Sunday Ops Report: Trump's Big Week
Plus: SCOTUS rulings, spies and the Dems who love them, and... the Diaper Index
So President Donald Trump has had a week. His administration won big at SCOTUS; he knocked NATO in line; and there was that little Iran thing. He may even get his Big Beautiful Bill over the weekend.
But at this writing, the hullabaloo over the “nationwide injunction” win at the Supreme Court is dominating the news cycle. Is this uproar justified? Will the ruling really change things?
Well… yes and no.
The case is known as Trump v. CASA. In CASA, SCOTUS ruled that local district courts can no longer issue an injunction — that is, essentially, a stoppage of a law or a presidential order — that applies coast-to-coast (the tactic had been vastly overused against Donald Trump — there’s a shock). The decision came down 6–3, along ideological lines.
While the catfight between Justices Barrett and Jackson grabbed the headlines, what was lost in the kerfuffle was that this decision is actually more about procedure than substance. While the ruling reins in local district courts from issuing blanket nationwide orders, the ruling also makes it plain that plaintiffs can still obtain the same injunctions by bringing a class-action suit under the existing federal procedure rules.
While class actions can be more procedurally complicated than single-plaintiff cases… I think we all know that progressive groups will make the effort. And will continue to forum-shop for like-minded judges.
So nothing’s changed? Not exactly.
In his concurrence, Justice Kavanaugh noted that courts that hear appeals —including the Supreme Court itself—can still provide nationwide clarity through emergency rulings. Kavanaugh even indicated that the Supreme Court will have to step up the pace of these.
The message? The Court isn't blocking “universal” legal remedies; it’s just reshuffling how and where those remedies are granted. As in: they’re going to the top.
So litigation going forward will likely pivot toward class-action lawsuits — with quick appeals, especially when lower courts conflict across different states. And SCOTUS will likely be the ultimate referee.
In light of the above, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s infamous dissent is all the more overheated. The ruling in CASA is not “profoundly dangerous,” as Jackson asserted for the left side of the Court. It’s likely not even that big a deal.
What it really means is that there will be differences in legal interpretation across different areas of the nation — something that has always been a part of our system. And SCOTUS will now have to engage faster and more regularly to resolve these.
Which strikes us as simply our system, working… and perhaps more efficiently.
But who’s been missing from our national conversation on all this? Chris’s favorite: Congress (see below!).
Injunction Malfunction
The Supreme Court knocked down the ability of lower courts to implement injunctions on presidential orders this week. Like in all corners of our government, the debate got contentious as Justice Amy Coney Barrett knocked Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion in Trump v CASA.
Barrett correctly called out Jackson stating that “Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.” Perhaps it’s just my personal bias, but it often seems like the more liberal justices often decide on feelings rather than law – where doing “the right thing” is more important than maintaining a tie to the constitution.
Whatever your opinion on the matter, both the majority decision and the dissenting opinion point to one looming problem.
Our Congress is broken. The government shouldn’t run on either executive orders or judicial injunctions. It should run on constitutional laws passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President.
But that hasn’t happened in years. Congress is paralyzed by procedure and posturing. Few in that body want to take an action or have an opinion that makes them look bad in the eyes of the media or the voters.
We are still calling out congressmen and senators for their vote to authorize the poorly conceived Iraq War in 2002. Voting for a compromise is unthinkable. A Democrat holding the same view as Trump on any matter is political suicide. A Republican siding with a Democrat would be a career-ender. What’s best for American is a not the primary concern – probably not the secondary one either.
Most in Congress seem concerned with one thing only: staying in Congress. And on the public dime.
The Supreme Court has used this case to once again call out the fact that Congress has been silent on the issue at-hand. Will Congress get the message? Recall that Article One of the Constitution provides for the legislature — not the executive. In the eyes of the Founding Fathers, it was Congress that was of primary importance.
Our nation is built on a foundation of compromise. We dread to think of the end result of a continued refusal to follow that principle.
Because any student of history knows that hyper-polarization rarely leads to a good ending.
The Sunday Podcast: A Conversation With Rep. Nancy Mace
Now there are some in Congress who are trying to move things forward. Certainly on the safety and security front.
So join us for a discussion of these issues with Rep. Nancy Mace, where we talk ICE, Iran, our military, rogue judges... and more.
Will Congress be stepping in against the judiciary? What can we expect from the ongoing House investigations? Does Congress expect to lock up members of the Biden administration?
And is Zohran Mamdani, who Rep. Mace terms, “a Sharia fanboy,” truly the future of the Democratic Party?
Join us for another lighting, 15-Minute Pod… here on The Ops Desk.
(Click below for the preview… or HERE for the full thing. No firewall this week!)
Zohran The Magnificent
We’ve always been fans of Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons. A favorite depicts two woolly mammoths fighting some cavemen. The mammoths are winning easily, flinging the neanderthals skyward with ease. But the mammoths are a bit nervous – the caption reads, “Every year there seems to be more of these things,” in reference to the spear-armed humans.
Which sums up the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City. In years past, few worried much about the threat of communism in the United States. It was always there in some form since the early 1900’s, but it had always seemed a fringe movement – an abstraction to be dismissed.
Recently however, like the cavemen of Larson’s comic, every year there seemed to be more of these things we call socio-anarchists, or “democratic socialists” (as they call themselves), or just plain, “communists.”
It started with Bill de Blasio — but now, they’ve fully arrived. Because at this writing it is extremely likely that the next mayor of New York City will be a hard-leftist that wants the government to run everything from grocery stores to real estate. Zohran Mamdani is for real, and his marxist mayoralty is imminent.
Yes, he calls himself a Democratic Socialist, but the jump from government-run stores to the proletariat owning the means of production is a short, and seemingly inevitable, step. And in light of X posts like this, endorsing his “comrade”….
Now whatever you call them, this element has been with us in the United States for a long time. From the Haymarket Riot in 1886, to the bombing of Wall Street of 1920, to the Red Scare of the 20’s where the FBI was sicced on American communists, to the 1950’s, when Hollywood was inundated with the ideology and communist spies gave nuclear secrets to the USSR, there has been a communist element here. Joe McCarthy was a dangerous nut, but American communists were real — and they sold us out.
But this may be the furthest an outright communist has actually ascended — and New York City is the perfect environment for communism to gain a real, mainstream foothold in American politics. A city of young liberal transplants from around the country. A city of universities where only the most far-left professors are hired to indoctrinate our youth with unrealistic and unchallenged ideas of utopia. A city of handouts and rent controls, where the free market is so far in the rear-view mirror as to seem lost to history.
A city with only one party, populated with the furthest-left vanguard of the ever-more lefty Democrats, competing with each other for ideological purity.
Lately, Mamdani’s message is a bit subtler than the usual marxist vocabulary. He’s replaced “bourgeois” with, “white people.” He’s not outlawing private groceries, he just wants to drive them out of business with taxpayer-funded undercutting.
But the end result will be the same: the “people” will own the means of production.
Recognize: these polices are all proven failures. And Mamdani’s plan for race-based tax increases (that he let slip out this week) is not only illegal; it’s more divisive than anything we have heard from a politician, ever. State-run stores in communist countries are most known for empty shelves and long lines — but even there, the lines are generally not segregated by race.
History has shown us that the ideas of Marx lead only to human suffering and tragedy. A government that has the power to control all aspects of society has the power to destroy people — and eventually will. The Ukrainian Kulak farmers had their food taken and were literally left to eat dirt by Stalin. Millions starved in a horror that still resonates in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war we pay for today.
Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward left as many as 50 million Chinese to starve to death. Castro’s Cuba had its Special Period in the Time of Peace that left its citizens malnourished and starving. And today we see Maduro’s Venezuelans exporting their poor to the United States just to avoid its people starving, as inflation and a lack of food are endemic.
The lessons of Karl Marx are certainly not limited to textbooks. These are real-world consequences, brought on by the most imbecilic political theory ever devised.
Now, some of Mamdani’s opponents want to prevent him from taking the reins in NYC. U.S. Representative Andy Ogles, for instance, has called for his citizenship to be revoked.
This is nonsense. Mamdani is an American and voters have a say. As Ed Koch once put it, “the people have spoken… and they must be punished.”
Let’s hope today’s Democrat Party can be prevented from punishing the whole country at some point.
The Spy Who Loved Me — Or At Least My Intel
So what is it with Dems and Chinese spies? Is there a marxist matchmaking service out there we don’t know about?
There was Rep. Swalwell and Fang Fang, of course… can you imagine the level of inanity in that pillow talk?
Then there was California Senator Diane Feinstein and her driver of 20 years — another confirmed Chinese spy. Imagine what he overheard coming from the backseat once she finally figured out how to use a cell phone.
Former NY Governor/mayoral washout Andrew Cuomo’s “liaison” to the Asian community, Larry He, appears to have been taking that job a bit too literally… he apparently thought that “community” included those with confirmed ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
And of course there was Hunter and “the Big Guy” Joe Biden, who were happy to be in the oil business with the man Hunter himself called, “the f*cking spy chief of China.”
Now comes word that Linda Sun, former “Chief Diversity Officer” to Andrew Cuomo and Deputy Chief of Staff to current Governor Kathy Hochul, has been charged with a $44 million dollar COVID-fraud scheme. Sun, you will recall, was previously arrested on eight counts of operating as an agent of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.
Um, did nobody in Cuomo or Hochul’s office notice that Sun was living awfully well on the salary of a government “Diversity Officer”? A $3.5 million home in a gated community on Long Island’s gold coast?
All we know is, if the right had a batting average like this when it comes to being hoodwinked by Chinese spies….
Dems, we know you don’t like vetting anyone (see, border, American southern) but maybe run a few basic background checks?
It’s easy — just pretend they’re trying to buy a gun.
The Economic “Diaper Index”
We read with interest this article in the print edition of The Wall Street Journal that examined the U.S. “dependency ratio” — that is, the number of retirees depending on government benefits in proportion to 100 people who are below retirement age. Right now, the U.S. number is 29; it was 19 back in 2010. By 2055, it will be nearing 40 — a number that is likely unsustainable.
But the U.S. is far from the worst-off. Right now Japan, for instance, is at 51. China’s number is rising, nearing on-par with the U.S; but by 2055, it’s number is projected to be 63. That’s right: for every 100 people working, there will be 63 depending on them for retirement benefits. That means, essentially, that every two working people will be supporting 1.3 non-working people. Impossible.
The reason for the “Diaper Index” term? In Japan, for instance — due to declining birthrates — adult diapers have outsold baby ones for years.
The point? It’s time for the Trump administration to begin touting, along with the much-needed deportations of illegals and migrant criminals, the “big beautiful door” part of his immigration policy. With the vast population bubble of the baby boomers — and the millenials which are now roughly equal to them — the United States needs to continue to bring in vetted, worthy, LEGAL immigrants.
It’s good policy… and good politics.
Otherwise, we’re going to run out of Social Security, Medicare… and diapers.
And finally…
Via The National Review:
Um…
