Supreme Court strikes restrictive Texas abortion law →

Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with the court’s liberals in the 5-3 decision that struck two key provisions in the Texas law, which the court said placed unconstitutional burdens on women seeking abortion...

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In Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a group of Texas abortion clinics had challenged the state law that required abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and to perform abortions only in ambulatory surgical centers.

Opponents of the law said the restrictions have already closed half of the state’s abortion clinics, imposing an undue burden on a woman’s access to abortion...

Creepy startup will help landlords, employers and online dates strip-mine intimate data from your Facebook page →

We should be actively thinking about and debating the coming loss of privacy:

 Its first product, Tenant Assured, is already live: After your would-be landlord sends you a request through the service, you’re required to grant it full access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Instagram profiles. From there, Tenant Assured scrapes your site activity, including entire conversation threads and private messages; runs it through natural language processing and other analytic software; and finally, spits out a report that catalogues everything from your personality to your “financial stress level.”

Egg producers pledge to stop grinding newborn male chickens to death →

If we actually saw what happened in industrial farms...

It’s a disturbing practice most Americans probably know nothing about: On the day they’re born, all the fluffy male chicks born to egg-laying hens at hatcheries are gruesomely killed — usually by being run, while conscious, through what is essentially a blender.

That’s because they’re useless to the industry. They can’t grow up to lay eggs, and they weren’t bred to be the fast-growing chickens sold as meat.

But that’s going to change. In what counts as huge news in the animal welfare world, United Egg Producers — the industry group that represents hatcheries that produce 95 percent of all eggs produced in the United States — announced Thursday that it would end this “culling” of millions of chicks by 2020, or as soon as it’s “economically feasible” and an alternative is “commercially available,” according to the Humane League, which negotiated the agreement.

Omar Mateen, Lone-Wolf Terrorist: What does it mean that the Orlando shooter pledged allegiance to ISIS?

Stopping lone wolf attacks is exceptionally difficult. When an individual travels abroad to fight in Syria or is in contact with ISIS handlers, U.S. intelligence can pick up on the communication and interaction. And by going abroad to fight for a jihadist group, an individual is committing a crime and can be arrested. Lone wolves, by definition, lack such links. The San Bernardino attackers were not on law enforcement’s radar screen before striking. And given permissive U.S. gun laws, even someone like Mateen who allegedly abused his spouse and was repeatedly investigated by the FBI, could legally purchase an semi-automatic weapon because he had not yet openly supported a terrorist group.* The FBI is already aggressive against potential terrorists to the point that civil liberties groups criticize it for entrapment and otherwise using stings too aggressively.

Because even a struggling ISIS retains its appeal and at least some of its supporters will stay off the radar screen, lone wolf attacks are likely to continue. In addition to continuing aggressive law enforcement efforts, the best thing U.S. leaders could do is to promote a sense of resilience and avoid demonizing Muslim Americans, recognizing that even as we mourn the tragic deaths of so many of our countrymen we must ensure that someone like Mateen is portrayed as hateful and pathetic, not as a representative of a broader threat among American Muslims or part of some grandiose ISIS plot.

Inside the donor network: Studies unravel the towering influence money has over politics — on the right and left →

Examining two of the largest networks, the Koch network on the right and the Democracy Alliance on the left, Skocpol identifies a number of attributes defining a donor consortium. The first is continual giving, where members of each network contribute tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to the network and its partners. This long-term focus supports these networks’ goals, which are temporally and substantively broad. Donor consortia think beyond election cycles and thus can undertake efforts, like supporting cultural shifts, which take place over a long period of time. They focus on a wide array of endeavors and policies, supporting everything from academics to advocates to political candidates who support work that comports with the network ideology. Finally, there is a major social element of these networks, including a number of in-person meetings where donors can attend sessions with political operatives, members of the media, advocates, and academics, creating a community of like-minded individuals working to overcome the same political challenges. (One of us, Sean, has previously discussed the political science research on the Koch Network). 

While individual donors are the most visible mechanism for money in politics, donor consortia are increasingly important. Whenever journalists criticize the Koch Network, conservatives cry “Soros,” and yet as the graph below shows, the full weight of the Democracy Alliance is below that of the Koch network, and while the number of donors in the Democracy Alliance has remained stable, the Koch Network has increased dramatically...

Skocpol also explores the occupations of donors and finds that finance, insurance and real estate account for a large share of donors on both the left and right. She finds that mining, retail and manufacturing are more common on the right. However, professionals, scientists, information technology (Silicon Valley) and entertainment are more common on the left. Unsurprisingly, there were no workers in either donor consortia (as we’ve discussed previously, workers are underrepresented across the political system).

...Skocpol’s work shows the growing power of organized donors over the American political system. In a paper with Alex Hertel-Fernandez, Skocpol notes the influence of Koch-funded organizations. They find that public opinion has little impact on the passage of anti-union right-to-work laws, while the presence of a paid Americans For Prosperity (a Koch-backed organization) state director did (see Table 1). They find, quite stunningly, that a paid AFP state director (a measure of mobilization) increases the probability of a right-to work law by almost 30 percentage points, equal to the impact of partisan control of government. Big donors are increasingly powerful in shaping policy at the state level, in some cases even more powerful than traditional lobbying forces like the Chamber of Commerce.

U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Net Neutrality Rules In Full →

It's the idea that phone and cable companies should treat all of the traffic on their networks equally — no blocking or slowing their competitors, and no fast lanes for companies that can pay more.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit delivered a slam-dunk victory to the Federal Communications Commission as it rejected the petition filed by telecom, cable and wireless industry associations alongside AT&T, CenturyLink and several smaller providers.

The ruling was celebrated as a victory for consumers by various public interest groups and Internet companies that had supported the FCC in the lawsuit. However, the telecom industry is expected to continue battling the regulations in Congress and before the nation's higher court:

Brexit Hottake →

Events like these have huge ramifications for those inside that country, including potentially more separatism, but not so much elsewhere.  In short, direct effects matter a lot [update: see statement by Scottish National Party leader], but indirect lesson learning does not.  Why?  For the former, the exit will directly affect the interests (incomes!) and power of those inside the UK, leading to stronger interests on the part of the Scots to leave (although it may not be as instant as some might have thought).  For the latter, the problem is that there are multiple lessons to learn.  For those who want to leave the EU or separate from their current country, they can look at Brexit and say: they did it, we can do it too, taking away the positive lessons.  For those who don’t want to leave the EU or secede from wherever, they can observe the economic shocks and other painful consequences and learn that this would be awful for them.  Let confirmation bias be your guide, I always say.  Again, multiple lessons to learn, so which lessons will people take away?

What does Brexit mean for the 2016 election? →

So Britain (well, really, England and Wales), voted to leave the European Union Thursday. As the English would put it, this decision has created a small spot of bother in global financial markets and political capitals. Off the top of my head, the knock-on effects will include:

1. A downward revision of British and global economic growth;

2. Scotland holding a second referendum on independence;

3. Other E.U. countries holding referendums on exiting the E.U. as well;

4. The U.S. trade deficit worsening as the dollar’s strength increases even further;

5. A lot of commentators freaking out even more about the possibility of a President Trump.