7 ms·
I think this both overstates and understates the case. The evidence being weak does not invalidate the decision; as the court notes, the government gets substan
by andrewla 19d ago
I think this both overstates and understates the case. The evidence being weak does not invalidate the decision; as the court notes, the government gets substantial deference on matters of national security.
The invalidation comes from the fact that this is clearly retaliatory behavior for speech; and the evidence for this is fairly strong since the administration has made public statements to that effect.
The evidence being weak means that it is clear that there is no reasonable belief that the cause of action is anything but an attempt to apply a penalty for the use of protected speech.
- superxpro12 19d ago[flagged]
- ok123456 19d ago"National security matters" was never in good faith. As a concept, it's used as an escape hatch whenever it wants to avoid public scrutiny.
- throwitaway222 19d agoI dislike it when people claim speech is violence. Like if you're trying to have a conversation on what should be or not - then people claim that it's a violent act to talk about.
- senderista 19d agoThe point of that is to justify actual violence to suppress speech.
- edoceo 19d ago[flagged]
- chihuahua 19d ago"Speech is violence" is very popular with the campus groups that want to ban speakers they disagree with. I'm not sure if it's still going on, but a few years ago the same crowd kept insisting that "silence is violence" which is even more ludicrous - if you're not parroting their critical race theory talking points at every opportunity, YOU are committing an act of violence.
- thenayr 19d ago[dead]
- FloorEgg 19d agoI wish the people down voting you would take a moment to explain why. Not because I agree with you, but because I don't know about this and I am curious and would appreciate a calm rational person to explain why they disagree with you.
- madrox 19d agoI have noticed fads in rhetoric as I've gotten older and lived through many of these moments. The rhetorical fads are mostly about structuring an argument where to disagree makes you appear beyond the pale. What fascinating about these is that they eventually turn on themselves, because rhetoric has no logical foundation and can be twisted to mean anything.
- hsuduebc2 19d agoAt this point, it seems pretty obvious to me that every group in this conflict is willing to do basically whatever it takes to push through what it wants. Both sides do it so clumsily and stupidly that they only end up pissing off both observers and their opponents even more. Consensus can never really be reached, because the whole point of these theatrics is the fight itself. I’m not American, so I’m not used to this kind of thing at all, which makes it even stranger for me to watch one group roleplaying as deeply religious while at the same time embodying arrogance, greed, and a lust for power, while on the other side you have people fighting for equality so hard that it eventually turns into plain old racism, sexism, and mental gymnastics, with definitions of words and concepts being constantly changed just to make them fit into an already flimsy theory meant to explain why the patriarchy or some similar nonsense is supposedly to blame for everything. I’m genuinely curious to see how the conflict between these two groups develops from here. It just keeps getting more and more absurd.
- fwip 19d agoI think you may have replied to the wrong post.
- kfse 19d agoThat was essentially the point made by America in allied-occupied Germany, which completely suspended free speech. It does happen.
- rogerrogerr 19d ago[flagged]
- bloppe 19d agoDemocrats tend to pass more legislation
- ecocentrik 19d agoPolitics is frequently a game of semantic drift. The application of labels with unclear meaning to further dilute meaning or extend it for the purpose of engagement, legal reclassification... it's not engineering and you can't expect well defined terms from people who want power without accountability.
- jacobolus 19d agoPolitics doesn't work if a significant part of the leadership is constantly acting in bad faith, and behaving essentially sociopathically. Voters' and citizens' (and some judges') willingness to support sociopathic behavior by leaders is a profound failing at their basic social duties, and is deeply shameful.
- LordDragonfang 19d ago> Politics doesn't work if a significant part of the leadership is constantly acting in bad faith, and behaving essentially sociopathically. Not to be too contrarian, but I'm certain there are many people who would claim that's the only way it has ever worked (poorly)
- jacobolus 19d agoPeople always feel like that to a certain extent, but both quantitatively and qualitatively there have been very dramatic shifts in the past few decades in the USA.
- pvab3 19d agoIt happens in a lot of ways. People call things violence, terrorism, matters of public health, or war to justify whatever it is they want.
- claytongulick 19d agoCongress ceding it's authority to the executive branch is an issue of national concern, has been going on for decades, and is definitely not limited to one specific party [1], though I do agree that the current administration has been testing the limits of executive power more than any other that I can recall in my lifetime. [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/its-time-tear-executive-branchs-blank-check https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/its-...
- XorNot 19d agoThe current administration is the final nail in the coffin of presidential-style governments versus the parliamentary system. Separating the legislature and the executive has no useful purpose: if the president is going to defacto enact law should be handled by the legislature, then there's no reason they shouldn't just be the head of the legislature and forced to actually whip the votes to do so.
- shimman 19d agoThe US president was always designed to be like this. It's like people are deliberately forgetting anti-federalists were not only a thing, they warned about these exact same problems over 200 years ago.
- XorNot 19d agoAnd built the system as it is anyway: with no practical way to prevent this from happening. And we see it over and over again in other presidential style systems, the US is just the largest one left to fall.
- shimman 19d agoYou say no practical way, I say system working exactly as designed. Many people who wrote the constitution were actively disdainful of "the democracy" problem. They openly hated that citizens were practicing local politics in towns across Massachusetts while thinking that plantation slave owners in Virginia, that were equivalent to oligarchs (and ruled as such too), were a more "noble" form of government. They used Shays' Rebellion as a pretext to push for constitutional reform. The constitution is explicitly written to prevent change. It's why change is so hard to implement and requires actual courage (see America's second founding). One of the first official acts George Washington did was sign the fugitive slave act then tried to deputize his nephew in the treasury department to kidnap a free woman who was his former slave, Ona Judge, because Washington didn't want to argue in a public court why she was his property. Great video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhxivf0gmj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhxivf0gmj8 Many of the founders were rotten ghouls (Alexander Hamilton's favorite form of government was a monarchy), you need to read what they exactly think because they designed a government where about less than 2% of the US population could vote and design a system where the only house that commoner's could be elected into would be the weakest. They openly wrote about all of this too, it's not anything new. When they wrote about freedom they weren't talking about 95% of society, they were talking about a very specific type of people that excluded many. The rot has always been there, it's why there is an allure of truth when conservatives say they just want to return to the founding. Look at what the founding actually entails, there is nothing unamerican about white national colonialism. That's why we mustn't look to the past to build a better future.
- throwaway85825 19d agoIn the 40s the government took control of the whole economy in the name of national security, in the 1860s the government suspended the constitution in the name of national security. None of this is new.
- seizethecheese 19d ago"In the 40s" and "in the 1860s" here are obfuscations of "during WWII" and "during the civil war". Extraordinary actions in the name of national security during a literal civil war or during a time of total war are to be expected. The comparison to other times is not meaningful.
- tremon 19d agoIsn't this exactly what the war on terror was for? To always be able to claim that the US is currently at war?
- blitzar 19d agothe war on terror is/was as real as the war on drugs and the war on christmas
- shimman 19d agoSomeone must tell the 200,000+ dead Iraqi civilians that the war was fake.
- LordDragonfang 19d agoStrictly speaking, it was, since we never actually declared war on Iraq. Which only makes the whole tragedy a more egregious violation.
- shakna 19d agoDeclaring war isn't... Really a thing. Since around WWII. Acknowledging a war has happened, is what the notification to Congress is, and that happened.
- feshbach 19d ago[flagged]
- jibal 19d agoA prime example is that the Trump regime overthrew all California environmental regulations regarding oil drilling by Sable in the name of national security: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/trump-intervened-to-revive-a-fraught-santa-barbara-oil-pipeline-but-why/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/trump-intervene...
- _3u10 19d agoNational security excuses enjoy widespread bipartisan support. Want to execute a citizen without trial? National security. Want to execute his child without trial? National security.
- msandford 19d ago[flagged]
- _3u10 19d ago[flagged]
- lern_too_spel 19d agoObjectively, the courts ruled for Obama and against Trump. You can read the rulings to understand why.
- LordDragonfang 19d agoGP already explicitly called it bipartisan, and it was bipartisan well before Obama (though if we're pointing fingers at a modern president for accelerating the abuse of "national security", it really should be Dubya).
- msandford 18d agoIt was literally Obama who did the things mentioned that had bipartisan support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awla...
- analog8374 19d agoRemember covid? We all fell into lockstep with great eagerness. Suddenly everybody agreed on what's good and bad, who's good and bad. And why. So don't go pointing fingers. Attend to the 2x4 in your own eye because it's happening to you right now.
- leonidasrup 19d agoRestriction on the movement of people, animals, and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests is much older then COVID. " The word quarantine comes from quarantena or quarantaine, meaning "forty days", used in the Venetian language in the 14th and 15th centuries and also in France. The word is designated in the period during which all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine
- analog8374 19d agoIf the past has taught us anything it's that we can contrive a logically-consistent, authoritatively-founded rationale to support literally anything.
- omgwtfbyobbq 19d agoThere are 5th amendment issues too IIRC.
- jonas21 19d agoWell, I guess it's good that corporations have free speech protections under the First Amendment. I often see it argued here that they shouldn't.
- hn_acc1 19d agoThey arguably have more free speech rights than the average person with citizens united..
- jonas21 19d agoHow so?
- iwontberude 18d agoBecause corps can donate unlimited money to super pacs while regular people have to pay for medical expenses (in addition to inflation, DOGEd government programs, gambling addictions, AI layoffs, etc) that keep them from having a political voice commensurate to institutions and financial whales. Regular people are basically subsidizing the same corporations that are taking away their representation.
- grackasthebig 18d agoMoney affords direct access and reach while the average person gets a queue You and I get an email box often full to communicate with officials over Rich people call and text them
- 1718627440 17d agoYou and me can also walk into their office.
- hn_acc1 13d agoHow many people can afford to take a day off work if they don't have flex hours?