Category Archives: politics

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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Yearning to Breathe Free

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The poem on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor is a sonnet titled “The New Colossus,” written by American poet Emma Lazarus in 1883. Its famous lines, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” transformed the statue from a monument of generic liberty into a worldwide symbol of immigration, refuge, and hope.

Lady Liberty was the first thing millions of immigrants saw as they arrived in the New World. “Her name,” the poem declares, is “Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome.”

Not anymore. Unless you can trace your lineage to the indigenous people of North America, and only about 2% of the current population of the United States can do so, your ancestors came from someplace else. As you contemplate the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation, you might consider that without the welcoming arms of the United States, your personal history would be quite different.

Although the United States is a nation of immigrants, there has always been a faction which opposes it. French and Irish immigrants were targeted in the 1790s. In 1798, President John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. This extended the naturalization residency requirement from 5 to 14 years and allowed the government to deport “dangerous” open-door arrivals.

Catholics were the targets in the 1840s. Protestant Americans feared that an influx of Catholics would be loyal to the Pope rather than the U.S. government. The late 19th Century brought racial exclusion with the target being Chinese and other Asian laborers. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It was the first major federal law to ban immigration based explicitly on race and nationality. The 20th Century brought a quota system, starting with the Immigration Act of 1924.

Modern opposition to immigration in the United States differs from historical eras by focusing heavily on border security, legal status, and federal enforcement rather than explicit racial exclusion. Under the administration of Donald Trump, the federal government has pushed measures like the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act and the Laken Riley Act, which expand mandatory detentions, mandate higher federal funding for border walls, and limit federal benefits for even lawfully present immigrants. At this time immigration to the United States has basically stopped. With the exception of a special exception for white South Africans who claim they are being persecuted in their home country.

We as a people are deeply split on this issue. Data from Pew Research Center shows that about 52% of Americans believe current administration tactics go “too far” on deportations, highlighting a steep partisan gap. According to polling compiled by NORC, while a majority of Republicans strongly back federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), most Democrats and independents hold unfavorable views of hardline enforcement. Conversely, a vast cross-partisan majority of voters (around 72%, according to the National Immigration Forum) favor a compromise solution pairing strict border security with a path to earned legal status for those already in the country.

Congress’s ongoing inability to pass a comprehensive, long-term immigration reform bill has left America’s immigration system broken, forcing a reliance on executive orders and courtroom battles instead of permanent laws. For decades, the standard playbook of a “grand compromise” pairing enhanced border enforcement with a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants has repeatedly collapsed under intense partisan polarization.

Because Congress cannot pass permanent laws, immigration policy changes drastically with every presidential administration. Borders are managed and humanitarian protections are granted or revoked entirely by executive actions, which are immediately challenged in court.

Last week the Supreme Court issued two monumental 6-3 rulings that significantly expanded the federal government’s power to enforce hardline border restrictions and strip protections from long-term residents. Both decisions split strictly along the Court’s conservative-liberal divide. They represent major legal victories for the Trump administration’s “America First” anti-immigration agenda.

Both majority opinions were written by Justice Samuel Alito. In Mullin v. Doe, dealing with Temporary Protected Status, the majority emphasized that federal courts are legally prohibited from reviewing the Department of Homeland Security’s policy decisions on TPS, rejecting arguments that the terminations were racially motivated.

“There is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary of Homeland Security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection… This text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad.”

Mullin v. Doe, Alito, Majority Opinion

The liberal justices argued that the Court bypassed critical constitutional tests regarding equal protection and executive bias. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called out the administration’s past derogatory statements about the affected nations.

“The references—of filth, disease, and primitiveness—are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes… The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.”

Mullin v. Doe, Sotomayor, dissenting

In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, dealing with asylum eligibility, the conservative majority focused strictly on the literal geography of the border line under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

“An alien standing in Mexico does not ‘arriv[e] in the United States’ by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country. An alien ‘arrives in the United States’ only when he crosses the border.”

Mullin v. Otro Lado, Alito, Majority Opinion

Dissenting again, Justice Sotomayor (joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson), found the liberal minority arguing that the ruling functionally dismantles humanitarian protocols established by Congress.

The majority’s decision “blesses the Executive Branch’s decision to slam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution, despite the detailed inspection and asylum system that Congress enacted and commands.”

Mullin v. Otro Lado, Sotomayor, dissenting

The initial effect of the first decision will be the immediate loss of TPS legal status for 350,000 people, mostly Haitian. That strips them of deportation protections and valid work permits and puts them at immediate risk of arrest and removal. The effect of a second decision clears the Trump administration to continue its current policy of turning away asylum seekers who come the U.S. borders.

Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who has led the administration’s anti-immigration policy, says the administration will move to remove the roughly 1.3 million TPS migrants, warning that “if you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported.” Miller’s ancestors escaped Russian pogroms and the Holocaust. He also declared, “America’s doors are closed fully to asylum seekers”, dismissing asylum applications as “fake.” Trump’s ancestors came from Germany and Scotland.

The welcome mat has been pulled up at the door of the once-shinning beacon of hope for the world.

Happy 250th.

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Poof! It’s Gone. Maybe.

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We think Donald Trump‘s name has been removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. At least, that what Trump’s handpicked board of directors told the District Court for the District of Columbia in a filing on Saturday. The removal had been ordered by the court two weeks earlier in a decision enforcing the Center’s original statutory name.

Trump’s name was added in December 2025 after he replaced the Kennedy Center’s leadership and the new board voted to rename the institution. The court found this action illegal, ruling that the board cannot unilaterally change the name of a national memorial.

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Inflation!

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Grocery prices

Go ahead. Tell me the higher prices we see staring back at us every day at the grocery store and the gas pump are just a temporary thing. I dare you.

The latest inflation report shows that price pressures heated up again in May, with the Consumer Price Index rising 0.5% month‑over‑month and 4.2% year‑over‑year, the highest annual rate since April 2023. That 4.2% figure matched economists’ expectations, but it still marks a clear acceleration from April’s 3.8% pace. The monthly increase was driven heavily by energy costs, which jumped 3.9% in May and are up 23.5% over the past year, reflecting the ongoing impact of the Iran conflict on global oil markets. Gasoline alone surged 7% in May and more than 40% compared with a year ago, accounting for the majority of the overall CPI increase.

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Trump Meets the Press

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This goes on my list of most memorable television interviews. And I have seen many.

Donald Trump sat for an interview with Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s Meet the Press. I have no idea why. Welker announced that she and her crew had been invited to follow Trump to a rally in Wisconsin, where Trump addressed farmers, one of his most supportive constituent groups. Why they continue to overwhelmingly support him is something else I don’t understand. His policies have crippled their export markets and put them on government subsidies, welfare, and threatened their livelihood. Still, he found himself addressing a friendly crowd. Then he sat down with Welker in a barn in the midst of a pouring rainstorm. As the interviewed progressed, the storm moved inside.

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Funerals at CBS

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There are two funerals on tap this week at CBS, Inc., the company where I spent the first decade of my professional career. When I joined it in 1974, it had recently changed its name from the Columbia Broadcasting System to better reflect its position as a major media company, not just a broadcaster. Its four core lines of business were Broadcasting (TV and radio), Records (music), Publishing (books and magazines), and Musical Instruments/Toys.

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