The Capitol Hill Reader 151: SCOTUS rules on birthright citizenship, mail-in ballots, party-affiliated spending caps, and a lot more.
Your weekly government tapas
Hello Readers,
We have a relatively short digest for you today. Congress is out on Summer Break, and while we do have a few executive actions coming from the White House, the majority of today’s issue focuses on seven Supreme Court cases that were decided in late June.
To celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday, here is a picture of an bald eagle robot distributing freedom:
Let’s get started.
The Actions of the President
July 3, 2026
Proclamation - 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ADOPTION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
This is a proclamation from President Trump celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence and setting some goals. Here is an excerpt:
We will seize the new frontiers of artificial intelligence and quantum discovery, unleash the boundless energy beneath our soil, and expand the wealth and abundance of the American People. We will defend our citizens and our way of life, answering every enemy with overwhelming strength and unflinching justice. We will cherish the sacred right to life and protect the innocent starting at life’s very first moment. We will restore law and order to our streets and usher in a new era of prosperity, health, opportunity, and happiness for every American family. My Administration will not rest until every one of these sacred promises are kept.
June 29, 2026
Proclamation - DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY AND AUTHORIZATION FOR TEMPORARY DUTY FREE IMPORTATION OF PHOSPHATE FERTILIZER FROM MOROCCO
This is a proclamation declaring a national emergency due to lack of available fertilizer, along with the authorization to import duty free phosphate fertilizer from Morocco.
You can read if by clicking the hyperlinked title above.
Memorandum - LOWERING THE COST OF LIVING BY PROMOTING THE FREEDOM TO FIX
This memorandum directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make it easier and more affordable for consumers to repair their vehicles with aftermarket parts. It argues that reliance on California’s certification process for emissions-related parts has created costly delays and supply bottlenecks, and instructs the EPA to clarify what repairs are allowed under the Clean Air Act.
Read it by clicking the hyperlinked title above.
The Supreme Court
Below we have seven SCOTUS cases for your maximum enjoyment. Also, in light of our recent misuse of “TLDR,” we have created a new, improved acronym: TLODFLR.
TLODFLR stands for “too long or don’t feel like reading.”
Trump v. Slaughter
TLODFLR: the Court holds that the Federal Trade Commission’s for-cause removal protections are unconstitutional, allowing the President to remove FTC commissioners at will.
After beginning his second term, President Trump fired Democratic FTC Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya without identifying “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance,” as the FTC Act requires. Slaughter then sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which ruled in her favor under Humphrey’s Executor (1935), and the D.C. Circuit declined to stay that ruling before the Supreme Court took the case before judgment.
On June 29, 2026, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 6–3 Court, reversed, holding that because the modern FTC exercises substantial executive power—rulemaking, enforcement, adjudication, and litigation—the President must be able to remove its commissioners at will; the Court also overruled whatever remained of Humphrey’s Executor that allowed Congress to insulate such executive officers from presidential removal.
With that, the FTC ceased to be even a quasi-independent organization.
Dissents:
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, argued that the Court discarded nearly a century of precedent and congressional reliance on independent, multimember agencies. In her view, Humphrey’s Executor had already upheld the exact FTC removal restriction at issue, and the majority’s decision threatens the independence of many expert agencies Congress deliberately placed at some distance from partisan presidential control.
What happens next:
The case returns to the lower courts, but Slaughter’s reinstatement claim is effectively over, and the ruling will likely invite challenges to removal protections at other independent agencies—though the Court expressly left questions about the Federal Reserve and non-Article III courts for another day.
Trump v. Cook
TLODFLR: the Court refuses to let President Trump immediately remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while litigation over her attempted firing continues.
President Trump purported to fire Fed Reserve Governor Cook in August 2025 after allegations that she may have made false statements on mortgage documents; Cook sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which issued a preliminary injunction preventing her removal, and the D.C. Circuit declined to stay that injunction.
On June 29, 2026, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5–4 Court, denied the government’s stay application, holding that the President had not provided the pretermination process required by statute before removing a Federal Reserve Governor for cause. The Court also wrote about the Federal Reserve’s historically protected independence and said the government’s position would effectively turn for-cause protection into at-will employment, though it did not decide whether Cook’s alleged conduct could ultimately constitute sufficient cause for removal.
You may be asking yourself, “wait, didn’t they just rule the exact opposite way in Trump v Slaughter?” Yes, they did, but Chief Justice Roberts said wrote that the Federal Reserve is an exception due to its historical significance, among other things.
Dissents:
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, arguing that under the Court’s removal-power cases, Federal Reserve Governors exercise executive power and therefore must be removable by the President, just like was decided in Slaughter. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Barrett in a separate dissent, also objected to leaving the injunction in place, with Barrett warning that the injunction may prevent removal based on the same mortgage-fraud allegations even if more process is later provided.
What happens next :
Cook remains on the Federal Reserve Board while the case proceeds, but the President may try again if he provides notice and an opportunity to respond, after which courts could review whether the alleged misconduct actually qualifies as “cause.”
Chatrie v. United States
TLODFLR: the Court writes that police do, in fact, conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they obtain a person’s Google Location History data through a geofence warrant.
This case began after a 2019 credit-union robbery in Midlothian, Virginia, where police obtained a warrant requiring Google to identify phones within a 150-meter radius of the bank around the time of the robbery; that process, in conjunction with a larger investigation, eventually identified Okello Chatrie as the perpetrator. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia agreed that the warrant was constitutionally defective but denied suppression under the good-faith exception, while the Fourth Circuit ultimately affirmed after an en banc split.
The good faith exception is a doctrine established by the U.S. Supreme Court via United States v Leon (1984) that allows unlawfully collected evidence to be used in court if police officers acted with an objectively reasonable belief that their actions were legal.
On June 29, 2026, Justice Kagan, writing for a five-justice majority, held that acquiring Location History data is a search because it can reveal highly precise, retrospective information about a person’s movements, and Justice Gorsuch concurred in the judgment, making the result 6–3. The Court did not decide whether this particular warrant was valid or whether suppression is required.
Dissents:
Justice Alito dissented, joined in part by Justices Thomas and Barrett, arguing that the Court went too far in treating this limited geofence request as a Fourth Amendment search and criticized the decision as unnecessary given the unresolved good-faith issue. Justice Barrett also wrote separately, disagreeing with the majority’s approach to privacy expectations in Google Location History data.
What happens next:
The case returns to the Fourth Circuit to decide whether the geofence warrant satisfied probable cause and particularity requirements and, if not, whether the good-faith exception still allows the evidence to be used. This will probably rest on whether or not the police conducting the investigation truly didn’t know their actions were illegal.
Watson v. Republican National Committee
TLODFLR: the Justices hold that federal election-day statutes do not prohibit Mississippi from counting absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received up to five business days later.
The RNC, the Mississippi Republican Party, and other plaintiffs sued Mississippi election officials in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, arguing that federal law requires both ballot casting and ballot receipt to occur by Election Day; the district court granted summary judgment to Mississippi, but the Fifth Circuit reversed.
On June 29, Justice Barrett, writing for a 5–4 Court, reversed the Fifth Circuit, holding that the federal statutes set the day on which voters must make their choice, not the deadline by which election officials must receive ballots. The Court also relied on UOCAVA (the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act), which presupposes that states may set ballot-receipt deadlines, and rejected the plaintiffs’ election-integrity arguments as policy questions for legislatures rather than courts.
Dissents:
Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, and by Justice Kavanaugh in part, argued that the federal election-day statutes should be read to require receipt by Election Day. The dissent viewed post-election receipt rules as inconsistent with the historic understanding of a single federal election day and warned that late-arriving ballots could undermine public confidence in election administration.
What happens next:
Mississippi’s postmark-by-Election-Day receipt rule survives, and the ruling likely protects similar absentee-ballot receipt laws in other states unless Congress amends the federal election-day statutes.
Trump v. Barbara
TLODFLR: the Court holds that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
This case challenged President Trump’s January 2025 executive order declaring that such children are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore do not receive birthright citizenship under either the Fourteenth Amendment or the Immigration and Nationality Act. Parents sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, which provisionally certified a nationwide class and preliminarily enjoined the order; the Supreme Court then granted certiorari before judgment from the First Circuit.
On June 30, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for five Justices, held that the Citizenship Clause codified the traditional common-law rule of birthright citizenship, confirmed by United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), and that children born on U.S. soil are subject to U.S. jurisdiction except for narrow historical exceptions such as children of foreign diplomats. Justice Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment on statutory grounds, agreeing the executive order was unlawful under 8 U.S.C. §1401(a), but not joining the majority’s broader constitutional holding.
For further reading on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, see the Capitol Hill Reader deep cut below.
Dissents
Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, argued that the majority overread common-law birthright citizenship and wrongly treated the Fourteenth Amendment as resolving the status of children born to parents unlawfully or temporarily in the country. Justice Alito and Justice Gorsuch also filed separate dissents, with Gorsuch arguing that at least some applications of the order—especially to children of temporary visitors—could be lawful, meaning the facial challenge should not have succeeded.
What happens next
The executive order remains blocked, and birthright citizenship continues under the existing constitutional and statutory rule unless Congress attempts to amend the INA or the Court later revisits the constitutional question in another case.
National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC
TLODFLR: the Court strikes down federal limits on how much political parties may spend in coordination with their own candidates.
The Federal Election Campaign Act had long capped coordinated party expenditures, and the Supreme Court upheld those limits in Colorado II in 2001. The NRSC, NRCC, JD Vance, Steve Chabot, and others sued the FEC, arguing that later campaign-finance cases had undermined that precedent; the en banc Sixth Circuit rejected the challenge because it remained bound by Colorado II, though several judges questioned whether the precedent could survive newer First Amendment doctrine.
On June 30, Justice Kavanaugh, writing for a 6–3 Court, reversed and held that coordinated party spending is political speech protected by the First Amendment, and that existing earmarking and disclosure rules are less restrictive tools for preventing donors from using parties to evade candidate contribution limits.
Dissent
Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, argued that the decision weakens contribution limits by allowing donors to route large sums through political parties to pay for candidate expenses. In her view, coordinated-expenditure limits were a necessary anti-corruption measure because a party working directly with a candidate can function as an alternative campaign bank account.
What happens next
Political parties may now spend unlimited amounts in coordination with candidates, likely increasing the role of national party committees in campaigns and shifting more campaign activity back from outside groups to formal party organizations.
West Virginia v. B.P.J. / Little v. Hecox
TLODFLR: in this case, (consolidated with Little v. Hecox), the Court held that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause permit schools to limit women’s and girls’ sports teams to biological females.
West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act and Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, two pieces of state legislation, both barred biological males from participating on female teams, including transgender girls. In the West Virginia case, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia granted summary judgment for the State, but the Fourth Circuit reversed on Title IX and remanded the equal-protection claim; in the Idaho case, the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho preliminarily enjoined (blocked) the law, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. In other words, in both cases the challenges to biological males participating on female teams were struck down.
On June 30, 2026, Justice Kavanaugh, writing for a 6–3 Court, reversed both lower-court rulings, holding that “sex” in Title IX and its athletics regulations refers to biological sex and that states have important interests in competitive fairness and safety sufficient to satisfy equal-protection review.
Dissents:
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, agreed in part but argued that the majority should not have resolved the West Virginia equal-protection claim without further factfinding. She focused on whether a categorical ban was overbroad as applied to transgender girls who, according to the challengers, had not experienced endogenous male puberty and did not retain the athletic advantages the state invoked.
What happens next
The West Virginia and Idaho laws may be enforced, and the decision will likely control similar challenges to state laws restricting participation in girls’ and women’s school sports based on biological sex.
Thank you!
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