Issue: Law

The Supreme Court’s final releases featured two historic rulings with epic significance.

In a win for women athletes, the Court upheld the right of states to ban male athletes from competing in women’s sports events. CBS reports:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled states can prohibit transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, a decision that delivers the latest setback for transgender rights.

In two of the most closely watched cases of its term, the Supreme Court upheld laws from West Virginia and Idaho that restrict transgender athletes’ participation in school sports. The cases are known as West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored the opinion for the majority, writing that under Title IX — the landmark law that promotes equal opportunity in sports — and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, schools can base eligibility for women and girls’ sports teams on biological sex.

“Consistent with Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that the States may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females. They may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex,” Kavanaugh wrote. “The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America.”

The three liberal Justices dissented. Sonia Sotomayor even read her dissent from the bench, which CBS took as “a signal of strong disagreement with the majority’s opinion.” The Manhattan Institute’s Ilya Shapiro, on the other hand, writes that the Court “stood up for girls in sports,” calling the ruling “a victory for fairness, reality, and the girls whom Title IX was meant to protect.” A Wall Street Journal editorial said the Court has “struck a blow for equal rights for women, federalism and common sense.” 

“Court Finally Gave Us the Protection We Need” is the headline on Paula Scanlan’s piece in The Free Press:

When Lia Thomas, a biological male, joined Penn’s women’s swim team, my coaches told me to accept it. The Supreme Court’s ruling on transgender athletes vindicated me.

Outkick’s Jackson Thompson reflected on the “years of sacrifice” leading up to the ruling. Praised in Thompson’s story is Riley Gaines, who in a separate story hails the ruling as an important victory but says the battle isn’t over (and specifically is calling out Simone Biles). Just to Be Clear: Justice Clarence Thomas tore into transgenderism as “a lie” in his concurrence and went further than his fellow Justices:

“Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are. Sex is an immutable ‘biological’ characteristic,” Thomas wrote in his brief, two-page solo concurrence.

The Court’s ruling on birthright citizenship knocked many conservatives for a loop and is a setback for President Trump’s efforts to end illegal immigration:

The Supreme Court has ruled that babies born in the US have a constitutional right to citizenship, rejecting Donald Trump’s bid to end the 150-year-old policy.

In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that children born in the US “to parents unlawfully or temporarily present” are “citizens at birth” under the 14th amendment.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, undoubtedly making herself even less popular among conservatives, sided with Roberts and the three liberal justices, making a 5-3 majority. Justice Alito’s dissent was blistering:

“In my judgment, the Court has made a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future,” Alito continued. 

Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent that the ruling cheapens citizenship:

“I am not sure that today’s opinion will stand the test of time,” Thomas, the longest-serving conservative currently on the bench, wrote in a 91-page dissent to the ruling upholding the 14th Amendment right. “The Citizenship Clause ‘added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship.’ Today’s opinion devalues that citizenship.”

Predictability Award: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “admonished” Justice Thomas—his dissent is racist, she said.

An editorial in the Washington Post called the ruling “judicial overreach” because it should have been decided on narrower grounds. Mollie Hemingway said on Fox that Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion is a “devastatingly bad decision for the future of the country” and compared it to Roe v. Wade and the Dred Scott decision, both of which were reversed in the fullness of time. In the meantime, conservatives may resort to patchwork corrections, made more difficult by the broadness of the ruling.

Oh, Say Can You See: Vice President Vance told Laura Ingraham that he can see “a big silver lining” in the “preposterous” ruling.

The Mamdani effect struck again yesterday in Colorado. Socialist Melat Kiros, 29, defeated 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGe in the leftist insurgency:

Ms. Kiros, who has questioned Israel’s right to exist and called the Oct 7 massacre “inevitable”, appeared to be riding an anti-establishment wave, which commentators have called the “Mamdani effect” after Zohran Mamdani, New York’s socialist mayor.

The Gen-Z socialist, meanwhile, is already bossing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. 

Colorado’s Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper managed to defeat progressive challenger Julie Gonzales. Phil Weiser scored a win for Governor over Senator Michael Bennett:

Weiser cast himself as the “fighter” against President Trump, pointing to more than 65 lawsuits his office filed against the administration.

But guess who bobbited up: Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert won the GOP primary, despite President Trump’s having called for a challenger.

A feature of the socialist surge is hostility to the state of Israel and Jews. Rich Lowry has a good piece on New York Mayor, the youthful progenitor of the socialist surge, and hizzoner’s lack of candor when it comes to his reasons for opposing Israel:

Mamdani makes it sound as though Israel is a theocracy, and so he has to withhold his support until such time as it meets his exacting standards for state neutrality in religious matters and freedom of conscience.

When is the last time, though, that you heard Mamdani or his movement, the Democratic Socialists of America, inveighing with great moral passion against Saudi Arabia?

This Mamdani line of argument is built on a falsehood about Israel and is transparently an exercise in bad faith and double standards.

“The American College of Surgeons Remains Committed to Ideology” is a City Journal headline. They invited Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to deliver an important lecture as a way to underscore their support of DEI. Jackson knows about DEI, having been selected for a Supreme Court seat because she is a black woman.

Would you want a surgeon whose surgical skills were comparable to Justice Jackson’s legal astuteness to operate on you? Read in City Journal about the ACS’s alienation of medical professionals who advocate merit.

President Trump today makes his debut flight in his brand-spanking-new Air Force One,  a gift of the Qatari government. I think we have good cause to be queasy about the president’s accepting a gift of such magnitude from the Qataris, who just happen to be key in our negotiations with Iran. I guess I wish he had not unveiled the new plane in the lead-up to July 4. But that’s sort of a copout.

A good way to get in the mood for the Fourth is to read Joel Kopkin’s “The Enduring Promise of America.” He begins with an inspiring quote from John Dos Passos, and then writes:

America is, above all, a nation of ambition played out across a vast continental canvas. At times this makes us appear rude or short-sighted, but it is preferable to following Europe’s green-tinged anti-growth agenda amid ever-louder calls to expand the welfare state. The continent that gave birth to America is increasingly becoming a delightful destination for North American, Asian and Arab tourists. It is considerably less appealing, however, for working- and middle-class Europeans as their industries continue to decline, even in Germany.

For all its faults, America remains a restless country where people strive, often unsuccessfully, in their ‘pursuit of happiness’. …This restlessness tends to make inequality worse, but also makes us overall much richer. The animal spirits have not been entirely suppressed. Meanwhile, a more ‘civilised’ Europe has fallen behind in productivity, economic growth, investment and wealth per capita. Great Britain, the motherland of self-government and industrial innovation, has fallen so far behind that it would now be the poorest of our 50 states.

The Supreme Court rained rulings yesterday. Biggest losers: ghost of Woodrow Wilson and the deep state. Biggest winner: E. Jean Carroll because the Court declined to review the verdict in her favor against President Trump.

The Court’s ruling on executive authority, Trump v. Slaughter, is the most important. Here is how a Wall Street Journal editorial addresses this one:

It took 91 years, but the Supreme Court on Monday abandoned the fiction of independent agencies (Trump v. Slaughter). Yet in a somewhat paradoxical decision (Trump v. Cook), the Court enshrined the Federal Reserve’s independence despite its exercise of vast executive powers.

In the first case the conservative 6-3 majority helped restore the Constitution’s proper separation of powers that have been eroded by Woodrow Wilson’s “rule by experts.” Going forward, the President will have free rein to fire members of agencies that exercise executive power as America’s founders intended….

The Federal Reserve is exempt from this presidential authority. The WSJ editors opine:

Our guess is that the Chief and Justice Kavanaugh made the pragmatic judgment that they simply don’t trust Mr. Trump to run monetary policy. They’re right on the politics, but Justice Thomas makes a powerful case on the law.

“Chief Justice Roberts Tries to Save the Fed from Democracy and the Constitution” is National Review’s take. This deals with President Trump’s unsuccessful (for now) attempt to fire Fed Board Member Lisa Cook. The Federalist headline is similar: “John Roberts: Presidents Have Executive Power. Also John Roberts: No, They Don’t.” “If the Fed Is Not Executive, What Is It?” ask NR Editors. Glenn Reynolds greets the Court’s rulings on executive power with a must-read Substack piece headlined “Bringing Back the ‘Spoils System?’ Yes, Please.” “A better name would be an ‘accountability system.’ And it’s just the beginning,” Reynolds argues. Andrew Jackson, the first populist president, is the chief executive whose name is most associated with the spoils system. It is the antidote to the deep state.

George Washington University law prof and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley’s headline sums it up this way: “Supreme Court Allows Trump to Say ‘You’re Fired’ to Meddling Bureaucrats.” Turley writes:

On Monday, Donald Trump sealed one of the most lasting parts of his legacy. In Trump v. Slaughter, the Court reaffirmed and reinforced the authority of presidents to determine who will carry out the functions of the Executive Branch.

For Powerline, the ruling was nothing less than the implementation of Article III of the Constitution. Ilya Shapiro argues in City Journal that the Supreme Court has finally brought the administrative state back under elected control.

President Trump had less reason to be pleased by the Court’s rulings on mail-in ballots and “geofencing,” two rulings with the conservatives and Justice Alito in dissent. The Wall Street Journal editorial:

So much for the “MAGA Supreme Court.” That’s the Democratic cliché for attacking the Justices, yet they released four major rulings Monday, and the liberals won in three. That includes a pair of cases, both with Justice Samuel Alito in fierce dissent, upholding late mail ballots and erecting a legal bar for police “geofence” investigations.

Sluggish election results are terrible for public confidence. But purely for voter convenience, many states give residents until Election Day to mail their ballots, and then officials spend a week or more afterward counting tardy arrivals. The question for the Justices: Does this violate federal laws, passed starting in 1845, that set a uniform Election Day?

No, says a 5-4 majority of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Chief Justice John Roberts, and the liberal trio. 

The ballots ruling aside, the Left tried to portray the Supreme Court as lackeys of the president. “If the Supreme Court Is in the Tank for Trump, It Sure Has a Weird Way of Showing It,” says Brittany Bernstein.

Today will be another big day for the Supreme Court as the Court issues its final rulings, including on the hot-button matter of birthright citizenship.

What’s going on today in Iran negotiations? Both the U.S. and Tehran are sending delegations to Qatar today, but Iran denies that direct talks are scheduled. A large shipping firm says that chaos in the Strait of Hormuz is the “new normal.” Politico recognizes that gas prices are dropping and that could help the GOP in the midterms. Meanwhile, The Free Press reports that “an emboldened Iran is going after Christians“:

St. Peter Evangelical is the oldest Protestant church in Iran. Now the regime is threatening to seize it, warning its leaders: ‘We are no longer afraid of America.’

Some GOP Senators see the state of the negotiations as a potential pitfall for Vice President Vance. Vance’s chief rival for 2028, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, comes out smelling like roses in a WSJ editorial headlined “Rubio Holds the Line on Hezbollah.”

“Eat the rich” is a lefty political slogan. And, yes, socialists—communists—will eat the rich. But not before an aperitif. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is looking very like an aperitif. Kirsten Fleming writes at the New York Post that Jeffreys is “rolling out the welcome mat for the DSA, which aspires to mount his head on their trophy wall.”

Congrats to Bill Maher, who won the Mark Twain Award, which was presented at the Kennedy Center. Kat Rosenfield of The Free Press said he won because he “isn’t afraid of pissing everyone off.” But Maher is himself—uh—peeved with the hard Left. He recently told VP Vance that his vote for 2028 might be “in play” for both Dems and GOP.  

The American Left is well-fed by billionaires such as the Soros family. One of these alleged funders is attracting notice from the U. S. Department of Justice:

A federal grand jury is investigating alleged financial crimes by Neville Roy Singham, the China-based tech tycoon whose fortune has funded a sprawling network of socialist, communist and Marxist organizations across the U.S. over the last decade….

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche authorized the investigation as the Trump administration seeks to crack down on fraud, money laundering and other financial crimes in the multibillion-dollar nonprofit industry.

Can the SAVE America Bill be Saved? Conservative activist Scott Pressler says the GOP had better do this. The House is trying to merge it with the must-pass defense bill.

Can the French be SAVED from heat strokes? “Air Conditioning, Scourge of the French Left” is an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

As the latest heat wave discomforts Europe, France is arguing about air conditioning. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally supports issuing €20 billion (about $23 billion) in interest-free loans to buy 30 million to 40 million units and insulation. The French left argues that air conditioning is a selfish indulgence and an ecological menace. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the country’s most prominent left-wing leader, warned that cooling would mean “increasing the damage,” and says he wouldn’t expose his grandchildren to air conditioning because it “destroys your sinuses.”

To an American, this is disorienting. Nearly 90% of U.S. households have air conditioning. But in much of Europe, cooling is a hot issue on which the populist right has the better side of the argument.

That should unsettle American progressives, who assume the far right is consistently irrational while the left is the party of science.

Moral: The Left will fry you before it eats you.

Even with all the chaos in the Strait of Hormuz, the Nasdaq is “on Track to Wrap Quarter With 20% Gain.” Here are some people who aren’t benefiting as much as they might have from the market: “They’re in Their 60s and Their Student Loans Won’t Let Them Retire.” Ms. Must’s pet peeve is that it was borderline criminal to give hefty loans to young people who had little experience with money and reality. And maybe majored in Women’s Studies or something equally ridiculous.  

President Trump has ousted his second Cabinet official.

Former AG (it was that fast!) Pam Bondi learned her fate Wednesday in a ride to the Supreme Court with President Trump: 

During the drive, Trump told her, “I think it’s time,” she would later tell an associate. 

The ensuing hours were as awkward and chaotic as Bondi’s 14-month tenure as the nation’s top law-enforcement official. Trump and Bondi briefly sat near each other during the Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship, but the president soon switched chairs. Later, Bondi would ask Trump if she could keep her job until the summer. The president declined.

The President called Bondi “a Great American Patriot” in a Truth Social post announcing her departure after a 14-month tenure that started with the declaration, “We love Pam.”  Well, it was a nicer send-off than Jeff Sessions got. The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal comments:

Is there a worse job in Washington, D.C., than Attorney General under President Trump? We can’t think of many, and on Thursday Pam Bondi learned this the hard way as the President sacked her after only 14 months on the job….

Ms. Bondi’s great fault is that she was never good at saying no. She blundered on the Epstein files by boasting about big revelations that never materialized. This fed the conspiracists who fretted about a cover-up. A manageable problem turned into a political fiasco that has hurt the President.

Among the moments that defined Bondi was her claim that the late convicted pedophile Epstein’s client list was sitting on her desk and would be released. It was never released (probably because there wasn’t such a list). Whenever there is a breaking legal story, Ms. Musts asks herself: What does Andrew McCarthy say? McCarthy says that “Bondi couldn’t do the impossible“:

From the president’s standpoint, lawfare — the leveraging of the government’s law enforcement apparatus against political enemies and for partisan ends — is a strategy that must be used because it was used against him. …

There are many ways in which Bondi came up short: She didn’t have DOJ experience, she’s not a good communicator, her instincts aren’t great. But in the end, the job on the terms offered was one at which it was impossible to succeed.

Offering a different perspective, The Federalist headline is “The Only Criterion For Trump’s Next AG Is How Many Antifa And Russia Hoaxers He’ll Arrest.” Eli Lake of The Free Press counters that “Bondi Did What Trump Wanted—Not What He Needed.” Lake cites the Epstein files, where doing Trump’s bidding, Lake argues, backfired.

There Are Two Wars. “The War—and the War on the War” is the headline on a Free Press piece by classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson. VDH argues:

Militarily, the war is going as well as could be envisioned, yet Democrats seek to turn it into another Vietnam or Afghanistan—hoping to win control of Congress at the expense of national security….

AEI’s Danielle Pletka has been hitting it out of the ballpark on the Iran conflict. In her latest, she takes on our NATO allies, which is akin in polite society to saying the canapes suck. Pletka writes:

So now, as we engage in a war to squelch the nuclear, missile, and terroristic ambitions of the Islamic Republic (not to speak of stopping them from killing their own people), is it presumptuous of us to ask — not for help, mind you — but to overfly or use bases in our NATO allied nations?

We’re not asking for troops; not for planes; not for fuel; not for love. Just overflight and landing rights. And guess what? We had to bully our “bestie” in Europe, Sir Keir Starmer, to allow us to use Diego Garcia. Our pal Giorgia Meloni denied us landing rights on Sigonella in Sicily. The Spanish won’t let us fly over their precious Jew-hating country. France has reportedly refused us overflight to resupply Israel. …

These are our “allies.” These are nations in which Iran has conducted multiple terrorist attacks. These are nations that acted to refer Iran’s nuclear non-compliance to the UN Security Council. These are nations that import more oil via the Strait of Hormuz than the United States. Far more.

The New York Post’s cover headline: “Justice Was Not Served.” It refers to the verdict in the trial of Guy Rivera, who shot and killed hero cop Jonathan Diller in 2024:

Cop-killer Guy Rivera was stunningly acquitted of first-degree murder Wednesday for fatally shooting the married dad and officer. He was instead convicted of the lesser charge of aggravated manslaughter in Diller’s death — and found guilty of attempted murder in the shooting of Diller’s partner, who survived the March 2024 carnage in Queens.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called the verdict a “gut punch” to the NYPD. But how did it happen? It is worth considering whether juries in New York absorb their mayor’s anti-policing agenda. Let us hope that a jury will not take such a cavalier attitude if this terrible New York shooting of a 7-month-old baby in Brooklyn comes before them.

More Crime. What kind of hospice has a 97% survival rate and has received more than $7 million in Medicare funds? This kind:

The FBI arrested a married couple Thursday accused of fraudulently billing Medicare for $7.45 million while running a hospice with a survival rate reported to be more than 97% after five years. They were the first in a series of arrests planned Thursday, federal officials told CBS News….

A high survival rate at a hospice provider is one of a series of red flags identified by state auditors for fraud because most people enter hospice care in the final stages of a terminal illness. In past cases of fraud, operators were found to be using false or stolen identities to collect federal reimbursements for palliative care. 

The FBI raid took place in San Dimas, California, where the hospice is located. Kudos to CBS News (linked above) for the hospice scoop. I linked yesterday to “Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud” in City Journal. Don’t expect blue state politicians to necessarily crack down—these scams involve federal welfare money, the lifeblood of the Left.

USA TODAY’S Ingrid Jaques has written a column that needed to be written. Love or hate former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, she doesn’t deserve the humiliation brought about because of pointless stories about her cross-dressing husband.

It’s the over-the-top mocking and apparent glee so many people are taking from this family’s pain that rubs me the wrong way. And it’s coming from both sides. Since Noem lost President Donald Trump’s support, apparently, it’s fair game for the right to pile on, too. 

That said, Malcolm Clark uses the unfortunate Noem story to make a point about what the headline calls “the dark secret of trans.” “Men who wear women’s clothes were not ‘born in the wrong body’ – they do it for a sexual thrill,” Clark argues in Spiked Online.

While we’re about gender, see “How Gender Medicine Set Itself Up for Disaster” in Compact Magazine. Just one wrong way:

It’s likely no one has done more to push pediatric gender medicine toward more liberal prescribing practices than Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who until recently directed the gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Charismatic and indefatigable, the pediatrician has been particularly vocal in questioning the comprehensive psychosocial assessments WPATH’s guidelines recommend for minors seeking gender-transition interventions. What some have held up as invaluable safeguards, she has disparaged as stigmatizing and counterproductive. 

Some Good News. U.S. hiring rebounded in March.  

Since it’s Good Friday, it’s the perfect day to mention that young people are turning to church in record numbers (here and here). Meanwhile, Unherd asks, “Can We Have the Good without Good Friday?” The article suggests that the movie “The Exorcist” is helpful in deciding.

Wishing you a good Good Friday and a happy Easter.