Crooked Media - What A Day: Battle of the Texas

It’s officially summer and it’s Friday so you know what that means: We’re talkin’ Supreme Court decisions.
 

• Our old frenemies in robes handed down two decisions on Friday pertaining to immigration. In United States vs. Texas, the Court ruled 8-1 against Texas and Louisiana, which challenged the White House’s immigration-enforcement priorities. These GOP-led states argued that the Biden administration’s policy—which instructs the Department of Homeland Security to focus on arresting recent border crossers and undocumented immigrants who pose a threat to public safety, as opposed to the millions of others who have settled in the United States—is unlawful. Guess who the lone dissenter was! I dare you! Yes; obviously it was crybaby McWhinypants Justice Samuel Alito. 
   

• The Trump administration instructed immigration-enforcement authorities to target anyone in the country illegally for deportation, not just violent offenders or those who had arrived recently, and well, that’s the kind of cruel and impractical policy favored by many Republicans. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority (weird but go off I guess) that Texas and Louisiana had “brought an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit,” seeking “a federal court to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more arrests,” a kind of lawsuit for which the states could cite no precedent. 
   

• A notorious right-wing federal judge in Texas had originally sided with the Republican states, halting the Biden administration’s guidelines, and last summer the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to prohibit the directives from taking effect while the administration appealed the lower-court ruling. The Biden administration’s solicitor general argued that the lower-court ruling was inconsistent with past deference to executive-branch autonomy over how to carry out its duties under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

With an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, Supreme Court rulings on immigration will have sweeping ramifications. 
 

• In another immigration-related ruling, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to uphold a decades-old measure that bars encouraging noncitizens to “come to, enter, or reside” in the United States illegally, including for financial gain. The case at the center of this decision involved a California man who deceived immigrants through a fraudulent “adult adoption” scheme. A lower court had ruled that the measure barring such speech was overly broad because it may criminalize speech protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court overturned that decision, endorsing the Biden administration’s view of the law, which justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote “forbids only the intentional solicitation or facilitation of certain unlawful acts,” and does not prohibit a substantial amount of protected speech. 
   

• Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the decision. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the measure criminalizes even commonplace speech such as advising a noncitizen about available social services, supporting a view held by various free speech, libertarian, and press advocacy groups, who argued that the law threatens attorneys, doctors, scholars, and anyone else who speaks in support of immigration. Colorado’s 10th Circuit Court of Appeals also ruled against the law in a separate case. 

We have a long summer ahead of us with Supreme Court decisions. In the weeks to come, the Court will decide landmark decisions on Affirmative Action, the fringe right-wing “independent state legislature theory,” student debt, and free speech exceptions to civil rights laws. So a lot of our rights as well as laws affecting the future of our democracy hang in the balance! Great! Fun in the sun! Surfin’ USA!

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The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Friday that Russia’s impetus for invading Ukraine was based on lies conjured up by the Kremlin’s top military brass, whom Prigozhin frequently skewers on social media and in the press. He also threatened violence against the ministry of defense and a manhunt is apparently on in Russia to arrest him for insurrection.

Meanwhile, 2024 Democratic primary candidate and vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said he believes Russia acted in “good faith” when it invaded Ukraine. Cool guy! Good opinions!

Republican extremists want to “expunge” disgraced former president Donald Trump’s two impeachments, which isn’t a real thing (impeachment is fo’ life!) but will force basically every Republican in the to vote for the insurrection and for extorting foreign governments to interfere in U.S. elections (again). 

The Indiana chapter of “Moms for Liberty” the extremist conservative “parental rights” group apologized on Thursday after publishing a newsletter featuring an Adolf Hitler quote, right above the section insisting that they definitely are not an extremist group. Let us know how that works out!

A new ProPublica report shows that biotech executives have a sexy little insider-trading problem, as they keep making perfectly timed health-care stock trades. 

Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is reportedly in the process of buying stake in several United States professional sports teams based in the nation’s capital, including the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the NHL’s Washington Capitals, and the WNBA’s Washington Mystics. Seems…strategic! 

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The damaged portion of Interstate 95 in Pennsylvania was rebuilt in just 12 days and reopened on Friday, ahead of schedule. We can still (re)build things in America!

President Biden signed an executive order on Friday aimed at expanding free access to birth control ahead of the one-year anniversary of the disastrous Dobbs ruling.