As a counterpoint, in US history there has always been an unspoken agreement that nobody would be appointed to the SCOTUS unless they were a white male. Lots of SC justices didn’t even have law degrees in history. Its only recently that the court started coming closer to resembling the people affected by its judgements.
I feel what Biden is doing is addressing that unspoken assumption and saying that he wants the court to reflect the US as it currently looks.
I guess my point is that, Biden is doing what presidents in history have done, just in the opposite direction. Instead of the unspoken assumption that he has to pick a white (christian) man, he wants to pick a black woman since they’ve not only been ignored by the powerful for so long but because they are a huge part of the democratic coalition. Theres always questions of demographics and ideology when a SC justice is picked, its just that many times its unspoken while Biden says it out loud. Granted there are other minority groups to pick, but I like how Biden basically said he rejects the tacit agreement we’ve had for the last 240 years about who we appoint to positions of power.
Also the people Biden are looking at are pretty good. On his list there are multiple federal appellate court judges, one is on the California supreme court, several are leaders of civil rights legal organizations, etc. There are ample people qualified to sit on the SCOTUS, so narrowing down the list based on demographics won’t reduce the quality of the pick.
Other people don’t have to agree with me, but thats how I see it and I think its a move in the right direction to try to promote a society where people in positions of power have more in common with the people they rule over.
The president has no authority to do so. He can suspend payments, collection activity etc during the emergency.
About 80% of Americans are opposed to total blanket student loan forgiveness, and I am one of them.
About 60% are in favor of some sort of forgiveness, depending, and I am one of them. To me, it is easy. Make student loans discharge able in Chapter 7, as they were before, and forgive all those bogus loans, like for trump university, etc. If someone can afford to pay off the loans, they should.
I think that race and gender should not be the basis of who you appoint (as a general principle). It was wrong when it was always white men, and it’s wrong now. But, and this is a big but (butt?), under these circumstances I don’t have an issue with it. I do support a call for diversity. A different perspective might be a good thing for the Court. As long as…
And with that, I’m good.
Holy crap. I am in complete agreement with you about something.
-Trump reversed some of Obama’s thawing policies with Cuba, and Biden hasn’t re-reveresed them back to the Obama-era policies.
-After pulling out of Afghanistan, the Biden administration sanctions on the Taliban have crippled their ability to respond to a massive famine over there.
Cite? And even if this is true, why not publicize what WH lawyers have advised on it.
But it’s almost certain to damage the perception of it - and to some extent the effectiveness of the person appointed. Appointing a well-qualified black woman could be a fine thing. Restricting the choices in advance guarantees that she’ll be criticized on the basis that without this arbitrary restriction she’d not have been chosen.
Whereas without this, it would be “Look who won out, based on her merits.”
Biden’s DoJ is defending Trump’s horrible Title 42 immigration policies in court. They are making arguments for the legality of Trump’s policies around child separation, blocking asylum seekers, and turning back immigrants for health reasons. The Biden admin has already expelled a million immigrants under Title 42 this year.
You’d think that Democrats would be fighting this tooth-and-nail given all the hoopla about Trump putting kids in cages, but it’s not making any news at all.
It’s not an option for me ever to vote Republican in the future. I’ll vote for Democrats until I die, but stuff like this makes me feel really gross about it.
There is debate among legal experts as to whether he can do everything he promised by executive authority.
From what I can find, he didn’t specify on the campaign trail whether he intended to support legislation or executive action to cancel student debt. It can be a bit dangerous to parse words but I think “I’m prepared to write off the ten thousand dollars’ debt, but not fifty. Because I don’t think I have the authority to do it by a sign of the pen” implies that his intent for the $10,000 of cancellation would be by executive power.
All of this is why his administration should publicize what they think is legally possible under current law. Obviously this matters to a lot of the public and regardless of which side they’re on they deserve to know which branch of government is continuing the status quo.
It’s absolutely maddening. We kicked out a million immigrants, and the right is insisting that no, we actually let two million immigrants into the country. That number is so big that it would transparently double the size of most midsized cities. You couldn’t possibly miss it.
Yeah, there’s a lot of that innumeracy going around. Here in Ottawa this week, we’ve had people saying that there are a “million-plus” protestors downtown. I heard a guy I know say that in person just the other day. Except that the population of the entire Ottawa area is only about 1-1.5 million, depending on how you count it. So these people think the city just about doubled in size - their own city, in which they live. They just never stop to ask, “Hey, is that number at all reasonable?”
Opened the Southern border to allow human trafficking, fentanyl, and other killing drugs. Begging OPEC to produce more oil when the US was almost oil independent and were exporting. High inflation (40 Year) and totally out of touch what’s outside of the beltway.
I’m not saying he shouldn’t appoint a minority or a woman. That’s perfectly fine by me.
What he did that I think is a mistake is announcing it ahead of time. I mean, I’m sure there are perfectly good black woman candidates out there. But what if there’s a gay Hispanic male lawyer who’s even more qualified? Or a straight native Hawaiian man? Or a non-binary Asian person? Yet the President has decided that the pool of candidates has been narrowed down to black women because the President wants to make some kind of point about race and gender.
I feel like while there are lots of Presidential points to be made about race and gender, the appointment of a Supreme Court justice isn’t necessarily the best place to do it, and is probably a politically costly one to boot.
Boy… talk about misunderstanding how the world works.
First, show how Biden “opened the Southern border” exactly vs. what Trump, Obama or Bush had in place?
Second, there’s no winning on oil; we can be oil-independent and US oil companies can make a lot of money… and prices at the pump will be HIGH, or we can deal with OPEC and have lower at the pump prices and less US oil company profits. That’s how it works- Biden’s dealings with OPEC were in response to very high oil prices in order to relieve the price at the pump for most people.
Third, high inflation is totally a consequence of the pandemic and the associated economic disruptions. That’s not something Biden did, or can really do a whole lot to mitigate when it comes right down to it.
I think the biggest thing that the Biden administration is failing to do (and the Obama administration was equally guilty) is tooting his own horn, listing his accomplishments, bragging about more jobs, falling COVID numbers, and many of the small, obscure, but important things that he is managing to do while (incredibly!) holding on to his sanity and optimism.
And I’d like to see Biden be more of a public presence. I want to see his face and his comments Out There in front of everyone. I want people to have a real grasp of how he is Matter to trump’s Anti-Matter.
He’s letting himself be swallowed up by the “nattering nabobs of negativism”* who dominate the media.
The Dems have never been good at singing their own praises.
Oh, gods no. I am reveling in the fact that I don’t start every day with existential dread like I did during the last administration. There are whole weeks where I don’t think about what Biden is doing. This is a good thing. Do the Democrats need to get on the ball with messaging? Surely. But Biden shouldn’t be the one doing it.
Not every day – C’mon, please don’t take my statement to an extreme.
I agree with you-- I like that I know he’s working, but I want it to be clear that HE is the one who is working. That he is accomplishing what he said he would do, to the extent that it’s possible with NO Republican support. Hell, Joe Manchin’s face is before the public more than Biden’s and that’s bad.
C’mon, please don’t take my statement to an extreme.