The Supreme Court’s Latest Decision Could Hand the GOP the Midterms

 

Just when it seemed the Supreme Court might be prepared to stop Donald Trump from sabotaging the midterm elections, the six Republican justices who dominate the court handed the president a potentially far-reaching victory on Sept. 25 with another ruling on its emergency “shadow” docket.

The ruling in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters permits the administration and Republican-led states to use a newly expanded federal database to review state voter lists, overturning a lower-court decision that had concluded the database could not be used for the midterms because it violates federal privacy laws and the Administrative Procedure Act. 

The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program was created in 1986 to allow federal, state and local government agencies to verify the citizenship and immigration status of noncitizens applying for public benefits, relying on records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of State.

However, in March 2025, Trump promulgated Executive Order 14248 (titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”), that revamped the program to permit state and local authorities to verify the citizenship status of registered voters so they could purge noncitizens from the rolls — a purpose the SAVE program was never intended to serve.

The executive order also directed the Social Security Administration to make its records available to the DHS for that purpose. Two months later, the DHS, acting on its own, launched a modified SAVE program that allows state and local authorities to conduct unlimited bulk searches of multiple individuals at once. 

In September 2025, the League of Women Voters, together with its affiliates in Texas, Louisiana and Virginia, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center sued the federal government, claiming that the expanded SAVE program violated the Social Security Act, the federal Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

On June 22 of this year, District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who sits in Washington, D.C., blocked the revamped SAVE program from being used for the midterm elections. The Justice Department, led by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, took its case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and, after failing to secure relief there, turned to the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, where the administration has enjoyed great success.  

The court’s three Democrats argued that the use of the database will result in voter disenfranchisement.

The high court granted Sauer’s request with a seven-page unsigned “per curiam” ruling, holding that the plaintiffs’ claims about the expanded database lacked merit, and that “the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters.” In their dissent, the court’s three Democrats argued that the use of the database will result in voter disenfranchisement. 

On its face, as some commentators have noted, the court’s ruling appears limited in scope because the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 prohibits states from conducting “systematic” purges of registered voters in the 90-day “quiet period” prior to elections.

If the terms of the NRVA are faithfully and literally applied, this means that states can utilize the expanded SAVE program to conduct only “individualized” (one at a time) citizenship checks of prospective voters in the weeks remaining before the midterms. Use of the SAVE program is also voluntary, as states are not compelled but only urged to use the system. 

The problem is that neither the NRVA nor the Supreme Court’s shadow docket ruling defines what is meant by “systematic” purges, and that individual purges can easily be aggregated to have a mass impact. In a post for Democracy Docket, reporter Yunior Rivas explained the problem this way:

Now, a crucial voter protection [under the NRVA] could hinge on whether the Supreme Court [in subsequent cases that will surely come its way before the midterms] wants to narrow the definition of “systematic” as applied to purges. And there’s reason to fear that it does [ … by allowing states to] run thousands of voters through SAVE and then evade the NVRA’s quiet period by treating each resulting citizenship challenge as an “individualized” inquiry. 

Rivas also observed that the Supreme Court’s shadow docket decision does not prevent the Trump administration from preparing master citizenship lists for each state, which GOP-led states could use to purge unlimited numbers of individual voters without even using the SAVE program. 

The legality of the lists is currently pending in litigation.

In fact, those citizenship lists are being compiled pursuant to Executive Order 14399, which directs the DHS, SSA and State Department to create lists of all “confirmed” citizens residing in every state who are entitled to vote. Once again, states are not required by the order to use the lists to purge their voting rolls, but the order stipulates that election officials in states that permit noncitizens to vote will be referred to the DOJ for possible criminal prosecution. 

On Sept. 14, the Supreme Court handed Trump a rare shadow-docket defeat, preventing the U.S. Postal Service from interfering with mail-in balloting. But that decision did not address the legality of the citizenship lists. The legality of the lists is currently pending in litigation brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the public-interest groups Protect Democracy and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, but no decision has been rendered. 

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. 

According to the DOJ, 27 states, including Texas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Indiana, have agreed to use the expanded SAVE database, which in practice has proven to be plagued by serious mistakes. In one Texas county alone, searches conducted under the database returned an astounding error rate of 21%. There is no reason to believe the master citizenship lists will be any more reliable. 

Standing alone, neither the expanded SAVE program nor the citizenship lists may be capable of changing the outcome of the midterms. But they do not stand alone. They are part and parcel of a multifaceted plan to sabotage the elections, engineered by a president with dictatorial aspirations and a core of committed quislings determined to keep him and the MAGA movement in power through the midterms and beyond.

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Trump's Recent Attacks on the U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told CBS News that President Donald Trump’s recent attacks on the court are “harsh” and decried “damaging” efforts to politicize the court’s decisions—though he also attacked President Joe Biden—as Trump has increasingly lashed out against the 6-3 conservative court for ruling against him in several high-profile cases.

Key Facts:

Alito was asked about criticism of the Supreme Court as it’s issued a number of politically controversial decisions in recent years, angering the left with decisions on issues like abortion and LGBTQ rights while also ruling against Trump administration policies like tariffs and restricting birthright citizenship.

When asked whether the court is “damaged” by attacks from political leaders on both sides of the aisle that paint the court’s justices as “political actors,” Alito agreed, saying partisan attacks on the court can be “quite damaging” to the Supreme Court as an institution.

Alito alleged there’s been a “great change” in how presidents respond to Supreme Court rulings in recent years, as leaders have attacked the court for its decisions rather than expressing disappointment while still showing respect for the outcome.

His comments come as Trump has frequently lashed out against the Supreme Court in recent months for issuing rulings he doesn’t like, decrying the court as a “shell of its former self” while claiming conservative-leaning justices are caving to Democrats and suggesting justices he appointed should be more “loyal” to him.

When asked about Trump’s attacks, Alito declined to single the GOP president out, claiming President Joe Biden had also levied “harsh” criticism against the court and describing Trump as just having “his way of saying things.”

Alito did wrap Trump into his criticism, however, telling CBS that Biden “was very harsh, and President Trump has been very harsh.”

“We are not part of any political movement, and we are not attempting to further any political agenda,” Alito argued to CBS about the Supreme Court, saying the justices are “trying to interpret the Constitution as best we can and apply it in cases that come before us.”

The Supreme Court’s new term will begin next week, which include a number of cases concerning Trump administration policies. Among the cases justices are set to decide are disputes over Trump’s immigration policies on mandatory detention and third-country deportations, as well as issues championed by Republicans like the legality of the federal ban on assault weapons and proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting. 

The court’s first oral arguments of the new term will be in a major climate change case, as the court decides whether parties can sue fossil fuel companies in state court for their alleged role in the impacts of climate change. Alito will not participate in that case, as the justice unexpectedly recused himself Monday amid pressure from advocacy groups to step down from the case due to his fossil fuel investments.

-Forbes

Undaunted Arts in D.C. Despite the "Mad, Boorish, Wanna-be King"

 

Trump’s intensified, malicious assault on the arts in his second term should have surprised no one. Like all authoritarians around the globe, he views the arts community as a pack of subversive dissidents, a danger to his grip on power and his command of the public psyche. Ever since they shed the golden handcuffs of royal arts patrons, visual and performing artists have found themselves at odds with despots.

The values and qualities that are foundational to the arts — creativity, inclusiveness, whimsy, irreverence, internationalism, etc. — are a threat to totalitarian bullies who seek absolute control, demand an echo chamber for their propaganda, target minority communities, vilify nonconformity, and celebrate militarism.

In the case of the Trump regime, the antagonism between state power and the arts is no doubt heightened by a boorish president who worships only money and himself. For decades, New York City (the arts capital of America) has held in disdain the crass Queens real estate baron whose taste runs from laughably garish to cheap/cheesy.

Since returning to office, Trump has followed a familiar pattern among autocrats. In seeking to destroy the independent arts community, he has attempted to defund PBS, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts — not to mention higher education (which fosters and cultivates the arts). 

He has reduced the arts’ stature by substituting gross spectacle (e.g., mixed martial arts) at the White House for celebrations of American culture, while invading and attempting to take over art institutions like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The only surprise in all of this was how thoroughly incompetent the barbarians were who pounded at the arts’ gates — and how visceral the consequent backlash has been. The takeover of the Kennedy Center has become one of the most visible, absurd displays of Trumpian ego and foolishness colliding with reality. 

In attempting to capture the Center, trying to MAGA-ize the programming, incessantly failing to affix his name to the memorial of a slain president, demanding it become another vanity architecture shrine to him, closing down the building to hide the flight of performers and audiences, and repeatedly incurring the wrath of judges and patrons, Trump has given his critics victories in court and plenty of incredulous laughs.

In response to the mad, boorish, wanna-be king, repeated, public displays of affection for the Kennedy Center have erupted. A massive crowd gathered to watch the letters of his name removed from the building. Again, the public metaphorically embraced the building earlier this month with a rally and march around the iconic structure. 

At these events and in the coverage surrounding the ongoing saga, Washingtonians have spoken lovingly of their own experiences at the Kennedy Center, their multi-generational encounters with the arts, and the arts philanthropy the Kennedy Center has contributed to the city in schools and through free performances. The Center is personal to thousands and thousands of people.

Now that the performing companies and outside artists have had to find other venues, the backlash has played out around D.C. I got a glimpse of this last weekend at a stunning performance of the Dance Theater of Harlem at the National Theater, which included the return of arguably its most iconic work, its 1982 adaptation of the Russian fairytale, Firebird.

Before the performance, executive director Robert Garland and representatives from the Washington Performing Arts Society spoke to the crowd. Given the origins of the company in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, its commitment to reaffirming the participation of African Americans in the classical arts, and the return of the dynamic prima ballerina Alexandra Hutchinson, who trained in D.C., one can imagine the emotion that animated the speakers and the crowd. 

What — in ordinary times — might have been perceived as banal references to city pride or the need to support the arts, the comments plainly had added punch, given our current climate. The speakers were repeatedly interrupted with applause and knowing laughter.

Attending the performance became not just a joyful expression of affection for a spectacular dance company, but a political statement reaffirming our civic commitment to the arts and our determination to defy the Orange Bully’s effort to commandeer them for his own purposes.

This sort of emotional encounter has not been a solitary event. The National Symphony Orchestra, homeless thanks to the deranged Kennedy Center landlord, has had to find other venues and construct a concert series on the fly. Its opening evening at the Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda was therefore highly anticipated.

The Washington Post described the scene: The orchestra began the evening in the European fashion, entering as a group rather than milling about and tuning onstage while the audience settles in, which is more common in the United States. That created the occasion for a powerful expression of thanks and gratitude, as the players walked out en masse in white tie and long dresses. An eager audience immediately stood to greet the now nomadic ensemble.

The Post report noted that in response to the Herculean effort of “securing a budget and scheduling a season outside the concert hall it has called home since 1971… their audience said thank you with a rousing display of emotion.” Such respect provides hope that “the NSO may not just survive the fiasco of Trump’s Kennedy Center takeover, but it also could connect to local audiences in a new way.” 

The report continued: “‘It will be an interesting season,’ music director Gianandrea Noseda said later in the evening. The audience laughed at the irony loaded into the word. And they laughed again when he stressed the bright side of the forthcoming peripatetic season: ‘It will be a bit more time to go here and there, but also more exciting: You can find different restaurants.’” And so it has been!

That spirit of joyous defiance now permeates the arts community in D.C. Under duress, it has found solidarity and newfound pride in a city that has long played (excuse the expression) second fiddle to New York.

Under siege from a fascist regime that failed to appreciate the tsunami of opposition it would unleash, the arts are enduring and flourishing. It takes more effort for arts patrons to reach the venues and navigate start-up online box offices, but — especially when done with purpose, as an act of resilience — that can make the experience all the more rewarding.

We celebrate the undaunted, undiminished, and unbowed artists, donors, executives, venue operators, staff personnel, and audiences who are ensuring that the arts thrive in D.C. More than ever, the country and the city need beauty, wonder, delight, camaraderie, and inspiration to remind us of our shared humanity and values.

We are grateful to all who keep arts alive — and look forward to the emotional high we will no doubt enjoy upon the release of the arts (and politics) from the fetid president’s grasp. In the meantime, if you live or visit D.C., find a performance that speaks to you, and enjoy both the artistic experience and the opportunity to express defiance of the barbarian Trump regime.

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Photo: Demonstrators gather during a rally outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on September 18, 2026, in Washington, DC, to form a human chain around the building after Trump announced the potential closure of the facility.(Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)

The American Mythology of Liberal Democracy

 

“No matter how much American foreign policy may be caricatured as overly idealistic, the country’s rhetorical commitment to a liberal international order and support for democracy around the world have provided a principled basis for continuing involvement in international affairs.  It has focused U.S. attention on abuses of power abroad that are actually susceptible to U.S. influence.  It has also facilitated democratic transitions in places such as Chile, the Philippines, and South Korea.”

– Francis Fukuyama, The Washington Post, September 13, 2026, “How realism gets the world profoundly wrong.”

There is no greater myth regarding American exceptionalism than the view that only the United States has always seen the promotion of “liberal democracy” as part of its national identity.  In actual fact, the United States pledges itself to “liberal democracy” the world over only when its military designs are compromised or stymied.  The model was President Woodrow Wilson’s “war to end all wars” during World War I.  When Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany in 1917, he famously stated that the “world must be made safe for democracy.”

Wilson understood that the American people were not interested in a conflict as part of a larger geopolitical battle but would rally around the idea of a moral crusade to permanently eliminate militarism and establish a lasting global peace.  President Franklin Roosevelt had the same challenge in trying to bring the United States into World War II, when the nation was reluctant to do so.

President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq is the best example of the myth of liberal democracy: he used a lie regarding weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of force, and when there were no nuclear weapons to be found, he bleated that U.S. forces were there to create liberal democracy as a paradigm not only for Iraq, but for the entire Arab world.

Donald J. Trump used the same template for the use of force in Iran: he argued that we were trying to prevent the development of nuclear weapons but then switched to introducing liberal democracy as a justification for an illegal and immoral war.  The example of Venezuela is classic: Trump talked about democratic reform and regime change, but his real designs were on the country’s oil and gold.

Fukuyama’s most risible assumption is that the United States has never been “simply trying to maximize its power.”  If that were so, then why would the United States develop a far-flung network of 750 military bases and facilities in more than 80 countries and territories in the wake of World War II?  

And why would the United States engage in regime change and attempt assassinations in countries that were trying to genuinely democratize, such as Iran and the Congo in the 1950s or Chile in the 1970s?  And why would the United States engage in disinformation in order to justify the use of military force against Iraq in 2003 or Iran in 2026?  The list goes on and on.

Fukuyama is no stranger to the mythology regarding “liberal democracy.”  In 1992, he wrote The End of History and the Last Man, which argued that the end of the Cold War marked the triumph of Western liberal democracy and the end point of humanity’s ideological evolution.  Fukuyama believed that the fall of communism and the Soviet Union marked “liberal democracy” as the “final and best form of human government.”  He concluded the “no superior ideological system will challenge liberal democracy as the ideal model for society.”

Myths regarding U.S. exceptionalism and liberal democracy prevent the United States from having a real debate about our national security goals.  Specious American alarmism is designed to capture support for the use of force in scenarios that don’t advance our geopolitical or international interests.  In an effort to increase defense spending, moreover, we exaggerated the Soviet threat during the Cold War, and now we are exaggerating the China threat.

Phony threat assessments lead to mistaken notions about the nature of the threat, the demand for a costly policy of “containment,” and the global military posture that currently exists.  There are perils to be faced regarding climate change, energy issues, and threats to the environment, but they require diplomacy and multinational consultation, not military force.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

 

The Courts Are Not Going to Save Voting Rights

 

The courts have been, at best, imperfect guardians of voting rights. The U.S. Supreme Court’s MAGA majority rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to wreak havoc with mail-in voting and turned away a MAGA re-redistricting map in Missouri.

However, the MAGA majority allowed states to proceed with individual inquiries to the flawed SAVE immigration data base, which is likely to result in false flags of noncitizen voters. On this one, “Completely absent from the majority opinion is any analysis of potential harm to voters who might be incorrectly flagged as noncitizens and removed from state voting rolls,” Rick Hasen wrote. “That should have figured in the balance of the equities.” Fortunately, “this case is likely to have limited impact on the midterms, because … the NVRA prohibits mass purges of voters in the 90 days before the election … [meaning] states can still use the database now for individualized determinations.”

Above all else, the massive blow to the Voting Rights Act in the Callais decision, resulting in the evisceration of Black and Hispanic representation in the South (and elsewhere), hangs over the 2026 election and beyond.

Where does this leave us? Naturally, lawyers and voting-rights advocacy groups who devote themselves to defending voting rights in court continue to sketch out what amounts to a whack-a-mole strategy: Challenging illegal executive orders on their face and again as implemented; winning at the lower courts, then scrambling to defend wins from the predations of a SCOTUS MAGA majority that draws the line only when abject chaos (e.g., Missouri maps, Post Office redesign) threatens to turn an election upside down. Well, when you have a hammer (litigation), everything looks like a nail (a court case).

But this strategy is insufficient, if not misguided. Voting rights hang by a thread, and the future of free and fair elections remains tenuous as long as an overtly partisan, intellectually corrupt MAGA majority sits atop the Supreme Court, prone to use the shadow docket to greenlight Trump regime mischief; Circuit Court decisions depend on the composition of the panel drawn (do you, for example, get the infamous duo of D.C. Circuit Court judges auditioning for the MAGA Supreme Court, such as Neomi Rao and Greg Katsas?); and judge shopping remains endemic. Even with the best lower court judges, judicial remedies are often too little too late or simply not up to the task of disarming MAGA officials bent on suppressing voting rights.

Ultimately, the sanctity of voting rights — the core of our democracy — rests with the voters and the elected branches of government. Unless and until a broad pro-democracy coalition prioritizes voting rights and electing local, state, and federal officials who are committed to implementing the 14^th and 15^th Amendments as envisioned, preserving the principles underlying the Voting Rights Act, and holding accountable election deniers and suppressors, voting rights will remain fragile at best. Because Republicans have become an anti-democratic party hostile to an inclusive electorate, that means electing Democrats who are committed to an aggressive, pro-democracy agenda. (Let’s start with the basic principle that no one should hold federal, state, or local office in any branch if he or she cannot admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. For now, that means virtually no Republican who can make it through a primary is fit to hold office.)

What would a pro-voting rights agenda look like?

At the federal level, enduring voting protection would require a Democratic president and Congress determined to expand the Supreme Court and implement term limits; reauthorize and clarify the intent of the Voting Rights Act (testing the MAGA Supreme Court majority’s aversion to declaring it outright unconstitutional); and pass a federal statute and/or constitutional amendment enshrining the right to vote (not merely the right to be free of racial discrimination). 

As to the latter, the Brennan Center explains: Today, no federal law provides for an explicit, affirmative right to vote. Congress has the power, under the Constitution’s Elections Clause and the 14th Amendment, to pass a law that does just that and then to provide citizens with the legal tools they need to enforce that right....

Congress should use its legislative authority to enact an explicit right to vote that is backed up with a clear mechanism for voters to challenge any infringement of that right. It should specify that any law or practice that makes voting more difficult will be subject to the strictest level of scrutiny by the courts. In addition, Congress can pass and the president can sign legislation to end gerrymandering once and for all and to fully fund election machinery, including ample protection for state and local officials menaced by violence.

As important as federal officials may be, the real action often is in the states and localities. If we do not want states to abuse the SAVE database, then we must elect state officials who are not bent on conducting reckless witch hunts for noncitizen voters and mandating sloppy voter purges. If we want to prevent a repeat of 2020, then we must elect governors, attorneys general, secretaries of state, and state legislators who will not concoct phony elector schemes or otherwise work to undermine the voters’ will. If we really want democracy to prevail, then we will vote for governors and state lawmakers committed to the National Popular Vote Compact that awards electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. (It has already passed in 18 states plus the District of Columbia, meaning 222 of the 270 electoral votes needed to activate the law have already been accumulated.)

In sum, litigation has been a necessary defensive strategy to prevent any further erosion of voting rights, which is the cornerstone of our democracy. However, it is not a sufficient approach to fortifying our democracy. For that, we need voters and the elected branches of government at all levels to establish hard and fast rules to protect voting rights both in statute and in the Constitution itself.

The good news: Having seen the extent to which MAGA forces will go to suppress voting and cling to power at all costs, voters in the midterms may finally understand just how hostile to democracy today’s MAGA Republican Party has become. In response, they can elect local, state, and federal officials committed to protecting and expanding voting rights so that our right to choose our leaders does not hang on the luck of the draw on a federal Circuit Court panel or on the predilections of the MAGA Supreme Court majority, which has repeatedly shown itself hostile to protecting pluralistic democracy.

The upcoming election will not only decide the balance of power in Congress and the states but also the fate of electoral democracy. That should be all the incentive anyone needs to get out to vote.

---

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Activists display signs during a press conference inside the rotunda of the Missouri State Capitol Building on September 10, 2025, in Jefferson City, Missouri. (Michael Thomas/Getty Images)

 

"It’s time—past time, really—for courts to hold this administration in contempt when it is"

Last Thursday, the White House, almost as soon as Judge Kelly entered his order forcing the administration to restore access to CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, began searching for play in the joints. 

What could they do to punish the news outlets that had offended Donald Trump without getting hauled back into court? Even after the Judge had ordered restoration of hard passes to journalists, CNN’s Betsy Klein and MSNOW’s Laura Barrón-López were denied entry into the White House and had their passes confiscated. It wasn’t clear why they were refused entry—Barrón-López said on air that it wasn’t clear whether she was refused entry because the White House was defying the court order or due to “some kind of incompetence or lag in the system.”

It wasn’t until later in the day, after their lawyer appealed to the Judge for help, that they were able to enter. No explanation from the White House, which, in a court filing, attributed the early morning issues to an administrative delay in reactivating badges. 

However, journalists were still being denied access at 11 a.m., an hour after the White House said it had restored them in the system. And the notion that Secret Service agents were confiscating passes, even after Klein showed them the court order, is inconsistent with a White House seeking to follow the court’s decision in good faith.

It got worse. That evening, as reporters arrived to cover Xi Jinping’s arrival at the White House for the State Dinner Trump threw for him, reporters for CNN and MSNOW learned that they would not be admitted, as other reporters began to cover the event. Was the White House in violation of the court’s order? Technically, perhaps not. 

It applied to hard passes, and this was a question of whether the editorial journalists each organization selected could cover the dinner. But excluding them without warning, while admitting other journalists, hardly seems neutral or justified. Nor did the exclusion of CNN from pool coverage of Trump’s trip to Tennessee Saturday morning.

When Trump first posted his ban on social media, he didn’t invoke national security as a justification for doing so. That didn’t happen until three days later, with his plan under attack in court. So, his White House turned to the same argument they’d used with success to justify the ballroom—that it had a national security purpose. Judge Kelly noted the late adoption of that argument: “nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes was motivated by national security concerns.” 

It was hard to read the government’s pleadings, which suggested CNN and MSNOW are threats to national security, with a straight face, and the government had left itself an out in the letters it sent to them, which referenced reporting that “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods.” But one man’s falsehood is another man’s truth, which is why we have a First Amendment in this country, and banning CNN and MSNOW for what Trump decreed spreading falsehoods would clearly violate it.

In other words, excluding the two from the Xi dinner and CNN from the Tennessee trip violated the spirit of the order, if not its letter. It’s clear defiance of the Constitution and our tradition of a free press.

So, what should happen?

It’s time—past time, really—for courts to hold this administration in contempt when it is. No bending over backward, no second chances. If the president of the United States fails to comply with court orders, he needs to be held to account. Here, the government arguably purged its contempt by restoring passes. But the fact that it turned around and retaliated against CNN and MSNOW should be more than just a footnote to the story.

I say this with all due respect because I suspect the Judge, and perhaps even the lawyers who could pursue the point, would disagree with me. Why poke the bear? Why pick the fight? They may think it’s better to get things back on track and move forward.

But respectfully, that approach has not served us well. After taking office, Merrick Garland didn’t jump into investigating and prosecuting Trump and those around him for January 6. He likely hoped the country could move forward without becoming even more fractured. And I get that. Truly I do. But it didn’t work. Donald Trump doesn’t respect the law; he simply sees it as an impediment to doing what he wants to do. And when he learns he can get away with flouting it, he will not hesitate to do so again. And again.

If Trump gets away with retaliating against the press in this context, he’ll continue to do it, perhaps to others and in still more situations. And we cannot afford that.

He banished the AP for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. He called a journalist “Piggy,” telling her to be “quiet.” And on and on. Technical compliance with the law is enough for a judge, but it can’t be enough for the American people. 

Without a free press to keep us informed, Trump would be running roughshod. Sunlight is, in fact, the best disinfectant, as we saw again today when Justice Alito recused himself from hearing a climate change case where he has conflicts—after the press exposed them and activist groups called on him to step aside.

On Tuesday, the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia will hear en banc argument in a case involving whether a federal judge can pursue contempt proceedings against the administration when he believes they violated his order, even though it was subsequently reversed by the Supreme Court on appeal. The law here is relatively clear—parties can’t ignore court orders, hoping that they’ll be reversed down the road. 

But as they so often do, this administration plays to the court of public opinion as well as courts of law, minimizing its conduct because of the subsequent reversal. They argue technicalities, because this is the case where Judge Boasberg ordered them to turn around flights carrying immigrants to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, and the administration’s line was that his orders were oral, not written, not clear, and that the planes were already out of U.S. airspace before the orders were given. 

Emil Bove, the DOJ employee who a whistleblower said under oath had told other lawyers at the Department “that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order,” is now a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge, appointed by Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate.

The world might look very different right now if Judge Boasberg had been permitted to pursue contempt proceedings back in the spring of 2025 and the administration had been held accountable. Instead, emboldened by his success, Trump has continued to treat the courts like a game to be played, not like a Constitution and an oath of office to be upheld. It would look different if the other news organizations that make up the White House pool continued to refuse to cover the president, so long as he violated the First Amendment right to a free press. But they haven’t.

And so, the Attorney General of the United States took to the Sunday shows to maintain that national security justified the decision to exclude CNN for Air Force One. ABC’s Martha Raddatz pushed Blanche for an example of CNN reporting inaccurately after Blanche—oh the irony—suggested that persistent misinformation and one-sided coverage can become a national-security concern. Then, they had the following exchange:

RADDATZ: The president said nothing about national security when he announced this ban, and clearly you're very interested in what the press says and how they say it

BLANCHE: What they say is exactly the issue when it comes to national security

RADDATZ: Give us an example

BLANCHE: You cannot be asking me that!

RADDATZ: But the judge decided this was not based on national security

BLANCHE: It is a privilege not a right to be in the White House

MSNOW’s Ken Dilanian underscored the point on Twitter, writing that “When the Justice Department lawyers filed papers in court about this—where there are repercussions for making false or unsupported assertions—they didn’t come up with a single example of misinformation or incorrect reporting to justify banning news organizations.”

Heather Cox Richardson reported that as all of this was unfolding, Trump told reporters: “I love an open, free press. What I don’t like is the fake press. What we don’t want is—we don’t want fake news.” But it’s not up to Donald Trump to decide what’s free and what’s fake. It’s why we have a marketplace of ideas in this country, so that we can decide for ourselves. It’s time for the courts to remind Trump that he too is accountable, that truly, no man is above the law. It should have happened before this, but it’s not too late; it can happen now. Trump needs to understand that there are consequences for going after the press.

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We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

"It turns out that Americans believe in religious freedom, diversity, and democracy, not racist theocracy"

The blue wave is cresting five weeks ahead of Election Day. The extent of the wave depends on a range of factors, from a late money surge/negative ad dump from desperate MAGA Republicans to the propensity of Republican voters as the election approaches to “come home” to their party to the danger of Democrats’ overconfidence and reliance on “good news” polls, which may be subject to the same sort of error rate we saw in primaries.

Regardless of the final margins, we nevertheless see evidence that, at least in one critical respect, the fascist MAGA movement has not entirely remade the fabric of American democracy. Instead, we may be seeing, finally, a backlash to Republicans’ embrace of white Christian nationalism, the noxious ideology that America is a white Christian nation for the benefit of those “real” Americans descended from white Europeans who merely tolerate (or don’t) others’ presence.

It turns out that Americans believe in religious freedom, diversity, and democracy, not racist theocracy. “While 56 percent of Republicans support Christian nationalism, only 32 percent of Americans overall do,” a survey from Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Meanings of Democracy Lab of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University recently showed. “Majorities in all but four states reject Christian nationalism.” Helping fuel the backlash is the rise of progressive Democrats who “are openly embracing their Christian faith and challenging Christian nationalism’s claim to be the true embodiment of Christianity.” It is about time.

The numbers are striking. “At least 12 pastors, seminarians and former clergy have run for federal office as Democrats this year … a number close observers say is unheard-of in recent memory,” the New York Times reported. “Even after the winnowing of the primaries, there will be seven running this fall. On the Republican side, there are only three.”

In contrast to the blasphemous deification of Donald Trump and MAGA self-proclaimed Christians’ frightful propensity to justify everything from concentration camps to war crimes to endemic lying as part of the mission to save white Christians from supposed obliteration, progressive Democrats are offering a different take on Christian values.

Melissa Deckman, PRRI’s CEO, and Ruth Braunstein, director of the SNF Agora Institute, wrote recently for Newsweek: Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott, an ordained Lutheran minister running in her state’s 3rd Congressional District, argues that Democrats have long avoided religious language because “all they’ve seen is the religious right and religious extremism.” Presbyterian minister Lindsay James says she was moved to run for Congress after the 2025 “Big Beautiful Bill” put 27,000 Iowans in her district at risk of losing health coverage, noting that her chaplaincy work showed her firsthand what that loss would mean for families struggling to get by.

In Alaska, congressional candidate and Presbyterian pastor Matt Schultz says he feels a moral obligation to speak out against Trump-era GOP policy, often invoking the parable of the Good Samaritan: “It’s important to remember that if someone is hoping to just be an innocent bystander, that’s not an option. You’re either helping or you’re part of the problem.”

Add to these the high-profile Senate nominees James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas, who have an opportunity not only to run up the score for Democrats in red states and districts but also to repudiate the notion that Christians have some religious obligation to vote for a party whose moral outrages and support for abhorrent behavior (e.g., covering up for a pedophile and his enablers) should disturb all but the most hardened MAGA cultists.

To be clear, the shift is among white Christians. Black churches have remained bastions of social activism, continuing the legacy running from abolition to the civil rights movement. What is new is the degree to which white Christians are responding to the call to return to the moral foundations of Christianity. (“Millions of Americans, including many Christians, look at Trump’s second term and see a litany of moral outrages: the sudden deportation of neighbors, the withdrawal of food aid and health care benefits and a war with no clear aim or endpoint.”)

For the first time in decades, white Christians are tying faith to political advocacy. “By hewing closely to Christian priorities like feeding the poor, the Democrats running as pastors have a chance to speak to Americans who are hungry for a different relationship between religion and politics, who want to see religion as a moral compass rather than a political agenda,” the New York Times noted. (And it provides a powerful counterweight to the Trumpian notion that empathy is “toxic.”)

At issue is whether Christianity, or frankly God, is the province of one party. For years, progressive groups such as the Interfaith Alliance have advocated for religious diversity, an essential component of pluralistic democracy embodied in the First Amendment. Now, their leaders see a spiritual revival to accompany a pro-diversity political movement.

“I have become convinced that we are indeed experiencing what we so desperately need, a great awakening in our own time,” Paul Raushenbush, the president of Interfaith Alliance, said in his September 19 keynote address for the William M. Johnson Lecture Series at Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. “Unlike previous examples of religious revival, our awakening is not attached to a single faith tradition or leader, but rather is a broad stirring inspired by a combination of a radical spirituality of nonviolent resistance, a named moral ethic of loving our neighbor, and driven by a promise of a democracy that can be made a reality by and for the people.” (Certainly, one factor in this “great awakening” is a widespread yearning for personal connection, something more emotionally sustaining than impersonal, often angry and cruel online discourse.)

Democrats remain a diverse party with a much higher percentage of “none of the above” voters (who reject any religious affiliation), so this is not about creating a left-wing theocratic party. Instead, as Doug Pagitt, an evangelical pastor and founder of the progressive Christian nonprofit Vote Common Good told the Times, Democrats finally seem determined to push back against Republicans who paint “Democrats as hostile to the Christian faith.” Rather than Christianize the Democratic Party, progressive Christians are making the case that the party must “include religious people in the pro-democracy movement.”

If Democratic candidates identifying as progressive Christians win in November, they will help sustain a Democratic blue wave but also, and more important, reaffirm the ideals of a country founded by religious dissenters and renegades who suffered from repressive established religion. Their wins would repudiate the noxious idea that America was founded for the benefit of white Christians rather than as a pluralistic democracy. And finally, for Christians longing to get mean-spirited, racist, xenophobic ideology masquerading as faith out of the pews, public acceptance of spiritual role models may reaffirm their own faith tradition that looks to churches for spiritual and social connection, not political indoctrination.

In short, defeat of white Christian nationalism at the hands of a diverse political electorate that includes millions of faithful Christians would be transformative for Democrats, democracy, and American Christianity. What a fitting rebuke to white Christian nationalism that would be.

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-Jennifer Rubin, 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!

Photo by Brad Dodson on Unsplash

Commentary:

What should we make of today's theocratic Trump Republican fascists, these white Christian Nationalistic misogynists and homophobes who are defunding the United Nations refugee agency? And what should we make of today's theocratic Trump Republican fascists who are scapegoating and deporting immigrants, repressing and dehumanizing women's rights and LTGBQ, and weakening rules on toxic air pollution by keeping coal power plants opened? And what about their continuing undermining of government functions already approved by Congress, their slashes to Medicaid, their closure of USAID and allowing the Affordable Care Act tax subsidies to expire, their attacks on elections and independent Media, their plan to restrict mail-in voting, their restrictions on protests, their politicization of the military, and their disregard of the U.S. Constitution, to name just a few of their autocratic, undemocratic injustices.

-Glen Brown