☕️ POLITICAL WHIMS ☙ Thursday, June 19, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Special SCOTUS win dissected; Thomas torches experts in biting concurrence; DNC flails in purity spiral; MN murder mystery deepens; Ukraine empties out; Senate D's forget Biden’s brain drain; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Today’s stellar roundup includes: a special edition deep dive into the best Supreme Court decision yet this year; cutting comments about experts in Justice Thomas’ special concurrence; more delicious purity spiral news as corporate media sends out desperate SOS for failing DNC; bizarre Minneapolis assassination story gets even weirder, of course, with Watergate-style break in; demographic collapse in Ukraine as its stubborn refusal to negotiate an end to the war clears out the country’s future generation; and Senate democrats get amnesia about Biden’s cognitive problems.

🪖 C&C ARMY POST 🪖

I know you have been waiting anxiously for more on my Heritage Foundation trip, but I’ve exercised authorial discretion (i.e., deadlines) and bumped it to tomorrow. Thanks for your attention to this matter!

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Yesterday’s biggest news, by a nautical mile, was another terrific Supreme Court decision. The Wall Street Journal ran the story below the headline, “Supreme Court Allows States to Restrict Transgender Treatments for Minors.” And it arrived just in time for Shame Month. Sorry! I meant “Pride,” of course. Or whatever this is:

But I digress. (Let’s call it an ADHD flare-up.)

The analysis begins with an even more vulgar image: the Journal’s careful narrative framing. The paper might have announced the earth-shaking decision the same way the vast majority of sane adults will see it: as good news for the most vulnerable —kids— who can be persuaded to try almost anything, like playing poker with their lawnmowing money. (Don’t blame me; I plead the Fifth.)

But no. The Journal’s glass-half-empty sub-headline was a stinker: “By 6-3 vote, justices say Tennessee ban is constitutional, the latest setback to transgender rights.” They could have just as easily called it the latest victory for parental rights. They didn’t even shoot for balance.

The Journal found only bad news in the decision. One suspects the Journal’s reporters could be found cheering on the sidewalks in the spectacle illustrated above, if not riding in the carriage.

⚖️ The case began with a controversial Tennessee law banning “gender affirming” surgeries and hormone treatments. Though the law carved out exceptions for valid medical reasons, like precocious puberty and intersex birth defects, it was not good enough for the activists, who promptly sued. The District Court judge agreed with the activists and held Tennessee’s new statute (SB1) was discriminatory and presumptively unconstitutional. Racist, sexist, and homophobic-ist.

But the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, and reversed the lower court’s ruling. Then SCOTUS accepted the case.

It was a historic, blockbuster ruling. Yesterday, the top court held (6-3) that transgender identity is not, in fact, a suspect class under 14th Amendment Equal Protection. In other words, transgenderism is not like race, sex, or religious belief.

The implications of that decision ripple far beyond mere medical regulations.

The shift is legally tectonic. Nobody yet knows how broadly it will reach. It is perhaps the US equivalent to the UK High Court’s recent earth-shattering decision in Forstater v. CGD Europe, which clarified that the terms “woman” and “man” under UK law refer to biological sex, not gender identity, unless explicitly defined otherwise. And even whenever it is otherwise defined, the High Court explained, legal sex classifications are not infinitely malleable.

In the UK, that means even trans women with valid “Gender Recognition Certificates” may still be excluded from women’s domestic abuse shelters based on their biological sex, so long as it’s a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. The UK ruling emphasized that the word “woman” means biological female, not gender on a certificate, undermining things like prosecutions for pronoun transgressions.

All that sounds like common sense. But, as you well know, we live in an age where common sense has become somewhat scarce.

⚖️ Here in the U.S., yesterday’s decision means rational basis review applies to laws relating to trans issues, rather than heightened scrutiny. That distinction is a green light for states to regulate —or even outright ban— so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors, with far less constitutional risk.

It was as big as the Dobbs decision, but for pediatric gender medicine.

This new decision’s effects, though nominally just about pediatric care, sent shock waves through the entire trans debate. It potentially affects all laws related to trans persons, including bathrooms, sports teams, prison segregation, and even school dress codes.

Chase Strangio, the transgender American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented the activist plaintiffs, whined that the Court dealt “a devastating loss for transgender people, our families, and everyone who cares about the Constitution.”

The Journal did not quote anyone who said it was a triumphant win for parental rights and kids.

⚖️ “Rational basis review” is the lowest hurdle for laws to pass constitutional muster. If a state can articulate any legitimate government interest (such as privacy, safety, fairness), that law is probably constitutional. And yesterday’s decision marked a full-scale retreat from the earlier phase of gender-identity jurisprudence, where identity trumped biology rather than the other way around.

The Journal, tracking arguments by trans activists, reminded readers that, as recently as 2020, SCOTUS extended civil rights protections to transgender employees. That opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, which Chief Justice Roberts and the whole liberal wing joined. But contrary to the Journal’s mendacious description, the case was about a trans person fired for being gay, and the holding was extremely narrow. The majority flatly stated: “We do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything of the kind.”

In any event, the new Tennessee case has flipped the script.

And, if SCOTUS eventually declares that “sex” in Title IX means biological sex (rather than gender identity), the entire activist architecture will collapse like the house of cards it always was. There’s a circuit split already brewing on the Title IX issue. (Portland readers: Title IX prohibits educational discrimination “on the basis of sex.”)

In 2023, the 11th Circuit in Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County (Florida) properly ruled that Title IX allows sex-segregation based on biological sex. But in 2020, in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, the 4th Circuit ruled the other way, in favor of a trans student under Title IX and Equal Protection.

The Supremes just chopped off Grimm’s Equal Protection prong.

The Supreme Court must resolve splits between circuits. Yesterday’s decision strongly suggests SCOTUS will hew to the same biological measuring stick under Title IX, since you can bet your lawnmowing money that SCOTUS won’t suddenly decide “sex” means “gender feelings.”

⚖️ But there was even more gold buried in the three liberal dissents and in Justice Thomas’ special concurrence opinion. The dissents were awful and are already being mocked. In short, they read like a copy-paste extravaganza between trans activist handbooks and judicial orders.

The liberal justices began with the premise, accepting it as established fact, that “trans women are women,” and that any law even mentioning the word “sex” is clearly discriminatory if it does not treat trans women (biological men) as women. “The Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims,” Justice Sotomayor angrily wrote.

That perennial debate —what is a woman?— forms the razor-sharp crux of the discord between the two sides. The majority started from the premise that biological women are women, and many laws often vary by sex without violating Equal Protection, like laws banning exhibitionist gals from going topless on public beaches. Just because only women have “breasts” doesn’t make laws banning exposed boobs unconstititional. So please keep them under wraps, ladies.

But … a twist! Pink News headline, yesterday:

(It was in England. Since this is a family blog, you’ll have to find your own event pictures.)

⚖️ But my favorite part was Justice Thomas’ concurrence. As is his habit, he wandered from the main issue, relishing the opportunity to take “experts” to the woodshed for a “quick meeting.” You will love it:

The Court rightly rejects efforts by the United States and the private plaintiffs to accord outsized credit to claims about medical consensus and expertise. The United States asserted that “the medical community and the nation’s leading hospitals overwhelmingly agree” with the Government’s position that the treatments outlawed by SB1 can be medically necessary.

There are several problems with appealing and deferring to the authority of the expert class. First, so-called experts have no license to countermand the “wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.”

Second, contrary to the representations of the United States and the private plaintiffs, there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children.

Third, notwithstanding the alleged experts’ view that young children can provide informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments, whether such consent is possible is a question of medical ethics that States must decide for themselves. Fourth, there are particularly good reasons to question the expert class here, as recent revelations suggest that leading voices in this area have relied on questionable evidence, and have allowed ideology to influence their medical guidance.

Taken together, this case serves as a useful reminder that the American people and their representatives are entitled to disagree with those who hold themselves out as experts, and that courts may not “sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.”

States are never required to substitute expert opinion for their legislative judgment, and, when the experts appear to have compromised their credibility, it makes good sense to chart a different course.

Justice Thomas wasn’t finished with tearing the experts a new one. In the next section, Thomas dismissed them again, as “self-proclaimed:”

The views of self-proclaimed experts do not “shed light on the meaning of the Constitution.” Thus, whether “major medical organizations” agree with the result of Tennessee’s democratic process is irrelevant. To hold otherwise would permit elite sentiment to distort and stifle democratic debate under the guise of scientific judgment, and would reduce judges to mere “spectators . . . in construing our Constitution.”

Oh, how I wish I’d had Justice Thomas’ cutting words about experts during the pandemic back when I was litigating the various cases. “Experts” are finally experiencing their long-overdue reckoning and a necessary pruning of their outsized influence. One wonders whether Justice Thomas would have been so firm if he, like the rest of us, did not have pandemic PTSD.

I am so sick of “experts.” If you agree with me and Justice Thomas, explain in the comments.

Anyway, as you can see, I devoted much time and thought to yesterday’s opinion, ironically (or auspiciously) landing on lawyers’ desks during June. I spent so many precious column inches on it because it’s such a good sign of progress, albeit at a snail’s pace: “men regaining their sanity slowly, one by one,” as a certain Scottish philosopher once said. (Portlanders: see Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), Charles Mackay.)

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The next story is a wonderful intersection of popular C&C topics: the Democrat purity spiral and Trump’s brilliant pre-midterm strategy. I should have already connected these dots, but fortunately, yesterday the New York Times did it for me in this astonishing headline:

A drop in big donations? Or is it rather just, a big drop in donations? Either way, it’s bad. The Times was forced to report, “the Democratic National Committee’s financial situation has grown so bleak that top officials have discussed whether they might need to borrow money this year to keep paying the bills.”

Let’s organize the dot-connecting table. First consider the two massive attacks on DNC infrastructure that we can see. As one of his first acts, Trump immediately pulled the plug on the USAID gravy train. Democrats weakly deny it, but it seems patently obvious that billions in “overseas aid” were being funneled right back into DNC operations. Then DOGE got after the rest of the leaky agencies.

The scheme worked like this: USAID (and other agencies) generously funded NGOs, whose well-paid activist officers sent large donations back to Democrats, keeping the whole sordid subterfuge afloat. But all that sweet taxpayer laundry money that the Democrats were hoovering up to fund their ongoing operations vanished overnight.

Next, the DOJ (and several states) began investigating the DNC’s top fundraising platform, ActBlue, for its “smurfing” scheme, wherein large numbers of low-income donors unaccountably made thousands of weird small-dollar donations —totaling to unaffordable amounts— and when asked by independent investigators, the donors denied they’d ever chipped in.

As a result of the additional scrutiny and the potential criminal implications, ActBlue’s entire board quit. The new board has vowed to “increase donation security” and blamed any “irregularities,” if they happened, on loose rules. It wasn’t us!

The other ActBlue loafer has yet to drop. It’s coming, and everyone knows it.

The predictable net effect of both problems —ActBlue and USAID— is that Democrat fund-raising is shrinking back to realistic proportions. And it is not difficult to imagine that Democrats, whose financial muscles were atrophied from decades of automated fundraising, have lost the skills for real grassroots dollar-digging, unlike the GOP and especially one Donald J. Trump.

🔥 Less obvious, perhaps, is a third factor. Corporate pay-for-play pipelines have become politically radioactive in the current populist climate. DOJ Attorneys General have been empowered to investigate political hijinks. Dems, out of power, can’t deliver any political favors to sponsors— or any protection.

According to FEC reports, in the first four months of the year, only three donors gave $100,000 or more to the DNC.

The Times coolly noted that “big donors — an essential part of the party’s funding — have been very slow to give to the party this year.” A recent New York event headlining Kamala Harris failed badly, raising barely $300,000— less than a third of what she’d raised at a similar New York event before the election.

One supposes that mega-donors are also feeling the pressure of having to hew more carefully to campaign finance laws, and are watching all the “chaos” unfold at the DNC with parsimonious eyes.

The DNC chaos, as we know, is spinning like a purity spiral top, set in motion by the party’s decision to frag its one-time poster boy. “David Hogg came in and dropped a nuclear bomb on the place,” said James Skoufis, a state senator in New York (D).

The DNC seems to be adrift, its efforts resembling a clown being chased by a bull. It invested $20 million to study young men’s preferences. Another new DNC initiative is a streaming show on YouTube, “The Daily Blueprint,” which is studio-filmed with glossy, high-end production values. (Not fake at all.)

“The show,” the Times concluded, “has drawn a minuscule audience so far, with some episodes scoring fewer than 1,000 views.” Money well misspent.

🔥 The New York Times just did what Trump’s media machine couldn’t: it publicly declared the DNC to be broke, broken, and bleeding relevance— all while framing it in the softest tissue-paper language it could find. But when the Grey Lady uses words like chaos, bleak, infighting, and desperate, you know the smoke is billowing out of every headquarters window.

The DNC’s purity spiral isn’t just a political crisis— it’s more so a financial one. While the cash kept flowing, party elders could buy peace, with patronage, perks, and padded contracts. But now the money’s drying up, and without steady payouts to keep the coalition glued together, the factions are turning on each other like rats in a sealed grain silo.

The far left doesn’t want compromise— it wants control. The problem is, it never had to compromise before. There was always enough money to buy agreement.

Without donor sugar to sweeten the message, what’s left is the bitter taste of ideological enforcement, live-streamed to an audience of twelve. The dried-up donations stem from the Trump Administration’s efforts to chop off USAID and ActBlue money. In short, the public purity spiral that we see unfolding in real time is most likely the direct result of a carefully laid plan.

It’s working.

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Nothing to see here! Move along. Yesterday, the UK Daily Mail ran a story headlined, “Murdered lawmaker Melissa Hortman's home is BURGLED four days after her killing in crime-ridden Minneapolis suburb.”

Brooklyn Park Police boarded Hortman's house on Sunday morning after she and her husband Mark were shot dead on Saturday in a strange and baffling 'politically motivated' attack. Yesterday, officers “were alerted” to a break-in at their residence, according to the police statement.

It remains “unknown who broke into the home and what their motive was.” Uh huh.

I mean, what are the odds? A political assassination in a quiet suburb, followed by an inexplicable break-in at the crime scene just hours after the media coverage peaks. Either it’s the worst-timed neighborhood burglary in Minnesota history— or someone needed something from that house that wasn’t supposed to be found.

If this were a movie, the next scene would be a masked man in black gloves carefully removing a USB stick from behind the drywall while local cops argue outside about jurisdiction. But sure, maybe it was just a raccoon with bolt cutters.

We know for sure that it wasn’t that unemployed master of disguises, the world-traveling security consultant and part-time entrepreneur Vance Boelter, since he’s been cooling his heels in jail since Sunday. Let the speculation proceed.

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More bad news for Ukraine. Zelensky’s refusal to engage in rational peace negotiations, and his maximalist demands for even agreeing to a cease-fire, now threaten to literally destroy the country. Yesterday, the UK Telegraph ran a story headlined, “Ukraine has a problem no one is talking about – young women are leaving in droves.” It’s self-genocide.

Since the war broke out and martial law was introduced, young men have been banned from leaving Ukraine as soon as they turn 18. But boys under 18 and young women are free to leave. So guess what Ukraine’s concerned parents are doing?

Mandatory conscription starts at age 24. One pro-Ukraine think tank study concluded that young, poorly-trained conscripts have an average life expectancy after reaching the front lines of just four hours. Every parent with even marginal resources is strongly considering getting their children out of Dodge City.

“There are real concerns over who will rebuild the country once the war is over,” the Telegraph reported, “if the nation’s youth does not return.” Why would they? Not only is the mass exodus a brain drain – Ukraine’s “brightest and best” are leaving the country – but the wave of emigration is also a demographic time bomb.

The article quoted Taras Hryvniak, 17, a brilliant former student at Lviv’s Physics and Maths Lyceum, who left his family to study at the University of Vienna, Austria. Taras said half of the boys in his school class have left for Europe, and almost as many girls. “It’s a really big amount,” he confided.

Tito Boeri, professor of economics at Bocconi University and the co-author of a 2022 study on Ukraine’s labour market, called Ukraine’s emigration issue “very serious.” He explained, “You can reconstruct physical infrastructure – it takes time, but still can be done. Reconstructing human infrastructure is way more challenging and may actually not succeed.”

“The situation is getting worse every day due to the war making young people choose universities in Europe not Ukraine,” a Kyiv high-school teacher told The Telegraph. Another Lviv English teacher agreed. She said girls who leave Ukraine “don’t see a future here” and “believe better career opportunities lie abroad.”

Tragically, Martial Law Administrator Zelensky shows no sign of climbing down. His peace demands still include Russia returning Crimea (Russian since 2014, and after a Crimea-wide referendum), Moscow paying for 100% of Ukraine’s reconstruction, and for Russian officials —including President Putin— to sit for war crimes prosecution. It is more likely that Zelensky will grow another twelve inches or turn heterosexual than Russia will ever agree to those terms.

Nor does the media seem to be any help. After helping cover for Zelensky’s disastrous recent “Kursk offensive,” wherein some 45,000 Ukrainian men were estimated slaughtered for nothing, this week corporate media has been celebrating a pinprick drone attack on some spare Russian bombers as a sign of Ukraine’s plucky resolve to “win the war,” whatever that means at this late stage.

As they used to say, if there weren’t bad news in Ukraine, there would be no news. Bless the Ukrainian parents who are making the best of a very difficult slate of decisions for their kids.

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In news of the utterly predictable, yesterday the Telegraph ran a story headlined, “Democrats boycott Biden cognitive decline hearing.” Seven of nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee opted not to attend the hearing on President Cabbage’s Autopen adventures. One of the two attending Democrats delivered a scathing opening address and then jetted. He called the hearing “a distraction” and “a waste of time” that voters don’t care about.

“Apparently, armchair diagnosing former President Biden is more important than other issues of grave concern,” Senator Dick Durban (D-Ill.) groused. Well, yes, Dick, it is. How about that?

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said, “The stonewall continues. They can’t bear to show their faces in public.” Senator Katie Britt (R-Al.) said, “The fact that we have none of my Democratic colleagues over here, shows that they are not interested in correcting it for the future.”

And Sir Robin bravely ran away…

Let’s be charitable. I think the truth is the Democrats had a senior moment. They just forgot about the hearing. It happens. You know, the thing. It’s understandable. They’re consumed with worry about “grave concerns” like oil cancer, cannibals in the South Pacific, where Uncle Bosey got off to, misinformation, and stuff like that.

Have a terrific Thursday! I’ll catch you on the flip side, with a fabulous Friday morning roundup of all the essential news and commentary you need with your morning caffeine injection.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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