The Trump-Musk Divorce / The Supreme Court's Busy June
25:01 Share

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

The Supreme Court issues four unanimous rulings, including a couple touching on culture war issues with majority opinions for the court by Justice Katonji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor.

Meantime, the Elon Musk and Donald Trump divorce starts to get ugly with Musk calling for the impeachment of President Trump and his replacement by Vice President J.D. Vance. What sparked this feud and will it affect or potentially derail the one big, beautiful bill that is now sitting in the Senate?

Welcome. I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleague on the editorial page, columnist Kim Strassel. Happy Friday to you, Kim.

On Thursday, there was a slew of rulings from the Supreme Court trying to clear up and clean out some of these cases on its docket as we get toward the middle of the summer here, the July break that the Supreme Court generally takes before its next term begins.

And out of these rulings, a couple of them that grabbed my eye. One of them was a case, Kim, on so-called reverse discrimination. This is a state employee in Ohio who says that she's straight and she had a gay boss and she was passed over for a couple of less qualified gay job candidates.

And to be clear, the state of Ohio denies that it discriminated against her, says that the supervisor did not even know the sexual orientations of these employees when these decisions were made. But notable that the question in this case was the legal bar for this kind of a complaint, because the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said that if you are a member of a majority group

and you are alleging discrimination, you have to show something extra than other plaintiffs might have to, that you have to show, you have to substantiate, quote, the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority, unquote. And so notable here, you have nine justices, Justice Katonji Brown Jackson writing, saying that

There is not a different standard in discrimination cases based on the race, the sex, or the sexual orientation of the person who is coming to court and saying they've been harmed. Yeah, the proper context for this, I would put it in the same category, a continuation in some ways of what the court began with a couple of years ago with Students for Fair Admissions and its decision in that case, which was essentially saying that you can't

essentially discriminate against majority categories who are trying to get into a university by giving special advantages to the minority. And now we're seeing an extension of that to a certain degree in employment law. And what was notable here is that Justice Jackson, she based her ruling on statutory law, in particular 1964 Civil Rights Act,

which she says very clearly writes out in the text that we afford the same protections for every, quote, individual. We do not make distinctions between minority. Are you a minority individual? Are you a majority group? And as a result, she writes that Congress left no room

to impose special requirements on who gets to make sure they're not discriminated against. I thought even more interesting was a Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch concurrence that went even further in this. And in their concurrence, they say that

they would go even farther and that this goes beyond just the statutory question, but to a constitutional guarantee of equal protection for every American. And they also brought up the fact that this is just slippery territory, Kyle, when you start to talk about majorities and minorities. And for instance, Clarence Thomas notes that Black employees in Detroit are the majority of

And so how do you come up with majority or minority there? He also notes that men are a minority in the broader United States public, but they are a majority in many fields, for instance, in construction workers. So it can get really thorny if you're going to start deciding who in any situation might be majority or minority. Much cleaner to just say, hey, let's not discriminate against any individuals.

Another example that he gave was in religious discrimination cases. Are you going to decide, is a judge supposed to decide that somebody who is Catholic and comes to court, is that a minority religion or is that part of a larger Christian majority? I mean, theological arguments that don't belong in court. And that is part of what Justice Clarence Thomas said. An old theme of his is that when judges start making up tests, these are the kinds of difficult questions that

that they end up giving to themselves. A second case that I thought was notable, also a unanimous case, this one is Catholic Charities Bureau versus Wisconsin. And this involved a tax exemption that the state of Wisconsin gives. Churches in Wisconsin do not have to pay into the state's unemployment insurance system.

And that exemption also extends to nonprofits that are controlled by churches and that are run primarily for religious purposes. So the argument in this case was the Diocese of Superior Wisconsin is exempt from this unemployment tax.

But the diocese also runs this Catholic Charities Bureau, and it does all sorts of things, good works, services for the disabled, but it doesn't proselytize in those services. It doesn't restrict them based on religion. Anybody can come and get the services, the charity that Catholic Charities is offering. And so on that basis, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that Catholic Charities Bureau is not run primarily for religious purposes.

Kim, it's almost a funny argument when you put it that way. And notably, again, a 9-0 unanimous opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court. This one is Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing and saying that the First Amendment is

does not allow that kind of a distinction by the state of Wisconsin. Yeah, I think you'll really understand how wild or disturbing this Wisconsin Supreme Court decision was. It's worthwhile quoting a couple of things that they said. They noted when talking about this Catholic Charities arm that, quote, their activities are secular in nature, end quote, because apparently they were providing services to disabled people.

And then they also noted that the problem here was that the charity did not, quote, attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith, end quote. So think about that for a minute. Unless you are out there basically saying you can't have this free meal unless you get baptized or unless you say a prayer with me or, by the way, you disabled person here, we're not going to help you out because you didn't attend mass last week.

And we heard down the road that you might be a Protestant. And so you're not getting anything from charity. I mean, it's so fundamentally opposed to the notion of charitable work. And indeed, the Catholic nonprofits in this case did point out that they were following religious teachings.

that say you should not use charitable conduct and charitable work to proselytize as a reason or an excuse to proselytize. And there are some very deep faith components to that argument, and it's a very common precept within a lot of different religious organizations.

So Sonia Sotomayor called this a violation of the First Amendment, and she termed it a paradigmatic form of denominational discrimination. We had another Thomas concurrence in that case, actually writing that it was simply wrong, he felt, on a more basic level to say that a charity was separate from a church.

based solely on the corporate structure, as it were, and the fact that it had a different arm. But take that as you will. I mean, this again falls into a long category of cases that the Supreme Court has been doing that I think firm up, shore up religious liberty, which has been

overdue. There could be some real consequences, interesting follow-ons from this though, Kyle. One of the arguments for those who oppose this and which got brought up in the lower court hearings was, where is the line where you then draw if you're going to come down with a ruling like this? And for instance, there are a lot of hospitals that are affiliated with

religious organizations, should they be categorized as religious nonprofits, I think there's still going to be some issues to be decided on this down the road. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.

Welcome back. One other point that I think is worth making on these cases that the Supreme Court decided on Thursday is I think many people who hear the political rhetoric these days around the Supreme Court will hear the news that the Supreme Court announced four unanimous opinions on Thursday and think that sounds odd. But really, it is not all that odd. If you go back and look at

the way that the Supreme Court decides some of these issues. In the last term, the term that ended last summer, about 46% of the cases had unanimous outcomes. And often in the debate about the Supreme Court, you hear Democrats, people who want reform, people who want to pack the court say, well, those are only the cases that don't matter. And that is not

the case either. If you go back and look at the last term, there were nine justices who ruled unanimously that Colorado could not take Donald Trump off of the presidential ballot as an insurrectionist under the 14th Amendment. There were nine justices who said that pro-life doctors could not sue the FDA. They did not have standing to bring a case trying to get the changes in the prescribing rules for the abortion pill Mifepristone.

There were nine justices on this case. The National Rifle Association sued New York, saying it was coercing insurers to stop working with gun rights groups. And nine justices said that that lawsuit could proceed. And it's true that it is not always the case. And as we get a little bit closer to the end of June and the beginning of July, we will get some of the more controversial opinions that are 6-3 decisions. Some of those are on traditional splits, liberals on one side and conservatives on the other. But

Often the conservatives are splitting their own ways or you get odd lineups in some of these cases because what they're doing, these justices are doing the law and they have their own idiosyncratic views of how they want their jurisprudence to come out and the right outcomes in some of these cases. And Kim, I think that is something that often bears repeating given how little it is sometimes said in the political debate on these questions about the Supreme Court.

Oh, you're absolutely right, Kyle. And it's just so important that that information gets out to people because I think it's reassuring to folks. It not only knocks back this very partisan argument that the court is there making decisions on the basis of politics and who's in the office, and that's just not the case. They're doing their jobs based on the law. But I think it also is very reassuring to Americans to be reminded that the

nine justices on the Supreme Court agree that there are certain bedrock principles in our system and that these are not things that we need or must fight about. But, you know, for instance, just look at the two we talked about today. These were not minor questions. They were pretty important questions of religious liberty in the one case and on discrimination and employment law in another case. And, you know,

to know that there is total unanimity on the court on these questions. Again, on the issue of discrimination or, for instance, the issue of religious liberty. I think that that is important people know. As you said, we're only just coming into the heavy period of the Supreme Court. And this is part of why people maybe end up getting a different impression is because the court often leaves those big cases to the very end, the ones that are going to be controversial.

So they always go out with this bang, right? And it's usually a 6-3, 5-4 splits on all of these. And it does, I think, make them look more divided than they are. We're going to have a couple coming up, birthright citizenship, although I'll be very curious to see what the lineup is on that. For all we know, that could be a 9-0 decision too. There's transgender medicine and procedures for minors. There's a really interesting case about

whether or not you have to provide age verification if you want to see porn sites. There's also parents who are unhappy about the reading of transgender books in libraries. There's a lot of things that are going to come up, and they might be much more closely decided. But yes, we can't say this enough, that about half of the cases, sometimes even more each year, are unanimous. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment.

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with Google Cloud, using AI to accelerate defense research for air, space, and cyberspace forces. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.

Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. Let's start with the political fireworks in Washington over the big, beautiful bill and the split, the ugly divorce now, it seems, between President Donald Trump and his one-time and not too long ago ally and advisor, Elon Musk.

head of the Department of Government Efficiency Doge operation. The split, Kim, seems to have begun with dissenting views by Musk over the big, beautiful bill, calling it an abomination, urging followers on his social site, x.com, to, quote, kill the bill. Then President Trump was saying that maybe Elon Musk has Trump derangement syndrome. And it got

Worse from there until Elon Musk last night was saying maybe we're going to cancel some Dragon rocket capsules. And Trump was saying we're going to cut off all federal contracts to Elon Musk's companies. Kim, what do you make of this very public spat? What?

First of all, who'd have thunk that this could happen, right? I was on that show on Fox yesterday and the host said, did you have this on your bingo card? I was like, absolutely. I had it on my bingo card. Two guys that have some fairly healthy egos love to escalate, you know, and punch it up a little bit and say what they think. The idea that that was going to always be a smooth relationship seemed highly unlikely to me. So look, here's what I think happened is

is that Musk, let's not forget that he spent a lot of money to get Republicans elected. And he did it in part because he believed in some big issues that he always talked about for the First Amendment. But another one was that he had become extremely worried about America's debt.

and our level of spending. And it's what inspired him to come up with this idea of a Department of Government Efficiency, and then essentially dedicate about six months of his life away from his businesses to trying to cut government spending. And then he sees the Republicans turn around, and he feels as though this bill does not go far enough or adequately enough, by the way, I completely agree with this, in cutting spending. And so he waits until he's

formally out of government, which I would argue was good manners. And then he voiced his criticism and it has gone from there. Look, I mean, I think Republicans are right. They absolutely must pass this bill for tax reasons. But Musk has a very valid point that they have not shown a lot of backbone about dealing with the

massive increases in spending that we have had since COVID. Let's listen to one of those senators, Texas Senator Ted Cruz on Fox News, trying to bridge this divide caught in the middle between these two larger than life characters. I think both of them are right. President Trump is absolutely right. We have to get this one big, beautiful bill passed and we're going to.

But Elon is absolutely right that we need to make the bill better. And I think the Senate is going to. We need to cut more spending. And I think the Senate is going to. I was in the Oval Office laying out multiple spending cuts that we could include to make this bill better. That's the outcome I hope we end up because that's the outcome that really delivers for the American people. Kim, what's your view on how this affects

the politics and maybe the policy for this one big, beautiful bill, because listeners probably need no reminder that it was a backflip to get this thing through the House initially. Some of the senators have concerns that might affect the views of some of those House members on a final package, including maybe lowering that state and local tax deduction, maybe reducing

demanding more spending cuts from the fiscal hawks, the fiscal conservatives. And so it can't help trying to get this thing through two chambers, neither of which Republicans have a real sizable majority in, when you have a guy like Elon Musk with a sizable fan base out there tweeting in all caps, KILL THE BILL. Yeah, hundreds of millions of followers. I

by the way, a lot of people too that became really big devoted fans of his, much in the way that I think that you've got a fan base for Donald Trump. Some of those people overlap, others don't.

It cannot help Republicans at the moment. And this is why you saw Speaker Mike Johnson moving very quickly to try to tamp this down, say he'd been on a phone call with Elon that he was trying to make things better. Elon might be remembering he did play a role earlier this year when there was a stopgap bill and sort of making that disappear for a time and come back in a different form.

It's going to be harder for him to actually stop this, but he is likely to put some real pressure on people. The most immediate outcome of this is, and you saw that there with Ted Cruz, I think some of the senators who would like to see spending cuts go more deeply will appreciate this backup because as you saw there, it becomes an argument for them. Look, we really do need to do some more. And the honest truth is, Kyle, is that there are cuts that can be made in this bill.

that are not to further cuts to Medicaid or for food stamps, for instance, although those are in the bill. And I think there's some good reforms there. But the reality is, is there's a lot of junk in this bill that the members were simply not willing to let go of because they like that it's money pouring into their states. You know, there's a bunch of really dumb stuff

that was in Biden's infrastructure bill. There's a big discussion at the moment about these green tax credits. And hilariously, this is the thing that Musk actually thinks should be kept. It's what really undermines his argument because he ends up sounding just like everyone in Washington, right? This is why nothing ever gets cut, which is, yes, we need to cut, but we just can't cut this one thing because this one thing is important to my district.

So there's a lot of things that can and should be cut. The senators, there's a group, a sizable, or I should say a substantial group of senators in the Senate who are saying, Republicans saying, we will not allow this bill to go forward without greater cuts than what we have now. The trouble, as you say, is that it's still got to get through that itty bitty, tiny, tiny majority in the House. And they barely did it this last time. I think the senators are cognizant of that, though, and that the

These are going to be moderate improvements, but even a moderate improvement to the bill would be useful. But the other difficulty, and we talked about this a little bit on Wednesday, but would love to get your take in a quick last word, is that the economy is looking shaky. Elon Musk himself suggests that on Twitter also Thursday. He said this, the Trump tariffs will cause a recession.

in the second half of this year, unquote. That is the Musk prediction. And the difficulty for the fiscal hawks is part of what they want to do is improve the United States' fiscal position. And if we get a $4.5 trillion tax increase because no bill passes extending those 2017 tax cuts, that's

That is not going to help. And if the U.S. gets pushed into a recession, nothing about a recession improves the United States' fiscal position if the economy goes in the tank and social welfare spending and aid and stuff like that starts going up. Oh.

Absolutely. Look, this bill at this point for Republicans is an existential survival. If they do not pass this bill, not only is it going to have enormous ramifications for the country, but it'll have huge political blowback for them as well, too, as Americans get comfortable with a $4.3 trillion tax hike in a midterm election year. I don't think that that's going to go over well with a lot of those voters. So they have to get this done.

And, you know, the argument Mike Johnson has been making is don't touch it at all because the balance that I struck in the House is the only balance that can be struck. That's a little much to ask, given that the Senate does also have its right to engage.

And that's why I'm saying, though, I think, you know, we have to make sure the perfect isn't the enemy of the possible. Is that the right way you say it? But that doesn't mean that you can't have some marginal improvements. I think that's all we're looking at at this point. Any radical changes to this bill of the kind that Elon Musk might like to see are less likely. But let's also remember, too, and Republicans continue to point this out.

This is the first of two reconciliation bills that they can go after this year. And there's always a possibility of coming back to do yet some more and better things in another one. Thank you, Kim. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch.

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority is using Google AI to create smarter tolling systems and improve traffic flow for Texans. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.