* Blog & notes for last week.
DAYLOG MON 30 JUN 25: As discussed in an article by one Nicholas Bagley, a legal analytical, in THE ATLANTIC ("The Supreme Court Put Nationwide Injunctions to the Torch" 28 June 25), there's been a big fuss over SCOTUS shooting down "nationwide injunctions" by the Federal judiciary, meaning that a Federal subordinate court can issue a judgement that not only covers the plaintiffs, but everyone else as well. SCOTUS has now judged they can only cover the plaintiffs.
OK, some background. Injunctions by the Federal judiciary covering nonparties along with plaintiffs are not new, but they were unusual until recently. Broad injunctions started to become more common in the 1960s, with a clear tick upward from the Obama Administration.
Nationwide injunctions were consistently invoked against the Biden Administration's executive actions, for example blocking student debt relief and online content moderation efforts. The judgements were typically handed down by lower Federal courts in Texas controlled by far-Right judges -- such courts being selected by plaintiffs through "forum shopping". Not surprisingly, given Donald Trump's willingness to push the rules as far as possible, nationwide injunctions have been common on his watch, until now.
The bottom line is that nationwide injunctions were, historically, not the norm. They became one, granting SCOTUS-level authority to Federal judges low on the totem pole. The only problem with SCOTUS curtailing the practice is that they didn't do it on Biden's watch.
The difficulty with the SCOTUS decision is that, as noted, Trump recklessly assaults well-established rights -- in this case, trying to rewrite the 14th Amendment's clause saying, without qualification, that anyone born in the USA is an American citizen, period. That's an obstacle to the Trump Gangsters.
However, general relief hasn't been completely eliminated. In some cases, granting relief to the plaintiffs automatically shuts down the infringement for everyone. It is also possible to file a class action suit, at least with a number of qualifications, and SCOTUS saying a class-wide injunction can be secured at the outset of proceedings.
Similarly, plaintiffs can have "associational standing", meaning everyone in a (national) association is covered -- and also, national injunctions are still available under the "Administrative Procedures Act (APA)", though that's too much to talk about here. In any case, the Trump attack on birthright citizenship is so blatantly unconstitutional that it is very unlikely to fly under any circumstances.
DAYLOG TUE 01 JUL 25: The NO KINGS protests in the USA in June were highly successful, with roughly 5 million people taking part -- that being presumably a record for a US national protest. Of course, the question remains of whether nonviolent protests actually accomplish anything.
I discussed that here back in April, with a recent article in THE NEW YORK TIMES ("Only Nonviolence Will Beat Trump" by Omar Wasow & Robb Willer, 17 June 2025) underlining that premise: nonviolent resistance isn't guaranteed to work, but violent resistance is worse off. Violent resistance turns off the public, with a violent resistance movement inevitably being much smaller than a nonviolent resistance movement. State violence against a nonviolent movement enhances public support, as well as inspiring sympathy within the government.
On the other side of the coin, public demonstrations that turn violent reduce public support. It gets tricky, because it's hard to ensure no violence in a big public demonstration, all the more so because the opposition may attack the demonstrators -- but it helps if the movement leadership publicly emphasizes nonviolence, and repudiates violent actors.
* Changing topics, an article from FUTURISM ("Something Hilarious Happens When Potential Customers See That a Product Has AI Features", 1 July 2025), a WALL STREET JOURNAL article reported on a survey that shows customers are turned off by products promoted as having with "AI" features.
That makes total sense, since a lot of artificial intelligence tech is oversold, not working anywhere near as well as promoted. Add to that, consumers also realize that the "AI" features being played up may not be really AI. Dogan Gursoy of Washington State University, one of the authors of the survey, says: "Consumers simply see fewer compelling benefits ... the specific advantages of AI must be obvious and worthwhile to justify the investment."
The survey showed that the majority of consumers didn't care one way or another, but more of the rest said they disliked "AI" than said they liked it. Apparently, "AI" wasn't a problem in previous years; people are just getting fed up.
DAYLOG WED 02 JUL 25: During June, the "Austrian World Summit (AWS)" on climate change was held in Vienna -- the AWS being the creation of Arnold Schwarzenegger, once governor of California among other significant things, and held annually since 2017.
Climate change is a forbidden topic to the US government these days, but as Arnold told the AWS: "Stop whining. Whining doesn't change anything. Whining doesn't build anything. ... I know that sometimes politicians in Washington DC or many other capitals of the world won't always agree with everything that we do and that we believe in. ... The world will always have problems and leaders who don't agree with us, or are just terrible leaders. We have seen it over and over again throughout history, but sometimes problems need to be solved by the people."
Arnold pointed to useful actions such as municipalities buying electric city buses, businesses working to reduce carbon emissions, and schools installing rooftop solar panels. During George W. Bush's administration, the Environmental Protection Agency objected to California's strict emission standards. Arnold said: "We sued the government. We took the fight from court to court to court." California won.
Arnold concluded: "You don't need to be the president to be a hero. You just need to care and get off your butts and get to work."
* That was good to hear, because for the moment the Trump Gang is on a rampage, taking an axe to responsible government. It's discouraging but no surprise, and belaboring it is wearying: it's not news, everyone with at least half a brain knows what's going on.
Yeah, we're stuck with it for the time being, but Trump will not last forever -- or even that much longer, since he's in obvious physical and mental decline, starting out from a low level. To be sure, the Republicans are backing Trump, but Trump voters don't really like the GOP, and the GOP will not last much longer than he does. American fascism is on the road to ruin, it's just a question of when the fall happens. In the meantime, we lay the groundwork for what comes after it.
DAYLOG THU 03 JUL 25: Trump's "Big Ugly Bill" is going down to the wire in the House of Representatives, with Hakeem Jeffries conducting a marathon speech to try to delay the vote. It will be a miracle if it doesn't pass.
The bill, as everyone who is paying attention knows, kicks 17 million Americans off Medicaid (killing a fair number of them by doing so), chokes off solar energy funding, turns bullying ICE into a gruesome giant, and racks up the deficit. It's all very discouraging.
It is not pleasant to be scared and creeped out by the Trump Gangsters every day, as I currently am. The interesting thing is: it's not going away, but I'm getting used to it. Conditions have driven a change in my own mindset -- which was partly coming due to age to begin with, but was accelerated by the arrival of Trump 2.0. It renders down to the question that comes up every now and then: What am I doing with my life?
That question turns out to have a very good answer: I'm focused on what can be done to get rid of the Trump Gangsters, and get the USA back on the good road. Works for me -- I can only do little things, but there are tens of millions of Americans doing the same.
As I've said before, the Trump Gangsters are very scary, but also very inept and dimwitted. I'm not thinking they're as big and bad as they pretend to be, and doubt they have any staying power. They're reliant on a demented criminal and a fading demographic. The Dems had worries about young guys for Trump, thinking that the Dems needed to get an equivalent to Joe Rogan, who supposedly had a lot of clout with young men. That appears to have been an illusion. "Tim Onion" -- Ben Collins of THE ONION -- commented on BlueSky: "The people I actually know, in real life, who listen to Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson are 45 and think they're 22, which explains a lot of things." Rogan, not incidentally, is 57.
Yeah, what we're dealing with now will come to an end, very possibly a decisive end. We can take them down. In the meantime, we keep on pushing.
DAYLOG FRI 04 JUL 25: Trump's "Big Ugly Bill" passed, as expected -- the only news in the event being that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries set a record for a House filibuster, talking for 9 hours. Jeffries wanted to push back on the public buzz that the Dems weren't tough enough in standing up to Trump and the Republicans. To be sure, he was only delaying the inevitable -- but these days, the Dems can't afford to pass up any chance to make "good trouble".
Also to be sure, the faction on BlueSky that sees their first priority as taking shots at Dems for not stopping GOP crimes kept on shooting, but that's to be expected. Who these people actually are, I do not know, but it's clear they're not really on our side.
In any case, we're stuck with the bad for some number of years. In the meantime, other countries are issuing travel advisories, telling their people not to go to the USA. I'll say the same: Don't come here, it's not a good idea. Tourism to the USA appears to be tanking. Things will be fixed here, but not soon.
