The Supreme Court on Dec. 5, 2025, agreed to review the long-simmering controversy over birthright citizenship. It will likely hand down a ruling next summer. When the justices weigh the arguments, they will focus on the meaning of the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, known as the citizenship clause. Both sides agree that to be granted birthright citizenship under the Constitution, a child must be born inside U.S. borders and the parents must be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. However, each side will give a very different interpretation of what the second requirement means.
14th Amendment
DeSantis Makes Dubious Claims About Florida Being ‘Forced’ To Redistrict
Democrats and voting rights advocates this week voiced vehement opposition to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ call to redistrict Florida’s congressional map in a special session next year, calling it an “illegal” gerrymander in violation of the Florida Constitution. Not surprisingly, DeSantis disagrees.
For 4th Year, Florida Republicans Try to Ban Pride and Political Flags from Public Buildings
Florida Republicans are trying for the fourth year in a row to ban political flags atop government buildings, including Pride, MAGA, or Black Lives Matter banners.
The U.S. Citizenship Test Shouldn’t Be Like Trivia Night at Tortugas
The new citizenship test “for aspiring Americans” is out. It is supposedly longer and harder than its predecessor. In fact, it’s not a civics test. It’s certainly not a citizenship test. It’s the sort of questions Jay Scherr baritones between nachos at his weekly trivia night at Tortugas, and it is riddled with errors while projecting an unrecognizably chauvinist America.
‘Ed Boy,’ Target of Murderers in a Trial 9 Months Ago, Is Now a Defendant Facing Up to 30 Years Over a Shove
Edward Gerard Sampson, better known as Ed Boy, shoved a woman and was charged with aggravated battery, a charge that would normally result in a minor penalty, possibly some jail time or probation. But the woman was pregnant, and Sampson is a habitual offender who was released from prison in May. Those factors combined now mean that if the jury convicts him at his trial this week, Sampson could spend the next 30 years in prison for that shove.
Same-Sex Marriage Survives as Supreme Court Declines to Reconsider
The Supreme Court on Monday morning turned down a request from Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky, to reconsider its 2015 decision recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Thus Spoke Lazarustra
Reports of Democrats’ death, Samuel Clemens telegraphs in Innocents at Home (his Substack), have been greatly exaggerated. But let’s not turn Tuesday’s Democratic sweep into a greatly exaggerated victory just yet. This was Lexington, not Yorktown. And Zohran Mamdani has a distance to go yet for his Hattin: those Christian nationalists have a stranglehold on this unholied America.
More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by ICE and Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days
Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched. About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
When Florida Sends Goons to Intimidate Government Critics
Retired Florida resident James O’Gara sent a postcard to Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, saying simply, “You lack values.” Soon after the postcard, two guys in armored vests emblazoned “POLICE” showed up at the O’Gara home and asked if James O’Gara had mailed that little missive to Tallahassee. They didn’t identify themselves, but the O’Garas checked with Largo police and found out the men were from the Department of Financial Services’ investigations unit.
Florida Attorney General Leads 21 States Backing ‘Parental Rights’ Over Child’s Gender Privacy in Court Case
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier led 21 states in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court Monday supporting a Tallahassee mother who claimed her rights were violated when a local middle school created a secret plan supporting her child switching genders.
The Supreme Court Resumes Its Rightward Reel
This year’s controversies at the Supreme Court focus on three dominant themes. One is the continuing constitutional revolution in how the justices read our basic law. The court has shifted from a living reading of the Constitution, which says the Constitution should adapt to the American people’s evolving values and the needs of contemporary society, to an original reading, which aims to enforce the constitutional principles understood by the Americans who ratified them.
Do ‘Conversion Therapy’ Bans Violate Free Speech?
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in a challenge to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” – treatment intended to change a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity – for young people. Kaley Chiles, a therapist in Colorado Springs and a practicing Christian, argues that the ban violates her right to free speech because it imposes “a gag order on counselors.” Colorado counters that the ban merely regulates the treatments that mental health professionals can provide because conversion therapy has been found to be “unsafe and ineffective.”
US Passport Is Best Defense Against ICE False Arrest as Supreme Court Approves Profiling in Mass Detentions
The aggressive drive to carry out mass deportations of people without legal status already has led to U.S. citizens being swept up in raids and detained, according to news reports from around the country as well as immigration experts. Such detainments now will increase, experts predict. Once in detention, it can take time to verify citizenship. A passport is considered the gold standard for proof that an individual is a citizen, but fewer than half of Americans hold passports, according to the State Department’s most recent data from 2024. Even fewer are likely to carry the bulky document around.
It Is Happening Here
Where would America be without hyperbole? From the chutzpah of the City Upon a Hill speech aboard the Arbella to the skirmish-turned Boston “massacre” to American Carnage a few years ago to the ongoing beatification of Charlie Kirk, it’s fair to say that without hyperbole, America would be more like a sprawly humble Saskatchewan than the Galactic Empire it’s become. But America’s slouch toward fascism is no hyperbole. Sinclair Lewis once mused that it can happen here. Today, it is happening here.
Appeals Court Ruling Against Transgender Deputy May Buttress Florida’s Restrictions on Pronouns Use
Florida’s defense of a 2023 law restricting pronouns that transgender teachers can use to identify themselves could be aided by an appeals-court ruling Tuesday in a Georgia case. A transgender Houston County, Ga., sheriff’s deputy filed that lawsuit after she was denied coverage under a county health-insurance policy for surgery related to gender dysphoria. The sharply divided appeals court ruled against the Georgia deputy, Anna Lange. Judge Nancy Abudu, in a dissenting opinion, pointed to potentially far-reaching effects of the majority ruling, calling it discrimination against transgender people.”
“The majority opinion effectively sanctions employment discrimination against transgender people,” Abudu’s dissent said.
Bail Grift: Instead of Returning Bond Money, Florida Seizes It to Pay Off Fines and Fees
Is Florida running a bail grift? That’s how one Judge described the state’s decades-old policy of keeping bail money from third parties and using it to pay off defendants’ outstanding fines and fees. At least one member of an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel that considered the issue this month appears to agree with that assessment. So do several current and former lawmakers who have tried to end the practice.
Judge Rules Illegal a Florida Law Banning Trans Teachers’ Choice of Pronouns
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker sided with Hillsborough County teacher Katie Wood and a Lee County teacher, identified as Jane Doe, in finding that the state law discriminates in violation of what is known as Section VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That section bars employment discrimination because of a person’s “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” But the outcome of the issue might ultimately hinge on an appeals-court ruling in a Georgia case.
Slew of Groups Are Filing Appeals of Florida’s New Law Restricting Ballot Initiatives
The League of Women Voters of Florida, the League of United Latin American Citizens and two individual plaintiffs filed a notice Friday that was a first step in appealing to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Florida Decides Healthcare and FloridaRighttoCleanWater.org political committees, which are trying to put proposals on the 2026 ballot, and individual plaintiffs filed similar notices July 25.
On Flagler County School Board, Competing Views Underscore District Tensions Behind Vouchers and ‘Choice’
At the end of a 15-minute hearing on Tuesday to approve Flagler County schools’ tentative property tax and budget for the coming fiscal year–a budget that includes the siphoning of $17 million to subsidize private school “vouchers” for almost 2,000 students, with the district’s dollars–School Board member Janie Ruddy delivered a brief speech decrying the erosion of public dollars for public schools, and addressing its consequences. Will Furry followed with a rejoinder, illustrating district tensions at the heart of the voucher and “choice” program. Both statements follow in full.
Federal Judge Wants To Know ‘Who’s Running the Show’ at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
A U.S. district judge on Monday pushed state and federal officials to provide a copy of an intergovernmental agreement showing “who’s running the show” at an Everglades immigrant-detention center, calling the situation “urgent” as at least 100 detainees have been deported amid legal wrangling over the remote facility.
ICE Arrests in Florida of Migrants Without Criminal Records Surged 450% in June
Since the start of the second Trump administration, ICE has carried out more than 10,818 arrests in Florida, up from 3,496 in the same period last year. But in June, the largest share of arrests, 36%, were of people the federal government labeled as having no criminal history in the country, a 457% increase from June 2024.
Stop the Grift: Florida’s School Vouchers Are Scamming Taxpayers and Sabotaging Democracy
Our public schools are America’s great equalizer, the engine room of our democracy, where kids of different incomes, races, abilities, and beliefs learn side by side. That’s not “just education.” That’s democracy in motion, argues Colleen Conklin, the former School Board member. And that’s precisely why the current voucher experiment—built on selective enrollment, hidden finances, and zero public oversight—is the opposite: it fractures the common schoolhouse, privatizes accountability, and poses a real threat to the democratic fabric that public education holds together.
America(n) Unbecoming
If the president can threaten citizenship revocation even for U.S.-born citizens, as he did this week, and just for holding opinions he doesn’t like, the rest of us certainly aren’t safe. For migrants, every night–every day–is Kristallnacht as ICE carries out its pogroms. A majority of Americans are either applauding or indifferent, while protesters are branded enemies and invaders to be crushed by militarized goonery. This is not the America any of us have known, or should tolerate.
New Schools Commissioner Threatens Superintendents About Violating ‘Parental Rights’
Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas delivered his first speech to the State Board of Education Wednesday, quoting the Book of Psalms, promising to work closely with Florida’s top law enforcement officer to ensure students aren’t being “indoctrinated,” and threatening superintendents about violating parental rights.
Making Ignorance Great Again
Most Americans once celebrated our heterogeneity, our pluralism, and our tendency to expand freedoms. We valued knowledge and tried to foster understanding; we welcomed the new. Not so much these days, not here in Florida. This state now has statutes forbidding teaching the truth about slavery and Jim Crow, threatening educators who discuss gender, sexuality, systemic racism, and other disfavored topics. Universities are scrubbing their websites of words like “women,” “Black,” “colonialism,” and “diversity” — even if it’s “biodiversity” — anything seen as threatening to white, male Christian hegemony.
U.S. Supreme Court Deals Blow to Florida’s Enforcement of Anti-Immigration Law in Rebuff to Uthmeier
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier that would have at least temporarily allowed enforcement of a new state law targeting undocumented immigrants who enter the state. Uthmeier last month asked the Supreme Court for a stay of a temporary injunction that U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued in April to block the law. Such a stay, if granted, would have allowed enforcement of the law while an underlying legal battle about the injunction played out. The Supreme Court denied the stay request.
DeSantis Vetoes Target Black History and Minority Scholarships
As the Governor continues to decry diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the private and public sector, the Republican Governor killed several line items in the state budget directed at elevating the marginalized.
Federal Appeals Court Endorses Florida Ban on Teachers’ Preferred Pronouns in Public Schools
A federal appeals court has ruled against a Florida teacher who challenged a state law forbidding transgender teachers from using their preferred pronouns during their official duties in the classroom. The case involves Katie Wood, a math teacher in Hillsborough County who is transgender. She sued the state after a 2023 law passed saying that employees of public schools may not identify to their students with pronouns not consistent with their birth sex, “an immutable biological trait.”
Christianity Has Long Revered Saints Who Would Be Called ‘Transgender’ Today
There are at least 34 documented stories of transgender saints’ lives from the early centuries of Christianity. Originally appearing in Latin or Greek, several stories of transgender saints made their way into vernacular languages.
U.S. Conference of Mayors in Tampa Will Take Up Resolution Critical of ICE Raids
The U.S. Conference of Mayors is holding its annual meeting in Tampa this weekend, and one of the resolutions they are poised to vote on calls upon federal authorities to focus their deportation actions on convicted criminals, and not on undocumented individuals who “contribute to their local communities.”
Maga Servility Ends in Humiliation for Santa Ono and UF
The trustees liked Santa Ono; Ron DeSantis liked him, especially since Ono, who was once all-in on diversity at UM, recently pulled a 180, loudly recanting his climate change-admitting, student protest-allowing progressive ways and parroting the governor’s War on Woke nonsense like a DeSantis Bot. It wasn’t enough. Poor old weathervane Ono fell victim to a nasty social media campaign against him, led by such intellectual giants as Don Trump Jr., who squawked “WTF!” on the twixter; New College trustee Christopher “They’re eating the cats!” Rufo, Sen. Rick Scott and the congenitally absurd Rep. Byron Donalds.
At Flagler Tiger Bay, Ex-US Attorney General Gives Bullish View of ‘Unitary’ Executive Power, With Nod to Calvin Coolidge
Jesse Panuccio is the former executive director of the Florida Department of Executive Opportunity, general counsel to former Gov. Rick Scott and twice the acting U.S. Attorney General during the first Trump administration. He focused on the record spate of recent presidential executive orders and “their legal status,” drawing from headlines about the most aggressive use of executive power since the Civil War in combination with Panuccio’s interpretation of history in the founding era to endorse the current president’s conduct as legally justified.
Democracy’s Sunset: There’s a 70% Chance the Constitution Will Be Suspended Before 2028
The democratic moment is over. There’s a 70 percent chance that the Constitution will be suspended before the legal end of the current administration. The chance of a suspension grows to 110 percent in case of an actual emergency, like a 9/11-style attack. But a majority of Americans aren’t interested in democracy anymore. They want their strongman. Nothing else explains the country’s surrender to the degradation of the country’s institutions since Jan. 20.
Why the Far Right Fabricated the Myth of a Migrant ‘Invasion’
The current administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years. By 2022, invasion rhetoric, which had previously been relegated to white nationalist circles, had become such a staple of Republican campaign ads that most of the public agreed an invasion of the U.S. via the southern border was underway.
How Trans People Affirmed Their Gender in Medieval Europe
Restrictions on medical care for transgender youth assume that without the ability to medically transition, trans people will vanish. History, however, shows that withholding health care does not make transgender people go away. Scholarship of medieval literature and historical records reveals how transgender people transitioned even without a robust medical system – instead, they changed their clothes, name and social position.
Randy Fine’s Bill Banning Pride Flags at Public Buildings Fails, as Does Preferred-Pronoun Ban
LGBTQ advocates are celebrating several bills — including one that could have banned Pride flags flown at government buildings — stalling out this Session. Some of the dead bills including HB 75/SB 100 that would have banned government buildings, schools and universities, from flying flags that represented a “political viewpoint.” The proposal was sponsored by outgoing state Sen. Randy Fine before he left for Washington, D.C.
How Probation Fuels Mass Incarceration
On any given day, 1.9 million people are incarcerated in more than 6,000 federal, state and local facilities. Another 3.7 million remain under what scholars call “correctional control” through probation or parole supervision. That means one out of every 60 Americans is entangled in the system — one of the highest rates globally. Yet despite its vast reach, the criminal justice system often fails at its most basic goal: preventing people from being rearrested, reconvicted or reincarcerated.
Florida Will Use Tax Dollars to Sue Its Own Public Schools on Behalf of Parents
Attorney General James Uthmeier said his office is “putting our money where our mouth is” in announcing a state-funded legal team dedicated to enforcing parents-rights laws. Addressing a crowd of fourth graders at Jacksonville Classical Academy Tuesday, Uthmeier said his office is “making sure that we’re walking the walk and setting examples” in enforcing laws related to gender transition, library materials, school surveys, and other topics that have dominated legislative, judicial, and executive conversations in recent years.
U.S. Supreme Court Will Hear Arguments on Ending Birthright Citizenship
The U.S. Supreme Court announced Thursday it will hear oral arguments next month over President Donald Trump’s efforts to restructure birthright citizenship, though the justices won’t decide on the merits of the case just yet.
Our Silent Genocide of Transgender People
The United States in general and Florida in particular are enacting laws that literally erase the existence of an entire class of human beings. Trump signed an order declaring that transgender people don’t exist. Florida is about to adopt a law that would let government employees dehumanize their transgender colleagues by refusing to refer to them by their preferred pronouns. It is a new kind of genocide: bloodless, to be sure, but no less obliterating.
Florida Senate Committee Approves Ignoring Preferred Pronouns in State and Local Government
A measure (SB 440) prohibits requiring any employee to refer to another person using that person’s preferred pronouns if such pronouns don’t correspond to that person’s sex at birth. Job applications in public workplaces may only ask an applicant whether they are male or female and may not provide a nonbinary option.
Florida Attorney General Threatens Removal of City Council Members Who Blocked Cooperation with ICE
Attorney General James Uthmeier is threatening three Fort Myers city council members with removal from office after they refused Monday to deputize police officers to participate in immigration enforcement. Uthmeier, who became the attorney general a month ago, warned the council that Gov. Ron DeSantis could remove them from office if they didn’t allow the city police to question people about their immigration status and detain those subject to deportation.
Who Do You Think You Are? Here’s Why You Should See ‘The Niceties’ at CRT
“The Niceties,” which opens tonight at City Repertory Theatre, is familiar to our ideologically poisoned times, raising questions about whether there is such a thing as objective truth. It subverts assumptions about American and Black history, generational divides, and power. It will make you angry only if you’re not honest with yourself as it also subverts your own assumptions about who you think you are.
Don’t Blame Trans People for Your Own Struggles
Today, both in the United States and in many parts of the world, trans and nonbinary people — a tiny, frequently poor, and marginalized percentage of the general population — are being used as scapegoats, as symbolic threats to the “right” way of being. These constant attacks are aimed at getting struggling people to blame trans folks for their problems. And they’re designed to keep us all politically reactive, overwhelmed, and unfocused on the deep systemic failures of our society, Aaron Scott, Moses Hernandez McGavin argue.
A History of Birthright Citizenship at the Supreme Court
Birthright citizenship was explicitly added to the Constitution in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was adopted following the Civil War. The United States is one of roughly 30 countries, including neighboring Canada and Mexico, that offer automatic citizenship to everyone born there. There is a “strong likelihood” that the challengers of a presidential executive order ending birthright citizenship “will succeed on the merits of their claims that the Executive Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment” to the Constitution.
Education Department Kills Biden’s Title IX Protections Against Gender-Based Discrimination
The U.S. Department of Education said Friday it is scrapping a Biden administration rule about gender-based discrimination in education programs. The department will use a previous rule about enforcement of Title IX, a landmark 1972 law that bars discrimination in education programs based on sex. In 2020, the Flagler County School Board revised a policy that added “gender identity” to the list of explicit protections in the school district’s anti-discrimination policy. That wording may now be in question.
American Trilogy: OJ Simpson, Louis Farrakhan, Donald Trump
On Oct. 3, 1995, after a trial that had lasted as long as a presidential election campaign, a jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Blacks cheered. Whites were horrified and angered that Blacks cheered. Blacks cheered even louder at whites being horrified. All they saw was white derangement syndrome. Sound familiar?
Protesters Disheartened and Disbelieving at an Abortion-Rights Rally in St. Pete: ‘Florida Is Gone’
Two months after a proposal to repeal Florida’s six-week abortion law and enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution failed to gather the 60% required for passage, more than 100 people gathered Wednesday on four street corners in downtown St. Petersburg to advocate for the cause. But it was a dispirited and disbelieving protest.
Trump’s Attack on Birthright Citizenship
One of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders relating to immigration and immigrants is a direct attack on the long-standing constitutional principle of birthright citizenship. That’s the declaration in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen, regardless of their parents’ nationalities or immigration status.
“We Cannot Walk Alone… We Cannot Turn Back”
A brief history of the origins and battles of the Martin Luther King federal holiday, and of the MLK monument at the Washington Mall, with full text and video of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”
