“Justice Anthony Kennedy announced Wednesday that he will retire from the Supreme Court, providing President Trump the opportunity to ensure a conservative majority on the Court.”
Kennedy’s retirement date is July 31.
Yet another reason to be thankful that Hillary Clinton isn’t President…
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth granted royal assent to Prime Minister Theresa May’s flagship Brexit legislation on Tuesday, ending months of debate over the legislation that will formally end the country’s European Union membership.
The House of Commons speaker John Bercow said the EU withdrawal bill, passed by both houses of parliament last week, had been signed into law by the monarch, to cheers from Conservative lawmakers.
“I have to notify the House in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967 that her Majesty has signified her royal assent to the following acts … European Union Withdrawal Act 2018,” Commons Speaker John Bercow told lawmakers during a session of the house.
This means that the UK’s formal withdrawal from the European Union will occur on March 29, 2019.
Links to the various sections of the act can be found here.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
In a 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court has struck down the compulsory collecting of public employee union dues from non-members for collective bargaining, ruling that it violates non-members’ First Amendment rights. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Kennedy and Gorsuch.
States and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from nonconsenting employees. The First Amendment is violated when money is taken from nonconsenting employees for a public-sector union; employees must choose to support the union before anything is taken from them. Accordingly, neither an agency fee nor any other form of payment to a public-sector union may be deducted from an employee, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay.
This is a huge blow to the Democratic Party’s union dues collecting machine. And the small remaining rump of #NeverTrump’s mocking cries of “But Gorsuch” ring particularly hollow today.
In a 5-4 decision (Roberts writing the majority opinion, joined by Kennedy, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch), the Supreme Court has upheld President Donald Trump’s travel ban from terrorism-supporting countries:
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, foreign nationals seeking entry into the United States undergo a vetting process to ensure that they satisfy the numerous requirements for admission. The Act also vests the Presi- dent with authority to restrict the entry of aliens when- ever he finds that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” 8 U. S. C. §1182(f). Relying on that delegation, the President concluded that it was necessary to impose entry restrictions on nationals of countries that do not share adequate information for an informed entry determination, or that otherwise present national security risks….
By its plain language, §1182(f) grants the President broad discretion to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States. The President lawfully exercised that discretion based on his findings—following a worldwide, multi-agency review—that entry of the covered aliens would be detrimental to the national interest. And plaintiffs’ attempts to identify a conflict with other provisions in the INA, and their appeal to the statute’s purposes and legislative history, fail to overcome the clear statutory language….
In addition to the majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion takes a very strong swipe at the Ninth Circuit Court’s increasing tendency to issue blanket, “universal” injunctions:
Injunctions that prohibit the Executive Branch from applying a law or policy against anyone—often called “universal” or “nationwide” injunctions—have become increasingly common. District courts, including the one here, have begun imposing universal injunctions without considering their authority to grant such sweeping relief. These injunctions are beginning to take a toll on the federal court system—preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the Executive Branch.
I am skeptical that district courts have the authority to enter universal injunctions. These injunctions did not emerge until a century and a half after the founding. And they appear to be inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts. If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality.
The text of the decision is here.
“Most” in this case means that the Supreme Court sided with Texas in Abbot v. Perez for 10 out of 11 disputed districts:
Extinguishing the possibility that Texas could be placed back under federal electoral supervision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday pushed aside claims that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against voters of color when they enacted the state’s congressional and state House maps.
In a 5-4 vote, the high court threw out a lower court ruling that had found that lawmakers intentionally undercut the voting power of Hispanic and black voters, oftentimes to keep white incumbents in office. The Supreme Court found that the evidence was “plainly insufficient” to prove that the 2013 Legislature acted in “bad faith.”
The Supreme Court also ruled that all but one of the 11 congressional and state House districts that had been flagged as problematic could remain intact. The one exception was Fort Worth-based House District 90, which is occupied by Democratic Rep. Ramon Romero and was deemed an impermissible racial gerrymander because lawmakers illegally used race as the predominant factor in deciding its boundaries.
The decision also means that “preclearance” (i.e., Texas having to have all redistricting cleared by the federal government) is finally well and truly dead.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, with concurrences from justices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Gorsuch.
Here’s the text of the decision.
As for House District 90, the text of the decision states that “On remand, the District Court will have to consider what if any remedy is appropriate at this time.” Since it’s already held by a democrat, expect the lower court’s enthusiasm for an immediate remedy to the issue to be tempered, and this late in the game, they might merely order that the issue be addressed following the 2020 census, which would fall to the 87th Texas legislature in 2021.
For your Lazy Sunday Video™ viewing pleasure, here’s some morons in Hollywood failing to answer some of the most basic question from a citizenship exam:
Enjoy the smug sense of superiority you get from watching an MTV reality show, without the annoyance of having to watch an MTV reality show…
This is interesting:
Beijing is set to announce a new fund of about 300 billion yuan ($47.4 billion) for the development of China’s semiconductor industry, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The government-backed China Integrated Circuit Investment Fund is heading up the new investment vehicle, the report said. The fund was not available for comment outside of Beijing business hours.
The 300 billion yuan fund would go toward improving China’s ability to design and manufacture advanced microprocessors and graphic-processing units, among other initiatives, the Journal said, citing one source. The size of the fund and other details could change, another source told the newspaper.
Last week, Chen Yin, spokesman and chief engineer of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said the fund welcomes foreign investment.
“The second phase of fundraising is underway, and we welcome foreign companies to participate in this round of financing,” Chen said at a news conference in Beijing, according to a report from state-run English-language newspaper China Daily.
Beijing is seeking to develop domestic technological innovation in areas such as robotics and semiconductors through an initiative called “Made in China 2025.” One of the U.S. trade delegation’s aims in talks with China this week was to ask Beijing to stop subsidies of that program. The visit ended Friday with little apparent progress in resolving a trade dispute between the two countries.
Should we worry? About that, no. Semiconductors are a very complex and expensive game to play. China is already in the game, and goodly portion of any semiconductor spending in China goes into the pockets of American and Japanese fab equipment suppliers like Applied Materials, LAM Research and Tokyo Electron. China has a native semiconductor equipment industry, but it’s hardly setting the world afire.
Tsinghua Unigroup is already in the process of building three fabs at a cost of $70 billion, focused on the memory business. Samsung is currently the top player in this space, followed by Hynix and Micron, and right now that space is pretty profitable.
In China the question is always how much of that investment is real, and how much is illusion. A lot of those “under construction” fabs never materialize, either unable to attract investors or having their funds magically siphoned off to some other enterprise. Also, memory chips are an extremely volatile business: In boom times (like now), they make money hand-over-fist. During busts (which are always around the corner), memory fabs barely break even, which is a big problem if you’re trying to earn back your $10 billion investment in a cutting edge 300mm fab.
A bigger concern for any foreign investor who helps build a fab in China to serve the Chinese manufacturing market is the blatant intellectual property theft, and China retaliating when a foreign manufacturer blows the whistle:
Three weeks ago, Micron and South Korean chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix all reported that the Chinese government had launched antitrust probes into their firms, and accused them of setting artificially high prices for memory chips.
Yes, but: American companies and the U.S. government have long been suspicious about the link between China’s anti-monopoly policies and its industrial goals. “They want access to the intellectual property. They need us to teach them how to do it. Once they have the industry, they want to push us out,” an industry source familiar with China’s investigation into Micron tells Axios. The price hikes, the source says, are largely due to a boom in demand for memory chips in everything from smartphones to autonomous vehicles. China’s investigation is “a clear indication that they’re not ready to make [semiconductors] work,” says the source. Micron’s fight to protect its IP is not new. Other U.S. firms have run up against the same Chinese antitrust policies or regulations and have been forced to strike deals with Beijing.
The New York Times’ Paul Mozur dove into the story a heist of Micron’s crown jewel — its chip design — in Taiwan, where the company keeps its trade secrets. Qualcomm tangled with China: “To get back in Beijing’s good graces, the company agreed to lower its prices in China, promised to shift more of its high-end manufacturing to partners in China, and pledged to upgrade the country’s technology capabilities,” the New York Times’ David Barboza reports. The same thing has happened to IBM and Apple and others. “‘I’m not sure who’s fought China and won, just like I’m not sure who’s fought a casino and won in the long run,” says Bruce Mehlman, who was an assistant secretary of commerce for technology policy under the Bush administration and now lobbies for several tech companies. Worth noting: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all have thriving semiconductor industries, too. The difference is, these countries accept competition, whereas Beijing wants to give its national champions the advantage, Jimmy Goodrich, vice president of global policy at the Semiconductor Industry Association, says. The bottom line, per the industry source: “We’re all dependent on China because everything is assembled there.”
This is a bigger problem, and will remain a bigger problem until American companies commit to building the infrastructure for a full-blown American flexible manufacturing supply chain to rival China’s.
All that said, IP theft only gets you so far in semiconductors. By the time you’ve stolen all the IP you need for a current generation chip, chances are good your rivals have already started to fab the next generation of product. And it’s not just the chip design you need to steal; you also need to steal the hundreds, if not thousands, of process step tweaks you need to properly fab 50 layer, 7nm node chips at acceptable uniformity across 300mm wafers. Screw up any one of those steps and your wafer yields crash and you’re making really large, expensive coasters.
Equally challenging for China is hiring qualified semiconductor engineers in China, people with the knowledge and experience to correct process steps to improve yields. There aren’t nearly enough being produced domestically, so China has recently started setting up satellite offices in America and Japan.
Tawain, on the other hand, has all the pieces to the puzzle (save, once again, semiconductor equipment manufacturing), with TSMC dominating the global foundry market. Foundries don’t design their own chips, they manufacture chips designed by others, and TSMC’s mastery of process control is probably second only to Intel’s. This is one reason defending Taiwan is in America’s national interest.
The Trump Administration should continue to push China on the intellectual property issue, and if the cost of doing business in China is giving away your intellectual property, foreign companies should refrain from manufacturing in China. (Alas, a resolution that’s easier said than done…)
The whole “OMG, we lock up illegal alien kids!” panic the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have ginned up is a sign of just how good the economy is under President Donald Trump, and just how desperate Democrats are to find an issue to run on in November. Faced with the prospect of running on tranny bathrooms, gun control and calling ordinary Americans racists (yet again), they hit upon screeching about the fate of some 2,000 illegal alien minors as the only naked emotional appeal left in their arsenal.
Here it is, folks: the only tactic Democrats could agree to run on this fall.
So naturally, President Trump defused the issue he inherited from Obama with an executive order, causing Democrats to turn on a dime from “OMG, this is the most important moral crisis of our time!” to “That’s not good enough, you heartless monster, we want immediate full amnesty or we keep screaming our heads off!” Ditto for Sen. Ted Cruz’s legislative fix, which was instantly labeled a “cynical ploy.” You know, just like Democrats manufacturing the whole issue.
Expect Democrats to to start bloviating about something equally ludicrous but completely different with the same overheated emotional furor next week…
“It’s a very complex situation,” he told “CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King. “When you have high levels of activity, and a lack of resources – personnel, technology, infrastructure – it creates this kind of chaotic environment.”
I know this is complicated for you and your team, but what people are talking about is cruel and inhuman behavior, is how it’s perceived,” said King. “Do you actually agree with this policy?”
“I do agree that we have to do something. We created this situation by not doing anything,” Padilla said. “So what happened with zero tolerance is, we were exempting a population from the law. And what happens when you do that, it creates a draw for a certain group of people that rises to trends that become a crisis.”
“I’m going to give you an example: Because we were releasing family units, May 2, just last month, we had a full-blown MS-13 (gang member) accompanied by his one-year-old child. He thought he was going get released into the community; that was not the case.”
Within the last two days, the anti-Trump Resistance has endorsed the brutal murder of ICE agents, the stalking of their children, the public mobbing of a DHS official, and the doxxing of White House officials. And also they're very worried about civility and norms you guys.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) June 20, 2018
The Small Arms Survey estimates there are 393,300,000 civilian-owned firearms in the United States. The survey, performed by the Graduate Institute of Geneva, estimated the United States military has about 4.5 million firearms. It put the number of firearms owned by police throughout the United States at just over 1 million.
That means American civilians own nearly 100 times as many firearms as the U.S. military and nearly 400 times as many as law enforcement.
Federal Bureau of Investigation background check records suggest that civilians bought more than 2 million guns in May alone, which means civilians purchase more than double the number of firearms owned by police departments. The number of gun-related civilian background checks in May and April, at over 4.7 million, is greater than the number of firearms currently owned by the American military.
The FBI reported processing more than 25.2 million gun-related civilian background checks in 2017, which is more than the 22.7 million guns the Small Arms Survey estimates are currently held by every law enforcement agency in the world combined. Between 2012 and 2017, the FBI reported conducting more than 135 million civilian gun checks—more than the 133 million guns the Small Arms Survey estimates are in all the world’s military stockpiles.
The Small Arms Survey estimated there are about 1 billion firearms currently in circulation throughout the world. By its estimate, about 85 percent are owned by civilians and American civilians own nearly 40 percent of all the guns in the world. Researchers said worldwide firearms ownership was up since the last time they studied the issue about a decade ago.
“We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “In light of the deeply revealing nature of CSLI, its depth, breadth, and comprehensive reach, and the inescapable and automatic nature of its collection, the fact that such information is gathered by a third party does not make it any less deserving of Fourth Amendment protection.”
Roberts was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
This is the rare case where I side with the court’s liberal wing against its conservative wing. If there is a constitutional right to privacy, then surely metadata, which reveals your minute-by-minute physical location, among many other things, should be covered.
In a 5-4 decision that broke across the court’s usual ideological lines (Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, Ginsburg, and Gorsuch in favor, Roberts, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissenting), the Supreme Court has ruled in South Dakota v. Wayfair that states can force online retailers to collect sales tax for them, rejecting previous Quill Corp. v. North Dakota precedent from 1992 that required a physical presence in the state. “Rejecting the physical presence rule is necessary to ensure that artificial competitive advantages are not created by this Court’s precedents.”
As someone who both buys and sells books online, this is not an outcome I would have wished, but having Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch on the affirmative side of the opinion does give me pause. But the golden age of the wide-open online commerce Internet appear to be drawing to a close.
Here’s the text of the decision itself (Legal Insurruection initially had a link to the wrong decision).
This morning, the EU’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) voted in favor of the legislation, called the Copyright Directive. Although most of the directive simply updates technical language for copyright law in the age of the internet, it includes two highly controversial provisions. These are Article 11, a “link tax,” which would force online platforms like Facebook and Google to buy licenses from media companies before linking to their stories; and Article 13, an “upload filter,” which would require that everything uploaded online in the EU is checked for copyright infringement. (Think of it like YouTube’s Content ID system but for the whole internet.)
EU lawmakers critical of the legislation say these Articles may have been proposed with good intentions — like protecting copyright owners — but are vaguely worded and ripe for abuse. “The methods to address the issue are catastrophic and will hurt the people they want to protect,” Green MEP Julia Reda told journalists earlier this week. After this morning’s vote, Reda told The Verge: “It’s a sad day for the internet … but the fight is not over yet.”
Both Article 11 and Article 13 were approved by the JURI committee this morning but won’t become official legislation until passed by the entire European Parliament in a plenary vote. There’s no definite timetable for when such a vote might take place, but it would likely happen sometime between December of this year and the first half of 2019.
“Vaguely worded and ripe for abuse.” Music to a bureaucrat’s ears!
Both those provisions fly in the face basic structure of the Internet, where linking is free and censorship is damage to be routed around. And make no mistake, once they have an “upload filter” in place, there’s no way it will be limited to “copyright infringement.” Expect them to start by censoring “hate speech” (such as videos critical of unassimilated Muslim immigration into Europe) and anything else sufficiently critical of sacred European goals. Calls for Italy to quit the Euro? Sorry, those have to be banned in the interest of “economic stability.”
Set aside, for now, the impossibility of implementing this for all but the biggest sites in Europe, much less the world. Merely attempting it would no doubt do a lot of damange and have that fabled “chilling effect” on free speech.
Let’s hope this legislation gets killed by Eurocratic inertia…
(Hat tip: Slashdot.)