Neil Gorsuch is not a Bachelor contestant: Trump’s attempt to turn his Supreme Court nomination into a reality show is in keeping with his longstanding degradation of the Constitution, writes Dahlia Lithwick. (Elsewhere in Slate, Mark Joseph Stern argues that Gorsuch is a principled jurist with a disturbing record on LGBTQ rights.)
It’s OK, buy that hoagie: Washingtonians are boycotting a local sandwich shop because one of its owners met with President Trump. It’s one of a wave of new social media–fueled boycotts of Trump-associated brands, but Helaine Olen argues that progressives’ eagerness to put their money where their mouths are comes with a downside: “It doesn’t permit much time to consider what’s to be lost or gained by boycotting a particular target.”
Title 50 of the U.S. Code, Section 3021: That’s the federal law that prohibits Trump from giving Steve Bannon a seat on the National Security Council’s Principals Committee. Fred Kaplan examines the implications of the law and encourages Congress to enforce it.
The Muslim ban is tearing families apart: Elissa Strauss tells a few stories of families that have been involuntarily separated by the travel ban and laments the Trump administration’s lack of compassion for their plight. “Perhaps the saddest part of this mess is the way it reveals our current administration’s immunity to the power of the family unit as a universal source of empathy and mutual understanding,” she writes.
For fun: “What I learned about the internet from The Baby-Sitters Club.”
Please don’t boycott this newsletter,
LVA
