A panel of jurors currently debates the fate of Lindsay Clancy. As I write this, it has spent approximately 17 hours over three days considering whether Clancy was criminally responsible at the moment she killed her three young children in 2023. The case is now in its fourth day of deliberations.

Before dismissing these jurors for the weekend, Judge William Sullivan gave them an emphatic warning:

“Don’t talk about this case, don’t talk about the deliberations, don’t listen to anything, don’t read anything, and just put this out of your mind as best you can.”

Earlier, he had been even more direct: “Don’t read anything about this case. Don’t talk with anyone about this case, even at home. Don’t listen to anything.”

Perfectly appropriate instructions. And every night, these ordinary human beings go home with very similar warnings about the hype.

Which prompts me to ask a question:

Can we realistically expect these people to follow the judge’s orders?

Years ago, when I first began writing commentary about law and justice, I wrote about the Jussie Smollett case and the danger of someone being tried and convicted in the press. And after Smollett was convicted, his own lawyer complained that the defense faced an uphill battle because Smollett had already been “tried and convicted in the media.”

Years later, the problem hasn’t gone away. It’s gotten worse.

A Jury Room Has Walls. The Internet Doesn’t.

In the 20th Century, a judge might instruct jurors not to read the newspaper or watch the evening news. And a conscientious juror could comply fairly easily.

Today, your mobile phone is an information machine—it knows what you like, what you read, even what you think. Google, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, news apps—they all know.

More importantly, their algorithms could care less about Judge Sullivan’s jury instructions. A juror doesn’t have to Google the “Lindsay Clancy trial.” Articles, videos, headlines, notifications, or legal commentary appear.

Like magic!

The courts recognize the seriousness of this issue. Updated model jury instructions warn jurors that, through no fault of their own, they may encounter pop-ups containing information about the case or related legal issues while using email, social media, or the Internet. Courts are encouraged to repeat these warnings throughout a trial, as Judge Sullivan has done.

He’s asking these jurors to do the impossible:

• Don’t watch television coverage.

• Don’t read newspaper stories.

• Don’t look at social media commentary.

• Don’t Google (or use any other search bar) anything.

• Don’t discuss the case with your spouse.

• Don’t tell your friends what you’re thinking.

• Don’t read what thousands of other people are saying about the case.

Perhaps most difficult of all, they are being asked to avoid curiosity for days. Maybe weeks.

So, what do you think?

Do jurors actually obey these instructions?

The research has been surprisingly reassuring. The National Center for State Courts published a survey of 583 federal and state jurors. About 8% of these jurors reported being tempted to use the Internet during trial or deliberations. None, zero, nada admitted violating the judge’s admonitions.

Similar juror studies have found that most jurors take judicial instructions seriously. But there is an obvious flaw in these studies:

If a juror is willing to ignore a judge’s instructions and break the rules, how can we expect this dishonest juror to narc on himself? He’s a rule-breaker! Hello? What’s wrong with this picture?

People won’t necessarily volunteer misconduct—particularly misconduct they were repeatedly and solemnly instructed not to commit. Court researchers cannot be certain that jurors who participate in these studies have honestly reported their actual Internet and social media activity.

Judicial surveys offer some insight—in a Federal Judicial Center survey of nearly 500 federal judges, only 33 reported exposing juror social-media use—and these incidents were few and far between, limited to a case or two. Another juror, court personnel, or the lawyers involved often reported violations. Most jurors were cautioned, a few were removed, and only one was found in contempt of court.

That’s encouraging, but it hinges on the assumption that those who violate the rules are usually caught. And we have no idea whether that’s true. How many violations were not discovered?

Sequestration is an obvious solution, especially in a high-profile case. Put jurors in a hotel and restrict their exposure to the media and other outside influences.

Cut them off. Problem solved. Right?

Not exactly—isolation brings about its own set of problems. Imagine you’re a sequestered juror in the Clancy case. You are removed from your home, spouse, children, work, routines, television, Internet, and ordinary life. You must spend every waking hour thinking about an emotionally devastating case involving the deaths of three children.

And you’re doing this against your will. You didn’t volunteer for this service. Are you a better juror or a more pissed-off juror?

“Let’s get this over quickly” might be a popular refrain in the jury room once deliberations begin. While the system seeks to limit or prevent outside influence, do we want jurors imprisoned for doing their civic duty?

How about we trust them?

Isn’t that the point? They take an oath. They make life-and-death decisions, evaluate witness credibility, and decide whether evidence is reliable.

We trust jurors. And if we trust them with those things, why shouldn’t we trust them to follow judicial orders? And I’d go one step further:

Trusting a “jury of our peers” is the cornerstone of our justice system.

We tell twelve ordinary citizens that another human being’s liberty—and sometimes life—is in their hands. We expose them to evidence that may be horrifying. We instruct them on complicated law.

Then we send them home. Suddenly, they can’t be trusted?

When a judge explains the enormous responsibility of being a juror, they must trust those impaneled to be up to the challenge.

The Lindsay Clancy jurors have been deliberating for days. The news just reported that they are at an impasse. Judge Sullivan sent them back for more deliberations. As this happens in real time, supporters rally, commentators offer opinions, journalists write articles, and television programs, podcasters, and social-media posters debate whether Clancy was a cunning murderer or a psychotic, desperately ill mother. suffering

Twelve people are required to ignore the hype. I hope they have.

Because if or when they reach a verdict, none of us will know whether they followed Judge Sullivan’s orders.

We will just have to trust them—that’s the way it works.

Mike Rogers and his Republican allies are running a television ad in the Detroit area warning Michigan voters that Abdul El-Sayed is “dangerous.”

The evidence?

El-Sayed saying things like:

“I for sure am dangerous.”

And:

“When they go low, we don’t go high. We take them to the mud and choke them out.”

Does this sound “dangerous” to you? Consider an annoying little factor called context.

When El-Sayed called himself “dangerous,” he wasn’t threatening anyone. He was bragging that “Senator El-Sayed” would be dangerous to corporations, special interests, AIPAC, Chuck Schumer, and others he believes stand in the way of his political agenda.

And his “mud and choke them out” comment? It was a macho (perhaps misguided—but read some of the opposing party’s comments below) political riff on Michelle Obama’s famous “when they go low, we go high.”

I don’t embrace either comment. But neither makes Abdul El-Sayed a supporter of violence. And before anyone accuses me of carrying water for him, let me be crystal clear:

I am on record saying I will not vote for Abdul El-Sayed.

I have serious issues with his positions and rhetoric concerning Israel and antisemitism and with some of the people and organizations with whom he associates.

But opposing El-Sayed doesn’t require me to surrender common sense. I have a low bar for political speech:

Don’t insult my intelligence.

And the hypocrisy of an ad like this being run by a man like Mike Rogers insults my intelligence. Or, maybe this is an “it takes one to know one” moment.

MIKE ROGERS: MEET MIKE ROGERS

Before Mike Rogers lectures Michigan voters about El-Sayed’s rhetoric, perhaps he should have a conversation with an earlier version of himself.

That earlier version of Rogers called Donald Trump “clearly destructive” and opined that America was “tired of the chaos.” After January 6, Rogers declared, “There is never a time in American democracy when violence accomplishes what you want.” He said that storming the Capitol in an effort to change election results was “giving up on our Constitution,” and also remarked that “Trump’s time has passed” and he was “more gangster than presidential.”

Today?

Mike Rogers embraces Donald Trump, enjoys Trump’s endorsement, and campaigns as his ally. Apparently Trump’s rhetoric stopped being dangerous when Mike Rogers needed Trump’s voters. That’s quite a conversion.

And this is one reason why I am also on record saying I will not vote for Mike Rogers, either. I am a Michigan voter with no senatorial candidate I can support.

It also makes Rogers’s sudden concern about Abdul El-Sayed’s political rhetoric insulting, hypocritical, and difficult to swallow.

If we’re going to start judging candidates by their most inflammatory rhetoric, let’s apply the same standard to everybody.

Let’s play a few Donald Trump and his sycophantic Republicans’ Greatest Hits:

“Knock the crap out of them.”

—Donald Trump, talking about protesters.

“I’d like to punch him in the face.”

—Trump again—another protester.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

—Trump, of course.

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.”

—Trump suggesting that one way to prevent ‘President Hillary Clinton’ from appointing Supreme Court justices and other important appointments would be to assassinate her.

“Fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

—Trump, encouraging what happened on January 6.

Trump has called political opponents “vermin” and “the enemy from within.”

Trump referred to Liz Cheney standing with “nine barrels shooting at her” and guns “trained on her face.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson once declared:

“Some folks need killing!”

And when Paul Pelosi was nearly killed by a hammer-wielding attacker who broke into his home looking for Nancy Pelosi, the assault somehow became material for jokes and political ridicule on the right.

I don’t know about you, but all of that seems pretty dangerous to me, and, in the case of January 6, the quoted rhetoric inspired actual danger, violence, destruction, and death.

But Abdul El-Sayed says he’ll take political opponents “to the mud and choke them out,” and suddenly Republican commentators reach for the smelling salts.

Give me a break.

This isn’t a defense of Abdul El-Sayed. It’s a defense of intellectual honesty.

If violent rhetoric disqualifies a candidate, apply that rule or standard to everyone.

If context matters when Donald Trump says many outrageous things, context matters when Abdul El-Sayed says something outrageous.

If Trump’s supporters consistently rationalize and trivialize his violent rhetoric—he was ‘joking’, ‘exaggerating’, ‘speaking metaphorically’, or merely ‘firing up a crowd’. I’d love to hear one person on the right apply that same standard to El-Sayed.

Let’s have a political standard about violent rhetoric, not two completely different ones for Republicans and Democrats.

And Mike Rogers? No! You can’t spend years warning Americans about Donald Trump, suddenly, when it’s politically expedient, embrace the very man you warned us about, and then accuse Abdul El-Sayed of being “dangerous.”

Your guy has proven himself a clear and present danger to America, and you carry his water.

There are legitimate reasons to oppose Abdul El-Sayed.

Make an honest case, Mike, as I have.

But don’t manufacture threats and expect voters to forget all the nasty and dangerous words we’ve heard from Trump and other Republicans, words you once repudiated.

My standards for American politics have gotten embarrassingly low these days.

Here’s one:

Don’t insult my intelligence.

I won’t vote for Abdul El-Sayed.

But fair is fair, even in politics.

I won’t vote for a Trump-licking hypocrite like Mike Rogers, either.

A few days ago, I published a piece titled “If I Were Meta’s Lawyer, I’d Tell Them to Tweak the Algorithm.”

Is Mark Zuckerberg a subscriber to “And Justice for All”?.

Probably not. But the timing is pretty damn peculiar.

My argument the other day was simple. Meta was getting hammered in court over allegations that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to keep kids glued to their screens. Instead of spending billions of dollars defending those practices, I suggested Meta change them.

Eliminate Facebook? Destroy Instagram? Abandon profit motives?

No to all three. Just tweak the algorithm!

Make the platforms less addictive for children. Reduce notifications. Give kids a reason to put the phone down. Give parents more control. Accept a little less engagement—and perhaps a little less profit—in exchange for protecting children.

In other words, stop asking your lawyers how to defend the conduct and start asking how you can behave better. Be a better citizen of the world.

Well, that was fast.

Meta has now reached a massive settlement with attorneys general across the country over claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users. Depending on how the settlement plays out, Meta could pay around $18 billion over the next decade.

That’s a boatload of tweaks, but money isn’t the most interesting part.

Meta agreed to tweak its products and services, almost exactly as I recommended.

The settlement calls for default daily time limits for minors, interruptions to continuous scrolling, restrictions on notifications during nighttime and school hours, stronger age verification and parental controls, limits involving likes and beauty filters, and an option allowing teenagers to use a non-personalized feed rather than one relentlessly selected by an algorithm trying to figure out what will keep them watching.

Sound familiar? I promise you, I was not involved in these negotiations.

Although Meta, if you’re reading this, I am available for consultation, and my hourly rate is considerably less than $18 billion.

But enough of my kibitzing; here is the fine print of the reported settlement:

Meta admits no wrongdoing. This settlement does not prove or resolve every issue or allegation made against Facebook or Instagram. But it does demonstrate something simpler:

Meta can change the product. It can, indeed, tweak the algorithm.

Facebook and Instagram will still exist tomorrow. Mark Zuckerberg will still be a billionaire. Meta’s stock jumped after the settlement was reported, and shareholders will still own their piece of an extraordinarily valuable company.

And kids who use these platforms will be a little safer.

Which causes me to ask:

Why did it take a lawsuit?

Why did it take attorneys general from across the country, years of litigation, and billions of dollars to get Meta to do the right thing? Something the company could have done without litigation and without a massive payout to 29 states?

Why, indeed?

Here are a few perfectly legitimate questions businesses like Meta might consider when making decisions:

Will this increase revenue?

Will it increase engagement?

Will shareholders benefit?

Will our stock price increase?

Is it legal?

Those are important questions.

But here are two vital questions that all companies should be asking:

Is this the right thing to do?

Will this make our customers safer?

Imagine if Meta had asked those questions years ago, without acrimony, litigation, or massive payouts. Suppose its executives had looked at the data about teenagers’ engagement and said:

“We’re making a fortune. But kids are different. Their judgment and impulse control are still developing. Maybe we shouldn’t design their experience to maximize every possible minute of engagement.”

Would Meta have made a little less money? Maybe.

Would shareholders have suffered? Marginally or not at all.

Would Zuckerberg have been forced to liquidate assets? He’d have muddled through.

Okay, I promised to stop kibitzing.

The larger point is that Meta would also have avoided years of litigation, government investigations, horrible publicity, and billions of dollars in settlements, litigation fees, and costs.

And kids would have been safer.

That’s the larger lesson, and Meta is not alone in their indifference toward kids.

Here’s one more important question:

How should we, the people, expect corporate citizens to behave?

I don’t object to company profits. I was a business owner; I love profit. Profitable companies create jobs, develop products, reward innovation, pay taxes, support retirement accounts, and often produce enormous benefit for society.

But profit is not and should not be the only measure of corporate success.

Doing the right thing might cost a few bucks. A good corporate citizen does it anyway.

Making a product safer might cost money or reduce sales. A good corporate citizen does it anyway.

Treating employees “better” or “fairly” might increase costs. Good corporate citizens treat them well anyway because it’s the right thing to do, and they know they will benefit in the long run.

Treat them better anyway.

Preserving competition might mean walking away from a profitable deal. A good corporate citizen walks away anyway. Remember what Bill Gates did for Steve Jobs? Did he suffer?

Sometimes consumer protection policies leave money on the table. A good corporate citizen leaves it there.

Make your fortune. But recognize that corporations are citizens of the communities in which they operate. Good citizens must occasionally sacrifice something for the benefit of other people.

What if all corporate citizens lived by this wonderful old expression:

Do well by doing good.

Litigation dragged Meta toward that conclusion. Wouldn’t it be amazing if other companies got there voluntarily? Because if Facebook and Instagram can remain enormously successful while putting reasonable limits on features that may harm children, we might start asking why those protections weren’t there in the first place.

“Are we doing the right thing?”

Think about it, won’t you?.

And Mark Zuckerberg? No kibitz—call me; I’m available. Let’s talk.

There are three doors to choose from when seeking to win an election.

1. Present a compelling case to a broad constituency and win the vote.

2. Get a few more votes than your opponent.

3. If you know you’re going to lose, do whatever you can to prevent people from voting.

Clearly, Donald Trump and today’s Republican Party have chosen Door Number Three.

They’ve even given the strategy a cool-sounding title: “Election integrity.”

I prefer “voter suppression.”

And, as with other controversial policies and procedures advanced by Donald Trump, he has gotten his sycophantic Supreme Court majority involved.

On Monday, the High Court, by the usual 6-3 vote, stayed a lower-court injunction that once blocked significant portions of Trump’s latest executive order targeting mail-in voting. And the headlines made SCOTUS’s decision sound like a mandate for a new presidential authority to impose election rules.

But there was no mandate. Not even from this Supreme Court. And that’s important.

No, Donald, SCOTUS did not decide that your executive order was constitutional. It did not decide that you have authority to rewrite the rules governing mail-in voting. Nor did it decide that the Postal Service may lawfully refuse to handle otherwise valid ballots because a state hasn’t complied with your absurd requirements.

In fact, Donald, SCOTUS even cautioned that this ruling doesn’t mean that future efforts to implement your order would be lawful or constitutional.

So, what did SCOTUS say?

We have yet to decide the actual case.

And the actual case raises a very simple question:

So, where does the power come from?

The Constitution has a very simple answer:

Article I, Section 4—the Elections Clause—provides that the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections shall be prescribed in each state by its legislature, while giving Congress authority to alter those regulations.

While I provided the emphasis, the United States Constitution is clear:

States prescribe; Congress alters. Notice who’s missing from this constitutional mandate?

The President.

As usual, despite clear constitutional language to the contrary, the president has decided, because his party is losing, to insert himself into the mechanics of mail-in voting, a method he uses to vote. His order directs the Postal Service to refuse to transmit ballots that don’t satisfy certain conditions that he has no authority to implement.

Trump says these measures are necessary to protect election integrity.

I call “bullshit.”

Election-Fraud Red Herring

Donald Trump has spent years claiming that American elections—particularly mail-in ballots—are “rigged” or, somehow, fraudulent, but only when he or the candidate of his choice fails to win.

Where’s the evidence? How is it that these brilliant fraudulent Dems let Donald Trump win . . . twice?

What justifies making it more difficult for millions of eligible Americans to vote? Nothing. There is nothing there, folks.

Are elections 100% fraud-free? Of course not. Human beings sometimes cheat. That’s why there are criminal laws to punish people for committing bank fraud, insurance fraud, tax fraud, Medicare fraud, and every other kind of fraud imaginable.

But the question isn’t whether there has been any fraud in election history. The question is whether widespread voter fraud exists at a level sufficient to justify the absurd barriers that this president seeks to implement. What’s he really trying to do?

President Trump seeks to prevent those who would vote against his candidates and his agenda from casting votes for the other side. He wants to prevent those voters from exercising their fundamental constitutional right to vote.

What a putz!

Republicans understand demographics. They know who votes which way. They know where voters live and which voting methods various populations prefer. They also know that making voting more difficult doesn’t affect every voter equally. This is a very sophisticated process.

And that’s why we all know that this “election integrity” argument is nonsense.

If the president and his party were genuinely worried about election integrity, they would take steps to improve security and make voting easier, not harder. Don’t create and solve an exaggerated fraud problem by creating a very real access problem.

I typically lean to the left. I’m a Democrat, and I make no pretense of neutrality. Democrats generally fight to expand access to the ballot—early voting, mail voting, accessible polling places, easier registration and other measures designed to increase participation.

Republicans increasingly fight to restrict those mechanisms, particularly in states and communities where increased turnout is likely to benefit Democrats.

Why do you think that is?

Republicans say they’re protecting elections from fraud and maintaining public confidence in the results.

But the issue is only as old as the emergence of the political Donald Trump, and it appears only when Republicans lose. Add the fact that every Republican solution to this so-called ‘fraud’ is to have fewer people vote, reduce the ways to vote, limit the times citizens may vote, or place more obstacles in a voter’s path.

Does any of this nonsense prompt anyone but me to call malarkey, especially when Trump leads the charge? Considering his record against anyone who opposes him or his agenda, forgive me if I don’t assume his motives are civic-minded.

The Judges are Split along Party Lines

As previously indicated, the Supreme Court vote was 6-3. The progressive minority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, dissented from Monday’s Supreme Court ruling. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani initially blocked important parts of the executive order. When the Postal Service nevertheless moved ahead with rulemaking, she concluded that the government had violated her injunction. After Monday’s decision, she was forced to lift her injunction. But that doesn’t end the controversy.

This morning, 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia returned to federal court with a new challenge to the Postal Service rule, and the case and constitutional issue remain alive. Lawyers lose motions on their way to ultimate case victories every day. This is the Supreme Court equivalent of losing a motion on the way to winning the case. This is not a victory on the constitutional merits. Keep that in mind as this litigation moves forward.

What Bothers Me the Most?

Why isn’t it the objective of both parties to get every eligible American to vote? Why should it matter who you might vote for? Think Trump is the greatest? Vote. Can’t stand to look at him or hear the sound of his voice? Vote. Republican? Vote. Democrat? Vote. Independent, Green, Libertarian, MAGA, Socialist? Vote.

More voting should be the goal, shouldn’t it?

All eligible voters should vote. Count the votes. Whoever gets the most votes wins. That’s democracy. That’s America. Political parties should compete for votes and voters, not fight over rules that limit one side or the other’s path to the ballot box.

Think your policies are better for America? Convince the voters.

Win arguments.

Win voters.

Win elections.

But if your strategy is to identify people likely to vote against you and make it more difficult for them to participate, you aren’t trying to win; you’re trying to rig. And when the president uses his executive power to assist you, a power not granted by the Constitution, the courts should stop him and ask:

By what authority do you exercise this power, sir, and why do you want it?

And every voter should ask themselves:

DOES THIS PASS MY SMELL TEST?

The jury in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial is being asked to consider the following question:

Can a person have such severe mental illness that she is no longer criminally responsible for what she does?

And here’s another important question:

Should the question be answered by law or by science?

I don’t know the answer to either question, especially in Clancy’s case. And, frankly, that bothers the hell out of me.

What happened is horrible. The facts are not in dispute. Three children lost their lives at the hands of their mother. The question isn’t the usual, did she do it? Here, the question is, because of mental illness, was she legally responsible for doing it?

Massachusetts law tells the jury that a person is not criminally responsible if, because of a mental disease or defect, she lacked the substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of her conduct or to conform her conduct to the requirements of law.

Read that again.

Now imagine you’re a juror in the Clancy case.

What is “substantial capacity”? How much capacity is enough for guilt? How does one “appreciate” wrongfulness? How do you, an ordinary citizen, determine whether a person’s obviously impaired mental state left her with enough mental capacity at a precise moment in time to control her behavior?

I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but I presume these are difficult scientific questions to answer.

Yet, the criminal justice system routinely asks twelve laypeople to answer them.

And the Experts Don’t Agree

This is where the Clancy trial (and cases like it) becomes troubling.

Experts in the Clancy case (depending on which side called them) offered starkly different assessments of Lindsay’s mental condition. Defense experts testified, essentially, that she was psychotic and not criminally responsible. Prosecution experts disagree— they contend that although she had a mental illness, she understood what she was doing. As such, she remains criminally responsible.

If the experts disagree, what should a juror do? Study each expert’s credentials and choose one? Evaluate the motives and credibility of each expert witness? Compare “style”? Who looks more credible, speaks better, seems more comfortable on the witness stand?

How does the jury evaluate diagnoses that trained professionals themselves dispute? And how does that jury decide beyond a reasonable doubt?

Massachusetts law is unique. Unlike most states, Massachusetts shifts the burden of proof. The prosecution must prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. Isn’t that refreshing? After all, this is a criminal prosecution, and the government seeks to take away a person’s freedom, perhaps forever. Shouldn’t its burden be extraordinarily high?

It seems like an almost insurmountable burden, though, doesn’t it? Suppose qualified Expert A says Clancy was psychotic and unable to appreciate or control what she was doing. Qualified Expert B says she had a mental illness but was criminally responsible.

Isn’t this professional disagreement enough to create reasonable doubt?

Well, not so fast, Bello. Jurors are entitled to evaluate experts just as they evaluate other witnesses. One expert may be more persuasive, better informed, or more consistent with the other evidence. So, no, as a matter of law, a jury might still find Clancey guilty. In fact, studies show that juries find the defendant guilty in these types of cases about 75% of the time.

But as a practical matter? I’m conflicted. Aren’t you? Do we want guilty people escaping responsibility because someone found an expert willing to testify for them? Of course not. On the other hand, do we want severely mentally ill people imprisoned for conduct they genuinely lacked the mental capacity to understand or control?

Intent matters enormously in criminal cases.

Science has taught us far more about the human brain, psychosis, postpartum illness, medication, and psychiatric disorders than we understood when criminal law and the concept of criminal responsibility were developed.

Has the law kept pace with the science?

That’s the key question in the Clancy case. I’m not sure it has. How about you?

And then came the religious arguments.

As if Judge William Sullivan didn’t have enough scientific evidence to ponder over, the Clancy trial produced another controversy—this one over religion.

When questioning Clancy’s former mother-in-law, the prosecution asked her whether she was an active member of the Catholic Church. When the woman said “yes,” the prosecutor followed with a question concerning murder as mortal sin.

The judge struck the religious testimony and instructed the jury to disregard the questions and answers.

Religion surfaced again during testimony from a prosecution forensic psychologist, who referred to Clancy’s Catholic upbringing, and a reference to suicide and mortal sin was made.

Because this was the second time (after a stern warning from the judge the first time) religion was mentioned, the defense moved for a mistrial and accused the prosecution of misconduct.

Judge Sullivan denied the motion but made his position abundantly clear. He declared that religion was an inappropriate subject for the jury’s consideration—the testimony was immaterial and irrelevant —and he ordered the jury to disregard it.

For those of us who have been around courtrooms, Sullivan’s ruling is not surprising. A jury instruction is the conventional remedy in these situations. But when is enough, enough? When I was a kid, if you did something wrong, you got scolded. Do it again, you got punished. Right?

And, besides, can jurors really unhear things?

Judges instruct juries to disregard evidence all the time. The justice system operates on the presumption that jurors will follow those instructions. I’m sure most jurors try very hard to follow the judge’s instructions. But they are human beings, not computers. There is no “delete” button in the human brain. So, once you’ve told a juror that murder or suicide is a “mortal sin,” you’ve introduced a religious concept of morality into a proceeding that is supposed to determine criminal responsibility under secular law.

That’s a huge problem for me; how about you?

The jury isn’t supposed to render a verdict on whether Lindsay Clancy committed a sin or violated her Catholic training. And jurors aren’t being asked what happens to someone after death, either. The only question the Clancy jury is being asked to answer is this:

Has the Commonwealth of Massachusetts proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible for her actions under Massachusetts law?

Nothing else matters.

Should the judge declare a mistrial?

Difficult question, no? Not every improper question requires starting over, throwing out weeks of testimony, exhibits, and other evidence. Judges have wide discretion to determine whether striking testimony and giving strong instructions cures prejudice.

Judge Sullivan gave a rather specific one. And there is a distinction between improper conduct and incurable prejudice. The prosecution crossed a line—the judge plainly instructed that religion didn’t belong there. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Clancy can’t get a fair trial.

What do you think? Can you unring the bell?

And one more thing—this case is not a referendum on how the law treats women.

The Clancy case has become a media circus over women’s mental health issues. Postpartum mental health, the medical profession’s treatment of women, psychiatric medication, motherhood, and whether our health-care and legal systems have failed this defendant.

While those are important conversations, they do not belong in this courtroom.

Neither the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Psychiatry, Women’s health care, motherhood, nor the criminal justice system is on trial.

Lindsay Clancy is on trial—only Lindsay Clancy.

The Clancy jury does not decide whether women suffering from postpartum illness receive adequate care in America. Nor does it decide whether the medical system generally or too often fails women.

The jury does decide the following questions:

• What was Lindsay Clancy’s mental condition when she killed her children?

• Did a mental disease or defect deprive her of the substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of what she was doing or to conform her conduct to the law?

• Has the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it did not?

And one more thing.

When people hear “not guilty by reason of insanity,” an important point gets lost in the shuffle.

‘Not guilty’ does not mean ‘free.’ If Lindsey Clancy is not found criminally responsible because of mental disease or defect, the courthouse doors do not magically swing open and treat her to an Uber or Lyft ride home.

A finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible would lead to psychiatric commitment in a locked ward. This case will not force a false choice between compassion and public safety. The system can and often does protect society while recognizing genuine mental illness. In this case, we can still mourn three innocent children while protecting their killer’s criminal rights.

In this case, it is also important that we acknowledge advances in psychiatric science while asking whether a legal standard developed decades ago—and ultimately interpreted by twelve people with no psychiatric training—is the best mechanism we’ve devised for translating that science into justice.

That may be the most important question posed in the Lindsay Clancy trial.

When law, medicine, morality and mental illness collide in one courtroom, “beyond a reasonable doubt” is hard to define. When someone’s freedom hangs in the balance, we had better be very sure we know what that phrase means.

I’ve asked some important questions in this edition of “And Justice for All.” Pick one, any one—you’re the juror. What’s your answer? I don’t typically pine for opinions when I write, but I am genuinely interested in your lay opinion, just as Lindsay Clancy’s defense team awaits a lay jury’s opinion.

What do you think?

Many years ago, when I was a practicing lawyer, I represented two brothers, sexually abused by the same priest.

One brother could pursue his claim. The other could not

Michigan’s statute of limitations barred the older boy’s claim.

Think about that for a moment. Two brothers. Same family. Same abuser. Both bearing the scars of sexual abuse. One important difference:

One got his day in Court. The other could only observe.

I’ve never forgotten it.

Decades later, it inspired my first novel, Betrayal of Faith, and launched a writing career I never expected. The fictional story has evolved considerably over the years, most recently into a new, soon-to-be-published novel, Alias: Legal Genius, but the real case—and the injustice I witnessed between those two brothers—has never left me.

I’m hardly the only lawyer who faced that situation at least once. Many lawyers have had to deliver the same devastating message to thousands of survivors: despite their courage in finally coming forward:

“Sorry, client, the law does not allow you to proceed.”

They’ve been abused. They’ve suffered terribly. They have compelling evidence of the crime and the damages it caused.

But they came forward too late. The courthouse door is closed.

I’m retired now—I have no cases waiting in the wings and no financial interest in whether Michigan changes its law. But I do have a perspective formed by years of representing injured people—and by having personally watched a statute of limitations deny one young man the opportunity it afforded his brother.

So, yes, my sympathies are with survivors.

But the debate has another side.

Why Do We Have Statutes of Limitations?

Every civil case has a deadline. Auto accident, Premises liability, Medical malpractice, and Products liability cases have them. People with legitimate injuries and meritorious claims sometimes discover, painfully, that they waited too long.

Statutes of limitations produce harsh results, but they exist for legitimate reasons.

Memories fade.

Witnesses die or disappear.

Documents are lost or destroyed.

Businesses close. Employees move away. Insurance policies become difficult to locate. A defendant is asked to answer decades-old accusations.

Do his rights count?

Are the resources to mount a meaningful defense still available to him? That’s not a mere technicality. That’s a fairness question.

Let’s suppose you suddenly find yourself being accused today of something you allegedly did in 1976, 50 years ago. The person who could prove your innocence has been dead for twenty years. Records that would prove your version of events were discarded decades ago in accordance with legitimate record-retention policies.

The plaintiff remembers something, but your evidence no longer exists.

Is it fair to proceed? “Let the jury decide” doesn’t solve the problem. Shouldn’t a jury consider all the evidence before rendering a just verdict?

And that’s the strongest argument for statutes of limitations. But I still can’t get this feeling of injustice out of my gut when I think about kids who are shut out of the system because of some “time limit.” It makes me physically ill.

And Is Childhood Sexual Abuse Different?

I believe it is. Not because sexual-abuse survivors deserve justice while automobile victims, malpractice victims, or other injured people don’t.

The difference is that the nature of childhood sexual abuse can itself be one of the reasons the victim doesn’t come forward before the deadline expires.

Extensive research on childhood sexual abuse documents delayed disclosure. Survivors blame fear, shame, self-blame, grooming, threats, family pressure, dependence upon the abuser, uncertainty about what actually happened to them, and fear that no one will believe them as reasons for their delay in coming forward. Studies show that disclosure may be delayed for years, even decades. Many survivors do not disclose until adulthood.

That’s not the same as failing to file your typical personal injury case on time, is it? More statutes of limitation imply a rather straightforward sequence of events: An accident happens. You’re hurt. You know you’re hurt, and you have a reasonable amount of time to do something about it. The clock is ticking. Besides, you see those lawyer ads on T.V.

Consider a child sexually abused by a priest, teacher, coach, physician, parent, or other trusted adult. Children don’t hire lawyers–they may not even understand that what happened was wrong or abusive. Perhaps they’ve been told that the abuse was their fault. Maybe they’ve been threatened.

Will anybody believe me?

Perhaps the perpetrator is a person of power in the child’s life.

How will disclosure affect my family?

And turning eighteen doesn’t necessarily make all of that disappear at midnight on someone’s birthday.

Michigan’s old rule effectively recognized childhood as a legal disability but ordinarily gave a minor only one year after reaching adulthood to sue—meaning, in many cases, until age 19. Michigan has since changed that law for childhood criminal sexual conduct. Current law generally permits a claim until age 28 or within three years after the survivor discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, both the injury and its relationship to the sexual abuse, whichever occurs later.

That’s substantial progress.

But is it enough?

What About Memories That Return Years Later?

To me, these are the hardest cases. What if a person was abused at age eight, had no conscious recollection of the event for years, and remembers it for the first time at age thirty?

When does his statute of limitations begin to run?

Michigan confronted that very question more than thirty years ago, long after my clients’ cases were completed. In Lemmerman v. Fealk, the Michigan Supreme Court considered claims involving adults who said they had repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. The Court declined to create a judicial exception to the statute of limitations. The justices punted and said the Legislature, not the courts, would have to change the law.

And there’s good reason to proceed carefully. While the American Psychological Association recognizes that forgotten memories can sometimes be recalled later, it also acknowledges that inaccurate memories can be created or suggested.

Extend a Deadline or Revive a Dead Case?

An important distinction, no? Some Michigan lawmakers have proposed expanding the limitations period. Senate Bill 257 would allow survivors to sue by the latest of ten years after the abuse, their 42nd birthday, or seven years after discovering both the injury and its causal connection to the sexual misconduct.

Fair? Unfair? A subject for meaningful debate?

The proposal would also create a one-year window allowing certain claims that are already time-barred to be filed again, subject to a $1.5 million damages cap against a single defendant. The package passed the Michigan Senate in May 2025 but remains pending in the House.

Also a subject for meaningful debate?

The Michigan Supreme Court itself recently recognized the significance of this distinction. In McLain v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Lansing, it held that Michigan’s 2018 discovery-rule reform did not retroactively revive claims that had already expired because the Legislature had not clearly said that it should.

But other states have decided that, for childhood sexual abuse, revival is justified.

According to CHILD USA’s 2026 tracking, 30 states and three territories have enacted some form of civil revival law for previously expired claims. Some states opened temporary windows—others go much further. And in many states, courts are deciding whether state constitutions permit these revivals.

So, as you can see, Michigan isn’t debating these issues in a vacuum.

Who Should We Protect?

This is where I keep returning to those two brothers. A statute of limitations serves an important purpose. Defendants shouldn’t ordinarily have to defend ancient claims after witnesses are gone and evidence has disappeared. But childhood sexual abuse presents an uncomfortable counterargument:

What if the reason the claim became so old is tied to the defendant, his position in the plaintiff’s life, and the harm he caused the child?

That argument gets even stronger when an institution knew of a perpetrator’s propensities, concealed the misconduct, transferred the offender, intimidated a victim, failed to report allegations, or otherwise contributed to the delay.

That’s what Betrayal of Faith is about.

Should an institution be permitted to benefit from the statute of limitations if it helped keep the truth hidden while the statute was running?

That question bugs me. It’s always bugged me.

I’ve seen what happens when the law says “you’re too late.”

I get it, I do. But I don’t have to like it. After spending most of my adult life in and around the law, I have learned it is not always fair or just, and sometimes rules created in the name of fairness produce profoundly unfair results.

Childhood sexual-abuse survivors deserve substantially more time than ordinary civil litigants, particularly where delayed disclosure, delayed recognition of injury, or institutional concealment prevented an earlier lawsuit.

But how far back should we go? And how much time should a survivor get? Should dead cases get a new lease on life? Where’s the cut-off point?

I do know one thing. My client got a raw deal all those years ago, and I have never forgotten it.

What’s just? What’s fair?

What do YOU think?

Readers: Would you like to read and critique my new novel before it’s published? Drop me an email at info@markmbello.com. I’ll randomly choose 25 readers. Thanks.

Antisemitism on American college campuses is real, and many universities have done an inadequate job of protecting Jewish students from harassment, intimidation, and discrimination. I have watched pro-Palestinian advocacy cross the line into anti-Jewish hatred, just as right-wing political advocacy crosses the line from protected speech into conduct that institutions have an obligation to address. As a Jewish grandfather of about-to-be college-aged grandchildren, I am concerned.

I am also a constant critic of the Trump administration. I rarely agree with anything Trump does. But when the Justice Department announced an investigation into antisemitism at some of America’s most prominent universities, I was not opposed.

Investigate the hell out of them.

But an investigation’s purpose is to determine whether laws are being violated. It is not a tool used to justify intimidation, selective or improper prosecution. Investigate. If you find wrongdoing, prosecute; if you don’t, announce your findings and move on to cases where prosecution is appropriate. A just government, a democracy’s government, does not intimidate or harass an innocent target into large government-friendly financial settlements.

According to a whistleblower complaint made public this week, lawyers and investigators assigned to the Trump administration’s ‘antisemitism task force’ concluded that there is insufficient evidence to establish Title VI violations at the universities Trump was targeting. But instead of accepting those conclusions, the whistleblower says administration officials pushed forward anyway.

If the whistleblower’s allegations are accurate, the scandal here isn’t about these universities or antisemitism; it is about the abuse of government power.

Investigate First. Prosecute Second

That’s how our system is supposed to work. An ethical prosecutor doesn’t decide someone is guilty and order investigators to find something—anything—to justify his or her whim. And an ethical justice department doesn’t decide that an institution deserves punishment and then search for a legal theory that will mandate it.

An ethical government investigates facts, applies law to those facts, and only when both elements are proven, enforces the law and seeks punishment for violations.

Unfortunately, in the Trump era, we do not have ethical government—instead, headlines, presidential grievance, fake news, retribution, personal, and presidential revenge are the order of the day.

The whistleblower account, reported by The New York Times, describes a process that was “outcome-driven,” one that sidelined or reprimanded any ethical lawyer who questioned whether sufficient evidence existed.

Consider Brown University.

According to the whistleblower complaint, federal investigators concluded that the evidence did not justify prosecution—no Title VI violation could be established. One government lawyer reportedly suggested sending Brown a closure letter.

Investigation over, right? Wrong.

The investigation remained alive. The Trump administration froze Brown’s research funding. And Brown University reached an agreement with the government that included $50 million for workforce development and policy changes that extended far beyond antisemitism.

This raises an inconvenient question for the government:

If your investigators did not find a violation of the law, how do you justify extracting a multi-million-dollar settlement from an innocent defendant?

The Government: Not Your Ordinary Litigant

Every practicing lawyer understands leverage. Some parties have it; others don’t. Litigation isn’t conducted in some pristine laboratory where two equally powerful adversaries present evidence and a judge decides who’s right. Money matters. Delay matters. Risk matters. The ability to survive the litigation matters. When one side has more power and money, almost no risk, and infinite time to make the other side’s life miserable, the imbalance can be unbearable and can lead to injustice.

Nobody walks into a courtroom with more leverage than the United States government.

Brown University depends on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding. So, in essence, the Trump administration said:

Agree to our demands—or we will withhold this research money and make you spend even more money fighting us in court for several years.

How’s that for leverage? Suddenly, it doesn’t matter whether the university believes in its case. Nor does it matter that the government knows it doesn’t have one and will lose in the end. The sheer economics of the litigation overwhelm principle or ethics.

So, Brown settles. And under similar pressure, so does Columbia.

But Harvard University chose to fight.

Harvard, with sufficient resources and an institutional willingness that Brown and Columbia lacked, told the Trump administration to go to hell. You say we violated the law? Prove it!

And guess what? Judges started handing the Trump Administration (as usual) significant defeats. In one case involving Harvard’s research funding, Judge Allison Burroughs described the administration’s reliance on antisemitism as, at best, “arbitrary” and potentially “pretextual.”

More recently, another federal judge dismissed the administration’s antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard.

Did Harvard do a good job combating antisemitism? I don’t know. It’s an open question, but it is beside the point.

What is the point, you ask?

Accusations are not evidence. And government power is no substitute for real evidence.

Which brings us to the most disturbing part of the story—there is real antisemitism on college campuses.

Jewish students have been frightened, isolated, harassed, and made to feel unwelcome at colleges and universities across America. And those institutions should be held accountable when they violate federal civil rights laws, just as they should when any religious or ethnic minority is subjected to unlawful discrimination.

Enforce the damn law. But don’t take the legitimate concerns of Jewish students and convert them into a political crowbar to pry concessions out of institutions that the president dislikes.

If the whistleblower’s allegations are true, antisemitism was justification for political pressure only, and not justification to bring charges.

Two very different things—and when we consider this administration’s attitude toward and oversight of curriculum, DEI programs, gender policies, university governance, endowment control, and other ideological priorities, it’s fair to ask:

Was protecting Jewish students the objective—or merely the leverage?

As a lawyer and a Jewish grandfather, I find that notion extremely offensive.

Don’t use my people as an excuse.

If anyone thinks I am minimizing antisemitism, come to Michigan.

Here in Michigan, we are having a very different—and very real—conversation about antisemitism. Abdul El-Sayed is our Democratic nominee for the United States Senate. Jewish Democrats are wrestling with what his candidacy means. Some supported him in the primary. Others (like me) are deeply troubled by his harsh rhetoric about Israel and AIPAC, and his inconsiderate comments following the attack on Temple Israel’s preschool children. There are Jewish Democrats who reluctantly support him, and others (like me) who will not support either candidate.

That’s not manufactured outrage. That’s democracy confronting a genuine disagreement about antisemitism, Israel, Gaza, Palestinian rights, political rhetoric, and what Jewish voters should expect from someone who seeks to represent them.

And that’s precisely the difference.

We don’t need the federal government to invent antisemitism for political purposes. We have enough real questions to confront.

When government officials stretch civil-rights law beyond what their own investigators believe the evidence supports, they don’t strengthen the fight against antisemitism—they cheapen it. They make it easier for the next person accused of genuine antisemitism to dismiss the accusation as “politics as usual.”

Jewish Americans don’t need manufactured protection. We need equal protection—and honest enforcement of the law.

This principle is bigger than Trump or Democratic/Republican politics. It should transcend partisan politics. Both parties should care about it when the opposite party’s administration uses federal enforcement power to pressure institutions into adopting its policies, progressive or conservative.

Power should not be used to make the end justify the means.

The Justice Department possesses extraordinary power because we entrust it to exercise that power differently from an ordinary litigant. Its mission shouldn’t simply be to win. Its mission should be to do justice. Sometimes, government lawyers must tell political appointees things they don’t wish to hear. Those political appointees are supposed to listen and follow the law.

That’s not weakness. It’s the rule of law.

Do you believe that when a defendant settles with the government, it must be guilty? Do you automatically believe the government had a strong case?

Most lawyers know that’s not necessarily true. While some people or institutions settle because they’re guilty, others settle because they’re afraid or because litigation will cost more than the proposed settlement. Sometimes they settle because the other side has the power to inflict catastrophic damage before anybody ever reaches the merits of the case, especially when the other side is the federal government.

And we, the people, should expect pristine ethical conduct from our government.

If federal officials have just cause to investigate Brown, Columbia, Harvard, or any other university for violations of Title VI by permitting unlawful antisemitic discrimination, it is their right, no, their obligation, to investigate those allegations. And if they find evidence of wrongdoing, they have a duty to prosecute those violations.

Prove the case.

But if government lawyers investigate and conclude that the evidence just isn’t sufficient, they do not have the right to bully United States citizens into submission.

That’s not civil rights enforcement. That’s infinite power searching for a legal justification. When the most powerful litigant in America uses the courthouse, the federal treasury, and the threat of financial devastation to make defendants accept terms the evidence does not justify, we ought to call it what it is:

Injustice. Lipstick on a pig.

AKA bullying with a presidential seal.

I’ve never been a corporate lawyer—I’ve spent most of my professional life representing people in lawsuits. But if Meta hired me tomorrow, my first piece of legal advice might surprise them:

Stop trying so hard to win lawsuits and start eliminating the reasons people keep filing them.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, recently got hammered in New Mexico. A jury imposed $375 million in civil penalties. A judge ordered another $567 million in remedies—a total financial hit of $942 million—along with significant changes in the way its platforms deal with children.

Today, as I write this, Meta is back in court.

This time, twenty-nine state attorneys general are pursuing claims alleging, among other things, that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to keep children engaged and that Meta misrepresented the risks associated with its products.

Meta denies the allegations and will undoubtedly mount a formidable defense. It can afford excellent lawyers.

But here’s the question I’d be asking if I were one of them:

Why are we spending fortunes defending business practices that keep putting us in court?

There is nothing inherently evil about engagement. Every business wants customers to use its product. I use Facebook and Instagram myself. I check what friends and family are doing. I promote my writing. I follow subjects that interest me. Then I put the phone down and move on to other things.

But adults and children aren’t the same consumers.

Children have developing brains, developing judgment, and developing impulse control. A feature designed to keep a 50-year-old scrolling for another ten minutes has a very different effect on a 12- or 13-year-old.

Infinite scrolling. Constant notifications. Likes. Streaks. Algorithmic recommendations. Personalized content selected specifically because the system predicts that the user will keep watching.

Each feature may be defensible individually. But taken together, they raise an obvious question: At what point does encouraging engagement become engineering compulsion?

That’s the question Meta keeps being forced to answer in court.

So here’s what I’d tell Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s board:

Change the conversation.

Don’t wait for another jury, judge, attorney general, or legislature to tell you what to do. Do it yourselves.

• Turn off—or substantially reduce—push notifications for minors, particularly during school hours and overnight.

• Give parents meaningful controls that aren’t buried beneath seventeen menus and a privacy policy nobody reads.

• Set reasonable default time limits for younger users.

• Make infinite scrolling finite for children. At some point, let the screen actually say: You’ve been here a while. How about doing something else?

• Stop measuring every successful product decision by whether it increases “engagement.”

Create a different metric for minors: healthy engagement.

And then advertise the hell out of it.

Imagine the campaign:

Instagram: Designed differently for kids.

Imagine Meta announcing that it voluntarily hired independent pediatricians, psychologists, educators, and child-development specialists—and then actually gave them authority to influence product design.

Imagine publishing the findings, including the uncomfortable ones.

Would children spend less time on Instagram?

Probably.

Would advertising revenue initially decline?

Maybe.

Would Wall Street complain?

Almost certainly.

And that’s where I would put on my corporate-lawyer hat.

The responsibility of corporate leadership isn’t simply to maximize next quarter’s earnings at any cost.

It is to create sustainable long-term value for shareholders.

Litigation isn’t free—neither are billion-dollar judgments.

Neither are government investigations, regulatory proceedings, congressional hearings, appeals, compliance orders, and years of paying some of the finest lawyers in America to explain why your company isn’t doing what plaintiffs say it is doing.

Reputational damage isn’t free, either.

Ask the tobacco and pharmaceutical companies that spent years defending practices they ultimately had to change anyway.

There comes a point when “fight everything” stops being a legal strategy and starts becoming a bad business model.

Meta has reached—or is rapidly approaching—that point.

And there’s another reason I’d recommend changing course.

It might be good for the company.

Parents aren’t going to eliminate social media. Kids aren’t going to stop communicating online. Facebook and Instagram won’t disappear.

Here’s a bold idea: Imagine being the company parents trust more than its competitors.

Imagine turning child safety from Meta’s greatest legal vulnerability into a competitive advantage. That is something shareholders should understand. Maybe quarterly engagement falls three percent. Maybe revenue takes a temporary hit. But what’s the long-term value of becoming the social-media company that parents believe is genuinely trying to protect their children rather than exploit their attention?

That’s an asset too.

I’ve seen companies fight lawsuits for years because changing course felt like admitting they had been wrong. It isn’t. Sometimes changing course means recognizing that yesterday’s profitable business practice has become tomorrow’s liability.

Meta doesn’t need another clever defense.

It needs a forward-looking business philosophy.

Protect the kids. Give parents more control. Accept a little less engagement. Make plenty of money anyway. And perhaps stop giving lawyers reasons to sue you.

If I represented Meta, that’s the advice I’d give.

Would they listen? That’s the multi-billion dollar question.

This morning, I reviewed emails and half-watched Morning Joe. Willie Geist and Joe Scarborough were interviewing Minnesota Democratic Senate nominee Peggy Flanagan, and something behind Flanagan’s image caught my attention.

It was a sign that read:

ALL ARE WELCOME HERE.

Four simple words.

I found myself wondering: What if Flanagan actually meant these words? What if all candidates lived by them?

Not Democrats or Republicans, progressives or conservatives...

All of them.

What if “all are welcome here” became a basic qualification for public office? What if those words became our nation’s governing philosophy?

Under Donald Trump, what does “all” mean? Does he seek to govern “all” Americans, or only a chosen few? Does he make Latino Americans feel welcome? Muslims? Jews? Members of the LGBTQ community? Immigrants? Middle- or lower-class citizens? People who don’t fit comfortably into a vision of America centered on Christianity, wealth, whiteness, or political loyalty?

But this isn’t about Trump.

I’m a Jewish Michigander. Our new Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, speaks passionately about equality and justice. Yet his rhetoric about Israel—and particularly his “hurt people hurt people” response following an attack on a Michigan synagogue—has left Jewish Michiganders like me wondering whether we are included in his vision of an inclusive America.

And that’s the point.

We have become remarkably good at demanding inclusion for the people we believe have been excluded while finding reasons to exclude somebody else, and, sometimes, everybody else.

The right champions one America. The left champions another.

Candidates increasingly speak to their specially selected constituencies, movements, donors, religions, races, economic classes, and ideological tribes.

But do any of them speak to everybody?

Whatever happened to the quaint notion that when you win an election, you become the representative of the people who voted against you, too?

Presidents and senators don’t govern only their chosen parties. Christian officeholders represent Muslims, Jews, atheists, and agnostics, gay, and transgender Americans. Muslim officeholders represent Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims. Wealthy politicians represent people living paycheck to paycheck. Progressives represent conservatives, and conservatives represent progressives.

That’s the job.

Officeholders don’t have to agree with everybody. God knows that’s impossible.

But shouldn’t they, at least, give a damn about everybody?

Maybe that’s what struck me about that sign behind Peggy Flanagan.

All are welcome here.

Imagine candidates who really mean it. Not as a slogan or a campaign strategy. Not as a sign placed behind them during a television interview.

As a governing philosophy.

Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, or anything else. Gay or straight. Native-born or immigrant. Black, white, rich, poor, urban or rural. Republican, Democrat, independent—or thoroughly disgusted with all of them.

You are an American, and you count. All are welcome here.

I’ve spent much of my life thinking about four other words:

And justice for all.

Not merely a name for my Substack posts or justice for my side, or for people who look like me, worship like me, vote like me, or see the world the way I do— Justice for all.

Am I being hopelessly idealistic considering today’s America? Perhaps our politics has become so addicted to grievance that candidates can no longer win without telling voters who they should fear, resent, blame, or hate.

Maybe it will take years—generations—to undo the damage this era of division has done to us.

But I’m an old man. I’m allowed to dream.

And I dream of candidates—Republicans, Democrats, independents, or others we haven’t invented yet—who understand that winning an election isn’t permission to punish the other side.

It’s your damned obligation to represent the other side!

I dream of candidates who don’t ask which Americans deserve a seat at the table but, instead, requisition a bigger table. The test reaches across political lines. Trump is tested by it. El-Sayed and Flanagan are tested by it. All Democrats and Republicans are tested by it. Christians, Muslims, Jews, progressives and conservatives are tested by it.

And We the People are tested by it. Nobody has to agree with everybody. God knows that’s impossible.

All are welcome here.

Four words.

They shouldn’t be revolutionary.

They should be American.

Let’s be clear: I am a left-leaning moderate who votes mainly democratic. From time to time, a standout moderate Republican earns my vote (not possible in the Trump era).

In the recent Michigan primary election, I desperately wanted Haley Stevens to win. When she didn’t, I decided not to write anything for a few days. Disappointment is a poor frame of mind from which to evaluate an election.

Now that I’ve had time to think, I’d like to explain why I oppose Abdul El-Sayed—and why his religion has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I find the recent wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric coming from parts of the Republican Party disgusting and Islamophobic. No American should be judged by the church, synagogue, mosque, or temple they attend. No candidate should lose votes because of a Muslim name. If we’re going to condemn antisemitism—and we should—we must also condemn Islamophobia. Bigotry isn’t noble when it’s directed at Muslims any more than it is when it’s directed at Jews.

That’s precisely why I am writing—to be clear about where I stand.

I do not oppose Abdul El-Sayed because he is Muslim. I oppose him for what comes out of his own mouth, what he emphasizes, and what he leaves unsaid.

As a Jewish American, I have watched Dr. El-Sayed repeatedly criticize Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Fair enough. So have I. Democracies should be criticized when criticism is warranted. Israel is no exception.

But I have been struck by something else. I rarely hear El-Sayed give equal weight to events that made the Gaza war possible in the first place: The terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian citizens on October 7, 2023.

On that day, Hamas terrorists, headquartered in Gaza, crossed an internationally recognized border, murdered civilians in their homes, raped women, burned families alive, kidnapped children and grandparents, and committed the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

That is no footnote—it is the beginning of the origin story of the current conflict. If your criticism begins after October 7, you’ve skipped the chapter that explains why Israel was compelled to respond.

Perhaps you believe that Israel has gone too far. Many people, including some American and Israeli Jews, have made that argument. But if you remain unwilling to grapple with why Israel responded, your analysis is incomplete.

Two years later, my home community, West Bloomfield, MI, experienced an attempted terrorist attack on Temple Israel—less than two miles from my home.

Here’s what Abdul El-Sayed said about this terrorist attack on a preschool:

“Nothing justifies the heinous attack that we saw on Temple Israel... I also think it’s just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people, and the circumstances happening 6,000 miles away can affect the lives that we live here.” (emphasis added.)

He has argued that his remarks were “taken out of context.” I don’t need additional context. No, they weren’t—I understand exactly what he meant. And I disagree with him.

Rabbi Jen Lader of Temple Israel explained why far better than I can. Responding to Dr. El-Sayed’s remarks, she wrote that Michigan Jews “are not abstractions or stand-ins for a foreign government.” Violence against a Michigan synagogue, she said, “is not an understandable reaction to personal loss. It is antisemitic hatred directed at Jews wherever we are.”

I completely agree. And here’s what I cannot reconcile.

Dr. El-Sayed asks us to understand the motivations of someone who attacks a synagogue and a preschool full of three- and four-year-olds

Has anyone ever heard him apply that same principle to Israel after October 7?

If “hurt people hurt people” helps explain the mindset of someone who targets Jewish preschool children in West Bloomfield, why doesn’t that same observation also help explain Israel’s military response after the largest massacre of Jews in nearly eighty years?

I do not argue that it justifies the full extent of Israel’s response.

Understanding is not endorsement and explaining is not excusing.

Human behavior is complicated. We can seek to understand why people do terrible things without absolving them of responsibility for them. But that principle must apply both ways.

When it is extended to those who commit violence against Jews but withheld from Jews responding to unprecedented violence against them, it creates a moral double standard.

Whether Dr. El-Sayed says things like this (or says nothing at all), many Jews—including me—experience that double standard as antisemitic.

Not because he is Muslim.

Not because he criticizes Israel.

But because compassion appears to flow in only one direction.

I was equally troubled by another inconsistency.

During the campaign, Dr. El-Sayed constantly criticized Haley Stevens for accepting support from AIPAC, one of America’s best-known pro-Israel advocacy organizations.

At the same time, his own campaign accepted support from organizations advocating for Muslim-American interests, including CAIR.

Candidates receive support from advocacy organizations every day. That’s politics.

What bothers me here is the selective outrage. If accepting support from an advocacy organization compromises one candidate, why doesn’t the same principle apply to the other?

Consistency matters. So does intellectual honesty.

I remind El-Sayed that he needs my vote. Despite his post-primary euphoria, he received no mandate from Michigan Democrats. He won by a percentage point, less than 20,000 votes. Mallory McMorrow received 60,000 votes. Had she suspended her campaign before ballots were printed, the results might have been different.

Dr. El-Sayed: Have I misunderstood your views? If so, I invite you to correct me. Not through campaign commercials or social media.

Let’s have a conversation.

Join me here on my And Justice For All Substack or on the Lean to the Left podcast that I periodically co-host with veteran journalist Bob Gatty.

I’ll ask tough questions and listen carefully to your answers. And treat you with the same respect I believe every public servant deserves.

I won’t ask about your faith.

I won’t question your patriotism.

But I will ask you this:

Why does the empathy you extend to those who commit violence against Jews seem so much harder to find when the victims are Jews?

If you have a reasonable answer to that question, I genuinely want to hear it.

I didn’t vote against you because you are Muslim. I voted against you because leaders must apply the same moral principles to everyone—even when doing so is politically inconvenient.

I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

Last I checked, there was no “Scapegoat Clause” in the Constitution. Nor should there be. But if the U.S, Senate Committee holding COVID-19 hearings last week had its way, such a clause might read something like this:

“When a national crisis embarrasses people in power, Congress shall select one highly visible public servant, strip away all context, ignore the chain of command, and hold that individual personally responsible for the actions of the government.”

Scary, no? Fortunately, that is not how our Constitution works.

While watching last week’s hearings, I was struck less by senators’ questions than by certain senators’ tone. Some senators did not question Dr. Anthony Fauci as though he were a physician whose recommendations they believed were mistaken. They questioned him as though he were the architect of a deliberate national calamity—a man whose motives were presumed corrupt before his testimony.

A COVID-19 congressional hearing was and is appropriate. Congress has every right—indeed, an obligation—to investigate America’s response to the pandemic. More than a million Americans died. Businesses failed. Schools closed. Families were torn apart. Mistakes were made, and the American people deserve answers.

But what we don’t deserve is political theatre masquerading as oversight.

In this theatre of a hearing, disagreement became accusation, policy dispute became moral condemnation, scientific judgment became evidence of some mysterious sinister intent, and a 40-year public servant became a scapegoat for it all.

And that is a dangerous place for a democracy to go.

We begin with a few inconvenient facts. COVID erupted during the Trump Administration. Donald Trump was the president. V.P. Mike Pence chaired the White House Coronavirus Task Force. The Secretary of Health and Human Services and the CDC Director were presidential appointees. President Trump surrounded himself with advisers whom he was free to follow—or ignore.

Every major federal COVID policy was ultimately adopted, modified, or rejected by these officials who possessed constitutional and statutory authority to make decisions.

Anthony Fauci never occupied the Oval Office, or signed an executive order, or controlled the Department of Health and Human Services, or directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He never possessed constitutional authority to impose nationwide policy.

Elected officials and presidential appointees made those decisions.

Fauci was only a scientific adviser.

If Senator Bernie Moreno and others believe the federal government’s pandemic response was a disaster, he has every right to make that argument. But if that’s the case, why are Moreno and his ilk hauling only the adviser before the firing squad?

Advice is not authority. Recommendation is not command. And influence is not legal responsibility. The legal system I practiced law in for 50 years asks a simple question before assigning liability or responsibility:

Who had the authority to act?

If a corporation is accused of wrongdoing, we examine the decisions of its officers, directors, supervisors, and applicable employees. We do not choose the most recognizable face and pretend that person was the corporation.

Government should be no different.

If Congress genuinely wishes to understand what happened during COVID, then investigate the entire decision-making process.

Question the president.

Question the vice president.

Question the HHS Secretary.

Question the CDC Director.

Question 50 governors.

Question anyone and everyone who possessed actual decision-making authority.

That would be oversight.

But focusing almost exclusively on one career scientist creates a sham hearing.

This committee wasn’t searching for the truth— it was creating a scapegoat.

Dr. Fauci invoked the 5^th Amendment multiple times during the hearing. This is a real constitutional principle that deserves attention. We begin with this basic truth:

Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not an admission of guilt.

The Fifth Amendment exists because our founders understood that government prosecutors must prove guilt. Defendants must prove nothing. But the government, especially this one, is often more focused on serving its own agenda than discovering the truth.

When public officials openly discuss criminal referrals, threaten prosecution, and spend years portraying one individual as the embodiment of a national tragedy, every competent defense lawyer would provide the same advice:

Do not assist the government in building a case against yourself. Invoke the Fifth—every time.

Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not an admission of guilt; it is an exercise of one of the oldest protections in the Bill of Rights.

Critics ask, “If a person did nothing wrong, why not answer every question?”

A lawyer’s response?

Because constitutional rights are exercised before convictions, not after, the Fifth Amendment protects the innocent and the guilty alike. It recognizes no distinction between the two. Besides, you are not paranoid if they are really out to get you.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this entire episode is what it says to the next generation of public servants.

Anthony Fauci served seven presidents over four decades. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all trusted him. Donald Trump trusted him enough to keep him in one of the nation’s most important public health positions during the greatest pandemic in a century. Joe Biden kept him in place after beating Trump in 2020.

Four Republicans and three Democrats—did Dr. Fauci dupe them all?

It is far more likely that America benefited from the expertise of a physician who devoted his professional life to public service, even as reasonable people disagree with some of his recommendations. That is the debate we should be having—not whether one elderly scientist deserves to be publicly humiliated for decisions ultimately made by the elected officials he served.

America will face another pandemic. History guarantees it. And when that day comes, we will desperately need brilliant physicians, epidemiologists, virologists, and public health experts willing to leave comfortable careers and advise presidents without regard to political affiliation.

But why would they?

Why would they volunteer if, years later, they are transformed from respected public servants into public enemies? This may be the sham hearing’s most lasting damage.

Congress should investigate COVID. It should investigate every mistake and every decision-maker. It should do so fairly, without engaging in political theatre. And it should never forget a principle that every lawyer, every judge, and even every first-year law student knows:

Accountability begins by identifying the person who had ultimate decision-making authority.

Choosing a villain first, then looking for evidence against him is the opposite of justice. It is not constitutional oversight. It is scapegoating. And history harshly judges scapegoat hunts.

Every year, thousands of innocent people are injured or killed by impaired drivers. In most cases, those drivers are charged with a crime and often face stiff penalties if convicted by a judge or jury.

Recently, former NFL broadcaster and current CBS-NFL television football analyst Tony Romo was arrested for allegedly drinking and driving. If there was probable cause to pull over and arrest Romo, he should face charges in court just like anyone else.

Please pay attention to my last statement. He should face charges in court.

Not on cable television.

Not on social media.

Not in the court of public opinion.

Like millions of Americans, I watched a now-familiar ritual unfold on television. Police body-camera footage. Field sobriety tests. Endless commentary. Before Tony Romo ever faces a judge, a huge segment of our population has declared him guilty.

That type of pre-trial publicity has always troubled me.

An arrest is an event that proves only that the police believe a crime has occurred. It is not proof that the charged crime did, in fact, occur. Our Constitution requires due process for precisely that reason: Accusations are not convictions.

Yet somewhere along the way, we’ve become comfortable trying people on television and determining their guilt before they ever step inside a courtroom.

Not only should that concern us all, but it raises another question:

What does any of this have to do with Tony Romo’s ability to analyze football games?

If he is ultimately convicted, he should face appropriate legal consequences. Perhaps he has a “morals” clause in his contract that applies to an event like this. However, should an alleged off-duty offense automatically end or indefinitely suspend a broadcasting career? Is CBS protecting its reputation, or simply reacting to public pressure?

These are legitimate questions. And the hypocrisy here that is harder to ignore.

The NFL has spent decades selling football and alcohol as inseparable companions. Beer commercials dominate game broadcasts. Teams partner with alcohol companies. Stadiums boast millions in beer sales every season, while sports bars fill with professional football fans every Sunday.

The message is unmistakable:

Football and drinking go together.

Suddenly, a prominent someone associated with the league allegedly drinks too much, gets into a car, and gets pulled over. Suddenly, everyone acts as though alcohol has nothing to do with football culture.

That strikes me as selective outrage.

To be clear, I am not excusing drunk drivers. Adults should be held responsible for their actions. But responsibility does not exist in a vacuum.

Alcohol impairs judgment. That is precisely why drunk driving is dangerous. But why are we unwilling to discuss the broader culture that encourages overconsumption while profiting handsomely from it?

Where does the bartender’s responsibility end?

What obligations do bars, restaurants, and stadiums have when someone is served while obviously intoxicated?

Should friends take away car keys?

Should hosts insist on calling an Uber?

Should the NFL, whose broadcasts generate billions of dollars alongside alcohol advertising, play a more active role in promoting responsible drinking?

Those questions rarely receive the attention they deserve because our national conversation begins only after a high-profile arrest.

In my opinion, these questions should begin several drinks earlier.

A final thought.

I rarely drink. I never drink and drive. I have children and grandchildren, and their safety is important to me. I’m not writing to defend drinkers or drunk drivers. But if Tony Romo broke the law, prosecutors must prove that in court and a judge must decide his punishment. He should not be tried and convicted on television.

And if the NFL truly wants to reduce impaired driving, it should set an example, not make one of Tony Romo. Let’s assume the legal process runs its course and Romo is convicted of an alcohol-related crime. Imagine the impact if he appeared in a series of public service announcements preaching something like this:

“I made a serious mistake. I was fortunate no one was hurt. If you’ve been drinking, don’t drive. Call a friend. Call a rideshare. Spend the money. You might save a life.”

Wouldn’t such a message prevent more tragedies than the televised humiliation of a celebrity NFL analyst?

And, by the way, even celebrities are innocent until proven guilty. Justice should be about accountability. Not spectacle.

CBS, the NFL, and alcohol companies should come forward, aceept some responsibility, and stop scapegoating those who abuse their products. Drivers sometimes make bad choices—so do those who serve, encourage, and profit from the sale of alcohol.

That’s my view. I’d love to hear yours.

By now, most of you are familiar with the video released by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, demanding the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I will not dignify the video by pasting it here. Suffice it to say, it is a disgusting piece of bigoted political propaganda from the mayor of a multi-cultural city.

I’m not a New Yorker. I’m a Michigander. And if the mayor of my city released a video demanding the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while ignoring virtually every fact that brought America and the Middle East to this moment, I’d be even angrier than I am today.

And not because I believe everyone should support Netanyahu. Without help from Mamdani or me, the people should decide for themselves. Reasonable men and women may agree or disagree with his policies, his prosecution of the war in Gaza, or whether his government has made serious mistakes. Remember though, his first obligation is to the safety of his citizens.

And the mayor of the largest city in America, indeed any city, also has a responsibility larger than his own politics. Mamdani represents an entire city—all New Yorkers, not merely those who share his ideology, religion, or worldview.

New York is home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. It is also home to millions of Muslims, Christians, Hindus, atheists, and people of every imaginable background. A mayor’s words should unite where possible, but this mayor chose to deepen already dangerous divisions.

Worse than the words Mamdani spoke in the video were those he chose to leave out. He made no mention of October 7, 2023—the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. No mention that Hamas deliberately murdered civilians, raped women, kidnapped children and grandparents, and held multiple hostages. Of those who came home, most were tortured or killed—only their bodies were returned.

Mamdani failed to acknowledge that Hamas routinely uses Gaza’s civilian population as human shields, embedding military operations among homes, schools, hospitals, and places of worship. He also failed to mention that Hamas’s stated objective has long been Israel’s destruction.

Context matters. How can anyone have an honest conversation about Gaza while pretending October 7 never happened? Can a responsible leader discuss civilian suffering without acknowledging the terrorist organization whose strategy has been to maximize that suffering for political gain?

Imagine, after September 11, 2001, if a Middle Eastern leader condemned the United States’ military response, while saying nothing about the terrorists who murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people. Most Americans would have found that morally reprehensible. This is no different, is it?

And this is especially true because Mayor Mamdani might have chosen another road, a higher road. He might have used Prime Minister Netanyahu’s upcoming visit as a call for peace or renewed negotiations. He might have condemned Hamas terrorism, mourned innocent Palestinian and Israeli civilians alike, and challenged both sides to end the fighting.

That would have been leadership.

Instead, he chose the low road, producing a video he knew would inflame passions on both sides while offering no meaningful path toward peace. Whether you support or oppose Netanyahu is almost beside the point. Leadership requires balance; in this case, leadership required the acknowledgment of uncomfortable facts, even if those facts complicated Mamdani’s preferred narrative.

Leadership demands that a leader remembers who he serves. A New York City Mayor serves all New Yorkers—not merely those who share his worldview. A public official who forgets or ignores that simple principle stops being a leader and starts being an activist. At a time when antisemitism is rising, Islamophobia is rising, and political violence is becoming more common, America does not need leaders who pour gasoline on the fire—we need leaders willing to help put the fire out.

This isn’t just a New York problem—it’s a leadership problem; one that is becoming uniquely American. It knows no political party. Donald Trump speaks and acts only for those who voted for him. He casts broad suspicion on Hispanic immigrants while overlooking the millions who work hard, obey the law, raise families, serve in our military, and strengthen our communities. He demonizes the press as “enemies of the people” and says he “hates” members of the opposition party, branding them as “Communists.”

It is difficult to watch a prominent Democrat mimic Trump’s deplorable failure to lead. Partisan leadership is no more acceptable for a mayor who elects to view one side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a single political or ideological lens. Public officials are supposed to represent everyone—not just those who share their beliefs, ethnicity, religion, or party affiliation. When leaders divide people into “us” and “them,” they stop leading and start campaigning.

Leadership isn’t measured by how passionately you speak for your supporters. It’s measured by whether those who disagree with you can believe you represent them as passionately as you represent your supporters. Donald Trump consistently fails this test. With his alarmingly one-sided video, Mamdani joins Trump in failing his citizens.

New York deserves better just as America deserves better. Public officials take an oath to represent every citizen—not merely those who helped elect them. Trump is beyond redemption—is there hope for Mamdani? I doubt it.

Prove me wrong, Mr. Mayor. Prove me wrong.

Heads of state have many responsibilities, none more fundamental than protecting the lives, safety, and security of their own citizens. A leader who knowingly fails to defend the people they govern also fails at the most basic obligation of public office.

That principle has guided presidents, prime ministers, kings, and generals throughout history. It guided Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor, and Winston Churchill during the Blitz. It guided Harry Truman as World War II reached its bloody conclusion. It guided Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur War. These days, it guides Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Ukraine fights for survival, and it undoubtedly guides Benjamin Netanyahu after October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history.

That does not end the legal inquiry—it begins it.

International humanitarian law does not ask whether a nation has the right to defend itself. It does. The question is how.

The International Criminal Court has accused Benjamin Netanyahu of committing war crimes during Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Whether these allegations are sustained remains to be seen. An arrest warrant is not a conviction. And like every defendant, Netanyahu is entitled to a presumption of innocence and to have the evidence tested before judgment is rendered.

But the ICC’s actions raise a fascinating—and uncomfortable—question.

If today’s legal standards existed in August 1945, would Harry Truman have been indicted for ordering the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

That is not a rhetorical question.

The bombings killed enormous numbers of civilians. Under today’s understanding of international humanitarian law, lawyers would inevitably ask whether the attacks satisfied the principles of distinction, proportionality, military necessity, and precautions to minimize civilian harm.

Some respected legal scholars believe Truman would have faced prosecution.

Others argue just as passionately that he would not.

Extraordinary circumstances confronted Harry Truman. Japan had not surrendered. The Pacific War had already claimed millions of lives. American planners anticipated staggering casualties from an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Truman believed—rightly or wrongly—that ending the war immediately would ultimately save lives.

And reasonable people continue to debate that decision more than eighty years later.

Which leads me to another question:

If we are going to evaluate Benjamin Netanyahu through the lens of modern international criminal law, should we not ask how that same lens would view other wartime leaders?

• Would Anwar Sadat’s surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, 1973, be analyzed differently today?

• What about Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and supporting Arab forces’ invasion of the newborn State of Israel immediately after it declared independence in 1948?

• How would Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia be judged under today’s standards?

• Should Emperor Hirohito have faced prosecution for Japan’s conduct during World War II?

There is one obvious exception.

Adolf Hitler occupies a category almost beyond comparison. His regime did not merely wage war; it launched wars of conquest, industrialized genocide, and systematically exterminated six million Jews along with millions of other innocent victims. The Holocaust remains the defining crime against humanity against which all others are measured. Nothing in this essay minimizes those horrors or equates them with the actions of any other wartime leader—quite the opposite. Hitler serves as the benchmark that reminds us why the remaining historical examples demand far more careful, contextual analysis.

The point is not that all of these leaders were war criminals. The point is that once we move beyond Adolf Hitler—whose crimes are so monstrous that they define evil itself—the legal and moral questions become far more complicated.

History is filled with leaders forced to choose among terrible options.

Context matters.

Intent matters.

Available alternatives matter.

And above all, it is every leader’s obligation to protect their own citizens.

I have no interest in serving as Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense lawyer. I’ve disagreed with many of his political decisions over the years and believe a different Israeli leader might have preserved more of the world’s sympathy after October 7. But legal judgments require context, and context begins with recognizing the circumstances a leader confronts.

Of the leaders commonly discussed in debates about wartime responsibility, Benjamin Netanyahu occupies a unique position. Unlike Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, Sadat, Nasser, King Abdullah, Riad Al Solh, or Vladimir Putin (currently the subject of an ICC arrest warrant), Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza followed immediately after the largest terrorist attack in Israel’s history—a deliberate massacre of civilians, hostage-taking, rape, torture, and kidnapping carried out by a non-state terrorist organization operating from territory immediately adjacent to Israel.

And while Harry Truman likewise inherited an ongoing world war, he did not decide to nuke two major Japanese cities while American civilians were under continuing attack on American soil.

Imagine if terrorists crossed from Mexico into Texas, murdered over a thousand Americans, kidnapped hundreds more, and then retreated across the border to hide among the civilian population.

What American president—Republican or Democrat—would declare the matter closed? Isn’t it every president’s first obligation to ensure that such an attack could never happen again?

The debate wouldn’t be whether America would respond, but how America would respond.

Israel does not fight a conventional army. It fights a terrorist organization that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and is willing to resort to terrorism to accomplish its objectives. It has celebrated attacks against Israeli civilians as legitimate acts of resistance. Israel argues—and substantial evidence has been presented—that Hamas deliberately embeds military assets within densely populated civilian areas, making lawful military operations extraordinarily difficult.

Critics argue that Israel's response has nevertheless caused disproportionate civilian suffering. These factual and legal arguments are appropriate for the International Court to evaluate. However, another reality cannot be ignored.

Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, and antisemitism did not disappear with the defeat of Nazi Germany. It continues to exist across the political spectrum and around the globe. That history inevitably shapes the Jewish worldview—including mine—on international criticism directed at Israel. And while it does not prove that every criticism is motivated by antisemitism, neither should that possibility be ruled out. History gives the Jewish people good reason to ask difficult questions when Israel finds itself uniquely isolated.

This newsletter post is not about proving Benjamin Netanyahu’s innocence. Nor is it about proving that the International Criminal Court is wrong. It asks a legitimate question about whether the ICC is applying international criminal law with the consistency its legitimacy requires.

Would today’s ICC indict Harry Truman for war crimes in 1945?

If today’s legal principles would indict Harry Truman, then perhaps modern international law has evolved beyond what previous generations accepted. But if they would not indict Truman because of military necessity, existential danger, or the duty to protect American lives, then it is fair to ask whether those same considerations deserve equal weight when evaluating Israel’s leaders.

The law was never meant to eliminate the need for judgment. It was meant to guide it.

Context matters. Intent matters. Available alternatives matter. The duty to protect one’s own citizens matters. And if those factors are ignored, international justice risks becoming an exercise in hindsight rather than an instrument of law.

The easiest judgments in history are made decades later, after the smoke has cleared and the graves have been counted. The hardest judgments are made in real time, when leaders must choose between terrible options with incomplete information and the lives of their own citizens hanging in the balance. International law exists to guide those decisions—not to erase the reality that sometimes every available choice carries an unbearable human cost.

So I return to my question:

If today’s ICC had existed in 1945, do you think Harry Truman would have been indicted for Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The answer may tell us as much about the equal application of law and the politics of war as it does about Harry Truman—or Benjamin Netanyahu.

Justice demands consistency. Mercy demands context. Wisdom requires both. Before judging Benjamin Netanyahu—or Harry Truman, Anwar Sadat, or any leader forced to make life-and-death decisions in war—ask yourself one final question:

If you had awakened on October 8 as Israel's prime minister, responsible for protecting nine million citizens after the deadliest attack in your nation's history, what would you have done?

Lindsey Graham’s sudden death made me stop and think—not just about Graham, but about what has happened to the Republican Party.

I wasn’t always reflexively anti-Republican. Quite the opposite, in fact. I once agreed with Republicans on taxes, limiting the size of government, fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, a strong national defense, and other important issues. I generally believed both parties were trying to move America forward in different ways.

Then came Donald Trump.

Graham’s sudden death has me remembering what the South Carolina Senator said about Trump before there was any political advantage in supporting the man.

And he wasn’t alone in his stark criticism.

• Marco Rubio questioned Trump’s temperament and character.

• Ted Cruz warned Republicans about the dangers Trump posed, even after enduring deeply personal attacks against his family.

• Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and others voiced serious concerns about whether Donald Trump possessed the character and judgment to be president.

Their critiques were correct. People of strong character, possessing good leadership skills, would have and should have stuck to their guns.

But then Trump won.

One by one, his harshest Republican critics became his strongest defenders. Some accepted positions in his administration. Others became political allies. Some decided that staying in the Republican Party meant standing behind its new leader. Blow up the debt and the deficit? Who cares? Turn our backs on our allies? Why not? Ignore the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Absolutely. Spurn Reagan-style free trade? Sure, tariffs are suddenly the way to go.

And that’s the part I have never understood.

I have a simple rule in life: When people speak, believe them the first time.

When someone tells me who they are and what they stand for—before ambition, party loyalty, or political survival enter the equation—I pay attention.

Lindsey Graham was sincere when he warned America about Donald Trump. So were Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, and the rest.

History will judge whether they changed their minds because of the political cost of standing by their convictions. I’ve made my judgment on this issue—I’m sure you have, too. But not every Republican made that choice. The Bush family has largely refused to embrace Trumpism. So did Mitt Romney (although he waffled when he thought he might get a cabinet post). Organizations like The Lincoln Project have remained steadfast in their opposition, holding onto their traditional conservative principles.

We can respect that. We don’t have to agree politically to admire consistency and courage.

Donald Trump not only changed Republican Party policies but also what many of its leaders were willing to overlook. And that’s the real legacy of Lindsey Graham.

He might have been a Republican hero had he remained steadfast. What he said about Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016 was true. It is even truer today, and the promise of America is suffering for it. When I reflect on Graham’s legacy now and in the future, what will always come to mind is this:

I believed him the first time.

A federal judge said something this week that should concern every American, regardless of their politics.

Judge Kathleen Williams ruled that President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS was filed for an “improper purpose.”

Think about that.

Not “weak.”

Not “unpersuasive.”

Not merely “dismissed.”

Improper purpose.

I wrote about this in May, questioning the lawsuit’s validity and Trump’s motives. I’m pleased Judge Williams agreed.

According to the judge, the lawsuit was used to lend judicial legitimacy to a settlement with no basis in law—one that would have benefited the president, shielded him from certain IRS scrutiny, and earmarked nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money for an “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” She threw out the settlement and referred the attorneys for possible disciplinary or ethics review.

This case was unprecedented.

A sitting President sued an executive agency that ultimately answered to him. His own Justice Department negotiated the settlement. In effect, the country’s Chief Executive controlled both sides of the litigation and asked a federal judge to bless the arrangement.

It is no surprise to this writer that the judge said “no” in rather harsh terms.

Whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, you should be pleased with this result, pleased that our system of checks and balances worked for a change. Courts exist to resolve real disputes—not to provide judicial cover for political or personal deals or schemes.

A grift is commonly defined as a scheme to obtain money or other benefits through deception, manipulation, or dishonest means.

Judge Williams chose different words, more professional terminology. She ruled that this lawsuit was filed for an “improper purpose” and amounted to an attempt to manipulate the judicial process.

Improper purpose? Grift? Both? Something else? I’ll let you decide which description fits that president’s actions and intent in this case.

President Trump used his Independence Day speech to warn America about what he called a growing communist threat. Here are a few of the “lowlights.”

Trump: “You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”

On its face, indeed, someone who genuinely seeks to replace the Constitution with a communist dictatorship is not embracing constitutional patriotism. The problem is that Trump never clearly defines who he’s talking about. Given his repeated references to progressive Democrats and recent Democratic Socialist election victories, the label sweeps far more broadly than actual communists.

Trump: “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land.”

The phrase “communist menace” is almost a direct callback to Cold War rhetoric and McCarthyism. During the Red Scare, “the communist menace” was a standard political refrain used to describe phony infiltration of American institutions.

Trump: “Our warriors did not fight communism only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America.”

This is vintage McCarthy. Bad ole Joe framed every issue as “the enemy is among us” rather than disagreements over policy.

Trump: “It’s like a cancer. You got to cut it out.”

History is full of governments describing political opponents as diseases, cancers, infections, or parasites. Such language dehumanizes an ideology and encourages people to view its adherents as something to be eradicated rather than debated.

And it is Trump, not the Democrats, who admires and praises foreign dictators like Putin and Xi.

Trump: “Communism is the greatest threat to our country...”

Trump described communism as America’s greatest threat—even ranking it above dangers such as the world wars or the September 11 attacks. That is an extraordinary claim and invites us to ask what exactly he means by “communism” in today’s American context.

These are but a few of many examples of presidential hate speech. This type of outlandish rhetoric aimed at Trump’s political adversaries is dangerous. And this danger is not in opposing communism. The vast majority of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, oppose communism. The danger is in expanding the definition of “communist” to encompass millions of Americans who disagree with the president’s policies or ideology.

That was one of the central lessons of the McCarthy era. So, what’s the difference between “Communists” and “Democratic Socialists?”

• Communists generally advocate replacing capitalism with collective ownership of the means of production, and historically communist states have been one-party authoritarian systems.

• Democratic socialists generally seek to pursue more expansive social welfare policies, stronger labor protections, and greater economic equality through elections and constitutional democracy. I disagree with some of those policies—and with the anti-Israel positions taken by some prominent democratic socialists—but their positions are not synonymous with advocating a Soviet-style communist state.

History has taught us that communist governments have committed horrific crimes against their own people. No serious student of history should romanticize Stalin, Mao, or the brutal regimes that followed them.

But history also teaches another lesson: democracies get into trouble when they begin labeling broad groups of political opponents as enemies of the state.

That is why President Trump’s rhetoric reminded me less of the Cold War than of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

McCarthy’s greatest mistake wasn’t that he opposed communism. Millions of Americans opposed communism. His mistake was turning “communist” into a political label broad enough to encompass people with whom he disagreed. Careers were destroyed. Reputations were ruined. Fear replaced reason.

We must be careful not to repeat that mistake.

Today’s political landscape contains genuine communists, democratic socialists, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, progressives, independents, and millions of Americans who don’t fit neatly into any ideological box.

Republicans and Democrats are not all the same—we do not fit into some neat little package on either side of the political aisle.

As I stated earlier, I disagree with many of the policy proposals put forth by the socialist democratic movement. I am particularly troubled by the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist positions taken by its most visible leaders and supporters. I have written extensively about what I view as the rise of antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism, and I make no apology for that concern.

But Democratic socialism is not the same thing as communism. Not even close. And if we care about truth, we should be willing to acknowledge those differences.

The Constitution demands that we distinguish between ideas we oppose and people who have forfeited their constitutional rights. And that principle applies across the political spectrum.

Over the holiday weekend, neo-Nazis marched in Washington, D.C. Their ideology is built on hatred, racism, antisemitism, and violence. I oppose everything they stand for. But if they marched peacefully, without committing crimes, making true threats, or inciting imminent violence, our Constitution’s 1st Amendment protects their right to do so. That’s the price of living in a free society. The 1st Amendment doesn’t exist to protect the speech we like; it exists to protect the speech we hate. And once the government gains the power to silence one unpopular viewpoint, history teaches us it rarely stops there. And that includes a president who describes a large political movement as “communist.”

Most of us oppose communism.

Most of us defend democracy and the Constitution.

The lesson of McCarthyism is that fear can tempt free societies to abandon the very constitutional principles they claim to defend. America is strongest when we defeat bad ideas through debate, elections, education, and persuasion—not by casually branding millions of our fellow citizens as ‘enemies of the Republic.’

History has already shown us where that road leads.

We shouldn’t travel it again.

Justice Through Storytelling

Justice, Books & the Law

Volume 1

Founding Issue

Author Independence Day Edition

July 2026

Editor’s Note:

We promised this Founding Issue on Independence Day. Then we made the rookie mistake of trying to make the first issue perfect instead of simply making it great. A few extra hours of editing turned into an extra day.

We appreciate your patience and hope you’ll agree it was worth the wait.

WELCOME

Every month, we’ll explore Justice Through Storytelling.

This Book Club was created for readers who believe great stories can change the way we think about the world. Together, we’ll explore novels, nonfiction, films, podcasts, interviews, and current events that challenge us to think more deeply about justice, fairness, compassion, and safety.

Some months we’ll feature a legal thriller. Other months, a memoir, a documentary, a children’s book, a constitutional debate, or a conversation with someone whose work inspires us.

Our Club will not be simply a place to recommend books. It will be a place to ask good questions, better questions.

Most importantly, it is your Book Club.

Share your ideas. Recommend books. Suggest guests. Challenge assumptions. Introduce us to stories that deserve to be read.

Let’s build something meaningful together.

So, welcome. We’re glad you’re here.

In This Issue

^IMMIGRATION

• ⚖️ Why Begin with Immigration?

• 📚 Justice in Focus: Betrayal at the Border

• 🎬 Watch the Book Trailer

• 🎧 Listen: Fighting for Immigration Justice

• 📖 Recommended Reading

• 💬 Join the Discussion

• 🗳 Choose Next Month’s Topic

• 🤝 Join the Movement

WHY BEGIN WITH IMMIGRATION?

Each issue of The And Justice For All Book Club will explore a topic through the lens of four guiding principles:

Justice.

Fairness.

Compassion.

Safety.

How do we protect our borders while respecting human dignity?

How do we uphold the rule of law while recognizing the desperate circumstances that drive people to come to America to seek a better life?

How do we keep our nation safe while remaining true to our values?

Reasonable people answer these questions differently.

That’s exactly why immigration is the Founding Discussion of this Book Club.

Can you think of another issue in America today that better captures all four pillars of our mission?

If America’s immigration policy were built around justice, fairness, compassion, and safety, would it become a better policy?

Why or why not?

We encourage thoughtful conversation about the stories—and the values—that shape our society. Use the comments section early and often. Express your point of view!

JUSTICE IN FOCUS

For our founding Book Club issue, we’ve selected Betrayal at the Border, the seventh Zachary Blake Legal Thriller by Mark M. Bello.

Why this book?

Justice. Fairness. Compassion. Safety. Immigration is one issue in America today that best challenges our four guiding principles:

Betrayal at the Border tells the stories of two families whose lives are forever changed by immigration law and international conflict.

One story follows an undocumented family from Venezuela as they struggle to preserve the American dream they have worked so hard to build.

The other follows a naturalized American citizen who returns to her native Kurdistan to visit relatives, only to have an ordinary family visit become an international nightmare when ISIS kidnaps her and her young daughter.

Different journeys.

Different legal challenges.

One timeless question.

What does justice require?

What reviewers said:

★★★★★ Reader Views: “A suspenseful, fast-paced legal thriller exposing a truly broken immigration system while never losing sight of the people caught inside it.”

★★★★★ Readers’ Favorite: “An exceptional legal thriller.”

★★★★★ Literary Titan: “A fast-paced legal thriller that tackles contemporary issues with stunning legal drama.”

★★★★★ Feathered Quill: “An international page-turner.”

WATCH:

Stories come alive in different ways.

Before reading further, take two minutes to watch the official trailer for Betrayal at the Border. It introduces the themes, the stakes, and the human stories that inspired this month’s discussion:

LISTEN:

Would you prefer to explore this topic beyond fiction? Listen to our conversation with California immigration attorney Tahmina Watson.

Recorded a while ago, the discussion remains remarkably relevant. We examine immigration law, constitutional principles, and the human consequences of public policy.

We discussed Tahmina’s groundbreaking book, The Startup Visa: Key to Job Growth & Economic Prosperity in America.

Here’s the podcast:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/fighting-for-immigration-justice-with-tahmina-watson--46765420

One of the goals of The And Justice For All Book Club is to introduce readers to books that deepen our understanding of justice from a variety of perspectives. And Tahmina Watson is this month’s featured guest author. Her work has helped shape thoughtful conversations about immigration law, entrepreneurship, and the rule of law.

Since our podcast discussion, Tahmina has also written Legal Heroes in the Era of Trump, celebrating the lawyers who defended constitutional principles during one of the most contentious periods in modern immigration history.

Whether you ultimately agree with every conclusion or not, both books add valuable perspectives to this month’s discussion and are well worth exploring.

One of the most exciting things about a new Book Club is that its members help shape its future.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Every family has a story.

Some arrived seeking religious freedom.

Some escaped war or persecution.

Some came searching for opportunity.

Others have called America home for generations.

Whatever your family’s story, we’d love to hear it.

Discussion Question:

How did your family come to America?

How has that story influenced the way you think about immigration today?

Please share your story in the comments section below.

As a small thank-you for helping launch this Book Club, one participant selected at random will receive a signed copy of Betrayal at the Border.

Let’s start a conversation.

LOOKING AHEAD

Which topic should we explore next?

• Police Accountability

• Religious Liberty

• Wrongful Convictions

• Antisemitism

• Free Speech

• Corporate Accountability

• Bullying & Children’s Safety

• Something entirely different?

Tell us. Every suggestion is welcome.

This is your Book Club.

Let’s build it together.

Next Month

Justice Through Storytelling continues—topic to be announced after members vote.

JOIN THE MOVEMENT

If you enjoyed this Founding Issue, please share it with a friend. Invite another reader to become a Founding Member of The And Justice For All Book Club.

Great communities begin with great conversations.

Thank you for helping us begin ours.

FINAL THOUGHTS

As our nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, we honor not only the birth of America, but the enduring freedoms and constitutional rights that define us.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights protect the liberties that shape our democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble peacefully, due process of law, equal protection, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the right to trial by jury in both criminal and civil cases.

These freedoms have guided our nation for 250 years. They should never be taken for granted. They endure only through our continuing commitment to the Constitution, the rule of law, and to one another.

On this Independence Day, let us reflect on the values that unite us as Americans and renew our shared commitment to justice, fairness, compassion, safety, and the constitutional freedoms that belong to us all.

From all of us at The And Justice For All Book Club, we wish you and your family a safe, peaceful, and meaningful Independence Day.

Until next month—

Justice often begins with a story.

Keep reading.

Keep questioning.

Never stop pursuing justice.

Happy Independence Day.

Mark M. Bello
Founder & Editor
The And Justice For All Book Club

Tomorrow is Author Independence Day.

For fifty years, I practiced law, helped people in need, argued cases, and fought for justice. Along the way, I discovered that every client and case tells a compelling story. While the law may shape outcomes, stories are even more powerful; they often change hearts.

My clients’ stories have inspired me to write fourteen books, including the Zachary Blake Legal Thriller series. And they have inspired hundreds of pro-justice essays here on And Justice For All.

Tomorrow, we will take the next step. In addition to our traditional newsletter posts on all things politics and justice, I’m excited to announce the inaugural edition of:

The “And Justice For All” Book Club.

Justice, Books & the Law

We won’t be a traditional book club, but we’ll certainly talk about books—including my own pro-justice novels and children’s books. We will also explore the legal, political, historical, and human stories behind the issues shaping our country. We’ll discuss novels, nonfiction books, court decisions, movies, podcasts, interviews, and the real-life events that inspire great storytelling.

And our first meeting couldn’t be timelier.

Following two significant recent Supreme Court immigration decisions and our recent And Justice for All commentaries on those rulings, we’ll examine immigration from different lenses—not simply through constitutional law or politics, but through literature and lived experience.

We’ll explore why I wrote the award-winning legal thriller Betrayal at the Border, hear from respected reviewers, revisit a fascinating conversation with prominent immigration attorney Tahmina Watson, view the book trailer, and, most importantly, begin what I hope will become an ongoing conversation about justice for all.

This will not be my Book Club. I will be yours. Hopefully, you’ll post comments often. Recommend books, suggest topics, nominate authors and guests, share your family’s stories, and respectfully challenge me when you disagree. The best discussions happen when thoughtful people don’t reach the same conclusions.

The mission of this club?

To build a community of readers who believe that books, ideas, and respectful dialogue still matter and that simple justice still matters in America.

I hope you’ll join me tomorrow for our Founding Issue. If you like what you see, please “phone a friend.” Download and forward tomorrow’s Book Club post to someone who loves books, justice, history, or thoughtful conversation. Recommend books, authors, articles, magazines, websites, newsletters, podcasts, films, or television shows. And if you have ideas on making the Club better, please share those with the rest of us. I want it to be the best it can be.

Movements don’t begin with thousands of people.

They begin with one conversation.

Hopefully, you’ll be part of ours.

See you tomorrow.

— Mark M. Bello

Over the past few days, I’ve written two “Supreme Court Potpourri” columns summarizing many of the Court’s most significant decisions. Looking back, however, I realized I missed one of the Term’s most important opinions—not because it lacked significance, but because I hadn’t yet seen the larger pattern.

That case involved Roundup weed killer and its link to Cancer. Many products over the years have been found to cause Cancer. And our justice system has, somewhat routinely, found ways to limit a victim’s access to justice and fair compensation without involving SCOTUS.

But this decision may prove to be one of the clearest examples of the constitutional philosophy that has increasingly come to define the current Roberts Court.

Let’s call this constitutional judicial philosophy The Constitution of “No.”

Every Supreme Court Term has had certain themes. This year, the theme isn’t simply executive power, immigration, transgender rights, or birthright citizenship.

It is something larger and far more dangerous to our democracy.

It is the steady transfer of power away from individuals, juries, state courts, and even the states themselves—and toward centralized governmental authority. Standing alone, each decision can be defended on its own terms. Taken together, they tell a very different story.

“No”

Consider a few of this Term’s decisions.

Immigrants seeking Temporary Protected Status?

“No.”

Asylum seeking?

“No.”

Transgender women seeking to compete in women’s athletics?

“No.”

Round up people living with Cancer seeking to present their cases to juries?

“No.”

Federal judges attempting to stop executive action nationwide?

“No.”

Meanwhile, the Executive Branch continues to receive broader discretion in immigration, greater deference from the courts, and an ever-expanding sphere of authority.

Each case has had its own legal reasoning. But constitutional history is written, not by one opinion at a time, but by cumulative effect.

The Transgender Athlete Case

This case presents one of the most difficult legal questions facing our country. I understand the concern. Some transgender women may retain physiological advantages. That is a legitimate subject for scientific inquiry and public debate.

But sports have never promised equal biology. They have always rewarded unequal biology. Elite athletes celebrate extraordinary natural gifts. Some are taller, or stronger, or possess remarkable speed, endurance, reflexes, coordination, and other physical characteristics the rest of us do not possess.

No one proposes excluding a basketball player because she is six-foot-eight, or bars a swimmer because she inherited an extraordinary wingspan, or disqualifies an athlete because she won the genetic lottery.

Every elite athlete benefits from biology. That’s how they become elite. And this raises a question I cannot escape:

If the law recognizes a transgender woman as a woman in virtually every other aspect of life, why should athletics become the one place where her prior biology forever determines her eligibility?

But SCOTUS sees it differently.

SCOTUS said “no.”

Birthright Citizenship

The birthright citizenship decision left me with a different concern.

The Fourteenth Amendment provides:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States...”

Those words have governed this nation for more than 150 years.

Yet, three justices urged a narrower understanding, relying on concepts such as “domicile” and “allegiance.”

The Fourteenth Amendment does not use these terms. It doesn’t require “domicile” or “allegiance.” Those words are not there.

This should have been a unanimous decision, which illustrates a larger concern. One-third of our current Justices were willing to ignore plain language and add their own because of their own particular worldview.

They wanted their colleagues to say “no” to birthright citizenship even though it is enshrined in the Constitution. Principles that once seemed absolute suddenly became remarkably flexible.

And that should scare the hell out of every one of you.

Roundup and the Vanishing Jury

The Roundup decision is the most overlooked opinion of the Term.

The Court did not decide whether Roundup causes Cancer or whether Bayer acted responsibly. Instead, it held that federal law preempts a significant category of state-law failure-to-warn claims because the EPA approved Roundup’s labeling.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, warned that the decision unjustifiably closes the courthouse doors to injured plaintiffs.

That language immediately caught my attention. I have spent much of my legal career defending the Seventh Amendment. For years, I’ve argued that the right to trial by jury is not disappearing because courts openly reject juries. It is disappearing because our government has eliminated lawsuits before juries have an opportunity to hear them.

The 7th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to a civil jury trial. But if there is no “valid” claim . . . there is no jury.

That is no small procedural change. It is a profound constitutional shift. In the Roundup case, the doors to the courthouse were slammed shut to thousands of victims.

SCOTUS said “no.”

Federalism—Until It Isn’t

For decades, conservatives have argued that important questions should be left to the states. We heard it repeatedly in debates over education, environmental regulation, public health, and, most famously, abortion. Yet in the Roundup case, federal law displaced state tort law. State judges, juries, and common law. gave way to a federal regulatory determination.

I cannot help but notice the tension. When does federalism matter? When does federal preemption suddenly become the preferred constitutional answer?

If we’re going to champion states’ rights as a constitutional principle, shouldn’t that principle apply consistently—even when state juries reach results some corporations find inconvenient? And does our government represent “we, the people” or ‘we, the lobbyists and the corporations?”

Executive Power

Finally, there is the Presidency. SCOTUS, this Term, apparently seeks an imperial president:

Presidential immunity.

Broad executive discretion in immigration.

Limits on nationwide injunctions.

Expanded deference to executive decision-making.

The Framers feared concentrated power. They had fought a revolution against a king and decided to divide authority among three branches of government. Checks and balances were not an accident. They were the Constitution’s central design.

Every time power shifts away from juries, away from the states, away from judicial review, and toward the Executive Branch, we should pause. And not just because a dangerous President occupies the Oval Office today, but because someone even worse may occupy it tomorrow.

A Constitution of “Yes”

What troubles me most is not the outcome of any single case. It is the constitutional instinct I see emerging.

As I reported yesterday, Justice Harry Blackmun’s constitutional vision was far different than Sam Alito’s. Blackmun’s was more expansive, while Alito’s is usually more restrictive (unless it runs contrary to his political ideology, as was the case in Trump v. Barbara).

Mine differs from both. Mine begins with a simple, yet very important question:

Does this interpretation make America a freer, fairer, more compassionate nation while remaining faithful to the Constitution’s text?

That question guides my views on the Seventh Amendment, immigration, civil rights, and equal justice under law. America’s greatness has never rested solely on military strength or economic power. It has rested on our willingness to expand liberty, broaden opportunity, and open courthouse doors rather than close them.

The genius of our Constitution is not that it trusted one institution. It trusted none of them. It dispersed power, empowered juries, respected the states, restrained the Executive, and protected individual rights.

Liberty rarely disappears all at once. It recedes one exception, one precedent, and one “no” at a time.

This is why this Supreme Court Term concerns me. Not because every decision was wrong. But because, taken together, they reveal a constitutional direction I do not recognize as the America that inspired my family to come here—or the America I hope my grandchildren will inherit.

A citizen needs to hear “yes” once in a while.