Supreme Court Restores Executive Authority; ‘a restoration of constitutional order’

A 6-3 decision definitively overturns the 90-year precedent of Humphrey’s Executor. In practical terms, the president has the constitutional right to fire employees in the executive branch. Ilya Shapiro: Humphrey’s Executor has been Slaughtered! Over the last 15 years, the Court has steadily chipped away at that 90-year-old case that blessed for-cause removal protections for the heads of so-called “independent” agencies. Trump v. Slaughter is the logical culmination of that line—a ruling that lets the president remove those officials because, after all, the Constitution vests all executive power in the president, including being able to decide who exercises power in his name. This decision isn’t a gift to President Trump or those who succeed him, but a restoration of constitutional order (Shapiro). SCOTUSblog: More broadly, Monday’s decision was a major victory for proponents of the “unitary executive” theory – the idea that the president should have complete control over the executive branch. Under this theory, the president should be able to fire any member of the executive branch, and laws – like the one that the court struck down – that restrict his ability to do so violate the separation of powers (SCOTUSblog). Hugh Hewitt: Thus endeth a tortuous day or so of Con Law lectures. There is one Executive Branch (Hewitt).

Supreme Court Allows Mississippi Law to Stand Allowing for Mail-in Ballots to Be Counted After Election Day

Justice Amy Coney Barrett penned the decision that was a disappointment to President Trump and conservatives. SCOTUSblog: Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett concluded that “the election-day statutes require the electorate’s choice to be made on election day. That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote—as it is in Mississippi. But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward.” Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Barrett’s opinion for the court. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito argued that “from this Nation’s founding until the last few decades of the 20th century—a period that spans the enactment of all three election-day statutes—having an ‘election’ on a particular day meant completing ballot collection on that day” (SCOTUSblog). President Trump: In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that “people’s” votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT (Truth).

Supreme Court Blocks Trump From Firing Fed Governor Lisa Cook

This decision, written by Chief Justice Roberts, limited Trump’s ability to intervene in the Federal Reserve. Ilya Shapiro explains: The Federal Reserve is an exception, however, because it’s never been considered an executive-branch agency and concerns about political interference in monetary policy go back to the Founding. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Gorsuch, is thus correct in his dissent in Trump v. Cook, that this “emergency” application for stay should’ve been granted or denied back in the fall, but instead we have an unsatisfying resolution that doesn’t resolve much and just sends the factual determination of whether Lisa Cook was properly fired “for cause” back where it should’ve been all along, in the district court (Shapiro). More from the Wall Street Journal: Roberts was explicit that something larger than Cook’s job was at stake. Allowing a president to fire governors at will would threaten the central bank’s ability to set policy free from political pressure, the core reason Congress made the Fed independent in the first place, he wrote. “Not only the fact of independence but also the appearance of independence is key to the Federal Reserve’s design,” Roberts wrote (Wall Street Journal).

Today: Look for Supreme Court to Release Remaining Decisions

Big decisions on birthright citizenship, transgender athlete bans and campaign financing. Beginning with birthright citizenship, from The Hill: President Trump’s banner immigration policy hangs in the balance. The Supreme Court is set to decide whether Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship can stand, or if they are unconstitutional…. Transgender athlete bans: The Supreme Court is preparing to say its piece on the national debate surrounding school sports and transgender athletes. In 2020, Idaho became the first of more than two dozen states to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls and women’s school sports…. Campaign finance: The Supreme Court will rule on a GOP-backed challenge to a campaign finance provision. At issue is how much money candidates can spend in coordination with their political party. Then-Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a former congressman filed suit arguing the provision violates the First Amendment (The Hill).

Leading Democratic Candidate for Senate Argued for Mass Release of Prison Population

Their preferred label for it is “decarceration.” The candidate is Abdul El-Sayed. He’s currently up the latest polling (Real Clear Politics). Free Beacon: Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D.), appearing alongside a convicted murderer and a registered sex offender in a webinar with a prison abolition group, endorsed “any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons” and said locking up criminals was akin to “robbing” them of their freedom. El-Sayed was the featured guest on a webinar hosted by the Carceral State Project and the American Friends Service Committee in August 2020 regarding their report “I Don’t Want to Die in Prison.” The American Friends Service Committee advertised the show—using the hashtags #FreeThemAll and #AbolishPrison—as a platform to “discuss the report findings and the road to decarceration and abolition with Abdul El-Sayed.” … “Not only are we taking people’s rights from them, but also we have failed to provide them the basic means of a dignified life,” said El-Sayed. “Every choice we make about incarcerating somebody is about robbing that somebody from the people who love them and the people who need them.” “Any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons and to keep people out of jails and prisons is policy that we need to be investing in,” El-Sayed, who is leading in most polls against his more moderate Democratic rivals Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow ahead of the August 4 Democratic Senate primary, went on (Free Beacon).

Colorado Primary Today: Democrats to Advance Another Marxist Radical?

The race to watch is the Centennial state’s 1^st Congressional district. The Democrat incumbent is Diana DeGette. The socialist/Marxist threat here comes from Melot Kiros. She is—true to pattern emerging—a vocal critic of Israel, using repeated accusations of genocide (Jejune). Axios: Kiros, a 29-year-old Democratic Socialists of America member backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), was born the same year that DeGette, 68, first took office. The Notre Dame law graduate made headlines after being fired by her law firm in 2023 for refusing to take down a Medium post defending pro-Palestinian advocacy and criticizing Israel. She has been backed by left-wing groups including DSA, Track AIPAC, the Colorado Working Families Party, Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement…. As with most of the marquee races in the 2026 midterms, this primary has attracted millions in outside spending, according to Federal Election Commission filings (Axios). Note: There’s very little polling, so it’s difficult to gauge who has the edge. But: Given what we’ve learned thus far in the election cycle, normal Democrats have plenty to be nervous about.

How Democrats Abandoned American Jewry

The antisemitic radicalism we see unleashed today has been brewing for decades. John Podhoretz traces the dominant threads over the past 40 years. He begins in 1984 with Jesse Jackson, complaining about “Hymies” in New York City. He highlights the ubiquitous “Orientalism” book by Edward Said. None of us should overlook the degree to which former President Jimmy Carter created an “earthquake” with his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” And then, of course, we have Barack Obama. Podhoretz: Upon arriving at the White House, Obama made it clear he was going to change America’s relationship with Israel. He said his approach would be one of tough love, though it was well-nigh impossible to see any love in it. The integrating thread today is our education system. More from Podhoretz: Studies of voting patterns by precinct in New York showed that the DSA surge last week came from two distinct groups. The first is educated white people. Older ones went to college in the Said-Crenshaw era; the younger ones, who might be their children, went in the BDS–George Floyd era. They are all products of an educational system that spoke ill of capitalism, spoke ill of America, certainly spoke ill of Israel. What reason would they have to challenge or question such views? And given the opportunity to express their displeasure with the status quo, what better use could they make of their vote than to pick someone to vote for who was not only awash in self-righteous principles but might also be part of an oppressed minority group? (Free Press).

Today’s Mamdani-Inspired Socialists Are Real Marxist Revolutionaries

Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Lavrenti Beria, Fidel Castro, Marx, Lenin, Stalin—these are the known heroes of, most immediately, Darializa Avila Chevalier who just secured the nomination in New York’s 13^th Congressional district. But Chevalier is representative of what we’re watching across the nation. Ed Morrissey: The DSA and its candidates aspire to remake America into the societies created by Stalin, Fidel, Che, the Kims, not the Norwegian and Swedish flirtations with socialism. That is the vision offered by Chevalier and the DSA, which increasingly controls the Democrat Party – not of beneficent communal policies but flat-oust communist totalitarianism. That is what their heroes championed, and that is what they wish to impose on the US. And you better believe that they will use their own Guevaras and Berias to sustain their grip on power if they succeed in winning elections. Matt Taibbi is not fooled at all about the DSA surge in the Democrat Party. He sees it for exactly what it is – nascent revolution in a literal sense: “What happened this week is being described in many places as a big win for populist or ‘anti-elite’ politics, but it’s the opposite. This was simultaneously a wipeout of Clintonian party hacks and Bernie’s staid F.D.R.-style big tent politics, in favor of a slickly marketed revolution with a young ethnic vibe…. If the Sanders campaign was a referendum on the presidency of Barack Obama, the Zohran/DSA revolution is a referendum on America itself, led by people who aren’t the least bit embarrassed to tell you they hate this place, to point of viewing our government as an extension of the Israeli state, whose people deserved 9/11” (Hot Air).  

Surprise: Hezbollah Angry Over Lebanon Peace Agreement With Israel

And that peace agreement’s commitment to disarm the terror group. Financial Times: Lebanon’s deal with Israel to end the conflict and disarm Hizbollah has sparked fierce backlash in the country, heightening fears of civil unrest as the Shia militant group and its allies condemned the agreement as “a humiliation” that would not be implemented. The country’s powerful speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, a key ally of the militant group, warned the deal risked deepening divides in Lebanon, where intra-communal tensions are simmering following more than two years of conflict with Israel. Berri, the country’s most senior Shia statesman, was quoted by Lebanon’s Al-Modon newspaper on Monday as saying the agreement “was designed to sow discord among the Lebanese” and said he supported the budding “political movement against it”. The agreement “will not stand. It will not be implemented”, Berri was quoted as saying in a separate interview with pro-Hizbollah newspaper Al-Akhbar…. Political leaders who oppose Hizbollah and Iran, including leaders of Christian political parties, praised the agreement. They echoed comments by Israeli officials who framed the deal as a blow to Iran and Hizbollah, claiming it would deny both actors a role in Lebanon. But criticism of the agreement extended beyond Hizbollah supporters to even its fiercest critics, with independent politicians and analysts raising concerns about its terms (Financial Times).

America 250: A Reminder From Lincoln on the God Who Judges Us All

As our nation approaches its 250^th anniversary, it’s no secret that we are deeply and bitterly divided. David Strom looks at a president who led the nation through another deeply divided period for our republic: Abraham Lincoln. Strom: I count Abraham Lincoln among our nation’s founders for a simple reason: he was the president who preserved the Union, of course, but more than that, he did so on the basis of reaffirming the very principles that were first outlined in the Declaration of Independence, pointing past the legal framework of the Constitution to the moral and ideological framework that made it possible…. Both the Civil War and the Revolution were ultimately fought over the American understanding of God’s plan for human beings and the fundamental autonomy and moral worth of each human being. America, Lincoln believed, was not just another country. If it were to truly be one nation, under God, we owed it to God to live by His light and plan for human flourishing. Lincoln’s point in his Second Inaugural Address was clear: Americans were paying a blood debt to God, and that debt was just, if terrible to bear: “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him.” Lincoln was not blaming the Southerners for the war or demonizing them, as both this passage and his final one make clear. All Americans owe to God a penance for our common sins, and when we expiate them, we will gain His blessings as promised (Hot Air).