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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Happy New Year! The cruelty is still the point [1]

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Date: 2023-01-01

Robert Barnes of The Washington Post reports that the United States Supreme Court issued a final report for the year without a word about the court’s various controversies during its termi

It was one of the most controversial terms in Supreme Court history, with the shocking leak of a draft opinion that eventually overturned a half century of abortion rights, public polls that showed record disapproval of the court’s work and biting dissension among the justices themselves about the court’s legitimacy. Brown v. Board of Education. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. chose not to address those or any other controversies in his annual “ Year-end Report on the Federal Judiciary ,” issued Saturday. Instead, he focused on a high mark of the judiciary’s past — a federal district judge’s efforts to implement school desegregation at Little Rock’s Central High School after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision inBrown v. Board of Education.

Jake S. Truscott and Adam Feldman of SCOTUSblog point out that the Supreme Court is speaking more during oral arguments.

Jackson’s dynamic style is a marked contrast from her predecessor, Justice Stephen Breyer. Breyer himself was far from succinct, and he was famous for asking long, winding hypothetical questions. Jackson, in contrast, often uses her time to make substantive points about the case being argued. Perhaps the starkest example came in Merrill v. Milligan, in which she invoked originalism — an approach typically associated with the conservative justices — to argue that the 14th Amendment does not mandate colorblind policies. Her persuasive approach is consistent with the recent trend of the justices tending to use oral arguments, especially in the most divisive cases, less to gather information and more to air their own views. Fatima Goss Graves, the president of the National Women’s Law Center, praised the “teaching quality” of Jackson’s questions, including “the deliberate way in which she explains and her level of preparedness.” Sherrilyn Ifill, a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation and a former president of the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, described Jackson’s “signature style” as “sharp, focused questions, a mastery of the record, and upbeat but often devastating lines of investigation that leave little room for advocates to hedge or dissemble.” Jackson is not alone in her high level of engagement during arguments this term. All of the justices are speaking more than they have in recent years — likely due in large part to the new argument format, in which the traditional free-form portion of each advocate’s presentation is followed by a round in which the justices take turns asking as many additional questions as they want.

Erica L. Green of The New York Times writes that the Education Department has received a record number of discrimination complaints.

Nearly 19,000 complaints were filed to the office in the last fiscal year — between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022 — more than double the previous year and breaking the record of 16,000 filed in fiscal year 2016, according to figures provided by the department. The surge reversed the decline in complaints filed to the office under the Trump administration, which rolled back civil rights protections. Officials say the complaints — most alleging discrimination based on disability, race or sex — reflect grievances that amassed during the worst public health crisis in a century and the most divisive civil rights climate in decades. The complaints were logged as schools struggled to recover from pandemic-related closures, and add to the declining test scores and growing mental health challenges that display the fragility in large parts of the country’s education system. Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary for civil rights, said the jump in the number of complaints, which have not yet been made public but will be reflected in the office’s annual report in the coming months, is both encouraging and sobering.

Charlie Duxbury and Jacopo Barigazzi of POLITICO Europe write that with Sweden’s six-month term on the rotating Council of the EU beginning today, there is concern that the far-right and Euro-skeptic Sweden Democrats will have influence on EU policy.

Diplomats in Brussels — who were looking forward to the Swedish presidency as one that would be able to get things done — are now worried that the Sweden Democrats' anti-EU tone will infect the way they operate. [...] The EU’s institutional architecture gives the country with the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the EU — currently the Czech Republic — a central role in setting and progressing the bloc’s policy agenda. To that end, it is seen as helpful if the presidency country has a clear attitude to EU cooperation and a widely understood position on central issues on the agenda. But the rise of SD, a party with neo-Nazi roots, has scrambled the picture of Swedish-EU relations for outsiders looking in. This is the first time SD has held real influence, and officials in Brussels are still figuring out what policy stances like its ultra-hard line on immigration and relatively friendly attitude to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary could mean for the way Sweden deals with the EU.

Jason Horowitz and Elisabetta Povoledo of The New York Times report that with the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the Roman Catholic Church finds itself in an odd and unprecedented moment.

The funeral of Benedict XVI will be held on the morning of Jan. 5 and will be “presided over by Pope Francis, evidently,” said Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, who delivered what he called the “sad news” of the death in a short statement on Saturday morning that made sure to refer to Benedict without fail as “pope emeritus” — in both Italian and English — to avoid any confusion. He declined to answer questions. “I don’t think now is the time for questions to leave us time for some sadness in our heart.” The timing was also inopportune because no one was quite sure what exactly would happen and what the first funeral for a pope emeritus would look like. “The question is complicated,” said Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a historian of the papacy. Those complications were immediately inescapable. Mr. Bruni said the funeral would be “simple,” and “solemn but sober,” in keeping with Benedict’s wishes. But Benedict, having retained his title of pontiff, if an emeritus one, was no simple cardinal, and it was not clear if he would receive the full procedural pomp and circumstance for a pontiff who died in office, among other things.

Finally today, we have this wonderful story by Malu Cursino of BBC News about the recently deceased soccer megastar Pele and the significance of Pele’s blackness to the Black community of Brazil.

Four generations, all devastated in equal measure by the death of an idol. Words, emojis and GIFs expressed our shock - we are Brazilian, after all, and emotions tend to run high. But what stuck with me was a comment from my aunt. She highlighted that Brazilian media, while discussing Pelé's life, used the phrase: "Our king is black." His stardom is unquestionable - and his influence worldwide says much more about him than his ethnicity and background. But for Brazil's black community, hearing those words matter. A lot. And they signify a paradigm shift we have been going through for decades - one which Pelé played a crucial role in. Because Pelé rose to the status of national treasure in a country with a deep history of slavery, and a legacy of division.

Everyone have a great New Year’s Day! And...we shan’t speak about last night, if you know what I mean.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/1/2144726/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-Happy-New-Year-The-cruelty-is-still-the-point

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