Irin Carmon

Opinion | JD Vance Claims One of Our Worst Traditions as His Own

come for the extended intro where i call jd vance a loser, stay for my analysis connecting vance's argument to the most reactionary antebellum views of citizenship

Buddy comedy

It took an actual Muslim socialist I guess

So this dude no longer says Obama’s a Muslim?

Brad Lander: "I also need to thank some of the most important people in my life and on this campaign—I mean, of course, the NYT editorial board. Just kidding, of course: I love Wordle and Connections, but I really urge the Times to cancel their new feature 'Editorial Riddles.' No one likes those."

My most cancelable take on this election is how much Mamdani reminds me of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

In theory Cuomo could have run with some kind of taking accountability / I’ve changed message. But I guess he thought if Trump didn’t have to apologize, why should he? Turns out that’s just one guy.

Never seen a lazier or more entitled campaign than the one Cuomo ran. Meanwhile Mamdani went everywhere and talked to everyone.

The Supreme Court’s Cruel Alternative Reality for Trans People The ruling to uphold a ban on health care for minors could’ve been worse, but that’s only because things are so very bad already.

“Like much of the opinion and concurrences, the lineage from anti-abortion precedent is explicit. Who needs experts, or bodily autonomy for that matter, when you have vague hunches to cover for moral judgment?” - @irincarmon.bsky.social nymag.com/intelligence...

Screenshot: "It fell on Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson to cut through the obfuscation. If a lower court judge was powerless to block an unconstitutional law for the whole country, Kagan pointed out, and only the party that loses a case can appeal it, the Court might never get the chance to say the executive order was constitutional. “It’s up to you to decide whether to take this case to us,” she said to Sauer. “If I were in your shoes, there is no way I’d approach the Supreme Court with this case.” Instead, the government wants to force “individual by individual by individual” into court, “and all of those individuals are going to win. And the ones who can’t afford to go to court, they’re the ones who are going to lose. Again, this is not a hypothetical. This is happening out there, right?” It is. Jackson was even plainer. “If the government is saying no lower court can completely enjoin it, it actually means that the government just keeps on doing the purportedly unlawful thing,” she said, “and it delays the ability for this court to reach the underlying issue.” Kagan chimed in again: “So for years, there are going to be an untold number of people that this Court has said should be citizens who will not be treated as such.” It was an echo of the equally lawless “deport first, due process maybe later” immigration operations the administration has been conducting. And if the Supreme Court doesn’t figure out a way to swat it down, with or without ruling on the nagging issue of nationwide injunctions, the Trump administration might just get away with it."

"If the government is saying no lower court can completely enjoin it, it actually means that the government just keeps on doing the purportedly unlawful thing."- KBJ laying out how the regime is gaming the MAGA #SCOTUS 2 conduct "lawless" operations @irincarmon.bsky.social nymag.com/intelligence...

Justice Alito is throwing shade on federal district judges. He's not wrong about the practical problem. But his suggestion that the multi-member nature of SCOTUS constrains the arrogance of him and his colleagues is . . . not reality-based.

I mean it is a streaming drama with distinct characters and stakes. you should write about it

Putting Jackson on the Court is still one of the best things Biden did.

Lol

Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America

Irin Carmon @irincarmon.bsky.social’s forthcoming book UNBEARABLE - the stories of five women illustrating the challenges of pregnancy in America - is now available for preorder (out this fall)! bookshop.org/p/books/unbe...

Sign Up for My Week in New York Newsletter Sign Up for My Week in New York Newsletter

Sign up for 'My Week in New York,' a Saturday newsletter from the people who make @nymag.com. This week's author is features writer @irincarmon.bsky.social.

When I wrote this about @leahlitman.bsky.social’s important book, I couldn’t yet fathom that “what’s to come” would include “vague, confusing orders that don’t seem to stop Trump from sending people to overseas gulags.” Anyway, you should preorder this book. www.simonandschuster.com/books/Lawles...

I’m biased but I heartily agree.

As far as I can tell, Khalil has still not been charged & his attorney/family still don’t know where he is.

Any Jew who thinks this is going to start and stop with a few Palestinian activists is fooling themselves. Our community should not be used as an excuse to upend democracy & the rule of law.

There was a tendency in traditional historiography, intentional or not, to treat Black southerners as passive victims of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement as a sudden and spontaneous eruption of outrage.

That ignores the *decades* of organizing and agitation against segregation by Alabamians.

A black and white photo of James Reeb marching with Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, and others.

Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Something I hope people keep in mind during the commemorations: a lot of the major events of the Civil Rights Movement took place in Alabama because Black Alabamians had long- established activist networks, especially in Montgomery and Selma.

Thanks — See also Grimes’s tweet yesterday.

Join these cultural luminaries! Sign here and pledge not to cross the @nymagunion.bsky.social's digital picket line:

nymagunion.org/reader-pledge

The pledge asked for a reason you would support the union, and this is what I wrote. (Slightly more eloquent than my other answer, "The creator of Cinematrix deserves to be paid a minimum of 3 million dollars a year.")

nymagunion.org/reader-pledge

Education Department employees placed on leave for attending diversity training Several employees began receiving leave notices late Friday.

"Education Department employees placed on leave for attending diversity training"

Pretty soon they're just going to fire everyone who isn't white, or has ever been friendly with anyone who isn't white. Just to be sure they haven't been infected with diversity.

www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed. Any unpublished manuscript mentioning certain topics, including gender and "LGBT," must be pulled or revised.

BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed.

Goes beyond MMWR +other CDC pubs. Applies to research already submitted to top medical journals.

Take a look.
open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

Mark Paoletta is the guy the Times reports is behind the OMB memo debacle, and has effectively served as Clarence Thomas’s spox. That looks a lot like a painting of him and his buddies hanging on the wall of Clarence Thomas’s home this week. www.propublica.org/article/clar...

Remember how I said that, at least initially, the Trump people would slap a “mass deportation” sticker on the side of normal ICE operations? This is what I mean.

In FY2024, under Biden, the average daily arrests were 310 and the average daily detainers served was 409.

Instagram and Facebook Blocked and Hid Abortion Pill Providers’ Posts Some posts related to obtaining abortion pills were recently hidden on Instagram and Facebook and some accounts were suspended, before being later restored.

a bunch of posts about abortion pills vanished from Instagram. Meta put them back after we asked what was happening: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/t...

That one also caught my eye!