After Justice Neil Gorsuch’s muddled opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, the door seemed at least ajar, if not wide open, to ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio to argue that discrimination against transgender people violated the Equal Protection Clause, and that like sex discrimination in Bostock, it deserved higher scrutiny than rational basis analysis if a state was to enact a law that discriminated against transgender people.

The State of Tennessee prohibited medical procedures, characterized as “gender-affirming care” by its advocates and supporters, and more precisely as puberty blockers and hormones as surgical intervention was already off the table, for minors. The catch was that the same medical treatment was permissible for other reasons, such as precocious puberty, but not for gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria, of course, is the diagnosis that gives rise to someone being transgender, although being transgender is not limited to gender dysphoria. Continue reading →

A mayor. A congresswoman. A judge. A senator. And now, the New York City Comptroller and candidate for mayor. There is a response to the government’s actions against all of them, that no one is above the law, which is both objectively false and subjectively simplistic. Each of these situations was different, involved different legal issues and raised different questions of culpability.

But they all share one common theme: the government, primarily ICE but also the other alphabet agencies whose function has been reduced to ICE’s anti-immigrant handmaidens, is actively pursuing state and federal officials who get in their way. Often, as was the case with California Senior Senator Alex Padilla and now Brad Lander, with the use of some degree of force. Continue reading →

Buried in the House version of the most Trumpian-named omnibus reconciliation bill ever, the “Big Beautiful Bill,” was that dubious nugget that would preclude courts from holding the government in contempt for violating court orders. The Senate was having nothing of it, and seized the opportunity to take the House’s ham-handed effort and . . . make it worse.

As Sam Bray explains at Divided Argument, the House version went after the courts’ authority to hold the government in contempt for violating a court injunction, making it replete with constitutional issues as well as having a practical flaw that would allow judges to fix the required bond at $1, thus defeating the effort and allowing the president to violate the Constitution with impunity. Continue reading →

It was beyond absurd that the Democratic National Committee believed it was a good idea, having just lost to Trump, to make David Hogg its vice chair. That they believed they were losing the youth vote was understandable. That they believed Hogg was the solution was nuts. Who was this kid, whose only claim to fame was surviving a school shooting? His public utterances, primarily on twitter, consisted almost entirely of infantile rantings that were roundly ridiculed by anyone with a basic knowledge of history and governance. And he was going to save the Democrats?

Hogg then did the unthinkable, putting together a PAC for the purpose of challenging Democratic incumbents who he decided were too old or too institutional to meet his radical vision. Continue reading →

I love a parade. I love the Memorial Day Parade they hold every year in the hamlet, with firetrucks and classic cars, marching bands and little league teams, more firetrucks and a fellow dressed like Uncle Sam on stilts handing out American flags. It lasts almost a half hour, as we sit with our friends, our kids, the dogs, and sip morning coffee. I love it. It is quintessential Americana.

There was a parade planned to honor the Army’s 250th Anniversary planned over the past two years, but it all changed after Trump was elected. It was the parade equivalent of his redecoration of the Oval Office, turning it into a mass display of weaponry that surely impressed Putin and Kim. Unfortunately, not too many other people were impressed. Or to be more frank, cared as three hours dragged. Continue reading →

Greetings, denizens of the SJ Hotel! Your humble humorist, Chris Seaton, is back to sling a tale of familial chaos, and this week we’re trudging north to the soggy hills of Vermont for my father-in-law’s 80th birthday. Buckle up, because this trip was less “Norman Rockwell” and more “Hunter S. Thompson with a side of steak tips.”

So, I fled the blessed warmth of Knoxville for the Green Mountain State, where the air smells like damp flannel and socialism. My father-in-law, a man who’s outlived half his high school class and still thinks he can arm-wrestle a moose, decided his 80th warranted a shindig. The plan? Everyone at the family home and enough steak tips to choke a bear. Sounds wholesome, right? Spoiler: it wasn’t. Continue reading →

President Donald Trump said there was an invasion. Judge Fernando Rodriguez held otherwise. President Donald Trump said there was a rebellion. Judge Charles Breyer held otherwise. Trump’s use of these extreme and hyperbolic words didn’t reflect his usual challenges with the use of the language, but were explicitly chosen to enable him to invoke laws intended for extreme circumstances that gave the president extreme emergency powers. After all, should exigent catastrophe strike, someone has to be able to act to save the nation when immediate action is necessary before all is lost.

Except there was no exigent catastrophe. There was just Trump seizing power. Continue reading →

As Jacob Sullum over at Reason tells it, Penny McCarthy tried her best to tell government agents who she was, and accordingly, who she wasn’t. She had all the usual papers, but none of that mattered. The marshals decided she was Carole Rozak, who had a warrant for arrest for failure to report 25 years earlier, and confirming that the woman they seized was the woman who was wanted was not their problem.

As ICE agents are pushed by Stephen Miller to arrest 3,000 aliens a day, which incidentally will still fall thousands short per day of Trump’s “promise” to deport the “20 million” illegal aliens who “invaded” the nation, the potential for error increases exponentially. Just as the marshals couldn’t manage to tell Penny McCarthy from Carole Rozak, even with government issued identification, the problem for ICE agents distinguishing between legal immigrants, illegal aliens and American citizens is manifest. Continue reading →

It was a shrewd move by Trump to replace the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Whether the new choices were more loyal to Trump than to the Constitution is unknown, but the message was clear. Trump would not tolerate general staff that would pull a Milley, tell him what he didn’t want to hear such as it being wrong to shoot protesters in the legs. After long and distinguished military careers, they would be unceremoniously fired by the Commander in Chief if they did not do as he commanded, whether his commands were lawful, ethical or just dumb.

In a speech at the newly re-renamed Fort Bragg, Trump did what Trump invariably does.

It is too much to call it a “speech”; it was, instead, a ramble, full of grievance and anger, just like his many political-rally performances. He took the stage to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”—which has become a MAGA anthem—and then pointed to the “fake news,” encouraging military personnel to jeer at the press. Continue reading →

One of the really good things about the Trump administration is that it rarely leaves anyone in doubt about why it does things. When Karoline Leavitt (no, I will not join the chorus of people calling her “Bullshit Barbie”) announced that the Associated Press was banned from pressers in the Oval or on Air Force 1, the American or Qatar flavor, the reason was clear, leaving no doubt for the D.C. Circuit in reaching its conclusion.

On February 11, 2025, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt informed the AP that it would not be permitted in the Oval Office or press pool unless it revised its Stylebook to refer to the Gulf of America, which President Trump had recently renamed from the Gulf of Mexico. The President and other senior White House officials publicly stated that the reason for the AP’s exclusion was its continued use of the name Gulf of Mexico. The AP was similarly excluded from events in the East Room, despite signing up in advance through the reservation process.

Continue reading →