If you’ve ever made the mistake of installing a bunch of news apps on your phone, then you’re probably familiar with the “push notification bomb.” That’s when breaking news happens, and within a few minutes, you get a dozen different alerts — all of which tell you the same thing. If a plane crashes or something, then you’ll hear about it, over and over again, until you finally snap and delete the apps from your phone. (Or you could change your notification settings — if you can figure out the interface.)
But every now and then, breaking news involves a topic that isn’t cut-and-dried, like a plane crash. Sometimes breaking news involves a Supreme Court decision, consisting of thousands of words, a majority opinion and a dissent. And in those cases, the “push notification bomb” is actually pretty interesting. So take a look at this swarm of push notifications that were sent out yesterday, by several different news organizations, after a decision came down from the Supreme Court.
Screenshot: iPhone
The New York Times reports, “The Supreme Court rejected a Colorado law banning sexual orientation or gender identity conversion therapy for minors.”
Fox reports that the “Supreme Court rules on conversion therapy ban challenged by Christian counselor.”
NBC says that the “Supreme Court rules against Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy aimed at LGBTQ youth.
And the AP declares that, “The Supreme Court ruled against a law banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado, one of about two dozen states that banned the discredited practice.”
Meanwhile ABC ran this report.
Watch:
ABC News/YouTube.com
What’s remarkable is that, in that segment and every push alert, from every single outlet, the term “conversion therapy” is used — as if it’s a real thing. None of the outlets tell you that it was an 8-to-1 decision in their push alerts, either. Instead, they strongly imply that this was a ruling by the conservatives on the court, to bring back a barbaric practice — or at least a “discredited practice,” as the AP put it.
Every time this happens, you should take note of it. When the media starts using a euphemism like “conversion therapy” with strong negative connotations, it’s important to unpack exactly what they’re talking about — because in pretty much every case, they’re lying. To be very clear about this, when they talk about “conversion therapy,” they’re talking about telling a boy that he’s a boy, and telling a girl that she’s a girl. They banned talk therapy where therapists say things that are true. The state of Colorado, and several other states, made it illegal for counselors and psychiatrists to tell their gender-confused patients the truth about their sex. They tried to force medical professionals to affirm the delusions of their patients. And if they didn’t go along with it, they’d lose their license. It’s as deranged as it sounds. And it’s a flagrant attack on free speech, as we discussed a year ago.
Of course, in a sense, every kind of therapy is “conversion therapy.” You’re trying to “convert” a patient from a bad mental state to a good one. But in Colorado, this “conversion” could only go one way. It was perfectly legal in Colorado for therapists to encourage patients to “identify” as some other gender. But it wasn’t acceptable for therapists to encourage patients to accept reality.
Just so there’s no confusion about this, I’m going to cite from the text of the Colorado law that the Supreme Court just struck down. This is what “conversion therapy” actually means, from a legal perspective. This is what the Left is demonizing. Conversion therapy, according to Colorado, is, “any practice or treatment . . . that attempts . . . to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” as well as any “effor[t] to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions toward individuals of the same sex.” At the same time, the law also allows counselors to provide, “[a]cceptance, support, and understanding for . . . identity exploration and development,”and to assist persons “undergoing gender transition.”
So the pro-trans “conversions” are totally fine, in other words. It’s only the “conversions” back to reality that are the problem. Under the First Amendment, this is clearly unconstitutional. The government doesn’t get to prevent people from saying things that the government doesn’t agree with. It doesn’t matter if those people are “licensed counselors” or therapists, or anyone else. The First Amendment applies to every American. As the majority opinion put it, “The First Amendment stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views, reflecting a belief that each American enjoys an inalienable right to speak his mind and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for finding truth. Laws like Colorado’s, which suppress speech based on viewpoint, represent an egregious assault on both commitments.”
It doesn’t matter if the government thinks that the world would be a better place if certain people weren’t allowed to speak. Unless someone is committing a very specific offense — like fraud or defamation, or making a credible and direct threat to harm someone — then the government has to stay out of it. This isn’t the Soviet Union, or Canada. But in this case, Colorado effectively tried to suspend the First Amendment. When it came to gender issues, the state of Colorado declared that you can hold any viewpoint you want — as long as it’s their viewpoint. They forced therapists to lie to their mentally disturbed patients. It’s one of the most psychotic laws that’s ever been passed.
That’s why eight Supreme Court justices — including two of the Leftists — just voted to strike down the law. (Technically, they voted to apply a much more strict standard to the law, but they made it clear that the lower courts need to strike it down.) So if you’re keeping track, this is the third time in the past few years that Leftists in the state of Colorado have been shut down by the Supreme Court after attempting to force Christians to adopt Left-wing orthodoxy, with harassment and lawsuits. First they tried to force the Christian baker to make the cake for the gay wedding. Then they tried to force the Christian web designer to create gay wedding websites. Now they tried to force a Christian counselor to affirm the gender delusions of children. And once again, they’ve lost. They caused enormous damage to these Christians, and they’ve made it clear that they want to destroy Christians entirely. And yet every time, in the end, they’ve lost.
But there was one justice who wrote a dissent to this ruling. And you already know who it was. Of course, it was Ketanji Brown Jackson — the single dumbest individual to ever sit on the United States Supreme Court, who was selected by the Biden administration solely because of her race and gender. They set out to find a black woman for the job, and she was the most qualified black woman they could find, apparently.
I’m going to go through this dissent at some length, because you really need to understand how dangerously incompetent this woman is — and why it’s important for conservatives to get serious about protecting their Supreme Court majority, which we’ll talk about in a second. But for now, let’s get to Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent.
We’ll start with the very beginning. This is the first line.
There is no right to practice medicine which is not subordinate to the police power of the States. This was true 100 years ago, and it should be true today.
This is truly an amazing passage, given the source. It’s like a vegan opening their argument by saying: “It is obvious that animals have no rights.” She just destroyed basically her entire ideological project.
That’s not to say that her statement is incorrect, in a vacuum. The idea is that, whatever a doctor wants to do, ultimately doctors are subordinate to the power of the government. If the voters in a state pass a law that restricts doctors in some way, in order to protect the public, then the doctors have to abide by that. Doctors are subordinate to the ability of the state to keep the public safe, is what she’s saying. It’s a very broad principle. As she says, it’s a very traditional principle. And she opens her dissent with it.
That’s obviously not an unreasonable position, by itself. The problem is that, in every other major case that’s dealt with this issue, Ketanji Brown Jackson has taken the exact opposite position. She clearly doesn’t actually believe the principle that state power (or the will of the voters) always trumps the opinions of the doctors. When it comes to abortion, for example, Jackson doesn’t care about what the government or the voters want. She thinks abortion should be available on-demand. “The government shouldn’t interfere with health care decisions.” This is the mantra trumpeted constantly, for decades, by Jackson and her left wing counterparts. She definitely doesn’t think that the “State police power” should override the woman’s so-called “right” to murder her child. Or maybe she does? Maybe she’s finally coming out in support of a total abortion ban. Based on this decision, that’s the only conclusion you can draw.
On top of that, Ketanji Brown Jackson just ruled, in the Skrmetti case, that people have no right to overrule the wisdom of doctors who want to sterilize and castrate children. She agreed with Sonia Sotomayor, who said that Tennessee’s law against child castration would cause, “untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them.”
Yes, that was a different case, with different issues. But without a doubt, in Skrmetti, Ketanji Brown Jackson did not endorse the principle that, “There is no right to practice medicine which is not subordinate to the police power of the States.” She didn’t even mention that principle at all.
So apparently with this so-called “conversion ban” case, we’ve stumbled on the one area of medicine where, according to Ketanji Brown Jackson, the power of the states (and the voters) is really, really important. In every other area, she doesn’t care what the voters think, or what lawmakers think. Already, this tells you that Ketanji Brown Jackson is not a real judge. She’s an activist. She doesn’t make rulings based on principle. She decides what outcome she wants, and then she works backwards from there.
In this case, the outcome that Jackson wanted is clear: She wanted the state to have the ability to regulate speech, and to force people to accept trans ideology. Don’t be fooled by the fact that this case is about therapy. The First Amendment applies to everyone, not just therapists. If Jackson can force a therapist to endorse gender ideology, then it’s only a matter of time before she writes an opinion forcing everyone to do the same.
Jackson writes:
Though these proscriptions certainly promote a certain viewpoint, in this context, that alone does not suffice to establish a First Amendment violation . … My colleague’s conclusions are puzzling, for a standards-based healthcare scheme cannot function unless its regulators are permitted to choose sides.
So she’s just coming out and saying it. In her view, “regulators” should be able to “choose sides,” and force everyone else to agree with them. In her view, that doesn’t amount to a First Amendment violation. Let’s continue.
In my view, it is obvious that the Minor Conversion Therapy Law is regulating professional conduct insofar as it prohibits providing a particular therapy; the aim of the statute is not suppressing speech.
In other words, she’s saying that, even though the Colorado government is explicitly banning speech by outlawing so-called “conversion therapy,” nevertheless, Colorado isn’t actually “suppressing speech.” That’s because, according to Ketanji Brown Jackson, the government is only banning speech in the context of some other “conduct” — the talk therapy session. So really, as Jackson understands the situation, the government of Colorado is really banning “conduct,” not “speech.” She thinks the ban on speech is incidental to the ban on conducting therapy sessions in a certain way.
Let’s think about this for a second. Every form of speech involves some kind of “conduct” in addition to the speech. If you send an email or post a tweet, you’re engaging in both “speech” and “conduct” at the same time. You’re sitting in a chair, typing on a keyboard, looking at a screen on a computer, et cetera. All of that behavior amounts to “conduct” that’s occurring alongside your “speech.” Speech is conduct. By the same token, if you go to a protest and wave a sign around, you’re engaging in both speech and conduct. You’re saying things, but you’re also waving a sign, walking down the sidewalk, and so on.
This goes for all forms of speech. If you go out in public and yell and scream psychotically, and someone says they disapprove of your conduct, it wouldn’t make any sense to reply: “But I wasn’t engaging in conduct. I was only engaging speech!”
Speech is conduct, wo under Ketanji Brown Jackson’s understanding, all speech could be banned, as a kind of “conduct.” But if you have an IQ above room temperature, then you understand how absurd this is. There needs to be some limiting principle. And as luck would have it, over the last 50 years, courts have established these limiting principles. And those limiting principles, in general, go like this: Whenever the government wants to ban speech, it can’t discriminate against a particular viewpoint, while allowing others. Additionally, the government can’t ban speech at all, unless it’s closely related to some kind of unlawful conduct, beyond the speech itself.
So for example, if the government passes a law that says no one can participate in a loud protest in the suburbs after midnight, that’s completely fine. The government isn’t discriminating against any particular viewpoint. Instead, they’re shutting down all viewpoints. And they’re doing it for a very important reason: a protest after 3:00 AM in the suburbs is very closely related to the separate crime of disorderly conduct, protesting without a permit, and so on. So in that case, someone could be prosecuted for creating a disturbance. But that’s very different from saying that the government will only allow, say, pro-BLM or pro-trans protests after 3 AM. That would be a very different situation. It would be analogous to what Colorado is doing here.
This is all very basic stuff. Again, this was an 8-to-1 decision for a reason. But the more you read Jackson’s opinion, the more problems you find.
So let’s continue with her reasoning, or lack thereof.
The medical community has determined that efforts to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity will necessarily be ineffective. The American Psychological Association (APA), for example, has found “no empirical evidence that providing any type of therapy in childhood can alter adult same-sex sexual orientation.” And “[n]o research has been published in the peer-reviewed literature that demonstrates the efficacy of conversion therapy efforts with gender minority youth, nor any benefits of such interventions to children and their families.
Notice what’s happening here. She’s saying that, because the Left-wing medical groups haven’t written a study that specifically states that it will help children if you tell them the truth about gender, therefore we shouldn’t allow counselors to tell children the truth about their gender. But here’s the thing: There’s no need for a study in this case, one way or the other. It doesn’t matter if researchers at the Berkeley Trans Factory claim to discover that children become unhappy (or even depressed) when doctors tell them the truth. The emotional response of children, regardless of what that response may be, does not override the First Amendment.
Of course we have plenty of evidence — not to mention common sense — which tells us that it’s a terrible idea to affirm the delusions of children. The ACLU’s lawyer had to admit last year, before the Supreme Court, that they have precisely zero evidence that so-called “gender-affirming care” actually reduces suicide rates, even though they constantly claim otherwise. But again, whatever data or study you come up with, the truth is all that matters. In a free country, no one can be forced to affirm a lie. Period.
We all know what’s going on here, with this dissent. This is yet another attempt — one of many — to give the so-called “experts” a veto power over what Americans are allowed to say out loud. First of all, even if the experts were always right about everything, which they aren’t, this whole line of argument is un-American and unconstitutional. So-called “experts” do not get to force other people to agree with them, which is what this law attempts to do. And as we all know, these experts are some of the most corrupt, least trustworthy people on the planet. Last year, as you may remember, The Daily Wire published footage of a private video call featuring the president of the AMA, which is the leading medical association on the planet. And in that call, the president of the AMA made it very clear that the organization is basically a rubber-stamp for other, smaller organizations. They aren’t actually vetting anything. They’ll endorse so-called “trans medicine,” and then when they’re asked about it, they’ll claim total ignorance. And when the president of the AMA was informed that these smaller organizations — the organizations the AMA is relying on — are staffed by extremely biased activists, he simply didn’t care.
I won’t go through everything else in Jackson’s dissent. But I did want to mention this one paragraph as well, because it actually approaches an intelligent argument from Ketanji Brown Jackson. And for that reason alone, it’s historic. We need to talk about it.
“When a State establishes a standard of care, or punishes a doctor for providing care outside of that standard, it necessarily limits what medical professionals can say and do on the basis of viewpoint. A State can prohibit the administration of specific drugs for particular medical uses but not for others. So, too, may it prohibit a doctor from encouraging a patient to commit suicide…”
She’s actually right there — at least in part. It’s true that the government can punish doctors who “encourage patients to commit suicide.” And, at some level, that does count as a restriction on the free-speech rights of these medical professionals.
But there’s a very big difference between that situation, and Colorado’s ban on so-called “conversion therapy.” Colorado was attempting to force counselors, in their official capacity, to lie to their patients, and to claim that gender ideology was settled science. Colorado was forcing doctors to take a specific position on a contested issue. And calling it contested is being VERY generous to the pro-trans side. It’s actually not contested at all by reasonable people. On the other hand, in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s example, doctors are telling patients to harm themselves — in other words, they’re encouraging patients to commit a crime. That kind of speech can be regulated, for the same reason that I’d get in trouble if I told all my viewers to commit a crime. It falls under a very narrow category of speech, which is incitement to violence. It makes sense for the medical profession to restrict doctors from encouraging their patients to commit crimes.
This probably seems logical to you or me, but for Ketanji Brown Jackson, who spends most of her time on Broadway (or at the Grammys), logic is irrelevant. And for that reason alone, Republicans should impeach her. AOC tried to impeach Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, even though they’re obviously competent and accomplished justices. She introduced articles of impeachment and everything, because they went on some vacations with their rich friends.
If that’s the standard, then by tomorrow morning, Republicans should introduce articles of impeachment against Ketanji Brown Jackson. She was nominated for a Grammy — supposedly because of her audiobook, but we all know the actual reason. That’s a pretty big “gift,” from some pretty rich friends. But really, the reason to impeach Jackson is that she’s a complete moron. She’s dangerously stupid. She’s not even attempting to be honest or fair in her rulings. We could go through her entire career and establish easily, as we’ve done in the past, that she’s grossly unfit and unqualified for the job she has. But really all we need is this ruling. A woman who believes that therapists should be forced by law to lie to confused children is not suited for the supreme court, or any other prominent position in society. She rejects the constitution. She rejects common sense. She is either insane or pretending to be insane. In either case, she shouldn’t be on the court, and there is a much better argument for impeaching her than there ever was for impeaching Clarence Thomas, that’s for certain.
And once we’re done impeaching her, we need to have a serious conversation about retirements. Clarence Thomas is 77. Samuel Alito is 75. John Roberts is 71. All three of them should give serious consideration to stepping down right now. That’s not because they’re bad at their jobs (except for John Roberts). Clarence Thomas is one of the greatest Supreme Court justices of all time. He’s a brilliant man, and a good man, and it would be a shame to see him go. But he will go, one way or another, sooner than later. If Democrats retake the Senate in November, then we’ll have no chance to replace them with conservatives. There’s a very real possibility that Democrats take the Senate this year, and then the White House in 2028. If that happens, it would be catastrophic. Democrats might be able to swap three conservative justices for three Leftists, which would swing the balance of power on the court.
Thomas, Alito and Roberts know all of this. They saw what happened with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, after she clung to power for a bit too long. If this country is going to survive, we simply can’t have any more Ketanji Brown Jacksons on the court. Birthright citizenship is the next big topic this court is going to decide. That could be the single most important case in American history. It could be the case that allows America to remove the foreigners who have invaded this country, and prevent them from coming back. It could restore America to Americans.
So we simply can’t tolerate any more radical far left insane justices, who are selected solely because of their race and gender. It would inflict far too much damage to the country. So as soon as possible, we need to give the White House the opportunity to replace at least some of these old conservative justices with three young ones. We have the power to do that right now. We should take advantage of the opportunity. And after reading this latest dissent from Ketanji Brown Jackson, it’s hard to imagine that every conservative on the Supreme Court — and everyone in the White House — isn’t thinking the same thing.
