The Ultimate Supreme Court Debrief With Mollie Hemingway And Shawn Fleetwood

Back with a special edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief at the Federalist, here with Sean Fleetwood. our Supreme Court reporter here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show at Radio at the Federalist.com. Follow us on X at FDRLST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts. And of course, to the premium version of our website as well. So as I mentioned, I'm joined today by Sean Fleetwood,

our wonderful reporter at the Federalist, who does so much to cover the Supreme Court. Sean, welcome to Federalist Radio Hour. Great to be here, Molly. Thank you so much for having. So we're recording this toward the end of the Supreme Court's term. The terms start in October and usually end at the end of June. Sometimes they go into the beginning of July.

And what is today's date and why is it special, Sean Fleetwood? So today is June 23rd, the day we're recording this. It is very special because 78 years ago, a very special man was born by the name of Justice Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas has served on the court for over, I believe, 34 years now. He is the second longest serving justice, and should he serve until spring of 2028, he will be the longest serving justice? And Clarence Thomas, I'm sure some of our listeners know I'm a big fan of his work, just him as a person. think that he's so emblematic of what we should strive to be as Americans. Obviously, his career as a jurist and as a judge is incredible, and he's done so much for the

Constitution and upholding the rule of law. But I also think that there's so much we can learn from him as a person and his incredible story, which you can read about in his autobiography, my grandfather's son. And he tells the story of what it was like to be born into abject poverty in the segregated South in Georgia, grew up during the height of segregation, and really details his journey from this impossible set of circumstances that he was born into to the man he has become today. And he's spoken often about what it means to have courage.

He's displayed that courage throughout his life and career. And he's such an inspiration to me, both personally and professionally. And there's not enough nice things I could say about it. we could do a whole podcast over how much I love Clarence Thomas. But yeah, I'll leave it to you if you wanted to add anything to that. Yeah, no, truly a great man. And I have enjoyed covering him as well. I'm old enough to actually have watched his confirmation hearings, watched them with my mother.

They were a formative experience for me and taught me so much about politics and what people were willing to do to push politics onto the court. and the way that he handled that major coordinated campaign against him, it's something that was unforgettable. And then also to see who he's become on the court. A lot of people, when they join the court, they seek the approval of people whose approval they shouldn't seek. And with Clarence Thomas, it's truly the exact opposite.

He had no confusion about why he, why the left targeted him. And he knew he never wanted to impress these people. So having covered the court a lot, I'm always interested in how much Clarence Thomas cares about the people who work at the court infinitely more than the people who are chattering about in Washington, D.C. And I wish more people emulated that. And then, of course, I just wrote the book on Samuel Alito, who shares this with Justice Thomas. He does not seek the approval of left-wing elites. If anything, I think he would assume that if he has their approval, that he has somehow messed up. So that's a much better attitude than one that we certainly inculcate at the Federalist, I believe. So these are these are men worthy of emulating.

And one of the things that I try and take from obviously Samuel Alito as well, but Justice Thomas is, you know, several years ago he did this interview, I believe. it was at the Library of Congress. And he was talking about the opinion writing process and how when he's writing opinions, he tries to use language that's accessible to the everyday American because they have every much as right to know how he's ruling in a certain case as the people sitting in newsrooms or in legal firms in Washington, D.C. or in New York and places like that. And I admittedly, I keep a picture of Clarence Thomas on my desk at home to kind of have

that reminder there for me that whenever I'm writing an article about a super complex subject or a legal case or a Supreme Court case that uses super hefty legal jargon that's, you know, kind of even confusing to me, I try and break it down in layman's terms and make it as simple as possible for our readers at home, not because I think ill of their intelligence or anything like that, but because, you know, not everyone's as crazy as us to be doing this five days out of the week or in some cases, seven days. out of the week. So that's something that I try and take from him just in everyday life is to try and incorporate that simplistic understanding and just to make it as simple as possible for people.

And I think that that's something we have the Federals do exceptionally well. Well, Fleetwood, that's kind of a good segue to one of the cases that I wanted to discuss with you, which was the decision handed down last week of United States versus Hamani. Is that how you say it? Yes. And can you tell us a little bit about the facts of that case, United States v. Hamani? Sure. So this was a case that dates back several years ago. It centers around a Texas resident named Ali Khamenei. He is a dual U.S. and Pakistani citizen. And basically the federal government and federal agents had suspected that he had ties to foreign terrorist organization.

And as such, they conducted a search of his home. And in the process, they found, He was in possession of a firearm as well as marijuana, and he admitted to being a regular marijuana user. Well, some time passed, and the federal government charged him, not with anything related to being associated with a foreign terrorist organization, but with a provision of the 1968 Gun Control Act that basically said that unlawful users of any controlled substance cannot possess a firearm. And Ali Khamenei challenged this use of the law. I'm basically saying that it violated his Second Amendment rights. And in a unanimous decision on the judgment last week, the Supreme Court said that is correct,

that the federal government's use of the statute to prosecute Ali Khamenei solely based on the fact that he was using a controlled substance under this provision of the federal law, that basically we can strip him up the Second Amendment rights and the Supreme Court said, no, you can't do that, that that's inconsistent with the Second Amendment and basically prohibited that type of prosecution from being used in the future. It was a very narrow ruling dealing specifically with the fact

that, you know, you can't just, the government can't just say like, oh, you're an unlawful user, we're going to prosecute you and take your Second Amendment rights for life, for life, that there has to be something more there. So it was very narrow, narrowly, tailored ruling. As far as the reasoning goes, Justice's Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan, author had a concurrence where they kind of differed on the reasoning, said that they would even gone narrower on the ruling. But I think that it was unanimous. And the judgment shows that the federal government kind of really overstepped its bounds here and trying to take away Mr. Tom Homan's second amendment rights. Do you think it's funny? Yeah, it was just a concurrence from Samuel Alito joined by Elena Kagan. But because of

who authored the opinion, Gorsuch, who joined with him on his opinion, who authored the concurrence, Samuel Alito, and who joined with him. It was the first time we had seen the court's nine justices break down this way, which is always just fun for court watchers to see when people join with which argument and why. But I mentioned that this was interesting in light of what you said previously about the clarity of Thomas's writing. Because as you noted in this case, Gorsuch has a fairly narrow, narrow thing claim to make here. And it really does deal with whether every other day marijuana use, such as what was the case for this guy, Hamani, whether the historical analog to drunkard laws really worked or not. And Gorsuch says that if you go back to

what the founding fathers were saying about drunkards and what the law said at that time, It really dealt with an inability to manage your affairs as opposed to, like, just the fact of being inebriated. And in this case, it didn't seem to apply, I think is what Gorsuch was saying here. But one of the criticisms of this decision as authored by Gorsuch is that it didn't provide much clarity for lower courts. And this is something that annoys me as well that you see a lot from all sorts of different, not all the justices, but most of the justices. They will take some big picture exercise and they will declare from on high, okay, well, this violates the First Amendment's clause here or the 14th Amendment's clause here. But then they don't really provide much direction to lower courts. And I can see this being an issue that will come back up to the court.

because of the lack of clarity about how lower courts should handle this decision, as well as the law enforcement officers who are dealing with gun possessors who are using illegal drugs. I think that's kind of some of the frustration that we've seen within the past several years with this court, is that sometimes you will get a narrow decision to say, okay, well, we're getting X amount of justices to get to a majority or in this case being unanimous on the judgment, but it's so narrow as to have that lack of clarity for the lower courts to abide by.

And in some ways, to a lesser extent, it kind of reminds me of that masterpiece cake shop case from several years ago where Colorado was trying to force, is it Jack Phillips, the cake artist out of Colorado to bake the cake. and it was a very narrow ruling in his favor, but it was so narrow as to not basically prohibit the lower courts from endorsing this type of lawfare against religious Americans from going forward.

And as we've seen in the years since, that type of religious persecution has continued and the lower courts have continued to, in some cases, endorse that type of lawfare. So, yeah, it kind of reminds me of that where it's so narrow as to, you know, it's obviously a win for Mr. Hamas. but as far as future similar litigation, I think we're definitely going to see that type of stuff continue.

I think I'm glad you raised that issue. That's another area where we've seen some frustration bubbling up at the court. The masterpiece cake decision is an excellent example of it. The court had a big rule, you know, had a nice majority on that, but on such narrow grounds that it didn't really matter. And the state of Colorado was easily able to return to. persecuting Jack Phillips on different grounds. Whereas sometimes you just need to say, you know, Colorado, Colorado, you're messing up. Colorado is the Minnesota of the modern court.

There was a time when Minnesota was always the state that was getting slapped down for violating people's First Amendment rights. That's Colorado now. You know, there was a case out of Minnesota that was very funny about, I mean, very sad, but funny, the oral argument about the, the, the case. case was funny, that they would forbid people from wearing political clothing at voting booths. And someone had worn like a tea party shirt or something like that. So Hennepin County, Minnesota delayed his ability to vote. And it went to the Supreme Court. And Samuel Alito had one of his great colloquies where he goes through different things

and asks whether they would be allowed on clothing in Minnesota. and the Hennepin County attorney just he wet himself basically. He did a very poor job of handling the questions from Samuel Alito. So he was like, yeah, you could wear a rainbow flag on a day when a gay issue was before the court, but you couldn't wear a second amendment. You couldn't have the words of the second amendment on your shirt. And Justice Lito follows it up with, what about the words of the First Amendment, causing everybody to laugh. Anyway, this is a segue from how much of a mess Colorado is,

but a couple years ago, there was a case out of Philadelphia. I can't remember the name of the case. I want to say Fulton, but that doesn't seem quite right, where Philadelphia was prohibiting a Roman Catholic charity from participating in its foster care placement program because it wouldn't place children in the homes of gay couples. There's a Roman Catholic foster care agency. And the court had one of those, you know, nine zero opinions, which said that Philadelphia had violated the law and violated the rights of this Roman Catholic charity. But it didn't do it in such a way that they couldn't have easily rewritten their regulations and kept discriminating against the Roman Catholics. And so Samuel Alito had a ridiculously long concurrence. Like, I could be, I don't

remember exactly what it was, but in my mind it was something like 87 pages, all about how you have to have really big reasoning to overturn employment division v. Smith, which was an old Supreme Court precedent that has caused a lot of problems for religious minorities coming before the court. And sometimes you just have to have the Cajonis to make the big decision rather than wasting everybody's time year after year, they have to keep coming to advocate for their rights because the court hasn't provided clarity. An issue that you touch on in Samuel Alito, which everyone should go pick up a copy if you haven't already, where it's kind of how even in originalism that is

interpreting the Constitution as it was written at the time was adopted and its sister doctrine textualism, which deals with statutes. there's still divisions even among originalists and textualists about how far are we going to go in a certain case or not. And you often note how Clarence Thomas will author concurrences in some of these majority opinions. And I believe he did in Hamani as well, kind of saying that, well, the court made a good decision here, but here's where we should be on an issue. Here's where we need to ultimately end up. And this is how far I would have gone in the case.

But you might not get a lot of the majority of justice. in a certain case to sign on to that decision at that time who aren't willing to go that far right at that point, which is where a justice like Samuel Alito comes in to say, you know, I may agree with Clarence Thomas, but, you know, obviously we don't have the numbers to get there right now. So here's how we kind of move the ball forward in the meantime. So I just think that that's a really good dynamic there between those two. They work well together. Yes, even if there are those frustrations with some of the other justices.

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Each guest gets the space to explain their position, and then you decide what makes the most sense. If you're looking for more thought and less noise, check out Future of Freedom wherever you get your podcast. Okay, so Fleetwood, we are recording this after the court handed down a few decisions on Tuesday, June. 23rd. Can you tell, was there anything interesting? If so, what? Yeah, so I would say there was one big case that was pretty pertinent. It was a case called Todd Blanche v. Lau, and it deals with a man named Mr. Lau, who in 2012 was charged with trademark counterfeiting, I believe. And Mr. Lau is a Chinese national who is also a green card holder or lawful permanent resident. And attempting, after a attempting to reenter the country.

He was paroled by immigration officials who basically deemed him to be inadmissible because of the fact that he was charged with trademark counterfeiting. He ultimately pled guilty to that charge or charges a year later in 2013, but he challenged the federal government in their decision to parole him, basically arguing that under what's called the Immigration and Nationality Act, that you can't parole. me because I hadn't been convicted of a crime yet. Well, the Supreme Court came out in the decision today that we're recording this, 6-3, Clarence Thomas authored the majority decision, saying that that's not what the INA says. What the INA says is that there are a series of

processes of which the federal government followed and deeming that, yes, you had, quote, unquote, committed a crime of what's called moral turpitude under the INA, and the immigration officials who made the decision to parole you correctly followed the law. So that's a win for the federal government and kind of immigration officials and their ability to kind of parole some of these LPRs or green card holders who have committed crimes, who have been charged and are likely to have committed those crimes, and basically making sure that the law is being followed with regard to their immigration status. Does this tell us anything about any other cases coming down the pike?

Sure. So we do have a couple other immigration related cases. I think it's probably a good signal for the administration on one called, I think it was renamed since Markwayne Mullin became DHS secretary, but I believe it's Mullen v. Altotrolado. That's an immigration case that deals with another provision, I believe, of the Immigration Nationality Act that basically says, or the federal government basically adopted this policy. see previously, I guess the better way to say it, called metering, which basically involves immigration officials turning away asylum seekers at the border before they reach the U.S. So while they're on the Mexican side of the border, and Al-Otrou-Lato, this left-wing immigration group and a group of asylum seekers said that that's not legal under the INA, that once, you know, we come into contact, even if we're on the Mexico side of the border, once we come into contact with these officials, we can declare asylum and should be granted entry through a port of entry.

And so I think that what this Todd Blanche v. Lau case shows is that the Supreme Court, as has been historic with some of these immigration-related cases in recent years, is willing to offer that deference to the executive branch, that immigration is a key function and key area in which the executive branch has oversight of. And so I think that, while obviously not the same legal issue, in Todd Blanche V. Lough, I think that what you're going to see, I would predict in this El Otrulado case is the Supreme Court siding with the administration once again and recognizing that executive authority over these immigration affairs. And really is interesting just from a policy standpoint, we're seeing greater division

among left and right on what it means to enforce a border and what tools should be available to those people who do enforce the border. I think it was someone running for Congress in New York who's endorsed by Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders. I saw her say that she opposes any deportation, even for murderers. She just doesn't believe in borders, border laws, deportations. And so you're seeing these challenges to border agents being able to enforce borders, in part because the Democratic Party just genuinely does not. love borders. And we saw that during the Biden administration, completely open borders with

the federal policy not giving agents any real right or ability to deport people. And then you see the other extreme, so to speak, it's not that extreme, but just the Trump administration, which does believe in borders, border enforcement, and is working to deport criminal illegal aliens. And only really doing, not doing that many of them, but certainly doing far more than we're done under any Biden year. Yeah, for sure. And one of the things that, I guess maybe this is a good segue to is that even though we have these rulings from the Supreme Court kind of ruling that, yes, the executive has authority

over immigration and kind of takes priority there. That's an article to function. you see a lot of these lower court judges issuing these overreaching injunctions, judges like Jeb Bosberg out of the D.C. district court that just attempt to infringe upon the executive's authority over immigration. And obviously, no branch is exempt from following the law or the Constitution. But what a lot of these lower court judges seem to be doing is just intruding upon the executive's authority and is attempting to micromanage these. issues. And that's not the system that our founders had designed in place. I think Article 3 has become, I would argue, the most powerful branch today, even though the power of its judgments rest wholly on other branches complying with them and the willingness of the people to follow them. They've kind of become the final arbiters of what's law and public policy in America today. And I think this lower court judicial coup against the president, whether it be in the

the area of immigration or other executive related functions, just further shines a light on that and how problematic it's become. Yeah. And Congress's impotence or inability to do anything to rein in that behavior is not good at all. Not that anyone's surprised that Congress is unable or unwilling to do anything. We've known that on pretty much every issue across the board. But it does so much damage to the legitimacy of the third article. branch when we don't see any kind of balance in how things are being ordered.

Oh, for sure. And I think, I'm trying to remember when it was, but Chip Roy had introduced an amendment, the congressman from Texas, several months ago, where it basically would have stripped some of the funding from going to the D.C. circuit in the D.C. district courts like Jeb Bosberg's office and slashed funding for his staff. I believe it also would have gone to Deborah Bordman, a Maryland judge who issued that horrific light sentence on Brett Kavanaugh's want to be assassin. And he put it up as an amendment on the House floor for a vote to be added to a spending package. And you had, I believe it was over 40 House Republicans that cited with Democrats and killing the amendment.

So Republicans will go on television and cable news and radio and tell you how terrible this judicial coup is and how awful things are. But when push comes to shove and, you know, kind of going back to what we're talking about with Clarence Thomas about actually standing and fighting for your beliefs, many Republicans are just not willing to do that. Can AI save healthcare? The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast with Chris Lisa Murkowski. Every day, Chris helps unpack to connect your.

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This reminds me that the Washington Post, which does not know enough. about basic science to know that men are not able to become women and vice versa, said that a man who changed his name to Sophie Roski had pleaded guilty to trying to kill Brett Kavanaugh and that the Justice Department will appeal his sentence or as the Washington Post falsely says, her sentence in an effort to keep him, or as the Washington Post says, her behind bars much longer. So the Washington Post, again, unable to report accurately about something as basic as biological sex, has, and also the media entity most responsible, probably for this man, Roski going to try to kill Brett Kavanaugh, because the Washington Post was the originator

of the Brett Kavanaugh smear, in which he was falsely accused of. of raping and trying to kill a high school classmate. So the Washington Post did give us this news that their effort to get him killed, that the Justice Department is appealing the attempted assassin's sentence because of how short it was from that judge. Just interesting news. And just kind of tying into what you wrote about in Samuel Alito, again, which everyone should go pick up a copy.

You know, Brett Kavanaugh is just one of the many victims. of the threats and violence that has been plagued against the conservative justices for years. The left is just going on a full jihad to destroy the Supreme Court as an institution, both its legitimacy and obviously threatening the lives of the justices.

And you have the liberal justices, like Ketanji Brown Jackson, going to the Grammys, going to perform on Broadway or off Broadway or whatever it was, getting lavished on the view and all of these great interviews. And meanwhile, you have the Republican appointees

who can't even go out to dinner with their families because their lives are being threatened on a daily, weekly basis. Clarence Thomas had to deliver remarks to American University several months ago, virtually because of threats against him and others. And he didn't want to jeopardize anyone's safety. You had the reported swatting incident

in Amy Coney Barrett's house just the other week, where she lives at home with, I believe, at least four of her children, as she has said in recent interviews. It's just horrific on every front. And it doesn't help when you have members of the judicial branch who you would like to think would be sympathetic to these judges and their safety, willing to bend over backwards

to accommodate the mental derangement of a wannabe killer who was going to kill a man at home where he lives with his wife and two daughters, which I think is just going to show how far we've come in America today where that's the stand. for so many judges in our judicial branch. Yes, it is appalling how the media cover this, how the left supports the violence against the Supreme Court justices

and how little attention they give to how much the left has been whipped up into a frenzy, a murderous frenzy when it comes to these justices. Okay, so what should we be looking for in the days to come, Fleetwood, about, you know, are there challenges? I feel like you had written, in fact, you have a great piece at the Federalist called Here are the biggest outstanding SCOTUS cases to look for. And in there, you talk about challenges to laws protecting women's sports from men. What are those cases?

And should we be expecting them soon, I assume? I mean, we're hitting the end of the term, right? Right. So I believe after today we probably have, I want to say, 11, 12, maybe 13 cases left to decide before the chairman's. We have opinions coming on Thursday, and then they haven't announced any other days thus far, but I would expect we'd get some early next week as well. But as far as the women's sports cases go, these are called Little v. Hickokx and West Virginia

versus BPJ. They deal with challenges to Idaho and West Virginia's laws protecting women's sports from trans-identifying men. And the challengers are basically alleging that these laws violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and in the West Virginia case Title IX. I expect, I'm not one for predictions, but I would expect kind of what we've seen from the court last term in a case called US v. Scrimetti, which dealt with laws banning trans procedures for minors, that based on that decision and kind of what you heard in oral arguments, the court seemed pretty favorable to Idaho and West Virginia in these cases. And one of the things that I think is going to be really

interesting to see whether they ultimately decide this in the majority opinion is whether transgender is called what's or what's called suspect classification or whether it falls under suspect classification. And suspect class is basically a group of individuals within the law who have faced discrimination. So race is the most prominent suspect class. And when you have a government law or policy that's tailored toward a specific suspect class, courts typically placed it under what's called strict scrutiny, which is basically a heightened standard of review that places the onus on the state or the governing body to prove that it's tailored toward a government, compelling government interest and that it's narrowly tailored toward that government interest.

And what you've been seeing in recent years is left-wing attorneys and pro-trans attorneys will file these lawsuits. And I believe in the Little v. Hecox case, the trans-identifying party made this claim. they will claim that trans is a suspect class, basically to try and increase the likelihood that courts will strike down these laws, recognizing biological reality, protecting kids from these trans wackos. And so what you had in Scermetti was three justices,

Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, and Thomas, say across concurring opinions that, no, transgender is not a suspect class. But because those were in concurrences and not a part of the majority decision, it did not set any sort of precedent for the lower courts to abide by. And so what I'm hoping we'll see in these women's sports cases, and I think we will get an answer based on what we heard in oral arguments,

is whether trans is a suspect class or not. And I'm really hoping that the majority will definitively say, assuming they rule in Idaho and West Virginia's favor, that no, trans is not a suspect class. And basically cut off that loophole in the legal system and the law that left-wing activists have attempted to explore, to advance pro-trans ideology throughout our legal system. It is worth noting.

I'm glad you mentioned that Amy Coney Barrett was making a great argument there that was only something shared by Thomas and Samuel Alito. We've come to expect Thomas and Samuel Alito to be solid on issues like this. It's disappointing that Brett Kavanaugh was not in the right place on that. And, of course, the real problem is Gorsuch, who's just a mess on trans law author of the Bostock decision, which claimed that the Civil Rights Act was about protecting trans-identifying people from being discriminated against in a sex-specific way.

It's an absurd opinion. It's embarrassing. And I like so many things about Gorsuch, and that contortion of textualism. is not one of them. Just like real awful legacy to have that. He is, I share those sentiments as well. I mean, I really like Gorsuch.

I think that he is someone who very much appreciates the American experiment, even though we may have some disagreements on him saying that America is just an idea. You know, I think that for him, he's kind of shown to be this libertarian-esque, justice in a way, because you'll get really excellent opinions from him on free speech, on gun rights, on religious liberty. He had that really great decision. I think it was called 303 creative several years ago, where I think it was again based out of Colorado, where these left-wing activists were attempting to force this Christian web designer to design a website for a same-sex couple. And Gorsuch wrote an excellent majority opinion defending religious

liberty, but then you'll get, you know, a decision like Bo Stock or that weird one where it was like Indians or Native Americans have, you know, a certain dominance of, that made like two-thirds of Oklahoma. Yeah, two-thirds of Oklahoma is like a lawless state now. Yes. Yeah. So I do like him in general, but you know, you do get those ones where you're just like scratching your head. Like, what are you doing, do you? Yeah. I think Gorsuch is sort of the work. Gorsuch is sort of the worst that libertarians can offer and Thomas is the best. Okay, great. So then we are still having to wait on birthplace citizenship. Can you tell us anything about that case, what we're expecting and how big of a decision that will be? So we obviously have not gotten it yet, which kind of

bums me out. And I say that because I'm not expecting a favorable outcome. And it's pretty bummer that we're coming up on America's 250th birthday and we're likely to get a bad ruling from the Supreme Court on this issue. I'm not optimistic that the court will fully endorse the residence position that, you know, if you're born to illegal aliens on U.S. soil, then that means that, you know, you shouldn't be automatically granted citizenship, right? But I also could see a situation where maybe the Supreme Court could punt on it. Maybe they could find a way to say, well, maybe birthright citizenship isn't necessarily a constitutional right in the 14th Amendment, but that's the current policy of the United States. And if you want to change the policy,

have to go through Congress. But I'm just not entirely positive that the Supreme Court's going to be in the right here. I think you, at a minimum, will probably get Samuel Alito and Thomas ruling the correct way. maybe Gorsuch, but, you know, I'm just not that optimistic that the Supreme Court will, you know, come down on the right decision here. But I hope to be wrong, but, you know, not super optimistic. Yeah, I went to that. I went to the oral arguments for that. And I came out of it not feeling despair, but then I re-listened to them recently a few weeks ago.

And I did not have a good feeling. So it will be very weird to celebrate the 250th Annabst. of our country's founding with a decision that that just completely undermines it. So I'm just praying there's some way to not say birthplace citizenship is in the Constitution. I'll take any improvement over that, including if they just say, well, it's not in the Constitution. It's the current policy. And Congress can change that if it's so desired. Yeah, I mean, that's one of those things that's like towards.

the end of the term, you get these big cases that opinions take a while to write because everyone's trying to get their dissents in and their majority opinions together. We're like, you'll get favorable cases where you're like, oh, that's a really great decision there. That's overturning bad precedent. That's following the Constitution. And then you'll get like a stink bomb where you're like, what on earth is this court doing? And I suspect that that will be the same this year as it has been in several years past. Thank you, Sean Fleetwood so much for joining me today. You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

I'm Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief at The Federalist. We'll be back soon with more, including next week another special Supreme Court edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.

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