On today's episode of FAFO

June 27, 2025

Sorry this is late, but I’ve been trying to made sense of the SCOTUS rulings today, so that I can educate you; the news is coming fast and furious today.

SCOTUS’s term is over and boy oh boy did they stick it to the American people. It’s very clear that the Court only rules as its told to do, and not governed by the Constitution. It handed plenty of victories to the Der Gropenfuehrer administration. For one, the conservatives on the Court ruled that no one federal judge can issue a nationwide injunction to block a President’s actions (such as an Executive Order), *even if that order is unconstitutional.* Justice Amy Coathanger Barrett wrote “Some say that the universal injunction give[s] the Judiciary a powerful tool to check the Executive Branch. But federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to try to exceed its power, too.”

More from her: “Here, prohibiting enforcement of the Executive Order against the child of an individual pregnant plaintiff will give that plaintiff complete relief: Her child will not be denied citizenship. Extending the injunction to cover all other similarly situated individuals would not render her relief any more complete.”

This ruling came about as a result of a case dealing with Der Gropenfuehrer’s Executive Order to limit birthright citizenship, which, of course, is patently unconstitutional if the justices would just read the goddam thing. The Court did not rule as to the constitutionality of that order, however. Lots of federal courts issued nationwide injunctions to block that, so he waddled his dirty diapered ass to SCOTUS and pitched a fit.

What next? The birthright citizenship cases go back to the judges that issued those nationwide injunctions, who now have to decide exactly who those injunctions apply to and if their ruling is narrow enough. Just the plaintiff? A larger group, such as in a class action suit? Or just to those who personally sued POTUS? We don’t know. Judges can issue nationwide injunctions. But SCOTUS says they need to be much more limited. It doesn’t go into effect for thirty days, but could result in a child being a citizen in one state, but not in another state, with the perhaps intended result being a bar to traveling from state to state.

More from Coathanger: “[Injunctions can only] provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”

That means there will be many more class-action suits, with larger groups of plaintiffs.

Justice Sotomayor said, in her dissent, “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersone class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit. Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who also dissented, pointed out that ““The wealthy and well connected will have little difficulty securing legal representation, going to court and obtaining injunctive relief in their own name if the Executive violates their rights. Consequently, the zone of lawlessness the majority has now authorized will disproportionately impact the poor, the uneducated, the unpopular — i.e. those who may not have the wherewithal to lawyer up, and will all too often find themselves beholden to the Executive’s whims. This is yet another crack in the foundation of the rule of law.”

The Court also ruled that public school systems are required to provide parents with an "opt-out" provision that excuses their children from class when course material conflicts with their religious beliefs. That could be an objection to LGBTQ content, or Darwin’s theory of evolution. It also upheld Texas’ age verification for commercial porn sites, upheld a program providing Internet access to underserved communities, kicked Louisiana’s Congressional redistricting case to next term, and upheld South Carolina’s ban on using Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood for non-abortion related services, such as cancer screenings and upheld a provision of the Affordable Care Act that would allow the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to continue determining which services will be available free of cost to Americans covered by the ACA.

It’s not going well with the Big Bullshit Bill in the Senate. They were set to vote today on the bill but there’s opposition to portions of it—lots of it dealing with the Medicaid cuts—and the things in the bill that don’t pass the Byrd rule. The bill is said to be up for a vote tomorrow and then to the House so they can try to get it passed by the July 4 deadline that Der Gropenfuehrer has decreed.

It's not all sunshine and rainbows as the GOP sets out to dismantle the American dream. There’s some opposition to the bill in their own party, and a fair amount of GOP House members that aren’t happy with the changes the Senate made, saying it’s too expensive and it restores a lot of the cuts they made. To pass in the House, it would need 217 GOP votes with everyone present and voting but it needs to pass in the Senate first. There are 220 Republicans and 212 Democrats (there are three vacant seats).

Also, the Department of Homeland Security under Cruella De Vil ended legal protections for about 500,000 Haitians, who now face deportation. The Department maintains that conditions in Haiti have “improved”. They were here under temporary protected status, which allows people to stay here and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. Immigrants from 17 countries were here under said protected status when Der Gropenfuehrer took office.

Can we get some Xanax in the water supply? I wanna be sedated.

That’s all I have for you today, kittens.