SCOTUS Strikes Again: The Good, the Grotesque, and the Genuinely Dangerous

An update to last week's devastating rulings—and why I sat down with Don Lemon to break it all down

Last week, I broke down four Supreme Court rulings that gutted asylum, shielded Monsanto from cancer victims, struck down gun safety laws, and ended TPS protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians. I said then that SCOTUS would continue to gut our rights and protections.

Sadly, I was right. And the Court is moving fast.

This week brought a fresh wave of rulings—some genuine victories, some predictable cruelty, and one decision so corrosive to democracy that it deserves to be remembered as the moment the Court formally sold our elections to the highest bidder.

I sat down with Don Lemon to walk through all of it. Watch the full interview below and also read my pithy, no-legalese breakdown of exactly what happened at the Supreme Court today and why it matters. Let’s Address This.

Watch The Full Breakdown

Don Lemon and I dug into what these rulings mean in practice, what comes next, and what we do about a Court that is 6-3 in favor of corporate power and against ordinary people in nearly every case that matters.

The Wins

Birthright Citizenship Survives—Barely

SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Barbara that a president cannot repeal a constitutional right by executive order. Good. Obvious. And it should have been 9-0. Instead, Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas—yes, Thomas, a Black man voting to gut a 14th Amendment protection forged in the blood of Reconstruction—dissented. Kavanaugh’s concurrence effectively called for repealing the 14th Amendment outright. Four justices were prepared to let a president erase a constitutional right with a signature. Sit with that.

Lisa Cook Keeps Her Job

The Court refused to let Trump fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook—a check on executive overreach into an institution specifically designed to operate independent of political whim.

Mail-In Ballots Survive

SCOTUS rejected the RNC’s attempt to gut mail-in vote counting, ruling that ballots postmarked by Election Day count—even if they arrive after. A real win for voting rights. The dissents? Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. The same four justices, again, on the side opposing free and fair elections. Noticing a pattern yet?

E. Jean Carroll Wins, Again

SCOTUS declined to hear Trump’s appeal, leaving intact his obligation to pay Carroll $5 million in fines plus $100 million in jury awards. Accountability, however incomplete, still exists somewhere in this country.

Your Phone Stays Private

In a genuine privacy victory, the Court ruled the Fourth Amendment applies to geofence warrants—the dragnet surveillance tool police use to search cell phone data across entire geographic areas without knowing who they’re even looking for. Police now need a specific warrant. Your location data remains yours. A real win for civil liberties.

Samuel Corum—Sipa USA/AP Images

The Cruelty

Trans Kids Banned from Girls’ Sports

In West Virginia v. B.P.J., the Court ruled 6-3 to ban transgender children from participating in girls’ sports. This is not about athletic fairness. This is the continuation of the structural eugenics I have written about extensively—a coordinated campaign to legislate trans children out of public life, one bathroom, one locker room, one playing field at a time.

(Laura Seitz/Deseret News)

The Catastrophe

Billionaires Can Now Buy Elections With Zero Limits

Here is the ruling that should terrify you most. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that spending limits on dark money violate the First Amendment.

Translation: there is no longer any meaningful limit on how much unlimited, untraceable dark money billionaires can pour into buying elections. Not a loophole. Not a workaround. A direct, unrestricted superhighway from billionaire bank accounts to your ballot box—with the Supreme Court’s full constitutional blessing.

Every fight I have written about—Medicare for All, taxing billionaires, ending corporate capture of the Democratic Party—just got immeasurably harder. Because the same billionaire class funding Third Way, AIPAC, and corporate centrist primary campaigns now has a Supreme Court-issued blank check to spend without limit or transparency.

Conclusion

Corporate media will spend the next week debating horse-race politics while burying the fact that billionaires just received a Supreme Court-blessed blank check to buy every election in this country.

That is why independent media matters now more than ever—not as a nice-to-have, but as the last line of defense against a media ecosystem owned by the same billionaire class these rulings just empowered. If this breakdown helped you understand what corporate outlets wouldn’t tell you plainly, consider becoming a paid subscriber to Let’s Address This. Your support is what makes this kind of accountability journalism possible—and right now, it has never mattered more.

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Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, legal accountability, and the plain-language analysis that corporate media refuses to provide. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.