Clarence Thomas Pushes Dangerous Definition of Assault Weapons

The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to take up a challenge to Illinois’s ban on assault weapons, though not every justice on the high court agreed with the decision to do so.

In a separate opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas appeared keen to uproot future bans, urging the court to take up another such case on the basis that some semiautomatic guns, such as the AR-15, are among the most popular weapons in the nation, thereby claiming that more guidance is needed to delineate which weapons are “dangerous” and “unusual.” He further called the Seventh Circuit’s decision to uphold the state ban, which stemmed from a landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision that ruled that military grade weapons such as M-16 rifles are not protected under the Second Amendment, as “nonsensical.”

“The Seventh Circuit’s contrived ‘non-militaristic’ limitation on the Arms protected by the Second Amendment seems unmoored from both text and history,” Thomas wrote. “It is difficult to see how the Seventh Circuit could have concluded that the most widely owned semiautomatic rifles are not ‘Arms’ protected by the Second Amendment.”

The Illinois ban was instituted after a 2022 Independence Day parade shooting in Chicago’s Highland Park took the lives of seven people and injured 48 others. The law prohibits the sale of semiautomatic “assault weapons,” which are commonly used in mass shootings, including the AK-47 and AR-15 rifles, as well as the sale of some handguns. The ban also forbids the sale of magazines that use more than 10 rounds for long weapons, or 15 rounds for handguns, as well as rapid-fire devices known as “switches” that convert semiautomatic weapons into automatic machine guns.

“This assault weapons ban is a step in the right direction,” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said at a press conference following the law’s passage. “But there’s no magic fix, no single law that will end gun violence once and for all. So we must keep fighting, voting, and protesting to ensure that future generations will only have to read about massacres like Highland Park, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde in their history books. It’s our burden and our mandate, one that we carry with solemn honor for our children who will grow up in a better and safer world.”

This is not the first time this term that Thomas has sought to dramatically expand access to deadly weapons. Last month, he joined the majority decision to overturn a federal ban on bump stocks and dissented from a ruling barring domestic abusers from owning guns.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it is sending a whopping nine cases back to the lower courts after its ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the first sign of the chaos from overturning the Chevron deference.

The court ruled Friday to upend Chevron, a 40-year-old doctrine that requires judges to defer to a federal agency when determining the meaning of any ambiguous laws that agency should try to enforce. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that, instead, “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the [Administrative Procedures Act] requires.”

The decision in Loper Bright now allows the federal judiciary to play pretend as scientists and policymakers, while stripping the administrative agencies that are staffed by experts who get their directives from democratically elected officials with the power to determine policy. As a result, several cases with questions about ambiguous language are now headed back to the lower courts.

For example, of the cases that have been remanded back to the appeals courts, there are four cases that have to do with the interpretation of ambiguous language in the Immigration and Nationality Act—a law enforced by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security, which is run by Biden-appointed Homeland Security Secretary Alejando Mayorkas.

Now the question will no longer be referred to immigration experts at the department, or to policymakers representing the current administration, but left to the discretion of appeals judges in the Fourth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits.

Other questions sent back to the lower courts have to do with energy, agriculture, labor practices, and the Internal Revenue Service to name a few.

In the wake of Loper Bright, right-wing judges—who have pushed for years to oppose Chevron and embrace deregulation—have the functional ability to veto any new federal regulation they decide is too “ambiguous.” As these cases continue to pile up, which they no doubt will, the law will no longer be determined by Congress, or even the executive branch, but by injunction.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity means that the president can attempt to overturn elections, according to one of Trump’s lawyers.

Will Scharf told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins Monday night that “alternate slates of electors have been a method used by previous presidents, most notably Ulysses S. Grant, to ensure the integrity of prior elections.”

“We believe the assembly of those alternate slates of electors was an official act of the presidency,” Scharf said, referring to the attempts by Trump allies to subvert the 2020 election results in different states. “That’s what we argued before the Supreme Court.”

After the 2020 election, Trump and his allies tried to present fake electors in states across America to flip results in his favor, including Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona, resulting in criminal charges in many cases. In Georgia, Trump himself was charged, along with 18 of his allies, but the case is in limbo while an appeals court considers whether prosecutor Fani Willis should be thrown off of the case.

The nation’s highest court seems to have opened the floodgates for any kind of presidential crimes, so long as the president can argue it was an “official” act. Now, sitting presidents can argue they cannot be prosecuted, evidence cannot be collected against them, and the Justice Department is not independent of the White House. There are probably more devastating interpretations yet to come. Meanwhile, Trump is attempting to get his hush-money conviction thrown out over how some of the evidence was collected.

The work to undo Donald Trump’s criminal charges—and his recent conviction—in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity has already begun.

Hours after the ruling Monday, the former president’s legal team requested that Judge Juan Merchan set aside Trump’s hush-money conviction and delay the sentencing scheduled for next week, citing the Supreme Court’s expansion of presidential immunity.

Trump’s attorneys argued that some evidence presented in the case constituted official presidential acts, according to a copy of a letter obtained by the Associated Press. That could refer to some of the communication Trump had about his former fixer Michael Cohen, which his legal team had previously attempted to redact from the trial on the same presidential immunity claim. But that was before the Supreme Court expanded the definition of immunity.

“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” read the consequential ruling. “There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

The high court’s decision already effectively killed Trump’s federal election interference trial, which sought to hold Trump accountable for his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results and the far-right mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6. Now it could overturn one of the few cases where Trump is being held accountable.

Trump was accused of using Cohen to sweep an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He was convicted on 34 felony charges in May for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime in the first degree. Merchan could sentence Trump to up to four years in prison on the charges. He could also impose probation, supervised release, or order Trump to do community service or pay fines.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr couldn’t help but laugh at the mention of Donald Trump’s erstwhile strategist Steve Bannon sitting in a federal prison cell.

During an interview on Fox News’s Your World Monday night, host Neil Cavuto asked Barr what impact he believed that presidential immunity, which Trump was freshly granted by the Supreme Court earlier that day, would have on Trump’s behavior if reelected to the White House. Cavuto asked Barr if he thought Trump would even care about being punished if he’d be 82 years old by the time he left office.

“Well, I would say, you know, the president acts through people,” said Barr. “And maybe he wouldn’t worry about it, although I think he would, but his, the people who are around him and are being asked to do things, certainly I think are going to make sure that they’re behaving within the law.”

“I understand people’s concern given his frequently incendiary rhetoric, I’m just saying, having experienced working with a person and being a subordinate of his,” Barr continued. “You know, Bannon says I’m the first person to go to prison under President Trump. I don’t lose any sleep over it. I’m not worried about that.”

Cavuto laughed, before pointing out, “I think he’s in prison right now, himself.”

Barr burst into laughter.

“I don’t mean to make light of that,” Cavuto said, moving on to his next question.

Bannon chaotically reported to Danbury federal prison in Connecticut on Monday, after being found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress. In recent weeks, the former Trump strategist made several desperate attempts to avoid jail time, all of which were clearly unsuccessful. While the American system of mass incarceration is no laughing matter, perhaps the MAGA mastermind will reenter society with a new perspective on prison abolition?

During his appearance on Fox News, Barr also took aim at Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the immunity case, in which she slammed the majority opinion for making the president a king by giving him the immunity to assassinate his political enemies.

“The president has the authority to defend the country against foreign enemies, armed conflict and so forth. He has the authority to direct the justice system against criminals at home. He doesn’t have authority to go and assassinate people. So whether he uses the SEAL team or a private hitman, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make it a carrying out of his authority. So all these horror stories really are false,” Barr said.

This isn’t the first time that Barr has downplayed the violent rhetoric of his former boss. In April, Barr claimed that Trump would “lose his temper” and “blow off steam” by calling for the execution of his enemies, but said, “I doubt he would’ve actually carried it out.” In just the past 24 hours, the possibility of Trump following through on any of his wild remarks promising violent retribution has become all the more real.

After the Supreme Court essentially gave him absolute immunity for “official acts,” Donald Trump decided to take aim at the man tasked with investigating his federal misdeeds: special counsel Jack Smith.

In a Truth Social post shortly after midnight Tuesday, the former president and convicted felon reveled in the fact that Smith’s election interference case against him is all but dead.

“A really bad day for Deranged Jack Smith, the wacko prosecutor used for Crooked Joe Biden’s attack on his Political Opponent. Today, as in the past, the Supreme Court gave the Deranged One a high level SPANKING!” Trump posted.

“His ‘real’ bosses, Andrew Weissmann and Lisa Monaco, not to mention Merrick Garland, whose once great reputation has been shattered by these Thugs, and his constant defense of Crooked Joe, must be furious at him. Garland ought to call an end to this never ending HOAX, and let people focus on bringing back Greatness to America!” Trump added.

Trump’s gloating follows his son Donald Trump Jr.’s mockery of Smith on Monday, referring to the special counsel in an X (formerly Twitter) post about “corrupt prosecutors” in Washington, D.C. It’s a post that will seem ironic if the elder Trump wins in November, as all of those federal prosecutors, who ultimately report to the U.S. attorney general, will surely lose their independence thanks to the Supreme Court. Their ruling states that the president can have free rein to wield the Justice Department as he sees fit.

The Trump family certainly won’t be calling any prosecutors who work for them “corrupt.” They’ll need them to keep away any investigations into their business practices, or their use of the presidency to make money. The only means of keeping presidential corruption in check may be the weak and Hail Mary threat of impeachment.

House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on Fox News Monday night to downplay the alarming implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, which grants Trump absolute immunity from federal prosecution for crimes he committed in office.

“No one who is elected to that office [of the president] is going to be prone to this kind of crazy criminal activity,” Johnson argued in defense of the Supreme Court ruling, ignoring that the case was brought to the bench after the former president was charged with committing crazy criminal activity. “What the court is saying here follows common sense, and, of course, our Constitution as well,” Johnson added.

Johnson’s comments came in response to a statement from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries stating that Congress would engage in “aggressive oversight and legislative activity with respect to the Supreme Court to ensure that the extreme, far-right justices in the majority are brought into compliance with the Constitution.” Prior to Jeffries’s statement, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued a declaration that she would be pursuing articles of impeachment against the Supreme Court, which she described as being “consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control.”

Trump brought the case to the Supreme Court in an effort to undermine his federal election interference case, arguing that any actions he took as president, such as conspiring to submit fake electors to fraudulently win an election, were inherently official presidential duties. In addition to ruling that presidents are shielded from prosecution for their “core” constitutional duties, the Supreme Court also limited what evidence can be brought against them to prosecute criminal “private” activities and suggested the federal case against Trump can’t continue. The combination essentially makes presidential power limitless and holding Trump to account effectively impossible.

As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her dissent, which Johnson wrote off alongside widespread condemnation of the Supreme Court decision as “all sorts of hyperbole,” the decision effectively turns presidents into “a king above the law” based on ahistorical reasoning that “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government.” Johnson cast these criticisms aside, describing concern for the death of the rule of law simply a “charade.”

Hunter Biden is finally making good on his threat to sue Fox News.

The president’s son filed a lawsuit against Fox News on Monday, alleging that the conservative media company violated New York state’s revenge porn law by illegally publishing his nude photographs and videos, as part of a miniseries imagining his trial for charges that were never brought.

The suit alleges that explicit photographs of Biden were included in the miniseries The Trial of Hunter Biden: A Mock Trial for the American People without his consent. The program depicts a fictionalized mock trial in which the president’s son is sued for allegations of bribery and foreign lobbying—charges that have never been formally brought against him. 

Fox News “unlawfully published numerous intimate images (both still and video) of Mr. Biden depicting him in the nude, depicting an unclothed or exposed intimate part of him, as well as engaged in sex acts,” the court documents said.

In the suit, Biden accuses Fox News of using the miniseries in an attempt to “harass, annoy, alarm and humiliate him and tarnish his reputation.”

Biden is seeking compensatory and punitive damages from Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for causing “severe emotional distress, humiliation, and mental anguish” for its own financial gain. 

“The miniseries is fictionalized; it is not a news event. It was made for the purpose of trade and advertising, and merely exploits Mr. Biden’s name, image, and likeness for Fox’s commercial benefit,” the lawsuit says.

Biden is also hoping to prevent Fox from ever again airing his nude images without his consent.   

In April, lawyers for Biden published a letter warning that they would bring legal action against Fox for the company’s “relentless” attacks against him, accusing the media giant of “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame” the president’s son. Soon after, the miniseries was yanked from Fox’s website out of an “abundance of caution,” Fox said in a statement to CNN. 

Monday’s suit alleges that the network failed to remove promotional material and clips of the series, and that the show is still available to view on third-party platforms. 

Fox News has already released a statement criticizing Biden and the lawsuit. “This entirely politically motivated lawsuit is devoid of merit,” said Fox News in a statement to Forbes. “The core complaint stems from a 2022 streaming program that Mr. Biden did not complain about until sending a letter in late April 2024.” 

The company also maintained that its coverage of Biden was consistent with the First Amendment. 

With the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity Monday morning effectively handing ultimate power to the presidency, and by extension, Donald Trump, it has opened the door to occupants of the Oval Office acting however they want.

One commentator on X (formerly Twitter), Democratic influencer Harry Sisson, pointed out that given the new ruling, Joe Biden could in theory order Seal Team 6 to assassinate Trump, his political rival—a point that Trump’s legal team tried to defend during the case’s oral arguments.

Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita soon quoted Sisson’s post with an ominous warning.

There are a few ways to interpret LaCivita’s words: Either he is ready to spread a new conspiracy theory about Biden attempting hit jobs on Trump, or he was warning Sisson about his own visit from Seal 6 in a second Trump term. Perhaps he was warning Biden himself. Regardless, references to political assassination are not inspiring coming from a top Trump campaign adviser.

The right-wing quickly dogpiled on Sisson after his initial tweet, leading him to post Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the case, where she referenced the relevant oral argument. Sisson also fired back with a video calling out LaCivita, and wondering aloud whether he was being threatened.

In the age of MAGA, Republicans and conservatives have not been shy to threaten political violence. The January 6 Capitol riot is one of the biggest examples of that rhetoric coming to fruition, and ever since, conservatives have not sought to calm the mood. In April, Senator Tom Cotton suggested that peaceful protesters who block traffic should be removed with physical violence, and Trump himself said that 2024 could be the “last election we ever have.” Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, which severely undermines the legal case against Trump for his involvement in the riot, shows that there’s little consequence for encouraging or threatening violence.

In response to the Supreme Court’s disastrous 6–3 decision on Monday granting Trump expansive immunity from criminal prosecution, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued a stern condemnation of the court’s “corruption crisis beyond its control” and vowed to issue articles of impeachment against the Supreme Court once Congress reconvenes after Labor Day.

“Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in response to the Supreme Court deciding on Monday that presidents are above the law. “It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.” Ocasio-Cortez’s bold declaration prompted a since-deleted response from Representative Veronica Escobar saying, “Count me in,” suggesting there may soon be more lawmakers behind the effort.

Prior to Monday’s ruling in Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court significantly expanded its judicial power and overturned the Chevron doctrine—and then further obliterated modern administrative law in yet another case. The Supreme Court also dismantled a law used to convict hundreds of Capitol rioters on the basis that the relevant subsection of the law comes after an irrelevant subsection, a barely cogent legal argument that conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett described as “textual backflips.”

According to the Constitution, Supreme Court justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” meaning justices remain on the Supreme Court until they either step down, die, or are removed by impeachment. Impeaching a Supreme Court justice requires a simple majority vote in the House followed by a conviction in the Senate with a two-thirds majority vote—meaning the success of AOC’s prospective efforts to impeach any Supreme Court justice relies in part on Democrats winning control of the House and substantially increasing their majority in the Senate, as well as ginning up enough support to pursue impeachment in the first place.

The only Supreme Court justice ever to be impeached was Samuel Chase in 1804. The House successfully passed articles of impeachment against Chase on charges that he used his position to promote his political agenda, which at the time the House’s impeachment articles described as “tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan.” Despite the House’s successful impeachment vote, the Senate later acquitted Chase.

It’s unclear whether the articles of impeachment Ocasio-Cortez intends to file would be levied against all six conservative justices behind the majority opinion in the immunity ruling, or whether the effort would focus on specific justices, such as Clarence Thomas and his chronic failure to disclose gifts from conservative billionaires or Samuel Alito and his wife’s love of far-right flags. Regardless, it’s a massive threat that will take a Herculean effort to pull off.