@louisrcouture @BackFromTheDud @georgetakei
So the Govt of the USA can't tax the earnings of Americans working outside the USA?
That'll please a lot of the oil industry workers I've worked with.
@louisrcouture
Now that's not the American way.
The world literally loves the USA for its exterritorial applying laws and enforcement.
Okay. What if my answer isn't NO, but YES?
I mean, that's what much of the discussion was about, wasn't it. What states can impose or not.
So when a state says you can't gamble here or anywhere else, and the Supreme Court is fine with that, then that's what it is. Live with it.
@cqd_sos @georgetakei Now apply that to civil rights and bodily autonomy.
If your home state of State A declares surgery illegal, should you be prosecuted for going to State B to have an emergency appendectomy?
You only got half of the shit show.
If your home state declares procedure A illegal, and says you can't have it anywhere else, you may have it performed in some other state, but as soon as you return home you're liable for prosecution.
Welcome to the United States of America.
@cqd_sos
Ah, but that opens the question.
What about people that have not lived in state A and have the procedure.
Eg residents of state B?
Considering that you still have the free movement around the USA this all does not make sense.
Equality before the law basically requires that all citizens that had the procedure and that travel to state A are prosecuted.
Or that people from state A are treated like they were moving to state B @WhiteCatTamer @georgetakei
and thus not under the rules of state A.
What are they do if the women literally get a package with a rented flat, a cost first to the DMV to get a new licence (or one of the fangled id cards for voting that seem to exist in some places), and then goes to the clinic on the next day as a resident of state B.
@WhiteCatTamer @georgetakei @cqd_sos
@yacc143 @WhiteCatTamer @georgetakei
Tha's not how it works. In particular, a state law doesn't need to make sense across states.
Theoretically, much like the nation-states in the EU, each state individually can pass any kind of law it wants, as egregious or illogical as it may be, and apply it to anyone crossing the state border. There's one requirement such a law has to fulfill though, it has to conform to the US constitution.
And how is that requirement being enforced?
@yacc143 @WhiteCatTamer @georgetakei
By challenging it, in the Supreme Court, which then validates or invalidates the law. That's how it works, it's an iterative process, not based on an overall design.
In Europe, there's also an EU law, and the states participating in the EU have to conform to that. Where the enforcement process is quite similar to the US.
Which, by the way, was a major reason why the UK left the EU. Because it felt the EU interfered too much in its domestic affairs.
@cqd_sos @WhiteCatTamer @georgetakei It's a little bit more complicated.
SCOTUS (similar to the ECJ) does not have their own army to enforce their verdicts.
In practice (and that exists in all federal systems, even relatively small countries with a "strong" federal government) you'll find that not all levels always enforce the law correctly. It does not have to be always a Nullification Crisis, but e.g. look how Marijuana regulations are enforced today in the USA. The feds literally
do not try to enforce their "war on drugs" (heard the Weirdo-in-Chief, he wants the death penalty for drug charges, but not for the drug kingpins he pardons I guess). You have it here in Austria, where Northern-Slovenia (aka Carinthia) refused for decades to put dual-language city signs. Till somebody forced the question, via a speeding ticket. (No VALID city sign, no city speed limit, oops). And in the USA it
Anyway, so making sure that the laws are correctly applied is messy.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/303858316.pdf
Just because SCOTUS rules, does not mean it cannot be ignored, right?
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol97/iss2/6/
And the lawyers are totally fine with it.
The ECJ OTOH has a more complicated situation, Americans might not realize, it does not rule on most cases directly, it's more of an expert hotline for EU law for MS courts, that these have to ask for interpretations of any EU law/regulation that might be unclear in their specific case before their court.
Well, any law is subject to interpretation, like all language is. That's what the Supreme Court is for, as far as the constitution is concerned.
And of course doesn't it enforce it in an executive sense. It's part of the judiciary, so all it does is make rulings. The enforcement lies in the assumption that the states comply with the contract they have, with the Union.
When that isn't the case, what you end up with is a constitutional crisis at best or a civil war at worst.
@cqd_sos @georgetakei
You disregard the modern notion of state as codified in the Montevideo protocol. Roughly speaking a state is a political entity that governs a region inhabited by people.
That is different from early medieval or Roman notions, for example, that are more a people with their own laws that happens to live somewhere.
So please don't be bothered when someone calls you medieval.
Honestly, nobody did, up to this point. In case somebody does, though, I'm now going to be prepared, thanks to your valuable contribution.
@chris @viq Thereβs the problem of distance. Georgia is deep in the conservative portion of the country. It would take traveling about 850 km to get from the capital of Georgia to the nearest state in which abortion is legal. Thatβs only a little less than the distance from the southernmost point in Germany to the northernmost.
The barriers are mostly distance. The USA is really, really big. A friend is in the process of moving about 1250 km, and Iβm considering moving almost 3400.
@chris @georgetakei it is a big hurdle. Finding jobs with the current regime is hard, the economy is weak. The US is huge and moving across state lines is expensive, specially if you have a family, and own a house. It also means leaving friends and, often, family behind.
Bottomline, no one is permanently moving to another state to simply abort a pregnancy. Thatβs, well, infeasible.
Moving anywhere in the United States is a Brobdingnagian undertaking unless you're wealthy, and those most at risk of being hit by criminal fines and imprisonment for evading an abortion ban in such a way are anything but. (The wealthy are also unlikely to be arrested as a whole.)
Of course, if it's life or death...
Every fascist movement weaponizes "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche" social policies against women.
https://abn.org.ua/en/documents/kinder-kirche-kuche-as-a-mirror-of-the-russian-world/
It's an early sign of the militarization of society in preparation for expansionist wars, according to historian Gwynn Dyer in his documentary "War".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Dyer
They're often disguised as sumptuary laws.
https://www.rawstory.com/salon-s-amanda-marcotte-on-why-trump-s-tariff-dolls-talk-reveals-a-deeper-misogyny/
https://msmagazine.com/2025/05/13/trump-dolls-toys-girls-inflation-tariff-supply-chain/
I feel like they left off the fact they only care about slave state's rights.