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The Michigan Senate Democratic primary debate between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and centrist Haley Stevens got heated, while Donald Trump played victim in Turkey, and the U.S struck Iran yet again.

Oil prices surged after Iran said it had struck dozens of US targets in retaliation for American strikes, threatening the fragile ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned against the sale, saying Ankara is “infected with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 8 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.Donald Trump thinks he has a new way to force Republicans to pass voter suppression legislation in time for the midterms. In a late-night tirade, Trump demanded that Republicans pass the so-called SAVE Act by attaching it to a must-pass defense spending bill. This comes as Republicans are getting more nervous about losing the Senate this fall, and some reportedly fear that Trump is setting them up. If they don’t pass the SAVE Act, they fear he’ll blame them for any midterm fiasco that takes place.We think it’s premature to rule out the possibility of Republicans actually passing this thing. It’s a high-stakes moment that’s passing largely under the radar. So we’re talking to congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, one of our go-to people for decoding the congressional GOP. Norm, nice to see you.Norm Ornstein: Good to see you too, Greg.Sargent: So Donald Trump and MAGA are pressuring Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which is this disgusting piece of voter suppression legislation. It can’t pass the Senate, so Trump is demanding that Republicans end the filibuster to pass it, which they don’t want to do or can’t do. Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson is looking for a way to pass something that he can call the SAVE Act to placate all the hardliners allied with Trump. Norm, what exactly is Mike Johnson trying to pass, and what’s he trying to pull off here?Ornstein: So first let me note, Greg, that John Thune has been as loyal a leader to a president, and certainly to Donald Trump, as anyone could have wished. And now he’s taking all of this abuse. But for Mike Johnson—many of his members, and they’re of course in very real danger of losing the House—they’re talking, and he’s talking to Trump, about using every voter suppression measure possible. But they really, really, really want this SAVE Act, because so many of the districts that are vulnerable to them are in blue states. Red states are going to do a lot, including a lot that’s already in the SAVE Act. Florida’s talking about passing their own version, Texas and others. But he needs something, and the SAVE Act, which includes a whole series of measures that would limit votes, suppress votes, make it difficult for people to vote at a time when Republicans are worried about a surge in voting, requires that everybody provide proof of citizenship. And even if you’re registered, you have to go back to the office to re-register with that proof of citizenship, which has to be either a passport or passport card, or a birth certificate—but not just any birth certificate. It has to be one that’s embossed, not a copy. And of course, as we know, if you are a woman who got married and changed your name, you have to jump through additional hoops.Sargent: The SAVE Act, as Trump wants it to pass, would include both the proof of citizenship requirement and also basically an end to mail voting, among a bunch of other stuff as well. What Mike Johnson seems to be trying to do is put aside the piece that would end mail voting, because Republicans who aren’t crazy actually know that they need mail voting for themselves as well. So Mike Johnson wants to put that aside and pass the proof of citizenship piece, correct?Ornstein: Exactly so, Greg. And let’s note here that Mike Johnson has a couple of reasons for wanting to do this. He is desperate to get something done. The fact is, many of his own members—and it’s particularly true of Mike Lee in the Senate and a couple of the others—are agitating publicly for this over and over again. There is a fear on the part of Johnson and other House Republicans that if they don’t pass something that has the name “the SAVE Act” attached to it, it will demoralize a portion of their base, who will say, you’re not doing what you need to do. That’s one reason. The other, as we’ve discussed, is suppressing what they believe will be votes for Democrats. And the proof of citizenship, which is a poll tax, which ought to be unconstitutional and illegal, is the core part of it. But he wants to take out the mail-in voting, not just because it can hurt Republicans a lot—they use mail-in voting plenty—but also because he needs to get something through and then blame the Senate. Because frankly, if Mike Johnson had to choose one house to go over to the Democrats, he of course would rather have it be the Senate.Sargent: Right. And so Mike Johnson thinks that he can essentially have slightly more of a chance of passing a SAVE Act that doesn’t have the mail voting piece. So in this context, at 12:58 a.m., Trump unleashes a tirade on Truth Social, calling our military “the strongest and the hottest in the world” and so forth, never mind the Iran fiasco, which is ongoing. Then Trump says this: “When Congress returns, we must pass Reconciliation 3.0. The SAVE America Act, paired with the full funding of our great Department of War, can be passed very quickly, ensuring that the United States of America stays FREE for generations to come.”Norm, let’s break this up into two pieces. What exactly does Trump want here? It seems that he wants Republicans to attach as much of the SAVE Act as they can to defense funding and pass the entire thing via reconciliation, which would then be able to pass the Senate on a simple majority due to that process, correct?Ornstein: That’s exactly what he’s trying to do. And he wants to make the defense bill, which normally would be handled separately, as part of a separate appropriations along with a separate authorization, folded into a third reconciliation bill. They’ve already done two. It’s unprecedented, or close to it, to have a third one. But it’s basically blowing up norms and rules to try and jam this through, even though the rules make it clear that it’s not allowable.Sargent: Why can’t Republicans end the filibuster? Is it just that they don’t have enough Republican votes to do that?Ornstein: Look, one part of it is a belief that if they do this first, then Democrats are going to take advantage of it, if and when they end up with majorities in the House and Senate and a president, and they will dismantle everything that Republicans have done—not just during the Trump era, but going back to previous Republican presidents.Sargent: Right. But Norm, if Republicans wanted to end the filibuster, could they do it?Ornstein: They could with a majority. But there’s another deeper reason why some Republicans don’t want to do this. They know that there are lots of things that would be deadly for them and the country, devastating, that they don’t want to do—crazy radical stuff, stuff that moves us even more towards a police state, stuff that could blow up their own economies and their own workforces. And they’re able to avoid doing that by saying we would have voted for it, but we don’t have 60 votes. So the filibuster actually gives a number of them who are not the crazy radical rightists—there are few who are even if they all vote the same way—who understand that the filibuster gives them protection.Sargent: Norm, let me underscore that just so people really get it. Republicans know that if the filibuster were done away with, all of a sudden they’d be able to pass whatever Trump and MAGA want with a simple majority in the Senate. And they don’t want that state of affairs, because that would fuck the country and fuck the Republican Party, in essence. So keeping the filibuster for them is kind of like a way to crazy-proof themselves against Trump and MAGA, more or less, right?Ornstein: That’s exactly right.Sargent: If Mike Johnson were to send some version of the SAVE Act over to the Senate, can they pass it with reconciliation, or would the Senate parliamentarian kick that out?Ornstein: There is no doubt that every part of the SAVE Act is inadmissible under budget reconciliation rules in the Senate. They have something called the Byrd Rule, which is named for Robert Byrd when he was the Senate leader, and it is basically that the fundamentals of everything in the budget reconciliation bill have to be fiscal. It has to involve spending and/or taxes. And it has to not add to the deficit or debt after a 10-year period. But they’ve always relied on what the parliamentarians said. However, the way they’ve relaxed their rules in the past is through this kind of maneuver. The parliamentarian rules that this is out of order. Somebody appeals the ruling of the chair. A simple majority can overrule the chair.And so what would happen here is, the parliamentarian would say, no SAVE Act, no portion of the SAVE Act, not allowable under the rules. Somebody—Tom Cotton, Mike Lee, any of the others—would appeal the ruling of the chair. Fifty Republicans would vote to overrule the chair, and then it would pass. It would be wrong. It would be illegal under the Senate rules. What would stop it from being signed by the president? Nothing. What would stop it in the courts? There’s no way the courts would intervene.So they can do this through the back door. But they also know that doing it that way is going to open up the floodgates for all kinds of actions that they would not like. And if they do it this way, then every radical, crazy Freedom Caucus right-wing proposal under the sun, they’re going to jam into reconciliation and use this as a precedent.Sargent: And then overrule the chair. Well, I just want to move on to another thing. NBC had this really striking report on what’s going on inside the Republican Senate caucus. The report says, “Some Republican strategists worry the party’s chances of holding the Senate are dwindling.” And the report also suggests Republicans are shocked and baffled that Trump keeps prioritizing the SAVE Act over showing that the party cares about costs, which is voters’ top issue. Republicans think, in short, that this is screwing them—Trump is screwing them, essentially. One GOP operative says, “Poll after poll shows affordability is the top issue, but his mind is elsewhere.” Norm, you’ve been around a long time. Have you ever seen a GOP Senate caucus quite this angry with a Republican president?Ornstein: No, I have not seen a Republican caucus in the Senate this angry with one of their own presidents. But let’s also keep in mind, Greg, that that anger, which is expressed for almost all of them privately—occasional exceptions, Thom Tillis talks a good game—and then they vote for what he wants. Now, they may not do it in this case, because it cuts too close to home. But two things are involved here. They’re pissed because he’s putting pressure on them to do something they don’t want to do and it’s a distraction, and it undermines their standing at home, because some of their own base voters are going to say these guys are disloyal because they’re cultist voters. At the same time, they’re right that what people care about is first and foremost their own lives and affordability.And it’s not just, let me note, that Trump is just talking about the SAVE Act. Look at some of the things he’s said recently. “They make up this word ‘affordability,’ those Democrats. There’s no such thing”—which does not resonate with their own voters, with working-class voters. And he said, “We’ve got a war to fight, we can’t fund Medicare or Medicaid or education or housing or any of these other things.”And when they were able to pass a bipartisan housing bill to deal with a key component of affordability, he said, “I’m not going to sign it.” After promising that he would. The bait and switch. So he’s undermining them at every front. But it’s still a cult, Greg, and we cannot rule out that when he pushes hard, they’ll go along because they’re afraid.Sargent: Well, there’s another striking thing in the NBC report. Republicans say they fear Trump is setting them up to take the blame for midterm losses. One GOP senator says Trump “will blame it on us and the fact that we didn’t pass the SAVE Act.”The senator adds: “He likes to dominate people, and he’s a bully, and he’s fucked things up as fast as he can, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” Norm, that’s amazing stuff. Republicans created this guy every step of the way. He’s fucked them in every which way. His unpopularity is the reason that they’re cratering potentially this fall. And now they’re saying—now all of a sudden they’re angry at him? What do you make of that?Ornstein: I think there’s frustration. And part of the frustration is that they’ve come to realize that the rash acts that he’s taken—this insane war with Iran and the way it’s playing out, the tariffs in and out and up and down, the inability to deal with major problems facing the country. The fact that—because he’s not just blown up green energy, he’s paying billions of taxpayer money to stop wind projects that are almost completed. And as a result, we’re likely to have more energy shortages and stoppages during the worst summer weather, that will hurt them as well. There is a growing awareness that this monster that they’ve created is creating problems for them and not just for others.You know, at the same time, they are unwilling to push back on the horrible things that ICE and the Border Patrol are doing. And what they’re realizing in states, including like Texas, is that the Hispanic votes that went to Republicans in 2024 are leaving them in substantial numbers, because of the policies that Trump is pursuing and their unwillingness to try and put a brake on any of them.Sargent: One hundred percent. Well, to wrap this up: We’ve got Donald Trump demanding that they pass the SAVE Act, Republicans fearing that his obsession with the SAVE Act and refusal to focus on costs and everything else are putting them at risk. What’s going to happen? There are several stages here where this could kind of fall apart, on liberals really. Number one, they could just end the filibuster—Republicans could end the filibuster and pass the SAVE Act. Number two, they could try to pass it via reconciliation, and if the parliamentarian throws it out, they could take the steps you outlined to overrule the parliamentarian. So is one of those things going to happen? Are they going to pass the SAVE Act, Norm?Ornstein: I think there is a 40 percent chance that they will. And the reason, in the end, is—well, two reasons. One is the relentless pressure from Trump and the fear that by failing to do so, their own voters will turn against them. The second is the fear that they could lose the Senate, and they’ll do anything, including long-shot stuff, to make it happen.Now, there’s one caveat I would offer out there. The Constitution has banned poll taxes. This goes back to the Jim Crow era, where Southern segregationists blocked African American votes—blocked poor people’s votes—by putting a poll tax. You had to pay to vote. And the Constitution says you can’t do that in federal elections. Law says you can’t do it in state and local elections. Requiring a passport or an embossed birth certificate is a poll tax. It costs $170 to get a passport if you don’t have one. And you have to provide proof of citizenship. Every state has some kind of a fee for an official birth certificate. Many of them are not available. So it’s at least possible that that part of the SAVE Act could be blocked in the courts as unconstitutional—although this Supreme Court, God knows what they would do.Sargent: Right. And that’s critical, because it looks like the mail piece won’t pass—the banning of vote by mail won’t pass, because Republicans want to keep that. Just to really clarify this: You think there’s a 40 percent chance that Republicans either end the filibuster or overrule the parliamentarian to pass the SAVE Act?Ornstein: Yeah. And I think it’s far more likely that they would do it by overruling the parliamentarian, so that they could then claim, we didn’t take away the filibuster.Sargent: Well, if that happens, Norm, all bets are off—but I really just don’t know whether that actually helps them. It could potentially help Democrats more. Norm Ornstein, thanks so much for coming on. That was a really, really great roadmap for us. We really appreciate it.Ornstein: Always happy to do it with you, Greg.

A raft of new defense investments by NATO members haven’t proved enough to appease the US leader.

The move comes after the country lost its top spot as Africa’s most industrialized economy.

Last month, the Supreme Court issued a number of landmark opinions involving transgender rights, campaign finance, executive power, and immigration. Those decisions were issued in the traditional way many of us recognize: pages and pages of arguments and citations, with each justice on the record voting yea or nay. But over the last decade, the […]

You can sort of tell the White House’s Domestic Policy Council knew it had a dud when it released its condemnation of the National Museum of American History over a holiday weekend. “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage” is a failure even when judged against the standards of the genre. It lacks the bitchy grandeur of a Joseph Epstein hit piece and the wacky verve of a Donald Wildmon sermon. More fundamentally, the report doesn’t have the goods. It’s the fruit of a “monthslong investigation,” according to the executive summary, but like much of President Donald Trump’s commemoration of the nation’s semiquincentennial—the blue sealant peeling from the $15 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool, that hunk of the Freedom 250 stage that fell and nearly killed rehearsing dancers on the National Mall—it’s a work of shoddy craftsmanship. Happily for the report’s authors, it was nearly impossible in the immediate aftermath of the report’s release to check its findings against the reality of the museum itself. It took me nearly an hour after I got off the subway on July 6 to get inside the building because Trump’s Great American State Fair, it turns out, runs through July 10. Not that many people were making their way into it, but the Mall itself was surrounded by fencing and Army trucks—this state fair looks more like an internment camp—and National Guard personnel patrolling the perimeter gave contradictory information about how to get around it. When finally I staggered into the National Museum of American History, I remembered my mixed feelings about the place. These objections have nothing to do with any evangelical leftism that the White House claims to have found there. Rather, I can’t square the museum’s mishmash of genuinely stirring artifacts (the Star-Spangled Banner, Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, the short-handled hoe that wrecked the backs of generations of California farmworkers until Cesar Chavez got it banned) with its pop-culture kitsch (Judy Garland’s ruby slippers, R2-D2 from Star Wars). The latter items really belong in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles or the Paley Center for Media in New York (though let’s keep Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet). Plus, there’s all those terminally boring first lady gowns. For as long as I can remember, NMAH has been overanxious to please the masses. The masses are not pleased by lefty virtue signaling, so you won’t find much there.Reading the White House report, one realizes as early as page 2 that the authors’ evidence gathering will fall short. The sentence announcing this is: “One of the most significant findings in this report concerns what is missing.” No self-respecting polemicist ever begins this way; you save the null-set argument for last, after you’ve flattened your opposition with devastating particulars. In this philippic, though, “what’s missing” is the very first item listed under the heading “Key Findings.” You can practically hear Domestic Policy Council director Vince Haley—a former speechwriter to Newt Gingrich—shout from his rostrum, “I got nothing.”What exactly “is missing” from the National Museum of American History? The Founding Fathers! The report explains:[A] visitor to the Museum today will find no major exhibit dedicated to America’s Founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or major moments of the American Revolution, such as Washington’s crossing of the Delaware.I’m going to spend the rest of this essay demonstrating how very untrue that is. As we enter NMAH, the very first thing to catch our eye is a monumental Horatio Greenough statue of a bare-chested and toga-clad George Washington. The work’s homoeroticism embarrassed many people at its unveiling at the U.S. Capitol in 1841 (Charles Bullfinch: “I fear this statue will only give the idea of entering or leaving a bath”), prompting its eventual removal to the Smithsonian. But Haley and his co-authors know that a bathhouse-dwelling George Washington can’t be blamed on today’s LGBTQ lobby, so they leave Greenough alone.  Instead, the White House gripes about a “didactic” (i.e., a text panel accompanying an artwork; I thought Haley was being snide, but that’s what museums actually call these) describing a frieze on Washington’s chair that shows Hercules battling a snake. This symbolizes, the didactic says, “the perceived courage of the American people.” If you can’t see what’s wrong with that phrasing, congratulate yourself for being sane. The offending word is “perceived.” Such distancing, the report complains, “refuses to affirm the exceptional courage of the American people.”Are the American people courageous? Some are, certainly. But to me, the great revelation over the past 18 months has been how many of our leaders are not.When the first thing you see on entering the National Museum of American History is a gigantic half-naked George Washington, in what sense does that give short shrift to the Founders? Well, Haley might reply, a statue is not a “major exhibit.” So let’s step around our first president and enter “American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith,” an exhibit on permanent display since 2017. “More than just waging a war of independence, American revolutionaries took a great leap of faith,” reads a wall text, “and established a new government based on the sovereignty of the people. It was truly a radical idea that entrusted the power of the nation not in a monarchy but in its citizens. Each generation since continues to question how to form ‘a more perfect union’ around this radical idea.”Inside the exhibit, what I first notice is an original copy of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. OK, Paine’s not the right’s favorite Founder (too left), but they like Thomas Jefferson, right? Here’s a handsome reproduction of Jefferson’s portable desk (the real one is on loan to the Smithsonian Castle, across the once-traversable National Mall), which (of course) Jefferson designed himself. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence on that desk. And here’s a print of the Declaration of Independence made from a copper-plate facsimile commissioned in 1823 by John Quincy Adams, when he was secretary of state. And here’s the document box that George Washington used at the Constitutional Convention, which may be the single most exciting object in NMAH’s collection. Incidentally, I see here no didactics that tattle on Washington for being an enslaver (though probably there’s one someplace around here because—sorry, Parson Weems—he was). What I see instead is the following, which I quote in its entirety:“Father of His Country”Admired in his time for courage, integrity, and leadership, George Washington became an icon after his death—a man to be emulated and venerated in monuments, celebrations, and epic stories, both real and myth. While Washington can seem a distant figure to 21st-century Americans, and modern scholarship focuses on the fallible man rather than the marble hero, his image is still used for inspiration, patriotism, and commercial gain. Now joined by modern heroic figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington continues to hold a place for many as a symbolic “father” of the country.Note that we see here no hedging on Washington’s courage (unlike that of the American people, it’s indisputable). I’m not crazy about the word “icon” (more here), and I suppose Haley might work up a head of steam over putting the word “father” inside quotation marks, but that’s too weak a complaint even for the White House report. Another didactic similarly omits Washington’s slaveholding and says he “spent his life in service to the nation.” Not perceived service to the nation. Service to the nation.Continental Congress? Check. Pilgrims? Check. Puritans? Check. Revolutionary War? Check. I didn’t see anything about Washington crossing the Delaware, but it’s possible I missed it (and anyway, who gives a shit; if you want to see the Emanuel Leutze painting, visit the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). I did glimpse the gunboat Philadelphia, “part of a small fleet that against all odds stalled a British invasion intent on ending the American Revolution,” per the didactic. “Today conservators are preserving this iconic vessel, stabilizing its timbers and iron fittings. And historians are making new discoveries about the people who built it and fought aboard it.” Hooray. Let’s hope White House budget chief Russell Vought doesn’t cut their funding.

The most important part of any Supreme Court ruling today is the majority opinion, for that is what the law is. The second-most-important part is whatever Justice Clarence Thomas writes separately, for that is what the conservative legal movement would like the law to be.Thomas has long carved out a reputation for frequent and idiosyncratic opinion writing. He pens more concurring and dissenting opinions than any of his colleagues on the high court. (Chief Justice John Roberts, by comparison, has not written separately in the last two terms.) This year alone, in a wide range of cases, Thomas sketched out a stunningly broad view of executive power—and, simultaneously, a sharply narrowed view of congressional power—that verges on the monarchical.This can manifest in both historic cases and less closely watched ones. In Monsanto v. Durnell, for example, the court was asked to decide whether a federal law on insecticides could preempt state-level lawsuits against the makers of Roundup. The court’s answer was “yes,” with which Thomas agreed. But he then went further, in a concurring opinion, to “call attention to some of the underlying constitutional infirmities in the [Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide] Act.”In his view, the law exceeded Congress’s powers under the commerce clause. “This power allows Congress to regulate ‘selling, buying, and bartering’ across state lines,” he wrote, quoting from a concurring opinion that he wrote in 1995. “It does not allow Congress to regulate ‘agriculture’ or ‘manufacturing,’ activities entirely ‘separate’ from ‘commerce.’”Huh? It is somewhat absurd to treat “agriculture” or “manufacturing” as distinct from “commerce,” as if farmers grow crops and factories make goods for recreation instead of economic reasons. Thomas’s own phrasing of the commerce clause is much narrower than its actual text, which gives the legislature the power to regulate “commerce … among the several states.” Thomas’s interpretation, if adopted by the high court, would demolish most federal statutes that regulate the economy.In Learning Resources v. Trump, the Supreme Court struck down the “Liberation Day” tariffs imposed by Trump last April. The court concluded that the Cold War–era law invoked by Trump did not allow him to impose tariffs via its permission to “regulate importations.” Some of the court’s conservative members disagreed with this interpretation, including Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh.Thomas also disagreed with the majority’s holding but, as usual, opted to take it one step further. He argued that Congress could delegate, and had broadly delegated, its power to levy tariffs to the presidency. Thomas claimed that the nondelegation doctrine, which generally forbids one branch of government from ceding its power to another, did not apply here.“Because the Constitution assigns Congress many powers that do not implicate the nondelegation doctrine, Congress may delegate the exercise of many powers to the President,” Thomas wrote. “Congress has done so repeatedly since the founding, with this Court’s blessing. The power to impose duties on imports can be delegated.”This seemed to baffle some of Thomas’s usual allies, such as Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has frequently called for a stricter interpretation of the nondelegation doctrine. “It’s a sweeping theory,” he wrote, while disputing Thomas’s argument at length. “One that would require us to reimagine much of our case law addressing Article I’s Vesting Clause. And one that presents difficulties of its own.”Thomas drew on medieval and early modern English sources to argue that the presidency could, in fact, wield broad powers like those of the British king. “In Great Britain, the King had no unilateral legislative power, but he had much unilateral power over foreign commerce,” the justice argued, quoting from the English jurist Lord Blackstone. “His power over foreign commerce included the power to ‘govern foreign trade,’ and to ‘prohibit any of his subjects from leaving the realm.’”Gorsuch could barely hide his astonishment at this line of argument. He noted that, to the extent it was relevant, the arc of English history was one of Parliament wrestling away revenue raising from the Crown. More relevantly, he noted, the Boston Tea Party ran counter to Thomas’s thesis. “Are we really to believe that the patriots that night in Boston Harbor considered the whole of the tariff power some kingly prerogative?” Gorsuch asked.Thomas’s view of executive power went even further in the court’s presidential-removal cases this term. In two separate cases, Trump v. Cook and Trump v. Slaughter, the justices weighed when and how the president could fire Senate-confirmed executive branch officials despite Congress’s protections for for-cause removal.In Slaughter, the court’s conservative majority held that the president could fire commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission at will, overturning a nearly century-old precedent to the contrary. But in Cook, the court held that Trump could not remove a member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, even with a pretextual for-cause rationale. Thomas enthusiastically supported the former ruling but dissented at length from the latter.“Today’s decision is an unprecedented incursion on the executive branch,” Thomas wrote. “Neither the parties nor the court can point to a single time in American history that this court has upheld an injunction against the president’s removal of an executive officer. In the 237-year history of our Constitution, this court has, by all accounts, never done so.”Roberts, writing for the court in Cook, concluded that the Federal Reserve could maintain its independence because it fit within the historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States, which operated at arms’ length from the federal government of that era. Thomas found the comparison to be ahistorical and argued for absolute presidential control over the nation’s central bank. “Regardless of whether unaccountable executive officers like Cook would better govern the economy, the Framers rejected such a ‘promised land of technocratic governance,’” Thomas wrote. “They instead chose government by the people. As a court, our duty is not to second-guess that decision, but to uphold it.”Thomas’s invocation of “the people” here is revealing. The executive and legislative branches are often described as the “elected branches,” in comparison to the life-tenured appointees to the federal bench. But only one of those two branches was elected from the start. The Framers always intended for Americans to choose their own representatives in the House, even if they circumscribed in practice who actually got to cast a vote.The presidency, on the other hand, is not and has never been directly elected by the American people. The Framers inserted the Electoral College as a buffer between the popular will expressed by American voters and state legislatures and the nation’s executive power. While some states allowed voters to cast ballots for slates of presidential electors, this did not become the norm until after the founding generation had passed out of public life in the 1820s and 1830s.Congress, on the other hand, was always meant to be the branch that channeled the popular will into law and policy. Part of that “government by the people” is Congress’s decision to create a central bank with a healthy degree of independence from the president’s day-to-day influence. If the American people wished to change course, they could elect representatives to Congress who would change it for them. They have not done so because, broadly speaking, it is good financial policy to not let the president personally set interest rates.Thomas’s monarchical tendencies are strongest when it comes to immigration and foreign policy. Mullen v. Al Otro Lado involved a challenge by immigrants rights groups to a federal immigration policy that prevented asylum-seekers from applying for asylum at U.S. ports of entry by physically preventing them from stepping foot on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the policy, interpreting the statute’s defining of “arriv[ing] in the United States” to mean literally setting foot on U.S. soil.Thomas joined the majority opinion but also wrote a concurring opinion where he went even further to criticize the lower court that had initially ruled in favor of the immigrants. “The relief that the district court provided may well have unconstitutionally infringed on the president’s inherent authority to exclude aliens from the country,” Thomas wrote.Under the high court’s precedents, Congress and the executive branch have absolute discretion to determine which foreign nationals—whether they be immigrants, asylum-seekers, temporary visa holders, or whatnot—can or can’t enter the country. Thomas took this reasoning an additional step to argue that this power actually rests with the executive branch, not with Congress.Thomas previously argued, in the Muslim travel-ban case during Trump’s first term, that the president “has inherent authority to exclude aliens from the country,” a remarkable theory given that Congress has the explicit Article 1 power to regulate immigration and naturalization. But Thomas disagreed with that approach on two levels.First, he claimed, the president inherited such a power from the English monarchy. “For example, William Blackstone explained that the King could send alien friends ‘home whenever the king sees occasion,’” he wrote. “And, at the time of ratification, [the] Framers of the Constitution argued that the President would have the same power.”Second, he argued that Congress’s power over immigration was much narrower than the legal consensus assumed over the past 150 years. “Congress, for its part, has no enumerated power to require the President to bring certain aliens into the country,” he wrote. “The Constitution grants Congress the power to ‘establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.’ But, the class members in this case are not naturalized or even on the path to naturalization.”To the extent that this is true, it is because the executive branch literally denied them the ability to request asylum at a U.S. port of entry. But to Thomas, this does not matter. “Any statute that forced the president to allow aliens to cross the border against his will would appear to exceed Congress’s enumerated powers, and a court could not enforce it against the President,” he claimed.If the court were to adopt this position, it would gut much of federal immigration law. Holding a green card would be pointless if the president, on a whim, could deport you back to the country from which you originally came. Statutory protections for refugees, asylum-seekers, and temporary visa holders would be meaningless. A broad swath of people lawfully present in the United States would suddenly find themselves at the president’s personal mercy, even if Congress wished to protect them.Thomas’s concurring and dissenting opinions, by nature, are not law. They can nevertheless prove to be highly influential in conservative legal circles. Lower court judges routinely cite them when challenging or disputing Supreme Court precedents. Some of those judges can be former Thomas clerks themselves: The Trump administration has drawn heavily from his acolytes to staff the federal bench. While Thomas’s opinions are rarely the law today, they can be a telling indicator of the world in which the conservative legal movement hopes to one day make us live.