Your $7,000 Limit, Their $551,300 Check. The Supreme Court Made Sure of It Today

Six justices struck down the limit on party spending and the door to buying a senator swung wide open.  Here's what happened and what to do about it. How does a $7,000 limit become a $551,300 weapon in the hands of one wealthy donor, with nobody breaking a single law and nobody facing a single charge? You are about to learn the answer, and the answer should make you furious. On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in a case called National Republican Senatorial Committee versus Federal Election Commission. The name sounds sleepy. The result is a wrecking ball.¹ Six justices erased one of the last guardrails standing between your vote and the open purchase of your government. I read every page of the opinion and every page of the dissent. As a trial lawyer who has spent decades watching how power moves through a courtroom, I am telling you plainly. Your voice in American elections got smaller today, and the checkbook of the wealthy got a direct line to the people who write your laws. What the Court Did Today Federal law sets a hard ceiling on how much money one donor hands a single candidate. $7,000 per candidate for the whole election cycle. That ceiling comes from the Federal Election Commission. The cap runs $3,500 per election, and the primary and the general count as two separate elections, so $3,500 plus $3,500 gives you the $7,000 total. Congress built more walls behind that ceiling. One of those walls limited how much a political party spends in direct coordination with its own candidate. Picture the party and the candidate sitting at the same table, planning ads, moving as one operation. The law capped how much the party pours into the joint effort, because a party check spent hand in hand with a candidate works exactly like cash in the candidate’s pocket. The Supreme Court knocked that wall down. In a six to three ruling, the majority declared the cap on coordinated party spending a violation of the First Amendment. Justice Kavanaugh wrote the opinion. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett signed on. Justice Kagan wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. The majority overruled a precedent called Colorado II from 2001, a decision where this same Court looked at the same wall and upheld the cap as fully constitutional. The Math They Hope You Never Run. Run the numbers with me, because the numbers tell the whole story. You, an ordinary citizen, hand your candidate the legal max. $7,000. A wealthy donor wants to move far more to the same candidate. The old rules blocked the easy routes. Today the donor walks through a door the Court swung wide. Here is the play. The donor does not write the candidate one giant check, because a check that size breaks the $7,000 cap and breaks the law. The candidate builds a different tool, a single collection account that holds a stack of committees at once. The legal name is a joint fundraising committee. Give it a friendly label, like the John Smith Victory Fund. The fund links 52 separate committees under one roof. The candidate’s own campaign, the national party committee, and the party committees of all 50 states. Each committee carries its own legal limit, and the fund lets one donor max out all 52 with a single check. These three limits come straight off the FEC’s 2025 to 2026 chart: -Candidate, $7,000. The most one donor may give a candidate for the cycle. -National party committee, $44,300 per year. This figure rises with inflation, and $44,300 is the current number. -Each state party committee, $10,000 per year. This figure is fixed in the statute and has held at $10,000 for years. Now watch the total climb. Fifty state parties at $10,000 each comes to $500,000. Add $44,300 for the national committee. Add $7,000 for the candidate. One donor signs a single check for $551,300 and never hands any one committee a dollar more than the law allows. Then the money moves. Federal law lets a party shuffle unlimited sums between its state and national committees. So the 50 state parties wire their $10,000 shares up to the national party, often the very same day. Stack those transfers on the national committee’s own $44,300, and the national party sits on $544,300 from one donor. The candidate already pocketed his $7,000 directly. Here is what changed today.  The old rules let the party spend only a small, capped amount in coordination with the candidate, so most of that $544,300 had to flow into other party work. The Court removed the cap. The national party can now spend the full $544,300 backing the candidate. Ad buys. Polling. Office rent. The catering for a campaign event. Every dollar lands where the candidate needs the money. So, a $7,000 limit becomes a $551,300 pipeline to one candidate. Around 80 times the cap Congress wrote. Justice Kagan laid out this exact math in her dissent, step by step, and the majority brushed past it. Here is the door the Court left standing open.  The candidate makes the ask. A senator sits across from a billionaire and says, max out my victory fund. The donor needs no earmarking words, no written instruction, nothing the rules would flag. A naked deal, your money for my official act, stays a federal crime, one now nearly impossible to catch with the guardrail gone. The Court calls the gratitude protected speech. You and I call the result the wealthy buying a government. Here’s what you actually need to remember. Forget the legal maze for a second. One donor used to be capped at $7,000. That same donor can now move more than half a million dollars to one candidate. That’s it. That’s the whole story. How We Got Here, and Why I Despise Citizens United. None of this happened in a vacuum. Today’s ruling is the newest brick in a wall the Court has been building against you for sixteen years, and the foundation stone has a name. Citizens United. In 2010, in Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission, five justices decided corporations and outside groups hold a First Amendment right to spend unlimited sums influencing your elections. I have detested this decision since the day the Court released the ruling, and time has proven every fear right. Citizens United, paired with a lower court ruling months later, birthed the Super PAC.  Suddenly a handful of billionaires and corporate interests poured oceans of money into races and drowned out the voice of the ordinary voter. The 2024 cycle tells the tale in cold figures. PACs raised more than fifteen billion dollars. The parties raised under three billion. Big money owns the field, and your single vote started to feel like a whisper in a hurricane. Four years after Citizens United, the Court struck again in a case called McCutcheon. The justices erased the overall ceiling on how much one donor gives across an entire election cycle. Remove the ceiling, and the joint fundraising committee I described becomes a loaded weapon. In 2022, the Court kept chipping in a case called Cruz. Today the demolition reached the party coordination wall. Each of these rulings sounds technical. Every one of them moves money in the same direction, toward the people who already hold the most of it. The majority dressed today’s ruling up as fairness. Parties deserve a chance to catch the Super PACs, the Court said. Read the logic twice. The same Court built the Super PAC era, and now points to the imbalance the Court itself created as the reason to knock down one more guardrail. Justice Kagan caught the circular game in her dissent and called it out cold. The Fingerprints on This One. Here is the detail you deserve to sit with. When a federal law gets challenged in court, the government usually defends the law. Stands up for the rule Congress wrote. The people’s lawyers argue for the people’s statute. The Trump administration refused. Donald Trump’s Justice Department had already stopped enforcing the cap on party coordination, the cap protecting you from half million-dollar end runs around the contribution limit. Then the administration walked into the Supreme Court and argued the cap should die. The government’s own Solicitor General stood with the people tearing the law down. The Court had to reach outside and appoint a private lawyer to defend the people’s statute, because the President’s lawyers would not. Sit with the meaning of this move. The administration that swore an oath to uphold the laws stood aside and let one more wall protecting your democracy collapse, and the wall happened to protect a system the President and his donor's profit from. One of the original challengers carries a familiar name too. JD Vance filed as a Senate candidate back when the suit began. He sits in the Vice President’s chair today, and his old candidacy paperwork kept the case alive long enough for the Court to rule. The people who brought this fight now run the executive branch. The people who refused to defend the law now run the Justice Department. Connect the dots, and the picture comes into sharp, ugly focus. What This Means for You. Strip away the legal vocabulary, and the ruling lands in your living room. Your government grows more responsive to the people writing the biggest checks and less responsive to you. A megadonor now buys a level of access and gratitude you will never afford. When a billionaire funnels half a million dollars to a senator through the party side door, the senator remembers. The next time a vote touches the billionaire’s business, the billionaire’s taxes, the billionaire’s industry, the senator returns the donor’s call first. Yours waits. You feel the result everywhere. In the prescription drug prices nobody reins in. In the tax loopholes nobody closes. In the industries nobody holds accountable. Money talks in Washington, and the Court keeps handing the wealthy a louder microphone, and your kids and grandkids inherit a government tuned to the frequency of the rich. I worry about them constantly. I worry about the country we leave behind. A democracy where a half million-dollar check outweighs ten thousand ordinary voices stops being a democracy and starts becoming an auction. What Happens Next. Brace yourself, because the wealthy and the operatives around them read these rulings the day they drop, and the planning starts immediately. Expect the joint fundraising committees to balloon. Both parties will build them bigger, link more state committees, and chase the largest checks in the land. The Federal Election Commission, already toothless and now stripped of one more enforcement tool, steps further back. The flood of money through the party channel grows. The arms race accelerates. Watch the next targets too. Justice Kagan, in her dissent, flagged a warning every voter should hear. The same logic the majority used today points like an arrow at the remaining guardrails. The rule treating a donor’s coordinated spending as a capped contribution sits in the crosshairs. Even the base contribution limits, the seven thousand dollar line itself, look more fragile tonight than they did this morning. This Court has shown a steady appetite for dismantling campaign finance protection one case at a time, and the appetite has not been satisfied. Justice Kagan summed up the wreckage with a line I will carry for a long time. Years ago, Justice Breyer warned that an earlier ruling left the nation’s campaign finance laws a hollow remnant. Kagan looked at what survived after today and called the result a remnant of a remnant. She is right. Brick by brick, the wall built to protect your vote from open corruption keeps coming down. This Is Where You Come In. I refuse to treat today as the end of the story. The Court wrote the latest chapter. You write the next one. Money found new lanes into our politics. Your power lives in the one place no billionaire outspends you. The ballot box, and the organized voice of an awake public. A megadonor buys access. A movement of informed voters buys outcomes. They are counting on you to feel small, to shrug, to look away as the auction runs. Prove them wrong. Learn the names of the candidates who take these mega checks and the names of the ones who refuse. Back the leaders fighting for real reform and a constitutional amendment to undo this entire rotten line of cases. Vote in every race, the small ones included, because the operatives bankrolling this machine pray you skip them. Talk to your neighbors. Talk to your kids. Make this your dinner table conversation. Then do one more thing today. Share this piece with one person stuck in the fog and pull them into the fight. The wealthy already know how this system works, and they have stayed quiet about the mechanics on purpose. Your job, starting right now, is to make sure everyone you know understands the game and refuses to sit out. They built this for the few. We take it back for the many. Let’s go. -Mitch Jackson, Esq.

 Jon Mitchell “Mitch” Jackson is a senior partner and founding attorney of Jackson & Wilson He has represented clients in the Orange County area for over 30 years, and he is committed to providing the trustworthy and skilled legal representation people need during the most difficult times of their lives – after a serious accident or the loss of a loved one. He has met with considerable success in this endeavor, recovering millions on behalf of the injured, including numerous multimillion-dollar settlements and verdicts.

 

The huge expansion of presidential power and the court’s embrace of the unitary executive theory would surely surprise our founders

In the week when we celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which was very much a protest against executive power, the Supreme Court on Monday significantly expanded the powers of the president. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor declared in her dissent in Trump v. Slaughter, “The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before.”

Actually, the Supreme Court decided three cases of great interest to the Trump administration on Monday and ruled against it in two of three. But these decisions were not of equal significance. The most important was Trump v. Slaughter — and that was a huge victory for the president in allowing him to fire seemingly almost anyone in the executive branch of government and in the court’s embrace of the “unitary executive theory” of presidential power.

Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat, was nominated to the Federal Trade Commission by Trump in 2018, and the Senate unanimously confirmed her. In 2024, Slaughter was reappointed by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate for a second term. A federal statute provides that FTC commissioners can be fired only “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Trump fired Slaughter — and the heads of many other federal agencies — without any claim of cause.

This should have been an easy case for the court. Ninety years ago, in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), the court unanimously held that Congress could prevent the president from firing commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission unless there was just cause for the firing. The court stressed that Congress, to carry out its policies, could limit presidential removal of commissioners unless there was good cause for the firing.

The Supreme Court followed this principle in many subsequent cases. In Wiener v. United States (1958), the court went further and held that even without a statutory limit on removal, the president could not remove executive officials where independence from the president is desirable. Wiener involved the president’s firing a member of the War Claims Commission. 

Unlike the Federal Trade Commission Act in Humphrey’s Executor, the statute creating the War Claims Commission did not expressly limit the president’s removal power. However, the court concluded that the functional need for independence of the War Claims Commission limited the president’s removal power. The court explained that Congress’s intent was for the War Claims Commission to award claims based on merit rather than on political influence.

In Morrison v. Olson (1988), the court, in a 7-1 decision, held that Congress could authorize the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate alleged wrongdoing by the president or high-level executive officials and could limit firing to where there was just cause. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a staunch conservative, wrote the opinion for the court and explained: “In Humphrey’s Executor, we found it ‘plain’ that the Constitution did not give the President ‘illimitable power of removal’ over the officers of independent agencies. Were the President to have the power to remove FTC Commissioners at will, the ‘coercive influence’ of the removal power would ‘threate[n] the independence of [the] commission.’”

Quite significantly, the court expressly rejected the unitary executive theory. This is a theory of presidential power developed by young lawyers in the Reagan administration, including John Roberts and Samuel Alito. When Alito went before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearings in January 2006, a primary ground for opposing his confirmation was his embracing of this expansive view of presidential powers. In Morrison v. Olson, Rehnquist emphatically rejected this theory and wrote, “we have never held that the Constitution requires that the three branches of Government operate with absolute independence.”

But in Trump v. Slaughter, the court expressly overruled Humphrey’s Executor and effectively overruled Wiener v. United States, Morrison v. Olson, and many other cases. The court explicitly embraced the unitary executive theory. The court concluded its opinion: “To ‘discharg[e] the duties of his trust,’ the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust.... Neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him.”

But the assumption of that statement is that commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission and similar agencies are “exercising the President’s power.” Quite the contrary, they are exercising Congress’s authority under the Constitution. As Sotomayor explained, this was to precent these “agencies becoming mere political instruments, which could be turned against political enemies with one hand and used to grant favors to allies with the other.”

For decades, Congress has relied on Humphrey’s Executor when creating myriad federal agencies — the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Communications Commission, National Labor Relations Board, to name just a few — with commissioners who can be fired only for cause. This was to provide the commissioners some degree of independence from the president.

And, in Slaughter, the court again overruled longstanding precedent. As Sotomayor said, “[n]inety years of precedent and 140 years of consistent political practice should have been more than enough to resolve this case.”

The court decided another case on Monday about presidential removal power and ruled against Trump, but on very narrow grounds. In Trump v. Cook, the court held that Trump could not fire Lisa Cook, a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, without providing her the notice and opportunity to be heard, as required by a federal statute.

Cook was appointed to the Board of Governors in 2022, at first to complete the final two years of an unexpired term. A year later, however, Biden nominated Cook to a full 14-year term, and the Senate again voted to confirm her. Cook’s term on the Federal Reserve is set to expire in 2038. As with the Federal Trade Commission, federal law allows removal only for good cause. Trump fired Cook, claiming that she had engaged in mortgage fraud. No court or agency has found that Cook did anything wrong.

In a 5-4 decision, with the majority opinion again written by Roberts, the court ruled for Cook. The court stressed the unique role of the Federal Reserve Board, tracing its history back to the first Bank of the United States during the presidency of George Washington. But the court’s ruling was on the narrow ground that under the federal statute “Cook was entitled to notice and some opportunity to respond prior to her termination.”

Finally, the court ruled against the position taken by the Trump administration in Watson v. Republican National Committee. Mississippi law, as in many states, allows the counting of absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days later. 

The challengers, supported by the Trump administration, argued that federal statutes setting the day for federal elections requires that ballots be received by election day. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision with the majority opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, came to the commonsense conclusion: “The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose.” 

In fact, the only surprise is that four conservative justices — Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh — came to the opposite conclusion because nothing in the federal law, explicitly or implicitly, prevents a state from counting absentee ballots mailed in a timely fashion.

Perhaps when a scorecard is done of Trump’s wins and losses in the Supreme Court, June 29 will be regarded as mixed. But that would overlook the huge expansion of presidential power in the court’s embracing the unitary executive theory and allowing the president to fire almost anyone in the executive branch of government. 

Those who drafted the Declaration of Independence deeply distrusted executive power and would surely have recoiled at this Supreme Court’s approach to it.

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.

---

The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now.

 

Supreme Court expands presidential firing power, overturning 90-year-old ruling

 

Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission are unconstitutional and overturned a 90-year-old decision that allowed Congress to shield members of certain independent agencies from being fired by the president at will.

The decision from the high court expands the president's power over many independent boards and commissions, which Congress had insulated from political pressure by saying their members could only be removed by the president for cause.

In a 1935 decision in a case known as Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which involved removal protections for the FTC, the Supreme Court said Congress could restrict the president's ability to fire officials from multi-member agencies at will. But the ruling from the high court's conservative majority in the case Trump v. Slaughter overturns that 90-year-old decision and marks the culmination of a years-long weakening of the New Deal-era precedent.

The court's ruling

The ruling was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority, joined by the other conservative justices. The three liberals dissented, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor read a summary of her dissent from the bench, a rare occurrence that signals strong disagreement with a decision. Roberts wrote that limits on the president's ability to fire those who wield executive power on his behalf infringe on his constitutional authority.

The FTC of today, the court's majority found, "unquestionably" exercises executive powers and therefore must be under the president's control. "Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work," Roberts wrote. "Subordinates who exercise the President's power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people."

The decision is likely to have ramifications beyond the FTC. Congress has created more than two dozen multi-member agencies led by officials who can be removed by the president only for cause, which typically means instances of inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. Among those agencies likely to be affected by the Supreme Court's ruling are the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.

In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor warned that while those agencies remain, they now take on a new form that differs from what Congress intended when they were created. "Put simply, today the majority reshapes our government. Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President's hands," she wrote.

President Trump cheered the decision as the "Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years. Such a Monumental Ruling at such an important time!"

The Slaughter case

Mr. Trump has sought to test the bounds of his executive power since returning to the White House for his second term in January 2025, including by firing a slew of officials appointed by Democratic presidents at multi-member boards and commissions without cause. Among those was Rebecca Slaughter, whom Mr. Trump appointed to the FTC during his first term. She was reappointed to the trade commission by President Joe Biden.

Slaughter was informed in March 2025 that her service on the FTC was "inconsistent" with the Trump administration's priorities and was fired from her post without cause. That clashed with the law that established the FTC in 1914, when Congress said commissioners could only be removed for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.

Slaughter filed a lawsuit challenging her removal and argued Mr. Trump broke the law when he fired her. A federal district court ruled in her favor and ordered Slaughter to be reinstated to her post. The U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C., eventually agreed that she could continue in her job at the trade commission, but last September, the Supreme Court allowed Mr. Trump to fire her while it considered the legality of removal protections for FTC members.

Before agreeing to decide Slaughter's case, the Supreme Court had also cleared the way for Mr. Trump to oust members of the National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board and Consumer Product Safety Commission. But the high court has so far spared two other officials from removal while litigation continues: Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, and Shira Perlmutter, the register of copyrights.

The justices heard arguments in January over whether to allow Mr. Trump to fire Cook from the Fed Board. The Supreme Court has indicated before that it views the Fed differently than other independent agencies, calling it a "uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks."

In an opinion also authored by Roberts, the high court rejected Mr. Trump's attempt to fire Cook while the challenge to her removal moved forward. The Supreme Court reiterated in its ruling involving the FTC that it does not implicate the constitutionality of the Fed's removal restrictions. It also stressed that the decision does not address tenure protections for judges on the U.S. Tax Court or the Court of Federal Claims, with Roberts writing that the justices are leaving "those questions for another day."

"All we do today is recognize what has been clear for a century — that those who fall within the President's 'general administrative control' must be removable by the President at will," he wrote.

The high court's decision in Slaughter's case is the latest in a line of recent decisions that chipped away at Humphrey's Executor and expanded the president's power over independent agencies. The Supreme Court invalidated removal protections for the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2020 and the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2021.

-Melissa Quinn, NewsBreak

Humphrey's Executor: Humphrey's Executor v. United States | 295 U.S. 602 (1935) | Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center

"Whatever Trump is doing is a failure and whatever he says is a bald-faced lie"

No amount of media sane washing can convince Americans that Donald Trump is rationally prosecuting the Iran war or accurately relating the terms of a (sort of) deal. No matter how many times Trump repeats his outlandish lies on matters big or small — e.g., vandals at the reflecting pool! She begged me for a photo! — or tosses out bacchanalian distractions, or seeks refuge in hapless propaganda (none creepier than Vice President JD Vance’s pro-Nixon spin), he cannot arrest a growing national consensus: whatever Trump is doing is a failure and whatever he says is a bald-faced lie.

Trump’s inability to snow over the public with his blizzard of deceit bodes well for Democrats’ chances to trounce Republicans in the midterms. Candid after his primary defeat, Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn let on: “The jury’s still out whether this MAGA populist movement can survive the midterms.” But widespread agreement that Trump is an inveterate liar offers the opportunity for something beyond a midterm victory, which would be nothing less than a reality reset.

In the late stages of any authoritarian crack, the degenerating despot’s spin, lies, and excuses eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. Each additional fabrication only reinforces exasperation with his galling mendacity. That, in turn, may whet the public’s appetite for some unvarnished truth-telling and public accountability.

Wall-to-wall lies

Trump’s horrific polling results are not simply a measure of widespread discontent with his performance. Increasingly, they serve to gauge public recognition that he is pathologically dishonest. Voters overwhelmingly express not just disapproval of what Trump is doing, but in the face of Trump’s determination to lie to their faces — on Iran, the economy, his health, the Epstein files, etc. — reveal a rise in understanding that he has been engaged in a massive, nonstop campaign of disinformation. 

The Quinnipiac poll, which found that “60 percent of voters think the U.S. military action against Iran was not worth it,” amounts to an emphatic statement that the majority of voters realize that Trump’s blather about a great victory is just blather. Voters see through the constant flim-flam and bravado, and the consistent drumbeat of phony triumphal accomplishments (the Strait is open! It’s always been open!).

Likewise, the 59 percent of the public know Trump is covering up damaging facts about his health or the Epstein-pedophile files. Likewise, Americans’ disapproval of Trump’s performance on the economy repudiates the lies he has been peddling. Prices are not going down. Voters’ day-to-day challenges tell them Trump has made their lives harder.

If the goal of strongmen is to control the information environment and persuade voters not to believe their own lived experience, and thereby inoculate themselves from accountability, then widespread rejection of state propaganda and willingness to declare “the emperor has no clothes” are sure signs the autocratic regime is unraveling.

Democrats would be wise to make Trump’s duplicity a key feature of their midterm campaign message. That would not only reaffirm voters’ own convictions that the economy is awful, but would help pre-bunk future lies, cut off excuses (it’s all Biden’s fault!), and prepare the public for the array of election shenanigans that Trump has launched to undermine the legitimacy of his loss. It would also lay the foundation for the great post-election reckoning.

Preparing for an accountability bonanza

If Democrats win the majority in one or both houses, the most extensive oversight and anti-corruption probe in history will get underway. Never have we seen any presidency so rife with financial corruption, self-dealing, self-enrichment, cronyism, and misuse of public funds for private purposes. “Following the money” will require Congress to track billions in crypto “investments,” corporate donations to Trump family pet projects, and foreign “gifts” used to gain influence. It will no doubt necessitate the most massive insider trading and market manipulation probe in history.

How much money are we talking about? Who gave it, and who got it? What government decisions were influenced? And most importantly, how can the public be made whole and the damage be undone? It may take years, but the undertaking is essential if we are ever to return to a semblance of clean, democratic government that punishes those who abused the public trust.

However, it would be a mistake to think of accountability purely in favor of the misuse and abuse of public funds. There is not a department or disgraced operation of government (including ICE street violence and murders of detainees and bystanders; weaponization of the Justice Department against presidential enemies; the Pentagon’s participation in extrajudicial killings, gross incompetence in war planning, discriminatory promotion decisions; and the full-scale assault on our public health and scientific research systems) that should escape scrutiny.

Only when we quantify the damage in lives and dollars lost, in institutional reputation and in lost human capital, can we begin to address the hundreds — if not thousands — of flawed decisions and ameliorate the impact of malicious, incompetent MAGA rule. Once we do that, we can begin to reset the expectation for all administrations going forward: Regardless of ideology and policy preference, every presidency must be held accountable for competent, transparent, fact-based decision-making; and every administration must operate within the nonpartisan civil service’s rules. Any oversight or accountability project must emphatically reject the Project 2025 mentality that instilled a nihilist bent on destroying expertise and undermining commitment to follow the law and uphold the Constitution.

MAGA’s war on truth, namely its obsessive reliance on lies and conspiracies — no matter how outlandish — to maintain its grip on power, is breathing its last gasps. The Trump regime’s credibility is in tatters, as voters thoroughly reject its policies and the artifice of lies it has relied upon. If Democrats do their job, the MAGA movement will be swept under in a blue midterm wave sufficient to dislodge it from power. With a decisive electoral win and a national commitment to oversight, we could ensure that we never again cede power to those who see government as a vehicle for personal revenge, pecuniary gain, or full-scale assault on pluralistic democracy.

In that regard, the midterms must not only be about cleaning the decks of MAGA scoundrels, criminals, and bullies, but restoration of faith in competent, good-faith self-government, where public interest must predominate.

-Jennifer Rubin

Join The Contrarian community to support bold journalism and help fund critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption — Subscribe now.

(Photo Credit: Mike Maguire, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

"Trump plans to sabotage the midterms, so we're going to need a plan to stop him"

As soon as he took office again, Trump started signaling that he intends to interfere with the midterms. There are too many examples to cover everything, so here are some of the lowlights from just the last year:             

March 2025: An executive order trying to unilaterally overhaul election administration.

July 2025: Ordered Texas to gerrymander five new Republican House seats.

August 2025: An executive order to "get rid of" mail-in ballots ahead of the midterms.

January 2026: Told the House GOP "they should cancel the election.” He regretted not seizing the voting machines after 2020, and then later that month he sent goons to raid Fulton County's election hub.

February 2026: Said Republicans should "nationalize" elections. The next day Steve Bannon said, "You're damn right we're gonna have ICE surround the polls come November," and urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

March 2026: Issues an executive order to create state-by-state citizen lists and orders USPS to deliver mail ballots only to federally approved names. Installed election denier Dan Bishop to run DOJ's "election-integrity" efforts.

April 2026: Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for racial gerrymanders in former Confederate states. Trump team threatens to force blue states to redraw their own maps.

June 2026: Raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a voter-registration nonprofit.

Even as he meets resistance from the courts and some blue states, he's clearly not backing down. So what's our plan?

We need to get into election protection formation -- let’s talk about how. For the last 75 weeks or so, Leah and I have hosted What's the Plan, our live Q&A with the Indivisible movement. It’s a unique space: thousands of people from across the country and the world, together every week, working through the strategy and tactics of organizing against fascism. When we’re at our best, we’re cutting through the noise, demystifying some process or institution, and focusing on what we all can actually do.

If Indivisibles are going to plan together for how we organize in defense of the midterms, the place to have that conversation is What’s the Plan. We don’t want to shortchange the big topic, so this week we’re trying something a bit different. This Thursday at 3pm ET, we'll be joined by Corey Dukes from Protect Democracy, an ally in this fight.

We're asking you to do a few minutes of pre-reading so the discussion is as fruitful as possible.

We're inviting you to submit a question ahead of time here. I’ll go through all these Wednesday night to help us steer the conversation before turning it over to live Q&A.

If we pull this off, you'll come away with a better understanding of how this sabotage threat actually works, and the steps you and your local group can take to blunt it. 

As a movement, we have to learn, grow, and act together, so I hope you can join us Thursday (or catch the podcast Friday!). But whatever your schedule, there are plenty of ways this week to organize your community in defense of democracy -- read on!

In solidarity,
Ezra Levin
Co-Executive Director, Indivisible

 

Birthright Citizenship

 

When the Supreme Court issues its decision in the birthright citizenship case, likely this week, the odds are that it will be a loss for the Trump administration. The Court heard argument in U.S. v. Barbara on April 1, 2026. The issue is whether Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” can end birthright citizenship.

Trump’s effort to rewrite the Constitution is blatantly illegal. Doing that takes a constitutional amendment, not a presidential whim. 

And while there may be a vote or two for the administration’s theory that the birthright citizenship provision and accompanying laws don’t mean what they plainly say, it seems more likely, following oral argument, that there are at least six votes for the noncontroversial legal view that the 14th Amendment means what it has been understood to say for over one hundred years—people born in the United States are entitled to U.S. citizenship, with rare exceptions for situations like the children of diplomats.

If you want a refresher on the issues in this case, find it here.

So don’t be surprised and pleased when the Court rules against Trump on this one. It won’t be remarkable. It won’t be a signal that the Court is finally getting tough with the executive branch. This is, put simply, a case that would not have happened in any other administration, because no other president would have attempted such a boldly illegal approach to changing the Constitution. Rejecting Trump’s effort to circumvent the law is a low bar for the Supreme Court to clear.

We saw a better example of this Court’s view of executive branch power last week when it agreed to let the administration end temporary protected status (TPS) for approximately 336,000 people who are legally present in this country because of natural disasters in their home countries—Haitians who came here following earthquakes and hurricanes, or Syrians who came due to armed conflict in their country. The Trump administration suddenly terminated their permission to remain in the country in mid-2025.

In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Alito, with a majority that included Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has two adopted children from Haiti, the Court held that the courts can’t review a president’s decisions about TPS. In other words, Trump can do whatever he wants to these people, and the courts can’t stay his hand.

Creator: Lynne Sladky | Credit: AP

The only exception, according to the Court, is for constitutional claims. There was a claim here that the decisions were impermissibly race-based: TPS was terminated for Haitians, Syrians, Venezuelans, Hondurans, and Nicaraguans. The majority’s willingness to ignore evidence that the administration’s decision was based on race was so transparently in contravention of the facts that it suggests the exception for constitutional claims exists on paper, but this Supreme Court will never give it any weight. Justice Alito held that so long as a race-neutral explanation for the government’s action exists, no matter how much evidence of racial animus is otherwise involved, a plaintiff is unlikely to succeed on constitutional claims.

The part of the TPS case that’s most worth reading is Justice Kagan’s dissent. She started out by noting that the countries the administration says it’s safe for people to be forced to return to “continue to be unsafe.” Justice Kagan wrote, “Secretaries [of State] have repeatedly examined the conditions in the two countries and have repeatedly determined that they remain too dangerous to permit safe return.” 

But Kristi Noem suddenly decided they were safe. When the case was brought, lower courts ruled in favor of the TPS holders, finding that Noem likely violated the law when she made her decision “without first consulting with other agencies about current country conditions.” Kagan writes, later in her dissent, that “Haiti and Syria are countries that the State Department continues to list as too dangerous for travel; they may be yet more perilous for a former inhabitant.”

But it was the argument about race and the Haitian plaintiffs that revealed the conservative majority’s willingness to tolerate the unacceptable. Justice Kagan was joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson in calling it “plain to see” that race was involved in the decision to terminate the TPS designation for Haiti. Kagan wrote that “the evidence is there, plain to see, in the President’s statements, which the majority (and for that matter, his own lawyers) cannot even bear to repeat.” Ouch.

The legal standard for what the plaintiffs have to prove is taken from a 1977 case, Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. They must show that “a racially ‘discriminatory purpose’ was ‘a motivating factor’ in the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation.” That means “One factor among many is enough when the factor is racial to presumptively establish an equal protection violation.” That means the administration’s decision to terminate TPS should be evaluated in light of “‘circumstantial and direct evidence of intent’ that is available,” as well as “‘[t]he historical background of the decision’; the ‘sequence of events leading up’ to it; and, most relevant here, ‘contemporary statements’ by decisionmakers.” That is the well-established legal standard that the majority purported to apply.

Justice Kagan takes the majority to task, writing that: “The evidence they [the Haitian TPS holders] have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print. (Indeed, one measure of the President’s way of speaking about Haitians is to compare it with the majority’s, which is unfailingly respectful.)” She then recites the comments the majority declined to include:

“Haitians are ‘eating the dogs . . . . They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live [in Springfield, Ohio].’”

“Haitians in the United States ‘probably have AIDS.’”

“Haiti is a ‘shithole country,’ which is ‘filthy, dirty, [and] disgusting.’”

“Haitian immigration is ‘like a death wish for our country.’”

“Haitians, along with some others, are ‘poisoning the blood’ of our country.”

She concludes with an example of Trump saying, “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries” like “Haiti [and] Somalia”? “Why cannot we have some people from Norway [and] Sweden?”

Kagan assesses the majority’s view of Trump’s comments like this: “The majority briefly replies that those remarks are not ‘overtly racial,’ … but it is hard to know what that means.” Then, she reaches the only conclusion possible on these facts: “Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.) The references—of filth, disease, and primitiveness—are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes. It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community.” It’s not a pretty bottom line, but it’s honest.

It’s hard to refute Kagan’s challenge to the majority: “The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.” But six conservative Justices chose to ignore them in order to give still more power to a president who has shown a willingness to abuse it and a carelessness about how his decisions affect not only immigrants, but American citizens.

This isn’t just a case about laws and legal standards. It’s a case about people, about individuals and their futures. Kagan makes this clear as well, writing about one of the plaintiffs that “Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot is a Haitian national who has held TPS for fifteen years. He lives in California where he works in a laboratory researching Alzheimer’s, a job he can hold only because of his TPS work authorization. Miot suffers from Type 1 diabetes, which is easily treated in the United States. But in Haiti, the same disease can be a death sentence, given that country’s collapsed health-care infrastructure.”

Kagan concludes that the plaintiffs “deserve better than today’s decision.” When the Court rules that Trump can’t rewrite the rules for birthright citizenship, do not clap. Remember Mr. Miot, and what he will face. Remember others with TPS, who are all here legally, with permission, performing important work in our economy. 

Shortly after the administration ended TPS, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote that “This mass de-legalization has left various segments of the American workforce, from health care to construction to hospitality, without the workers they depend on. Notably, the termination of TPS for Haiti — scheduled for February 3, 2026 — threatens to seriously disrupt the health care, senior care, and disability care workforce.”

Who wins here? Perhaps it’s Stephen Miller, who will gain an estimated 1.3 million people he can tack on as statistics to support the success of his mass deportation master plan. It’s hard to see who else these benefits. These people are not violent criminals, who the administration promised us it would deport. These are hardworking people who are making important contributions that benefit Americans, people who have broken no laws, who only ask to be permitted to remain in this country so they can raise their claims in court and have them heard.

Some decisions are wrong from the start. Like Dred Scott, which denied former slaves' citizenship, or Korematsu, which allowed the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. This case will join them in a Supreme Court walk of shame.

Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse. Your support makes it possible for me to do deep dives into cases like this, so we understand what’s really happening at the Supreme Court, not just how the headlines read. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, click on the subscribe button below and join our community.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

Healthcare Fraud

 

Federal prosecutors charged 455 people, including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals, in a nationwide crackdown on schemes that allegedly billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs for more than $6.5 billion in false claims. 

The 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown stretched across dozens of federal districts and targeted a range of fraud types, from amniotic wound allograft billing to pill-mill operations and sham mental-health services. The sheer scale of the alleged losses, and the direct involvement of credentialed providers, raises hard questions about how deeply fraud networks have penetrated the health care system.

Why $6.5 billion in alleged fraud demands attention right now: The dollar figures in this takedown are not spread thin across hundreds of small cases. They are concentrated in a handful of districts where prosecutors allege that specific procedure types, particularly amniotic wound allografts, drove enormous billing volumes. 

In Arizona alone, charges involved over $1.2 billion in false or fraudulent claims, with allegations of kickbacks, bribes, and sham invoicing designed to inflate reimbursements for products applied to elderly and hospice patients. In the Southern District of Texas, nine defendants faced charges tied to an alleged $906 million allograft scheme in which a nurse practitioner and clinic managers allegedly created fake patient records to justify billing.

That pattern suggests a clear enforcement signal. The districts that filed the largest individual loss amounts also show the highest concentration of allograft-related charges. Arizona and Southern Texas together account for more than $2 billion of the $6.5 billion total, and both center on allograft fraud. If procedure type is functioning as a leading indicator for enforcement targeting, providers billing heavily for wound allografts in other states should expect increased scrutiny from federal investigators and CMS program-integrity teams in the months ahead.

Licensed professionals at the center of the alleged schemes: The Justice Department announced that 90 of the 455 defendants held medical licenses, a figure that includes doctors, nurse practitioners, and other credentialed professionals. 

Their alleged roles went beyond passive participation. In Texas, prosecutors described clinic managers and a nurse practitioner who allegedly generated fabricated records to support Medicaid mental-health billing and pill-mill prescriptions alongside the allograft scheme. Separate charging documents in the Southern District of Texas outlined how defendants allegedly used shell entities and falsified documentation to conceal the scope of their billing activity.

The single largest case by alleged loss amount landed in the Eastern District of New York. Dubbed “Operation Gold Rush,” the indictment charged 11 defendants in a multi-billion-dollar fraud and money laundering scheme affecting Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers. Prosecutors called it the largest case by loss amount ever charged by the Department of Justice. The case included an international dimension, with apprehensions reported in Estonia, illustrating how fraud networks can operate across borders while exploiting American health programs.

The fraud was not limited to massive schemes. In Minnesota, 15 defendants faced charges for over $90 million in alleged Medicaid provider fraud. Across the Southern District of Florida, prosecutors highlighted transnational activity and laundering tied to durable medical equipment, home health services, and telemedicine orders. Smaller districts reported cases involving allegedly unnecessary genetic tests, forged prior authorizations, and billing for counseling sessions that never occurred. Taken together, the filings show how both large and mid-sized operations can drain public health programs when internal controls and external oversight fail.

What the takedown reveals about enforcement priorities: The 2026 operation underscores several enforcement priorities that health care organizations should not ignore. 

First, investigators are clearly focused on high-reimbursement niche products such as amniotic wound allografts, where complex coding rules and limited clinical familiarity can mask abusive billing. 

Second, prosecutors are increasingly framing cases around alleged kickback and referral arrangements, not just false claims, signaling a broader view of corrupt financial relationships as a gateway to fraud.

Third, the prominence of licensed professionals in the charging documents shows that credentials are no shield. When physicians or nurse practitioners allegedly lend their names to sham clinics, sign off on medically unnecessary procedures, or delegate prescribing authority to non-qualified staff, they become central to the government’s narrative of intentional fraud. That emphasis is likely to reverberate through state licensing boards, malpractice insurers, and hospital credentialing committees, which may respond with tighter oversight of practice patterns and ownership interests.

Implications for health systems and policymakers

For hospitals, group practices, and ancillary providers, the takedown is a warning to reassess internal compliance programs. High-volume billing in specialized product lines, especially where third-party marketing companies or distributors are involved, will attract attention. Robust pre-billing review, independent medical-necessity audits, and clear documentation standards are now essential risk controls rather than optional best practices.

For policymakers, the cases highlight structural vulnerabilities in federal and state health programs. Complex reimbursement formulas, fragmented data systems, and uneven state-level enforcement create openings that sophisticated actors can exploit. Strengthening real-time claims analytics, harmonizing state and federal data sharing, and investing in specialized fraud units focused on emerging therapies and devices may be necessary to keep pace with evolving schemes.

The 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown is not just a snapshot of alleged wrongdoing; it is a roadmap of where enforcement is headed. Providers whose business models rely on aggressive use of high-margin products, loosely supervised telehealth arrangements, or volume-based mental-health billing should assume their claims data will be scrutinized. As these cases move through the courts, they are likely to shape future regulations, compliance expectations, and, ultimately, how trust is rebuilt between health care professionals, patients, and the public programs that fund so much of American care.

The post How did 455 people allegedly drain $6.5 billion from Medicare and Medicaid? Federal prosecutors say doctors and nurses were in on the schemes appeared first on The Financial Wire.