SCOTUS Hands Trump HUGE LOSSES But There's A Problem...

So in a prior video I told you guys that Tuesday was going to bring the real fireworks. Birthright citizenship, trans athletes, campaign finance. Well Tuesday showed up and not only were there several landmark rulings coming out of SCOTUS, but there was lots of intrigue. So let's go over what actually happened on Tuesday and what the Supreme Court looked like. Because it started off chaotic. For about 20 minutes on Tuesday morning NPR's most legendary Supreme Court reporter, someone who has been covering this beat since 1970 or so, looked America dead in the eye and announced that Justice Samuel Alito was retired. Headline news. Top of the website. Notifications went out as all of the other news outlets were picking up on the story. But by the time I could even click on the story on my phone it had been replaced with As in someone told the entire country, nay the world, a sitting Supreme Court Justice had retired. On the single biggest ruling day of the year. And the story was completely wrong. Alito even got a personal apology call. And look, I get where the idea sounds plausible. He's 76 years old. The second oldest justice on the bench. And he was hospitalized for dehydration back in March after one of those Federalist Society dinners. So it wouldn't be completely out of left field to see him step down. But Alito is still there. And on the very morning he didn't retire he wrote a very furious dissent calling part of the Constitution a quote medieval rule. Because the rest of the court ruled against his pal Donald Trump. And I'll be honest with you about something that's maybe a little uncomfortable here. Even though Sam Alito is in my professional opinion a real piece of Trump, the worst possible outcome for our side here is him actually retiring. Because you've got a Republican Senate that would confirm his replacement in about a week and a half and you just end up with a younger more loyalist version of the exact same vote. So weirdly right now Sam stay right where you are. At least until November. Better yet until we actually win the next presidential election. Hell I never thought I'd be rooting for this man's job security but well hell here we are. And speaking of justices that are excrement adjacent on Monday the oldest most senior justice on the bench Clarence Thomas was oddly spotted wandering the Capitol building alone. And an MSNOW reporter cornered him and said hey who the heck are you meeting with? And Clarence Thomas's answer oh nobody. Then laughing says none that I'm going to tell you about. And some reporters even have claimed to have seen him sneaking out of Mike Johnson's office. But in fairness the other leading theory out there according to multiple reporters on the hill is that Thomas was there to visit the Capitol's attending physician. The same office that Ruth Bader Ginsburg visited when she refused to retire and instead passed away leaving a vacancy in the Supreme Court when we couldn't afford to have one. Look that's a hell of a mood to start the day with a justice accidentally getting retired by one of the most trusted reporters in the building and another one caught wandering around the Capitol and giving suspicious answers as to why. But there were actual impactful rulings. And I'm going to start with the one that Stephen Miller turns into a daywalker for birth right citizenship. And it was a six to three vote the court ruling that Trump's executive order that was trying to end automatic citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil is unconstitutional. And look the 14th amendment it says it if you're born here you're a citizen full stop. It's the way it's been read for 128 years and the majority court said that there is no honest reading of that text that lets the president rewrite it on a whim. And one of the most priceless things I've even seen was from speaker Mike Johnson getting caught flat footed groaning when he found out live that his administration the Trump administration lost. Anybody who looks at this oh dear. The decision is children born in the United States parents unlawfully or temporarily present are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and are citizens at birth under the 14th amendment citizenship clause. What's your reaction to that Mr. Speaker. I need to read the opinion. OK. But obviously that's I mean you could say that's a textualist originalist view. I'm sure the conclusion from this opinion is going to be that you've got to have a you've got to amend the Constitution to fix that. As we all know it's a it's a big challenge to amend the Constitution. It's only happened 27 times in our whole nation's history. And the reason is because you've got to have two thirds of the both chambers of Congress and three fourths of the states to ratify. It's usually a you know at least a many years long process and very complicated. We'll see. I'm sure there's going to be lots of discussion about that. I will say I'm very disappointed in that outcome. I think it subjects the country to serious challenges going forward and we'll have to deal with it as a Congress. And it wasn't just Mike Johnson that was disappointed because Trump of course went true social. And before he congratulated China on their massive birthright citizenship win he posted Congress should start today to work on ending expensive and unfair to our country birthright citizenship. They will have my complete and total support. You know if you read that it sounds like he just wants you to pass a regular law and undo a constitutional right. That's his plan. But of course that would take amending the Constitution itself. He'd have two thirds of the House, two thirds of the Senate, three quarters of the states. The Constitution is designed to be almost impossible to change on purpose. Just so that a right like this doesn't evaporate into thin air the moment a Donald Trump comes along and gets a simple majority. And there is another ruling that was very impactful that came out and this one deserves a little bit more care than normal and a whole lot of nuance. So bear with me on this. The court ruled six to three that states can ban transgender kids from school sports teams that match their gender identity. And the case combined two lawsuits. One in West Virginia and an Idaho one as well. Both brought by transgender girls who wanted to run track. And look this is a very controversial topic. But despite all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth from MAGA this case was more about optics than numbers. The NCAA's own president testified to the Senate that he knows of fewer than 10 transgender athletes out of more than half a million college athletes nationwide. And get this the advocacy group that's leading the push for these state bans could only identify five. Five transgender kids playing on girls teams in the entire country. That's kindergarten through 12th grade. Not 5,000 not 500. Five. And that is what's being yelled about on Fox News like it's the defining issue in American athletics. And now you have a policy being written for the entire country based on a population that you could fit in a minivan. And Justice Sotomayor she wrote the dissent and I think she handled this about as well as anyone could have handled it. She didn't argue that there's no such thing as a hard question in sports. She argued something much narrower. And honestly her arguments harder to dismiss. That the majority ruled on this without ever sending the case back down to establish the facts. She said that the majority quote moves the goalposts set by precedent. And resolves quote this important divisive issue without knowing all of the facts. Which is true. And she pointed out that the West Virginia plaintiff a middle schooler who'd already won a state shot put championship fair and square was never even shown to be taking anyone else's roster spot. And look here's my personal take. Because first representation matters. Especially when it comes to a harshly marginalized group like the trans community. And without any reservations I stand with our trans friends. And as for the question about trans people in sports. There are real complicated conversations to have about competitive sports and competitive advantages. But it's not just because of hormones or gender identity. But any physical mismatch. And I'm going to tell myself a little bit because hell in 7th grade I was like a full foot taller than my classmates. And I couldn't shoot a basketball to save my life. But I was a hell of a basketball player because the other kids just bounced off of me. That experience wasn't fair to me nor my opponents. Heck my middle school football league had to make special rules to keep me from injuring other players. In 8th grade I was 6'1, 195 pounds with a full beard. And I was tackling kids that were almost 100 pounds lighter than me. So I get the safety debate. But it can't just single out trans kids. And pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone including trans kids themselves. But what happened in courtrooms and state houses across this country over the last few years has never really been about a rational conversation. And by the way it is extremely important to note that there are no easy quick answers here. It was about turning a tiny number of kids into the villain of a culture war that pulls well for one political party and changes virtually nothing about anyone else's actual day to day life. 5 kids don't threaten girls sports in America. Fear mongering about those 5 kids however has been extremely good for MAGA and for them to rally behind. Hatred. That's what it is. And then the third ruling. It sounds boring. Campaign finance. And full disclosure before I sat and thought about this one I had a pretty soft reaction over it. But that changed as I thought through things and I want to walk you through the way I thought about it because I think it might be helpful to you. The court struck down the limit on how much a political party can spend when it directly coordinates with its own candidates. The challenge was originally brought back in 2022 by then senate candidate J.D. Vance. And my gut reaction was who cares? Citizens United already blew the barn doors off and super PACs already spend whatever the hell they want. Isn't this really just semantics? Well not quite. Because Citizens United was about outside groups spending independently. McCutcheon a few years later that was about individual MAGA donors maxing out to more candidates at once. Neither one of those got to the issue of coordination. This ruling is different. It lets the party itself spend unlimited money in direct coordination with the candidates own campaigns. Something that super PACs are legally barred from doing. And here's the key. It comes with cheap broadcast ad rates that federal law guarantees candidates get but denies to outside groups. They get cheaper air time. So essentially a political party just became a fully synced unlimited money cheap rate extension of a person's campaign. Justice Kagan in her dissent she said that a party can now act as an alternative checking account for a campaign. So frankly I was wrong about the scale. Still right about the trend here. It is one more brick out of a wall that's been coming down since 2010 and it lands four months before the midterm. And here's the thing that nobody's saying loud enough. Of everything the court did this week this might be the one that shapes the most actual elections with the least public attention. Because coordinated party expenditure limits doesn't exactly raise eyebrows. Reforming the FEC, actually rebuilding the guardrails around this stuff is not sexy work. It never will be the headline at a rally. But I would bet real money that the first serious 2028 candidate who makes fixing this their actual signature issue, not just a footnote, ends up resonating a lot more than people expect. Because most Americans, you and I especially, already know that the system is bought. They're just waiting for somebody to treat it like the first step in saving our republic. So tell me, which potential 2028 candidate do you think actually has it in them to make overhauling campaign spending their real fight? Drop it in the comments. I want to see who you've got. And frankly this is where I think Jon Ossoff, he is particularly strong. He has advanced legislation and he has been a convincing advocate for campaign reform. So I think on this topic, he's the strongest out there. And look, for SCOTUS, by the way, on their way out for summer recess, they agreed that in the fall they're going to take up a brand new case. Whether states can ban AR-15 style rifles. You'll hear that probably in October. And given that this exact same sixth justice majority that spent a week expanding the president's powers and gutting campaign finance limits, I wouldn't be shocked if assault rifles end up on the things the government can't touch list by next summer too. And look, despite all these rulings, we're still here. We still exist. But our country keeps shifting. That's why I'm going to ask you to subscribe and stick around because a court that just did all of that in a week, they are not going to go quietly.