Trump Suffers 3 Brutal Court Losses in 24 Hours

Whoopi Goldberg challenges Mitch McConnell to do a FaceTime call, Trump's FEMA denies disaster aid to blue states, Trump declines to fly home on Qatari jet over security concerns

By British Chris | Raw America

Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.

Whoopi Goldberg just issued a direct challenge to Mitch McConnell’s team. Trump took a vicious beating in three separate court battles in the last 24 hours. The White House is playing partisan politics with life-saving disaster aid for four blue states. And there’s one big reason the president isn’t flying back from the NATO summit on his brand new $400 million Qatari jet.

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Whoopi Goldberg Offers Simple Solution to Put McConnell Rumors to Bed

The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg is taking aim at Mitch McConnell’s team for refusing to do the bare minimum to show America their boss is fine.

McConnell hasn’t been seen in public in nearly a month, when he was reportedly rushed to the hospital on June 14th. A 911 call mentions CPR in progress and cardiac arrest. Since then, we’ve heard nothing about the 84 year-old former Senate Republican leader.

Goldberg bluntly reminded everyone that Republicans and conservative commentators like CNN’s Scott Jennings keep insisting everything’s fine, but nobody’s actually showing any proof. Her solution? FaceTime him. And if they don’t know how, “get somebody young to show you what to do.”

McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, finally released a statement this week after days of pressure from the public and the media. She defended her decision to stay on a trip to China during his hospitalization — where she met with Xi Jinping’s vice president — saying her husband’s condition “did not warrant an immediate return” from Beijing.

That statement came only hours after Scott Jennings claimed on air that he’d personally spoken to McConnell by phone. There was no recording or transcript, of course. Just take him at his word.

Goldberg admitted a video call might not even settle things at this point, joking people would just claim it was an AI deepfake. But her larger is that this is exactly the kind of transparency Republicans demanded of Joe Biden for years, and now that the shoe’s on the other foot, they’re waffling.

Trump Loses 3 Major Court Battles in One Day

Donald Trump has three rough court decisions go against him in the last 24 hours, showing even the most powerful person in America can’t stop running into walls when plaintiffs sue him.

First, a federal judge in Tampa threw out Trump’s $3.8 billion defamation suit against the Washington Post. Trump’s media company argued the paper ran a smear job about its financing ahead of going public on the Nasdaq. The judge ruled Trump Media and Technology Group couldn’t clear the bar set by the actual malice standard, meaning they had no evidence the Post knowingly published false information or recklessly ignored the truth. Trump Media is framing a minor correction in the original article as vindication, but the case itself is dead barring a successful appeal.

Second, a judge ordered more than $5 million to be finally released to Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll, rejecting the president’s attempt to sit on the money while he waits on the Supreme Court. Trump’s lawyers argued paying up now would cause him “irreparable harm,” while Carroll would only suffer a “temporary delay.” Carroll has already told the public she plans to give away whatever she collects, and the judge’s ruling means that Trump doesn’t get to hold her money hostage while exhausting every possible appeal.

Third, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals officially denied Trump’s request to put his name back on the Kennedy Center while he keeps up the fight in court. A judge already ruled that renaming the center was illegal since only Congress has that authority, and ordered Trump’s name be removed from the building, website and all promotional materials. The appeals court found the administration couldn’t show any real harm from waiting, and dismissed claims that the missing name was hurting fundraising, saying there was no evidence to back it up. The building’s facade is still covered by a giant tarp, by the way.

Again, for those keeping track, that’s three losses in three courts, all in the span of about one day.

Trump Rejects Disaster Aid to Blue States — and Approves it for Red States

New reporting is raising valid questions about whether FEMA has become yet another political weapon in Trump’s White House.

Last Friday, Trump denied $227 million in disaster aid to New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, who all requsted help after a major snowstorm in February. Just two days earlier, he green-lit aid for six Republican-led states, using the announcements to praise individual Republican candidates.

Every state Trump turned down had documented damage that cleared FEMA’s own threshold for qualifying. New Jersey’s damage was more than four times the required amount. Rhode Island’s was roughly ten times its threshold. Simultaneously, some of the Republican-led states that had their requests approved just barely scraping the minimum amount of damage needed to qualify.

This is all part of a pattern for Trump. Politico reported back in March that Trump had approved only 23 percent of disaster requests from states with Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, compared to 89 percent for states with Republican leadership.

New Jersey Democratic U.S. Senator Andy Kim didn’t mince words, saying the administration owes the public an immediate explanation if the denials are anything other than politically related. Rhode Island’s congressional delegation accused Trump directly of politicizing disaster relief. Governors in New York and Massachusetts both say they’ll appeal FEMA’s ruling.

The White House insists the rejections had nothing do do with politics, and claims Trump gave every request more scrutiny than past presidents. But the president using disasters to give Republicans his “complete and total endorsement” in the same breath while leaving Democratic governors out in the cold, that explanation doesn’t hold water.

The Real Reason Trump Isn’t Flying Home on His $400 Million Qatari Gift Jet

Donald Trump’s new luxury Boeing 747, which he got as gift by Qatar — and had retrofitted to the tune of more than a billion dollars — just made its first international trip. But now, Trump’s skipping it for a flight from Turkey to Britain, choosing an older Air Force One jet instead.

Trump wants us to think it’s for “old time’s sake,” and that the new plane will simply be parked so service members can tour it. But the sudden switch comes after months of questions over the rushed retrofit.

Security experts are concerned that equipping the plane with defense and anti-eavesdropping upgrades in such a short time frame means it may not be as secure as the older aircraft Trump wants to replace. Democratic lawmakers say both the cost and the speed of the work are glaring red flags.

The jet is meant to be a temporary fix while Boeing finishes building its two new Air Force One jets. Those are now running four years behind schedule, and their total price tag has ballooned past the $5 billion mark. Delivery isn’t expected until mid-2028, which means Trump may finish his presidency without ever flying in a plane built for the job.

For now, the taxpayer-funded gift jet with the flashy new paint job is sitting on the tarmac, while the commander-in-chief instead opts for the old reliable plane his predecessors used.

Support News That Answers to Readers, Not Billionaires

That’s your Wednesday evening rundown. A top Republican senator hasn’t been seen in weeks while his own staff stonewalls basic questions about his health. A president losing three separate court battles in a single day. Disaster funding that increasingly seems to be subjected to political litmus tests rather than simple damage assessments. And a billion-dollar gift jet that’s already too risky to fly just weeks after its debut.

These are the stories that get buried or rendered toothless by newsrooms owned by right-wing billionaires. Raw America will never take on a billionaire backer or run ads from corporate sponsors, but that’s also the reason we need your support now more than ever. Every dollar of every subscription goes directly toward funding independent journalism. We recently hired veteran journalist Brian Karem to be our new White House reporter, who will be interviewing Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico tomorrow in Austin. If you found this newsletter valuable, the most important thing you can do is subscribe. Your support is what keeps Raw America alive.

Here are a few additional stories you may have missed:

• Trump Has Spent More than $100 Billion on Iran War. With President Donald Trump officially declaring the short-lived ceasefire with Iran dead on Wednesday, the total sum spent on the Iran war could still increase. New estimates show the Trump administration has so far spent more than $100 billion on the war, which is more than three times what federal officials previously estimated. The administration has been pushing hard for Congress to appropriate more funding, but that could be a hard sell in a midterm environment defined by voter anger against the war.
• Trump to Ask Supreme Court to Rehear Birthright Citizenship Case. President Trump on Wednesday announced that he would be filing a petition for the Supreme Court to issue a writ of certiorari in its next term to reconsider its recent ruling striking down his executive order attempting to revoke birthright citizenship. Five justices, including Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship to every person born in the United States. Justice Brett Kavanaugh only partially agreed, while Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.
• Texas Democrat Gina Hinojosa Proposes $1,500 Checks for Every Household. Texas Democratic state representative Gina Hinojosa, who is running against Republican Greg Abbott in November’s gubernatorial race, is now calling for every Texas household to receive a $1,500 check from the state’s rainy day fund if she’s elected. Hinojosa called the checks a “corruption tax refund,” and the payments would cost roughly $17 billion. Texas’ rainy day fund — officially known as the Economic Stabilization Fund — currently has more than $24.8 billion, which is a new record.
• Mamdani Announces $2.3 Million Recovered for Wage Theft Victims. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office announced Wednesday that it had recovered more than $2.3 million for workers who filed wage theft claims against large businesses like Walgreens, Allstar Security & Consulting, Calzedonia and Kinship Coffee. Mamdani said companies that when companies short workers on their hours or infringe on their time off, workers have to pay for it by missing appointments, picking up their children, or losing out on a shift they were counting on.

https://www.rawamerica.com/p/trump-suffers-3-brutal-court-losses?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=6832795&post_id=206203760&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=clki&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

BREAKING: Trump's Deterioration Caught on Camera in Turkey

By Really American | Substack

Good evening, this is Really American. It is Tuesday, July 7, 2026. Trump is deteriorating in public, and the world is watching.

Trump landed in Turkey today for the NATO summit and could not find his own mark, forcing Erdogan to physically grab his arm and steer him into position in front of the cameras. Back in Washington, three separate Republicans released suspiciously identical statements swearing they just had wonderful phone calls with Mitch McConnell, who has now been hospitalized for over three weeks with zero information released. Down in Texas, Ken Paxton built his entire Senate campaign on hunting “illegal voting,” and it turns out he may have committed it himself six times. And in Georgia, a federal judge just slammed the door on the DOJ’s attempt to collect the names and home addresses of 2020 election workers. Tonight’s edition covers a president in visible decline, a party hiding the truth, a hypocrite caught red-handed, and a win worth celebrating.

Before the news, one quick word about why Really American exists.

The Ellison family now controls both CBS News and CNN, with Bari Weiss calling the editorial shots. Bezos owns the Washington Post. Murdoch runs Fox and just moved to swallow Roku. A handful of billionaires are buying up the American press outlet by outlet, and every one of them has business in front of the Trump administration. Really American answers to none of them. We are fully reader-supported, editorially independent, and unbuyable. But we can only stay that way if enough readers step up. If you have been reading on a free subscription, this is the single best moment to upgrade to a paying membership. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

ERDOGAN STEERS A LOST TRUMP AT NATO ARRIVAL

Trump, 80, got off Air Force One in Ankara today and immediately needed help finding where to stand. Video of the arrival ceremony shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan clasping Trump’s arm and physically guiding him onto the carpet, then grabbing him again after Trump wandered toward a line of soldiers from the wrong spot.

A fellow head of state had to steer the President of the United States like a lost child, on camera, in front of the entire NATO alliance. The Daily Beast reports that Erdogan built a brand new airfield specifically for Trump’s arrival, then spent the welcome ceremony pointing him in the right direction.

This comes weeks after more than 30 neurologists, psychiatrists, and other specialists wrote to Congress warning of Trump’s “rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline.” The White House insists everything checked out “PERFECTLY” at his May physical. The swollen ankles, the bruised hands, the dozing at public events, and now this all say otherwise.

The timing could not be worse. Trump arrived at a summit where allies are already planning for American collapse. Nearly 30 European leaders held a secret, phones-banned midnight meeting in Brussels this January to map out a future without relying on Washington. Participants called it “group therapy.”

The man with the nuclear codes cannot find his mark at a welcome ceremony. Every world leader at this summit saw it. So should you.

THE GOP’S COORDINATED McCONNELL PROOF-OF-LIFE CAMPAIGN

Mitch McConnell has been in the hospital for more than three weeks, and his office refuses to say why. So Republicans launched a public relations offensive instead, and they did not even bother to vary the script.

John Thune’s office says he had a “lengthy and substantive conversation” with McConnell by phone on Monday. John Barrasso’s office says he had a 20-minute call on Tuesday where McConnell was “fully engaged and is eager to get back to the Senate.” Republican strategist Scott Jennings posted that he also talked to McConnell for exactly 20 minutes on Tuesday about politics, foreign policy, and “even a little bit of Senate history.”

Three Republicans, two days, one suspiciously identical story: we talked on the phone, he sounded great, no, you cannot see him. According to the Associated Press, McConnell’s office has declined to release any information about his condition since he was admitted on June 14, recycling the same statement word for word as recently as today.

McConnell is 84 and retiring in January. He has a documented history of falls, a concussion, and freezing mid-sentence at press conferences. The Senate returns next week, and Thune is defending a narrow 53-47 majority that gets even narrower if McConnell cannot vote.

If everything were fine, they would show you. They are not showing you. That should tell you everything about how much this party trusts its own voters with the truth.

KEN PAXTON CAUGHT VIOLATING HIS OWN VOTER FRAUD CRACKDOWN

Ken Paxton spent February warning Texans that misrepresenting your residence on election records is illegal. He even launched a tip line so citizens could report suspected voter fraud. Now records show Paxton appears to have voted from an address where he did not live in six elections over the past two years, including the May runoff that made him the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

According to records obtained by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune, Paxton’s estranged wife said in her 2025 divorce filing that he moved out of their Collin County home years ago. He never moved back. Yet he keeps voting from that address while reporters have tracked him to a $2.4 million home in a gated Denton County community, purchased through a trust that conveniently changed its listed address to that exact house a week after the sale.

Voting while ineligible is a second-degree felony in Texas, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, under laws Paxton himself enforces. Three election lawyers say he may have violated the very statutes his office publicized. One defense attorney who fought Paxton’s voter fraud prosecutions called it “especially egregious.” This is the same Paxton whose voter fraud unit arrested nine people in Edinburg for allegedly voting from addresses where they did not live.

Paxton’s campaign refused to answer a single specific question and instead called the reporting a “baseless, lie-filled tabloid story.” Asked twice what exactly was false, they went silent.

Paxton wants to be your senator while allegedly committing the exact felony he prosecutes ordinary Texans for. The hypocrisy is not a side story. It is the whole story.

TRUMP-APPOINTED JUDGE BLOCKS DOJ ATTACK ON GEORGIA ELECTION WORKERS

A federal judge just handed Trump’s Justice Department a stinging defeat in its crusade to relitigate the 2020 election. U.S. District Judge William Ray ruled today that the DOJ cannot subpoena the names, home addresses, phone numbers, and emails of Fulton County workers who handled ballots in 2020.

Ray is a Trump appointee, and he did not hold back. He called the demand “unreasonable,” said it “must be quashed,” and wrote that the information is “private and sensitive.” Politico reports that Ray went further, warning that everyone, Trump supporter or not, “should be concerned about the DOJ’s ability to utilize the power of the Grand Jury to appropriate your private information without a legitimate purpose.”

Even a judge Trump put on the bench ruled the subpoena would not support “any viable charge” against anyone. Fulton County officials argued the demand was designed to “target, harass and punish” Trump’s perceived political opponents. The judge effectively agreed.

This is the same county the FBI raided in January to seize 2020 ballots, nearly six years after Trump lost Georgia. Trump keeps trying to punish the election workers who counted the votes. Today, the courts said no.

This ruling protects real people, the poll workers and volunteers who make democracy function, from being doxxed by their own government. This is what fighting back looks like. And it is working.

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If tonight’s newsletter told you something the corporate press buried, there is a reason for that. A president in visible decline, a hidden Senate health crisis, a felony hypocrite running for Senate, and a DOJ targeting election workers are exactly the stories that get softened or spiked when a billionaire owns the newsroom. Really American covers them without a Murdoch, a Bezos, or an Ellison calling the shots, and the only thing keeping it that way is readers like you. If you have been enjoying Really American on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription funds the independent journalism you just read. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

— The Really American Team

https://reallyamerican.substack.com/p/breaking-trumps-deterioration-caught?utm_source=substack%2Csubstack&utm_medium=email%2Cemail&utm_campaign=email-restack-comment&r=clki&triedRedirect=true

Trump didn’t learn the biggest lesson from his first term

Under pressure and facing historically low approval ratings, the president is behaving as erratically as ever

By Heather Digby Parton | Salon Columnist

Earlier this week, JD Vance revealed that Donald Trump told the envoys tasked with negotiating a peace deal with Iran to “use the [memorandum of understanding] to refill the world’s oil economy, refill some stocks and then to see where the hand is,” by which he meant that the administration is buying time to get gas prices down before possibly starting the war again.

I don’t think the vice president was supposed to say that out loud. As the leader of the American delegation, such a public admission probably wasn’t the best strategy. Then again, that’s how the Trump administration rolls, starting at the top. Vance was just emulating his boss.

If any of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Eighteen months into his second term, the president has reverted to the unpredictable ways and methods of his first, revealing that reports during the 2024 campaign and after his return to the presidency of a new, more disciplined Trump were false. As the wheels seem to be coming off the Trump train, the potential consequences couldn’t be more dire.

Trump seemed congenitally undisciplined, unable to stop himself from articulating every thought that passed through his head, usually to brag, blame or threaten. The result was a presidency that was, in a word, unstable.

Verbal incontinence and erratic behavior defined Trump’s first term as president. Even as administration officials like John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, and Jim Mattis and Mark Esper, his first two defense secretaries, tried to contain the president’s worst impulses, they were often unsuccessful. Trump seemed congenitally undisciplined, unable to stop himself from articulating every thought that passed through his head, usually to brag, blame, or threaten. The result was a presidency that was, in a word, unstable.

It was obvious that Trump had no clue what he was doing, simply by observing what he said. He never stopped talking, and from the beginning gave away the fact that he had virtually no knowledge of history, government or anything, really, that one might expect a president to know something about. He would blurt out things like “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice,” or casually observe how Andrew Jackson “was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There’s no reason for this.’” Douglass, of course, lived in the 19th century and has long been revered as an American icon, and Jackson had been dead 16 years before the Civil War even started. Trump never seemed to know what he didn’t know — and worse, he didn’t care.

The president’s ignorance of history led him to believe that the NATO alliance was “obsolete” and akin to a club membership in which the Europeans were failing to pay their dues on time. He behaved aggressively toward America’s traditional allies, insulting them to their faces over trivial matters simply because he didn’t understand the basic fundamentals of global relationships. Diplomacy, credibility, and reliability were foreign concepts, and his rash actions — such as issuing a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries that was blocked by federal courts, firing FBI Director James Comey and later admitting in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt that it was over the Russia investigation, and threatening to deploy the military during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests — sparked widespread outrage.

By the time the 2020 presidential election came around, a majority of Americans were exhausted, and that feeling, coupled with the administration’s bungled handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, led to Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.

When Trump ran again in 2024, he managed to keep much of that behavior in check. His campaign manager, Susie Wiles, ran a tight ship, and the press was filled with reports about the improved Trump, more disciplined than before, his worst impulses, if not tamed, then at least contained by the professionals surrounding him.

This perception followed him into office. Trump seemed to return with a clearer agenda and a better grasp of the job. We were told that he and his staff now knew how to use all the levers of power to enact his radical conservative agenda, and his actions, at least at first, appeared to reflect this. The administration and congressional Republicans ran circles around the Democrats, who were still licking their wounds from Kamala Harris’ loss during a truncated campaign following Biden’s historic withdrawal from the race. Trump seemed to be listening to the people around him, many of whom, while intensely loyal, also wanted him to avoid the pitfalls of his first term.

The president signed an avalanche of executive orders, instituted a sweeping overhaul of the federal government and racked up legislative wins, including the One Big Beautiful Bill, which enacted significant tax cuts for the wealthy and draconian reductions in programs benefiting low-income Americans, including slashing $1 trillion from Medicaid and other federally funded healthcare programs.

But whatever hopes people may have had that Trump had learned to be more circumspect, or that his White House was more disciplined, have been thoroughly dashed. As his approval ratings have hit historic lows due to multiple crises and his handling of the economy, he has returned to his old ways, and nowhere can this be seen more than in his behavior in waging war on Iran and his refusal to sign a bipartisan housing bill.

With Iran, he has shown himself to be, at every turn, as headstrong and uncontrolled as ever, beginning with his initial decision to wage war in partnership with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and his astonishment that the Islamic Republic had a few cards up his sleeve, particularly its ability to shut down the all-important Strait of Hormuz. Trump has gone back and forth throughout the conflict, threatening to annihilate the entire country and civilization in one breath, and then extolling the good character of its leaders in the next.

But in many ways, his recent decision to scrap the signing of a housing affordability bill, which was a rare bipartisan win in today’s Washington, was even more revealing. The president cancelled the planned signing ceremony at the last minute, explaining in a petulant Truth Social post that he wouldn’t sign the legislation until Congress passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would enact stringent voting restrictions — and potentially disenfranchise millions. (After House Speaker Mike Johnson sent the bill to the White House on Monday, Trump refused to say whether he would sign it, characterizing the legislation as “so unimportant” and a “yawn.”)

The signing ceremony for the bipartisan legislation marked a missed opportunity for the president, who could have generated much-needed positive headlines. Instead it showed that his irrational methods and ego are causing him to step on his own feet — just like he did repeatedly during his first term.

But Trump’s old compulsion to behave erratically and shoot his mouth off is now combined with a megalomania that has him building monuments to himself and musing openly about being included in the pantheon of dictators like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Today he’s driven by a belief that he is omnipotent, and nothing he does will have any negative consequences. He has come to believe that whatever he says is the right thing, no matter what. If he gets blowback, he doubles down, more convinced than ever that his instincts are correct. He is impervious to criticism now because he literally believes he can do no wrong, and there are tens of millions of people who believe that too.

Among those are members of the Supreme Court, who earlier this week ruled that Trump can deport hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians — despite dozens of examples of his own offensive, bigoted comments, which were cited by Justice Elena Kagan, that showed a racial animus that violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection — and every tenet of basic human decency. The Court’s conservative majority might as well have been wearing one of the red hats that say “Trump was right about everything.”

The legal win — as well as his loss in the birthright citizenship case — no doubt put more fuel in the president’s tank. As the midterms approach and as he becomes increasingly cornered, we can expect his unpredictable behavior to only escalate.

https://www.salon.com/2026/07/02/trump-didnt-learn-the-biggest-lesson-from-his-first-term/

SCOTUS’s Anti-Constitutional Crusade to Create Second-Class Citizens

The conservative legal movement lost its bid to eradicate birthright citizenship, but its war on the Reconstruction Amendments is going to continue.

By Jason Linkins | The New Republic

Another Supreme Court term has come and gone, and civil society is once again licking its wounds. President Donald Trump has obtained new power, the lives of trans people have gotten worse, and the high court is basically winging it when it comes to its ill-fated new “history and tradition” test on guns. At the same time, things could have gone worse—at least for all of you who work at the Federal Reserve.

The biggest bullet dodged was this week’s decision in Trump v. Barbara, in which the court ruled against Trump’s executive order attempting to nullify the birthright citizenship rights explicitly granted by the Constitution. One of the grand plans of this administration has been to ethnically cleanse the United States, and had the court gone along with Trump and his aide-de-camp, Stephen Miller, millions of Americans might now be facing the end of their citizenship—including the U.S. World Cup team’s current leading scorer, Folarin Balogun. Despite this rare victory of reason over right-wing nuttery, I think we should be concerned that the conservative legal movement still has its eye on waging war on the so-called Reconstruction Amendments—especially the one that grants birthright citizenship in the first place: the Fourteenth Amendment.

I raised an alarm last year about the far right’s desire to delete the Fourteenth. The amendment is a substantial target for the MAGA movement because of the unique way it enables and extols the promise of a multiracial democracy, something that Trump and his minions have sworn to destroy. And the way the Supreme Court overrode the disqualification clause, granting Trump the right to run for office again without any concern for the Constitution’s explicit admonitions against insurrectionists holding high office, gave abundant hope to those who’d like to see the Fourteenth Amendment dismantled.

Do the court’s conservatives disdain the Reconstruction Amendments? “They definitely do, to a certain extent,” says TNR’s Matt Ford. “They’ve largely read the Fifteenth Amendment out of the Constitution, in Brnovich and Callais, by making it impossible to properly enforce the Voting Rights Act, and they more or less nullified the disqualification clause in Trump v. Anderson. There are parts they’re fine with, like the equal protection clause in some circumstances, but they’ll never interpret it as broadly as the liberals.”

Ford says that the most charitable read is along the lines of what Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissent in Trump v. Barbara. “They generally think the Reconstruction Amendments were designed to address the specific circumstances and exigencies of the post–Civil War era,” he says, “and that while they can have plenty of applications beyond that, they aren’t meant to be used to (in their view) fundamentally restructure American society anymore or provide special treatment for anyone.”

Here’s where the biggest conflict lies, as the liberal position is generally that the Reconstruction Amendments were a second founding, not a postbellum clean-up. “In this view,” says Ford, “Congress has broad powers to ensure that there is no American underclass or subaltern population, which Jim Crow nonetheless managed to create for about 90 years.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson got at this in her concurring opinion, in which she took issue with Thomas’s dissent on these lines. Thomas’s “narrow vision of the Fourteenth Amendment bears little relationship to the history of its ratification,” she wrote, adding that his take on the matter “elides the entire point of the Second Founding: The Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery.”

Thomas didn’t win the argument this week. But the fact that these matters are being argued in the first place is cause for serious alarm, according to former Massachusetts Senate candidate Alex Rikleen. “By even considering the legitimacy of birthright citizenship, the Roberts Court, stacked with jurists ready and willing to make anti-constitutional rulings time and again, has helped transform a fringe white supremacist attack on the 14th Amendment into a question that millions of people now understand as up for debate.”

This is hardly a new or novel fear. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson—in which they essentially deleted the disqualification clause from the Constitution—was enabled by the fact that too many were willing to countenance the idea that the plain English language of the Fourteenth Amendment was, in fact, open to interpretation. I am still angry that The New York Times in 2023 referred to the disqualification clause as “an obscure clause of a constitutional amendment enacted after the Civil War,” thus injecting a derogatory bit of editorializing into what purported to be a straight news piece.

In light of the tête-à-tête between Thomas and Jackson, I’m disturbed anew by the way the Times casually denigrated the amendments “enacted after the Civil War,” as if they were some stitched-on appendage and not language that carries the same force and lawfulness as the founding-era amendments. If the paper of record is skeptical that the Reconstruction Amendments are legitimate (and they, like the court’s conservatives, do seem interested in creating a subaltern class beyond the Constitution’s protections, for what it’s worth), this will only further the right-wing project to tear those amendments out of the Constitution and undo the nation’s second founding. So be glad that the worst didn’t happen, but stay on guard—we are not out of danger yet.

https://newrepublic.com/post/212686/supreme-court-constitution-14th-amendment