The Trump administration’s filing, which seeks for the Supreme Court to enjoin Illston’s order, said it ‘interferes with the Executive Branch’s internal operations and unquestioned legal authority to plan and carry out RIFs, and does so on a government-wide scale.’

June 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark parental rights decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters.

That historic opinion recognized “the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” It also famously declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

Sadly, despite that—and even now—many federal programs continue to encroach on parental rights. //

....

These federal programs violate parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing, education, and health care. The government should help—not hinder—loving parents in fulfilling their “high duty.” Including parents helps. Keeping secrets hinders. //

Fortunately, Congress has the authority—and the opportunity—to protect parental rights from federal government overreach by passing the Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act.

This act recognizes that parents’ fundamental rights are entitled to the highest level of constitutional protection. It requires courts to apply the proper standard of judicial review—“strict scrutiny”—to federal violations of parental rights.

This is the same standard the Supreme Court has applied to safeguard other fundamental rights—like free speech and free exercise of religion. Congress is well within its constitutional authority to ensure that federal programs properly respect parental authority. ///

Therefore... School choice!?

"If the courts are going to have so much influence over US policy, do you wish you would have just become a judge?"

Trump: "We had millions of criminals pour into our country. And if we don't get them out and get them out quickly, you could lose your country very easily." pic.twitter.com/UfA7egQLi8

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) May 30, 2025. //

ELON MUSK: "I think the fundamental moral flaw of the left is empathy for the criminals and not empathy for the victims — empathy for the criminals but not empathy for the victims. And there's been way too much of that; that needs to stop. To the president's point, there's been immense judicial overreach that is unconstitutional — that was never intended — and it's undermining the people's faith in the legal system. It needs to stop. It's gone too far.
pic.twitter.com/JY1IomtX60

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) May 30, 2025. //

stickdude90
5 minutes ago
During Trump 1.0 (and arguably long before then), the media threw away their credibility in favor of ideology.

During the pandemic, the public health institutions threw away their credibility in favor of ideology.

The judiciary is bound and determined to follow that path, and they're doing a bang-up job so far.

The District of Columbia court system is an unconstitutional mess. The idea that the president can only nominate candidates to the bench from a preselected list provided by a commission over which he has no control clearly violates the Constitution’s appointments clause.

But somehow the process of reappointment in the District of Columbia is even worse. There, a similarly bizarre committee (the Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure) evaluates judges whose terms have expired, after which it can usurp the president’s nomination and appointment powers as well as short-circuit the advice and consent function of the Senate.

In other words, this commission — and this commission alone — can decide whether judges will continue to serve despite what the president, the Senate, or the people the president and Senate serve want.

President Trump and Attorney General Bondi should consider taking action to remedy this constitutional abomination. //

Because both the nomination and appointment of judges are core Article II powers, having that power exercised by an independent body wholly outside the president’s control is constitutionally untenable. In many ways this is even worse than the unconstitutional judicial-nomination system in D.C. //

So what is to be done? In the case of the Judicial Nominating Commission, the remedy is easy enough: President Trump should nominate whomever he wants and appoint him subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.

For those judges already on the bench and subject to reappointment, he might need to be more creative because the paper authorizing the reappointment does not traverse the White House at all.

One option in the case of a reappointed judge is for the attorney general to seek a writ of quo warranto. One of the ancient prerogative writs, it literally means “by what warrant” and is a way for a court to determine whether or not a holder of public office is legitimate. Rarely used — and almost always pursuant to state law — it is contemplated in the All Writs Act at the federal level. The limited precedent on the subject seems to indicate that the attorney general has the power to seek the writ. //

Law and order in the District of Columbia is a disgrace, in no small part because of its activist local judges chosen and reappointed through an unconstitutional process. As President Trump seeks to “make D.C. safe again,” he should act where he has the authority to do so and fix the broken reappointment process for the D.C. courts.

SCOTUS Takes Up the Power of Nationwide Injunctions and the Threat to Executive Authority.

May 16, 2025

Mark Twain once used the word, Podunk to describe a small, unimportant town. Today, a Podunk pettifogger from just such a place thinks he is David taking on Goliath. But this time, Goliath is the duly elected President of the United States. //

The Presidential Executive Order (EO) has become the way to govern Washington at a time when Congress is entirely dysfunctional. However, the vast network of federal district judges, who are, by definition, supposed to be apolitical and neutral, often rule against the EO. They do so increasingly on a "nationwide" basis, far beyond the districts their courtrooms oversee.

It has become a pressing and multifaceted issue. The United States federal judiciary has 677 district court judges (across 94 districts, including territorial courts like those in Puerto Rico and Guam). These are lifetime appointments under Article III of the Constitution. When an activist federal judge deems the underlying challenge to an EO from a plaintiff noteworthy, the judge sets out to ensure "uniform relief" across the entire country through a nationwide injunction. Even the nine Appeals Courts do not have such a reach. Even the Supreme Court doesn't have the same power unless at least five justices agree! //

Expectedly, Justice Clarence Thomas expressed his displeasure again at nationwide injunctions, pointing out that the U.S. judicial system operated without them until the 1960s, so why were they necessary now? Justice Samuel Alito, who has previously been a skeptic, hinted that he would vote to scale them back.

Chief Justice John Roberts focused on the procedural aspects of nationwide injunctions, suggesting that the Supreme Court has become more efficient at handling emergency cases expeditiously. He undercut the concerns of Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, and Sotomayor.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh had the best legal solution by suggesting that class-action lawsuits could serve as an alternative to nationwide injunctions. His questioning was a rare demonstration of principled legal analysis, not tainted by politics.

"Federal district judges are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and serve lifetime terms. There are currently 677 such judges in the U.S. Do you support or oppose individual district judges having the authority to block or halt a president’s policy nationwide?"

A solid majority of Americans say yes. Specifically, 56% said they either support such powers "strongly" (31%) or "somewhat" (26%), while just 28% said they oppose it either "somewhat" (13%) or "strongly" (15%). A sizeable 16% said they weren't sure. //

Democrats are most supportive, with 71% saying the support the judges, just 14% saying they oppose them. Among independents, that majority falls to 54% support, and rises to 30% opposition. The surprise comes among Republicans, where a plurality of 48% support judges over presidents, while 40% support it. //

But the numbers shifted somewhat with our second question: "Do you agree or disagree that federal judges should serve for a limited term rather than a lifetime appointment?"

The answer was even more overwhelming, this time not in favor of the judges. Overall, 71% said they either agree "strongly" (41%) or "somewhat" (30%), while the disagree category mustered only 16% for disagree "somewhat" (9%) or "strongly" (7%). //

Overall, 64% said they supported arresting judges who break laws either "strongly" (43%) or "somewhat" (21%). Just 22% opposed the idea, 10% "strongly" and 12% "somewhat." //

According to the Congressional Research Service, federal judges issued 17 separate injunctions against Trump from the time he re-entered office on Jan. 20 through March 27.

This is nothing new. In 2019, William Barr, Trump's second attorney general, complained about judicial injunctions directed at Trump.

"Since President Trump took office, federal district courts have issued 37 nationwide injunctions against the executive branch," Barr said. "That’s more than one a month."

"By comparison," the nation's former top lawyer added, "during President Obama’s first two years, district courts issued two nationwide injunctions against the executive branch, both of which were vacated by the Ninth Circuit. And according to the Department’s best estimates, courts issued only 27 nationwide injunctions­ in all of the 20th century (emphasis ours)." //

Americans' appetite for enabling federal judges to halt presidential actions willy-nilly may soon be tempered by a Supreme Court decision that limits those powers. If so, it should not be politics. It should be because the Constitution does not allow it.

///

That's democracy. But what is consistent with Constitutional Law? Districts should not have jurisdiction beyond their district.

Margot Cleveland
@ProfMJCleveland
·
Follow
🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: Obama appointee Allison Dale Burroughs enters TRO against Trump Administration in Harvard case WITHOUT a Trump attorney even appearing in case. Yes, TROs can be ex parte BUT THIS IS NUTS because . . .
Margot Cleveland
@ProfMJCleveland
Harvard's lawsuit against Trump Administration was predictable, as was its request for a TRO. Will a court blindly issue a TRO, given there is no immediate harm per the letter? Probably. 1/
12:24 PM · May 23, 2025 //

Josh Blackman, constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston and President of the Harlan Institute, wrote Friday:

[We do] …not have time stamps, but the case could not have been on her docket for more than a few hours.

I have a serious question: did Judge Burroughs even read the 72-page complaint and 59-page motion for a TRO? What about all of the pages of exhibits? Did she have any time to reflect upon it or consider countervailing arguments? //

RSB
4 hours ago edited
This is one the administration should openly defy. Not only is there zero legal basis for the TRO and the judge violated multiple TRO rules but SEVP is explicitly not covered under APA (it is just an internal program of INS) and the executive has sole, nonjudiciable authority on issuing and withdrawing visas. They CANNOT be compelled to do so.

In my work with legal historian Professor Mark David Hall, we’ve shown that despite a widespread misunderstanding of the role of Christianity in our founding and decades of bad Supreme Court rulings, such displays are constitutional — a lesson the ACLU and others who challenged the Louisiana law are likely to learn soon.

While the founders were uniformly opposed to government imposing religion, they did think religion, especially Christianity, was extremely important to the founding of the country. They understood that humans are created in the image of God and instilled with dignity. And if people have dignity, they must have rights to protect that dignity. This is the religious inspiration for the huge number of rights enumerated for all citizens at the founding of the republic.

The founders also believed that to ensure the success of the American experiment, people needed to use those rights responsibly. Put bluntly, they must be moral. George Washington said in his Farewell Address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” For a republican form of government to work, you must have a moral people, meaning a religious people.

What about Thomas Jefferson, you may ask? He is held up as the poster child for the strict separation of church and state, famously informing the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 that the First Amendment created a “wall of separation between Church & State.”

The purpose of Jefferson’s letter was to reassure the Baptist congregation that the government wouldn’t interfere with their church, not that religion would have no place in the actions of government. He did not think the Constitution kept the government out of the business of religion altogether. For instance, as governor of Virginia, he invited his fellow Americans to join him in prayer. Jefferson also made the War Department and Treasury Department buildings available for church services. So, in his own political life, Jefferson didn’t act as if there were a wall of separation between church and state. //

Shortly after Gov. Jeff Landry signed the Louisiana law mandating displays of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, the American Civil Liberties Union sued. It claimed the Ten Commandments are not a source of American law and that having the displays would unconstitutionally expose some people to a religion they don’t believe in. A few months later, a federal judge ruled in the ACLU’s favor, and the state appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Professor Hall and I submitted an amicus brief in support of Louisiana with the appellate court.

CNN — a far-left outlet a jury found is literally fake news — is upset that Christians were permitted to openly pray to their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ while on the job at the Pentagon.

The outlet’s hissy fit stems from a Christian prayer service Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hosted at the Defense Department on Wednesday. The event — for which Hegseth himself said attendance was on a “voluntary basis” — featured remarks and prayers from Hegseth and the defense secretary’s Tennessee-based pastor, Brooks Potteiger. //

As aptly noted by Federalist CEO Sean Davis, “America was founded as a Christian nation by Christian men with Christian ideals and morals and laws for Christian purposes, and the only thing the First Amendment prohibits is the literal establishment of a specific government church funded by taxes.” In other words, the framers did not want the U.S. government “establishing” an official state church subsidized by the American people.

In no way did Hegseth’s voluntary prayer service violate this constitutional provision. Not even close. //

What’s become evidently clear, at CNN and other left-wing propaganda outlets, is that it’s perfectly OK to dishonestly question, ridicule, and/or outright smear Christianity if doing so can help advance leftists’ agenda. And given that their worldview is antithetical to Christian teachings, it’s safe to assume this despicable trend is here to stay.

Thursday, the Senate voted to block a package of vehicle emissions regulations issued by California, including a highly controversial rule that would have banned the sale of gasoline-powered (aka real) cars by 2035. In the process, tears were shed, threats were issues, and knickers became tightly knotted by leftist Democrats out to cripple the US economy. //

Only a month before leaving office, the [Biden administration] approved a California regulation that banned the sale of new cars and trucks in California in 2035. This was a decision of earthshaking import. Given the size of its market, unilateral economic actions affect the entire country as businesses adjust their processes to accommodate California regulations. Making matters worse, 11 other states were in the process of enacting similar bans. All told, this would have reduced the market for new gasoline-powered automobiles in the US by 40%. This approval was an obviously malicious act by the outgoing EPA management. The EPA had been sitting on the approvals since 2022 but dumped this burning bag of ordure on the front porch of the Trump White House for political points.

The House teed up the action with a bipartisan vote of 246-164 to disapprove three EPA waivers granted to California: a "zero emissions" standard for trucks, a regulation that would have essentially banned heavy-duty off-road vehicles, and the 2035 ban on real cars and trucks.

When the resolution of disapproval arrived in the Senate, its fate was in question. The General Accounting Office had rendered a "legal opinion" (funny how that phrase has become synonymous with "anti-Trump mischief-making") that a mere waiver of an existing law did not rise to the level of being a regulation that the mere collective vote of Congress could override. In this assertion, the GAO was joined by the Senate parliamentarian. //

Neither the GAO nor the parliamentarian has binding authority over the will of the Senate, but what Republicans wanted to avoid was the appearance of steamrolling the parliamentarian. This is where the solid leadership of South Dakota's John Thune came into play in a clear contrast to the "failure theater" directed by Mitch McConnell whenever he was majority leader. //

Thune decided to go around the bureaucratic obstacle. “What I didn’t want to do was vote to overturn the parliamentarian," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), "and with help from a lot of experts the leader came up with an approach that avoids that outcome, and I’m glad.” //

What Thune did was get a ruling from the floor that the situation was not as cut and dried as the GAO and parliamentarian had claimed and that the waivers did, indeed, fall under the provisions of the Congressional Review Act. //

DaveM
8 hours ago
"[Schumer]: This Senate vote is illegal,"

Apparently we have more than a few Senators sworn to uphold the Constitution that have never bothered to read it.

Article II Section 5 Paragraph 2:
"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings..." //

Romeg
7 hours ago
After carefully scouring my copy of The Constitution of The United States of America I have to report that I was unable to find that article, clause, paragraph or amendment that grants California the power to regulate interstate commerce. Perhaps someone reading this can help me out. //

anon-hlc8 streiff
7 hours ago
Sometimes the problem is that whomever is prosecuting the case does not bring that point of law up in their briefing. If they do not bring up that states may not regulate or impede interstate commerce, the judge is not going to help them out. //

Romeg streiff
5 hours ago
I cannot avoid the conclusion that such rulings utterly negate the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. Wickard v Filburn went in the completely opposite direction making ALL commerce, in effect, Interstate Commerce and thus subject to congressional regulation. The ruling you cite along with past failures to challenge CA's high-handedness seem to be judicial nullification of at least certain aspects of that clause in the Constitution.

Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein
·
BREAKING: #SCOTUS allows Trump to fire labor board members. Apparent 6-3 decision with all liberal justices in dissent. Court says more harm from denying POTUS right to remove officials than from those officials staying in office. Doc: https://documentcloud.org/documents/25951855-24a966-order/
4:44 PM · May 22, 2025. //

Tom Fitton @TomFitton
·
In a massive blow to the permanent administrative state, the Supreme Court, in 6-3 order, lifts stay on @RealDonaldTrump firings of Democratic appointees to "independent agencies." Key majority finding does not augur well for the future of constitutionally suspect agencies that protect appointees from being fired by the Chief Executive:
6:21 PM · May 22, 2025

The stay reflects our judgment that the Government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power. But we do not ultimately decide in this posture whether the NLRB or MSPB falls within such a recognized exception; that question is better left for resolution after full briefing and argument. The stay also reflects our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.

While judges have the authority to issue temporary injunctions to protect one of the parties in a case from harm while the court considers the case, the Trump administration claims the judges have abused this power, claiming to protect people across the country who aren’t parties to the suit.

Sauer noted that courts have issued 40 universal injunctions against the federal government, including 35 from the same five judicial districts.

He argued that these injunctions “prevent the percolation of novel and difficult legal questions” through the normal legal process. He also argued that “they encourage forum shopping,” that is, parties filing lawsuits in certain areas, seeking friendly judges who will issue injunctions on their behalf. He further argued that they circumvent Rule 23, the process by which plaintiffs apply for class action.

“They create what [Supreme Court] Justice [William] Powell describes as repeated and essentially head-on confrontations between the life-tenured and representative branches of government,” Sauer added, referring to a justice who served from 1972 to 1987. //

Justice Clarence Thomas asked Sauer about the history of universal injunctions, and the solicitor general pointed to 1963 as the first example.

“We survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?” Thomas asked.

“Correct,” Sauer responded. “Those were rare in the 1960s. It exploded in 2007. The 9th Circuit started doing this with a bunch of cases involving environmental claims.”

The solicitor general noted that “the court consistently said you have to limit the remedy to the plaintiffs appearing in your court.” //

In response to questions from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Sauer brought up the history of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, where “there were passionate challenges to nationwide policies,” but when judges held New Deal policies illegal, they issued “hundreds of injunctions protecting individual plaintiffs.” //

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s appointee, suggested that universal injunctions might be healthy for the judicial system.

“It seems to me that when the government is completely enjoined from doing the thing it wants to do, it moves quickly to appeal that,” bringing the case to the Supreme Court.

Sauer responded that the courts are supposed to work more slowly, methodically considering cases and not rushing them through emergency dockets to the Supreme Court. The “percolation” of cases through lower courts up to the Supreme Court is “a merit of our system, not a bad feature of our system,” he responded.

In a recent piece for National Review, John Yoo and Robert Delahunty argue the Trump administration is justified in challenging Harvard’s tax-exempt status. Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bob Jones University v. the United States (1983), the authors point to precedent establishing university policies “contrary to a fundamental public policy” and in violation of “deeply and widely accepted views of elementary justice” constitute grounds for revoking 501(c)(3) status.

It can be added that the administration is on solid ground in stripping funding from Harvard under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars institutions receiving federal assistance from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. That action was recently taken in response to Harvard’s rejection of the Trump administration’s settlement proposal following its investigation of Harvard’s failure to protect Jewish students from targeted harassment and violence. The terms of the settlement included several reforms, the most controversial of which required Harvard to take reasonable action to address rampant viewpoint discrimination against conservative-leaning students and faculty.

For Yoo and Delahunty, this minimally proscriptive requirement (asking Harvard to consult with an external party of its choosing) is a bridge too far as it “seem[s] to fall outside the mandate of a national government whose only true power here is to end racial discrimination and ensure that its grant recipients obey the Constitution and federal law.” //

First, consider that Yoo and Delahunty warn of a potential return to abusive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. The argument that conservatives should be careful not to go too far lest leftists reciprocate would carry more weight had leftists not already gone deep into that territory. That ship has sailed.

As sure as the sun rises in the east, the next leftist presidential administration will work to roll back the Trump administration’s civil rights reforms. The right’s newfound willingness to employ the potent tools of the civil rights state does not constitute the end of the left’s willingness to do the same. Rather, it means a formerly one-way, left-only ratchet now operates bidirectionally. //

The Trump administration should act boldly, as its rivals have acted before and will act again. It should wield its civil rights authorities to replace the left’s outcomes-based (“equity”) spoils system with one rooted in the principles of color-blind meritocracy.

This leads to the second problem with Yoo and Delahunty’s take: Although viewpoint discrimination is not prohibited under civil rights law, there is a clear connection between an aggressive left-wing campus monoculture and tolerance of campus antisemitism. The core tenets of the dominant “woke” paradigm cast Jews as “oppressors” by virtue of their success and proximity to whites. The institutionalization of this paradigm in higher education contributes to an astonishing two-thirds of 18-to-24-year-olds now asserting that Jews as a “class are oppressors.”

The Trump administration is right to hold Harvard accountable, not only for its toleration of antisemitism but also for the full range of civil rights violations it inflicts on students, faculty, and staff. It should aggressively wield its authorities to address rampant viewpoint discrimination at elite universities, understanding that such discrimination is intimately related to other forms of discrimination explicitly prohibited under federal law.

Judge Illston’s ruling exemplifies a growing trend where district judges are using temporary restraining orders and nationwide injunctions as tools to block executive actions they disagree with. This is judicial activism, plain and simple. It’s one thing to hear a case and rule on it within the confines of a specific district. It’s another to issue a nationwide injunction that overrides the president’s authority across the entire country. //

The judiciary’s role is to interpret the law, not to decide what presidential directives are appropriate. If Congress disagrees with Trump’s restructuring plan, it has the power to pass legislation to counter it. But a single district judge should not have that power. //

The president’s authority to direct the federal workforce and implement agency restructuring must be upheld — otherwise, we’re looking at a future where unelected judges, not elected leaders, are the ones calling the shots.

The Constitution is clear: The president is the head of the executive branch. //

Outerlimitsfan
2 hours ago edited
We are witnessing the tyranny of the Judicial branch that Jefferson was concerned about.

The media is correct that a Constitutional Crisis is on the brink of occurring. The blame lies with the Judicial branch and in particular Roberts who refuses to stop the overreach by district courts.

So many leftist activist judges are angry that Trump got elected again and the lawfare failed to throw him in prison. //

Mrs. deWinter
2 hours ago
If previous Presidents and their administrations can add endless agencies and personnel and grow the government bigger and bigger without any complaint or judicial oversight, then another duly elected President can un-grow it! Period. HE'S the elected Executive. He's the one who makes those decisions about personnel and departments. And obviously, Trump was elected to do just that since the debt is out of control and the government has grown to mammoth proportions where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing any longer, and the waste, fraud, and corruption are on steroids.

There are two subplots to the complaint.

First, anti-death penalty lawyers have pushed hard to create a doctrine that says executions must produce instantaneous, painless deaths. Otherwise, they are "botched" and illegitimate. The strategy is to convince fellow-traveling judges to rule that the possibility of a "botched" execution is, by definition, a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment." This is obviously hogwash, as that prohibition applies to punishments designed to inflict pain.

In 1947, Louisiana attempted to execute Willie Francis via its traveling electric chair. A drunk technician improperly wired the device (Louisiana, go figure), and Francis survived the attempt. The Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment did not apply and the state was entitled to another go, and this time, it was successful.

Things change, and our imperial judiciary has expanded the clear meaning of the Eighth Amendment into something no one would have conceived at its drafting. //

Second, there are insinuations that the execution may have played out the way the members of the firing squad intended. All the rounds missed Mahdi's heart, though bullet fragmentation did cause some injury to that organ. //

Most curiously, there were only two entrance wounds in the body, but three shots were fired. The Department of Corrections spokeswoman said that this was due to two bullets hitting the same spot, and it has happened before on test runs. While not ready to throw the bull**** flag on this story, but relying on my four years as a member of my college rifle team (yes, we used to have those) and many more years teaching basic rifle marksmanship, I'd contend that even though two rounds through the same hole does happen on a rifle range, there is a huge difference between one man shooting several rounds at a target and three men shooting precisely one round each into a human. When one considers that Mahdi tried to kill a corrections officer during a 2009 escape attempt, some degree of payback, rather than universally bad marksmanship, might be a better explanation. //

Poteen
40 minutes ago
The French of all people had the right idea. Lop off the head. Over in seconds. No pain whatsoever. Do it every week on PBS and they wouldn't need government funding.
Their next best idea was Devil's Island. Just drop them off on island and let them fend for themselves. The sea around the island becomes a live fire gunnery range. Drop in a few cameras and you'll have the most popular reality show in history. Keeping Up with the Krazy Killers. //

DavidW
37 minutes ago
If you want painless execution, carbon monoxide is the answer. You give the executee a strong sedative so that he/she falls asleep. Place the unconscious person into a cylinder or very small room. Then introduce CO into the room until it has displaced all of the air. CO is readily absorbed by the body (why so many people die from malfunctioning gas heaters), so there is no reaction by the body to "choking". Give it 60 minutes then vent the room/cylinder. Check the executee for a heartbeat. There won't be.

streiff DavidW
23 minutes ago
that was the original plan for the gas chamber.

In 1949, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who had served as co-counsel at Nuremberg, wrote the following as it pertained to a free speech case he was involved in.

“[t]his Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means . . . that all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrine logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

I could expand on what this means, but I think Thomas Jefferson does a better job than I ever could when he wrote to John Colvin in 1810:

Whether circumstances do not sometimes occur which make it a duty in officers of high trust to assume authorities beyond the law, is easy of solution in principle, but sometimes embarrassing in practice. A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen: but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property & all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.

This is basically the "don't cut your nose off to spite your face" argument. If following the letter of the law is going to send the country over the cliff, apply some common sense and don't follow the letter. Lincoln said as much in 1861 when he suspended habeas corpus by executive order, telling Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney that he had empowered Gen. Winfield Scott to arrest, and detain, without resort to ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to public safety because it served the public interest.

And later during a special session of Congress, he said, "In nearly one-third of the States had subverted the whole of the laws ... Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" It's kind of a unique and odd argument that the left puts out there today. It wants strict adherence to constitutional law, and at the same time, it wants to violate current immigration law (which was, by the way, legally and constitutionally affirmed). And the fact that we have to grapple with this at all is due to the Democratic Party's practice of busting the law as they soar high above it like a drone. It might make them look like children stealing out of the cookie jar when one of their judges gets caught sneaking illegal aliens out the back door, and it's enjoyable to watch them beclown themselves, but all of this is really quite dangerous. //

One final thing I ran across while studying this matter was a couple of obscure passages in the SCOTUS ruling for the Shaughnessy v. United States case noted above.

a) The alien's right to enter the United States depends on the congressional will, and the courts cannot substitute their judgment for the legislative mandate....In the exercise of these powers, Congress expressly authorized the President to impose additional restrictions on aliens entering or leaving the United States during periods of international tension and strife. That authorization, originally enacted in the Passport Act of 1918, continues in effect during the present emergency. Under it, the Attorney General, acting for the President, may shut out aliens whose "entry would be prejudicial to the interest of the United States."

b) Courts have long recognized the power to expel or exclude aliens as a fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government's political departments largely immune from judicial control.

America is the only nation in history to be founded on the premise that all men are created equal

Revisiting the Scope of Constitutional Birthright Citizenship
NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper Forthcoming

29 Pages
Posted: 21 Apr 2025
Last revised: 28 Apr 2025
Samuel Estreicher
New York University School of Law

Rudra Reddy
New York University School of Law

Date Written: April 20, 2025

Abstract:
On the day he took office for his second term, President Trump signed an executive order purporting to end citizenship by birth for the children of illegal aliens and temporary visitors. Since then, several federal judges have entered preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders enjoining the executive order's enforcement indefinitely. A torrent of criticism has come from law school professors, with several competing to condemn the order in the harshest terms. These criticisms reinforce the conventional academic view that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment provides citizenship by birth to the children of parents who have entered this country unlawfully or as temporary visitors (what we call the "expansive view"). As we see it, the case for the expansive view, at least with regard to the issue of parents not lawfully in this country, has not been made out.

This ruling effectively reins in district courts that have been sidestepping proper jurisdictional channels in cases challenging Trump administration actions. The decision serves as a clear reminder that courts themselves must operate within their prescribed legal boundaries. //

According to Margot Cleveland, senior legal correspondent for The Federalist, the D.C. Circuit’s ruling hinges on a critical point: jurisdiction, which has sweeping implications. As Cleveland explains, many of the legal challenges being hurled at the Trump administration involve employment decisions—precisely the kind of disputes Congress has explicitly said federal district courts have no authority to adjudicate.

The court’s decision also strikes at the heart of a broader legal strategy being used by leftist groups to stymie Trump’s reforms—namely, the claim that the administration is engaging in “wholesale dismantling” of agencies. But as the ruling makes clear, the Administrative Procedure Act was never designed to handle such broad-based political grievances, and Congress never waived sovereign immunity to allow them.

In another key point, the court found that the lower court also overstepped its bounds by trying to restore federal grants—something Congress assigned to the Court of Federal Claims, not the district courts. All told, the decision is a sharp rebuke to the legal overreach being used to obstruct the Trump administration’s agenda. //

The Dark Lord LBPA
20 hours ago
Even worse. This is such a powerful decision it will be appealed to the full DC Circuit for an “en banc” hearing.

Radical Leftists hold a 7 - 4 majority among active judges on the DC Circuit. So, we will lose decisively on appeal.

However, this was such a good opinion it could provide the framework for a sweeping successful decision from SCOTUS. If, …

If Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh decide not to support the judicial coup attempt. //

Hominem Humilem Sum The Dark Lord
18 hours ago
Alas, diminishing the power of the judiciary may not be something Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh are inclined to do: they may prefer to leave the power in the hands of the judiciary and claim the ultimate authority for themselves. Admittedly, that would be a dangerous game to play, since the Article III crew have no indigenous enforcement capability (and would have to rely on the Executive and Legislative Branches to "take their word for it"). //

Mrminwnc Hominem Humilem Sum
18 hours ago
This sounds glib, but respect for the judiciary branch is essentially a courtesy extended by the other two, in particular the executive branch. If the others simply get tired of judges overreaching they can just ignore them.

Margot Cleveland @ProfMJCleveland
·
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland
12/ In sum, this opinion is a HUGE win for Trump because it establishes 3 key principles that apply to many of the other cases being brought against Trump Administration: a) no jurisdiction over firings; b) no jurisdiction over grant terminations;
13/ c) you can't get around Congress limiting district court jurisdiction by creative pleading of claims under other theories; d) with no bond harm to government will outweigh other harm; e) public has interest in Article III obey Article I.
2:14 PM · May 3, 2025 //

The Left only destroys
2 hours ago
require a bond for the injunction
To me, this is the most important part of the ruling. My understanding is that the bond posted must cover the expenses that the defendant (in this case, the Federal Government) incurs if later the injunction is overturned. Given the scope of those activities, the cost of the bonds would be huge. If this really happens (and I'm betting President Trump will move mountains to make sure it is), it will finally prevent every little candy-@$$ed technicolor-haired leftist from filing for injunctive relief six seconds after an Executive Order is issued.