In this week Elijah v. UNITED STATES, The nation’s judicial correspondent shares his thoughts on the Texas primaries. Plus, a terrible Supreme Court decision and bad play by Major League Baseball.
Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D-TX) participates in a campaign event outside Round Rock Donuts on March 3, 2026.
(John Moore/Getty Images) Texas held its congressional primary on Tuesday, and the good news is that turnout was very high. I emphasized the idea that voters who do not want to choose between “a lesser evil” in November should show up to vote in the primaries. I hope to see record engagement throughout the spring and summer, leading up to the November midterm elections.
I am, however, a little disappointed with the results of the primary on the Democratic side of the Senate. James Talarico beat Jasmine Crockett, and while I know a lot of people are excited about the prospect of a current seminarian and soon-to-be pastor calling out racists who dress in church, I can’t help but feel very “Beto O’Rourke II” about the whole thing. Talarico can throw verse for verse against the most biblical Republicans Texas has to offer, but to get excited about it presupposes that there are a significant number of Republicans who are guided by their faith and not their bigotry and misogyny.
I don’t believe it. I believe these people are voting for white supremacy and the oppression of others. They are not disciples of Jesus; they are followers of white privilege and any version of religion they can manipulate to support it. I don’t have faith that Talarico will lead them to the light.
Across the aisle, Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton met in a runoff to determine who will be the Republican nominee this fall. I saw a lot of liberals hoping Paxton would make it, because Paxton is one of the most obnoxious public figures in the world and Democrats think he can be more easily defeated in the general election than the stuffed suit that is Cornyn.
I have a problem with this analysis because…Paxton is one of the most obnoxious public figures in the world. Supporting a worse candidate because you think you can beat them is not something I will fall into again. Not after the 2016 presidential election. I tell you, if I could go back, I would applaud for Jeb Bush. This seems especially true in the case of someone like Paxton in a state like Texas, where Democrats haven’t won a statewide election since 1994. If Paxton wins the primary, Paxton will become a U.S. senator, and that’s the worst possible outcome.
Write for The nationAna Marie Cox says I’m wrong about most of this. She says Texas is winnable for a Democrat, Talarico has the juice and a bruising runoff between Cornyn and Paxton will improve their chances.
Current number
I’ll be delighted if Cox is right. And I’m excited that people are participating in the primary. I just wish voters weren’t so focused on the circular and counterproductive “electability” argument. Choosing a candidate based on how you think others will vote is just crazy to me. Most people have difficulty choosing a restaurant friends will like it, but do they think they can choose a candidate who will appeal to complete strangers? Outsiders who largely disagree with them and everything they stand for? Electability is a ridiculous argument, which is probably why it’s most often used as a dog whistle to warn people not to vote for a black person or a woman or especially a black woman.
But it doesn’t matter, it’s Texas. If Jesus were a Democrat, he could literally lose six points to an animated penis in a cowboy hat. How else can you explain the continuity of Ted Cruz’s political existence?
The bully and the ugly
In a shadow decision, the Supreme Court governed that schools in the state of California must “turn over” trans students to their parents. I’ve said this before, but if you’re the parent of a trans child and that child doesn’t want to tell you, the fault is yoursnot that of the State. The court heard oral arguments this week at Montgomery v. Caribe Transportationa case that ostensibly focuses on whether freight companies can be held liable for negligent hiring when their drivers cause accidents. But alleged attempted rape Brett Kavanaugh everything has been done whether Trump can require truck drivers to read English. The court also heard arguments in United States v. Hemania case determining whether a federal law prohibiting drug users from owning firearms violates the Second Amendment. Just to point out how stupid “originalism” is… there was extended questions judges to determine whether current federal law is “analogous” to laws imprisoning “habitual drunkards” of the 18th century. We’re trying to figure out whether a cocaine addict can have an Uzi based on the fact that Tommy the town drunk had to spend a night at the sheriff’s Bridewell in 1775. We’re not serious people. The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from a computer scientist seeking copyright protection for AI-generated art. On his application, the guy listed himself as the owner of the art (he asked the machine to create it) and listed his software as the author of the art. The D.C. Circuit has ruled that “human authorship” is a fundamental requirement of the Copyright Act of 1976, and the Supreme Court will uphold that ruling, but I promise you this isn’t the last we’ll hear about this issue. I should mention that the Senate I didn’t do anything to stop Trump’s illegal war against Iran. Thus continues our long and shameful history of undeclared wars of choice and aggression while the people’s representatives cower in fear, refusing to exercise the powers vested in them by the Constitution. Inspired Takes
Mark Hertsgaard and Giles Trendle wrote in The nation that the illegal war against Iran is also a war against the climate. This is an angle of the current horror series that I hadn’t thought of before. In his Nation article, Jack Mirkinson argues that the US-Israeli war against Iran will, in the long term, be harmful to US-Israeli relations. He says people will understand that Israel played a big role in pushing us into this war, and ultimately people won’t like that. I hope he’s right. Over at SCOTUSblog, Zach Shemtob begins what I believe to be an important series. It takes an in-depth look at how other countries use their higher courts, what powers those courts have, and compares them to our Supreme Court. I have long believed that if Americans understood how strange and powerful our Supreme Court is compared to other high courts in other major democracies, more people would want to reform and dismantle our court. Its first case study is the United Kingdom. Popular “Swipe left below to see more authors”Swipe →
The worst argument of the week
The Supreme Court has unanimously rejected an immigration appeal by Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, who claimed a hitman was seeking to kill him and his entire family in his native El Salvador. Urias-Orellana applied for asylum in the United States, but his case was denied by an immigration judge. The case came before the Supreme Court on the question of what power courts should have to review and overturn decisions made by immigration judges. Urias-Orellana lost, with Ketanji Brown-Jackson writing for a unanimous court ruling that immigration judges’ asylum decisions are nearly final.
I’m not surprised. Indeed, when I previewed this case At the start of the Supreme Court’s term, I predicted not only Urias-Orellana’s defeat, but also that he would lose 9-0, as he just did.
I still think it was a terrible decision. I don’t think courts should defer to the opinions of immigration judges, at least not under our current immigration system. Immigration judges are extremely overworked, meaning that even those operating with the best of intentions are often unable to give each individual case the time and attention it deserves. There are also far too few free or affordable immigration lawyers to represent all asylum seekers, forcing them to appear before judges alone, without someone who can ensure they bring their best evidence and arguments to their hearings.
Meanwhile, assuming that immigration judges demonstrate “best intentions” is itself a fiction in the Trump era. Many of the most sympathetic immigration judges have retired or been fired, meaning those who remain tend to be more comfortable with Trump’s xenophobic ideas. Indeed, we recently saw Trump commandeering military JAG officers, who have no immigration training, to serve as buffers for Trump’s anti-immigration regime. The idea that the decisions made by these people should be given almost total deference by real appeals court judges who actually understand the law is ridiculous. I wouldn’t trust a Trump-appointed immigration judge to know whether Abu Dhabi or Agrabah is the real place.
So why was the decision 9-0? Why did the liberals agree and commission Jackson to write this opinion? Well, Jackson’s opinion determines immigration judges’ decisions. almost insurmountable. His opinion leaves a path, a very narrow path, by which asylum seekers can obtain appellate relief. It says asylum seekers can appeal their cases if they provide “substantial evidence” that the immigration judge was wrong – evidence with which “no reasonable fact finder” would disagree. Basically, Jackson leaves the door open for an asylum seeker who (perhaps through better representation) is able to present more evidence on appeal than he was able to provide at his initial hearing.
I don’t believe this door would be open if this opinion had been 6-3 and written by someone like Justice Sam Alito. The decision is bad, but it’s not the worst version of that decision that could have happened.
Yet “it could have been worse” is little comfort in the Trump era. Trump enlisted a group of immigration judges in his deportation scheme, and the Supreme Court just unanimously told those judges that their decisions will likely never face serious appellate review. cel a means that these immigration judges can actually only answer to Donald Trump, and not to a higher court or, thank goodness, to the facts or the law.
What I wrote
I really didn’t have anything new or interesting to say about the horrors the United States is inflicting on Iran, so I kind of left that question aside. I mean, how many times can I write, “What the president is doing is illegal and… no one is going to stop him”? How many times could I write: “American foreign policy is violent and evil”? How many times could I write: “Our country is a rogue state that should be sanctioned and punished by the international community”? Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll attack another brown country soon, and I can repeat everything.
In news unrelated to the current chaos
Major League Baseball is implementing a new system that will allow robots to call balls and strikes. This is called the Automated Ball Strike Challenge System (ABS). During the game, players will be able to challenge a referee’s decision using a computer replay system.
The system has been tested in the minor leagues for several years. It allows only it is the batter, pitcher or catcher who challenges the pitch call, not the other players on the field or even the manager. Each team will only receive two challenges per match, but they will keep the challenges if they succeed. So you can challenge as many throws as you want as long as you continue to be right. If challenged, the AB S system (which is just a set of high-speed cameras and motion sensors) displays a graphical representation of the previously thrown ball on the big screen. In minor league testing, challenges were completed in 13.8 seconds on average.
Here is an article from MLB.com explaining everything you need to know about ABS.
I… kind of hate it. I guess I’m a baseball “purist.” I don’t like the designated hitter, I don’t like the middle reliever, and I don’t like singing “God Bless America” in the seventh inning. (I like sabermetrics and advanced stats, but that impacts how I understand the game, not how the game is played).
I recognize that I am in the minority here. Fans overwhelmingly approve of robots. This year, during a spring training game, a referee lost five ABS challengeswhich seems like a lot.
But overall, the impact has been minimal: In spring training, only 2.6 percent of calls have been challenged so far, and those challenges have been successful just 52 percent of the time.
You can take these numbers either way. Some people might say that getting a few more calls done correctly is a net benefit, especially if it takes less than 15 seconds to get it right. I would like to counter the fact that a few miscalls here and there have been a part of the game for over 100 years, and keeping it that way means I don’t have to wait for a stupid replay before knowing whether or not I can be happy reacting to a play on the field.
I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I mean, pro football has degraded to the point where I have to wait 10 minutes to see a replay from three different angles before I know what a “catch” is, and I’m getting used to it. So I’m sure I’ll learn to accept “Strike three! No. Wait. Ball four! Get your base, lmao.”
But being a baseball fan also means looking modernity in the face… and making fun of it. I will learn to accept ABS, but I will never like it.
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Elie Mystal Elie Mystal is The nationjustice correspondent and columnist. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: New York Times bestseller Let me respond: A Guide to the Constitution for Black Men And Bad Laws: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining Americaboth published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie c. US » here.
