Americans want gun control.

May 1, 2023

          Americans mourn for the victims of the weekend gun violence in Texas and the Texans forced to live in a society that glorifies guns above public safety. The details of two shootings over the weekend are horrifying. In the first, neighbors asked a man shooting an assault rifle in his front yard at 11:00 PM to stop because he was waking sleeping infants in the neighbors’ home. The man with the assault rifle then executed five of the neighbors in their home—including an eight-year-old boy. The gunman remains at large. Governor Abbott said nothing for 24 hours (other than releasing a photo of his golden retriever). When he finally commented, he tried to diminish the horror of the executions by describing the victims as “illegal immigrants.” See Business Insider, Gov. Abbott Calls Texas Mass Shooting Victims 'Illegal Immigrants'.

          In a second killing, a man on a date was scammed out of $40 by someone pretending to be a parking valet. When the man learned he had been scammed, he shot and killed the scammer, then returned to the restaurant to finish his dinner with his date. He has been arrested.

          When everyone is armed, the temptation to solve every disagreement by resorting to arms is overwhelming. The killings are sickening, and the lawless situation is dispiriting. But . . . there is reason to hope. All Americans are tired of the senseless killings that are the inevitable result of an armed populace. Fox News conducted a poll that confirms that a majority of Americans—including Republicans—now favor enhanced regulations of firearms. See Mom’s Demand Action, New Fox News Polling Confirms Popularity of Gun Safety Laws Among Democrats, Republicans, and Gun Owners.

          Moms Demand Action summarizes the key points of the Fox polls as follows:

• 87% of Americans support requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers, including 83% support from gun-owning households.

• 81% of Americans support improving enforcement of existing gun laws.

• 81% of Americans support raising the legal age to buy a gun to 21, including 76% of gun-owning households.

• 80% of Americans support allowing police to take guns from those considered a danger to themselves or others, also known as Red Flag laws, including 76% of gun-owning households.

• 61% of Americans support banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons, including 50% support from gun-owning households.

          But Republican legislatures are not able to restrain themselves. They are captives of the NRA and the minority of Americans who value guns above all else. The Fox poll suggests that Republicans are vulnerable on a core issue going into 2024. They have picked the wrong side on guns and reproductive liberty. And the economy.

          The fact that Republicans seem hell-bent on creating the worst platform possible for 2024 does nothing to reduce the sting and sorrow of the latest mass shootings. But there is a path forward for Democrats as Americans come to understand the dark future that Republicans are plotting.

More on the North Carolina Supreme Court gerrymandering decision.

          On Friday, the newly constituted GOP majority of the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed a decision issued last year finding that congressional districts set by the state legislature violated the North Carolina constitution. The 2022 decision held that the congressional boundaries were the product of racial gerrymandering. The decision issued last Friday reversed the 2022 ruling and held that partisan gerrymandering is permissible under the North Carolina constitution. See Talking Points Memo, Newly Right-Wing N. Carolina Supreme Court Reverses Its 2022 Gerrymandering Decision.

          The effect of the decision is to disenfranchise Black voters in North Carolina and create obstacles to a congressional delegation that fairly represents the electorate in North Carolina. The decision was a naked exercise of political power by jurists who are supposed to interpret the law objectively and impartially.

          Justice Anita Earls wrote a withering dissent that left nothing unsaid. She wrote, in part,

Let there be no illusions about what motivates the majority’s decision to rewrite this Court’s precedent. Today’s result was preordained on 8 November 2022, when two new members of this Court were elected to establish this Court’s conservative majority.

To the Court’s new majority, the parties’ briefing after rehearing was granted did not matter. The oral argument held after rehearing was granted did not matter. The merits of Plaintiffs’ arguments do not matter. For at stake in this case is the majority’s own political agenda. Today, the Court shows that its own will is more powerful than the voices of North Carolina’s voters.

          The decision will likely affect the balance of power in the 2024 House elections—once again proving that state judicial elections are critically important to Democrats seeking to restore the rule of law to the nation and the balance of power to Congress.

DeSantis flops on the international stage.

          It looks increasingly like Ron DeSantis will not make it out of the starting gate for the 2024 GOP nomination—which should make for an interesting primary when (if?) Trump is indicted by Jack Smith. DeSantis went on the obligatory international tour to prove he knows which fork to use at a dinner with a head of state. He apparently does not. See Politico, Ron DeTedious: DeSantis underwhelms Britain’s business chiefs.

          Per Politico,

Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis failed to impress British business chiefs at a high-profile London event Friday, in a tired performance described variously as “horrendous,” “low-wattage” and “like the end of an overseas trip.”

One U.K. business figure said DeSantis “looked bored” and “stared at his feet” as he met with titans of British industry in an event co-hosted by Lloyd’s of London — the world’s largest insurance marketplace.

“It felt really a bit like we were watching a state-level politician. I wouldn’t be surprised if [people in attendance] came out thinking ‘that’s not the guy’.”

          The point is not to gloat over DeSantis’s poor showing. It is that the “stars” of the GOP are lackluster bullies who strut and preen when they have veto-proof control of state legislatures but are unimpressive and uninspiring when they are no longer on home turf. Just like Trump.

Another major scandal for the Supreme Court.

          The New York Times has published an important investigative article on the corrupt relationship between Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and the Antonin Scalia School of Law. The article is here (and is unlocked for all readers): NYTimes, How Scalia Law School Became a Key Friend of the Court.

          I urge you to read the entire article. It details how the conservative law school has subsidized Justice Gorsuch's income and luxury vacation travel and, to a lesser extent, Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett. The financial corruption of the Court has been in the news practically every day for the last week. Standing alone, that corruption necessitates an overhaul of the Court.

          But the real scandal is that the Scalia Law School regularly appears before the Supreme Court by filing so-called “friend of the court” briefs—the same school that includes Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett as faculty or lecturers. Worse, some law school professors who submit those briefs to the Court are co-instructors or presenters with Justice Gorsuch on legal issues that overlap with the “friend of the Court” briefs. In other words, Justice Gorsuch is considering briefs submitted by his colleagues at the Scalia Law School.

          If the Court accepts briefs submitted by Justice Gorsuch’s colleagues at the law school, he should recuse himself from those cases. The conservative majority on the Court continues to exhibit disdain for the American public—whose trust in the Court is the thin reed on which the legitimacy of the Court rests. That thin reed is buckling under the accumulated scandals at the Court.

Kevin McCarthy’s bad-faith budget proposal puts pressure on newly elected GOP House members.

          Kevin McCarthy managed to pass his bad-faith budget with one vote to spare, which means that about a dozen new GOP members of the House endorsed the radical proposals of McCarthy’s budget. Most of those new GOP members won victories in districts Biden won in 2020—meaning they are holding onto razor-thin majorities. Signing onto McCarthy’s budget makes them vulnerable in 2024. See Washington Post, House Republicans walk the plank.

          As explained by the Post, as to newly elected GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans,

In Kiggans’s Virginia, the legislation she just backed would strip tax incentives that go to the likes of Dominion Energy, which is building a $9.8 billion offshore wind project in her district. She also voted to ax solar and electric-vehicle incentives for hundreds of thousands of Virginians, and tax breaks projected to bring $11.6 billion in clean-power investment to the commonwealth.

          As with GOP positions on gun control and reproductive liberty, we should take no joy that Republicans are driving voters away from the GOP. But we should take confidence from the fact that newly elected Republican members of Congress will be on the defensive in 2024 because they voted to support Kevin McCarthy’s bad-faith budget.

Concluding Thoughts.

          As with everything Joe Biden does or says, the White House Correspondents Dinner was a “test” of whether he was “up to the task given his age.” As usual, the answer was “Yes.” Biden received glowing reviews for his self-deprecating humor and one-liners directed at Fox News and Tucker Carlson. For example, Biden referred to the author of the Bill of Rights as “my good friend Jimmy Madison.” It takes humility and confidence to poke fun at oneself. See Chicago Sun-Times, Biden White House dinner speech: Poked fun at his age.

          The point is not that Biden was able to read jokes from a teleprompter. The point is that Biden showed up and engaged in an annual tradition in good humor. Do you know who did not attend the White House Correspondent Dinner when he was president? Donald Trump. The dinner is just one more way that Biden has helped to heal America after the fractious years of Trump's presidency. Biden promised to help restore the “soul of America”—and is keeping that promise every day.

          Over the weekend, my wife and I visited the long-vanished, now re-emergent Tulare Lake in the San Joaquin Valley. I have posted a few pictures below. Thanks to our tour guides Jim and Mary for a two-hour tour around a lake that did not exist six months ago but now measures 16 miles wide by ten miles long!

          Talk to you tomorrow!

A road disappears into long-dormant Tulare Lake, which stretches to the mountains on the horizon—twelve miles away!

Incubator sheds for leafcutter bees floated up against a levy that protects Corcoran, California from the floodwaters. The next month will tell whether the spring snowmelt in the Sierras will overtop the levees.

Two ducks swim in an orchard of young pistachio trees killed during an earlier “high water” event in April. The spring snowmelt in May is expected to exceed the April flood.

For more, see my Managing Editor’s blog, Every Day with Jill, The Return of Tulare Lake 2023!