Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

Not two years ago, I wrote of a “disconcerting trend” in this Court’s cases: “When it comes to the separation of pow-ers, this Court tells the American public and its coordinate branches that it knows best.” SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109, 201 (2024) (dissenting opinion). Matters that for centuries had been left to the political branches have been sub-ordinated, one after another, to this recent Court’s rigid theories of how Government should operate. See id., at 201-202 (collecting cases).

The majority’s decision continuing that trend today is egregiously wrong. In this case, the Court takes one of the oldest debates in American history and decides that the six Justices in the majority, alone, ought to be the ones to settle it for all time. That decision does not just overrule prece-dent; it all but ignores that precedent exists. It does not just hamstring the political branches’ ability to respond to new challenges; it rewinds the clock nearly 150 years, holding that a common agency structure is, and always has been, forbidden. It is true that today’s decision does not eliminate the FTC or the many other agencies whose structures are implicated by overruling Humphrey’s. It is undeniable, however, that those agencies will be transformed in ways that those who created them never could have expected and actively sought to avoid, fundamentally recalibrating the balance of power in this country in the process.

Will these transformations yield the benefits, sounding in responsiveness and accountability, that the majority touts? Or will they risk placing “in the hands of a bold and designing man, of high ambition, … an instrument of the worst oppression,” which will “sacrific[e] every principle of independence to the will of the [President]”? 3 Story §1533, at 390-392. Neither I, nor the majority, knows with certainty. That is exactly why the Constitution leaves decisions like this one, involving sensitive tradeoffs and difficult judgment calls, to those best positioned to make them, and then to be held accountable for doing so: the political branches.

Today, the Court discards that democratic regime in favor of one that distorts the structure of Government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control. The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before. It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him. In granting the President this unbridled author-ity, the Court upends its precedent, misconstrues our history, and sheds any pretense of judicial modesty. I respectfully dissent.

Justice Sotomayor is not without her own inconsistencies, as Gorsuch (himself a little two-faced in his concurrence here!) pointed out in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. But, credit where credit is due, this is very well said.

Addendum — Bob Bauer summarizes things well: “Bipartisan, independent civil enforcement was already collapsing, but formal presidential control will end it—and a weaponized DOJ may fill the vacuum.”

David French:

For every high-profile case that goes to the Supreme Court, there are dozens of other, smaller cases in federal courts across the country in which the Trump administration lies, bends the rules, slanders innocent citizens and otherwise abuses the legal system to persecute its political opponents.

[…]

… Todd Blanche, the man who announced the bogus prosecution of the Broadview Six in the first place, is Trump’s nominee to replace Pam Bondi as the attorney general of the United States.

If he is confirmed, expect more vindictive prosecutions. Expect more prosecutorial misconduct. And expect more federal judges (and more American citizens) to say, along with Judge Perry in Illinois, that their trust is broken.

Why? Because the Trump administration is the nation’s chief threat to the rule of law.

Just found this in the draft folder. Good timing, given that the Supreme Court is also vying for the position of Chief Threat.

I just love how thriving the spirit of competition is:

David French: Trump is the nation’s greatest threat to the rule of law.

Supreme Court: Hold my beer.

Congress: No, hold my beer.

Republican voters: No, no. Hold my beer.

Democrat voters: No, no, no. Hold myyy beer.

Nick Catoggio:

Americans want cheaper housing, [Trump] wants the SAVE America Act. He didn’t debate for a second whose desire should take precedence, I’m sure.

[…]

Blocking a bill that would make housing cheaper to create leverage for a bill that would make voting harder is Trumpism in its purest state. Given a choice between marginally improving its electoral chances by doing something good for the “forgotten man” and maximizing its chances by screwing him over, it will prioritize its autocratic power lust every time.

[…]

This is a paradox in Trump’s character. On the one hand, the postliberal strongman in him cares nothing about public approval relative to his own selfish interests. On the other hand, the narcissist in him desperately needs to believe he’s popular. Democracy matters to him not a bit but he yearns for evidence that everyone thinks he’s the greatest.

This is why it’s always been hard to tell (and is getting harder in his senescence) whether his paranoia about elections is a knowing lie told by a dissembling megalomaniac to discredit a threat to his power or a sincerely held delusion by a fragile egomaniac to reassure himself that the people love him. […]

It’s no coincidence that someone who yearns to be loved by millions yet feels unbound by accountability to them would behave more like a king than a public servant. It’s also no coincidence that someone who perceives no special legitimacy in democracy and who craves adulation to a degree unusual even for politicians would be more willing to tamper with election rules to produce a result that proves how adored he is.

And, it’s probably more important to note, there’s a parallel paradox and predictable story that runs through the collective conscience of supporters, enablers, and ‘splainers.

Show me your friends, etc…

Listen to this post read by me here:

—

Wendell Berry, from “Amish Economy”:

In morning light, men in dark clothes
Go out among the beasts and fields.
Lest the community be lost,
Each day they must work out the bond
Between goods and their price: the garden
Weeded by sweat is flowerbright;
The wheat shocked in shorn fields, clover
Is growing where wheat grew; the crib
Is golden with the gathered corn,

While in the world of the found selves,
Lost to the sunlit, rainy world,
The motor-driven cannot stop.
This is the world where value is
Abstract, and preys on things, and things
Are changed to thoughts that have a price.

Cost + greed – fear = price:
Maury Telleen thus laid it out.
The need to balance greed and fear
Affords no stopping place, no rest,
And need increases as we fail.

But now, in summer dusk, a man
Whose hair and beard curl like spring ferns
Sits under the yard trees, at rest,
His smallest daughter on his lap.
This is because he rose at dawn,
Cared for his own, helped his neighbors,
Worked much, spent little, kept his peace.

—

William Carlos William, both poems published under the title “Pastoral”:

When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel-staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best
of all colors.

      No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.

—

The little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.
But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.

      Meanwhile,
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread
is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.
      These things
astonish me beyond words.

Fascinated and haunted by this poem from Miguel de Unamuno:

Here, in the night, all alone, this is my study;
the books don’t speak;
my oil lamp
bathes these pages in a light of peace,
light of a chapel.
The books don’t speak;
of the poets, the meditators, the learned,
the spirits drowse;
and it is as if around me circled
cautious death.

And I wondered if I had quoted him before. One of the best things about a searchable online commonplace blog — I discovered that I have, and in no insignificant way.

The enshittified highlight of my morning went thusly:

Call to reschedule appointment. Greeted by new AI assistant. Dance verbally with AI assistant who can’t actually help and tries to connect me to a human being. No human being answers. AI assistant comes back and instructs me to leave my voice message for some human being. AI assistant cuts me off 5 seconds into my message. AI assistant asks if there is anything else I want to add to my message. AI assistant cuts me off again and thanks me for calling. Curse the universe and all that has led to that phone call and go back to family and kids. I miss a callback from a human being who leaves a voicemail saying to call back at “x” number. I call “x” number only to be greeted by the AI assistant. More cursing. 

How have we let it come to this? I ask why I’m losing my mind and what I can do about it. Then I remember Matthew Crawford’s point that these interactions presuppose “your willingness to suspend those capacities and dispositions that form the basis for self-respect.” 

“Such resignation only feels like defeat for a little while,” he adds, “until the numbness sets in.” 

So society increasingly gives me only two options: become more numb, less human, and thus remain at peace, or just lose my farking mind.

I can’t help some of the former, but I’m leaning toward actively choosing the latter.

Insanity is the only way.

David Bentley Hart:

Yes, of course, as individuals and as distinct communities, we have our various religious and cultural mediations between time and eternity. All human culture, at least of the kind that emerges naturally over generations and epochs, is a structure of cyclic repetitions and returns, dramaturgical and narrative recapitulations of history and myth and the timeless origin of all things, interweaving and inflecting one another and drawing us out of the barren banality of mere sequential time. But I am talking not about individual Americans or discrete ethnic factions or elective affinities; rather, I mean America as a civic totality, and there the situation is either grave or ridiculous by turns. On the whole, religion inevitably fails in this country. We may have the greatest number of religious adherents, at least per capita, of any “developed” nation, but there is something about American culture that is relentlessly corrosive of genuinely spiritual values. Our indigenous forms of Christianity in particular are essentially shams and perversions, not only in the bizarre universe of white Evangelicalism, with its hospitality to blasphemous nationalism, diabolic militarism, and lunatic chiliasm, but also in many mainline Protestant denominations and increasingly in Catholic and Orthodox circles as well. America’s principal religion is America, and it tends to extinguish or subvert any rivals to its supremacy. One way or another, the myth of America insinuates itself into the sacred memories preserved in the faith and practices of Christian creeds and communities, and the sanguinary gods of patriotism manage to force their way into the company of Christ and the saints. Our civic pieties, moreover, are morasses of saccharine sentiment spiced with crass belligerence. Nationalism is, of course, a perennial temptation for Christians everywhere within the lands of Christendom. America is hardly unique in this regard. But here that temptation comes laden with all the ludicrous apocalypticism and messianism of America’s delusions regarding its own historical destiny. All is corrupted, all is idolatry. Only one institution stands out in public life that is more or less innocent of these evils but also capable of bearing the full weight of a people’s need for the sacred integration of personal, historical, mythic, and timeless memory: … baseball.

[…]

All right, perhaps I am, after all, indulging in hyperbole here. Love chafes at every restraint, and I truly love the game. But there is a certain serious moral point I am trying to make, all facetiousness aside. I do think that the displacement of baseball by the NFL at the center of American culture is indicative of a certain kind of spiritual sickness. In part, this is simply because it marks a movement away from the pastoral to the military in our shared imagination, and away from a lyrical celebration of grace and speed to a gladiatorial spectacle of physical prowess and brutality. It also, however, marks a turn away from dreams of eternity to ambitions with respect only to the terrestrial future. … How we dwell within time – whether as strangers and pilgrims seeking a better city or, instead, as partisans in a bloody war for the future – depends on what we choose to remember and how we cultivate that memory. To remember eternity and not merely the past, to remember God and not merely the call of destiny, is to be partially liberated from the brutality and idiocy of history. And, in its humble way, baseball really is a vehicle of reconciliation between simple recollection of the past and a transfiguring anamnesis of the eternal, experienced in the enchanted form of repeated cycles within repeated cycles, across an ever-widening expanse of years. The game really is a kind of civic liturgy, a kind of ritual repetition, that allows time to become transparent to the timeless. It cannot redeem souls, obviously, but even so it does have the power to aid in the redemption of the culture’s imagination and deepest longings. Or so I like to think. At the very least, it offers us a glimpse into paradise – into childhood’s innocence, into Eden, into what Nicholas of Cusa called the walled garden of the divine essence – all under the aspect of play; and that is a great blessing. Only in play, whether in sport or in art or in other “ahistorical” endeavors of that kind, can we really understand the true nature, the original peacefulness, and the final purpose of creation.

---

Nick Catoggio:

We should not underestimate the degree of difficulty involved in convincing the American right, a faction populated by millions of evangelical Christians, that Iran is a more trustworthy broker than Israel. But if the last 10 years have proved anything, it’s that right-wingers are willing to change their beliefs about all sorts of things to rationalize their allegiance to Donald Trump. J.D. Vance is betting that embracing Hillbilly Obama-ism toward a terrorist regime is one more belief that they’ll come around to. I wouldn’t bet against it.

Neither would I. Having seen A LOT of those changed “beliefs” myself over the years, it wouldn’t even be much of a bet. I know plenty of folks who deeply despise Obama (and not for the reasons I do) who spent 8 years whining about how soft the “community-organizer-in-chief” was on Russia, and who spent the previous 8 years praising the War on Terror. And every single one of them, on the same night, at the same time, hit their heads falling out of bed and woke up talking about NATO encroachment, neocons, and the military industrial complex.

They also still hate Obama. (It’s a both/and situation, you see.)

I remember when someone I’ve known my whole life, a lifelong Republican 20 years my senior, looked at me in one of those many various political conversations and said of the person we were discussing, “Yeah, but isn’t her husband a neocon?” I cannot overstate how utterly strange it was — to say nothing of the irony — to hear this person say that. And I think I learned more about political “logic” in that sentence than in any other I’ve ever heard. I promise you he did not come up with that sentence or arrive at the meaning of that term through the channels of logic and experience; he repeated it in the exact same way a parrot would. I know many such people whose lives I greatly, greatly admire. But when it comes to politics, the adults in the room are little more than willingly indoctrinated teenagers.

As I have said before, I have no problem criticizing NATO, neoconservatives, or the military industrial complex — when we’ve defined our terms and admitted our history. But I get real annoyed when I have to listening to lectures on the topics from lifelong, by-definition-neoconservative amnesiacs. Right or wrong, the truth can’t live here.

Here’s Jonah Goldberg the other day:

The real Trump never left. He does what he does for reasons having to do with his self-interest. That’s it. It’s not more complicated than that. If he can do the right thing easily and at low cost, he’ll do the right thing if he gets the credit for it. If it becomes hard, boring, costly, or embarrassing, he’ll give up or reverse course.

Ditto for the parrots, who will “change their mind” again, and again, with no aim toward learning anything or establishing any integrity.

Do you know what happens when you spend a decade praising or otherwise excusing flagella-driven bacteria? You become one.

Hannah Rowan:

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it is. But to [Joel] Salatin, it’s only natural — and beneficial — that regenerative farming would lead to a need for more farmers. “Duplication is the way nature increases stuff,” he explains. “If nature wants more humans, it doesn’t make a bigger human, it makes babies. If nature needs more tomatoes, it doesn’t make a monstrous tomato plant, it expects people to plant more tomatoes.” The analogy with small-time farmers versus massive industrial operations is obvious. The former is healthy, the latter is abnormal — farming like Frankenstein.