Ep. 99: Trump's Court
Hey FRs,
It's summer break at the Last Podcast Network, so last week we invited our old pal, law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider, on to talk through the latest decisions made by the Supreme Court. It was an enlightening, if not very heartening, conversation...
Why did birthright citizenship survive but only barely?
Fortunately, the 14th Amendment's text is unambiguous, and even this Supreme Court couldn't fully pretend otherwise. Trump's executive order tried to deny citizenship to children born to undocumented parents, and the Court struck it down 6-3. But the never-admit-defeat Justice Kavanaugh refused to join the majority's constitutional reasoning, instead arguing Congress could still take it away by statute.
Trump responded by signing two new orders limiting birthright citizenship, betting litigation delay will matter more than the ruling itself.
What did the Court just do to independent federal agencies?
It let Trump fire the heads of agencies like the FTC for no cause at all, overturning a 90-year-old precedent. The 6-3 ruling means the FCC, meant to stay independent from presidential control over broadcast licensing, now answers directly to the White House. Basically, Chairman Brendan Carr no longer has to pretend to be independent while threatening broadcasters over content Trump dislikes. The Federal Reserve got a carve-out for now. Nothing else did.
Why did the Court block Trump's tariffs but leave a mess behind?
Well, taxation without representation isn't just a slogan; it's an actual constitutional argument, and it killed Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, 6-3. The ruling found Trump illegally invoked a 1970s emergency powers law that Congress passed specifically to constrain unilateral presidential action. Now comes the messy part: refunds.
In what I'm sure is a very innocent coincidence, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's family bought tariff-refund vouchers before the ruling came down. They now stand to make millions off the back of the consumers and small business owners who actually suffered.
What happened to Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians?
The Court let Trump end TPS protections for both groups in a 6-3 ruling that Justice Alito wrote around, not through, the 14th Amendment's equal protection guarantee. Trump's own public comments, calling Haiti and similar nations "shithole countries," formed the evidentiary record of bigotry the dissent cited. Alito's answer was that Trump also dislikes poor white people, so it isn't really about race.
Roughly 350,000 Haitians will lose status nationally.
How did a JD Vance campaign case just deregulate election money?
A 2022 lawsuit filed by then-Senate candidate JD Vance's campaign was decided this year, and it dismantles the wall between campaign committees and outside political party spending. Building on Citizens United's (il)logic that spending equals speech, the ruling lets national party committees like the NRSC coordinate unlimited spending directly with candidates ahead of the 2026 midterms. Vance's own 2022 race was boosted by $15 million from Peter Thiel and NRSC money under the old rules. Now that coordination is explicitly legal. In an already broken system, this cannot be good.
Watch the full episode here:
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