This week: partisan social self-sorting, paranoia at SCOTUS, the erasure of women, a long war in Ukraine, unread books, and the death of Franco. Let’s go —
1) “Around two-thirds of Democrats and six-in-ten Republican respondents said that their friend groups are made of mostly fellow partisans. While about five percent of both Republicans and Democrats are the ‘odd ones out’ in their group, the bulk have mostly politically homogenous friend groups. In fact, for around one-third of Democrats, they reported having no close friends of the other party.”
https://codebook.bulletin.com/do-americans-have-many-friends-across-party-lines
2) “China already assumes the US would defend Taiwan. Its understanding of US domestic politics is not especially sophisticated – it was blindsided by Trump – but one thing it does know is that since the trade war, no politician has paid a price for bashing China. Would the America of their imagination, committed to stopping ‘China’s rise,’ stand by idly as it ascends to the pinnacle of its power? China’s perception is not entirely wrong, but the real question for all parties involved is how vigorous the US would be in defending Taiwan.”
3) “At the Supreme Court, nothing is as usual this term after the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion in the biggest abortion case in nearly a half-century. Normally at this time of year, the justices would be exchanging hundreds of pages of draft opinions and working with each other to resolve differences and reach consensus in the most challenging cases of the term. Instead, the court is riven with distrust among the law clerks, staff and, most of all, the justices themselves.”
4) “Working at a huge news organization—the Post, The New York Times, CNN—is like living in a big city where there are always emergencies. As a colleague, you probably should be trying to help fund the fire department or city services and make it a better place to live; at worst, you’re not paying your taxes. And then you have Felicia, who is essentially pouring gasoline on every fire and inviting people to watch.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/inside-the-washington-posts-social-media-meltdown
5) “This is a sweet spot for Republican foreign policy, and understanding the reluctant internationalism of most of the party’s voters—a repudiation of the embarrassed anti-Americanism of the Democratic Party’s far left and the activist internationalism that has heretofore characterized the Republican Party leadership—will be key to geolocating a new Republican Congress’s preferred national security policy.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/02/gop-congress-midterms-foreign-policy-ukraine-taiwan/
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