One thing that needs to be noted up top, before getting into the specifics, is that there are two justices on the Supreme Court who always give Trump exactly what he wants. Those justices are Clarence Thomas (appointed by the elder George Bush) and Samuel Alito (appointed by the younger George W. Bush). It’s interesting that Trump got to appoint three justices during his first term, and they’re not the ones who give him everything he wants all the time. However, it also needs to be noted that all six Republican appointees–Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett–do give Trump most of what he wants most of the time.

On Thursday, June 25, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has the right to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from Haitian and Syrian migrants. Now at first glance, the ruling seems sound, because, like it or not, the statute creating TPS provided that there could be “no judicial review of any determination . . . with respect to the . . . termination” of any TPS migrant’s privilege of remaining in the country. However, the law also sets out procedures that must be followed, including consulting with other agencies to determine how safe it would be for migrants to return to their home countries, and those procedures were not followed. And actually, I have another thought as well: Can’t the Supreme Court use its power of judicial review to strike down the “no judicial review” provision in the statute?

Justice Samuel Alito (as noted above, one of Trump’s two steadfast loyalists on the Court) wrote the majority opinion. In it, he addressed the question being considered by the lower court of whether the reversal of TPS for Haitian migrants reflected racial prejudice, which would raise a constitutional issue of its own. He wrote that there was no evidence of any such prejudice affecting the administration’s decision. But Justice Elena Kagan (appointed by Obama), joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor (appointed by Obama) and Ketanji Brown Jackson (appointed by Biden), begged to differ. Justice Kagan, in her dissenting opinion, wrote:

It is more than plausible: Even putting the clear-error standard aside, the Haiti plaintiffs have carried their burden. The evidence they have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print. (Indeed, one measure of the President’s way of speaking about Haitians is to compare it with the majority’s, which is unfailingly respectful. So here are some of those statements. Haitians are “eating the dogs . . . . They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live [in Springfield, Ohio].”  And: Haitians are also eating “other things too that they’re not supposed to be.” And: Haitians in the United States “probably have AIDS.” And: Haiti is a “shithole country,” which is “filthy, dirty, [and] disgusting.” And: Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.” And: Haitians, along with some others, are “poisoning the blood” of our country. And: “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries” like “Haiti [and] Somalia”? “Why cannot we have some people from Norway [and] Sweden?”
The majority briefly replies that those remarks are not “overtly racial,” but it is hard to know what that means. Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.) The references—of filth, disease, and primitiveness—are shot through with racial stereotypes
and tropes…. The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.

In reality, many Haitians in this country under TPS have been working in the health care field, including as home attendants and nursing home aides. If they are deported, this is going to create a staffing shortage in that area, among others.

But on Tuesday, June 30, three Republican appointees voted not to give Trump what he wants on birthright citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 soon after the Civil War ended, says, “All persons born or natural- ized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Trump issued an executive order last year saying that this does not apply to babies born to undocumented immigrants or immigrants with only temporary residency status. The Supreme Court finally issued its ruling on this matter, and Trump has lost. Conservative Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined with liberal Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson to reaffirm that such persons are citizens.

Article at Scotus Blog on the TPS decision, June 25, 2026

Report on NPR about Haitian health care workers and the TPS decision, June 27, 2026

Full text of the TPS decision and dissent

Article at Scotus Blog on the birthright citizenship decision, June 29, 2026

Full text of birthright citizenship decision and dissents

Congress recently did something it rarely does: passed a major bill with huge bipartisan support. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the House 358-32 and the Senate 85-5, makes it harder for rich investment firms to control large numbers of houses and makes it easier to build new houses by easing regulatory restrictions, among other provisions. In other words, it’s about making houses easier for middle-class Americans to buy.

Trump had previously been in support of this bill, and in fact he still hasn’t expressed any substantive objections to it. However, he is refusing to sign the bill until Congress passes the SAVE America Act. And that bill just doesn’t have the votes. The SAVE America Act would require voters to show proof of citizenship before registering, which for a lot of Americans is easier said than done and in any event is not widely considered necessary to guard against voter fraud. But Trump strongly wants this act passed, and if it were to be passed in time, it would make it much harder for the Democrats to take a majority in either chamber of Congress in this year’s midterm elections.

Two key principles need to be remembered. First, the Constitution provides that the president has ten days not counting Sunday to sign or veto a bill, otherwise it becomes law. Thus, Trump is going to have to either sign or veto the housing act, or else it will become law by default and Trump will have accomplished nothing.

Second, because of the tradition of the filibuster, it takes 60 votes in the Senate, not just a simple majority, to pass a piece of regular legislation. (This is not because of anything that’s in the Constitution.) Only Republicans want the SAVE America Act to pass, and the Republicans do not have a 60-seat supermajority in the Senate.

Theoretically, the Republicans could vote to abolish the filibuster any time, making it possible for them to pass the SAVE America Act and any number of other acts that they want passed. Trump has tried to pressure them into doing so. He has also tried to get the Senate parliamentarian, the one who rules on what kinds of acts can be passed with just a simple majority, fired, determined as he is to get this act passed. But, it doesn’t appear likely to happen, as even Trump has to admit.

As things stand now, the Democrats have a fair chance to take a majority in the House of Representatives, not so much the Senate, in this November’s midterm elections. Even if the Democrats take both chambers, they won’t be able to control the legislative agenda in any meaningful way. However, if they take a majority in the House, you can expect to see a spate of investigative hearings at Trump’s expense, maybe even a third impeachment trial.

Article at The Hill, June 29, 2026

On Monday, June 29, the Supreme Court issued two rulings on whether the president can fire a commissioner of an independent regulatory agency at will.  Taking the two rulings together, the Court seems to be saying that when it’s a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, no he can’t, but when it’s a member of the Federal Trade Commission, yes he can.

The Federal Reserve case involved Lisa Cook (who, by the way, is Black). It needs to be remembered that Trump, right along, has been trying to pressure the Fed to lower interest rates more aggressively than they’ve voting to do. He tried to coerce former Fed chairman Jerome Powell with the threat of a criminal prosecution for imprecise statements he apparently made to Congress about some building renovation that was going overbudget, and in the case of Lisa Cook, his administration has been accusing her of mortgate fraud in connection with her ownership of certain property in Michigan and Georgia. What’s really involved, though, is that Trump wants the Federal Reserve Board to be dominated by individuals who will do exactly what he wants them to do.

Lisa Cook’s conflict with Trump is still unresolved. For one thing,  the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is still accusing her of mortgage fraud (story in The Hill, June 29, 2026). For another, her case against Trump is still playing out in a lower federal court. The main point of this ruling is that while that case plays out, she can stay on the Fed. The ruling seems to affirm the principle that the Fed needs to function independently and not be under the control fo the president. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing the majority opinion, declared in Trump v. Cook, “Acceptance of the Government’s position would in effect transform the Federal Reserve’s for-cause protection into at-will employment—an interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our Nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference.”

It’s different with the Federal Trade Commission. Here, the Court’s majority is allowing Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, not for cause (bad job performance), but for making decisions that Trump opposes ideologically. The decision reverses a precedent from the New Deal era, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to fire an FTC commissioner whose decisions weren’t friendly enough to the New Deal. In the Supreme Court case that resulted from that conflict, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), the Court ruled that the president can only fire a commissioner on the FTC for cause, not for policy differences, consistent with the statute that created the FTC. The Court has now reversed that rule.

Roberts wrote:

To “discharg[e] the duties of his trust,” the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust…. Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.

This ruling would appear to sidestep a key point about regulatory bureaucracy: Commissioners on a regulatory panel do not “work with” the president. The president typically has no interaction with FTC commissioners. Like numerous other regulatory agencies, the FTC was created to carry out the will of Congress. For decades, it has been understood that regulatory agencies were supposed to act independently, not to be directly controlled by the president. But this ruling changes that. It’s also consistent with the notorious Project 2025, the Republican Party’s policy agenda, which puts great emphasis on a unitary executive branch, meaning the president’s control over all parts of the branch.

In both cases, the three Democratic appointees–Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson–voted against allowing Trump the power he desires, while four of the Republican appointees–Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett–were on Trump’s side. The two remaining conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, were the swing vote, being on Lisa Cook’s side in the Fed case and on Trump’s side in the FTC case. Roberts, as seen above, wrote both opinions.

Article at ScotusBlog on Trump v. Cook, June 29, 2026

Article at ScotusBlog on Trump v. Slaughter, June 29, 2026

Full text of Trump v. Cook decision, including the dissents

Full text of Trump v. Slaughter

Article on multiple cases at The Hill, June 29, 2026

The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, issued on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, needs to be understood in a few different contexts.

First, it needs to be remembered that in the South, the color line and the party line come very close to being the same thing: Whites tend to vote Republican and non-whites tend to vote Democratic.

Second, the Supreme Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) that partisan gerrymandering–the drawing of district lines to give one political party disproportionate strength in either a state legislature or a state’s delegation to the House of Representatives–is not judiciable by the federal courts; that is, the federal courts can’t interfere with it. Racial gerrymandering is a different story. Federal courts can still step in when district lines have been drawn to discriminate against a racial group, to weaken a racial group’s influence in the political system.

Third background point: In the 2023 case of Allen v. Milligan, not one but two of the conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, surprised many people by voting with the liberal justices to uphold a lower federal court ruling requiring Alabama to redraw its map of congressional districts. The decision applied a 1982 amendment to the Voting Rights Act, as supported by the 1986 Supreme Court precedent Thornberg v. Gingles, to say that there needed to be one more Black-majority congressional district. The point was not that there had been any intentional racial gerrymandering, but merely that it was possible to draw a map with an additional Black-majority district without any wildly contorted shapes, that would give the Black population more proportionate influence with their votes, and that the lower court was right in requiring the state to do so.

Given that decision, the state of Louisiana figured that it had better redraw its own map to create another Black-majority district. But they wanted to do it in a way that would not jeopardize the seat of with house Speaker Mike Johnson or Representative Julia Letlow. Thus, the way they drew the map did involve a little bit of contortion. That was the rub: It made it possible for Louisiana whites–or, as the challengers called themselves, “non-African-Americans”–to claim that they were victims of a racial gerrymander against them. And this brought about the case of Louisiana v. Callais.

Most Supreme Court cases are wrapped up within one year, but in this instance, the Court heard arguments during its 2024-25 season and continued it into 2025-26. The first time around, the state was defending its map; in the re-argument, the state had switched sides and was teamed up with the “non-African-Americans” to oppose it. The Court, meanwhile, had asked for arguments as to whether the creation of that new Black-majority district violated the 14th and 15th Amendment.

In the final ruling, written by Justice Samuel Alito (one of the ultra-conservatives on the Court), the Court decided that the new map did indeed constitute an unfair racial discrimination–that is, discrimination against the “non-African-Americans.” The decision did not strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as amended in 1982, nor did it exactly reverse Thornberg v. Gingles. It did, however, say two key things that are going to make a difference in future maps and future cases. First, it said that Section 2 only applies if the racial gerrymandering can be shown to be intentional. Second, it made clear that partisan gerrymandering–drawing the lines to favor a political party–is perfectly all right and should not be interfered with even when a map has to be redrawn to correct a racial gerrymander.

The ruling has all six Republican appointees (Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett) in the majority and all three Democratic appointees (Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson) in dissent. Elena Kagan, in her dissenting opinion, expressed regret about the 2019 decision that gave a green light to partisan gerrymandering, and about this decision that she claimed made use of that ruling to make it harder for minority voters to claim discrimination: “Under the majority’s new test…a plaintiff will have to show—contrary to Section 2’s clear text and design—that the legislators were ‘motivated by a discriminatory purpose.’ … And that, as Section 2’s drafters knew, is well-nigh impossible.”

Because the color line and the party line in the South come so close to being the same thing, it was hard enough to prove racial gerrymandering as opposed to mere partisan gerrymandering already. But now this ruling puts a heavier burden on those who want to claim that there’s been an unfair racial gerrymander at the expense of non-white political strength, and it reaffirms that partisan gerrymandering is perfectly excellent and salutary.

Many experts are of the opinion that this ruling is going to open the floodgates to a lot of redistricting, at the expense of non-white voting strength in the South and, thus, at the expense of Democratic voting strength, making it harder for the Democrats to have a majority in the House of Representatives for the long run. How right they are remains to be seen; it will take at least a few years to know. It isn’t likely to have a sweeping effect on this year’s midterm elections, but it is already having an effect in Louisiana: Primary elections are suspended until the map can be redrawn, surely eliminating that Black-majority district that the 2023 map had created.

Write-up on the ruling at Scotusblog, April 29, 2026

The  ruling itself, including the dissent

On Tuesday night, February 24, Trump delivered his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation. In that speech, he did a number of things:

–made grandiose claims about how the economy was in terrible shape under Biden and has made a miraculous recovery under him;

–repeated his reference to tariffs as a tax that other countries are paying to the United States, which is not true;

–gave several highly prestigious awards, including a Purple Heart to a National Guardsman who was shot in Washington and survived, a Medal of Honor to a 100-year-old World War II veteran; a Medal of Honor to a commander in the recent Venezuela raid; a Legion of Merit medal to a Coast Guard hero who rescued 164 girls in last summer’s flooding in Texas; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the goalie on the winning US Olympic hockey team (article in TheHill.com, February 24, 2026); and

–cited the involvement of Somalis in apparent childcare fraud in Minnesota as evidence that US immigration policy is letting in people whose cultures are all about dishonesty.

Republicans are hoping to get some mileage out of a moment during the speech when Trump asked people to stand if they agree with the statement that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Republicans stood; Democrats didn’t. Of course, the reason Democrats didn’t stand was that they associated this statement with approval for Trump’s specific current actions in cities like Minneapolis, but it’s giving Republicans a propaganda tool, the ability to say “The Democrats made clear that protecting American citizens is no longer their primary objective” (in the words of one Republican strategist). We can expect to be hearing this a lot in Republican ads for the midterm congressional elections next fall (article in Politico, February 26, 2026).

But now I want to focus on another part of his speech, that involving transgender youth.  Let’s start with Trump’s own words:

And here is one more opportunity to show common sense in government. In the gallery tonight are Sage Blair and her mother, Michele. In 2021, Sage was 14 when school officials in Virginia sought to socially transition her to a new gender, treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Before long, a confused Sage ran away from home. After she was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left-wing judge refused to return sage to her parents because they did not immediately state that their daughter was their son. Sage was thrown into an all-boys state home and suffered terribly for a long time. But today, all of that is behind them because sage is a proud and wonderful young woman with a full ride scholarship to Liberty University. Sage and Michele, please stand up. And thank you for your great bravery and who can believe that we’re even speaking about things like this. 15 years ago, if somebody was up here and said that, they’d say, what’s wrong with him? But now we have to say it because it’s going on all over, numerous states, without even telling the parents. But surely, we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents will. Who would believe that we’ve been talking about that. We must ban it and we must ban it immediately. Look, nobody stands up. These people are crazy. I’m telling you, they’re crazy. Amazing. [Inaudible] boy, oh boy. We’re lucky we have a country with people like this. Democrats are destroying our country, but we’ve stopped it just in the nick of time, didn’t we?

One aspect of this story that is not in dispute is that this individual suffered a horrible ordeal. The teen, who was adopted and raised by maternal grandmother Michele Blair, apparently ran away from home, fell into the hands of sex traffickers, and was raped. The teen spent some time in a Maryland facility for boys, suffered sexual abuse there, ran away from there, and suffered further abuse in Texas. All of this is horrific, and clear not the fault of either the grandmother or the school.

But we need to consider what may have happened before all that, back at the school. Listening to Trump, one could easily imagine that Sage Blair showed up for school one day, got called into the principal’s office, and was told “We’ve observed that you have some masculine tendencies, so we’ve decided to transition you into being a boy, because that’s obviously what you want. Don’t argue, here’s your new name, here are your new pronouns, and here’s your new bathroom.” Trump would have us believe that the actions of the school drove Sage to run away from home.

The absurdity of that scenario speaks for itself. Clearly, it was Sage Blair who approached school administrators with the desire to be considered male and asked them not to tell Michele, because Michele would not be supportive. To be sure, there’s room for more than one opinion on whether a school system should go along with a student’s transgender proclivities without informing the parents, but let’s at least be clear that that’s what the question is. Trump gives the impression that the whole thing was the school’s initiative–consistent with the broader accusation of teachers being “groomers” of gay and trans youth–and that’s just poppycock.

There’s no way of knowing, at this time, how Sage Blair feels about all of this, and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s none of my business. Sage may very well regard the gender dysphoria at age 14 as a passing phase, may very well resent the school for having encouraged it, and may even blame the school for Sage’s decision to run away, and thus blame the school for the horrible ordeals that followed. The only way we’ll know Sage’s feelings in the matter is if Sage (or Draco, as Sage was called during that period) sees fit to speak out at some point in the future. Meanwhile, though, Trump is waging an all-out war on any kind of affirmation of transgender identity, whether for adults or minors, and is using Sage (or Draco) Blair as a pawn in this agenda and using an obviously distorted version of Sage (or Draco) Blair’s story to make that agenda look like simple common sense.

Transcript of Trump’s speech with video clips

Video of Trump’s speech

Democratic response by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger

CBS News fact check of Trump and Spanberger speeches

Article about Sage Blair in LGBTQ Nation, February 25, 2026

This is not the first time that federal and state forces have been at odds with each other. The civil rights era was replete with confrontations between federal authorities and state governors, where state governors were trying to defend racial segregation and federal authorities were trying to enforce court orders for integration, especially in the public schools.  Now, however, we’re seeing a completely different kind of confrontation between federal and state levels of government.

The Trump administration is determined to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Trump claims that he’s mainly going after criminals, but this is not what’s actually going on. Trump also has a personal grudge against the state of Minnesota, especially its governor, Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election. So for the last few weeks, the city of Minneapolis has had agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in thick concentration, going from door to door looking for migrants to detain and deport.

On Wednesday, January 7, an ICE officer named Jonathan Ross shot and killed a woman named Nicole Macklin Good in Minneapolis. He claimed she was trying to run over him; others say she was trying to get away from him. What is known is that he fired three shots: one from in front of her, and two more from the side. A new report says that he had internal bleeding in his torso. There is some ambiguity as to exactly what happened.

The federal government, however, as dominated by Trump, doesn’t seem to see any ambiguity. The FBI (which is run by a Trump loyalist, Kash Patel) is supposedly investigating the shooting, but whatever they’re doing, they are totally shutting the corresponding state agency out of the process.  Rather, Trump’s Justice Department is pursuing possible charges against Nicole Good’s widow, Becca Good. This has triggered a flurry of resignations by career prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in Minnesota. Meanwhile, Minnesota state authorities are conducting their own investigation. The Trump administration regards Renee Good as a domestic terrorist, not a civilian victim.

Here are the aspects of this saga that are most abnormal:

(1) It’s abnormal for the federal government to refuse to work in cooperation with state authorities when something like this takes place.

(2) It’s abnormal for any level of government not to see the need for an investigation when a law enforcement officer shoots a civilian.

(3) When things are normal, the president does not tell the Justice Department whom to investigate and prosecute. Moreover, when things are normal, career prosecutors have more latitude to use their own judgment in these matters. Here, Attorney General Pam Bondi is running the show from the top down, and she’s obviously taking her marching orders from Trump.

Trump’s response to the whole saga is to send more ICE agents into Minnesota. This fits in with his overall philosophy of governance: that’s all about getting tough and getting tougher.

Story on NBC News, January 13, 2026

To state the obvious, the majority of Republicans in Congress are not only loyal to Trump but subservient to him. When Trump vetoed two bills that had passed Congress with strong bipartisan support, with every appearance that he was motivated by vengeance against individuals involved rather than ideology, some Republicans voted with the Democrats to override his vetoes, but not enough to muster up a two-thirds majority in either chamber.  Thus, a majority of Republicans, even though they had initially favored these two bills, did not want to anger Trump by voting to override his vetoes.  (Article in TheHill.com, January 8, 2026)

But a handful of Republicans–again, just a handful–are speaking up against Trump’s actions in Venezuela, and have voted with the Democrats to invoke the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to restrain Trump.  (Article in Politico, January 8, 2026; see also this article and this one)  Now, it’s a purely symbolic measure, because Trump can and will veto any such bill that they pass, but it does show that subservience to Trump among congressional Republicans isn’t air-tight.

And this is understandably true. Trump has claimed to hold an America First ideology, which implies avoiding getting entangled with foreign countries, and yet he not only launched a mission that killed over 100 Venezuelan political and military personnel to arrest President Nicolas Madura and his wife, but also intends to “run” Venezuela and control its oil industry for some years to come. And this is where a key question arises: Does loyalty to Trump and the so-called MAGA movement mean loyalty to a set of policy principles, or does it just mean personal loyalty to Trump for whatever he wants to do?  The fact that the Republicans at their 2020 national convention didn’t even bother to write up a platform, and then in 2024 issued a platform that was made up entirely of Trump’s own talking points, would seem to indicate the latter.

Trump is also threatening to take over Greenland, a territory of Denmark.  He claims it’s necessary for America’s national security, but that’s absurd, because the United States already has a military base on that island, as well as the full cooperation of the government of Denmark for any reasonable expansion of its military presence that US leaders deem wise. What’s more, for whatever natural resources Trump wants from Greenland, those too can be negotiated. But with the same kind of stubborn persistence we normally associate with children at the age of four, Trump keeps saying that no, the US needs to take it over. And one of Trump’s advisers has suggested that if the US moves in, Denmark will step aside, viewing the cost of war too high–which, by the way, is the way Hitler took control of Austria in March of 1938.

For any Republican to oppose Trump, however, is a huge career risk, because since Trump came on the scene, Republican primary election campaigns for the House or Senate have been largely about who’s more loyal to Trump, and anyone who displeases Trump is likely to lose the next Republican primary in his or her district or state.  Liz Cheney–a very conservative Republican from Wyoming–not only lost her seat in the House after supporting Trump’s second impeachment and co-chairing the House committee investigating Trump’s role in the January 6th attack, but was also declared by the Republican Party in her state to be a non-Republican, a traitor. And of course Trump’s own definition of a traitor is anybody who isn’t personally loyal to him. So if every Republican who stands up to Trump gets voted out, the result could be a Republican Party in Congress that’s even more loyal and subservient to His Majesty Trump.

How long is this going to last? That’s anybody’s guess. An important marker of where we’re going is going to be this year’s November congressional elections. The Republicans can be expected to lose some seats in the House, probably to the point of losing their majority, but if they lose big–and if they lose their majority in the Senate (which is going to be harder for the Democrats to pull off)–then it will appear that swing voters who voted for Trump in 2024 are starting to have second thoughts about this whole Trump era.

Right along, Congress has been able to create regulatory agencies in the executive branch that are not directly subordinate to the president. In such agencies, the president can only fire commissioners for bad job performance, not political disagreement. Thus, in the making and enforcing of regulations, the commissioners in such agencies have not had to worry about making the president happy. However, all that may be about to change. The Supreme Court has just heard arguments in a case where Rebecca Slaughter of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is challenging Trump’s power to fire her over ideological differences.

The Constitution does not explicitly say that Congress has the power to create a regulatory agency with powers independent from the president. (The Constitution doesn’t say anything specific about departments and agencies in the executive branch at all, though it does anticipate that there will be executive departments.) However, in the 1935 case of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the act of Congress creating the FTC was constitutional and that President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not have the power to fire a conservative FTC commissioner who was giving him grief over New Deal programs. Now, Trump is asking the Supreme Court to overturn that precedent.

In the justices’ responses to the arguments that were heard on Monday, December 8, a pattern seemed clear: The liberal justices were concerned about the power of the president being unchecked; the conservative justices were concerned about hypothetical scenarios where Congress could convert cabinet departments and other parts of the executive branch into independent agencies and put them beyond the power of the president to control who worked there.

The argument on Trump’s side is that the Constitution concentrates executive power in the president and says nothing of any agencies that won’t be directly accountable to the president. On the other side is the argument that creating independent regulatory agencies is a necessary and proper part of Congress’s lawmaking powers, since the areas where Congress makes laws are likely to involve technicalities that independent agencies can best deal with.

While it looks as if the Court is going to be on Trump’s side in this case, the big remaining question is how broad and sweeping the ruling will be. There is another case, which the Court will be hearing separately, involving Trump’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board, Lisa Cook. The Court has given observers reason to think that, while it will probably allow Trump to fire FTC commissioners, it may allow the Federal Reserve Board to maintain its independence. Even so, the whole concept of independent regulatory agencies may be about to be seriously altered.

Article in Politico, December 8, 2025

Article at SCOTUSblog, December 8, 2025

Report on NPR, December 8, 2025

Two major areas of change in US foreign policy in 2025 need to be noted: a revision in the criteria for the State Department’s annual human rights report, and a new National Security Strategy document that the Trump administration issued in early December 2025.

Every year, as required by Congress, the State Department issues a report on human rights conditions and abuses, country by country, around the world. In April of 2025, the Trump administration issued a set of memos calling for changes in what these reports will focus on. Among the issues that are not to be treated as human rights abuses in these reports are: denial of freedom of movement; denial of peaceful assembly; holding of political prisoners without due process; bad prison conditions; restrictions on free and fair elections; forcing refugees and asylum seekers to return to their home countries; harassment of human rights organizations; and persecution of individuals for being LGBTQ+ or belonging to any other vulnerable affinity group–including persons with disabilities and women. (NPR report, April 18, 2025) Further guidelines released in November of 2025 treat DEI policies, facilitation of mass migration, and gender-changing medical treatment for minors as human rights abuses. The news policies also purport to put greater emphasis on freedom of speech, including the freedom of opposition political parties to compete, but that part appears to be thinking of the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which makes hate speech and disinformation on social media illegal. (Obviously, “hate speech” can be a matter of definition.) It also appears that Trump wants it to be easier for far-Right parties in European countries to get ahead. (NBC News report, November 21, 2025)

And, during the first week of December 2025, Trump released his National Security Strategy. (Here is the actual document.) Among other things:

–He represents his new policy as a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, essentially heightening the sense of the United States being the policeman of the Western Hemisphere. (It should be noted that Teddy Roosevelt issued the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, justifying a long spate of military interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean.) It reads as a clear promise of US muscle-flexing in the hemisphere to defend perceived US interests, including stopping drug trafficking and restricting migration to the US. (Many are wondering whether Trump intends to launch a full-frontal ground assault on Venezuela to force the ouster of President Nicholas Madura, who is holding on to power despite losing the last election.)

–He has reinforced his demand that member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) spend 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, an increase from what the target had been before: 2%, and more recently 3.5%. Trump has accused other countries in NATO of freeloading off the United States. (It should be noted that the other countries in NATO did contribute troops in the US War on Terror, the only time that the provision of “an attack on one is an attack on all” has ever been invoked.)

–He claims that European countries are suffering “civilizational erasure” due to declining birth rates combined with overly loose immigration policies–which appears to mean that they’re declining due to a lower percentage of the population being white. A similar interpretation can be put on this sentence: “We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”

–Unlike Biden, Trump does not view Russia as an existential threat to international peace and stability. His main point regarding Russia, and Russia’s war in Ukraine, is that the Ukraine war has strained relations between Russia and most other European countries.

–Trump soft-pedals the tensions with China but speaks of the importance of the US maintaining a strong position in the world economy.

Leaders in the European Union (EU) find some of the remarks in the NSS alarming, especially where he downplays the Russia threat and where he shows his support for far-Right (“patriotic”) parties.

Article in Politico, December 5, 2025

Article in TheHill.com, December 5, 2025

Expert interview on NPR. December 8, 2025

NPR report on European Union reactions to the NSS, December 8, 2025

In recent days, Trump has been deploying federal troops and the National Guard on the streets of Washington, DC, and has announced a federal takeover of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.  He has two stated objectives: clearing homeless people off the streets and getting tough on crime.  While some DC residents undoubtedly think he’s making them safer, many others don’t (NPR report August 16, 2025), and the lawfulness of this move is being questioned (NPR report August 12, 2025).

It needs to be remembered that the District of Columbia is the only part of the United States proper (not counting external territories) that is not part of a state.  It would be much harder for Trump to demand control of a police department in any other city–New York, for instance.  And up through 1973, the federal government directly controlled DC’s institutions of governance.  That changed in 1973 with the Home Rule Act, in which Congress relinquished most means of control and made the city self-governing.  (Here is the full text of that act.)

According to that act, the president can, in the event of an emergency, solicit the services of the city’s police department.  But that’s many steps away from assuming control over it.  Moreover, as has been seen in other contexts, Trump has a way of getting creative with the definition of the word “emergency.”  (Here is his executive order, issued Monday, August 11, 2025.)  The city had a high crime rate a few years ago; it’s down to a thirty-year low now.  That doesn’t mean that crime isn’t a problem in DC, but is it such a problem that the a federal takeover of the police force is needed?

Put in a larger context, what’s going on now reflects the fact that for years Republicans have been accusing the Democrats of being “soft on crime.”  Consistent with that, Trump is playing to a base that sees crime purely in terms of the difference between being tough and being soft.  In this mindset, there’s no room for supporting programs aimed at helping youth in vulnerable population groups get ahead educationally so they won’t be so likely to turn to crime.  It’s just all about being tough.  It’s in that spirit that Trump, in one of his announcements, said that DC police would now be allowed to do “whatever the hell they want to.”

This saga is in the early stages now, so where it’s heading is anybody’s guess.  But given that the city has a nonwhite majority in its resident population, it won’t be surprising if there are some racial incidents, and if nonwhites perceive themselves as being targeted as potential criminals in the interests of keeping whites safe from crime.