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Briefs. Oral arguments. Questions and answers analyzed by experts and an interested public. This is how we’ve long experienced major, often nation-altering Supreme Court cases. But something changed just after 6 p.m. on a February evening in 2016. The Court was considering one of those big, impactful cases, in which they would decide whether to block or allow President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. You probably didn’t read any of the submitted briefs or hear any of the oral arguments. Because there were none. But that doesn’t mean the case wasn’t decided. America was caught with its briefs down, as the Roberts Court halted the environmental plan. “They acted before any other court had addressed the plan’s lawfulness. The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a word of reasoning. At the time, the ruling seemed like a curious one-off. But that single paragraph turned out to be a sharp and lasting break. That night marks the birth, many legal experts believe, of the court’s modern ‘shadow docket,’ the secretive track that the Supreme Court has since used to make many major decisions, including granting President Trump more than 20 key victories on issues from immigration to agency power.” The adage suggests that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. That, like so many of the cases that are now decided in secret and rendered with no explanation, seems like a notion worthy of a public hearing. The NYT (Gift Article): The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court. “Rulings with no explanation or reasoning, like the sparse paragraph from that February night, have become routine. The emergency docket is now a central legacy of the court led by Chief Justice Roberts.” How dramatically will that legacy change our legal system and our country? Only the Shadow knows.
+ Steve Vladek wrote a highly regarded book on this topic: The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.
2
Baby Bump
Techno-optimists and pessimists likely agree on a couple things: AI is only getting more powerful and nothing is going to stop that trend. So what does one do when one is faced with the prospect of the singularity, “the moment when superintelligent machines, having surpassed the feeble cognitive abilities of humans, begin to act in ways contrary to the interests of humanity.” Well, you can’t count on computers getting dumber. So you’re gonna need to create smarter humans. MoJo: Creating Baby Geniuses to Thwart the AI Threat? (Yes, Really.)
+ “Heavier AI users are generally more optimistic about its effects on their careers than occasional users and non-users. That’s still true. But Gallup found that even heavy AI users within Gen Z are growing more pessimistic.” Gen Z Is Souring on AI. (No worries. We’ll just program the new babies to be more enthusiastic...)
3
Sizzle Real?
“In the lead-up to the war, which Trump launched without consulting Congress, making a case to the American people, or assembling allies, many of his aides believed that Trump was not taking seriously the risks and trade-offs involved ... Once the war began, Trump received updates that were screened and bowdlerized for him. He has long been inattentive to briefings—early in his first term, aides realized that he liked maps and graphics and would glaze over if given much information in text—but he has reportedly been starting his day off with a sizzle reel of stunning explosions rather than with hard info.” The Atlantic(Gift Article): The Aides Keeping the President in the Dark.
+ None of the ignorance keeps Trump from participating in delicate negotiations by way of social media. CNN: A deal to end the Iran war seemed close. Then Trump started posting on social media.
+ “Vice President JD Vance’s trip to Pakistan for a second round of negotiations with Iran has been put on hold after Tehran failed to respond to American positions, a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the situation said Tuesday. Iran, for its part, said it had not yet decided whether to resume talks with the United States.” But don’t worry. Trump says, “We’re going to end up with a great deal.” (Maybe we should all be shown the daily sizzle reel. It seems to cheer him up.) Here’s the latest from NYT, The Guardian, and NBC.
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Cook the Books
Steve Jobs was known as the visionary. Tim Cook was more of a get things done CEO. And he definitely fulfilled that role. “When Tim Cook took over Apple in 2011, leaders from Silicon Valley to Wall Street predicted that the company’s best days were behind it. They feared that without Steve Jobs, Apple’s innovative chief executive, the company would falter. They were wrong. Over 15 years, Mr. Cook has engineered Apple’s rise from a Silicon Valley darling worth $350 billion into a cash-generating giant worth $4 trillion.” NYT (Gift Article): Tim Cook Was Very, Very Good at Making Money.
+ “Cook inherited a company with extraordinary potential growth in front of it, but in deep existential grief. He led the company — and its community — through that grief and achieved that potential. The transition Apple and Tim Cook announced today is entirely different. No one’s hand was forced. There is nothing unpleasant.” John Gruber: Another Day Has Come.
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Extra, Extra
The Fog of Warsh: “Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, asserted repeatedly at a combative confirmation hearing on Tuesday that he would not cut interest rates simply because President Trump wanted him to, pledging to be ‘strictly independent’ if confirmed for one of the world’s most powerful economic positions.” We’ve been down this hearing road before. He’ll say he’s independent and will be normal. Everyone in the Senate knows that’s not true. He’ll get confirmed, anyway. Corruption will ensue. Bad things will happen. No one will be surprised. Meanwhile, “Lori Chavez-DeRemer, President Trump’s embattled labor secretary, stepped down on Monday as multiple scandals and investigations closed in on her.”
+ Donny on the Spot: NYT (Gift Article): ‘Donnyland’? Ukraine Proposes Renaming Part of the Donbas in Trump’s Honor. “That a name evocative of Disneyland has been applied to a depopulated, decimated swath of Ukrainian coal-and-steel country could appear jarring as Europe’s deadliest fighting since World War II continues to rage. But it also reflects a global reality in which governments appeal to Mr. Trump’s vanity in order to get American might on their side.” (It’s sad that an ally would think this way. They are also right to think this way.)
+ Targeting the Good Guys: “When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system. There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.” Southern Poverty Law Center says it faces a Justice Department criminal probe over paid informants,
+ Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? “When Donald Trump attends the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner for the first time as president on Saturday, the pressure will be on the journalists’ organization to make some sort of a statement about the president’s relentless attacks on the media, which he has labeled the ‘enemy of the people.’” Hundreds Of Veteran Journalists And Groups Urge WHCA To ‘Speak Forcefully’ About Trump’s Attacks. (Better idea. Don’t attend the damn dinner.)
+ Beak Softly and Carry a Big Stick: “In 2021, a disabled parrot named Bruce made headlines worldwide for creating his own prosthetic beak. He didn’t stop there: Scientists reported on Monday that Bruce has now become the alpha male of his group. And he did it by learning to joust.” How Bruce the Parrot Landed Atop the Pecking Order, Without a Beak. (There’s a lesson here somewhere, and I think it has to do with the importance of jousting.)