More excellent writing from The Atlantic:
The Court That Will Believe Absolutely Anything Is ‘Race-Neutral’
The majority gives Trump yet more license to discriminate.
By Adam Serwer
Trump-administration officials have made no secret of their desire to purge the United States of nonwhite immigrants. Donald Trump has declared, “If you import The Third World, you become The Third World,” a common refrain repeated by his advisers. Trump has also said that immigrants have “bad genes,” that they are genetically predisposed to crime, and that they are “poisoning the blood of our country”—coming, as they are, “from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
In many instances, Trump’s vitriol has been directed at Black immigrants, particularly from Africa and the Caribbean. He has said that allowing in Haitian immigrants was a “death wish for our country” and that “they all have AIDS,” and accused them of eating household pets. He has referred to Haiti as a “filthy, dirty, disgusting” place, a “shithole” country, while complaining that America doesn’t take in enough people from Norway and Sweden. That last statement is crucial—Trump has not proved hostile to all immigrants. Removing all possibility that the president’s xenophobia is nonracial, the administration has implemented what is effectively a whites-only refugee policy that accepts solely South Africans of European descent.
Much of this evidence, including statements by Kristi Noem, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security, was presented to the Supreme Court when it considered in Mullin v. Doe whether the Trump administration had lawfully ended temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Syria and Haiti. Yet the right-wing majority shrugged off the clear racially discriminatory intent in the president’s rhetoric, and sided with Trump. As long as one can find a valid justification for the policy decision, the opinion suggests, then it doesn’t actually matter what Trump said. The racist statements mean nothing so long as, in another, hypothetical universe, Trump could have made the same policy choice without making the racist statements first.
The immediate impact of Thursday’s ruling will be that 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians are now at risk of deportation, despite the dangers they face in their home countries. Yet the ruling has implications beyond immigration law, because it suggests that no amount of evidence of racial animus against Black people will be enough to convince a majority of justices that racial discrimination has occurred. As Guy-Uriel Charles, a professor at Harvard Law, put it to me, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion “basically sets up an impossible burden for plaintiffs because race is rarely going to be the sole justification” for a policy.
“None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications,” Alito wrote in his opinion. “One may oppose TPS and favor tighter restrictions on immigration for economic or other reasons that have nothing to do with race.”
Alito’s insistence that “none of the cited statements” was “overtly racial” does not pass the laugh test. Trump’s remarks were not just “overtly racial”; they were the essence of racism: assuming the value of individual human beings solely on the basis of their origin, regardless of their individual characteristics. Shortly after the decision, the White House adviser Stephen Miller gushed, “We can finally remove these Haitian illegal migrants.”
As Justice Elena Kagan observed in her dissent, “The evidence is there, plain to see, in the President’s statements, which the majority (and for that matter, his own lawyers) cannot even bear to repeat.” Alito indeed does not repeat these plainly racist statements, instead substituting his own “race-neutral” explanations for what they might have said or meant. In reference to Trump’s “shithole” comment, for example, Alito wrote that “a person without racial bias can provide a harshly unfavorable description of living conditions in some of the countries with TPS designations. The criteria for TPS designations guarantee that many, if not most, designated countries have such characteristics. Haiti is no exception. It is a very poor country, and living conditions there are unquestionably difficult.”
Alito, in perhaps the most grotesque Alito Disclaimer ever put to paper, adds that “poverty and deprivation are no reflection on character, and there is no justification for denigrating the character of Haitians who suffer from and bear no responsibility for their country’s ills.” Denigrating people who have suffered from their country’s ills is precisely what Trump is doing when he talks about immigrants poisoning America by importing the values of the “Third World.” And yet, the justices are rewarding him for it.
In his opinion, Alito notes that the administration had previously eliminated TPS protections for countries in Asia, Africa, South America. “Most would regard this as a racially diverse group,” he writes, as if racism toward all nonwhite people doesn’t count as racism. But that’s a perfectly coherent ideological principle, the same one that led to the eugenics-inspired racist immigration restrictions that Miller has insisted should be restored, right down to the preference for Nordic immigrants.
The Roberts Court has been turning anti-discrimination law upside down for years. Its approach came into particular focus in May, with Louisiana v. Callais, in which it determined that not allowing Louisiana’s government to dilute Black votes was racist. In that case, Alito insisted that forcing the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district would be an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander” because Republicans were entitled to discriminate against Black voters if they argued that their purpose was partisan instead of racist. The Court reaffirmed that position in a subsequent case dealing with Alabama, after a lower court had found ample evidence of deliberate racial discrimination, as opposed to the discriminatory effect of the Louisiana map.
Mullin now sets up an even more impossible double standard. If the government wants to discriminate against Black people, any pretext will do. “As long as there is a plausible basis—any plausible articulable basis—for the government’s action, then the Court will look to that basis as sufficient,” Aderson Francois, a law professor at Georgetown University, told me, “even in the face of evidence that government actors were motivated by animus.” If a Black person wants to prove they’ve been discriminated against, however, no amount of evidence will suffice.
They want to codify White-Minority Rule and give it legitimacy. They want to codify Jim Crow 2.0.
user avatar
Citizens for Ethics
@CREWcrew
Trump’s Board of Peace is reportedly planning to grant itself sweeping legal immunity.
And by the way, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is on the board. Despite retaining BILLIONS in potentially conflicting investments.
https://x.com/CREWcrew/status/2071700306778349831
MeidasTouch
@meidastouch.com
Nehls on how House GOP will make case for affordability back home:
Nehls: What are you talking about? I’m gonna get me lobster tails. Some nice rib eyes.
Reporter: Do you think the 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck can afford that?
Nehls: Maybe not. Maybe they don’t work as hard as me.
https://bsky.app/profile/meidastouch.com/post/3mpjyywqx7s2y
Rex Huppke
@rexhuppke.bsky.social
Follow
Republicans are behaving with such arrogance and supreme confidence that it’s obvious they’re not going to accept midterm election results. That said, I think the anger they’re stoking among voters will cause them to lose so dramatically it won’t matter. A needle is coming for their bubble. Keep on.
https://bsky.app/profile/rexhuppke.bsky.social/post/3mpk57mej7k2g
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar.com
CNBC host Rebecca Quick to a crazed-sounding, incoherent, ranting Palantir CEO Alex Karp: “You sound pretty angry”
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mpllshnkc526
Lily is anti-ICE, anti-fascist, anti-MAGA, anti-DSA
@lily77.bsky.social
Follow
I’m pretty sure we will all survive if Palantir went out of business, especially when their business is spying on us and using our personal information to further fascism.
https://bsky.app/profile/lily77.bsky.social/post/3mplmlbaess2y
Not the RUSSIANS who have been doing Baby Tourism for forever…
No mention of them….
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Acting AG Todd Blanche: “Everybody should agree that it’s a violation of our laws if your intent in coming here if you’re pregnant is to have a child to become a US citizen because of our now laws. And so what we have to do as the DOJ is make sure HSI agents and the FBI are focused on stopping that.”
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2072349145214431660
scary lawyerguy
@scarylawyerguy
Just remarkable how quickly they can invent a panic out of thin air (ANCHOR BABIES WILL END OUR DEMOCRACY!) and have it dominate the news cycle. (see also, trans athletes in women’s sports)
https://x.com/scarylawyerguy/status/2072387395866038728
Candidate for Senator in Michigan.
Lips so pursed.
Jeb Fain
@JebFain
El-Sayed is being dishonest again. He didn’t just sit for an interview with Piker. He featured Piker at multiple campaign rallies. Between El-Sayed announcing campaigning with Piker and doing so, Piker’s abundant antisemitic, anti-American rhetoric was in the news because of it!
https://x.com/JebFain/status/2072339761751081290
Texas Tribune
@TexasTribune
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision loosening campaign finance rules means national Republican committees can use their flush war chests to help candidates like Paxton close fundraising deficits.
https://x.com/TexasTribune/status/2072360303627522156
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
@ReichlinMelnick
Trump wants to cut down Washington DC’s oldest grove of cherry trees along the Mall and eliminate the public biking path and picnic areas so he can build a Trump golf course on public land, using public dollars, and taking spaces away from the public.
https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/2072339951119663145
Democracy Docket
@DemocracyDocket
NEW: Four GOP-led states asked a court if it could regain access to the DHS’ citizenship verification database after a judge recently shut the system down.
Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Iowa previously sued the department for allegedly not doing enough to help uncover noncitizens on their rolls. democracydocket.com/news-alerts/re…
https://x.com/DemocracyDocket/status/2072384334795784320
THIS😠😠
I Smoked A Predilection For Nipples
@BlackKnight10k
Guys, it was a 5-4 decision. We were one Trump appointed crony away from everyone in this country who isn’t white being deported
user avatar
Musk and his responsibility for the close OF USAID
https://youtu.be/M4nnoWLH2xs?si=898Bd0h5EgTZ5DBs
Sherrilyn Ifill
@sifill.bsky.social
I do not think there is sufficient appreciation for how catastrophic yesterday’s decision in Slaughter is for this country. As Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent and she intoned from the bench yesterday, “today the majority reshapes our Govt.”
7:44 AM · Jun 30, 2026
Sherrilyn Ifill
@sifill.bsky.social
Independent agencies set standards that keep us safe across a wide range of areas. Imagine Trump’s friends want to market an unsafe product – for children, for elders, in construction. And the Consumer Products Safety Commn is run by Trump cronies who will approve whatever he wants.
7:47 AM · Jun 30, 2026
Sherrilyn Ifill
@sifill.bsky.social
Imagine there is a chemical spill that harms hundreds or thousands. But the manufacturer is a friend of Trump & the Chemical Safety Board, authorized to investigate the disaster is filled with Trump cultists who, fudge the findings & obscure the truth to protect Trump’s friend.
8:03 AM · Jun 30, 2026
Sherrilyn Ifill
@sifill.bsky.social
Allowing the President to appoint his cronies and remove at will those who do not pledge or show fealty to him to the Merit Systems Protection Board means that we will lose one of the core institutions that undergird functioning democracies – protected & indep. civil service employees.
8:05 AM · Jun 30, 2026
Sherrilyn Ifill
@sifill.bsky.social
The majority on this Court has left Americans undefended. The President is now a king, and our only hope is to elect a more benevolent king. In their zeal to end the so-called “administrative state,” they broke what was left of protections for the American people.
8:06 AM · Jun 30, 2026
https://bsky.app/profile/sifill.bsky.social/post/3mpj2zakxrk2t
REPERCUSSION OF THE CLOSING OF USAID
Eric Michael Garcia
@EricMGarcia
Rovina Naboi in Kenya lost her little daughter Jane to starvation in a refugee camp. After Elon Musk threw USAID into the woodchipper, food was rationed to 40 percent of daily caloric needs, and one meal a day.
The world’s richest man did this.
https://x.com/EricMGarcia/status/2071939318222831704
Wendell Pierce
@WendellPierce
This story is so insane and confounding. She delivered the most artistically successful season in 75 years for Arena Stage Theater Company, brought in 8 million in enhancement, highest grossing gala in history, raised 3 million in foundation support and one back to back best production Helen Hayes Awards for the first time ever, and diversified the audiences.
All of the success does not trump fear of change, racism, or dirty politics. Hana Sharif was pressured by the board to resign on the eve of opening night of a new American musical sure to be the next Broadway hit! Black excellence in Black women is under attack.
-Dr. Carla Hayden fired from Library of Congress
-Lisa Cook investigated with the attempt to remove her from the Federal Reserve
This is a Call to Action.
Restitution must be paid. Let’s be clear this isn’t about the art created or the business generated because it belies those barometers of success. This is vindictive, cruel, and a reprehensible petty dirty trick power play. Shame on those who conspired against Hana Sharif
3:13 PM · Jun 30, 202628.7KViews
https://x.com/WendellPierce/status/2071975381624570183
They really can’t stand it when you confront them with their own words
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
POCAN: You are a Christian nationalist by declaration
VOUGHT: This is the second time you’ve used that slander
POCAN: You wrote an article, ‘Is there anything actually wrong with Christian nationalism’
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2071970557764018216
NOT.EVEN.CLOSE.
Melanie D’Arrigo
@DarrigoMelanie
Trump has been allegedly selling pardons for up to $6 million each. Now he may sell another 250 and pretend his open call for bribes and corruption is in celebration of our nation. Most corrupt president ever — and it’s not even close.
https://x.com/DarrigoMelanie/status/2071730418798195122
TELL THAT TRUTH
GIVE GOP EVERYTHING …WHAT DID YOU EXPECT
👑 Mr. Weeks 👑
@WonderKing82
The point is y’all gave Republicans the White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court… y’all strategically removed Democrats from power now you’re yelling at the same people to do somerhing when you should be focusing on the people y’all helped into power for the last decade.
https://x.com/WonderKing82/status/2071981149564375402
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊