A federal judge has blocked the state of Hawaii from enforcing a recently enacted ban on firearms on its prized beaches and in other areas including banks, bars and parks, citing last year’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding gun rights.

  • LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    This is a result of a SCOTUS decision. SCOTUS membership is determined by the president and control of the senate at the time of vacancies. Neither of those are influenced by gerrymandering.

    At the core of it this comes down to 2016 when a larger than typical number of people on the left lied to themselves and said “eh, they’re all teh same” and tossed their vote at a third party or just didn’t vote at all. Following that, SCOTUS went from a 4-4 tie (with 1 vacancy) to 6-3 conservative advantange.

    I wouldn’t blame laziness, but instead a combination of apathy and people who are more interested in ideological purity than in accepting the available-better such that they would rather complain about the unavailable-best.

    RBG refusing to retire in 2012-2014 also shares blame. She could have retired then and the court would be 5-4 instead.

    • Furbag@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      That 1 vacancy should have been Obama’s pick. It was fucking stolen from him, and now we’re paying the price of “decorum”.

      Of course, Republican hypocrites shoved another conservative justice on the bench before RBG’s body was even cold, even after Trump lost the election (not to mention impeached).

      It wasn’t just 4 years of Trump that we had to endure, it’s now three lifetime conservative appointments to the supreme court. So progressive legislation is stalled for another 30+ years. Our generation will be as old as the fucking Boomers are now before we get another chance at kicking out the conservatives, whose ideology is literally killing the planet. Gen Z and the generation that follows them will rightfully blame us for our inaction.

      • Zaktor@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Or instead of giving up we could make court expansion and reform a litmus test in future Democratic primaries. And/or normalize the idea that judicial rulings need to be enforced by someone else and they too have agency.

        Because allowing this to continue for much of our remaining lives is also decorum. We live in an unjust system, but it’s not just how life has to be for the next 30 years.

        • Furbag@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          I don’t entirely disagree, but I’d like to see an actual roadmap for how such changes would be implemented. Voting for somebody who promises court expansion and reform, but doesn’t have the support of either the legislative or judicial branches and doesn’t have a concrete method of implementing it, seems like they are set up to fail.

          I want to see more ruthless politicians on the left as well, but not if they can’t actually follow through with their promises.

          • Zaktor@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            Easy:

            1. Vote in better Democrats
            2. Abolish the filibuster
            3. Pass law changing the number of justices on the court

            Support from the legislature is all that’s important. If the justices say “you can’t do it”, then ignore them because clearly they can. The constitution says very little about the supreme court and its size has been changed multiple times before. This is just doing history again.

      • Coffeemonkepants@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Since you actually seem to be asking… There is no gerrymandering at the federal level in the presidential election. You could argue that the electoral voting system is somehow a form of this, but it isn’t the same as intentionally drawing districts to mathematically skew the advantage to the party drawing the map. That said, because electoral votes are based upon congressional representation, they do weigh smaller, emptier states more heavily. US senators are entirely free from gerrymandering as they are directly elected by popular vote. Small, empty states do have more power as a result and by design, for better or worse.

          • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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            2 years ago

            And they have 0 say in the Supreme Court. They have a minor say in creating other courts, but it’s been a long time since anything has meaningfully changed there either.

        • Donnywholovedbowling@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          I think they have a good point though. Sure, at a basic level, you can’t gerrymander a senate election. But you start with the state, draw the district lines. Now the state is gerrymandered, often packing dense districts with democrats. Now your state legislature (gerrymandered as hell) passes a law that says 2 voting machines per district. You bet your ass that affects national elections. Ol’ Jim-Bob has to share his two voting machines with 150 other people, whereas a city dwelling Democrat has to share theirs with a few thousand.