BREAKING: Today, Georgetown Law condemned one of its own law professors for his "appalling" criticism of President Joe Biden's pledge to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.
There are signs that the school is gearing up to fire him. 🧵
In an email to the entire law school, William Treanor, the dean of the law school, said Ilya Shapiro's comments regarding Biden's pledge to base his nomination decision on race were "at odds with everything" the law school stands for.
Shapiro, the executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, wrote on social media on Wednesday that Biden was not going to pick the most qualified person for the Supreme Court because he pledged to pick a black woman.
"Because Biden said he's [sic] only consider black women for SCOTUS, his nominee will always have an asterisk attached," Shapiro wrote. "Fitting that the Court takes up affirmative action next term."
Shapiro also said the "objectively best pick" for the vacancy would be Sri Srinivasan, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
He's a "solid prog[ressive] & v[ery] smart," Shapiro said. "Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn't fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we'll get [a] lesser black woman."
Treanor said Shapiro's posts amounted to a "suggestion that the best Supreme Court nominee could not be a Black woman," a mischaracterization of Shapiro's argument.
Shapiro's now-deleted tweets sparked outrage from progressive students, who asked the school to "publicly denounce" Shapiro and "reconsider the decision to hire" him.
"This tweet is antithetical to Georgetown Law's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion," the students wrote in a petition to Georgetown faculty. "Ilya Shapiro expressed bigoted views in this statement, explicitly stating that Black women are a ‘lesser' choice."
Treanor's email came less than 24 hours after the petition, which has been signed by 350 students.
The statement signals to students at the law school that Shapiro is on the chopping block—especially in light of recent history.
The school used similar language last year prior to dismissing Sandra Sellers, a professor who was caught on tape saying that black students tend to cluster at the bottom of her classes.
After students protested her comments, Treanor sent out an email condemning Sellers's "reprehensible" and "abhorrent" conduct, which he said had "no place in our educational community." The next day, he announced that "Sellers is no longer affiliated with Georgetown Law."
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It was 9:30 on a Saturday night, and the library was deserted. With no one within at least 150 feet of him, a Yale senior decided to relax with a movie—and without a mask.
It got him reported to the school’s COVID hotline.
According to the Yale senior, another student walked into the library and demanded he mask up. Since he didn’t have one on him, the senior said he would leave. As he was gathering his belongings, the other student pulled out her phone and began filming him.
When he asked for her name, she raised her middle finger and stormed off. Two days later, he received a notice from the Yale administration: he'd been reported for violating the "Community Compact," a set of rules put in place to "promote the health and safety of all" Yalies.
BREAKING: One of the largest hospital systems in the United States gave race more weight than diabetes, obesity, asthma, and hypertension combined in its allocation scheme for COVID treatments, only to reverse the policy after threats of legal action. 🧵
SSM Health, a Catholic health system that operates 23 hospitals across Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, began using the scoring system last year to allocate scarce doses of Regeneron, the antibody cocktail that President Trump credited for his recovery from COVID-19.
The rubric gives three points to patients with diabetes, one for obesity, one for asthma, and one for hypertension, for a total of six points. Identifying as "Non-White or Hispanic" race, on the other hand, nets a patient seven points, regardless of age or underlying conditions.
NEW: Minnesota will no longer use race to decide who is eligible for monoclonal antibodies, after a story by yours truly sparked widespread outrage about the state's guidelines.
Utah may also be backtracking—but New York is standing its ground.🧵
MN quietly updated its prioritization scheme on Jan. 11, one day after former Trump administration advisor Stephen Miller told Fox News that he was considering "legal action" against the state.
The old system (left) gave "BIPOC status" 2 points. The new system (right) does not.
Miller's organization, America First Legal, had already threatened to sue New York over that state's race-based triage scheme; the group on Wednesday added Minnesota and Utah to the list, calling their rationing policies "blatantly racist, unconstitutional, and immoral."
New York, Minnesota, and even Utah are rationing scarce COVID-19 therapeutics based on race. But the idea for racial triage wasn't hatched in local health departments; it came directly from the Food and Drug Administration. 🧵
First, a little detail on these triage plans. In Utah, "Latinx ethnicity" counts for more points than "congestive heart failure" in a patient’s "COVID-19 risk score"—the state’s framework for allocating monoclonal antibodies. coronavirus-download.utah.gov/Health/Utah_CS…
In Minnesota, health officials have devised their own "ethical framework" that prioritizes black 18-year-olds over white 64-year-olds—even though the latter are at much higher risk of severe disease. health.state.mn.us/diseases/coron…
NEW: The Biden administration will offer bonuses to doctors who "create and implement an anti-racism plan" under new rules from the Department of Health and Human Services, which also reward doctors for "trauma-informed care."
Effective Jan. 1, Medicare doctors can boost their reimbursement rates by conducting "a clinic-wide review" of their practice's "commitment to anti-racism." govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR…
The plan should cover "value statements" and "clinical practice guidelines," according to HHS, and define race as "a political and social construct, not a physiological one"—a dichotomy many doctors say will discourage genetic testing and worsen racial health disparities.