The Supreme Court finally ruled regarding the executive order rescinding birthright citizenship. This is based on the 14th amendment which categorizes all those born in the United States and subject to its laws (the exclusion here is for diplomats, invading armies, and Native Americans) as United States citizens. As part of their sweeping racist agenda, Republicans have long wanted children of immigrants denied US citizenship. They have faced the small roadblock of the 14th amendment being rather explicit. In case there was any confusion, the drafters of the post Civil War amendments wrote extensively about their intent and debated that intent on the floor of Congress. There are simply no good faith arguments that birthright citizenship doesn’t apply to the children of immigrants. This was a slam dunk Supreme Court case.

And the vote was 5-4.

We are one Supreme Court vote away from the court simply ignoring a Constitutional amendment entirely. The “scholarship” cited by the dissenters has been generated only in the last few years. To justify Trump’s ridiculous anti 14th amendment stance, a small handful of legal writers invented new arguments about why the 14th amendment does not say what the 14th amendment (and its authors) says.

The outcome here was correct. But that vote should be alarming and be an impetus for court reform.

Mike Johnson and Donald Trump have promised legislative action to get around the decision. No such sidestepping is actually possible since their problem here is the plain language of the 14th amendment. Aside from this suggestion, the reaction has been as racist as you would expect. Stephen Miller, among other Republicans, said the United States needs to ban pregnant women from entering the United States so as to stop those children from becoming Americans. If you are not horrified by that, consider how the government would go about confirming if a woman visiting the United States was pregnant or not.

Donald Trump is the most corrupt politician in United States history and arguably one of the most corrupt in the world. The dollar amounts are absolutely staggering. Past political scandals involve figures in the millions of dollars or less. Just last year, Donald Trump took in over $2 billion for his personal businesses. The vast majority of that came in the form of cryptocurrency purchases. Foreign citizens and even governments have a method of directly sending money to Donald Trump without leaving any sort of verifiable trace. This is blatantly unconstitutional but the Republicans in Congress don’t do anything about it because they only care about corruption when Democrats do it. The Pentagon has awarded no bid contracts to companies his sons run. His granddaughter has recorded ads for her clothing brands at the White House. The 4th of July events have ads for Trump branded merchandise.

In addition to the crypto income and merchandising, the president made approximately 21,000 stock trades last year. For comparison, Biden made 13 trades while in office. Not 13,000. 13. Total. Those 13 trades were unusual as the normal number of trades presidents make is zero. Every president for as long as you have been alive has placed their financial assets into a blind trust to remove the obvious conflict of interest in forming US policy so as to enrich yourself.

I have seen pundits saying Trump uses a blind trust. This is just a flat out lie. Not only can we see which stocks Trump trades, but he has timed those trades to match policy announcements such as buying stocks in companies immediately before announcing the removal of tariffs. The US president is setting US policy so that he can make money in the stock market. And again, the Republican Party does absolutely nothing to hold him accountable.

After years of court battles, the Supreme Court declined to take up a Trump appeal of one of the two E. Jean Carroll cases. This is the smaller decision, only $5.8 million, awarded to Carroll for Trump’s sexual assault and defamation of her. Trump asked the Supreme Court to reconsider (this almost NEVER happens) and appealed the order to pay her while he waits for the Supreme Court to say no for a second time. The second circuit denied his appeal. The money should have been released to Carroll, but I haven’t seen confirmation it was sent yet. Her SECOND victory against him, with a much larger amount of damages, is still tied up in the courts.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani asked New Yorkers to raise their thermostats to 78 degrees in order to help alleviate electrical demand during a heatwave. This is a very common request during extreme weather. It’s so common, it was on the Department of Energy’s website. I say WAS on the website because after Mamdani made the request, Republican commentators were furious that he dared to ask people to conserve energy. When it was pointed out this very same advice was on the DoE website, the recommendations on conserving energy were removed from the site entirely.

Like most other things touted by conservatives, this was just another bad faith attack. Nikki Haley responded with “welcome to socialism” despite issuing a nearly identical request issued while she was governor. Ted Cruz said things like this don’t happen in first world countries. I’m a lifelong Texan. I couldn’t begin to count how many times the state has asked us to alter our energy usage during summers and winters. Rand Paul and Rick Scott both blamed “communism” for Mamdani’s request. Lindsey Graham blamed “woke” somehow. All of this was in response to Mamdani asking people to conserve electricity.

Trump has instructed his cabinet to cut off trade with Spain, entirely, because Spain won’t allow the US to bomb Iran using Spanish airspace. Trump has given this exact same order before without anyone actually implementing it. The reason they haven’t implemented it is simple. Spain is a European Union member. They do not act as individual states. You can cut off trade with the entire European Union or you can keep trading with all of it. It is not likely the president understands this.

NASA director Jared Isaacman owns several F-5 Tiger fighter jets. He wanted to fly them over the National Mall as part of the 4th of July celebrations. The FAA said the planes were not safe enough to fly over densely populated areas. Transportation Secretary Duffy refused to overrule the FAA, so NASA reclassified Isaacman’s planes as “for public use.” As the FAA does not have jurisdiction over NASA’s planes, Isaacman got to take himself and Todd Blanche over the capital.

In another bizarre rant directed at Iran, Trump has once again threatened to destroy the country, ending his post with “Praise Be to Allah.” Notably here, Trump says the military has been instructed to destroy Iran if Iran assassinates him. The military is not beholden to orders from dead people.

Finally, Trump has now begun flying on the 747 “donated” to the United States by Qatar to use as Air Force One. While talking about how amazing the plane is, he said the United States “couldn’t build a plane like this.” The plane is a Boeing 747. Boeing. The American company Boeing. Every single 747 on the planet was made in the same building (fun fact; it’s the largest building in the world) and that building is in Everett, Washington. The New York Times reported that Trump had to switch back to the original Air Force One because of security issues with the new plane (which was widely predicted). In response, the FBI has subpoenaed the reporters who broke the story.

It doesn’t matter to Donald Trump that his “new” 747 was built in America. That doesn’t fit his narrative so he simply lies. And virtually no one calls him out on it.