BENJAMIN WEINGARTEN: Supreme Court Killed Universal Injunctions in Name Only.

On June 27, the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump what he hailed as a “GIANT WIN,” finding that lower courts had “likely” overstepped in ordering universal injunctions blocking many of the president’s policies.

While the Court’s 6-3 opinion in Trump v. CASA appeared to disarm Trump’s opponents of perhaps their most potent legal weapon, his adversaries had other ideas.

In the weeks since, Trump’s challengers have seized on the ruling’s openings – especially the use of class-action suits in which a handful of plaintiffs may allege harm and seek relief on behalf of all similarly situated parties – to continue leveraging lower court judges to block the president’s orders.

Norm Eisen, one of the architects of a so-called “rule of law and shock and awe” strategy to blanket the administration with dozens of lawsuits, quickly helped bring a case before New Hampshire’s district court. The suit aimed to enjoin the president’s ban on birthright citizenship not only with respect to five named plaintiffs, but for “a nationwide class of all other persons similarly situated.”

On July 3, the district court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor in that case, over the Trump administration’s objections. Other plaintiffs prevailed in a separate case in the D.C. District Court challenging the president’s crackdown on asylum claims at the southern border.

Scholars on both sides of the universal injunctions issue agree that CASA’s impact may be limited.

Stanford Law Professor Mila Sohoni, a supporter of universal injunctions, wrote in CASA’s aftermath that “the court may have in the end accomplished little beyond handing the executive branch a litigation victory.”

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, who has opposed universal injunctions in congressional testimony, told RealClearInvestigations, “I’m not sure how much CASA will actually check the ability of lower courts to halt presidential policies.”

Read the whole thing.

DISPATCHES FROM THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS: Ex-ABC News reporter admits employer biased against Trump due to lack of ‘viewpoint diversity.’

“Let’s talk about bias. I worked at ABC News for almost 28 years, and I’m proud to say that,” [Terry] Moran wrote on his Substack on Tuesday. “But: Were we biased? Yes. Almost inadvertently, I’d say. ABC News has the same problem so many leading cultural institutions do in America: A lack of viewpoint diversity.”

Moran explained that ABC News was run by “White men” when he joined the network, but the Disney-owned news organization made efforts to increase diversity to change the company “for the better.”

“But there was one way ABC did not change and did not diversify. It is no secret. There are hardly any people who supported Donald Trump at ABC News,” Moran wrote.

“And this is bound to impact coverage, not so much out of malevolent bias… but more out of what is a kind of deafness,” Moran continued. “The old news divisions don’t hear many of the voices of the country, because those voices aren’t in the newsroom. Yes, news teams go out with a microphone and a camera and accost people at Trump rallies; but to me that often comes off as weirdly anthropological and inaccurate, kind of like trying to understand nature by visiting a zoo.”

So ABC has more diversity in terms of skin color, but no ideological diversity. And the same can be said for all three broadcast networks. Cal Thomas asked Leslie Stahl in 2003, “Can you name a conservative journalist at CBS News?” She hemmed and hawed but of course couldn’t answer the question. Last year, NBC and MSNBC anchors revolted en masse when management tried to bring in former RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as an analyst. Only Republicans who never vote for Republicans are allowed at the Peacock Network:

And of course, everything Moran describes above predates Trump’s arrival onto the American political scene for half a century.

AND IT WILL HAVE THE SHORTEST PATH TO THE REMAINDER BIN: Unemployed Kamala Harris says she’s writing a book about ‘the shortest presidential campaign in modern history.’

She’s still speaking.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris announced plans Thursday to cash in on her 2024 election drubbing with a new book titled “107 Days” that promises a “behind-the-scenes” look at the “shortest presidential campaign in modern history.”

“I believe there’s value in sharing what I saw, what I learned, and what I know it will take to move forward,” the unemployed 60-year-old said in a video announcement — a day after she passed on running for California governor.

“In writing this book, one truth kept coming back to me. Sometimes the fight takes a while, but I remain full of hope and I remain clear-eyed,” she added. “I will never stop to make our country reflect the very best of its ideals.”

I hope its ghostwriter was well-paid for his or her efforts — because everybody else during Harris’s stillborn campaign was: How Kamala Harris Burned Through $1.5 Billion in 15 Weeks.

It was a spree that averaged roughly $100 million per week.

The frenzied spending has led to second-guessing among some Democrats, including whether investing in celebrity-fueled events with stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyoncé was more ostentatious than effective.

Since her loss, the Harris operation has pressed supporters for more cash with desperate-sounding solicitations, stirring fears about post-election debts. “Is there anything we can say?” came one email asking for cash last Monday.

The biggest expense during the race was advertising. Between July 21 and Oct. 16, financial records show that the Harris campaign spent $494 million on producing and buying media, a category that includes both television and digital ads. The total sum through the election is said to be closer to $600 million.

Who’s the first stop on the new book’s promotional trail? But of course:

UPDATE:

There isn't a single human being interested in this book so when she makes a few million off it the money laundering will be obvious https://t.co/xMzzsBRvfs

— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) July 31, 2025

MORE: Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom are absolute pikers compared to how these two can spend money:

Colbert is having Harris next as a guest on his show; the host who lost $40 million a year interviewing the candidate who burned through over $1 billion in losing the last election…

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 31, 2025

‘JERRY IS ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE:’ The Deadheads boycotting SF’s anniversary shows.

I was 12,000th in the Dead & Company Ticketmaster queue when I texted my father to see if he wanted to fly to San Francisco from the East Coast for the 60th anniversary shows Aug. 1-3 in Golden Gate Park.

My dad is one of the biggest Deadheads I’ve ever known. In the earliest days of the internet, envelopes stuffed with cassette tapes of Dead shows would arrive on our doorstep, sent from fans all over the country whom my dad had met online. The music was the soundtrack to my childhood, and father-daughter jam-band outings became one of our favorite ways to spend time together. What better way to continue our cherished family tradition than in the city where it all began?

That’s why I was shocked when he replied, “No, I’m good. I really have no interest.”

It was a moot point: By the time I’d advanced to the front of the Ticketmaster queue, three-day passes had sold out. I asked my dad to elaborate on his stance.

“This whole thing is just a big money grab, a real ‘fuck you’ to the fans,” he said. “It totally goes against what the Grateful Dead was all about. Jerry is rolling over in his grave.”

* * * * * * * * *

Tickets cost $635 for three-day general admission; VIP options range from $1,800 to a staggering $6,300 “Golden Road” pass, with which the Champagne crowd can enjoy unlimited dining, expedited entry, and a private viewing deck. All for concerts in a field featuring two out of the six original Grateful Dead members.

Is my father a curmudgeon, or does he have a point?

Yesterday was Ozzy Osbourne’s funeral in Birmingham, England. As more and more elderly rockers like Ozzy head off to the proverbial Great Gig in the Sky, this is it — the future of boomer-era rock, or the lack thereof. Concerts with massively expensive ticket prices to see what were called in the Big Band days “ghost bands” with only one or two original members. (Or the dreaded holographic recreations of ancient bands.) Steven Hyden wrote in his 2018 book, Twilight of the Gods, that for “classic rock” the brand is everything, and increasingly, the brand will be all that survives.

FAUXCAHONTAS HAS FALLEN:

DOWN SHE GOES!

Elizabeth Warren just took a nasty tumble.

Oof. pic.twitter.com/R2TXuDHvjr

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 31, 2025

QUESTION ASKED:

Or, what if he was an Chinese agent? 👇 https://t.co/gNn9GX3OST

— Michael Goolsby (@MichaelGoolsbyV) July 31, 2025

JIM GERAGHTY: No Hope for a NASA Revival.

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the authors of the book Abundance, are correct to point out how slow, burdensome, and delayed by red tape innovation can be, especially on the public side of the ledger. They are correct that this has in many ways ruined the appetite of the public for more of this kind of investment, especially when Elon Musk is managing to leverage private investment and commerce into accomplishments hardly anyone thought possible, like reusable rockets caught in the air as between chopsticks.

But I think there is a broader problem, identified by Peter Thiel, that prevents liberals from taking up their mid-century idealism into massive public projects that aim to bring us progress: Americans have largely stopped believing in any future worth living in. We’ve effectively ceded the imagination of the future to others, namely the Chinese, who have turned the ubiquitous communication revolution of the internet into a surveillance state and social-credit system, or the Europeans, who imagine a future of, well, austerity — ultra-expensive energy, below-replacement fertility, and ultimately degrowth to save the planet.

Thus leading to this unintentionally hilarious Bloomberg headline today, a real-life version of the Brits’ apocryphal “Fog in Channel, continent cut off” headline: Europe’s Energy Security Threatened by Cloudy and Windless Days.

As for the final frontier, I’m fine with Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Virgin’s Richard Branson privately funding space exploration, but if there truly is “no hope for a NASA revival,” then the agency should be shuttered.

The JFK-era New Frontier liberals that gave us the moon landings gave way to a left that has pessimistic about America’s future for almost 60 years now, leaving them permanently stuck wallowing in malaise mode. Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968. One of Bobby Kennedy’s ’68 campaign ads featured him scaring impressionable young kids that pollution could become so bad that everyone would be wearing gas masks or living underground (no, really). Once Nixon won the White House, and the left went insane over that outcome, they had every reason to double-down on their pessimism – and they did. As a result, 1969’s triumphant manned moon landing was followed the first “Earth Day” in 1970, which projected an eternity of eco-doom. With the people who staff the news media being true believers in that mindset, is it any wonder the American people similarly adopted their nihilistic worldview as well?

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: When Your Power Meter Becomes a Tool of Mass Surveillance.

Simply using extra electricity to power some Christmas lights or a big fish tank shouldn’t bring the police to your door. In fact, in California, the law explicitly protects the privacy of power customers, prohibiting public utilities from disclosing precise “smart” meter data in most cases.

Despite this, Sacramento’s power company and law enforcement agencies have been running an illegal mass surveillance scheme for years, using our power meters as home-mounted spies. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is seeking to end Sacramento’s dragnet surveillance of energy customers and have asked for a court order to stop this practice for good.

For a decade, the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD) has been searching through all of its customers’ energy data, and passed on more than 33,000 tips about supposedly “high” usage households to police. Ostensibly looking for homes that were growing illegal amounts of cannabis, SMUD analysts have admitted that such “high” power usage could come from houses using air conditioning or heat pumps or just being large. And the threshold of so-called “suspicion” has steadily dropped, from 7,000 kWh per month in 2014 to just 2,800 kWh a month in 2023. One SMUD analyst admitted that they themselves “used 3500 [kWh] last month.”

California’s power rates are the highest in the continental US. Shouldn’t utility companies be thrilled when customers are gorging on their product? Jay Leno used to advertise Doritos with the slogan, “Crunch all you want – we’ll make more!” Why isn’t that the motto of California’s power companies?

TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO VAN HAS GONE BEFORE: For Sale: 1990 Airstream NASA 025 Command Vehicle. A Once-in-a-Lifetime Investment Opportunity.

Imagine pulling into Burning Man driving this?

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to own your own NASA vehicle this is the NASA 025 command vehicle. NASA 025 was designed to land crewed missions at Edwards Air Force Base. It is the one and only of its kind ever built.  Has only 8240 miles on it as driven from Ohio to California then around the Edwards base

As Edwards AFB is a massive dry lake bed space missions (both public and secret) would often land in remote areas of the base miles from the tower. This vehicle would be the onsite command center complete with communications and atmospheric monitoring.

You might try haggling to see if the owner will toss in the Space Shuttle for free as well to sweeten the deal:

PREMISE OVERLOAD:

#SocialMediaVideoCritique
– This is a strange, and overtly, misstep of a piece.
– The production design seems to suggest a My Little Pony version of Pee-Wee's Playhouse. We are primed for a children's show.
– The main character(s) present their dialogue in a kindergarten teacher… https://t.co/BFusHd2zph

— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) July 31, 2025

(Yes, it’s real, all right.)

Not surprisingly, American Eagle has a slightly more measured response:

As Jeff Blehar quips after NPR couldn’t track down American Eagle for a quote, “I have close friends in the advertising world, and when I asked one of them about this she joked that American Eagle’s brand strategists and creatives — whether internal or hired from an agency — probably couldn’t be reached for comment by NPR because they were two days into a massive celebratory bender. (‘If they aren’t doing all the cocaine right now, they should be.’) As she emphasized, what matters most is that American Eagle has won the ‘attention war’ in a notoriously fickle and divided media ecosystem.”

MARK JUDGE: How Bob Woodward Could Have Saved the ‘Washington Post’ from Russiagate Humiliation.

In January 2017, Woodward went on Fox News to dismiss the Steele dossier, which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, as a “garbage document.” The Steele dossier was opposition research that claimed Trump was hanging out with prostitutes in Moscow and was in the pocket of Putin.

You’d think that such a statement coming from the media’s Watergate hero would have had some effect on the Washington Post—but it didn’t. Jeff Gerth describes what happened next:

After his remarks on Fox, Woodward said he “reached out to people who covered this” at the paper, identifying them only generically as “reporters,” to explain why he was so critical. Asked how they reacted, Woodward said: “To be honest, there was a lack of curiosity on the part of the people at the [Washington] Post about what I had said, why I said this, and I accepted that and I didn’t force it on anyone.

Woodward also told Gerth that the Mueller report would “fizzle” but added that reporters were “never going to declare it’s going to end up dry.”

In 2021, as the Steele dossier was falling apart, Erik Wemple, the media critic for the Post, pleaded with the media, including his own paper, to come clean. “What most dismayed me,” Wemple wrote, “was the failure of MSNBC and CNN to counter and properly address the questions I was asking them.” Temple concluded that for the media “a reckoning is years overdue.” In case there was any doubt, Wemple made a demand about the fake Russiagate coverage: “Retract the stories.” Of course, they didn’t.

Speaking of Wemple, he’s making a lateral move from the WaPo the Gray Lady:

WHEN YES, PRIME MINISTER GETS IT TOO ON THE NOSE:

When satire from 2013 becomes reality in 2025. pic.twitter.com/mDyomDM2LN

— TheRealMrBench (@therealmrbench) July 30, 2025

IT’S COME TO THIS: Black Cincinnati council woman says white people brutally beaten by mob ‘begged for that beat down.’

President Pro Tem of the Cincinnati City Council Victoria Parks commented that the white couple who were mercilessly beaten on the streets of her city “begged for that beat down.” The comments came after she saw video of what led up to the beating in the early morning hours of July 28, showing two men starting to fight while others attempted to break it up.

“They begged for that beat down!” Parks wrote in a comment on the video, from one of her two Facebook profiles. “I am grateful for the whole story.”

Cincinnati’s in the very best of hands:

WHITE HOUSE WARNS STARMER: Stop threatening US tech companies’ free speech.

The White House has warned Sir Keir Starmer to stop threatening American tech companies amid mounting backlash over Britain’s online safety law.

Members of Donald Trump’s administration are monitoring the Online Safety Act with “great interest and concern” after key allies said it was censoring free speech and imposing unfair burdens on US businesses.

The law, which regulates online speech, allows the British government to levy massive fines on companies like Apple, Truth Social, and X if it finds that rules on hate speech have been broken.

Those in the president’s inner circle see the potential penalties as an unwarranted foreign intervention into American free speech.

“President Trump has made it clear that free speech is one of our most cherished freedoms as Americans,” a senior US State Department official told The Telegraph.

“Accordingly, we have taken decisive action against foreign actors who have engaged in extraterritorial censorship affecting our companies and fellow citizens.

“We will continue to monitor developments in the UK with great interest and concern.”

Meanwhile, across the Channel: French Prosecutor Rules that Social Media Platform X Is an ‘Organized Crime Group.’

The motivation is obvious: Elon Musk is playing in European politics, supporting conservative candidates, and the failing political leaders fear–rightly–that they will lose power. Things are not going well in Europe, with a huge migration problem, sexual violence against women spiking, an increase in organized crime, and stagnant economies.

* * * * * * * *

The EU has been trying to use its Digital Services Act to suppress speech both in Europe and the United States. As you may recall, Thierry Breton threatened Elon Musk with massive fines for hosting a conversation with Donald Trump during the campaign.

The EU exists to shakedown American tech companies, and has been doing so for decades, as this 2014 Reuters headline spotlights: Microsoft sued over browser miscue that led to $731 million EU fine.

Four years later, the Verge noted: Google’s European fine is a flashback to Microsoft’s ugly antitrust battle.

And don’t get Belgium started over Apple’s choice of charging cables: With Apple’s iPhone 15, the EU wins the charger war.

UNBURDENED BY WHAT HAS BEEN IN 2024: Kamala Harris will not run for California governor in 2026.

WHY IS THE GOP SENATE TAKING A SUMMER SIESTA?

I really mean screaming into the void. I wrote this is May https://t.co/qW42MaBXde pic.twitter.com/KybWGwfIx3

— Rachel Bovard (@rachelbovard) July 30, 2025

ANSWERS TO THE MOST IMPORTANT OF QUESTIONS: Why Sydney Sweeney’s Body is Causing a Total Meltdown:

The body positivity movement told us, loudly and constantly, that everyone is beautiful, that all bodies are worthy of the spotlight, that a triple chin was not only normal, but empowering. Obesity wasn’t a health crisis, it was an identity. That era wasn’t really about celebrating women. It was about neutralizing beauty. Sanding down the sharp edges of desirability until no one felt left out, and no one stood out.

And now here comes Sweeney, basking in her exceptional, remarkable, jaw-dropping body. Selling sex and looking like an unreformed Victoria’s Secret Angel, draped across a convertible in low-rise denim. Saying: Yeah, I’m lucky, I got really, really good genes. The contrast is almost comical. Whether she meant to be or not, she’s a kind of walking middle finger to the movement that tried to blow up all of our old-fashioned ideas about beauty. She’s not the future of advertising. She’s the past, revived, and making more money than ever.

And Sweeney embodies a bigger vibe shift that is—whether she is or not—fundamentally MAGA. TikTok is flooded with conventionally attractive women doing thirst traps in American flag bikinis. The “MAGA babe” is a thing, and you can buy her calendar. It’s cultural revenge for years of being told to find dumpy lingerie models inspiring. To believe in the polite fiction that beauty is subjective.

Some women are hotter than others. Always were.

And Sydney Sweeney is one of them. She’s hot. She’s blond. Her body’s a 10. She has the kind of face you’d cast to play a starlet in 1953. And the most offensive part of all? She knows it. She’s not ashamed. She’s just standing there, looking like that, and making bank.

And that, more than anything, is what’s driving people insane.

Because it proves people still want to look at beautiful people. They still want to buy what they’re wearing. They still respond to sex. And Sydney Sweeney? She never stopped playing that game. She just played it better than everyone else.

In 2021, Matt Labash wrote, “I hurt for my supermodel sisters.  I asked a lot of unanswerable questions like, ‘Why, God, why?’  Then I asked one last question, which you’re not supposed to utter in public: ‘Whatever happened to skinny, beautiful models, and will they be coming back any time soon?’”

Well, one slipped through the left’s lock on the culture, and as a result, they’re furious (what isn’t the left furious about?), and hoping that all of their table-banging will prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.

Concurrently: Democrats Scramble to Figure Out Why Young Men Hate Them, and the Findings Are Comedy Gold.

DEVELOPING: Virginia Politician Doused In Gasoline Then Set On Fire: “Danville, Virginia, City Councilman Lee Vogler was attacked and set on fire Wednesday by a man who forced his way into the offices of Showcase Magazine, where Vogler is employed. According to a video posted by the publication on Facebook, the suspect entered the building and doused Vogler with a five-gallon bucket of gasoline before chasing him to the front of the office and igniting the fuel.”

BURN AFTER READING: Patel found thousands of sensitive Trump–Russia probe docs inside ‘burn bags’ in secret room at FBI.

FBI Director Kash Patel found a trove of sensitive documents related to the origins of the Trump–Russia probe buried in multiple “burn bags” in a secret room inside the bureau, sources told Fox News Digital.

Sources told Fox News Digital that the “burn bag” system is used to destroy documents designated as classified or higher.

Sources told Fox News Digital that multiple burn bags were found and filled with thousands of documents.

Sources told Fox News Digital that one of the documents FBI officials found in a burn bag was the classified annex to former special counsel John Durham’s final report, which includes the underlying intelligence he reviewed.

Why, it’s as if:

TSUNAMI EVACUATION ORDERS LIFTED IN HAWAII, THREAT TO WEST COAST EASES.

However: Central and South American authorities order evacuations; volcano in Russia starts erupting after earthquake off Russian coast.

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: NYT Commits Blood Libel and Gets Caught.

The New York Times published a photo—taking up nearly half the front page—showing what appears to be a child dying of starvation in Gaza.

It shocked the world, as it should. It was horrific, if a bit weird, since the mother for some reason seemed well fed.

After we exposed the lies and cynical exploitation of Gazan children who suffer from rare genetic diseases that cause their bodies to become severely emaciated, who have become symbols of hunger – the New York Times, one of the world’s largest newspapers that echoed this lie itself, published a clarifying tweet… The problem is that a week has passed, and after you publish the picture of a child like this on the cover, a small clarifying tweet doesn’t really help. This is how media outlets in the world that are supposed to be objective and balanced become tools for Hamas propaganda. Instead of having to apologize over and over again, take some advice – do your job, investigate, and publish only the truth and facts, even if it means that Israel is actually right.

It fed every narrative that Hamas and its supporters want you to believe, and did so in the most powerful way. Because a picture is not worth a thousand words, but millions of them. You cannot unsee a starving child. No amount of statistics can dissuade you from believing what your eyes show you, even if what they show you isn’t exactly real.

The Time did issue a correction of sorts – on a Twitter/X account that has a vastly smaller number of readers than their main one:

(Classical reference in headline.)

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

American Eagle Apologizes, Replaces Sydney Sweeney With Fat Transgender Double-Amputee Of Color https://t.co/qlQnE0l4hA pic.twitter.com/GvMOOMXiJE

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 29, 2025

Sydney Sweeney will also be getting a stylish new, modern look:

Federal Judge Orders Sydney Sweeney To Gain 100 Pounds And Get One Of Those Butch Haircuts https://t.co/idkx973KCo pic.twitter.com/dVTzmfXVLI

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 29, 2025

DEVELOPING: 8.7 magnitude earthquake near Russia prompts tsunami alerts in California, Alaska and Hawaii.

And Puget Sound, and Japan’s Pacific coast.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF JEREMY CORBYN’S PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Keir Starmer’s blackmailing of Israel is a depraved new low.

SPARTACUS SCREAMS: Cory Booker Has a Complete Meltdown, Slams Other Democrats Because the Orange Man Is Just That Bad.

Cory Booker is having a complete MELTDOWN right now. pic.twitter.com/jARQ85nCXk

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 29, 2025