The Supreme Court rejected Verizon and AT&T’s constitutional challenge to massive fines imposed by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) in an 8-1 vote on Thursday. Chief Justice John Roberts ruled the companies are not entitled to a jury trial to contest the fines. Related to the use of customers’ location data, they amount to a combined more than $100 million. The Seventh Amendment…
President Trump upended expectations yet again when he told reporters Thursday that he would be “honored” to meet Iran’s supreme leader in the event of a peace deal. “If we make a deal, it’s possible that I would meet him,” the president said in the Oval Office. The idea of a meeting between Trump and…
It's no longer enough to choose candidates for the nation's highest court with perfect resumes who mouth the principles of originalism. They must have shown their courage in fighting for those principles, especially when it has cost them personally.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy — a Donald Trump appointee in Rhode Island — referred U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys to a court disciplinary committee. Politico's Josh Gerstein, reporting on X, noted that the ruling was "over handling of fight over trans medical care subpoenas to RI Hospital" — adding, "Earlier she agreed that presumption of regularity for [government] 'no longer holds.'"Gerstein tweeted a previous court document by McElroy, dated May 14. And she was quite critical in some of her comments.McElroy, in the document, wrote, "As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary. DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (the 'Texas court')."The federal judge went on to say that the Trump DOJ "has misled the parties with whom it was negotiating in Rhode Island, who have now been placed in an untenable and unprecedented procedural position."McElroy added, "And when its attorneys came to this Court to explain their conduct, the senior attorney — who was present at many of the events that took place in this case — sat silently by as his counterpart, a junior attorney who has been practicing law for approximately six months and had no relevant information, was forced to answer questions about DOJ's blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations."McElroy explained, "Now before the Court is the petitioner, the Child Advocate for the State of Rhode Island’s (the 'Child Advocate') Emergency Motion to Quash a subpoena duces tecum issued by DOJ as well as Rhode Island Hospital's ('RIH') Motion to Quash the same subpoena. (ECF Nos. 1, 28.) For the following reasons, the Court GRANTS both Motions to Quash and enjoins the DOJ from seeking or receiving any documents related to this now invalid subpoena."Trump nominated McElroy to her current position during her first presidency, and she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
The Knicks didn’t win Game 2. Victor Wembanyama lost it.
The D.C. Circuit is reviewing an injunction issued by a judge who said "no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have."
Trump administration has asked DC circuit court of appeals to reverse lower court decision which blocked construction of $400m ballroomNo court has the authority to halt construction of Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and a secure underground facility, a Department of Justice lawyer has argued, suggesting only US Congress had the power to stop the project.The Trump administration has asked the Washington DC circuit court of appeals to reverse a lower court decision which blocked construction of a $400m ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. Construction of a secure bunker for staff underground at the site was allowed to proceed while the dispute between Washington DC preservationists and the White House continues. Continue reading...
American democracy, writes political commentator Brian Beutler, is trapped in a precarious contradiction. On one hand, outrage against the corruption and harmful leadership of President Donald Trump has made it likely that he and his party will face backlash at the polls, but at the same time, the likelihood of that backlash provides Trump supporters with “fuel for further attempts to overturn elections.” This creates a situation in which “Trump has everything to lose by losing, and nothing to lose by attempting another coup.” And according to Beutler, the Supreme Court has been motivated to help him do it. “While his corruption will make it easier for Democrats to sweep the midterm elections, it will also make him more determined to steal back their victories,” Beutler explains. “That’s why the past month’s news read the way it did: A slush fund to buy a second insurrection. An election-denying prosecutor in North Carolina named Dan Bishop who’s up to god knows what. A promotion for the acting attorney general who’s promised Trump total loyalty. A new interim spy chief, chosen for his willingness to mine confidential government documents seeking dirt on Trump’s enemies. All while Trump increases the pace of looting, and abandons any pretense of trying to win the old-fashioned way.”More alarming still, says Beutler, is that Republicans in key positions “seem willing or eager to go along with him. His allies in state legislatures helped national Republicans steal perhaps five to 10 House seats through mid-Census gerrymandering. They were given a leg up by Republicans on the Virginia Supreme Court, which summarily voided a voter-approved pro-Democrat gerrymander, and by Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court, who allowed southern Republican legislatures to redraw congressional maps in the middle of primary elections, creating new Republican seats just in time for the midterms.”And it is this meddling by the courts that Beutler argues should have Americans most concerned. As he notes, while in 2020, the Supreme Court and lower courts across the country rejected Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, now, the political landscape has changed, and “they, too, have everything to lose by losing, and nothing to lose by helping Trump complete his coup. In the winter of 2020, their interests diverged, or at least seemed divergent. Today, they are completely aligned.”When Trump staged his political comeback, says Beutler, he “gave the Republican justices a choice: you’re with me or you’re with the Democrats. They didn’t hesitate to pick a side. They went out of their way to protect Trump from political and criminal accountability for the January 6 insurrection. Then when Trump returned to power, they used their shadow docket to advance his interests by fiat, without explaining themselves to the public. And that was before their ruling in Callais, which transformed the Voting Rights Act from a statute that prohibited gerrymanders intended to disenfranchise black voters into a doctrine meant to encourage anti-black gerrymanders and forbid pro-minority gerrymanders.”They’re taking such action because “they can see the anti-Trump rebellion brewing, and they know it doesn’t just threaten their power. It threatens to consign them to the legal anticanon along with some of the country’s greatest historical villains. ... Every law student in America learns about the anticanon — the worst rulings in the Supreme Court’s history: Dred Scott, which upheld slavery. Plessy, which upheld segregation.” Now the Roberts Court has been adding its own decisions that will be decried by history, such as gutting the Voting Rights Act and “Trump v. United States, which transformed the presidency into a zone of lawlessness for would-be dictators.”Today, as Beutler explains, Republicans face a near-future where Democrats score big midterm wins, flipping key districts and states and maybe taking back the Senate, which would allow them to block Trump’s judicial nominees and agenda. “Now ask yourself,” Beutler wonders, “what wouldn’t Roberts and the other justices do to stop this?” In the face of such sweeping Democratic wins, forecasts Beutler, “Trump alleges fraud. So does the loser, Ken Paxton, who also happens to be [Texas’s] sitting attorney general. They race to federal court, claiming Paxton is the rightful victor. A Republican judge disqualifies enough ballots to flip the result. Democrats appeal. The appeal reaches the Supreme Court quickly. Control of the Senate, and thus the legitimacy of the entire U.S. government, hangs in the balance.”
The DOJ urged judges to reject efforts to block its $1.7 billion "anti-weaponization fund," arguing the cases are moot because of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's assertions that the fund is not going forward.