Monday: SCOTUS Is About to Hand the Right a Culture War Win

So, here's what's going on. The Supreme Court just entered its final sprint of the term, and we're talking about rulings that could reshape the country before the end of June. Welcome to the Rush Lindell Show. I'm Rush Lindell. And I'm Regan. And Rush, CNN put it pretty plainly this week. The court has more than 25 opinions still to drop, with a president watching every single one. Watching! That's a generous word for it. The man is monitoring like it's a live stock ticker. Fair enough. So, here's what we've got today. First, the transgender athlete bans. SCOTUSblog covered the early arguments closely, and the signals out of that court were not subtle. We dig into what a ruling looks like and why the scope question matters as much as the outcome. That's the piece most people are skipping over. A narrow win and a broad win are very different. Exactly right. Then we get into birthright citizenship. Trump vs. Barbara. Look, I'll tell you up front, the constitutional read here is not friendly to the executive order, and I'll say it, but there's a story inside that story worth telling. And it involves the justices Trump himself put on the bench. You know what nobody wants to say? Sometimes your own team makes the call against you. We'll get into that. We'll also walk through what the Washington Examiner is reporting. 35 rulings due before July. Seven days on June 11th, 18th, and 25th. Any session through June 26th could be the one. So stay close. This is the show to listen to before any of those drop. Let's get into it, starting right now with the transgender athlete cases. Before we dive in, a quick reminder. We love hearing from you. If you have questions or topics you'd like us to cover, head to the link in the description and submit your question. We read every single one. You know what nobody wants to say? The Supreme Court just put the entire conservative agenda on a three-week deadline. 23 opinions, birthright citizenship, presidential firing power, trans-athlete bans, mail ballot rules. All of it stacked up, waiting to drop before the end of June. And that calendar is tighter than it looks, Rush. According to the Washington Examiner, the court has only three opinion days formally scheduled. June 11th, June 18th, June 25th. They'll almost certainly add more sittings. But we're still talking about a sprint. A sprint with a president watching every single decision. CNN reported this week that Trump publicly criticizes justices who rule against him. Nine justices, a ticking clock, and the man in the White House keeping score. That's the part that matters procedurally. The court doesn't announce which opinions land on which day. So every opinion morning between now and late June is basically a mystery box. Mystery box. That's one way to put it. I'd call it the most consequential fire sale in modern legal history. 23 cases, three weeks, zero margin for error. To be fair, not all 23 are earth-shattering. Some are narrow. Right. And some are birthright citizenship. Yeah, yeah. The big ones are genuinely massive. Here's the thing. A president who campaigned on reshaping the courts now finds out whether that bet actually paid off. All at once. In public. There's no staggering it across six months. The bill comes due in June. And according to U.S. News, several of these decisions could directly affect midterm election processes. So the political stakes aren't just constitutional, they're electoral. That's exactly right. Which brings us to the one case in this pile where we already know where the court is leaning. And the answer is going to make a lot of people very uncomfortable. So ask yourself, which side is doing the math right now? So the one the whole country was watching. SCOTUSblog covered the January 13th arguments wall to wall. And here's what they found. Nearly three and a half hours across Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ. Idaho, West Virginia, the two states being tested. And when it was over, court watchers had one read. A majority of justices looked ready to uphold the bans. That's the honest takeaway. Under arguments, the consensus was the bans in 27 states are probably going to survive. Even the three liberal justices spent most of their time not arguing to win, but trying to limit how badly they'd lose. That is the story nobody sang out loud. The equality industrial complex spent three and a half hours trying to lose by less. And the media still called it a toss up. Come on. To be fair, there's a reason. Idaho's argument that the law classifies on the basis of sex because sex is what matters in sports went basically unchallenged from the right leaning bloc. But the liberal justices were probing scope. Kagan was asking what a ruling should say to leave room for states that go the other direction. Right, right. So they're already playing defense for some future case. They're not fighting the principle anymore. You know what nobody wants to say? The principle is settled on that bench. The question is just how far the ruling travels. And that's where I'd slow you down, Rush. A majority looks likely, but the Constitution Center noted after arguments that the big remaining question is whether a ruling is narrow, covering just these two state laws, or broad enough to touch all 27 states with bans. Dead math. So winning might still mean re-litigating this in 25 other states. That's exactly the concern. A narrow ruling leaves a patchwork. State bans keep getting challenged one at a time, which is actually where the more interesting fight lives after this term ends. And that question, narrow versus broad, is what makes this ruling matter well beyond June. Short pause. Short pause. So here's the real question, and I want to sit with it for a second. The win people are celebrating, how durable is it, legally? That's where I want to push back a little, actually. SCOTUSblog was clear after January 13th. Majority likely upholds the bans in 27 states. But SCOTUSblog also flagged it was not at all clear how broadly the ruling might sweep. Those are two very different things. Right, right. Kavanaugh raised it himself during arguments. 27 states have bans. 23 don't. He specifically asked how a broad ruling handles that split. Nobody had a clean answer. Which is not what you want to hear when your side is supposed to be winning. And here's the durability problem. A narrow win, covering Idaho and West Virginia specifically, doesn't settle anything for the other states. You're back in federal court, state by state, challenge by challenge, for the next decade. Wait, hold on. I hear you, and you're right on the legal mechanics. But narrow win or broad win, you know what changes tonight? The political energy. Nineteen months to midterms. A Supreme Court majority says these bans hold. That's not nothing. The left doesn't get to run the courts will stop this argument anymore. That's fair. The political framing shifts. I'll give you that. And you know what nobody wants to say? The states without bans, the 23, they now have a roadmap. A ruling, even a narrow one, tells every legislature what survives constitutional review. That's a template. It's a template if the court writes it cleanly. Barrett's name came up in arguments as the one pushing for narrow. If she controls the opinion, that template might be thinner than conservatives are hoping. Justice Barrett writing the narrowest possible win. That is a sentence that should be on a bumper sticker. It really should. Look, the legal patchwork is real. Reagan's right. But a win that creates problems is still a win. And we're going to need some nicknames for the people who argued the other side. That's coming up. All right, shifting gears. It is nickname time. Oh, no. Reagan, the court is about to hand us 23 opinions and I need a filing system. Nicknames are the filing system. It's not how law works. No, but it's how radio works. So Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the man who walked into the Supreme Court on April 1st, and I want you to appreciate the date, April Fool's Day. The date was a coincidence. Was it, Reagan? Was it? He walked in to argue that the 14th Amendment doesn't mean what every court in America has said it means for 160 years. And Roberts looked at him and said, according to CNN, it's the same constitution. Roberts was not gentle. So D. John Sauer gets a nickname. You ready? I'm actively bracing. The Domicile Whisperer. That's terrible. The man built his entire argument around reading the word domicile into a clause that says jurisdiction. Gorsuch asked him whose domicile counts. The mom's, the dad's, the child's. And Sauer couldn't fully answer it. Couldn't answer it. On April Fool's Day. In front of the president, who was sitting right there and then left before it was over. He had somewhere to be. He had somewhere to be. SCOTUSblog read the room as a 7-2 outcome against the government. 7-2. Two justices, Thomas and Alito. That is not a coalition. That is a book club. Look, I get why the nickname is funny. The domicile argument was genuinely thin. No justice openly embraced it during arguments. Not one. So after the break, the actual legal wreckage of Trump vs. Barbara. The case where the administration sent the Domicile Whisperer to rewrite 160 years of constitutional history and got told no by justices Trump himself put on the bench. So here's the real story on birthright citizenship. Trump showed up in person April 1st, watched John Sauer argue the domicile theory live. First sitting president ever to attend oral arguments. And then his own justices took a sledgehammer to it. Right. What will he put on the bench? Gorsuch basically asked Sauer whether Native American babies born today would even have citizenship under his test. Sauer couldn't answer cleanly. That exchange alone tells you everything. The domicile argument had no limiting principle that survived a hard question. Roberts was the one who finished it off, though. Sauer's arguing we're in a new world, so the old rules don't apply. And Roberts looks at him and says, it's the same constitution. Case closed. And look, here's the thing. That's the correct answer. Wong Kim Ark has been settled law since 1898. You don't get to reread a 160-year-old precedent by slipping the word domicile into the 14th Amendment when it isn't there. Nobody's happy about losing. But the honest read here, the administration came in with a revisionist theory, and the justices they put on the bench said no. That's not a rigged court. That's the Constitution doing its job. SCOTUSblog reported the court appeared likely to side against Trump on birthright citizenship. And after reading that oral argument transcript, I get why. Barrett flagged that the domicile test might not even cover the free slaves the 14th Amendment was explicitly written to protect. That is not a minor problem for the government's position. And yet, you know what nobody wants to say? A loss here is not the end of the immigration argument. You can lose at the court and still win the political fight. The base sees the court blocking Trump's immigration agenda, and that is a fundraising email that writes itself. That's one way to spin an L. I prefer reframe, which brings us to the real question heading into November. One win, one loss. What do you actually do with that? Because the scoreboard matters, and we need to talk about what conservatives cash in on and what they let slip away. So here's the scorecard. One W, one L. Trans-athlete ban looks like a win. Birthright citizenship, we're taking the loss. Now the question is what the right actually does with that. And that's where I want to pump the bricks a little. Go ahead. The trans-athlete win is real. 68% of registered voters support the bans, according to the center square's March poll. Even 65% of true independents. That is not a niche position. That's exactly right. This is a 27-state ruling covering laws that most of America already agrees with. That's not a culture war flank. That's the center. Agreed. But here's my honest read. A culture war win only converts to midterm votes if the messaging is disciplined. And the right has a habit of moving to the next outrage before cashing in on a real victory. We do love a fresh outrage. It's a gift. Look, on the birthright loss, I'll flip it. CNN's reporting that 23 cases are coming down before the end of this month and the ruling in Trump vs. Barbara will be one of them. Democrats want a contrast message? Fine. We get the courts are against us and a fired-up base heading into November. That's not nothing. That's a real rallying frame. But, Rush, rallying frames require follow-through. The base stays fired up when there's a legislative play attached. Without that, it just becomes noise. Fair point. So the assignment is simple. Take the trans-athlete win, say it clearly and loudly, hold the message for more than a news cycle, then use the birthright loss to draw a line about who appoints the next court. That's a two-sentence strategy that most campaigns won't execute. Which is why we're here. Somebody has to say it. And we're almost out of June. Opinion days on the 11th, 18th, and 25th. Any one of those drops the ruling. The clock is already running. So here's your assignment before we let you go today. June 11th. That's Thursday. The court drops opinions. June 18th is on the calendar. June 25th is on the calendar. And SCOTUSblog has flagged that the biggest cases, birthright citizenship, the trans-athlete ruling, those could land any one of those days, or all on the last day. According to SCOTUSblog's April status report, the court typically saves its heaviest rulings for the final opinion day. If this term mirrors last term, that's June 26th. June 26th. Mark it. Write it on your hand if you have to. I'd suggest a calendar app, but sure. And here's the thing. CNN reported this week the court is racing to finish 23 cases this month. Presidential firing power, birthright citizenship, mail ballot deadlines. That is not a slow news month. That is a detonation. That's fair. And the cases that land will matter more to how people actually live than 90% of what gets wall-to-wall cable coverage this summer. You know what nobody wants to say? Most people will miss it. They'll tune back in for whatever outrage drops on social media and completely sleep through the most consequential court month in years. That's why the messaging discipline we talked about matters. The rulings are only half the battle. What happens the following 48 hours shapes what people actually remember. So pay attention this month. Not to the hot takes three hours after a ruling drops. Read the actual holding. Understand what it covers and what it doesn't. Then decide what you think. You are smarter than the spin. I promise you that. And if you want to understand the scope question before the trans-athlete ruling lands, SCOTUS blog's oral argument recap from January 13th is worth a read. They laid it out clearly. June is here. The court is live. Don't blink. We'll be back Thursday. All right. That's the show. June is when it all lands. 23 opinions, three weeks, and every single one of Trump's big bets at the Supreme Court on the table. And the scope question on the trans-athlete ruling is the one I'd watch closest. A broad ruling versus a narrow one changes everything about what this actually settles. The equality industrial complex spent three and a half hours trying to lose by less. That line is going to live in my head. That's accurate. I will give you that. Mark your calendars. June 11th, June 18th, June 25th. Opinion days. Do not miss them. Big rulings, real stakes. That's what this show's for. If you got something out of today, subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and send this episode to someone who needs it. New episodes every weekday. Thanks for being here. We'll see you tomorrow.