Category Archives: Federalist

I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing that it was all started by a mouse. So said Walt Disney in a 1954 television special, referring to Mickey Mouse, which brought his eponymous company enduring success. Nearly seven decades later, executives at The Walt Disney Company apparently think everything stems from race. Disneys embrace of critical race theory has turned a company created by its namesake to provide wholesome entertainment for the entire family into a hotbed of division.

Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute recently obtained a presentation given by Disney to its employees regarding its Reimagine Tomorrow diversity initiative. The presentation instructs Disney cast members to challenge colorblind ideologies and rhetoric, and avoid conflating the black experience with other communities of color, because of a unique history that has led to anti-black racism.

The presentation does not merely attempt to define employees by race and gender, or reference concepts of critical race theory like white fragility, intersectionality, and microaggressions. It goes further, actively indoctrinating cast members by telling them to examine and work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understandwhat needs to [be] healed. And it pits workers against each other, encouraging cast members to be accountable by flagging problematic posts on company message boards.

The presentations obsessive focus on race, racial and cultural divisions, and Americas flaws directly contradicts the image of a company firmly rooted in Americana. One cannot easily reconcile the images of Main Street, U.S.A. fashioned to resemble Disneys boyhood home of Marceline, Missouri with language instructing employees to reflect on the countrys racist infrastructure. Does CEO Bob Chapek consider America a racist country, and if so, why does the company promote nostalgia for a nation with a long history of systemic racism and transphobia?

After Rufos reporting was published, Disney issued a statement but then removed the entire diversity and inclusion program from its internal company portal.

Disneys fixation on race relations in the United States also contrasts with its behavior in China, where the company has arguably profited from racial genocide. Rather than condemning Chinas brutal crackdown on its Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang province, Disney filmed its live-action remake of Mulan there, going so far as to thank Chinese government bodies in the credits.

While current Executive Chairman and former CEO Bob Iger said in an internal training video that Disney should be taking a stand on political controversies, in 2019 he said just the opposite regarding Chinas human rights crackdown in Hong Kong: To take a position that could harm our company in some form would be a big mistake.

Finally, the presentations focus on equity focus[ing] on the equality of the outcome belies the behavior of company executives. According to the companys proxy statement, in 2020 outgoing CEO Iger received over $31.5 million in total compensation, with incoming CEO Chapek receiving another $19.5 million. If Disney wants to promote equity, does it plan on capping executive compensation at the companys median salary, to ensure all cast members receive equal outcomes?

Disney aficionados know that Roy E. Disney not once but twice used shareholder activism to defend the company his uncle founded. His first Save Disney campaign, in the 1980s, sought to prevent a hostile takeover that would dismantle the company. Twenty years later, Roy Disneys second proxy campaign ultimately led to Michael Eisners removal as CEO. As a longtime Disney owner appalled by the messages sent by this presentation, I believe that conservatives may need to embark on a third Save Disney shareholder campaign this one to sever the companys reliance on critical race theory.

On July 17, 1955, the parks namesake dedicated Disneyland by reading a plaque that began To all who come to this happy place, welcome. Little did Walt Disney suspect that decades later, his company would seek to define and divide cast members by race. Like any mortal man, Walt Disney had his faults, but he deserves better than the companys current descent into progressive indoctrination and cultural Marxism.

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It's Time For A Third 'Save Disney' Campaign To End Racial Segregation - The Federalist

Senior Editor Christopher Bedford joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinksy to talk this week in politics including the potential ousting of Rep. Liz Cheney, and how it raises the question: To what is extent is loyalty to Donald Trump a litmus test Republican leaders and Republican voters?

On the one hand, you have a good chunk of the Republican base that is more loyal to Trump than they are to the Republican party, Jashinsky said. At the same time there is the contingency of suburban voters that are Trump isnt why they vote Republican.

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Podcast: Liz Cheney And The GOP's Trump Litmus Test - The Federalist

Like the Schuman Declaration in 1950, the Conference on the Future of Europe could pave the way for a reform of the EU, the Spinelli Group which gathers federalist MEPs and national parliamentarians with the Union of European Federalists and the European Movement International has said.

In its appeal Our federal, sovereign, democratic Europe, the group demands a federal Europe. While the demand itself is not new, the document has catapulted it into the mainstream after it was signed by hundreds of political and cultural personalities from all over Europe and from different political forces.

According to Social Democrat MEP Brando Benifei (S&D), president of the Spinelli Group, the initiative stems from the groups conviction that the EU needs to change, and that action is needed now.

Mobilisation, organisation, participation, will be the key words of the next years if we actually want to produce the change that the European Union needs, Benifei said.

Renew Europe MEP Sandro Gozi, president of the Union of European Federalists (UEF), stressed the need to exploit the full political potential of this unprecedented Conference, and the appeal would kickstart a permanent dialogue with all the citizens attending the conference and with national and European parliamentarians.

The speeches by Costa and Von der Leyen were very cautious, especially on the possible objectives to be taken as a follow-up to the conference, for example on the revision of the treaties. We need to create a strong pressure from below. We will ask to participate in the conference as NGOs: its a tough battle, but we have all the requirements to ask for it, Gozi said.

Such broad support shows that after the EUs strong response to the pandemic, the Conference on the Future of Europe has raised high expectations in European society.

A recent Eurobarometer showed that citizens understand that the EU can be an instrument for solving fundamental problems, but should be strengthened in crucial areas such as health, security and defence, social policy where the EU has little competences and powers.

This would require EU treaty reform, something that shall not be taboo, according to European Parliament President David Sassoli.

Proponents believe the appeal may at least give the European Parliament the option to use for the first time its power of initiative on treaty reform as a follow up to the conference.

[Edited byAlexandra Brzozowski]

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Federalists: Conference on the Future of Europe could kickstart EU reform - EURACTIV

The Walt Disney Corporation has been allegedly holding extensive critical race theory training for employees.

Internal documents obtained by Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute, show Disney launching a diversity and inclusion program called Reimagine Tomorrow. The trainings discuss the leftist ideas of systemic racism, white privilege, white fragility, white saviors, microaggressions, and antiracism. The subtitle of the booklet guide reads: Allyship for Race Consciousness.

Disney, which owns ABC, ESPN, Touchstone Pictures, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and other major media companies, instructed employees to take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-Black racism as well as not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you, which would be emotionally taxing.

When Americas storied places of joy and refuge from the cares of the world turn themselves into partisan actors and political indoctrination factories, the harm to our social fabric is immeasurable, Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The Federalist. Disney is dividing the country it once helped to inspire, inviting entirely justified blowback from the vast number of Americans it now derogates, disregards, and caricatures. I thought politicized baseball was the unkindest cut of all, but now this. As Disney and other woke corporations plunge America into the bitterest cultural conflict in memory, they deserve to feel shame, not pride.

The training modules centralize the notion of anti-racism the idea that Americans must acknowledge their country is systemically racist and eradicate any semblance of a colorblind society. The company told employees they must also work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed, harping on the notion of implicit bias. The phrase All Lives Matter was communicated as derogatory, and so was the phrase I dont see color.

One module in the training titled What Can I Do About Racism? instructed staff to denounce the idea of equality and instead favor equity. The corporation crafted a 21-Day Racial Equity and Social Justice Challenge that was followed by a white privilege checklist. The checklist claims a variety of statements, if affirmed, indicate a persons privilege. This includes some of the following statements:

Below is the full document Rufo obtained from a Disney whistleblower:

In addition to other modules, employees were provided several outside resources. This included a guide titled 75 Things White People Can Do For Racial Justice that claims readers should support defund[ing] the police and decolonize your bookshelf.

The guide also claims employees should read The New York Timess inaccurate and divisive 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones. Streaming service Hulu, owned by Disney, is streaming a docuseries on Hannah-Joness work. The company described the 1619 Project as a landmark undertaking of the brutal racism that endures in so many aspects of American life today.

Dr. James A. Lindsay, the founder of New Discourses and the author of

This is happening pretty much everywhere, Lindsay said. Whats happening at Disney, while it looks very extreme, is actually quite typical. We see almost exactly the same kinds of things playing out in terms of what these trainings are made up of and what they include. The picture that has to come across somehow is these arent isolated incidents. This is government agencies. This is churches. This is virtually every university. This is many if not most school districts.

Further dividing its employees by race and sex, Disney crafted affinity groups for minority employees to join. The groups are titled Hola for latino individuals, Compass for asians, and Wakanda for blacks. The objective of the groups is to provide culturally-authentic insights for employees and encourage diversity, inclusion, belonging, identity, and allyship. There is no group provided for all individuals to join.

Employees told Rufo the corporation sends almost daily memos on such issues and that Disney is completely ideologically one-sided. Numerous employees concurred and one claimed the corporate environment is very stifled.

Its been very stifling to feel like everyone keeps talking about having open dialogue and compassionate conversations, but when it comes down to it, I know if I said one thing that was truthful, based on data, or even just based on my own personal experience, it would actually be rather unwelcomed, a Christian and conservative employee said.

In a video obtained by Rufo, Executive Chairman Bob Iger allegedly said Disney will not shy away from politics and should be taking a stand on identity politics issues. Iger also allegedly said the films Dumbo, Aladdin, and Fantasia are racist content. The company fired The Mandalorian actress Gina Carano in February for not displaying allegiance to identity politics while continuing to do business with a genocidal Communist China.

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Bombshell Report: Disney Pushing Critical Race Theory On Employees - The Federalist

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The Texas House has advanced legislation that would require K-12 school districts and open-enrollment charter schools to teach informed American patriotism through the founding documents of the U.S. starting in the 2021-22 school year.

The House passed House Bill 4509, by state Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, by a voice vote Thursday afternoon. It will need one more vote before it can be sent to the Texas Senate, which has already approved the similar Senate Bill 2026, authored by state Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood.

HB 4509 would, among other things, mandate that students study documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers to promote understanding of the fundamental moral principles of the country.

Before voting on the bill Thursday, the House adopted an amendment proposed by Bonnen to include speeches by Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr.s I Have A Dream speech as part of the required texts mentioned in the bill. That came after criticism that the bill initially focused on writings by white historical figures.

At a House Public Education Committee hearing last month, Bonnen said documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence captured firsthand struggles, triumphs, challenges and beliefs upon which America was founded.

To ensure Texas students gain access to receive exposure to these founding documents, we must ensure these primary historic sources are incorporated into the state education curriculum across all grade levels, he said last month.

But Maggie Stern, a youth civic engagement and education coordinator at Childrens Defense Fund, said at last months hearing that the curriculum should also highlight the contributions of women; Black, Native, Latino and Asian people; and other people of color in addition to the white Founding Fathers.

In a state with a growing multiracial youth population, its particularly vital that this education is inclusive and relevant to all students, Stern said. Comprehensive civic education requires more than just memorizing facts without context or application. Civic knowledge is important.

The approval of HB 4509 came only a few days after the Texas House gave final approval to House Bill 3979 amid pushback from education, business and community groups and multiple proposed amendments from Democrats. HB 3979 would limit what public school students can be taught about the United States history of racism and how racism has shaped systems within the nation. That includes limits on critical race theory. And critics of HB 3979 said some of its provisions would discourage students civic engagement.

While HB 3979 focuses on what teachers cannot teach, HB 4509 outlines what concepts must be taught, such as the structure, function, and processes of government institutions. The bill also lists the instructional materials students will be required to learn from, including the first Lincoln-Douglas debates and excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville s Democracy in America.

Bonnen said at last months hearing that only 23% of Texans under age 45 can pass the civics test from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services while 90% of immigrants can pass the test. He said founding documents make up the historical truths surrounding Americas birth, and they need to be incorporated into K-12 education.

The proposal comes after Gov. Greg Abbott asked lawmakers to prioritize expanding civics education in Texas during the 2021 session. Republican state legislators have proposed multiple bills to modify what children are taught in schools, including limiting the teaching of critical race theory and a greater emphasis on the countrys founding documents.

Thomas Lindsay, distinguished senior fellow of higher education and constitutional studies at the conservative-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, testified last month that the bill would lead to more-informed voting.

Weve got a lot of action and weve got a lot of passion, Lindsay said. We need thinkers. Think first. Learn first. Understand the U.S. Constitution first, and then you will see the stakes involved and then you will become involved in an informed way.

Michael Baumgartner is a representative of Civics 4 Yall, a student-led advocacy group at St. Edwards University working to provide young Texans with civic engagement opportunities. He said the founding documents are vital to learn, but civics education should also promote active citizenship and student activities outside of the classroom.

Civics education should be about learning the history of our great nation and providing young citizens a place to discuss policy problems while being taught efficient ways to engage in the process of solving them, Baumgartner said.

Disclosure: St. Edwards University and the Texas Public Policy Foundation have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribunes journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Texas students must learn informed American patriotism in bill House OKs - The Texas Tribune

Twitters trending topics took issue with a post from Donald Trump Jr. which compared President Joe Biden to former President Jimmy Carter as opposed to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Biden isnt the next FDR hes the next Jimmy Carter, Trump Jr. wrote, hours after a new jobs report Friday morning signaled a long, slow recovery ahead with missed expectations by 700,000 jobs added in April.

Twitters editorialized trending topics highlighted the post, branding users confused as if Trump Jr.s tweet was a personal attack of character.

People are confused by a Tweet from Donald Trump Jr., saying that President Biden isnt the next FDR hes the next Jimmy Carter, the platform-publisher wrote, given that former president Carter is a Nobel Peace Prize winner whose humanitarian record is largely respected.

Trump Jr. published another post on the topic after Twitter began amplifying confusion.

Anyone who is supposedly confused, by my below tweet should probably read the awful Biden job report out today, Trump Jr. wrote. Then take a peek at the rising prices of raw materials that were seeing and then finally google Jimmy Carter inflation.Things will make a lot more sense to you!

The report out Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows about 266,000 new jobs were added for the month of April, far short of the million jobs predicted as millions of Americans rake in more on government assistance as opposed to an earned paycheck. School closings endorsed by the Biden administration meanwhile, have kept millions of working parents home, unable to re-join the workforce.

Generous government handouts combined with school closures ticked the unemployment rate up to 6.1 percent despite more jobs available this spring than there were in the days leading up to the pandemic last year.

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Twitter Employees Confused Why Biden Is Comparable To Jimmy Carter - The Federalist

More than 120 retired flag officers are calling on Americans to rally and reject the nations excessive embrace of a radical leftist agenda, particularly the antiracism efforts the left weaponizes to suppress dissent.

Our nation is in deep peril. We are in a fight for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776, wrote the prominent group of 124 retired generals and admirals. The conflict is between supporters of Socialism and Marxism vs. supporters of Constitutional freedom and liberty.

The signatories, which include President Ronald Reagans former National Security Adviser John Poindexter, President George W. Bushs former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Gerald Boykin, and retired Army Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who is now running for Senate in New Hampshire, rail against a litany of left-wing pursuits showcased in the first 100 days of the new administration led by President Joe Biden, who has redefined what it means to run a far-left presidency.

The retired flag officers blasted the Democrats assault on election integrity, pursuit of open borders, rampant Silicon Valley censorship, re-engagement with the Iran nuclear deal, dismissal of energy independence highlighted through the elimination of the Keystone Pipeline, weaponization of the military to gaslight the public of right-wing threats, excuses for left-wing anarchists in city streets,and the recent confusion over nuclear code procedures at the White House.

Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration, our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government, the officers wrote.

Biden has aggressively pursued this agenda in large part through the power of the pen, with no clear legislative mandate to enact a hard-left agenda given a November victory of less than 43,000 votes across three tipping-point states, an evenly divided Senate, and narrow six-seat majority in the lower chamber after unexpected Democrat losses in the House.

The Current Administration has launched a full-blown assault on our Constitutional rights in a dictatorial manner, bypassing the Congress, with more than 50 Executive Orders quickly signed, many reversing the previous Administrations effective policies and regulations, write the retired officers, noting Biden has the most orders signed since President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Moreover, population control actions such as excessive lockdowns, school and business closures, and most alarming, censorship of written and verbal expression are all direct assaults on our fundamental rights.

The group is calling on Americans to throw out far-left politicians in favor of candidates at the federal, state, and local levels who place value in fiscal responsibility and individual rights over socialist collectivism as conditions present prime and necessary circumstances for the revival of a new 21st-century Tea Party movement.

The survival of our Nation and its cherished freedoms, liberty, and historic values are at stake, they wrote.

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thefederalist.com More Than 120 Retired Flag Officers Call For Revival Of A New Tea Party - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Charles Payne, host of Fox Businesss Making Money, joins Senior Editor Chris Bedford to discuss woke capital, COVID-19 economic recovery, rising inflation risk, and why the U.S. is the best country to climb the economic ladder.

You talk about not wanting to be American or wanting to be global and being afraid to be proud of your American roots, thats one of the reasons I think we really have seen these corporations become so involved in as to take on conservative American values to the degree that they have over the last few years, Payne said.

You can take on conservatives because you know you can grow your business around the rest of the world a lot quicker, Payne explained.

Its a stepping stone, the notion of stepping and moving up the ladder. And each rung bringing a different level notches of economic success but a certain pride and we can do that in this country better than anywhere else in the world, Payne said.

And I dont care what kind of weird survey some leftists will show you, theres no other country with better upward mobility than America. We just have to apply ourselves, he said.

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Charles Payne On Woke Capital, COVID Recovery, And Inflation Risk The Federalist 10.05.2021 21:51 - The Federalist

To the extent that Americans are aware of them at all, the Anti-Federalists are remembered as a band of vaguely disreputable second-raters who failed to prevent the 1788 ratification of the US Constitutiona document that for many Americans has become, over the past two centuries, something approaching a divine instrument.

But now, at a moment when so many of the Constitution's vaunted democratic safeguards seem to be breaking down, the Anti-Federalists' legacy may be due for a more respectful reassessment. As a matter of fact, the Anti-Federalists deserve credit for seeing the future quite clearly, and for perceiving, long before the rest of us could, some of the Constitution's most dangerous latent defects. So what did the Anti-Federalists believe? And what led them to oppose the Constitution's ratification?

Anti-Federalist thinking was complex, and Anti-Federalists disagreed with one another on many specific policy questions. Indeed, their fractiousness explains, in part, why they failed to defeat the Constitution. But at the core of Anti-Federalism was a coherent set of beliefs about human nature, the promise and peril of democracy, and how to design democratic institutions. The late, great political theorist Wilson Carey McWilliams summed up the Anti-Federalists' fundamental beliefs this way:

The Anti-Federalists believed that democratic government depended on the virtue of individual citizens andstrange as this may sound to usthat government must be designed to foster that virtue, by creating the "public happiness" that grows out of citizens having an intimate connection to self-government as a collective enterprise.

Public happiness is what Thomas Jefferson refers to in the Declaration of Independence when he declared that government is instituted to secure our rights to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." This is not the same as personal satisfactionindeed, public happiness requires citizens to subordinate their personal satisfaction to the public good (or, in ideal circumstances, to merge the two).

Because democracy both depended on and created this sort of public engagement, the Anti-Federalist model insisted that as many decisions as possible must be pushed out from the center to the states. Only in those smaller, more homogeneous communities, the Anti-Federalists argued, can individuals meaningfully participate in public debate, directly experience the benefits of legislating in the common good, and feel the ties of affection to fellow citizens that undergirds public happiness. (Note that though the Anti-Federalists were localists, they nevertheless were not tied to the classical model of the Greek city-state. They understood that modern life required greater scale.)

By contrast, the Federalists were far more skeptical about democracy leaning heavily on the virtue of the mass of citizens. "A dependence on the people," James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51, "is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

The Federalists imagined democracy for a large, diverse and fractious America in which citizens engaged with the public interest only occasionally and more likely acted according to their grubby private interests than some noble conception of the public good. The Federalists aimed to fit democracy to these hostile conditions.

The key innovation, laid out in Federalist No. 10, was the view that Anti-Federalist localism was upside-down. Only a large, diverse republic, Madison said, could "break and control the power of faction," by which he meant a private or group interest inconsistent with the public good. First, in an extended republic, Madison wrote, it would simply be more difficult for a faction to gain enough leverage to dictate policy:

Madison acknowledged that scale was not a complete answer. Factional interest may gain majority support even in a large country. In that instance, the Federalists relied not upon the virtue of citizens, but of their representatives. Because representatives in a large republic are chosen by a larger and more diverse body of citizens, the results of elections, Madison wrote, "are more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters." Once in office, these men will act "to refine and enlarge the public views," blunting factional proposals "by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations."

So the Federalists relied heavily on deliberation by national elites. They downplayed citizen virtue in favor of elite virtue. The Anti-Federalists objected furiously. They saw the Federalists as centralizing power, removing virtue from politics, elevating representatives as a sort of aristocracy, and, ultimately, as setting loose the power of self-interest which inevitably, they feared, would usher in tyranny and corruption.

None of this is to deny that the Anti-Federalists had their blind spots; it's difficult to imagine that their program of localism and citizen virtue could possibly have worked in a country as large and individualistic as America. And yet in light of what we've all witnessed, who can say now that the Anti-Federalists didn't, in general, see the defects of the Federalist project more clearly than the Federalists who defeated them?

The Anti-Federalists feared that the national government would wax in power at the expense of the states. They were correct. They feared that future presidents would make claims to monarchical power. They were again correct. The Anti-Federalists feared that the legislature would become oligarchic. Today's United States Congress, comprised of a majority of millionaires, bears the Anti-Federalists out on this one, too.

The Anti-Federalists were perhaps most prescient, however, in predicting how the United States Supreme Court would become glutted with powerto the point where we risked, in the view of the Anti-Federalists, becoming a nation ruled by judges.

The Federalists believed the federal courts were, in Hamilton's words, the "least dangerous" branch. He argued in Federalist No. 78 that we had little to fear from courts, because they were powerless relative to the president and the Congress:

But the Anti-Federalists understood the likely role of the Supreme Courtthe only court established in the Constitutionvery differently. Those views are best summed up by the Anti-Federalist "Brutus," who, in the months prior to the Constitution's ratification, wrote a series of editorials in a New York newspaper detailing his fears that the Supreme Court would exercise essentially unreviewable power:

Unlike in England, Brutus wrote, where rulings are subject to correction by Parliament, under the proposed Constitution the courts are subject to no check:

And also unlike in England, where courts claim no power to set aside democratically-enacted laws, Brutus predicted that the Supreme Court would insert itself into lawmaking by striking down legislation:

And finally, Brutus predicted that the Constitution's vague text wouldn't constrain the Supreme Court's power, but rather further expand it. Most of the Constitution's articles, he wrote, and especially the most important ones, "are conceived in general and indefinite terms, which are either equivocal, ambiguous, or which require long definitions to unfold their meaning." The Supreme Court would feel little constraint from "any fixed or established rules, but would determine, according to what appears to them the reason and the spirit of the constitution." Brutus expected the Court would take every opportunity to expand its power to control the Constitution's meaning:

"This power in the judicial," Brutus concluded, "will enable them to mould the government, into almost any shape they please."

Brutus's Anti-Federalist account of the Supreme Court has proven far more accurate than Hamilton's conviction that the Court would act with "neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment." The Anti-Federalists were correct in anticipating that the Constitution's oracular text would license the Supreme Court to make political judgments, cloaked (barely) in the language of law. They were correct in anticipating there would be no possibility of democratic recourse in most instanceseven where the Supreme Court exercised its great "latitude of interpretation" to issue deeply unpopular decrees. And the Anti-Federalists were prescient in predicting the Supreme Court would refuse to be constrained by "any fixed or established rules."

We saw an example of that when the court reversed course after decades of First Amendment Free Exercise precedent, introducing a new formula for deciding those casesone more favorable to claims that religious organizations should be exempt from generally-applicable laws and regulations. The court did so not in the context of a case on its regular docket, but in a "shadow docket" case decided outside the court's normal procedure and with minimal briefing and no oral argument. In so holding, the court broke its own rules, which bar changing the law in a shadow docket decision. But who is going to hold the court accountable? The Anti-Federalists knew. No one.

Unfortunately, the Anti-Federalists did not anticipate all the harm that would eventually be done by our imperial Supreme Court. Most importantly, they did not predict that a political party would attempt, as Republicans did under Donald Trump and will do again the next time a Republican occupies the White House, to harness the Supreme Court's overweening power for partisan political ends. Republicans have built their recent political strategy around stocking the federal bench with right-wing judges. And they've done this with a greater goal in mind. The party can effectively stay in power even if it can't win. The furious energy with which Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Federalist Society worked to elevate partisan conservativesby far the most consequential achievement of Trump's presidencyis all about frustrating the ability of the Democrats to do much with power once they have it.

That said, the Anti-Federalists' lesson for us is that the problems with the Supreme Court are much deeper than the politics of the moment. It's not just that the justices are too conservative or too liberal. It's that they are too powerful. That is why the Americans need to be looking back to the Anti-Federalists for ideas about how to shrink the power of the Supreme Court. Recent proposals have focused mostly on shifting the Court's composition through court packing and the introduction of judicial term limits. But the Anti-Federalists would have wanted a deeper reform. One that is focused not on who sits on the court but on creating accountability for it.

There is such a mechanismone that the Federalists wrote into the Constitution itself but the implications of which the Anti-Federalists, unfortunately, failed to apprehend. Article III gives Congress power to strip jurisdiction: a power that can be employed to rein in politicized courts and even override judicial decisions, at least when courts are standing in the way of change that a substantial and enduring political coalition wants.

The implications of Article III power are potentially profound. Congress's power over courts' jurisdiction means that it can reclaim from an unaccountable Supreme Court authority to interpret the Constitution in particular cases. It would give us, in other words, some of the accountability that the Anti-Federalists warned we lacked.

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These key defects in the Constitution threaten democracy because we ignored the warnings - Raw Story

One of the teenagers who pled guilty to murdering an UberEats delivery driver is going to be able to walk free by her 21st birthday.

Claire Huber, a spokeswoman for the Washington D.C. Superior Court, said Tuesday the 15-year-old girl will be held in a juvenile facility until the age of 21, but might get out sooner if deemed rehabilitated. The D.C. Attorney Generals Office dropped other charges in exchange for her pleading guilty to felony murder.

The killing of Mohammed Anwar in a March 23 carjacking made national headlines upon its graphic footage being released. The 66-year-old Springfield, Va., resident died after the 15-year-old and a 13-year-old dragged him while taking the vehicle. The car flipped and Anwar went flying on the sidewalk. Anwar was assaulted with a Taser. The 13-year-old girl was likewise charged with felony murder, in addition to other crimes. A verdict has not been rendered.

Attorneys in the case are not permitted under law to comment publicly on the case since it is a juvenile matter. One of Anwars family members has said the family will not make a comment until the other teenagers verdict comes in. There is a hearing for May 19 scheduled for the 13-year-old. Sentencing will occur on June 4 for the 15-year-old.

Anwars family published a GoFundMe page shortly after the incident. As of writing, it has raised more than $1 million.

Mohammad Anwar was a hard-working Pakistani immigrant who came to the United States to create a better life for him and his family, the page description states in part. He was simply at work yesterday evening, providing for his family, when his life was tragically taken in an appalling act of violence.

Anwar was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, uncle, and friend who always provided a smile when you needed one, it continues. He leaves behind a family, near and far, who cherish, love, and miss him dearly. Words can not describe how our family is feeling currently. Devastation, confusion, shock, anger, heartache, and anguish are just a few that come to mind.

CNN referred to the murder as an accident, which caused an uproar on Twitter.

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Teenager Who Murdered An Uber Driver Will Be Out By 21, If Not Earlier - The Federalist