Wednesday, July 1, 2026

Trump's better (but still bad) day in court

If everything that could go wrong at the Supreme Court for President Donald Trump went wrong for him on Monday, he and Republicans got a few lucky breaks on Tuesday.

First, the big one: the high court ruled against his executive order to curtail automatic birthright citizenship.

To boot, Amy Coney Barrett, one of the justices that Trump nominated in his first presidency, joined the majority opinion with Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's three liberals.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice, wrote the dissent saying that birthright citizenship "devalues what it means to be a citizen.

Not surprisingly, Trump did not take too kindly to that. 

"I would like to congratulate President Xi, and the Great Country of China, on their massive Birthright Citizenship WIN," he posted on Truth Social. 

The announcement was so abrupt that Inside Washington wound up informing House Speaker Mike Johnson about it during his weekly press conference. 

“Oh dear,” Johnson said and rolled his eyes up toward the heavens and shook his head repeatedly at the fast and furious pace of the decisions coming down at the tail end of his weekly briefing.

It wasn't all bad news for conservatives, though. The court also ruled 6-3 to ax restrictions on coordinated campaign spending between political parties and their candidates. Trump welcomed the decision.

And in a particular blow to the queer people on the last day of Pride Month, the court ruled that states can ban transgender athletes from women's sports. Trump and Republicans have made hay out of this issue and have used it to show that Democrats are out of touch.

It's another sign of the rolling back of transgender people's rights. 

Still, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, reassured transgender people and their families. 

"I would just say to the kids and the families who feel besieged and scapegoated by the authoritarian politics of MAGA Republicans, that there are millions of people across the country who stand with you, and they didn't say that the states have got to compel those exclusionary policies," he told Inside Washington.

And lest transgender youth fear nothing will get better, they should know that there was a time when Raskin was one of the few Democrats willing to defend same-sex marriage when it was unpopular. 

Read more here. 

By Eric Garcia

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

Listen, the great thing about WWE, that's so inspiring, is that all of these guys have failed. Every one of them has lost fights.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while seated next to WWE Chief Content Officer Paul "Triple H" Levesque. Nobody told him that wrestling is staged apparently. 

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