Steve (and Mark) are good correctives to the weird, glib "it'll all work out" take so popular with court-knowers

“This is on me. And only me.” — Nina Totenberg. This is not, as Totenberg says, a “rookie mistake,” rookies won’t EVER say “I didn’t witness something as important as 1 of 9 supreme court justices retiring? I’ll assume which one it is and publish!” Rookies don’t do this!

Consulates have a ton of discretion under existing law to deny someone a visa. And suspicion of birth tourism _has_ served as a reason to deny visas in the past. If the problem is insufficient enforcement, good news, you can solve that problem without changing the law or Constitution!

Lol the perfect GOP take on the data center issue - a moratorium on their construction but only in the areas that vote for Republicans

I think the fear being stoked here is more Camp of the Saints-y - third worlders now can fly to JFK and breed so they have anchor babies

Right - the border is closed and almost no asylum seekers are getting in. I saw Chip Roy suggest that we must halt *all* immigration until there's some birthright fix, maybe that's where it's going. Feels hubristic to me. People forget, Trump initially ran on border wall + citizenship path.

Yeah, I think a lot about this because I've covered elections for so long. Even in 2018, an insurgent candidate needed the MSM in a way he/she doesn't now. A long, substantive Hasan stream does you much more good than a cable hit where you are asked the same 4 questions.

This soft-launch of a birth tourism panic is fascinating. It *is* true that some people come to the United States specifically to have a kid. It's just never really affected the average American in any way!

Years ago, Davis was arguing with me on Twitter, and fabricated a story about how I once begged Tucker Carlson for a job and was bitter that he denied me. It was such a weird, specific lie that I clocked him as a sociopath. (The truth is funnier. Tucker tried to hire me in 2010.)

This is correct. It went from a "crazy idea" that the various Law Knowers said was obviously stupid, to a nearly-there cause that can be won if Rs get to replace Sotomayor. And in the meantime, Rs who were otherwise happy w Trump on immigration have new demands to stop "birth tourism."

Folks...

Today's narrow SCOTUS ruling on trans athletes gives Republicans exactly what they want: keeping the issue alive to make campaign ads about. open.substack.com/pub/aridrenn...

The USDA booth is selling $47 Trump hats

Yeah, I hate to say this is true, but it is. Four justices agreeing is a signal that this is now the benchmark for any conservative jurist. “No more Souters” will turn into “no more Barretts.”

What a mess! I assume it was slugged something w SCOTUS in the title and somebody hit PUB at the worst time.

I do think that the Dem political establishment bobbled the court issue in 2016 bc they were concerned that it would turn out R voters more than their voters. In Sanders's defense, he brought up the court at every pro-Clinton stop of his that I covered.

Been asking Rs the political question. They would obviously confirm any Alito replacement quickly, and post-Kavanaugh are very confident (too confident imo) that liberals would "go crazy"* and create a motivating issue for R voters. *as Ralph Reed put it

Especially valuable in the very long opinions.

It's only done that twice in my voting life!

I love when people bring this up - I'm the reporter Cruz said that to! www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cru...

I usually regret starting this argument because nobody really engages. Yes, winning the presidency and Senate lets you appoint judges. Sometimes, parties get a bad candidate - in 2016 Rs thought Trump was a disaster - and the right has a more sophisticated understanding of the stakes.

Many liberal priorities would be in better shape had Clinton won and replaced Scalia, Ginsberg, and probably Breyer (I assume he would have retired before 2020 in that scenario). Even if she got turfed out by Rubio/Cruz in 2020. Rs would be dealing with a 5-4 liberal court, limiting their ambition.

Yeah, Rs have this pretty sweet situation under Trump where they have a huge money funnel to fund their elections and voters say "both parties are equally corrupt, look at Pelosi's stock trades."

If Rs win in 2028 and replace Sotomayor, it's gone. I don't know why a bloc of left-wing voters convince themselves "the court shouldn't matter, you can't blackmail me" but that happens every decade and a half for some reason

I'm a doomer on liberal court ideas, but there's maybe no issue where Rs get SCOTUS to do more unpopular work than campaign finance. Talk to any normal person, ask if they thought there were too many limits on wealthy interests funding elections. Too bad!

If there is a silver lining in the NRSC decision it's that SuperPACs are less relevant, but the other side of that coin is that SuperPACs were by design less efficient which meant that billionaire money was less effective. Now, not so.

The Supreme Court's first decisions are the trans athlete cases. By a 6–3 vote, the court holds that Title IX and the equal protection clause do NOT stop states from excluding trans women and girls from female sports teams. The three liberals dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

universities now becoming like police departments willing to pay out in litigation rather than do the obviously right thing

This is my favorite thing I’ve read all month

not directly rewarding slop on your platform seems like it would result in less slop, and a healthier ecosystem generally (and more users jumping from your competitors). will be interesting to see if it plays out that way for tidal www.404media.co/tidal-says-i...

Last week's reads. "Citizens," I had 100 pages left and decided to run through it on Sunday, so that doesn't really count. Same with "Chain of Ideas," was down to the last 150 pages and trudged through it, hopefully the worst book I read this year.

NEW from me - I spent time behind the scenes with Jon Ossoff, the Democrats’ sudden 2026 viral hit, talking about why he thinks his approach is working in Georgia, how having young kids changed his view of older senators, his favorite movie - and yes, 2028 www.cnn.com/2026/06/29/p...

Bumpin' that youtu.be/N_GbLtsyFPc?...

There's no sugar-coating Slaughter. It's an enormously important ruling (far more important than the other three decisions #SCOTUS handed down today). It's a huge win for Trump/the executive. And it's going to have massive ramifications for the functioning of the government long after Trump is gone.

On behalf of the BlueSky Robert Caro Stans Caucus, a note on Watson: Alito's dissent characterizes LBJ's 1948 "Box 13 scandal" as involving "late arriving votes" which flipped the election. No. No! It's about votes which were never cast in the first place. www.newyorker.com/magazine/199...

After federal agents shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, a New Yorker sent ICE's director an email in January comparing him to a Nazi. This week, DHS agents stalked him across New York. His home. A hotel. They gave his wife a letter warning of criminal prosecution. www.syracuse.com/news/2026/06...

“Imagine if this was Obama” is such a tired experiment but I keep writing Fox chyrons in my head for an Obama “state fair” with busted exhibits that nobody went to

On 'Supergirl,’ and failing the 'Who is Doing What and Where' test vincemancini.substack.com/p/supergirl-...

I wrote my Documentary Lens column on perhaps the most successful documentary series of all time www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/m...

Hell yeah, James Tiptree Jr. entering the LOA www.loa.org/news-and-vie...

Or has he...

The media trope of describing every intra-party conflict as a "civil war" drives me nuts. This is what parties do. It's like calling it a "civil war" when you and your wife debate where to go for dinner.

Bumpin’ that youtu.be/m94_C8Z7wLk?...

Wrote about the Democratic insurgency that has now arrived at leadership's doorstep www.jezebel.com/the-democrat...

working on a project about corporate mulit-state operators dominating legal cannabis and their marketing is so comical. "How do you do fellow potheads?" the brand

I feel like everyone needs to see @mattlieb.bsky.social’s movie theater nacho strategy. He puts the chips in the cheese a bunch at a time to let them marinate. Likes them to be a little soggy. man has the soul of a prison chef.

Sometimes I check to see if there’s still a restaurant chain based on Forrest Gump and there always is

Two ICE agents tracked down a woman *inside a polling place* yesterday. Why? They demanded that she take down an Instagram post in which she named Jonathan Ross as the man who shot & killed Renee Good (after the Star Tribune identified Ross). www.syracuse.com/news/2026/06...

NEWS --> Gov Josh Shapiro confirms to me that Pennsylvania won't join Trump 250 gala. “This president routinely makes patriotism partisan and personal—it shouldn’t be that way,” Shapiro tells me, noting that PA businesses didn't want to participate. Details here: newrepublic.com/article/2123...

Bumpin’ that youtu.be/QI2pyrN3Z5I?...