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After Donald Trump held two back-to-back summits, in an effort to get a quick ceasefire and peace agreement in Ukraine, not much of anything has actually changed. Unless you count the rest of the world either laughing at America's president or gingerly trying to not bruise his all-too-fragile ego. Both of those things have increased, sadly.
Donald Trump has ushered in a period of political shamelessness. Things that politicians used to do very quietly or in secret are now done right out in the open. There is no longer any pretense about such moves, the politicians now brag about what they're doing. This is evident in too many ways to even list, but the most prominent example right now is the mid-decade redistricting battles being waged in the states. Led by Texas and California, this could soon spread to other states as well, as Republicans jockey to avoid losing control of the House of Representatives next year and Democrats move to counterbalance these efforts.
Two stories dominated the political headlines this week: Texas Democrats fleeing the state to halt the Republican-dominated legislature's efforts to redraw their U.S. House district lines to hand Republicans five more safe seats, and Donald Trump letting incredibly high tariffs begin against over 90 countries worldwide.
We'll get to them in a moment, but what's more interesting is the dog that didn't bark today. Russia was supposed to have a "10-day deadline" to end its invasion of Ukraine, and steep tariffs were supposed to be slapped on them if Vladimir Putin hadn't manage to do so by today. However, nary a headline is talking about the tariffs that were supposed to appear, because once again Putin played Trump like a violin.
There's a slogan used by those who support redistricting reform that is worth starting with today: "Voters should pick their politicians; the politicians shouldn't be able to pick their voters." But the process of designing districts -- for U.S. House of Representatives seats as well as state legislative seats -- has long been a political process. The word "gerrymandering" was coined to describe a Massachusetts governor (Elbridge Gerry) who, while serving in office in 1812, approved a district so convoluted that a newspaper drew it as a mythical lizard with the name "the gerrymander." The name stuck, which shows you this sort of thing has been going on for over two centuries now.
Usually these battles are fought immediately after the decennial Census, as states have to adjust to a new number of House members (whether fewer or more). But it's not illegal for a state to redistrict mid-decade, which has been happening more and more frequently over the past couple of decades.
When the Supreme Court rules, in many instances it issues the final legal word on a particular issue. Congress can always try to legislate changes to the law after such a ruling, but as far as the judicial system is concerned, once the Supreme Court rules all lesser judges must follow their ruling. But this legal finality is not always true, because a Supreme Court ruling can, in many instances, only address one particular legal facet of the underlying constitutional case. The high court sometimes takes this route intentionally, ruling on one legal detail and then returning the case back to the lower courts for further proceedings -- allowing the initially-filed case to continue, just with new technical (and limited) instructions from the Supreme Court about how the lower judges should handle it. And although some saw the Supreme Court's recent decision on Donald Trump's executive order which attempted to redefine what birthright citizenship means in the Fourteenth Amendment as the final legal word, it was not. It wasn't even close to a final decision, since the Supreme Court actually completely ignored the underlying constitutional issue in question. Instead, they used the case to make a sweeping ruling limiting lower-court judges to issue nationwide injunctions which block some move by the president or his administration. By doing so, they overturned a nationwide injunction which barred the Trump administration from attempting to implement his new definition (which would have severely limited the grant of citizenship for babies born on American soil). But they put their order on a 30-day pause, and they left a loophole.
I've written about this subject before, where I used the phrase: "Be careful what you wish for" in the opening paragraph, so I thought I'd just use it as today's headline. Previously, I had written about an effort in the Senate to introduce a bill that would remove the ability of federal judges below the level of the Supreme Court to issue nationwide (or "universal") injunctions which banned government behavior while a case was being litigated. Here's how Republican Senator Josh Hawley explained the need for the bill he intended to introduce:
What needs to happen is one of two things: Either the Supreme Court needs to intervene and make clear there's only one court that can issue rules for the whole country, that's the Supreme Court, that's why we only have one of them. [O]r, if they won't do that, Congress needs to legislate and make clear that district courts do not have the ability to issue these kinds of injunctions.
Today, the issue was indeed argued before the Supreme Court. And the conservatives on the court seemed open to perhaps limiting or removing the ability of lower-court judges to issue such universal injunctions. To which I again say: Be careful what you wish for.
If you'll check a historic calendar (which is easy enough to do), you will clearly see that there are three possible days which could validly be celebrated as marking the end of World War II. They are: August 14th, August 15th, or September 2nd. The initial announcement of the surrender of Japan was made on August 14th, in Japan. Due to the nature of time zones, this happened when it was August 15th in America already. Then the formal surrender, which happened on the deck of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri, was signed on September 2nd. The president at the time, Harry Truman, announced the United States would celebrate what was known as "V-J Day" (for "Victory over Japan Day") on September 2nd. So that would be the most likely day you'd expect any subsequent American president to announce as a new semi-holiday, since it was when World War II actually officially ended. But you'd be wrong.
A legal fight in North Carolina over the 2024 election held for a seat on the state's supreme court is now officially over. After a recent ruling from a federal judge which would have shut down the effort to overturn an election (which was verified by two separate recounts), the Republican who tried to do so is now waving the white flag of surrender, saying: "I will not appeal the court's decision." This brings to an end a very dangerous legal fight that could have had implications for democracy not only in North Carolina but (had it been appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court) elsewhere in America as well. In the end, a federal judge (appointed by Donald Trump, no less) upheld democracy in the face of a Republican attack on how elections are determined.
Well, that didn't take long. Hours after swearing an oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, President Donald Trump issued an executive order which attempted to rewrite one part of that same Constitution. He did so unilaterally, without any action by Congress. Of course, neither Congress nor a U.S. president is actually capable of changing the Constitution's text on their own -- that would require a constitutional amendment ratified by three-fourths of the states' legislatures. But that pesky detail didn't stop Trump from trying.
Today is a federal holiday to honor the memory of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. As I sometimes do, I thought today would be a good day to both reflect on King's life and what he stood for, while reading some of his own words.
