On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an important ruling regarding the interpretation of the definition of "waters of the United States" (WOTUS) in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency that stopped unconstitutional overreach by the federal government in its tracks. National Review explained:

In Sackett, the EPA argued that the Court should defer to the agency’s “broad and unqualified” reading of WOTUS, such that it might cover all the water in the country. The only limiting principle is a “nexus” test nowhere found in the statute, requiring an assessment of aggregate effects of all “similarly situated” waters on the local ecosystem of a body of water that is or could be navigable. Whatever that is, it is not law. All nine justices were unanimous in rejecting the EPA’s “nexus” test. The Court thus finally ruled in favor of property owners who had been fighting the agency for 19 years over whether they could move dirt and rock onto water that was on the opposite side of a road from a non-navigable creek that feeds into a once-navigable lake, on the theory that the aggregate effect of the Sacketts’ body of water when combined with an unconnected fen would harm the lake.

On Wednesday, the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections held a hearing on American titled, "American Confidence in Elections: Ensuring Every Eligible American has the Opportunity to Vote – and for their Vote to Count According to Law." Subcommittee Chair Laurel Lee kicked off the hearing, setting the stage for a robust discussion on measures to improve voter confidence.

At today's #ACEAct Elections Subcommittee hearing, Chair @RepLaurelLee: While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, there are steps states can take to boost voter confidence and improve voter integrity.

Watch her full opening statement here ⬇️https://t.co/5S9UMCkTrO

— House Admin. Committee GOP (@HouseAdmin) May 24, 2023

Our condolences to the family of C. Boyden Gray on his passing. He was a friend to the conservative legal movement and a defender of the rule of law. Ambassador Boyden Gray spoke at the RNLA National Policy Conference often, most recently in 2021. But we remember him best as the 2008 recipient of the Hon. Edwin Meese III Award and for giving the keynote address at our 2008 National Policy Conference. (Pictured below with fellow Meese Award winner Dick Wiley.)

Last Friday, the Biden Border Crisis reached a new stage with the expiration of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that used public health authority to quell immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Biden Administration claims that it will be tougher on border issues moving forward, but reality shows otherwise. Former Trump Department of Homeland Security officials explained:

Beginning on Friday, all illegal aliens apprehended at the southern border will be put into Title 8 immigration proceedings and will be subject to "expedited removal." Though the Biden administration makes this sound like an effective enforcement policy, it is merely an optical misdirection. 

What the administration is not telling the American people is that there is a glaring loophole in expedited removal that the cartels coach aliens to exploit — the ability to claim asylum regardless of how dubious the claim. 

Republican attorneys general are fighting back against the disastrous border policies being implemented by the Biden Administration.

Special Counsel John Durham has completed his probe into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation which morphed into the broader Trump-Russia probe by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The report minced no words in its criticism of the FBI and DOJ:

"Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report," the report said.

In When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives, Heather Mac Donald addresses the causes of racial disparities in outcomes in education, culture, and other areas. She expertly and with exhaustive research makes the case that the true cause of outcome disparities is not what has become a conventional wisdom of racism, but rather, the gap in academic skills and educational opportunities between black and white Americans.

Mac Donald traces the beginning of the racism conventional wisdom to the 1971 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power. Prior to Griggs, only deliberate and intentional discrimination stated a claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and similar statutes. In Griggs, the Court adopted a disparate impact theory, finding for the first time that measuring outcomes rather than intent could create liability for discrimination. As Mac Donald reports, disparate impact analysis now pervades not just the law, but all of culture. Indeed, she writes, “The concept of disparate impact is destroying America’s core institutions in the name of inviting invented racism.”

Yesterday’s Senate Judiciary “Supreme Court Ethics Reform” hearing had three Senators who took the spotlight, representing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good

The good was Republican Senator John Kennedy who totally destroyed Democrat witness Kedric Payne of the Campaign Legal Center. 

Senator Kennedy slams the biased Twitter posts of a key witness, who called some justices "politicians in robes who thrive in a system where access and influence are for sale" and said Chief Justice John Roberts was "a disgrace." pic.twitter.com/6DLEXqf1oW

— The Article III Project (A3P) (@Article3Project) May 2, 2023

Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, the Democrat Party, and their media sycophants have been trying to build a case against Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices leading up to Durbin’s "Supreme Court Ethics Reform" hearing on Tuesday. This is part of the Democrats' long term effort to undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, but the reality is it may be undermining Durbin’s legitimacy. 

First off, it is worth noting that all nine Supreme Court Justices pushed back against the Durbin’s efforts:

All nine justices, in a rare step, on Tuesday released a joint statement reaffirming their voluntary adherence to a general code of conduct but rebutting proposals for independent oversight, mandatory compliance with ethics rules and greater transparency in cases of recusal.

The implication, though not expressly stated, is that the court unanimously rejects legislation proposed by Democrats seeking to impose on the justices the same ethics obligations applied to all other federal judges. . . .

"If the full Court or any subset of the Court were to review the recusal decisions of individual justices," they wrote, "it would create an undesirable situation in which the Court could affect the outcome of a case by selecting who among its members may participate."

Later, they added that public disclosure of the basis for recusal could "encourage strategic behavior by lawyers who may seek to prompt recusals in future cases" by framing them a certain way in an attempt to disqualify a particular member of the court.

Last week was a great example of the media bias in Election Integrity.  A big story was not reported and a non-story was promoted.  First, what should have been big news:

“[Virginia Department of Elections’] examined its data sharing relationship with the Virginia Department of Health. After ELECT requested a review of all VDH death records going back to 1960, VDH discovered death records that had not been previously shared with ELECT. After additional data analysis by ELECT staff, 18,990 records of registered voters were identified and will be sent to local registrars for processing in the coming week.  As a result of these findings and process improvements, citizens can expect to see a significant number of names removed from Virginia’s voter rolls.

As a few conservative outlets like RedState, who reported on this, concluded:

The change seems especially important, given a major Department of Elections confession. Apparently, administrators haven’t been sticklers for accuracy.  . . .

It would certainly be nice if only those who are alive could vote. Perhaps it would lessen concerns that American voting is in a state south of perfect integrity.

A new report from The Heritage Foundation once again proves that the Left's "voter suppression" narrative is a myth. The report, entitled "The Latest Election Data Show—Once Again—That 'Voter Suppression' Claim Is Just Propaganda," explores how data over several election cycles illustrates that increased voter integrity measures leads to greater confidence in the election system, and in turn, increases voter turnout. Voter ID laws are a perfect example of this trend: