Wednesday: SCOTUS Has One Week Left and the Right Has No Idea What's Coming

Rush Lindell: So here's what's going on. The Supreme Court is in a full sprint right now. Twenty plus opinions sitting in that building, zero advance notice on when any of them drop, and a term that ends in late June. Reagan: Wow. Rush Lindell: Every single morning this week could be the morning. Reagan: And it's not a light docket. NPR counted 23 cases still pending out of 58 argued this term: birthright citizenship, transgender athletes, gun rights, campaign finance. Finance? Independent agencies? Rush Lindell: All of it at once. No big deal. Reagan: Completely normal news cycle. Rush Lindell: Right. So what we're doing today-and this is the whole point of this episode-is giving you the cheat sheet before the rulings hit, not after when the cable news hyperventilate starts. Before. Reagan: That's the only way to actually follow this, if you don't know what the cases are asking- Being a headline telling you who won is almost useless. Rush Lindell: You know what nobody wants to say? Most people will hear the birthright citizenship ruling get handed a take by their preferred anchor and have no idea what the court actually decided on nationwide injunctions, which, Reagan, I think you're going to argue, is the sleeper issue of the whole term. Reagan: It might reshape federal litigation for decades more than the citizenship question itself. in itself. Rush Lindell: We've also got two Second Amendment cases that nobody's talking about-and wait until you hear the Hunter Biden connection on one of them. Reagan: The media will find a way to under-report both. Rush Lindell: Shocking, I know. Plus, election law, mail ballots, campaign spending limits, all of it landing right in the middle of midterm season. The timing alone should get your attention. Reagan: We'll walk through every major case category, the legal question, what's actually at stake, and where the court is looking like it's headed. Rush Lindell: Start with the biggest constitutional fight on the docket. Birthright citizenship is up first. Before we get into it, 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. Nine justices, roughly twenty opinions still sitting on the shelf, and no warning on which day they land. Reagan: Wow. Rush Lindell: That's where we are right now. Reagan: And the term ends late June, early July at latest. The clock is not their friend. Rush Lindell: The clock is not anybody's friend; not the White House, not Congress, not anyone who thought the big fights were already over. CBS News put it plainly: "The court already struck down Trump's tariffs, already gutted the Voting Rights Act in the Callais decision. position, and what's left is arguably the heavier batch. Reagan: That's the part people keep underestimating. Louisiana versus Callais dropped April twenty ninth, a six-three ruling that rewrote how states can use race in redistricting. That was consequential, and the court still has Birthright citizenship, Campaign finance, Transgender athletes, Second Amendment, all of it. Rush Lindell: Still on the shelf: Totally normal June. Reagan: Not remotely. Rush Lindell: You know what nobody wants to say. Say, most people are going to find out these rulings happened because their phone buzzed while they were eating lunch. No context, no framework, just a push notification and a headline that sounds insane. Reagan: Which is exactly the wrong way to absorb decisions that are going to shape federal law for the next decade. Rush Lindell: That's why we're here. We're building the Cheat Sheet before the chaos hits, so when the opinion drops, you already know what's at stake and why it matters. Reagan: Uh huh. Speaker 3: Huh? Reagan: US news flagged eight major cases still pending (eight!), and the court gives zero advance notice on which ruling comes which day. Rush Lindell: Very convenient for everyone trying to prepare. Reagan: Models of Transparency Rush Lindell: So let's start where the temperature is highest; there is one case that rewrites what it means to be born in this country, and the justices who heard it did not sound like they were buying the administration's argument. What happens if they rule against the White House on that one? Speaker 4: Yeah. Rush Lindell: So let's talk about the main event: Trump v. Bruen, the birthright citizenship case, day one executive order. I've been calling it the citizenship erasure since January 2025. The idea? If your parents are here illegally or on a temporary visa, you don't get automatic citizenship at birth. Reagan: And courts have blocked it every single time, every court that's reviewed it. Rush Lindell: Every single one. Then Trump did something no sitting president has ever done: he showed up to watch oral arguments in April, first time in American history. Reagan: Which tells you everything about how confident the White House was going in. Rush Lindell: And then walked out and posted on Truth Social that America is (and I'm quoting here) "the only country stupid enough to allow birthright citizenship," caps-locks, STUPID, after his own appointed justices grilled his Solicitor General. Chief Justice Roberts literally told the administration, quote, it's the same Constitution. Reagan: Barrett and Gorsuch, both Trump appointees, pressed the administration hard, too. two. This order is probably going to lose on the merits: the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause has meant automatic birthright citizenship since the eighteen ninety-eight Wong Kim Ark ruling over a century of settled law. Rush Lindell: Right, right, but here's what I think the media keeps sleeping on. Reagan: The nationwide injunction question. Rush Lindell: Yes, tell them! Reagan: The court already ruled in Trump v. Casa last June. six three that district courts can't just issue sweeping nationwide injunctions blocking federal policy for everyone, everywhere. That ruling outlasts the birthright case. Wow. Rush Lindell: Wow. Reagan: Future administrations, future policies, that's the precedent that actually reshapes how courts can stop executive power. Rush Lindell: So Trump may lose the citizenship fight but walk away with a power he can use on the next 20 executive orders. CBS News flagged this one: The term ends before July, and this ruling is coming with it. Reagan: And speaking of the 14th Amendment, we're not done with it. The Equal Protection Clause is about to get its own moment in the spotlight. Rush Lindell: Same 14th Amendment we were just talking about, now applied to a very different fight. Reagan, CBS News flagged this one. West Virginia. Virginia versus BPJ and Little versus Hecox, two transgender athlete cases, 27 states have laws like these. Whatever the court says sets the national standard. Reagan: Arguments were January 13th. The legal question is whether those state bans violate Title IX or the Equal Protection Clause, and after watching the arguments, court observers broadly expected the conservative majority to uphold the bans. Rush Lindell: Which means cable news is about to lose its mind. I'm telling you right now, the second this ruling drops, every chyron in America reads, Supreme Court Attacks Trans Kids. But what does the ruling actually say? Reagan: That's the key distinction. Upholding a state ban on transgender athletes in school sports is not a sweeping ruling on trans rights broadly. The court is deciding a narrow question. Can states draw a biological sex line for athletic competition under Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment? Rush Lindell: You will not see that nuance on prime time. Reagan: No; but here's something worth flagging: the Idaho case has a wrinkle: the original plaintiff, Lindsey Hecox, voluntarily dropped her claims. That raises a mootness question. Rush Lindell: Wait, so Idaho might not even produce a substantive ruling? Reagan: Possibly, which is why West Virginia v. B.P.J. (Becky Pepper-Jackson's case) is most likely the vehicle the court uses to actually write the opinion that matters. Rush Lindell: Twenty-seven states waiting on one ruling-that's the weight of this thing. Reagan: And whatever the court writes on the equal protection framework could reach well beyond just sports, that's what the advocates on both sides are watching for. Rush Lindell: So when the coverage tells you this is simple- It's not the holding is narrow, the downstream implications are not. Remember that when your phone starts buzzing. Reagan: Right. Rush Lindell: Now, shifting gears, two Second Amendment cases the media will almost certainly ignore. That's a problem because the gun rights questions coming out of this term might outlast everything else we've talked about today. OK, so the media is going to completely sleep on these next two. No culture war hook, no viral moment, just two Second Amendment cases that could quietly rewrite the rules for every gun owner in America. Reagan: And both run straight through the Bruen framework. That 2022 decision said gun regulations need a historical analog from the founding era to survive. Lower courts have been scrambling ever since. Rush Lindell: Scrambling is generous. It's been chaos. So case one, Wolford versus Lopez. Hawaii said if you've got a concealed carry permit, you still need the property owner's express permission before carrying on private property open to the public. Beaches, restaurants, gas stations, you need a permission slip. Reagan: The Ninth Circuit upheld it, but the Third, Fifth, and Seventh Circuits struck down similar bans post-Bruen. That's a clean circuit split. Which is exactly why the court took it. Rush Lindell: Hawaii is asking licensed gun owners to beg before entering a Starbucks and nobody can find a founding era analog for that. Reagan: That's the test; if there's no historical precedent for it, Bruen says, it doesn't survive. The question the court's actually answering is whether private property open to the public functions like a sensitive place. Rush Lindell: Now the second one-Hemani-federal law makes it a felony to possess a firearm if if you're an unlawful drug user. That statute is 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(3). Sound familiar? That's the same type of law Hunter Biden was convicted under. Reagan: Right. And SCOTUSblog noted the justices were skeptical at oral argument in March. The government's argument is there's a historical analog in laws disarming habitual drunkards. Hemani's lawyers say that's a stretch, a categorical ban on. And on any drug user, regardless of whether they were even intoxicated. Rush Lindell: And here's what gets me: if Bruen kills that statute, you're talking about federal gun prohibitions unraveling across the country. That's not a narrow ruling. Reagan: It could be narrow or broad depending on how they write it. That's the real question: does the court rule as applied to Hemani specifically, or do they knock the whole statute down? Rush Lindell: Either way, nobody on cable news is talking about Reagan: Uh Rush Lindell: it. Reagan: -huh. Rush Lindell: And then... And then we've got election law cases coming – mail-in ballots, campaign finance – where the downstream consequences arrive before November. Reagan: Those hit even faster. Rush Lindell: Much faster. Let's get there. Now, Election Law; two cases, both dropping before November; I'm calling this the Double Barrel Segment: Reagan: And both barrels are loaded. Rush Lindell: Watson versus RNC first; fourteen states-California, New York, Texas, Oregon, among others-currently count mail ballots that arrive after election day, as long as they're postmarked by election day. The RNC says federal law- which defines election day as a "specific Tuesday" wipes out those state rules. Reagan: The CBS News flagged this one specifically as a case that could upend election procedures before November. The ruling forces those fourteen states to rewrite their ballot intake rules potentially in weeks. Rush Lindell: Mississippi's law allows ballots received up to five business days after election day to be counted. Reagan: Wow. Rush Lindell: The RNC says that's a preemption problem. And the conservative majority at oral arguments signaled their with the RNC. Reagan: That's the politically immediate one; but NRSC versus FEC is the one I'd watch for structural consequences. Rush Lindell: Walk me through it. Reagan: The Republican Senate Committee—JD Vance was a Senate candidate when he Coplintoned—is challenging fifty year old caps on coordinated spending between political parties and their own candidates. Right now, parties can spend unlimited money independently. Instantly the moment they coordinated with a campaign, there are hard limits. Rush Lindell: And if those limits fall— Reagan: Parties can funnel essentially unlimited money directly into competitive Senate races, in coordination with the actual campaigns. That's a different animal than a Super PAC operating independently. Rush Lindell: So the party and the candidate just work together, openly, with no cap. Reagan: That's a fair read. Now, I'll say the First Amendment argument here is more legally- Legally solid, then critics admit, parties exist to elect candidates. There's a real speech interest, but the downstream effect on competitive Senate races is enormous, and it lands right in the middle of the cycle. Rush Lindell: Two rulings, votes and money, both before November-the double barrel fires at the same time. Reagan: And after we figure out who controls the ballot, we get the Rush Lindell: the question of who controls the executive branch itself. Reagan: That's actually where this gets messier: presidential power over the agencies that run the whole regulatory apparatus. Shifting gears, this one gets zero cable news minutes, and it might be the most consequential case in the bunch. Speaker 3: Trump versus Slaughter. Reagan: Rebecca Slaughter, FTC Commissioner, Biden appointee, term runs through 2029. Trump fires her by email, Speaker 3: Wow. Reagan: and I mean that literally, an email saying her continued service is, quote, inconsistent with my administration's priorities. Rush Lindell: No cause stated-just vibes. Reagan: Just vibes; and the statute, the nineteen fourteen law that created the FTC says you can only remove a commissioner for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance. She didn't do any of those things; she just disagreed with the president. Rush Lindell: So the real question before the court is whether Humphreys Executor-the nineteen thirty five precedent that said for cause protections are constitutional-gets overruled. And that's not a slam dunk for either side. Reagan: How so? Rush Lindell: Ninety years of settled practice, Congress has built the FTC, the FEC, the NLRB, more than fifty independent agencies, on the assumption that those protections hold. The historical argument against overruling is real. That said, oral arguments in December had several conservative justices openly questioning whether Humphreys still fits the modern administrative state. State of State. Reagan: SCOTUSblog's read after arguments—the Court seems likely to side with Trump." Chief Justice Roberts signaled the precedent may no longer fit. Rush Lindell: And if they do side with Trump, any president—this one, the next one—controls every one of those agencies directly—the FTC, the FEC, the Fed. Reagan: That's the administrative state losing its insulation from whoever just won an election. And here's my problem with the coverage, or lack of it: Cable news won't spend four minutes on Commissioner Slaughter because she doesn't have a nickname people recognize. Rush Lindell: She does now. Reagan: Just vibes, Rebecca. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue. But the ruling? Massive. Every regulatory agency you've ever heard of, and 50 you haven't, hangs on this decision. Rush Lindell: That's exactly the pattern across everything we've covered today. Today, every single case is someone asking, where does this authority actually begin and end? Reagan: Birthright citizenship, gun rights, election law, and now, who runs the agencies? Different cases, same fight. So, the verdict's quick and clean. Rush Lindell: Let's do it. Reagan: Most likely to reshape the midterms. That's Watson and NRSC—and it's not close. Mail ballots and party cash, both landing before November. Those two cases are the ones that actually move votes and money. Rush Lindell: And the justices at oral arguments in Watson signaled they're ready to overturn those late arriving ballots. Ballot grace periods." SCOTUSblog noted the justices seem ready to side with the RNC on that one, so watch for it. Reagan: Most likely to generate wall to wall cable hysteria wildly disproportionate to the actual ruling: trans athletes. The ruling's almost certainly going to be narrow-one state, one statute-and cable news will frame it like a constitutional amendment. Rush Lindell: The legal scope and the media scope of that ruling will have basically nothing Speaker 5: to do with each other. Rush Lindell: nothing to do with each other. Reagan: They never do. Rush Lindell: And the ones most likely to be ignored despite serious downstream consequences, Reagan: Hemani and Wolford, the Second Amendment cases, zero cable coverage, potentially massive impact on every gun statute in the country that uses a drug user or similar categorical ban. Rush Lindell: If Hemani goes broad, you're looking at constitutional questions that stretch well past Hunter Biden. And prosecutors across the country will be dealing with the fallout. Reagan: And here's what it all adds up to. Rush Lindell: Uh-huh. Reagan: You just spent an hour on these cases. When the rulings drop and CBS News says they're all expected before July, you won't need cable news to tell you how to feel. You'll already know what happened and why. Rush Lindell: That's the whole point. Preparation beats reaction. The people watching the chyron's tonight are going to be confused. Just you won't be. Reagan: The rulings are coming; you know what they mean. We'll see you when they land. All right—that's our full SCOTUS cheat sheet—nine justices, roughly twenty opinions, and the clock is almost out. Rush Lindell: In everything we cover today—the citizenship eraser, the nationwide injunction sleeper, the Second Amendment cases nobody's talking about—all of it lands before the midterms. Reagan: That's the whole point of today—when the opinion drops, you already know what's at stake. No scrambling, no waiting for a cable news chyron to tell Speaker 5: you what's going on. Reagan: ...and to tell you what to think. Speaker 4: I'd flag Watson and NRSC as the ones with the most direct midterm impact-mail ballots and coordinated spending both on the table simultaneously. Reagan: And the media will spend all week on the trans-athlete case-guaranteed. Speaker 4: Probably. Reagan: Preparation beats reaction. That's the show. Speaker 4: Thank you for walking through all of it. Reagan: Thank you for keeping me honest. And thank you for listening. Subscribe! 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