Mid January Updates

Iran, Minnesota, and the Supreme Court

Iranians Still Protesting

As of today, the people of Iran have been demonstrating in the streets for 17 days. The leaders have turned off the internet, so we do not have any video evidence for the last two or three days. Reports suggest they IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) have killed between 12,000 to 20,000 people.

Pres. Trump has repeatedly stated that he would support the protestors and “punish” the regime officials. He even told protestors to record the names of anyone involved in massacres because they would pay for their crimes. But no one yet knows what he and American forces will do. (Anything could change between when I write this and when you read this.)

The son of the former Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, has been speaking with American officials and has been sending word to protestors in Iran to continue and to the Iranian military and police to side with the people and turn on the Islamic regime.

No one knows where this will end. The best case scenario is seeing Pahlavi return as at least a transitional leader until something more permanent can be established. If that were to happen, the largest sponsor of terrorism would be eliminated and China’s major source of oil would become an American ally. Iran also produces the drones for the Russian war in Ukraine, which would be shut off immediately. Half the parties in the China-Russia-Venezuela-Iran axis would be taken out.

The downside is that a nation of 90 million people in the crossroads of Europe and Asia could be thrown into chaos. Our interventions have not always turned out well, so this is a real possibility.

But if you hear people sound excited about the events in Iran it is because this is an historic opportunity for releasing millions from oppression and rearranging the geostrategic map of the world. More later.

Minnesota

The death of Renee Good in the incident with ICE officials continues to divide the country and the state. More video has come out without changing minds. People who initially thought she was murdered still do. Those who thought the officer defended himself still do.

It is very unlikely that the ICE agent will face criminal charges. There are strong protections for law enforcement officers who believe their lives are in danger. Any reasonable assessment at the time (not in hindsight, which is what anyone watching the videos are doing) that the officer was in danger exculpates the individual. Minnesota and federal laws are all in agreement, as is Supreme Court precedent. And in case you were wondering, cars count as deadly force in these cases.

One of the reasons Minnesota is the center of this case is that the state and Minneapolis are both “sanctuary” jurisdictions. Neither will cooperate with federal officials enforcing immigration laws. Where in other states the police will accompany and protect ICE officers and hand over to them anyone they happen to arrest who has a deportation order, sanctuary jurisdictions will not accompany police nor hand over offenders. If ICE is going to deport anyone, its officers will have to track them down without the assistance of local police. There are many cases of police releasing people they have arrested so that ICE can’t get them. Indeed, a Wisconsin judge named Hannah Dugan took a man who appeared before her court for battery charges through her chambers and helped him escape. She has since been convicted of felony obstruction.

Why surge ICE to Minnesota? There are several reasons. Recent revelations of fraud by the Somali community put it in the news; Tim Walz was the Democratic nominee for VP and so was in the spotlight; it is smaller and easier to make an example of the state than, say, California or New York. These might seem unfair, but they are real reasons.

Supreme Court

The Court is expected to release decisions on major topics today or later this week. One is on the powers of the President to impose tariffs. Others involve voting rights, specifically whether the apportionment of “majority minority” districts (Congressional districts that are gerrymandered to produce a population that is greater than 50% minority, which in practice means African American) is mandated by the Voting Rights Act or is unconstitutional.

Yesterday, the Court heard oral arguments in the case of two states, Idaho and West Virginia, that are being sued for their laws that do not permit men to play in women’s sports, even if those men say they are women. These two cases were consolidated into one because they involve the same issues, even though one is about a university and the other about a high school. The Supreme Court will often do this.

The question is whether banning these men from women’s sports violates Title IX and/or the 14th Amendment. Title IX guarantees that no one can be denied benefits or opportunities based on their sex in educational settings. The largest impact has been on the expansion of women’s sports since its enactment in 1972. It has been interpreted to mean that schools have to spend the exact same amount of money on women’s sports as on men’s.

The 14th Amendment is a Reconstruction amendment to the Constitution passed in the wake of the Civil War. I wrote about this amendment in relation to birthright citizenship and the question of “jurisdiction.” The same section continues:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

So the question before the Court is whether women only sports leagues either violate Title IX’s protection from discrimination based on sex or on the 14th Amendment’s “privileges or immunities” clause or its “equal protection” clause. But the real question, of course, is whether a man who says he is a woman can legally be a woman. Yes, the world has come to this point.

There are three possible outcomes, as I can see:

1. The Court punts as it did in the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and says this is a state issue and they can do what they like, allowing Idaho and West Virginia to ban men but allowing California, for instance, to include them in women’s sports. This is unlikely because the cases hinge on a part of the Constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment.

2. The Court could say that men who claim to be women are legally women. The liberals on the Court would like to do so, but the legal reasoning for this would make a bowl of spaghetti look like a straight line. But Roe stood for almost 50 years, so stranger things have happened.

3. The Court could rule that men are men and women are women. This, of course, is the most straightforward and logical position to take. It conforms with law, biology, and is attested to by both birds and bees. This is complicated, however, because of the 2020 Bostock decision. In that case the Court ruled 6-3, with Justice Gorsuch writing the opinion, that “An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions. That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” Will this same reasoning apply to the question of “transwomen” (or is it “transmen”? I can never remember whether the trans refers to the destination or the origin.)

Sic transit gloria mundi, although I don’t think any of the parties involved are named Gloria. (There’s a joke for Jane. Let’s see if she reads all the way to the end and finds it.) [That’s not much of a joke, ed.]