What Just Happened Yesterday?

SCOTUS and Moody's and Trump's Meltdown

Historians of the distant future will likely be dumbfounded by the conjunction of the events that we saw on Friday. Hopefully you are not triggered by long sentences, because here goes:

Amidst the most brazen corruption in American history, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, took time out to call Bruce Springsteen a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker”; and declared, “Has anyone noticed that, since I said 'I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,' she's no longer 'HOT?” — on the same day that he was forced to admit that he could not make 90 tariff deals in 90 days and would be sending strongly worded letters instead. It was also the day that Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States for the first time in history, and the Supreme Court slapped the Trump Administration with a stinging rebuke, even as Trump’s minions called for jailing the former director of the FBI for posting an internet meme. And, in case you have a life or something, you may have missed this morning’s unhinged rage-fest from the world’s most powerful preternaturally thin-skinned man-child.¹

All of this may sound very much same-old-same-old. But what happened Friday was actually a BFD, which I’ll try to explain below….

Happy Saturday.

I know that you really don’t want to subscribe to another Substack. And I know that there are lots of demands on your time and your wallet. But if you think the fight for sanity, democracy, and the rule of law is worth it, please consider supporting us. Because we can’t do this without you.

To the Contrary is a reader-supported publication. There are no investors. No corporate overlords. No sugar daddies. We’re not affiliated with any PACS. Or parties. Just me. And the dogs.

To receive new posts — including cross-posts, podcasts and videos— please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. (And I’m immensely grateful for your generous support.)

Donald Trump: World-Class Dupe

“And the thing I love about the story is because if you are a Trump skeptic, you're always having to balance two truths in your mind. One is the president is unfathomably corrupt and wicked and immoral. On the other hand, he's kind of a goofball, and a fool, and a sucker, and a dupe." — David Frum

On today’s “To the Contrary” Podcast, I’m joined by The Atlantic’s David Frum. We discuss the staggering corruption and cluelessness behind Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million Qatari jet—complete with the backstory of diplomatic white elephants and Vegas-style décor. And we explore how Trump’s second term is shaping up to be less about governance and more about retirement planning, international grifting, and institutional erosion.

You can watch or listen right here or (later) on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.

SCOTUS Slaps 47

It’s easy to get lost in the technicalities of Friday’s 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that blocks the Trump Administration from using a 1798 law to deport a group of Venezuelan migrants. The Economist’s Steve Mazie noted: “This is not the end of the story. The Court does not decide the underlying issue of whether Trump can deport alleged members of this gang under the AEA. That question is for another day.”

But here are few key points to keep in mind:

• All 3 of Trump's Supreme Court appointees just voted to hand him another major loss.

• Besides the 7-2 vote, the language in the unsigned majority opinion was “unusually pointed” and suggests the Court is losing patience with the Administration.

• The opinion drips with frustration over the Trump Administration’s handling of the Abrego Garcia case… and its misrepresentations to the Court.

• The Alien Enemies Act is dead until the Supreme Court says otherwise.

Steve Vladeck has a much deeper dive, but here are some of his key points:

The majority opinion’s language included a “subtle but significant dig at the government for the shell games it's been playing with AEA detainees."

On page 2, the majority goes into detail about the slippery language the government used on April 18 re: whether any removals under the AEA were imminent, then notes that “evidence now in the record” appears to be inconsistent with the government’s representations, and concludes by underscoring the ongoing litigation in Abrego Garcia—and how difficult it has proven to get detainees back once they have been removed (indeed, Abrego Garcia is cited again on page 4). This is quite a subtle but significant dig at the government for the shell games it’s been playing with AEA detainees, especially for a majority opinion…

The Court takes a rather healthy shot at the Fifth Circuit for not taking the gravity of the plaintiffs’ claims (and the district court’s delay in ruling on them) seriously enough—correcting the record in the process. As it writes, “Here the District Court’s inaction—not for 42 minutes but for 14 hours and 28 minutes—had the practical effect of refusing an injunction to detainees facing an imminent threat of severe, irreparable harm.” Indeed, that text inside the em-dashes is the majority correcting an erroneous portrayal of the timeline by both the lower courts and Justice Alito back in April.

More generally, the opinion is all-but dripping with exasperation that the lower courts didn’t think these cases were serious enough, or the plaintiffs’ allegations of imminent harm plausible enough, to justify moving faster….

Finally, in a portion of the opinion devoted entirely to responding to Justice Alito’s dissent, the majority begins by “reject[ing] the dissent’s characterization of the events that transpired on April 18.” That may seem tame by the standards of contemporary public discourse; it’s a pretty sharp elbow in a majority opinion by the Supreme Court. And, again, it appears to reflect real concern on the part of the justices in the majority that the dissenting justices seem so un-troubled by how events appeared to be transpiring back in April.

Vladeck saves the biggest questions for last: How Big a Deal is this Ruling? His answer? Yesterday’s ruling was “a very big deal—and, indeed, much more important than the Court’s temporary (but massively important in its own right) intervention in the same case on April 19”.

He gives three reasons: (1) The decision indefinitely freezes removals under the Alien Enemies Act; (2) The court said that “plaintiff classes can be provisionally certified by district courts for purposes of providing temporary relief even without resolving the likelihood of full class certification,” and (3) The justices’ broader refusal to accept the Trump Administration’s “good faith.”

Vladeck explains:

I continue to be fascinated by the eroding “presumption of regularity,” and where it is (and isn’t) showing up in Supreme Court decisions in Trump-related cases. That erosion shows up in A.A.R.P. II in spades.

Indeed, although the majority never quite brings itself to say the quiet part out loud, the point animating most of its disagreement with the dissent is its unwillingness to rest its analysis on the government’s representations rather than on the plaintiffs’ allegations. We’ll see if this skepticism remains limited to the removal context, or whether it starts showing up in other rulings in Trump-related cases. But it’s clearly the elephant in the room here.

You know who else thinks Friday’s SCOTUS ruling was a BFD? Trump, who went into full ALL CAPS meltdown mode:

Followed minutes later by a post declaring:

"The Supreme Court has just ruled that the worst murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and even those who are mentally insane, who came into our Country illegally, are not allowed to be forced out without going through a long, protracted, and expensive Legal Process [Editor’s note: otherwise known as due process], one that will take, possibly, many years for each person, and one that will allow these people to commit many crimes before they even see the inside of a Courthouse.

"The result of this decision will let more CRIMINALS pour into our Country, doing great harm to our cherished American public. It will also encourage other criminals to illegally enter our Country, wreaking havoc and bedlam wherever they go. The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do. Sleepy Joe Biden allowed MILLIONS of Criminal Aliens to come into our Country without any 'PROCESS' but, in order to get them out of our Country, we have to go through a long and extended PROCESS. In any event, thank you to Justice Alito and Justice Thomas for attempting to protect our Country. This is a bad and dangerous day for America!"

Moody’s Downgrade is also a BFD…

…and a pointed slap at Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. Moody’s also called bullshit on the whole DOGE fiasco.

“Successive U.S. administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,” Moody’s analysts said in a statement. “We do not believe that material multi-year reductions in mandatory spending and deficits will result from current fiscal proposals under consideration.”…

“If the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is extended, which is our base case, it will add around $4 trillion to the federal fiscal primary (excluding interest payments) deficit over the next decade.”

“As a result, we expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of GDP by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending and relatively low revenue generation,” Moody’s said. ″We anticipate that the federal debt burden will rise to about 134% of GDP by 2035, compared to 98% in 2024.″⁣

Does this matter? Yes, indeed.

The decision to lower the United States credit profile would be expected, at the margin, to lift the yield that investors demand in order to buy U.S. Treasury debt to reflect more risk, and could dampen sentiment toward owning U.S. assets, including stocks.

Nota Bene

I had some thoughts.

**

Axios: Listen to the full Biden-Hur special counsel interview

Axios obtained the recordings of former President Biden's interviews with special counsel Robert Hur — held over two sessions on Oct. 8 and 9, 2023 — that Biden's White House had refused to release last year.

Why it matters: The audio from two hours-long sessions appear to validate Hur's assertion that jurors in a trial likely would have viewed Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

Saturday dogs

We had storms last night, and for a few minutes I couldn’t find Eli. It turns out that he was hiding in the downstairs bathtub.

1. Trump’s rage post suggests the he’s BIG MAD:

FFS.