The Ennead Awards: Nine Justices, Nine Prizes
Well, folks, before the arguments to the Supreme Court on Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act are erased from your memory tapes to make room for “Thrift Shop” (clean version only, please!), we present the First-Ever Ennead Awards. There are — conveniently — nine categories, to wit:
Most Willfully Clueless Award: To Justice Antonin Scalia, for his remarks that sociologists were in disagreement about the effects of gay and lesbian parenting on children. OK, they’re not. The most one can say is that more evidence would be helpful, but this position is usually taken by those who are trying to avoid the implications of the studies that do exist — and show that kids do just fine across all measures when raised by same-sex parents. It might be that Scalia was sending out one of his increasingly high-pitched dog whistles to the far right, a sonic treat that was prominently featured during his otherwise-inexplicable excoriation of the Obama Administration for not doing enough to deal with illegal immigration. But it might also be that, once again, the opera-loving oenophile just didn’t do his homework. As Maureen Dowd pointed out, he didn’t even seem to know how many states have full marriage equality. (He might have just been posing, though.) And last year, he seemed to lament the suggestion that he should actually read the Affordable Care Act before deciding its constitutionality. Try that in your job.
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Best Performance by an Actor in a Fantasy: To Chief Justice John Roberts. When the Justices agreed to hear the case, some of us hoped that they would finally take up the issue of whether discrimination based on sexual orientation should be judged by what the Court calls “heightened scrutiny.” It doesn’t look like the Court’s going to do that. In fact, I doubt they’re even going to get into the vast equal protection problems at all. And one reason for their declining to do so was voiced by the Chief Justice, who suggested that gays and lesbians don’t need the suspect classification designation that’s reserved for groups that lack political power. According to Roberts, the reason same-sex marriage laws have passed is because of our powerful lobbying. Then he added:
As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case.
OK, this is a valid point (and one I made, in a somewhat different way, in this Slate piece). But here’s the much more persuasive response of Roberta Kaplan (representing Edie Windsor, the DOMA plaintiff):
The fact of the matter is, Mr. Chief Justice, is that no other group in recent history has been subjected to popular referenda to take away rights that have already been given or exclude those rights, the way gay people have. And only two of those referenda have ever lost.
[A]nd until 1990 gay people were not allowed to enter this country. So I don’t think that the political power of gay people today could possibly be seen within that framework, and certainly is analogous — I think gay people are far weaker than the women were at the time [the Court found women to be a “suspect class.â€]
Just to make sure no one else might claim this award, the Chief Justice also expressed mild incredulity that the 84 Senators who voted for DOMA might have been motivated by a dislike of lesbian and gay people. Sustaining this particular fantasy requires ignoring the contribution of our next award winner…[1. Justice Roberts would also have won the “Oops!” Award if the Academy had recognized the category. At one point, he let slip the obvious point that Congress wasn’t really concerned with uniformity in enacting DOMA, but in something else: “Do you think Congress has the power to interfere with the [oops!!]…to not adopt the state definition….”]
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Best Audiobook Reading Performance: To Justice Elena Kagan. Her sparring with Paul Clement, who was trying to defend the indefensible DOMA, was devastating. When Clement kept insisting that the real purpose of DOMA was to ensure uniformity, she confronted him:
JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, is what happened in 1996 — and I’m going to quote from the House Report here — is that “Congress decided to reflect an honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality.”
Is that what happened in 1996?
MR. CLEMENT: Does the House Report say that? Of course, the House Report says that. And if that’s enough to invalidate the statute, then you should invalidate the statute.
Yes, it does. And yes, you should.
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The Lactose-Intolerance Award: To Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who delivered this dairy product:
It’s — it’s — as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes [that confer federal advantages], and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You’re saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage.
Well, we know what she thinks of DOMA. But I don’t want to milk the point any further.
I mean, take a state that really does nothing whatsoever. They have no benefits, no nothing, no nothing.
Anything but that!
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[To a flabbergasted Charles Cooper]: “And you might address why you think we should take and decide this case.” (Really? Now? Over at Slate, I offered a possible reading of this statement.)[T]here is an immediate legal injury…and that’s the voice of these children. There are some 40,000 children in California, according to the Red Brief, that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don’t you think?
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John Culhane is the co-author of the new book, Same-Sex Legal Kit for Dummies. He is a law professor who writes about various and sundry topics, including: disaster compensation; tort law; public health law; literature; science; sports; his own personal life (when he can bear the humanity); and, especially, LGBT rights and issues. He teaches at the Widener University School of Law, and is also a contributing writer for Slate.
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Despite repeatedly endorsing Viktor Orbán, praising him as his “twin” in Europe, and dispatching Vice President JD Vance to Budapest to campaign for him, President Donald Trump now claims he had little to do with the far-right Christian nationalist prime minister’s reelection bid — which ended in a massive landslide defeat Sunday, ending 16 years of authoritarian rule.
“I wasn’t that involved in this one,” Trump said of Orbán’s failed reelection effort, telling ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that the Hungarian right-wing populist “was behind substantially,” while praising him as “a good man.”
Noting that Orbán is “a key figure in the global far-right movement and is also allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” The Daily Beast reports that Trump had been “insisting he wasn’t actively campaigning for him.”
Trump “had been posting on Truth Social before the election, urging people to vote for Orban, whom he has described as ‘a true friend,'” The Daily Beast reported. During his time in Hungary, Vice President Vance called the Hungarian leader a “wise and smart” man, while describing his authoritarian regime as a “model for the continent.”
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But Trump’s support for the embattled Orbán has taken its toll. The Daily Beast describes him as “wounded” from his attempts to prop up the Hungarian illiberal nationalist ruler, and points to British think tank Chatham House, which suggested the White House’s “intervention” in Hungary “now looks more like a political own goal.”
Grégoire Roos, director of Chatham House’s Europe and Russia and Eurasia programs, noted that the Hungarian election “was monitored closely in the Oval Office,” and suggests there will be a cost.
“Several European far-right parties have already begun distancing themselves from Trump over his more erratic foreign-policy moves and this result may further accelerate a trend towards greater autonomy from MAGA. The question now is whether Washington adjusts its methods of influence in Europe or simply doubles down.”
For his part, Trump appears to have moved on.
ABC’s Karl reports that Trump told him he “likes” incoming Prime Minister Péter Magyar.
“I think the new man’s going to do a good job — he’s a good man,” Trump said. “I think he’s going to be good.”
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Image via Reuters
A “substantial anti-Trump youth movement” is missing, argues New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall, warning that apathy, social media, and artificial intelligence may be leading to the deterioration of American exceptionalism and democracy.
“We have a president who has directly attacked the finances and the intellectual freedom of colleges and universities, is building the technology for a surveillance state, undermines free and fair elections and took the nation into an unjustified war with no explanation while causing domestic economic havoc,” Edsall writes. “But one ingredient is missing: a substantial anti-Trump youth movement.”
Edsall suggests that the “No Kings” movement is increasingly comprised of a demographic that is older than students and younger men and women.
Asked about their mobilization, Dana Fisher, a professor in the School of International Service at American University, said, “We’re not seeing them in the streets at No Kings events.”
“At No Kings 1 (June 14, 2025) the median age was 36,” Fisher wrote, “at No Kings 2 (Oct. 18, 2025) the median age was 44, and at No Kings 3 (March 28, 2026) it was 48. Clearly, it’s getting older.”
Asking why, Edsall writes he spoke with experts who “pointed to such structural developments as the explosion in social media usage and public access to artificial intelligence, both of which weaken users’ sense of efficacy and agency.”
Democrats will bear the brunt of the cost of social media and artificial intelligence, given that those “adverse effects are most acute for young liberals, especially young liberal women.”
There are other factors at work.
Sociology professor emeritus Richard Braungart “argued in an email that over 70 years the United States has undergone a moral and ideological transformation that has created a hostile environment for the liberal activist young.”
Braungart posited that there “is a widening gap and split between spirituality and materialism in our society today.”
He pointed to his youth, “a world of moral and spiritual values (Marshall Plan, U.S.A.I.D., CARE, good government that served the people), which, unlike today, heavily influenced political decisions. Politicians were held accountable for their moral lapses and flagrant violations.”
But now, “Americans are living in a crumbling moral wasteland, where corruption and raw-power politics rule supreme and are carried out without ethics, morality, personal responsibility, accountability, nor concern for people, the environment and a healthy future for upcoming generations.”
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt also points to social media, arguing that it “has done more harm to the Democrats than to the Republicans, both by weakening their young people (e.g., their requests for trigger warnings and safe spaces) and also by radicalizing them. They in turn push the party to take more extreme cultural positions, which drive noncollege voters to the right.”
Haidt has more to say about social media, and specifically about short-video platforms.
“I believe that TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are bringing America a cognitive catastrophe,” he writes. “The diminishment of capability is hitting both sides, but it is the left that most needs its young people to come out and fight for change.”
Edsall has a warning: “As apathy spreads, the ability of authoritarian leaders in the Trump mold to smash democratic norms and wrest control of elections will grow stronger.”
Image via Reuters
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, 76, has given no public indication he plans to retire — but if he does, Senate Republicans stand ready to fast-track President Donald Trump’s nominee through committee and lock in a confirmation before the November midterm elections.
“Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that Republicans are ‘prepared’ for the possibility of a retirement as speculation swirls that Alito, a conservative vote on the Supreme Court, is weighing stepping down at the end of the current term, slated for the end of June or early July,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“That’s a contingency, I think, around here you always have to be prepared for,” Thune said. “And if that were to happen, yes, we would be prepared to confirm.”
Alito is thought to want to avoid a similar repeat of events when liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg eschewed requests from the left to retire during President Barack Obama’s term. Republican President Donald Trump was able to fill her seat upon her death with a conservative, changing the balance on the Court.
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Justice Alito is not the court’s oldest justice — that distinction belongs to Justice Clarence Thomas, 77, who has given no public indication he plans to step down either.
“I hope they stay ’cause I think they’re fantastic, OK?” Trump told Politico in December 2025, referring to both Alito and Thomas. “Both of those men are fantastic.”
Should Alito or Thomas — or both — retire, Trump could secure a conservative majority, possibly for decades to come. Chief Justice John Roberts, also a conservative, is 71 and is not rumored to be seeking retirement.
The three remaining conservative justices Trump placed on the court during his first term. Amy Coney Barrett is 54, Brett Kavanaugh is 61, and Neil Gorsuch is 58.
The three liberal justices are Sonia Sotomayor, 71, Elena Kagan, 65, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, 55.
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Image via Reuters
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