In It to Win It
In It to Win It's JournalBREAKING: SCOTUS MASSIVELY Expands Trump's Presidential Power - Strict Scrutiny Podcast
In this emergency episode, Leah and Kate break down todays incredibly consequential decisions in Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook, which followed the Project 2025 playbook to rewrite almost a century of precedent regarding presidential power.
They also discuss how close the Court came to ruling that states cant count absentee ballots that are cast by election day but received after election day in Watson v. RNC.
BREAKING: Supreme Court REJECTS Trump In MAJOR Rulings (with Kate Shaw) - What A Day
On Monday, we got four more decisions from the nations highest court, and they were well, confusing.
We also got a surprisingly good ruling on mail-in voting, and a separate victory for privacy and the Fourth Amendment. So is there any method to the seeming madness in the Supreme Courts decisions this term? To find out, we spoke to Kate Shaw. Shes a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-host of Crooked Medias Strict Scrutiny.
And in headlines, Trump says the U.S. will meet with Iran in Qatar on Tuesday for further negotiations, Russian President Vladimir Putin admits Russia is facing fuel shortages in its war with Ukraine, and the WHO names Europe the fastest-warming continent on the planet.
Chapters:
00:00 Opening
00:53 Headlines: Iran update
01:45: Russia facing fuel shortages
02:08: Europe is heating up
02:47: New poll: National pride is low.
03:07: Supreme Court Rulings
03:56: Interview with Kate Shaw on SCOTUS rulings
11:44: Ad break
13:44: Interview with Kate Shaw cont.
18:30: This F*cking Guy Promo
19:06: Closing
Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court's Leading Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theorist - Jay Willis @ Balls and Strikes
https://ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/watson-v-rnc-alito-dissent-voter-fraud/After the election, which Trump indeed lost in decisive fashion, his warnings only got more shrill, more dire, and more vaguely messianic. In December, he delivered a speech railing against the scourge of corrupt forces stuffing ballot boxes, and blamed Bidens victory on fraud and abuse on a scale never seen before. His efforts to contest the outcome, Trump said, were about ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election and in all future electionsa task that he said might prove to be his single greatest achievement.
Unfortunately for Trump, neither his initial legal challenges nor his subsequent efforts to incite a violent coup were sufficient to get him what he wanted. But as I predicted at the time, in Republican circles, Trump did manage to mainstream the belief that states that allow mail-in voting are at least facilitating cheating, if not outright encouraging it. Today, adherence to Trumps stolen-election conspiracy theories remains table stakes for anyone who aspires to be relevant in the Republican Party and/or the conservative legal movement.
Watson v. Republican National Committee, which the Supreme Court decided on Monday, reveals just how deeply election denialism is now embedded in the conservative consciousness. In Watson, a five-justice majority of the Court rejected the GOPs challenge to a Mississippi law that allows officials to count absentee ballots received up to five days after Election Day, as long as the ballots are postmarked by Election Day. But Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented, and in his opinion for the foursome, Alito warned of Watsons lamentable consequences: Counting post-Election Day ballots, he said, is not only blatantly contrary to what federal law requires, but will also further undermine Americans faith in the integrity of this countrys elections.
Given that the 2026 midterms are about four months away, it is of course good that the Court declined to issue a decision that could disenfranchise tens of millions of mail voters, who tend to cast ballots for Democratic candidates. But it is deeply unnerving to learn that four of the Courts nine members are willing to upend the electoral processes in more than half of states in service of their demented party leaders most demented lie. As it turns out, the line between the Court preserving the status quo and the Court plunging the country into a chaotic, anti-democracy nightmare is a single vote.
It is good that the Supreme Court passed on this chance to disenfranchise millions of people. It is very, very bad that Trump's demented conspiracy theories about voter fraud are now so embedded in the conservative consciousness that FOUR Supreme Court justices apparently believe them.
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) 2026-06-29T20:35:51.045Z
By a 6-3 vote, SCOTUS lets Trump fire heads of independent agencies but refuses to let him fire Lisa Cook by 5-4 vote
We have Slaughter and Cook. By a 6â3 vote, SCOTUS overturns Humphrey's Executor and lets Trump fire heads of independent agencies. But by a 5â4 vote, it refuses to let him fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) 2026-06-29T14:18:20.640Z
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
Last two #SCOTUS rulings are Slaughter and Cook, both by Chief Justice Roberts.
— Steve Vladeck (@stevevladeck.bsky.social) 2026-06-29T14:18:46.540Z
As expected, Court sides *with* Trump (the usual 6-3 majority) in Slaughter:
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
5-4 majority (with Kavanaugh and the Chief joining the Dems) rules *against* Trump in Cook:
SCOTUS holds states can count late-arriving mail-in ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day
First (but *not* last) ruling from #SCOTUS today is in Watson v. RNC. For a 5-4 majority (with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, Kavanaugh dissenting), Justice Barrett holds that federal law does *not* bar states from counting late-arriving mail-in ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day.
— Steve Vladeck (@stevevladeck.bsky.social) 2026-06-29T14:02:49.360Z
SCOTUS Just Handed America to Corporations - Strict Scrutiny Podcast
Melissa, Leah, and Kate briefly recap the Courts two major immigration decisions last week (for a deeper dive, check out last weeks emergency episode), before digging into the Second Amendment case, Wolford v. Lopez, which featured a cage match between private property rights and the right to bear arms, as well as Sam Alitos funhouse-mirror version of history.
Chapters:
0:00 Opening
0:31 Mullen v. Doe: Ending TPS for Haitians & Syrians
2:08 What the TPS Ruling Means in Practice
3:30 Mullen v. Al Otro Lado: Gutting Asylum Protections
10:12 Wolford v. Lopez: Guns vs. Private Property
16:05 Ad Break
19:43 The Bruen Test & Cherry-Picking History
22:52 Justice Jackson's Dissent on Bruen
26:36 Justice Barrett's Concurrence
29:59 Blanche v. Lau: Lawful Permanent Residents
31:26 Pung v. Isabella County: Tax Foreclosures
33:00 Landor v. Louisiana: Rastafarian Prisoner & RLUIPA
37:41 Ad Break
41:30 Exxon Mobil v. CIMEX: Cuba & Foreign Sovereign Immunity
44:29 Cisco v. Doe: Corporate Liability for Human Rights Abuses
49:24 The Re-Gilded Age: Corporate Power & Unenforceable Rights
52:59 Monsanto v. Durnell: Roundup & Preemption
55:40 Ad Break
58:59 We Need to Talk About Justice Thomas
1:01:00 McCarthy v. Hernandez: Habeas & the Etan Patz Case
1:02:48 Voting Rolls & State Lawsuits
1:05:32 Affordable Housing Bill & the SAVE Act
1:08:30 OLC Opinion: Disability Rights & Olmstead
1:11:21 Favorite Things
Here's the current state of play in the Senate if you use polls and reasonable guesses about the state of play in each s
Here's the current state of play in the Senate if you use polls and reasonable guesses about the state of play in each seat projects.gelliottmorris.com/senate-2026/...
— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) 2026-06-27T20:02:29.894Z
Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas Think Police Abuse of Black People Is Kind of Overblown - Jay Willis @ Balls & Strikes
https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/samuel-alito-and-clarence-thomasThe police, however, had follow-up questions: The same officer asked Carter to hike up his pants, and when Carter did so, another officer noticed an L-shaped bulge in his shorts. Based on that observation, the cops frisked Carter and found a handgun. He was charged with an array of gun-related crimes, convicted, and sentenced to 14 months in prison.
Before his trial, Carter filed a motion to suppress the gun as evidence. His argument was that police had seized him within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, at the moment the officer told him to hike up his pants, since, as a young Black man, ignoring armed cops from a unit infamous for racial profiling wasnt a viable option for Carter. And because the police had no reason to suspect him of anything at that timeagain, he was just standing on the sidewalk, and had already shown that his waistband was emptyCarter argued that the officers had no grounds to search him.
The trial court rejected his argument, finding that Carter was not seized until after he hiked up his pants, and that the bulge the officer (allegedly) saw provided the reasonable suspicion necessary to frisk him. But in August 2025, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals threw out his conviction. As the court explained, the test for whether a defendant is seized is whether an objective and reasonable person in the defendants shoes would have felt free to end the conversation with policean analysis that requires the court to consider, among many other factors, the objective reality that people of color face during interactions with law enforcement.
Here's something from a long, bad week at the Supreme Court that you might have missed: Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas arguing that under the "color-blind" Constitution, judges and juries have to pretend that police abuse of Black people does not exist
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) 2026-06-27T14:22:52.664Z
Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas Think Police Abuse of Black People Is Kind of Overblown - Jay Willis @ Balls & Strikes
https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/samuel-alito-and-clarence-thomasThe police, however, had follow-up questions: The same officer asked Carter to hike up his pants, and when Carter did so, another officer noticed an L-shaped bulge in his shorts. Based on that observation, the cops frisked Carter and found a handgun. He was charged with an array of gun-related crimes, convicted, and sentenced to 14 months in prison.
Before his trial, Carter filed a motion to suppress the gun as evidence. His argument was that police had seized him within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, at the moment the officer told him to hike up his pants, since, as a young Black man, ignoring armed cops from a unit infamous for racial profiling wasnt a viable option for Carter. And because the police had no reason to suspect him of anything at that timeagain, he was just standing on the sidewalk, and had already shown that his waistband was emptyCarter argued that the officers had no grounds to search him.
The trial court rejected his argument, finding that Carter was not seized until after he hiked up his pants, and that the bulge the officer (allegedly) saw provided the reasonable suspicion necessary to frisk him. But in August 2025, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals threw out his conviction. As the court explained, the test for whether a defendant is seized is whether an objective and reasonable person in the defendants shoes would have felt free to end the conversation with policean analysis that requires the court to consider, among many other factors, the objective reality that people of color face during interactions with law enforcement.
Here's something from a long, bad week at the Supreme Court that you might have missed: Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas arguing that under the "color-blind" Constitution, judges and juries have to pretend that police abuse of Black people does not exist
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) 2026-06-27T14:22:52.664Z
The Supreme Court's Era of Meaningless Rights - Leah Litman
Gift Link
The Atlantic
Two of them, both issued Tuesday, held that the plaintiffs lacked causes of actionthe legal authorization to sue to vindicate their federal rights. In Cisco v. Doe, practitioners of the Falun Gong religion claimed that they were persecuted by the Chinese government and that Ciscos surveillance technology helped China identify and torture them. The six Republican appointees said the victims could not sue Cisco under the Alien Tort Statute, a law enacted in 1789 that allows any civil action by an alien for a tort that is committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States. In another case, Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, a Rastafarian prisoner had attempted to sue the correctional officers who had forcibly held him down and shaved his dreadlocksin violation of his religious practicesafter he had handed them a judicial decision telling them they could not do so. Here the six Republican appointees said that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act does not allow people to bring claims for money damages against the individual correctional officers who are subject to the acts obligations.
In both of these cases, the majority ruled expansively, issuing sweeping legal proclamations that will have serious consequences for people whose rights are violated. In Cisco, the justices didnt just say that Falun Gong practitioners couldnt sue a corporation for enabling their torture. They said that courts could not recognize any causes of action under the Alien Tort Statute for violations of the law of nations that did not exist when the statute was enacted in 1789. It is up to Congress to authorize causes of action for newly recognized features of the law of nations, even though Congress had already created a cause of action for violations of the law of nationsthe Alien Tort Statute itself. The Courts decision will bar suits by victims of any human-rights abuses, because human-rights protections became part of international law in the 20th century.
Landor did to another set of legal protectionsspending-clause statuteswhat Cisco did to international law. Spending-clause statutes are the set of laws in which Congress has offered states money, provided that the states adhere to various conditions. In Landor, the condition was that states would agree to respect the religious-freedom rights of incarcerated people. The majority in Landor said that the conditions in those spending programs generally couldnt be enforced against the state officers who are supposedly bound by those conditions. The Court said Congress didnt have the power to impose liability on the individual government employees who didnt personally agree to comply with the conditions that are part of the spending programsand that state and local governments agree to when they accept federal funds.
I'm in The Atlantic on the Supreme Court's cases from this past week - which allow corporations to enforce their rights but ... almost no one else?
— Leah Litman (@leahlitman.bsky.social) 2026-06-26T17:56:10.985Z
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
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