Politics
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February 6, 2026
On this installment of Elie v. US, our justice correspondent explores the week’s huge authorized information, together with a attainable Alito retirement. Additionally, the anti-trans mob’s newest goal: tight clothes.
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Supreme Court docket Justice Samuel Alito has a brand new e-book popping out. It’s titled How Watching Fox Information Made Me the Worst Model of Myself.
Simply kidding, I don’t truly care what it’s referred to as. (Effective. I can Google it for you. It’s referred to as So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Structure, the Court docket, and the Nation.) It’s my job to learn such issues and… I gained’t learn his e-book. They’ll’t make me. Life is fully too brief.
I deliver it up as a result of the e-book is scheduled to be launched October 6, 2026. That’s a curious date. The Supreme Court docket begins its 2026–27 time period on October 5, the primary Monday of October. Alito’s e-book is about to drop the following day.
It positive appears like Alito doesn’t plan on having an actual job the Tuesday his e-book launches and as a substitute thinks he’ll be free to run across the nation selling it. By means of context, listed below are publication dates for the the final 4 sitting Supreme Court docket justices who launched books:
Amy Coney Barrett, September 9, 2025
Neil Gorsuch, Could 5, 2025
Ketanji Brown Jackson, September 4, 2024
Sonia Sotomayor, January 25, 2022 (a kids’s e-book)
Present Difficulty
Sonia Sotomayor, September 3, 2019
It is sensible for the justices to launch their books in September. You have got all the eye on the upcoming time period, however the justices are free to fly across the nation, giving talks and doing interviews to advertise their books. Might also is sensible, as a result of the court docket is not listening to instances then, simply writing and enhancing opinions.
The justices are busy in October. Arguably too busy to promote a e-book.
The publication date of the e-book makes me suppose that Alito is planning to retire on the finish of the Supreme Court docket’s present time period, in July. That will give Trump, and the Republicans who nonetheless management the Senate, time to nominate and make sure his alternative earlier than the midterm elections.
Alito watches TV. He reads the papers. Whereas the Republicans are nonetheless favored to hold on to the Senate, it’s removed from sure. Alito turns 76 in April. He’s achieved many of the evil he got down to do, together with overturning Roe v. Wade. With Republican ballot numbers flagging, I don’t suppose he desires to roll the cube and be pressured to hold round on the court docket ought to Republicans lose the Senate this fall.
The publication date of his e-book is a big inform. I feel he’s leaving whereas Republicans nonetheless have the political energy to exchange him with one other Sam Alito who’s 30 years youthful.
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I hope I’m unsuitable about this. I don’t need Trump to have the ability to substitute Alito with one other Alito. He’ll probably retire by the top of Trump’s time period anyway, however the best-case state of affairs could be for him to remain on out of the hubristic perception that Republicans will maintain on to the Senate—and be unsuitable about that.
The Dangerous and the Ugly
It doesn’t matter what Tom Homan says, ICE remains to be on the bottom in Minnesota, violating constitutional rights and threatening individuals with violence. It’s solely a matter of time earlier than they homicide another person.
Home Democrats are demanding that the Division of Homeland Safety finish warrantless house invasions.
A federal decide quickly blocked DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s makes an attempt to bar members of Congress from touring ICE detention camps.
Minnesota faculties are suing DHS over its invasion of faculties and abduction and harassment of kids.
Republicans in Arizona are preventing a Biden-era regulation that stops mining uranium within the Grand Canyon. To recap: There are individuals who wish to mine the Grand freaking Canyon for uranium. There are sufficient of these people who Biden needed to make a whole-ass federal regulation—giving the canyon and the encompassing space “nationwide monument” safety—to cease them.But, undeterred, these individuals are actually preventing that regulation in court docket. I simply don’t know what to do with this info.
Impressed Takes
New York Metropolis Mayor Zohran Mamdani took to The Nation web site to endorse Kathy Hochul for governor. I’m not there but. (Disclosure: I do know one in all her major opponents, Antonio Delgado, personally, from legislation college). I haven’t forgotten her makes an attempt to drive Hector LaSalle onto the state’s highest court docket or her behavior of governing as Cuomo-lite till just some months in the past. The sitting NYC mayor making an attempt to make good with the sitting governor in Albany doesn’t transfer my needle.
Two of my favourite broadcasters, Dean Obeidallah and Pleasure Reid, sat down with Laura Flanders in The Nation to speak in regards to the abject failure of the mainstream media.
The Boston Overview hosted a discussion board on “How Not To Defeat Authoritarianism” (emphasis added) that excoriated the Democrats for his or her weak-sauce responses. It’s hearth.
Worst Argument of the Week
The Meals and Drug Administration is concentrating on gender-affirming… clothes. Particularly, Trump’s FDA despatched letters to 12 corporations that make or promote chest-compressing clothes, warning them that their merchandise are thought-about “medical units” and shall be regulated as such. The FDA warned that the businesses’ operations may very well be shut down in the event that they proceed to “market them as a therapy for gender dysphoria.”
The battle on transgender people now apparently contains tight clothes.
Initially, in case this must be stated: Each single article of clothes is gender-affirming indirectly. You suppose I like carrying pants? I don’t. I’d gladly go away my home in a kilt, commando-style, as a result of that’s simply far more comfy. I don’t, as a result of cis-hetero males carrying skirts is frowned upon in my tradition. Ditto roaming the streets sans boxers. However I don’t see the FDA warning Fruit of the Loom that its merchandise are actually medical units.
The FDA’s threats are aimed not at what these merchandise do (once more, body-smushing clothes are ubiquitous in our society) however who’s carrying them and why. And that may be a straight-up content-based restriction that violates the First Modification. It can’t be the case that you’re allowed to market chest-compressing undergarments to a cis lady who desires to play tennis however can not market them to a trans-man who… desires to play tennis. That’s an unconstitutional restriction on expression.
It’s nearly humorous, in the best way that fascists’ getting mad at one thing small is at all times form of humorous. However it’s additionally extremely severe that these assaults on transgender individuals are so fortunately carried out by Trump’s FDA. Keep in mind, the FDA additionally regulates precise medication and medical therapies, together with the hormone blockers and boosters that some trans individuals take. Treating trans individuals who wish to take medication otherwise from cis individuals who wish to take the identical medication is the unconstitutional—and deeply hypocritical—precedent for all of those assaults.
I feel if individuals understood that the fitting wing’s assault on hormones is simply as silly as the fitting wing’s assault on glorified Spanx, extra individuals would possibly help the idea that trans individuals needs to be handled equally below the legislation.
What I Wrote
Trump and the Republicans are going to attempt to rig the upcoming midterm elections. Their plans are out within the open. I argue that Democrats want a coordinated response to the Republicans’ coordinated assaults, and I’ve a fairly good concept for the place to start out.
In Information Unrelated to the Present Chaos
A UK court docket dominated that stealing cash in a online game may be handled like stealing cash in actual life. And I’m 100% right here for it.
The problem arose within the standard on-line sport RuneScape. A developer, Andrew Lakeman, who labored for Jagex, the makers of RuneScape, allegedly used his entry to the sport to primarily hack the accounts of assorted gamers. He’s charged with stealing 705 billion “Gold” from 68 gamers.
Most video games nowadays have two sorts of currencies: “in-game” forex and “premium” forex. In-game forex can usually be earned simply by taking part in the sport (defeating monsters, promoting spare objects, yada yada). Premium forex can usually be earned solely by paying real-world cash and shopping for the premium forex from the sport’s builders. Generally video games will let you earn some premium forex from taking part in the sport, and typically video games will let you promote premium forex for in-game forex, nevertheless it’s finest to think about these two currencies as separate: In-game forex is earned along with your time, premium forex earned along with your pockets.
No one would dispute that stealing premium forex is theft, as a result of it’s apparent that such forex has a real-world worth, as evidenced by the truth that sport builders cost for it and gamers pay for it. However “Gold” is RuneScape’s in-game forex. Most courts deal with this forex as worthless. Lakeman, the previous developer, argued that he couldn’t be charged below the UK’s Theft Act as a result of he solely stole this worthless, in-game forex.
However a UK appellate court docket disagreed. The court docket dominated that every gold piece may very well be considered “property” of the gamers who earned them, though the forex is functionally “infinite” as a result of Jagex can simply make extra Gold at any time when it desires.
That is the fitting determination. As a result of if you steal in-game forex from individuals, what you’re actually stealing is time. Gamers put in lots of time killing the monsters and farming the objects and making Gold for his or her characters within the sport. Stealing it’s theft.
And “the market” is aware of that point is cash, even on this case. Lakeman reportedly bought his ill-gotten Gold for round $750,000 of Bitcoin. Why would anyone purchase in-game forex for real-world cash? Nicely, as a result of it takes lots of time to amass $705 billion in Gold within the sport of RuneScape.
Now, if Lakeman had performed RuneScape, defeated 68 gamers, and lifted 705 billion Gold off their useless corpses (which you’ll completely do in RuneScape), that might be nice. That’s simply… taking part in the sport. As has been stated to me many instances, whereas my character is mendacity useless, “Git gud, scrub.”
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