Birthright Citizenship Whack-A-Mole
Plus: Democratic donors are a definitely maybe meh about Kamala Harris, Mamdani’s campaign fonts & American prison populations are declining.
In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in the case over birthright citizenship—but before your blood pressure spikes, let’s clarify what happened. In Trump v. CASA, President Donald Trump had issued an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship for those children born to undocumented immigrants or people in the country on short-term visas. The case centered on two legal questions:
Can a president end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants or temporary visa holders?
Can a federal district judge issue a nationwide (a.k.a. universal) injunction that blocks a federal policy for everyone, not just the plaintiffs in a case?
Knowing the first question wouldn’t go down without a fight (don’t worry, it will likely make a reprise later), the administration asked the Supreme Court to rule on the second. With this 6-3 decision, it effectively limits a legal tool that has been used to freeze controversial federal policies nationwide.
What does this mean? Well, it’s all a bit unclear. I understand the frustration of your policy decisions being foiled by one judge in the middle-of-nowhere Idaho, which is to say, from the perspective of NYC, DC, or Cambridge, everywhere in Idaho, but by its title alone, FEDERAL LAW, you would assume that it applies FEDERALLY. It seems like what this is saying is that federal law is going to have different applications depending on which state you’re in.
Also notable, they also decided on Mahmoud v. Taylor today, 6-3, with the parents who opposed the Montgomery County Education Board’s allowance of Pride Puppy in the schools. I guess Sarah Isgur will have to retire her Pride Puppy-inspired leather jacket.
Welcome to the Gist List—a news roundup, things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.
Here’s what’s on my mind:
😕 Democrats are definitely, maybe, pumped about Kamala Harris… sorta.
🪧 Behind Mamdani’s bodega-inspired campaign imagery.
🎻 Tech billionaire proves, once and for all, orchestras don’t need a conductor.
🌸 The seedy underbelly of the luxury scent industry.(🔒)
🌟 Good News: Prison populations are declining. (🔒)
The Gist List
California Donors Cool on Kamala Harris: 'No One Is Incredibly Pumped.' (Politico)
Kamala Harris is making the rounds in a potential run for governor of California and firing up the crowds to a temperate climate-controlled degree. Democratic donors are still nursing their wounds from this last election, but Harris is finding her quiet donor “thanks a lot” tour is only piquing mild-to-moderate curiosity. The thinking is that if she can lock up the “fair” vote, the “to middling” will naturally follow.
I mean, how hard is it to dial the energy of “not disinterested” up to 11? Well, her team seems to think that she’d be the frontrunner thanks to strong name recognition, a seasoned fundraising network, and support among Black voters. IE, the Andrew Cuomo game plan. But while she’s dipping her toes into the lukewarm waters of candidacy, she still hasn’t addressed the issues of Biden's cognitive health, and some donors don’t want to reopen the old wound, with one donor calling it “traumatizing.” For now, she only appears to inspire interest off the charts of “meh, I guess.”
Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign Logo Looked Nothing Like a Campaign Logo (Curbed)
Say what you will about the results of the NYC mayoral Democratic primary, but you have to hand it to Mamdani—his campaign signage was amazing. Instead of the staid, tired-looking red, white and blue color scheme, his design team at Forge punched it up with yellows, oranges, and a shocking blue. Moreover, they used type that made it look like a hand-drawn store lettering that you’d see on any family-owned store in one of the outer boroughs.
For whatever reasons his campaign was successful, the tone this set helped. Instead of the emotionally distant, I’m-trying-to-connect-with-the-youths vibe most campaigns give off, this had an anti-corporate, grassroots feel that was as approachable as, well… any family-owned store in one of the outer boroughs.
Tech CEO Pays to Conduct the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (The Globe and Mail)
Tech CEO Mandle Cheung paid $400,000 to conduct the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, proving that if you have enough money, you can be whatever you want when you grow up. And no, they did not invite him. He hired the orchestra out to live out this fantasy.
If you go to enough orchestral concerts, you might see the gimmick every now and then where they invite a donor or child up to conduct some John Philip Sousa march. Here's the secret: When that happens, it's either a piece that is so easy and well-rehearsed that the orchestra doesn't need a conductor, or it is a piece that wasn't designed to have a conductor.
This, however, was different. Cheung conducted Mahler's Symphony No. 2, which requires 90-100 musicians, two vocal soloists, and a choir of around 100 people. The piece runs an hour and a half long, plus five minutes if you include the pause between the first two movements—which he did. The orchestra got ahead of him a few times, so perhaps they didn't actually need him. Nevertheless, he was beaming by the end of it. Remarkably, the show sold out and elicited a deeply emotional response from the audience.
Behind the World's Fragrances Sits a Shadowy Oligopoly (The Economist)🔒
The fragrance industry, from luxury perfumes to dish detergent, has a seedy, sweet, musky underbelly. It turns out that the majority of the market is controlled by four firms: IFF, Symrise, DSM-Firmenich and Givaudan. Obviously, to regulators, this smells suspicious. The industry is now facing multiple antitrust investigations throughout the EU, UK, Switzerland, and potentially the U.S. for alleged price-fixing and market collusion.
These companies are also facing external threats. Cutting through the stench of overpriced perfumes is a growing industry of cheap dupes that smell, if not completely, almost like the real thing.
America’s Incarceration Rate Is About to Fall Off a Cliff (The Atlantic)🔒
DEPARTMENT OF UNDER NOTICED PROGRESS: Prison populations are getting smaller, dropping from 1.6 million in 2009 to just over 1.2 million in 2023. One of the biggest reasons for this, according to Keith Humphreys, is that the high-crime generation of the '70s–'90s is aging out of their ne'er-do-well (and I would add leaded gasoline huffing) ways and not being replaced by younger generations. The current massive prison population is just a snapshot of historic crime waves of people who started a career in/life of/lead-infused enthusiasm for crime when they were young. In 2007, young men aged 18–19 were imprisoned at 5× the rate of senior citizens, but by 2022, they were imprisoned at half the rate.
For the first time in a long time, there is an off-ramp to our prison problems. We can stop building prisons except to replace new ones, and we can start decarcerating prisoners who are old or sick and pose no real public safety risk. We can also readily ignore policies that treat the real problem of mass incarceration with the foolish idea of no incarceration.
Yesterday on The Show: Covid, Closed Schools & Closed Minds
David Zweig, author of An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions. talks about public health's blind spots, when the caution became the risk. Plus, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reshapes the CDC's vaccine advisory panel—swapping experts for skeptics and dredging up the long-debunked thimerosal panic, on his way to declaring war on mayonnaise. And in the Spiel a U.S. strike on Iran’s Fordow facility may have been less obliteration than “oblit-ish-ation,” though both the administration and its critics are spinning narratives faster than centrifuges.
This newsletter was put together in collaboration with Kathleen Sykes. All mistakes belong to Mike Pesca.
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