REFUGEE LIMIT REACHED | Attorney Who Argued Same-Sex Case Isn’t Sweating Kennedy Rumors
July 13, 2017
HOLD THE DOOR
|We’ve reached the Trump administration’s limit of 50,000 refugees for this budget year. However, that number of admitted refugees could still rise by several thousand, as refugees with close family members already in the U.S. will continue to be allowed to enter the country, under the terms of the recent Supreme Court order.
HOW IT HAPPENED
|On SCOTUSblog, Steve Vladeck explains how the acting solicitor general (sort of) saved DONALD TRUMP’S travel ban. He notes, “The government’s apparent litigation strategy suggests that not even the administration’s own lawyers believe (or, at the very least, are reasonably confident) that the Supreme Court will uphold the entire executive order on the merits. Although many have suggested that the court’s interim June 26 ruling is proof that the justices are likely to side with the government on the merits if and when the time comes, the fact that a majority voted to leave the injunctions in place as applied to any non-citizen with a “bona fide connection” to the United States strongly implies the opposite.”
RIBBET RIBBET
|The Supreme Court was just asked to wade into a case about an endangered frog, with justices asked to overturn a declaration that Louisiana timberland is critical habitat for the frog found only in the state of Mississippi. All experts agree…this case could get slimy.
KENNEDY SCHMENNEDY
|In The National Law Journal, Marcia Coyle writes, “If JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY retires soon, as rumors continue to predict, some worry a more conservative successor would endanger the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark same-sex marriage decision.” But as Coyle points out, the attorney who argued the historic case isn’t buying any of it.
JUST A WEE BIT MORE
|Mark Berman with The Washington Post explains why we could see more executions this year. Even with this increase though, 2017 will see fewer executions than most years since 1990.
TOP-ED
|For Slate, Richard L. Hasen opines that DONALD TRUMP JR.’s free speech defense is just as bogus as it sounds. He writes, “To let someone off the hook who solicited ‘very high level and sensitive information’ from a hostile government because there may be cases in which information from a foreign source does not raise the same danger to our national security and right of self-government is to turn the First Amendment into a tool to kill American democracy.”