Many of our readers will be aware of my long-ago addiction to General Hospital. I failed a college class because of the Cruise of Deception for chrissakes.
That addiction, fortunately for my career and marriage, ended long ago. I haven't seen a daytime soap in decades. But now, news comes from Port Arthur that changes everything.
There's a mysterious new character in town, a dashing, debonair international man of mystery. Friends, I give you...Z. (Not that one.)
For a bit more context regarding this glorious crossing of streams, I commend to you this explainer from Brian Grubb. Oh to be living John Oliver's life.
England’s epic 3-2 World Cup knockout win against Mexico in Mexico City immediately notches as a classic, a testament to resolve as the Three Lions endured almost half the match down a man against a host team that is nearly invincible in that stadium. Some in the British sporting press are calling it the country’s best performance since winning the Cup in 1966 and perhaps its greatest ever on foreign soil (they won the ’66 Cup at London’s Wembley Stadium).
A sampling of English newspapers in the aftermath of the win is a treat. British English is its own idiom with some lovely vernacular that can require a bit of thought and translation. British sports writing, particularly when it comes to the national side and its figures, sometimes contains florid phrasing and passages that mostly do not exist in American sports writing.
In the months and years to come, the match will grow in legend and you can see it entering a sporting equivalent of Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” or “Beowulf” territory.
Consider this from Barney Ronay in The Guardian:
“In the event this was the most extraordinary, agonising night of football as an experience of the mind, body, bones, guts, blood and back of the neck. During which England overcame not only the Mexican national football team over 90 minutes plus an extendable eternity of added time; but an event, an iconography, a set of ghosts.
“Down to 10 men and faced with the relentless hostile will of the Azteca crowd, the players took themselves into some deep, strange places. This was total immersion, a knockout game that felt at times like watching Colonel Kurtz play Colonel Kurtz at full-contact death match ping-pong.”
This was Oliver Holt’s lede in the Daily Mail:
“In the great football temple of the Azteca, in the midst of the chaotic, untrammelled fervour that football unleashes here, battered by the din, electrical storms raging around the stadium, reduced to ten men for 40 minutes, up at an altitude of 7,220ft, in the thin air that makes your heart race and your lungs gasp, England defied it all.
"When the final whistle went, they breathed again. All England breathed again. All England, up in the middle of the night in packed pubs in cities and villages across the country, in front rooms and basements, the intrepid few who sat high in the stands here, all breathed again.”
Or this lede, from Jack Pitt-Brooke, a British sports writer for The Athletic:
“You could watch England play for your whole life and never experience anything like this. Nothing that would feel this meaningful, this exhausting, this stirring, this profound.”
In other countries, the relationship between teams and the press is sometimes more like a big, contentious family rather than strictly professional subject and reporter. It can be critical, even adversarial, but backed by unwavering support. As in: I get to criticize my family/team/country because I want them/it to be better, but they know I’m always behind them. There’s a mostly unwritten rule in American sports writing: No cheering in the press box. In many foreign press boxes and among foreign correspondents, however, cheering is part of the experience. They’ll still call out mistakes and assign blame and ask difficult questions, but there’s no question where their loyalties are.
As for distinct phrasing, here’s more Pitt-Brooke:
“Even the air itself here, lighter, thinner, harder to breathe, was in Mexico’s favour. England only arrived on Friday night, with no real time to adapt. And yet they still kept finding reserves within themselves, somehow keeping the brains and bodies going through two hours of drama.
“And as if all of that was not enough, torrential rain and thunderstorms delayed kick-off by one hour, only adding to the feeling of historic significance. It made you wonder whether this was Tlaloc, the Aztec rain god, the roar of the Earth, all bulging eyes, jaguar fangs and feathered crown, gathering up the air stored in the mountains and pouring it out for maximum mischief.”
And more Ronay, as England attempted to hold on to its lead:
(England manager Thomas) Tuchel was here in blue raincoat and waterproof ankle swingers, like a malnourished minor duke out walking the hounds … He sent on Dan Burn, Djed Spence and John Stones, five defenders flat across the back as Mexico swarmed pleasantly but without real incision, like being assailed by a cloud of dandelion seeds.”
This was the kicker to Holt’s piece in the Daily Mail:
“The crowd smelled blood. They bayed for the equaliser. England clung on. John Stones, Dan Burn and Djed Spence came on. They all played like heroes at the back. Then the fourth official held up a board showing there would be 11 minutes of time added on.
“Some doubted England could hold out. But this game was about 15 heroes. Fifteen men who stood up when many expected them to fail. Fifteen men who would not yield to everything the Azteca threw at them. Fifteen men who will travel to Miami this week to play for a place in the World Cup semi-finals.”
In all the excitement of England's scintillating 3-2 win over Mexico last night, we lost track of the schedule. Ah, well. On to Cincinnati.
That excitement got to Harry Kane, who scored one, assisted one, and sang one. The latter as part of a team/crowd rendition of 'Wonderwall' which left Kane sounding like an excited Muppet in a post-match interview:
Now that we're down to the final 12 teams in the tournament, we've lost some of our favorites. Goodbye, tequila-pounding Koreans, sayonara tidy Japanese, farewell dancing Oranje, festive Ghanaians, drunken Scots, and obrigado, mighty Brazil, for the color you brought to the proceedings.
We'll miss Cabo Verde, too, for their fans and for the players' valiant efforts. Their overtime loss to Argentina means the Blue Sharks have to leave the tournament, but it also means they're the only participating nation in World Cup history to never have lost a match in regular time. Sidny Lopes Cabral's extra time equalizer will go down as one of the great goals of this event.
The players and staff will likely never have to buy a grogue at home ever again, judging by the welcome they received when they returned yesterday.
In a bit more prosaic news, the Aussies found Popeye's before they headed back Down Under.
And finally, after an epic two-goal performance - some might call it Beowulfian - Erling Haaland led his Norge teammates and fans in their now-iconic row. Norway face England in the quarterfinals, and you'd be a right fool to count them out.
This year's Supreme Court term ended with a string of bangers, beginning with Louisiana v. Callais where the Court held that partisan gerrymandering is Constitutionally acceptable because "vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, which have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination," cresting with Mullin v. Doe where the Court held that the Trump administration did not act from racial bias when it revoked TPS status for all covered Haitians even though the Court admitted that President Trump "broadly denigrate[d] ... Haiti ... as [a] hellish place[] in which to live" and made "some statements malign[ing] Haitians who have come to the United States," and culminating in Trump v. Barbara where the Court said that the 14th Amendment says what it says (as they said 128 years ago) so people born here are citizens but people who read cases for a living are still nervous. Does that all make sense? No? Let me explain, or at least sum up.
As I said here several times before, the Constitution says whatever five out of nine middle-aged-to-elderly judges think it says. People don't like that, so SCOTUS typically, or at least used to, coalesce around an opinion that all nine would sign for majorly important Constitutional issues. Cases like Brown v. Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, US v. Nixon, Trump v. Anderson. For whatever reason that didn't happen this term--everyone went all YOLO and did whatever the hell they want. If you're interested in deep analyses go read David French in NYT or any of the myriad articles on The Bulwark and The Atlantic. If you prefer something more passive but still insightful you can watch this. I'm keeping it Gheorghe.
Callais will make your head spin. Writing for the majority, Justice Alito said that states may draw congressional districts on a partisan basis without running afoul of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 despite holding in 2019 that political gerrymanders "present a 'political question' and [are thus] nonjusticiable—outside the courts' competence and therefore beyond the courts’ jurisdiction." And they allowed Louisiana to implement their new congressional map immediately even though mail-in voting had already started and their 2007 decision in Purcell v. Gonzalez says you can't do that. Fortunately, racial gerrymanders are still impermissible, but race is, of course, a proxy for party alignment. There is one Black Republican senator (Tim Scott) and he is only the fourth ever. Two of the other three (Hiram Rhodes Revels and Blanche K. Bruce) served in the 1870s back when the GOP was the party of Lincoln and the third (Edward Brooke) served on behalf of Massachusetts from 1967-1979. According to Gemini, "There are 61 Black members serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, including two Delegates. This figure includes 57 Democrats and 4 Republicans." So if you see a Black legislator on TV, chances are greater than 90% that they're a Democrat. And when you dilute the Democratic vote there's a good chance you're also diluting the Black vote.
Despite all that, Justice Alito remarkably thinks racism isn't that big of a deal in federal elections anymore. Or maybe he's just racist, I don't know. What I do know is that this Court has torn down the Voting Rights Act starting with Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 and I think their mission is complete. I'll let you form your own views on the motivations.
Justice Alito continued to be remarkable in Mullin v. Doe, a case involving the withdrawal of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. This withdrawal required two things in order to be Constitutional. First, the relevant statute required the Department of Homeland Security's Secretary to make a "determination" that conditions in Haiti no longer satisfy the statutory requirements supporting TPS. Second, don't be racist. I think the administration failed at both but they won because reasons.
The "determination" aspect required Kristi Noem to do some stuff that she didn't do but Alito just waived his hands at it, claiming that the statute doesn't allow courts to review the determination. This is horseshit. Plaintiffs weren't asking for a review of the determination's conclusion, they were asking for a review of whether Noem followed the process required to form a proper determination. Even more ridiculous: Alito tacitly admitted that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem publicly expressed racist views towards Haitians but concluded that their statements weren't "overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications." I guess thinly veiled racism is ok? Racism covered up by nothing more than two pasties is just fine? Justice Kagan called bullshit on this horseshit and spelled out some of the slurs. I won't repeat them but you can see them on page 46 of the PDF.
I don't know how to reconcile Alito's statement that racism isn't a problem anymore in Callais with his rebuke of Trump's words in Mullin ("poverty and deprivation are no reflection on character, and there is no justification for denigrating the character of Haitians who suffer from and bear no responsibility for their country’s ills"). Or to be more succinct, how is racism a non-issue when the President of the United States says racist stuff?
There were other cases I didn't like this term but they don't surprise me. Brett Kavanaugh, SCOTUS's most famous girls' basketball coach, took pen in hand for West Virginia v. B.P.J., holding that West Virginia may prohibit transgender girls from playing in girls' sports leagues. This isn't a great outcome for transgender girls but it keeps the issue with the states and that's pretty typical for a court of six Republican appointees (or at least it was back on Earth 1.0 before Trump). Situations likely exist where transgender girls should be allowed on girls' teams (like when the girl in question used puberty blockers before puberty) but no one wants SCOTUS making those rules. Let local leagues figure it out. If you're looking for a silver lining, Justice Kavanaugh applied the "intermediate scrutiny" standard of review and that's good, especially for future cases involving more existential transgender issues.
It also comes as no surprise that Chief Justice Roberts wrote Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook. Both involve separation of powers principles and a conservative hobby horse called the "unitary executive theory" which holds that the President has control over all Executive branch officials, allowing him to fire any of them at his pleasure. If you want to learn more about the unitary executive theory (or fall asleep) you can read this (I had to read it in law school and I don't recommend it). C.J. Roberts is a big fan, given his Reagan/Bush 41/Bush 43 origin story, so he and the five other Republican appointees decided to expand the President's power, allowing him to fire officials from independent agencies. SCOTUS said the President couldn't do this 90 years ago in Humphrey's Executor v. United States but hey, what's precedent and stare decisis when you have a two-thirds majority on the Court! To put a fine point on it, Roberts wrote in Slaughter "If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it." (Emphasis in original). Importantly, Roberts wrote in Cook that this does not apply to governors of the Federal Reserve. I don't know why and neither does Roberts or anyone else on the Supreme Court, aside from the need "for the stability and success of the U.S. and world economies." So the unitary executive is all well and good so long as it doesn't play with the Justices' money.
Trump is therefore free to destabilize everything else. The silver lining here is that it's now easier to undo almost all of Trump's agency appointments in the future (assuming we ever have another fair and free election and a Democrat wins). But as with Calais and Mullin, there are some intellectual inconsistencies.
My favorite recent case is Trump v. Barbara where six Justices held that the 14th Amendment provides birthright citizenship. This should've been a really short opinion because this issue was decided in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. At the oral argument, Justice Kavanaugh asked counsel for Barbara "if we did agree with you on Wong Kim Ark, that could be just a short opinion, right, that says the better reading is Respondents' reading, government doesn't ask us to overrule, affirmed?" And that approach makes sense. There are many different ways to interpret the law, but this Court loves originalism which is where the Justices follow what the statute's authors intended when they wrote the law. As a result they treat the Constitution like stone tablets handed down by God and try to divine its meaning through blood sacrifice and other ritualistic undertakings. Helpfully, Wong Kim Ark was decided only 30 years after the 14th Amendment was ratified so the Justices interpreting it knew exactly what its authors intended. Originalism! Just do what those guys did and knock off early.
As a practical matter, we all learned of the Constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship in middle school, so again, open and shut. I never heard anyone question it until we put this dildo back in the White House.
The opinion is 6-3 in favor of birthright citizenship, but only five Justices based that decision on the 14th Amendment. Kavanaugh invalided Trump's executive order in light of 8 U.S.C. §1401(a), a federal statute that implements the 14th Amendment to provide birthright citizenship. Remarkably (I can't stop using that word!), Kavanaugh thinks that Wong Kim Ark is good law but still would've upheld the executive order under the 14th Amendment despite what he said at oral argument. This means that only five justices think the 14th Amendment provides birthright citizenship--with one changed vote it could be taken away by a mere act of Congress (i.e., revoking 8 U.S.C. §1401(a)). So if one of the septuagenarians in the majority (Roberts or Sotomayor) keel over today and Trump puts Jeanine Pirro on the Court, birthright citizenship is over. That's bonkers.
The dissents are mostly upset about the practice of "birth tourism," where foreigners travel to the US to give birth so their child will be a citizen. I can see why this would grind a racist's gears but Gorsuch, this fucking guy.
Besides addressing temporary visitors, the order also denies the benefits of citizenship to children born in this country to parents who make their permanent home here, but do so in defiance of federal immigration laws. The government insists that aspect of the order can survive any possible legal challenge, too, because individuals can secure domicile in this country only if they do so in compliance with federal law.
About that, however, I harbor doubts. Perhaps Wong Kim Ark does not squarely foreclose the government’s position. After all, that case addressed a child born to parents who lawfully resided in this country. Still, I wonder: Is a child born here to parents who have long chosen to make this Nation their permanent home not a citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment solely because his parents’ presence violates statutory law? If those parents are not domiciled here, then where are they domiciled? And if the answer is nowhere, how can we reconcile that conclusion with this Court’s longstanding recognition that every person is domiciled somewhere? See Desmare v. United States, 93 U.S. 605, 610 (1877). Because the executive order is not facially invalid, these questions may not be properly before us. But their answers are undeniably important to a Nation committed to a view of citizenship open to all children born here to parents who can call this country their home.
Now is exactly the time to address this question Neil. Everyone else did! You should too.
How do I reconcile all this? Easy. The Republican appointees have interpreted Justice Robert Jackson's maxim "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final" as a call to YOLO instead of to humility, compromise and order. They have no fucks to give. Which I guess is a classic Republican thing. Happy Fourth!
There's a local mercantile in my little town that I frequent nearly daily. Not because I'm addicted to shopping, but because they have dog treats behind the counter, and my hound knows this. So she and I usually go into Brick and Mortar on our midday walk.
The store stocks a range of products from fairly high-end casual clothing (think Filson, Howler, Pendleton, etc) and shoes (Blundstone, Birkenstock) to amusing bric a brac, booze accessories, books (they stock JoJo's book, for example), and locally-themed odds and ends.
On our most recent trip, I saw this t-shirt:
For the uninitiated, that's a reference to Joe Diffie's 1993 hit, "John Deere Green", about a young man who painted the town's water tower with the words Billy Bob Loves Charlene in bright green. It's a prime example of the country story genre, and I love it unironically.
Naturally, thinking about that song sparked memories of several more, some similar in their storytelling, others in their tonality. So on this Independence Day Eve Eve, a brief tour of my brain, country and western version.
I'm late to the party on Slow Horses, but better late than never. If you subscribe to AppleTV and haven't watched, it'd be a lot cooler if you did.
Based on the Slough House series of novels by Mick "don't call me Gil Scott" Herron, the show follows the adventures of a small group of MI5 agents from London's Slough House station. Unlike a typical spy series where agents are practically superheroes, Slough House is a land of misfit toys nicknamed the "Slow Horses," hence the show's title. All these agents have at least one fatal flaw that prevents them from being real MI5 field agents, so when they do try to solve case or catch a criminal they fuck it up and sometimes hilarity ensues. It's a proper spy show though, so sometimes there's tragedy instead of hilarity. People die.
The Slow Horses are captained by Jackson Lamb, a legitimately bad-assed field agent, at least when the spirit moves him to crawl out of the bottle and off the sofa. Gary Oldman is amazing as Lamb, playing him as a cross between Roy Kent, Perry Cox, and Roger Sterling.
Only gassier.
Other great quips include "You're about as useful as a paper condom" and, to a recovering alcoholic, "You wouldn't have lost him if he was a bottle of gin." Each season is only six episodes, each of which is about 45 minutes long, so it isn't as much of a commitment as trying to watch Lost. Give it a go!
Bullies famously dislike it when their targets fight back. Let's start the week with a clever bit of wordplay from a German politician that landed like a hammer blow.
Kathi Gebel is a 29 year-old member of Germany's Left Party. She won a seat in the Bundestag in 2025. In March, she was speaking during open debate when right-wing AfD legislator (and possible Nazi) Martin Reichert persisted in interrupting her.
Priceless, both the look on Reichert's face after Gebel's shot lands and the reaction of the other members of the Bundestag. I suspect this is one bully who'll pick a different target next time.
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