As I reflect on this apparent dissonance, I think it can be harmonized. What the Supreme Court did was, in my view, an outrageous enabling of executive overreach. Whether it will affect the mechanics of this midterm election remains to be seen.

The Court’s Opinion enabled the President to move forward with two provisions of his mail-in voting executive order:

1. An order directing DHS to compile a list of eligible voters, coupled with a bleak threat of prosecution for state and local election officials.

2. An order directing USPS to promulgate rules about mail-in ballot envelopes, while also allowing them to refuse to send envelopes it disapproves.

The second provision was already subject to a separate injunction. The district court lifted that injunction, following the Supreme Court’s lead. So the USPS moved forward with promulgating its rules. But then a new suit this week led to a new district court injunction. Whether the Supreme Court will allow that new injunction to stand remains to be seen.

Whether the USPS intends to enforce these mail-in ballot envelope rules in this election is equally unclear. It would be imprecise to say that the USPS will not enforce the rules in this election. What they actually said was that ““the Postal Service will not take actions to implement the rule specifically for the 2026 election unless and until the government obtains relief from those injunctions.” Federal Register. So again, we will be at the mercy of the Supreme Court shadow docket, and we have to wait and see if it intervene again.

So what happens as we wait for further Supreme Court action? I do expect state and local election officials to continue to jealously guard their autonomy over election processes. It is very possible that the envelopes, ballots, vendors, and processes will ultimately remain unchanged in this election. But I do think it is more important than ever to vote early if your jurisdiction allows for it. This helps free up lines on election day. And in states that issue only mail-in ballots, you might consider dropping it off in a drop box yourself rather than mailing it in. That’s what I’ll be doing.

So, did I overreact? Nope! But my indignation was not just about changes to this election’s logistics — changes which may or may not ultimately occur. My indignation also stemmed from the flaws in the Supreme Court’s reasoning. To wit: my rants below…

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SCOTUS hands Trump mail-in voting victory

Case overview

Justice Jackson’s thoughts

Shadow docket explained

Remembering Dolly

The first of these two videos stemmed from something I just happened to read a few days before her passing. The second is from a court ruling on the day of her passing.

The most important thing she ever did?

Poetic justice in a Texas federal court

This week calls for two palate cleansers

When lack of evidence meets lack of self-awareness

And of course, Fact Check Friday

This was a fun one.

Thanks for reading! Please share this publication to help it grow!

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Sources

Trump v. California, 609 U.S. ___ (2026) (per curiam), Nos. 26A124 and 26A139, decided August 24, 2026.
Exec. Order No. 14399, "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," 91 Fed. Reg. 17125 (Mar. 31, 2026).

Vladeck, Stephen I. "The Solicitor General and the Shadow Docket." Harvard Law Review, vol. 133, no. 1, 2019, pp. 123–163.
Brennan Center for Justice. "Supreme Court Shadow Docket Tracker — Challenges to Trump Administration Actions." Brennan Center for Justice, updated 25 Aug. 2026.
Davis, Taraleigh. "What the New York Times Got Wrong – and Right – About the Emergency Docket." SCOTUSblog, 21 Apr. 2026.
Trump v. California, 609 U.S. ___ (2026) (per curiam), Nos. 26A124 and 26A139, decided August 24, 2026.
Exec. Order No. 14399, "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," 91 Fed. Reg. 17125 (Mar. 31, 2026).

Evans, M. D. R., Jonathan Kelley, and Joanna Sikora. “Scholarly Culture and Academic Performance in 42 Nations.” Social Forces, vol. 92, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1573–1605.
Borman, Geoffrey D., and Hyunwoo Yang. “Cumulative Access to Print Books Improves Literacy Achievement: Evidence from a Five-Year Randomized Trial in High-Poverty Schools.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2026.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The Dollywood Foundation, 2026.
Carbonaro, Giulia. “Republicans Cut Funding for Dolly Parton’s Child Reading Program.” Newsweek, 26 Aug. 2026.
Buchanan, Tyler. “Dolly Parton Celebrates Her Imagination Library Program in Columbus.” Axios, 10 Aug. 2022.

The Woodlands Pride, Inc. v. Paxton, No. 4:23-cv-02847, Supplemental Findings of Fact & Conclusions of Law & Amended Order of Permanent Injunction (S.D. Tex. Aug. 25, 2026).
Howerton, Gwen. “How One of Dolly Parton’s Guitars Ended Up in the Hands of a Texas Drag Queen.” Chron, Aug. 27, 2026.

Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) Victory Speech, August 25, 2026.
Shoutout to @acyn for pulling the quotation.

Dale, Daniel. "Fact Check: Nine Trump False Claims About Canada." CNN, 25 Aug. 2026.
Bricker, Darrell. "Canadians Dismiss U.S. Annexation as Unlikely to Happen." Ipsos, 2 Oct. 2025.

How’s that working out for us?

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How many people have died from the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID?

We know that number.

But how many would it take to spark national outrage?

Because every loss of every life matters. Sometimes the loss of one life is enough to spark that outrage. Especially when we identify with the victim. When they look like us. It hits close to home.

But the people who died from USAID cuts were far away. 10-year-old Abdullahi Ibrahim died of an asthma attack after we abruptly stopped paying for his inhalers. 8-year-old Ibrahim Garba died of typhoid fever because the world’s richest country suddenly stopped paying for antibiotics. 16-year-old Purity Wamboi died because the world’s richest man cut the public health services that would have caught her tuberculosis before it was too late. Evan Anzoo was an HIV-positive 5-year-old orphan in South Sudan. He couldn’t get medication on his own. So the United States paid for it, and it had been keeping him alive. It cost us 12 cents a day. We cut that off too. And he died.

But these children aren’t household names. And when Marco Rubio said, “no children are dying on my watch,” we just let him get away with it.

So, how many deaths would it take to spark national outrage?

If we lost 3,000 people from USAID cuts, would that be enough to hold our leaders accountable? That’s about how many we lost from the 9/11 attacks.

What if it were 50,000, like the number of American troops who died in the Vietnam War?

What if the deaths we caused equaled the combined total of all American combat deaths in all the wars in our nation’s history, 650,000 deaths? Then would we notice?

Because we do have a number of the deaths directly attribute USAID cuts so far. Men, women, and yes, children.

That number is 700,000.

The not-so-pro-life system of hiring ICE agents

How easy is it to become an ICE agent?

Journalist Laura Jadeed applied to find out.

She submitted an application and did a six-minute interview at an ICE career expo.

A few days later, she received an email with a tentative offer. It required her to submit a number of forms including information about any prior domestic violence convictions and a background check consent form.

She never submitted any of that paperwork.

Then, she received another email, thanking her for proceeding, and asking her to submit a drug test. She did submit the drug test, knowing she would fail because she had recently used legal marijuana.

Nine days later, she logged onto the jobs website.

Somehow, despite never having submitted a background check or the identification information or the domestic violence affidavit.

She got the job.

The site listed her as having accepted a final offer. It said she had passed her drug test, three days in the future, and that she had passed a fitness test that she never even took.

In her widely read reporting exposing this experience she said, “ICE’s recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea who’s joining . . . We’re all, collectively in the dark about whom the state is arming . . . and then sending into America’s streets.”

David Brouillette: a case study

ICE hired Laura Jadeed in October 2025. The next month, ICE hired a man named David Brouillette.

Brouillette had been diagnosed with severe mental health issues in his youth. He had displayed racist and bullying behavior throughout high school. He likely had PTSD from his service in the Army. After that, he struggled to hold down a job. He had recently failed to complete a community college firefighter training program. In a lawsuit, he alleged that he had to leave the program after a steel beam hit him in the head and left him with impaired cognitive functioning. He had been repeatedly rejected by the local police department for having “too many red flags.”

Both of his ex-wives and his teenage daughter had sought protection orders against him. They all allege a consistent pattern of abuse in court filings. They claim he threw a pot of boiling water at one of his wives while she was holding their baby. That he threw his 13 year-old daughter through a glass coffee table. That he said every woman in their bloodline should have their throats cut. That he once followed his wife into the shower, pointed a gun at her, and threatened to “blow [her] brains all over the bathtub.”

This is the man who, last month, shot and killed Johan Sebastian Durán Guerrero. Durán Guerrero was a family man, who lived for his daughter. He had a Social Security number and authorization to work in the United States. He was on his way to work when he was shot and killed.

But this isn’t a story about him. It’s not even a David Brouillette. There will always be guys like him. They should receive and accept help before they hurt themselves or someone else.

This is a story about those who armed him. Who empowered him. Who emboldened him.

Including the Senators who voted to give ICE and Border Patrol $70 billion in additional funding with no strings attached. Zero reforms. Senators like Ashley Moody, Dan Sullivan, Susan Collins, Jon Husted, Pete Ricketts, and Roger Marshall. All of whom are asking voters to reelect them this fall.

But still… it’s the economy, stupid.

Correction: the economy’s stupid.

Say what you will about him, President Trump should at least be good for the economy, right?

This video displays data visualized in the New York Times based on governmental data.

Year-over-year economic growth under Trump is lower than under Biden.

President Trump said he’d balance the federal budget. Deficits are increasingly deepening, and it’s projected to become even worse.

The national debt is at an all-time high. This will make business loans and mortgages more expensive and will limit our ability to fund other priorities. And our debt is about to exceed the size of our overall economy for the first time since WWII.

This debt comes from cutting taxes on the wealthy, not from spending on those who need it.

President Trump said he wouldn’t cut Medicaid. But he’s already cut $17 billion. But he timed most of the cuts to hit after the midterm elections to reduce political fallout.

Private health insurance is now less affordable. They jumped 26% from last year.

He said he’d bring gas under $2 a gallon. We all know what happened there. It’s over $4.

But in his defense, if you set aside economic growth, the deficit, the national debt, healthcare costs, and the price of gas, he’s also done a bad job on manufacturing jobs, wages, and inflation.

And now for the usual palate cleanser: Fact Check Friday

Sources:

Gawande, Atul. "The Human Cost of DOGE's War on U.S.A.I.D." Interview by David Remnick. The New Yorker, 12 June 2026.
Daniel, Ari, David Augustine, Kazeem Olawale Nasiru, and Lameck Nyagudi. "Trump's Team Says 'No Children' Died from USAID Cuts. Consider These 3 Cases." NPR, 17 July 2026.
Emanuel, Gabrielle, and Jonathan Lambert. "Marco Rubio Said No One Has Died Due to U.S. Aid Cuts. This Mom Disagrees." NPR, 28 May 2025.
Kristof, Nicholas. "Really, Secretary Rubio? I'm Lying About the Kids Dying Under Trump?" The New York Times, 31 May 2025.
Kristof, Nicholas. "Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn't True." The New York Times, 15 Mar. 2025.

Jedeed, Laura. “You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof.” Slate, 13 Jan. 2026.
“Journalist Tests ICE Recruitment; Surprised to Find Herself Hired with No Background Check.” Democracy Now!, 14 Jan. 2026.
Sommerlad, Joe. “Anti-Trump Journalist Claims ICE Offered Her a Job After Six-Minute Interview and ‘Sloppy’ Vetting.” The Independent, 15 Jan. 2026.
Platoff, Emma, and Lea Skene. “Maine ICE Agent David Brouillette Had Red Flags. ICE Hired Him Anyway.” The Boston Globe, 24 July 2026.

Platoff, Emma, and Lea Skene. Maine ICE Agent David Brouillette Had Red Flags. ICE Hired Him Anyway. The Boston Globe, 24 July 2026.
Romo, Vanessa, and Alina Hartounian. Ex-Wife Says ICE Agent Who Killed Man in Maine Had Racist Beliefs, Violent Tendencies. NPR, 17 July 2026.
Associated Press. AP Exclusive: ICE Officer in Maine Shooting Has History of Violent Behavior, Family and Records Say. Associated Press, 16 July 2026.
Allen, Emily, Morgan Womack, and Rachel Estabrook. ICE Agent in Biddeford Shooting Had ‘Too Many Red Flags’ to Become Local Cop. Portland Press Herald, 27 July 2026.
Snider, Ari. Family Members and Friends Remember Biddeford Shooting Victim as a Kind and Dedicated Family Man. Maine Public, 14 July 2026.
Hogan, Norah. What Johan Sebastian Guerrero’s Work Permit Tells Us About His Immigration Status. WMTW, 17 July 2026.
Fulton, Jacob, and Savannah Behrmann. Immigration Bill Passes Without Curbs on ‘Anti-Weaponization’ Fund. Roll Call, 5 June 2026.
Roll Call Vote 119th Congress—2nd Session. United States Senate, 5 June 2026.
Senate Facts: Class II—Senators Whose Terms of Service Expire in January 2027. United States Senate, 2026.

Rattner, Steven. "Trump's Broken Promises, in 11 Charts." Graphics by Taylor Maggiacomo, The New York Times, 18 Aug. 2026.

Crowley, Kinsey, and Samantha Neely. "Here's What Jon Ossoff Said About That 'Natalie' Comment Going Viral." USA Today, USA Today Network, 20 Aug. 2026.
Haberman, Maggie, and Jonathan Swan. Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Simon & Schuster, 2026.
Gardner, David. "Natalie Harp's Intimate Letters to Trump Revealed in Full." The Daily Beast, 20 Aug. 2026.

Coming next week:

1. A long-form deep dive on ICE.

2. “Exact legal language” merch (I’ll explain later).

A reader’s comment (intended rhetorically) piqued my curiosity. The answer surprised me, and it became my top video of the week:

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How many ICE agents have been killed in the line of duty?

Several people asked when I did a video listed the unarmed people ICE agents have killed.

And it’s a great question. Because it seems like each time we hear about ICE killing someone, we hear that the ICE agent was fearing for his life. And to be clear, I don’t think any ICE agents should be lost in the line of duty. I think those who commit crimes should be prosecuted.

But we need to know if numbers support the overwhelming fear and panic that ICE agents continue to exhibit.

So I looked up the Department of Homeland Security data. They list all fallen agents since the ICE was founded in 2003. But this includes people who have died of disease, and an HSI investigator who was killed by the cartel while in Mexico. So I looked closer at the DHS data. Because really what we want to know is:

How many ICE agents in America have been killed through violence while performing immigration enforcement duties?

The answer is zero.

In America, we’ve lost nurses, doctors, EMTs, thousands of store clerks and taxi or ride share drivers, police including on January 6, security guards, mail carriers, pizza delivery people, journalists, and teachers. Violently killed while doing their jobs.

But not one ICE agent, ever.

The boy who cried sue.

We’re 18 months into President Trump’s second term (though it feels like just the past week has lasted that long).

Here are the purely personal lawsuits he filed that have settled since Election Day 2024. These don’t include times he has been sued, or times that he has used the DOJ to do his personal bidding. Just him suing and settling.

He sued Meta, X/Twitter, and Google/YouTube for kicking him off their platforms for spreading dangerous lies about the 2020 election. After he was re-elected, Google/YouTube settled by paying $24.5 million, Meta settled for $25 million, and even after Elon had taken over X and was running DOGE, X settled by paying $10 million.

In December 2024, Disney settled a lawsuit that Trump brought against ABC News because George Stephanopoulos said a jury had found Trump liable for rape, when in fact they had found him liable for sexual abuse. Disney paid $16 million.

The President likely would have lost every single one of these lawsuits at trial. But from his perch atop the bully pulpit, he settled them all.

Now, most of the payments were made not to him personally, but to his future presidential library foundation. It’s the same entity that will own the $400 million luxury jet gifted by the Qatari royal family. And that presidential library foundation will enjoy favorable tax treatment.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that after President Trump leaves office, his library foundation is going to take exceptionally good care him.

PM Netanyahu and the ICC

Why can’t Mamdani arrest Netanyahu?

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And if arrested, he’d stand trial at the Hague. So when he comes to New York for the UN General Assembly meeting, why can’t the NYPD arrest him?

They can arrest someone who has a state or federal arrest warrant. Why not this?

A couple reasons.

The first is the UN Headquarters Agreement, which the US interprets as an obligation to ensure that representatives of all nations can travel unimpeded to the UN Headquarters.

And the second is that the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court. The US participated in negotiating the Rome Statute, which established the ICC. And President Clinton signed the Rome Statute in the year 2000, but the Senate never consented to its ratification. And in 2002, the Bush Administration notified the UN that we would not become a member of the ICC, and Congress passed a federal law prohibiting the US from extraditing anyone to the ICC.

So could federal agents arrest Netanyahu. No, not under existing federal law. Congress would need to repeal the existing federal law, and ratify the Rome Statute, and pass new legislation implementing the Rome Statute. Or the president does actually have to power to waive this particular existing federal law and enter an ad hoc agreement with the ICC. But even then, they’d still have the UN Headquarters Agreement and potential head of state immunity as an obstacle.

If you zoom out, you realize that international law isn’t something that exists on high and is imposed upon all nations. Rather, it’s a series of agreements between sovereign nations. Zoom out even further, and you realize that all laws, and all governments depend either on the consent of the governed, or upon the accumulation of power by force and coercion, or by some combination of both (not that we’d know anything about that…).

Why can the U.S. arrest Andrew Tate but not Netanyahu?

Manosphere influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested in Miami based on a British extradition request. They face 59 British charges of sexual violence and human trafficking.

You know, guy stuff.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu for charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But the U.S. is not going to arrest him when he comes here for the UN General Assembly Meeting.

Why? The Tates have dual citizenship, but that’s not why. The real reason is that international law is largely based on agreements. And agreements are typically two sided.

We have an agreement with the United Kingdom to arrest their criminals when they come to the US, because we want them to arrest our criminals when they go to UK.

But we have not ratified an agreement with the International Criminal Court. We have not agreed to arrest war criminals from other countries when they come to the US, because we don’t want, stay with me here…

Weekly palate cleansers…

A few themed days help me structure my week and maintain some semblance of sanity.

Weird Quote Wednesday

Yes, I know “quote” is a verb for you purists. Come to think of it, if you are a language purist, you might want to stop reading now.

Below are the President’s weirdest statements from the past week.

At a speech in Michigan:

Me-he-ho. Me-he-ho. I love the way there’s a very nice president of Mexico. You know that. She’s very nice and she speaks beautifully. And she calls it Me-he-ho. So I said to a group the other day, “and we will stop all business going to Me-he-ho,” and they didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.

At the White House Correspondents Dinner:

Some of you are lucky that our last dinner was cut short because I had brought with me what would possibly have been, I’m telling you, I had, uh, I had something. I was gonna go after you. I was gonna, I feel so badly doing this. It’s gotta be such a let-down. Oh, yay, yay. But your lives were really in danger the last time for an opposite reason. But on the plus side, your careers were saved and, we have a, uh, we really do. We have a complete and total, you know, I love the words complete and total. They say, “But it means almost the same thing.” I said, “It doesn’t matter when you say it. It’s called emphasis. It’s called emphasis.” But everyone is now really warming up the new White House military center, drone port, highly-protected ballroom. It’s, we have our ballroom. The windows are this thick. I said to the people, “Well, if a bullet hits, what happens?” “Nothing. Nothing. It bounces right off, sir. This is the greatest bulletproof glass.” I said, “AK-47,” that’s supposed to be a big one. I don’t know so much about the guns. My sons know a lot. But I said, “A, I know it’s big.”

And finally, while announcing plans to expand U.S. Nuclear Power Capacity:

Well, Michael Jordan’s a guy that’s a friend of mine. I play golf with him. He’s a really good guy. And I think LeBron -- LeBron is -- maybe he’s a racist but maybe he doesn’t like Trump, I don’t know, but. I only like people that like me, so I would say Michael Jordan all the way.

Fact Check Friday

Senator Josh Hawley, who is “a narcissist, and a megalomaniac, and a liar” said this about Dr. Fauci invoking the Fifth Amendment in his congressional testimony:

“Innocent people don’t invoke the Fifth.”

This is false.

The Fifth Amendment isn’t about guilt; it’s about our constitutional protection from being compelled to give the government evidence against ourselves. The Framers enshrined it in the Bill of Rights in no uncertain terms.

Josh Hawley knows this. He is a graduate of Yale Law School. He’s doing performative stupidity. Maybe he thinks ignorance is manly or something. I know it’s hard to believe that the author of the book “Manhood” might be presenting a sort of phony masculinity (he makes it looks so natural!).

The point is, what he said is false. But, as LeVar Burton would say, you don’t have to take my word for it.

Listen to this person, who was invoking the Fifth in a deposition, explain why:

“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ I was asking that question. Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated witch hunt, supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and even the fake news media, you really have no choice.” . . .

“One statement that is ever so slightly off. Just ever so slightly. Such as it was a sunny and beautiful day when actual it was overcast would be met by law enforcement at level seldom scene in this country, as I’ve experienced it. The United states Constitution exists for this very purpose. And I will utilize it to the fullest extent and defend myself against this malicious attack.”

That statement is from then-former-President Trump in 2022. He invoked the Fifth four hundred times that day.

Sen. Hawley’s claim that “innocent people don’t invoke the Fifth” is false. But not all who invoke the Fifth are innocent.

Wishing you an uneventful week ahead.

Not very threatening. So could he even steal an election if he tried? Well, yes, actually.

I want to walk you through exactly how he would do it and what we can do to prevent it.

This is the video I’ve been working on ever since I started making short-form civic commentary videos five months ago, and it’s been amazing to see it happening in real time as I write it. Scroll to the bottom for the video or check it out on YouTube.

It could be President Trump, it could be someone who comes after him. But I’ll just say it like this: if you want to steal an election, here’s how you do it.

You start with the midterms. Why? Because winning the midterms at the state, the local, and the federal levels is really a prerequisite to stealing the presidential election.

So how do you steal the midterms? Well, much of it relies on the power of incumbency.

So what are the steps?

Clear house of civil servants

The career people in the government who keep things running smoothly and impartially. We’ve already seen this start to happen.

It took at least 75 individual people in the federal government apparatus to take some sort of action to prevent President Trump’s theft of the 2020 election. Almost all of them are gone now, many of them replaced by Trump loyalists. At least 10 of those loyalists were actively involved in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

That’s lawyers in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which is meant to enforce voting rights laws. It’s the closure of the public corruption team at the FBI. And it’s the gutting of the team at the Department of Homeland Security whose job it was to combat misinformation and ensure cybersecurity in our elections.

Adding to this is the Supreme Court’s recent landmark decision in Trump v. Slaughter, announced at the end of June, overturning a 91-year-old precedent. The Supreme Court said that the president can fire the leaders of agencies that Congress intended to be independent. These include the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance law, and the Federal Election Assistance Commission, which helps states run fair and secure elections.

And in fact, the Federal Election Assistance Commission was the very first agency President Trump targeted with his newfound power. He fired all its remaining commissioners within two weeks of the Supreme Court decision. This will leave either a gutted agency unable to adopt new rules, or a commission without commissioners, or with Trump loyalists acting in accordance solely with the president’s will.

And if you’re looking to steal an election, the other agency you need to make sure is full of your loyalists is the Federal Communications Commission, which leads us to our next step:

Take control of the media

Doing this through the free market could take decades, so it really helps to use the power of incumbency. Use the regulators who work for you in the executive branch. Have the FCC crack down on independent media outlets. Have your trade regulators, like at the Federal Trade Commission, approve anti-competitive mergers so that your mega-wealthy allies can take control of major media conglomerates. Now you control the news and the very information that people will use to make their voting decisions.

Manufacture a crisis

Announce some form of trumped-up election interference as if it were a national security imperative.

Now any good crisis, particularly a national security emergency, needs a good boogeyman. It could be a domestic political party. It could be the classic boogeyman of illegal immigrants. Or for maximum national security authority, it could be a foreign government.

A Newsweek column in 2020, authored by former Senator Tim Wirth and editor Tom Rogers, suggested that the perfect trumped-up national security voting emergency would be a false claim of Chinese interference in American elections. China does have a history of trying, unsuccessfully, to do things like that, just as Russia does. But of course, President Trump has baggage with Russia. And China is a perfect target for being unpopular, communist, and opaque.

Of course, The Wall Street Journal’s top economic commentator has said President Trump’s economic policies are similar to that of the state party in Communist China, but that’s neither here nor there.

But because China, like Russia, has attempted interference in the past, it would be easy to come up with something that looks like evidence, regardless of whether their interference attempts had any effect on the election whatsoever. So expect that.

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And then, of course, another pretend crisis you could manufacture is the old classic of undocumented immigrants voting, or ideally some combination of those three groups working in cahoots.

So let’s talk about the issue of undocumented immigrants voting. I took a pretty deep dive on this subject, and what I found surprised me. I looked at voting among non-citizens, which is a broader term to include undocumented immigrants, but also green card holders and other legal residents. And I looked at undocumented immigrants specifically.

And by the way, I’m sorry if the term “undocumented immigrants” bothers you, but it’s actually more accurate than saying “illegal immigrants,” because some undocumented immigrants may actually be here in a legal status, such as asylum seekers.

Anyway, here’s what I found on non-citizen voting. Most recently, in Utah, Republican election officials did an expensive and extensive audit. They poured through the voting rolls looking for examples of non-citizens registered to vote. And do you know how many they found? One. Not one percent. Cne voter. One registered voter. I shouldn’t even say voter, because apparently that person didn’t even vote.

Georgia election officials did the same thing, and out of 8.2 million registered voters, the cases of suspected non-citizen registered voters were again in single digits, and they referred those to law enforcement, because there are already strong systems in place to prevent non-citizen voting, and harsh penalties if they try.

Okay, but what about undocumented immigrants specifically? For that question, let’s consult the Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025. They collected data on all the cases of voter fraud they could find dating back to 1982. They proudly published the data on their website. They didn’t claim it’s comprehensive, but the effort they put into it sure makes it seem like they intended it to be.

So in 2024, the American Immigration Council went through and actually looked at all of the Heritage Foundation data. And here’s what they found: between 1982 and now, the number of votes cast in American elections was over two billion, according to census data. And in that time span, the Heritage Foundation data showed 1,546 cases of voter fraud of any kind. Most of those were U.S. citizens. Tina Peters is one of those cases; she was one of those “big lie” people working in cahoots with the MyPillow guy.

So how many of those cases were non-U.S. citizens? Sixty-eight. And most of those were green card holders who thought they could vote. So of those, how many were undocumented immigrants? Ten. Ten, out of more than two billion, according to the Heritage Foundation’s own data.

So the evidence shows that this whole illegal-immigrant-voting thing is, to borrow a phrase, a hoax.

But if you’re going to steal this election, you really need it to be an issue. So you’ve got to ignore the evidence and stoke as much fear as you can, because if you can get your supporters to ignore the evidence as well, you can use this manufactured crisis to increase your own power.

And this manufactured crisis would be particularly well suited to persisting even without evidence. Why? It allows you to conveniently rely on the difficulties in disproving a negative. Even with the facts I just cited, people will say, “Oh, but those are only the cases we know about. Who knows what else could be out there?” Even if there’s no evidence to suggest that there is anything out there, you can’t definitively disprove the boogeyman’s presence under your bed. Maybe he just disappears when you look.

This crisis also lends itself to whataboutism, where every accusation is an admission. So whenever someone points to the facts, you can just say, “Oh, Democrats are just making that up because they want to use illegal immigrants to perpetrate voter fraud.”

And of course, this manufactured crisis would allow you to benefit from racial resentments. And one final bonus for you: courts are extremely reluctant to intervene in something that the president refers to as a national security crisis, so they may stay out of your way.

Okay, so now you’ve got your crisis. What are you going to do with it? You’re going to use it as a means for achieving all your other goals. Now, if you can tie this crisis to the actual voting equipment or some method of voting, even better. You want to control the mechanics of voting. Tie the crisis to the mechanics for maximum control.

Take control of the mechanics of voting

This is the ultimate prize. And there are currently a few major legal efforts underway to do just that.

One: gerrymandering. Under the recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, states can gerrymander (meaning draw the legislative boundaries) for the express purpose of benefiting a political party, but they cannot do so for a race-conscious remedial purpose. What does that mean? It means that the vast majority of minority groups in America support Democrats, and diminishing their voting power can be disguised as purely partisan gerrymandering, which is totally legal.

And the second legal effort underway is the SAVE America Act. It’s not law yet, but they’re still trying, and it is a top priority for President Trump. And you can’t blame him. It enjoys broad popular support right now because it’s being marketed as merely a voter ID bill. But it’s actually so much more than that. It makes it harder to register to vote. It allows the federal government to purge voter rolls. It would increase litigation and tie up elections in the courts. It would reduce mail-in voting. This bill has it all. This thing is your golden ticket to stealing the election.

Under the SAVE America Act, a passport would be enough to register to vote, but those cost time and money to get, and about half of Americans don’t have one. You might say, “Well, what about that REAL ID I have to use to get on a plane now?” That’s actually not good enough under the SAVE America Act, in all but five states, because it doesn’t expressly show your citizenship status. Why doesn’t it show your citizenship status? Because the Republican Congress that passed the REAL ID bill didn’t require it to.

A Social Security card isn’t good enough to register to vote. And if you’re one of 69 million American women who changed her name when she got married? Without a passport, you’re out of luck, because you can’t register to vote unless your birth certificate and your ID names match, and the bill doesn’t say anything about using a marriage certificate. You would assume that would work, but the bill doesn’t say it would.

The bill would allow states to establish processes for people like that who couldn’t provide documentary proof of citizenship. But those state processes would be subject to rules adopted by the Federal Election Assistance Commission. Remember them? They all just got fired, so they can’t adopt any rules.

You might say, “Oh, this is all just some big misunderstanding about married women voting.” But House Republicans rejected an amendment last year that Democrats proposed, which would have had states certify that married women wouldn’t be prevented from voting under this bill.

A military ID wouldn’t be good enough, either. You’d also need your military service record, and that would have to show a place of birth in the United States, even though many U.S. citizens and eligible voters might have been born elsewhere. And remember, even if you’re already registered, if you move and have to re-register, you’d have to comply with all of this.

Another thing to build on: many of the lawsuits in 2020 about the “big lie” and President Trump trying to overturn those election results were dismissed for lack of standing. That’s when a judge dismisses a case because they say, “You can’t personally sue here because you weren’t personally injured.” Well, the SAVE America Act would do away with that requirement. Any random person could sue a state election official if they believe the terms of the SAVE America Act had been violated. That would absolutely open the floodgates to election litigation coming from both sides.

And if you’re looking to steal an election, that’s a perfect opportunity for you, because then you can tie up an election in the courts and use election certification deadlines to your advantage.

Another thing the SAVE America Act does is require states to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government, where the Department of Homeland Security will run the voter rolls (the list of registered voters) through something called the SAVE database. That’s a database that tries to identify ineligible voters, like non-citizens. And by the way, this SAVE database has a history of producing false positives and actually purging eligible voters from the voting rolls. And we have ineffective notification procedures, so your name could be taken off the list of registered voters and you might not even know it.

The bill would also make it harder to register by mail. You’d have to send in the last four digits of your Social Security number or a copy of your ID, by mail, which would be difficult and costly for election officials to implement, and it would also make you more susceptible to identity theft, according to the AARP.

And all of this disenfranchises people who would only vote by mail (perhaps because they have childcare or hourly job obligations and don’t have much disposable free time) or limits the votes of women. All of these can, of course, be used to your advantage when you’re trying to steal an election, especially if you’re enormously unpopular among those groups.

And that’s great, because winning the midterms sets you up for stealing the next presidential election. You want to come out of the midterms with a majority in the Senate, but also the House of Representatives. You want state and local election officials. You want state legislatures, because all of these people have a role to play in the Electoral College. And by the way, you want to win mayors’ races too, so the mayors don’t try to stop you from sending ICE to the polls.

The Electoral College

Remember this old thing? It only factors in during presidential elections, okay? So now we’re talking about the presidential election: 2028 or beyond.

Quick little Schoolhouse Rock reminder on how the Electoral College works: presidents aren’t elected directly by a popular vote. Instead, when we vote for president, we’re really voting for a person to go cast a vote on our behalf for our state. We’re voting for electors. And each state has a certain number of electoral votes. Wyoming has three, California has 54. And those electors are pledged to a specific candidate based on our votes from that state when we vote for president.

And these mechanics are not just some boring civics lesson. They are an essential tool to stealing power in America. Here’s how you do it.

Okay, so let’s say you’re a Republican running for president. Unfortunately, your Democratic opponent won not only the popular vote, but also, based on the early returns, the Electoral College. The way the news stations are calling it, it looks like that Democratic candidate will get the requisite 270 electoral votes to be declared the winner.

And as you look at the map, you realize that four of the key swing states your opponent won actually have Republican state legislatures. And those same four key swing states have majority Republican House delegations. In other words, an individual state might have five Republican congresspeople and four Democratic congresspeople, so that would be a Republican majority delegation. Okay, that’s perfect.

It doesn’t matter that you lost the election. You can ride those four states to victory, and here’s how (again, much of this comes from the sadly prescient 2020 Newsweek column).

Run out the clock

You immediately declare that the election was rigged. You say there was mail-in ballot fraud, and of course immigrants were behind it. And you say it was really bad in these four key swing states; not because you have evidence there, but because those are the states you need to win.

Now, having railed against immigrants voting for years leading up to this point, you’ve really set the table for certain groups to believe you. If you repeat a lie enough, it starts to develop a certain patina of truth among some people.

Now, if you’re president, you say, “This is a national security issue now,” and you invoke emergency presidential powers. You direct the Justice Department to investigate these states. You sue everywhere you can, and you have your allies sue everywhere they can. And if your opponents or voter rights groups sue you, you say, “You can’t stop me,” and the courts should be reluctant to intervene because it’s a national security issue.

Now, the whole point of this (the lawsuits, the investigations, etc.) it’s all to run out the clock. The election is in the beginning of November, and you’ve got to run out the clock to December 14th. That’s your key date, because it’s the date by which each state’s electoral college (their electors) must be appointed. You’ve just got to run out that deadline.

Go to the States

Okay, so we’re dealing with four swing states, and let’s say they all have Republican state legislatures. This is why those races become important, because those state legislatures could refuse to certify the slate of electors because of this “national security emergency.” Lawsuits go back and forth, and the Supreme Court may side with you and let the state legislatures appoint their preferred electors.

But even if you lose at the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court says, “No, the state legislatures can’t do that, but the December 14th deadline does have to be met,” you’ve still got a chance, and here’s how you do it.

The Electoral College would meet, but without electors from these four states, there wouldn’t be enough electors for either candidate to get a majority: 270 electoral votes. So what happens then? Well, under the Constitution, it goes to the United States House of Representatives.

Go to the House

And you may say, “Well, we expect the Democrats to have a majority in the House of Representatives by the 2028 election, so okay, then the Democrats just appoint the Democrat who actually won the election.” No, that’s not how it works. It’s not done by a vote of the House of Representatives’ members, but rather by a vote of the state delegations in the House of Representatives.

So if those congresspeople vote along party lines, the state’s electoral votes would go to the Republican candidate, even if the Democratic candidate won the state. And given the lopsided majorities in huge states like California and New York, it’s very possible that Democrats could have a majority in the House of Representatives but not have a majority of the state delegations. That’s how the votes would be counted.

And if you have an iron grip on your party and they vote with you, you could retain the presidency even if you lost the election.

It’s amazing to think about, but it could be done, and that’s exactly how.

Just one more question…

Who are we talking about here? Isn’t President Trump term-limited? Well, yes and no. Here’s what the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says: “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice.”

So it’s possible that President Trump could run as the vice president on the ticket, go through all the steps I just described, and then the nominal president could resign. President Trump could ascend to the presidency for a third time.

This type of behavior does have some precedent. A London School of Economics survey found that “presidential overstay” is surprisingly common throughout the world. About a third of presidents who reach the end of their terms try to stay in office one way or another, and about two-thirds of those who try succeed.

But President Trump hasn’t exactly said he wants to do that, and so it may just be his MAGA successor. It’s possible that he could use all of the maneuvers I’ve just described to secure the presidency for his heir apparent: one of his loyalists, whoever he wants to anoint as the next MAGA president.

So then the question becomes:

What do we do about it?

Name the game

Start talking about it now. In mediation training, we call this “naming the game.” If you can call out what you are seeing, it helps take its power away.

But most importantly, I want you to think back through all the mechanisms I just described. What do they all have in common? They need narrow margins. They require some ambiguity about who actually won.

Huge margins

The only way to prevent this is with overwhelming electoral margins. There must be no question about who won.

The only way to bring down this castle is with a landslide.

Sources:

Rogers, Tom, and Tim Wirth. “How Trump Could Lose the Election—and Still Remain President.” Newsweek, 3 July 2020.

Ip, Greg. “The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism with American Characteristics.” The Wall Street Journal, 11 Aug. 2025.

Clark, Doug, and Jen Fifield. “Inside Trump’s Effort to ‘Take Over’ the Midterm Elections.” ProPublica, 13 Apr. 2026.

Dunlap, Stanley. “Georgia GOP Secretary of State: Audit Found 20 Noncitizens Registered to Vote out of 8.2M.” Alabama Reflector, 24 Oct. 2024.

Horley, Tim, and Mila Versteeg. “How Donald Trump Could Overcome the 22nd Amendment and Get a Third Term in 2028.” USAPP – American Politics and Policy, 11 Nov. 2025.

Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U.S. ___ (2026) (No. 24-109).

Trump v. Slaughter, 609 U.S. ___ (2026) (No. 25-332).

McHardy, Martha. “Steve Bannon Says ‘There’s a Plan’ for Trump 2028.” Newsweek, 24 Oct. 2025.

National Archives. “Distribution of Electoral Votes.” National Archives and Records Administration, 26 June 2023.

Reichlin-Melnick, Aaron. “Unpacking Myths about Noncitizen Voting — How Heritage Foundation’s Own Data Proves It’s Not a Problem.” American Immigration Council, Aug. 2024.

Rivas, Yunior. “Utah Reviewed Its Voter Rolls for Noncitizens. It Found One. Who Never Voted.” Democracy Docket, 27 Jan. 2026.

S. 1383, SAVE America Act, 119th Cong. (2025–2026.

What happens in South Carolina

Senator Graham was facing reelection this November. The Republican party will now hold a special primary to find a replacement nominee.

Under South Carolina law, their Republican governor can appoint a replacement to serve out the rest of Sen. Graham’s term. That appointed Senator will be a voting member of the Senate until January, when the new Senator is sworn in, and that appointed Senator can be a candidate in the special primary.

What happens in Kentucky

The South Carolina process contrasts with Kentucky, where the Republican legislature overrode a veto from Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear to strip him of his power to appoint senatorial replacements.

Which brings us to this week’s strange phenomenon of various Republicans claiming to have spoken on the phone with a suspiciously energetic Mitch McConnell. Apparently, he doesn’t have the phone number of anyone in the press.

Below, I explain the process in about a minute.

Another Graham who won’t be on the ballot

As we reflect on Sen. Graham’s complicated legacy, one thing that comes to mind is his fiery defense of then-Supreme Court Justice-appointee Brett Kavanaugh, as he faced allegations of past sexual assault and misconduct.

This also came to mind this week as more allegations surfaced against Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who reluctantly dropped out this week after receiving major pressure from his former supporters.

While we have seen solidarity be effective in a general election landscape, I am glad that one party at least draws a line somewhere. We saw it with rising star Rep. Eric Swalwell, and we saw it again this week with Graham Platner. Below is my reflection on the disparity in standards (obviously, this is from before he officially dropped out):

How to steal an election

Last week, I published my first long-form civic commentary video on my YouTube channel. It was an expanded version of my Opinionpocalypse newsletter from the week prior. In it, I discussed Trump v. Slaughter, the recent Supreme Court decision that gave the President to fire the heads of formerly independent agencies with impugnity.

This week, in his first act under that newfound power, President Trump fired the commissioners of the Federal Election Assistance Commission.

This upcoming week, I will be publishing my second long-form commentary video: How to Steal an Election. In it, I will detail the specific steps we can expect President Trump and the Republican Party to take to exercise expanded control over the midterms and the 2028 presidential election.

Be sure to subscribe on YouTube so you don’t miss it.

Below as a sneak peek is my take on the firing of the FEAC commissioners.

First, he lies about the elections being broken, then he pretends to fix them. And is doing so, he breaks them. I’ll explain how in How to Steal an Election on YouTube this week.

Palate cleanser 🍧

I don’t only bring depressing news all the time. Sometimes, I bring depressing news that’s also mildly entertaining. Here’s an example from my new Fact Check Friday series. I hope you enjoy!

If you are enjoying Notes on the Rule of Law,
please share it with your friends (or enemies!)

Share Notes on the Rule of Law

Sources:

McDaniel, Eric. “US Sen. Lindsey Graham Has Died after a Brief and Unexpected Illness, His Office Says.” NPR, 12 July 2026.
Wagner, Bayliss. “Lindsey Graham Was Facing Re-election in November. What Happens Now?” The New York Times, 12 July 2026.
U.S. Const. art. I, § 5, cl. 2.
"What If a Member of Congress Is Severely Incapacitated and Cannot Perform the Duties of the Job?" Bipartisan Policy Center, 26 Mar. 2020.
Segers, Grace. "Christine Blasey Ford Is '100 Percent' Certain Brett Kavanaugh Assaulted Her." CBS News, 27 Sept. 2018.
Jacobs, Julia. "Anita Hill's Testimony and Other Key Moments From the Clarence Thomas Hearings." The New York Times, 20 Sept. 2018.
Jong-Fast, Molly. "RFK Jr.'s Family Doesn't Want Him to Run. Even They May Not Know His Darkest Secrets." Vanity Fair, 2 July 2024.
McCrummen, Stephanie, Beth Reinhard, and Alice Crites. "Woman Says Roy Moore Initiated Sexual Encounter When She Was 14, He Was 32." The Washington Post, 9 Nov. 2017.
Wilkie, Christina. "Trump Formally Endorses Roy Moore Despite Sex Allegations Against the Alabama Senate Candidate." CNBC, 4 Dec. 2017.
Shabad, Rebecca. "Under Fire for Epstein Ties, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Defends Visiting His Private Island." NBC News, 10 Feb. 2026.
Neumeister, Larry, Jennifer Peltz, and Michael R. Sisak. "Jury Finds Donald Trump Liable for Sexual Abuse, Awards Accuser $5M." AP, 9 May 2023.
Timm, Jane C., and Jonathan Allen. "Trump Fires Election Assistance Commission Members Ahead of Midterms." NBC News, 9 July 2026.
Swasey, Benjamin. "President Trump Cleans House at the Bipartisan Election Assistance Commission." NPR, 9 July 2026, 11:11 p.m. ET.
S. 1383. SAVE America Act. 119th Congress, 2025-2026.
Judd, Donald. "Trump Posts Apparent AI-Generated Image of Large, Golden Eagle Affixed to Truman Balcony." CNN, 30 June 2026.
Walker, Chris. "Trump Misquoted Declaration, Reciting Bible Passage Instead in July 4th Speech." Truthout, 6 July 2026.
"Founders Claimed a Subversive Right to 'Nature's God.'" NPR, Weekend Edition Sunday, 13 July 2014. Interview with historian Matthew Stewart.
Dale, Daniel. "Fact Check: Trump's False Claims at His NATO Press Conference." CNN, 8 July 2026.
"Trump Pulled In at Least $2 Billion After Returning to the White House." The New York Times, 30 June 2026.
Jacobson, Louis. "Trump Says Stock Market Drove His 2025 Income Gains, But the Majority Came from Crypto." PolitiFact, 7 July 2026.
U.S. Census Bureau. "Total Construction Spending: Manufacturing in the United States." FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, data retrieved through April 2026.

In any event this flurry of end-of-session decisions delivered some good. But as should be expected from this Court, the main result of the decisions was a vast expansion of President Trump’s executive powers. Below I explain the decisions in as entertaining a manner as I can muster. Birthright citizenship, and Justice Jackson’s powerful concurrence, are at the end.

A note on partisanship and ideology

Last month, Chief Justice Roberts said the Supreme Court is not political. He said, “I think they [the public] view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do.”

Then within the past two weeks, the Roberts Supreme Court struck down a Hawaiian gun control law on a 6-3 party-line vote, allowed the Trump administration to turn away asylum seekers at the border, on a 6-3 party-line vote, allowed the Trump administration to remove temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian migrants, on a 6-3 party-line vote, struck down a cancer patient’s lawsuit against Monsanto (that one was 7-2), and handed the president unprecedented control over formerly independent agencies.

Yes, the Court is unanimous in a surprising number of cases, and those who argue that the Supreme Court is not political love to cite to the unanimous decisions. But those raw numbers do not tell the whole story. The unanimous cases tend to be the less politically charged cases. A deeply partisan Democrat and a deeply partisan Republican could still agree that the sky is blue. Much of the Court’s docket is devoted to issues that have less to do with ideology than with lower-court error correction.

Chief Justice Robert’s remarks imply that the American public just doesn’t understand what the Supreme Court is doing. I think it’s the opposite. As we learned in law school, facts persuade, conclusions do not. And when the Supreme Court acts politically, they are political actors.

The American people are too ignorant or unintelligent to understand what the Supreme Court is doing. Rather, they are too smart to take the Chief Justice’s word for it.

Now let’s examine the decisions in the Court’s latest flurry.

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Blanche v. Lau

In another 6-3 ideological opinion, the Court held that border officers do not need “clear and convincing evidence” that a green card holder committed a crime in order to deny the green card holder re-entry into the country. With all the attention paid to the positive result of the birthright citizenship case, this case was one of three major end-of-session decisions that disfavored immigrants. Justice Thomas wrote for the Court. Justice Jackson wrote for the three dissenters.

Mullin v. Doe

Another 6-3 vote (guess who voted how). The decision allowed the Trump administration to end TPS removal protections for Haitian and Syrian asylum-seekers who feared persecution and violence in their home countries.

Mullin v. Al Otro Lado

On another 6-3 vote, the Court allowed the Trump administration to turn away asylum seekers at the border. An interesting “courtroom drama” played out as the justices announced its opinions, according to SCOTUSblog reporter Mark Walsh.

He reports that Justice Sotomayor:

[Delivered] an oral dissent in this case, and she opens with something from page 29 of her 35-page opinion, the story of the M.S. St. Louis, the ship that left Nazi Germany in 1939 with some 900 Jewish refugees but was turned away in Cuba, Miami, and Canada before returning to Europe, where 250 of the refugees died in the Holocaust.

This led, after World War II, to a treaty and federal laws meant to avoid such a fate for asylum-seeking refugees. But under the practice at issue in this case, U.S. immigration officers “physically block” asylum seekers just outside ports of entry, Sotomayor says.

“Turn the ship back,” she states, hammering home her point.

She takes issue with the majority’s conception of “arrive,” saying it is perfectly logical to say you have arrived in Washington, D.C., when you have landed at “Reagan National Airport,” which is in Virginia. (She uses its “DCA” code in the opinion, but adds from the bench that “I always think I’m still in D.C.” while at that close-proximity airport.)

Sotomayor also discusses the federal “metering policy” that limited the number of arriving aliens who would be inspected at ports of entry and how it has led to makeshift camps on the Mexican side of the U.S. border and other “dire humanitarian conditions.”

Justice Alito bristled at this oral dissent, retorting, “There is much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read.”

Apparently, he did know she would do so, despite what he said on the bench. On Friday, a spokesperson for the Court said, “Justice Alito was notified in advance by Justice Sotomayor’s chambers that she would be reading a dissent from the bench. It was a misunderstanding on Justice Alito’s part.”

Wolford v. Lopez

In this case, the Supreme Court struck down a Hawaii gun control law that would have barred carrying concealed weapons without permission onto private property open to the public (mostly businesses). Business owners can still put up a sign prohibiting weapons, though with less enforcement power behind it. Still, it was a modest gun control provision. But that’s what concerns me most: the Supreme Court striking down even a gun control provision as unambitious as this one.

Some might call it a victory for the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment says,

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

So is that about the 18th-century practice of using citzen militias instead professional standing armies? A lot scholars think so. Or does it a personal-use individual right?

Supreme Court says it’s an individual right? You probably already knew that. In fact that may form the basis for your entire belief system about the Constitution.

So let’s play a game. The Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. When do you think the Supreme Court first declared that it was an individual right? What do you think, 1795? 1801?

The answer is 2008. Shortly after President Bush appointed two new justices to the Supreme Court. That case was decided on a 5-4 vote. A Ford appointee wrote the dissent, saying the Supreme Court had previously held the militia view of the Second Amendment.

Did the framers intend an individual right? Would they have wanted that in a time when gun violence is the leading cause of death of American children? We don’t know.

We know that you can carry a concealed weapon into a coffee shop without the coffee shop owner’s express consent. But don’t pretend that right comes from the Framers. It doesn’t. It comes from a one-vote margin in 2008 and a party-line vote last week.

Monsanto v. Durnell

The Supreme Court struck down a cancer patient’s lawsuit against chemical company Monsanto, and here’s what you might not know: Justice Clarence Thomas used to work at Monsanto. He was an in-house lawyer for them for three years, and his time there had a major impact on his political views. In fact, his time at Monsanto was his only private practice experience before joining the Supreme Court.

A Harvard Environmental Law Review article called him “The Justice from Monsanto.”

In this case, a man with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma alleged that Monsanto failed to warn of the danger of its Roundup weed killer product. The Supreme Court held that under federal law, states cannot require Monsanto’s product labels to contain warnings. Product labels are part of the product’s federal registration process.

What did Justice Thomas do when he was employed at Monsanto? Well, among other things, he worked on Roundup’s federal registration process.

Never in a million years should he have participated in this decision. He should have recused himself. Justice John Paul Stevens recused himself in cases involving Monsanto and other manufacturers of the Vietnam War chemical Agent Orange, after his own Vietnam-veteran son died of cancer. He did so out of a sense of honor, ethics, integrity.

We can no longer rely on the honor of Supreme Court justices. Congress must pass binding ethics rules for the Supreme Court.

West Virginia v. B.P.J, Little v. Hecox

The Supreme Court allowed states to ban transgender athletes from competing in sports that match their gender identity.

Three quick points on this decision:

One: the decision doesn’t ban transgender athletes. It leaves that issue to the states. Based on the way the opinion was written I expect further litigation.

Two: Justice Brett Kavanaugh used respectful language when speaking of transgender athletes and youth. But to me, it’s a dangerous pattern: Justice Kavanaugh has this aristocratic tendency to speak with a genteel kindness toward marginalized groups while stripping them of their rights. He did the same thing when he voted against protecting gays and lesbians from employment discrimination.

Three: Justice Thomas wrote separately to say that transgender people have a “mental state that is the object of psychiatric treatment” and that “Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are.”

These conservative justices like to say that judges don’t make the rules, they just call balls and strikes. But Justice Thomas’s words are the equivalent of an umpire calling a strike and then turning to the batter and saying “by the way, you’re not a batter. You just believe you are.”

So much of Supreme Court jurisprudence comes down to the question of who decides major issues. The President, Congress, the states, the courts, or individual people?

Apparently, when it comes to gender, the individual doesn’t decide. The Supreme Court does.

NRSC v. FEC

The Supreme Court strengthened the influence of money in politics and reinforced the two-party system. And in doing so, they once again overturned their own precedent.

The Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Watergate-era Federal Election Campaign Act, which it had previously upheld. The law limited the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination political candidates. So the Republican Party and then-Senator JD Vance sued, and obviously won. And now, as of this week, there is no limit on the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with candidates.

So what’s the takeaway? A constitutional amendment on campaign finance may be in our future. But in the meantime, those looking to change our country will be all the more forced into doing so through the confines of the two-party system.

In other words, if you want to change the country, you’ll have to a change a political party first.

Watson v. RNC

Mississippi passed a law saying mail-in ballots mailed by election day would count, even if they arrived after election day. Republicans sued. Justice Barrett wrote the Opinion of the Court, saying the Framers gave discretion over elections to the States and to Congress, not to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roberts joined her and the three liberals to form a majority. Justice Alito wrote a dissent in which Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh joined. Should we be surprised that the four dissenting justices managed to find a technical interpretation of statutory language that just so happened to align with their voter-suppression proclivities?

Trump v. Cook

The Supreme Court had two seemingly conflicting cases about President Trump’s power this week. Why? The answer may not at all surprise you.

In Trump vs. Slaughter, the Supreme Court overturned a 91-year-old decision and allowed the president to fire members of government agencies that Congress intended to be independent.

But in Trump vs. Cook, the Supreme Court blocked the president from firing a member of the Federal Reserve without judicial review?

So why the contradiction? I might paraphrase the dialogue like this (taking substantial poetic license):

Slaughter majority: The Federal Reserve is different because it has a long tradition.

Slaughter dissent: Okay but that tradition all came after the Constitution, just like all other agencies, so that’s not enough.

Majority: Yeah, but the Federal Reserve is very important.

Dissent: Okay, but so are the other agencies we just gave the president control over: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Chemical Safety Board, the regulators meant to rein in Wall Street and major corporations, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Election Commission, to name just a few. We just gave the President control over all of it.

Majority: Yeah but the Federal Reserve, we can’t trust the president with that because that’s like, really, really important. That’s our money!

Trump v. Slaughter

Another 6-3 vote. This one allows the President to fire officials at agencies that Congress intended to be independent. These are the formerly independent agencies that the Supreme Court just gave President Trump control over:

Federal Trade Commission, which polices unfair business practices, scams, and anticompetitive corporate mergers.

The National Labor Relations Board, which protects workers’ right to unionize and fight unfair labor practices.

The Merit Systems Protection Board, which hears appeals from federal employees fired or punished unfairly.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which sets safety standards and recalls dangerous consumer products, including toys.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates workplace discrimination.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses nuclear power plants and enforces radiation and reactor safety.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates interstate electricity transmission and approves major pipeline projects.

The Chemical Safety Board, which investigates industrial chemical accidents and recommends plant safety improvements.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which is meant to reign in Wall Street.

And the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance law, contribution limits, and donor disclosure rules.

In the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court just gave the president “a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted.”

Chatrie v. United States

The Court ruled that a warrant requiring Google to provide location data for cell phone users constitutes a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes. Justice Kagan wrote for the Court. Justice Alito dissented, joined by Justices Thomas and Barrett.

Trump v. Barbara

And finally, the case Justice Alito called “one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court”: birthright citizenship.

On vote count

I have a different take on this result than many of my like-minded friends. As I read (with all the eagerness of a Swiftie on album release day) the Opinion announcement, my knee-jerk was that the vote count was outrageous: 6-3 on the result and 5-4 on the Constitutional issue. I thought that would be the story I would tell.

But as I dug further into the opinions I found a different story. Yes, the dissents of Thomas and Alito were so ideological that they should leave little doubt, if there was any remaining, as to their objectivity and intellectual honesty as jurists. But why wasn’t the result 7-2?

In analyzing that question I found not a partisan outrage but rather some good news. I believe the court sacrificed a more lopsided vote count in favor of a broader holding. They could have had Justice Kavanaugh’s vote if they had decided the case on statutory grounds, and they could have had Justice Gorsuch’s vote. If the case had analyzed Trump’s executive order as applied to specific plaintiffs, as opposed to being a facial challenge to the executive order, analyzed against an entire class of plaintiffs.

Instead of striving for a seven-two vote on narrow grounds, the court painted with a broad brush. It struck down the entire executive order, calling it unconstitutional on its face. The vote count may not have been pretty, but the holding was.

On that concurrence

Justice Jackson just wrote one of the most powerful concurrences in Supreme Court history. The real story of this birthright citizenship case is the dialogue on race and Reconstruction between her and Justice Thomas.

The case was a win. It struck down President Trump’s Executive Order denying birthright citizenship to the babies of undocumented parents, which violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

But Justice Thomas dissented. He said the Constitution is color-blind, but the Fourteenth Amendment was meant for freed Blacks, not for undocumented immigrants.

Then Justice Jackson wrote separately solely for the purpose of refuting him. She referred to him not as the “principal dissent,” as is customary, but by name. (For what it’s worth I also noted that his dissent cited himself quite a bit, which is a bit like wearing the t-shirt of your own band, but that’s neither here nor there). Out of the 194 pages and six opinions in this case, her 19 pages are the most powerful. It is absolutely worth reading in full so I’ve included it here. It begins on page 32.

Here is my summary of what she said:

The Fourteenth Amendment and the other “Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment[.]”

She said yes, “the Fourteenth Amendment was “enacted . . . with the . . . purpose of securing equal citizenship for” the formerly enslaved, but that “does not justify JUSTICE THOMAS’s myopic treatment of it. . . . [T]he teacher who scolds a student for bullying a classmate hopes the student learns the broader lesson of treating everyone with kindness, not just that one kid.” She said, “In the aftermath of the Civil War,” the champions of the Fourteenth Amendment “understood the assignment.” She actually used that phrase. “Their work product used ‘language that transcended race and region,’ and thereby ‘changed and broadened the meaning of freedom for all Americans.’”

She traced the history of Black people fighting for their rights after the Civil War, and how they demanded not just rights for themselves, but universal rights. They “understood that ‘[a] diverse origin does not disprove a common nature, nor does it disprove a united destiny.’”

She explained that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment made the language broad and universal so that it would include immigrants in a time when anti-Chinese and anti-Romani sentiment resembled the anti-immigrant bigotry of today.

She said that with this universal Fourteenth Amendment, “the Nation gained a new font of legitimacy and vitality.”

She said the Fourteenth Amendment was “not color-blind;” rather, it served the “race-conscious remedial purpose” of striking down “racial caste” and “systemic subordination.”

Then she talked about Frederick Douglass, who demanded after the Civil War that “Americans look down upon their own recent self-destruction . . . and remember. Douglass declared that his own aim was to ‘show that nations should have memories.’”

Justice Jackson said, “the irony is that for all the talk about the detestable Dred Scott decision, [Justice Thomas] propose(s) a return to its core tenet”: that “bloodline [is] the marker of birthright. The America that was reborn from the rubble of the Civil War simply does not countenance that inequitable result. Thankfully [today], a majority of the Court remembered.”

The full opinion (J. Jackson concurrence beings at p. 32).

The birthright citizen who argued the case

Below is an old video I did on the morning of the oral arguments in this case, profiling the attorney who argued it.

The Constitution Annotated with the Trump Administration’s Violations is available now.

You can download it for free in PDF or EPUB (ebook) format. You can also buy a pocket-sized hard copy for $9.99 if you’d like have it in your pocket, give it as a passive-aggressive gift, and/or support my content creation work.

Click here for your copy.

Please feel free to share it with your friends (or foes)!

It is the full text of the Constitution, and I’ve conspicuously inserted examples of violations as they appear in the text.

As a Substack subscriber, I’ll also let you know when I update it. I have a feeling that’s going to be necessary…

Subscribe now

The list is extensive, but I intend to finish it this week.

And of course, I’ll need to update it periodically. The list is growing. At the same time, the wheels of justice grind slowly, so courts continue to rule, Trump continues to appeal, and sadly, the Supreme Court continues to expand his power.

On that last note, I am anxiously anticipating several Supreme Court opinions over the next two weeks, including but not limited to Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case.

Yeah, I’m going to need to update this annotated Constitution quite frequently.

Here’s the most recent violation:

Withholding Homeland Security money for election demands

the Trump administration is threatening to withhold homeland security money from the states unless they cave to his demands about how to run elections.

This latest action from the Trump administration violates our Constitution in three ways:

It violates Article I, § 4 of the Constitution, which gives the states and Congress, not the president, the power to regulate elections.

It violates Article I, § 9 of the Constitution, which gives Congress, not the president, the power to appropriate money.

And it arguably violates the Tenth Amendment, which is the states’ rights Amendment.

Here are three things you can do about it:

Spread the word far and wide.

Pressure your state attorney general to challenge this in court. (And I understand that some will be more amenable than others. Remember, many state attorneys general are up for election this November.)

Make a plan to vote. The harder they try to take it away from you, the more you should know that your vote matters.

Source:

Collinson, Stephen, et al. "Exclusive: Trump Administration Plans to Use Homeland Security Funds to Force States into Election Changes." CNN Politics, 22 June 2026.

Sneak peek

Since you, my dear Substack readers, will be the first the receive the annotated Constitution, here is a sneak peek of some of the violations I have listed so far. The annotated copy will include more detail and explanation, along with citations and current litigation status.

President Exercising Legislative Powers

>>> Tariffs under IEEPA (see Art. I, § 8).

>>> Attempting to control elections (see Art. I, §§ 4, 9).

>>> Freezing Congressionally approved funds (see Art. I, § 9).

>>> Imposing a $100,000 H-1B visa “fee” that was actually a tax.

Dismantling Agencies

>>> U.S. Agency for Int’l Development (USAID).

>>> Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

>>> U.S. Institute for Peace.

>>> Institute of Museum and Library Sciences.

>>> Department of Education.

Habeas Corpus

>>> The Trump administration deported of 250+ Venezuelans to El Salvador before courts could review their claims. Trump v. J.G.G., 604 U.S. ___ (2025) (confirmed general rule but did not apply it to these plaintiffs).

>>> Immigration-related habeas corpus cases have hit an all-time high. By one count in 2025, detainees won 97% of habeas corpus cases against the Trump administration.

>>> Stephen Miller said the Trump administration was “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus.

Emoluments Clause

Accepting a gifted Qatari luxury jet.

Exceeding Article II Presidential Powers

Appointment of DOGE bros with sweeping powers.

Removal of agency heads without cause.

Using federalized National Guard troops for domestic law enforcement against ICE protesters.

Article III (Courts)

Contempt for judicial independence, failure to follow orders (there’s a lot more detail on this one).

This is just the body of the Constitution — it does not include the Amendments. The First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments are where it really gets interesting.

I will send you your free ebook soon, and the pocket-sized physical copy will be available for purchase. This is the week!

Housekeeping notes

Our law firm is closed on Juneteenth, and I will not be posting on that day. Over the long weekend, I will be working on the annotated Constitution so that I can send it to you as soon as possible.

While today is a Thursday, I think I will start posting these articles on Tuesdays and Fridays going forward.

Terrible people!

In the unlikely event that you missed Gutfeld! on Fox News last night, Vice President Vance called Congressional democrats “just terrible people.” Ironically, he led into the statement with, “To make a bipartisan point here...”

So, who are these “terrible people” on the Democratic side of the aisle in Congress?

Perhaps he was referring to Representative Jahana Hayes, who experienced homelessness as a kid and became a teen mother, then later became National Teacher of the Year, and decided to run for Congress while building Habitat for Humanity houses with her students.

Or maybe he meant Senator Andy Kim, who cleaned the capitol after January 6 and is now fighting to free children from inhumane detention.

Could he have been referring to Representative and Dr. Raul Ruiz, who has saved multiple lives on airplanes and provided humanitarian aid in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake?

Or maybe Senator Corey Booker, whose numerous examples include running into a burning building to save a woman’s life.

Perhaps he was thinking of Senator Mark Kelly, who was a decorated combat pilot in the Gulf War, became a NASA space shuttle pilot, then left NASA and the Navy to take care of his wife Representative Gabby Giffords, after her assassination attempt. Later as a Senator, he co-sponsored a bill to ban congressional stock trading.

Who knows, maybe he meant Senator Tammy Duckworth, an immigrant who lost two legs serving our country in the military, and then requested a medical waiver to keep serving.

Vice President Vance also excoriated Democrats for not being more grateful to be American. Between this and his demand for a thank you from President Zelenskyy, Vance must be our nation’s angriest promoter of gratitude practice.

A modest proposal

(This is a preview of an upcoming video.)

A no-bid multimillion-dollar contract has left the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool overrun with algae. And the guys dumping residential-sized hydrogen peroxide into the edges of the pool somehow… only cleaned the edges of the pool.

Which is where Mark Rober comes in.

If you’re not 12 or 12 at heart, you might not know him. But he is a former NASA engineer YouTuber who also happens to be the Guinness world record holder in elephant toothpaste, a type of rapidly expanding foamy substance. And the primary ingredient of elephant toothpaste? Hydrogen Peroxide. He even has his own extra-potent version called Devil’s Toothpaste. The recipe is a secret, but I’m pretty sure it would kill algae.

Here’s what I propose: Devil’s Toothpaste could clean the pool, teach kids about science, and put on a show for Freedom250. And you apparently don’t need to bid on a contract; maybe you can just go do it.

Mark Rober: a grateful nation needs you to drain the swamp.

Sources:

Abramwell, Michaela. "JD Vance Said Democrats Are 'Terrible People,' And People Have Thoughts." BuzzFeed, 18 June 2026.
"About Jahana." Jahana Hayes for Congress.
"Teacher of the Year Inspires Through Community Service." Habitat for Humanity.
"'What Else Could I Do?' NJ Rep. Kim Helps Clean Up Capitol." WHYY, 7 Jan. 2021.
"Senator Kim Releases Statement After Another Day at Delaney Hall and Another Day of ICE Brutalities." Office of U.S. Senator Andy Kim.
"Biography." Office of Congressman Raul Ruiz.
Parkinson, John. "Rep. Raul Ruiz Helps Stabilize Ill Passenger on Flight." ABC News, 24 Oct. 2013.
Miller, Joshua Rhett. "Newark Mayor Cory Booker Rescues Woman from Burning Home." New York Post, 12 Apr. 2012.
"Biography." Office of U.S. Senator Mark Kelly.
"Ban Congressional Stock Trading." Office of U.S. Senator Mark Kelly.
"Biography." Office of U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth.

Constitution on its way before July 4

My Substack subcribers will be the first to receive a free e-book/PDF copy of the MAGA-Annotated Constitution. I am annotating the Constitution with a list of every example I can find of the Trump administration violating the Constitution, alongside the original text.

As soon as I finish it, which I hope will be very soon, I will send it to you!

I will also make pocket-sized physical copies available for a purchase. The price will be low (just need to cover printing, shipping, etc.).

When I mentioned this offer in a video, the demand was far greater than I expected. Thank you! I will try to finish as soon as possible. They’ll make the perfect semiquincentennial stocking stuffer for your MAGA loved ones.

The Case of the Culture War Mascots

The crack investigative team in the Trump administration’s Department of Education Office of Civil Rights thought they discovered 61 boys on the rosters of girls sports teams in the Jefferson County Colorado school district.

The administration launched an investigation in June 2025. And in March, they concluded “that the District had blatantly violated Title IX by allowing male students to participate in female sports … based on their ‘gender identity.’” The Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights said, “the Trump Administration will not allow students to continue to be abused at the hands of a radical ideological agenda.”

And this month, the Trump administration issued a warning letter to the District threatening “termination of [their] federal education funding.”

Then, this past week, we received a full public explanation for what these boys were doing on the rosters of girls’ sports teams.

They were mascots, team managers, and trainers. None of them were athletes.

The administration had been notified of this fact but was too busy posturing to correct themselves.

Eat the Wealthy

The rich pay their fair share of taxes in America, by any reasonable measure. But the wealthy do not.

And those of us who believe in making the wealthy pay their share should clear in making that distinction.

The top 1% of income earners do pay almost 40% of the income tax in America. That’s even higher than the proportion of income they earn. And the top 10% of income earners pay 72% of the income tax. And individual income taxes are the largest source of federal revenue.

But what’s the key word there? Income.

We’re talking about income earners. People with high-paying jobs or successful small businesses.

But billionaires, the ultra-wealthy individuals, avoid having any income at all. Why? Because we tax income, and we don’t tax wealth.

So they borrow money against the value of their shares, which allows them to live tax free, or if they do sell shares of their corporation, they pay capital gains tax, which is lower than the income tax rate.

The result is that the wealthiest Americans actually have a lower tax rate than the average American.

So when we talk about making the wealthy finally pay their fair share, we need to be clear that we’re not talking about people who can afford to take their family on a cruise. In fact, we want them in our coalition. Instead, we’re talking about the people who own companies that own the companies that own the cruise ships.

Reparations

Reparations may not be something you’ve thought about before.

They’ve been on my mind lately because the Trump administration’s $1.776 billion slush fund essentially amounts to reparations for January 6. white supremacists.

Our country gave reparations during the Civil War, but never to the formerly enslaved. We gave them to Union loyalist slaveholders. However, the Thirteenth Amendment prevented widespread reparations for slaveholders.

We also paid reparations to Japanese-Americans interned during WWII and to Sioux Indians for the illegal seizure of their land (though the adequacy of the amounts is up for debate).

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman confiscated 400,000 acres of tillable land along the Atlantic coast to redistribute to freed families. Then, President Andrew Johnson came along and returned the land to white Confederates. Later, Black Americans were excluded from enjoying the full benefits of the Homestead Acts and the GI Bill, not by the express language of those laws, but by the racist application of them such as in discriminatory lending and admissions practices.

All of this and more resulted in a massive wealth disparity between Black and white America.

Closing the entire wealth gap has been estimated to cost $1.6 trillion, which is a staggering number, but it’s also in the ballpark of the net worth of just one man.

The typical white family has about $285,000 in net worth. The median Black family? $45,000. If white households were to press pause and stop accumulating any wealth whatsoever, at the present rate it would take Black households 228 years to catch up.

What accounts for this disparity? Either it’s external factors, or it’s something inherent about the people involved. I know what I think.

Of course, there is a case to be made that something like universal basic income, which could begin to chip away at wealth disparity in a race-neutral way, may be a better approach.

And there is the question of how to pay for it. I have seen bonds, rather than taxes, proposed. The thought is that the increased economic activity would be enough to pay for the bonds when the become due.

It might be easy not to think about this subject. But in the words of Reni Eddo-Lodge, we’ll never move forward until white people talk to other white people about racism.

Our country has a history of doing big things that once seemed impossible. What if our generation’s big thing is to finally achieve the promise of equality and shared prosperity?

A sneak preview of the forthcoming annotated Constitution

Here are all the Constitutional provisions that ICE and DHS have violated, according to courts, not according to me.

Article I, §8 says Congress alone has the power to impose taxes. DHS violated this by imposed a $100,000 surcharge on H-1B visa applications by executive proclamation, without Congress.

The same article says Congress controls spending. DHS violated this by threatening to withhold federal money from cities that didn’t cooperate with ICE.

Article I, §9 contains the Writ of Habeas Corpus, the right to challenge unlawful detention in court. ICE violated this when it sent 250 Venezuelan men to a Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.

The First Amendment, Freedom of Speech and Assembly. ICE violated this a lot by targeting and retaliating against protestors and people speaking out about the raids and detention centers.

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. ICE violated this by entering homes without judicial warrants.

The Fifth Amendment guarantees Due Process. ICE has violated this by deporting people without notice or a right to a hearing.

The Tenth Amendment is states’ rights. ICE violated this by coercing local jurisdictions into enforcing federal immigration law.

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees Equal Protection and Birthright Citizenship. And the Supreme Court should rule against the Trump administration on that any day now.

Sources:

ICE/Constitution

Los Angeles Press Club v. Department of Homeland Security, No. 2:25-cv-05423 (C.D. Cal. 2025).
D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-10676 (D. Mass. 2025).
Trump v. J.G.G., 604 U.S. ___ (2025).
California v. Mullin, No. 1:25-cv-13829 (D. Mass. June 8, 2026).
City and County of San Francisco v. Trump, No. 3:25-cv-01350 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 24, 2025).
State v. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-00208 (D.R.I. Sept. 24, 2025).
Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, No. 2:25-cv-05413 (C.D. Cal. 2025).
State of Washington v. Trump, No. 25-807 (9th Cir. 2025).
U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1 (Taxing Clause).
U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1 (Spending Clause).
U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2 (Suspension Clause / Writ of Habeas Corpus).
U.S. Const. amend. I.
U.S. Const. amend. IV.
U.S. Const. amend. V.
U.S. Const. amend. X.
U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
Bier, David J. “Congress Should End Amnesty for DHS Agents.” Cato at Liberty, Cato Institute, 10 June 2026.

Mascots

Asmar, Melanie. "District Says 61 Boys the Trump Administration Found on Girls' Sports Rosters Were Mascots, Managers." Chalkbeat Colorado, 12 June 2026.
Jeffco Public Schools. "A Letter to the Jeffco Public Schools Community." Jeffco Public Schools, 12 June 2026.
United States, Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. "U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights Concludes Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado Has Violated Title IX." Press release, 13 Mar. 2026.
United States, Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. "U.S. Department of Education Issues Warning Letter to Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado as District Refuses to Follow Title IX." Press release, 3 June 2026.

Eat the Wealthy

Michel, Adam N., and Joshua Loucks. "It's Tax Season—Five Charts on Who Pays and What's at Risk." Cato at Liberty (blog), Cato Institute, 11 Apr. 2025.
Lempinen, Edward. "The Ultra-Rich Have Lower Tax Rates." Research UC Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, 4 Sept. 2025.
Balkir, Akcan S., et al. "How Much Tax Do US Billionaires Pay? Evidence from Administrative Data." Working Paper No. 34170, National Bureau of Economic Research, Aug. 2025.

Reparations

NAACP.NAACP. "Reparations." NAACP, 2024.
United States Census Bureau. "Wealth by Race and Ethnicity: 2022." Census.gov, Apr. 2024.
Collins, Chuck, and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad. The Ever-Growing Gap: Without Change, African-American and Latino Families Won't Match White Wealth for Centuries. Institute for Policy Studies and Corporation for Enterprise Development, 2016.
See also Coates, Ta-Nehisi. "The Case for Reparations." The Atlantic, June 2014.

As this content-creation adventure continues to escalate, my new focus is Substack. I want to share my plan with you so that you know what to expect. I am also sharing resources on how to modify your subscription or notifications if it becomes more than you bargained for when you subscribed.

So far, my newsletters (on Substack, they’re known as “articles”) have just been one or a few of my best video scripts from the week, sent on Friday or over the weekend. That is about to change.

My new Substack cadence

If you’re new to Substack (as I am), each edition of a newsletter is called an “article.” I “post” it, and it notifies you through the app and/or by email, depending on your notification preferences.

Starting this upcoming week, I will post articles each Tuesday and Thursday. The articles will include embedded videos (the short form videos I post on other platforms), plus embellishment, explanation, and the substantive paragraphs I invariably have to cut from the video scripts to appease the algorithm gods. Think of these articles as the “director’s cut” or DVD extras for my short form videos. They will also include sources for further reading.

Substack also has “notes.” Notes are like tweets. I intend to post one note most weekdays. This may annoy you, especially if you receive both an app notification and an email for each note I post. I’ve included instructions on how to adjust your notifications below.

Substack also has “restacks.” This is where I share an article from someone else. Substack does not email these to you individually, but I believe they may send a digest of my restacks.

Finally, Substack has pledges and paid subscriptions. Someday, in the hazy and distant future, I will add paid subscriptions. My plan is to include an additional “Ask Me Anything” article each week for paid subscribers. I think I’ll call it “AMA (Other Than Legal Advice)” and a Fact Check Friday. If you have been kind enough to pledge payment, I will warn you before turning on paid subscriptions so that you have an opportunity to change your mind.

How you can adjust your notification preferences

Save this section for when I annoy you. 😜

Learn how to unsubscribe, cancel a paid subscription (when that day comes), and more in this Reader’s Guide to Substack.

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Thank you for being part of this journey!

I am excited to find out how good we can make this thing. I will just try to make each article 1% better than the last. Thank you for your support and for being part of it. Onward!

How many families has ICE separated?

How many families have been separated by the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement?

According to a new analysis by the Brookings Institution, the number is 100,000.

100,000 families where the Trump administration has separated children from parents.

That’s 205,000 children affected. In fact, it’s 145,000 U.S.-citizen children separated from the parents.

If the current rate continues, over 750,000 children overall and half a million U.S citizen children will be separated from their parents by the Trump administration.

And of course, this includes asylum seekers, which is not an illegal status.

Now, according to Physicians for Human Rights, most parents and children who go through the trauma of family separation immigration enforcement develop at least one mental health condition such as post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.

Think of ripple of this.

The administration we elected has imposed that trauma on 100,00 families and counting.

Read the analysis, with an interactive tool, here: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-many-children-are-affected-by-parental-immigrant-detention/.

How to Spot Weaponization: The Three Ps

The Trump administration is weaponizing the Department of Justice again. This time it’s a criminal investigation of E. Jean Carroll, who sued President Trump twice and won twice, both times for defamation, and once for sexual abuse.

But how can we articulate why this is weaponization and not a legitimate investigation, especially when both sides accuse the other of doing weaponizing the DOJ. How can we articulate the difference when MAGA says what about Biden, he did the same thing?

Here’s what I propose as an objective framework: the Three Ps.

Is there a predicate? Something that actually happened, like an event: a report from a victim, or a stock market crash, or a riot, etc.: some event that spurred the investigation. Or did it just come out of the blue?

Priority: does the investigation or prosecution fit stated priorities? For example, has the administration increased white collar crime prosecution overall or perjury cases overall, or do they selectively choose those charges for their personal or political enemies?

And precedent: is there a history of the DOJ investigating and prosecuting crimes like these across administrations?

Those Three Ps can help us distinguish law from lawfare.

Because the DOJ isn’t the President’s law firm. It’s our law firm.

The fate of the slush fund is… slushy.

First, we had this development:

A federal judge has temporarily paused the Trump administration’s $1.776 billion slush fund.

This is just one of the lawsuits about the slush fund. This was filed by the nonprofit Democracy Forward on behalf of a large group, which includes January 6 prosecutor Andrew Floyd.

Now, the judge just said the Trump administration has to pause, not take any action on the fund, while the initial round of briefs are being filed in the lawsuit. So this is just a temporary win, but it does give us some breathing room.

Meanwhile, Texas Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher filed a bill to prohibit any president from filing a lawsuit against the U.S. government while in office and to prohibit use of the Treasury’s Judgement Fund to settle claims with the president. The Judgment Fund is where the slush fund money would come from – it’s typically used for cases where people sue the government and win or it looks like they’re going to win so there’s a settlement. Civil rights cases, things like that.

We don’t know yet if the courts or Congress will ultimately stop this fund, but the fight is on.

Then, we had this:

A bizaare little announcement from Department of Justice on X. The DOJ said they will “abide by the Court’s ruling” that “under no circumstances” may they proceed with the fund. Which is… odd. Because the court rule on the fund or strike it down, the court just said don’t do anything with the fund until we, like schedule a hearing.

So is the DOJ just being really dramatic about having to pause the fund during the court process, or are they saying they’re ending it forever?

It’s almost as if Attorney General Todd Blanche isn’t a very clear communicator.

And if they are ending the fund forever, it’s pretty strange to cover up your political disaster by lying that you lost in court.

Maybe it’s a comfort zone thing (Todd Blanche was the losing attorney when a jury convicted President Trump of 34 felonies).

Then, in his interview with Kristen Welker, President Trump said he would like to revive the fund.

But here’s what we know for sure: the DOJ order shielding the Trumps from any IRS tax claims? That part is still there, untouched. It’s doing fine.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost think President Trump cares less about his supporters than about himself.

And for good measure, a quick rundown of the Papal Encyclical on AI

A papal encyclical is a formal letter from the Pope (to the bishops, but published for all).

This one’s called Magnifica Humanitas The subtitle is “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.”

The pope that says technology isn’t inherently evil, but it’s also “never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who” control it. And what we must never let technology do is attempt to replace humanity, or “the human heart, in all its grandeur and woundedness.”

In the age of AI, the choice is “not between enthusiasm and fear, but between two paths of development: a progress that serves individuals and peoples, or a progress that” subjugates the people to the powerful.

He says technology can free human beings from burdensome or repetitive tasks, but it must not lead to unemployment in the name of reducing costs and increasing profit. And then the Pope expresses hope for a renewal of labor organizations.

Because “The value of persons … does not depend on what they achieve or produce.”

He says, “automation must not be evaluated solely in terms of efficiency, but in relation to the dignity of the worker, the right to sufficient [pay], and the genuine possibility of participating in society.”

He says we shouldn’t measure countries by their GDP, but rather by their protection of the environment, their shared prosperity, and their reduction of inequality.

How are we doing?

What’s it about?

President Trump actually had three complaints: two were administrative complaints with agencies he controls (one about the Mar-a-Lago classified documents raid and one complaint for even investigating Russian collusion) he wanted to be paid for both of those.

But the main lawsuit was about only one thing: the leak of Trump tax returns. And that did happen. That leak is how we found out Trump paid only $750 in income taxes in 2016 and $0 in 10 of the prior 15 years. And by the way every other president in the past 50 years has voluntary disclosed their taxes to the public. We just never thought to make it a law before Trump.

For this leak, Trump, two of his sons, and his business sued the federal government for $10 billion (a sum that the Complaint did not explain).

But here’s the thing: the government did not leak those tax returns; it wasn’t even a government employee. The person who leaked those tax returns was an employee of corporate powerhouse consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. They were contractors to the federal government. But the Trumps didn’t sue that corporation. Because they don’t control that corporation. They control the federal government, so that’s who they sued.

Funny Timing.

You can apply for a payout if you feel you have been a victim of mistreatment by the federal government. And the Trump administration decides who gets paid from this slush fund, and it’s all secret.

But, the timing is really an underrated aspect of this.

The settlement says that no claims can be processed after December 1, 2028 and all funds must be spent before January 1, 2029. The Trump administration says this is the “ensure swift processing for victims.”

But does that date ring a bell? Well it’s right before January 20, 2029, the day we get our next president.

No other president will be able to use this money to compensate people mistreated by the government.

Trump created this slush fund, and he alone can drain it.

Love means having to issue a formal apology.

The United States has to issue a formal apology to Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization.

The settlement agreement doesn’t specify exactly what the apology will say.

Maybe it’s I’m sorry, Mr. President, we thought your political career would be over after you incited an insurrection. We were wrong.

Maybe it’s, we’re sorry we took all those classified documents from your Mar-a-Lago bathroom.

We’re sorry that we found out that you pay almost no income tax.

How would you like to apologize to the Trumps?

When did they know?

Andrew Paul Johnson refers to himself as an “American Terrorist.” He pleaded guilty to several charges for his role in January 6th and was put in prison.

On his first day back in office, President Trump pardoned Andrew Paul Johnson and let him out of prison.

Andrew Paul Johnson is also a child molester. And shortly after being let out of prison, he was at it again. He contacted children through online sites like Roblox and sexually abused them.

According to this police report, he tried to keep his victims quiet by telling them he’d share the $10 million he expected to receive from the Trump administration.

This police report is from 2025, so it didn’t really make sense at the time.

But then, this month, May 2026, the Trump administration announced that it had set up a $1.776 billion fund to pay Trump allies.

And Senator Chris Van Hollen confronted Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about this money being used to pay Andrew Paul Johnson, Blanche said, “Well, you’re obviously lying … because … the slush fund … didn’t exist” at the time of that police report.

But we now also know that the Trump team has planned this slush fund all along, even before the 2024 election.

When you put this all together, it shows that the Trump team told January 6 rioters like Andrew Paul Johnson about the slush fund before they ever told us.

When is it weaponization?

In the midst of creating this corrupt “Anti-Weaponization” slush fund, the Trump administration is weaponizing the Department of Justice again. This time it’s a criminal investigation of E. Jean Carroll, who sued President Trump twice and won twice, both times for defamation, and once for sexual abuse.

But how can we articulate why this is weaponization and not a legitimate investigation, especially when both sides accuse the other of doing weaponizing the DOJ. How can we articulate the difference when MAGA says what about Biden, he did the same thing?

Here’s what I propose as an objective framework: the Three P’s.

Is there a predicate? Something that actually happened, like an event: a report from a victim, or a stock market crash, or a riot, etc.: some event that spurred the investigation. Or did it just come out of the blue?

Priority: does the investigation or prosecution fit stated priorities? For example, has the administration increased white collar crime prosecution overall or perjury cases overall, or do they selectively choose those charges for their personal or political enemies?

And precedent: is there a history of the DOJ investigating and prosecuting crimes like these across administrations?

Those three p’s can help us distinguish law from lawfare.

Because the DOJ isn’t the President’s law firm. It’s our law firm.

Breathing room

A federal judge has temporarily paused the Trump administration’s $1.776 billion slush fund.

This is just one of the lawsuits about the slush fund. This was filed by the nonprofit Democracy Forward on behalf of a large group, which includes January 6 prosecutor Andrew Floyd.

Now, the judge just said the Trump administration has to pause, not take any action on the fund, while the initial round of briefs are being filed in the lawsuit. So this is just a temporary win, but it does give us some breathing room.

Meanwhile, Texas Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher filed a bill to prohibit any president from filing a lawsuit against the U.S. government while in office and to prohibit use of the Treasury’s Judgement Fund to settle claims with the president. The Judgment Fund is where the slush fund money would come from – it’s typically used for cases where people sue the government and win or it looks like they’re going to win so there’s a settlement. Civil rights cases, things like that.

We don’t know yet if the courts or Congress will ultimately stop this fund, but the fight is on.

Congress can stop this. Call your representatives to demand they block the “Anti-Weaponization” slush fund — and please spread the word.

Maj. John “Alex” Klinner, 33. His wife said their three young children “won’t see how goofy and funny he was. They won’t witness his selflessness, the way he thought about everyone else before himself. They won’t get to feel the deep love he had for them.”

Sgt. First Class Noah Tietjens, 42, is survived by his wife and teenage son. The three had taken up martial arts together. He had become certified as an instructor and dreamed of opening his own studio one day.

Sgt. Declan Coady, 20. A student at Drake University, he had been taking his classes virtually while in deployed in Kuwait. His sister said, “I still don’t fully think it’s real. I just remember all our conversations about what he was going to do when he came back.”

Captain Cody Khork, 35, will be remembered “as someone who was always smiling, easygoing, and genuinely kind — someone who looked out for the people around him and left a lasting impression on those he met.”

Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45, is survived by his wife and three kids. He was “not only a role model to his children . . . but also a goofy and playful dad who was always ready to make them laugh.” He was a proud track, gymnastics, music, and theater dad, too.

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, is survived by his wife and daughter. He is remembered as “an amazing husband, father, brother, nephew, uncle, and friend.” And as a “Hero with a servant’s heart.”

Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, 26. “Everyone who knew Ben well knew he was destined to be an Army man, and there was no convincing him otherwise.” He was an Eagle Scout and lived life “servant-hearted and in sacrifice to others.”

Capt. Ariana Savino, 31. Those who knew her describe her as “a mentor for Latino youth” who was “a source of positive energy,” and was not only proud of her service but also “deeply honored to represent her Puerto Rican heritage.”

Capt. Seth Koval, 38. His wife said “He grew up dreaming about becoming a pilot and to stand beside him as he made his dreams come true was an honor . . . I will see him in the smile of our son and carry him with me in every moment.”

Capt. Curtis Angst, 30, will be remembered for “his steady kindness and the joy.” His family said he made others feel welcome and valued with “his constant smile and instantly recognizable laugh.”

TSgt. Tyler Simmons, 28. The first time he flew a plane was in the ninth grade, when a deacon at his church, who was a Tuskegee Airman, took him for a ride. As his mother was making funeral plans, his family said they were saddened beyond measure.

TSgt. Ashley Pruitt, 34, came from a large family and is survived by her husband, stepson, and 3-year-old daughter. Her husband described her as “in a word, radiant. If there was a light in the room, she was it.”

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Sources:
"U.S. Soldiers Killed in the Iran War." The New York Times, 2026.
Breen, Kerry. "U.S. Service Members Killed in the Iran War Include a Minnesota Mom and an Iowa College Student." CBS News, 4 Mar. 2026.
"U.S. Service Members Killed in the Iran War." Time, 10 Mar. 2026.
"U.S. Military Aircraft Down in Iran/Iraq." Associated Press, 2026.
Puerto Rico Fire and EMS Association–ADC. "In Honor of Captain Ariana Savino." Facebook, 2026.
"Obituary: Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens." Des Moines Register, 2026.
Pennington, Benjamin "Ben" Noah. Obituary. Trowbridge Funeral Home, 8 Mar. 2026.
Stone, Bria. "Friend Pays Tribute to Capt. Ariana Savino, One of the Six U.S. Service Members Killed in a Plane Crash over Iraq." CNN, 16 Mar. 2026.
KETV NewsWatch 7. "Nebraska Soldier Remembers Sgt. First Class Noah Tietjens." YouTube, 4 Mar. 2026.
Knoll, Corina, Christina Morales, Pooja Salhotra, Jacey Fortin, and Susan C. Beachy. "These American Service Members Died in the Iran Conflict." The New York Times, 14 Mar. 2026.
Mayorquín, Orlando, Chris Hippensteel, and Sonia A. Rao. "Dreams of Flight and Service for 6 U.S. Military Members Killed in Iraq." The New York Times, 14 Mar. 2026.
Lee, Chantelle. "What We Know About the Thirteen U.S. Service Members Killed in the Iran War." Time, 10 Mar. 2026.
Scolforo, Mark. "'Radiant' Mother from Kentucky Was Among 6 US Service Members Killed in Air Crash in Iraq." Associated Press, 16 Mar. 2026.
"Obituary: Maj. Jeffrey R. O'Brien." Des Moines Register, 2026.

ICE Detention

This Mother’s Day, thousands of moms and hundreds of kids are being held in ICE detention under inhumane and illegal conditions.

ICE arrested a woman recovering from a C-section as she was on her way to visit her 15-day-old baby in the NICU. They arrested a woman at five months pregnant and detained 1,500 miles from her husband and two young kids, with insufficient medical care for most of her pregnancy.

But there are good people doing something about it, and you can help.

Attorneys are using something called habeas corpus. It’s a legal tool with an incredibly proud history, specifically with mothers.

When Sojourner Truth escaped from slavery in 1826, she found out that her 5-year-old son had been illegally sold back into slavery in New York to Alabama slaveholders.

So she brought a habeas corpus lawsuit.

And she won. She won her son’s freedom, and she became the first Black woman to win a lawsuit in American history.

Today, in 2026, 200 years later, legal nonprofits are using that same tool to free mothers and children from illegal ICE detention. Groups like the ACLU, Raices Texas, and Immigration Defenders need our support.

Cash Bail

This Mother’s Day, 30,000 mothers are being held in U.S. jails without ever having been convicted of a crime, simply because they can’t afford cash bail. But there’s something very cool you can do to help.

The average cash bail for a felony is $10,000, which is about 8 months’ wages for the typical person in this situation. You can pay in full, which is refunded only after the case closes, minus fees, or can pay a bail bondsman a 10% nonrefundable free. Many people can’t do either. So they sit in jail for months, sometimes even years, waiting for a trial.

But there’s an organization that exists for the sole purpose of paying bail for mothers on Mother’s Day so they can go home. It’s called the National Bail Out. Their program Free Black Mamas because of the disproportionate incarceration rate for Black women. They pay the full bail to the court so that it’s eventually refunded, and the money can be used over and over to free presumed-innocent mothers as they await trial.

The Mamdani Act

A MAGA Congressman has introduced a bill to exclude socialists from the United States, it’s called the Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists Act. The Mamdani Act. How clever.

I read the bill. I’d like that portion of my life back please.

It won’t pass and isn’t serious, but it has actually been introduced in Congress. Another guy introduced a bill to protect puppies from Sharia law.

But here’s the thing:

Right now, 75% of American families can’t afford a median priced home.

Childcare costs are up 30% since 2020.

11 million American children live in poverty.

One third of Americans have cut back on daily expenses to afford healthcare.

Gas prices are up 30% under this presidency.

My point is, we need a Congress of serious people doing serious things.

Here are some more real bills right now:

A bill to add President Trump to Mount Rushmore.

A bill to create a Trump Peace Prize.

A bill to make President Trump’s birthday a national holiday.

A bill to have the National Institute of Health research Trump Derangement Syndrome.

A bill to rename two airports after President Trump.

And a bill to add President Trump’s face to a new $250 bill.

Some daddy issues there. But my main problem is this:

Congress failed to extend the healthcare tax credit and caused our premiums to double.

About half of Americans can’t afford essential expenses.

You’d have to earn 43% more than the average worker to afford the average home. How does that work?

And costs keep rising faster than earnings.

Let’s send some grown-ups Congress.

Proud Boys and Oath Keepers: Good?

This week, the Trump DOJ asked a federal appeals court to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for their roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Now you might say, didn’t President Trump already pardon all these people? Well he did for most of them, but for a few, he only commuted their sentences, which means they could get out of prison with credit for time served, but they’d still have the felony convictions on their records.

But now, if the DOJ is successful in this request, those Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders would no longer have felonies on their records, so they’d be able to vote and own guns again. Cool.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson: a Low-IQ Person?

Yesterday, President Trump called Supreme Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson a “low IQ person.”

I was curious, so I looked up a list of people he’s referred to as a “low IQ.” It includes not only Justice Brown Jackson, but also Vice President Kamala Harris, Representative Jasmine Crockett, Representative Maxine Waters. Wait a second.

So let’s get to know Ketanji Brown Jackson.

She is the daughter an attorney and a high school pricipal. In high school, she was class president and a national debate champion. She then took her low IQ to Harvard, where she graduated magna cum laude, which is Latin for stop whining about DEI. She then went Harvard law school, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She and her low IQ then clerked in the U.S. District Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals, and finally for Justice Stephen Breyer whose seat she would later assume on the U.S. Supreme Court. She was a successful federal public defender and private practice attorney before being appointed as a judge to the U.S. District Court, and then the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Then President Biden appointed her to the Supreme Court and received a ton of criticism for having said he would appoint a black woman. But why do we talk about that instead of talking about how no president had ever appointed a black women to the supreme court before?

Southern Poverty Law Center: Bad?

One week after moving to vacate the convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leadership, the DOJ is prosecuting the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC, the group made famous for suing the KKK.

The story MAGA is pushing is that the SPLC is funding right-wing extremist groups, including the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville. Guess that’s what he meant by “there are very fine people on both sides.”

But in reality, the indictment doesn’t say that. It alleges that the SPLC was paying individuals inside extremist groups as paid informants. And the SPLC’s response is, “yeah that’s exactly what we were doing. And we used shell companies to preserve the anonymity and the safety of the informants. And our donors knew all about it. And we have a track record of bankrupting hate groups like the KKK through our lawsuits. And if we wanted these groups to be well funded, why would we be bankrupting them? And also we don’t need to fund them to justify our existence. There’s plenty of racism out there already without our help.”

I’m paraphrasing.

The Trump DOJ has used white collar crime prosecutions and investigations as a tool to go after their perceived political enemies, from Leticia James to Jerome Powell. Meanwhile, overall white collar crime prosecution has gone down under this DOJ. So white collar crime prosecution is a priority only when the defendant is a political enemy.

The Constitution is actually silent on who can vote. It left that to the states. And the states said: white male landowners only.

In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution gave us birthright citizenship, and in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment gave Black men the right to vote. Many states then blocked them from the polls using poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud, and intimidation.

Women’s suffrage happened gradually at the state level, but it wasn’t federally required until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. That year, the National American Woman Suffrage Association disbanded and became… the League of Women Voters.

In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted Native Americans citizenship and voting rights. Though, again, many states continued to block them from the polls.

In 1926, Arkansas became the final state to prohibit noncitizen voting in state and federal elections.

In 1964, the Twenty-fourth Amendment banned poll taxes, and in 1965, the Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests and required states with a history of voter discrimination to get federal approval before changing their voting laws.

In 1971, in the midst of the Vietnam War draft, the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age to 18.

Large-scale absentee voting dates to the Civil War, but in 1978, California became the first state to allow voters to vote by mail without an excuse.

In 1993, the Motor Voter Act made it easier for eligible Americans to register to vote by requiring states to offer registration at the DMV and other government agencies.

In 1996, Congress made noncitizen voting in federal elections a federal crime — even though it was already illegal in every state.

In 2013 and again in 2021, the Supreme Court significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act: first by gutting federal oversight, and then by weakening its protections against discriminatory voting practices.

Every advancement in voting rights faced fierce opposition. Today, voter ID laws, voter roll purging, and other restrictions are being used to disenfranchise eligible voters.

Despite what some in my comments sections may believe, I have never once heard a Democrat say undocumented immigrants should vote in federal elections. So forget about that straw man. But it should be free and easy to register and vote, even if you’re a working person who can’t afford to take off work for three hours to stand in line on a Tuesday.

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The Constitution in Under 3 Minutes

Send this to your friends or save it for the next time someone’s talking about the Constitution, and they don’t know what they’re talking about. And I’m working on some videos about how this all relates to our current “situation,” so follow for more. Subscribe for more.

The Constitution has three parts: The Preamble, the articles, and then 27 amendments.

We have the first codified constitution written by elected leaders, not a king. That’s why the Preamble begins, “We the People.”

Then the body, the original Constitution, is called the articles. There are seven.

Article I establishes the legislative branch. Article II establishes the presidency. Article III establishes the judicial branch.

Article IV requires states to recognize each other’s laws. Article V sets the constitutional amendment process. Article VI establishes federal supremacy over state law and prohibits any religious test to hold any federal office. Article VII was just the ratification process for the constitution.

Now the amendments. The first ten, ratified together, are called the Bill of Rights.

The First protects freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, of which I do have a few.

Second says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Third says we don’t have to let soldiers stay at our house.

Fourth protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Fifth guarantees Due Process and requires fair compensation if the government takes your property.

Sixth protects several rights of people accused of crimes.

Seventh guarantees trial by jury.

Eight protects us from excessive bail and fines, and from cruel and unusual punishment.

Ninth says just because we’ve listed some rights here doesn’t mean these are like the only rights you have.

Tenth says that any powers the Constitution doesn’t grant to the federal government are left to the states or to the people.

Eleventh says federal courts can’t preside over cases where a state is sued by the citizens of another state or foreign country.

Twelfth says the vice president is voted in separately, it’s not just the runner-up.

Amendments Thirteen through Fifteen are the Reconstruction Amendments, enacted after the Civil War.

Thirteenth abolished slavery.

Fourteenth did a lot, including requiring the States to respect due process and equal protection.

Fifteenth protects the right to vote regardless of race, color, or previously being enslaved.

Sixteenth allowed for income tax.

Seventeenth required Senators to be elected rather than appointed.

Eighteenth was prohibition.

The Nineteenth in 1920 finally protected women’s right to vote.

Twentieth shortened the length of time between the election and inauguration.

The Twenty-first in 1933 repealed prohibition.

Twenty-second prohibits anyone from being elected president more than twice.

Twenty-third gave D.C. the right to vote in presidential elections.

The Twenty-fourth, in 1964, prohibited poll taxes.

Twenty-fifth sets up a process for removing the president if the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office.

Twenty-sixth lowered the voting age to 18 during the Vietnam War.

And the Twenty-seventh, in 1992, prohibited members of Congress from giving themselves raises during the current session.

The Preamble Explained in Under 2 Minutes

It begins with We the People. This may sound simple but it was revolutionary. Despite all our country’s early exclusions, more people were allowed to vote on this constitution, through elected representatives, than had ever voted on anything in the history of the world.

The next phrase is “of the United States.” The Framers made an important decision not to list each state, but rather refer to us as a collective and unified group.

What are we the people doing? We are creating the constitution and making it official, in the words of the time, we “Do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

But then there’s all the stuff in the middle. That explains why we’re doing this. We’re doing it “in order to” do six things:

1. “Form a more perfect Union.” We were improving upon the Articles of Confederation, our first attempt at a government where the central government was so weak it couldn’t govern effectively. Pefect had a slightly different meaning at the time, closer to complete, but notice how this phrase does imply continual improvement, a process and a struggle we’ve been engaged in throughout our history and continue to this day, although it’s not always perfect.

2. “Establish Justice.” A fair legal system and the rule of law. Notice how early and prominently that is mentioned.

3. “Insure domestic Tranquility.” There was a lot of civil unrest and rioting prior to the Constitution.

4. “Provide for the common defence,” our national security done collectively, not on a state-by-state basis where Delaware has to fight its own wars or something.

5. “Promote the general Welfare.” Extremely significant and revealing phrase showing that the Framers viewed this new government as having a responsibility to actually help people, and the word general shows its intended for all people, not just a select a few, though again, we haven’t achieved perfection in doing that (yet).

6. “And secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” this showed that the Framers of the Constitution wanted a stable and long-lasting government to protect our freedom.

For further reading, I recommend Akhil Reed Amar’s book “America’s Constitution: a Biography,” which I keep under my pillow.

3 Not-So-MAGA Aspects of the Constitution that Actually Make America Great

The biggest influences on our Constitution weren’t religious leaders or texts, but rather Enlightenment philosophers, who were some of the most secular political thinkers the Western world had seen in centuries. And as someone who doesn’t share the exact same religion as the Framers, I appreciate that.

No Kings is not just implied in our Constitution, it’s literally in there. Article I § 9 says “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.”

Under that same section, habeas corpus protects anyone on U.S. soil, even undocumented immigrants, from indefinite detention without judicial review.

Those last two are both from like, the first chapter, by the way.

My analysis of the 25^th Amendment

…given our current “situation.”

The 25th Amendment says that the Vice President and either a majority of cabinet members or another body designated by Congress, AND two-thirds of the House AND two-thirds of the Senate can remove the president from office if they determine that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

So is President Trump unable to discharge the powers of his office?

Well, so much of the Constitution is about the question of who decides. We see that throughout. Article I says States decide how to run elections (and if the federal government has to get involved, it’s Congress). It says the House decides whether to impeach the president, and the Senate decides whether to convict him. Much of our body of constitutional case law grapples with the question of who decides what.

And nowhere is the “who decides” question more consequential than in the 25th Amendment. Because it’s not a question of whether the President is unable to serve; it’s a question of who decides whether he’s unable to serve. And with the current Vice President and cabinet and Congress, it’s just not gonna happen.

Now here’s the good news: it is ultimately we the people who decide everything. But we do so through elections.

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Monday: We need to talk about birthright citizenship.

Not enough people are talking about this case, and it goes in front of the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The 14^th Amendment to the US Constitution says that All persons born in the United States and who are subject to our laws, are citizens.

On his first day back in office last year, President Trump issued an Executive Order saying, no they’re not. Only the babies of citizens or green card holders who are born here are citizens. Not the children of visa holders, refugees, asylum seekers, or undocumented immigrants.

The President can’t change the constitution, so obviously, the ACLU sued, the case is called Trump vs. Barbara, and it’s taken this long to get in front of the Supreme Court.

In support of his position, the President is relying on an 1884 case where a Native American was denied the right to vote because he was born on a reservation. Congress has since fixed that issue.

Unfortunately, for the President, however, the exact issue in this case has already been decided by the Supreme Court, in 1898. A man Wong Kim Ark, who was born in Americanto parents of Chinese descent, was denied reentry into the country under a law called the Chinese Exclusion Act. And the Supreme Court said hello, that’s not okay, obviously Wong Kim Ark is citizen, he was born here, and that’s very clearly what the 14^th Amendment says.

So in other words, the President’s position here is that our laws should treat immigrants how we treated native americans in 1884, not as well as we treated Chinese immigrants in 1898.

That’s where the bar is right now.

Tuesday: These are the three parents suing the Trump administration over birthright citizenship.

The President tried to prevent their American-born babies from becoming citizens. This violates the constitution, so they sued, and their case goes to the Supreme Court this week.

They use fake names in the case, but they’re stories are real.

Plaintiff “Barbara” is a citizen of Honduras but lives in New Hampshire with her husband and four kids, one of whom was born shortly after Trump’s Executive Order. She’s lived in the US since 2024 and has an asylum application currently pending, so that means she’s not what you might call an illegal immigrant. We don’t know why she was seeking asylum, but we do know that many from Honduras seek asylum because they are fleeing natural disasters caused by climate change which have left millions without food, and some are fleeing murderous extortion at the hands of the organized criminal organizations that run portions of the country.

Plaintiff “Susan” is a citizen of Taiwan. She now lives in Utah with her husband and four kids. She has lived in the U.S. for 12 years. She currently has legal immigration status on a student visa and is in the process of applying for lawful permanent resident status based on an approved employment-based immigrant visa, so she’s also very much not what you might call an illegal immigrant. Susan gave birth to her fourth child shortly after President Trump’s Executive Order. And her three other children are U.S. citizens. She fears that her family could be separated, or that her U.S.-citizen children will be forced to move to a country which they have never been to and where they do not speak the language.

Plaintiff “Mark” (again, fake name) is a citizen of Brazil, living in Florida. He has lived in the US for the past five years, and is currently in the process of applying for lawful permanent status based on family ties. He and his wife welcomed their first child last March, and now they’re worried that that baby could be subject to immigration enforcement.

So it’s worth remembering two things about who this unconstitutional Executive Order targets: first, it includes not just undocumented immigrants, but also many who are here legally. And the second thing to remember here is that Trump’s Executive Order doesn’t strip any adults of their citizenship: it specifically targets babies.

Tuesday: Here’s someone to tell your kids about.

Cecillia Wang was born in Oregon to parents who came to the US from Taiwan on student visas as graduate students. So when she was born, she became a birthright citizen under the 14^th Amendment.

But her parents weren’t yet naturalized citizens, so if Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order had been in place when Cecillia was born, she would not have become a US citizen.

Cecillia worked hard in school and went to Berkeley, where she majored in English and Biology and graduated with Honors. She then made it to Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. After that she clerked at the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court, and later served as a public defender. She’s lectured at Berkeley and Stanford Law Schools. In 2004, she began working as a staff attorney at the ACLU. And she eventually worked her way up to become National Legal Director of the ACLU.

And tomorrow, on behalf of three sets of parents_—including a Taiwanese mother who came here on a student visa—she’s arguing the birthright citizenship case in front of the United States Supreme Court.

Wednesday Afternoon: Law Nerd Super Bowl!

My rapid reactions to what is probably the biggest Supreme Court case in years: birthright citizenship.

I have carefully reviewed the transcripts and considered the merits of both sides, and I have come to the conclusion that the Trump administration GOT THUMPED.

By the way, it was the first time a sitting president has ever attended an oral argument in person. So, all of this happened in front of him (what was it Margaret Atwood said about men’s greatest fear?).

Here are the highlights:

Trump appointee Justice Alito said in front of the president that some undocumented immigrants have “made a permanent home here and have established roots,” and the Executive Order “raises a humanitarian problem.”

Now, the last time the Supreme Court addressed this issue was in an 1898 case about the Chinese Exclusion Act called Wong Kim Ark. That’s the precedent here.

So it was telling when Trump’s lawyer tried to talk about the Wong Kim Ark case, and Trump appointee Justice Gorsuch interrupted him and said, “Well I’m not sure how much you want to rely on Wong Kim Ark.”

You wouldn’t hear it in the mic’ed up audio stream, but the transcript includes an important note:

(Laughter.)

Ouch. Justice Gorsuch working the room.

Later, Trump appointee Justice Kavanaugh said to Cecillia Wang, lawyer for the ACLU, “if we agree with you on how to read Wong Kim Ark, then you win,” so “that could be just a short opinion, right”? To which Ms. Wang responded simply, “Yes.”

(Laughter.) Again, this is in the actual transcript.

The Trump administration is asking the Court to read into the Constitution language that just isn’t there or at least to expand the language that is there. And that shows just how far MAGA has strayed from traditional conservatism.

Trump appointee Justice Barrett illustrated this simple point when she interrupted Trump’s lawyer and said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but what about the Constitution?”

But the real mic drop moment happened when Trump’s lawyer tried to argue that it’s a new world now because anyone, anywhere can just hop on a flight and come to America and have a baby. And Chief Justice Robert responded, “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

(Laughter.)

The Supreme Court’s written opinion will come out some time before their summer vacation (which is a real thing, by the way). I predict a decision in favor of the babies, with the votes being in the 7-2 to 9-0 range.