Federal prosecutors to focus on issue despite court backing constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. Plus: Greek priest whose metal music has become cult smashGood morning.The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, has said federal prosecutors and law enforcement officers will focus on combating so-called “birth tourism” – which involves tourists, temporary visitors, or undocumented immigrants traveling to the US primarily to give birth and and secure birthright citizenship for their children.What did Blanche say? “There’s other things … the federal government can do in the visa process, and the application process, to try to minimize or limit the opportunity of folks coming here not to visit, and not to do what they’re saying they’re doing on the tourist visa, but just to have a baby that can then be a US citizen. What we have to do as Department of Justice is make sure our agents … and the FBI are focused on stopping that.” Continue reading...
"This is Citizens United 2.0," Representative Greg Casar said Tuesday about the Supreme Court's ruling allowing political party campaign committees to coordinate directly with campaigns without a cap on spending. Republicans praised the decision, while Democrats issued dire warnings about the fate of democracy.
Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author. How America Created a Parallel Court System Where Due Process Vanishes, Children Become Commodities, and Judges […]
In its 6-3 Trump v. Slaughter ruling released on Monday, June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court's GOP-appointed supermajority decided that President Donald Trump enjoys considerable power when it comes to his ability to fire members of independent regulatory agencies. The ruling rejected the High Court's Humphrey's Executor v. United States precedent of 1935, and Peter M. Shane — a scholar at the New York University School of Law — views Trump v. Slaughter as a major "triumph" for a "radical" far-right doctrine known as the "unitary executive theory."The unitary executive theory, promoted by many MAGA Republicans, favors a very powerful executive branch for the federal government. But critics of the theory, including conservative New York Times columnist David French, see it as unconstitutional and anti-checks and balances.The "Slaughter" in Trump v. Slaughter was Rebecca Slaughter, who Trump fired from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The High Court ruled that Trump was well within her right to fire her.Shane is highly critical of the Robert Court's Trump v. Slaughter ruling, which he sees as a recipe for presidential overreach."In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote for the majority, the FTC 'unquestionably exercises executive power, and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive, in whom such power is vested,'" Shane explains. "As a result, he said, Rebecca Slaughter 'served as the President's subordinate at the FTC — and that the President was entitled to cut her tenure short.' In so concluding, the Court explicitly overruled the unanimous 1935 decision Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which held exactly the opposite with regard to the same agency…. The Court's decision extends to all independent regulatory agencies, not just the FTC. Its central premise is that the president is constitutionally entitled to control all exercises of executive power — the 'unitary executive theory.'"Shane continues, "Roberts defined 'executive power' as broadly as is possible: 'When an agency executes a congressional mandate against private parties,' he wrote, 'it exercises executive power — no ifs, ands, or quasis about it.' Because all of the regulatory agencies created by Congress issue rules and orders that affect private parties, they all would appear to exercise executive power within the Roberts definition."Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, was among the three dissenters in Trump v. Slaughter — and Shane shares her concerns. "It is not hard to imagine how a creative president could use his newfound control over all agencies," Shane writes. "As (Justice Neil) Gorsuch points out, giving presidents unfettered control over the specialized agencies allows a retributive chief executive to launch attacks on his opponents from multiple directions…. A Court tilted against regulation has positioned itself as the ultimate, nondeferential arbiter of when legal challenges to the president are even permissible and whether those challenges have merit. The Court can also tell Congress if measures the legislative branch thought 'necessary and proper' to constrain the executive went too far."Shane continues, "Justice Sonia Sotomayor is certainly correct in stating that 'the result' of Slaughter 'is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before.' One might, however, say the same about the Roberts Court itself."
“This is Citizens United 2.0,” Representative Greg Casar said Tuesday about the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing political party campaign committees to coordinate directly with campaigns without a cap on spending. Republicans praised the decision, while Democrats issued dire warnings about the fate of democracy.But behind the partisan divide, there’s an interesting disagreement about what, exactly, the ruling will do: Some analysts say this decision could weaken the power PACs have over elections, making political parties the dominant spending force. Unfortunately for Democrats, though, the decision will probably heighten a fundraising advantage Republicans already have this year. Then-Senator JD Vance, then-Representative Steve Chabot, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, or NRSC, and the National Republican Congressional Committee, or NRCC, first brought National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission to federal court in 2022. They argued that the court should overrule its 2001 decision restricting the amount of money political parties can spend in coordination with candidates—particularly via committees like the Democratic National Committee, Republican National Committee, or House and Senate campaign committees. The petitioners argued that these limits violated the First Amendment.Due to Tuesday’s ruling in favor of Vance and his associates, political parties can now both coordinate with candidates and raise unlimited funds—giving them an advantage over PACs, which can raise unlimited funds but cannot coordinate directly with candidates.Super PACs have become a dominant force in campaign spending since 2010, when the Supreme Court struck down caps on independent spending by corporations in Citizens United. That decision gave corporations immense power to influence elections, but with the important caveat that super PACs aren’t able to coordinate with campaigns. (Campaigns have found creative ways to get around this, namely by putting “red boxes” on their websites that instruct PACs how to spend their money without directly communicating with them.) Super PACs will remain important forces in elections. But after Tuesday’s decision, political parties may once again have an advantage over super PACs.Democrats are concerned about both the short- and long-term impacts of the decision. In the short term, they say, this could deal a blow to vulnerable House and Senate candidates, since the RNC has a major fundraising advantage over the DNC. At the end of May, the RNC reported its highest-ever cash-on-hand total, $125 million. In comparison, the DNC had just $14.4 million on hand and was $18 million in debt.On the Senate side, candidates in competitive races like Mary Peltola in Alaska and Sherrod Brown in Ohio may face better-funded opponents this fall. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “frontline” candidates, incumbents running in swing districts, could face a similar challenge from their Republican opponents. The ruling could throw a wrench into the Democratic Party’s confidence that they will be able to retake the House, and perhaps the Senate, this fall.In a statement, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, or DSCC, Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, Chair Suzan DelBene, and DNC Chair Ken Martin downplayed the threat to Democratic candidates. “In November, voters will reject Republicans’ toxic agenda and efforts to rig the system and weaken our democracy by electing a Democratic House and Senate majority,” they wrote.In the long term, Democrats say the ruling will make elections more corrupt and flooded with dark money. Casar called the decision an example of the “hyperpartisan donor-purchased Supreme Court” reversing one of the landmark campaign finance wins of the post-Watergate era. “It’s essentially legalizing corruption in our political system,” he said.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, had a similar view. “Republicans would get laughed out of Congress if they tried to repeal the few remaining guardrails against dark money and special interest influence,” he wrote in a statement. “So instead, Republicans run to their captured Supreme Court to do the democracy-damaging work for them.”
President Donald Trump has received another setback in his ongoing quest to control U.S. elections. In a 5-4 split, the Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots do not need to be received by Election Day to be counted, as long as they were postmarked by then. Although a “rare victory for voting rights,” the conservative justices’ assertion that voting by mail is prone to fraud — a disproven theory that Trump blames his loss in the 2020 election for — is “very disturbing,” says Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. “My fear is that this is going to embolden Republicans to double down on their efforts to try to get rid of mail voting, including the SAVE America Act, Trump’s sweeping voter suppression bill, which he seems desperate to go to any lengths to try to pass,” says Berman, who also comments on the court’s decision to strike down a federal law limiting campaign spending.
