Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for starting your day with me today.
We got some truly terrible opinions from the Supreme Court yesterday (what else is new?), raising the question of why Democrats aren’t focused on expanding the Supreme Court ahead of the midterms. The Constitution gives Congress the power to set the number of justices on the Court, and that number has varied between five and 10 since our country’s founding. The alternative is to sit back and watch the Roberts Court chip away at our basic freedoms and who we are as a people.
Yesterday, the Court held that the Trump administration was within its rights to end legal protection of Haitian and Syrian immigrants. So much for “give me your tired, your poor,” I guess.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.
The 6-3 decision overturns lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.
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The court’s conservative majority found that the law doesn’t allow courts to question the process that immigration authorities use to revoke the protections.
The decision was especially bad, as anyone who paid attention to the rhetoric coming out of the Republican party ahead of the 2024 election knows, because it completely ignores the racist comments made by Donald Trump and JD Vance about the Haitian community, including Vance’s statement that he had no problem creating false stories to sway people to his point of view. Accusing a community of eating neighborhood pets in order to justify institutionalized prejudice certainly seems like it was relevant to the Trump administration’s treatment of Haitians, but Alito brushed the comments away as “insufficient” to show that Trump’s immigration policies are based on racial discrimination.
That’s yet another win for the “you can’t tell the President what to do” crowd and a loss for everyone who believes in coequal branches of government. I don’t want to ever hear another thing about immigrants who come to the US “the right way,” because apparently that doesn’t matter anymore, either.
In a second case, the Court held that it was lawful for the Trump administration to block asylum-seekers at the US-Mexico border, contrary to policy that has been in place at least since I was in law school in the 1990s.
The Supreme Court said on Thursday that the Trump administration can turn away migrants seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border by physically preventing them from crossing into the United States as they seek protection from persecution.
The administration had asked the court to permit the government to revive a policy, first used in 2016, as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Under that so-called turn-back policy, the government had stopped asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil, where federal law would have entitled them to try to claim asylum and receive protections.
The statute at issue says any noncitizen who is “physically present in the United States” or “arrives in the United States” can apply for asylum. Migrants who announce their intention to seek protection are then referred for an interview to evaluate their claims.
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Kelsi Corkran, the Supreme Court director at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, who argued the case, said in a statement that the ruling is “an affront to congressional authority over immigration matters with devastating humanitarian consequences.”
Justice Sotomayor read her scathing dissent from the bench, which made Justice Alito, the author of the majority opinion, so mad that he felt the need to respond.
She then began citing specific incidents of the U.S. turning back people who were later persecuted and killed. She recalled the infamous incident involving the voyage of the M.S. St. Louis, in 1939, in which 937 passengers, almost all of whom were Jewish refugees, attempted to flee to the United States from Nazi Germany. It first went to Cuba and then to the U.S. The Americans turned them back.
"She finishes," continued Biskupic. "She takes, you know, about three times as long as Sam Alito had taken to deliver the actual opinion. And the first thing he says before he starts to recount the temporary protected status opinion that 'If I had known what the dissent was going to say I would have explained my ruling more.' And he just sits there kind of stone-faced, and everyone's like wow, and you know he definitely suggested he was blindsided."
The case of the MS St. Louis, referenced by Sotomayor, led directly to the death of Anne Frank and her family — who were passengers — when the ship was ultimately turned back to Europe. Imagine voting to uphold the same policy that allowed the Nazis to get their hands on the Franks.
Finally, SCOTUS tossed out a lawsuit against the pesticide Roundup, which claimed it failed to warn customers that the product could cause cancer. I mean… what?
The high court, in a 7-2 ruling, held that Roundup cannot be sued in state courts for failure to warn because federal regulators have found a cancer link unlikely and do not require a warning label. Federal law also bars states from imposing additional or different labeling requirements, the opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh states.
The EPA, the “federal regulators” referred to above, found that Roundup was not a carcinogen when it first came to market, and this finding was reaffirmed in 2019 by the Trump-era EPA. Since then, we’ve learned much more about Roundup than we knew initially, including that a paper the EPA relied on in making its determination was flawed.
Here’s what Dr. Chadi Nabhan, author of Toxic Exposure: The True Story behind the Monsanto Trials and the Search for Justice, told NPR:
So the EPA really relies on the evidence that was presented to them. But one of the most important things to know that -- just to give you an example, one of the papers that the EPA relied on was retracted just recently, several months ago.
It was a paper that was authored by Williams and colleagues, and that paper was retracted because of ethical concerns and research misconduct. This is the paper that continues to be cited by everyone that says glyphosate is safe and Roundup is safe.
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Why was the paper retracted? Because of the litigation trials, because of what surfaced in courts, because of these lawsuits that actually brought this paper to light.
So, if you’re keeping track, yesterday’s rulings were a huge win for giant corporations that give us toxic products, and significant losses for immigrants fleeing violence in their homelands. What a country.
In other news: Soldiers accuse Pete Hegseth of downplaying injuries; ICE tells a poll worker to delete an IG post; Sean Duffy insults his own daughter; and The High Note.
Here we go.
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Is Pete Hegseth covering up injuries to troops?
If you needed further proof that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has no business being in charge of our troops, yesterday, the US Military reinstated mandatory flu shots for soldiers. This move comes after more than 300 troops at a single base fell ill.
Now, Hegseth is accused of more than being an anti-science dumbass who can’t do proper pullups or grapevines: Hiding troop injuries from Americans.
Those on active duty during President Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular conflict told CBS News they believe there has been an effort to hide how badly they were hurt through official military designations.
In March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth assured reporters that “an overwhelming majority, almost 90 percent” of the 400 injured American service members had suffered “minor injuries,” and that many have since returned to duty.”
However, several soldiers injured during the Iran War have pushed back against that narrative.
Chief Warrant Officer Rodney Bearman, who was blasted by shrapnel after an Iranian drone struck his command center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, on March 1, is one of those who was listed as “not seriously injured” by the Army.
However, medical records reviewed by CBS News revealed that he suffered a concussion, damage to his lungs, and hearing and vision loss as a result of the drone strike, which killed six U.S. service members and injured 20 others.
“That assessment is unacceptable,” his wife, Amy Bearman, told CBS News.”
Sgt. 1st Class Cory Hicks, 37, was also injured in the Kuwait attack, suffering severe shrapnel wounds and requiring multiple operations as part of his recovery.
He said his wife was only told by the Army that his injuries were “minor.”
“They said your husband was injured, he has a minor jaw injury, and he’s going to be returned to duty,” Hicks told CBS News. He added that he “absolutely” believes the Army and the Pentagon have attempted to downplay the seriousness of the deadly Kuwait drone attack.
Trump, of course, didn’t bother to visit any of the injured troops while they were being treated at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
ICE tracks tries to intimidate NY poll worker
ICE isn’t beating the allegations of being Trump’s secret police force anytime soon. On Tuesday, they tried to strong-arm a poll worker into deleting a post about the ICE agent who killed Renee Good in Minnesota from her social media.
Federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) entered a polling place in Onondaga County during New York's primary elections on Tuesday.
Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker, says the agents were there to give her a warning that she may have violated federal law.
In January, Gonyea posted the name of the federal agent who shot and killed Renee Good in Minnesota on her Instagram.
Gonyea says she doesn’t feel she did anything wrong.
“It was his name that was already out there from the Minnesota newspaper,” Gonyea said. “Like, I released something that was already released to the public.”
ICE reportedly showed up at the polling place, where Gonyea was working, armed with a folder full of printouts from her Instagram account and a copy of her driver’s license. To her credit, Gonyea stood her ground and refused to delete the post, which is still up.
This entire thing is so dystopian that a local Republican official initially thought the entire thing was a hoax.
Sean Duffy used a slur against the mentally disabled — he has a daughter with Down syndrome
The only time we ever hear about Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy is when the DOT screws something up (air traffic control), he pulls something grifty (the Great American Road Trip), or he does something mind-bogglingly stupid. Guess which one this is?
I have been disgusted by this man for half my life. I never thought part of that would be due to his role in a presidential cabinet, but here we are. What a great catch you made with this guy, Rachael!
And while we’re on the subject of dumb dumbs showing their asses in public, here’s JD Vance trying to rehab Richard Nixon’s image:
The idea that a president was taken down for stealing an election is crazy!
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
Just in time for the midterms, here’s Bob Odenkirk on Democracy, which I thought we had all agreed on in 1776.
And a huge congrats to Katie Phang, who won a preliminary injunction against DOJ to force them to proceed with transparency measures regarding the Epstein Files:
I’m contemplating taking some time off next week, as I have writing projects going that really need my attention. I’ll let you all know.
Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
