Hello, happy Thursday. 130 days until the election. Today we will talk about flies, lies, and postponing the issue.

First, the fly. The presidential debate is happening tonight, and it's obviously not going to go well, but all I can think about is when a big black fly landed on Pence's snow-white hair during the 2020 Pence-Harris debate.

It was mesmerizing, in the most terrifying way. For two minutes the fly stayed there, taunting us not to notice. It swayed and quivered. And best of all, it stayed.

This fly, which I named Marty for no particular reason, has been the subject of countless memes and Bobblehead.

Hours later, President Biden released a fundraising ad. “The truth is bigger than the fly” – Flyswatter for $5 donation.

So the only thing that matters tonight is Marty's moment, the unexpected viral sensation that surpasses all else.

Now, the Supreme Court, even when it issues decisions, tries very hard not to issue decisions.

The mistake of abortion

The Supreme Court accidentally released a high-profile decision on abortion on Wednesday that was sure to reignite Dobbs' PTSD (the decision was leaked earlier by a yet-unknown source).

Bloomberg Law has obtained a copy. Before the court realized its error, we got a sneak peek at the cases it will formally decide on Thursday: Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, a consolidated set of two cases.

However (as I've written before) this is better known as an EMTALA case. Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Work Laws.

Essentially, Idaho wanted to ban nearly all abortions, including those performed in emergency rooms to save women from serious health consequences. Note to self: Idaho sucks.

The US government essentially launched a Hail Mary to try to block this outdated law by invoking a Reagan-era law designed to prevent patient abandonment and force emergency rooms to provide critical care. Because federal law supersedes state law, the government thought it had an opportunity.

If the leaked decision is indeed the final decision (which it likely is), the Supreme Court did not rule in favor of the US government, but it also “definitely did not hand a victory to abortion opponents,” Mary Ziegler told me.

She's a professor at the University of California, Davis, and a national expert on abortion rights.

In an increasingly frequent move, the court ruled that the lawsuit was “frivolously admitted” and postponed the decision to a future lawsuit, meaning the case should never have come before the court in the first place.

“They haven't decided anything on the substantive issues,” Ziegler said, adding that Idaho will likely have to at least temporarily provide abortions in emergency rooms until the lower courts rule or another case makes its way to the Supreme Court.

So the Supreme Court postponed the issue until a year without an election.

That means there won't be any shocking abortion rulings this summer that will infuriate the public, as Democrats had hoped.

Ziegler said what's most interesting about the decision is that the court's six conservative justices appear to be split on the case, saying “three of the conservatives are not as ready to go in as the rest of them.”

Do you think that's a good thing? At least it's the best we have.

Kicked the other can

The justices also deliberately ruled on a case known as Murthy v. Missouri.

This one hasn't gotten as much attention as some of the other decisions expected this week, but it's more important than we might think.

After the 2020 election and throughout the pandemic, the federal government urged social media sites to remove misinformation and disinformation (i.e. lies and propaganda), particularly regarding the COVID-19 virus.

You may remember this as the QAnon era where good people lost their minds. “Q” was dropping “hints” about a Deep State international plot to make the Democrats masters of humanity. There was also a ton of anti-Semitism and some lizard men for fun.

(The crazy social media shitstorm also included anti-vaccination garbage from presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., who has made his own case on the issue. Kennedy vs Biden.

In Mursi v. Missouri, two right-wing attorneys general from Louisiana and Missouri and several conservative private plaintiffs sued the federal government for flagging such posts on social media sites, arguing that the federal government had no right to do so because it violated the First Amendment and amounted to government censorship.

And, as with EMTALA, the judges didn't really make many decisions about censorship or propaganda, other than they didn't want to decide anything.

The court ruled that Missouri, Louisiana and the other plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, meaning they cannot sue in court because nothing wrong happened to any of them.

“Neither the state government nor individual social media users have been able to prove or even allege that the actions of government agencies or officials caused them any harm.” Lisa McPherson“The government is trying to protect its interests,” he said in a statement.

So again, the court doesn't want to get involved in the key issue: what is free speech and what can the government do to combat lies and propaganda without infringing on it?

That's both good news and bad news.

Mia Bloom, a professor at Georgia State University and an expert on disinformation, said this is “good for Biden because it refutes the far-right's claims that Democrats are weaponizing social media.”

She points out that most of the misinformation and disinformation online comes from right-wing sources, but at the same time, the far-right is constantly claiming that it's the left that is spreading the lies. Parliamentary Committee He has grilled experts on the issue, thwarting attempts to curb the spread of this kind on social media.

But Joan Donovan, a disinformation expert and professor at Boston University, said the lack of a ruling would only leave confusion and fear. The government might again be allowed to flag suspicious or false posts and send takedown requests to social media platforms, but would they want to do that?

“No one wants to be the target of a smear campaign for reporting misconduct on a social media company's platform,” Donovan said, noting that individual public officials would not want to be targeted.

It will only further embolden those who are already frighteningly adept at manipulating not only people but reality.

“Disinformation today is a political strategy that uses online platforms as a platform for mass propaganda campaigns,” Donovan warned.

What else to read

Must Read: Supreme Court now appears poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho
“Of course.”: Times/Siena poll finds Republicans support Trump after conviction
LA Times SpecialTrump wants mass deportations. Can Biden pitch a more nuanced approach in the debate?

Stay golden,
Anita Chhabria

P.S.: Here's a smiling great white shark captured by marine photographer Eric Mailander in Monterey Bay.

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