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October 22, 2024

Kamala Harris campaign dying

The Kamala Harris campaign is gasping for breath, as a critical-care patient does shortly before dying. Even one of Donald J. Trump’s most vicious detractors among evangelical or “born-again Christians” will no longer deny the signs. At the same time, two other Christian apologists have discovered that tens of millions of self-identifying Christians do not even plan to vote, and are asking them to reconsider.
Kamala Harris campaign and its dying breaths
Recall that your editor has a medical degree. He earned that in part through core clinical clerkships that exposed him to patients breathing their last as he watched. Heart- and lung-disease specialists, and critical-care specialists (at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Anesthesiology Department also manages all Intensive Care Units), speak of agonal respirations. These are the hesitating breaths a patient takes until at last the patient expels all air from his lungs.
So what are the agonal respirations of the Kamala Harris campaign? Erick-Woods Erickson listed them. He’s not talking about the ...

CNAV.NEWS

Kamala Harris campaign dying - Conservative News and Views

The Kamala Harris campaign shows every sign of dying, with people already blaming one another for the inevitable loss.

Terry A Hurlbut@Temlakos

October 21, 2024

Kamala Harris campaign dying

CNAV.NEWS

Kamala Harris campaign dying - Conservative News and Views

The Kamala Harris campaign shows every sign of dying, with people already blaming one another for the inevitable loss.

Terry A Hurlbut@Temlakos

October 07, 2023

Extinctionism – older than you think

Elon Musk occasionally likes to highlight a particular person or issue that concerns him, by posting about it on X. With one hundred fifty-nine million followers, he can make that person or issue “go viral” with a single post. Today he left two posts, on a subject that has concerned him for well over a year: extinctionism. Indeed he went so far as to say that extinctionism is the real ideological threat to humanity.

Extinctionism – what is it, and who actively propounds it?

Extinctionism means seeking the extinction of the human race. Even that concept, as extreme as it sounds, encompasses a broad spectrum of ways to achieve that end. Elon Musk highlighted one of them in his two posts:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1710394306572251409

Les U. Knight founded the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, abbreviated VHEMT (pronounced Vehement, “because that’s what we are,” says Knight.) Its method is simple: let all human beings abstain from reproduction. Thus the human race would die off by simple attrition. If everyone adopted that ...

Terry A Hurlbut@Temlakos

5 hours ago

Measurement and American patriotism

In the fiery debate on American patriotism and exceptionalism, American patriots have missed one vital element – measurement. Most of those who talk about measurement, lament that ours is one of the few countries left that still uses ancient units of measurement that do not relate to one other in “clean,” powers-of-ten ratios. In short, only in the laboratory (and not always at the drugstore) does any American use “the metric system.” Nor is this for lack of effort by its proponents to cram it down Americans’ throats. But to make any coherent defense of our American system of measurement (other than “we grew up with it, so why change”, one must understand where those ancient units came from. Once one does, one realizes that those ancient units are the only units that relate reliably to regular human experience. And that alone makes them worth keeping.

Measurement began with human anatomy and physiology

Any system of measurement requires a standard so that everyone understands what a given unit means. When human beings first started measuring things, they used themselves as the standard of measurement. Or if that didn’t make sense, they used something in common human experience, like water.

The United States Customary System of Units uses most of those ancient units of measurement, plus some not-so-ancient. In fact many of those units are as ancient as the Roman Empire, or more ancient than that. Admittedly, humans have stopped using at least two: the cubit (from elbow to middle fingertip) and the span (from thumb to little finger on a stretched-out hand). But the inch (breadth of the nose), foot (length of the foot), and yard (from nose to fingertip of the outstretched hand) are still part of the U.S. Customary system. So is the fathom, or length of an anchor rode between two outstretched hands – six feet.

This system contains many other units of length, most of which have fallen out of use. (Examples: link, rod, chain, furlong.) But we still use the mile, which is a thousand paces on the march. And some might have heard of the league, though they never learned what it meant. A league is an hour’s march in full infantry kit. The standard speed on the march is three miles per hour, so one league is three miles.

The beauty of these units

All these units of length have one thing in common. They relate to the human experience. That makes them absurdly easy to use. Want to know how long is the boundary between your yard and your neighbor’s? Step it off. If you’re in a boat and want to know how deep the water is, drop a lead weight attached to a length of rope, then pull it in by stretching it between your arms. The number of times you do that, is the number of fathoms.

Obviously one doesn’t convert from one length unit to another by multiplying by a power of ten. But one doesn’t have to. All that matters is using the unit appropriate to the activity.

Units of area have a similar derivation, as do the units of liquid capacity. The units of weight initially derived from the units of liquid capacity – one pint of water weighed one pound. Sadly, that’s no longer true – different “prototypes” changed sizes too often. Also, in the ancient world, weight and mass meant the same. Not until Sir Isaac Newton would anyone even think of going to a place where a one-pound mass weighed less. Or, for that matter, more.

Temperature had a similar connection to human experience. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit famously defined zero as the freezing point of saturated ammonium chloride brine. His high point was 96 degrees – his estimate of normal body temperature. So now you know why, when temperature drops “below zero,” salting the roads is useless.

Vive la révolution!

Then came the French Revolution – the first great excuse to abolish human anatomy and experience as a standard of measurement. European kings had, to be sure, laid the groundwork for this change. A new king would redefine the foot as the length of his own foot. The infamous Asymmetrical Ship shows what can happen: halfway through its building, the king was dead, long lived the king, and the foot changed. Needless to say, that ship was never seaworthy.

The French Revolutionists wanted to get away from all things royal. In the process, Joseph Lagrange and his Revolutionary Committee on Weights and Measures also broke away from human experience. They invented the metric system, or at least the first version of it, and the forerunner of Système International d’Unités – International System of Units, which we abbreviate SI.

The meter would be one-ten-millionth of a quarter-meridian of Earth. All other units of length would be powers-of-ten of this unit. To form the names, the Committee ordered affixing Latin prefixes for shortening, and Greek prefixes for lengthening. So the units of short distance would be the decimeter, the centimeter, and the millimeter. The unit of long distance became the kilometer, or one thousand meters.

How does any of this relate to human experience? It doesn’t. The meter is longer than anyone’s arm – unless that person is an acromegalic. And the kilometer bears no relationship to how fast one walks, on the march or otherwise.

Derivation of other metric units of measurement

Similarly, Lagrange’s Committee derived units of liquid capacity and mass from the meter, using pure water as the standard. One cubic decimeter (one-tenth meter) became the liter, the base unit of liquid capacity. The Committee defined the gram as the mass of one milliliter of pure water.

But not at any temperature! Anders Celsius, in 1742, had proposed his own centigrade temperature scale. It went from 100 (the freezing point of pure water) to zero (the boiling point of pure water). The French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin inverted this scale to produce the Celsius scale we know today. Water is at its most dense at four degrees Celsius. So a milliliter of water at that temperature became the standard for a gram of mass. So said Joseph Lagrange’s Committee.

Again, none of this relates to the human experience. True, Fahrenheit’s scale now has a redefinition, but at least Fahrenheit tried to define his scale in relation to human experience. Neither Celsius nor his successors can make the same claim.

One quantity of which no one has successfully substituted a new unit, is time. Humans everywhere still use the second and all its multiples, with ratios dating back to ancient Babylon. Emperor Napoleon tried to change to a decimal unit of time – and faced armed rebellion as a result. No serious effort at time conversion has occurred since.

Further distancing from human experience: redefinition

The United Nations General Convention on Weights and Measures, in 2019, made matters worse. Originally, SI had seven base quantities for defining everything, with definitions that made some sense. Furthermore, these definitions had a traceable history, and one could understand the need for a redefinition.

So for decades the units of time, length, mass, temperature, electric current, amount-of-substance, and luminous intensity had common-sense definitions. But that wasn’t good enough for the keepers of SI. That held especially for the unit of mass – the kilogram – then the only unit defined in terms of an artifact. But they also felt that way about the other units, except perhaps the unit of time (the second).

So in 2019 this UN body replaced seven units with seven constants, which now are defined constants. They are the:

Hyperfine transition frequency of cesium-113,
Speed of light in a vacuum,
Planck Constant,
Boltzmann Constant,
Elementary charge,
Avogadro Number of elementary entities, and
Luminous efficacy at a frequency of 540 tera-Hertz.

Behold! This Convention finishes the job of Lagrange’s Revolutionary Committee. They have utterly divorced our units of measurement from any semblance of human experience. True, they did it to “future-proof” their definitions. But they make no attempt to tell us where the original definitions came from. Given that, these definitions, such as they are, are purely arbitrary.

Why doesn’t America use the metric system – yet?

YouTube influencer Joe Scott publishes this history of attempts to “metricate” the United States. This and other sources reveal an interesting sequence of events.

In 1793, Joseph Dombey traveled to France and acquired a standard kilogram. But pirates seized his ship, took him hostage (he died as a hostage), and apparently destroyed his artifact. Five years later, the United States almost went to war with France. Even the effort in 1832 to establish a uniform system of measurement, failed.

1875 saw a new effort to “metricate” the United States. The only practical result has been the complete switch to the metric system (actually SI) in research laboratories. A few industries (like food and beverages) will sell their products in metric quantities. Toolmakers offer either metric or “English” tools. But never once has anyone made conversion to the metric system compulsory. For that reason, only one major highway in the United States (Interstate Highway 19 between Nogales and Tucson, Ariz., stretching for 102 kilometers) has metric distances throughout its length.

One cannot explain this in terns of American exceptionalism, because until today, no one has consistently defended U.S. Customary units on that ground. Perhaps one can make allowance for simple “cultural inertia” – not wanting to change the units one has lived with. But why did the French embrace Lagrange’s new system so readily? Revolutionary fervor?

Perhaps. But perhaps the real reason why metrication remains incomplete in America is … supernatural.

American measurement and American patriotism

Today, CNAV will be the first to defend the American measurement system on grounds of American patriotism.

Human beings have no reason to insist on having only one unit of length, mass, or liquid capacity. Multiplying these base units by powers of ten doesn’t change them. The metric system, and its current variant (SI) have one base unit each for length, mass, and liquid capacity. Everything else depends on these three.

Tellingly, this is not true of units of time. Humans still measure time in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, as appropriate to the application. Nor does the one-unit rule hold for length in absolutely all applications. Astronomers do not measure stellar or even planetary distances uniformly in multiples of the meter. They use other units that, again, reflect the experience of the application. These are the:

Astronomical unit (semi-major axis of the orbit of Earth around the Sun),
Light-year (the distance that light travels in a year), and
Parsec (Parallax of one second, or the cotangent of one second of arc, multiplied by an astronomical unit).

An American patriotic system of measurement would retain these units – while also retaining miles, yards, feet, and inches.

Extending the American Patriotic System

At present, the American Patriotic System would still be incomplete. It would retain three units from what some call the Gravitational English System. They are the second, the foot, and the slug, or that mass that accelerates by one foot per second squared when pushed or pulled by a force of one pound. It would also retain the Rankine, or the unit of absolute or “thermodynamic” temperature equivalent to a Fahrenheit degree.

But it would need three more units – of electric current, amount-of-substance, and luminous intensity – to be complete and coherent. (Coherency means deriving one unit, other than a base unit, from others with ratios of one.) To arrive at that, one must revisit the original definitions of the SI units of these quantities. For instance, one mole of a substance was its molecular (or formula) mass expressed in grams. Substituting the dram (slightly heavier than the gram) will require recalculating Avogadro’s Number to make it fit.

Similarly, before 2019, SI defined the ampere in terms of meters and newtons (the SI unit of force). A “patriotic” unit of electric current would start with a definition in terms of feet and pounds-of-force instead. (Call it the franklin, after Benjamin Franklin.) One would need a similar accommodation to arrive at a “patriotic” unit of luminous intensity. (Call that the patriotic candle.)

Conclusion

In 2016, and again in 2024, Americans elected a President who believed in America as an exceptional country. If Americans are going to embrace their exceptionalism, then they should embrace it in every context that could possibly matter. That the United States has never managed to switch measurement systems in more than two centuries, cannot be an accident. That’s one reason to retain, and expand, the system of measurement that has served us well for those two centuries.

The use of ratios other than powers of ten to convert between and among different applications is not a good reason to abandon the American system. If decimal conversion is so important, why do astronomers still measure stellar and planetary distances in astronomical units, light-years, and parsecs? The answer is that the choice of conversion ratios is far less important than is their consistency within the system. Abandoning decimal-power ratios is a small price to pay to retain appropriateness of various units in various applications. Put another way: is it worth remembering that 5,280 feet make a mile to retain a definition of a mile as a thousand human paces? Yes.

At a minimum, President Trump should resist, roll back, and cancel any further attempt at metrication of the American people. And at maximum, the President should consider extending an American Patriotic Measurement System to all quantities, not merely time, length, mass, temperature, and their derivatives.

Link to:

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/07/11/editorial/talk/measurement-american-patriotism/

Video:

Joe Scott’s history of attempts at American metrication:

https://thatjoescott.com/2023/09/25/the-many-times-the-us-tried-to-go-metric/

Declarations of Truth:

https://x.com/DecTruth

Declarations of Truth Locals Community:

https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/

Conservative News and Views:

https://cnav.news/

Clixnet Media

https://clixnet.com/

Read full Article

Terry A Hurlbut@Temlakos

July 10, 2025

Elon Musk and his third party

Elon Musk has packed up his marbles and gone home – or some might say he’s lost his marbles. Over last weekend, he announced the formation of a new party – a third party. He calls it the America Party, and insists it will be a centrist party. In fact his plan clearly is to help Democrats “flip” the House and Senate. That’s his plan – but he very likely cannot carry that plan out. Or at least, the Republicans don’t have to let him.

Elon Musk new party announcement almost lost in the news cycle

As it happened, only through his stubbornness are we still talking about Musk or his new Party. On the very weekend in which he made his announcement, devastating floods struck the Texas Hill Country. More than 100 people are dead, and, at least in Kerr County, Texas, the rest are too busy even to think about politics. (Those that are thinking about politics, are mainly expressing bitter resentment at non-Hill-Country residents making callous observations about how they vote, and sharing highly dubious theories as to the ultimate causes of the floods.)

Let us close the curtain of charity on the rest of the scene.

Samuel L. Clemens

But Musk managed to keep his new Party in the news, after President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino blew the announcement about the Epstein Files. No one but Georgia Ostrich Erick-Woods Erickson can possibly believe that there was never anything to see in those files. The defensive attitude of all four officials has given Elon Musk all the excuse he needs to accuse anyone close to Trump who pooh-poohs his new Party of bearing guilty mention in those files.

(CNAV believes that the same people who had Epstein murdered in his cell, destroyed the files. But Jim Hoft and Wayne Allen Root at The Gateway Pundit have their own investigation open. So has every prominent conservative YouTube influencer.)

What does the America Party resemble and for what does it stand?

Eric L. Daugherty of Florida Voice News broke the story last Saturday.

🚨 BREAKING - IT’S OFFICIAL: Elon Musk creates the “America Party” following conclusion of his poll on X.

“Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.”

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941585595488403861

Mark Mitchell at Rasmussen Reports noted immediately that Musk’s “poll” was unscientific. He didn’t even vet his sample to exclude noncitizens, nonresidents, and unlikely voters in American elections. (Like all social media, X has an international user base.)

From the start, Musk hints that his Party will field candidates in a select number of close races.

🚨 BREAKING: Elon Musk announces his new "America Party" will be "extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield." This could mean Elon plans to field candidates and pour funds only into very specific districts/races.

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941616303896191052

In other words, spoilers. Lately, Musk has disclaimed any plans to field a candidate for President in 2028.

🚨 BREAKING: Elon Musk suggests his new America Party will not back a candidate for president in 2028, avoiding potential electoral disaster for Republicans in swing states.

The post from Scott Adams, shared by Musk, further predicts Musk will target specific congressmen or senators, which could give the GOP a way to "get past politics to solutions the country wants and needs, such as deficit reduction."

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941920472050061818

An FEC filing appeared, listing an Indian, Vaibhav Taneja, as Treasurer, Custodian of Records, and form signatory. The “Red Eagle Patriot” snidely observed that Musk was “us[ing] the H1B [visa] system to staff [the party].”

https://x.com/RedEaglePatriot/status/1941899673502974011

Almost at once, Musk disavowed the filing.

The filing is false and has been reported as such to the FEC.

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1942014656505155674

As always, should you or any member of your [Impossible Missions] Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

Voice on the tape giving mission orders on the CBS-TV show Mission: Impossible

Daugherty quoted Musk on these planks of the proposed America Party platform:

🚨 JUST IN: Elon Musk confirms his new "America Party" platform will be "centrist" on most issues, and specific policies will be:

- Reduce debt, responsible spending only

- Modernize military with ai/robotics

- Pro-tech, accelerate to win in ai

- Less regulation across board but especially in energy

- Free speech

- Pro natalist

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941617503320371695

Another influencer gave this tart observation of what the above likely means:

Elon Musk’s Party Platform:

- Reopen the border

- Globalist free trade that sends factory jobs to China

- Regime change in South Africa

- Cut Social Security and Medicaid

- Green New Deal solar and wind incentives

- Subsidies for Tesla’s electric cars

- Carbon tax

https://x.com/TheClassicalCon/status/1941592826300834094

Reaction to the announcement has been swift and brutal. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNN that the working principles of Musk’s signature contribution, the “Department” of Government Efficiency, were and are far more popular than the man himself.

🚨 Holy SMOKES: Scott Bessent with a message for Elon Musk...

"The principles of DOGE were very popular. If you looked at the polling, Elon was NOT."

"Those Board of Directors did not like this announcement [of a new party] yesterday."

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941852827652862170

CNN token conservative Scott Jennings warned Musk explicitly that the new Party could divide conservatives.

🚨 BREAKING: Scott Jennings tells Elon Musk his party could divide conservatives.

"You may be dividing the forces of people who want to save Western civilization to the benefit of the people who don't."

"And so to the extent that this effort would divide conservatives and Republicans against each other, that wouldn't be helpful, because it would leave the country to people who want unfettered immigration, don't share your fiscal views and so on and so forth."

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941858508091044262

Is Musk being self-serving?

The Red Eagle Patriot observed that in America, third parties do not work.

A third party does not work in a two party system. You don't have to like it, but your best course of action is to infiltrate/reform one of our 2 major parties. It's also why the GOP, while not perfect, is nearly unrecognizable compared to what it was 20 years ago.

https://x.com/RedEaglePatriot/status/1941592527712264403

As evidence, he cited H. Ross Perot’s 1992 Reform Party, which handed the Presidency to Bill Clinton. Perot’s motives were blatantly self-serving; he hoped to land a contract for his Electronic Data Services company with Hillarycare. (Perot lost out, not only because Hillarycare didn’t happen, but likely because Hillary Clinton would never have given him such a contract.) Likewise, Musk resents the end to the Electric Vehicle Mandate and the corollary end to $7500 per vehicle tax write-offs.

The Big Beautiful Bill actually reduces the current deficit compared to the actual baseline (more $$$ in spending cuts than in new tax cuts). Elon should be happy about that, but since it cuts EV subsidies, he forms a new party to get 0.2% of the vote! Hilarious.

https://x.com/RedEaglePatriot/status/1941662028965224724

For more information, play this video.

Analysis

First, let us examine the platform as Musk avowed it. Reduce debt with responsible spending only? As Red Eagle pointed out, HR 1 (the center of the quarrel) does that.

The promotion of artificial intelligence became problematic at about the same time as Musk’s announcement. His Grok 4 AI engine started spewing out “conspiratorial antisemitic” content. (Shades of Tsar Aleksandr III’s Protocols!) That’s so embarrassing that X CEO Linda Yaccarino is resigning over it. Musk blames certain users for manipulating the engine. Indeed at least one prominent X user, Andrew Torba, has boasted of such manipulation. But an AI subject to such manipulation is not the kind of engine we want in charge of weapons systems or anything else.

Less regulation across the board? Trump is delivering on that. Free speech? Trump’s officials have settled all remaining free-speech cases involving the government and social media.

Now as to pro-natalist policy: Musk has said nothing about his policy prescriptions along this line. Child tax credits will not suffice; those who have no taxes to pay, get no credit as a general rule. “Refundable” tax credits would violate another Musk precept: reducing the debt. But the late Will Durant, in The Story of Civilization, highlighted the most important influence.

Religion attends the birth of civilization; philosophy accompanies it to its grave.

For evidence, observe the Old Order Amish, the most thriving sub-population in America today. But Musk has a problem: he’s a stone-cold atheist, believer in evolution, and acceptor of a super-annuated universe. This is not a pro-natalist position.

The accusations

The accusations against Musk, beyond the pettiness of his position, deserve closer attention. “Reopen the border” isn’t quite accurate. The H1B visa program is definitely exploitative but, so far, is not the high-volume problem that illegal immigration is. “Globalist free trade that sends factory jobs to China” might be accurate at that. Elon doesn’t seem to recognize how vulnerable a country without its own industrial base can be. “Regime change in South Africa” is a facile assumption depending solely on Musk’s origins. The recent admission of a group of Afrikaners fleeing systematic “unofficial murder” in South Africa does not equate to declaring war against that country. And “cut Social Security and Medicaid” distorts the actual plan to make illegal aliens ineligible for those programs.

But the other three accusations might lie at the heart of Musk’s opposition to Trump’s program. He genuinely believes that the only legitimate electric power is solar and wind power, with gigantic batteries to store it at night and during periods of calm. More to the point, losing the $7500 per vehicle subsidy alone explains his bitterness with the Trump administration.

This new party need not have any practical effect. Conservative influencers will likely force the administration’s hand on the Epstein affair, on which the Democrats have been strangely silent. (Pam Bondi, who has blundered worst of all, should resign.) Elon has his own embarrassment with the Grok affair. These things, plus the selection of more dynamic Republican candidates, can neutralize this third-party threat.

Link to :

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/07/10/editorial/talk/elon-musk-third-party/

Video:

Posts on X about Musk’s Party:

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941585595488403861

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941616303896191052

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941920472050061818

https://x.com/RedEaglePatriot/status/1941899673502974011

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1942014656505155674

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941617503320371695

https://x.com/TheClassicalCon/status/1941592826300834094

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941852827652862170

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1941858508091044262

https://x.com/RedEaglePatriot/status/1941592527712264403

https://x.com/RedEaglePatriot/status/1941662028965224724

Red Eagle video:

Declarations of Truth:

https://x.com/DecTruth

Declarations of Truth Locals Community:

https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/

Conservative News and Views:

https://cnav.news/

Clixnet Media

https://clixnet.com/

Read full Article

Terry A Hurlbut@Temlakos

June 29, 2025

Universal injunctions – forbidden!

On the last Friday of its term, the United States Supreme Court finally laid down the law on universal injunctions. Simply put, the Court forbids the federal trial bench – the District Court judges – to issue them. From now on, anyone seeking an injunction with nationwide import must file a class action – the old-fashioned way. Most commentators have totally missed the significance of this ruling, because everyone’s concentrating on the cases behind the consolidated Applications for Stay that President Donald J. Trump filed. This ruling – a rare instance of a full-blown Battle of Opinions on an application for stay, not a writ of certiorari – carries implications far beyond “birthright citizenship,” the subject matter of the cases at hand. The Court’s Institutionalists have finally gotten fed up with trial judges usurping their authority, and have now reasserted it. No one can properly understand the ruling, apart from that fact.

The actual makeup of the present Court

To understand what happened last Friday, remember that the Court does not have only two blocs, the conservative and the liberal. Instead, it has three:

Originalists – Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito and Neil Gorsuch (in order of seniority of service),
Equitarians – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and
Institutionalists – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Originalists need little introduction to understand their role and their desires in the cases they review. Equitarians try to assert equity powers that the Supreme Court does not have. (They also sympathize with trial judges, who do have equity powers, when said trial judges abuse those powers.)

Institutionalists have only one loyalty: to the institution that we call “Supreme Court of the United States of America.” To a lesser degree, they extend their loyalty to the entire national judiciary. Anything that threatens the authority or the reputation of the national judiciary, and/or the Supreme Court, is their enemy.

In the present three-bloc structure of the Court, the Institutionalists rule. Rarely do the Institutionalists split on any given case. That they side more often with the Originalists than with the Equitarians, merely reflects the confluence of interests of Institutionalists and Originalists in most cases. Sometimes – as in FCC v. Consumers’ Research, also decided Friday – the Institutionalists side the Equitarians. But not often – and definitely not in the three cases at hand.

Three universal injunctions at issue

The cases at hand are named Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, versus:

CASA (Central American Solidarity Association),
State of Washington, and
State of New Jersey.

These three cases all concern the notion of “birthright citizenship.” According to it, any person born on American soil, regardless of the citizenship or residency status of mother or father, is a citizen. The Latin phrase for this principle is jus soli – the Law of the Soil. But contrary to popular belief, jus soli is not a holding of Roman law. Jus sanguinis (whereby a born person inherits the citizenship of his or her parents) is a part of Roman law.

President Donald Trump sought to abolish birthright citizenship with his Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” Almost at once, CASA and the States of Washington and New Jersey sued, both on their own behalf and in behalf of several pregnant women who hoped to have citizenship extended automatically to their children as soon as they were born. These birth tourists have two interests in acquiring citizenship for their children by these means:

Defined charitable benefits the government extends to citizens, and
A means by which the “birth tourists” involved can obtain citizenship for themselves.

The governments of Washington and New Jersey apparently want to protect Democratic Party control of their States. Mendicants overwhelmingly vote Democratic. CASA has a conflict of interest. “Central American solidarity,” by definition, cannot square with patriotism.

Applications for partial stay of the universal injunctions

President Trump filed an application for partial stay of each of the universal injunctions in those three cases. Those cases found their way to the Supreme Court. (Docket Nos. 24A884, 24A885, 24A886.) On May 15, 2025, the Court took the unusual step of hearing oral argument on those three applications. That step was unusual because the Court does not ordinarily hear argument on applications for stay. Furthermore, the Court does not hear argument on any kind of case in the month of May.

The argument transcript should have given everyone the vital clue to Friday’s decision. In particular, Justice Thomas – who, as senior serving (and living) Justice, always opens questions at oral argument – asked Solicitor General D. John Sauer to expound on the history of universal injunctions. Mr. Sauer addressed a specific analogy upon which the lower courts relied: a bill of peace in English courts. Sauer argued – and Thomas accepted – that class actions are the modern analogs of bills of peace.

In fact, the Court has been down this road before. Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. ____ (2018). That was another immigration-related case, involving the barring of nationals from foreign countries that refused to provide enough information to “vet” said nationals. The Court voted 5-4 to uphold President Trump (first term) in that matter. More to the point, that case also had involved a universal injunction. Justice Thomas had warned then that the Court would have to review universal injunctions, as to their appropriateness, propriety – and authorization.

The main opinion forbids universal injunctions

Justice Amy Coney Barrett – most junior in age and second most junior in service – delivered the opinion of the Court. As plainly as she could write, she said universal injunctions have no authorization in the Judiciary Act of 1789. (This is the act that first “ordained and established” the first “inferior courts” according to Article III.) The Judiciary Act grants the equity powers the District Courts enjoy. Those powers extend only to the grant of complete relief to particular plaintiffs before the court in question. Universal relief is not a valid equity power under the Judiciary Act.

In particular, in the immediate post-colonial era, individuals brought suit against other individuals. And, like Justice Thomas before her (in his concurrence in Hawaii), she compares bills of peace to class actions.

Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure lays out what class actions are, who may file them, and how to handle them. Rule 23(a) sets out the prerequisites of all class actions:

One or more members of a class may sue or be sued as representative parties on behalf of all members only if:

(1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable;

(2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class;

(3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class; and

(4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.

Barrett (and her colleague Justice Kavanaugh, concurring) cite Rule 23(b)(2), which reads:

A class action may be maintained if Rule 23(a) is satisfied and if … the party opposing the class has acted or refused to act on grounds that apply generally to the class, so that final injunctive relief or corresponding declaratory relief is appropriate respecting the class as a whole.

In this case, the opposing party is President Trump, and his action – EO 14160 – applies generally to a hypothetical class. Indeed Justice Kavanaugh reminded the respondents that they can go back to their trial courts and seek class certification.

Dissenting opinions

Barrett astutely observed that the respondents were trying to work around this rule. So also did Justice Sotomayor, who breathlessly (in dissent) said,

The Court’s decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution.

In fact, the bulk of Sotomayor’s dissent is a defense, not of universal injunctions but of birthright citizenship itself. Neither Barrett nor either of the concurring Justices (Thomas and Kavanaugh) addressed that issue. The only matter before the Supreme Court in those cases was the idea of universal injunctions.

So why did Sotomayor (and Jackson) spend so much time defending birthright citizenship? Why did they boast that the administration did not seek a stay or vacatur of the injunctions as applied to particular pregnant women? Perhaps because they knew that a Rule 23 class will be inherently more difficult to certify. And perhaps because they know that the merits might not favor birthright citizenship nearly as much as they suppose.

Sotomayor doesn’t seem to realize how socialistic she sounds. She laments that children ultimately denied citizenship will lose “critical public services, like [Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program] and Medicaid.” If that’s all that citizenship means to Justice Sotomayor, that’s all the more reason to question the wisdom of her appointment to the Court. Then she suggests American-born children would be stateless. Not so. Those children would be citizens or subjects of the nation-state of their mothers.

But here Sotomayor plumbs the depths of absurdity:

If allowed to take effect, the Order may even wrench newborns from the arms of parents lawfully in the United States, for it purports to strip citizenship from the children of parents legally present on a temporary basis… Those newborns could face deportation, even as their parents remain lawfully in the country.

No one has so alleged. All that would happen is that the children would have to go back when their parents’ visas have expired.

The Jackson dissent

Justice Jackson dismisses the analysis of English court rules in the Framing era as “a smokescreen.” All that matters to her is whether a federal court can “order the Executive to follow the law.” She insists that this is, and by right ought to be, the prerogative of any federal court at any level.

Here Jackson descends to a colloquialism totally unbecoming a judge:

As I understand the concern, in this clash over the respective powers of two coordinate branches of Government, the majority sees a power grab—but not by a presumably lawless Executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the Constitution. Instead, to the majority, the power-hungry actors are . . . (wait for it) . . . the district courts.

Wait for it!? Social-media influencers use that expression. Judges and Justices do not – or did not until now.

In fact the usurpation of authority by lower courts lies at the heart of the matter before the Supreme Court. Again, the Institutionalists finally decided that they could no longer tolerate district courts acting like the Supreme Court they’re not.

Nor could the Institutionalists tolerate district courts bringing the entire national judiciary into disrepute. Barrett set a new record of tartness in chiding her colleague:

We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.

To demonstrate this, Barrett cites the very case that established the principle of judicial review. Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803). Marbury had sought a writ of mandamus against James Madison – and the Court refused the request. They concluded that they hadn’t the authority so to act – and no Act of Congress could give them that authority. In other words, Barrett sent Jackson back, not merely to law school, but to high school, to re-learn civics.

The future of universal injunctions – and birthright citizenship

To repeat, universal injunctions have no future. No longer may judges issue injunctions out of their jurisdiction – not without first certifying an action-taking class. To do that, judges will have to take briefings and hold hearings on certification of classes, per Rule 23. (Note that Ben Weingarten of The Federalist observed that then-President Joe Biden also objected to universal injunctions. The shoe is clearly squeezing the other foot.)

Contrary to the breathless dissents on this partial stay, the question of birthright citizenship remains to decide. CNAV believes that the CASA entity will recruit and proceed to certify a class of persons born to non-citizen and non-permanent-lawful-resident parents. The various foundations in the George Soros financial empire will see to this.

The Babin Bill

As CNAV predicted, Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) did introduce a bill to define specifically who is “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” for purposes of citizenship by birth. His Birthright Citizenship Act of 2025 (H.R. 569) would set limits on birthright citizenship on lines similar to those on Trump’s EO 14160. His bill, now with 64 co-sponsors, is sitting in the Judiciary Committee. The list of co-sponsors reads like a Who’s Who of Republicans in the news for supporting Trump’s program. They include ten Judiciary Committee members and one freshman from Virginia (Rep. John J. McGuire of Virginia’s Fifth District).

This is the only sure method of revoking birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. It would not overrule the famous Wong case, because both it and EO 14160 carve out exceptions for children of lawful permanent residents. But CNAV sees no reason why a bill to limit even these children to lawful permanent residency status of their own would be unconstitutional. The Wong court declared that Congress had failed to act. When Congress does act, the Institutionalists are more likely to recognize such an act as valid. They might not want to recognize EO 14160 as valid, because Presidents execute law but do not make it.

H.R. 569 is the real sleeper in this drama. The minute Alex Soros (George’s son) announces a Birthright Citizenship Legal Defense Fund, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) should put H.R. 569 on the House Judiciary Committee calendar.

Link to:

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/06/29/news/universal-injunctions-forbidden/

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