Online Predator

Insane Ruling Just Cleared A Path For The Creepiest AI Use Yet

child sexual abuse material

first amendment

seventh circuit court of appeals

stable diffusion

steven anderegg

A federal appeals court has ruled that the First Amendment protects the private possession of AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM), provided that the images do not depict real children, a decision that exposes a startling gap between decades-old Supreme Court precedent and modern artificial intelligence.
The <a href="https://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/OpinionsWeb/processWebInputExternal.pl?Submit=Display&amp;Path=Y2026/D08-25/C:25-1354:J:Lee:aut:T:fnOp:N:3597567:S:0">7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled</a> Tuesday that the government cannot prosecute Steven Anderegg for possessing AI-generated images depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct because Supreme Court precedent protects the private possession of such material.
Two of the three judges on the panel, in a separate opinion, acknowledged the disturbing implications of a ruling they felt bound by precedent to reach.
&#8220;We now live in an age where GenAI models can render images depicting the abuse of virtual children that are virtually indistinguishable from those depicting the abuse of actual children,&#8221; Judge John Lee wrote in a concurrence joined by Judge Joshua Kolar. &#8220;Given the relentless advancement in artificial intelligence models, we have some concerns about the lines these cases draw, but we are not free to redraw them ourselves.&#8221;
The ruling stems from the prosecution of Anderegg, a Wisconsin man accused of using an AI image generator to create thousands of sexually explicit images depicting children. According to prosecutors, an investigation began after Meta, the parent company of Instagram, reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that an Instagram user had sent apparent AI-generated CSAM to an account belonging to a minor. Anderegg was ultimately charged with producing and distributing the material, transferring it to a minor under 16, and possessing it.
A federal district court dismissed the possession charge, concluding that prosecuting Anderegg for privately possessing the AI-generated images violated the First Amendment. The Justice Department appealed that decision to the 7th Circuit. The appeals court affirmed the dismissal.
Crucially, the decision does not mean that everything Anderegg allegedly did is protected by the First Amendment. The charges involving the production and distribution of the material, as well as allegedly sending it to a 15-year-old boy, remain pending.
Still, the court&#8217;s decision emphasizes a legal distinction: If a person creates or obtains AI-generated CSAM through conduct that is otherwise prosecutable, the government is able to prosecute that conduct, but once purely virtual material is privately possessed inside the home, existing Supreme Court precedent prevents the government from criminalizing the possession itself.
The foundation for the conundrum dates back to 1969, when the Supreme Court ruled in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/293">Stanley v. Georgia</a> that the government generally could not criminalize an individual&#8217;s private possession of obscene material inside his home.
Building on that foundation three decades later, the Supreme Court confronted virtual child pornography in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2001/00-795">Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition</a>. In the 2002 decision, the justices struck down portions of a federal law that prohibited sexually explicit depictions of fictional children when no actual child was involved in their production.
The Supreme Court reasoned that the government&#8217;s strongest justification for prohibiting child pornography — protecting children from being exploited in its production — did not apply when no real child was involved. Those rulings were written long before today&#8217;s generative AI systems could produce photorealistic images with a few prompts.
The 7th Circuit said that distinction has become increasingly difficult to maintain. “Free Speech Coalition” was decided nearly 25 years ago, Lee wrote, and “the image-generation technology available today was likely unimaginable back then.”
The court also pointed to emerging evidence that AI-generated CSAM may not be entirely disconnected from the exploitation of real children. Lee noted that researchers have found CSAM in datasets used to train image-generation models, raising the possibility that some supposedly “virtual” material could ultimately be connected to real-world abuse. That issue, however, was not fully developed by the government in Anderegg&#8217;s appeal, leaving the court unable to resolve it.
The 7th Circuit&#8217;s opinion also revived a warning made by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas more than two decades ago. In his 2002 concurrence in Free Speech Coalition, Thomas warned that technological advances could eventually make it difficult to enforce laws against child pornography involving actual victims if virtual images became sufficiently realistic.
Thomas wrote that if technological advances prevented prosecutors from effectively enforcing laws against illegal material, the government might eventually have a compelling interest in regulating a narrow category of otherwise lawful speech. “According to some experts, that day may have arrived,” Lee concluded, citing the growing volume of AI-generated material reported to the CyberTipline and the difficulties it presents for law enforcement.
The judges ultimately concluded that it is not their role to overrule or rewrite Supreme Court precedent. “The stakes are high,” Lee wrote, “and we must be mindful of the ever-accelerating advancements in image generation technology.” The decision therefore leaves the issue squarely in the Supreme Court&#8217;s hands.

Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Policy Gets Supreme Court Hearing

You Can’t Be Charged For Possessing AI Child Porn, Court Rules

artificial intelligence

court ruling

supreme court

Monday night, Americans were subjected to a frontal lobotomy as a radical, terror-sympathizing, West-hating Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, drew a false equivalence on &#8220;Jessie Watters Primetime&#8221; that canon law is the same thing as sharia law.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Last night Abdul El-Sayed sat equated Sharia law with Christian Canon law.
“I don’t begrudge you your right to practice your faith as you choose. I don’t know why the idea that I could practice my faith as I choose is a problem.”
It is a problem. 
The story below is Sharia in… <a href="https://t.co/A1UgTtrYM7">https://t.co/A1UgTtrYM7</a> <a href="https://t.co/7FMNjFmvkL">pic.twitter.com/7FMNjFmvkL</a>
— Trisha Posner (@trishaposner) <a href="https://x.com/trishaposner/status/2092371655897272661?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Just relax, people! Let sharia law shine!
Host Jessie Waters didn’t buy it, and neither should you. Because he could not be more obscenely, iniquitously wrong. These two are not the same thing. One is a filing cabinet for a church; the latter could destroy Western civilization.
Canon law is not “Christian law,” no matter how confidently the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/shorts/6c4c39a2-487d-41e3-9025-95a507370741">Blue’s Clues Bolshevik</a> says it. Protestants don’t walk around with a Vatican codebook, and the Eastern Orthodox have their own canons entirely. What El-Sayed inaccurately conflated with sharia law is the Catholic Church’s internal legal system: the 1983 Code of Canon Law, plus a pile of older tradition, that tells the Church how to run itself.
Think of it as the bylaws of a 1.4 billion-member organization that also happens to believe it was founded by God. It tells bishops how to assign priests. It governs sacraments, parish property, religious orders, and whether a Catholic marriage can be annulled inside the Church. Its harshest penalties are laicization, denial of Communion, and excommunication.
Notice what&#8217;s missing from that list: Fines. Prison. Stoning.
A bishop in Detroit cannot walk into a Michigan courtroom and demand the state enforce Canon 1398. He cannot jail you for skipping Mass, seize your house for leaving the faith, discount your court testimony as half of a man&#8217;s, execute you for converting to Judaism, or shrug while a mob stones you for premarital sex. If he tried any of it, the First Amendment and a civil court would have him in handcuffs by lunch.
The Code itself instructs the Church to defer to civil law on ordinary matters (property, guardianship, adoption, contracts), so long as those laws don&#8217;t violate divine law, and in the United States, &#8220;divine law&#8221; is not supreme law. The Constitution is. The Church can preach at you. It can withhold the Eucharist from you. It cannot become the penal code. That&#8217;s why almost nobody outside the Catholic Church has ever heard of canon law: it doesn&#8217;t reach past the pews.
But canon law works in harmony with America, because we are, whether the current moronic moment likes admitting it or not, a country built by Christians and Jews whose moral vocabulary stems straight from the Bible. Our Declaration of Independence promised the government would not take away the rights endowed to us by our Creator. Washington called religion and morality the &#8220;indispensable supports&#8221; of political life. Adams, who is probably looking down in complete horror at us right now, once said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.&#8221;
But here’s what Sharia Sayed misses: The Founders didn’t install a national church. They assumed a national conscience and then built a limited government on top of it, because they believed men were fallen and power needed a leash. Madison&#8217;s Memorial and Remonstrance, Jefferson&#8217;s Statute for Religious Freedom, the First Amendment; these were written by men steeped in scripture and allergic to theocracy.
They had just watched Europe&#8217;s centuries of throne-and-altar bloodletting and said: never again, not here, not as public law. Believe whatever you want. Build a church with the strictest internal rules imaginable…just don&#8217;t conscript the sheriff, pretty please.
Christianity and Judaism are examples of faiths that live melodiously inside that bargain. A rabbi can&#8217;t stone you in Brooklyn. A priest can&#8217;t flog you in Detroit. Their authority stops at the congregation door. The state&#8217;s law is identical for the believer and the atheist who lives next to him. That&#8217;s the deal. And canon law fits inside it. So does halakha, practiced privately. What doesn&#8217;t fit is a legal system engineered from the ground up to be the state.
Which brings us to the thing El-Sayed is trying to smuggle in under “freedom of religion”: “sharia” is not “Muslim canon law.” Stop letting him say that.
In private, sharia (religious rules) can look like piety: prayer, no pork, etc. — which the First Amendment covers, but the part he is flattening is sharia as public law: the version currently operating in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Taliban Afghanistan, and embedded in the penal codes of parts of Pakistan and beyond.
There, sharia isn’t a cute little parish pamphlet; it’s the theocratic legal system that applies to Muslim, Christian, atheist, and unlucky layover tourists alike. It’s not “my faith, my choice”; it’s “Allah’s rules, or else.”
And we&#8217;re not talking about a strongly worded letter from the diocese.
Under state sharia: apostasy and blasphemy are capital crimes. A woman&#8217;s courtroom testimony is worth half a man&#8217;s. Daughters inherit less than sons, when they inherit at all. Male guardianship isn&#8217;t chivalry; it&#8217;s a binding legal chain of command over a woman&#8217;s body and movements. Sex outside its narrow permissions is a sin that regularly ends in a death sentence, and in several jurisdictions girls&#8217; privates are cut to make sure they never enjoy any of it.
Canon law&#8217;s worst-case outcome is that you&#8217;re denied a wafer. Sharia&#8217;s worst-case outcome, where it governs, is that you&#8217;re denied a courtroom, a passport, or a pulse.
One is a church telling its members how to be Catholic. The other is a government telling an entire population how far to bend the knee, and if they don’t, they’ll cut it off.
If Sharia as state law were just &#8220;another religious law, same as any other,&#8221; Riyadh and Rome would be interchangeable. They are not.
In Iran, post-1979, the marriage age for girls dropped from 18 to nine almost overnight, women lost the right to initiate divorce and custody, hijab went from optional to compulsory, and Iran remains a world leader in executions, while the worst liberal you know chants in solidarity with the Ayatollah in a crop top. Pakistan, post-1979 Islamization, saw blasphemy prosecutions go from 14 cases in nearly 60 years to over 1,500 in the following three decades. Zina laws have, in practice, turned rape victims into defendants for failing to produce four male witnesses, and the country&#8217;s Christian population has been bled to near nothing. Afghanistan, since 2021, is the only country on earth with a formal, standing ban on girls&#8217; secondary and higher education. Where, if you refuse the marriage your family arranged for you, the penalty is stoning.
And this isn&#8217;t just a few bad regimes misreading their own religious texts. Pew&#8217;s landmark 2013 global survey found 99% of Afghan Muslims and 84% of Pakistani Muslims wanted sharia as official state law. Of those supporters, 79% in Afghanistan and 76% in Pakistan backed the death penalty for apostasy — which nets out to roughly three in four Afghans and two in three Pakistanis endorsing execution for leaving the faith. In Egypt, 74% wanted sharia codified into law, and 86% of that group backed killing converts — about 64% of Egyptian Muslims overall.
So no…these are not &#8220;a few bad actors misunderstood by Fox News!&#8221; These are states, and in several cases outright majorities, doing precisely what their legal schools prescribe.
<a href="https://x.com/TheStatesmanLtd/status/2092865064932163987">So when Trump says he’s going to ban sharia law</a>, that’s a massive win for this country. When El-Sayed says it’s somehow racist and Islamophobic to ban sharia law in this country, he’s telling you exactly how little he cares for you and the country you currently know. And when the man who has previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/abdul-el-sayed-displayed-book-written-by-extremist-tied-to-1993-world-trade-center-attack">asked a documentary crew to keep his bookshelf full of Islamic books</a> out of the frame to appear more &#8220;secular&#8221; on camera falsely equates canon law with sharia law? Let’s just say that it looks eerily similar to taqiyya, the Islamic concept that permits one to lie to advance the religion.
When you’re campaigning alongside grotesque, grisly creeps who say America deserved 9/11, sharing bookshelf space with authors tied to terrorism cases, and surrounding yourself with family members who have close ties to the Taliban and want the American empire to crumble, you don’t get to lecture the rest of us about the sanctity of religious liberty and the American way of life. You don&#8217;t get to piggyback off of America&#8217;s free-speech protections while quietly pushing a legal system that would strip those same protections from the lady writing this sentence.
I don’t want sharia law anywhere near the American frontier. I’m a woman. I would rather not need a male guardian to sign off on my passport. I would rather not inherit as the discount relative. I would rather not be entered into a courtroom as half a witness. I’d rather not be forced to wear a burqa at the beach, or a hijab at homecoming, or stoned for failing to do so.
Western law, built on a Judeo-Christian claim that every person bears an image no caliph gets to rank, tells a woman she is a full legal person. That is not bigotry against Islam. That&#8217;s why I can function in society without being stoned. El-Sayed wants you to hear “sharia law” and picture a prayer rug. I hear a statute book. And I want it banned.

Niqab

No, Canon Law And Sharia Law Are Not The Same. One Of Them Wants You Dead.

2026 midterm election

abdul el-sayed

canon law

opinion

sharia law

For years, Washington has been consumed by fears of foreign influence campaigns targeting American democracy. Pundits and lawmakers constantly warn about foreign adversaries attempting to subvert American discourse through covert online ops.
Yet the most successful foreign influence operation reshaping the American internet isn&#8217;t operating out of Moscow or Beijing. It is operating in plain sight out of London… and it is working to dismantle the First Amendment state by state.
According to an <a href="https://www.effort.news/uk-lobby">investigation</a> published by Effort News, five foreign non-governmental organizations have launched a coordinated campaign across the United States. Pushing bills across 21 statehouses and Congress, their playbook uses the shield of “child safety” to mandate digital identity frameworks. These regulations force platforms to demand government IDs, credit cards, or biometric facial scans before granting access to ordinary websites — effectively eliminating online anonymity for adults.
As someone living in the United Kingdom, I&#8217;m watching this all play out in front of me. Americans need to understand what is being imported before it is too late: in Britain, “online safety” was the Trojan horse used to kill our anonymity and enforce state-backed policing of public discourse. Now, the exact people who engineered Britain’s system are selling it to American state lawmakers who seem completely unaware of who is pulling the strings.
Skeptics might dismiss this with the classic refrain: “If you have nothing to hide, what do you have to fear?” But anonymity has always been the cornerstone of a free society. America was quite literally argued into existence under the shield of anonymity: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay published the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym “Publius,” precisely to allow ideas to be judged on their merits, free from state reprisal or social retaliation. The secret ballot and anonymous public assembly exist for the exact same reason. When you remove anonymity, you snatch away the ability to challenge institutional power.
The investigation reveals that many of those pushing for digital IDs hold the keys to power in the United Kingdom.
​Take the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). It was co-founded by Imran Ahmed and Morgan McSweeney (who served as chief of staff to former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer). 
Although run by British individuals, the group spent years involved in U.S. policy debates on age verification without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), leading to complaints to the Department of Justice.
Similarly, the 5Rights Foundation is an NGO founded and directed by Baroness Beeban Kidron, a member of the British House of Lords. 5Rights openly co-designed California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AB 2273), which was explicitly copied from the UK’s own regulatory framework.
Public records show 5Rights — acting as a foreign principal — paid the lobbying firm Capitol Connection $50,000 to push the bill through the California legislature in 2022. Yet Capitol Connection failed to disclose its foreign agent status for 5Rights under FARA until 2024, long after the bill had passed. When disclosures were finally submitted, they denied foreign government influence and conveniently left blank the section that would explain the control wielded by an unelected British parliamentarian. To date, 5Rights has engaged with 42 age-assurance and online design bills across 18 U.S. states, with 11 already signed into law. 
Perhaps most shocking is where the funding comes from. ​The London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which produces reports labeling normal political dissent as “misinformation” or “anti-Ukraine narratives,” has taken in over $11.2 million directly from U.S. government grants through the State Department, Department of Justice, and Homeland Security. That dwarfs the £720,000 they received from the U.K. government. American taxpayers are literally footing the bill for a foreign think tank that advises on transatlantic censorship frameworks.
Behind these ideological NGOs stands an even more cynical player: the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA). Dominated by British executives from identity-tech vendors like Yoti, AVPA is an industry cartel whose members stand to make millions in corporate windfalls if American statehouses force every website to purchase digital ID-checking software.
American state legislators voting for these “design codes” and age-verification bills genuinely believe they are voting for mere innocent child welfare protections.
In Britain, we were told the exact same story. 
First came the U.K.’s Age Appropriate Design Code. Then came the Online Safety Act. Each step was sold as a common-sense measure to shield minors from online harm.
In Britain, the consequences have been dire; our civil liberties have been hollowed out. To follow these mandates, platforms are forced to build highly intrusive verification software: uploading government IDs, biometric facial scans, and tying real-world identities to every digital footprint. Digital anonymity — the greatest historical defense against government overreach and public ostracization — has been virtually eliminated in the U.K.
Worse, once this infrastructure is established, the mission inevitably creeps. British police <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-struggle-30-arrests-a-day-censorship/">routinely</a> investigate citizens for non-crime hate incidents and social media commentary.
The reason British NGOs are targeting American statehouses is simple: in the United States, the First Amendment makes top-down federal censorship uniquely difficult. Unable to pass a direct federal speech code, foreign activists are using a state-by-state strategy. If California, Maryland, or 20 other states require websites to determine user age and assess whether platform features create vague “psychological harm,” tech companies will standardize those restrictions nationwide for operational efficiency.
State lawmakers must not continue to introduce copy-paste versions of these bills, blindly trusting foreign lobby groups.
The United States became independent from Britain almost 250 years ago precisely to reject authoritarianism. It is odd that in 2026, American state legislators are inviting unelected British peers and foreign lobbies to make the rules for Americans.
Protecting children online is a noble goal, but it cannot be achieved by adopting the playbook of an increasingly illiberal state. When lobbyists work to remove digital anonymity in America, lawmakers should remember why that anonymity exists in the first place.
​It is time for states to firmly reject the British export of online censorship.
***
Samiksha Bhattacharjee runs Ladies of Liberty Alliance UK, is a Young Voices UK contributor, and serves as President of the University College London Libertarian Society. You can find more of her work at<a href="https://samikshabhattacharjee.github.io/"> Samiksha’s State of the Debate.</a>

Free Count Dankula Protest In London

How U.K. Operatives Are Exporting Censorship To Twenty-One States

5rights foundation

age verification

center for countering digital hate

online safety act

Was a public school counselor in Oregon participating in hate speech when he displayed two kids&#8217; books about the gender binary? That&#8217;s what a federal appeals court ruled last month.
The court determined Roderick E. Theis II violated hate speech legislation by showcasing the books “He is He” and &#8220;She is She.” It also ruled that displaying these books, which affirm the gender binary, was not protected under the First Amendment.
In the wake of the unreasonable ruling, the books&#8217; coauthor, Ryan Bomberger, spoke to The Daily Wire about the case and the work conservative Christians must do to save the country. He didn&#8217;t hold back.
The gender binary isn&#8217;t evil
Bomberger said “He is He” and “She is She,” which he cowrote with his wife Bethany, are rooted in love.
“We wanted to take this insane pronoun issue and just make something that spoke truth about the human condition and celebrate what it means to be a boy, and celebrate what it means to be a girl,” he said. “It celebrates motherhood, fatherhood, the means by which all of us exist. So, what&#8217;s more inclusive than a book that speaks to the &#8230; heterosexual self-identity of more than 90% of Americans? How is that not inclusive?”
Bomberger rejects the idea that the books could be seen as harmful in any way. 
“The books are so beautifully illustrated. They are diverse. As someone myself, I&#8217;m mixed white, black, part Asian, part Native American. I&#8217;m a mixture of all things,” he said. “It&#8217;s laughable that the school sees these books as being hostile in any way, shape, or form.” 
The school district isn&#8217;t just being unreasonable here. It&#8217;s hypocritical. Bomberger pointed out that many of the teachers showcased BLM or LGBT propaganda, which he called “highly discriminatory against the nuclear family, against fatherhood, against black conservatives” and “anti-science,” respectively.
“What&#8217;s laughable to me is this is the same school district that pushes things like &#8216;How To Be An Anti-Racist,&#8217; which has an animus toward white people, [and says] in fact, the only way to deal with past discrimination is present discrimination,” Bomberger said. “So that book violates Oregon&#8217;s law.”
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Battling in court
The fact that a scuffle over his commonsense books made it to court, he says, was by design. Reports said Theis, who worked for the InterMountain Education Service District for over 15 years, was fired after a teacher recorded him showing the books to some eighth graders. Bomberger says that the whole situation was a setup.
“There was one complaint from a teacher who only saw the covers. This teacher never even read the books — only saw the covers and objected to the covers,” Bomberger explained. “That teacher is the one that set up the two 8th graders who came and insisted on reading the books. It was not genuine interest. It was set up. That was the teacher that actually recorded the whole interaction, where Rod allowed them because they kept pressing him to read the books.”
Bomberger expressed sorrow about the recent ruling, arguing that it will set a bad precedent in the West Coast.
“My hope is that Alliance Defending Freedom does appeal it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They have a very strong case.”
Though Theis’ appeal was rejected by the court, ADF lawyers have <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/fired-school-counselor-loses-again-after-free-speech-fight-over-gender-themed-books-his-office">promised</a> to “continue to defend Rod’s First Amendment freedom to express his views like other employees.”
Bomberger said the lower court misunderstood the case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which the Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not stop a football coach from kneeling midfield to say a quiet prayer.
“They said that [Kennedy’s prayer] was a private, personal thing. It wasn&#8217;t private. It was very public,” Bomberger said. “It was during his duty and his role. So simply based upon that, I think they have a case and the fact that the First Amendment doesn&#8217;t get stripped from government employees when they walk onto taxpayer-funded property.”
When woke fights back
Bomberger also argued that the recent case shows that wokism is not dead, but simply has been rebranded, hiding in the shadows while it grows stronger.
“We need to be forever vigilant about where this stuff goes,” Bomberger said. “The public school system is so deeply rooted in ideologies that are anti-American, that are anti-science, and certainly in many cases that are anti-truth. So, we have to be aware that this is not something that&#8217;s going away anytime soon.”
The Left’s goal is to fake outrage, foster ignorance, and silence dissension, Bomberger said.
“Well, honestly, we hear the phrase all the time: &#8216;Ignorance is bliss,&#8217; and apparently, it&#8217;s a goal. It&#8217;s a virtue of the woke Left,” Bomberger said. “They want to pretend that they are in some sort of fascist society where they can&#8217;t get [their favorite] books.”
While Democrats hand-wring about book bans, they don&#8217;t seem to care when librarians make explicit material available to kids.
“They&#8217;re feigning outrage about fake book banning, but [they&#8217;re fine] when it comes to completely inappropriate content for children that is sexually explicit, that is violent and violent and gory, I mean the list goes on and on,” he said. “But it&#8217;s perfectly fine if it could be categorized as a diversity book — diversity being LGBTQ/DEI.”
Bomberger ended by calling on his fellow Christians to stand up and not be afraid to speak the truth.
“The most important thing, as a Christian, I see this first and foremost as a spiritual battle, not just this book battle, but the battle for objective truth,” Bomberger said. “First of all, don&#8217;t despair. There is always hope, but we have to be vigilant. We cannot leave the major influence of our children up to &#8230; the education establishment. We can&#8217;t leave it up to Hollywood, and we often do.”
“We&#8217;re called to love every human being, not every human doing,&#8221; he added. &#8220;So as Christians, we have to see the world differently, and we have to react differently.”
***
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Despite its many groundbreaking victories for originalism and textualism, the Supreme Court’s term closed with a barrage of vitriol from some conservatives aimed at Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The biggest trigger was the Court’s birthright citizenship decision, <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo5OWU0Ojc2NDE4MWI0MTg2M2EzYjM4NTc2YTM4YTcwNDEwYzcyYTBlMTg5OTZjYmI3YzJkNWNmNWVlOWE2NTJmZGU5OTU6cDpGOkY">Trump v. Barbara</a>, which came on the Court’s last day. Social media lit up with barbs declaring that Barrett had veered Left. The College Republicans from her alma mater and former employer, Notre Dame, <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/x.com/NDRepublicans/status/2071981700813377755___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6ZjIwMWYwZGQxYzJhNjhiMGM1YTg3NzgxNTUyMzQ1ZTg6NzpjZWJkOjkzOGM0ZmI2MTY0Y2E4NmY0NzYyYjBlNDE0OWQwYTc3NmY1MmM2MDM0ZDkzNGRkYTI1NGQ3NGJmYjA2ZjY1NmI6cDpUOkY">called</a> her an “absolute disgrace” and Rep. Nancy Mace <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/x.com/NancyMace/status/2071979617569636863?s=20___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6ZjIwMWYwZGQxYzJhNjhiMGM1YTg3NzgxNTUyMzQ1ZTg6NzoxODVhOjQzNWRhYmEzNTcyMTMzZGRiNDk1MzczMjEzM2RhMTM2YjU2MzQyODI4MGI5NzBlMDc1MWFkMGI0NzYzMTc2ZDU6cDpUOkY">declared</a> that she “should be removed from the Bench.” Missing from the pile-on was any contextual analysis of Barrett’s full track record on the Court.
Frustration over Barbara is understandable. Conservatives (including me) care about immigration enforcement and hoped for a different outcome. But the justices do not cast votes on outcomes, and it’s a mistake to judge them solely by the question, “Did my side win or lose?” Fidelity to the Constitution is what matters. We should credit the originalist majority for its good-faith effort to apply originalism and textualism in difficult cases. No approach does better at reading the law as it is rather than as judges wish it to be.
The Court regularly wrestles with hard methodological questions, and even principled originalists sometimes err. Take Justice Antonin Scalia, who more than anyone else steered the Court — and legal scholarship generally — toward originalism. He wrote the Court’s decision in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep494/usrep494872/usrep494872.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo1M2QyOmI3ZmZmYzc1MDIzZTc5YzkwZWQzZTg1OGU4NTJmNjA5NmM2MTI1ODZhNDFhOGU5NTRhMDQwNjVkMDVjYThiYzM6cDpGOkY">Employment Division v. Smith</a> (1990), gutting free-exercise protections so badly that Congress had to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to fix it. He spent years championing Chevron deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous laws. And in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep545/usrep545001/usrep545001.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzpmMDc5OmQ0NDdiZTUxNTBkNmU5ZmM2ZWZhZTAyYTA3MTUwYmI4ZTNjZjIwYTE1YjQxYjUzZTg2NzFmM2JiNThmNTEzYzg6cDpGOkY">Gonzales v. Raich</a> (2005), he provided a concurring vote for a sweeping reading of the Commerce Clause that let the federal government prohibit local cultivation of marijuana — an affront to federalism.
Justice Clarence Thomas, a favorite of mine and of many other originalists, dissented in Raich. But weeks later, he wrote the Court’s opinion in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep545/usrep545967/usrep545967.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzoxZDk0OjYzOTFjNTBmZTRlYWUzM2ExNGFlYTljYWQ4NDhhYmMzY2NkNjY4ZjQyZjhiYzBhNTc4NmM2NGM2NmRiNzc2ZTg6cDpGOkY">National Cable &amp; Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services</a>, which expanded Chevron deference over Scalia’s dissent. (In 2020, Thomas <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-402_o75p.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo4ZGJiOjQ0YTI3ZTlkZTA1ZjYxZjRlZWE1YTUzMWQyNGU0N2NjMjk5ZDMwYTA2YjU4YjdlMzc0MjRlYWU5ZjJjZGUxOTY6cDpGOkY">changed his position</a>.) Justice Samuel Alito, another towering originalist, balked at perhaps the <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/fragmented-gundy-court-suggests-the-nondelegation-doctrine-might-have-a-future/___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6ZjIwMWYwZGQxYzJhNjhiMGM1YTg3NzgxNTUyMzQ1ZTg6NzpkOGI5OmM2OWE5ZGQzYTNiZmE2ODk3YWJlNTgzMGIyODU4OWZlMzZhYjFiODM4MjY1MDU2NWI4MWRmZmExMTdiMjk2ZWY6cDpUOkY">best opportunity</a> over the past decade to revive the nondelegation doctrine, the separation-of-powers principle under which Congress is prevented from transferring its legislative power to another branch. Those are long-serving judicial superstars.
Of course, many Republican appointees drifted leftward over time, embracing the bald judicial activism of “living Constitution” liberals: Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. Justice Barrett is not one of them. In fact, she helped clean up the jurisprudential mess those justices had made — most notably voting to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzpjMWM0OjkxODNiZmRhMmYzMzM3MDJjMDQ1ZGYwZDZkY2E3YmQwNjY4MWIxOTM3Nzk1MzdjZTI0M2ExYjI1ZWJjZGFjOTE6cDpGOkY">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a> and to overturn racial preferences in education in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo3MTFjOjY1ZDI3NGZiZTFjZDgwMzc5NmM5Mjk4YmNkZjU2ODk1NmQ0YTkyMTk5ZTRjOTZhZjY0NzVhOGUyMDQ2MDQyM2E6cDpGOkY">SFFA v. Harvard</a>. She also voted to end Chevron deference in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo0ZjA5OmMyMGZlMjlhZDUxZmQwZDAzNmFjZjNhNWQ5M2I1YzZhMDQxNDk3NDdhNmI1NTVkOGVjODk5NTI4ZDE3MzIwYzY6cDpGOkY">Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo</a>. 
Apart from those jurisprudential earthquakes, she has been a reliable originalist vote in hard-fought First Amendment cases, on both speech and free exercise — supporting a web designer’s <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzplZDRjOmZmMjEwMWFhZGYxZjkzMzAwMzM5Zjk0ZTNhOGEzNWI5NjBkN2FlNzI5NjI4MWVkM2U4YmFmNWQwYmIzMDk0YjI6cDpGOkY">ability to refuse websites</a> that violate her religious beliefs, protecting parents’ <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-297_4f14.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo1MDZhOmMxNTI1MTdmZGJjNzdjMzc4ZTM4ZTFiNDU3YTliM2ZiZjM3OTdjM2Q1ZjIzMzhhNmU3Mjg4NzI0OWIwYzVhZTc6cDpGOkY">right to opt out</a> of sexual material in public schools, upholding states’ ability to require <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1122_3e04.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzpkZjE2OjRjNTk4NzMyYTAwYzJkNGM5YTZhOWFiZmMzZDkzNmM5ZWNmMTY5YjJlNTNlNzE1ZWJjYWYyNTNmYjNhOWZlNTc6cDpGOkY">age verification</a> for pornography, <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-621_h315.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzpmYjlkOjU1OWQ5NzYyN2UyODBlOTdiNzYxNzA2YmM5M2Y4MWQxNjgwYzRlNGVlMzhlNjIwNjY5OWNiYTA5OGY0MTU5YmQ6cDpGOkY">safeguarding political speech</a>, and striking down Colorado’s <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-539_fd9g.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzoyNTM5OmRjOTg5MDkzMzgwMDRhYTJlNmU0YmVmNzk1N2QxMDQ0ODBjZWYwMGY3ZTcyZjRlZGMxZWJlMTRmOTRlMGZhNTA6cDpGOkY">“conversion therapy” ban</a>. The same holds for Second Amendment protections of the individual right to bear arms in cases from <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzowMjRhOjA2OTA2ZjBlYTA5ZTg5YTNhNDA2YzdmNzY3ZWU5NDcxODQ5NWM0MGRjMjc2MWRmOTIwNDAyMDkzYjEwNjZlZDY6cDpGOkY">New York State Rifle &amp; Pistol Assn. v. Bruen</a> in 2022 to <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1046_nmio.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzplMGY3OmNjMjRiNDJkMGJiM2YwM2Q1ODIyY2FhOGI5NTA1MTU3OGM5Y2M2MDU5MjJiYmIwMDMxMTZhMTI3ZDBkYTY1NzY6cDpGOkY">Wolford v. Lopez</a> this term.
Barrett helped the Court reject activist contortions of the Equal Protection Clause — efforts to stop states from <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo1ZjAwOjhjZTNkYTY3YzFkMGE4NmI4ODE3YjgxZTFmZGI2MjlmNWFjZTYwYTQ2NDQ3ZDI0MTQ5ZDIzYmU2MTIzYjhjYmI6cDpGOkY">prohibiting transitioning procedures</a> for minors and <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-43_2b35.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo0NjllOjJlYjcwMDUwNGQ0Y2Y5ODBmOGU4MjQ0MzJkYzI5MmFmNDE3YTQxNjEwOWJmMzVmMjhhMDUxZjNjZTc2ZTNjMWU6cDpGOkY">limiting women’s sports</a> to biological females. She supported extending the colorblind principle to <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo0MDM4OmU4OTRjNjdhMmYyMDFhNDdlNTQxODUwOWY5YThkYTI4ZTJlOGMzOTY0ZjY0NzBhOGQxNmZkZjczOTA5NmYzNDE6cDpGOkY">racial gerrymandering</a> cases.
A strong protector of the separation of powers, Barrett <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-332_qn12.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzoxNTgwOmY5MWJjY2JiOWE4MTRlZDJiOTNhMzg4M2U4YzM1YjE1OWIxYTBlMzBmN2FiMTllOGMyMjRiMmIyYzZhZjkyYzc6cDpGOkY">defended</a> the president’s ability to fire heads of “independent” commissions — overturning a 91-year-old precedent that had <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/farewell-humphreys-executor/___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo3NjFhOmQxZjNiMjRlZGRmMmVmNzFkMTNhM2VhNWE2OGZjZGZjN2VjODhlNmRhYWJjY2I4ZTFhYTg2Zjk2NjJlNmY1NTE6cDpGOkY">fueled</a> the modern unaccountable administrative state — and dissented with other conservatives when the majority declined to apply the same principle to the Federal Reserve. She has also invoked the major questions doctrine to check executive overreach involving draconian <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo5NmQ5OmQxNWNiYjZlZWZmODVhNzAzZTA0NTAyM2M3Zjg2ZGRlYjYyNzk5M2Y3MGI4YmVhYzY3YjZjOWE2YmNlYjI5OTE6cDpGOkY">carbon mandates</a> and <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzozMGNmOmM4NjU5MTQ2Zjk4Y2IzZjU1Njk2MjJmMGFmMjMzZWI4NjE0YzRjN2VkNjExZWYyZTIxYTk3ODQzM2Q1YTRkMzk6cDpGOkY">student loan forgiveness</a>. Yet all these strong rulings risk being overshadowed by the online fury over Barbara, a challenging case in which originalists differed over the text and history of the Citizenship Clause. Barrett’s critics selectively ignore this term’s other textualist victories, several of which she joined on the side of immigration enforcement, including the president’s termination of Temporary Protected Status.
The major originalist and textualist victories in the six years since Barrett joined the Court seemed completely out of reach a generation ago. That is not a record of a justice, let alone a majority of the Court, slouching leftward. This is one of the greatest Courts in American history, and Justice Barrett is an instrumental part of it.
***
Carrie Severino is the President of the Judicial Crisis Network.

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Trump v. Barbara

The Trump administration has issued subpoenas for four New York Times journalists, requiring them to testify before a grand jury in a criminal investigation. 
The subpoenas come after the Times reported on security concerns involving Trump’s new presidential aircraft — a gift from Qatar. The purpose is to compel the journalists to reveal their confidential government sources in the investigation.
The media is, of course, outraged by Mr. Trump’s actions. Most leading outlets, including ABC, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, have labeled the subpoenas “unprecedented” executive overreach. They are not.
Let’s examine the darling of the press: the Obama administration. President Obama prosecuted more leakers under the Espionage Act than any administration in history.
Mr. Trump’s actions are problematic. They raise genuine questions about press independence and government overreach. But let’s add some historical context.
As with so many things Mr. Trump does, the subpoenas are not actually a departure from the norm. They only look that way because everyone else did it in the shadows while he does it in broad daylight — and this largely has to do with a hostile media (toward Trump) versus a sympathetic one (toward any and all Democrats).
Much of the Obama surveillance was conducted in secret; the affected organizations learned about it later, after records had already been collected. In 2012, the Justice Department obtained two months of telephone records from the Associated Press without providing notice of any kind.
If anything, this secrecy is all the more troubling from a free-press standpoint. Trump obviously believes (in error) that he is fully legally justified in his actions — hence his pride and publicity in them. It’s harder to make that case about Obama, whose subterfuge implies at least a certain degree of doubt that he had the right to do what he did.
Even more notably, in 2009, Fox News reporter James Rosen published a story on North Korean nuclear weapons. The story was based on an intelligence report that had been leaked by an administration official.
In order to obtain a warrant for Rosen’s personal emails, phone contacts, and communications information, the affidavit baselessly characterized him as a possible “aider, abettor, or co-conspirator.” While Rosen was not charged, the criminal language allowed prosecutors to obtain his material with no advance notice.
Would someone like to explain to me how exactly that’s different, let alone milder, than Trump’s subpoenas?
When pressed with these facts, many Democrats will be quick to respond, “Sure, it was a problem when Obama did it, and it’s a problem now. Let’s bring it to a swift end.” I don’t disagree.
This response, however, is hugely disingenuous.
Only now that Obama is out of public office can it become an unforgivable action. You can tell me all you want that it&#8217;s a red line, but it never kept you from endorsing Obama. It doesn’t keep you from pining for the days when the president was an upstanding, humble citizen. What’s different this time?
While Obama did eventually draw the criticism of the mainstream media, it was far from a comparable reception. Obama’s abuse of the Espionage Act was treated as a mere footnote in his presidency. Meanwhile, Trump’s actions are an “unprecedented” threat to the democratic process.
This is selective memory at its finest. How many people, especially younger people, even know about the Obama scandals? It seems the media did such a good job running cover that they even forgot about them themselves.
To be clear: The Trump subpoenas are wrong. The Obama scandals were wrong. But the press is also wrong for its incessant fearmongering and selective crucifixion. If it wasn’t the end times then, it’s not the end times now.
You don’t get to pick and choose. This is another case where the press — and its blatant bias — has become the story rather than a pursuit of the truth.

Obama/Trump

Trump’s Subpoenas Are Not Unprecedented Despite The Media Hysteria

barack obama

Freedom of the Press

James Rosen

media bias

President Trump

subpoena

Every Supreme Court term produces headlines. This one produced structural change — the kind that will shape how power works in Washington, D.C., in statehouses, and in your own community for years to come.
Start with the case that mattered most: Trump v. Slaughter. For 90 years, Congress could shield the heads of “independent” agencies — the Federal Trade Commission, and by extension dozens of similar bodies — from being fired by the president except for cause. The Court ended that, ruling that if an official exercises the president’s executive power, the president can remove him. In practice, that means voters who elect a president now have more say over the sprawling bureaucracy that regulates everything from consumer products to labor disputes, rather than leaving that power with unelected commissioners serving staggered terms.
A companion case, Trump v. Cook, carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve — Fed governors can be fired only for cause, a 5-4 compromise that Justice Barrett, in dissent, called out as arbitrary and going beyond what the Court needed to decide the case.
Women’s sports had one of their best days ever at the Court. In cases out of West Virginia and Idaho, all nine justices agreed that Title IX — the law that opened the door to girls’ athletics in the first place — doesn’t force states to let biological males compete on girls’ teams. A narrower 6-3 majority held that constitutional equal protection likewise allows states to protect female athletes. That means the 27 states that already protect single-sex sports are on solid legal ground, and cases are already wending their way to the Supreme Court asking whether equal protection and Title IX actually require the other 23 states to do so.
The Second Amendment kept winning, too. In Wolford v. Lopez, the Court struck down a Hawaii law that weaponized trespass law against concealed-carry permit holders: Instead of assuming that a valid permit holder could enter a business with his weapon unless told otherwise, Hawaii required businesses to explicitly invite him in first. The Court said that the law effectively criminalized ordinary daily life for lawful gun owners — a ruling that should also doom copycat laws in California and other blue states. In a separate case, the justices unanimously held that the government can’t strip someone’s gun rights merely because he’s an occasional marijuana user, absent any sign he’s actually dangerous.
The First Amendment had an outstanding term as well. The Court struck down Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” counseling, ruling that a state can’t let therapists affirm a client’s gender identity while banning them from helping a client move the other direction — that’s the government picking sides on a viewpoint, not regulating conduct.
Elsewhere, the Court protected a New Jersey pregnancy center’s right to keep its donor list private from a hostile state subpoena, and struck down limits on how much political parties can coordinate spending with their own candidates. The campaign finance ruling is the latest in a series of cases reaffirming that free speech includes the right to political speech, and it will likely shift fundraising and election spending back to the parties and away from outside groups and Super PACs.
The term also delivered a landmark election law decision: Louisiana v. Callais. The Court held that a Voting Rights Act lawsuit can’t succeed just by pointing to a correlation between race and party in a district — plaintiffs now need real evidence of intentional discrimination. The Court put that reasoning to work almost immediately in an emergency order reinstating Alabama’s congressional map, an order that invoked the “colorblind Constitution” — language borrowed from the first Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, and now, for the first time, adopted by a majority. In practice, this makes it harder to scurrilously repackage partisan gerrymandering claims with racial language. One disappointment: the Court left in place the counting of late-arriving mail ballots, though it noted Congress could set a firmer national rule if it chose to.
Immigration cases mostly went the government’s way, with the Court reading several statutes in commonsense, textualist terms — including a ruling that someone who is stopped at the border hasn’t yet “arrived in” the country, reaffirming that courts can’t second-guess the president’s determination not to exempt Haitian and Syrian immigrants from removal, and another making it easier to remove green-card holders who commit serious crimes. The exception was the birthright citizenship case, where the majority applied the traditional, broad meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause to cover the U.S.-born children of both illegal immigrants and temporary visitors. As an originalist matter, it was a difficult case, with both sides grappling with the historical evidence. Justice Thomas’s 91-page dissent masterfully presented a narrower view of the Clause, but even the dissenters concluded that the president’s executive order likely went further than the Constitution permits.
On the business side, the Court made it harder for trial lawyers to drag oil companies into friendly state courts over decades-old wartime production, ruling that those suits belong in federal court — a real check on the climate-litigation industry that’s grown up around this kind of lawsuit.
Not every case broke along predictable lines. In a dispute over the president’s tariff powers, originalist justices ended up on both sides — a useful reminder that originalism is a method, not a rubber stamp, and methods sometimes produce results conservatives don’t love.
The term produced a few decisions that disappointed the president or conservatives, but, taken as a whole, it stands as one of the most significant terms in memory for bringing the Court back to an originalist understanding of the Constitution. Presidential removal power, women’s sports, the First and Second Amendments, immigration enforcement, climate and election litigation abuse — the Court engaged all of it and got the lion’s share right. That’s not a disappointing term. That’s a historic one.
***
Carrie Severino is the president of the Judicial Crisis Network. Follow her on X <a href="https://www.twitter.com/@JCNSeverino">@JCNSeverino</a>

US-JUSTICE-SUPREME-COURT-GROUP-PHOTO

The Supreme Court Term That Handed Originalists One Of Their Best Years Yet

birthright citizenship

Election Laws

executive power

Louisiana v. Callais

title ix

Transgender Athletes

Trump v. Cook

Trump v. Slaughter

Wolford v. Lopez

Free speech is America’s greatest protection against tyranny. It also creates one of our greatest vulnerabilities to foreign enemies. Our challenge is to defend that freedom without letting our enemies turn it against us.
The First Amendment protects free speech for good reason. Once government gets to decide which opinions are allowed, every other freedom becomes less secure. But the same openness that lets Americans criticize the government, organize movements, and argue for radical ideas can also be exploited by enemies who would never permit that freedom at home.
In America and the West, people are free to fund nonprofits, organize protests, build campus movements, and use social media to shape public opinion, even against the country’s own institutions. You wouldn’t be allowed to use those same tools to undermine the regime in China, Iran, Russia, or North Korea. Those governments keep a tight grip on their universities, media, and public square.
That asymmetry is how a free society becomes vulnerable. Every society produces fringe ideas. That’s normal. But potentially harmful ideas usually remain harmless as long as they stay fringe. They become dangerous and divisive when someone gives them money, legitimacy, and a way to spread.
Right now, self-destructive beliefs that once remained on the fringe are growing in popularity across America and the West. Some of these ideas surely started organically. But that doesn’t mean these ideas are spreading at this scale on their own. They can also be magnified by foreign money flowing into the universities, nonprofits, and platforms that shape the worldview of millions of Americans.
Take energy. Radical activists push to block pipelines, shut down nuclear plants, and eliminate coal in the name of saving the planet, while China keeps burning cheap coal to power its economy. Taken to its extreme, this agenda, dressed up as climate virtue, becomes a form of industrial self-destruction while handing our competitors a massive economic advantage.
Or take immigration. Done right, legal and controlled with real integration, it’s a strength. Done wrong, an unchecked open-borders policy is a recipe for national self-destruction. No rational state would allow indiscriminate migration on a scale that destabilizes its own society. Yet many Western constituencies now treat basic self-preservation as something shameful.
We don’t need to prove that foreign money is the main driver of every self-destructive belief spreading through America. The vulnerability itself is the problem. Hostile governments don’t need to invent these ideas from scratch. They only need to find the radical ideas already capable of tearing us apart and fund their growth. Adversaries who have spent decades studying how to weaken America would be foolish to pass up such an obvious opening. Why spend trillions trying to beat America militarily when a fraction of that can get Americans to do the work for them?
What can we actually do about this?
Not censorship of Americans. That would be the most dangerous response. Americans have every right to argue and protest against America itself. That’s part of the deal free speech gives us. If we answer foreign manipulation by giving the government the power to police what Americans believe, we expose ourselves to something worse than foreign influence: a government powerful enough to turn against its own citizens. The First Amendment has to stay fully intact.
The better answer is to extend a principle America already accepts: foreign money should not be allowed to shape American public life from the shadows. <a href="https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/foreign-nationals/">Foreign nationals</a> already can’t donate to American elections. <a href="https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara">FARA</a> requires certain foreign agents to register and disclose their activities here. Those laws exist because America understands that foreign money can be weaponized, and that foreign influence can be restricted or exposed without touching any American’s right to speak.
We should apply that same logic more broadly to nonprofits, universities, and advocacy groups that shape American culture and politics. The distinction should stay simple: ordinary commerce is fine. Foreign money financing domestic influence is not.
Foreigners can buy products, hire American companies, or pay full price for their own children’s education here. That is foreign money exchanged for real goods and services, and it’s not the problem. The problem is foreign governments, foreign nationals, or foreign-controlled groups endowing chairs, funding programs, or financing research in ways aimed at shaping our culture, our politics, or how young Americans are educated.
If Americans want to fund radical climate activism or open-border movements, that’s their right. The First Amendment protects them. Americans are free to be wrong and free to be radical. But the First Amendment does not require us to let foreign adversaries bankroll our national self-destruction.
Perhaps a broad restriction is too blunt an instrument. We would welcome any narrower solutions that actually work. At the very least, full transparency about which foreign governments, foreign nationals, and foreign-controlled entities are funding our nonprofit institutions would be a good first step.
But transparency alone may not be enough. According to the <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-releases-latest-foreign-funding-disclosures-federally-funded-american-universities">Department of Education’s 2025 foreign-funding disclosures</a>, Qatar was the largest foreign source of reportable gifts and contracts to American universities, including Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, with China third. Qatar alone accounted for more than $1 billion. That fact is already public, since federal law requires universities to report large foreign gifts and contracts. Yet the money keeps flowing anyway. At some point, transparency must be followed by real restrictions on foreign money flowing into causes designed to reshape American society.
America does not need to become less free to protect itself. It needs to stop being naive. Our enemies understand that free speech in an open society can be used against it. We are under no obligation to give them the tools to turn our freedom against us. If we want free speech to survive, we need to defend not just our right to speak, but the society that makes that right worth having in the first place.
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Rabbi Elie Feder, PhD, and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer host the “<a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/">Physics to God</a>” podcast.

100 US dollars on the background of the banknote of the Chinese yuan. The concept of a trade war between the USA and China

Free Speech Is The West’s Greatest Asset. It’s Also Our Greatest Vulnerability.

American Universities

Foreign Funding

Foreign influence

foreign nationals

The Supreme Court got this one right. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, decided today, the court struck down the federal limits on coordinated expenditures between political parties and their candidates. The vote was 6–3, with Justice Kavanaugh writing for the majority, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett. For decades, these restrictions rested on a bizarre fiction, that a political party could somehow corrupt the very candidate it nominates. Nobody who has ever worked in politics believes that. Parties exist to elect candidates. The court has now said what practitioners have known all along: the government cannot punish them for doing so.
The court did not mince words. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that Colorado II’s “reasoning has been rejected by subsequent cases and is no longer good law in light of the court’s more recent precedents. To the extent that Colorado II has retained any vitality, it is now overruled.” That 2001 decision, FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, had upheld the coordinated-expenditure limits by a 5–4 vote over a powerful dissent by Justice Thomas — the only member of that court still serving. Twenty-five years later, his dissent has been vindicated. As the majority acknowledged, Justice Thomas “explained that ‘the ordinary means for a party to provide support is to make coordinated expenditures’” and that “‘breaking the connection between parties and their candidates inhibits the promotion of the party&#8217;s message.’”
I have some stake in saying so. As a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, I was at the commission when this litigation began. The Biden administration chose to defend the restrictions. When President Donald Trump returned to office, the solicitor general shifted the government’s position, rightly, in my view, and conceded the limits were unconstitutional. That was not a political stunt. It was an honest acknowledgment of what the First Amendment requires. Because the government declined to defend the law, the court appointed Roman Martinez, a former clerk to both Chief Justice Roberts and then-Judge Kavanaugh, as amicus curiae to argue in defense of the statute.
The history matters. When the case went to the en banc Sixth Circuit, a majority of the judges questioned the continued validity of Colorado II, considering later Supreme Court decisions, particularly McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) and FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate (2022), but felt bound by the 2001 precedent. The Supreme Court freed them, and us, from that constraint.
Look at what these coordination limits did. They did not reduce the amount of money spent on politics. They just pushed spending away from political parties and toward outside groups. The court recognized this directly: the coordinated-expenditure limits imposed a “stifling effect on the ability of the party to do what it exists to do.” Meanwhile, donors sent their funds to Super PACs and other outside groups with a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money. The numbers are staggering: in the 2024 cycle, PACs raised over $15.7 billion, compared to $2.7 billion by political parties. A Super PAC run by consultants could spend without limit, but the Republican or Democratic party committee could not coordinate a mail piece with its own nominee. The First Amendment does not require that absurdity.
The majority applied what it called the “closely drawn” scrutiny from McCutcheon and Cruz, requiring that any restriction on political speech be “necessary,” “narrowly tailored,” and not “disproportionate” to the government’s interest. The only permissible interest in campaign finance restrictions, the court reaffirmed, is “preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption” — and only the narrow, quid pro quo kind. Not “influence.” Not “access.” Not “ingratiation.” The court wrote plainly: “Ingratiation and access &#8230; are not corruption,” but instead “embody a central feature of democracy.”
As for the government’s circumvention argument, the idea that donors would funnel money through parties to evade contribution limits, the court concluded that three existing tools already address that concern: base contribution limits to candidates, earmarking rules that treat directed contributions as direct donations, and robust disclosure requirements. The coordinated-expenditure limits were a “fourth line of defense” — a “prophylaxis-upon-prophylaxis” that was disproportionate to the interest it served. The majority pointedly observed that a majority of states “largely give parties free rein to make coordinated expenditures on behalf of their state-level nominees,” and yet “no evidence of corruption” via circumvention “has materialized.”
It is important to remember: parties disclose their donors. Their leadership is public. They file detailed reports with the FEC. The court itself emphasized that disclosure “offers much more robust protections against corruption” today than ever before, because of advances in technology and the Internet. If you care about transparency in elections, you should want more money flowing through parties, not less.
Critics will say this opens the floodgates. It does not. Contribution limits to the political parties still exist. Parties still cannot raise unlimited money the way Super PACs can. What changes is that parties can now spend what they raise in coordination with their candidates instead of pretending they operate independently. As the court stressed, the decision “treats all political parties equally” and will “allow all political parties, including the DNC and RNC and the respective Senate and House campaign committees, to participate more freely and compete more fully in the political process.” Some money will migrate back from Super PACs to party committees. That means more disclosure, more accountability, and more coherent campaigns.
Campaign finance reformers have spent decades getting this wrong. Every time Americans find a way to participate in political speech, the reformers’ knee-jerk response is the same: restrict it. They pushed for the coordinated-expenditure limits. They got them. The predictable result was that money flowed to outside groups while parties withered. The court has now corrected part of the problem by eliminating the coordination restriction, but the underlying contribution limits, themselves an unconstitutional restraint on political association, remain in place because the same misguided reform impulse that created them still dominates the conversation in Washington.
At bottom, this case asked a simple question: Can the government restrict political speech because regulators think there is too much of it? The answer is no. It has always been no. As the court reminded us, the “Framers were even more famously suspicious of government suppression of political speech” than they were of political parties. And it closed with the most powerful point of all: “For nearly 200 years after the ratification of the First Amendment, parties could spend on campaigns in coordination with candidates,” and no one suggests “that these elections were not functional or that they were marred by corruption.” The First Amendment is not a suggestion, and it does not come with a carve-out for election season.
That should not be a controversial statement. But in Washington, apparently it still is. Credit the court for moving the conversation in the right direction — toward freedom, and away from the reflexive assumption that government knows best when Americans speak about politics.
***
Trey Trainor is a partner at Dhillon Law Group, Inc., board certified in Legislative and Campaign Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and former Commissioner and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

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