The country's theocracy hopes to see millions flood the streets of the capital beginning Saturday in scenes reminiscent to the burial of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.
In a 6-3 decision breaking on partisan lines, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that Trump can fire Federal Trade Commissioners and other federal agency directors without cause. The ruling overturns longstanding Supreme Court precedent and express statutory instruction that combined to protect the political independence and subject matter expertise of federal agencies for over 90 years.The ruling presents a novel reading of a president’s Constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” expanding that power for a rogue president hellbent on breaking laws instead of executing them. As Justice Sotomayor put it, “The Court… is elevating (Trump) above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”An activist Roberts Court has now written into existence an all-powerful unitary executive despite elaborate instructions in art. I, II and III to keep the three branches of government separate and equal. Rejecting federal laws that restrict a president’s removal of agency directors to for-cause removal, SCOTUS has made the president all powerful and Congress less relevant, while arrogating scientific and technical questions to itself.Trump’s corporate donors can now choose their own regulatorsBefore republicans on the bench rewrote it this week, the Federal Trade Commission Act stated that a President could only remove a commissioner for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” That statute clearly and intentionally barred presidents from firing directors for partisan or corrupt reasons, and from punishing regulators who rule against a president’s corporate donor(s). Vesting a singularly authoritarian executive with unprecedented, expansive powers, the Supreme Court re-wrote federal laws to advance their own political narrative.Over two dozen federal agencies will be affected, covering everything from the financial markets, the commodities markets, and nuclear power. Agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission were all Congressionally designed to be independent watchdogs, enforcers insulated from partisan whims. Now Trump can remove any commissioners who threaten to rule against his allies, assuring that his political supporters will be afforded preferential review, licensing, merger approvals and other rulings.With Trump’s new latitude to fire any agency head who threatens meaningful regulation, his corporate donors have been effectively empowered to choose their own regulators. Federal laws passed to protect human health, finance, banking, communications, workplace safety, and clean air, soil and water have been rendered functionally meaningless.Replacing science, expertise and merit with political fealtyCongressionally created and funded federal agencies serve express, statutory purposes written to safeguard the American public. The Supreme Court had protected agency autonomy and expertise dating back to 1935, ruling that some degree of autonomy was necessary for federal agencies to meet specific scientific, economic, communications, trade, health, and environmental mandates. Federal agencies were never meant to be a president’s personal toys with which to reward donors and cronies.For a president in the habit of accepting lavish gifts and cash from foreign governments, along with hundreds of millions from domestic supplicants, finding even more room for self-dealing, corruption and political favoritism must be heady. For the rest of us, it’s dangerous. We actually need competent people to run the federal government, even in its post-DOGE watered down state.If Trump declares that every home must be heated by dirty coal, the head of the Energy Commission must try to effectuate that command no matter the harm to Americans’ lungs. If Trump declares that particulate matter, fossil fuels and the widespread use of Monsanto is good for the environment, any EPA director who contradicts him with cancer and death statistics will be silenced through removal. It’s governance by full Idiocracy.A know-nothing, anti-science president can now follow his gutTo every American outside the Fox News propaganda bubble, Trump has demonstrated astonishing incompetence on all fronts. From economically illiterate tariffs to our defeat in Iran, sprinkled with comically disastrous results in between, an ignorant and arrogant “I follow my gut” Trump revels in rejecting science and expertise as Americans pay the price.The only thing saving the nation from complete chaos and disaster to date is that several federal agencies had retained some level institutional competence despite Trump (and Musk’s) best efforts to dismantle them.
Conservative commentator John Podhoretz called a pastor "actively evil" for expressing concerns about his interracial family while the future of birthright citizenship was still uncertain.Right-wing pastor Joel Webbon posted the concerns on June 29 on X alongside a photo of his multiracial family, which includes a Black daughter."Because of an interracial family, my grandchildren may not get to have a country," Webbon wrote. "Adopting children of another race/nationality is biblically permissible, and in some cases, may be even commendable. The real problem is that women make great mothers, not civil magistrates."He posted the day before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship in a 6-3 ruling, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has also adopted Black children, casting one of the deciding votes.After the court upheld birthright citizenship, Podhoretz lashed out."Wow. You are actively evil, and the fact that you minister to a flock is a tragedy for your community and all of humankind," he wrote on X."What's crazy is that this is obviously extremely racist but it's also still euphemism," The Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer wrote on Bluesky. "What he means is if he ever has to see someone who isn't white he 'doesn't have a country,' it is not about rights or citizenship but race purity which even edgelords are still queasy about expressing directly.""…Their model of 'rights' is 'we are oppressed when denied the right to be a racial overclass,'" he continued.Webbon, who hosts the Right Response Ministries podcast, has previously argued that interracial marriage falls outside God's "normative design."
The Air Force has confirmed a trainee died as a result of a flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, according to Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). Keon McDaniel was in his sixth week of basic military training when he experienced a “medical emergency” June 12. He was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center and died there on June…
Social media accounts weighing in on birthright citizenship were raked over the coals for an ignorant jab at President Donald Trump’s family. Barron Trump’s citizenship was the […]
Without the practical realities the Constitution brought into existence, the principle and vision of the Declaration of Independence might have stood unfulfilled.
