It’s the 24th anniversary of 9/11 today. And it’s been quite a week, even if things have remained quiet in Chicago, which is where I feared the week’s emphasis would be after last weekend’s Chipocalyptic social media post.
On Monday we had another apparent 6-3 shadow docket decision from SCOTUS to overturn a lower court order aimed at preventing the government from immediately doing something that smells illegal, pending full resolution of the legal issues involved. This story is getting old.
This week’s case, Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo, involves racial profiling by ICE. There has recently been an apparent pattern of behavior in which ICE are stopping individuals in L.A. based solely on a combination of four factors — ethnicity, language/accent, location, and profession — without having any other reason to believe the individuals have violated immigration laws. A District Court judge in California issued an injunction preventing the government from acting so indiscriminately, and the 9th Circuit declined to overturn that injunction; but now, SCOTUS has overturned it.
Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion joined by the other two liberals, using the less polite phrase “I dissent” rather than the customary “I respectfully dissent.” The standout sentence from the dissent is: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”
The majority offered no explanation for its ruling. However, Kavanaugh did pen a 10-page concurrence explaining his reasoning, although it was not joined by any of the conservatives, nor did it satisfy the liberals. Sotomayor writes: “[I]t is the Government’s burden to prove that it has reasonable suspicion to stop someone. The concurrence improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely. The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.”
Speaking of profiles, earlier this summer the WSJ had published an article alleging that Trump had written a curious poem for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday two decades ago, including a drawing of a naked woman and a signature in what would be the woman’s pubic region. Trump had vigorously denied this and sued the WSJ and Rupert Murdoch. Well, this week House Democrats released the picture, which is contained in a bound book prepared for that birthday celebration and recently provided to Congress by the Epstein estate. Trump again denied that the signature was his, upon which the media promptly found several other examples from that period of Trump using the very same signature style.
There continue to be efforts made in Congress to force the government to release more of the DOJ’s Epstein files. Representatives Massie (R-KY) and Khanna (D-CA) have collaborated on a discharge petition to force Speaker Johnson to call a vote on the matter. Yesterday a new Democratic representative from Virginia took office, thanks to this week’s by-election (in which the Democratic majority expanded from 67-33 in November to 75-25), and his election leaves the petition only one vote short. That vote should be provided in about two weeks, after an Arizona by-election in a safe Democratic seat occurs. Today Schumer tried to force the issue in the Senate, falling short 49-51; Hawley and Paul joined the Democrats, but Collins and Murkowski did not.
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook received an district court injunction keeping her in office, notwithstanding Trump’s purported firing of her “for cause” based on alleged mortgage fraud transpiring before her appointed to the Fed. Per Judge Cobb’s ruling: “The best reading of the “for cause” provision is that the bases for removal of a member of the Board of Governors are limited to grounds concerning a Governor’s behavior in office and whether they have been faithfully and effectively executing their statutory duties. “For cause” thus does not contemplate removing an individual purely for conduct that occurred before they began in office.” Today Trump filed an emergency appeal with the D.C. Circuit, seeking to get her out of office before the Fed’s two-day meeting next week, at which the Fed is widely expected to begin lowering interest rates.
But, overshadowing all of this news as well as the 9/11 anniversary was the shocking assassination yesterday afternoon of Charlie Kirk, the Republican activist who was almost certainly the best-known U.S. political figure born in the 1990s (noting that AOC was born in late 1989). Kirk was killed in the middle of an outdoor speech he was giving at Utah Valley University, shot in the neck by a single bullet fired from 200 yards away. It has been over 24 hours at this point since the assassination and the shooter has yet to be apprehended, although today authorities released the picture of a person of interest. Notwithstanding that the profile of the shooter was completely unknown, Trump swiftly blamed the “radical left” while recounting a list of political violence that failed to include incidents perpetrated by right-leaning individuals, such as this summer’s assassinations in Minnesota.