• The Supreme Court has agreed to take yet another case that will allow it to greenlight bigotry in the guise of religious freedom. The case involves a Catholic school that is suing over its exclusion from receiving funding from Colorado’s universal pre-K program. The school is excluded because it allegedly discriminates against LGBTQ+ families. The 10th Circuit dismissed the lawsuit, but the Supreme Court agreed to hear it on appeal. There’s only one reason for the religious wing-nut supermajority to do that, and that reason is to give its blessing to the school’s bigotry.
• Jan Crawford, CBS News’s excellent Supreme Court reporter, has written a piece saying that Justice Samuel Alito has no plans to retire this June. Even though I think Alito will indeed retire, I really hope Crawford and her sources are right. I want Alito to be on the court when Republicans lose control of the Senate. It’s the only way to avoid another 30 years of somebody just like Alito—or worse.
• The other big Supreme Court news this week involved a leak of documents to The New York Times that show how the shadow docket took on its current sketchy form. The takeaway? It seems Chief Justice John Roberts really didn’t like Barack Obama’s political agenda and changed the way the court operates to stop it.
• Virginia voters approved a mid-decade redistricting plan that should give Democrats control of 10 of the 11 congressional seats in the state. You asked for this, Republicans. This is what you wanted, Texas. This is what you set in motion, Supreme Court.
• The Department of Homeland Security has requested funding to help it develop “smart glasses” so that ICE agents can conduct biometric surveillance of people while out in the field. Last week, I told you that a number of civil rights organizations are trying to stop Meta from producing smart glasses because of the dangers they pose to women by handing a powerful new surveillance tool to stalkers, abusers, and creeps. ICE probably saw that and said, “Wait, this will help us harass women? And also immigrants? You have to get us some of those!”

• The Nation’s Jeet Heer follows up on The Atlantic’s story about Kash Patel with a point that has fully lodged itself in my brain: Thank God this man is apparently so drunk and addled that he can’t effectively do his job. Folks, I thought Patel was the most dangerous appointment Trump made when he pulled together his cabinet for his second term. Patel is a vindictive guy with a literal enemies list who has the keys to the FBI. But if he’s spending so much time in the champagne room that he can barely show up for work, that’s a win. I hope Trump never fires him.
• Brazil’s Supreme Court is wild, y’all. I could give you my most radical ideas about court reform, and Brazil would be like, “Elie, hold my cerveja.” Zach Shemtob continues his excellent SCOTUSblog series on other supreme courts.
• Here’s a little bit of Black history I never knew about: In 1781, an enslaved woman named Elizabeth Freeman heard the words of the new Massachusetts Constitution and decided to demand her freedom. A year later, she became the first enslaved woman to have her independence recognized by an American court. It’s a fascinating tale, told by Errin Haines at The 19th.

Alsenat was convicted of selling machine gun conversion devices (MCDs) to undercover agents in June of 2023. Alsenat’s lawyer argued, no joke, that machine guns are constitutional because old people who are too crumbly and frightened to aim need to be able to… indiscriminately spray an area with bullets in hopes of hitting something. Here’s the relevant quote from Courthouse News: “‘Now, I imagine that most folks hear machine gun and clutch their pearls,’ Ta’Ronce Stowes told a three-judge panel. ‘But let me be clear: What we’re talking about here is a machine gun conversion device, or MCD. An MCD is typically no bigger than the tip of your thumb. MCDs make small arms more useful for elderly householders and others who are too frightened to draw a careful bead on an intruder.’”

This argument is patently ridiculous. Like, what are we even doing here? How are we living in a Quentin Tarantino movie?

The 11th Circuit rejected this argument (thank Zeus), but it’s worth noting the reasoning of the chief judge of the circuit, William Pryor, a Republican who was once on the short list for a Trump Supreme Court appointment. Pryor argued that the reason there is no Second Amendment right to a machine gun is that machine guns were not in “common use for lawful purposes” at the founding of the country. He then went on to detail the rise of the machine gun after World War I, the Tommy-gun era, sealing his argument for why machine guns should not be protected by the Second Amendment.

Pryor is right. The problem is that everything he said about machine guns could also be said about AR-15s or any modern handgun. A revolutionary-era rifled musket has no legitimate analogue to anything on the market today. It is insane to compare a weapon that had to be loaded one ball at a time to anything available to the next guy who wants to shoot up an elementary school.

I find it hypocritical and intellectually dishonest that Republican judges are able to see that machine guns, tanks, and tactical nuclear weapons are beyond the scope of the Second Amendment but pretend that assault rifles and hand-cannons are just like what the founders owned. Their machine gun rulings prove that they know better; they just don’t care enough about dead schoolchildren to carry their logic to its inescapable conclusion, which is that the Second Amendment is no bar to reasonable gun regulation.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

• My feature piece about the rising use of artificial intelligence in courtrooms—including, in some cases to replace human judges—is finally available online. I’m really proud of it, so give it a read when you can.
• I also wrote about all the leaks that have oozed out of the Supreme Court in recent weeks and argued that the justices should be speaking to us directly more often—and the press should hound these people if necessary, demanding answers.

That’s it. That’s the blurb. I just wanted you all to know that Tim Keck, founder of The Onion (better known as “Tim Onion”), is just about to gain control of one of the jewels of the white-wing misinformation sphere. Enjoy.

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