Thursday, July 02, 2026

Which Is Why Nobody’s Going To The Great American State Fair Tomorrow

Record heat, and no A/C on the Mall.

🙂‍↔️
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Fear Of Yellow Commies

Moynihan: We already know that people are using it for social welfare services. So why would we want more of that? Why would we want more?

Phillip: You’re saying 1.5 million people of Chinese heritage are coming to utilize our social services?

Moynihan: Do you really want people whose parents are still CCP citizens to come here and vote?

Phillip: That is plenty of people who have parents who have foreign citizenship, who are American citizens and do in fact have the right to vote. They might be from China, they might be from Russia, they might be from England, they might be from anywhere.
People who can afford to come here and stay for three months (airlines won’t let pregnant women fly in the third trimester), are probably doing it so their children can access American universities in 18 years.

Again: this is a situation Congress can remedy. Although given the lack of support of public universities (down dramatically since the ‘70’s when I was in school) by the state, colleges might need the tuition money from rich foreigners. Our more pressing concern is the failure to support the students who can attend major research centers, i.e., public universities, in America. Our short sightedness is destroying that base, while we are told the solution is to let free enterprise build AI data centers for, according to Palantir’s Karp, the battlefield.

Make it make sense.

Meanwhile:
Collins: The forecast is expected to be the hottest July 4th ever recorded. There's a list of what people can't even bring because of the tightened security measures: reusable water bottles, sunscreen, bug spray, camping chairs, coolers, umbrellas. I mean, if you're a family and you're going out to watch fireworks that aren't expected to start until after the president has spoken, it might make it tough to to hang out for hours on end.
ETTD. They can be used as weapons, ya know! Brown people all pack shivs. Trump does present a target rich environment for investigations. They’re gonna be investigating him long after his term is over. Pretty sure you’ll be pretty much alone. Mother Nature pats him gently on his pointed little head and says “Bless your heart.”

We close with a preview of the 2026 GOP midterms campaign:
Yeah, don’t think voters are gonna give a shit how many air conditioners France 🇫🇷 doesn’t have.* Can you use your 401k to buy groceries? Asking for a friend. 

*They’re very serious about this:
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Stephen Miller and “Birth Tourism”

To begin with, we have to acknowledge that “birth tourism” is real. But it’s also minuscule:

Though hard to know for certain, the most expansive albeit contested estimate based on review of U.S. Census Bureau data is that up to 26,000 babies born in the United States annually could be attributed to birth tourism—a tiny fraction of the more than 3.5 million U.S. births yearly. Yet the idea has nonetheless taken center stage in the Trump administration’s campaign against the guarantee of birthright citizenship. An executive order, issued by President Donald Trump on his first day back in office, would limit automatic citizenship to children born to at least one U.S.-citizen or lawful permanent resident parent.
We should pause here to note Trump’s order changes the constitutional requirement from jus soli to jus sanguinus, a citizenship standard only recognized in this country by statute for children born to American parents overseas. It has never been the law of the land, and is clearly not the standard in the 14th amendment, yet three justices would rewrite the first clause of that amendment. Never let me hear again about “activist judges” rewriting the law.

Birth tourism is, as I said, real:
The Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific, has attracted special scrutiny since it allows visa-free entry to nationals of certain countries. Congressional Republicans have specifically raised concerns about Chinese women using the territory to gain U.S. citizenship for their baby. The issue also received attention after authorities in 2015 raided “maternity hotels” in Southern California used by Chinese women. The prevalence of Russian women giving birth in South Florida has also generated headlines.

The federal government has advanced a number of initiatives to address birth tourism. These include criminal prosecutions of people linked to birth tourism schemes and a 2020 regulation rendering inadmissible women with a tourist visa who are found to be traveling primarily to the United States to give birth. In 2024, the government modified a visa-free program for the Northern Mariana Islands amid concerns about birth tourism abuses. And this April, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched an initiative to investigate birth tourism networks.

In defending the executive order, the Trump administration has asserted that limiting birthright citizenship to lawfully present and long-term foreign-born residents is the only way to address birth tourism. Critics of the executive order argue these concerns can be effectively addressed by means short of undermining a touchstone constitutional protection with deep roots in U.S. history. Opponents also note that the number of babies who would lack U.S. citizenship at birth would far surpass those born as the result of birth tourism.
Following the Barbara decision there was renewed (racist) concern from the administration (and a revived reference to “communist” China, not coincidentally) about Chinese mothers coming to America, but silence on the Russia connection. I don’t have a problem with limiting “birth tourism.” But that’s not what Trump is trying to do.

One great irony of this is that Trump’s policy would create an entire class of stateless persons.
The order would lead to an estimated 255,000 babies born in the United States annually without U.S. citizenship to parents who are either unauthorized immigrants or on long-term temporary visas, according to Migration Policy Institute (MPI) calculations. Accounting for other demographic trends, MPI estimates ending birthright citizenship could increase the size of the unauthorized population by up to an additional 2.7 million people by 2045 and 5.4 million by 2075.
Unless the countries of their parents recognize jus sanguinus, those children would not be citizens anywhere. Not that this administration cares; the parents and their children are non-persons in the eyes of Stephen Miller.

How many children are we talking about? The 26,000 number comes from an anti-immigration think tank. The CDC puts the number at 9600, based on birth mothers listing foreign home addresses. Either way, in a nation with 3.5 million births a year, it’s barely a drop in the demographic bucket. 🪣 

Again, this is a subject Congress can address:
Birth tourism, the contemporary phrase, was preceded by the pejorative term “anchor baby,” used since the 1970s to describe the practice by principally Mexican immigrants crossing the border to have a baby who would be a U.S. citizen and could eventually sponsor their extended family to immigrate legally. Without knowing the prevalence of this phenomenon, Congress quietly addressed the issue in the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1976. The 1976 act for the first time applied an age requirement of 21 to sponsor a relative from the Western Hemisphere for a green card, effectively ending the ability of minor children to act as “legal anchors” for relatives. Though birth tourism was not explicitly mentioned in the law, an internal State Department memo acknowledged the phenomenon, claiming that the provision was necessary because “large numbers of natives of Mexico have qualified to immigrate to the United States as parents of minor United States citizen children.”
But the Trump Administration isn’t interested in governance. It is only interested in ruling.

The administration has focused significant attention in its second term on immigration enforcement, including in its public argument to end birthright citizenship. It is therefore intriguing that birth tourism, a heretofore fringe issue in American politics with occasional media splashes, featured so prominently in the legal debate.

When and why that shift happened is unclear. What is evident, however, is that birth tourism is an extremely small phenomenon with no sign of becoming more pronounced. It has raised critical challenges—including visa fraud, tax evasion, business ethics, and access to medical care—that cut across multiple policy lenses including immigration, economics, and national security.

But some of these concerns have already been addressed by executive actions taken by prior administrations, including the 2020 regulation prohibiting use of B-2 visas exclusively for birth tourism, investigations and prosecutions of birth tourism facilitators, and increased screening of pregnant tourists to ensure they can pay for maternity and neonatal care. More recently, advocates seeking to limit the practice have proposed enhancing cooperation with international and national law enforcement agencies to target the businesses facilitating birth tourism. Other policy proposals have included greater scrutiny of pregnant tourists, stricter airline measures restricting how far along in their pregnancy women are able to fly, and increased consequences for those who engage in birth tourism. In addition, calls for increased data collection—to accurately measure the scope and scale of birth tourism—have sounded across the political spectrum.

These measures, if adequately resourced and properly implemented, show that policymakers can respond to the challenge of birth tourism without weakening the Constitution. Birthright citizenship has been regarded as a fundamental American principle of inclusivity and a constitutionally guaranteed protection written 150 years ago to end a troubling legacy of slavery. Undoing this principle to address a small-scale policy issue discounts the many other potential consequences of ending birthright citizenship.
I disagree that the first clause of the 14th was only intended “to end a troubling legacy of slavery.” I would argue it was intended to add an even more enduring legacy in America: racism. After all, when the Supreme Court first ruled on the 14th amendment’s citizenship clause, it was when the Chinese Exclusion Act was still law. It was under the provisions of that Act that Mr. Ark was denied entry back into his home country, making him essentially a stateless person. 

Four Supreme Court justices 133 years later, seem to be fine with that. Time really is a flat circle.⭕️ 
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I Think They’re Losing Their Minds

I’m pretty sure a woman could find room to give birth on the new flying bribery palace a/k/a “Air Force One.” Which is also the reason airlines won’t let pregnant passengers on a plane in the last months of pregnancy. 🤰 

They are coming apart at the seams.
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Wednesday, July 01, 2026

The Games People Play

Because of the replies on Twitter, I thought I’d explain.

I’ve seen people avoid paying a judgment, but never like this.

Trump deposited the amount of the judgment with the court, so he could appeal the verdict. It’s a bond, to be sure the judgment is paid if, as now, appeals are exhausted. Trump is now asking for time to file a motion for rehearing, or more accurately, to get the Supremes to reconsider their denial of appeal (technically, of the writ of certiorari). Which they won’t; IIRC, they sat on this for months (13, I want to say). They’re done.

So the trial court will deny Trump’s motion. He’ll appeal, and the appellate court will tell him to pound sand. And he’ll appeal that.

Or so Trump probably hopes. Sooner or later, Carroll gets the money, with interest. Trump can’t stop that; I’m not even sure he can postpone it. Once a judgment is final (as this one now is), courts are usually only interested in seeing it collected. They don’t have a lot of sympathy with deadbeat defendants.

So it’s likely the trial court will just release the money and end the game. There’s really no reason not to. Trump may be hoping to postpone the inevitable. I don’t see why the courts should play along.
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Connect The Dots

(Rural voters in Texas are largely Republican voters.)

Because there seems to be a major disconnect. (Although I do think Karp and Vance are connected at some quantum level, because they both go off like lunatics at roughly the same time. Or maybe it’s just a contagion passed from Karp to Thiel to Vance.)
Somethin’s happenin’ here….

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“Trickle Down” Is Still…

.. the horse gets the oats, and you get what trickles down.

Trump’s media company stock is in the toilet, btw. But Trump made his money on the front end, there. His crypto money likewise came from fees paid to purchase it. The coin itself is worth about $1.67. Trump doesn’t care.
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Fundamentally Misinterpreted

Pretty sure this Administration has already told parents: “Your baby can stay, but you have to go.”

Also pretty sure Roberts laid out the history of jus soli citizenship in the Barbara opinion: that it was adopted by the government after independence, and was added to the Constitution to insure the children of slaves born here would indeed be citizens (and that wasn’t limited to children born AFTER the 13th amendment was adopted). Roberts also included the Congressional arguments over the 14th, which included challenges that the language would cover immigrants and “the Chinese.” To which the sponsor said: “Yup.”

Interesting that that legislative history was not reviewed in U.S. v. Ark. Seems they didn’t feel the need to in 1893, even with the Chinese Exclusion Act on the books. This is how we identify progress.
What’re you gonna do about it? “Pack” the Court? Amend the Constitution? Pass a new statute in the last 3 weeks of the pre-election session? The White House thinks the country has fundamentally misinterpreted the intent of the Emoluments Clause.
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Fired Up

 I am going to shamelessly copy this from TC:

DEMOCRATS SHOULD POINT OUT, at every possible turn that now it's the Democratic Socialists who want:

YOU TO OWN YOUR HOME,

YOU TO KEEP YOUR HOME,

YOU TO KEEP YOUR FARM,

YOU TO KEEP YOUR RETIREMENT SAVINGS,

YOU TO KEEP YOUR MONEY,

YOU TO EDUCATE YOUR CHILDREN,

YOU TO KEEP OWNERSHIP OF YOUR BODY,

YOU TO KEEP YOUR HEALTH AS LONG AS POSSIBLE, ETC.

AND IT'S THE REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS WHO ARE TAKING ALL OF THOSE AWAY FROM YOU.

They should say that since that's socialism NOW, that's what voters really want.

That's how scary those Democratic Socialists really are, that they want to do that FOR YOU and it's the Republicans who are DOING THE OPPOSITE TO YOU RIGHT NOW. The very things we were always told was a consequence of socialism, losing your property, turns out to be a consequence of capitalism American 2026 style.
The GOP is united around the message that immigrants want your houses (just by being here they’ve driven up the cost of housing. Somehow.), but “affordability” is a hoax, which is why Trump can’t sign the housing bill, but we must keep pregnant foreigners out of America because…freedom?

Xenophobia is literally all they’ve got. And they think that’s enough to distract from that laundry list of concerns that have been bothering Americans since Covid. 

They lose.
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Trump Is Panicking About Paxton

Can’t imagine why: But why else come to Dallas in September? It’s not like “As goes Texas, so goes the election.”
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“Because Birth Tourists Are Polluting Our Bloodlines”

He means “white people.” This is bringing all of the racists out of the woodwork.

At least it’s easier to identify them, now. What’s the current number? 60% of Americans can’t pay their bills? How many can’t afford housing? And yet immigrants are racing here to pop out babies who are “anchors”? In the country with the least support for children, childcare, and maternity, in the industrialized world?
Yeah; this can’t possibly be about racism.
What crime is that? Non-white women visiting America?
Rep. Randy Fine accuses SCOTUS of "facilitating the invasion of this country," adding that "we're gonna have to reduce immigration of all kinds, because if we say that once you get off the plane and hide for a while and you have a baby, that baby is American, we're not gonna be able to let people come here"
Literally afraid of a nation of immigrants. "Reason for visit?”

“To pollute American bloodlines with Chinese babies. Oh, and US. v Ark, 1893.”
Working hard to resurrect eugenics. 🤔
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Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Wrapping Up Another Turn Around The Sun

Focused like a laser beam on the concerns of the electorate.

And now, lessons from VP Vance:
A “moral win” in court and $5 will buy you a cup of coffee. Is he expecting Roberts to die? Or retire? Or Comey Barrett? Because the likeliest candidates for replacement before 2028 are Alito and Thomas. And changing either of them won’t change the results.

But if that’s the morbid campaign promise you want the GOP to run on, don’t let me get in the way. Besides:
Did they teach you anything at Yale Law School! Or they just don’t have the votes. Me, I’d prefer the filibuster be eliminated. It still won’t get the SAVE America act passed, and it would speed the plow in 2027.

Be careful what you ask for, little boy.  The Senate GOP may be doing you a favor.
Only if the inmates are running the asylum. You can’t be a part of this Administration and be coherent. Still not familiar with the concept. He is just too ignorant to stop and realize how ignorant he is.
I like AOC, but boo-fuckin’ hoo. Boomers born ten years in rode waves of boom and bust that kept most of us in economic straits long after our parents were at our age. The long term boom of the postwar era ebbed in the late ‘60’s, and turned into inflation that lasted into the ‘80’s. Double digit inflation the likes of which nobody not a Boomer and alive today has seen.

The world “you’ve” been left with? Boomers didn’t like the world they were “left with,” so they fucking changed it. Not completely; the economics of it got worse, not better.  But you have two choices: light a candle; or curse the darkness.

And while we’re on the subject, what about the generation born into the Great Depression? The same generation that had to go to war against Germany and Japan. Do you think they felt “a tremendous amount of betrayal about the world [they’d] been left with’?

As Chris Rock used to say: “Whaddya want, a cookie?”

Don’t whinge; nobody likes whingers.

On the other hand:
Stephen Miller on Birthright Citizenship Decision: I can step tomorrow onto the deck of a 747. It does not mean that I'm the pilot of that plane and I'm qualified to fly it.

We have people from all over the world from third world nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel let alone modern technology, let alone medicine, let alone air travel, and they can just come into the country, have a baby, and then that baby is automatically a citizen? The baby can sit on a jury when they turn 18??
He’s afraid of non-white babies. (He’s ignorant as a stump, too.)
Collins: Do you really think the president has dementia?

Pritzker: I do. Look at any of the videos from 2015 or 2016 and then you fast forward and look at him now, I really think that there's something genuinely wrong with him.
Dementia. Or incompetence that has him in so far over his head when he looks up he can’t see bottom. He only did this to stay out of jail, after all. And he’s so demented he’s grifting like mad? He seems to know what he’s doing there.
TRUMP’S FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE JUST DROPPED…AND IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT.

The U.S. Office of Government Ethics released Donald Trump’s 927-page financial disclosure today. Here’s what a sitting U.S. President made in 2025:

💰 $635 MILLION from the TRUMP memecoin, while retail investors watched it crash from $74 to $1.68

💰 $594 MILLION from World Liberty Financial token and stablecoin sales, a crypto venture co-founded with his own sons

💰 $65 MILLION from selling equity in that same company

💰 $80+ MILLION in media settlements from ABC, CBS, Meta, and YouTube, paid to his own presidential library

Total crypto haul: over $1.4 BILLION. In one year. While serving as President of the United States.

His net worth has nearly TRIPLED, from $2.4 billion to $6.3 billion, since taking office.

And while Trump pocketed $1.4 billion from crypto, the everyday Americans who bought his memecoin? They lost. 764,000 wallets ended up in the red.

This is the most corrupt presidency in American history. Period.
Square that circle for me. Just don’t call it “feral cunning.” Much better than whinging.

Swinging back around to VP Vance (not coincidentally):
It's hard to know what to make of the Vice President's bizarre, almost nonsensical, comments here. It sounds like he is equating the use of these "hideous signs" to an alternative version of the Nicene Creed.

A little background: The Nicene Creed, formulated by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, is an essential profession of faith used by the Catholic Church (among other churches). It is also the familiar creedal formula spoken by Catholics during Sunday Masses: "I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth..." It's a statement of belief, mainly about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It obviously doesn't talk about "hideous signs" welcoming people.

However, the Nicene Creed does affirm belief in the church as "one, holy, catholic and apostolic." (These are the four traditional "marks" of the church.) This means, among other things, believing that the church comes to us directly from the apostles (it's "apostolic"). Thus, it derives its authority not only from Jesus Christ, but also through the "apostolic succession," an authority passed down from the apostles in the early church to the Pope and to the bishops today.

It's ironic, then, that the Vice President is mocking things like love and the church's teaching on migrants in the same breath that he is professing his faith through the words of the Creed, which includes belief in authority of the church. Because this "one, holy, catholic and apostolic" church has long proclaimed the Gospel message of love and care for the stranger, which Jesus himself preached during his public ministry.

So a butchering of the Creed would mean, in fact, not listening to the church's teaching on these matters and, even worse, not listening to Jesus's own teaching on love and loving the stranger.

Because, in the words of the Creed, we also believe in "one Lord, Jesus Christ."
"Care for the stranger" is one of the consistent messages in the scriptures, starting with Abraham at the oaks of Mambre, all the way through to the Christian epistles. It is a primary feature of the law of Moses (care for the strangers among you, for you were strangers yourselves), and a primary teaching of the major and minor prophets, as well as throughout the four gospels. 

Vance really is just a relentless boob.
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How I Feel Today

Unless you have a note from your doctor saying you are not in your third trimester. A) It doesn’t work that way
B) Even if it did, Congress is going to recess about three weeks after the 4th, and not return until after the elections.
C) Trump is such an incompetent boob, he doesn’t understand the Constitution, the concept of the constitution, or the Congressional calendar.
Manchurian candidate children? I guess. 🤷‍♂️ 
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Fallout

Oh, okay. (You can’t fix stupid.)
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“Fuck ‘Em. They Weren’t Born Here.”

CNN: Hours before the earthquake in Venezuela, close to 150 people on a deportation flight were at the epicenter and the hotel they were in collapsed. Many remain missing. Do you think DHS has responsibility to account for those missing?

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ: No I don't. It's just an act of God.
"And even if they were, they shouldn’t have been citizens.”

Or does he mean God wanted them dead? 😵 
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Is There A Medical Condition…

... for not knowing how to use words?

And is it contagious?
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Even The Supreme Court Is Supposed To Follow Rules

I haven’t read the Court opinions, but from what I’ve heard, Justice Thomas sails blithely past the fundamental rule of constitutional and statutory interpretation, without even a passing nod.

If I remember correctly from law school (which I left almost 40 years ago), statutory (or constitutional) interpretation starts with the plain language of the statute/provision. The idea arises from English common law. Torts, for example, in the common law, arise from practice, not legislation (I speak generally). So “assault” is defined in case law as an “offensive contact,” and further refined “offensive” as understood by “a reasonably prudent person.” (No, I’m not going to define that. This discussion won’t need more rabbit holes.)  To determine what that means on the facts presented by a particular case, you have to refer to relevant case law, seeking definitions of “contact” and “offensive,” and so on. I can tell you that, while you might think contact must be bodily, in one case the defendant struck the tray out of the hands of the plaintiff. That was deemed “contact” sufficient to establish the tort.

Similarly, with statutory interpretation, one begins with the case law. I don’t know what Thomas does with Wong Kim Ark, but that case clearly held that a person born here was “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” His parents certainly were: the Chinese Exclusion Act barred them from being citizens, but not, the Court held, their child, under a very plain reading of the first clause of the 14th Amendment. Which, frankly, I find dispositive of Thomas’ putative argument. At least what I’ve read about it. (Caveats abound!) If the case law doesn’t provide an adequate interpretation of the statute based on the facts presented, one turns, carefully, to statutory interpretation.

Such interpretation starts with the language of the law. If that doesn’t clearly answer the question, one looks to the legislative history, or even how words and phrases were understood at the time the law was adopted. I can tell you as some trained in textual analysis and word changes (both in literature and Biblical works), that the rules of statutory interpretation are often obtuse and bizarre. But we don’t have to go into them because, as I said, Thomas doesn’t.

What Thomas does is ignore the language of the 14th, and replace it with his own. So children of slaves get citizenship, which bootstraps him into citizenship. (Rather like Thomas would undo every Court ruling on what marriages are allowed by the Constitution, except Loving v Virginia, the case that disallows criminalizing mixed race marriages.) But people not “domiciled” here, says Thomas, have no such privilege.

Here I would point out that “domicile” and “residency” have little meaning in Texas law. You need an address in order to register to vote; or to use some of the city services of Houston, like recycling centers (largely meant to keep companies from showing up with skiploaders of trash). But “residency” had limited meaning in Texas law, and I don’t believe the word appears anywhere in the Constitution. Even the restrictions on the President, who must be over 35 and a “natural born citizen” (i.e., by birth), doesn’t include being a resident of the United States, or domiciled here. Frankly, if we’re going to add requirements to the qualifications, it should bar anyone convicted of a crime of moral turpitude. A felony, IOW. But we can’t interpret the Constitution that way (or even bar a candidate for participating in an insurrection; clause 3 of the 14th.) We can decide a President enjoys limited criminal immunity, but that’s a different question of Constitutional interpretation (not really different, but we pretend it is).

But I digress, and I said I wouldn’t do that. The point being, Thomas is reading the requirements of residence or domicile, even allegiance, into the plain text of the Constitution, when those words don’t appear, those concepts don’t apply (else they would have been included). I was a child in school pledging allegiance to the flag and the United States long before I had any idea what I was pledging (or what “pledging” meant), but I was an American citizen ab initio, because of place of birth, not because of my parents (i.e., blood). Nor did the freed slaves have to pledge allegiance in order to be free (the states put a lot of other restrictions on them, but that’s another matter). Indeed, the descendants of slaves didn’t enjoy the full benefits of citizenship until the Civil Rights movement and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts (now a half a loaf victory, thanks to this Court).

Thomas, in short, wants to create a 14h Amendment as he sees fit, from whole cloth, and tailored to his individual preferences. The latter he doesn’t get in this republic, although he and Stephen Miller and Elon Musk, among others, think they’re entitled to do so, simply because they prefer the country that way. As for the former, that would require an amendment to the 14th Amendment (that would not be a constitutional anomaly), which he can retire and lobby Congress for as a private citizen. Of course, his sugar daddies might not be quite so interested in buying gifts for him then….

We’re gonna need two Congresses simultaneously; or just one, that can walk and chew gum.  There’s a lot of legislation to be written and/or amended (starting with the VRA, ending with the size, and term limits, of the Court); and a separate track just to clean the Augean stables of the rank corruption these decades have wrought.

But they can start with forcing the corrupt Thomas from the bench. His corruption is not just ethical, it’s in his legal reasoning, which is NOT all created equal but just applied differently.  If that were true, we’d all be able to graduate law school handily. And then we really would have an Idiocracy.

(Somebody told Trump about U.S. v. Ark. That link also shows the argument accepted by Thomas has an old, and racist, pedigree, Quelle surprise, huh?
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The Taney Court Rises From The Dead Bottom

BREAKING: The Supreme Court holds that the Fourteenth Amendment protects birthright citizenship, blocking Donald Trump's executive order to end it.

Roberts has the opinion for the court, which is 5-4 on the constitutional question and 6-3 on whether federal law protects birthright citizenship.
Kavanaugh dissented on the constitutional question (?), but affirmed the statutory one (??).

Earl Warren held Brown v Board until he had crafted an opinion that won unanimous support. And that case didn’t involve black letter constitutional law.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
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Well, I’ve Heard Of Brooke Rollins….

"President Trump who?" (Does anybody ever ask why he needs to raise money? He won’t spend it on Congressional races. He’s hobbling those with his policies. And he can’t run again. It’s just pure grift. P.T. Barnum was right.) A golden age. They get the gold. We get the shaft. (Is this really the best they can do?) Still the best answer. Oh, no, don’t stop there.
Let me tell you what just got reported, because you will not believe it until you see it laid out.

The Trump administration cut a billion-dollar tungsten deal with Kazakhstan. Tungsten is the metal we need for missile warheads, fighter jets, and computer chips. Trump himself got on the phone to close it. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick worked it from the inside, sending letters, leaning on the Kazakh president, lining up as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing.

Within weeks of those negotiations, investors tied to a firm partly owned by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump took a 20% stake in an entity connected to the very same Kazakhstan project their father was negotiating. Around that same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm run by Lutnick’s own sons, raised $210 million for a partner in the deal and pocketed the fees.

The fathers set the policy. The sons cashed in.

Six days after the Trump sons and their partners moved their money, Lutnick signed the final deal.

The reporting found one or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies working with the government on critical mining deals.

The total federal funding flowing toward those companies tops $8.9 billion.

This is your tax money.

It is supposed to secure our supply chains and protect our troops, not pad the portfolios of the President’s children and the Commerce Secretary’s children.

This is the most corrupt administration in American history. It is not close.

We must keep digging, and keep asking the questions they do not want asked. Republicans in Congress are unwilling to lift a finger. Mike Johnson is running a protection racket.

Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.
Congressional oversight is a quaint concept. But it is what Mike Johnson is worried about.
Johnson: If we lose the midterms, these Democrats will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they'll go after the president's family, the cabinet, his donors, friends, half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. We’ll take care of you.
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More Importantly…

... can we drain the pool and measure the “cut”? Or will you have to put a tarp over the pool first?

Are you going to arrest people who try to take pictures of the damage?
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Isn’t It Ironic? Don’t You Think?

A little too ironic?
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A Reminder…

... that the first Europeans to come to this continent (well, from Columbus on), came looking for resources to exploit; or “cites of gold” (El Dorado), or even magical fulfillment (the Fountain of Youth). And gaining wealth was predicated on exploiting labor (just read Moby Dick), or the brutality of slavery. The Cain and Abel of American history.

And the “American Dream” is still an amalgam of possession, exploitation (AI is the latest in a long line of efforts to exploit resources at the expense of many for the benefit of a few. Even Andrew Carnegie built libraries across the country. What has Elon Musk done for anyone besides Elon Musk?), and the pursuit of money as the only real “pursuit of happiness.”

We convinced ourselves (very recently) that we are the “land of the free because of the brave” so we could just justify the standing military and the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us against.  What he was warning about was the siren song of all that money. $80 billion worth Trump managed to burn up in a month, to what end? So we could be free? Or so we could be brave? Or so defense contractors could get a lot of money?

🎶 “It’s money that matters/in the U.S.A. 🎶

That die was cast over 500 years ago.
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Monday, June 29, 2026

Walking While Not White (But Wearing White)

She was walking to Mass.
Ugboaja is also a registered nurse at South Texas Health System and worked previously for 10 years as a certified nursing assistant at DHR Health in Edinburg, Riojas confirmed.

Members of congress representing south Texas intervened with federal officials. As of Monday, Ugboaja was back in her home.
She lives in McAllen. She was walking to a church in McAllen. But she’s not white. That’s all it took.

And then it took the attention of elected federal officials to get her released.

Somewhere, Stephen Miller is grinning an evil, shit-eating grin. This is his dream.
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How It’s Going

MacFarlane: I feel like all of this was doomed to fail at the Great American State Fair the second Milli Vanilli canceled. Only bad things happen when Milli Vanilli cancels on you.

It’s going to be a chapter of the story of Trump that’s titled, Milli Vanilli Canceled on Trump, but He Persevered.

Yes. Here’s the thing. I’ve got an official document here. I’ve got a Post-it note that lists all the important dates coming up soon on Trump vanity projects.

It’s put-up-or-shut-up time. July 8, he’s going to be in court—or his Department of Justice will be in court—on the slush fund.

July 9, the Department of Justice, has to actually put on paper what it says people did at the reflecting pool. That’s the deadline to charge people either with minor water touching or some type of felonious box-cutter assault.

Then, in mid-July, he’s got to answer for the tarp on the Kennedy Center. The judge wants to know why the tarp is still up there and when the tarp is coming down.

There’s an Epstein file deadline this week….
Working hard to win the midterms! Like a rock. Tied around the country’s neck. And you’re just the guy who can sell that…to MAGA. Maybe. In those three races in New York….
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Telling The Emperor He Is Not Naked—State Fair Edition

It’s a pancake 🥞 eating contest. For MAHA. 🤡 Trump is watching Fox with the picture off. When the people show up, they’ll be there! 🤪
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Why Must Everyone Laugh At My Mighty Sword?

Trump really thinks he has superpowers, which extend to even campaigning for the office. (Please note the POTUS has no Presidential shield from civil judgments, a precedent set at least by Bill Clinton.)

I wonder if the Roberts Court will decide buying interests in a mining company is part of the President’s “official duties”? It is enough to get him impeached and removed from office. But being POTUS is not enough to protect him from civil discovery in the BBC libel suit Trump started.
Also, too, as well: I really don’t think the broad scope of civil discovery in a suit Trump brought as a private citizen is going to support intervention by the DOJ to protect “government interests.”

🍿🍿
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Primal Forces 💰

The Roberts Court has overturned 90 years of precedent to say the POTUS can control “independent agencies,” by firing any agency head who isn’t loyal to the new Administration.

The Roberts Court has also sustained precedent, by ruling POTUS cannot fire a Federal Reserve Board governor without valid cause, which does not include half-baked allegations from anyone named Bill Pulte.

And here is the lesson: government regulatory agencies suck. But YOU DON’T FUCK WITH THE MONEY!💰 

That would be meddling with primal forces.

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😳

Trump: “Do you think people appreciate what a fantastic job we did in building and operating the Great American State Fair at the National Mall, packed with happy people, and everybody loving it? Ask yourself this simple question, ‘DO YOU THINK THAT OBUMA OR SLEEPY JOE BIDEN COULD HAVE DONE IT?’ THE ANSWER IS NO!”
Even flying over the fairgrounds, Trump couldn’t possibly miss how empty it was. Or that it closed yesterday due to rain. “Chaotic” seems optimistic. It looks much more like he’s completely lost touch with reality.
Every Trump debacle follows the same 13 steps. The reflecting pool fiasco is just one of the lower stakes versions of it.
1. Devise unnecessary spectacle
2. Disregard expertise
3. Bypass normal procedures
4. Declare victory too early (bonus if done by AI-slop post)
5. Spend way more than estimated
6. Ignore the haters
7. Realize it is not going well
8. Bypass normal procedures once again
9. Allege conspiracy and sabotage
10. Redeclare victory
11. More blaming
12. Losing interest
13. Pretend it never happened, and move on to the next thing
I think we’re at step 7, although arguably Trump’s post is skipping ahead to step 10. This “fair” is supposed to run through July 10, so we’ll see if they mercifully pull the plug early, or let the corpse just continue to fester. 😳
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Sunday, June 28, 2026

God Giving Trump The Middle Finger

Or, why most state fairs are not scheduled in the summer.

(And global warming is a hoax!)
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Rain, Rain, Go Away…☔️

In the rain? Sure he did. Good to know he doesn’t need to be in the Situation Room getting updates on the “ceasefire” with Iran.

And did the tarp ever come down from the KENNEDY Center?
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