Environment / March 20, 2026
And other key news of the week, including new legislation on prediction markets and a threat to the critically endangered Rice’s whale.
US President Donald Trump.
(Win McNamee/Getty Images) Late Sunday evening, Donald Trump turned to social media to launch an epic rant against the Supreme Court. Apparently he’s still angry about the tariff decision. “The decision that mattered most to me was the TARIFFS! The Court knew where I stood, how much I wanted this victory for our country, and instead decided to give away, potentially, billions of dollars to countries and corporations that have taken advantage of the United States for decades.”
After going out of his way to congratulate the dissenting justices, and once again acting as if their dissent gave him the power to do what the majority said he couldn’t do, he got to his point (to the extent that Trump still has an argument beyond “I’m a very strong man but everyone is mean to me”). He wrote:
Democrats on the Court “stand together,” no matter how strong the case presented to them. There is rarely even a slight “wobble”. But Republicans don’t do it. They openly disrespect the presidents who appoint them to the highest office in the land, that of a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and go out of their way, with bad and unjustified decisions and intentions, to prove how “honest”, “independent” and “legitimate” they are.
This narrative, that Democratic judges vote as a bloc but Republican judges do not, makes Republicans very happy. Trump doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand that he is accidentally praising Republican judges, because in his mind, loyalty to the king is all that matters and an independent judiciary defeats that project. But for other Republicans, including those who run the mainstream media these days, this narrative is their catnip. They want you to think that Republicans are independent arbiters, while Democrats are just Democrats.
Chief Justice John Roberts, speaking Tuesday, did not directly mention Trump’s comments, but he certainly answered them. Roberts warned that personal attacks on judges are dangerous, but then reaffirmed Trump’s assertion, in a way, by saying that judges are not bound by any president’s agenda and do not “advance the opinions of those who appointed us.”
The fact is that Trump and Roberts are wrong. I’ve explained this before, but the key thing to understand is that since Republicans hold a large majority on the Supreme Court, the only thing the Court is fighting over is the Republican interpretation of the law. The only thing at stake is how best to achieve the Republican political agenda. Democrats on court don’t even have the votes to win their case heard by the Supreme Court without Republican support. It takes four votes for the Supreme Court to “grant certiorari” and agree to hear a case. This means that literally each The case debated in court since Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death got there because Republicans wanted it to. Every question presented was a question Republicans wanted answered, and every argument was made with the intention of getting at least some Republicans to follow it.
Of course, in this kind of lopsided situation, it is likely that the Democrats on the ground will find themselves on the same side in most cases. There’s a huge difference between the legal positions of, say, Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, but when the question is still, “Is Donald Trump a kaiju empowered by star gods sent to trample the administrative state and murder fishermen?” “, no one will be able to observe these differences.
Current number
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, each The Trump case will revolve around the minimal difference between Roberts’ theory of executive power for (Republican) presidents and Samuel Alito’s theory of executive power for (Republican) presidents.
Essentially, you have Republicans arguing among themselves about whether they should use a Bushmaster or a Remington to go hunting, while Democrats are saying, “OMG, don’t shoot Bambi’s mom!”
If the Supreme Court ever returns to enforcing the law instead of imposing the Republican agenda on us, you’ll see a lot more legal disagreements among Democrats.
The bully and the ugly
Attorneys general of 16 states filed a complaint against the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. They claim the agency’s new anti-DEI guidelines violate the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act was one of the trio of successes achieved by the civil rights movement under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Along with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, it was one of the laws that ultimately fulfilled the promise of the Reconstruction Amendments. And like those other two laws, the racists who run the country hate it and are doing everything they can to get rid of it. New York’s Mass Transit Authority has sued the federal government over the $60 million the Trump administration is withholding from it. This money, which has already been approvedis needed to complete the Second Avenue Subway extension to East Harlem. Hmm…I wonder why the Trump administration doesn’t want to provide better subway service to Blacks and Latinos living in East Harlem? Actually, forget it, I don’t wonder. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to cut SNAP funding in Colorado. Trump was trying to use budget cuts to intimidate Colorado into granting a pardon to Holocaust denier and election fraudster Tina Peters. A federal judge is likely to block Trump’s ballroom at the White House. Unfortunately, this is a prime example of a case where the damage will have already been done by the dictator long before the law can catch up. The Ninth Circuit thrown away a case alleging that the state of Arizona violated the National Voter Registration Act. The case was brought by two Republicans who argued that the state had not purged enough ineligible voters from the rolls in 2024, thereby diluting the Republican vote. Meanwhile, next week will be a big week for voting rights: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case on whether ballots should be thrown out if they are not received by Election Day, and the Senate will continue to debate Trump’s favorite voter suppression law. Inspired Takes
Popular “Swipe left below to see more authors”Swipe →
Here is a piece in The nation by Amber Husain it is I try to explain which foods and diets are now MAGA coded. I am fundamentally suspicious of all people, right or left, who have crazy dietary needs that are not linked to serious allergies. Eat what you want, of course, but if we go out to dinner and you start talking to me about how your order was ordered by RFK Jr. or some tech bro who’s trying to live to be 175, I’m going to judge you. Lucky for you, I’ll be dead soon. This is a very beautiful story by Dave Zirin in The nation about New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Knick Mo Diawara break their Ramadan fast together. Yes, yes, I know I just wrote a very critical paragraph about people and their food choices, but I would like to think that there is a huge difference between respecting and appreciating the breadth and beauty of different cultures expressed through food – and being kind to vegans. On Balls and strikesmy brother from a different mother, Jay Willis, goes into a lot of depth myopic narcissism of Trump’s complaints to the Supreme Court. The worst argument of the week
Sarah Palin made two lasting contributions to the Republican lexicon: “I can see Russia from my house” and “Drill baby drill.” The latter has somehow become the official policy of the Republican Party and Donald Trump (even if he doesn’t always remember the three-word slogan and therefore instead). sometimes says “dig, you have to. “)
Trump’s crude desires led him to kidnap the president of Venezuela and start a war in Iran. So it might be easy to overlook the most surprising casualty of this country’s greedy dependence on oil: the environment.
Trump’s attempts to open drilling in every ecologically vulnerable environment on Earth has led to an unusual event. On March 31, his Interior Department will hold a special meeting to consider granting an “exception” to the Endangered Species Act to allow more efficient drilling in protected areas in the Gulf of Mexico. The last time such a meeting took place was in 1991, during the George HW Bush era.
To be clear, granting an exception to the Endangered Species Act means we will potentially condemn entire species to extinction because they live near something we want. In this case, the most immediately threatened species is Rice’s whale. This is the rarest whale (that we haven’t killed yet). The population was devastated by the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in 2010, and it is estimated that only 51 individuals remain. They all live in the Gulf, where Trump wants to drill.
What’s surprising here is that the main reason the administration is seeking an exception to the Endangered Species Act is not directly related to drilling. This is the speed at which boats can travel while heading toward the oil. We’re literally talking about the extinction of an entire species so that the oil industry can move a little faster.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a complaint trying to prevent what they called the “extinction committee” from meeting. The center’s executive director, Kierán Suckling, issued a statement condemning the committee as “immoral, illegal, and unnecessary” and castigating the entire effort: “There is no urgency, no legal basis for convening the committee, and no legal way to endorse the extinction of Rice’s whales.” This deception is nothing more than [Secretary of the Interior] Burgum pretends to support Trump and saves the fossil fuel industry a few dollars by allowing their boats to run faster and more recklessly.”
I don’t know if the Center for Biological Diversity, or anyone else, can do anything to stop this. When bad people run government, bad things happen. But killing an entire species of whale to allow oil tankers to ro uling faster is truly one of the worst and most despicable arguments I have heard this year.
What I wrote
Nothing digital from me this week. Everything is printed. But, speaking of paper, I wrote an article about the problem of the Supreme Court treating Trump like a “normal” president. is now available on the Internet by Al Gore.
In news unrelated to the current chaos
Democrats legislation unveiled aimed at preventing gambling sites that present themselves as “prediction markets” from betting on government actions. They say it is necessary to prevent insider trading.
This bill seems logical to me. If websites like Polymarket and Kalshi can bet on what the government will do next, then it is very easy for powerful people in or near that government to make thousands of dollars betting on actions they know will be next. I mean, what’s stopping Pete Hegseth from betting on whether the US will start a war with Iran? Or to stop Stephen Miller from betting on how long Trump’s State of the Union will last?
I would of course go further than the Democrats. It’s all well and good to prevent these sites from accepting certain bets, but even if the legislation passes, these sites will do everything they can to get around the law and allow people to place bets on the bets. results of government action, otherwise the probability of these actions. Additionally, there will be international sites not subject to US law that will take over.
So I would double down on this bill and prevent anyone who works for the government, or anyone whose immediate family works for the government, from betting on these markets.
And while we’re at it, I would also prevent elected officials and their immediate aides from trading stocks because, although we pretend it’s very different from “gambling,” it’s not. And government officials should not be allowed to do it.
I know this is going to sound crazy, but my position is that people who have been given the public trust should not be allowed to play. Gambling has always been the “gateway drug” to all kinds of corruption, and it would be better for the entire political system if public officials were not allowed to do so.
No games from the government. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
***
If you enjoyed this episode of Elijah v. UNITED STATES., Click here to receive the newsletter in your mailbox every Friday.
Support independent journalism that breaks the rules Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding popularity couldn’t have been clearer: rampant corruption and billions of dollars’ worth of personal enrichment during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided solely by his own abandoned sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Today, an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire across the region and Europe. A new “forever war” – with an ever-increasing likelihood of US troops on the ground – could very well be upon us.
As we have seen time and time again, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory justifications for attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are threatened by non-citizens registered to vote. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
In these dark times, independent journalism is the only one that can uncover the lies that threaten our republic – and civilians around the world – and shine a light on the truth.
The nation’s experienced team of writers, editors and fact-checkers understand the scale of what we face and the urgency with which we must act. That’s why we publish critical reporting and analysis on the war with Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more.
But this journalism is only possible with your support.
This month of March, The nation must raise $50,000 to ensure we have the resources to produce reports and analysis that set the record straight and empower people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?
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.