Marvin Justice

@trader_tony_ @mattyglesias Platner has repeatedly and forcefully called for the abolition of ICE while Fetterman has opposed efforts by his fellow senators to impose bare minimum restrictions on them.

@mattyglesias Fetterman went from a progressive hero to a slobbering piece of shit. Platner went from a troubled past to a populist redemption. Kind of opposites tbh

I feel like these two crazy kids are pretty clearly kindred spirits and I hope they can grab some beers and work it out.

@JeffWPa @mattyglesias Fetterman wants to fund ICE with no strings attached whereas Platner has called for its abolition.

@mattyglesias Fetterman is fine. Only problem the left has with him is he supports Israel. I don't think he'll get along with the nazi tattoo guy but time will tell

@PhilWMagness Don't some argue that the enclave could be reduced to a minimal size without an amendment?

So yeah...this would be blatantly unconstitutional. The federal enclave clause establishes the district as a separate political entity. Senate seats are only allotted to states. DC cannot become a state without a constitutional amendment eliminating the federal enclave.

@keithchaput @mattyglesias The problem is that ~80% of non-elderly adults get health insurance through an employer which is "better" than Medicare. Sure, we should do something for those that don't but Medicare for All would actually be a downgrade for most people.

@mattyglesias Dramatically improving lives by implementing things like universal healthcare and universal childcare is the only way Dems get and hold power. The lack of big policy ideas is exactly what led to Trump in the first place. How this is a mystery is baffling.

@henryolsenEPPC He's painted himself in a corner and has no easy exits now.

Trump isn't looking for an exit in Iran washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/45344…

@Mithrandir48 @KelseyTuoc @Guinius999 @goblinodds How do we deal with the Trump family fraud we have at this point (selling pardons for cash, meme coin pay-to- play schemes, etc). Those Somali fraudsters (a small fraction of the population) have been prosecuted and imprisoned by Minnesota already.

@KelseyTuoc @Guinius999 @goblinodds So how do we deal with the Somali fraud we have at this point?

I think the discussion around this keeps unhealthily conflating two different things. America was founded by weird Protestant splinter groups fleeing oppression, and protecting religious freedom is in fact fundamental to what it means to be an American. There is very little more American than deciding everyone else is doing religious practice wrong and moving out to the middle of nowhere to do it according to your own deep principles. I think that many American groups that are not specifically Christian (or whose Christian-ness is contested) should be understood as inheritors of this tradition. But this commitment to religious liberty and to pluralistic tolerance of a wide range of different practices only functions if there is a bedrock, shared governing ethos that allows us to navigate these object-level disagreements. That ethos - the defining thing that it means to be American - includes freedom of religion, the commitment that everyone else's right to their beliefs must also be defended, and defended even at significant personal cost; freedom of speech, an understanding that you have the right to offend and no right not to be offended, a deep suspicion of state exercises of power; commitment to equality under the law and to the idea that much of virtue must be defined and pursued outside the law. It makes no sense to demand people assimilate in the food they eat or the clothes they wear. It is downright unAmerican to insist that people assimilate by adopting an existing American church instead of by following in the deep American tradition of freedom of conscience. But it is absolutely necessary that everyone adopt - 'assimilate to', if you'd like - the underlying commitments that make America the world's most successful pluralistic society. Nothing I've said here disagrees with Hamid's column; I think in many ways it's the exact same point he's making. The examples he gives of not assimilating are examples of not secularizing - for example, not accepting gay marriage, or not thinking that it's good for women to work outside the home. Those are the kinds of disagreements the American project can endure and does endure every day. But I think that people often talk past each other when it comes to assimilation, in a way that makes "we should stop expecting assimilation" a statement that'll sow enormous confusion. I think there's some of this confusion in Hamid's observation that Muslims say 'homosexuality should be discouraged by society' at a much higher rate even than Republican Americans. Does every American have the absolute right to practice a faith that teaches their super loving perfect god will torture me eternally because I have a wife? Yes. I will defend their right to do so, whether that faith is Christian or Muslim. Do they have the right to try to use the state to impose that view - say, by making it harder for me and my wife to own property, get custody of our children, leave our possessions to each other, etc.? I would argue that they do not! I know a lot of people opposed to gay marriage. Some of them are deeply and fundamentally committed to the American vision of pluralism, and some are not. The ones who are not are far, far scarier. If someone is a sincere pluralist, it is not threatening at all for them to believe that homosexuality is gravely evil; if they're not, then it's really quite a big deal. So the more that immigrants assimilate on the important stuff - the conviction that they may not use the state to impose their religion and it would be abhorrent to try, that other people have the right to believe differently, that people have the right to deconvert - the less of an issue it is if they have different views from mine on the object-level stuff. But when someone says "immigrants don't need to assimilate", I don't know whether they mean "immigrants do not need to agree that it is the absolute right of every individual to deconvert from Islam and go around vociferously criticizing it in a strident and offensive way" (immigrants, like all Americans, do need to agree on that) or if they mean "immigrants do not need to agree on whether homosexuality is sinful" (certainly true). Or more generally, whether people talk about the importance of assimilation some mean, "you need to have the same views as me", and some mean, "you need to be essentially persuaded of the pluralistic American project and willing to sacrifice to protect it where it protects views you disagree with". The first is bad and the second is just true. Now for the good news: The data says that in fact Muslim-American immigrants are assimilated in the important sense - opposing political violence at higher rates than other groups, believing in freedom of speech and religious liberty. Hamid references that very data! But he should say clearly "this is good" rather than "this is unnecessary", and then point out that this (good) assimilation is why we can all graciously live alongside one another while our views vary greatly, and why we are able to sustain a society in which it is not an emergency that my neighbors think my lifestyle is sinful.

@quirkyllama @mattyglesias But that's just the point. ICE is itself breaking the law in too many cases. MAGA seems to think illegals don't deserve due process but the constitution disagrees. If ICE wasn't so out of control then the public would be more on their side.

Again- I'm not defending the entire corpus. I agree much of what Trump has done is itself extra-constitutional. But if you want to undermine democracy, the way to do it is let 1 side win, then prevent them from enacting/enforcing policy via non-constitutional means. Immigration is key. It's good law that 10-15M people are here illegally. Passed by both houses. Signed by prior presidents. Supported by large majorities of Americans. Yet, the Left is content to prevent the admin from enforcing the law- often by extra constitutional means. There was a huge showdown in Minneapolis- all Trump wanted was to expel *criminals*- and the Left rallied via extra-constitutional means to prevent that. Put yourself in the place of someone who really believes in MAGA & is anti-immigrant. You won the election. You won twice. Even before you won, there was good law supporting your position. Nothing changes. They say "Elections Matter". But if they don't, why should a MAGA supporter care about elections? To me, this is the most recklessly dangerous thing about Trump2. It's not Trump- it's the gleeful willingness of the Left to oppose his *lawful* attempts to enforce the law. If the Left makes no distinction between lawful and unlawful, then why should the Right make any distinction?

@fed_speak Migas are better

TAKE: Chilaquiles are the perfect breakfast food.

@HebrewConTeam @DouthatNYT Huh? The Iranians issued their own 10 point plan which contradicts Trump's terms. The only thing that's agreed upon so far is a re-opening of the straits while negotiations take place. In particular nowhere has Iran agreed to hand over any uranium.

@DouthatNYT Was there a veto? Trump issued an ultimatum, and his terms were accepted.

Just a comment on the limits of Suez analogies here. What happened at Suez was that the U.S. issued a veto on British and French action, demonstrating that they could no longer conduct an independent foreign policy under the shadow of the American hegemon. With Iran and Hormuz, the (provisional) veto on Trumpian escalation came above all from domestic political constraints, the likelihood Americans would not endure ground-operation casualties or higher gas prices for the hazy objectives of this war. You can argue back and forth about what that domestic veto means for American empire, but being constrained by internal politics is meaningfully different from having your foreign policy plans vetoed by a new global hegemon.

@Seniorveteran @oren_cass Not to us. If Europe feels threatened then the thing to do is a combined NATO response. But this president wants to withdraw from NATO anyway, so for MAGA to use that as an excuse to justify the current war isn't really believable.

@FoontySploont @oren_cass So having enough refined uranium and missiles that can currently reach Europe and eventually reach our East Coast isn’t a threat?

I mostly avoid commenting on what President Trump says from day to day, while pulling no punches in my assessments, whether positive or negative, of his policy. His Iran ultimatums feel different. Making such threats is a policy. If he were to follow through on them, the consequences would be immediate, irreversible, and catastrophic on a world-historical scale. So while some will inevitably insist he should be “taken seriously rather than literally,” or that he is executing a sophisticated “madman” strategy in a complex game of 5-D chess, or that he needs everyone’s steadfast support to maximize his leverage, now rather than later seems the time to say that the actions that he is proposing would be a disaster for our country, both strategically and morally, which makes the remarks themselves a terrible mistake. Simply put, what’s the point of all this? If these are empty threats that we all know he will not carry out, then they are ineffective threats (the Iranians are on X too!), merely making the president and our nation look foolish. If they are not empty threats, then the president is asserting the American position that such actions are acceptable in this situation and ones we are willing to take. We are not living in some quantum thought experiment where he simultaneously is and is not serious. We cannot expect the Iranians, but only the Iranians, will believe him. Whether the threats are empty or not, we should be willing to say: This is wrong. We should not establish a pattern of threatening escalation from a blockaded strait to elimination of a civilization. We should not launch strikes intended to devastate the lives of millions of people and take our nation to total war without indisputable justification, or before the American people have deliberated upon and assented to the path with full understanding of what total war might mean for them. Those principles are vital to our Republic, independent of whether the strategy could “work.” But it’s also worth emphasizing that the strategy is a dead end. This war is actively weakening American power, increasing the danger to American citizens, and frustrating the president’s important efforts at addressing our many domestic challenges. It has closed a strait that was previously open, strengthened the incentive for other nations to pursue nuclear weapons, and in this most recent rhetoric made more plausible their use. Our choices for continuing the war appear to be catastrophic escalation of the air war or extensive deployment of ground troops, neither of which were planned or had support at the outset. Stepping back from these threats and admitting such actions do not offer a path to resolving the conflict may be unpalatable, but it is by far the least unpalatable option available. Let us all hope cooler heads prevail.

@Seniorveteran @oren_cass No, the least palatable option would be a drawn out ground invasion a la Iraq resulting in thousands of US casualties. Iran is nowhere close to being able to threaten the homeland.

The least palatable option would be to leave the present regime in place just to have to go back in and take out their nuclear program again. Leaving the IRGC in place just invites the world into a future worldwide nuclear war. The current regime is totally intransigent and will never compromise. Trump is caught between a rock and a hard place because critics criticize boots on the ground or other options. Trump always wants to negotiate, but the Iranian leadership refuses to do so in good faith. We are only here at this junction because of weak leadership in the past. We currently have a strong leader but that may not be the case in the future when we really need one.

@Reddened64 @SeanTrende But if the president fights a 25th amendment attempt then it's thrown over to Congress with 2/3 in both houses.

@SeanTrende House impeachment is simple majority. Senate conviction is 2/3rds.

It's easier to impeach and remove him though; this requires 2/3 vote of *both* houses to stick. And of course, the endpoint of this is Acting President Vance.

@ianlarkin @SeanTrende Nope. See section 4 of the 25th. If the president disputes his cabinet's decision then it's thrown over to Congress to decide.

@Slate Community note is misleading. Presence of the SRY in and of itself is insufficient as explained by the discoverer of SRY here theconversation.com/world-athletic…

The Olympics just succumbed to a ridiculous gender panic. Here’s who it’s really going to hurt. slate.trib.al/5xP1vEj

@ChrisKirk_ASP @BigailMatters @HespeChris34466 @Slate Sure you can define sex as binary but the people are not because nature is messy. Orgs like the IOC have to draw a line somewhere, and that's fine, but the underlying biology is so messy that line will be somewhat arbitrary and open to dispute.

@ChrisKirk_ASP @BigailMatters @HespeChris34466 @Slate The scientist who discovered the SRY gene disagrees with you theconversation.com/world-athletic…

@edu_46XX @BigailMatters @HespeChris34466 @ChrisKirk_ASP @Slate My understanding is that according to the IOC rules a Swyers person is excluded from female competition so maybe it's not as cut and dried as you think?

@FoontySploont @BigailMatters @HespeChris34466 @ChrisKirk_ASP @Slate An individual with Swyers is female. The medical conditions might not “fit” but that doesn’t matter. Because no such terminology is used in biology. All humans are male or female.

@BigailMatters @HespeChris34466 @ChrisKirk_ASP @Slate Not quite accurate. Some people are born DSD (i.e. intersex) and don't fit neatly into the M/F category. The IOC will test for the presence of the SRY gene to determine eligibility for female events. Is a person with e.g. Swyer syndrome M or F? I think it's ambiguous

@FoontySploont @HespeChris34466 @ChrisKirk_ASP @Slate all people are either males or females. hypothetically, if there was ever a person who isn't male, nor female, they can always compete in men's category, because is an open category, and no sex screening is recquired. women's sports are protected category created for females only

@CindyOlds2 @laurast51362949 @ChrisKirk_ASP @Slate Intersex/DSD has nothing to do with men becoming women. Rather a small number of individuals are born with characteristics of both. I'm ok with restricting such individuals' ala the IOC. But to say "intersex isn't a thing" goes a step further toward denying their humanity imo.

@laurast51362949 @FoontySploont @ChrisKirk_ASP @Slate “If men can be women then we have no women’s rights. We become invisible in policy and in law.” - the most important, still not well known to the general public aspect of this entire issue, imo.

@LynnFreyaG @ChrisKirk_ASP @Slate semanticscholar.org/paper/Ovulatio…

@FoontySploont @ChrisKirk_ASP @Slate Except there’s no such thing as human hermaphroditism, the ancients also had myths & legends encompassing multi gods and fantastical tales 😂