What A Day: Plop plop, fizz fizz, no student relief it is

The Supreme Court is issuing rulings faster than you can say “Why is Clarence Thomas still on the bench?”

• The right-wing court voted 6-3 to reject Biden’s proposed student-loan forgiveness plan. Guess who voted for what? That’s right, only the women who aren’t Amy Coney Barret were on the losing-but-correct side. Again. This latest ruling means that 20 million borrowers who were eligible to have their loan balances completely erased will soon have to start making payments. In many cases, these borrowers have already paid back more than they borrowed, but still face a mountain of debt they can’t recover from. 
   
• Americans need money and the government just won’t let us have it. For those calling for armageddon, Biden still rejects the idea of packing the courts with additional liberal judges, warning, “We're going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy.” The Supreme Court may already but a little unhealthy, but hey, like they said, “We drank beer. We liked beer.”
   
• Biden has vowed that the “fight is not over” which sounds pretty hollow and most likely means “vote for me again” as reversing student debt was a top campaign pledge of his in 2020. The program would have given 43 million Americans up to $10,000 dollars in debt relief. As of this writing, we’ve yet to hear a new plan. There are a slew of government programs that aid lower-income workers with the burden of student-loan debt but there’s not much to offer middle-class Americans.

So, at this point, it’s hard not to be freaked out about this Supreme Court and bracing for year after year of this shit. Unfortunately, there’s more bad, and then possibly more even bad after that. Does that help?

• The other immediate bad was their other ruling today in favor a Christian website designer who refuses to make websites for gay couples. The three dissenting judges (guess who?) wrote that this basically gives businesses “a license to discriminate.” The woman who brought the case only wants to make websites for marriages that represent “a long-long union between one man and one woman." Good luck with that, sister. Half of your websites end up being for sinners. 
   
• They also agreed Friday to consider another case about whether the government may forbid people subject to domestic-violence orders from having guns. They ruled last year to make it easier for people to carry guns outside of the home, so only God knows how the conservative justice majority is going to steer this decision.

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New laws will take effect across the country on July 1. Since most new laws are terrifying, I wanted to highlight some of the better legislative outcomes. In Florida alone, 200 new laws will go live including limits on using TikTok and carrying guns without concealed-weapons licenses. California added a new law making Juneteenth a state holiday. California offices and courts were notably open this Juneteenth, though it was declared a federal holiday for the first time this year. Also going into law in California is the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act, which creates a new industry standard of conduct, making it easier for Californians to take firearm retailers to civil court. Connecticut is stepping up against child abuse and will make marriage illegal for anyone under 18. Prior to 2017, the state had no age restriction whatsoever on who could be legally married with their parent’s permission. 

But not all the laws deal with such heavy topics. There are some fun ones out there. For instance, Maryland legalized cannabis. And why should adults have all of the fun? Thanks to a petition launched by fourth graders, Mississippi will make the blueberry the official state fruit. And thanks to another student in Washington, the new official “state dinosaur” there is the Suciasaurus Rex, based on the first-ever dinosaur remains discovered in the state in 2012. I don’t know people, it’s been a bleak news week and that’s all we got.

• Those 10,000 five-star reviews are fake. Now they’ll also be illegal. These disingenuous reviews makeup 30-40 percent of online reviews and could face astronomical fines depending on how many fake reviews they have created. 
   
• Amid a shortage of Sriracha, the bottles are now being sold for up to $70 a pop. It’s just chiles, sugar, garlic, and vinegar, people. Time to start your own Sriracha competitor.
   
• A man accused of involvement in the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol was arrested Thursday afternoon near Barack Obama’s home, shortly after Donald Trump posted the Obamas' address online. Police found weapons, ammunition, and materials that could make explosives inside the suspect’s van.
   
• Hunter Biden settled his Arkansas child support case in part by giving his daughter his paintings. She was given the option of keeping them or selling them. Since some of them are being sold for upwards of half a million dollars, I think I know which one she’s going to pick. 
   
• Finally, some sane news out of the courts: Judge rejects Trump’s “presidential immunity plea in the case against E. Jean Carrol.
   
• The number of unhoused residents in the city of Los Angeles rose by a whopping 10 percent this year to over 75,000 people. 
   
• Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder received the maximum possible sentence of 20 years for being the ringleader of a racketeering scandal that netted him more than $59 million in bribes in exchange for a $1.3 billion bailout to Akron-based FirstEnergy.
   
• After months of negotiations, a strike by UPS workers is imminent with a deadline to strike by Friday. 
   
• A Brazilian court has ruled that Jair Bolsonaro cannot run in any elections until 2030. He’ll be 75 by then, not that there’s anything wrong with that. 

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One lingering pandemic habit that Americans can’t shake is shopping at farmer’s markets.

In Japan, you don’t have to quit all by yourself. Hire a “job leaving agent” to handle all the messiness. In Japan, job loyalty is a much bigger deal, and leaving your job can be as messy as a divorce.