, and respect the original content?”

Cave publishes a monthly newsletter, The Red Hand Files, in which he answers questions from his audience. In the new edition, he responds to the above query with a direct statement that should be a model for other creatives who are feeling weak-kneed in the face of rapidly changing standards of acceptability.

What songwriter could have predicted thirty years ago that the future would lose its sense of humour, its sense of playfulness, its sense of context, nuance and irony, and fall into the hands of a perpetually pissed off coterie of pearl-clutchers? How were we to know? 

Perhaps we writers should have been more careful with our words—I can own this, and I may even agree—however, we should never blame the songs themselves. Songs are divinely constituted organisms. They have their own integrity. As flawed as they may be, the souls of the songs must be protected at all costs. They must be allowed to exist in all their aberrant horror, unmolested by these strident advocates of the innocuous, even if just as some indication that the world has moved toward a better, fairer and more sensitive place. If punishment must be administered, punish the creators, not the songs. We can handle it. I would rather be remembered for writing something that was discomforting or offensive, than to be forgotten for writing something bloodless and bland.

Cave is not some reactionary rock star whose best years are behind him or whose oeuvre is packed with worn-out rock-star cliches about feminine pulchritude. The song referenced above, “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry,” the opening track to an acclaimed 1992 album with his band The Bad Seeds, is a “kind of a nasty fucked-up lullaby” (in his own words) that Cave says he used to sing to his young son. It’s a hauntingly surrealistic tormented ballad that defies any easy categorization. The Australian native is a long-lived, hard-thinking observer of modern life who has been in the public eye since the early 1980s and whose output includes dozens of albums, novels, screenplays, and nonfiction pieces. His interests, modes of expression, and style have all evolved over time but one constant is his defense of free speech and artistic independence.

In 2017, he pushed back against calls from musicians such as Roger Waters and Brian Eno to respect the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s demand that no musical act perform in Israel. Besides making it harder for critics of the Israeli government to plead their case directly from the stage, Cave wrote in an open letter, BDS supporters were also trying to “bully, shame and silence musicians” into adopting a party line. Last fall, he insisted that “free speech was a clear-cut and uncontested virtue.”

We live in a world where the old guard often cowers to pressure, especially from the young, out of fear or forgotten principles. As a musician, Cave works in an industry that rewards groupthink, especially when it comes to politically sensitive issues and sensibilities. His willingness to speak his beliefs is doubly notable, first because he is doing it at all and second because he does it without acrimony or aversion. As a rule, rock stars age with all the grace of jack-o’-lanterns left out on the porch for way too long, but Nick Cave is teaching a master class in aging gracefully and seriously.

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via IFTTT

Rocker Nick Cave Defends Old Songs From ‘Perpetually Pissed Off Coterie of Pearl-Clutchers’

The last time Reason wrote about Australian musician and genre-bending Goth heartthrob Nick Cave, he was making a bold statement in favor of free speech and creative expression while slamming “woke” culture and what he saw as its analogs on the far right:

Antifa and the Far Right…with their routine street fights, role-playing and dress-ups are participants in a weirdly erotic, violent and mutually self-sustaining marriage, propped up entirely by the blind, inflexible convictions of each other’s belief systems. It is good for nothing, except inflaming their own self-righteousness.

This time I want to quote him in a discussion with a fan who asks the (good) question, “Do you ever feel the need to change lyrics, when performing live, which may be problematic in 2020, for example ‘a fag in a whalebone corset dragging his dick across my cheek’? Or are you happy to preserve the lyric as a product of its time, and respect the original content?”

Cave publishes a monthly newsletter, The Red Hand Files, in which he answers questions from his audience. In the new edition, he responds to the above query with a direct statement that should be a model for other creatives who are feeling weak-kneed in the face of rapidly changing standards of acceptability.

What songwriter could have predicted thirty years ago that the future would lose its sense of humour, its sense of playfulness, its sense of context, nuance and irony, and fall into the hands of a perpetually pissed off coterie of pearl-clutchers? How were we to know? 

Perhaps we writers should have been more careful with our words—I can own this, and I may even agree—however, we should never blame the songs themselves. Songs are divinely constituted organisms. They have their own integrity. As flawed as they may be, the souls of the songs must be protected at all costs. They must be allowed to exist in all their aberrant horror, unmolested by these strident advocates of the innocuous, even if just as some indication that the world has moved toward a better, fairer and more sensitive place. If punishment must be administered, punish the creators, not the songs. We can handle it. I would rather be remembered for writing something that was discomforting or offensive, than to be forgotten for writing something bloodless and bland.

Cave is not some reactionary rock star whose best years are behind him or whose oeuvre is packed with worn-out rock-star cliches about feminine pulchritude. The song referenced above, “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry,” the opening track to an acclaimed 1992 album with his band The Bad Seeds, is a “kind of a nasty fucked-up lullaby” (in his own words) that Cave says he used to sing to his young son. It’s a hauntingly surrealistic tormented ballad that defies any easy categorization. The Australian native is a long-lived, hard-thinking observer of modern life who has been in the public eye since the early 1980s and whose output includes dozens of albums, novels, screenplays, and nonfiction pieces. His interests, modes of expression, and style have all evolved over time but one constant is his defense of free speech and artistic independence.

In 2017, he pushed back against calls from musicians such as Roger Waters and Brian Eno to respect the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s demand that no musical act perform in Israel. Besides making it harder for critics of the Israeli government to plead their case directly from the stage, Cave wrote in an open letter, BDS supporters were also trying to “bully, shame and silence musicians” into adopting a party line. Last fall, he insisted that “free speech was a clear-cut and uncontested virtue.”

We live in a world where the old guard often cowers to pressure, especially from the young, out of fear or forgotten principles. As a musician, Cave works in an industry that rewards groupthink, especially when it comes to politically sensitive issues and sensibilities. His willingness to speak his beliefs is doubly notable, first because he is doing it at all and second because he does it without acrimony or aversion. As a rule, rock stars age with all the grace of jack-o’-lanterns left out on the porch for way too long, but Nick Cave is teaching a master class in aging gracefully and seriously.

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Minnesota Is Latest State to Consider Ban on Single-Family Zoning

Minneapolis became a national leader in housing reform in 2018 when it eliminated single-family-only zoning to allow three-unit homes citywide.

Now a bipartisan group of Minnesota state lawmakers is following suit by introducing a package of a dozen bills that would pare back zoning regulations across the state, reform the way fees are charged to developers, and limit local governments’ ability to micromanage how new homes look.

Senate File (S.F.) 4064, authored by Sens. Richard Draheim (R–Madison Lake) and John A. Hoffman (D/FL–Champlin), would allow the construction of duplexes on all residential land currently zoned to only allow single-family homes.

Should that bill pass, Minnesota would become the second state to officially abolish single-family zoning.

Oregon was the first to do that in 2019, passing legislation that allows duplexes on all residential land in towns of 10,000 or more people, and four-unit homes on all residential land in communities of more than 25,000 people. California, by allowing homeowners to build up to two accessory dwelling units on their property, has also effectively eliminated single-family-only zoning.

Other bills authored or sponsored by Draheim—who chaired a select committee on housing affordability—would go further.

That includes a bill that would limit local governments to requiring only one garage per single-family home. Other legislation would address the fees localities can charge new developments, capping them in some instances and requiring more information to be reported on how fee money is spent.

Language in other bills in Minnesota’s housing package would also forbid local governments from conditioning the approval of new housing on the use of “specific materials, design, amenities, or other aesthetic conditions” not already required by state law.

Local governments’ use of planned unit developments—discretionary approval processes that can allow developers to bypass local zoning laws in exchange for them agreeing to pay additional fees or abide by specific design requirements—would also be restricted.

Budget-conscious localities have an incentive to attract residents who pay a lot of taxes and consume few city services, Salim Furth, a housing policy expert at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, told Reason in December. Passing design requirements that only allow for high-end housing is one way to ensure you get high-income residents.

“There’s a level of micromanaging, even in places that allow growth, they’re more and more allowing it through a highly discretionary planned unit development process,” said Furth. “[Local governments] have certain priorities that never include affordability, that never include the diversity of housing typology. Its always about pushing quality, and therefore price, up.”

Minnesota’s Housing Affordability Institute, a developer-backed nonprofit, noted in a recent report that local design requirements intended to improve the aesthetic of homes can be quite detailed and add thousands to the costs of a new home.

That report gave the example of Corcoran, Minnesota, whose city code “outlines the design requirements for all new homes in the city, including materials used on the façade of homes, percentage of varying materials for the home, architectural styles, the percentage of the garage on the front elevation and garage door designs, just to name a few.”

The Housing Affordability Institute’s report surveyed homebuilders who said regulations in certain Minnesota communities add as much as 30 percent to the final costs of a home.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has found that government regulation pushes up the costs of single-family homes by 25 percent, and multi-family units by 30 percent.

“It is a question of affordability. Do we want people to have the American dream? Do we want a family to grow up in a home?” says Grace Keliher of the Builders Association of Minnesota.

With housing affordability becoming a nationwide concern, the last thing we need is local governments dictating how a new home should look or how big of a garage it needs.

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Minnesota Is Latest State to Consider Ban on Single-Family Zoning

Minneapolis became a national leader in housing reform in 2018 when it eliminated single-family-only zoning to allow three-unit homes citywide.

Now a bipartisan group of Minnesota state lawmakers is following suit by introducing a package of a dozen bills that would pare back zoning regulations across the state, reform the way fees are charged to developers, and limit local governments’ ability to micromanage how new homes look.

Senate File (S.F.) 4064, authored by Sens. Richard Draheim (R–Madison Lake) and John A. Hoffman (D/FL–Champlin), would allow the construction of duplexes on all residential land currently zoned to only allow single-family homes.

Should that bill pass, Minnesota would become the second state to officially abolish single-family zoning.

Oregon was the first to do that in 2019, passing legislation that allows duplexes on all residential land in towns of 10,000 or more people, and four-unit homes on all residential land in communities of more than 25,000 people. California, by allowing homeowners to build up to two accessory dwelling units on their property, has also effectively eliminated single-family-only zoning.

Other bills authored or sponsored by Draheim—who chaired a select committee on housing affordability—would go further.

That includes a bill that would limit local governments to requiring only one garage per single-family home. Other legislation would address the fees localities can charge new developments, capping them in some instances and requiring more information to be reported on how fee money is spent.

Language in other bills in Minnesota’s housing package would also forbid local governments from conditioning the approval of new housing on the use of “specific materials, design, amenities, or other aesthetic conditions” not already required by state law.

Local governments’ use of planned unit developments—discretionary approval processes that can allow developers to bypass local zoning laws in exchange for them agreeing to pay additional fees or abide by specific design requirements—would also be restricted.

Budget-conscious localities have an incentive to attract residents who pay a lot of taxes and consume few city services, Salim Furth, a housing policy expert at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, told Reason in December. Passing design requirements that only allow for high-end housing is one way to ensure you get high-income residents.

“There’s a level of micromanaging, even in places that allow growth, they’re more and more allowing it through a highly discretionary planned unit development process,” said Furth. “[Local governments] have certain priorities that never include affordability, that never include the diversity of housing typology. Its always about pushing quality, and therefore price, up.”

Minnesota’s Housing Affordability Institute, a developer-backed nonprofit, noted in a recent report that local design requirements intended to improve the aesthetic of homes can be quite detailed and add thousands to the costs of a new home.

That report gave the example of Corcoran, Minnesota, whose city code “outlines the design requirements for all new homes in the city, including materials used on the façade of homes, percentage of varying materials for the home, architectural styles, the percentage of the garage on the front elevation and garage door designs, just to name a few.”

The Housing Affordability Institute’s report surveyed homebuilders who said regulations in certain Minnesota communities add as much as 30 percent to the final costs of a home.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has found that government regulation pushes up the costs of single-family homes by 25 percent, and multi-family units by 30 percent.

“It is a question of affordability. Do we want people to have the American dream? Do we want a family to grow up in a home?” says Grace Keliher of the Builders Association of Minnesota.

With housing affordability becoming a nationwide concern, the last thing we need is local governments dictating how a new home should look or how big of a garage it needs.

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Salty Sanders Supporters Say They Won’t Settle For Biden

Did Democratic voters hand Donald Trump the election yesterday? The mood on the left following former Vice President Joe Biden’s besting of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) in Tuesday’s primaries is one of defiance and scorn about the way the most establishment candidate pretty much always wins in Democratic Party politics. Many are rejecting the idea that it’s now their duty to vote for Biden and are pledging not to back Biden should he get the party’s nomination, which now seems very likely.

“We don’t want to be overly dramatic, but it does seem as if the writing is on the wall for Sanders’s campaign after tonight,” wrote Sarah Frostenson at FiveThirtyEight shortly after midnight. “And that’s because if he was going to mount a comeback, he needed to start tonight. Some of the most favorable states for Sanders left on the primary calendar voted tonight, which means things moving forward are only going to get harder, not easier.”

Biden won in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, and Missouri yesterday, while Sanders won in North Dakota. Washington state has still not been called.

With 1,991 Democratic Party delegates declared overall as of 9:30 a.m. this morning, Biden has 846 and Sanders 683, according to the Associated Press. (Going into Tuesday’s elections it was 664-573.) When all delegates from yesterday’s contests are awarded, 53 percent will still be in play. The math might not be strictly stacked against Sanders yet; the political consensus among journalists, pundits, and political representatives rapidly is. But Sanders supporters seem to be rejecting the idea that this means they must fall in line…

For some segments of Democratic punditocracy, this has only provoked more attempts to shame their more radical elements into supporting Biden:

But there’s a (relatively) new twist to this old story: allegations that the drama is all just a product of Russian bots!

People have also been casting blame on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) for Sanders’ loss…

… something that Trump, too, has gotten in on:

Interestingly, both Trumpian Republicans and left-leaning Democrats have converged on the idea that Sanders’ loss yesterday was Trump 2020’s gain.

QUICK HITS

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Salty Sanders Supporters Say They Won’t Settle For Biden

Did Democratic voters hand Donald Trump the election yesterday? The mood on the left following former Vice President Joe Biden’s besting of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) in Tuesday’s primaries is one of defiance and scorn about the way the most establishment candidate pretty much always wins in Democratic Party politics. Many are rejecting the idea that it’s now their duty to vote for Biden and are pledging not to back Biden should he get the party’s nomination, which now seems very likely.

“We don’t want to be overly dramatic, but it does seem as if the writing is on the wall for Sanders’s campaign after tonight,” wrote Sarah Frostenson at FiveThirtyEight shortly after midnight. “And that’s because if he was going to mount a comeback, he needed to start tonight. Some of the most favorable states for Sanders left on the primary calendar voted tonight, which means things moving forward are only going to get harder, not easier.”

Biden won in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, and Missouri yesterday, while Sanders won in North Dakota. Washington state has still not been called.

With 1,991 Democratic Party delegates declared overall as of 9:30 a.m. this morning, Biden has 846 and Sanders 683, according to the Associated Press. (Going into Tuesday’s elections it was 664-573.) When all delegates from yesterday’s contests are awarded, 53 percent will still be in play. The math might not be strictly stacked against Sanders yet; the political consensus among journalists, pundits, and political representatives rapidly is. But Sanders supporters seem to be rejecting the idea that this means they must fall in line…

For some segments of Democratic punditocracy, this has only provoked more attempts to shame their more radical elements into supporting Biden:

But there’s a (relatively) new twist to this old story: allegations that the drama is all just a product of Russian bots!

People have also been casting blame on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) for Sanders’ loss…

… something that Trump, too, has gotten in on:

Interestingly, both Trumpian Republicans and left-leaning Democrats have converged on the idea that Sanders’ loss yesterday was Trump 2020’s gain.

QUICK HITS

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