"A transgender woman penalized for being perceived as aggressive has experienced discrimination 'on the basis of sex' just as much as a cis-gender woman has, no matter that the transgender woman’s behavior matches expectations of her sex assigned at birth."

"Either way, the institution has imposed its gender-based expectations upon her. And either way, the institution may have violated Title IX. In short, the majority is wrong to suggest that the term 'sex' in Title IX ' cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.' Title IX makes room for individuals to live in the gender they choose; it cares not just about sex assigned at birth but also about individuals’ ability to match (or not) their gender presentation to their gender identity."

Writes Justice Jackson, in West Virginia v. B.P.J.

But what is "gender identity" if it stands apart from gender stereotypes? What is being identified with?

NPR got something very right and wrong or just very very wrong.

But if you go to the link now, you get this:

Is this what Justice Thomas was so jovial about yesterday?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who has long coached girls' basketball teams — channels the emotions of female athletes.

From his opinion for the majority in West Virginia v. B.P.J.,  allowing states to provide separate women’s and men’s sports teams defined by biological sex:

Some might ask: What is the harm in allowing an additional athlete to compete in women’s or girls’ sports? That sentiment, though understandable, misunderstands the nature and reality of sports. 

Sports are highly competitive and generally zero sum. At almost every turn, someone wins and someone loses. Every athlete who makes a team takes a roster spot from another athlete. Every player who earns playing time reduces the playing time of a teammate. Every player who makes the starting lineup sidelines another who remains on the bench. Every competitor who wins a race or competition deprives another athlete of that victory, or medal, or prize. Every team that wins because of an added player means that another team has lost because of that added player. Every player who makes all-conference beats out another player who does not. Every student who earns an athletic scholarship takes that opportunity away from another student. And so on. 

Women and girls who play sports care deeply about all of those things. They obsess about them.

The Supreme Court is about to hand down its last decisions of the term.

Here's the live blog at SCOTUSblog.

And here's where to get the text of the opinions immediately, starting in a few minutes, at the Supreme Court's website.

UPDATE: West Virginia v. B.P.J.: "Title IX allows schools to provide separate women’s and men’s sports teams defined by biological sex, and West Virginia has permissibly maintained female sports for biological females consistent with Title IX." Kavanaugh has the opinion joined by Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett. Thomas and Gorsuch have concurring opinions. There's an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, by Sotomayor that is joined by Kagan and Jackson, and then Jackson has an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part. To what extent is this unanimous? 

From the Kavanaugh opinion: "In short, States are not required to conduct an individual-by-individual comparison of the physical and athletic capabilities of all biological males in order to satisfy intermediate scrutiny. Intermediate scrutiny permits a sex-based classification that, as here, is 'not invidious, but rather realistically reflects the fact that the sexes are not similarly situated in certain circumstances.”

UPDATE 2: "FECA’s political-party coordinated-expenditure limits violate the First Amendment." The case is National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Committee. Another Kavanaugh opinion. It's joined by the 5 you'd expect to join, and the 3 dissenters are then, as you'd know, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson. 

UPDATE 3: Birthright citizenship survives. Here's the opinion, Trump v. Barbara. Roberts writes the majority opinion and is joined by Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson. Kavanaugh writes an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch all write their own dissenting opinions, with Gorsuch also joining the Thomas opinion. 

From the Roberts opinion: "If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design. Words appearing frequently in the Executive Order—'mother,' 'father,' 'lawful,' 'temporary'—are absent from the Clause. For a simple reason: they did not matter. And while the Clause does ensure state citizenship attaches for U. S. citizens in 'the State wherein they reside,” Amdt. 14, §1, the explicit invocation of residence for state citizenship only highlights its absence from the criteria for U. S. citizenship. See Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 74 (1873) (a person can 'be a citizen of the United States without being a citizen of a State'). When the principal dissent does grapple with the operative legal text—'subject to the jurisdiction' of the United States—it has little to say...."

Also from Roberts: "Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to 'every free-born person in this land.”' Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 600 (Sen. Trumbull). We keep that promise today."

UPDATE 4: From SCOTUSblog: NPR is announcing that Alito is retiring -- but still has not been confirmed... "Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Supreme Court's opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, is retiring, the court announced Tuesday."

"[T]he court overruled its 91-year-old decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States... [M]ore broadly, Monday’s decision was a major victory for proponents of the 'unitary executive' theory..."

"... the idea that the president should have complete control over the executive branch. Under this theory, the president should be able to fire any member of the executive branch, and laws – like the one that the court struck down – that restrict his ability to do so violate the separation of powers. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts contended that 'the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust. Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.'..."

I'm reading "Supreme Court allows Trump to fire FTC commissioner and overturns major restraint on presidential power" by Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog, writing about yesterday's Trump v. Slaughter.

"In a 36-page opinion... Roberts first emphasized that the Constitution gives the president '[t]he executive Power,' as well as the responsibility to 'take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.' The Framers of the Constitution, Roberts explained, wanted to create a system in which the one person, the president, was in charge of the executive branch. The officials who work for him, Roberts continued, are there to help him, but the president must be able to fire them if they are not performing well – so that he can carry out his own job.

"To feed its millions of troops in World War II, the military turns to food science. Orange juice is reduced to concentrate, potatoes are dried into easily reconstituted flakes..."

"... and Cheddar is dehydrated and pulverized. But the war’s end leaves mountains of surplus cheese powder. Charles Elmer Doolin, riding high on the success of the Fritos he created 16 years earlier, fries extruded puffs of cornmeal and coats them in the powder. Dozens of other food companies take advantage of food technology developed for the war effort, ringing in the heyday of ultraprocessed foods."

That's the NYT, selecting Cheetos to represent the 1940s, in "1776 – 2026/The Pursuit of Hungriness: 250 Years of American Food Innovation" (gift link).

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Waiting on the Supreme Court.

Following the live chat at SCOTUSblog: "The cases still to be decided: birthright citizenship; the president’s power to fire the heads of independent agencies; the transgender athletes cases; two election law disputes; and whether a geofence warrant violated the 4th Amendment."

The full text of new opinions will be available here, at the Court's website.

ADDED: We have Watson v. RNC:  "The federal election-day statutes do not prevent Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days thereafter; nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by election day." That's written by Justice Barrett and joined by the Chief and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. Dissenting are Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.

Next is Chatrie v. United States: "Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information. Justice Kagan writes the majority opinion, joined by the Chief and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson. Justice Gorsuch writes a concurring opinion, and Justice Alito has a dissent joined by Thomas and Barrett. From the Kagan opinion:

Consider just a few trips that a person is apt to think “indisputably private”: to “the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, [or] the by-the-hour motel.” And unlike a GPS device, Location History enables police officers to focus on precisely those sites—to see, in a given time block, who shows up. Similarly, Location History—even two hours of it—allows officers to target one-off events of potential interest: a gun show, say, or a political rally....

From the Gorsuch concurrence:

I might have hoped that the Court would have pursued a more traditional approach to the Fourth Amendment today. But look carefully and you will see hints of it at work even in the Court’s opinion. Why is the Court so protective of Location History data, email, and electronically stored photos and calendars? Because, it turns out, “a user reasonably understands” all those things “as his own.” Put another way, they are his effects. And why does the Court hold Mr. Chatrie’s effects protected by the Fourth Amendment even though a third party stores them? Because, the Court says, those effects remain his “even though [they are] stored on Google’s servers.” Put another way, entrusting your effects to a third party for certain agreed purposes doesn’t mean they are no longer yours....

Now, we get the last opinions of the day, Cook and Slaughter, the cases about the President's power to fire heads of independent agencies. David Lat at SCOTUSblog: "In terms of their bottom lines at least, Slaughter and Cook came out as many expected. 'The Fed is different' carried the day."

"I’m pleased that the D.C. police recognize their part in violating my rights."

Said Sam O’Hara, quote in "Man who played Star Wars music at National Guard members receives settlement/The ACLU announced it had reached a financial agreement with the D.C. government and four of its officers, resolving part of the case" (WaPo)(gift link).

"At a time of fierce debate over how to teach American history, particularly around issues of race, the Freedom Trucks weigh in squarely on one side of the argument..."

"... telling a patriotic, positive story of core American values and exceptionalism. They stand in sharp contrast to liberal efforts in recent years — in classrooms, museums, national parks and media — to lift up discussion of systemic racism and highlight chapters where America has failed to live up to its ideals."

From "Trump-backed ‘Freedom Trucks’ tell a sanitized story of the country’s founding/At a time of fierce debate over how to teach American history, the mobile exhibits weigh in squarely on one side of the argument." (WaPo)(gift link).

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"These aren’t like some vague hallucinations, these are like three-dimensionally-rendered, highly-detailed figures inhabiting your exterior world."

"And they’re also interacting with objects in the real world — like crawling up chairs and tables or under doorways.... The little people are said to typically like teasing, playing with or harassing the person seeing them.... Everyone knows that this mushroom has this property and can make you see little people, but they’ll continue to eat it anyway, because they’re just not afraid of that effect."

Said University of Utah researcher Colin Domnauer, quoted in "New magic mushroom makes users see tiny ‘gnome’ people — scientists have no idea how it’s doing that" (NY Post).

The mushroom is L. asiatica.

Would you want to see little people running around everywhere?

I remember hearing Joe Rogan talk about this and speculate that the people are somehow really there....

"You know the thing is like is it teaching us something about the human brain or is it allowing you to see something that's actually there all the time?"

"In response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Central Asian governments have drawn closer together as a bloc, while welcoming Mr. Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy."

"They are seeking opportunities to reduce their reliance on Moscow, even as they tread lightly so as not to cross the Kremlin or antagonize China. 'For the business relationship, it has never been better,' said Jeff Erlich, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kazakhstan, who has worked in and around the region since the late 1990s. 'In my experience, that is clear.'"

From "Kazakhstan’s Leader Deepens U.S. Ties, Saying Trump Was ‘Sent by Heaven’/The Central Asian nation is aggressively courting President Trump’s Washington to counterbalance its powerful neighbors, Russia and China" (NYT)(gift link, so you can try to figure it out for yourself).

That's one of 2 stories about Kazakhstan at the top of the front page of the NYT right now. The other is: "Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit. An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the president and the commerce secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten."

"Installing AC simply wasn’t the British thing to do. He’d have to break a stiff-upper-lip mentality and make peace with a trade-off..."

".. that Europeans tend to view as taboo: Air-con accelerates global warming. Still, his mind kept wandering back to a Starbucks he had visited in Los Angeles. 'It was so temperate,' he moaned. 'So beautiful.'... In Europe, where homes tend to be older and climes fairer, residents mainly favored cross-ventilation over machines that leaders cast as pricey spewers of greenhouse gas emissions. 'It’s like living in a sealed jar,' one French columnist complained of AC in 1994. 'It’s unbearable.'"

From "European soccer fans enjoy a brief fling with America’s air-conditioned culture/Despite a deadly heat wave at home, many say they won’t permanently embrace Americans’ electricity-guzzling amenity" (WaPo).

Questions: 1. Who says "air-con"? 2. Wasn't that a movie with Nicolas Cage? 3. What would Americans do if they found themselves wrangling with guilt about global warming whenever they indulged in air conditioning.

Answers: 1. The British. 2. No, it was not. 3. Do what half their compatriots have already done and decide global warming is a hoax.

Bonus question: "'Con Air' won a Golden Raspberry Award in what category? Answer: "Worst Reckless Disregard for Human Life and Public Property."

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"And the Democrats aren't fighting back.... They didn't beat us, but they'd be victorious against the Communists."

"But they don't have the courage to do so. So, they're turning Communists themselves, becoming a Communist Party. These are not Social Democrats. These are hardcore godless Communists. They're godless Communists. All communists are godless. They don't believe in God. This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence... 250 years ago...."