The big story heading into the week ahead is going to be the Supreme Court, which will hear oral argument in a number of important cases. We focus on two of them:
Those two cases seem to me to be the most important upcoming stories in the space we explore in this newsletter, the intersection of law and politics. But there is obviously a lot more on tap. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we handle this constant onslaught of news—there are so many important developments every day that it’s more than we can really take in. Back in the quaint days when it was just one story at a time, we could get our arms around the facts and understand what they meant. Lately, that’s become much more difficult, so I’ve been trying to devise strategies that will help us process it all and take away meaning, not just headlines. I had been contemplating, on nights like tonight, breaking out the stories into tiers and writing to you, as I do tonight, that the Supreme Court stories are the most important, but that there is also a second tier of stories that matter; that you should devote time to if you can. But there are more than two tiers of stores on a night like tonight, and on many nights. That point was driven home to me this evening when I spoke with a wonderful audience in Brunswick, Maine, and one of the audience questions was about White House envoy Steve Witkoff and the possibility of financial self-dealing. Witkoff and Jared Kushner are negotiating with Russian and Ukrainian representatives to end the war, and the questioner’s concern was that given their business connections, there was the possibility of financial self-dealing. It’s a legitimate concern and an underreported story that many people aren’t even aware of. The deluge of questionable behavior with this administration continues to be a feature, not a bug. It’s hard to sustain attention on the specifics of any one incident when there is so much taking place. Trump pardoned former Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar, and then lashed out at him for saying he’d run again as a Democrat rather than pay Trump back for the pardon by switching parties. That’s not the only questionable pardon. There’s the way the Trump family is making money in the Crypto market. And so much more. So tonight, as we focus on the most important story ahead, the Supreme Court, and touch on some of the other issues I expect we’ll be discussing this week, I wanted to ask all of you how you respond to this most important question I’ve been considering: How do we consume the news, instead of letting it consume us? Onto the Court.
The issue in Trump v. Slaughter is whether President Trump’s firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter violates the Constitution’s separation of powers and if the Supreme Court should overturn its 1935 precedent in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. (The D.C. Circuit found a way to gut Humprey’s Executor without overruling it—which only the Supreme Court can do—in a decision we discussed here last week). We may get a tip-off during oral argument as to whether there are Supreme Court justices who prefer taking that path to outright reversal of a longstanding precedent. The Court has unabashedly bulked up the presidency at the expense of other branches of government and American citizens (like they did in last week’s Texas gerrymandering shadow docket ruling). They’ve seemed inclined to do away with Humprey’s Executor for as long as we’ve been discussing it. This is their opportunity. NRSC v. FEC, the campaign finance case, will be heard on December 9. The case was brought by Republicans in an effort to make it easier for big money donors to exert even more significant influence over the outcome of elections. Republican interests are challenging limits on coordinated party expenditures, arguing that they violate the First Amendment. Marc Elias will be one of the lawyers arguing against this effort to further erode campaign finance laws. He represents Democratic groups that intervened in the case because the Justice Department isn’t defending long-established rules that prevent campaigns from coordinating spending with political parties. Marc explained it like this in Democracy Docket, his newsletter, last week: “Normally, it is the job of the solicitor general to defend federal law in the Supreme Court. But after Trump took office, the Department of Justice — including the solicitor general — switched sides and is now attacking the very law it defended under both Democratic and Republican presidents for 50 years. To fill this void, the national Democratic Party stepped in to defend the law.” Citizens United made it possible to inject dark money into politics. Depending on how the Court decides this case, the partition campaign finance law injects between parties and candidates when it comes to spending may become a thing of the past as well.None of this is good for everyday Americans who don’t have millions of dollars to throw at candidates and only want them to govern in ways that benefits people at least as much as large corporations. Beyond the Court, the other issues we will be paying attention to this week: Last week, Secretary of Defense Hegseth and Admiral Bradley continued defending lethal strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats. The Admiral told lawmakers, during a trip to Capitol Hill, that everyone on alleged boat that was destroyed on September 2 was on a list of military targets. He said U.S. intelligence had identified the 11 people on the boat and determined the military was authorized to kill them as part of Trump’s campaign against alleged drug-smuggling vessels. That misses the point. These men were shipwrecked. Our own rules prohibit killing shipwrecked men, even if we are at war. But we aren’t.  Whether these men were on a list or not is irrelevant THERE. IS. NO. JUSTIFICATION. FOR. KILLING. SHIPWRECKED. MEN. Sun, 07 Dec 2025 04:17:14 GMT View on BlueskyMany Republicans seemed satisfied with the administration’s response. Something we can all do is keep demanding that Congress hold hearings to get to the bottom of what is happening here, instead of giving DoD an easy out and no oversight. The New York Times has sued the Pentagon after press corp members were required to surrender their passes unless they agreed they wouldn’t look at the administration’s military operations too closely. That’s awfully interesting in light of the “narcoterrorism” stories we’ve been following. The lawsuit alleges that the government has violated the First and Fifth amendments, characterizing it “an attempt to exert control over reporting the government dislikes.”
The Times is asking the court to declaring the new Pentagon press policy unlawful and unconstitutional and permanently enjoin its enforcement. They want the government to be forced to reinstate the press passes their reporters lost. The Washington Post reported that a senior attorney at the New York Times, who spoke anonymously, said, “It shouldn’t be that the press pass becomes a shackle…The press pass should be a badge that allows you to do more, not less.” The Founding Fathers had strong view on this subject and would undoubtedly have agreed. Will James Comey and Tish James be reindicted? Trump U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsay Halligan has declined to step aside after a judge ruled her appointment didn’t pass muster. There are reports the investigations continue. But prosecutors who have trouble clearing the low bar of probable cause to indict a case should think carefully about what that portends for their ability to convince a trial jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that they aren’t makes these case look like what they’ve been labeled as all along—revenge prosecutions, not legitimate ones. Last week the Trump administration removed two national holidays, MLK’s birthday and Juneteenth) as free entry days to National Parks. Both holidays celebrate Black history and contributions to our country. Trump decreed that…his birthday would be a free day instead. Sometimes, there are no words. This is actually real. No other living president has stooped to this sort of cult level self-appreciation, and certainly not at the expense of the contributions of other Americans to our nation. It’s uniquely Trumpian. But this is the level of pettiness at which this administration is now operating. Get ready for another difficult, disturbing week. We’re in this together, Joyce You're currently a free subscriber to Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance . For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Sunday, December 7, 2025
The Week Ahead
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