Tag: scotus

Courtroom Battles: Trump’s Wins Against the Deep State

Traditionally, June marks the climax of the Supreme Court term. This is when the justices release their most consequential rulings – decisions that shape how America lives for years to come.

For the Trump administration, this June delivered another round of intense combat against the entrenched forces determined to block common-sense reforms, from protecting women’s sports to dismantling the administrative state’s unaccountable power.

The Court’s current makeup gives conservatives a clear 6-3 edge. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were appointed by Republican presidents before Trump.

Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined during Trump’s first term. The liberal bloc consists of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan (Obama appointees) and Ketanji Brown Jackson (Biden appointee).

This alignment produced meaningful advances for the administration’s agenda even as the left’s institutional resistance remained fierce.

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The Supreme Court Has Weakened The Regulatory State

n Trump v. Slaughter, published yesterday, the Supreme Court held that the President has plenary (that is, unfettered) authority to fire the heads of regulatory agencies (though not the governors of the Federal Reserve Board, as explained in a note at the end of this post). The decision is hugely consequential. It is both a massive blow to the regulatory state and a huge—albeit precarious—step to returning our nation to function as the Constitution intended.

For over a century, ever since President Woodrow Wilson ushered in the “progressive era,” Congress has been creating “independent” agencies that have complete power to write regulations with the force and effect of law, and then to enforce those regulations, including deciding cases in their own courts, with penalties that include fines and jail time.

This means that, for most of our lifetimes, we have lived in a nation where federal agencies, which do not exist in the Constitution and are insulated from the ballot box, have had a far greater impact on our daily lives than the other three branches of government. The agencies’ reach has been an ever more intrusive tyranny of the regulatory state, from the EPA’s CO2 endangerment finding (which allows the agency to control every aspect of life) to the Department of Education’s unceasing support for teachers’ unions, which launder money to the Democrat party. (Indeed, Jimmy Carter created the DOE to sustain the unions.)

Almost all federal agencies hew to the same increasingly radical left agenda, as evidenced by political donations. And, indeed, this was President Wilson’s dream: To run roughshod over the Constitution and democracy, substituting rule by technocrats. Until yesterday, Wilson had succeeded.

When Congress created these so-called “independent agencies,” it often provided that the people appointed to operate had long-term sinecures that presidents could end only for malfeasance. This created what some called a fourth branch of government, cementing the “Deep State.” These agency heads, running their own fiefdoms, could thwart an elected president’s preferred policies. As Senator Elizabeth Warren has repeatedly, and rightly, pointed out, “personnel is policy.”

However, despite their seeming entrenchment, these agencies have no place under the Constitution. Art. II Section 1 provides that the “executive power” to enforce the laws resides solely with the duly elected president. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion, the Constitution’s drafters explicitly intended that the executive power include the plenary authority to remove any personnel exercising executive powers. Congress cannot curb that power using legislation.

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Justice Sotomayor Discloses $4,333 in Concert Tickets from Bad Bunny’s Record Label in Latest Supreme Court Financial Report

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor disclosed receiving $4,333 worth of concert tickets from Rimas Entertainment, the Puerto Rican record label that represents superstar Bad Bunny, as part of the latest round of Supreme Court financial disclosure reports.

The tickets were for Sotomayor and an unspecified number of guests during a private trip she took to Puerto Rico in August.

Sotomayor, the first justice of Puerto Rican descent, noted in her filing that the gift came from the label while she was traveling privately, though she did not specify which concert she attended.

At the time, Bad Bunny was in the middle of a major residency that included more than 30 sold-out shows in San Juan.

These 2025 financial disclosures, which cover outside income, gifts, and other interests for eight of the nine justices, are required annually under federal ethics rules.

Justice Samuel Alito was granted a 90-day extension and has not yet filed.

While Sotomayor’s concert tickets stand out as the most eye-catching gift in the current reports, the filings also show substantial outside earnings for several other justices, primarily from book deals and teaching positions.

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Justice Clarence Thomas Dissents: Birthright Citizenship Claim Is Based on Feudalism

Justice Clarence Thomas says the Supreme Court’s 5-4 court decision today establishing birthright citizenship as a constitutional right is a modern political project built on a feudal principle rejected by the American Revolution that devalues U.S. citizenship.

Thomas wrote:

The Court says that the Citizenship Clause incorporated the English feudal principle that subjects owed lifetime servitude to the King who owned the soil on which they were born, but Americans — unsurprisingly — rejected this feudal principle.

…

Today’s opinion devalues [U.S.] citizenship. I respectfully dissent.

His dissent is long:

The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially unconstitutional the President’s Order excluding from citizenship the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens. In doing so, the Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress [after the civil war] did not support. [Emphasis added.]

Thomas’s dissent, which was co-signed by Justice Neil Gorsuch, explained his view:

The Citizenship Clause was consistently interpreted not to apply to the children of foreign temporary visitors, who were by definition not domiciled in the United States. Regardless of administration or party, the Federal Government for decades after ratification regularly denied claims to citizenship by children who were born in the United States but not domiciled here. When a child was “born” in the United States to parents “domiciled” abroad, he was “not, therefore, under the statute and the Constitution a citizen of the United States by birth”…  Scholars agreed: A child “born within the territory of the United States, of alien parents” was not a citizen unless his parents were “permanently domiciled within the United States”… This Court agreed: The Citizenship Clause “exclude[d] from its operation children of… citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States”… And, Congress agreed: The Citizenship Clause did not extend to a child born here but “subject to any foreign power”… As Justice Harlan would write in his [Supreme Court] dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson… the Citizenship Clause “gave citizenship to all born or naturalized in the United States and residing here”…

The [Supreme] Court offers a different account. American citizenship, the Court says, was based on a medieval English “feudal” principle, according to which each person “owed personal service to the lord of the soil” as his “master” — a perpetual servitude that was “born with the child and only ended in the grave”… Americans, the Court says, adopted this feudal principle as a rule of American citizenship “with little fanfare”… Then, according to the Court, the Reconstruction Congress codified that feudal principle with the words “not subject to any foreign power” in the Civil Rights Act and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof ” in the Citizenship Clause. Then, the Court says, the Clause’s meaning was definitively settled by dicta in United States v. Wong Kim Ark…

With due respect, the Court’s account is not historically accurate. The Court says that the Citizenship Clause incorporated the English feudal principle that subjects owed lifetime servitude to the King who owned the soil on which they were born, but Americans — unsurprisingly — rejected this feudal principle. The Court’s theory of American citizenship is based on the opinion of a New York assistant vice chancellor in an inheritance dispute called Lynch v. Clarke, … But, the assistant vice chancellor’s reasoning, whatever it was worth, was not even followed in New York by the time of the Citizenship Clause. Finally, the Court reasons that dicta in Wong Kim Ark settled the meaning of the Clause. But, Wong Kim Ark itself emphasized that its holding was limited to persons domiciled in the United States. And, scholars and government officials continued to agree after Wong Kim Ark that the Citizenship Clause did not extend to the children of foreign temporary visitors. The rule remained what it always was: A child born on American soil of “a stranger or traveler passing through the country, or temporarily residing here,” was “not a citizen.”

President Barack Obama’s nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, responded with a sneer that Thomas is a racist who supports the court’s 1857 Dredd Scott decision endorsing slavery which helped trigger the Civil War:

Of course, the ultimate irony is that for all the talk about the detestable Dred Scott decision, the Government and the principal dissent propose a return to its core tenet. Their bottom line is that, for certain people, being born on American soil will not suffice to confer citizenship. It is that odious conclusion that the Citizenship Clause plainly rejects, as the Court explains.

Thomas ended his dissent with a reference to the court’s 1896 Plessy v Ferguson decision that overturned racial segregation and the obsolete, pre-Civil War Dredd Scott case:

I am not sure that today’s opinion will stand the test of time. The Citizenship Clause “added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship.” Plessy, 163 U. S., at 555 (Harlan, J., dissenting). Today’s opinion devalues that citizenship. I respectfully dissent.

The court’s decision leaves American citizens with no avenue to guard their citizenship except a formal constitutional amendment enacted via a two-thirds majority of the federal Congress or of the states.

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NPR’s Nina Totenberg Reveals Why She Posted a Story Claiming Alito Was Retiring – Then Quickly Retracted

Does NPR’s Nina Totenberg have advanced knowledge that Justice Samuel Alito is about to retire?

NPR reporter Nina Totenberg on Tuesday published an article claiming Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring.

Totenberg claimed that the Supreme Court made the announcement that Alito was retiring.

Nina Totenberg wrote: “Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Supreme Court’s opinion reversing Roe v. Wade is retiring, the court announced on Tuesday.”

However, 10 minutes later, the NPR article was scrubbed and left with an editor’s note.

The original article is archived here.

“This story has been taken down. It was published in error,” the note read.

NPR staff published a separate article claiming the Alito article was “erroneously published.”

NPR said that Totenberg already had a draft article on Alito’s retirement ready in advance of the announcement.

The outlet claimed that Totenberg assumed that Alito was retiring after she heard a bystander say that Chief Justice Roberts made a retirement announcement.

“Totenberg was reporting on the final day of the Supreme Court session on Tuesday. As she was leaving the court, Chief Justice John Roberts was announcing upcoming retirements. Totenberg wondered why everyone else wasn’t leaving and asked someone outside the court. According to her interview that same day on All Things Considered, Totenberg asked a bystander what was going on, and the person replied “retirement announcements.” But Totenberg heard the reply in the singular, “announcement, ” and assumed it was the notice that Alito was retiring,’ NPR reported.

Nina Totenberg revealed on “All Things Considered” that she made a “rookie mistake.”

“I scared everybody half to death for about five minutes,” Totenberg said on the show. “It’s entirely on me. It’s not anybody else’s fault.”

Totenberg read the text of her apology to Alito on Tuesday’s show:

“Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today’s error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that the usual rush of folks after a few minutes had not happened, I asked somebody was going on inside, to which the answer was, ‘retirement announcements.’ I didn’t hear the ‘s’ on ‘announcements,’ and I assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring. It was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism. I could go on, but I don’t know what else to say, except that I am so so sorry.”

NPR claimed that Nina Totenberg’s status as one of the most experienced reporters covering the Supreme Court contributed to the error.

“Totenberg is one of the most experienced reporters covering the Supreme Court. She’s done so for NPR since 1975. Her status contributed to the error,” NPR said.

“She’s the preeminent Supreme Court reporter in the courtroom,” NPR Executive Editor Krishnadev Calamur said. “So I’m assuming that’s what she heard. … She’s in the room. It’s like when we report opinions. I’m not waiting to see what the Times is reporting. It’s when Nina says, here’s what happened, and we do it. That’s the trust you build up.”

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Supreme Court: States Can Ban Trans Athletes From Girls’ Sports

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that states can block biological transgender males from competing in girls’ sports. In a 6-3 ruling, the court gave an iron-clad answer to the question. 

Writing for the majority in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (consolidated with Little v. Hecox), Justice Brett Kavanaugh held that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause requires schools to carve out an exception for transgender athletes who’ve undergone hormone therapy or never experienced male puberty. States can draw the line at biological sex, full stop – no judge-administered athlete-by-athlete fairness hearings required. The ruling reverses both the Fourth Circuit (which sided with West Virginia’s B.P.J.) and the Ninth Circuit (which sided with Idaho’s Lindsay Hecox), and lands squarely in the wake of last year’s Skrmetti decision, extending its “this is a sex classification, not a transgender classification” framework from medical care straight into the locker room.

Background

Roughly half the states – approximately 27 – have enacted laws in recent years restricting participation in girls’ and women’s school sports to those whose biological sex, as determined at birth, matches the team category. These measures, often titled “Fairness in Women’s Sports” acts or similar, reflect concerns over competitive fairness, safety, and the preservation of opportunities for biological females amid rising participation by transgender athletes.

The two cases before the Court arise from Idaho and West Virginia.

Idaho’s law (enacted 2020) categorically bars transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s teams in public elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools. It defines eligibility based on biological sex and requires sex verification (often involving invasive procedures) for athletes on girls’ teams but not boys’ teams.

West Virginia’s law (enacted 2021) similarly requires that participation on teams designated for girls or women be based on biological sex.

Lindsay Hecox, a biological male, challenged Idaho’s law after seeking to compete on Boise State University’s women’s track and cross-country teams – and later participated in club sports. Hecox’s lawsuit alleged violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, claiming the law discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status and imposes unequal verification burdens.

B.P.J., another biological male who has identified as a girl since third grade and has taken puberty blockers and estrogen, challenged West Virginia’s ban after competing on their high school’s girls’ track and cross-country teams. The suit claims violations of both the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX (the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs).

Lower federal courts blocked enforcement of both laws. The 9th Circuit found Idaho’s measure likely violated equal protection by intending to exclude transgender girls/women and by imposing sex-based verification only on girls’ teams. The 4th Circuit held West Virginia’s law likely violated Title IX by discriminating against B.P.J. on the basis of sex.

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Supreme Court Grants Cert In Grant v. Higgins: A Major Challenge To Connecticut’s Assault Weapon Ban

In a significant development for gun rights advocates, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 30, 2026, granted certiorari in Grant v. Higgins, a challenge to Connecticut’s post-Sandy Hook assault weapon ban. The Court consolidated the case with the parallel Illinois case Viramontes v. Cook County.

The justices will now directly address whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of law-abiding Americans to possess AR-15 platform rifles and other commonly owned semiautomatic firearms.

This is the breakthrough Second Amendment advocates have long awaited. Connecticut’s “assault weapons” ban — and similar laws nationwide — represent a direct challenge to the core right to keep and bear arms “in common use” for lawful purposes.

Grant v. Higgins (originally filed as Grant v. Rovella/Lamont) is brought by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), the Connecticut Citizens Defense League (CCDL), and individual plaintiffs including Eddie Grant Jr. It challenges Connecticut’s ban on semiautomatic rifles, which prohibits firearms by specific name and by a list of arbitrary “features” such as pistol grips, folding stocks, and flash suppressors.

The lower courts, including the Second Circuit, upheld the ban. Petitioners argue this ruling defies Supreme Court precedent by treating the most popular rifle in America — the AR-15 platform — as somehow outside constitutional protection. The question presented is clear: Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the AR-15.

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TRIGGER WARNING: NBC News Grovels to Viewers for Using Terms ‘Biological Male’ and ‘Biological Female’ in Report About SCOTUS Ruling on Trans Athletes 

When NBC News reported on the Supreme Court decision on transgender athletes in sports today, journalist Craig Melvin fell all over himself top explain that he was using the terms ‘biological male’ and ‘biological female’ because that is the language the court used in the ruling.

He did not come right out and tell viewers that he was giving them a trigger warning but this is exactly what a trigger warning looks like. It was like he was apologizing to viewers for using these words.

This is how far we have gone down this ridiculously stupid road. Journalists on TV are afraid of offending the audience with completely normal and non-offensive words.

NewsBusters reports:

NBC News debased itself Tuesday with its Special Report on the Supreme Court decision allowing state bans of transgenderism in sports to remain in place, delivering a trigger warning about the use of “biological male” and “biological female” as well as scoffing at President Trump for “boil[ing] it down into bumper sticker language” when it’s unclear men have advantages over women and more care should be shown to a “deeply personal issue” that involves a “small” number of people…

Today co-host Craig Melvin also embarrassed himself with Orwellian verbiage, posing what seemed to be a trigger warning for any trans person watching: “Just a quick note here. The terms that we’re using here during our reporting, biological male, biological female, the high court put those terms in quotations in their decision and their dissent. But just so you know, we’re using those terms from the decision itself, biological male, biological female.”

Melvin should consult both Genesis 1 and 5 as well as Matthew 19 to name a few chapters in the Bible laying out male and female.

Jarrett thankfully returned and dispensed with analysis of the ruling without the ludicrous rhetorical throat-clearing.

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Sen. Rand Paul Slams Supreme Court’s Ruling Upholding Birthright Citizenship, Introduces Constitutional Amendment to End It for Children of Illegal Aliens

Senator Rand Paul expressed his strong disappointment Tuesday after the Supreme Court ruled to uphold birthright citizenship and strike down President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to parents who are illegal aliens or temporarily in the country.

Instead of sitting on his hands, the Kentucky senator said that he has already filed an amendment to fully end birthright citizenship for those in the country illegally.

In a post on X, Paul stated, “The Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship is disappointing. That’s why I’ve already filed an amendment to end birthright citizenship for those here illegally. I’ll keep fighting to protect the integrity of American citizenship.”

The ruling addressed Executive Order 14160, which President Trump signed on his first day back in office.

The order directed that beginning 30 days later, children born in the United States to mothers who were either unlawfully present or lawfully present on a temporary basis, and to fathers who were not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents at the time of the child’s birth, would not be recognized as U.S. citizens and would not receive federal documentation such as passports or Social Security numbers.

The executive order never took effect because lower courts had blocked it with nationwide injunctions, and the Supreme Court’s decision invalidated it entirely.

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, which was joined in the core holding by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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Here’s How Devastating the Birthright Citizenship Ruling Is

The Supreme Court handed down some good rulings on Tuesday, but one of them, Trump v. Barbara, was truly stinking hot garbage, to put it as nicely as possible. It was one of the most consequential rulings in a generation, and if you’re not furious about it, you haven’t been paying attention.

As my PJ Media colleague Athena Thorne put it, the Supreme Court ruled that “any basic skank who can sneak onto American terra firma and give birth is automatically the parent of a U.S. citizen, with all the rights and benefits that implies.”

On The Five on Tuesday, Jesse Watters didn’t hold back in his reaction to the ruling.

“I’m angry,” he said. “Are you?”

And that set the tone for everything that followed.

He focused on Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent, which Watters described as a genuine alarm bell. Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, he noted, saw this for what it was — a case with enormous implications that the court essentially fumbled. “He said in his dissent, this was one of the most important cases the court’s ever seen, and we blew it,” Watters said. “He and Thomas were basically like, ‘Yeah, this devalues and degrades U.S. citizenship because it opens it up for anchor babies and for birth tourists.’”

The example Watters used was, honestly, terrifying.

Under birthright citizenship as it currently stands, a Chinese Communist Party official could bring his pregnant wife to Guam, deliver the baby on American soil, then fly that infant back to Beijing, complete with a U.S. passport in hand. That child could grow up in China, get funneled through whatever the CCP wants him for, and then, at 18, have access to American welfare programs. He could vote. And theoretically, at 35, he could become eligible to run for president.

It’s a scary thought, because yes, that’s what the decision would enable.

“That’s the stupidest thing anyone ever thought of,” Watters said. “Literally.”

The historical context makes the ruling even harder to swallow.

Watters noted that the senator who authored the relevant language in the 19th century made it clear that it was never intended to cover foreign nationals or the families of foreign diplomats. The amendment’s architect agreed. So did the president at the time, Ulysses S. Grant. “The guy that sponsored it,  the guy that initiated, the architect of, this 14th amendment, the AG, the president at the time, Grant, all said, yeah, no foreigners, no visitors,” Watters said.

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