IRS says pastors who endorse political candidates should remain tax-exempt
WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS says pastors who endorse political candidates from the pulpit should not have to…
#UnitedStates #US #USA #america #business #DonaldTrump #executiveorders #generalnews #Politicalendorsements #Politics #Religión #Texas #TXStateWire #unitedstatesofamerica #USnews #USAnews #Washingtonnews
https://www.europesays.com/2228446/
A team created by #DNI [Russian asset] #TulsiGabbard has expressed a desire to gain access to emails & chat logs of the largest US #spy agencies with the aim of using #AI tools to ferret out what the admin deems as efforts to undermine its agenda, acc/to several people familiar w/the matter. The mission of the Director’s Initiative Group, or #DIG, is to enforce #Trump’s #ExecutiveOrders to end “weaponization” of the govt & declassify documents & halt #diversity, #equity & #inclusion programs.
“Trump’s fossil fuel orders are a death sentence for my generation.”
Our Children's Trust files a #new #lawsuit more narrowly focused than Juliana, that explicitly #calls #trumps #climate #denying #executiveorders #unconstitutional https://www.truthdig.com/articles/suing-like-the-future-depends-on-it/
Well, seeing how it will pass, #ICE will be the nations largest jailer or at least be funded that way and with the recent changes to military bases along the border and with this Supreme Court ruling making it impossible to block his #ExecutiveOrders the #MassDeportation we fear is coming.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qqkq2zdwq4j5jingukgtuky/post/3lsots7jjkc2l
#Republicans are positively *giddy* this morning regarding the Far Right #SCotUS ruling prohibiting lower court FEDERAL judges from stopping "T****'s agenda".
First, these aren't LAWS these lower court judges are blocking, they are #ExecutiveOrders (something the #GOP called "#unconstitutional" when #Obama used them.)
Second, #Conservative used Federal judges EXTENSIVELY when it came to stopping President #Biden from protecting #Abortion rights, #DACA, or #CollegeDebtRelief.
EA on UK Outlets: The #SupremeCourt Enables #Trump Authoritarian Rule
#BirthrightCitizenship #ExecutiveOrders
https://eaworldview.com/2025/06/supreme-court-enables-trump-authoritarian-rule/
Lazy Caturday Reads: Yes, Fascism is Coming to America.
East is a delicate matter, by Zakir Akhmadov
Good Afternoon!!
I don’t see any good news out there today. I wonder if things are just going to continue getting worse until fascism completely takes over our country. It’s already true that we are a failing democracy; and it’s not clear whether we can recover.
We still have some hope that the federal courts can rescue us, but the Supreme Court is making that less likely with each passing day. Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the latest nightmare decision from SCOTUS in the birthright citizenship case, and reactions to that decision are still dominating today’s news and opinion, and there are differing opinions about the fallout from the decision.
I also want to highlight some immigration horror stories that demonstrate how fascism really is coming to America, as Dakinikat suggested yesterday.
The Birthright Citizenship Decision
Nicholas Bagley at The Atlantic (gift link): The Supreme Court Put Nationwide Injunctions to the Torch. That isn’t the disaster for birthright citizenship that some fear.
Yesterday, in a 6–3 decision in Trump v. Casa, the United States Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in a case involving an executive order that purports to eliminate birthright citizenship.
Confusingly, the Court’s decision wasn’t about the constitutionality of the birthright-citizenship order. Instead, the case proceeded on the assumption that the order was unconstitutional. The only question for the justices was about remedy: What kind of relief should federal courts provide when a plaintiff successfully challenges a government policy?
The lower courts had, in several birthright-citizenship cases across the country, entered what are known as “universal” or “nationwide” injunctions. These injunctions prevented the executive order from applying to anyone, anywhere—even if they were not a party to the case. The Trump administration argued that nationwide injunctions were inappropriate and impermissible—injunctions should give relief only to the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit, no one else.
In a majority opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and put nationwide injunctions to the torch. That’s a big deal. Not only does it represent a major setback to the states and advocacy groups that brought the lawsuit, it also amounts to a revolution in the remedial practices of the lower federal courts.
But it is not, as the dissenting Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have it, “an existential threat to the rule of law.” It won’t even mean the end of sweeping injunctions in the lower federal courts. To the contrary, the opinion suggests that relief tantamount to a nationwide injunction will still be available in many cases—including, in all likelihood, in the birthright-citizenship case itself.
Cat of Morocco by Isy Ochoa
The author, Nicholas Bagley, is a law professor at the University of Michigan and in the past served as legal counsel to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He writes that Barrett’s decision was based on history. Nationwide injunctions did not become commonplace until fairly recently in U.S. history; therefore she argued that ‘The federal courts thus lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions. Period. Full stop.” Bagley’s take:
In my book, that’s a positive development. In 2020 testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate, I argued that nationwide injunctions “enable opportunistic behavior by politically motivated litigants and judges, short-circuit a process in which multiple judges address hard legal questions, and inhibit the federal government’s ability to do its work. By inflating the judicial role, they also reinforce the sense that we ought to look to the courts for salvation from our political problems—a view that is difficult to square with basic principles of democratic self-governance.”
Although the Supreme Court divided along partisan lines, with the liberal justices dissenting, I don’t see this as a partisan issue. (The outrageous illegality and sheer ugliness of President Donald Trump’s executive order that lies underneath this fight may go some distance to explain why the three liberals dissented.) Nationwide injunctions are equal-opportunity offenders, thwarting Republican and Democratic initiatives alike. Today, it’s Trump’s birthright-citizenship order and USAID spending freezes. Yesterday it was mifepristone, the cancellation of student debt, and a COVID-vaccine mandate. Why should one federal judge—perhaps a very extreme judge, on either side—have the power to dictate government policy for the entire country? Good riddance.
ven as it ended nationwide injunctions, the Supreme Court left the door open for other forms of relief that are not nationwide injunctions—but that look a whole lot like them. That’s good news for opponents of the birthright-citizenship order.
You’ll need to read the rest at The Atlantic to understand Bagley’s arguments.
Jonathan Last [who is not a lawyer] at The Bulwark: The Supreme Court Just Made America a Dangerous Place.
The Supreme Court issued its birthright citizenship ruling this morning and it’s worse than just about everyone feared it could be.
The Court’s ruling is composed of two main parts.
The first is its declaration that it is possible that the president can contradict the plain-text reading of the Constitution by issuing an executive order doing away with birthright citizenship.
The second is that lower courts can no longer issue nationwide injunctions against blatantly unconstitutional policies imposed by the executive. Injunctions must now be created on a patchwork basis.
I want to impress upon you how dangerous this is. SCOTUS has empowered the president to impose whatever he likes—irrespective of its constitutionality—and then prevented judicial overview except at the localized level.1 Meaning that we will now have two sets of laws. One that operates in Red America and one that Operates in Blue America.
Separate, but unequal. A house divided against itself.
I think the majority believes it is being clever—that it has found a way to pretend to give Trump a win while (they tell themselves) ackshually delaying a substantive verdict.
But what they have done is not mere make-believe. They have set in motion a calamity.
Mr. Angel, Sir, Some Other Dude Done It, Elisheva Nesis, Israeli artist
I’m going to give you a bit more, because this article is behind a paywall. Last notes that the case before the SCOTUS was not about birthright citizenship, so they didn’t need to deal with that, and they didn’t specifically do that. That question will require further litigation.
The Supreme Court could have jumped ahead and simply ruled that the action proposed by the president’s executive order was unconstitutional. This would have meant widening the scope of the specific question in Trump v. Casa. But scope gets widened all the time.2 The Supreme Court is the Supreme Court. It can do whatever it wants.
The fact that the majority chose to delay answering this question is, all on its own, a statement. My theory is that at least two members of the majority do not believe that the birthright citizenship order is constitutional—but they want to delay making that judgment as long as possible.
And so, by constructing this new idea—that universal stays are now verboten—they tell themselves that they have handed Trump a tactical victory but set him up for a strategic defeat on the substance of his EO later on.
The Supreme Court majority thinks it’s being clever by playing within the rules. They’re actually being fools, because Trump isn’t playing within the rules. Their conception that injunctions should be limited just to the parties in each particular case works only if (1) similar cases will be decided similarly, and (2) the government knows this fact and won’t try to break the law. But the government is, right now, in the process of finding ways to ignore the courts—including the Supreme Court—with as little political price as possible. And the government has shown already—repeatedly—that it will break the law.
That’s very true. See this article at The Washington Post: Trump says he will move aggressively to undo nationwide blocks on his agenda.
An emboldened Trump administration plans to aggressively challenge blocks on the president’s top priorities, a White House official said, following a major Supreme Court ruling that limitsthe power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
Government attorneys will press judges to pare back the dozens of sweeping rulings thwarting the president’s agenda “as soon as possible,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
Priorities for the administration include injunctions related to the Education Department and the Department of Government Efficiency, as well as an order halting the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the official said.
“Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” President Donald Trump said Friday at a news conference in which he thanked by name members of the conservative high court majority he helped build.
Trump on Friday cast the narrowing of judicial power as a consequential, needed correction in his battle with a court system that has restrained his authority.
Scholars and plaintiffs in the lawsuits over Trump’s orders agreed that the high court ruling could profoundly reshape legal battles over executive power that have defined Trump’s second term — even as other legal experts said the effects would be more muted. Some predicted it would embolden Trump to push his expansive view of presidential power.
“The Supreme Court has fundamentally reset the relationship between the federal courts and the executive branch,” Notre Dame Law School Professor Samuel Bray, who has studied nationwide injunctions, said in a statement. “Since the Obama administration, almost every major presidential initiative has been frozen by federal district courts issuing ‘universal injunctions.’”
For another take, see this article at Slate by Matt Watkins: The United States Is About to Embark on a Terrifying Experiment in Mass Statelessness.
Huffpost’s Jennifer Bendery reports on the reactions of the ACLU and other civil liberties groups to the SCOTUS decision: Groups File Nationwide Class Action Lawsuit Over Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order.
Immigrants rights’ advocates on Friday filed a nationwide class action lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship, just hours after the Supreme Court partially blocked nationwide injunctions challenging Trump’s order.
The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Legal Defense Fund and other groups, was brought on behalf of a class of babies subject to the executive order, along with their parents. It charges the Trump administration with flouting the Constitution, congressional intent, and longstanding Supreme Court precedent.
Bohemio et el gato, Luis Garcés
It is also a direct response to the Supreme Court’s decision earlier Friday that puts new limits on nationwide injunctions, and reflects a new legal pathway that groups will likely turn to when challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful actions.
In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the high court struck down nationwide injunctions against Trump’s birthright citizenship order, narrowing their scope to provide relief to the specific plaintiff who is suing in a case rather than anyone who would be affected by the order. In addition to drawing sharp criticism from constitutional experts, the court’s decision is a major blow to pro-democracy groups that have been successfully challenging Trump’s lawlessness through the use of injunctions.
But the justices left the door open to challenging the administration in other ways, like class action lawsuits. The ACLU and its cohorts wasted no time using this legal pathway.
In a statement, the groups behind the new lawsuit noted that three lawsuits previously obtained nationwide injunctions protecting everyone subject to Trump’s executive order, but the Supreme Court’s decision narrowed those injunctions and potentially leaves children without protections.
“Every court to have looked at this cruel order agrees that it is unconstitutional,” Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney in this case, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court’s decision did not remotely suggest otherwise, and we are fighting to make sure President Trump cannot trample on the citizenship rights of a single child.”
Read the rest at HuffPost.
Immigration Horror Stories
First, two incidents in California, which is still under Trump’s thumb with his commandeering of the National Guard and his stationing marines in Los Angeles and with masked ICE gangs roaming the streets. We aren’t getting as much coverage about the situation in California, but protests and ICE raids are still going on.
The Guardian: Federal agents blast way into California home of woman and small children.
Federal agents blasted their way into a residential home in Huntington Park, California, on Friday. Security-camera video obtained by the local NBC station showed border patrol agents setting up an explosive device near the door of the house and then detonating it – causing a window to be shattered. Around a dozen armed agents in full tactical gear then charged toward the home.
Jenny Ramirez, who lives in the house with her boyfriend and one-year-old and six-year-old children, told NBC through tears that it was one of the loudest explosions she heard in her life.
“I told them, ‘You guys didn’t have to do this, you scared by son, my baby,’” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said she was not given any warning from the authorities that they wanted to enter her home and that everyone who lives there is a US citizen.
The raid comes as federal agents have ramped up immigration enforcement in Los Angeles and across southern California over the last few weeks. Huntington Park is in Los Angeles county. Immigrants have been swept up in raids at court houses, restaurants and straight off the street. Some of the people targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) have been US citizens. In one incident, Ice agents detained a Honduran woman seeking asylum and her children, one of which was a six-year-old boy who had been diagnosed with leukemia.
The agents who raided Ramirez’s home in Huntington Park on Friday also reportedly sent a drone into the house after setting off the explosive device.
Two cats on a colorful cushion, woodcut by Theophile Steinlen
More details from ABC 7: Federal agents blast door off, shatter window during raid in Huntington Park.
Dramatic video shows the moment federal agents blew up the front door of a residence in Huntington Park early Friday morning, using a drone to search room by room for a man they say rammed a federal vehicle last week during immigration raids.
“They were right here with their rifles and we heard some screaming up in the front but we couldn’t see because everything was blocked, but it was pretty shocking,” said Lourdes Salazar.
That man, Jorge Sierra-Hernandez, was not home at the time, but his girlfriend and two young children were, leaving them shaking with fear due to the aggressive tactics of those agents.
He is now back home with his family after turning himself in Friday.
After the break-in and drone search:
Once the drone went out, at least nine agents moved in with guns drawn. They eventually escorted Ramirez and her children outside.
“They didn’t identify themselves until I came out, they told me they were from Homeland Security, from ICE,” said Ramirez.
She said pleaded with them to give her an explanation, but instead of giving her an answer, they said “when we find him he’s going to know why.” [….]
The agents claimed that Ramirez’s car ran into a truck carrying federal agents. It’s not clear if it was deliberate. The agents were also angry because protesters were throwing rocks at them during the incident. Why does that justify terrorizing a mother and two small children? DHS and ICE are on an out-of-control power trip.
Channel 4 Los Angeles reported on another incident: Family outraged after federal agents detain US citizen, accuse her of assault.
A 32-year-old U.S. citizen was released from federal custody Thursday evening after her family said she was wrongfully detained by agents during an immigration enforcement operation in downtown Los Angeles.
According to her attorney, Andrea Velez was released on bond after being detained by immigration enforcement agents on Tuesday and then charged with assaulting a federal officer. The Department of Homeland Security said Velez “forcefully obstructed an ICE officer,” but her family said that’s not the case.
Estrella Rosas documented the frantic moments as she saw her sister being thrown to the ground before being arrested and forced into an unmarked car by unidentified officers near 9th and Main Street in downtown Los Angeles.
Woman with a cat, by Marijan Trepše.
“We dropped off my sister to go to work like we always do, all of a sudden, my mom in the rearview mirror she saw how a man went on top of her. Basically, dropped her on the floor and started putting her in handcuffs and trying to arrest her,” said Rosas, recounting the arrest.
In the video, Velez’s mother and sister can be heard pleading for help. “That’s my sister. They’re taking her. Help her, someone. She’s a U.S. citizen,” said Rosas.
In the criminal complaint, prosecutors alleged that during an immigration enforcement Tuesday morning, “Velez stepped into an officer’s path and extended one of her arms in an apparent effort to prevent him from apprehending a male subject he was chasing and that Velez’s outstretched arm struck that officer in the face.”
In her court appearance Thursday, Velez did not enter a plea in federal court. Velez’s family said she was just walking on her way to work as a marketing designer and did nothing wrong.
Both sisters are U.S. citizens, but these days that doesn’t seem to matter.
One more awful immigration story from The Washington Post: DHS ends deportation protection for Haitians, says Haiti is ‘safe.’
The Trump administration announced an end to temporary legal protections for Haitian migrants in the United States, leaving hundreds of thousands of people at risk of deportation.
The temporary protected status for Haitian nationals in the United States, granted after a 2010 earthquake near Port-au- Prince caused up to 200,000 deaths, will terminate Sept. 2, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Friday.
“This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary,” DHS said in a statement Friday. The “environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home,” DHS said, and Haitian nationals may “pursue lawful status” through other means if they are eligible.
The statement did not elaborate on why it considered Haiti safe for citizens.
That’s because Haiti is not safe.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to advise Americans against all travel to Haiti, which has been under a state of emergency since March 2024 because of “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.” The State Department’s travel advisory adds that “mob killings and assaults by the public have increased” and that crimes including “robbery, carjackings, sexual assault and kidnappings for ransom” are common.
Bedtime Story, by Jeanette Lassen
The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince this week noted that some domestic air travel had resumed, and urged Americans to leave the country “as soon as possible.”
In a federal register notice of the decision, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi L. Noem said she decided to terminate the TPS designation for Haiti “because it is contrary to the national interest to permit Haitian nationals … to remain temporarily in the United States.”
“Widespread gang violence in Haiti is sustained by the country’s lack of functional government authority. This breakdown in governance directly impacts U.S. national security interests, particularly in the context of uncontrolled migration,” she said in the notice. While the situation in Haiti was “concerning,” she wrote, “the United States must prioritize its national interests.”
The puppy murderer has spoken.
More Important Stories to Check Out
NBC News: Senate Republicans release 940-page bill for Trump’s agenda as they race to vote this weekend.
Politico: Fresh megabill text overnight: what’s in and what’s out.
Bryce Edgmon and Cathy Giessel at The New York Times: Alaska Cannot Survive This Bill.
The New York Times: Senate Blocks War Powers Resolution to Limit Trump’s Ability to Strike Iran Again.
Ryan J. Reilly at NBC News: Pam Bondi fires three Jan. 6 prosecutors, sending another chill through DOJ. workforce.
CNN: University of Virginia president resigns amid pressure from the Trump administration.
Stars and Stripes: Trump eyes staff cuts to top spy agency as he sweeps aside Iran intelligence.
The Washington Post: DOGE loses control over government grants website, freeing up billions.
That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?
#ACLU #BirthrightCitizenship #California #executiveOrders #fascism #federalCourts #haiti #immigrationHorrorStories #nationwideInjunctions
The courts are lost because #Democrats let them go
#Trump #MAGA #Republicans #ussupremecourt #Supremecourt #Supremecourtruling #USpol #LGBTQ #LawFedi #BirthrightCitizenship #democracy #monarchy #executiveorders #law #Constitution #SeparationOfPowers
https://butchware4gov.news/p/the-courts-are-lost-because-democrats-let-them-go
David Dunn on GB "News":
"America is a country with a Constitution and a system of checks and balances and shared power between the courts, Congress, and the Presidency.
The Supreme Court has shifted the power firmly towards the Presidency. And that is problematic when you have a President who is prepared to issue a variety of #ExecutiveOrders, on a variety of issues"
EA on UK Outlets: The #SupremeCourt Enables #Trump Authoritarian Rule
#BirthrightCitizenship #ExecutiveOrders
https://eaworldview.com/2025/06/supreme-court-enables-trump-authoritarian-rule/
#TheGremlinZoo #ExecutiveOrders #Trumpism
From Reuters.com: US law firm Susman Godfrey defeats Trump executive order
https://www.aol.com/u-law-firm-susman-godfrey-213958894.html
#SCOTUS Sides with #Trump Against the #Judiciary
Its ruling lets the President temporarily revoke #BirthrightCitizenship —& enforce other #unconstitutional #ExecutiveOrders without fear of being blocked by “rogue judges.”
By Ruth Marcus
#law #democracy #Constitution #SeparationOfPowers
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-supreme-court-sides-with-trump-against-the-judiciary
According to Reuters, the Trump administration is set to enhance energy supply with executive actions to boost AI growth, aiming to outpace China. This includes easing connections for new power-generating projects and making federal land available for necessary data centers. With AI's electricity demand expected to surge, the plan focuses on streamlining processes and establishing "AI Action Day" on July 23. For more on this initiative, read the full article here: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/27/trump-plans-executive-orders-to-power-ai-growth-in-race-with-china.html. Kudos to the authors for their insights! #AI #trumpadministration #energy #executiveorders #technology #China #datacenters #powergrid
Cybersecurity takes a big hit in new Trump executive order https://arstechni.ca/Jmna #quantumcomputing #executiveorders #encryption #WhiteHouse #Security #Biz&IT #Policy #Trump #post #BGP
Nonetheless, #Trump has asked federal agencies to review #funding for #California, targeting an array of sources of federal money the #state receives….
Trump’s team is asking federal employees to develop *rationales* [billshit reasons] for the funding cuts, including citing noncompliance with Trump’s #ExecutiveOrders targeting #diversity efforts & steps to eliminate *waste, fraud & abuse* [normal functioning] from the government.
An analysis by AP shows that 30 of #Trump’s 150 #ExecutiveOrders have cited some kind of #EmergencyPower or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors.
The result is a redefinition of how presidents can wield #power. Instead of responding to an unforeseen crisis, Trump is using #EmergencyPowers to supplant #Congress’ authority & advance his agenda.
"#TheBase believes society should be pushed to collapse so a #WhiteEthnostate can arise out of the ruins.'"
That pretty much sums up the purpose of #Trump's #ExecutiveOrders and #BigUglyBill, eh?
This one trick to get rid of a president | @destiny
#ExecutiveOrders #Impeachment #Resignation #SaveTheCountry #Destiny
