Blinken Repeats “Crimea Is Ukraine” As Kiev Steps Up Attacks On Peninsula
On the very day that Ukraine’s military issued a very provocative statement saying its forces have destroyed a Russian S-400 missile defense system in Crimea, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reaffirmed Washington’s view that “Crimea is Ukraine”.
The timing of Blinken’s statement is interesting indeed, coming amid general stepped-up Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russian territory, including nearly a straight week of drone strikes on Moscow.
For 9 years, Russia has occupied Crimea and subjected its residents to a campaign of brutalization and repression. But the people of Ukraine have not backed down, not even after the Kremlin’s illegal and horrific invasion. Crimea is Ukraine. Russia’s aggression must end. pic.twitter.com/QXo8iczgTc
“For 9 years, Russia has occupied Crimea and subjected its residents to a campaign of brutalization and repression,” Blinken said in a fresh video statement published Wednesday. “But the people of Ukraine have not backed down, not even after the Kremlin’s illegal and horrific invasion. Crimea is Ukraine. Russia’s aggression must end.”
There have been several recent attempts to destroy the Crimean Bridge as well, used primarily for civilian vehicle traffic, but also as a vital military logistics crossing into southern Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials said Wednesday of their claimed successful attack on a S-400 battery, “The explosion completely destroyed the system, its missiles and personnel,” according to the GUR military intelligence agency’s words.
The GUR said it happened on the Tarkhankut Peninsula of western Crimea, and touted that “Given the limited number of such systems in the enemy’s arsenal, this is a painful blow to the occupiers’ air defense system.”
External war monitors have tallied that there have been two prior instances of Russian S-400s being taken out, which remains a rarity – thus if confirmed this would mark the third instance of the war.
As for Blinken’s new video message, it seems geared toward boosting Ukrainians’ morale even amid staggering losses and increasing admissions, including in the pages of the NY Times and Washington Post and others, of a failing counteroffensive. It seems Blinken also wants to assure allies that Washington will stay the course in its support of Ukraine.
Meanwhile on the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin told counterparts at the BRICS summit (via virtual remarks) that his country desires the end of the Ukraine war, but which was a conflict “unleashed by the West and its satellites.”
As politicians continue to debate the cause of the crime epidemic that has seen the descent of many of the nation’s most populated cities into war zone-like conditions, increasing numbers of businesses and residents have turned to private solutions in effort to reclaim their neighborhoods.
Pastor Corey Brooks, Executive Director of Project H.O.O.D, a Chicago-based non-profit seeking to end violence through individual empowerment, says that after decades of hoping for solutions from public officials, residents of crime-ridden cities are no longer waiting on empty pledges of safer streets to be fulfilled.
“Politicians all make promises that if we vote them into office they know how to make our communities safe, meanwhile, it just keeps getting worse,” Mr. Brooks told the Epoch Times. “This is a crisis. We no longer have the luxury of waiting for the government to come in and save the day. The people are beginning to understand that this is a problem the government can’t solve.”
“If we are going to end this violence on our streets, it’s going to come from the people, not another government program.”
Escalation
For several years, crime in major American cities has remained at crisis levels.
The surge in thefts, harassment, and violent crimes experienced in cities nationwide during much of 2020 and 2021 had been expected by many experts to be a temporary blip as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic and reaction and aftermath to the death of George Floyd. However, more than a year after officials declared an end to the COVID-19 emergency and officers involved in Mr. Floyd’s death were convicted and sentenced, lawlessness continues to persist at a high level.
In Washington D.C., homicides are up 15 percent compared to a year ago with the city on pace to surpass 200 for the third year in a row. Carjackings in the city have also seen a spike with police reporting 140 incidents in the month of June, the highest in more than five years.
Earlier this month, Washington D.C. City Council member Trayon White, who represents the Eighth Ward, held a press conference where he told reporters that federal troops would be needed to restore law and order.
“The crime is out of control and getting worse by the day,” Mr. White said at a press conference. “We must declare an emergency regarding the crime and violence in our neighborhoods and act urgently. It may be time to call on the National Guard to protect the children and innocent people that are losing their lives to this senselessness.”
Foreign countries have also taken notice. A July 24 tweet from the Mexican Consulate urged its nationals to “take precautions” while visiting the nation’s capital due to “a significant increase in crime in areas previously considered safe.”
In San Francisco, the problem has spiraled so far out of control that some workers are now being told to stay at home, as opposed to risking the commute to work. An Aug. 2 memo from the Department of Health and Human Services advised federal employees to avoid the office at the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building, due to drug use and rising crime in the area, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Videos posted on social media of nearby streets show coroner’s vans picking up dead bodies, drug needles littering the streets, and piles of human feces scattered across public sidewalks.
In Los Angeles, the sight of “flash mobs” composed largely of youth rampaging through retail stores has become the new norm. On Aug. 13, a Nike store was robbed in broad daylight by a group who walked out with thousands of dollars worth of apparel. On the same day dozens of people stormed the Nordstrom store at the Westfield Topanga Shopping Center, making off with more than $300,000 worth of items, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Last weekend in Chicago at least 40 people were shot, seven fatally, including at least four teenagers, one just 14 years old. Overall, the city has experienced a 50 percent increase in shooting victimizations of school-aged youth 17 years and younger since 2019, according to The University of Chicago Crime Lab.
Citizen Solutions
As crime escalates and police resources dwindle, regulations have limited the options for city residents to protect themselves. For the vast majority of those living in major American cities, the ability for a resident to legally own a firearm ranges from difficult to nearly impossible. Some communities have responded to the rise in crime by pooling resources to hire their own security to patrol their streets. Over the past year, several neighborhoods in Chicago, San Francisco, and Baltimore have brought in private security amid a spike in thefts and carjackings.
In Los Angeles County, protection dogs are in high demand among the more affluent residents, some of whom have been willing to spend as much as $150,000 on a dog, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Blame for the metro crime epidemic has broken down largely on political affiliations, with many on the Democrat-left attributing the spike to economic and racial inequality while many on the Republican-right claiming the problems stem from cuts to funding for police departments and policies of liberal district attorneys who have curtailed cash bail, placing criminals that would formerly be behind bars back out on the streets.
However, according to Mr. Brooks, the real root cause of the lawlessness isn’t the result of bad public policy from either the left or right, but more so from the breakdown in family—specifically, a lack of male role models prevalent in many inner city communities.
“The first epidemic we have to confront is the one of fatherlessness. Eighty percent of the black households in Chicago are single parent households and a lot of these young men are growing up without fathers, without male mentors. It’s vitally important that other men step up and provide the role of mentors at a really early age,” said Mr. Brooks.
In creating a network of mentorship for at-risk youth, Mr. Brooks claims to have already seen promising results in his community, noting that in one area where his program has been implemented crime has decreased by nearly 50 percent.
“We are seeing violence at alarming rates. It calls for all people to have all hands on deck if we are going to figure out how to stop it. The solution isn’t found in D.C. It’s found in the community and in the home.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy says House Republicans might consider launching an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden when the House comes back from vacation.
To review, the president of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma was allegedly coerced by the Bidens to tune of $10 million– and has 17 recordings of Biden dealings for ‘insurance,’ on top of Hunter Biden’s exorbitant board seat, in exchange for Biden abusing his office to provide Burisma with political cover – according to an FBI document that the agency stonewalled on until the absolute last second.
Donald Trump was impeached for asking Ukraine about it.
And McCarthy says House Republicans are ‘thinking about’ going after Biden – something he said four weeks ago, after House investigators revealed over $20 million in payments they claim foreign actors from places like Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan sent the Biden family and their associates while Joe Biden was vice president.
“The thing that holds up whether we’ll do an impeachment inquiry: Provide us the documents we’re asking,” McCarthy told Fox News Tuesday night. “But if they withhold the documents and fight like they have now to not provide to the American public what they deserve to know, we will move forward with impeachment inquiry when we come back into session.”
“The whole determination here is how the Bidens handle this.”
Oh, so if the Biden administration coughs up a list of requested documents, House Republicans might think about impeaching Biden?
“The only reason you know of all this information is because we took the majority and we’re holding the administration accountable. It is appalling what we have learned. It is different from what President Joe Biden has told us,” McCarthy told host Larry Kudlow, filling the room with hot air.
“The only stories that have not changed are the whistleblowers from the IRS. Their story has held up time and again,” McCarthy continued. “If the Biden administration continues to fight to withhold information that could really clear all this up… we would have to move to an impeachment inquiry.”
Nothing like the uniparty’s selective outrage depending on who’s in office.
Nvidia Erupts To New Record High On Blowout Q2 Earnings, Whisper-Shattering Q3 Guidance, And New $25BN Buyback
As we wrote in our preview of NVDA’s Q2 earnings, it is safe to say that more were paying attention to today’s earnings report from Nvidia than some/all of the other giga caps or frankly any other company this quarter, thanks to the thundrous, “paradigmatic” impact Nvidia has had on the broader market. In fact, the excitement was so palpable that JPM trader Stuart Humphrey said “The anticipation is LITERALLY killing us!“
Well, the anticipation is over, and moments ago NVDA reported not only Q2 earnings that crushed estimates, but gave Q3 guidance that has absolutely blown out even the most optimistic whisper number.
Here is what NVDA reported about Q2 earnings:
Adjusted EPS $2.70 vs. 51c y/y, smashing estimates of $2.07
Revenue $13.51 billion, up 101% vs $6.70 billion a year ago, and blowing away estimates of $11.04 billion
Data center revenue $10.32 billion vs. $3.81 billion y/y, beating estimates of $7.98 billion
Professional Visualization revenue $379 million, -24% y/y, beating estimates of $318.7 million
Automotive revenue $253 million, +15% y/y, beating estimates of $309.4 million
Some more details on the revenue breakdown:
Data Center revenue was a record, up 171% from a year ago and up 141% sequentially, led by cloud service providers and large consumer internet companies. Strong demand for the NVIDIA HGX platform based on our Hopper and Ampere GPU architectures was primarily driven by the development of large language models and generative AI. Data Center Compute grew 195% from a year ago and 157% sequentially, largely reflecting the strong ramp of our Hopper-based HGX platform. Networking was up 94% from a year ago and up 85% sequentially, primarily on strong growth in InfiniBand infrastructure to support our HGX platform.
The hart below from Bloomberg shows all you need to know about the company’s main revenue driver:
Gaming revenue was up 22% from a year ago and up 11% sequentially, primarily reflecting demand for our GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs based on the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture following normalization of channel inventory levels.
Professional Visualization revenue was down 24% from a year ago and up 28% sequentially. The year-on-year decrease primarily reflects lower sell-in to partners following normalization of channel inventory levels. The sequential increase was primarily due to stronger enterprise work station demand and the ramp of NVIDIA RTX products based on the Ada Lovelace Architecture.
Automotive revenue was up 15% from a year ago and down 15% sequentially. The year-on-year increase was primarily driven by sales of self-driving platforms. The sequential decrease primarily reflects lower overall auto demand, particularly in China.
Going down the line:
Adjusted gross margin 71.2% vs. 45.9% y/y, beating estimates of 70.1%
R&D expenses $2.04 billion, +12% y/y, in line with estimates of $2.05 billion
Adjusted operating income $7.78 billion vs. $1.33 billion y/y, beating estimates of $5.89 billion
Gross Margin
GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins increased from a year ago and sequentially, primarily reflecting growth in Data Center sales. The year-on-year increase also reflects the impact on the year-ago gross margin from $1.34 billion in inventory provisions and related charges.
Expenses
GAAP operating expenses were up 10% from a year ago and up 6% sequentially, primarily driven by compensation and benefits, including stock-based compensation, reflecting growth in employees and compensation increases.
Non-GAAP operating expenses were up 5% from a year ago and up 5% sequentially, primarily reflecting increased compensation and benefits.
The financial results in a nutshell:
Commenting on the results, CEO Jensen Huang said that “A new computing era has begun. Companies worldwide are transitioning from general-purpose to accelerated computing and generative AI… NVIDIA GPUs connected by our Mellanox networking and switch technologies and running our CUDA AI software stack make up the computing infrastructure of generative AI.”
“During the quarter, major cloud service providers announced massive NVIDIA H100 AI infrastructures. Leading enterprise IT system and software providers announced partnerships to bring NVIDIA AI to every industry. The race is on to adopt generative AI,” he said.
But while the Q2 results were in themselves stellar, it was the company’s Q3 guidance that absolutelyblew away investors far more so than even last quarter, as the company now expects Q3 revenues of $16 billion not only some $3.5BN above Wall Street’s estimate of $12.5 billion, but also above the highest whisper number of about $15.0BN!
The full Q3 guidance:
Revenue is expected to be $16.00 billion, plus or minus 2%, Est. $12.5BN
GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 71.5% and 72.5%, respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points.
GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $2.95 billion and $2.00 billion, respectively.
GAAP and non-GAAP other income and expense are expected to be an income of approximately $100 million, excluding gains and losses from non-affiliated investments.
GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates are expected to be 14.5%, plus or minus 1%, excluding any discrete items.
Gross margins are expected to be 71.5% and 72.5%
GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $2.95 billion and $2.00 billion, respectively.
And if all that was not enough, NVDA said that the Board of Directors approved an additional $25.00 billion in share repurchases, without expiration. NVIDIA plans to continue share repurchases this fiscal year. In Q2, NVIDIA returned $3.38 billion to shareholders in the form of 7.5 million shares repurchased for $3.28 billion. As of the end of the second quarter, the company had $3.95 billion remaining under its share repurchase authorization.
In response to the stunning earnings, NVDA stock is up about 7% after hours to a new all time high of $506, and a market cap that is set to rise above $1.2 trillion tomorrow.
A back of the enveloped calculation shows that NVDA is now trading at 20x sales based on Q3 annualized run rate of $16BN
In response to reports of COVID restrictions, including social distancing and masking being reimplemented by colleges and offices, Senator Rand Paul asserted that those pushing the measures again “have no shame.”
During a Fox News interview, Paul described the move as “hysteria” being pushed by the leftist media to financially benefit their corporate pharma owners.
“These people are so conflicted,” Paul said, adding “It’s so dishonest to put people like that on the air to promote a product that they make more money from … promote this hysteria. This defies all logic. It defies science, and it defies common sense.”
“To see this coming up again, these people have no shame,” Paul continued, pointing to Morris Brown College in Atlanta, a black private liberal arts college that has reinstated the measures as part of a “precautionary step.”
“That university that’s wanting to mask up and do all this testing — zero cases,” Paul urged, adding “But even worse than that, even when COVID was really more potent in 2020, the death rate for young, healthy people turned out to be close to zero.”
“We don’t know for sure because the CDC won’t release it, but we do know that Germany released all of their data, and not one young, healthy person died. So, it’s a crime to mandate masks. It’s a crime to mandate vaccines, which do have some risks for young, healthy people,” Paul further noted.
The Senator urged that Americans are “not going to lay down and take it again,”adding “there will be more resistance” this time.
“We will fight back, and we will point out that they are making money off of this. These are not high-minded people. They are making money off of us and making money off of generating hysteria,” the Senator asserted.
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“The United States has been at the center of the global financial universe for about 80 years,” she tells me, but that’s changing for a whole lot of reasons, most of which are beyond any regular person’s ability to control. Yet she isn’t one to despair. Instead, she counsels that we should all proactively “do things to control our personal resources and our wealth.” Roth’s analysis and advice are worth listening to.
Today’s sponsor:
Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. A six-part Reason podcast series about the frustrating and foolish aspects of American trade policy that make everyday items more expensive. From last year’s sudden shortages of baby formula to the Jones Act and President Lyndon Johnson’s infamous “chicken war,” host Eric Boehm sits down with industry experts and libertarian policy wonks to explore how these counterproductive rules got made—and explains why they can be so difficult to undo.
Bonds, Bitcoin, Big-Tech, & Bullion Soar As ‘Bad News’ Is Good News Again
It’s been an ugly couple of days for micro- and macro- data in the US (and globally) as retailers signal a far more-stressed American consumer than the market would like to believe, and global PMIs scream stagflation with ‘sticky’ prices rebounding as new orders tumble and the false optimism of the Services sectors’ rebounds evaporates in a red mist of reality.
This week has seen the biggest set of ‘bad news’ since April…
Source: Bloomberg
And that bad news prompted a very aggressive bid for global bonds with USTs tumbling 8-12bps on the day, leaving the long-end down 9bps on the week (but 2Y +2bps still)
Source: Bloomberg
And in true US equity market fashion, that ‘bad news’ bid for bonds is ‘good news’ for long-duration stocks and we saw Nasdaq dramatically outperforming on the day (although all the majors were green today ahead of NVDA’s earnings). Some late-day profit-taking wiped some of the lipstick off with The Dow lagging…
The bad news prompted a dovish drop in the market’s Fed rate expectations, erasing the week’s hawkish drift…
Source: Bloomberg
And for those hoping for a hawkish Powell deja vu all over again, we note that financial conditions have actually been tightening in recent weeks both mechanically…
Source: Bloomberg
…and anecdotally with SLOOS showing tighter credit conditions, home mortgage applications collapsing to 1995 lows, Dallas Fed banking conditions significantly tighter, and Macy’s et al. commenting on surging credit card delinquencies.
The dollar dived on the dovish ‘bad news’ bias (after surging in the European session on weaker Euro)…
Source: Bloomberg
…which sent gold spiking back above $1900 (Spot)…
Source: Bloomberg
..and helped support crypto with Bitcoin bouncing back above $26,000…
Source: Bloomberg
The yield curve (2s30s) inverted deeper today, flattening back to last week’s lows…
Source: Bloomberg
…as the 2Y Yield tried to get back above 5.00% but failed notably…
Source: Bloomberg
Oil slipped lower on the PMIs signaling demand fears – although WTI did bounce off one-month lows…
Peloton was puked hard to a record low as Americans prefer the Ozempic shortcut to fat loss…
Foot Locker stunk – suffering its worst day ever as the stock fell to its lowest since 2010 (and along wioth it all of Cramer’s club members capital)…
Nike down for the 10th day in a row – its longest losing streak ever – falling to its lowest since Nov 2022…
Finally, NVDA bounced back to Monday’s lows – teetering on the brink ahead of earnings tonight…
0-DTE call-buyers provided the floor for NVDA today
Let’s hope this analogy finally snaps…
Because Nasdaq’s Advance/Decline line just hit a record low…
Supply chain problems were supposed to be a thing of the past, but instead our supply chains just keep getting hit by issue after issue. Have you noticed that it has become really difficult to acquire parts and get things repaired? It isn’t just your imagination. And have you noticed that store shelves seem rather sparse just about wherever you go shopping? During my latest visit to the local grocery store, I was stunned to see how thin stock levels had become. I assumed that it was because I had arrived at a bad time and that they were about to be restocked. But then I started looking into this, and I discovered that major supply chain issues are starting to develop all over the country.
According to a survey that was recently conducted, a whopping 82 percent of those that visit brick and mortar stores have had problems with things being out of stock this year. That figure is up 11 percent from the same time last year…
More than four-fifths (82%) of bricks and mortar shoppers say they’ve experienced items being ‘out of stock’ this year, according to new research.
The data – from software provider Retail Insight – finds this headline figure is up 11 percentage points year-on-year, and says supply chain disruptions causing it are now seriously threatening customer loyalty.
The findings are based on a survey of 1,000 people, and found shoppers believe product availability has become increasingly a problem since the onset of the pandemic – as reported by 71% of respondents. An additional three-quarters (75%) said product availability has worsened since the start of the cost of living crisis.
Of course it isn’t just brick and mortar stores that are having trouble keeping things in stock.
This was also a story amongst online shoppers, where incidents of ‘out of stock’ items have increased by six percentage points year-on-year, with 60% of customers now seeing out of stock items online.
At a time when things are supposed to be getting back to “normal”, these numbers are going up.
That isn’t good.
So what in the world is going on?
Well, the truth is that it isn’t just one thing.
In a video that he just posted, Steve Poplar explains that our supply chains are literally being hit from countless different directions right now…
Sadly, some of the wounds to our supply chains are self-inflicted.
The Biden administration on Thursday announced new tariffs on can-making metal imported from China, Germany and Canada, a move that food companies say could lead to higher prices for some canned foods.
Chinese products would be subject to the highest tariffs of the three countries—a levy of 122.52% of their import value. That rate partly reflects Chinese companies’ refusal to cooperate with the investigation to prove their independence from the Chinese Communist Party, an administration official said.
The Consumer Brands Association, a trade group representing companies such as Campbell Soup and Fresh Del Monte Produce, estimated new tariffs, if applied aggressively, could raise the prices of canned food by up to 30%.
Thanks Joe.
Now a can of soup that currently costs us about two dollars will soon be close to three dollars when you add on sales tax.
On top of everything else, the seemingly endless drought in the middle of the country is likely to mean that corn production and soy production will both be well below expectations this year.
This week, a massive heat dome will drive the heat index above 110 degrees in our agricultural heartland, and that is not good news at all…
A heat dome will consume the Plains and Mississippi Valley into the South this week with oppressive and dangerous conditions, the National Weather Service reported early Monday.
“…The more widespread weather hazard extending through midweek involves searing temperatures impacting a majority of the central U.S. and Gulf Coast,” the NWS said. “Dangerous heat underneath an extremely potent upper-level ridge centered over the Middle Mississippi Valley is forecast to stretch from parts of the Upper Midwest to the Gulf Coast. Highs into the upper-90s and triple digits will be easy to come by over the next several days, with heat indices into the 110s when taking into account the humidity.”
Unfortunately, the entire globe has been dealing with very unusual weather patterns this summer, and global food prices are beginning to surge.
Prices for rice grown in Kenya soared a while ago because of higher fertilizer prices and a yearslong drought in the Horn of Africa that has reduced production. Cheap rice imported from India had filled the gap, feeding many of the hundreds of thousands of residents in Nairobi’s Kibera slum who survive on less than $2 a day.
But that is changing. The price of a 25-kilogram (55-pound) bag of rice has risen by a fifth since June. Wholesalers are yet to receive new stocks since India, the world’s largest exporter of rice by far, said last month that it would ban some rice shipments.
But even though we are in the early chapters of the worst global food crisis in modern history, leaders in the western world continue to do absolutely insane things in the name of fighting climate change.
Look to the Netherlands for further evidence. Dutch farmers, the backbone of a nation that is a leading exporter of meat and agricultural products, are being chased off their lands. A staggering number, 3,000 farms, are forecasted to be confiscated in the coming years. The tragic fallout is evident, with a reported 20 to 30 farmers tragically ending their lives annually.
Our friends in Europe are no strangers to these baffling decisions either. The European Commission greenlit a strategy to compensate livestock farmers for halting their operations in certain areas – with a stipulation that they never resume their animal breeding activities. The implications are clear: a drop in global food availability and an inevitable spike in prices.
Have they gone completely nuts?
Maybe.
Here in the United States, “suspicious fires” continue to erupt at key facilities over and over again.
The latest example happened at a large fertilizer plant in Bartlett, Texas…
The American Plant Food Corporation fertilizer plant fire has been contained, and the air quality is deemed good as Hazmat crews continue work to clean up the site of the fire, and firefighters work to clear the smolder, authorities said.
Barlett Mayor Chad Mees and Barlett Volunteer Fire Department Fire Chief Steven Wentrcek on Monday said the fire department received the call about the fire at 8:30 p.m. on Aug. 20 at the plant located at 9901 North Highway 95 Bartlett.
Fire Chief Steven Wentrcek said that when crews arrived at the scene, the building was fully engulfed and help was sought from departments in surrounding areas.
We keep being told that it is just a “coincidence” that there have been dozens of such fires all over the nation.
But they just keep happening.
And we keep being told that our supply chain problems are being fixed.
But they just keep getting worse.
So what is going to happen when global events become a lot more chaotic in 2024 and beyond?
It is going to become increasingly difficult to stock up on things, and so I would plan accordingly.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Atlanta College Bringing Back Mask Mandates, Canceling Parties, Despite Zero Covid Cases
A college in Georgia is joining the now-growing chorus of institutions and agencies arbitrarily bringing back mask mandates.
Morris Brown College in Atlanta has reportedly “advised students, faculty, and staff that facemasks must be worn on campus for at least the next 14 days”, according to The Daily Wire.
And as if the idiocy of bringing back mandates without evidence that they work wasn’t enough, how about bringing them back in the absence of the virus? That’s right: the college has seen no confirmed cases of Covid, according to WSB-TV, who reported: “Officials say there have been no confirmed COVID-19 cases among its students”.
That didn’t stop the school from posting a message to its Instagram account this week proclaiming that it was going to be responding to the non-threat with mask wearing, physical distancing, guidelines for large gatherings, isolation and quarantine, contract tracing and symptom monitoring.
What, no social credit score yet?
The college is the first in the nation to reinstitute the policies, which it says it is doing “because of reports of positive cases within the Atlanta University Center Consortium”, Atlanta News First reported.
They quoted one student as saying: “We went so long without taking it so seriously to begin with, I’m not surprised that it’s back.”
“I per se don’t want to wear a mask again,” another said.
WSB-TV reported that the mandate is “a precautionary move for the next 14 days.” Over that period of time, “Morris Brown College will also not allow any parties or large student gatherings on campus,” the report says.
It continued: “Other precautionary measures include: temperature checks upon campus arrival, social distancing and contact tracing. Morris Brown College does have a vaccine requirement for students with religious and medical exemptions allowed.”
Judge Rao’s remarks have provoked a response from Professors Adrian Vermeule and Conor Casey, two prominent proponents of “Common Good Constitutionalism.” Their response, “Judge Rao’s Unintentional Surrender,” has been published in “The New Digest,” a “forum for short essays on law, politics, political theology, post liberalism, and the common good.”
The full essay requires a subscription, but here is how it begins:
On the March 3, 2022, Judge Rao of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit gave the Sumner Canary Memorial Lecture at Case Western Reserve University, which has now been published. Her lecture, entitled Textualism’s Political Morality, sets out to “explore the political morality that undergirds and informs a textualist approach to statutory interpretation” and then to contrast textualism favorably against “methods of interpretation that rely on the judge’s abstract normative values about justice or fairness or that seek to update statutes in accordance with evolving social or political norms.” In her opening remarks, Judge Rao says that her defense of textualism is “especially timely” given critiques advanced by what the judge refers to as a “wave of post-liberal scholars” (mentioning one of us by name) who have suggested that “laws should be interpreted to promote the ‘common good.'” Judge Rao’s subsequent critique of common good constitutionalism and its classical approach is anchored on the premise that its proponents think “judges should give effect to certain substantive values, values that exist independently of the law” and that “should interpret statutes in light of principles found outside the law” because “such principles will lead to ‘better’ results than simply following the text” (our emphases).
This is, rather trivially, not at all the classical legal position held by common good constitutionalists; the classical view has always been that background principles of legal justice are themselves internal to law. As Vermeule wrote in his recent book, the principles to which the classical tradition looks “are themselves already part of the law and internal to it.” Or, as John Finnis puts it, such principles are ipso iure, meaning that they are themselves part of the law. All this is familiar and uncontested, or ought to be. H.F. Jolowicz explained long ago that for the Roman lawyers, aequitas or equity was not a “contrasting principle” to law, but a mode of interpretation within law.
But in this post, we want to do more than highlight Judge Rao’s misunderstandings. If Judge Rao merely misunderstood what the classical view holds, her lecture could neatly join a crowded shelf of off-the-bench efforts at legal theory by originalist judges, which we have discussed elsewhere, and which are also crippled by a question-begging stipulation that the classical legal tradition does something other than law.
What we find more interesting, and which raises her argument to an apparently unintended form of high art, is that she then proceeds to recreate the classical view itself, seemingly without knowing that she is doing so, and under a different label. In so doing, Judge Rao has continued a recent trend, in which textualists have in effect allowed a kind of Augustan settlement of our law. Like the senators and optimates of Rome under Augustus, they have been content with retaining the outward forms and labels of the regime to which they are wedded, while ceding the operative content of the law to rule by other principles.
