President Trump, apparently contradicting two specific mandates in the Constitution, today banned the counting of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. when seats in the House of Representatives are divided up next year, following the 2020 census. In an executive order that civil rights groups immediately vowed to challenge in court, Trump claimed that it… Read More
Supreme Court slows House subpoenas
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request by House of Representatives committees to put into effect immediately the Court’s new ruling allowing the panels to demand access to President Trump’s private financial records. The effect will be to slow down by about two weeks the committees’ move to start a process in a lower… Read More
Trump seeks delay in feud with Congress
President Trump’s lawyers, opposing the effort by House of Representatives committees to move ahead rapidly to get his financial records, have urged the Supreme Court to let that controversy go over to the new Congress that will not meet until January 3. If a delay lasts that long, the subpoenas issued by the committees would… Read More
Is chaos in store for the election?
Looming over the election that occurs in 113 days is a refrain that is sure to be heard repeatedly from the White House, before and after the balloting: “The election was rigged!” That may not be true of how the contest actually went, but it is bound to add to the uncertainty that already is… Read More
Beginning of the end…?
A troubled presidency, America knows from Richard Nixon’s sad demise, can collapse in a hurry, especially if the Supreme Court is unwilling to bend the rules to rescue such a regime. From a ruling against him by the Court on July 24, 1974, a mere 15 days passed before Nixon resigned under a threat of… Read More
Is Jefferson’s “wall” crumbling?
For centuries, religion has made the human condition not only more tolerable, but also more serene, comforted and spiritually uplifting. But, over those same centuries, some acting in the name of religion have caused war and strife and contributed to actual worsening of the human experience. In America, religion has long been at the center… Read More
Still, the Electoral College’s flaws remain
Every major case that the Supreme Court decides has the potential to settle a lot about what the nation’s laws or its Constitution mean. Much of the time, though, the Court prefers to decide such a case narrowly, leaving serious questions unanswered. Today’s unanimous decision by the Court on the Electoral College is narrow like… Read More
The right to abortion — saved again, for now
When six of the nine Supreme Court Justices together write 133 pages of opinions, divided into six different perspectives, in the course of deciding one case, it may be difficult to figure out just what the Court has done. With today’s new abortion decision, however, that is easy: the 16 pages written by Chief Justice… Read More
Obamacare’s future in the Supreme Court, explained
The Affordable Care Act, which had its tenth anniversary in March, has never been free of some doubt about how long it might last. Almost from the beginning, there were frequent predictions of a “death spiral” setting in, because the huge law with so many inter-locking parts supposedly would collapse on its own. And, from… Read More
DACA’s fate still in doubt
After eight years in operation, and multiple legal tests in the courts, the federal government’s program that has kept nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants from being deported still faces a deeply uncertain future. It is true that the program – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — was saved by Thursday’s 5-4 decision by the Supreme… Read More