SCOTUS, POTUS…and the Rest of Us

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Every June, the Supreme Court becomes America’s least exciting, least watched, but most consequential reality show.

It has none of the pageantry or paparazzi, nothing sexy like celebrities or soap opera drama.

Just nine justices issuing opinions…that can alter the legal landscape for decades. Rules and robes. So, there’s that.

This year is no exception.

As the Court approaches the finish line, several major cases remain undecided, and they are doozies. Together they touch some of the biggest questions in American life: citizenship, immigration, presidential power, campaign finance, and the ongoing debate over the distinction between sex and gender.

Whether you’re a constitutional law professor or just someone trying to make sense of the headlines, these are the ones to watch in Washington.

Birthright Citizenship

Perhaps the most closely watched case involves President Trump’s executive order seeking to limit automatic citizenship for certain children born in the United States.

The legal question is not just political. It reaches back to the Fourteenth Amendment itself and asks what the framers intended when they wrote that persons born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens.

Opponents argue that more than a century of precedent supports the current understanding of birthright citizenship…including the gross misuse of it.

Supporters, including myself, would argue that framers never envisioned birthright tourism and the pirating of a nation via childbirth. 

But perhaps the bigger decision in this big decision will be the answering of this question: Should a single federal district judge be able to halt a presidential policy nationwide?

Raise your hand if you’re tired of your vote being vacated and impeded by juris-vigilantism. Just me?

Presidential Power

Several pending cases ask a painfully simple question:

Who ultimately controls the executive branch?

For those of us who grew up on Schoolhouse Rock, the answer seems obvious. The Executive.

But for decades, Congress has created agencies designed to operate with over, outside, around, and independently from the president. 

Hence, the “Deep State,”—the unelected bureaucracy insulated from democratic accountability. 

The Court’s rulings could clarify how much authority a president has to remove officials and direct executive agencies.

Common sense would demand that we acknowledge that if the POTUS is stripped of his power to hire and fire within his own administration and agencies, we no longer have a president and elections are no longer necessary because in reality we have a symbol, a figure-head…a monarch…who can do nothing. 

And an unknown, unelected bureaucracy who can and has done whatever the heck they want to. 

Including crippling us from within, turning on its own citizens and harnessing the power of “.gov” against us.

The Federal Reserve 

We don’t spend a lot of time fretting or fawning over The Fed. But maybe we should. 

For generations, markets have largely assumed that the Fed’s decisions on interest rates and monetary policy are immune to day-to-day political pressure. Tell that to poor Jerome! Trump has been gunning for him since day 1.

Oddly, while singing the praises of  Alan Greenspan—the longest-serving, and most revered head of the federal reserve…who didn’t do that great of a job in reality. 

He peeled off and printed more cash money than every rapper in every rap video in all of time. We are still bouncing in the residual inflation of his flation. 

Immigration 

Let’s goooooo!

Does every visitor get to stay in our fair land? Or can the executive branch terminate asylum claims for individuals who are…oh I don’t know…plotting terrosim on our soil? Defrauding welfare programs?

Friends—neighbors—there is an uncomfortable crossroad where sovereignty and humanity meet and not everyone gathered there has good and sincere motivations. 

Such interlopers and loafers should be shown the door. 

The Court’s role is not to decide what immigration policy should be. 

Its role is to determine who has the authority to decide what immigration policy should be.

Say it loud, say it proud–THE EXECUTIVE.

Women’s Sports and the Meaning of Equal Protection

I will never not be angry that we are having to defend girls from the left all the way to the Supreme Court. 

It’s wickedness. There is no gray here. There are not a hundred shades of gender and sex to be considered. There are girls. There are boys. There are biological differences. Period.

Watch closely, kids. 

We will know we won if Democrats’ response to the rulings is to call for court-packing and the dismantling of the SCOTUS.