Category: Supreme Court
HUGE: Supreme Court Will Decide If ‘Election Day’ Still Exists in Wild Vote-by-Mail Case
From PJ Meida: The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will hear a case that will decide if Election Day actually exists in America anymore. SCOTUS will decide if states can accept mail-in ballots days after the designated Election Day. Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton, whose organization wrote an amicus (friend of the court) brief in support of […]
The post HUGE: Supreme Court Will Decide If ‘Election Day’ Still Exists in Wild Vote-by-Mail Case appeared first on Judicial Watch.
Supreme Court rules in favor of Trump administration to extend pause in SNAP funding
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s request to extend the pause of an order to fully fund food aid benefits for a few days.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson previously granted the emergency pause on an order from U.S. District Judge John McConnell from Rhode Island for the government to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Many on the left excoriated her for what they perceived as a pro-Trump order.
‘The only way to end this crisis — which the executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government.’
Solicitor General John Sauer argued in the emergency appeal on behalf of the government.
“The core power of Congress is that of the purse, while the executive is tasked with allocating limited resources across competing priorities,” he said.
“But here, the court below took the current shutdown as effective license to declare a federal bankruptcy and appoint itself the trustee,” Sauer contined, “charged with picking winners and losers among those seeking some part of the limited pool of remaining federal funds.”
While the Trump administration had agreed to partially fund the program by about 65%, McConnell’s order called the government to use a separate pool of funding to fully support the program.
“The only way to end this crisis — which the executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government,” Sauer said.
That effort to end the government shutdown appeared to be successful after Democrats caved to Republicans demands.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi thanked the court for the ruling.
“Our @TheJusticeDept attorneys just secured a further administrative stay through Thursday at midnight at the Supreme Court to prevent further judicial upheaval for the SNAP and Child Nutrition programs,” she wrote. “Thank you to the Court for allowing Congress to continue its swift progress to end the shutdown WITHOUT last-ditch disruption from lower courts. We will continue fighting and winning to protect President Trump’s agenda from meritless judicial activism.”
RELATED: Woman goes viral after admitting to being on SNAP benefits for 3 decades
Critics of the SNAP program point to examples on social media of recipients proudly admitting to abusing the program. In on case, a woman said she had been on SNAP for nearly three decades, though that report did not indicate whether she was suffering from disabilities.
“The first thing I did was grab my phone and call, and when I heard ‘zero dollars,’ my chest went into my throat!” said Maggie Aragon of New Mexico to KOAT-TV. “I have depended on those benefits since the 1990s, and it’s detrimental to my life if I don’t get them.”
About 42 million people rely on SNAP benefits.
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Trump reveals what’s at stake if Supreme Court rules against his tariffs: ‘Devastating’
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday regarding President Donald Trump’s authority to impose reciprocal and fentanyl-related tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Given the skepticism expressed by liberal and conservative justices alike, there is cause to suspect that things may not go in the president’s favor.
Trump has since underscored in a series of posts on Truth Social that a loss for his administration in this case would prove to be a “catastrophe” for the economy and national security.
Skepticism on the high court
One day prior to the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments in the consolidated cases Trump v. V.O.S. Selections and Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the president noted that the outcome of the case could mean “LIFE OR DEATH for our Country. With a Victory, we have tremendous, but fair, Financial and National Security. Without it, we are virtually defenseless against other Countries who have, for years, taken advantage of us.”
‘The US Supreme Court was given the wrong numbers.’
While Justice Samuel Alito appeared sympathetic to some of the government’s arguments, his conservative colleagues didn’t come across as entirely convinced.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, for instance, joined his liberal colleagues last week in trying to poke holes in U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s defense of Trump’s tariffs, suggesting that the danger of too liberal a reading of the IEEPA in the president’s favor risks creating “a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives.”
RELATED: Trump’s SHOCKING 25% truck tariff: A matter of national security?
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Chief Justice John Roberts, like some of the other justices on the high court, took issue with the absence of the word “tariffs” in the IEEPA, which empowers the president to regulate imports of “property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest” during a declared national emergency.
“You have a claimed source in IEEPA that had never before been used to justify tariffs. No one has argued that it does until this — this particular case,” said Robert.
Roberts, whose note on the unprecedented nature of the interpretation was also raised by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, added that tariffs amount to an “imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been the core power of Congress.”
Concern in the White House
Trump, no doubt aware of how the oral arguments went, has emphasized in the days since what is at risk.
Hours after indicating that any money left over from his proposed $2,000 tariff dividend for American citizens “will be used to SUBSTANTIALLY PAY DOWN NATIONAL DEBT,” Trump suggested on Monday that the cost of the Supreme Court’s invalidation of his tariffs — which Barrett said would likely be “a mess” — could be far higher than previously suggested.
Trump noted in a Truth Social post on Monday, “The ‘Pay Back’ Numbers being quoted by the Radical Left Lunatics, who would love to see us lose on Tariffs because of how bad it would be for our Country, are much higher than those being stated by our Fake Opposition — Opposition mainly from Foreign Countries that would do anything to be allowed to charge us Tariffs without retribution.”
‘Possibly non-sustainable!’
“The actual Number we would have to pay back in Tariff Revenue and Investments would be in excess of $2 Trillion Dollars, and that, in itself, would be a National Security catastrophe,” added the president.
In a subsequent post, Trump wrote, “The U.S. Supreme Court was given the wrong numbers. The ‘unwind’ in the event of a negative decision on Tariffs, would be, including investments made, to be made, and return of funds, in excess of 3 Trillion Dollars.”
As all revenues from tariffs, including new and pre-existing ones, through September of this year had raised between $174 and $195 billion, Trump’s allusion to a figure over $3 trillion appears to refer to the potential tariff revenue lost over the next decade.
According to a recent Tax Foundation report, Trump’s tariffs “will raise $2.4 trillion in revenue over the next decade on a conventional basis and reduce US GDP by 0.6 percent, all before foreign retaliation.” Other estimates put potential revenue as high as $3 trillion.
The Congressional Budget Office released an estimate in August indicating that “increases in tariffs implemented during the period from January 6, 2025, to August 19 will decrease primary deficits (which exclude net outlays for interest) by $3.3 trillion if the higher tariffs persist for the 2025-2035 period.”
Trump suggested further that the loss of tariff revenue and return of funds “would truly become an insurmountable National Security Event, and devastating to the future of our Country — Possibly non-sustainable!”
U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer told “Mornings with Maria” last week that the reciprocal tariffs at issue have netted over $100 billion but less than $200 billion and noted further that if they are invalidated, specific plaintiffs might receive a refund, but it remains unclear what will happen to the remainder.
“As for the rest of it … I’ll hand that file to the secretary of the treasury,” said Greer.
“You’ll have all these importers and importing interests who are going to want that money back, and so, you know, we’ll have to figure out — probably with the court — what kind of a schedule might look like and what the rights are of these parties and what rights the government has to that money.”
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Judicial Watch Statement: Supreme Court to Hear Mississippi Ballot Deadline Case
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton announced today that the Supreme Court of the United States has granted review in a landmark election integrity case brought on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi. The case seeks to uphold a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which struck […]
The post Judicial Watch Statement: Supreme Court to Hear Mississippi Ballot Deadline Case appeared first on Judicial Watch.
Supreme Court punts on revisiting landmark gay marriage decision
The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal that was thought to be the only case that had standing to challenge the landmark 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized so-called same-sex marriage.
On Monday, Supreme Court justices denied a petition for a writ of certiorari for the case Kim Davis v. David Ermold, et al., according to court documents.
‘If ever a case deserved review, the first individual who was thrown in jail post-Obergefell for seeking accommodation for her religious beliefs should be it.’
There were no notable dissents in the order, and no justices recused themselves.
Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images
The appeal was brought by Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who was briefly jailed after refusing to issue marriage licenses for a homosexual couple who are party to the suit.
Davis was also ordered to pay $100,000 in damages plus another $260,000 in legal fees, according to her attorneys.
Her refusal to issue the marriage license was on religious grounds, raising serious First Amendment questions.
Davis’ appeal opens: “If ever a case deserved review, the first individual who was thrown in jail post-Obergefell for seeking accommodation for her religious beliefs should be it.”
Of the three questions presented in the petition, the last reads: “Whether Obergefell v. Hodges … and the legal fiction of substantive due process, should be overturned.”
Although Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have previously indicated a willingness to reconsider Obergefell, Davis’ case was always considered to be an uphill battle since four justices would need to assent to hearing it.
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‘Patently inequitable’: Ketanji Brown Jackson whines after SCOTUS stays Biden judge’s order in trans passport case
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered the Trump administration a victory on Thursday, prompting bitterness not only from trans activists but from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who suggested that the “regrettable” ruling might leave transgender-identifying individuals at risk of “harassment and bodily invasions.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 directing his secretaries of state and homeland security to ensure that government-issued identification documents, including passports and visas, “accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”
‘Today, the Court refuses to answer equity’s call.’
The Trump administration’s reversal of the Biden-era policy that enabled people to choose their own sex marker as well as a third marker, “X,” instead of an “M” or an “F” marker, was poorly received by some radicals.
Keen to have the government continue indulging their delusions, several transvestites joined the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and Covington & Burling LLP in a lawsuit over the passport policy in February.
In April, U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, a Biden appointee, granted them a preliminary injunction preventing the State Department’s enforcement of Trump’s Executive Order 14168 while the lawsuit played out — but only as it applied to six of the plaintiffs. Months later, Kobick granted a class certification request and expanded the scope of her injunction.
After its appeal was rejected by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, the Trump administration filed an emergency stay request to the Supreme Court.
To the chagrin of non-straight activists, the high court granted the stay on Thursday, stating, “Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth — in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”
RELATED: Trans-identifying teen agrees to plead guilty to plotting Valentine’s Day massacre at high school
Photo by Hyoung Chang/Denver Post/Getty Images
The court noted further in its unsigned order, which was opposed by all three liberal justices, that the “respondents have failed to establish that the Government’s choice to display biological sex ‘lack[s] any purpose other than a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group.’ … Nor are respondents likely to prevail in arguing that the State Department acted arbitrarily and capriciously by declining to depart from Presidential rules that Congress expressly required it to follow.”
The high court concluded that absent a stay, the government would suffer a form of irreparable injury as the Biden judge’s injunction could lead to foreign affairs implications.
Justice Jackson noted in her dissenting opinion that “as is becoming routine, the Government seeks an emergency stay of a District Court’s preliminary injunction pending appeal. As is also becoming routine, this Court misunderstands the assignment.”
After casting doubt on her “obliging” colleagues’ comprehension skills, Jackson — whose past opinions have bewildered her conservative and liberal peers alike — characterized the reality-affirming passport policy as “new” and legally questionable. Then sentences later, she acknowledged that it was not new so much as a reversion to the government’s long-standing policy as it existed until at least the early 1990s.
Jackson argued that the cross-dressing plaintiffs face greater harm absent injunctive relief than the government would face absent a stay, and expressed doubt whether the government faces any irreparable harm at all.
“But the Court somehow sees fit to grant the Government’s stay request regardless, waving away its abject failure to show any irreparable harm and promoting a patently inequitable outcome to boot,” wrote Jackson.
Jackson suggested further that the indication of an individual’s actual sex on a passport amounts to a concrete injury and echoed the Biden-appointed district court judge, writing that “transgender people who encounter obstacles to obtaining gender-congruent identity documents are almost twice as likely to experience suicidal ideation, and report more severe psychological distress, than transgender people who do not face such barriers.”
In her conclusion, the leftist justice complained that “today, the Court refuses to answer equity’s call.”
Jon Davidson, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, joined Jackson in complaining about the court’s decision, stating, “This is a heartbreaking setback for the freedom of all people to be themselves and fuel on the fire the Trump administration is stoking against transgender people and their constitutional rights.”
“This decision will cause immediate, widespread, and irreparable harm to all those who are being denied accurate identity documents,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. “The Trump administration’s policy is an unlawful attempt to dehumanize, humiliate, and endanger transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans, and we will continue to seek its ultimate reversal in the courts.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi referred to the court’s ruling as the administration’s “24th victory at the Supreme Court’s emergency docket” and noted, “Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport. In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”
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Washington’s Use of the ‘Emergency’ Label Comes to a Head
In Washington today, the word “emergency” is a magic key; it unlocks powers Congress never granted, suspends the discipline of…
Attorneys ‘Very Optimistic’ SCOTUS Will Make It Easier To Challenge Bad Election Laws
The Federalist: Plaintiffs are feeling “very optimistic” the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in their favor in a pivotal elections case recently heard before the justices, legal counsel and Judicial Watch attorney Russ Nobile told The Federalist. Speaking with The Federalist, Nobile noted how Paul Clement, who represented plaintiffs before the court, presented “three different […]
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Election Day is One Day, Not Weeks
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