Six Supremes Put Elections up for Bid

They put their thumb on the scale for the 2026 election

By Gerald E. Scorse

Statistics suggest that our current Supreme Court justices have some of the highest IQs in America. It seems fair to conclude, then, that six of them knew exactly what they were doing when they effectively put for-sale signs on the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government—on the presidency, on the Senate, on the House of Representatives.

The deciding six were Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas. Definitely and positively, all six realized the message they were sending to candidates and their big-money organizational contributors: You can do whatever you want; the campaign spending limits of the past 55 years have become past history.

Their decision came on the last day of the Court’s term, in the case National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission. The ruling strikes down 1971 and 2001 decisions that limited how much money political parties could spend in coordination with candidates. The justices ruled that any cap on such spending violated the First Amendment’s free-speech rights.

Justice Kagan’s dissent underlined the decision’s gift to candidates. The ruling, she argued, “ushers in the same opportunities for quid pro quo corruption that the [prior] contribution limits were meant to check.”

“As a result,” she wrote, “a donor will be able to give a party as much as half a million dollars (as compared to the $7,000 he can give directly to the candidate) to cover the candidate’s bills. And the candidate can seek just such a donation.”

The public was all in for Kagan. By huge margins, Democrats and Republicans alike opposed the decision. Only 25 percent of GOPers approved, compared to 22 percent of Democrats. On every other decision this term, the approval difference between the major parties was over 30 percent.

An ecstatic Donald Trump responded in his over-the-top Truth Social style: “The Supreme Court just took restrictions off political spending! A BIG WIN FOR REPUBLICANS and…the First Amendment!”

It absolutely was a major win for Republicans. While individual Democrats are out-raising their GOP rivals heading into the midterms, the Republicans have a $600 million advantage for the kind of campaign financing just greenlighted by the Court.

As for Trump’s First Amendment “WIN,” here’s a sharply different view from Michael Waldman, president and CEO at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law: “[The] campaign finance ruling is part of the Roberts Court’s 16-year drive to destroy anti-corruption laws. From Citizens United forward, these justices have ushered in an era of massive money in politics.” The court not only overrode Congress, it went “against the wishes of the vast majority.”

Lawyer and former Congressman Colin Allred was even more scornful: “The Supreme Court term that just ended was, in my considered legal opinion, one of the worst in modern history.”

Let’s finish up by circling back to the beginning, when six injudicious justices ignored an eternal political truth. That truth was glaringly obvious to two major figures from America’s past, Thomas Paine and George Washington.

Paine made tax proposals that would have limited income to the equivalent of about $27 million in today’s dollars. He saw the limit as a necessary guardrail; for him, extreme wealth gave the rich an “overgrown influence” and was “one of the principal sources of corruption at elections.” For Paine, money and politics made for a toxic mix.

It wasn’t big money that worried George Washington, it was anything at all. Washington “was always very reluctant to accept any kind of gift because he was afraid people might interpret it as a bribe.”

Conclusion: Six smart Supremes made a supremely stupid decision.

This article first appeared at www.nydailynews.com. Gerald E. Scorse helped pass the bill requiring basis reporting for capital gains. He writes on taxes. His articles have appeared often in Progressive Charlestown.

The best is yet to come

Trump Unveils Sweeping New Tariffs Expected to Cost Americans $100 Billion a Year

Trump uses bogus claims to continue to impose a national sales tax on Americans

Jake Johnson

On July 23, Donald Trump  unveiled a new package of tariffs targeting 60 countries that account for over 99% of US imports, a move that—if upheld in court—would cost Americans an estimated $100 billion per year in the form of higher costs.

The duties, ranging from 10% to 12.5%, were announced as part of Trump's effort to maneuver around repeated court rulings against his sweeping tariffs, including by the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court. Jamieson Greer, the Trump administration’s top trade official, pointed to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to justify the new tariffs, introduced with the purported goal of penalizing countries “for their failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.”

Observers questioned the administration’s pretext. “Magically, the US tariff probe on forced labor practices is done perfectly in time to replace the generalized but expiring Section 122 tariffs,” noted Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove, referring to the legal authority Trump cited for earlier tariffs.

Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) acknowledged that “Section 301 is a law Congress passed,” but added, “What was passed in 1974 was authority to respond to specific unfair trade practices after investigation.”

“What is being done with it now is a tariff on 99% of American trade, set by Trump, with no expiration, no vote, and no ceiling,” said Levin. “If a delegation that broad is lawful, then the tariff power in Article I means very little. The Supreme Court struck down the last version of this policy in February. The response was to avoid Congress and find a different statute and rebuild substantially the same tariffs, effective the same minute the old ones lapsed.”

The list of countries targeted by the Section 301 tariffs includes Canada, Australia, Brazil, China, Mexico, Russia, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

Between the start of his second administration and January 2026, Trump’s tariffs cost American families $1,700 each on average as importers passed burdens onto consumers in the form of higher prices. The tariffs have also hammered small businesses, increased hardship for farmers, and failed to arrest the decline of American manufacturing jobs.

O Canada

Trump renews war on Canada because?

Robert Reich

Trump on Monday signed orders to impose a 50 percent tariff on a wide range of Canadian imports.

The White House claims the tariffs are a “punishment” for Canadian discrimination against American cars, dairy, and alcohol.

But the tariffs will also punish us. Remember, tariffs are import taxes — paid for by you and me and everyone else in America. So, we’re about to pay more for everything we import from Canada — plywood, paper, furniture, hockey sticks, cement, et al. Canada is our second-largest trading partner, for chrissake.

Even if the Supreme Court finds that Trump lacks authority to invoke these tariffs and the government must refund American importers for the extra cost — as the high court did with his first round of tariffs — you and I won’t be reimbursed for the extra costs we’ve paid.

Corporations aren’t giving their customers any of the $80 billion in refunds they’ve received from the Treasury Department for the first round of tariffs, so don’t expect any reimbursement on this second round. Which means we’re doubly screwed.

Worse yet, the Treasury isn’t really bearing the cost of the $80 billion in refunds. 

Why Trump’s move to gut the Endangered Species Act likely won’t hold up in court

Trump seems to hate all animals

Patrick Parenteau, Vermont Law & Graduate School

Piping plovers lay their eggs on the ground. They
became an endangered species as development encroached
on their habitat and made it harder for their chicks
to survive. Under the Same Moon/Flickr, CC BY

The Trump administration has decided that destroying the habitat of endangered species is not harmful.

Think about that.

Habitat loss is the No. 1 reason species become endangered. Red-cockaded woodpeckers need mature long-leaf pine forests to reproduce. Endangered western monarch butterflies depend on pesticide-free milkweed for food. Pacific salmon must have clean, cool rivers for spawning. If coastal water becomes too polluted, manatees will starve.

Yet, on July 14, 2026, the U.S. Department of Interior formally rescinded the so-called harm rule under the Endangered Species Act, removing language that has protected species from losing millions of acres of habitat.

As a law professor who has followed these issues for over five decades and litigated early cases under the Endangered Species Act, I believe this effort to gut the nation’s premier wildlife conservation law is unjustified and unlawful.

I see several reasons the rule change is not likely to survive the legal challenges that have already begun.

Public opinion on abortion has shifted 4 years after Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade

We're more polarized than ever

Laurel Elder, Hartwick College; Mary-Kate Lizotte, Augusta University, and Steven Greene, North Carolina State University

It’s been four years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion.

In the immediate aftermath of the decision, national attention centered on implementation of state bans and a rapidly shifting legal landscape.

But four years later, one of the most impactful developments has been less visible: a significant, sustained and politically consequential shift in public opinion. In the wake of Dobbs, the debate over abortion rights did not simply return to the states. It fundamentally altered how many Americans think about the issue and how they vote.

Will Trump require foreign tourists to get pregnancy tests?

Reaction to Supreme Court decision upholding birthright citizenship

Amanda Becker, National Reporter

This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

In the wake of a Supreme Court decision this week upholding the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, the Trump administration and fellow Republican immigration hardliners are exploring alternative routes to limit citizenship rights for children born within the United States to foreign tourists. 

Markwayne Mullin, the head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, suggested on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning that this effort could include banning pregnant foreigners from traveling to the United States. 

“There are tourist visas that they get to come into the United States or into our territories just simply to give birth; they’ll come in the eighth month, maybe one, two, three weeks left, give birth here,” Mullin said. He did not offer any evidence that the practice is widespread.

They “have a child who may move back to China, raise the person in a communist regime — even though they’re a citizen of the United States — and they come back over here, and in some cases, they go to universities, stealing intellectual property. It’s absolutely been a national security issue,” Mullin continued.

Mullin added that there was a “long conversation at the White House” on Tuesday after the Supreme Court ruled in the birthright citizenship case. He met with Trump; Stephen Miller, a top adviser to the president and the architect of many of his far-right immigration policies; and Tom Homan, the president’s “border czar.”

There’s No Doubt: The Supreme Court Is Part of Trump’s Anti-Democracy Movement

They don't even try to hide it anymore

Robert Reich in Inequality Media

The real way to read the immigration decisions the Supreme Court issued on Thursday is not to see them solely as losses for immigrants to the United States or the rights of immigrants. They are much larger losses. 

They are losses for the authority of Congress to have its laws fully executed by a president who doesn’t agree with them.

Markwayne Mullin vs. Al Otro Lado concerns a 1917 law that requires immigration officers to inspect noncitizens who arrive at ports of entry to determine whether they may enter the United States. Congress amended the law in the Refugee Act of 1980 to allow noncitizens fleeing persecution in their home country to apply for asylum as part of this inspection process.

The act lays out a required set of procedures to guide this process. It says that a noncitizen who seeks admission to the United States “may apply for asylum.” If the noncitizen lacks valid travel documents, the officer “shall order [her] removed” unless she conveys an intention to apply for asylum or a fear of persecution, which in turn requires the officer to “refer” her for further processing of her asylum application.

This system is designed to ensure that the US government considers the application of each person seeking to come into the United States to determine who should be let in, who should be turned away, and who should be allowed to apply for asylum.

This must be seen for what it really is—a systemic effort by the six Republican appointees on the court to shrink congressional authority and enlarge the authority of the executive branch.

Trump Supreme Court hands German chemical company a huge win

License to kill

By Anika Jane Beamer

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

A Supreme Court ruling issued Thursday limits Americans’ ability to sue pesticide makers over alleged health harms from their products.

The 7-2 decision overturned a 2023 Missouri circuit court ruling that required agrochemical company Monsanto to pay John Durnell of St. Louis $1.25 million in compensatory damages for failing to warn customers of the cancer-causing potential of its popular weedkiller, Roundup.

Durnell said he used the glyphosate-based herbicide for twenty years before developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Glyphosate-based weedkillers make up the bulk of all agricultural pesticide use in the U.S., with farmers and ranchers spraying over 250 million pounds of the chemical across farmland each year. An extensive body of research suggests improper glyphosate use could be linked to endocrine disruption, metabolic disorders, neurological effects and several cancers. Even after application, the chemical may leach into waterways or drift over residential areas.

And it’s not just glyphosate. Nearly all conventional weedkillers, derived from fossil fuels and petroleum byproducts, are believed to present multiple health hazards.

The highly anticipated ruling not only overturns the lower court’s decision, it also sets a legal precedent that all but seals the fate of hundreds of similar lawsuits being fought in courtrooms across the country.

The decision also represents a huge victory and financial windfall for Monsanto and its parent chemical company, Bayer, which has spent billions of dollars fighting legal claims linking Roundup to cancer since acquiring Monsanto in 2018.

In a majority opinion delivered by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court wrote that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) prohibits states from imposing labeling requirements “in addition to or different from” the labels required by the Environmental Protection Agency.

‘Alarm’ at White House After Vance and Miller Pushed Insurrection Act, Habeas Corpus Suspension During Anti-ICE Protests

Close call for democracy

Brad Reed for Common Dreams

A June 15 report in The New York Times revealed what it described as the “alarm” felt by some White House lawyers at proposals made earlier this year by Vice President JD Vance and Trump adviser Stephen Miller as the administration was forced to contend with widespread anger over its anti-immigration agenda.

Among other things, the Times reported that Vance pushed for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow for the US military to be deployed on American streets, in an effort to shut down mass protests in Minnesota against federal immigration enforcement operations in the state.

A few days after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers fatally shot demonstrator Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, the Times reported that Vance—who had also elevated a baseless claim by Miller that Pretti had been a “would-be assassin”—said invoking the Insurrection Act was necessary “to crush the unrest in Minnesota.”

Vance also believed invoking the law would send a “message” that “paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations”—even though, as the Times noted, there is no evidence that Pretti; demonstrator Renee Good, who was also killed by federal agents; or any other organizers in Minnesota or elsewhere received any money in exchange for protesting.

However, right-wing attorney Will Scharf quickly shot down Vance’s suggestion, noting that the Insurrection Act is an instrument aimed at putting down armed rebellions rather than groups of citizens blowing whistles at ICE officers.

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair then made the political case against invoking the Insurrection Act.

The triple toll of Trump’s terrible tariffs

Ultimately, American workers and consumers suffer three different ways.

Tom Schaller

Following the Supreme Court’s February ruling that Donald Trump’s tariff policy violated Congress’s tax authority, the administration must now refund the $159 billion it collected from its unconstitutional tariffs.

But unfortunately for American workers and consumers, winding down this fiscal fiasco results in a lose-lose-lose situation:

• First, most Americans will never be reimbursed for what were effectively temporary sales taxes they paid for various imports, nor will they receive the public benefit of having those sums spent on government programs or projects.
• Second, because it is logistically easier to reimburse the American companies that directly paid the tariffs, some corporations may enjoy windfall refund profits — presuming, that is, those companies did not go bankrupt.
• Finally, the surviving businesses and the employees who still work for them — hundreds of thousands of workers were laid off because of the tariffs — will for the foreseeable future continue to suffer because foreign countries, companies, and citizens quite rationally retaliated against Trump’s policies.

Let’s work through the three-fold ruin wrought by Trump’s catastrophic policy.

The Supreme Court’s Whites-First Reasoning on Gerrymandering

It’s Always Been About Race

Mitchell Zimmerman

Will the Supreme Court’s evident desire to assist the G.O.P. before the midterms override a decision by three Republican-appointed judges to spare Black majority districts in Alabama from being gerrymandered out of existence?

This is the question posed by possible Supreme Court review of the finding by an Alabama judicial panel that Alabama could not use a congressional district map that deliberately discriminated against Black voters.

Two of the three judges on the panel which found race-based discrimination had been appointed to the bench by President Trump; one, by President Reagan. The issue now is whether the conservative justices of the Supreme Court will upend the panel’s racial discrimination finding, notwithstanding that the Alabama judges had followed legal standards set in the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

If they allow the Alabama decision stand, it will be a rare exception to the flood of Supreme-Court-encouraged gerrymandering prompted by the Callais decision. Those Republican gerrymanders are likely to purge one-third of African -Americans representatives from Congress by destroying the Black majority districts that elected them.

Nonetheless, the six justices of the Supreme Court who caused this political bloodbath along racial lines claim that Republican gerrymandering does not violate the voting rights of African-Americans. The purge is lawful under the Voting Rights Act, say the justices, because the G.O.P. has partisan reasons to eliminate the Black districts that cannot be “disentangled” from racial motives.

Rhode Island needs to pass bills to codify the Voting Right Act into RI law

We are at Code Red for Democracy

On May 21st, 2026, the Rhode Island Voting Rights Act Campaign (RI VRA) hosted a lobby day at the State House to promote the Rhode Island Voting Rights Act (H8334/S3143) and its ten amendments. As group leaders in the campaign, and after experiencing actions and lobbying by over 100 people for the passage of the bill, we invite you to join the urgent Code Red for Democracy call.

As community leaders, we are calling on the Rhode Island General Assembly to pass the RI VRA and all 10 amendments before the session ends in June. There is extreme urgency.

Voting rights are being attacked across the country, both at the state and federal levels. The recent United States Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted the federal Voting Rights Act. Action needs to be taken now. Rhode Islanders cannot afford to have their voting rights put at risk. The way to do this is to pass the Rhode Island Voting Rights Act and its ten amendments before the session ends, and implement the bill immediately upon passage.

“Standing inside the Rhode Island State House alongside Common Cause, The Womxn Project, the RI Coalition of Black Women, The Women’s Fund, Clean Water Action, and members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta and Zeta Phi Beta sororities, lobbying for the codification of the Voting Rights Act into Rhode Island law, was a surreal and sobering moment — because sixty-one years ago, my grandparents already fought and won this battle,” says Shahidah Ali, the Political Action Committee Chair of the RI Coalition of Black Women.

Yet here we are again.

Ask the hand

MAGA Supreme Court Okays G.O.P. Overthrow of American Democracy

Disenfranchising 40% of a state’s citizens cannot be reconciled with representative democracy

Mitchell Zimmerman

The Supreme Court gave a “two-fer” to white supremacists and proponents of Republican autocracy: First, six right-wing justices completed the erasure of the crowning achievement of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act. Second, in the same case, Louisiana v. Callais, the right-winger judges approved of states shaping legislative districts that deny the opposing party any role in government.

In essence, the Supreme Court okayed the destruction of Congress as an instrument of American democracy.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was enacted and ratified five years after the Civil War. The Amendment confirmed – in principle – that African-American citizens have the right to vote and to have their votes count.

So said the Constitution. But for almost a century the former Confederate states negated African-Americans’ right to vote.

The Voting Rights Act put an end to the myriad legal schemes Southern white politicians had used to disenfranchise Black Americans

The Fifteenth Amendment also gave Congress the power to enforce its mandate. After years of struggle over civil rights – after peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham confronted snarling police dogs, mass arrests and lethal bombing, after hundreds of nonviolent students worked for freedom in Mississippi in the face of murder, assaults and the burning of Black churches, after peaceful marchers for voting rights returned to Selma after being clubbed by state troopers and ridden down by racist possemen – Congress tackled the white supremacist obstacles to African-American voting.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 put an end to the myriad legal schemes that Southern white politicians had used to disenfranchise Black Americans and terminated the ploys used to deny African-Americans a fair opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.

Trump Tariffs Ruled Illegal—Again—as Data Shows Promised Manufacturing Boom Is Nonexistent

Trump treats court opinions as "advisory"

Jake Johnson for Common Dreams

A panel of federal judges ruled Thursday that US President Donald Trump’s sweeping 10% tariffs on most imports are unlawful, another major legal blow to the centerpiece of the Republican president’s economic agenda—which has failed to produce the manufacturing boom he repeatedly promised on the campaign trail.

The Court of International Trade (CIT) found in a 2-to-1 ruling that Trump violated the law when he unilaterally enacted the 10% import taxes following a February decision by the US Supreme Court, which struck down tariffs the president imposed using emergency powers. 

But the CIT’s ruling, which the Trump administration is expected to appeal, only barred collection of the tariffs from some of the plaintiffs in the case—including a pair of businesses and Washington state—limiting the ruling’s immediate impact.

Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), a member of the House Trade Subcommittee, applauded the new ruling in a statement, saying that “Trump must comply with the law by ending his illegal tax on the American people and getting families and small businesses the refunds they are owed.”

Guess you still have the right to choose

To be absolutely clear...

Upcoming

Trump once again votes by mail in Florida election even though he claims mail voting is cheating

It makes sense though when you remember Trump IS a cheater

Julia Conley

Donald Trump has been escalating his push for the US Senate to pass sweeping legislation that would ban universal mail-in voting, spreading misinformation about mailed ballots, and slamming the system as “cheating”—but amid his efforts, he found time recently to cast his own ballot by mail for the latest time in Florida’s special legislative election.

Voter records in Palm Beach County showed Trump cast his ballot by mail before early voting ended Sunday in state House and Senate races in Florida.

It’s at least the second time that the president has voted by mail in Florida; he did so in 2020 as well.

“I can vote by mail,” he told reporters at the time. “I’m allowed to.”

That same year, he aggressively promoted the baseless notion that voting by mail—a system long used in states run by both Republicans and Democrats, including Utah and Washington—would lead to election fraud.

Numerous US courts found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, in which more voters relied on voting by mail due to the Covid-19 pandemic.