How to Make Sense of the Roberts Court
Want to get The Morning by email? . For anyone trying to make sense of the Supreme Court run by Chief Justice John Roberts, yesterdays two big decisions were helpful. In the more prominent one, Roberts joined the courts four liberal justices . It was the third major decision this month in which Roberts sided with the liberals, having already done so on L.G.B.T.Q. rights and immigration. The cases have been reminders that the Roberts court is not reliably conservative on every issue, even though Republican presidents appointed five of the nine justices, including Roberts. Over the years, the court has also established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage (with Anthony Kennedy, now retired, as the swing vote); declined to outlaw affirmative action; upheld most parts of Obamacare; and more. These decisions have left many conservatives feeling betrayed. Yet there is at least one big area in which the Roberts court has continued to lean strongly right: business regulation. With rare exceptions, the justices have restricted the governments ability to regulate corporate America. And there was another example yesterday, when the court , an Obama administration creation. The decision was 5 to 4, with the five Republican-appointed justices all on one side and the Democratic appointees on the other. Similar decisions in the past have overturned campaign-finance law, blocked action on climate change, restricted labor-union activities, reduced workers ability to sue their employers and more. , the Roberts courts rulings have been far friendlier to business than those of any court since at least World War II. These decisions have been part of a larger trend, too. Government policy over the past half-century has generally given and less power to their workers. Thats one reason incomes for the affluent than they have for any other income group. Whatever you think of the Roberts court, Id encourage you not to treat it with one broad brush. On some major social issues, it has been moderate or even liberal. On economic issues, the story is very different. Yesterdays two decisions captured the contrast. For the past half-century, the court has been drawing up plans for a more economically unequal nation, and that is the America that is now being built, the journalist Adam Cohen Adam Liptak writes about Roberts: 15 years into his tenure, that has caused experts to hunt for historical comparisons. And Sabrina Tavernise and Elizabeth Dias explain that the abortion ruling . The Times has reported that to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Trump and other administration officials have claimed otherwise in recent days. The intelligence was included in Trumps Presidents Daily Brief document a compilation of the latest secrets and best insights about foreign policy and national security. The information was also disseminated more broadly across the intelligence community in an article in the C.I.A.s World Intelligence Review. Coronavirus rates are rising , including deep-blue California, Oregon and Washington. The pattern shows that the spread of the virus isnt a reflection only of the partisan divides over whether to wear masks and listen to Trumps advice. Much of the Western U.S. appears to have grown complacent about the virus, after having avoided bad outbreaks earlier this year. Unlike people in the Northeast, many Californians did not have a sense of urgency or immediacy toward the virus because infection rates had been so low for months, The Times reports, . The governors of New York and New Jersey said they were because of concerns over the surges in the West and the South. Studies have found that most transmission of the virus comes from a small number of so-called superspreaders. Now scientists are trying to . China that will empower the government in Beijing to crack down on dissent from Hong Kong. Activists expect China to use the law to stifle pro-democracy protests like the ones that have filled Hong Kongs streets over the last year. Yesterday, in anticipation of the law, the U.S. on exports of defense equipment and some high-tech products to Hong Kong. The Trump administration is describing Chinas small but growing nuclear arsenal as an imposing threat and hopes to . Who needs offices? Employers like Facebook are becoming excited about the long-term prospect of remote working, mostly because of the money it saves. But decades of setbacks suggest a bumpy road ahead. In the past, IBM, Best Buy and other companies scrapped work-from-home experiments after finding that . But maybe this time really is different, because of the combination of a major health crisis and better technologies like Zoom. Some retailers, expecting that work from home is here to stay, are revamping their offerings to concentrate on a new kind of workplace clothing: . The South Pole is one of the most , with temperatures rising three times faster than the global average since the 1990s. More online platforms are taking action against Trump and his associates: Reddit yesterday , The_Donald, and the streaming site Twitch for hateful conduct. , including a Democratic Senate primary in Colorado and the results of the close Democratic Senate primary in Kentucky, between Amy McGrath and Charles Booker. Joseph James DeAngelo, whose California crime spree in the 1970s and 80s earned him the nickname the Golden State Killer, to 13 counts of first-degree murder. As the wife of an ambassador and White House chief of protocol, the Dow Chemical heiress Ruth Buchanan entertained world leaders and dazzled American society at her opulent mansions in Washington and Newport, R.I. . Robert Muellers two-year Russia investigation uncovered . It found eager attempts by Trump campaign officials to collaborate with Vladimir Putins government, as well as multiple efforts by Trump to interfere in investigations of himself and his allies. Yet Muellers work had virtually no impact. It . Muellers report wasnt even powerful enough to spur much action by House Democrats. They instead impeached Trump over a later phone call with the president of Ukraine. In the new issue of The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin in an effort to explain why it was ineffectual. Toobins conclusion: Trumps lawyers and Attorney General William Barr consistently outmaneuvered Mueller and his team. The Trump side played political hardball, while Mueller was slow, afraid of confrontation and ultimately naive, Toobin argues. Mueller had an abundance of legitimate targets to investigate, and his failures emerged from an excess of caution, not of zeal, Toobin writes. Mueller forfeited the opportunity to speak clearly and directly about Trumps crimes, and Barr filled the silence with his high-volume exoneration. Take coleslaw to the next level. cabbage and chickpeas with a toasted sesame-seed vinaigrette for a bright, earthy side dish. Its ideal served alongside roasted salmon and rice. In recent years, there has been no shortage of ways to experience James Baldwins work: There are Barry Jenkinss film adaptation of and the documentary , for starters. Now, a new book on Baldwin by Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, blends biography, criticism and memoir to make sense of America today. Even if you dont agree with Glaudes interpretations, youll find yourself productively arguing with them, . He parses, he pronounces, he cajoles. He spurs you to revisit Baldwins work yourself. Until his final days, the 91-year-old graphic designer behind the iconic I NY logo, was still thinking about how his work could help his city. He had been working on a new design inspired by the pandemic: a graphical treatment of the word Together that he hoped to distribute to public school students across the city and, eventually, the country. In before his death last week, Glaser discussed the project and how he wanted it to evoke the idea that we have something in common. Take by the great American artist Rosie Lee Tompkins. In the rapper Fivio Foreign breaks down the making of his anthem Big Drip and talks about the rise of Brooklyn drill music. Heres , and a clue: Bird with light blue eggs (five letters). . P.S. David Gelles of The Times will speak today with Lonnie Bunch of the Smithsonian Institution, about how museums can survive in the modern age. . Correction: Yesterdays newsletter said the New England Patriots were penalized for videotaping another teams practice; it was actually another teams sideline, during a game. You can see . Todays episode of is about the Supreme Courts abortion ruling. 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