Category Archives: civil rights

The Supremes 2026

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The Supreme Court wrapped up its 2025-2026 term with a flood of high-profile decisions announced on June 26, 29, and 30th. The usual end of the session reviews quickly flooded the media. Most watchers of the Supremes tried to frame the session as a win or loss for Donald Trump. Or at least a win or loss for the conservation majority which has dominated the Court in recent years.

I see the term as a continuation of the conservative drive to remake, or at least change the direction, of constitutional interpretation in the United States. It featured major rulings on birthright citizenship, tariffs, transgender school sports, independent agencies, and election rules, while also producing some surprising coalitions in the final week of the term. The great online court watching service, scotusblog, has the numbers.

The term was more polarized than the one before it. The share of decisions that were 6-3 rose from 15.2% last term to 28.8% this term and ideologically split 6-3 decisions rose from 9% to 22.7%. Liberal justices also dissented together more often than before. The Court still had a conservative center, with Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett frequently in the majority. Yet some headline cases ended with the liberal justices in the majority. Although I would not make as much of that as some other commentators have done. I think their wishful thinking is not justified.

Major rulings

One of the term’s defining cases was the birthright-citizenship dispute, Trump v. Barbara. The outcome was expected, but the voting alignment was not. Roberts wrote the opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, while Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented. That made it a major case in which the liberal justices were part of the prevailing coalition rather than the dissent.

The New York Times wrote the decision “capped a more than decade-long effort by Mr. Trump to use the issue as a political tool.” A relief, to be sure, but no cause for celebration. A plain reading of the 14th Amendment would bring anyone to the same decision. The court was split, however, with some justices unable to resist the temptation to dehumanize immigrants by calling them “foreign birth tourists.”

The outlier was conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who concurred in the outcome but dissented as to the reason. The five justices in the majority cited the amendment. Justice Kavanaugh said current immigration law grants citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, implying that Trump can have his way if he can get Congress to change the law. As for Alito and Thomas, they dissented with their usual outrage at any decision which upholds the rights and dignity of groups that they see as fundamentally less deserving of rights and dignity than themselves.

Another major case was Learning Resources v. Trump, the tariffs case. The Court rejected the administration’s tariff position, and the decision reflected the Court’s willingness to police the limits of presidential power where statutory authority is unclear.

Executive Power

The term also produced an important executive power ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, involving the president’s power to remove the head of the Federal Trade Commission. The Court overturned, in the majority’s words, whatever is left of Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 precedent protecting some independent agencies from at-will presidential removal. SCOTUSblog described it as the term’s major overruling, because the Court made explicit a direction it had been moving toward in earlier removal-power cases.

While Slaughter seems to imply Congress cannot put any restraints on the president when it comes to firing officers of the executive branch, a majority did make an exception, for now, in the case of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. In Trump v. Cook, Trump had fired Cook, citing accusations regarding a home mortgage. The Court rejected that effort by a 5-4 vote, with Roberts joined by Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson.

The case was sent back to the district court, where Cook will be given an opportunity to contest the allegations. I see this as only a temporary victory, because the president can fire Cook again without cause, as he did in the case of Slaughter.

In Slaughter, Chief Justice Roberts ruled that because the FTC exercises executive power, its commissioners must be removable at will. The statute governing the FTC allowed removal only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance”. The Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. § 242) uses the exact same core standard, stating that governors may be removed “for cause by the President”. I don’t see how the Court can differentiate the two cases, should Cook come back before it.

Voting and social issues

In Louisiana v. Callais, Louisiana urged the Court to rethink Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and the case raised the possibility of further narrowing race-conscious redistricting rules. The Court continued its campaign to neuter the VRA, a lifelong goal of Chief Roberts, allowing Louisiana to redraw its Congressional districts to eliminate a Democratic seat, not caring that it also cut down minority representation from the state.

In Watson v. Republican National Committee, a 5-4 decision in which Barrett and Roberts joined the liberal wing, the Court rejected a position on late-arriving ballots that had been strongly supported by the Trump administration. The ruling allows Mississippi to continuing counting ballots which arrive by mail for five days after the date of an election, as long as the ballots are postmarked on or before election day.

The Court also dealt with transgender school sports litigation, including West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, decided together, the Court held that schools can separate women’s and men’s sports teams defined by biological sex. Those cases fit the Court’s broader recent pattern of closely watched disputes over gender identity, education, and equal-protection claims. Taken together with prior terms, they showed that the Court continues to use these cases to define the legal boundaries of state regulation in culture-war conflicts.

While progressives are beginning to believe there is a future down the road with a Democratic president arriving in two years, it will not be sufficient to change the direction of law in the nation. He, or she, will be up against a Supreme Court which continues to reenforce a conservative rule of law, empowering a president now with no promise it will continue to do so if a progressive occupies the Oval.

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US at 250

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“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776

John Adams, by far the most prescient of the founders, described Independence Day in this letter sent to his wife Abigail on July 3rd, 1776. He got most of it right.

Adams predicted that the anniversary of American independence would be celebrated forever. He expected July 2 to become Independence Day because that was the day Congress approved Virginia’s resolution that the thirteen colonies declare their independence from England. Instead, we celebrate July 4, the date on which the text of the Declaration of Independence was approved and eventually printed with that date. But his description, parades, bells, fireworks (“illuminations”), bonfires, sports, and public celebrations, closely resembles how we celebrate the Fourth of July today.

Adams foresaw the growth of the United States of America to span the continent from west coast to east. And his letter to Abigail captures his confidence that the new nation would endure as a great nation among those of the world.

I often wonder, in this age of divisiveness, if we have fulfilled Adams’s dreams. The United States is unquestionably the world leader in many respects. It has the world’s biggest economy. It has grown dramatically in population. It has expanded to stretch from one ocean to the next. It claims to have the most powerful military, although it doesn’t seem to be able to keep a strait essential to the world’s energy supply open. It certainly outspends the next dozen or so countries on that military. Adams foresaw those things and I think on those points the United States today would please him.

But he would be less pleased to discover that his biggest fears have also come to pass. He wrote of the dangers facing the new republic. His biggest fear came not from without, but from within. He warned that avarice could produce leaders who put personal gain over the needs of the people. He predicted that under certain circumstances, factions succumbing to greed for power and money could infect multiple branches of government and defeat the system of checks and balances the framers wrote into the Constitution in 1787. I do not believe he would be pleased with the current state of affairs in Washington.

The Declaration was always a contradiction. It famously contains what the great biographer Walter Isaacson calls, “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.” Yet the author of, ““We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” Thomas Jefferson, was a slaveholder throughout his entire life, as were many of the Revolutionary era leaders.

Jefferson listed slavery as one of the evils brought to the new world by the King of England. But that sentence was removed from the Declaration during the final debate. Jefferson later wrote it was the price for gaining the acquiesce of South Carolina and Georgia to the independence resolution.

Slavery wasn’t abolished until the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, after the Civil War. Voting rights for women didn’t arrive until the 20th century, with ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Many people believe the nation should work toward unity, the assimilation of the various immigrant groups which have arrived on our shores in waves over the years. This is what I call the “great melting pot” strategy. This may be the answer in other countries, where the population is homogeneous and it is easy to be loyal to a race or a land. The United States has never been that. Unless you can trace your lineage to the indigenous people, and only about two per cent of the population can, then you trace your roots to someplace else. We expect immigrants to be loyal to the country, and history proves they are. Yet we retain as important parts of our identity those aspects of heritage which our ancestors brought to these shores.

There is no question that this diversity, a word the present administration sees as obscene, adds to our divisions. But history proves it is also a source of great strength. We should embrace the diversity of our people. We should strive toward tolerance and understanding of fellow Americans who have stories which are different than our own. Our diversity makes it clear that the people who are Americans choose to be Americans. I see in the continuing clamor of people from all over the world to immigrant to the United States evidence that we are doing something right.

For me the obvious contradiction between the words of the Declaration and reality is resolved by viewing the Declaration we celebrate today as aspirational, rather than literal. The document was a statement of profound principles and ideals, rather than a word-for-word reflection of 1776 reality. It remains so to this day as we strive to, in the words of the great preamble to the Constitution, “form a more perfect union.” For me, that gives hope that we can come closer to our goals. Someday.

“You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not.—I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States.—Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.”

John Adams. 1776

Do we see on the occasion of our 250th birthday John’s rays of ravishing light and glory?

Do we agree with Adams, that the end is more than worth all the trials and tribulations, the blood and the treasure? That the end is more than worth all the means?

It’s up to us now. And to the generations to come.

Happy Birthday America.

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This is How It Should Be

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This is a great picture in these troubled times. All four of the living former Presidents of the United States, and First Ladies, gathering in Chicago for the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center. It was an uplifting event, full of hope and optimism for the future of a country about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its birth. The only downside was that we found ourselves noting how remarkable it was. This is how it should be.

It was a fitting memory of those eight years of Obama’s history-making presidency. Something I thought I would never live to see as I grew up in the 1960s, during the turmoil of the civil rights protests. For four years I rode my bike, weather permitting, right past the spot in Jackson Park where the Obama Center now stands. I was going from our apartment just north and east of the location to my high school in the middle of the University of Chicago campus, just to the west.

The ceremony was, like the Obamas themselves, classy and dignified. President Obama spoke not about himself, but about the accomplishments of the team he put together in Washington. He focused on rejecting political cynicism, defending American democracy, and honoring the South Side community that shaped his early career. He said, “I found my purpose here, and I fortified my faith here, and I found my community here.” He noted that the Jackson Park location sits near where he met Michelle, where they married, and where his daughters took their first steps.

President Obama stated he did not want the center to feel like a static “mausoleum” or evoke “nostalgia for some gauzy, bygone era.” Instead, he designed it to address the “unfinished business” of progress. He described democracy as frustrating, slow, and inefficient, but called on visitors to view the center as an affirmation of why democracy is so precious. He explicitly urged us to reject growing cultures of mistrust, declaring that giving in to cynicism would be a “betrayal of our founding ideals.” He closed his speech by channeling 19th-century abolitionist Theodore Parker, describing a “defiant call not to abandon hope or give way to fear,” reminding the crowd that the country must keep fighting even in the face of impossible odds.

What few political zingers were heard came from former First Lady Michelle Obama, who introduced her husband. She praised her husband’s resilience under fire, redefining what a “lasting legacy” means, and positioning the Center as a refuge from modern political chaos. She addressed him directly, saying, “Eight years in the crucible and not once did you melt in the heat. Not once did you let it harden you.”

“You were unflappable at every turn, always focused, always calm, always looking at the long view,” the former First Lady said to her husband. “How absurd it is to even imagine that you might have buckled under the pressure even once, lashed out in frustration, lost your temper. How absurd it is to imagine that you might have done anything but make our family and this entire country proud.”

“No, you were too busy. I’m not done, y’all! Not done,” Mrs. Obama continued as the crowd roared with approval. “So much to say. You were doing the people’s work, rescuing our economy, expanding healthcare, ending a war, ordering the Bin Laden raid, saving an auto industry, winning a peace prize.” Seated in the wing, Hillary Clinton burst out laughing at the obvious jab and President Obama laughed along with her.

We shall leave he-who-was-not-directly-named to sit in the Oval Office fuming. This was a private, not a state event, and he was not invited. The Obamas live in his head to this day.

The entertainers included John Legend, Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson, Bono, the Roots, Christina Aguilera, Common, Marc Anthony.

It is not just a look into the past, but a living testament for the future.

It was as it should be.

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John Roberts is …

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John Roberts is displeased. John Roberts is exasperated. John Roberts is frustrated. John Roberts is annoyed. John Roberts is irked. John Roberts is any other of the many synonyms my thesaurus suggested instead of the word I originally used, which it found to be “vulgar.”

What has the Chief Justice of the United States in high dudgeon (I thought of that one myself) is the reaction to the Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which drove a stake through the heart of the only section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the Court had not previously decimated. With the vote falling along party lines, many critics condemned the decision as racist and political.

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R.I.P. V.R.A.

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John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States, has achieved his life goal. With the Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, he has killed the Voting Rights Act. Roberts made the destruction of the VRA of 1965 his lifelong crusade. His opposition to the Act dates back to his days as a law clerk for then Associate Justice William Rehnquist. Rehnquist notoriously wrote a memo in 1952 stating, “I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be re-affirmed.” Plessy was the infamous “separate but equal” case institutionalizing racism in public schools. It was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

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Minneapolis, Minnesota

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The reason investigations are conducted before making a judgment is because no one knows all the facts in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy.

That didn’t stop Department of Homeland Security Director Kirsti Noem from announcing within hours of the killing of a then unknown woman in Minneapolis that the woman was a domestic terrorist and that the agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement had acted in self-defense after she ran him over with her car. The next day Vice President J.D. Vance displayed the fruits of his Yale law degree by proclaiming that the agent involved has “absolute immunity.” Vance also claimed, “She tried to stop him from doing his job. When he approached her car, she tried to hit him.”

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The Donnie-Mander

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The Supreme Court, or rather the six Republican justices on the Supreme Court, have handed Donald Trump another victory. They issued a stay, blocking the order of a three-judge panel in Texas, which found the recent reapportionment of the state’s Congressional districts to be racially motivated and therefor illegal. The six, has been their pattern all year, issued their order in the dark of night on the “shadow” docket without an explanation or opinion. Greg Abbott, et al. v. League of United Latin American Citizens, et al.

The map the lower court panel blocked was seen as one of the most aggressive mid‑decade gerrymanders in recent history. The Supreme Court stay allows Texas to proceed with the new map, which analysts say could give Republicans five additional U.S. House seats in the 2026 midterms.

Gerrymandering 101

What, in a nutshell, is gerrymandering? The Encyclopedia Britannica has a wonderful explanation from which I have borrowed the graphic above. The American Constitution requires that every ten years we conduct a “census” to apportion representation in the House of Representatives. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 2 begins, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”

Once the number of representatives is determined by the census, it is up to each state to draw the maps of legislative districts. Because the states have statewide elections for senators, governors, and to decide members of the Electoral College, there is data on how the state as a whole divides between the parties. Using the graphic above we find of a total population of fifty, thirty (60%) are orange voters while twenty (40%) are purple voters.

From that starting point, the state could draw “fair” maps which distributed the people in such a manner to generate three orange and two purple representatives, proportionate to the statewide electorate. But the state could also gerrymander, producing an outcome, using the example on the right above, of five orange and no purple representatives, or two orange and three purple representatives.

The term “gerrymander” was coined as a portmanteau of the name Elbridge Gerry and the word “salamander.” Gerry, who was the governor of Massachusetts, signed a redistricting law that redrew district lines in a way that favored his party. Critics said the new map created a weirdly shaped district which resembled a salamander. A satirical cartoon published in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812, popularized the word. The cartoon depicting the irregular shape helped turn a local political attack into a lasting political term.

The Donnie-Mander

The political parties have a long history of manipulating their maps to various degrees every ten years when the new census requires a reallocation of seats. But two things make this year’s manipulations unusual. First, this is a mid-census reapportionment. The last census was in 2020 with new maps taking effect in 2022 in most states. Second, this mid-census revision to the 2022 map came at the direct demand of Donald Trump. Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott heeded Trump’s call and generated a new map that may add as many as five Republicans to the House in 2026. That is the map the Supreme Court now says can be put into place. With the Republican control in the House hanging on a tiny seven vote majority, Trump is clearly afraid the Democrats could gain control in the next election.

This Trump inspired Donnie-Mander, now sanctified by the Supreme Court, has set off an unprecedented arms race of mid-decade redistricting across the country. Missouri and North Carolina have passed their own Republican leaning maps. California voters approved a map designed to cancel out the Texas gains. Virginia and Maryland are working on new maps favoring Democrats. Illinois is considering one. Florida and Indiana are working on revisions on the Republican side.

National Public Radio has been keeping score on its web site. As of this writing they show a slight gain for Republicans on the basis of district voting patterns in next year’s election. Considering his atrocious polling numbers, Trump is going to need all the help he can get. The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, one of my favorite pollsters, sees 2026 shaping up to be much too close to call.

Congress has over the years tried to set standards and take control of the redistricting process. It has never been able to pass a law to bring order out of the chaos.

The majority on the Supreme Court, by allowing these partisan mid-decade redistrictings, has created a free-for-all which is a lose-lose for the American people. But 2026 does promise to be a good show.

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