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Alternet: One Trump enabler has done more damage than the rest of them combined | Opinion

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John Roberts came to the U.S. Supreme Court professing the best of intentions. In his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing, he promised to serve as chief justice in the fashion of a baseball umpire, calling only “balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” Two years later, in an interview with law professor Jeffrey Rosen, he mused that the court’s many acrimonious 5-to-4 decisions could lead to “a steady wasting away of the notion of the rule of law” and ultimately undermine the court’s perceived legitimacy as a nonpartisan institution.

Roberts said that as the court’s leader, he would stress a “team dynamic,” encouraging his colleagues to join narrow, unanimous decisions rather than sweeping split rulings.

“You do have to put [the Justices] in a situation where they will appreciate, from their own point of view, having the court acquire more legitimacy, credibility, that they will benefit from the shared commitment to unanimity in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise,” he reasoned.

Today, that reasoning is on the cutting-room floor. Although the court’s conservatives today outnumber its liberals by a 6-to-3 margin, the tribunal remains fractured and is widely regarded as just another political branch of government. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in mid-June, neither Republicans nor Democrats see the nation’s top judicial body as neutral. Just 20% of respondents to the poll agreed that the Supreme Court is unbiased while 58% disagreed.

Instead of healing divisions on the bench, Roberts and his Republican confederates old and new, including three justices nominated by Donald Trump, have issued a blistering succession of polarizing and reactionary majority opinions on voting rights, gerrymandering, union organizing, the death penalty, environmental protection, gun control, abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance, the use of dark money in politics, equality for LGBTQ+ people, and perhaps most disastrous of all, presidential immunity.

The court’s reputation has also been tainted by a series of ethics scandals involving its two most right-wing members, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, over the receipt of unreported gifts from Republican megadonors. Alito came under added fire for flying an American flag upside down (sometimes used as a symbol of distress at mostly left-wing protests) outside his Virginia home just a few months after the insurrection on January 6, 2021.

The court’s lurch to the far-right accelerated in the recently concluded 2024-2025 term, driven in large part by the immunity ruling — Trump v. United States, penned by Roberts himself — and the authoritarian power grab that it has unleashed. The decision effectively killed special counsel Jack Smith’s election-subversion case against Trump. It also altered the landscape of constitutional law and the separation of powers, endowing presidents with absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken pursuant to their enumerated constitutional powers, such as pardoning federal offenses and removing executive officers from their departments; and presumptive immunity for all other “official acts” undertaken within the “outer perimeter” of their official duties.

Seemingly emboldened by the ruling, Trump has made good on his boast to be a “dictator on day one” of his second stint in the White House, releasing a torrent of executive orders and proclamations aimed at dismantling federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs; eviscerating environmental regulations; imposing sanctions on liberal law firms and elite universities; creating the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); authorizing mass deportations; and ending birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, among dozens of other edicts.

Trump’s executive orders have generated a myriad of legal challenges, some of which reached the Supreme Court this past term as emergency, or “shadow docket,” appeals. The challenges placed Roberts and his conservative benchmates in the uncomfortable but entirely predictable position of balancing the judiciary’s independence as a co-equal branch of government with their fundamental ideological support of Trump’s policy agenda. By the term’s end, it was clear that ideology had won the day.

One of the first signs that Trump 2.0 would cause renewed headaches for the court occurred at the outset of the president’s March 4, 2025, address to a joint session of Congress. As he made his way to the podium, Trump shook hands with retired Justice Anthony Kennedy and with Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Elena Kagan. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary until he approached Chief Justice Roberts, whose hand he took, and with a pat on the shoulder could be heard saying, “Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget.”

Donald Trump greets John Roberts at the U.S. Capitol. Win McNamee/Pool via REUTERS

Whether Trump was thanking Roberts for his immunity ruling was ambiguous, but on March 18, Roberts was compelled to issue a rare public rebuke of the president after Trump called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for issuing two temporary restraining orders (TROs) that halted the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said in a statement released by the court.

The rebuke, however, came too late to stop the removal of two planeloads of Venezuelans to El Salvador in apparent defiance of Boasberg’s TROs, sparking concerns that Trump might ultimately defy the high court as well, and trigger a full-scale constitutional crisis.

The deportation controversy, along with several others, quickly came before the Supreme Court. On April 7, by a 5-to-4 vote with Justice Barrett in dissent, the majority granted the administration’s request to lift Boasberg’s TROs and remove the cases for further proceedings to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, where the named plaintiffs and other potential class members in the litigation (who had not yet been deported) were being detained under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). The court’s four-page per curiam order (Trump v. J.G.G.) was unsigned, and, in a small defeat for the administration, also instructed that the detainees had the right to receive advance “notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal” by means of habeas corpus petitions.

In a related unsigned eight-page ruling (A.A.R.P. v. Trump) issued on May 16, this time by a 7-to-2 vote with Justices Thomas and Alito in dissent, the court blocked the administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members held in northern Texas under the AEA, but also held that the detainees could be deported “under other lawful authorities.”

In another unsigned immigration decision released on April 10 (Noem v. Abrego Garcia), the court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, a resident of Maryland married to a U.S. citizen who had been sent to his native El Salvador because of an “administrative error.” Ábrego García was brought back to the United States in early June, and was indicted on charges of smuggling migrants and conspiracy.

The court waited until June 23 to release its most draconian immigration decision of the term (DHS v. D.V.D.), holding 6 to 3 that noncitizens under final orders of removal can be deported to third-party countries, even ones with records of severe human-rights violations. And on June 27, in a highly technical but very important procedural ruling (Trump v. CASA) on Trump’s birthright citizenship order, the court held 6 to 3 that district court judges generally lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions. Although the decision did not address the constitutionality of the executive order or the substantive scope of the 14th Amendment’s provision extending citizenship to virtually all persons born in the country, it sent three legal challenges to the order back to three district court judges who had blocked the order from taking effect. The litigation continues.

The immigration cases were decided on the court’s “shadow docket,” a term of art coined by University of Chicago professor William Baude in a 2015 law review article. It describes emergency appeals that come before the court outside of its standard “merits” docket that are typically resolved rapidly, without complete briefing, detailed opinions, or, except in the CASA case, oral arguments.

The Supreme Court has a long history of entertaining emergency appeals—such as last-minute requests for stays of execution in death penalty cases—but emergency requests in high-profile cases proliferated during Trump’s first presidency. According to Georgetown University law professor and shadow-docket scholar Steve Vladeck, the first Trump Administration sought emergency relief 41 times, with the Supreme Court granting relief in 28 of those cases. By comparison, the George W. Bush and Obama administrations filed a combined total of eight emergency relief requests over a16-year period while the Biden administration filed 19 applications across four years.

Fueled by Trump’s authoritarian overreach, the court’s shadow docket exploded to more than 100 cases in 2024-2025 while the merits docket shrank to 56. Not surprisingly, the upsurge has generated significant pushback, with a variety of critics contending the shadow docket diminishes the court’s already limited transparency, and yields hastily written and poorly reasoned decisions that are often used by the conservative wing of the bench to expand presidential power, essentially adopting the “unitary executive” theory as a basic principle of constitutional law. Popularized in the 1980s, the unitary theory posits that all executive power is concentrated in the person of the president, and that the president should be free to act with minimal congressional and judicial oversight.

Although shadow-docket rulings are preliminary in nature, they sometimes have the same practical effect as final decisions on the merits. For example, on May 22, in an unsigned two-page decision (Trump v. Wilcox), the Supreme Court stayed two separate judgments issued by two different U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia judges that had blocked the Trump administration from firing members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) without cause. The decision remanded the cases back to the D.C. Circuit and the district courts, but even as the board members continue to litigate their unlawful discharge claims, they remain out of work.

Shadow-docket rulings also have an impact on Supreme Court precedents, often foreshadowing how the court will ultimately rule on the merits of important issues. The Wilcox decision called into question the precedential effect of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, decided in 1935, which held that Congress has the constitutional power to enact laws limiting a president’s authority to fire executive officers of independent agencies like the NLRB, which oversees private-sector collective bargaining, and the MSPB, which adjudicates federal employee adverse-action claims.

The three appointed to the court by Democrats dissented. Writing for herself and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Kagan accused the Republican-appointed majority of political bias and acting in bad faith. “For 90 years,” she charged, “Humphrey’s Executor v. United States… has stood as a precedent of this court. And not just any precedent. Humphrey’s undergirds a significant feature of American governance: bipartisan administrative bodies carrying out expertise-based functions with a measure of independence from presidential control.”

Quoting Alexander Hamilton, she added, “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents.” She castigated the majority for recklessly rushing to judgment, writing, “Our emergency docket, while fit for some things, should not be used to overrule or revise existing law.”

The court also issued other pro-Trump emergency shadow-docket rulings in the 2024-2025 term, permitting the administration to bar transgender people from serving in the military and to withhold $65 million in teacher training grants to states that include DEI initiatives in their operations and curriculums. The court similarly used shadow-docket rulings to endorse DOGE’s access to Social Security Administration records and to insulate DOGE from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Yet despite the court’s deference, Trump complained about his treatment at critical junctures throughout the term. After the shadow-docket ruling blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act in May, he took to Truth Social, his social media platform, writing in all caps, “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” It also has been widely reported that Trump has raged in private against his own appointees—especially Justice Barrett—for not being sufficiently supportive of his executive orders and initiatives, and his personal interests.

Meanwhile, back on the merits docket, with Roberts at the helm and with Barrett and the conservatives united, the court has continued to tack mostly to the right, giving Trump nearly everything he wants. On June 18, Roberts delivered a resounding victory to the Make America Great Again movement with a 6-to-3 opinion (United States v. Skrmetti) that upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender transition medical care for minors. The decision will have wide-ranging implications for 26 other states that have enacted similar bans. Echoing the sentiments of many liberal legal commentators, Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern described the ruling as “an incoherent mess of contradiction and casuistry, a travesty of legal writing that injects immense, gratuitous confusion into the law of equal protection.”

Joe Biden delivers remarks on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

In other high-stakes merits cases, the court, by a vote of 6 to 3, approved South Carolina’s plan to remove Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program because of the group’s status as an abortion provider; and held 6 to 3 that parents have a religious right to withdraw their children from instruction on days that “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks are read.

Progressives searching for a thin ray of hope for the future might take some solace in the spirited performance of Justice Jackson, the panel’s most junior member, who has become a dominant force in oral arguments, and a consistent voice in support of social justice. Dissenting from a 7-to-2 decision (Diamond Alternative Energy LLC v. Environmental Protection Agency) that weakened the Clean Air Act, she ripped the majority for giving “fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens.”

Eras of Supreme Court history are generally defined by the accomplishments of the court’s chief justices. The court of John Marshall, the longest-serving chief justice who held office from 1801 to 1835, is remembered for establishing the principle of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison. The Court of Earl Warren, whose tenure stretched from 1953 to 1969, is remembered for expanding constitutional rights and the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

The Roberts Court will be remembered for reversing many of the Warren era’s advances. But unless it suddenly changes course, it will also be remembered as the court that surrendered its independence and neutrality to an authoritarian president.

One Trump enabler has done more damage than the rest of them combined | Opinion

https://www.alternet.org/trump-enabler

Harpar’s Bazaar: What Should Artists Do When Alligator Alcatraz Moves Next Door?

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The Florida Everglades are home to a diverse community of artists. The Trump administration targeted this area to build a controversial ICE detention center, and residents are fighting back.

On June 14, Dakota Osceola was wrapping up the day, selling her bead art and necklaces at a festival in Miami, when she heard the news from a friend.

A new immigrant detention facility, to be named Alligator Alcatraz, would be built on a 10,500-foot-long old airport strip inside the Big Cypress National Preserve in the Florida Everglades.

“How is this happening right now?” she thought.

Home of the indigenous Miccosukee and Seminole people, the Everglades are the largest wetland ecosystem in the United States and the land where Osceola’s family grew up. This territory is considered a sacred place to tribe members and a national wildlife treasure to Floridians. But in less than 10 days, a portion of the Everglades was seized by the state and paved over to make room for a new prison built to hold up to 3,000 immigrants, a move supported by the Trump administration as a means to detain undocumented people.

On June 28, in the scorching heat, Osceola decided to go voice her opposition to this detention camp. Grassroots organizations such as Friends of the Everglades and Unidos Immokalee voiced environmental and human-rights concerns. Alongside independent activists, artists from the South Florida community joined with their protest art and signs to defend the home that has inspired them and that they love.

Outside the gates of the detention facility, and in the center of the Everglades, hundreds of Floridians gathered, chanting and holding up signs. Miccosukee tribal elder and environmental activist Betty Osceola, with Love the Everglades Movement, used her megaphone to address the crowd and keep people safe. Demonstrators lined up on the narrow road, north of the Tamiami Trail, as dozens of trucks with machinery entered the old Dade-Collier Airport, where the facility was being built. In the weeks since, different organizations have continued to arrange protests and gatherings weekly in front of these gates. There have been peaceful prayer vigils with no signs allowed, a protest asking to shut down the Everglades concentration camp, and family members of detainees gathered along with grassroots human-rights organizations, and a Catholic archbishop is waiting to see if he can hold a mass at the gates.

Outside the gates of the detention facility, and in the center of the Everglades, hundreds of Floridians gathered, chanting and holding up signs. Miccosukee tribal elder and environmental activist Betty Osceola, with Love the Everglades Movement, used her megaphone to address the crowd and keep people safe. Demonstrators lined up on the narrow road, north of the Tamiami Trail, as dozens of trucks with machinery entered the old Dade-Collier Airport, where the facility was being built. In the weeks since, different organizations have continued to arrange protests and gatherings weekly in front of these gates. There have been peaceful prayer vigils with no signs allowed, a protest asking to shut down the Everglades concentration camp, and family members of detainees gathered along with grassroots human-rights organizations, and a Catholic archbishop is waiting to see if he can hold a mass at the gates.

A member of the Seminole tribe, Osceola was aware of how hard the tribes fought in the 1970s to stop the construction of the old airport due to the environmental damage it would cause to the fragile ecosystem of the Glades. That battle was won when the construction came to a halt due to growing opposition from environmentalist groups. But now, into that abandoned air strip, the construction trucks started coming in, creating more and more traffic inside the Big Cypress National Preserve. Then, a sign with the words “Alligator Alcatraz” went up overnight, sparking sinister national jokes, memes, and merch about the alligators eating anyone who tries to escape this jail.

Protesters had different reasons to voice their opposition to the detention center: It would harm a fragile ecosystem and is not environmentally sound; it is an inappropriate use of FEMA funds; conditions there are inhumane. When Florida lawmakers visited the facility on a limited tour, they described 32 people per cage in the sweltering heat, exposed to bug infestations and fed meager meals, with prisoners crying for help and even one person pleading, “I’m a U.S. citizen!”

An important point ignored in national coverage is that the construction involves a seizure by the state of Miami-Dade-owned land under the guise of an emergency. The Miccosukee tribe joined other environmental groups, such as Love the Everglades, in suing federal and state agencies for failing to conduct an environmental review, as required by federal law, before initiating the project. Meanwhile, the ACLU is suing the Trump administration because of a lack of access to counsel at the detention center.

“I see my relatives, my family, in those cages. They came here undocumented, overstayed their visas, and eventually became citizens,” says Aubrey Brown, a Florida-based storyteller and artist who contributed to the protest sign art. Brown, who shares stories about Florida’s history with her 40,000 followers on social media, couldn’t stay silent and decided to speak up against the detention center, risking backlash. “I’ve always tried to stress that history and politics are inextricably intertwined,” she adds. Challenging the false narrative used by the president to make others believe there is nothing but fierce alligators and swamps in the Everglades, Brown argues, “People must understand that the Everglades is not a wasteland; this is people’s home. The Glades are wild, sacred, and free. It’s where the Seminoles went to hide from being captured, and it is where I go when I want to get away from everything.”

Acting as if no people exist in the Everglades, the federal government decided to seize land belonging to Miami-Dade County, completely ignoring the sovereignty of tribal nations at Big Cypress and that both their ceremonial and ancestral burial grounds stand near the facility.

“When it comes to my Seminole and Miccosukee friends, people treat them like they are not here anymore and are a relic of history,” Brown adds.

Once considered a swing state, Florida is now ground zero for the MAGA base supporting cruel anti-immigration policies. Built undercover, this facility was estimated to cost taxpayers $450 million a year. However, according to a review of purchases, the state has already spent $250 million on it in less than one month.

President Trump said that the facility would cage “some of the most vicious people on the planet” to be deported. Yet, a report released by the Miami Herald debunked this narrative, showing that hundreds of the detainees have no criminal charges.

Kidnapped without a warrant, stripped of their civil rights, and placed into a black hole where attorneys cannot reach their clients, only a third of detainees have a criminal conviction. But the public cannot see the nature of the sentence they received. ICE has so far offered the press only top-level statistics, which do not show whether a sentence is for a traffic violation or a murder attempt. Not only do the reports withhold details about the alleged offenses of each detainee, but ICE has not made public the records specifying how it targets the people it takes to detention centers, especially those without criminal charges. In response, The Guardian has decided to sue the Trump administration for withholding public documents from the press, which are a matter of clear public interest right now.

Maria Theresa Barbist, a Miami-based artist and psychologist who explores trauma, memory, and collective healing in her works, attended and made signs for the protest. “I am from Austria, and we have a dark history there. We have done this before. We have put people in concentration camps, and we know how this story ends. It’s our responsibility as descendants of Nazis never to let that happen again,” she says.

“The Nazis did not start with Auschwitz; they started with driving people out of their homes and putting them into camps. It was not just Jewish people, it was immigrants too,” she adds.

“This is not the first concentration camp being placed; they are just getting warmed up. Project 2025 is going to extend for at least the next four years,” says Eddie Aroyo, an artist who explores themes of power structures and attended the protest. “This is about absolute conquest,” he adds, referring to a conservative white nationalist agenda that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity.

Democratic Florida representative Maxwell Frost visited the detention center on July 13 and shared on social media, “I didn’t see any Europeans who overstayed their visa. I saw nothing but Latino men and Haitian men. They are targeting specific types of people. And it’s the type of people that look like me.”

A few miles away from the detention camp, artist and native Floridian Sterling Rook, who attended the protest, is currently completing an artist residency in the Everglades National Park. Hosted by AIRIE (Artists in Residence in Everglades), this program allows artists to explore work related to the environment. The first day he entered the residency was also the day the first buses carrying migrants arrived in the Everglades. “It’s beautiful out here, but now I think about this every day, how 30 miles away from here there are people in tents in a terrible situation,” he says. “I’m not necessarily a political artist, but you become political just by the nature of your situation,” he adds. Rook used his residency time to work on a Glades skiff boat, which is known for navigating the marshy waters of the Everglades.

“As a performance, I would love to ride it out into ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ maybe leave it there as a symbol of rescue and escape. But I also struggle with self-censorship,” he says.

This self-censorship comes from a place of very real fear about political persecution of artists who speak up. “There are genuine and considerable threats when speaking out against any of these violent governmental policies, especially in Florida,” says Johann C. Muñoz-Tapasco, an artist and organizer affiliated with the local collective Artists for Artists Miami (A4A: MIA). “Numerous artists have chosen to disengage from sought-after exhibition platforms and institutions altogether. Others have lost their jobs and clients. Many more have self-censored as a form of self-preservation.”

Federal and state funding cuts to the arts, combined with the elimination of National Endowment for the Arts grants and Florida’s political climate, have led many artists, organizations, and institutions that depend on this funding to limit freedom of expression, fearing retaliation or even more economic cuts. AIRIE did not respond to my request for a statement on its stance on this issue. The majority of Florida’s art institutions and organizations have remained silent.

A4A: MIA is currently discussing collaborative projects and planning actions against this detention facility, but it recognizes that American artists have been woefully unprepared to respond to the rise of fascism. “Since the postwar era, the ways artists validate their work and fund their practices have been tied to the tastes and whims of those in power,” misael soto, a Miami-based artist, educator, and organizer affiliated with this organization, stated. “Now those at the top whom we’ve been dependent on, on whichever side of the political spectrum, are mostly kneeling to fascism. Artists have to come to terms with how they sustain their practices and how this is intrinsically tied to their art.”

Mae’anna Osceola-Hart, a photographer and member of the Panther Clan and the Seminole tribe, participated in organizing the protest and lives within walking distance of the detention camp. Her grandfather was one of the tribe members who fought the development of the Dade-Collier Airport. These days, the traffic on the Big Cypress reserve is becoming increasingly dangerous, and she describes seeing the wildlife already being displaced. “The deer and bears now walk on the side of the road,” she says.

“My heart sinks, seeing how this concentration camp is affecting the land that protected us indigenous people since time immemorial, the environmental impacts it’s already causing, along with how it’s already harming human beings and their rights. Just yesterday, I saw three cars coming in with people wanting to take a photo in front of the [Alligator Alcatraz] sign, treating it like a roadside attraction,” she says.

“It feels like a fever dream.”

What Should Artists Do When Alligator Alcatraz Moves Next Door?
The Florida Everglades are home to a diverse community of artists. The Trump administration targeted this area to build a controversial ICE detention center, and residents are fighting back.

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a65488687/artists-fight-alligator-alcatraz

USA Today: Thanks, Supreme Court! It’s now my right to prevent my kid from learning about Trump.

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Any attempt to teach my children that Trump exists and is president might suggest such behavior is acceptable, and that would infringe on my right to raise my child under the moral tenets of my faith.

I have a deeply held religious conviction that, by divine precept, lying, bullying and paying $130,000 in hush money to an adult film star are all immoral acts.

So it is with great thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court and its recent ruling allowing Maryland parents to opt their children out of any lessons that involve LGBTQ+ material that I announce the following: Attempts to teach my children anything about Donald Trump, including the unfortunate fact that he is president of the United States, place an unconstitutional burden on my First Amendment right to freely exercise my religion.

In its June 27 ruling, the high court cited Wisconsin v. Yoder and noted, “The Court recognized that parents have a right ‘to direct the religious upbringing of their children’ and that this right can be infringed by laws that pose ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that parents wish to instill in their children.”

Well, I wish to instill in my children the belief that suggesting some Americans are “radical left thugs that live like vermin” and describing a female vice president of the United States as “mentally impaired” and “a weak and foolish woman” are bad things unworthy of anyone, much less a commander in chief.

So any attempt to teach my children that Trump exists and is president might suggest such behavior is acceptable, and that would infringe on my right to raise my children under the moral tenets of my faith. (My faith, in this case, has a relatively simple core belief that being a complete jerk virtually all the time is bad.)

Alito clearly doesn’t want schools teaching kids that Trump exists

As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion regarding the use of LGBTQ+ books in schools, some “Americans wish to present a different moral message to their children. And their ability to present that message is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.”

Exactly. I wish to present a moral message to my children that when a man is found liable for sexual abuse and has been heard saying things like “I moved on her like a bitch” and “she’s now got the big phony tits and everything” and “Grab ’em by the pussy,” that man is deemed loathsome by civil society and not voted into the office of the presidency.

That wish is undermined by any book or teacher exposing my student to the fact that Trump is president.

Supreme Court is protecting children from the tyranny of love

Alito cited several books that were at issue in Maryland schools, including one called “Love Violet,” which “follows a young girl named Violet who has a crush on her female classmate, Mira. Mira makes Violet’s ‘heart skip’ and ‘thunde[r] like a hundred galloping horses.’ Although Violet is initially too afraid to interact with Mira, the two end up exchanging gifts on Valentine’s Day. Afterwards, the two girls are seen holding hands and ‘galloping over snowy drifts to see what they might find. Together.’”

While my religion would define such a story as “sweet” and “loving,” Alito and his fellow conservatives on the Supreme Court find it “hostile” to parents’ religious beliefs.

As Alito wrote, “Like many books targeted at young children, the books are unmistakably normative. They are clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.”

OK. By that same logic, any class discussion or history lesson involving Trump and his status as president has the potential to teach my children that it’s normal to have a president who lies incessantly, demeans transgender people and routinely demonizes migrants.

Any in-class acknowledgement of Trump as president would, in Alito’s words, be “clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.”

I will now object to any book or classroom mention of Donald Trump

I simply will not stand idly by while a taxpayer-funded school indoctrinates my children into believing a fundamentally dishonest and unkind person like Trump has the moral character to be president of the United States. My faith has led me to teach them otherwise, and any suggestion that Trump’s behavior is acceptable would undermine that faith.

Elly Brinkley, a staff attorney for U.S. Free Expression Programs at the free-speech advocacy group PEN America, said in a statement following the Supreme Court ruling in the Maryland case: “The decision will allow any parents to object to any subject, with the potential to sow chaos in schools, and impact students, parents, educators, authors, and publishers.”

Amen to that. I object to the subject of Donald Trump. Let the chaos ensue.

Thanks, Supreme Court! It’s now my right to prevent my kid from learning about Trump. | Opinion
Attempts to teach my children anything about Donald Trump place an unconstitutional burden on my First Amendment right to freely exercise my religion.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/06/29/trump-supreme-court-ruling-books-maryland-parents/84380649007

The 19th News: Thousands of LGBTQ+ veterans were supposed to get pardons. A year later, only four have succeeded.

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President Biden pledged to use his clemency powers to right ‘an historic wrong.’ Why did it fall so short of its promise?

The email came while James Harter was on vacation with his husband in Quebec City, Canada. He was checking his computer in their RV when he read the no-nonsense subject line: Certificate of Pardon.

He had no idea just how uncommon that email was ….

Fast forward one year:

Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have been erased under the new administration’s zeal to refocus the military on lethality. Thousands of transgender service members are being discharged and banned from serving. And the Pentagon is considering renaming ships, including the USNS Harvey Milk, named for the slain gay rights activist and veteran who was discharged over his sexuality, among other ships that don’t fit a “warrior” ethos. 

While The War Horse had previously reported on the low number of pardon applications for LGBTQ+ veterans, records disclosed last month by the Office of the U.S. Pardon Attorney are the first to reveal just how few have been granted: two from the Navy, one from the Air Force, and one from the Army.

What a difference a year makes, when bigots like Hegseth & Trump are now running the show.

Thousands of LGBTQ+ veterans were supposed to get pardons. A year later, only four have succeeded.
Thousands of veterans separated from the military due their sexuality qualified for pardons under Biden, only four got one.
Leah Rosenbaum, The War Horse Archives
The 19th is an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting at the intersection of gender, politics and policy.

https://19thnews.org/author/leah-rosenbaum-the-war-horse

Alternet: This obscure Supreme Court decision could impact Trump’s agenda — and restore faith in the court

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But there is one recent decision where the court was unanimous in its ruling, perhaps because its holding should not be controversial: National Rifle Association v. Vullo. In that 2024 case, the court said that it’s a clear violation of the First Amendment’s free speech provisions for government to force people to speak and act in ways that are aligned with its policies.

The second Trump administration has tried to wield executive branch power in ways that appear to punish or suppress speech and opposition to administration policy priorities. Many of those attempts have been legally challenged and will likely make their way to the Supreme Court.

The somewhat under-the-radar – yet incredibly important – decision in National Rifle Association v. Vullo is likely to figure prominently in Supreme Court rulings in a slew of those cases in the coming months and years, including those involving law firms, universities and the Public Broadcasting Service.

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In May 2024, in an opinion written by reliably liberal Sonia Sotomayor, a unanimous court ruled that the efforts of New York state government officials to punish companies doing business with the NRA constituted clear violations of the First Amendment.

Following its own precedent from the 1960s, Bantam Books v. Sullivan, the court found that government officials “cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”

This obscure Supreme Court decision could impact Trump’s agenda — and restore faith in the court

https://www.alternet.org/trump-supreme-court-2672423710

Miami Herald: ‘Have We No Shame’: Judge’s Swift Ruling Defies Trump

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A federal judge in Boston declared that President Donald Trump’s termination of NIH research grants was unlawful. He described the action as “arbitrary and capricious.” Judge William Young’s ruling alleges potential racial bias and condemns the administration’s approach to diversity matters.

Young urged government officials to clarify the meaning of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) during a hearing. He raised concerns over canceled grants targeting health disparities and noted a troubling pattern of discrimination against racial minorities and the LGBTQ community.

Young said, “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.” Young added, “Have we no shame.” He added, “This represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”

‘Have We No Shame’: Judge’s Swift Ruling Defies Trump
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/have-we-no-shame-judge-s-swift-ruling-defies-trump/ss-AA1HcuZk

Washington Post: As Trump shuts out migrants, Spain opens its doors and fuels economic growth

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As the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants and asylum seekers brings tear gas, protests and raids to the streets of the United States, Spain is positioning itself as a counterpoint: a new land of opportunity.

In this nation of 48 million with long colonial links to the New World, an influx of predominantly Latin American immigrants is helping fuel one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe. The Spanish economic transformation is unfolding as the center-left government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has streamlined immigration rules while offering legal status to roughly 700,000 irregular migrants since 2021.

A landmark bill now being negotiated in the Congress of Deputies could grant legal amnesty to hundreds of thousands more — most of them Spanish-speakers from predominantly Catholic countries in Latin America. Those newcomers often enjoy visa-free travel to Spain, even as Madrid controversially works with Morocco, Mauritania and other countries to block irregular arrivals from the African coast, though Sánchez has also called for tolerance toward migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Africa.

Spain’s approach is attracting at least some migrants rejected or barred from the United States, including Venezuelans who are now subject to President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

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Yet the legislative amnesty push came not from a government plan but a grassroots effort backed by civil actors including small-town mayors, companies, migrant advocates and the Catholic church. Spain also has a history of normalizing irregular migrants who can prove steady work, with the last large-scale amnesty under the center-left government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2005.

Should Sánchez survive the corruption crisis — and Spain’s economy continue to thrive — his policies could set up this nation as the antithesis of Trump’s America: a migrant-friendly progressive paradise.

As Trump shuts out migrants, Spain opens its doors and fuels economic growth
Defying the anti-immigrant trend in the U.S., Spain is reaping economic benefits by granting citizenship to tens of thousands of newly-arrived workers.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/as-trump-shuts-out-migrants-spain-opens-its-doors-and-fuels-economic-growth/ar-AA1H5Kjo

AFP: Balloons, bubbles, tear gas: LA anti-Trump protests turn chaotic

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For hours, thousands of people in Los Angeles peacefully celebrated their defiance of US President Donald Trump Saturday with music, marching, bubbles and balloons — then police unexpectedly moved in, and chaos and confusion broke out.

The demonstration — part of the nationwide “No Kings” day of protests across the country — was by far the largest in more than a week of protests ignited by anger against immigration raids the Trump administration has been carrying out across the country’s second-largest city. 

Like those before it, Saturday’s had been largely peaceful. A march that began in the morning had finished, with demonstrators milling about on a sunny afternoon as the scene took on the air of a street festival. 

But then:

Then police unexpectedly began moving people away from the area, igniting confusion and anger among demonstrators caught off guard and unsure of where to go.

Police on horseback pushed crowds back as law enforcement fired tear gas and flash-bang grenades hours ahead of an 8:00 pm (0300 GMT) curfew. 

A police spokeswoman later told local TV channel KTLA that a “small group of agitators” had begun throwing rocks, bottles and fireworks at officers, prompting the decision to order the crowd to disperse.

Balloons, bubbles, tear gas: LA anti-Trump protests turn chaotic

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/balloons-bubbles-tear-gas-la-anti-trump-protests-turn-chaotic/ar-AA1GJd8h

Axios: Judge orders Trump admin. to restore hundreds of terminated NIH grants

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A federal judge Monday ordered the National Institutes of Health to restore grants that the agency cut based on gender ideology or diversity, equity and inclusion, calling the move illegal.

District of Massachusetts Judge William Young told the attorneys that the case raises serious concerns about racial discrimination on the basis of health and said some evidence points to potential discrimination against women’s health.

“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” Young said Monday afternoon. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.”

Judge orders Trump admin. to restore hundreds of terminated NIH grants
“I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” the judge said.

https://www.axios.com/local/boston/2025/06/16/nih-grants-ordered-restored

Associated Press: Judge rules some NIH grant cuts illegal, saying he’s never seen such discrimination in 40 years

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A federal judge ruled Monday it was illegal for the Trump administration to cancel several hundred research grants, adding that the cuts raise serious questions about racial discrimination.

U.S. District Judge William Young in Massachusetts said the administration’s process was “arbitrary and capricious” and that it did not follow long-held government rules and standards when it abruptly canceled grants deemed to focus on gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion.

In a hearing Monday on two cases calling for the grants to be restored, the judge pushed government lawyers to offer a formal definition of DEI, questioning how grants could be canceled for that reason when some were designed to study health disparities as Congress had directed.

Young, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, went on to address what he called “a darker aspect” to the cases, calling it “palpably clear” that what was behind the government actions was “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”

After 40 years on the bench, “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young added. He ended Monday’s hearing saying, “Have we no shame.”

Judge rules some NIH grant cuts illegal, saying he’s never seen such discrimination in 40 years
A federal judge says it was illegal for the Trump administration to cancel several hundred research grants issued by the National Institutes of Health.

https://apnews.com/article/nih-research-trump-cuts-dei-rfk-4fec9f308f3ff427185a12e88f260c81