The Weekly Sift

On many Mondays, I complain in the teaser about how much news there is to cover. This week, though, I have a sense that we’re all waiting for something to happen.

Georgia is widely expected to indict Trump for tampering with its 2020 election, but not until next month. Jack Smith is looking at the same set of facts, but his timetable is unknowable. The standing indictments against Trump in New York and Florida won’t come to trial anytime soon. Meanwhile, the GOP presidential campaign is on, but the first debate won’t happen until late next month, and the first actual votes are half a year away.

Congress is about to come back into session, with lots to get done if it’s going to avoid a government shutdown in October. The Ukraine summer offensive is underway, but there have been no major swings on the battlefield yet. Climate change continues its inexorable grind, with record heat and flooding, but no city-destroying hurricanes at the moment. There are new stories of Clarence Thomas living the high life at the expense of rich “friends”, but when aren’t there?

It’s tempting to take the week off.

Instead, I’m going to write another article about judicial rulings. Last week, the Supreme Court gave me a lot to comment on. But while they’re out of session now, other courts continue to make news. Two rulings stand out, one positively and the other negatively.

The positive news is a remarkable protest against last year’s pro-gun Bruen ruling and the Supreme Court’s originalism in general, written by District Judge Carlton Reeves of Mississippi. Reeves protests the gun-rights ruling by applying it. The subtext of his ruling (dismissing a case against a former felon who owned a gun, in violation of a 1938 federal law) virtually screams “this is stupid, but it’s what I have to do to follow the precedent”. He ends with a plea for the Supremes to apply the same expansive standards to other constitutional rights (like voting) that they’ve applied to gun ownership.

The negative legal news is a Trump-appointed judge’s injunction ordering large swathes of the federal government to have no contact with social media companies. The ruling repeats a litany of alleged examples of the government suppressing conservative speech, with no fact-checking. It takes seriously various conspiracy theories about malign Biden administration intentions, and completely ignores the interest of the government in minimizing the spread of dangerous misinformation.

I’ll cover both in one article, which should be out between 10 and 11 EDT.

The weekly summary will cover the hottest week on record, some things I learned from last week’s Moms For Liberty convention (which I didn’t attend), what a flap in Oklahoma points out about anti-CRT laws, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s exit from the Freedom Caucus, and a few other things. It should appear around 1.