Last month, delegates to the [Texas Republican] state party convention approved a platform that would effectively require a kind of electoral college for statewide elections. To win the governor’s mansion, a candidate would need to carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties. Democrats, concentrated in the state’s major cities, could never win, no matter the majority they scored at the polls. Republicans, who dominate the state’s vast rural expanse, would govern in perpetuity. (Bouie)

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The Supreme Court overturned a ban on bump stocks enacted by the Trump administration, ruling that the government was wrong to classify the devices as machine guns… The bump stock allows a [semiautomatic] weapon to fire at nearly the rate of a machine gun without technically converting it to a fully automatic firearm.
Rates of fire:
2016 Orlando night club shooting — 24 shots in 9 seconds, 29 killed, 53 injured;
2017 Las Vegas shooting — about 90 shots in 10 seconds, 58 killed, almost 500 injured (lone gunman had bump stocks on 12 rifles);
Fully automatic firearm — 98 shots in 7 seconds.
(Buchanan, et al.)

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The title of the head of the judicial branch is chief justice of the United States, not chief justice of the Supreme Court… [Chief Justice William Rehnquist] once skipped the president’s State of the Union address because it conflicted with his painting class at the local recreation center. [I assume this happened during Bill Clinton’s presidency, but I can’t find the painting class story attested elsewhere. JMN] (Greenhouse)

Sources
Jamelle Bouie, “Justice Alito Is Right About One Thing,” New York Times, 6-14-24.
Larry Buchanan, Evan Grothjan, Jon Huang, Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Adam Pearce and Karen Yourish, “What Is a Bump Stock and How Does It Work?, New York Times, published in 2017, updated 6-14-24.
Linda Greenhouse, “How John Roberts Lost His Court,” New York Times, 6-16-24.

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