[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

Trump “celebrating” Juneteenth, a federal holiday that he once made positive campaign promises about and later recognized during his previous term:

Second news item

This seems to be hurting more than it’s helping:

Farmers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley say they are feeling the effects of workers failing to show up due to the continued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.

Farmer Nick Billman of Donna told Nexstar’s KVEO that the raids are keeping employees from coming to work, leaving farmers without any help. He said things started getting worse just weeks ago.

“I would say within the last three weeks, it started to slow, but this last week has been huge,” Billman said. “That is when it has been zero people wanting to come out and be exposed, to be able to be picked up, whether they are legal or illegal.”

. . .Billman reported having zero workers on his farm for the past week.

“One hundred percent. One hundred percent don’t want to come out of fear of being picked up even if they are doing it the right way,” Billman said.

More casualties:

The produce market in downtown Los Angeles has become another casualty of the ICE raids happening across Southern California, with employees not showing up and customers staying away out of fear of being detained.

Rotting fruit and vegetables scattered throughout the market were seen on Tuesday in what would otherwise be a bustling scene. Store after store closed for now, each with plenty to sell but no one to buy.

The immigrant community usually fills the L.A. produce market but since ICE agents arrived in downtown, the market has been empty, with only a trickle of workers showing up.

And then there is this ruling:

A federal appeals court has indefinitely blocked an effort by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to reclaim control of the National Guard troops President Donald Trump deployed to Los Angeles following unrest related to immigration enforcement.

The three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that Trump appeared to have acted within his authority when he took control of 4,000 California National Guard troops under a law that has never been invoked without the consent of a state governor.

Third news item

Trump and his “two more weeks” claim :

President Trump has stepped back from bombing Iran, giving Tehran up to two weeks to negotiate an end to the conflict with Israel.

Trump is looking for an “off-ramp” after advisers became concerned at Iran’s ability to hit United States bases across the Middle East and kill American troops in retaliation for any military intervention, such as the targeting of nuclear facilities with bunker-busting bombs, The Times understands. On Wednesday, Tehran wreaked considerable damage against targets in Israel, including by using hypersonic missiles to evade Israel’s Arrow interceptor system.

Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, quoted the president as saying: “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”

This:

And at some point Benjamin Netanyahu will be gone, probably replaced by a (moderately) more dovish prime minister. His retirement would drain some of the venom from the American left’s antipathy to the Jewish state and possibly encourage moderates who have soured on it to look at it with fresh eyes.

All that’ll be left to do at that point is, uh, broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians before whatever depraved successor to the PLO and Hamas gets up and running. Piece of cake.

But in the meantime, Willick is right: The Israelis should handle Fordow themselves if at all possible. Their enemies in the United States are looking for excuses to hold a grudge. They shouldn’t give them one.

Read the whole thing.

P.S. If recent history tells us anything, maybe not count on anything happening after the two week mark.

UPDATE: So this is happening:

The President will make an Address to the Nation at 10:00PM ET. Tune in! pic.twitter.com/WT0AeS3ghA

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) June 22, 2025

Now what?? What kind of payback are we looking at? After all, we have troops and bases in Europe and the ME. What about the Straits of Hormuz?? We are now in a war. And with no Congressional authorization. Just because American planes are safely on their way home doesn’t make a difference to Iran.

Fourth news item

Ethical questions raised:

Adriana Smith, a 31-year-old Georgia nurse and mother, was just eight weeks pregnant when she was declared brain dead in February after suffering a medical condition.

However, the family claims the hospital told them legally she had to be kept on life support to allow the fetus to grow. The family claims doctors told them they were not legally allowed to consider other options, according to local Atlanta station 11Alive.

Last week, Smith’s baby was born by emergency Caesarean section, weighing under 2 pounds and needing care in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), reported 11Alive.

. . .

The case has captured national attention and raised numerous legal and ethical questions about medical consent; who should get to make decisions for permanently incapacitated people, especially when pregnant; and whether abortion laws are further complicating pregnancy care.

“This is a case that reflects the confusion in the post-Dobbs-era,” Michele Goodwin, the O’Neill professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown Law, told ABC News, referencing the Supreme Court decision that resulted in the overruling of Roe v. Wade.

“Because the hospital believed that it could not allow this brain-dead woman to simply be deceased because the state has a very strict abortion law, they believe that they needed to do all matters possible to keep the fetus alive,” she continued.

Fifth news item

He does whatever he wants:

President Donald Trump has extended the deadline for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the short-form video app to an American owner by another 90 days.

On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order granting a third extension for the Chinese company to sell its platform so it can continue to operate in the United States.

At least some lawmakers and commentators are pointing out the wrongness of Trump’s action:

Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, told the Associated Press: “An executive order can’t sidestep the law, but that’s exactly what the president is trying to do.”

And:

“This is lawless—nothing in statute or otherwise permits the President to extend the deadline like this,” Heath Mayo, founder of conservative group Principles First. . .

Brazenly illegal. https://t.co/Nz5rplj6gG

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 19, 2025

Sixth news item

Let’s hope so:

Russian drone attacks against Ukraine might decrease due to Iranian Shahed production capabilities being targeted in Israeli strikes, Estonian military intelligence commander Ants Kiviselg said on June 20, according to the ERR broadcaster.

The comments come as Russian drone strikes across Ukraine have been breaking records in recent weeks, with nearly 500 drones and missiles launched overnight on June 9.

Have a good weekend.

—Dana

[guest post by JVW]

In a 6-3 decision, divided entirely how you think it would be. From Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion [SB1 refers to the Tennessee law at issue in this case; citations have been removed]:

(1) On its face, SB1 incorporates two classifications: one based on age (allowing certain medical treatments for adults but not minors) and another based on medical use (permitting puberty blockers and hormones for minors to treat certain conditions but not to treat gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or gender incongruence). Classifications based on age or medical use are subject to only rational basis review. [. . .]

The plaintiffs argue that SB1 warrants heightened scrutiny because it relies on sex-based classifications. But neither of the above classifications turns on sex. Rather, SB1 prohibits healthcare providers from administering puberty blockers or hormones to minors for certain medical uses, regardless of a minor’s sex. While SB1’s prohibitions reference sex, the Court has never suggested that mere reference to sex is sufficient to trigger heightened scrutiny. And such an approach would be especially inappropriate in the medical context, where some treatments and procedures are uniquely bound up in sex.

The application of SB1, moreover, does not turn on sex. The law does not prohibit certain medical treatments for minors of one sex while allowing those same treatments for minors of the opposite sex. SB1 prohibits healthcare providers from administering puberty blockers or hormones to any minor to treat gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or gender incongruence, regardless of the minor’s sex; it permits providers to administer puberty blockers and hormones to minors of any sex for other purposes. And, while a State may not circumvent the Equal Protection Clause by writing in abstract terms, SB1 does not mask sex-based classifications.

Finally, the Court rejects the plaintiffs’ argument that, by design, SB1 enforces a government preference that people conform to expectations about their sex. To start, any allegations of sex stereotyping are misplaced. True, a law that classifies on the basis of sex may fail heightened scrutiny if the classifications rest on impermissible stereotypes. But where a law’s classifications are neither covertly nor overtly based on sex, the law does not trigger heightened review unless it was motivated by an invidious discriminatory purpose. No such argument has been raised here. And regardless, the statutory findings on which SB1 is premised do not themselves evince sex-based stereotyping.

(2) SB1 also does not classify on the basis of transgender status. The Court has explained that a State does not trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny by regulating a medical procedure that only one sex can undergo unless the regulation is a mere pretext for invidious sex discrimination. [. . .]

By the same token, SB1 does not exclude any individual from medical treatments on the basis of transgender status. Rather, it removes one set of diagnoses—gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, and gender incongruence from the range of treatable conditions. SB1 divides minors into two groups: those seeking puberty blockers or hormones to treat the excluded diagnoses, and those seeking puberty blockers or hormones to treat other conditions. While the first group includes only transgender individuals, the second encompasses both transgender and nontransgender individuals. [. . .]

This case was controversial and complex enough that Justices Alito, Thomas, and Barrett all filed concurring opinions which deviated slightly from the main ruling. In total, there are 118 pages of rulings in this case. Justice Alito mostly concurs, but he finds that SB1 does indeed classify based upon transgender status; he just doesn’t believe that invalidates the legislation. And he points out that creating a classification of “transgender” is challenging, given that defining the term as people who identify with the opposite sex from their birth sex, people who identify with both sexes, people who identify with neither sex, and people who identify with something other than a standard sex categorization renders the transgender classification too amorphous for legal usage.

Justice Thomas used his concurrence to also remind the Court that he disagrees with the Bostock ruling which conflated “sexual orientation” with “sex” in matters pertaining to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act:

I see in any event no reason to import Bostock’s Title VII analysis into the Equal Protection Clause. The Bostock Court recognized that “other federal . . . laws that prohibit sex discrimination” were not before it [. . . ] and thus rested its analysis on what it took to be the ordinary meaning of the relevant statutory terms — “because of,” “otherwise . . . discriminate against,” and “individual” — within the context of Title VII [. . . .]

The Equal Protection Clause includes none of this language. [. . .]

[. . .]

While the majority concludes that SB1 does not discriminate based on sex even under Bostock’s incorrect reasoning, [. . .] I would make clear that, in constitutional challenges, courts need not engage Bostock at all.

Justice Thomas’s long concurrence is also interesting because he expends a great deal of time dismantling the case for transitioning transgender youth, eviscerating the very influential World Professional Association for Transgender Health, who has argued that transitioning minors is a safe and effective treatment option, for “rest[ing] this conclusion on self-referencing consensus rather than evidence-based research,” and he concludes with a warning that warms my cynical heart: “In politically contentious debates over matters shrouded in scientific uncertainty, courts should not assume that self-described experts are correct.”

Justice Barrett, joined by Justice Thomas, concludes that transgender status should not be a suspect class:

[. . .] Laws distribute benefits that advantage particular groups (like in-state tuition for residents), draw lines that might seem arbitrary (like income thresholds for means-tested benefits), and set rules for specific categories of people (like a particular profession or age group). Such classifications do not usually render a law unconstitutional. Instead, as a general matter, laws are presumed to be constitutionally valid, and a legislative classification will be upheld “so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end.”

There are only a few exceptions to this rule: classifications based on race, sex, and alienage. Racial and ethnic classifications receive strict scrutiny; to survive a constitutional challenge, they must be “narrowly tailored” to serve “compelling governmental interests.” [. . .] Classifications based on alienage are subject to similarly close scrutiny. And laws distinguishing between men and women receive intermediate scrutiny; to survive a constitutional challenge, they must be “substantially related” to achieving an “important governmental objectiv[e].”

Beyond these categories, the set has remained virtually closed. Indeed, this Court “has not recognized any new constitutionally protected classes in over four decades, and instead has repeatedly declined to do so.” So in urging us to recognize transgender status as a suspect classification, the plaintiffs
face a high bar.

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Jackson and joined with one exception by Justice Kagan, dissents. Her dissent is long and tedious, and I confess that I have very little respect for what I was willing to speed-read of her reasoning, but she lays out her argument in five different sections, each of which per Court usage is assigned a Roman numeral (only a real asshole still uses Roman numerals to delineate items these days). Quoting her would be a fool’s errand, so here is my brief summation of each of her sections:

I. Doctors prescribe hormones to young boys and girls all the time in order to help them through puberty. That’s no different than prescribing them to help adolescents delay or even forestall puberty. She uncritically adopts the unproven contention that suicides will spike if these kids aren’t allowed to transition early. She also wrongly claims that this ban is still in effect even if the treatment is “medically necessary.” In fact, the majority simply recognizes that “necessary” is not such an expansive term that it encompasses what activists desire for their ideological satisfaction.

II. She rejects the majority’s deference to state legislatures, desiring the courts to actively meddle into all sorts of areas in the name of the Equal Protection Clause. Just look at the Bostock case for competent reasoning.

III. She really, really, believes that courts ought to be taking a strict look at these laws. And, um, Bostock rules!

IV. No guys, I mean she really, really, really, believes these laws need to be held to strict scrutiny by the courts. Even though the Court got things wrong fifty years ago in Geduldig v. Aiello, the judicial system should be given plenty of opportunities to continue to get things wrong. Like in Bostock! She also agrees with Justice Alito that SB1 does classify by transgender status, but unlike her colleague she finds this classification to be nefarious.

V. The Court needs a more strict level of review than the majority would have. Specifically, when we are at situations where some scientists marshal evidence in favor of one outcome and other scientists marshal evidence in favor of another, the majority would allow legislatures to choose which side they believe is more likely correct. Justice Sotomayor believes that it is the judicial system which should make the ultimate determination of which side has the better science behind its arguments. This was apparently a bridge too far for Justice Kagan who did not join in this fifth part of the dissent.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent reminds me of that more-clever-than-bright college student who figures that if they write a tediously long term paper continually hammering on the same two or three arguments, the professor will ultimately get tried of reading it and just grant the student an “A” grade. I made a half-hearted attempt to read through all thirty-one pages of her dissent, but I confess that the expository abilities of the Justice and her law clerks are not adequate to the task of holding my attention span that long, nor do I imagine that her colleagues can easily slog through her clunky and meandering prose.

Anyway, I approve of the majority’s decision and I am glad that we are taking clear steps to back away from the trans mania which has inflicted tremendous harm on young people over the past decade.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

The grift never sleeps:

The Trump Organization on Monday unveiled a mobile phone plan and a $499 smartphone that is set to launch in September.

The new service, Trump Mobile, will offer a $47.45-per-month plan that includes unlimited talk, text and data, as well as roadside assistance and a “Telehealth and Pharmacy Benefit,” according to its website.

The company, owned by President Donald Trump, also announced it will sell a “T1” smartphone, which appears to feature a gold-colored metal case etched with an American flag.

Don Trump Jr., who is EVP of the Trump Organization, said about the phones:

Trump Mobile is going to change the game, we’re building on the movement to put America first, and we will deliver the highest levels of quality and service. Our company is based right here in the United States because we know it’s what our customers want and deserve.

It’s funny how he says that they’re “building on the movement to put America first,” considering that items sold in the Trump Stores are identified as being made in China, (Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Pakistan). Just like the new Trump smartphone:

And that smartphone that the Trump organization claims is made in the US, is a cheap Chinese android device, that they are tripling the Amazon price of, slapping on new plastic, and calling it a day.

And the grift goes on. Yeah, the grift goes on. . .

—Dana

[guest post by danat]

Regarding the U.S. getting involved in the Israel-Iran conflict:

President Trump will meet with his national security team in the White House Situation Room at 1pm on Tuesday to make decisions about U.S. policy towards the war between Israel and Iran, three U.S. officials tell Axios.

The U.S. officials said Trump is seriously considering joining the war and launching a U.S. strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, especially its underground uranium enrichment facility in Fordow.

However, given Trump’s posts today, we must question whether we are already directly involved in the Israel-Iran conflict?

The question is: Where is the necessary Congressional authorization?

—Dana

[guest post by JVW]

Even though we are now two years removed from the centenary of his ascendancy to the Presidency, I find it necessary to call back to one of my five favorite Presidents who, it turns out, was a proponent of Flag Day long before President Harry S Truman officially established it in 1949. Yesterday I received an email message from the marvelous Calvin Coolidge Foundation, reminding me of this fact and linking to an essay about our Thirtieth President and his devotion to the celebration of Old Glory. As usual, President Coolidge has ideas well worth hearing.

As far back as 1862, Connecticut had been celebrating Flag Day on June 14, chosen in honor of the date in 1777 when the Continental Congress adopted the stars-and-stripes as the national flag. Various magazine editors and schoolteachers had observed the date informally since then, and many communities across the nation held Flag Day parades and orations. President Woodrow Wilson had observed June 14, 1916 as Flag Day, but neither he nor Congress seems to have made any attempt to treat this as an ongoing day of commemoration. So it was up to Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge to declare June 14, 1919 as Flag Day in the Bay State. In his usual fashion, he crafted some rousing words for the proclamation:

When the people of the Colonies were defending their liberties against the might of kings, they chose their banner from the design set in the firmament through all eternity. The flags of the great empires of that day are gone, but the Stars and Stripes remain. It pictures the vision of a people whose eyes were turned to the rising dawn. It represents the hope of a father for his posterity. It was never flaunted for the glory of royalty, but to be born under it is to be a child of a king, and to establish a home under it is to be the founder of a royal house. Alone of all flags it expresses the sovereignty of the people which endures when all else passes away.

The next year, Governor Coolidge followed-up with further thoughts, which still resonate today:

[Our flag] is the flag of a people who have arrived. It must be the flag who have the determination to remain. It stands for order and liberty, for freedom of the human hand and the human mind, free speech, free press, free church; it means that property and life and honor shall be inviolate, and it recognizes the duty of the people to protect each other in the security of these rights, and that all experience and all reason demonstrate that the sole source of such protection is in government according to law. Unless it be the symbol of the law administered by a government which has the disposition and the strength to be supreme, all the meaning and the glory of the flag fade away and all reverence for it perishes. It is time to realize that all those who disregard the law or resist the authority of government are disloyal to the flag. Whatever their motive or their station, they seek the destruction of all the flag represents.

Those words may sound surprising to our modern sensibilities, but read closely and understand the point that the governor is making is both the government (who must have “the disposition and the strength to be supreme”) and the people (who had better not “disregard the law or resist the authority of government”) have sacred obligations under our compact, or else the entire thing fails. Calvin Coolidge, as we have discussed previously, also insisted that the people were the government, so any failure of the government was ultimately a reflection upon the people who elected them to office.

By the time that Calvin Coolidge stepped into the Oval Office upon the death of President Warren G. Harding, he had begun a correspondence with Bernard J. Cigrand of Chicago, president of the National Flag Day Association, who was publicly advocating for an official holiday in honor of Old Glory. In a Flag Day letter to Mr. Cigrand in 1925, the President reiterated his sentiments from the 1919 proclamation, arguing again that the stars and stripes represented the sovereignty of the people as well as their obligations in maintaining that arrangement.

President Coolidge was still in office two years later when the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the flag came to pass on June 14, 1927. And of course the great man rose to the occasion with a stirring proclamation:

Flag Day on June 14 will mark the 150th anniversary of the adoption by Congress of the Stars and Stripes as the emblem of our nation. It is fitting that we should recall all that our flag means, what it represents to our citizens and to the nations of the earth.

There should be no more appropriate time to give thanks for the blessings that have descended upon our people in this century and a half, and to rededicate ourselves to the high principles for which our ensign stands. Liberty and union, freedom of thought and speech under the rule of reason and righteousness as expressed in our Constitution and laws, the protection of life and property, the continuation of justice in our domestic and foreign relations-these are among the high ideals of which our flag is the visible symbol.

It will be futile merely to show outward respect for our national emblem if we do not cherish in our hearts an unquenchable love of and devotion to the unseen things which it represents.

To the end that we may direct our attention to these things. I suggest that Flag Day be observed in the display of the stars and stripes in public places and upon public and private buildings and by patriotic exercises in our schools and community centres [sic] throughout the land.

Upon leaving the White House, Calvin Coolidge wrote a syndicated column for the McClure newspaper chain. In a June 12, 1931 column, he made his final public remarks on the importance of venerating this symbol of our nation, distilling his earlier thoughts into three succinct paragraphs, the final two of which carry his powerful message:

The stars and the red, white and blue colors have a significance of their own, but when combined and arranged into the flag of our nation they take on a new significance which no other form or color can convey. We identify the flag with almost everything we hold dear on earth. It represents our peace and security, our civil and political liberty, our freedom of religious worship, our family, our friends, our home. We see in it the great multitude of blessings, of rights and privileges, that make up our country.

But when we look at our flag and behold it emblazoned with all our rights we must remember that it is equally a symbol of our duties. Every glory that we associate with it is the result of duty done. A yearly contemplation of the meaning of our flag strengthens and purifies the national conscience.

Happy Flag Day. God bless America, and thank you, Lord, for giving us Calvin Coolidge.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

So this happened:

The Trump administration can maintain control of several thousand National Guard troops in California and continue to deploy them in Los Angeles, a federal appeals court ruled late Thursday, pausing a lower court ruling that determined President Donald Trump’s federalization of the guardsmen was unlawful.

The ruling by a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals keeps in place Trump’s directives authorizing the deployment of at least 4,000 California National Guard troops and several hundred Marines pending further litigation, even as state leaders cast the military presence as unnecessary and escalatory.

Second news item

Israel strikes:

Dozens of Israeli aircraft participated in an initial wave of strikes on dozens of military targets and Iranian nuclear sites early on Friday morning.

Warning sirens have been set off to get the public ready for potential Iranian counterattacks of ballistic missiles on Israel.

The IDF had not stopped attacking since the initial wave. Rather, as of 4:30 a.m., the IAF was still carrying out broad attacks, and there were no specific signs of stopping.

Moments ago, Israel launched Operation “Rising Lion”, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival.

This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.

——

Statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: pic.twitter.com/XgUTy90g1S

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) June 13, 2025

Iran warns:

Iran Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi:

We have received instructions from Imam Khamenei to punish the perpetrators of the crime and those who incited it.

Incredibly:

Israel spent years preparing for the operation against Iran’s nuclear and missile programs that was launched early Friday morning, a security official told The Times of Israel, including building a drone base inside Iran and smuggling precision weapons systems and commandos into the country.

The operation — dubbed “Rising Lion” — saw more than 200 Israeli Air Force aircraft participate in the opening strikes, as fighter jets dropped over 330 munitions on some 100 targets, the IDF said. Israel billed the strike as “preemptive” and “precise,” and said it had no choice but to damage the nuclear program of the Islamic Republic, which vows to destroy the Jewish state.

Third news item

Wonderful news:

Ukraine successfully brought back five children who had been forcibly taken to Russia as well as Russian-occupied territory, Presidential Office head Andriy Yermak announced on June 12.

The children have been returned home under the President of Ukraine’s initiative, Bring Kids Back UA, according to Yermak.

“We are fulfilling the President’s mission — to bring back every Ukrainian child,” Yermak said in an statement.

Reminder:

Since February 2022, at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted from Russian-occupied territories and sent to other Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine or to Russia itself, according to a Ukrainian national database, “Children of War.” Only 1,359 children have been returned thus far.

Fourth news item

Why the Supreme Court keeps granting stays to President Trump: It might be something other than the composition of the Court:

But my own view is that that’s too simplistic an explanation. After all, plenty of Republican-appointed lower-court judges have ruled against President Trump, including in some of these very same cases. Instead, it seems to me that Trump’s success rate in the Supreme Court, at least to this point, reflects three different—but related—phenomena that are Supreme Court-specific: the effective abandonment, at least by a majority of the justices, of traditional equities-balancing when deciding emergency applications; careful culling of cases by the Department of Justice (which has not sought emergency relief from the justices in the substantial majority of cases in which lower courts have blocked Trump policies); and the volume of applications itself—which has ratcheted up the amount of capital the Court would have to spend to rule against Trump in more than a handful of these (and other) disputes, such as the Alien Enemies Act cases.

None of these explanations is meant to condone the Court’s behavior, of course. But understanding why the Court is doing what it’s been doing may be helpful not just to those of us who are watching (and trying to understand) the Court from afar, but to lower courts and those challenging the Trump administration’s policies in thinking about how best to mitigate the (steadily increasing) risk of emergency intervention from the Supreme Court.

Fifth news item

A “dictator chic” parade:

On Saturday there will be tanks on the streets of the nation’s capital as Washington hosts a celebration of the US army’s 250th anniversary, which happens to coincide with Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.

While the army has said it has no plans to recognize Trump’s birthday, the president will play a major role in a made-for-TV extravaganza that will reportedly feature rocket launchers and missiles.

The show of military might comes just a week after Trump activated thousands of national guard troops and marines to quell protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles. Opponents draw a direct line from that crackdown to Saturday’s authoritarian display of dominance.

“He’s adopted not only the signifiers of dictator chic but the actual articles of its faith,” said Rick Wilson, a political strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. “North Korea: military parades. China: military parades. Russia: military parades.

“These aren’t parades to celebrate a victory and it’s certainly not to celebrate the United States army’s birthday. This is a parade to aggrandise Donald Trump’s ego. No one who knows either Trump or his pattern of behavior would think for a minute this is anything else.”

Sixth news item

Oh:

On Thursday, President Donald Trump acknowledged concerns from the agriculture and hospitality industries that his strict immigration policies are making it harder to retain long-time workers—even as his own company continues importing foreign workers through legal visa programs to staff its clubs and Virginia vineyard.

. . .
In a Truth Social post Thursday, Trump said his “very aggressive policy on immigration” is driving away long-time workers, citing complaints from the agricultural and hospitality industries—jobs those businesses are struggling to fill.

At the same time, the Trump Organization has consistently made use of temporary visa programs to hire foreign workers for Mar-a-Lago, four golf clubs and his Virginia winery—filing to bring in at least 1,880 seasonal workers since 2008, including 382 during Trump’s first term, according to Department of Labor data.

The company’s use of short-term, temporary visas has increased steadily in recent years, from requesting 121 in 2021 to asking for a high of 178 in 2024.

It’s unclear where the Trump Organization’s foreign workers are coming from. The Department of Labor does not disclose the nationalities of the foreign workers, though workers from 90 countries—including El Salvador, Haiti and several African nations—are eligible. In 2018, referring to immigrants from those regions, Trump asked lawmakers, “Why are we having all these people from s—hole countries come here?,” The Washington Post reported.

Seventh news item

Uh-oh:

An analysis by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education found that 2041 will have 388,000 fewer graduates than 2025, a 13 percent decrease. While some states, such as Florida, will see small class-size increases, 38 will have a reduction. The decline has already begun in the Midwest and the Northeast.

This downward slope will almost certainly continue beyond 2041. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. population will start waning in 2080 if current trends hold. In a lower-immigration scenario, the population could begin to decrease in fewer than 20 years. In either case, the U.S. will soon have fewer births than deaths and considerably more people over the age of 65 than under 18.

As a result, we can expect labor shortages, economic instability, empty classrooms, and threats to America’s geopolitical position. In Japan, the combination of an aging population and low birth rates has strained the nation. Its population has been dwindling for more than a decade, and twice as many people died as were born last year. Japan is facing labor shortages in nearly every industry, a military failing to reach its recruitment goals, a collapsing marriage rate, and a culture in decline. It is a warning to the West.

While increased immigration could temporarily mask the problem, it is not a particularly effective solution, especially because immigrants already make up their highest proportion of the U.S. population in more than a century. The United States needs more babies and support for young families. Some recent proposals include child tax credits and federal funding for IVF, but they have major economic or moral drawbacks. Moreover, studies show that pronatalist public policy has had little effect on fertility rates in Europe and elsewhere.

Have a good weekend.

—Dana

[guest post by JVW]

A weird story, reported by National Review Online:

The administration of New York Governor Kathy Hochul assigned a senior state government official to participate in back-channel talks led by a Chinese Communist Party bureau allegedly involved in espionage and co-opting foreign political leaders.

This individual was slated to deliver remarks on a Zoom call on October 19, 2023 with the CCP’s International Department and several Chinese officials linked to the Party’s political influence organs, according to emails and documents obtained by National Review under a public records disclosure law. Hochul’s then-director of Asian Affairs, Elaine Fan, coordinated the official’s participation. The official was only referred to as a “senior representative of New York State” and is not named in the correspondence.

The backstory to this is that, as we all remember, the Biden Administration came under enormous criticism for appearing flat-footed and unsure of itself when China floated what was almost certainly a spy balloon over the Northwestern United States (and Costa Rica!) earlier that year. This perception was not helped when three months later the Biden Administration meekly chose to delay sanctions against Beijing, while at the same time doing them a real favor by cancelling a scheduled visit by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. NRO reports that the administration was desperate to repair the relationship with the authoritarian government of China, fretting that economic fallout from sanctions would imperil Joe Biden’s reelection chances. And so they looked to Albany:

In a statement, Hochul’s press secretary Avi Small suggested that the administration’s involvement in the dialogue was authorized and that the State Department had coordinated its role in the talks: “The Hochul Administration has strong vetting procedures in place to review potential invitations and determine their provenance. It is not uncommon for the United States Department of State to ask state government officials to participate in conversations with foreign counterparts.”

[. . .]

Two months after the videoconference to which the Hochul administration sent a New York State official, General Secretary Xi Jinping visited San Francisco. Then, in January 2024, International Department minister Liu Jianchao, the lead Chinese delegate to the virtual talks, met with top Biden administration officials in Washington, D.C.

Meetings involving the International Department are controversial given its role in espionage and malign political influence schemes. Safeguard Defenders — the human-rights watchdog group that was first to reveal the existence of a secret Chinese government police station in New York City — has said that Liu was the architect of a global repression and kidnapping campaign in one of his prior roles. The Justice Department has brought numerous cases in recent years targeting alleged Chinese agents who played a role in those efforts.

So if I am reading this correctly, the Biden State Department pretty much used Kathy Hochul’s office as a front for, if not reopening, then certainly solidifying lines of communication with the murderous, genocidal government of China while publicly pretending to isolate them. Coincidently or not (and I’m guessing not), a month later Xi Jinping finds himself visiting San Francisco, which served as a nice excuse for Greasy Gavin and the incompetent London Breed to actually do something about the city’s vagrancy and drug problem. The Biden Administration never was serious about their threats of sanctions against China. Xi’s visit was followed up in January 2024 by a visit from China’s International Department bureau, a group which German intelligence services months earlier had warned is an active bureau in Chinese espionage. ID is headed up by a notorious CCP official named Liu Jianchao:

Meetings involving the International Department are controversial given its role in espionage and malign political influence schemes. Safeguard Defenders — the human-rights watchdog group that was first to reveal the existence of a secret Chinese government police station in New York City — has said that Liu was the architect of a global repression and kidnapping campaign in one of his prior roles. The Justice Department has brought numerous cases in recent years targeting alleged Chinese agents who played a role in those efforts.

Laura Harth, director of Safeguard Defenders’s China program, expressed concern about the Hochul administration’s role in the back-channel dialogue, telling National Review: “The set-up bears all the hallmarks of the CCP’s subnational influence campaigns, and is of particular concern given the growing awareness on the Party’s united front work and objectives.” The CCP’s united front work is its bespoke approach to influencing people outside of the Party to do Beijing’s bidding and destroying its enemies.

The Kathy Hochul administration has had some very questionable dealings with China and has shown a certain insouciance regarding the danger posed by Chinese assertiveness on the world stage. Our own Gavin Newsom also has a nasty predilection for cozying up to tyrants when he thinks he can derive political benefit from it, and he refuses to learn from past mistakes and keeps courting the same thugs who are happy to play him for the fool that he is.

There is more to the NRO piece, including some information about Elaine Fan, a former Hochul aide with an ugly history of facilitating Chinese propaganda. It turns out that Ms. Fan is the granddaughter of a CCP official from the Mao era who ended up serving as the chief editor of Xinhua News Agency, controlled by the party. Ms. Fan has apparently been living in the U.S. for some time (perhaps she has taken U.S. citizenship; the article does not say), and after leaving the Hochul administration she now works as a consultant for some NYC Mayoral candidate by the name of Scott Stringer. Ms. Fan has played a key role in secretive meetings of elite progressives and Chinese officials:

In an October 18 email addressed to Fan, Asia Society staffer Jing Qian thanked Fan for her “unwavering support in arranging a senior representative from the New York State to speak at tomorrow’s Track 1.5 Dialogue.” That term is diplomatic speak for back-channel talks involving both government officials and non-government officials.

[. . .]

An agenda for the virtual meeting that Qian attached to his email showed that the “Senior Representative of the New York State” was scheduled to speak during a plenary session of the dialogue the morning of October 19 focused on putting the U.S.-China relationship “on a more stable track.”

The documents Qian sent to Fan and U.S. participants in the dialogue were marked confidential and included a list of the speakers with lengthy professional biographies and headshots. An agenda for the meeting said that the International Department and the Asia Society “will independently draft own press release if they choose to.” It continued: “The co-hosting institutions will be acknowledged, and participants in the dialogue might be named, only with their consent.”

Pause here to mention that the Asian Society is a 501(c)3 organization which purports to be “dedicated to understanding Asia and its role in the world” and focuses on “bring[ing] together leading thinkers on policy, arts, culture, business, and education for lectures and discussions, analysis and reports, exhibitions, performances, networking and family events, and more.” It has six offices in the U.S., five in Asia, two in Europe, and one in Oceana. The fact that AS partners with the International Department in these secret conferences doesn’t inspire confidence in their independence.

While the International Department published a two-sentence summary of the talks five days after the virtual meeting, it only named the Asia Society as the U.S. organizing entity and did not name any of the attendees.

The documents obtained by National Review, which were marked “confidential,” listed American participants, including business executives and think tank scholars who have met frequently with Chinese officials, such as Asia Society fellow and former Obama State Department official Daniel Russel, Johns Hopkins professor Jessica Chen Weiss, MIT president emeritus Rafael Reif, Council on Foreign Relations President Michael Froman, and John Thornton, the executive chairman of Barrick Gold. Australian ambassador to the U.S. Kevin Rudd [ed: who is also a former Prime Minister] was a lead member of the Asia Society delegation.

The influence of the Asia Society extends to the present day as AS President Kyung-wha Kang and the aforementioned Mr. Qian recently met with ID’s Mr. Liu in Beijing. AS declined to comment to NRO on the meeting, though presumably they remain influential in Washington DC and various state capitals. As for New York and Governor Hochul, National Review had to invoke U.S. law to receive most of the information quoted in the article, and NY was actively unhelpful in fulfilling it:

Hochul’s office obstructed a previous National Review request for records under the Freedom of Information Law, claiming, falsely, that a search for correspondence related to China and Taiwan had yielded no responsive records.

Where China is concerned these days, you can bet that an awful lot of people have an awful lot to hide.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Can there be any doubt that the United States supports Russia in its efforts to destroy Ukraine as we know it? Can there be any doubt that Trump cozied up to Putin, thinking he’s a wiseguy just like the president of Russia, but the truth is, Putin is pulling the strings of Trump, the clueless puppet. Trump betrays all freedom-loving Americans and Ukrainians.

By the way, let’s looks at some of Russia’s “aspirations,” such as committing a genocide against the Ukrainian people by intentionally targeting and bombing civilian centers and private homes:

Kharkiv, after tonight's Russian drone strike. At least 12 people injured. Homes destroyed. Russia does this every single day. pic.twitter.com/YgTdQDN1AK

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) June 12, 2025

I mean, WTAF?

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]
Trump’s three goals:

By militarizing the situation in L.A., Trump is goading Americans more generally to take him on in the streets of their own cities, thus enabling his attacks on their constitutional freedoms. As I’ve listened to him and his advisers over the past several days, they seem almost eager for public violence that would justify the use of armed force against Americans.

. . .

First, they will turn America’s attention away from Trump’s many failures and inane feuds, and reestablish his campaign persona as a strongman who will brush aside the law if that’s what it takes to keep order in the streets. Perhaps nothing would please Trump more than to replace weird stories about Elon Musk with video of masked protesters burning cars as lines of helmeted police and soldiers march over them and impose draconian silence in one of the nation’s largest and most diverse cities.

Second, as my colleague David Frum warned this morning, Trump is establishing that he is willing to use the military any way he pleases, perhaps as a proof of concept for suppressing free elections in 2026 or 2028. Trump sees the U.S. military as his personal honor guard and his private muscle. Those are his toy soldiers, and he’s going to get a show from his honor guard in a birthday parade next weekend. In the meantime, he’s going to flex that muscle, and prove that the officers and service members who will do whatever he orders are the real military. The rest are suckers and losers.

. . .

Third, Trump may be hoping to radicalize the citizen-soldiers drawn from the community who serve in the National Guard. (Seizing the California Guard is also a convenient way to humiliate California Governor Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, with the president’s often-used narrative that liberals can’t control their own cities.) Trump has the right to “federalize” Guard forces, which is how they were deployed overseas in America’s various conflicts. He has never respected the traditions of American civil-military relations, which regard the domestic deployment of the military as an extreme measure to be avoided whenever possible. Using the Guard could be a devious tactic: He may be hoping to set neighbor against neighbor, so that the people called to duty return to their home and workplace with stories of violence and injuries.

To what end, you might ask? Well, according to Nichols:

In the longer run, Trump may be trying to create a national emergency that will enable him to exercise authoritarian control. (Such an emergency was a rationalization, for example, for the tariffs that he has mostly had to abandon.) He has for years been trying to desensitize the citizens of the United States to un-American ideas and unconstitutional actions.

Ultimately:

So far, even the Los Angeles Police Department—not exactly a bastion of squishy suburban book-club liberals—has emphasized that the protests have been mostly peaceful. Trump is apparently trying to change that. Sending in the National Guard is meant to provoke, not pacify, and his power will only grow if he succeeds in tempting Americans to intemperate reactions that give him the authoritarian opening he’s seeking.

Protesters would do well to shame and disassociate from any of their own using violence as a means of protest. By tamping down the violence, Trump would have no need to bring in the military, and essentially will look the fool for having done so. This, of course, is aside from the issue of the deportation of immigrants legally here, families, and children. It’s also aside from , migrants’ rights to due process being ignored.

Here is a thorough explainer on domestic use of the military. And here is a brief video explaining troop activation in Los Angeles.

Gov. Newsom has made his strong objections known to Trump for bringing in the National Guard without the governor having requested the president to do so. In fact, Newsom is planning on suing the Trump administration. Plus, as we know, there’s always a tweet:

Trump in 2020: We have to go by the laws. We can't move in the National Guard. I can call insurrection but there's no reason to ever do that, even in a Portland case.
We can't call in the National Guard unless we're requested by a governor. pic.twitter.com/0sTAa9CiCX

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 9, 2025

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

Honoring the many:

Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.

Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.

Here's our Stars and Stripes front page from June 6, 1944. Today is the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings. pic.twitter.com/B4XNOAFBBR

— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) June 6, 2025

Second news item

Like he hasn’t already been bombing the hell out of Ukraine:

Russia launched an intense missile and drone barrage at Kyiv overnight, killing four people, after Vladimir Putin had vowed to respond to Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb attack on some of the Kremlin’s nuclear-capable bombers.

Missiles and drones hammered the Ukrainian capital leading fires to rage through residential buildings and forcing the local metro system to close after a train was hit.

Four killed, 20 injured.

Sure, Vlad, whatever you say:

Russia’s defence ministry said that its forces had carried out the overnight attacks in response to what it called Ukrainian “terrorist acts” against Russia. The Kremlin later described its three-year invasion of Ukraine as “existential” for Russia, casting it as nothing short of a battle for the “future” of Russia.

Third news item

A new policy throughout the country is happening, and it’s a great:

District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is continuing to take steps toward banning phones inside its schools. The school division announced Friday that all phones and mobile devices will no longer be allowed in the classroom.

The policy will go into effect during the fall of the 2025-26 school year.

This means that all phones must be turned off and stored away throughout the school day. All middle schools and several high schools have already begun implementing the policy, and DCPS noted they are seeing positive changes.

Fourth news item

Shameful. Shameful. Shameful:

Trump’s efforts to weaken the bill reportedly include:

Urging Lindsey Graham’s office to insert waivers: These waivers would give Trump the discretion to choose which individuals or entities to sanction, rather than making sanctions mandatory.

Requesting changes to the bill’s language: Specifically, turning the word “shall” into “may” where it appears in the text, which would remove the mandatory nature of the sanctions.

Reasons for Trump’s stance:
Preference for presidential authority: Administrations often seek legislative language that grants the president more authority in decision-making, particularly concerning foreign policy actions.

Focus on peace talks with Ukraine: The push to weaken the sanctions package has stalled the bill’s progress as Trump has been emphasizing efforts to bring about peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Impact of these actions:
Congressional aides have expressed concern that removing the mandatory nature of the sanctions would render the bill “toothless”.
Despite bipartisan support for the bill in the Senate, Senate Republican leadership is reportedly waiting for a “green-light” from the White House before moving forward with a vote.

Fifth news item

Supreme Court rules on “reverse discrimination“:

The Supreme Court on Thursday revived a lawsuit from an Ohio woman who claimed she was the victim of reverse discrimination because her employer denied her a promotion because she is straight.

In a unanimous decision in the case of Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, the high court tossed out a ruling by a federal appeals court that dismissed Marlean Ames’ claims because she failed to clear a higher bar applied to members of a majority group in order for her employment discrimination case to proceed. The justices concluded that a “background circumstances” requirement cannot be squared with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and sent Ames’ case back to the lower courts for further proceedings.

This:

Charlie is exactly right. The text of Title VII prohibits discrimination — not just discrimination against historically marginalized groups. We should all be treated the same.

Unanimous decision. Justice Jackson wrote the opinion. That's what judicial consensus looks like. https://t.co/PI4zCU1SbU

— David French (@DavidAFrench) June 5, 2025

Sixth news item

Oh, come on:

The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.

The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.