BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER,
& CROOKED MEDIA

Tuesday, June 26th, 2018

—Mike Pence circa 2015

GORSUCH A BAD DAY

The Republican Party’s theft of a Supreme Court seat in 2016 paid its most awful dividends on Tuesday, with a 5-4 decision upholding the third iteration of President Trump’s Muslim travel ban, and two other 5-4 decisions that tilt against access to abortion and in favor of concentrated economic power.

The upheld travel ban restricts entry to the U.S. from seven countries: Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela. The original ban included only Muslim-majority countries, but the administration reverse engineered a modified version of the order, which satisfied the Supreme Court’s five conservatives that the text of the ban didn’t demonstrate obvious anti-Muslim animus. Thus, they ruled it could be implemented on national security grounds.

In a separate case, the same justices struck down a California law that required crisis pregnancy centers to provide women with information about abortion and other reproductive-health options. They distinguished these laws from analogous red state laws that compel speech from doctors aimed at discouraging abortion, because… none of this shit is on the level.

In a third case the court upheld gag orders that American Express imposes upon vendors, prohibiting them from telling customers that other credit cards carry lower fees for the merchants.  

All of these decisions are the result of Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented partisan power grab in 2016, when he refused to grant President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee a hearing.  That decision galvanized conservative voters, and helped Trump-skeptics in the GOP to rationalize voting for him. And Mitch is pretty proud of himself. McConnell once claimed to oppose the Muslim ban. Today, after the ruling was handed down, McConnell tweeted out this celebratory picture.

From Brian: If there’s a single image that ought to encourage liberals to take the race for the Senate seriously, it is that photo. Donald Trump is President (with a little help from his Vlad). Neil Gorsuch is a Supreme Court Justice. We can’t change that.  But Democrats can stop Trump from being rewarded with another Gorsuch if they win back the Senate. Then we can be the ones smirking. Remember smirking because you won something? Good feeling.

HEALTH AND INHUMAN SERVICES

The Department of Health and Human Services has released new child separation figures, which show that it still has 2,047 separated children in custody, meaning that only six children were reunited with their families over the weekend. The update also withheld information on whether or not its facilities are still receiving children who are being separated from their parents.

Yesterday, the head of Customs and Border Protection said that the agency was no longer referring migrants with children to the Justice Department, and had reverted to a “catch and release” policy until the two agencies are able to agree on a policy.

It’s Primary Day in New York, Colorado, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah. Hopefully after reading this newsletter every day (and clicking on the links, signing up your friends, and supporting our sponsors) you people did your civic duty.

An ICE agent threw an immigration attorney to the ground and broke her foot to prevent her from filming him deporting her client—a three-year-old—as well as his pregnant mother. The agent refused to allow her to call 911 and did not provide her with medical attention. We doubt this will cause a week of hot civility takes.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) says his Nazi-sympathizer retweet was a mistake, but he isn’t sorry about it, because he thinks the Nazi-sympathizer was right. Also, after stepping forward to criticize Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) for incivility, House Speaker Paul Ryan had his press secretary issue a vague statement about how retweeting Nazis is also bad without mentioning King’s name. But sure, both sides.  

Republicans (accidentally?) raised taxes on churches but it’s fine because God really really wanted those corporate tax cuts.  

Melania Trump will reportedly visit another immigrant-detention facility this week. Hey Topshop, do you have any outerwear with insensitive statements painted on the back? An umbrella that says “voting is dumb,” perhaps? Now’s your chance!

Harley Davidson is moving some of its production overseas in order to avoid Europe’s retaliatory tariffs. Not exactly high on the hog, you know?

Twitter wasn’t allowing users to post the URL Trump Hotels dot org today for a brief period of time…

The latest viral footage of an unhinged racist tirade against innocent people in this country features a woman using Trump’s name to berate Esteban Guzman, a 27-year-old California man, and his mother, as they tried to do landscaping work. Borrowing language from Trump himself, she calls them “drug dealers,” “rapists,” and “animals.”

On Pod Save the People: DeRay, Sam, and Brittany discuss corporations’ response to Michael Brown’s death, Melania Trump’s jacket, and more.

Then, Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mahlon Mitchell joins DeRay and discusses his race to become the state’s first black governor, and Colorado gubernatorial candidate Mike Johnston explains how one of his students inspired him to run.

Listen →

Do you pay close attention to nerdy economic indicators? Neither do we! But you should take two minutes to learn about a recession signal that the bond market may be showing us.

Read →

Protesters playing audio of children who were separated from their families confronted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, on Georgetown’s campus.

Emin Agalarov, the Russian pop star who helped arrange the Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, has released a new music video suggesting the pee tape is definitely real.

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