The Conservative Cave

Can governors issue blanket clemency actions, especially when dealing with the worst of the worst offenders in the state? We may soon find out – and perhaps Gavin Newsom hopes to get challenged.

John wrote yesterday about Newsom's commutation of 548 death sentences in California. The timing itself is interesting. Newsom waited until after the midterm election to pursue his supposedly principled course of action, claiming in the eighth year of his governorship that executions violate "our core values ... justice and decency." It apparently took a midterm blue wave for Newsom to discover his own "core values," not to mention what will start immediately after the midterms.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a preliminary injunction blocking portions of Mississippi’s ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion practices at public schools and universities, clearing the way for the law to take effect.

The appeals court also sharply criticized U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate’s handling of the case, calling the proceedings a “botch job” and ordering the lawsuit reassigned to another judge.

Mississippi’s H.B. 1193, enacted in April 2025, prohibits public schools and universities from maintaining certain DEI offices and requiring diversity training.

The law also requires employment, academic opportunity, and student-engagement decisions to rest on merit and qualifications rather than race, color, sexual orientation, or gender.

It restricts institutions from requiring adherence to a list of “divisive concepts” involving subjects including race, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and national origin.

Wingate blocked portions of the law in August 2025 after finding that they violated the First Amendment.

The Fifth Circuit reversed that decision.

Judge Jerry Smith wrote that Wingate “carelessly exercised his Article III power by issuing sloppy edicts based on falsehoods and fabrications,” the Magnolia Tribune reported.

The appeals court also said an earlier temporary restraining order cited a nonexistent case and identified parties who were not involved in the lawsuit.

moniss (9,550 posts)


A long time DU member asked me to

make into an OP a comment that I had made to an OP they had made about our need to push hard on defending women's rights and I heartily concur that this needs to be a top priority. So here is the comment I made:

"Right you are and those in charge need to immediately work on child care/day care costs as well as addressing maternity costs and impacts. The cost of day care is enormous these days. You are absolutely right about the unfair scheme in this country for allowing the states to attack women's rights in the ways they have.

One of the things that wasn't really talked about in this election was that states had been given the green light to come after pregnant women and literally hunt them down, monitor their mail, surveil them, restrict their movements, threaten their health care providers and threaten the women with prison sentences etc.

Never forget that in addition to hunting down immigrants they hunted down pregnant women. I will never forget. I will never forget that Abbott strung razor wire in the river knowing it would entangle and drown children and adults. I will never forget how they thought it was funny to lie to asylum seekers about jobs waiting for them and then unannounced load them off to northern cities in the dead of winter and leave them off with nothing in the middle of the night in freezing cold. I will never forget that they thought it was funny to cut food and medical care to children and give that money to already wealthy people. I will never forget the trauma they caused so many children and their parents by being brutally ripped apart from each other at gunpoint in their communities. I will never forget that they thought kids getting measles was no big deal. I will never forget the scum at DOJ who hid the Epstein files and refused to meet the victims.

Not one of them, exception for Massie and a couple of others, has the guts to own up to any of this. I won't forget or be persuaded when they tell me they have "changed".

https://democraticunderground.com/100221619345

As I posted about this in a recent daily thread, the antisemites know Philthydephia's DA won't pursue them.