ANOTHER EMAILGATE | SCOTUS, Trump And Twitter Walk Into A Bar | Why Texas Is Texas

July 11, 2017

Let’s get the news of DONALD TRUMP JR. out of the way right off the bat so we can get back to SCOTUS. We have another #EmailGate, people, and this one might be the mother of them all. The now-president’s son agreed to meet with a “Russian government attorney” who claimed to have incriminating information on presidential candidate, HILLARY CLINTON. One of the emails that was made public this morning read that this information “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” One of the emails to Don Jr. also said, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Within minutes, Don Jr. replied, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

News of the Trump family — particularly in the context of Twitter — is inescapable these days. But Charlie Savage with The New York Times reports that isn’t necessarily true for everyone. A group of Twitter users were blocked by DONALD TRUMP and they’re now suing the president and two top White House aides, arguing that his account cannot bar people because it is a public forum. As Savage notes, the case raises “cutting-edge issues about how the Constitution applies to the social media era.” 

Hawaii is no longer alone in its efforts to combat PRESIDENT TRUMP’S travel ban. Monday, Hawaii was joined by 15 other states and the District of Columbia in the campaign to get the ban to broaden in scope and allow more people to get visas and travel to the United States.

“One of the most significant civil rights questions developing over more than a quarter-century — how far did Congress intend to go to outlaw sex discrimination – is headed to the Supreme Court for a likely showdown.  That issue is at the intersection of three phases in the modern civil rights revolution: on women’s rights, gay rights, and transgender rights.” That’s Lyle Denniston with Constitution Daily reporting on a blockbuster SCOTUS case on sex discrimination that everyone should be following.

Peter Jenning with The New York Times reports that digital privacy will come under the Supreme Court’s scrutiny next term in a case known as Carpenter v. United States.

For the Los Angeles Times, Jenny Jarvie covers a gerrymandering case that cuts to the core of the state of Texas and its transformation into a more and more diverse state. The case originated from challenges to the state’s new congressional boundaries drafted just after the 2010 Census showed immense population growth — mostly coming from a massive influx of Latinos and African Americans. Civil rights groups are challenging the constitutionality of those redistricting maps saying the legislators drew them in such a way that the voter power of minorities is diluted. Jarvie writes, “The trial is only the latest round in a long-running Texas saga over gerrymandering and race.”

On this day in 1955, PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER signed a bill mandating that the inscription “In God We Trust” be on all U.S. paper and coin currency. POLITICO’s Andrew Glass notes, “The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that the nation’s ‘institutions presuppose a Supreme Being’ and that government recognition of God, on currency and elsewhere, does not constitute the establishment of a constitutionally prohibited state-sponsored religion.”