LAWdork: Ultimately, the “nationwide injunction” arguments were about the birthright citizenship order
Although justices might be skeptical of nationwide injunctions, the problems with Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order loomed larger at SCOTUS on Thursday.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court sought to address a question the justices have wrestled with at different times in different contexts in recent years: Frustrations with nationwide, or “universal” injunctions.
And yet, after more than two hours of arguments over the nationwide scope of injunctions blocking implementation and enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, the court seemed more aligned on the unconstitutionality of Trump’s order — and in agreement with all of the lower courts to consider the question — than on any solution about how to deal with nationwide injunctions.
“Let’s just assume you’re dead wrong“ about the order’s constitutionality, Justice Elena Kagan told Solicitor General John Sauer. “Does every single person that is affected by this EO have to bring their own suit? Are there alternatives? How long does it take?“
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First, the nationwide injunctions being challenged by the Trump administration here are the injunctions blocking something that the Supreme Court has previously said is unconstitutional.
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Second, the Trump administration doesn’t only argue that nationwide injunctions should be scaled back or limited. The reply brief filed by Sauer, who argued Trump’s immunity case for him last year before being nominated to be solicitor general, argued that such orders are not only unadvisable but, rather, that they are unconstitutional. … As the lawyers for the states and organization who have sued pushed back, there are multiple instances throughout American law that show that can’t be true.
(LAWdork more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – May 15, 2025
Perhaps in frustration, this season’s writers of the saga of American history are making their symbolism increasingly obvious.Today the story broke that a long-neglected document held by Harvard University Law School, believed to be a cheap copy of the Magna Carta, is in fact the real document. More than 700 years ago, the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, established the concept that kings must answer to the law.
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And yet the fundamental principles on which the government of the United States is based are under attack. In an interview that aired on Sunday, May 4, President Donald J. Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he “didn’t know” if persons in the United States had a right to due process. When Welker reminded him that the right to due process is written into the Fifth Amendment, he said: “I don’t know. It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Robert Reich: The Process That’s Due
Trump recently told an interviewer he didn’t know whether the Constitution required him to uphold due process rights of noncitizens. He also lamented the extraordinary burden of providing individual hearings for millions of immigrants marked for deportation.
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Miller has also raised the specter of suspending the right to habeas corpus — the age-old right to challenge being taken into custody in the first place.Federal judges have been pushing back — requiring that the regime accord due process to people facing deportation.
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Here are four things you should know:- The Constitution clearly guarantees “due process” to all “person[s].” The Constitution’s 5th Amendment says “no person shall … be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” The word “person” makes no distinction between citizens and noncitizens.
- The Supreme Court has long held that this promise extends to immigrants in deportation proceedings.
- Due process doesn’t always require a full trial, however.
- The right to habeas corpus is fundamental to our legal system.
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Allison Gill: In Defense of Judge Hannah Dugan
Judge Dugan has pled not guilty, and her team of lawyers has submitted a motion to dismiss the charges against her.
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Foreign Affairs: The Risk of War in the Taiwan Strait Is High—and Getting Higher
Beijing’s Worry About the Future Could Spur a Deadly Miscalculation Soon
Tensions in the Taiwan Strait are growing. Even before Taiwan elected William Lai as its president, in January 2024, China voiced strong opposition to him, calling him a “separatist” and an “instigator of war.” In recent months, Beijing has ramped up its broadsides: in mid-March, the spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office labeled Lai a “destroyer of cross-Straits peace” and accused him of pushing Taiwan toward “the perilous brink of war.” Two weeks later, as Beijing launched a large-scale military exercise around Taiwan, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) circulated cartoon images that portrayed Lai as an insect. One image depicted a pair of chopsticks picking the “parasite” Lai out of a burning Taiwan.
(Foreign Affairs more…)
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Steven Beschloss: He’ll Never Be Respected in the World
He can demand it. He can travel to the Middle East and pretend he’s getting it. But we can be sure that most will never give it to him.
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As Trump gloated among rich royals this week in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, I’ve been thinking about Obama’s famous entreaty for us to put aside childish things. Now we have this deeply corrupt man who refused to imagine why anyone would have a problem with him taking a shiny new $400 million jumbo jet from his Qatari pals.
There he was loving the flattery and the pomp delivered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. So what if he was implicated in the bone-saw murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi? “I like him a lot,” Trump said while gripping the hand of MBS. “I like him too much.”
(Steven Beschloss more…)Stephen Robinson: The bribe in the sky
The Qataris make Trump an offer he refuses to refuse.
Bulwark: I Called the Constitution Police and They Say You’re Going to Jail
…If the Qataris are giving him the plane in exchange for something, it’s a corrupt bribe—a transaction so unforgivable the Supreme Court took pains to note it was not included in the sweeping grant of presidential immunity it created last year. If, on the other hand, they’re giving him the plane in exchange for nothing, then it’s by definition a gift—which runs headlong into the brick wall of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which forbids U.S. officeholders from accepting gifts without the consent of Congress “of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
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A coalition of 27 Senate Democrats have already introduced a resolution condemning the transfer. But as Ryan Goodman of Just Security argued this week, that may be approaching the problem from the wrong end. Rather than register their disapproval, Goodman said, both houses of Congress should bring up a motion of consent for the plane—then vote it down.One Mile at a Time: Qatari Royal Family Selling Boeing 747-8 Private Jet
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Apple Insider: Trump is too busy for his own tariff negotiations, so will dictate terms instead
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Daily Beast: Veteran Air Traffic Controller Spills All on Trump-Era Safety Crisis
‘SACRIFICING A LOT’
Jonathan Stewart told The Wall Street Journal about a close call at Newark.
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Jonathan Stewart outlined in an on-the-record interview a recent close call at Newark-Liberty International Airport, and outlined the dangers of staffing shortages bedeviling the FAA.
(Daily Beast more…)
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Jay Kuo: Justice for Kseniia Petrova
Don’t let this case fly under the radar.
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Felony smuggling laws are intended to deter profiteers from deliberately carrying in endangered species, not to punish researchers who fail to declare frog embryo samples.
(Jay Kuo more…)
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Atlantic: The Mad Dual-Hatter
Trump’s reliance on the same group of officials to fill multiple jobs is dangerous.
Unemployment rates are near historical lows, and finding good help is hard. Perhaps that’s why Donald Trump keeps turning to the same group of officials to fill multiple positions.Todd Blanche is the deputy attorney general, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department—a big and important job. As of this week, he’s also the acting Librarian of Congress. Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, is also the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—though because he’s effectively frozen the bureau’s work, that may not be much of a lift. Kash Patel is the head of the FBI but also served as acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives until he was replaced by Daniel Driscoll, who happens to be the secretary of the Army as well.
Still, no one is working as hard as Marco Rubio, who now has four jobs. His main gig is serving as secretary of state, but in February he was appointed acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Days later, he also became the acting archivist of the United States. And earlier this month, after Trump sacked National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, he named Rubio to fill that role on an acting basis as well. (A State Department spokesperson has said he’s receiving only one salary.) The administration is also relying on acting officials—temporarily appointed but not Senate-confirmed—in other key roles, including FEMA’s head and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
(Atlantic more…)
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Fast Company: Texas is in an extreme drought—and oil companies are using billions of gallons of water
The Lower Rio Grande River is in a ‘near-permanent human-induced megadrought threatening all life that depends on it.’
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Daily: Trump Sent Elon Musk To Track Fraud At Social Security And Found Nothing
Elon Musk claimed that 40% of phone calls to Social Security were fraud, so he set up a system to track calls. Musk found no fraud, but he did delay Social Security processing.
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ProPublica: After Two SpaceX Explosions, U.K. Officials Ask FAA to Change Starship Flight Plans
Facing a significant increase in the number of SpaceX launches, British officials detailed their concerns about the safety of Turks and Caicos and other Caribbean territories after debris from an earlier failed launch littered beaches and roads.
(ProPublica more…)
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Al Jazeera: US judge dismisses case against migrants caught in new military zone
The magistrate ruled that apprehended migrants may not have been aware they were crossing into a military zone.
A United States judge in the southwestern state of New Mexico has dismissed trespassing charges against dozens of migrants apprehended in a military zone recently created under President Donald Trump.The military zone is one of two so far that the Trump administration has created along the US-Mexico border, in order to deter undocumented migration into the country.
(Al Jazeera more…)
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Politico: Medicaid cut protesters disrupt GOP megabill markup, 26 arrested
No sooner had the House Energy and Commerce Committee kicked off its markup of the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill” than protesters descended upon the proceedings. U.S. Capitol Police was forced to quickly arrest 26 people and remove several protesters in wheelchairs from the hearing room amid chants of “no cuts to Medicaid” and “waste, fraud and abuse my ass.”Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) repeatedly pounded his gavel and said that “disruption of Congressional business is a violation of law and is a criminal offense.”
(Politico more…)
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Special Edition: Free excerpt from my new book, “We All Want to Change the World: My Journey Through Social Justice Movements from the 1960s to Today”
(Kareem Abdul-Jabbar more…)
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Decoding Fox News: A Price Check on The Trump Admin
- As far as groceries are concerned there’s been a slight increase in prices across the board for nearly everything.
- So far the average national price of kilowatt-hour in the U.S. has increased.
- The last price from the Biden Administration was approx. $3.00 a gallon. The latest price on this chart dated 5/15/25 was $3.18.
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EEAGLI: Google still dominates despite ChatGPT
Five charts to start your day
(EEAGLI more…)
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Closer to the Edge: Comey’s coded clam crime: the ‘86 47’ apocalypse
James Comey went for a walk.He saw some seashells.
They spelled out two numbers:
86 47He took a picture.
He posted it to Instagram with the caption:
“Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
That’s it.
That was the whole crime.
(Closer to the Edge more…)AP: Trump administration officials say Secret Service is investigating Comey’s ’86 47′ social media post
Above the Law: James Comey Enjoys Long Walks On The Beach… So MAGA Gonna Send Him To El Salvador Prison Camp
Borowitz: Trump Establishes New Cabinet Department to Process Huge Volume of Bribes
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew