Kevin Drum

One of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's proudest achievements is the Stop WOKE Act. Among other things, it bars employers from holding mandatory DEI training sessions. Four months after the law was signed a district court issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement on First Amendment grounds, and today DeSantis unanimously lost his appeal in the 11th Circuit Court:

Florida’s law, the Individual Freedom Act, bans certain mandatory workplace trainings.... Discussion of these topics, however, is not completely barred—the law prohibits requiring attendance only for sessions endorsing them. Employers can still require employees to attend sessions that reject these ideas or present them in an “objective manner without endorsement of the concepts.”

....By limiting its restrictions to a list of ideas designated as offensive, the Act targets speech based on its content. And by barring only speech that endorses any of those ideas, it penalizes certain viewpoints—the greatest First Amendment sin.

Florida tried to argue that the law prohibited only conduct—i.e., meetings—not speech itself. The court had no patience for this obvious sophistry:

The fact that only mandatory meetings that convey a particular message and viewpoint are prohibited makes quick work of Florida’s conduct-not-speech defense.... If Florida disapproves of the message, the meeting cannot be required.

....Under Florida’s proposed standard, a government could ban riding on a parade float if it did not agree with the message on the banner. The government could ban pulling chairs into a circle for book clubs discussing disfavored books. And so on. The First Amendment is not so easily neutered.

There's more, but it's just the legalistic superstructure required in modern judicial opinions. For all practical purposes, the opinion can be boiled down to two sentences: Florida is trying to ban the private expression of certain viewpoints it dislikes. That is absolutely, positively not allowed by the First Amendment.

The three-judge panel that issued this opinion included two Trump appointees and one Clinton appointee.

POSTSCRIPT: The Stop WOKE Act also prohibits similar DEI instruction in schools. That was not at issue in this case and the court said nothing about it. However, a district court has already issued an injunction against the law as it relates to higher education.

A recent article in Pediatrics reports that antidepressant use has increased substantially among young adults. Among men the increase since 2017 is 44%. Among women it's 58%.

Trend data suggests that antidepressant use is rising at similar rates among adults of all ages—in fact, perhaps at a higher rate among older adults. So, as a rough approximation, we can extrapolate growth among young adults to growth among all adults. If we use CDC figures from 2015-18 as a baseline, here's what we get:

If this is anywhere near accurate, it means that a third of white women are taking antidepressants. That's far higher than it is for any other race or gender. This has been true for some time, but the gap is widening and the sheer numbers are continuing to increase. What's going on?

Here's a chart from Ryan Burge:

Between the ages of 20-50, the number of people having frequent sex has declined by 7-10 percentage points. Burge is interested in whether this has anything to do with religion, but I have a different theory.

The early comparison period is 1989-1993. This was before the Prozac revolution really took off.

The later comparison period is 2016-2022. During this period, something like 12% of adults aged 20-50 took antidepressants.

A great many of these antidepressants are SSRIs or related meds, which have a well known effect on sex. That effect is to make it all but impossible. It's telling that Burge finds that sex hasn't changed much among Black protestants, which matches data showing that Black people use antidepressants at a far lower rate than white people.

This is speculative for now. A proper study would compare frequency of sex among different races and genders, which have substantially different rates of antidepressant use. Has anyone done that?

I spent yesterday at the Los Angeles Zoo, but before we get to that it's time to finally finish up my photos from the San Diego Zoo three years ago. This is a black-billed magpie, a handsome bird that's common in western North America. And with that, we're done with the San Diego Zoo.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that teacher turnover is up. They base this on data from ten states. Why only ten?

National teacher exit data is released only sporadically, and many states don’t produce timely figures. But the Journal obtained information from 10 states, the most comprehensive recent compilation, that shows turnover typically followed a postpandemic pattern: a drop in the summer of 2020, followed by a spike in 2022.

This is a very odd thing to say. States may issue official exit data "sporadically," but the JOLTS survey produces data every month. This data isn't perfect since it encompasses both K-12 and higher education, but 75% of this is K-12 so it's still pretty suggestive:

Separations have been slowly rising since 2010 thanks to retirements among baby boomers. But surprise! For the past two years separations have been going down.

As usual, when you look at national data there's little evidence that teachers are quitting in great numbers or that schools can't fill their positions. There are specific areas that might have problems, but overall things are pretty normal.

I remain unmoved by the liberal panic over Joe Biden's weak poll numbers. However, I keep getting asked why, so here it is:

• Right now the race is basically a tossup.
• But it's still very early. The vast majority of swing voters aren't paying attention yet—and won't until after the conventions.
• As voter attention shifts to the campaign it will hurt Trump. Historically, the more people hear from Trump, the less they like him.
• Trump has a lower ceiling than Biden. There are just too many people who flatly won't vote for him. Biden has more upside.
• Many of the people who say they won't vote for Biden will come around later in the year. As always, the prospect of a Republican winning—especially Trump—will overcome their early doubts.
• Biden hasn't even begun to campaign yet. He has a lot of money, and when the ads start running they'll hurt Trump a lot.
• Biden has an obvious problem with his physical condition, which reads as old. But his mental condition is fine. Trump, by contrast, shows signs of serious mental deterioration. This hasn't gotten a lot of attention yet, but it will.
• Trump has a big potential downside from all his trials. His MAGA fans might not care, but centrist voters do, and it could spell big problems if prosecutors are getting headlines for Trump's misdeeds when October rolls around.

So that's that. But I have two big worries. The first is that the economy might go south, though that's looking less and less likely all the time. The second is that although the race is a tossup nationally, it really does seem like Biden is weak in the battleground states that matter. I'm not sure how that will play out.

The Wall Street Journal reports that restaurants continue to struggle thanks to surging wages for workers:

The surge in restaurant and bar worker wages since 2021 followed years in which their hourly earnings ticked up by an easier to manage 2% to 4% annually. For independent restaurants that make food from scratch, higher labor costs are particularly painful.

This is flatly untrue. Here are restaurant wages adjusted for inflation:

Wages did surge in 2021 but have been flat for the past two years. Current wages are precisely on their pre-pandemic trend. This is true for all types of restaurants tracked by the BLS (fast food, sit-down, cafeterias, etc.).

As usual, the Journal tries to make its case with a combination of anecdotes and a chart that's not adjusted for inflation. This is all but deliberate dishonesty.

So what's the reason that so many restaurants are struggling? The Journal notes that sales volume is extremely healthy, which is true. However, the Census Bureau doesn't break down sales between fast food and sit-down restaurants, and I suspect that sit-down restaurants haven't recovered completely from the pandemic. There's also this:

Takeout orders account for about 80% of Johnny Roger’s dinner business, up from 20% prepandemic. Dabbs figures it costs him $1 per customer every time someone places a to-go order, because of the extra expense of packaging.

The rise of DoorDash and other food delivery services has probably hit the restaurant business pretty hard. Not only are takeout orders more expensive, but delivery services take a slice of the revenue. Between the two, revenues are down and costs are up, especially at sit-down restaurants.

What else could it be? It's pretty clear that, while the cost of food and labor has gone up, restaurants have raised their prices even more. So it can't be that. One way or another, something else has happened to the business to make it less profitable. The growth of takeout is my guess.

I see this morning that the Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump can't be tossed off the ballot for participating in insurrection. The ruling was unanimous.

The Court ruled, first, that "more or less formal" proceedings are required to decide if someone is guilty of insurrection and therefore ineligible to hold office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment:

Section 3 works by imposing on certain individuals a preventive and severe penalty—disqualification from holding a wide array of offices—rather than by granting rights to all. It is therefore necessary, as Chief Justice Chase concluded and the Colorado Supreme Court itself recognized, to “ ‘ascertain[] what particular individuals are embraced’ ” by the provision. Chase went on to explain that “[t]o accomplish this ascertainment and ensure effective results, proceedings, evidence, decisions, and enforcements of decisions, more or less formal, are indispensable.”

Second, the Court ruled that for federal offices, these proceedings needed to be federal:

It is Congress that has long given effect to Section 3 with respect to would-be or existing federal officeholders. Shortly after ratification of the Amendment, Congress enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870.... In the years following ratification, the House and Senate exercised their unique powers under Article I to adjudicate challenges contending that certain prospective or sitting Members could not take or retain their seats due to Section 3.

This comes as no surprise. And I suspect it's good news. The unanimous ruling hints at an understood agreement that the Court will side with Trump in this case and against him in the immunity case. Ideally, I imagine that Chief Justice Roberts would like to see a unanimous opinion in that case too. Stay tuned.

Joe Kent is a MAGA Republican running for Congress against Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state. He is opposed to replacing an aging bridge that crosses the Columbia River:

Mr. Kent, who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election and has referred to those jailed for taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as “political prisoners,” has branded the reconstruction plan an “Antifa superhighway.” He has claimed that the proposed project, which includes a light rail and tolls, will bring unwanted urban elements from Portland into the car-centric, predominantly white community of Clark County, Washington, effectively serving as “an expressway for Portland’s crime & homeless into Vancouver,” as he wrote on social media.

Huh. I wonder what Kent's alternative is? Just keep the old bridge until it collapses someday? Tear it down so nobody can cross the river? Replace it with a ferry?

Every country has some lunatics. Some of them even get into office. But we sure as hell have more than our share these days.

Monica Hesse writes in the Washington Post today about a crop of new books on marriage and divorce:

All of these treatises about divorce are really, no surprise, about marriage. Who benefits from it? Who carries it? Who gets to be the show pony and who has to be the workhorse? What should we make of the statistic that Lenz offers us, that 70 percent of divorces are initiated by wives, while their husbands seem shocked to realize that things aren’t actually fine? She cites research and anecdotes pointing to the conundrum of modern marriages: Wives may have entered the workforce, but husbands still haven’t entered the kitchen to pick up the slack. Can marriage be saved?

Earlier, Hesse pondered whether she was "the only female essayist in America who was not either getting or considering a divorce." Interesting! Of course, one thing she could have done is 60 seconds of googling:

About 1.5% of marriages end in divorce every year. This has dropped steadily since 1979 and is now a bit lower than it was 50 years ago. Admittedly this says nothing about divorce specifically among American female essayists, but it certainly suggests it's probably fairly low.

This data comes from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University, which also provides a geographical breakdown. I know you're curious, so here it is:

Marriages are most fragile in the Bible Belt, which explains why they're the ones most concerned about the breakdown of the family. They see it and live it every day.

POSTSCRIPT: Marriage rates have dropped substantially since the '70s, which probably explains part of the low divorce rate. When people get married only if they really want to, they're less likely to eventually get divorced.