Speaker 1: And here we are. How are you happy Friday? Thanks
for coming by the old podcast on this twenty seventh
day of June, Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty five.
My name is Tom Sullivan. So today the news barrel
is full, and it's well, it's like ninety five percent
full of Supreme Court rulings. Today was the last day
or the Supreme Court session for this term, and they
have brought out the birthright citizenship case. But it really
wasn't about birthright. It was about federal judges in Can
they issued nationwide injunctions. There's over seven hundred federal judges
and Pam Bondi was talking earlier today about the fact
that out of all the injunctions out there nationwide injunctions,
there's something like forty of them, thirty five of them
came from five federal districts. In other words, people went
shopping for liberal judges in liberal districts and got what
they wanted because Donald Trump's executive orders they didn't like.
And it's happened before on the other side. This is
the thing about these judge rulings is you have to
remember about Barack Obama or Joe Biden and the courts
dealing with them. So it works both ways, but it's
been very heavy against Donald Trump, there's no question about it.
So it's in any case. They came out with the
birthright citizenship slash federal judge injunctions. They've got a decision
on that. There's also another case about parents that want
to opt out their children opt out of classes where
they do the instruction from well, it's being built as
LGBTQ plus books. That's part of it. But the real
issue is about the books involving transgenders, and a lot
of parents are concerned that, Well, it's a time old
rule about if you want to try to change society,
you start with the young. You try to get people
when they're young and plant ideas in their heads, and
they will much easier to sell an idea to a
young person than it is to somebody that's been around
the block a few times. So that's the big complaint
is that you're trying to talk my child into changing
their gender. At let's turn to chapter two, boy and
girls here, where have you ever thought about maybe you're
in the wrong body that sort of thing? And so
the court ruled and said, yeah, parents have rights and
they can take their child out of that class if
you're going to start teaching out of LGBTQ plus or
transgender plus books. And it was not only under parents' rights,
it was also under There were two groups that sued.
One was a group of Christians, another was a group
of Muslims, and both of them said, our religions both
require that we stand up and fight back on this.
So it was religious freedom for Muslims and Christians and
Jews on this issue about the parents' rights to have
their children educated by some sort of a gender book.
Third was age restrictions for adult material. And this case
comes out of Texas, where the state of Texas is
one of I got to look here, how many I
think it was? There are dozens of states now twelve
twelve states have already issued age barriers for children, people
under the age of I guess eighteen to access porn.
And so in this particular case, the judges ruled for
the state of Texas. The only people that were for
this that were four children having access to porn were
the porn shops, the people that make the adult films.
So that one went down. Not a lot of commentary
coming from the legal crowd on that. But basically, today
I have for you a long list. I started accumulating
the various commentaries by various lawyers that you see on
television a lot, and instea out of chopping it up
and breaking it up, I thought I would just play
the a montage of all the lawyers. There's Shannon Breem,
who is a lawyer. She covers the Supreme Court for Fox.
Andy McCarthy, former Southern District of New York prosecutor, Jonathan Turley,
professor at George Washington University Law School, Elie Honig, former
federal prosecutor, SHRIFFH. Shenlin who is a former federal judge
on this. So we've got a bunch of different ones
to play. I'll just put them all together in one
long list and you can get the gist of how
the lawyers looked at this, as I don't think they
were all that surprised. Essentially, the legal argument is, there
is the executive branch, and there is the judicial branch,
and the judicial branch. Just because they don't like something
the executive branch is doing, they can't stop them cold
in their tracks for the whole nation. Now they can
stop for their federal district. They can stop. They can
rule in favor of people who brought a case about
some federal case that they have wanted to have before
a federal court. They can do that, but it won't
apply to the entire nation. The only other way for
to have an entire national injunction seems to be that
you have to file a class action lawsuit, and if
it's a big enough case and a big enough issue,
then let them do that. It's done not like it's rare,
but it's much more cumbersome, and it would require groups
that have an argument with whoever the executive, whether it
be a Democrat or Republican, that they're going to have
to put a class action together in order to fight
back on a national basis. Otherwise it will be in
a federal jug judicial district basis. And I think this
makes sense. The other one that makes sense was the parents.
Parents have rights, don't they? Whatever happened to that is?
How did this get to the Supreme Court. This should
have been something that everybody would have nodded on years
ago when these cases were started about the fact that no,
the school wants to use an LGBTQ plus or a
trans gender a book to educate your children, and the
parents had to go all the way to the Supreme
Court to fight back on this, And it's interesting how
that's the way the court ruled parents have rights, but
it's also the peorn access. In other words, the judges
are saying, people that are minors, we need to protect them,
and we can't. Left in the case of the instruction books,
we can't an agenda that somebody has. The way they're
trying to get the agenda to spread is to put
it in the minds of the kids in schools and
let it grow from there. So pretty interesting day. In
the course, we also have a little more people are
freaking out about the guy who won the Democrat primary
for mayor of New York City because he's a big socialist,
he's got some wild ideas. There's a little bit of argument,
not much about how much damage was done to Iron's
nuke program. There are still a few people out there,
like Chris Murphy, the Democrat senator from Connecticut, who still
is watch them on television. He's like a bobblehead. His
head keeps bobbing around. He I don't know, I don't know.
I don't have any It's becoming rather clear that from
every angle on the analysis of this, and it still
has more analysis to do, but the the overwhelming evidence
is Iran's nuke damage. Their nuke business is severely damaged.
What else have we got today? Oh, this weekend the
big beautiful bill say it's going to vote on it.
They're going to try and vote on it this weekend.
That probably means Sunday night, and the President is staying
in DC this weekend to try to shepherd that thing through.
Most people do expect it to pass. There always is
the I don't know people in Washington, they try to
have some sort of drama to it, but most people
are now expecting it to pass. Joe Biden, her top
aid guy by the name of Anthony Burnell. He would
not come before Congress to testify they're doing an investigation
into was the President really running things in the White
House or not? Then he would not testify why not?
What was unless there was some funny business going going on?
Why would he not willfully go over and say here's
what I saw, here's what happened. The President was in
charge everything, he was fine, Yeah, he had his mom. No,
he said, I'm not going. I'm not going to testify.
So they have now issued a congressional subpoena to make
Anthony Burnell show up before the committee in the House
that's investigating the use of the auto pen and the
cognitive decline of Joe Biden. So let's start with the
Supreme Court and the birthright case. It's interesting because they
did not rule on whether or not the Fourteenth Amendment
does in fact control citizenship. If you're born here, you're
a citizen. They did not rule on that. They ruled
on the cases around the country where federal judges blocked
the birthright citizenship question, and that's what the case was on.
Now birthright is going to have to be heard on
its own again next fall when the Supreme Court gets
back to work. But for now, let's start with It's
Shannon Breen, Andy McCarthy, Jonathan Turley, and Elie Honig, Siri Scheinlen,
the former federal judge. We'll go through and I'll just
play a montage for you. You'll get an idea of how
the lawyers viewed the case by the Supreme Court today,
just to.
Speaker 2: Set the table for folks. So a reminder of how
this works. The least senior justices release their opinions first,
all the way up to the most senior justices, which
means probably the cases with the biggest impact will be
the last ones we get. We're expecting five, maybe six
if they give us that nationwide injunction case today, and
so those are probably going to be last. That one
also the one with the parents here in this area
who want to opt their kids out of lessons that
include books that say say are in conflict with their
real religious faith. We've also got a case out of
Texas that puts an age limit on online porn access
for minors. So several cases to go as we get
through them today, again in reverse seniority, so I'd expect
the bigger ones to be a little bit later. But
about that nationwide injunction case, remember it came through the
emergency docket. It wasn't handled like a regular case is
on this term. So it's possible that justices don't give
us that decision today. We hope they will. We think
they'll want to get it off of their plate before
they head out to their summer teaching assignments and travel
and those kinds of things. We know that the Chief
Justice has a public event tomorrow, and I'm thinking he's
going to want all these things wrapped up, but we'll
have to wait and see it. Okay. Yes, So this
is at least a partial, if not a full. And
we're reading this because there are several concurrences here. But
it's written by Justice Barrett, which goes against the ruling
that I just gave the guidance because she's one of
the least junior justices, which she was assigned to write
this opinion, and essentially what she says, she says some
say that the universal injunctions give their judiciary a powerful
u to check the executive branch, which he says, Federal
courts do not exercise general oversight of the executive branch.
They resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress
is given to them. When a court concludes the executive
branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the
court to exceed its power. Sounding very much like they
are limiting these injunctions, we know here that they have
granted at least partially the stay to these preliminary injunctions,
but they say only to the extent that the injunctions
are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each
plaintiff with standing to sue. They say, the lower courts
have to move expeditiously with respect to each of these plaintiffs.
Says the injunctions are also stayed to the extent that
they prohibit executive agencies from developing and issuing public guidance
about the executive plans implement the executive order. If you
remember part of this executive order on birthright citizenship, the
stay was that the agencies that would be responsible for
actually implementing the change with birthright citizenship, those agencies couldn't
even start making a plan. That part of it is
lifted as well. We do see that the descent here
comes from the three justice As you expect, it looks
like Justice Sotomayer filed the descent. Kagan and Jackson joined that.
Justice Jackson also filed a dissenting opinion. But there are
a lot of concurrences here, Justice tomas A Leito, there
are others, so we'll parse through this. But at its
first blush, it looks like this is a win and
putting a limit on these nationwide injunctions. We'll see how
far those limits go. As we dig back through this, well.
Speaker 3: I've only started to read the opinion, but what I've
seen does look like a victory for the Trump administration.
Justice Bart is saying that the only way for justice
to exercise this type of universal injunction in some of
these cases is equable relief, but she does not find
evidence that that type of relief was granted to these judges.
So they indicate that the administration is likely to prevail
on this issue. All of that is going to be
awfully good news for this administration. They have been really
hit with these sort of Liliputian attacks there all these
individual district judges effectively freezing federal policy and programs across
the country. So it does appear to be a victory.
It may be a bit more nuanced, but I so
far it looks like a good day for the Trump administration.
Speaker 4: No, you're not wrong. I think this really we never
get to the merits because of the injunction issue. And
it seemed to me that what made this case very
interesting to people at the beginning was the birthright citizenship
question and the very important question of whether that's compelled
by the Fourteenth Amendment or not. As the case was litigated,
it really became this other thing, which was about these
nationwide injunctions, which, for the reasons that Jonathan just mentioned,
are the thing that is plagued the Trunk administration across
the board in its second term.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I always think it's helpful to turn there because
you can get a sense of exactly what they're pushing
back against with all these different concurrences. And what they
said is because remember, again, this comes to us in
the vehicle of a birthright citizenship case, and the questions
at oral arguments were, Okay, what if district judges decide
differently and they aren't able to give an order for
the entire country, would a child be born in New
Mexico have a different right than one in New Jersey
depending on how those judges have ruled in different places.
Just as Sodoma are writing for the Descent, says, the
parents of children covered by what she's calling the citizenship
order would be well advised to file promptly class action
suits and to request temporary injunctive relief for the class
pending class certification. And so she's saying, listen, if you
were one of these parents who are worried about what's
going to happen with the citizenship of your child. You
should be out there filing so that there will not
be this patchwork, that every district will have an opportunity
to weigh in. But she also says get these cases
moving quickly. She says lower courts would be advised to
act swiftly on these request for relief and to adjudicate
the cases as quickly as they can so as to
enable this court's prompt review, saying we have not decided
that birthright citizenship question. We want the lower courts to
act quickly so there's not this patchwork, so it gets
back here and they actually answer the question on substance.
She goes on to say this today the Court abdicates
its vital role in these efforts, saying, with the stroke
of a pen, the President has quote made a solemn
mockery of our constitution, she said, pointing at the President,
and then she goes on to blame the court rather
than stand firm. This court gives way so clearly the
descent not in line with what has been decided by
the majority of this Court. Again, will continue to read
through those concurrences as well.
Speaker 5: Looks like as the professor was saying, the court has
not decided the birthright citizenship issue as expected. They have
not said Donald Trump is right or wrong in an
effort to limit birthright citizenship. That is going to be
decided another day, probably next year. You know, it'll come
back up to the Supreme Court. But on the issue
of whether district court judges can issue nationwide injunctions can
stop the president's action nationwide, Conservatives have long been skeptical
of that power by district court judges. Generally speaking, conservatives
are more proponents of executive power of the president's power,
and generally speaking, liberals have been bigger believers in the
power of an individual district court judge.
Speaker 6: So what this appears to do.
Speaker 5: And I know Paula and Joan and others are going
through this and we're reading as fast as we can,
but it does appear to be an expansion of the
president's power to issue these orders because it limits the
ability of district court judges to stop them. The key
test appears to be that courts can issue these injunctions,
but I'm reading from the brief, nare now they cannot
be broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each
plaintiff with standing to suit. Now that's a little bit
of legal lease, but basically it says, if district courts
are going to issue these injunctions, they have to be
as narrow as possible. They have to give the plaintiffs
to people who've sued what they're asking for, but they
shouldn't necessarily impact other people who are not parties to
the case unnecessarily.
Speaker 4: Now that's a little bit vague, a little.
Speaker 2: Bit broad, but the Supreme Court does that.
Speaker 5: Sometimes they will give a test or a standard and say, Okay,
from now on, you have to apply this test. It
can't be broader than necessary, and then it's up to
the courts to duke it out case by case. So
they don't give us mathematical formulas or scientific equations. Frustrating sometimes,
but the courts have given us a broad pronouncement, basically
limiting to some extent to what extent will work out
in the details, but limiting to some extent the ability
of district courts to issue.
Speaker 7: Well, I wish i'd had the chance to read this
entire one hundred and nineteen page opinion. I have not,
so from listening to this summary that I just heard
from La and others on your panel, it seems to
me that the district court powers are limited. I'm not
surprised by that. I expect did that. There's always been
a question about one judge, a single judge, being able
to enjoy something for the entire country when those people
are not before the court, and the court has to
limit itself to those who come before them. And you know,
it all depends on whose ox is being gored. When
national injunctions came out of Texas and stopped Joe Biden's efforts,
then the liberals didn't like it. Now that the national
injunctions are stopping President Trump, so the conservaives don't like it.
So the idea that one single judge can do this
has always been a problem. It leads to judge shopping,
it leads to going to certain district court judges, and
that's never been a good thing. But as Ellie said,
how this will play out in the lower courts is
yet to be seen. That will take a long time
to develop. What are the circumstances when a judge can
do it and when a judge can't do it. So
I think there's going to be a period of confusion
and working things out that you can't even begin to predict.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, of course, what they're saying is that this
practice of nationwide injunctions, which we went almost two hundred
years of American history without having a single one, involves
a court not only making a decision that binds the
parties before it, but making a decision for the whole
nation under circumstances where the court is the non political
branch that doesn't answer to the people whose lives are
affected by these rulings. And I think it's interesting what
Shannon just told us about Justice Soto Mayor's suggestion that
you go to class actions. That would even that I
think would be a victory for the Trump administration in
the sense that class actions are much more rigorous and
much more regulated than the idea of these district judges
in a completely untethered way just making rulings that apply
to the whole country.
Speaker 6: I think that's right.
Speaker 8: This decision frees the Trump administration from having to run
at the beck and call of every single district judge
in the country, of which they're almost a thousand and
So what's going to happen now is that the Trump
administration will have to stop. It's executive orders only in
the courts where those judges decide against them, but still
be able to pursue their policies in the rest of
the country. Now, the dissenters in the opinion, let me
be clear, this is a very important, significant victory for
the Trump administration at the Supreme Court. One I think
that a lot of people did not foresee a back
in January of February when the President took office and
start issuing the executive orders. Now, the downside is we're
going to have fragmentation of federal law throughout the country.
This is something the Supreme Court does not want that
most federal courts don't want to tolerate. That's in fact,
why we have an appellate system and the Supreme Court
to make sure there's only one rule of laws. So
what's going to have to happen in addition to this,
both for the Trump administration and for the parties that
are challenging his rules, is that the Supreme Court is
going to have to accelerate the review of questions like
the birthright citizenship question to get them to the Supreme
Court faster so that we don't have, say a district
court in Massachusetts and a district court in Texas having
enforcing different interpretations of the birthright citizenship question in their courts.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it is very significant. You know, the
majority is is really pushing back on just as Soda
Mayor saying, you can't show me any case law in
the universal jurisdiction, they say, well, that's the point, is
that it's silent because this effectively they say this didn't
exist for the framers. They didn't anticipate this, and they
certainly did anticipate this at the beginning of the Republic. Now,
Justice Alito, in his opinion, does flag that the opinion
stopped a bit short in establishing clarity on issues like
class certification. The assumption is, and some people push this
in the oral argument, that if you want a national injunction,
just certify a national class, show that you represent people nationally.
There are many that did not want that to happen
because it adds a burden for the plaintiffs. Just as
Alito was saying, you know, you still left a little
bit of wiggle room here. That makes me feel uncomfortable.
But I don't see how you could see this as
anything but a tremendous victory for the Trump administration.
Speaker 4: Well, it's not over, but it'll be significantly curtailed. Jonathan
just pointed out that Justice Alito says that there's some
wiggle room here. That doesn't surprise me because the Court,
including Justice Barrett during the oral argument, seem to be
very sensitive to the downsides of potentially making a rule
that said no universal injunctions at all. So I think
there'll still be some wiggle room here. We shouldn't delude ourselves.
Both sides do this sort of thing. I think when
during the Biden years, it was pretty typical for right
leaning states and groups to go to venues like Texas
to file actions that involved enforcement of the federal Immigration
Laws bill. So you know, this is a game that
everybody plays, this forum shopping thing. In a way, if
you're a lawyer, it be irresponsible not to play it
if everybody else is doing it. But to the extent
that it gets curtail, I think that's a good thing
for the country.
Speaker 2: So Justice Jackson wrote a dissentergy said, I agree with
everything that Justice Sotomayer said, but I have to add
my own two cents to this thing, And boy, is
it scorched earth. She goes on to say, in her descent,
perhaps the degradation of our rule of law regime would
happen anyway, but this court's complicity in the creation of
a culture of disdain for lower courts there are rulings
and the laws they interpret, it hastened the downfall of
our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise. She goes on
from there, but clearly she sees this decision as something
she obviously disagrees with, but as a very threat to
the structure of our courts and our institutions as they
now exist. I understand there is something that Justice Sparit
said in the majority with respect to answering Justice Jackson's descent.
I'm trying to tick back to that. But also a
reminder for folks, Justice Barrett was a law professor for
a long time before she got into the world of
being a federal judge. She also taught classes in civil procedure,
which is one of the first things that I had
my first year in law school. You get it as
a first year student, but it gets to the heart
of how things proceed, how the court system works. So
it does make sense now that even being a more
junior justice, why she would have written this opinion. And
it gets to this opinion a lot of those questions
that you've heard our other panelists bring up here about
certification of class actions. It takes a lot of work,
it is not easy to do, and there are cautions
throughout this opinion that district court judges not now simply
default to that. So I'm going to go back and yeah,
great questions. So you're right. We had been watching her
because she publicly talked about during the Biden years how
this wasn't a good policy, it shouldn't be the way
that the framers of the Founders would have intended this
to work. But during the arguments here May fifteenth, to remember,
this was a rare ad. They don't hear arguments in May,
they did it for this case. She differentiated during the
oral argument saying that this was a different case. This
did not line up with the statements that she had
made during the Biden administration saying that this was a
different situation. So we thought there that we saw from
her during the oral arguments that she may peel off
and go in a different direction. So she clearly has
signed on to Justice Sodomera's descent. That's where she lands
today as to Justice Jackson and that very existential threat
to our institutions dissent that she wrote, Here's what Justice
Barrett wrote in the majority opinion to that. She says,
Justice Jackson chooses a startling line of attack that is
tethered neither to the sources that they sort in coming
to their conclusions, or frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever, waving
away attention to the limits on judicial power as a
mind numbingly technical query. She often offers a vision of
the judicial role that would make even the most ardent
defender of judicial supremacy blush. In her telling, the fundamental
role of courts is to order everyone, including the executive,
to follow the law full stop. So some harsh words
back and forth between a couple of the justices, it
sometimes happens in these heated opinions, We understand Justice Sodomayer
is reading. Her descent from the bench doesn't happen a lot,
but it does when there's a very heated feeling about
that descent. So that continues.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's warranted. I must say, by the
way that the section of the opinion where Justice Barrett
goes after Justice Jackson makes her some pretty sporty reading.
Speaker 6: I mean, she.
Speaker 3: Delivers a haymaker where she essentially accuses Justice Jackson of
embracing judicial supremacy and somewhat mocks her hyperbolic response. I mean,
the Jackson descent itself is rather radioactive. I mean, she
talks about the collective demise that will come from all
of this that clearly rubbed Justice Barrett wrong. I mean,
the notable thing about this is that Barrett has shown
a willingness in past cases to vote with the liberal justices.
She is not robotic or rigid in that sense, but
she clearly took umbrage at the language in the Jackson Descent.
Justice Jackson of late has been more hyperbolic, more heated,
frankly in some of her opinions, and Justice Barrett here
is pushing back in an uncommonly direct way for an opinion.
Speaker 8: I think Justice Jackson's rhetoric is exactly look people watching.
Americans should not worry about the rule of law collapsing
in the country just because there's going to be a
few more months of delay between when the Supreme Court
gets to hear a decision and differences in federal l
on the country. We already have a system that is
built to tolerate different interpretations of federal law. That's why
we have thirteen geographic courts of Appeals. That's why it
all goes to the Supreme Court. Even if this rule
is wrong, even if the majority made a mistake, the
Supreme Court will still get these constitutional questions, maybe just
a few months later than under this current system. And
at the same time, the president, who is elected through
a democratic process will be able to enforce the agenda
on which he or she is elected. So I think
Justice Jackson, I'm afraid to say, is really exaggerating crime wolf.
And what's the problem here is that this is not
that important a case when it comes to the Constitution.
This is really just an important case about the judiciary
limiting its own jurisdiction in a democratic system where judges
have lifetime tenure and are never elected. So the thing
you would have to worry about on the Court and
its dynamics and Justice Jackson and the other two liberals
is if they're going to cry wolf and say a
case like this, which is fairly technical, as Shannon said,
a case of technical civil procedure, which are most Americans
I hope never have to learn, except a few lawyers.
If they're going to cry wolf about this, say the
rule of law is collapsing, When are we ever going
to believe them when that actually is the case. This
is I think that the liberals on the Court are
just shooting off their ammunition when it's not appropriate, and
they are depleting any kind of political capital they have
with their colleagues. They're ruining their opportunities to try to
engage and get some kind of compromise in their direction.
I think it's going to make the six justices who've
been appointed by Republican presidents feel more like they're in
the same foxhold, make them more cooperative with each other
and less tempted to cooperate with the three liberals on
the court.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, this is why I'm sort of emphatically nodding
as John is speaking, because to my mind, I would
say seven chances are more in ten that Trump is
going to lose the you know, the Trump administration is
going to lose on birthright citizenship. I don't say that
with great happiness. I actually I like the policy that
they want to push I just don't see from in
terms of precedent, how you get around the prior Supreme
Court governing case on this from I think the late
nineteenth century. But you know, the hysteria over this and
the back and forth which is vitriolic over this really
judicial procedural case, belies the likely outcome of this, which
I think is that the you know, the progressives are
actually going to win the case in the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as we've talked about, it's starting to rain
out here today. It's just one of those days at
the Supreme Court where it is raining down. Also from
the bench, we talked about and we've all talked about
this back and forth between the descent from Justice Jackson,
which is really really forceful and very gloomy about the
future of the judicial institution, And we talked about some
of what Justice Bearit said in response to her in
the majority opinion, she spents several pages expressing where she
feels Justice Jackson has gone too far. She ends her
portion of the Justice Jackson majority opinion saying this Justice
Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition that
everyone from the President on down is bound by the
law that goes for judges too, so I can only
imagine as they had the initial vote after they heard
this case May fifteenth. There's been a lot of sparring
back and forth within the building behind me because some
of these descents feel very personal, and the back and
forth with the majority opinion at times. As I said,
Justice Sodo, myyer's reading from the majority discent right now,
what will be interesting to me is to see if
Justice Jackson reads from her descent. It's the secondary. She
was the only one. There's no sign on to that
Justice Jackson descent. It would be very rare. I don't
know that I've ever seen that happen in the years
I've been covering the Court. But because this thing has
been so heated back and forth between these two justices,
I'm watching to see if maybe Justice Jackson gets a
chance to read from the bench as well. We've got
five more opinions to come, but this one, of course,
taking all the headlines in oxygen while we wait.
Speaker 1: So there was a long list of commentary from various
lawyers about what they think regarding the Supreme Court decision
on injunctions and nationwide injunctions, But that was just one
of two big cases today. The other case was the
parental rights for taking children out of classes that have
a curriculum involving LGBTQ books or transgender books. It's a
religious freedom case. Here are some of the lawyers, the
elighni from a former federal prosecutor, Rebecca Pearlstein, she's a
constitutional law professor at Princeton and Judge Shinland, who former
federal judge.
Speaker 5: Let's listen spit that came out of Maryland, just north
of the district of Montgomery County, Maryland, where the public
elementary school adopted curriculum that involves stories that have LGBTQ
characters or themes to them. A group of parents from
different religions objected on free exercise of religion basis. They
did not say we want to block the schools from
teaching this materials. What they did say is we want
to have the opportunity to pull our students out of
class for those lessons. And now the Supreme Court has
agreed with the parents. They have said that yes, the
parents do have the right under the First Amendment Freedom
of Religion, free exercise of Religion clause to pull their
students out of those specific classes. These are elementary school
kids in public schools in Maryland. Yet again a six
to three opinion. Yet again it's the six conservatives on
the inside. Justice Alito wrote this opinion, and yet again,
this is a tough day. I mean, Justice Sotomayor, Kagan,
and Jackson are dissenting on all the big ones.
Speaker 6: As we discuss.
Speaker 5: Before, a very sharp descent in the birthright case, and
so far it looks like a sharp descent in this case.
Full Look, this is a win and an expansion of
First Amendment free exercise of religion principles. It's consistent with
where this Supreme Court has gone, and it's a setback
for the school district, but it's really more of a
win for the parents who sued here.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and so what this decision says is that parents
have a right under the Constitution, if they have a
religious objection to these particular texts, right not to pull
them out of the class entirely. But the students don't
have to read these books or the like that. It'll
be up to I suppose the school districts in the
first instance instance to figure out how to implement this.
This is not a surprise, this decision out of a
conservative court that has been moving to expand free exercise
rights substantially in recent years. I think the real question
is how broadly is it written? How broadly does this
precedent now sweep going forward. It's not so much just
about the opt out rights from this particular book or
that particular book, but does this include, for example, instruction
on evolution in scientific classrooms in high schools and public schools.
And that will have to read the opinion to find
out to some extent. But that's the real sort of
underlying stakes here.
Speaker 7: Let me go back to the nationwide injunction first. The
one thing we didn't say earlier, and we covered a lot,
is we may see a flood of litigation in fifty
states because the activist lawyers who have brought these cases
were prepared for this. This was an anticipated decision listening
to that oral argument. So I wouldn't be totally shocked
to see forty nine more lawsuits filed in the next
thirty days within the timeframe where where there's a stay,
and so we may see this happens throughout the country,
court after court, as far as the Maryland case. This
expansion of the interpretation of the free exercise clause has
been happening now for almost a decade. It is not
a surprise. The conservative majority has broadened and broadened this
interpretation of the First Amendment way beyond where it was
prior to the last ten years. So again, this is
not a surprise decision. It was expected, and it does
give this right for people to be able to opt out.
Whither it will end up, as Professor Peerostein said, banning
other ideological issues from the classroom. That's something we don't
know yet, and I don't think I'm hoping that we
don't go that far.
Speaker 1: And finally, the third big case was the case out
of Texas, which you had to do with age restrictions
for minors to access born and the Supreme Court did
uphold the Texas law that requires age verification for access
to online pornography. It was a case brought by of
Free Speech Coalition against the Texas Attorney General. The ruling
six to three ruled that the laws burden on adult
consumers was justified by the state's interest in protecting minors
from harmful content. So the porn producers lost and the
state of Texas won. They're not alone. There's one of
twelve states that have age barriers for online pornography. But
you want to talk budgets, because that's what the Senate's
going to be doing this weekend. President Trump's staying in
town and in Washington to try to shepherd this thing through.
The Senate says they're going to have a vote on
the big beautiful bill this weekend, probably late on Sunday.
Mark Wayne Bullen, Senator from Oklahoma, chimed in on what
he thinks is going to happen.
Speaker 10: Well, what that shows is there's a lot of elected
officials that have strong opinions. At the end of the day,
that's what we negotiate on. We're trying to get a
bill that isn't going to be perfect, but it has
more reasons to vote for than against.
Speaker 6: The biggest issues we're dealing with the salt that's still
a explain that for people that don't might not understand
y'all back home.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so salt is a state and local taxes and
then you could induct it from your federal taxes. The
issue you have with this is blue states typically have
very high state and local taxes and a lot higher
than red states. So the gripe is is that they
get to claim this from all their federal taxes and
basically red states have to offset it. And so it's
a real sticky point. There's only about five members in
the House that actually come from those salt states what
we call it. There's no senators that come from blue states,
so there's a big gap between the House and the
Senate when it comes to this. The fact is we
need the salt guys because they have to put the
two eighteen on the vote are on the board, and
so we need to pass something in the Senate that
they can deal with. It's expensive, though, it's really Dana,
It's a really really expensive price tag.
Speaker 6: So we've been negotiating.
Speaker 10: I was with Secretary Besset last night working with assault guys.
There's a lot of back and forth. We have spent hours,
I'm not joking hours with the White House on this
for the last week, trying to find at landing spot.
And I don't think either side's going to be great
with it. But once again, it's not necessarily about a
strong deal. It's about having more reasons to vote for
it than against it, and that's part of the negotiations.
And Medicaid is also obviously a big sticking point, and
that was my next question is what is going to
happen with the proposed medicaid cuts.
Speaker 6: Well here's here.
Speaker 10: You know, Ron John's got some really strong points on this,
Rick Scott, Tom Tillis, Josh Hawley. The fact is is
everybody's putting their input in it, and we've got to
come up with a solution that we can get fifty
one votes on the Senate for with. That's what we're
doing so well, yesterday we had a very good productive
conference where things are starting to shake out. Everybody has
said their piece, everybody has been responsible for try getting
their votes on their idea, and I think we're going
to come out with something this weekend that we can
pass in the Senate floor, get to the House House
and going to ball pass and the President bill to
sign it on July fourth. But I believe it's going
to be ceremonial that he signs it on July fourth.
It'll be kind of a neat thing.
Speaker 1: Some of the highlights of the bill funding more money
for ice and for border patrol and for everything regarding immigration.
There's a ban for medicaid to be they can't be
used for youth, transgender care, expanding, employer childcare credit, ending,
residential clean energy credit, defunding planned parenthood. And one more
guy to kind of chime in on this. He always
has a little different flavor, is Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana.
Speaker 11: Well, here's here's where we I think we are. Look,
I believe in teamwork. It gives you somebody to blame. Uh,
but but at some point, Uh, you've got to make
a decision. Now. Our quarterbacks are John Thune and Mike Crapo.
They're both rock stars. They're trying to make everybody happy.
It can't be done. Uh, we have we have cussed
and discussed and rediscussed. We need to start voting. Everybody
needs to adult, adult, real hard and and uh and uh,
the jackassery has to stop. I have encouraged John and
Mike to tell everyone, Look, we're gonna start voting tomorrow
at noon. If you're not happy offer amendment, we'll have
a full amendment process. But here's the bottom line. In
any legislation of this magnitude, some people are just going
to have to settle for a ham and egg sandwich
without the ham. That's just the nature of the beast.
And I think that if you put everybody to the
test and say, look this is what God made, votes
is time vote?
Speaker 6: I think the bill will pass.
Speaker 1: And finally, the argument about was the damage at the
Iranian nuke sites? Was it convincing? Did they actually blow
up Iran's nuclear business? Mark Wayne Bullen, the Oklahoma Senator,
had this comment after getting the classified briefing yesterday. Oh
and here's his comment also about Senator Chris Murphy.
Speaker 10: Senator Murphy's lion, and I'll tell you that he's absolutely lying.
All he's trying to do is audition for the twenty
eight election presidential election cycle. There's no one that can
walked out that hearing or that classified briefing has said
that America didn't win on this.
Speaker 6: Can you? I mean, just think about this. One got
to say this real quick.
Speaker 10: There is no way that President Trump, who was the
first president to actually deliver on what Clinton, Bush, Obama
and Biden all said that Iran could never have an
acre weapon. The only person that did something about it
was President Trump. So why do we go in there
when we control the airspace and leave before we had
the job done, when we were already started doing the job.
No one called, No one ran us out of the airspace.
We could have stayed there for five days if we
wanted to. Job was complete, and President Trump pulled the
people home. And now guess what. Now they's starting to
be peace in the Middle East for the first time
because President Trump had the backbone to do something. But
yet the Democrats are still rooting for America to lose
against a country who has been attacking us for forty
years and chanting death to America. And we finally did
something to quiet them up, and yet it's still not
good enough for the Democrats. It's because their absolute hatred
towards President Trump that they want America to lose and
not win. Everybody should be celebrating this victory, regardless of
what side of the aisle you're on, because this is
about America and the safety of America today and tomorrow.
Keep in mind, too, it's because of the strong relationship
between President Trump and the trust that the Israeli administration
and the IDF have on President Trump having their back.
They couldn't have done this with Biden the office because
there's a tremendous amount of mistrust and because of that mistrust,
they wasn't willing to share actual intel information that we
needed to be able to make the right decisions. But
that's why you have a that's a difference in leadership
between President Biden and President Trump.
Speaker 1: So let's wrap up the week on Wall Street with
it was a very good week. The Dow was in
record territory. Donald Trump came out and talked about continuing
a trade fight with Canada, and that sent the Dow
Jones industrials lower, gave up about half of They were
up about five hundred points today. But with that trade talk,
it's predicted table. It always gives the market a little shake.
Not that much this time, though, because the Nasdaq and
the S and P five hundred they got knocked down too,
but they came rarely rallying back near the end, and
they finished with the record high on the S and
P five hundred, a record high on the Nasdaq, and
yields interest rates on government bonds coming down, so people
aren't so worried about inflation from tariffs and trade wars.
But it did rattle the Dow just enough to give
it not the high numbers they had earlier, but it
finished up four hundred and thirty two. Like I said,
we were up over five hundred, came down about half
of that, and then in the last half hours so
started rallying to a gain of four hundred thirty two.
The Dow at forty three thousand and eight nineteen, SMP
up thirty two, new record high, sixty one seventy three,
Nasdaq up a record high of one hundred and five
twenty thousand and two seventy three. Price of gold fell
sixty four dollars to thirty two eighty three, and the
price of oil down get the dime down to sixty
five dollars fairly fairly tame considering all the activity in
the Middle East. Sixty five dollars for one barrel of oil.
So that's it for today, That's it for the week.
Thank you for coming by, have yourself a wonderful weekend.
We'll be back here and hope to see you on Mondays.