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.

There was some Saturday night drama in the Senate yesterday. In the wee hours of the morning, the Senate had released its version of OBBBA, and then called a vote for later that afternoon on the motion to proceed with debate. (This timing was insensitive inasmuch as it forced Minnesota’s two Democratic Senators to miss the funeral of assassinated Minnesota politician Melissa Hortman.)

At the end of the 15-minute voting period, the tally was 46 ayes and 50 nays. As expected, Senators Paul (R-KY) and Johnson (R-WI) were no votes, as was Senator Tillis (R-NC) who is concerned about the Medicaid cuts’ impact on his state; while Senator Hawley (R-MO) had previously expressed similar concerns, he had announced his support for the bill prior to the vote. Four Senators were present but had yet to cast their votes: Lee (R-UT), Scott (R-FL), Lummis (R-WY), and Murkowski (R-AK). VP Vance was called in to be ready to cast a tie-breaking vote if needed.

After about an hour Murkowski caved, swayed perhaps by a new provision that exempts “non-contiguous states” from some of the Medicaid cuts (shades of the Cornhusker Kickback 15 years ago to win Senator Nelson’s vote on the ACA). It took another couple of hours after that for the other three holdouts to fall in line, as did Johnson, making the final vote 51-49 to proceed with debate.

Since then, the Parliamentarian has reportedly axed the non-contiguous states provision from the bill. What exactly is in the bill? Can it pass the Senate? And then can that bill pass the House? Will Trump get to sign his big beautiful bill on July 4th as he has insisted? It should be an interesting week.

We are leaving later today for vacation in Croatia. I may blog during that time, but then again I many not.

The focal point of this post will be two SCOTUS decisions that came out this week, but a couple of quick hitters before getting to those.

In a press conference Thursday, Defense Secretary Hegseth referred to last weekend’s U.S. bombing attacks on Iran as “the most complex and secretive military operation in history”. No hyperbole here. I couldn’t help but think of the opening scene of my favorite movie of the decade, 2024’s Civil War, in which we see Nick Offerman’s unnamed U.S. President workshopping language to describe a recent battle before settling on “some are already calling it the greatest victory in the history of military campaigns.”

With Trump’s self-imposed July 9th tariff deadline looming, we can expect to see trade relations back in the news in coming days. Friday afternoon Trump posted to social media that he is terminating all trade talks with Canada, citing Canada’s announcement today that it will proceed on Monday as scheduled with the initial collection of a new Digital Services Tax that had been enacted a year ago (retroactively to January 1, 2022).

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

On Monday, SCOTUS granted the administration’s request in DHS v. D.V.D. to stay a lower court’s preliminary injunction while the case is appealed to the 1st Circuit. As is typical for shadow docket cases, no explanation of rationale for the majority’s action was provided; however, Justice Sotomayor did pen a 19-page dissent, joined by the other liberals.

This case involves so-called third-country removals of deportable aliens. Some background on the concept, from Sotomayor’s opinion:

“Federal law generally permits the Government to deport noncitizens found to be unlawfully in the United States only to countries with which they have a meaningful connection. To that end, Congress specified two default options… [as well as] which possibilities the Executive should attempt next. … This case concerns the Government’s ability to conduct what is known as a ‘third country removal’, meaning a removal to any ‘country with a government that will accept the alien.’ Third-country removals are burdensome for the affected noncitizen, so Congress has sharply limited their use…”

There are also considerations here relating to the Convention Against Torture, which prohibits returning an individual to a state for which “there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Lower court rulings in this case required the government to “provide noncitizens with written notice in advance of a third-country removal (as is statutorily required), along with a meaningful opportunity to raise a claim under the Convention.” As such the relief the administration sought from SCOTUS was the ability to continue conducting third-party removals without those constraints, while it appeals the lower court’s ruling.

On one level this topic seems comparatively uninteresting to the average American: The individuals in question have already received the due process to determine they are deportable (unlike in the A.A.R.P. case), so we’re talking about a somewhat lesser due process issue, with respect to their destination after leaving the U.S. However, the goings-on with this case are the closest so far that the administration has come to openly defying a court order, and that fact has elevated public interest in the case. Again quoting from Sotomayor’s opinion:

“Here, in violation of an unambiguous TRO, the Government flew four noncitizens to Guantanamo Bay, and from there deported them to El Salvador. Then, in violation of the very preliminary injunction from which it now seeks relief, the Government removed six class members to South Sudan with less than 16 hours’ notice and no opportunity to be heard. The Government’s assertion that these deportations could be reconciled with the injunction is wholly without merit. … The affected class members lacked any opportunity to research South Sudan, to determine whether they would face risks or torture or death there, or to speak to anyone about their concerns. Instead, they were left in their cells overnight with no chance to raise a claim and deported the next morning. The Government thus openly flouted two court orders, including the one from which it now seeks relief. Even if the orders in question had been mistaken, the Government had a duty to obey them until they were ‘reversed by orderly and proper proceedings’.”

In that context, the Court majority’s willingness to stay the lower court injunction while the administration appeals is disconcerting. Sotomayor described the majority’s use of discretion to grant the stay as being “as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable” and noted the following:

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last. Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

So, that was Monday,

Then Friday comes, and SCOTUS hands down 119 pages of opinions in Trump v. CASA, the case involving so-called universal preliminary injunctions handed down by three courts on Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. Barrett has the 6-3 majority opinion, with Sotomayor writing the lead dissent for the liberals; there’s also a Thomas concurrence (joined by Gorsuch), an Alito concurrence (jointed by Thomas), a Kavanagh solo concurrence, and a Jackson solo dissent.

The Barrett opinion doesn’t discuss the merits of the underlying birthright citizenship dispute at all, but focuses strictly on the question that has been percolating at SCOTUS for the last several years before finally coming to a head in this case: has Congress “granted federal courts the authority to universally enjoin the enforcement of an executive or legislative policy”? Solicitor General Sauer had argued that Article III forecloses the concept of universal relief. Barrett’s opinion doesn’t go that far but instead focuses on the authority Congress granted to the courts under the Judiciary Act of 1789, concluding the following:

“Under our well-established precedent, the equitable relief available in the federal courts is that ‘traditionally accorded by courts of equity’ at the time of our founding. Nothing like a universal injunction was available at the founding… [t]hus, under the Judiciary Act, federal courts lack authority to issue them.”

What we are really talking about here is competing visions of the role of the judiciary in the U.S. Constitutional system. The majority’s view, summarized by Barrett, is that “federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.” As such, per Kavanagh’s concurrence, “district courts issuing injunctions under the authority afforded by the Judiciary Act of 1789 may award only plaintiff-specific relief.”

Kavanaugh’s concurrence is interesting, as it imagines in this context a significant role for SCOTUS to play in resolving “applications for stays or injunctions with respect to major new federal statutes and executive actions”. He concurs with those who believe that “there often (perhaps not always, but often) should be a nationally uniform answer on whether a major new federal statutory, rule, or executive order can be enforced throughout the United States during the several-year interim period until its legality is finally decided on the merits,” but argues that it is SCOTUS, and not a district court, whose job it is to do that and thereby provide “a form of precedent (de jure or de facto) that provides guidance throughout the United States during the years-long interim period until a final decision on the merits.”

Sotomayor’s principal dissent criticizes the majority for ignoring the underlying context in which this case arose, namely the administration’s desire to enforce an executive order that is (per Sotomayor) “patently unconstitutional.” Per Sotomayor:

“The Court’s decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution. The Executive Branch can now enforce policies that flout settled law and violate countless individuals’ constitutional rights, and the federal courts will be hamstrung to stop its actions fully. Until the day that every affected person manages to become party to a lawsuit and secure for himself injunctive relief, the Government may act lawlessly indefinitely. Not even a decision from this Court would necessarily bind the Government to stop, completely and permanently, its commission of unquestionably unconstitutional conduct.”

But the real tour de force here is Jackson’s solo dissent, which is brusquely dismissed by Barrett as being “at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself” and as “embracing an imperial Judiciary.” To Jackson, the fundamental question posed by this case is simple:

“May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the Law? To ask this question is to answer it. In a constitutional Republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the Executive to follow the law—and it must. It is axiomatic that the Constitution of the United States and the statutes that the People’s representatives have enacted govern in our system of government. Thus, everyone, from the President on down, is bound by law. By duty and nature, federal courts say what the law is (if there is a genuine dispute), and require those who are subject to the law to conform their behavior to what the law requires. This is the essence of the rule of law.”

And as such Jackson criticizes the majority for taking too narrow a view of the Judiciary’s power:

“[The majority thinks] that the only function of our courts is to provide ‘complete relief’ to private parties. Sure, federal courts do that, and they do it well. But they also diligently maintain the rule of law itself. When it comes to upholding the law, federal courts ensure that all comers–i.e., everyone to whom to law applies and over whom the court has personal jurisdiction (including and perhaps especially the Executive)–know what the law is and, most important, follow it.”

Jackson is also deeply worried by the consequences of the majority’s decision:

“[O]ur rights-based legal system can only function properly if the Executive, and everyone else, is always bound by law. Today’s decision is a seismic shock to that foundational norm. Allowing the Executive to violate the law at its prerogative with respect to anyone who has not yet sued carves out a huge exception–a gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound. … [R]ather than having a governing system characterized by protected rights, the default becomes an Executive that can do whatever it wants to whomever it wants, unless and until each affected individual affirmatively invokes the law’s protection. … What the majority has done is to allow the Executive to nullify the statutory and constitutional rights of the uncounseled, the underresourced, and the unwary, by prohibiting the lower courts from ordering the executive to follow the law across the board.”

Lofty rhetoric aside, it is somewhat too early to read the tea leaves here. With respect to the birthright citizenship dispute, litigation will continue. As imagined by Kavanaugh’s concurrence, I suspect the day will soon come when SCOTUS will be asked to grant an injunction preventing the enforcement of the executive order while litigation proceeds, and I am optimistic the Court would grant that injunction. With respect to the broader issues at play, this Court keeps shifting the balance of power towards the Executive, which could be a force for a good in the right hands and a force for evil in the wrong hands.

The real lesson here, I think, is that elections matter, in a couple different dimensions. While I think Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Barrett have each brought some interesting perspectives to the court, I do think that if Hillary Clinton had been able to fill those three vacancies, the SCOTUS resulting from those appointments would not have issued these types of opinions (although in that counterfactual Trump presumably would have returned to private life after losing in 2016 so these particular cases wouldn’t have arisen).

As an aside, I continue to think of Jackson as the new Rehnquist, forging a solo path on the Court, hoping that over time the pendulum will swing back to meet her. She is 54 now and has been on the court for 3 years. When Rehnquist was 54, he’d been on the bench for 7 years, and was still 7 years away from becoming the Chief Justice; it was another 5 years after that, with the appointment of Thomas, before Rehnquist would have something approximating a majority of like-minded justices (although that majority included justices FedSoc would consider ‘squishes’, namely O’Connor and Kennedy). Where will Jackson be in 12 years, and will she ever be able to forge a Court reflecting her judicial vision? That will depend crucially on who gets to fill the Thomas (age 77), Alito (75), Sotomayor (71), and Roberts (70) seats. And that depends to a large extent on who controls the Senate in 2026, and the Presidency in 2028 & beyond.

But more fundamentally: The people who we elect are swearing an oath to uphold the Constitution (and, in the case of Senators, to provide advise and consent in the appointment of officials who also swear such an oath), and we as citizens need to take great care in assessing whether those individuals truly intend to uphold those oaths, for we can no longer expect the judiciary to enforce those individuals’ adherence to said oath.

So much to talk about… This is what I get for not carving out time to blog on a daily basis.

We’ll start with Iran: On Monday there was a brief and somewhat performative attack by Iran on a U.S. base in Qatar. I say ‘performative’ because the Iranians tipped the Qataris off about it in advance, and as a result there were no casualties. After that, Trump claimed that Iran and Israel have agreed to a ceasefire, although the situation remains somewhat tenuous–enough so that Trump complained on Tuesday that the two countries “have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” Yes folks, that’s the President of the United States, dropping the f-bomb during a press availability (this was not a hot mike situation).

There has also been some debate over how effective last weekend’s U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear capability actually was. On Tuesday the NYTimes reported that a classified DIA assessment asserted that the bombing “set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months.” Consistent with his worldview that everything is either a total success or a complete failure, Trump continues to insist that there was “total obliteration” of the facilities and decries any reporting to the contrary as, you guessed it, fake news.

Moving from Iran to Tehrangeles: Yesterday Judge Breyer ruled that the Newsom v. Trump case, regarding the federalization of the California National Guard, could continue at the district court level notwithstanding the recent 9th Circuit ruling overturning his temporary restraining order. He also rejected the administration’s desire to transfer the case out of the Northern District (where the state government sits) and into the Central District of California (which, confusingly, is where L.A. sits). The next step in the case will be expedited discovery on the question of whether the federalized National Guard has taken actions in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Now moving from West Coast to East Coast: I had not previously talked about the fact that on Tuesday there was a Democratic primary for the mayor of New York City. Recall that Eric Adams, the current mayor, was elected as a Democrat but had been indicted on federal corruption charges in September 2024, causing most of the Democratic establishment to call for his resignation. As such Adams dropped out of the Democratic primary in early April, but is expected to run for re-election this fall as an independent.

With the moderate incumbent out of the primary, the favorite to win was another moderate, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had resigned as governor in 2021 due to sexual harassment allegations. Importantly, in NYC the Democratic primary for mayor uses ranked choice voting, although the general election does not. As such several candidates entered the race to Cuomo’s left, and many of them entered into cross-endorsement agreements, trying to tell their supporters who they should rank downballot. An organized initiative even emerged called DREAM: Don’t Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor.

Out of this environment, a leftist candidate for mayor emerged: a previously obscure State Assemblyman named Zohran Mamdami. Born in Uganda on my 20th birthday, the charismatic Mamdami — a Muslim, and an avowed socialist — started the primary campaign at 1% in the polls but by election day had established himself as the clearest threat to Cuomo. (Hmm, charismatic young State-level politician of color with a funny name, starts from nowhere in the polls against multiple competitors, but manages to come out of the pack – where have I seen this before?) Going into Tuesday, the conventional wisdom was that Cuomo would almost certainly win a plurality, but not a majority, of the first choice votes and then we would need to wait one week to find out whether ranked choice re-allocations were enough to put Mamdami over the top.

Well, it turned out we didn’t have to wait. Shockingly, it was Mamdami who won a convincing plurality of the first choice votes, 43.5% to Cuomo’s 36.4%. That was enough, in light of the cross-endorsement agreements, to convince Cuomo to concede on election night, although Mamdami’s victory won’t be official until next week. Having said that, Cuomo had already formed his own Fight and Deliver Party in order to give him access to the general election ballot irrespective of the results of the Democratic party, but it is possible he will decide to drop out.

As such we don’t know at this point if Mamdami will be facing a four-way race (against Adams, the Republican candidate, and another independent candidate already endorsed by former Governer Paterson) or a five-way race (adding Cuomo); and with no ranked choice in the general, who knows how that will play out. Even so, the magnitude of Mamdami’s victory is a shock, and is expected to have significant reverberations on Democratic politics far beyond the five boroughs.

Moving from NYC to D.C.: The Senate is continuing to struggle with getting its version of OBBBA to the floor for a vote. The Senate Parliamentarian continues to issue rulings that various aspects of the bill do not quality for inclusion in a budget reconciliation bill exempt from the filibuster and thus requiring only 51 votes for passage. The list of bill components that have reportedly been nixed by the Parliamentarian is getting rather long, and I am having some trouble believing that what’s left over of this bill could pass either chamber at this point. On the other hand, the price of inaction is the expiry of the TCJA’s tax cuts in 2026, and there is probably not a single elected Republican who wants to see that happen.

Finally we move from Capitol Hill across the street to 1 First Street NE. Today SCOTUS announced that tomorrow will indeed be the last day of opinions for cased argued in October Term 2024, which means that we should finally learn the outcome of the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. CASA. Three days ago we did also get action from SCOTUS on the controversy regarding third-country removals of migrants, in a case that came to the top court under the caption DHS v. D.V.D. But given how long this post is already, I’m going to save a discussion of that case for tomorrow’s post.

Back in the U.S. for a week, between summer trips to Canada and Croatia.

In my last post I noted that Trump had been making noise about possible U.S. intervention in the Iran-Israel War that had just broken out. On Thursday the White House Press Secretary said that Trump would decide “within the next two weeks” on whether or not the U.S. would bomb Iran. That prompted the New York Times to remind the world of the many, many times that Trump had said an issue would be addressed in “two weeks” only for it to vanish:

“Two weeks for Mr. Trump can mean something, or nothing at all. It is both a yes and a no. It is delaying while at the same time scheduling. It is not an objective unit of time, it is a subjective unit of time. It is completely divorced from any sense of chronology. It simply means later. But later can also mean never. Sometimes.”

Indeed, the “two weeks” reminded many people of another principle that has become a common refrain in recent weeks, TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out.

In that context, it came as quite a surprise Saturday evening when word came out that the U.S. had, indeed, attacked three Iranian nuclear facilities using stealth bombers and submarine-launched cruise missiles. This attack represents the first-ever use of a 21st century U.S. weapon called the Massive Ordinance Protector, which can only be delivered by American B-2 bombers, and which was designed to strike deep underground targets like Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Fordow.

While it’s still very early, this news bears monitoring along at least three major dimensions.

First, the direct foreign policy implications: To what extent does this represent a “one and done” event versus a harbinger of greater U.S. intervention in the Iranian conflict, and to what extent can and will Iran and its allies retaliate against the U.S.?

Second, the implications on Republican politics: Given that Trump clearly positioned himself as the anti-war candidate and swore off foreign interventionism in favor of his “America First” policy, to what extent does this action splinter the MAGA coalition?

Third, the implications for Congress: To what extent do the Trump’s actions violate the War Powers Act, and what is Congress willing to do about that? Some on the left are already arguing that the Iranian bombing constitutes an impeachable offense.

In other news, the Senate Parliamentarian has started making rulings about which provisions of OBBBA can and cannot be included in a budget reconciliation bill requiring only a bare majority instead of a 60-vote majority. To my surprise, the Parliamentarian has blessed a revised version of a controversial provision that would place a 10-year moratorium on enforcing state and local AI legislation; in order to pass muster, the provision has been revised in the Senate to make the moratorium a condition for states for receive federal broadband expansion funds, thus creating a suitable connection to budgetary concerns.

As expected based on oral arguments, a 9th Circuit panel ruled 3-0 in favor of the administration in Newsom v. Trump, overturning the temporary restraining order issued by federal Judge Charles Breyer (the younger brother of retired Justice Breyer). Importantly, the 9th Circuit did not endorse the government’s position that there was no place for judicial review of the President’s decision to federalize the National Guard. On Friday Judge Breyer had been expected to hold a hearing on Governor Newsom’s request for a preliminary injunction, but now Breyer appears to have some doubts as to whether that injunction request should be filed in his court or directly with the 9th Circuit, so he called for briefing due tomorrow on that procedural question.

In other judicial news, SCOTUS did not grant the plaintiffs’ request for expedited consideration of the Federal Circuit IEEPA tariffs case.

Still on vacation in Canada, and am writing this from a train bound for Montreal. It’s a national day of mourning here, as last night the Edmonton Oilers lost the Stanley Cup Final to the Florida Panthers 4 games to 2, now making it 32 straight years that the Cup has gone to a U.S. team instead of a Canadian team.

Canada has been in the world spotlight for other reasons this week, as Prime Minister Carney has been hosting the annual G7 Summit out in Alberta. Trump showed up but then left halfway through the summit, citing the Iran-Israel War that broke out a few days ago as the pretext for a sudden return to D.C. Trump’s public statements today have been ambiguous as to whether he intends for the U.S. to join the war.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit held oral arguments yesterday in Newsom v. Trump, the National Guard federalization case, but the questioning appeared to indicate the judges think Trump’s position has the better merits. Things have remained relatively calm in L.A. in recent days, with Mayor Bass yesterday lifting the evening curfew in effect for portions of downtown L.A. for the past 7 days.

Although we’re only about six weeks out from the Federal Circuit taking substantive action on the V.O.S. Selection v. Trump challenge to Trump’s use of IEEPA to justify various types of tariffs, yesterday a different set of plaintiffs urged SCOTUS to grant certiorari before judgment on its IEEPA tariffs case working its way through the D.C. Circuit, with the aim of getting oral argument at SCOTUS scheduled for October or even earlier. This case, Learning Resources v. Trump, presents the question of whether IEEPA’s grant of presidential authority to “regulate importation” authorizes any tariffs at all. The V.O.S. Selections case, by contrast, pre-supposed that IEEPA could authorize tariffs but then argued that these particular tariffs were beyond the scope of that authority.

Nothing of note from the SCOTUS shadow docket in recent days. On the regular docket, today the canonical 6-3 majority upheld (in U.S. v. Skremetti) a Tennessee law that forbids minors from receiving gender-affirming care. When the case was heard in December, the Biden administration was appealing a decision below that upheld the law, with General Prelogar making what I think was her last such appearance before the Court. In February the Trump administration informed the Court that it was changing its position about the constitutionality of the law, but urged that the Court continue with its opinion rather than dismiss the suit.

Finally, the Senate hopes to start taking votes on OBBBA by the middle of next week, but it is far from certain that Trump’s July 4th deadline for enactment can be met, as the competing priorities of Senate Republicans and House Republicans remain difficult to reconcile with one another.

Today is Father’s Day. I’m spending it in Canada with my two children who are rising juniors in high school; tomorrow we’ll do a university visit, then spend a couple of days with my parents, then do another university visit, then head back to the U.S.

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, a gunman posing as a police officer entered the home of Melissa Wortman, the leader of the Democratic caucus in the Minnesota House (which was split 67-67 between the two parties, with the Republican leader currently serving as Speaker under a power-sharing arrangement), and assassinated her and her husband. The gunman then went to the home of a prominent Minnesota Senate Democrat, John Hoffman, and shot both him and his wife several times, although both survived.

The suspected assassin, a 57-year-old white male, spent the rest of the weekend at large but reportedly was captured after sunset tonight, with the first reports breaking I was sitting down to write this post. By Saturday morning authorities knew who they were looking for and had found his abandoned vehicle, with a long list of other Minnesota Democratic political targets, and a number of fliers for No Kings Day events. In response, Minnesota authorities cancelled all No Kings Day events in the state, although tens of thousands of people showed up anyways in St. Paul at the Capitol.

More broadly, the No Kings Day protests throughout the country were a success yesterday. Organizers claim total attendance of 5 million, which is probably an exaggeration, but it’s believable that it hit a million. Most major cities had turnout in the high five figures, and there were many gatherings in smaller communities. Oak Park, the Chicago suburb where my older kids live, had about 1,800 people turn out even though it overlapped with the much larger rally going on in downtown Chicago.

Trump’s military parade went off later in the day, although bad weather interfered with some of the plans, and attendance appeared to be extremely underwhelming. That didn’t stop Trump’s chief propagandist, Steven Cheung, from claiming that 250,000 had attended the parade; the real number may be as little as a tenth of that.

In other news, late last week the 2nd Circuit formally refused Trump’s request to have an en banc rehearing of his appeal of the verdict in the Carroll II trial, the one from 2023 where E. Jean Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages. Trump’s appeals in the Carroll I trial, the one from early 2024 where Carroll was awarded a further $83.3 million in damages, continue with the 2nd Circuit scheduled to hear oral arguments on June 24th.

Two significant developments in California yesterday.

First, during a press briefing being given by DHS Secretary Noem inside the federal building in L.A. that is being protected by the federalized National Guard and Marines, Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) stood up to interject immediately after Noem said that federal troops would be staying in L.A. “to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

One of my favorite political movies is the 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate. There is a scene in that movie where the Defense Secretary is giving a press briefing, and in the middle of it Senator Iselin (the movie’s surrogate for Senator Joseph McCarthy) stands up and interrupts to announce that he is holding a (non-existent) list of card-carrying Communists employed by the Department of Defense. What doesn’t happen in that scene is Senator Iselin immediately being confronted by bodyguards, shooed from the room, forced to his knees, and handcuffed.

But that’s what happened to Senator Padilla yesterday, all captured very clearly on video. Naturally many Democrats are apoplectic and have called for Secretary Noem’s resignation, while Republicans seem to be denying any wrongdoing and blaming the incident on Padilla. This coming from an administration that recently indicted one Congressperson, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), over a skirmish last month outside an ICE facility in Newark. (The Newark Mayor was originally arrested but has not been charged; he went on to finish 2nd in this week’s Democratic primary for this year’s New Jersey gubernatorial election.)

Second, a federal judge in California took swift action in Newsom v. Trump, ruling yesterday that Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard was unlawful, but declining to address Newsom’s concerns about potential use of the Marines in immigration actions until such time as there has been an alleged violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. (“Crime. Boy, I don’t know.”) The ruling was stayed until midday today to give the 9th Circuit time to act, and they have stayed the ruling further pending a hearing scheduled for June 17th.

In other news, the House voted 214-212 in favor of Trump’s recission request relating to $9.4 billion of previously appropriated funding for federal aid and public broadcasting. The Senate has 45 days to act, and it only requires a majority vote.

Finally, I should mention that tomorrow is not only Trump’s 79th birthday, but also the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Continental Army. To commemorate the occasion Trump has arranged for a military parade in D.C., the first one since 1991. As fate would have it, I will be on a flight leaving the country while the parade is taking place; the symbolism was unintentional, but apt. Earlier that day, so-called “No Kings Day” protests have been scheduled for hundreds of communities throughout the country.