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.

While the first half of the week contained some promising legal news, there have been several unsettling developments as the week progressed.

On Friday, Trump signed an executive order entitled “Restoring the United States Department of War”. We’d had a Department of War from 1789 through 1947, at which point it was renamed the Department of the Army; then in 1949 the Departments of Army, Navy, and Air Force were in effect combined into the modern Department of Defense. It would apparently take a statute to formally rename the Department of Defense, but Trump’s order authorizes the use of the terms Department of War and Secretary of War (for Hegseth) in “official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts, and non-statutory documents within the executive branch.”

Earlier in the week, U.S. military forces carried out an air strike on a boat in the Caribbean, ostensibly because the boat was involved in drug trafficking by the Venezuelan “terrorist organization” Tren de Aragua. The legality of this strike is doubtful, although the President’s formal letter to Congress about the strike suggested the strike was justifiable on grounds of national self-defense, even though the 11 people killed in the attack would appear to be civilians rather than soldiers. Some are wondering if Trump is setting the stage for a war against Venezuela, perhaps in Wag The Dog fashion to distract from other woes.

Then yesterday, Trump made a social media post with an AI-generated picture that is beyond belief. The background is Chicago, burning and with helicopters flying over it; the caption reads “Chipocalypse Now”, in the font associated with the 1979 war movie Apocalypse Now; and the picture shows Trump’s face superimposed over the body & clothes of the officer played by Robert Duvall in that film. The text in the social media post reads: ” ‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” I have no words.

President Obama was particularly fond of a Martin Luther King Jr. quote about the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice. It has been a pretty good week in that regards, for a change.

The week started on Tuesday with Judge Breyer’s decision in Newsom v. Trump, the case in which the California Governor argued that the President’s use, in L.A. starting in June, of the Marines and the federalized National Guard to execute domestic law was a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. In Breyer’s ruling, he agrees that the Posse Comitatus Act was violated. He also granted injunctive relief (currently stayed until September 12th), along the following lines:

“Defendants are enjoined from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants, unless and until Defendants satisfy the requirements of a valid constitutional or statutory exception, as defined herein, to the Posse Comitatus Act.”

Consistent with the new world order frowning on universal injunctions, Breyer’s injunctive relief is narrowly tailored to California, although Breyer noted in his ruling the President’s threats to send National Guard troops into Oakland and San Francisco, underscoring the need for such relief in parts of the state beyond L.A. Having said that, one imagines his opinion will carry some weight if and when officials in, say, Illinois are faced with federal troops sent in to carry out immigration raids.

Later that same day, the 5th Circuit issued a substantive (as opposed to due process) ruling in an Alien Enemies Act case relating to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Many observers had felt that, the 5th being the most conservative of the circuit courts, there was a greater likelihood that the administration might receive a favorable ruling in this district on its interpretation of the 1798 statute. However, in the case once called A.A.R.P. v. Trump but now called W.M.M. v. Trump, by a 2-1 majority the panel ruled that “we find no invasion or predatory incursion,” and thus enjoined the government from relying on the AEA to deport members of a class of affected individuals. Judge Oldham, perhaps auditioning for a SCOTUS appointment under Trump, wrote a 130-page opinion with the unusual ending “I respectfully but emphatically dissent.”

Then yesterday, Judge Burroughs gave Harvard University a thorough legal victory in Harvard v. HHS, contesting the administration’s actions in April and May to strip the university of roughly $2 billion in federal research funding, purportedly due to concerns about Harvard’s actions to combat antisemitism. The summary of paragraph of her ruling reads:

“Defendants and the President are right to combat antisemitism and to use all lawful means to do so. Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did. The record here, however, does not reflect that fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard and, even if it were, combatting antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment. We must fight against antisemitism, but we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other. Harvard is currently, even if belatedly, taking steps it needs to take to combat antisemitism and seems willing to do even more if need be. Now it is the job of the courts to similarly step up, to act to safeguard academic freedom and freedom of speech as required by the Constitution, and to ensure that important research is not improperly subjected to arbitrary and procedurally infirm grant terminations, even if doing so risks the wrath of a government committed to its agenda no matter the cost.”

(“Committed to its agenda no matter the cost” will likely end up being the epitaph for this administration, TACO notwithstanding.)

Perhaps the most interesting part of Burroughs’ opinion is found in a footnote. In order to explain that context of that footnote, however, I need to go back a couple of weeks and mention an August SCOTUS shadow docket decision that I hadn’t previously mentioned, NIH v. AHPA.

That case arose out of the administration’s termination of a large number of NIH grants to researchers, for which the 1st Circuit had provided injunctive relief. Consistent with most of its other recent shadow docket actions, SCOTUS has now lifted the lower court stay, allowing the grant terminations to take effect while litigation on their legality continues, while at the same time creating an odd two-track process for that ongoing litigation. In NIH v. AHPA the Court splintered more than it usually does, in an unusual 4-1-4 configuration: Roberts and the 3 liberals would have kept the stay in place; the 3 arch-conservatives and Kavanaugh would have lifted it entirely; and as such Barrett’s opinion, joined by nobody else, ends up controlling the situation.

But Gorsuch wrote a scathing concurrence, the first sentence of which reads: “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.” In Gorsuch’s mind, the outcome of this case was pre-ordained by a 5-4 shadow docket decision from early April, in Dept. of Education v. California, and hence the lower court’s ruling was contrary to established SCOTUS precedent. (Never mind that in Roberts’ dissent, joined by the 3 liberals, he believes that this case is in fact distinguishable from the earlier case.)

With that as background, here is Burroughs’ heroic footnote:

“[T]he Supreme Court’s recent emergency docket rulings have not been a model of clarity, and have left many issues unresolved. … This Court understands, of course, that the Supreme Court, like the district courts, are trying to resolve these issues quickly, often on an emergency basis, and that the issues are complex and evolving. … Given this, however, the Court respectfully submits that it is unhelpful and unnecessary to criticize district courts for “defy[ing]” the Supreme Court when they are working to find the right answer in a rapidly evolving doctrinal landscape, where they must grapple with both existing precedent and interim guidance from the Supreme Court that appears to set that precedent aside without much explanation or consensus.”

Of course, there will be appeals in all these cases, so perhaps the arc will swing back over time even if, for the moment, justice is served.

And speaking of appeals, the administration has filed its petition for certiorari in what is now styled Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, the IEEPA tariffs case decided last week by the Federal Circuit. Alongside the petition, the government filed a motion — with respondents’ acquiescence — requesting “expedited consideration of the merits to the maximum extent feasible” and proposing that oral argument take place in the first week of November, which is lightning fast by SCOTUS standards. Assuming SCOTUS agrees, that should vault this case to the top of the list of noteworthy SCOTUS cases for the October 2026 term.

Finally, in political news Senator Ernst (R-IA) has announced that she will not seek re-election in 2026. It is a sad commentary on our politics when the Iowa Senator born in 1970 is seeking to retire from public life while the Iowa Senator born in 1933 chose to run for an 8th term in 2022 and hasn’t ruled out running again in 2028. This could put another Senate seat in play next year, with Democratic hopes in Iowa bolstered by a recent State Senate by-election in which the Democrats won a seat 55-45 in a district that went 55-44 for Trump last November.

It’s Labor Day today. To celebrate, last week the Department of Labor hoisted a giant banner of President Trump on its HQ in D.C., alongside a similar banner of Teddy Roosevelt. Nothing says “we’re definitely not becoming an authoritarian country” than putting a giant banner of our glorious leader on a government building, amirite?

Trump has kept an exceptionally low profile since a Cabinet meeting 6 days ago, with no public appearances until yesterday morning, when he was seen getting into a limo to go to his Virginia golf club. Later yesterday his social media account posted a picture of him playing golf with football coach Jon Gruden; except that Trump wasn’t wearing the same golf clothes in the picture as he was when he entered the limo, and Gruden was wearing the same golf clothes he wore in pictures he’d posted the previous Sunday, sparking speculation that the picture was in fact a week old. Nothing says “we’re definitely not hiding information about our glorious leader’s health” than keeping him out of the public eye for several days and then posting an old picture without admitting that it’s old, amirite?

In industrial policy news, last week the U.S. government purchased a 10% stake in chip manufacturer Intel, using funds that had originally been earmarked under the Biden-era CHIPS Act as direct grants to Intel. This came less than three weeks after Trump had called for Intel’s recently appointed CEO to resign due to purported links to China, and after Trump had struck a (probably illegal) deal with two of Intel’s competitors (Nvidia and AMD) to grant them export licenses to China for certain AI-related chips in exchange for the U.S. government getting 15% of the revenues. This is where I’m obligated to remind the reader that Trump represents the Republican Party. Nothing says “we’re definitely not devolving into crony capitalism” than bullying a CEO into accepting direct government investment and having the government take a cut of private company revenues, amirite?

One of the major stories of the past week involves Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, a Black woman originally appointed in 2022 on a 51-50 Senate vote (with VP Harris breaking the tie) and then re-appointed in 2023 for a 14-year term ending in 2038 on a 51-47 Senate vote. Trump’s appointed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency recently alleged that back in 2021, Cook had committed a form of mortgage fraud by virtue of, in separate mortgage applications for two different properties, indicating that both properties were a principal residence. Without providing any opportunity for Cook to respond to these allegations, Trump then used the allegations as his grounds for purportedly firing Cook “for cause”, the only grounds under which a Fed governor may be removed involuntarily prior to the end of their term. Cook has sued to remain in her position. Recall that in the Wilcox shadow docket decision earlier this year, SCOTUS appeared to distinguish between Fed governors and other appointees; as such it will be particularly interesting to see how this case develops. Nothing says “we’re definitely still committed to the rule of law and the appropriate use of power” than using a political appointee to gather dirt on a political enemy and using that dirt pretextually, amirite?

Enough of that schtick, amirite? Catching up on some other news:

• Gerrymandering. After two weeks as refugees the Texas Democratic legislators returned to their home state, providing the quorum needed for Texas Republicans to enact their mid-decennial Congressional redistricting plan, which is expected to transfer 5 seats from Democratic to Republican hands in 2026. California has now also enacted their own mid-decennial redistricting plan, which is expected to transfer 5 seats the other way; however, the California plan requires ratification by the voters this November. Other states may be taking action soon. There was also a recent court ruling in Utah against the current gerrymandered map, which splits Salt Lake City into 4 districts to dilute Democratic voting power.
• Tariffs. On Friday the Federal Circuit issued its 7-4 en banc ruling in the IEEPA tariffs case, V.O.S. Selections v. Trump. The majority per curiam opinion was intentionally silent on the question of whether IEEPA authorizes tariffs at all, but ruled that the tariffs in question exceeded the authority given to the President under IEEPA. Four of those seven judges wrote separately to argue that IEEPA does not authorize any tariffs, period. In a separate order, the ruling was stayed for 45 days to allow the government to appeal to SCOTUS. As such, it now seems likely that this case will reach the regular merits docket of SCOTUS in the upcoming term.
• Federalization of the National Guard. There are currently over 2,000 National Guard members from six different states in D.C., purportedly to deal with an emergency situation regarding violent crime, but largely there as a show of force by the President. He has signaled that Chicago may be next, to which both Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker take great objection. The bench trial in the L.A. Posse Comitatus Act case, Newsom v. Trump, ended two weeks ago with no ruling yet. DHS Secretary Noem yesterday made the ludicrous claim that L.A. would have burned down in June without federal intervention.
• Trump Organization fraud trial. After taking almost a year to rule, a New York appellate court finally released its ruling on Trump’s appeal in the Trump Organization civil fraud trial under Judge Engoron. The five-judge panel was quite splintered, to the extent that there is no majority opinion. Four of the five agree that the prosecution was warranted. However, only two of those four concur with the outcome of the trial; the other two believe that the errors made at trial were sufficiently critical that a new trial would be required, but of course such trial would be impractical at this point. As such, the ~$500 million disgorgement order has been thrown out, while the injunctive relief that would prevent Trump or his sons from running a New York business remains intact (but continues to be stayed pending full resolution of the appeal).

With both House and Senate now in their summer recess, and SCOTUS having largely worked its way through what has accumulated on the shadow docket, you’d think there might not be that much to talk about these days. Yeah, right…

A major story this month has been efforts by the Republican-led Texas government to call a special legislative session for the purpose of performing a highly unusual mid-decennial Congressional districting. This was suggested by President Trump, and the gerrymandered map that Texas Republicans want to implement is carefully designed to transfer 5 seats from the Democrats to Republicans. So far, the Texas state Democratic caucus has thwarted these plans by escaping to various Blue states, although there is talk that the FBI might attempt to bring them back to Texas (under extremely questionable authority) and/or that their legislative seats might be declared vacant with Republicans appointed to fill them (ditto).

While this percolates, other Democratic-held states have threatened a gerrymandering race to the bottom. On the one hand, it is perhaps refreshing to see Democrats finally respond to a naked exercise of power on the other side of the aisle with a willingness to hold their noses and respond in kind. On the other hand, it is clearly hideous for the long-term legitimacy of our democratic form of government if we end up in a gerrymandering cold war.

Later this week, and to the disgust of many, Russian President Putin will be visiting U.S. soil for a summit meeting with Trump. The Alaska summit’s purpose is to discuss an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, without participation from either Ukraine or Europe. Of course we’re now over six months into Trump’s second term and his promised “day one” resolution to the war.

Today a three-day-long federal trial commenced in Newsom v. Trump over whether Trump’s use of military forces in L.A. in June violated the Posse Comitatus Act. In related news, today Trump announced that he was federalizing the D.C. National Guard and also asserting federal control over the D.C. police, citing a purported emergency regarding violent crime (notwithstanding that crime rates in D.C. have declined significantly from 2023 to 2025). The Home Rule Act of 1973 gives the President the ability to seize control of the D.C. police on an emergency basis for 48 hours, and then brief Congress on why such control may need to be extended for up to 30 days.

Finally, Trump just announced a further 90-day delay in the implementation of higher tariffs for China, which I think makes it the only country besides Mexico for which higher tariffs have yet to go into effect. At present the aggregate effective tariff rate has been estimated by J.P. Morgan Chase to be 15.3%, up from 2.3% at the end of 2024. Analysis from Goldman Sachs indicates that in the first half of 2025, businesses chose to absorb 64% of the impact from higher tariffs; however by late 2025, U.S. consumers are expected to be absorbing two-thirds of the tariff burden.

August 1st marked the day that Trump had indicated tariffs would go into effect for any country that had not negotiated a “deal”. In the end he blinked with respect to Mexico, giving them another 90 days. He has announced “deals” with the EU, Japan, and South Korea, all of which will have 15% tariff rates going forward. (I’m putting air quotes around “deal” because given how rapidly negotiations were conducted, it is far from clear that all parties have the same understanding of the agreement.) There was no “deal” with Canada, for which the tariff rate for goods not covered by the Trump 1.0-era USMCA will now be 35%, and those tariffs actually took effect on August 1st instead of August 7th as will be the case for most other countries.

The Federal Circuit did hear oral argument en banc last week in its IEEPA tariffs case, V.O.S. Selections vs. Trump, and that argument didn’t seem to go well for the government although it is still hard to know what will happen here. Still, absent a judicial rebuke of Trump’s interpretation of the IEEPA (coupled with a Congressional refusal to enact Trump’s tariffs after the fact), the United States is entering a whole new world of international trade. But to what useful purpose? Supply chain management professor Zachary Rogers made the following observation this week:

“Right now, a finished car from Japan carries a 15% tariff. Conversely, a car built in the U.S will come with the following: 50% tariff on steel, aluminum, and copper, 40% tariff on components from China (rare earths, batteries), 25% on components from South Korea (electronics), 25% on components from Mexico, and 35% on components from Canada. Plus, you have to pay high U.S. labor costs. In this scenario, the imported finished car from Japan looks pretty good.”

The risk of stagflation appears real. But will we know it? On Friday Trump took the unprecedented step of firing the non-partisan head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after the July jobs report showed significant downward restatements in the previously reported jobs figures for both May and June. A year ago during the campaign, Trump had made unfounded accusations that the Biden administration had, for political purposes, been reporting overly rosy jobs figures that then got downwardly restated. Now that similar downward restatements have occurred on his watch, he still suspects a political motive. Separately, economists have noted this week that, over the past 3 months, the government’s use of estimates rather than actual data in the computation of inflation statistics has dramatically increased (possibly because of DOGE-related cuts in the government). All of this is leading an increasing number of people to use the phrase “banana republic” in connection with the U.S.A.

Oh, and this week the EPA proposed revoking its 2009 “endangerment finding”, which has served as the lynchpin of federal efforts to address climate change. This reflects a perspective that federal climate regulations are actually contrary to the public interest, as they lead to increased car prices and decrease consumer choice for cars.

Oh, and recently the administration had negotiated a prisoner swap with Venezuela, in which hundreds of Venezuelans held at the CECOT facility in El Salvador were traded for ten American citizens and permanent residents held in Venezuelan prisons. Except, only nine of the ten were “political prisoners” in any conceivable meaning of the term. The tenth has admitted to having committed a triple murder in Spain but ran to South America and eventually was arrested and tried for the Spanish crime by officials in his birth country, Venezuela. After serving less than 7 years of a 30-year sentence, the man is now apparently living free in the U.S. Terrific diplomacy, there.

Oh, and there was a shadow docket decision this week in a case called Trump v. Boyle, filed by two members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission who Trump fired without cause in early May, contrary to existing law. Two months earlier SCOTUS had issued an order in a similar shadow docket case, Trump v. Wilcox, allowing a similar firing of officials to take effect while they continue litigation to prevent it, even though a 1935 SCOTUS precedent called Humphrey’s Executor would indicate that these firings should not be allowed. The same 3 liberals who had dissented in Wilcox also dissented in Boyle, noting this time that “only another under-reasoned emergency order undergirds today’s.” But interestingly, this time Kavanaugh also wrote separately to say that while he agreed with granting a stay, he also would have granted certiorari so that SCOTUS could hear this case now (and adding that he also would have done the same two months ago in Wilcox), speeding matters up.

Oh, and Emil Bove was indeed confirmed by the Senate to a seat on the 3rd Circuit, 50-49, with the only Republican nays being Collins and Murkowski. Disappointing to see lame ducks Tillis and McConnell fall in line here.

Oh, and a piece of crypto legislation called the GENIUS Act was recently signed into law, while another piece of crypto legislation called the CLARITY Act has passed the House and is now being considered by the Senate. I don’t know much about either bill, but I do know that they don’t ban cryptocurrency entirely, and any bill that doesn’t do that is bad crypto legislation as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately for sound public policy, the crypto industry has thrown too much money at politicians in general, and Trump in particular.

So yeah, things are going just great.

Not everything is on fire, mind you. The situation in Los Angeles has fizzled out, with the Marines and about half of the federalized California National Guard having been withdrawn a couple of weeks back. And the Iran-Israel conflict seems to have completely subsided after Trump’s brief unilateral military action. Of course, there’s still Gaza. And Ukraine. And Trump advertising that he has just sent two nuclear submarines to “appropriate regions” near Russia.

The Epstein saga remains a major story, however. It was burning so hot several days ago that Speaker Johnson actually sent the House home for its summer break a day early, out of fear that in that remaining day there might be some uncomfortable votes relating to calls for further transparency on Epstein. Since then, Deputy Attorney General Blanche took the extraordinary step of personally interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell in prison for two days, after which she has been transferred to a minimum-security facility. Let’s pause to remember Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking. There’s speculation that Maxwell may ultimately receive a commutation or pardon in return for (potentially perjurious) testimony to Congress that exonerates Trump. In the meantime, there is reporting that the FBI spent vast amounts of time this spring going through the Epstein files and redacting any references to Trump.

And with Epstein simmering, Trump has sought to change the subject with a continuation of his grievances over 2016 and 2020, recently accusing President Obama of treason while DNI Gabbard alleged “a years-long coup and a treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our republic, and an effort to undermine President Trump’s administration.” Substantiation of these accusations has not occurred in the 10 days since the words were uttered, nor have any charges been filed against anyone.

There was, however, just an announcement that former Special Counsel Smith would face an investigation for potential violations of the Hatch Act. Even if one were to find such violations, since the remedy is removal from government service and Smith is no longer a government employee, any such investigation would seem pointless. Seems like there’s a phrase for those types of investigations, it’s on the tip of my tongue… ah yes, “witch hunt!“.

Catching up on the week that was…

More disappointing news out of SCOTUS, as they ruled Monday in a shadow docket case called McMahon v. New York to overturn a temporary injunction that had prevented Education Secretary McMahon from terminating half of the Department of Education’s workforce, as (quoting McMahon) “the first step towards a total shutdown” of the Department. As with other cases, litigation about the legality of the actions will continue, but in the meantime structural damage to the functioning of the federal government will be done. This time Sotomayor drew the assignment of writing the dissent, on behalf of all three liberals. Much of the commentary around the decision pointed out the incongruity between the Court’s handling of this case versus its handling in Biden v. Nebraska of the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program, thus strengthening the case many on the left are making that SCOTUS is acting in a partisan rather than principled manner.

And disappointing news out of the Senate, in two different ways this week.

First, the Judiciary Committee has advanced the nomination of Emil Bove to the 3rd Circuit, notwithstanding that he may be uniquely unqualified to serve on the federal bench (and many believe Trump intends to nominate him to SCOTUS when a vacancy arrives). As Ben Wittes recently put it: “Bove’s fundamental problem as a nominee is that there is simply no reason to believe him ethically or morally capable of fulfilling the judicial oath Trump has nominated him to take. His career, particularly the past six months of it, have been marked by an unmistakable trail of allegations—many of them not meaningfully in contest—of conduct simply unacceptable in a federal judge.” The full Senate is expected to vote on his nomination next week; I still have hope, but I really had hoped he wouldn’t make it out of Judiciary.

Next, the Senate voted 51-48 to approve a slightly modified version of the $9 billion rescissions package that, among other things, kills federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The earlier procedural vote, on whether to proceed to debate, actually required Vance as tiebreaker, with opposition from Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell. However once debate was underway, Senator Smith (D-MN) had to be hospitalized overnight, depriving the Democrats of a no vote; and in the end McConnell switched sides for the final vote. Today the House passed the revised version (which restored $400 million in funding for international AIDS relief), 216-213. With this precedent having been set, it will be interesting to see what further rescission packages the administration puts forward for the House’s consideration.

Paramount, the corporate parent of CBS currently attempting to merge with a company called Skydance, had earlier this month agreed to settle Trump’s lawsuit against CBS for $16 million. The lawsuit, which relates to an interview with Vice President Harris that “60 Minutes” had aired during the 2024 campaign, was widely viewed as being completely without merit. However, Paramount needs FCC approval to complete the merger with Skydance… On Monday CBS late night host Stephen Colbert, a Trump critic, returned from a two-week vacation and referred to the $16 million settlement as a “big fat bribe”. On Thursday, CBS announced that it would cancel Colbert’s show, The Late Show, in May after 11+ years with Colbert as host following David Letterman’s 22-year run. While CBS asserts this was strictly a financial decision, there is widespread suspicion that the cancellation of the show may have political motivations.

But the huge political story of the week involves disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein, who died by hanging in 2019 while in federal custody for sex trafficking charges.

It is hard to know quite where to begin here in explaining this story… Epstein had a long list of very powerful friends, including both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, who may (or may not) have engaged in sexual activity with underage women that Epstein allegedly trafficked. (I say ‘allegedly’ since Epstein died before trial but, after his death, Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of related charges and is serving a 20-year federal sentence.) As such there is widespread interest in the question of what incriminating material Epstein may have retained and that may be in the possession of federal investigators, and who that material incriminates. In particular, many of the MAGA persuasion believe that these “Epstein files” would incriminate whole swaths of the “deep state”, and that the Biden administration was keeping these files secret to protect Democratic interests. Given this, a major priority for many MAGA figures–including the men who are now the top 2 officials in the FBI, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino–was getting the Trump administration to provide full transparency about the Epstein investigation, including whether his death in custody was really a suicide.

That objective overlooks an inconvenient truth, namely that in the 1990s and 2000s Epstein and Trump were reportedly very close friends. As such, it seems far more likely that full transparency into the Epstein files would incriminate Trump himself than it would reveal, as MAGAites appear to expect, a vast sex trafficking conspiracy among leading Democrats. In light of this, over the past few months the administration has been slow-walking its commitment to transparency around the Epstein files. Then, almost a week ago, DOJ and the FBI released an unsigned two-page memo that basically said there’s nothing to see here, claiming that there actually is no “incriminating ‘client list'” (despite Attorney General Bondi’s earlier contention that said list was on her desk awaiting her review) and re-affirming that Epstein’s death was by his own hand.

This has not gone over well among Trump’s base. Trump keeps trying to move past the issue, claiming recently that these Epstein files are yet another “Democratic hoax” and arguing that Republicans who are fixated on this issue are “stupid”. Sensing weakness, Democrats are now jumping on the bandwagon of supporting full transparency for the Epstein files, and there may well be enough Republicans joining them to eventually force the administration into releasing more than they want to release.

And then yesterday the Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell, reporting that for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003 Trump had penned a very curious letter as part of a tribute to Epstein, including a signed doodle of a naked woman and ending with the wish that “every day be another wonderful secret.” Today Trump has sued the WSJ and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, for defamation, seeking billions of dollars in damages. Of course, let us remember that truth is considered a complete defense to accusations of defamation.

Ten days since my last blog post. We’ve been back from Croatia for a couple of days now, and bodily cycles are more or less back to normal by now.

OBBBA has been enacted, although in many cases we’re still getting to know what’s in the bill. Something amusing in the bill that has taken a lot of people by surprise is a tweak it made to the taxability of gambling winnings: Under OBBBA, you can only net 90% of gambling losses against your gambling winnings, instead of the previous 100%. That may look innocuous, but it’s enough to make most professional gambling strategies ineffective on an after-tax basis. For instance, if you have a strategy whose success rate is 51.3%, and you face a marginal federal tax rate of 35%, your pre-tax earnings are now zeroed out on an after-tax basis. I haven’t seen an explanation yet as to who added this to the Senate bill and why, but with Nevada a critical swing state there is some bipartisan support for amending this change after the fact.

In judicial news, SCOTUS did stay the preliminary injunction in Trump v. AFGE, thus allowing the administration to continue with plans implementing Executive Order 14210, and an associated OPM memorandum, relating to the restructuring of the federal workforce. Quoting from the unsigned SCOTUS order:

“We express no view on the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan produced or approved pursuant to the Executive Order and Memorandum. The District Court enjoined further implementation or approval of the plans based on its view about the illegality of the Executive Order and Memorandum, not on any assessment of the plans themselves. Those plans are not before this Court.”

Sotomayor picked up on that theme in her solo concurrence:

“The plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage, and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law. I join the Court’s stay because it leaves the District Court free to consider those questions in the first instance.”

Jackson was the sole dissenter, consistent with her recent theme of opposition to the Court’s approach with respect to the judicial oversight of the administration’s actions. Quoting from her dissent:

“What is at issue here is whether Executive Order No. 14210 effects a massive restructuring of the Federal Government (the likes of which have historically required Congress’s approval), on the one hand, or minor workforce reductions consistent with existing law, on the other. One needs facts to answer that critical question, and the District Court not only issued such preliminary findings based on actual evidence, it is also the tribunal best positioned to make that determination, at least initially. Put differently, from its lofty perch far from the facts or the evidence, this Court lacks the capacity to fully evaluate, much less responsibly override, reasoned lower court factfinding about what this challenged executive action actually entails. I respectfully dissent because, in addition to the Government’s failure to show the exigency or irreparable harm that is required for emergency relief, this Court could not possibly know in this posture whether the Government is likely to succeed on the merits with respect to such a fact-dependent dispute. So it should have left well enough alone.”

There will be further litigation here, but in the interim the administration may proceed with implementing further layoffs. To that end, on Friday the State Department fired 1,400 employees, representing about one-sixth of its workforce.

Elsewhere, this week a district court judge (and GWB appointee) in New Hampshire certified a class action lawsuit (“Barbara” v. Trump) relating to the birthright citizenship executive order, and issued an injunction preventing the order from being implemented against members of the certified class, which includes all babies already born or born in the future to which the order would potentially apply. As such this action has much the same effect as the universal injunctions overturned last month due to Trump v. CASA, but using the form of class action lawsuits, following the road map laid out in Kavanaugh’s concurrence in CASA. More to come here, of course.

July 9th was supposed to be the expiration date of the 90-day pause that Trump had put in place on many of his tariffs, while he worked out deals on a country-by-country basis. Over the last several days we haven’t seen any deals announced, but we have seen a lot of unilateral pronouncements by Trump of new tariff rates that will take effect–for sure, this time we pinky promise–on August 1st. Many of these announced tariffs remain eyepopping: 30% for the EU, 30% for Mexico, 35% for Canada, and 50% for Brazil. The Brazil tariff is particularly interesting because in Trump’s letter imposing it, he specifically called out Brazil’s treatment of its former President Bolsonaro, thereby tying American tariff policy to a domestic political dispute in Brazil. In all of these cases, we shall see what actually transpires between now and August 1st; and, of course, litigation continues as to whether Trump’s authority under IEEPA actually includes the ability to impose these types of tariffs without Congressional approval.

The Senate is likely to vote this week on the rescissions bill recently enacted by the House, which among other things would de-fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Trump recently announced that any Republican Senator who votes against the rescissions will lose his endorsement.

I’m starting to lose the enthusiasm for this blogging project, so we’ll see how much time I spent on it over the rest of the summer. I’ve rarely thought that the U.S. was “headed in the right direction,” as the pollsters like to put it; but right now the U.S. is (from my perspective) accelerating so rapidly in the wrong direction that it is difficult to have any faith that we can ever get back to the right course. And in that context, it’s depressing to keep focusing day after day on all the ways in which things are going wrong–the corruption, the short-sighted policymaking both domestically and globally, the upending of norms, and most of all the continual progression towards authoritarianism and the cult of personality. Still, there’s some value in documenting the journey, I suppose.

Today, July 3rd, was a very interesting day to be monitoring American politics from Europe.

When I woke up in Croatia at 7am local time (1am in D.C.) and checked my phone. I learned that the House was in the middle of a very elongated process to vote on a motion to proceed with debate of the Senate version of OBBBA. At that particular point in time, there were 5 Republicans who had already voted “nay” to the motion, which would have been enough to kill it; but Speaker Johnson kept the vote open for close to 6 hours. A couple of hours after I’d woken up, that motion would pass, 219-213.

(That was actually the second several-hour-long vote of the day; a previous vote to make some technical amendments to the rules around the debate took more than 7 hours, making it the longest vote in the history of the U.S. House. Keep in mind that these types of House votes normally last 15 minutes.)

Shortly after that, a few minutes before 5am D.C. time, the debate started on the Senate version of OBBBA itself. At this point Minority Leader Jeffries took it on himself to do a bit of a filibuster, breaking the House record for longest speech by talking continuously for 8 hours. And this is immediately after the House had already pulled an all-nighter.

With all that, we were finishing off our dinner in Croatia and getting ready to order dessert when the news came through that the House had passed the Senate version of OBBBA without any amendments, 218-214. In the end the only two Republicans who refused to vote for the bill did so for opposite reasons: Massie of Kentucky is the keenest of deficit hawks and had voted against the original bill; while Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a moderate who represents a suburban Philadelphia district that Harris won in 2024, disliked the changes made by the Senate to Medicaid.

So in the end, Trump will indeed to get to sign his big beautiful bill tomorrow on the 4th. A major political win for him and for Speaker Johnson, at least in the short run. However from both a process standpoint and a substantive standpoint, it’s hard to view OBBBA as anything but an abomination. And the bill itself appears to be very unpopular. Once the dust settles I will try to memorialize what OBBBA actually does.

In other news, yesterday a district court judge ruled, in a case captioned RAICES v. Noem, against a Proclamation issued by Trump on Inauguration Day called “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion”, the main effect of which was to conduct an end-run around the normal asylum system. Quoting from the opinion:

“[T]he Court concludes that neither the INA nor the Constitution grants the President or the Agency Defendants authority to replace the comprehensive rules and procedures set forth in the INA and the governing regulations with an extra-statutory, extra-regulatory regime for repatriating or removing individuals from the United States, without an opportunity to apply for asylum or withholding of removal and without complying with the regulations governing CAT protection. The Court recognizes that the Executive Branch faces enormous challenges in preventing and deterring unlawful entry into the United States and in adjudicating the overwhelming backlog of asylum claims of those who have entered the country. … [But] nothing in the INA or the Constitution grants the President or his delegees the sweeping authority asserted in the Proclamation and implementing guidance. An appeal to necessity cannot fill that void.”

I was amused to note that the judge worked in a reference to Kavanaugh’s concurrence last week in Trump v. CASA. The judge’s decision grants immediate relief to a small set of named plaintiffs, and then certifies a class of individuals still present in the U.S. but who are potentially impacted by the Proclamation, and grants relief to that class postponed for 14 days (giving the administration an opportunity to seek a stay pending appeal). The decision does not address those individuals who have already been deported under the Proclamation, but litigation will continue on that issue.

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It’s Canada Day today. Also Free Agent Frenzy Day in the NHL, although this year that was fairly underwhelming with a last-minute flurry of re-signings plus the sign-and-trade to Vegas of star Leafs winger Mitch Marner.

Speaking of Canada, I was chagrined to learn that Prime Minister Carney caved yesterday, cancelling the implementation of Canada’s Digital Services Tax and announcing legislation will be introduced to repeal it. This paves the way for re-opening of trade negotiations between Canada and the U.S, but feels like a win for Trump’s bullying tactics.

The big news of the day is that the Senate, after an all-nighter, passed its version of OBBBA on a 51-50 vote, with Vance breaking the tie. As expected, Republican Senators Paul and Tillis were no votes (with Tillis having announced over the weekend that he will not run for re-election in 2026, possibly opening the door for former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper to capture the seat for the Democrats). The third no vote was Senator Collins of Maine. Senator Murkowski of Alaska was a reluctant yes, but after the vote she was critical of the artificial deadlines for passage imposed by Trump and urged that things proceed more slowly from here.

Notwithstanding that desire, the House is expected to take up the Senate version of OBBBA in the next couple of days. Can the Senate bill pass the House as is? That seems very hard to me. The Senate bill is considerably worse on the deficit than the House bill, which may cause consternation on the part of some of the deficit hawks who had voted yes before; and at the same time the Senate bill limits the House’s SALT relief to only 5 years, which may offend some of the Blue state Republicans who had voted yes. And on top of that, last week a key moderate Republican who was a yes vote on the original bill, Don Bacon of Omaha, announced he will not run for re-election and is not necessarily going to be a yes vote on the revised bill.

In other news, Mamdami was officially named the victor in the NYC Democratic mayoral primary today, after all votes from the 3rd-place and lower candidates were re-allocated in ranked choice. In the first choice ballot, Mamdami was at 43.5%, Cuomo 36.5%, and other candidates were at 20.0%. After re-allocations, Mamdami was at 53.1% and Cuomo 41.7%, with 5.1% of the original ballot not expressing a choice for one of those two. (Most outlets are ignoring the 5.1% and reporting this as a 56.0% – 44.0% win for Mamdami.) As such, Mamdami had close to a 2-1 advantage over Cuomo on the re-allocated votes, which is consistent with the conventional wisdom going into the election that Mamdami would benefit from ranked choice.