White House Press Secretary and self-described "historic figure" Karine Jean Pierre decried the US Supreme Court's recent affirmative action ruling on MSNBC, saying that it represented the judiciary "taking away important constitutional rights." She added that President Biden -- who has repeatedly attacked the Court over decisions with which he disagrees -- is "an expert" on jurisprudence, and called the Court's actions "unheard of" and "really wrong:"
Karine Jean-Pierre claims race-based college admissions is one of Americans’ “important constitutional rights” pic.twitter.com/1pBoO9lAxE
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 8, 2023
This is the chief White House spokesperson indignantly defending outright, government-sanctioned racial discrimination as an "important constitutional right," and lamenting that the Court uprooted said racial discrimination. Quite literally, this is a pro-systemic racism attitude. And she's espousing it while speaking on behalf of the President of the United States and his party. Who she's not speaking for, however, are the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose racial considerations in college and university admissions decisions. This includes vast majorities across all racial demographics:
We are told SCOTUS is “losing legitimacy” by issuing rulings that are “out of touch” or unpopular. That misunderstands the justices’ function, of course, but many of the same people who’ve engaged in such concern trolling will be screaming over today’s decision. Show them this: pic.twitter.com/wGoWhByiP0
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) June 29, 2023
Based on quite a lot of very consistent polling, this is a 70/30 to 80/20 issue, with leftist identity activists (and therefore the Biden administration) within the small, pro-racial discrimination minority. It's entirely possible that support for racial discrimination in college admissions will rise a bit now that “progressive” tribal leaders are loudly telling the flock what they’re supposed to believe, but the pre-ruling baseline noted above reflects what people fundamentally understand to be right. On the other side of the ledger, the president and his team are in favor of this, which most people instinctively understand to be wrong, unfair, and even un-American, frankly:
Is this really an approach to admissions you want to defend? Training aspiring elites in racial stereotypes? Good riddance. https://t.co/q3iSvbE1kb pic.twitter.com/aPuejQpDKC
— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) July 8, 2023
The justices rightly determined that this racially discriminatory regime violates the constitution, ruling that if institutions of higher learning strive to achieve meaningful diversity, they cannot continue to do so under the corrosive, flagrantly racial rubric they've been using for years. Even if this were an unpopular conclusion, it would still be the correct one under the law. It just also happens to be very popular, too. Today's Democratic Party is so radical and fixated on identity politics that they are angrily endorsing discrimination against groups of people -- including people of color -- based on the color of their skin. They're doing so in the name of "progress," evidently believing, as ever, that they're the righteous ones. Whether through garbage hit pieces, ad hominem attacks, direct threats, embarrassing statements like Jean Pierre's, or 'news' media coverage like this, the Left is aggressively working to undercut the Court as an institution:
“News” media as Dem SuperPAC, part ♾️ pic.twitter.com/cL1Tyord5u
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 1, 2023
Asians against Affirmative Action are not hard find. You’d think they’d ask at least one to weigh in before proclaiming them dupes.
— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) July 2, 2023
As for the impression that this is a rogue, right-wing Court, upending precedent all over the place and running roughshod over the law -- the prevailing Narrative being pounded into people's minds -- the actual facts tell a very different story. It's a story that you'll virtually never hear from journalists:
Fun SCOTUS stats from this term:
— Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons) June 30, 2023
50%: unanimous in outcome (counting 3 PCs)
89%: at least one liberal justice in the majority
8%: 6-3 with the 6 Republican appointees all on one side
3%: 5-4 with the 3 Democratic appointees all on one side
Love today's decisions or hate them, this is still true: The current Court overturns precedents less often than its post-WWII predecessors did https://t.co/AJFurxHamn
— Jonathan H. Adler (@jadler1969) June 29, 2023
This term, Justice Jackson was in the majority more often than Justice Thomas or Justice Alito https://t.co/s9fgNggamu
— Jonathan H. Adler (@jadler1969) July 2, 2023
Martin-Quinn scores for this Supreme Court termhttps://t.co/HqMRrfB7nH pic.twitter.com/DOKkXSQ1b9
— Matt Grossmann (@MattGrossmann) July 5, 2023
Half of all cases were decided unanimously this term, at least one of the liberal justices were part of the majority in nearly 90 percent of rulings, Justice Jackson found herself in the majority more often than the two most conservative justices, and the biggest ideological outlier (by far) was Justice Sotomayor. Oh, and the current Court is less likely to overturn precedents than its modern-era predecessors. How many casual observers of the news would have the faintest inkling of a single one of these facts, based on the coverage? Finally, since the thrust of this post is about the racial discrimination case, there have been developments in one of the controversies surrounding Justice Jackson's dissent, which was widely hailed by 'progressives.' It seems KBJ included a ludicrously incorrect assertion in her opinion:
In a dissent from last week’s ruling against racial preferences in college admissions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson enumerated purported benefits of “diversity” in education. “It saves lives,” she asserts. “For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live.”...A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%. How could Justice Jackson make such an innumerate mistake? A footnote cites a friend-of-the-court brief by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which makes the same claim in almost identical language.
It, in turn, refers to a 2020 study whose lead author is Brad Greenwood, a professor at the George Mason University School of Business. The study makes no such claims. It examines mortality rates in Florida newborns between 1992 and 2015 and shows a 0.13% to 0.2% improvement in survival rates for black newborns with black pediatricians (though no statistically significant improvement for black obstetricians). The AAMC brief either misunderstood the paper or invented the statistic...So we have a Supreme Court justice parroting a mathematically absurd claim coming from an interested party’s mischaracterization of a flawed study. Her opinion then urges “all of us” to “do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together.”
Yikes. Everyone makes mistakes, but the justices are surrounded by teams of the top legal clerks in the country to help avoid such humiliating and glaring ones. Did no one even give such an obviously absurd factoid a second glance? Or was it too appealing to check, within the worldview dominating KBJ's chambers? Well, here's an update from some of the very "experts" Jackson's dissent instructed "all of us" to follow on matters of great import (in this case, in favor of racial discrimination):
#appellatetwitter
— (((tedfrank))) (@tedfrank) July 8, 2023
Can you ever remember a letter like this sent to SCOTUS by an amicus a week after the opinion issued? https://t.co/vXVqq1Bod2
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