As you’ve probably heard by now, a very scary poll released on Sunday shows Joe Biden losing the 2024 election to the four-time indicted insurrection enthusiast Donald Trump in five out of six major battleground states. That’s obviously a wildly disturbing prospect; it would be like asking someone if they’d like to catch a movie after work or have a rusty crowbar shoved up their ass, and then seeing them choosing the latter. But possibly even more surprising? How popular anti-vaxxer candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is among voters.

Yes, according to the results of the New York Times/Siena College poll, one quarter of 3,662 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin said they’d go for RFK Jr. in a hypothetical matchup between him, Biden, and Trump. And among voters under 45? He beats both the 45th and 46th presidents. The results are similar to a recently conducted national poll by Quinnipiac University, which saw the nephew of John F. Kennedy winning 38% of registered voters ages 18-34, compared to Biden’s 32% and Trump’s 27%.

Kennedy dropped out of the Democratic primary last month to announce an independent run. He’s probably best known, apart from his family, for saying stuff like “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” and suggesting that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. (He is also a 9/11 conspiracy theorist). In an interview over the summer with Vanity Fair’s Joe Hagan, Kennedy said it’s “obvious” that censorship is a “greater threat to the republic” than another January 6. “You could blow up the Capitol and we’d be okay if we have a First Amendment,” Kennedy declared. “Why are we hearing about the Capitol day after day after day after day and nobody’s talking about the First Amendment?”

While Republicans were initially thrilled about the prospect of RFK Jr. going up against Biden in a Democratic primary, they have since changed their tune, given the prospect of the independent taking votes away from Trump. Of course, with one year to go until the election, it’s impossible to predict what will happen, or if the Kennedy scion will turn out to hurt the incumbent. Which would obviously not be a great turn of events for democracy, humanity, etc.

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Don’t look now, but the Supreme Court might—might!—do something good re: guns

Per The Washington Post:

>The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to uphold a federal statute disarming people who are subject to domestic-violence protective orders, signaling a reluctance to make that issue the next frontier in the court’s recent efforts to expand Second Amendment rights.

>Justices on both sides of the court’s ideological divide seemed to think the Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from restricting firearm possession to individuals who are found to be a danger. During oral arguments Tuesday morning, some of the justices suggested they did not have to go much further than that to decide the case at hand.

>Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, said the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit…had “profoundly erred” in finding that a federal law meant to protect victims of domestic abuse was unconstitutional. The law, Prelogar said, satisfies both the Constitution and “common sense.”

“Throughout our nation’s history, legislatures have disarmed those who have committed serious criminal conduct or whose access to guns poses a danger—for example, loyalists, rebels, minors, individuals with mental illness, felons, and drug addicts,” Prelogar told the court. There is “no historical evidence that those laws were thought to violate the right to keep and bear arms.”

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