Legal Analysis of Supreme Court Rulings

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Start relieving your insuranoia today at njm. com Birthright citizenship, what are your thoughts and will you accept it if it rules against you Well, I guess I have to accept it's the Supreme Court. So I'll accept I think it's very bad for our nation. We're the only nation that does it . No other nation does that birthright citizenship. No it not even close . Some did it, they ended it. It's tremendously destructive. It's extremely costly . I don't know. It's up to them, but in terms of for the good of the country, it would be great if they did they didn't allow it . President Trump yesterday when asked about the big case expected to be decided today by the Supreme Court as for yesterday, the high court handed down a number of spl it decisions for the administration. The justices expanded executive power that would allow the president to fire one federal employee but rejected his bid to fire another in a decision that could impact the midterms, the justices ruled in favor of a Mississippi law that allows elections officials to accept mail in ballots that arrive after election day as long as they are postmarked by election day , and the court refused to hear the president's bid to overturn a jury's finding that he sexually abused and later defamed writer Eugene Carroll . Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, june thirtieth. With us, we have MS Now Contributor, Mike Barnacle, MS Now, senior legal reporter, Lisa Rubin, and More to Come, and Willie , a fascinating set of rulings came down yesterday. Of course, we're still waiting for one anytime today , but some of these quite consequential . Yeah, we'll get a couple more today on the last day of the corporate but yesterday as you say, , was a big day. The Supreme Court yesterday upheld that Mississippi law that allows mail in ballots to be received up to five days after election day. That's a loss for President Trump, who repeatedly has pushed unfounded claims of voter fraud when it comes to mail and voting, despite the fact that he used it himself. The Supreme Court's decision emphasized the Constitution gives election authority to state legislatures and to Congress, not to the president . It was a five four opinion with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the court's three liberal justices in the majority. So let's take a pause here quickly. The significance of this first Lisa is that the president has been pushing and continues to push this idea that we got to get rid of mail and voting. He just said there no other country uses it. That's not true. Many other countries of, course use, mail in voting . And we should point out again, as we do every time he brings up this point, there is very, very, very little fraud that is found in mail in voting. A couple examples here and there that he uses as a larger example. But what is the significance to you legally here? I mean, the significance is that the integrity of the election has been shored up by the Supreme Court yesterday. And what was a surprise decision? Many people who listened to the oral argument, included, believe that the Supreme Court was poised to make the other decision and decide that under federal law, the term election day means that all votes not only must be cast by then, but they must be counted by then as well. And the court's decision to go in the opposite direction honoring the laws of eighteen states and territories means that mail and ballot mail and balloting will remain secure for November unless or until the president is able to legislate otherwise. And Willie, I think that's the big open question because you and I both know the president has had a series of executive orders that are aimed at elections, which right now have been stopped by courts. Some of those executive orders also aim ed at mail and balloting. For example, one of them said that the attorney general should prosecute state and local officials that will allow these grace periods for counting ballots. Now the president as he continues to push the Save America Act, will he try to insert provisions in that make it harder for these states to allow these grace periods? That's one possibility, but you can count on him to sort of doub downled on the risks of fraud associated with mail and balloting helped along, by the way, by some of the dissenting justices Justice Alito in his dissent in that decision, basically saying that the fact that these states allow this lends itself to the narrative of mail and ballots leading to fraud. That's not a helpful comment from a Justice of the Supreme Court, particularly given what you said, there is little to no proof that mail and ballots lead to any substantial fraud let alone outcome determinative fraud in the twenty twenty election despite the fact that the president continues to advance that narrative. And we should point out this was not a slam dunk. It was a five four decisionief, Chice Just Roberts writing the deciding opinion here. But when you say, you know, Donald Trump is holding up legislation, which he is. He's holding up this housing, a bipartisan housing bill to get the Save Act through, which again would do great damage to male in voting. What are your concerns legally about kind of end around runs that the president and his aides can make around even this Supreme Court decision? Well, I think there are sort of two of of them. One them is just about certainty, right? Administering elections is difficult enough for people in states without last minute changes. And you can rest assured that the White House in advancing the Save America Act, they don't care about the havoc that it wreaks for local and state election administrators. They want to get their way. And so that will introduce a whole bunch of uncertainty if they in fact pass this law and it has impact not only on proof of citizenship, but how the voter rolls are certified, who gets to vote and when that big raises just huge question marks over the heads of voters all throughout the country. But the other problem is that constitutionally the time place and manner of how elections are administered in this country belong to the states and not to the federal government. So while there is some language in the majority decision here saying, hey, we're not foreclosing the right of Congress to legislate otherwise, there is a big open question about whether Congress can make a different decision about these grace periods. You know, there's going to be an extended issue on this and you just referred to it as poll workers themselves. Who wants to do that job given the if fy nature of what's going on? But right now as it stands off the ruling, if you cast a mail in ballot the day before election , so long as it's counted within five days after the election, that ballot is legitimate. Is that the way it's going to work? Well, look, you have to live in a state that has a law that provides for this already. And there are only eighteen states and territories, fourteen states, the District of Columbia, three territories that allow for this. But yesterday's ruling, in fact, Mike means exactly what you just said. If you live in one of those states with a grace period that allows for the counting after election day, your vote should be secured under this ruling. Yeah , some questions though about that five day period given in some states the mail has been slowed down for a number of reasons. Let's bring in MSN National Affairs analyst, John Heilman. He is a partner and chief political columnist at Puk. Let's stick with Mail and Bowding, Heilmann, your thoughts. And anything to my concerns about the slowness of the mail, if it is a five day period. I mean, if it's postmarked, but it can arrive within a good amount of time after election day, maybe that works is five days enough . Well, I think Mika obviously we've seen in the past we've seen much longer stretches than that. I think that there's that it would be good in fact to have some pressure on some states to be able to to get their acts together to be able to process these ballots more quickly. I think it's obviously from this point of view of the law and the Supreme Court ruling, this is a blow to Donald Trump. It's also a blow to it, but it shores up what I think we most of us agree. Given the vast record that we now have before us, which suggests that there is no problem with fraud and mail in ballots that's ever been proven or demonstrated, that's a good thing. The main consequence I think on this politically is that as determined as Donald Trump has been to try to get the Save Act through . This is just going to increase his degree intensity and focus on that, which has gummed up the works on Capitol Hills, holding up the housing bill has held up a lot of things. But I think we're going to see a very we lost Heilman there. We'll get him back in just a second. But just to put a fine point on this , Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the Majority opinion said of this potential end around . If vary deadlines for ballot receipts similarly call for a national solution, the American people must choose it through their elected representatives. In other words, go through Congress if you want to change these laws, not through us. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also cleared the way for President Trump to fire the heads of most independent federal agencies at will. It was a six three decision this time. The justices ruling Trump can fire Rebecca au Sghterl from the Federal Trade Commission overturning a unanimous decision from the court in nineteen thirty five that protected the independence of government agencies. The ruling effectively makes FTC commissioners and those who staff independent federal agencies serve at the president's discretion and eliminates Congress's bipartisan requirement for the agency. In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote quote, independent agencies are not so independent after all. Justice Sonya Sotomayor, who read her dissent from the bench, firing back, writing, This court undes uries of political practice and concludes that all three branches of government have been acting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time . But the court is making an exception for the independence at the Federal Reserve, at least for now. In a separate five decision, the court ruled Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can keep her job as she fights dubious mortgage fraud claims from President Trump and his allies. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined joined the three liberal justices in the majority ruling there. So Lisa, this basically sets the precedent now that you can fire an independent regulator at will. If they're not doing your bidding effectively as President of the United States, you can just get rid of them. That overturns ninety years or so of precedent there . But they do make this carve out for now for the Federal Reserve. What's the distinction between the two? Well, I can tell you what the justices say the distinction is, and then we can talk about what the real distinction is, if any. One of the things that happened here is that Donald Trump did not contest the constitutionality of the statute that binds him to only fire members of the Federal Reserve for cause. He seemed to accept that that was a given. And then the only question for the court was, what does it mean to fire a member of the Federal Reserve for cause and had he done it here . But really, there is no distinction, Willie. And Justice Barrett points that out in a dissent in the cook case. She says, like, how can the court on one hand announce a new categorical rule and on the other breath say here's the exception to that rule. And if you look at the various opinions here, one thing that I think is striking is there are only two justices who are in the majority in both cases Chief Justice Roberts who is, fighting for the court 's institutional life, basically in every decision, and Justice Kavanaugh, who has gone out of his way time and again to say, in so many words, the Fed is different. That's not an explanation that carried weight with seven of the justices who in a variety of ways have said , I don't know how to square this circle. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And the other thing that I want to point out about the slaughter opinion, that's the opinion through which they have said the president now has the power to fire members of independent agencies or these multi member commissions . If you read Chief Justice Roberts' opinion in that case, one of the things that is really scary about it is it's not just about independent agencies, it suggests that the president has the constitutional authority to fire any subordinate , meaning he doesn't just have the fire the power to fire Rebecca Slaughter, he might have the power to fire somebody like Maureen Comey, a career prosecutor here in the southern district of New York who was fired basically by a letter that says pursuant to Article two, you're fired, right? And if that is what the court is saying here or setting the ground for, that means we're not just talking about the evisceration of independent agencies. We're talking about the eradication of the civil service writ large. That is an enormously terrifying proposition at a time where this administration has really hollowed out lots of executive agencies, not only with respect to those people who are appointed , but also with respect to scores and hundreds of lawyers as our colleagues Carol Lennig and Ken Delaneian have reported with respect to, for example, the FBI or the DOJ . You know, to that point, Lisa the civil service system, the Wall Street Journal predictably, I think editor ially writes today in the first case, this case that we're talking about right now, in the first case, the Conservative six to three majority helped restore the Constitution's proper separation of powers that have been eroded by Woodrow Wilson's quote rule by experts going forward , the president will have free reign to fire members of agencies that exercise executive power as America's founders intended. So that's Katie Bar the door in terms of any federal worker. Yeah. And I mean, look, there's a sentence here that when I read it, I texted a law professor friend of mine. And I said, Does this mean what I think it means? And he said, it one hundred percent does. This is Roberts writing, What text, history, and structure settle, our precedent confirms the president may remove his subordinates at will. Period, full stop. And so this is a decision that I think is going to have reverberations for decades to come, right? The mail and balloting decision yesterday or the Cook decision, those are the ones that really made headlines. But if you're teaching law in this country and you're thinking about your syllabus in the fall, this is the one you're going to tell your students is going to change the course of American regulatory and even like governmental history. Or if you're working in the regional office of the vir Eonmentnal Pollution Agency in New York or Boston or you could be gone. The civil service system could be fractured. That's correct. And by the way, the civil service system is overseen by something called the Merit Systems Protection Board, members of which have been fired by Donald Trum p. Now Donald Trump gets to remake the Merit Systems Protection Board in his own image, the very agency that is supposed to oversee the independence of the civil service is now a casualty of this very decision. And Micah why the separate case and the different decision for the Federal Reserve without saying it out loud, the court effectively saying the Fed is too important. You could put in a lackey who could manipulate the global economy by changing rates please whichever president was in right now. So that's for now. But the top line as it says is that after almost a hundred years of independence from federal regulators wiped out yesterday . can You put in partisan lackeys in some cases to run all these organizations. And the president's already indicated he's going to fire Lisa Cook seeming like he's ignoring what's going on here. So there's a lot to follow in the days to come and especially how this president responds. The Supreme Court declined to review Donald Trump's appeal in a civil case involving writer Egeneu Car ol in twenty twenty three, a federal jury in New York decided in favor of Carol , who said Trump had sexually abused her in the mid nineteen nineties in the dressing room of a New York City department store and then later defamed her. The jury awarded Carol five million dollars in damages . Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to review Trump's appeal of the case. In response, Trump blast ed the High Court on social media, writing in part quote, surprisingly , the Supreme Court declined to review in what he calls a fake case brought against me by a woman I never met . Carroll released a statement that read in part quote his multiple efforts to appeal that verdict have all failed . And today's ruling ends his quest to avoid accountability for his actions . Trump's attorneys say they also plan to appeal another eighty three million dollar verdict awarded to Carroll by a different jury after a second defamation trial. So Lisa, we await that. I mean, these continue can this continue forever especially focusing on that second verdict . Well, Mi theka, second verdict obviously is for substantially more money for Aegen Carroll, but are viewers she ever see it ? I think she will see it. And I want to tell you why because Donald Trump, as you might remember, had to post a bond as security for that verdict. So that money underwritten by another company is sitting there waiting in an account for Egyne Carroll if and when she prevails at the Supreme Court. By the way, with interest. And the same is true of this five million dollars plus verdict in the first trial, Donald Trump wrote a check in cash deposited with the court in the southern district of New York. And so that money, the security for that money is sitting there. But what I was going to say about the first verdict is the first verdict in many respects is less significant, certainly on the money. But don't sleep on the fact that the first verdict is the one where a jury of Donald Trump 's peers decided that Donald Trump indeed sexually abused Egene Carroll, not just that he lied about it, not just that he lied about never having met her. When I chuggled when you said that because of course at the first trial, Donald Trump was confronted at his deposition with a picture showing that he met Egene Carroll and her then husband. And when he was asked about the picture, he said, Oh, that's Marla, meaning he mistook a mid nineties E Cgarenroell for his ex wife, Marla Maples, he definitely did meet her . But the fact that the jury found that he sexually abused her now is something that cannot be erased and the importance of that shouldn't be overstated. Eugene Carroll is one of the only people who has held Donald Trump accountable for his past actions and a jury of his and her peers , that verdict has now been cemented by the United States Supreme Court. And this is the case people remember a few months ago, the president went to the Supreme Court himself, kind of making an appeal to the justices to review the case. They will not. Let's look ahead to today. Last day of the Supreme Court term, some huge questions still hanging out there on birthright citizenship, on campaign finance, transgender athletes. What we be watching for today I'll be looking for how the justices interpret the Constitution in the birthright citizenship case. I mean, certainly at oral argument, there was a perception that Trump is going to lose on birthright citizenship . But the whole argument rests on the phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof . When you read the citizenship clause of the fourteenth Amendment, it seems like a slam dunk, right? That anybody who's born here should be a citizen. Period, full stop. Except that there's this phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof . And his solicitor general, his former personal lawyer, John Sauer, says, that only includes people who intend to be subject to the laws of the United States, who never intend to return to their home country, who have fully made a home here. And somehow he says that means birthright citizenship is not, in fact, birthright citizenship. I'll definitely be looking to see how the court divides on that and how they interpret that phrase . And really, I'm really looking at this NRSC case, the National Republic an Senatorial Committee, if the court decides today that parties can coordinate their spending with candidates , that will be in some respects the beginning of the death of the Super Pact and the beginning of the resurrection of the modern party system. So for people out there who think already our two major political parties have way too much control over our elections, just wait until after today. It may get worse. We'll be watching Mika. We'll be absolutely so much to watch for today and continued fallout from these rulings yesterday . MS. Now, senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin, thank you so much for coming on this morning and helping explain it all. And still ahead on morning Joe, President Trump is criticizing the bipartisan housing legislation passed by Congress , even as affordability remains a top concern for voters, many who really can't afford to live in houses. We'll show you his latest comments. Also ahead, can never trump conservatives trust Marco Rubio heading into twenty twenty eight? That's the question. One of our next guests is asking. And as we go to break, a quick look at the travelers forecast this morning from Accu Weather's Bernie Reynau, Bernie how's it looking Me it's a fourth of July week furnace across half of the United States and the heat builds across the Mid Atlantic and Northeast Accu Weather says sunshine, New York City, ninety two Washington, DC Accu Weather Real Field Temperatures at or above one hundred sp,ot ty but gusty thunderstorms across New England, hot in Chicago, hot in St. Louis, hot in Dallas, spotty thunderstorms across the southeast, only across the Florida Peninsula. Travel delays, I don't see many today . To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the Acu Weather app today The fastest self care Clean hair K eighteen Airwash Dry Shampoo is the first biotech powered dry shampoo. 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Pakistan, a key mediator, also said negotiations between the two sides would resume today . Iranian officials, however, are at least publicly telling a different story. Iran's foreign ministry , spokesman, said a delegation would travel to Qatar this week to follow up on the release of frozen Iranian funds, but added there are no negotiation meetings with the US side at any level scheduled in the coming days . We'll be following that . And survivors of the twin earthquakes in Venezuela last week continue to deal with aftershocks and slow emergency response as the death toll has risen to more than seventeen hundred people. While no damage was reported from a particularly strong aftershock yesterday morning, several lines of the metro in the nation's capital city of Caracas were shut down due to concerns of weakened infrastructure. Even as the government has set up fifteen shelters and fifty provisional camps for those in the region affected , millions of Venezuelans remain without access to sanitation or basic necessities among the casualties are believed to be as many as one hundred forty people who were deported from the United States just hours before the earthquakes struck . They were staying at a hotel that toppled due to the quakes. It was just one of nearly two hundred buildings that were destroyed with experts saying the damage has been exacerbated by poor building code enforcement under past leaders Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. Meanwhile, rescue teams remain under way. Even as the seventy two hour window for finding survivors has long passed , officials say thirty nations have deployed more than three thousand six hundred rescuers. Some of those teams were involved in pulling out one man from the rubble after he was trapped for one hundred six hours . According to a video posted online yesterday by acting ident Pres Delsie Rodriguez , and the El Salvadoran government posted a video of their rescue crew digging out a puppy from a building's wreckage on Sunday . U. S. Marines also provided an update yesterday saying they have repaired one of Venezuela's two main ports to allow the delivery of further supplies and equipment and the US government announced, a commitment of three hundred million dollars to aid in the nation's recovery efforts. Willie Back in Washington this morning, it remains unclear when or if President Trump will sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill. The president refus ed to sign it last week, canceling a ceremony at the last minute, and giving Congress an ultimatum that he only would sign the legislation if they pass his controversial voting bill. Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News on Sunday he would be sending the housing bill to the president on Monday . But by yesterday afternoon, when reporters were in the Oval Office, the president said he still had not received it. What are your plans for the housing bill, mister President? Are you ? I don't know . I think it's so unimportant by compared by compared to the Save America Act. I think the Save America Act is exactly what it says it's saving America from crooked elections . And the housing bill is a bill that can get approved. They worked on it long and hard . It's very bipartisan . That means the Democrats like it . I think it's maybe even it's probably maybe more that way they're getting things that I wouldn't necessarily agree to. Nobody knows more than housing in the history of the presidency , nobody, nobody did well like me in housing . Well, will you sign that housing bill? I have not did. It hasn't been sent to me yet. It's coming, I understand . Then I'll make a bill. Here's what I would like to sign . Much more than a bill that big deal . It's a yawn 's wonderful . To me, compared to the Save America Act , just about everything is a big yawn. The president continues to dismiss the importance of that housing bill, calling it there a yawn. But Republicans , even his own administration have been trying to promote the legislation. The night before President Trump cance the signlleding ceremony, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levit posted about it on social media calling the legislation one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history. She ended that post with . Tomorrow's historic bill signing is another promise made promise kept . That is from the White House. Let's bring an author and conservative writer, Matt Lewis. He's now a full time columnist for Notice Matt.. It's always great to see a lot to talk about with you, including your new piece about Marco Rubio. But let's pause here. This time President Trump calling housing, affordability a yawn. It just doesn't interest him. They've tried at the White House over these months to get him out on the trail to talk about affordability, where he calls it a democratic hoax. He says, I don't care about people's financial situations when asked about the rising cost, particularly of gas during the Iran war, they just can't get him interested in the idea that occupies the minds of most Americans, which is life is too expensive right now. That's right, Willie. I mean, let's be clear in twenty twenty four, if you had to boil it down to one reason that Donald Trump won, it was inflation. Things cost too much. There was a perception that Joe Biden had let this thing get away and that Donald Trump would restore the great econom y of twenty nineteen. Affordability was the issue and Donald Trump pledged on day one , prices will come down . And so the fact that he doesn't seem to care about that issue is we're just now a couple months away from the midterms is insanity. He's hanging these Republicans out to dry. He's obsessed with this voting bill that frankly , I'm not even convinced would help Republicans if it were to pass, it might be a bad bill, but it doesn't necessarily mean Republicans would be the ones who would benefit from it. So we have a president who, I mean, if you're if you're a Republican in Congress right now to do something we're drowning and he's throwing us bricks, you know 's the life preserver that we need ? You know, Matt there's another aspect to it that you just alluded to as well, I would think . So you're sitting in Congress , Republican or Democrat. The housing bill is a critical piece of legislation. It's going to help a lot of people to buy homes that they otherwise could not purchase. And yet, the president of the United States remains hung up on one of the poisons that he injected into the system years ago , corrupt elections , and he can't get over it, and the damage that that has done to this country is nearly epidemic . I mean, his messaging is so bad. When he talks about housing affordability, sometimes he says, I don't want prices to come down because that's going to hurt homeowners, right? And then he is we're talking obsessed with the voting bill, but it's really about the twenty twenty election, which he continues to insist was stolen. And I think if you're an everyday American out there, if you're a voter who's struggling to pay the bills if you can't afford to buy a house , it's pretty clear there's a president who's much more concerned about his personal legacy and about some affront to him that happened for four or five years ago , six years ago , then he is about helping you, helping, you know, Joe Sixpack out there who's trying to get by. And this is the opposite of what any strategist would advise a politician to do . Well, a number of things. First of all , he said to Speaker Mike Johnson a while back that no one gives a bleep about housing . So this is not something that's just a fleeting thought . And about personal legacy versus winning elections , I'm sorry, this does not seem like a president who is at all concerned about the midterms . And you have to wonder why . You have to wonder when you were saying things that are basically malpractice in the months leading up to the midterms, you have to wonder why , especially given other presidents that this president has set . And Matt, your debut column for notice is entitled I'm a never Trump conservative who used to love Marco Rubio. Should I still believe in him? You're right in part this possibility that this sad detour in American politics could end with a president Rubio offers at least on the surface a tiny bit of hope. But then there's the uncomfortable part. Being a never Trump conservative has always involved two facets. One is ideological, an abiding support for mainstream conservative policy. The other is moral, an opposition to a vulgar, incompetent and chaotic authoritarian who lacks the character and temperament to be president . Rubio once seemed to satisfy both commitments. Today, however, he is one of Trump's top deputies all the baggage that entails . It's really a catch twenty two . Any Republican who remained opposed to Trump has already been purged , which means the only viable Republicans have to varying degrees been tainted . Matt, I venture to say that it's thinking too far ahead . At this moment, there's a lot happening at the same time. We're going to be having a conversation in the next hour about America at two hundred and fifty, some of the positives, but also some of the negatives. I mean, there's a real backslide happening here , and we may see that bear out in the midterm elections . That's right, Mika. Well, I write several these columns a week and my next one will be on America two hundred and fifty, I think . But look, I came to DC recently, took some, you know, videos, some pictures of the reflect ing pool, the Kennedy Center. And I started meeting with my old friends. These are people who are still, you know, they don't really like Donald Trump that much, but they're still part of the Republican Party, part of the Conservative movement. And they just would volunteer. Hey, they're excited about Marco Rubio, right? And so this is pretty relevant. I have to tell you, you know, Ruben Galliego, Democrat from Arizona, the other day, said if Marco Rubio's the Republican nominee, we're in trouble . According to the book regime change, Donald Trump has been asking I think it was Rupert Murdoch. Do you like Rubio or do you like Vance? And he said he implied that Rubio he sort of gushed about Rubio. So this is something we're going to have to confront at some point. And on one hand, if you had told me after all of the mess and the chaos of Donald Trump, at the end of it, we're going to get Maroco Rubi, the guy that I wanted a decade ago anyway. On one hand, that's a really positive thing. I mean, we could do a lot worse. We could get him, I don't know, Candace Owens or something, right? So on one hand, this is maybe a small glimmer of hope . On the other hand , you know, can we rehabilitate any of these guys? Etched into my brain is that image of Marco Rubio sitting there on the couch while JD V and Donald Trump humiliated and insulted Ukrainian President Zelenskyy . And so I think if you're a never trump conservative, maybe in twenty twenty six , maybe vot youe Democrat . But we just we've seen what's happening with the Democratic Party. It seems like it's trending in a leftward direction. At some point, those of us who still consider ourselves to be never Trump conservatives, we're going to be faced with a choice. Can we rehabilitate someone like Rubio or has he been corrupted by the last decade? Matt, you write in the piece that the best case scenario from your point of view and from the point of view of conservatives is that Marco Rubio actually still in there somewhere is who he was a decade ago, that he's been playing a part or saying and doing the things he's had to do to remain viable to become secretary of state to put himself in a position for this kind of comeback that you're talking about here. The question will be, I guess, as you say, though , Vance, Rubio, or potentially an outsider, somebody else like you just mentioned, what's your sense ? Forget the president for a moment, but among conservatives about who they would prefer. Is it Rubio or is it advance? Well, I think that Marco Rubio is having a great moment right now. If you 'd asked me this in December, I think JD Vance had a really good first year of the Trump second term. But Marco Rubio has really emerged. I think he's just more prepared , more eloquent Donald Trump seems to have for now and he's fickle, but for now have taken a liking to him. So we are having a rubyo moment . There are going to be some people on the right who will never accept him. But frankly, some of those people are now upset at Donald Trump as well over the Iran war . I think Rubio has really been pretty careful as it pertains to this war. He's I think he's been responsible. He's not coming off as too hawkish, but he's also not criticizing the president. I think it's ironically more likely that JD Vance gets sort of tagged and blamed for some of the mess of this Iran war. So Ruby is really handling himself very well . I you know, assuming Donald Trump actually goes off into that good night at some point rides off into the sunset, there's going to be a major , I think, battle this Republican nomination. And with Rubio , we're never going to go back to John McCain, Mitt Romney like and nor should we. But with Rubio, I think there's a chance that that we can have maybe something of a hybrid where those of us who have been in the wilderness, we've been homeless now for a decade could maybe finally come home . But we can't do it if he's going to be out there saying things like the twenty twenty election was stolen. If he we need someone who's going to embrace the rule of law, they don't have to be Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan's not walking through that door again . But but they need to be someone who has honor and integrity and just believes in the Constitution at bare minimum. The new piece is available to read online now. Calmness for notice. Matt Lewis, thank you as always for coming on the show this morning. We appreciate the conversation. And coming up on Morning Joe, we're going to turn to the Democrat side where Senator John Osop of Georgia is emerging as a rising star. His message to voters for the midterms and beyond is straight ahead on Morning Joe Other stories we're following this morning . A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from withholding billions of dollars in funding for the Hudson Tunnel Project between New York and New Jersey. The two states sued in February, arguing the administration's sixteen billion dollars funding freeze was politically motivated. In her decision, the judge highlighted past comments from the president, including a remark Trump made in October , when he said quote, It's terminated because the Democrats are so foolish. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the White House referred requests for com ment to the Transportation Department . A spokesperson there said the Transportation Department remains committed to ensuring hardworking taxpayer dollars are being spent responsibly. Republican congressman Tom Kain Jr. of New Jersey is expected to return to Capitol Hill today after a month long, largely unexplained absence . The congressman last voted in the House on march fifth , missing more than one hundred votes since then. Kane's family and staff have offered little public explanation for his extended absence throughout the weeks , citing only a personal medical issue . Now his spokesman says Cain will return to work today and be transparent about what kept him . And the FAA is investigating after a passenger jet report edly struck a drone while approaching JFK International Airport in New York City yesterday , hours later, a helicopter pilot had a close call with the remote control airplane near the same airport . Fortunately, both aircraft touch down safely . More than one hundred drone sightings are reported near airports every month in a growing threat to airline safety. We will follow that. And still ahead on morning Joe, we're going to be joined by a New York City council employee who was just freed after spending five months in an immigration detention center in New Jersey . Morning Joe is coming right back . The fastest self care, clean hair, K eighteen Airwash dry shampoo is the first biotech powered dry shampoo. It instantly eliminates odor and reduces oil and sweat for fresh hair and scalp for up to three days, and no white cast, starchy buildup, or heavy fragrances . K eighteen studied the science of fresh hair, so you never have to worry about wash day again. Shop at Sephora or get ten percent off your first purchase at K eighteen hair. com with Code Podcast. That's code podcast at K one eighthair. com. Hi, it's Sierra Miller. I can't wait for you to check out my new collection of shoes and accessories at Designer Shoe Warehouse . 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Visit comfort license for license information zero one two fifty four past the hour as America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday fast approaches many are asking the question What exactly are we celebrating? While the country initially had a bipartisan commission established by Congress more than a decade ago to plan festivities for this all important milestone , these plans were pushed aside by the Trump aligned Freedom two fifty initiative. Increasingly , the president has put himself at the center of many of these events, including a visit to Mount Rushmore this Friday . Joining us now, professor at Princeton University, Eddie Glaude Jr. He has a new book out titled America USA How race shadows the nation's anniversaries . Welcome back to the show. Congratulations on the book. And Eddie, I just wonder what your thoughts are how multidimensional they may be in terms of the gains made over the many decades versus where we are right now at America two hundred and fifty . Well, thank you for having me, Mika. I think we've been struggling with what are we actually celebrating? I was thinking about the slaughter case that in the earlier segment . And Joe has been talking about the importance of Madisonian democracy. But what we see with the slaughter case, of course, is the enshrinement of a unitary executive theory, right? That we have this outsized executive power . And so I'm worried about what that means for American democracy. I'm thinking about voting the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the redrawing of districts in the South. I'm thinking about the court's decision around TPS and the immigration policies that harkened back to the nineteen twenties . I'm thinking about Donald Trump kind of in so many ways blending his own kind of cult of personality with the celebration of the nation and wondering what, exactly are we celebrating? Is it a storybook version of America? This idea that, you know, we are a beacon of freedom and that our perfection was secured in our salvation? Or are we looking at the way in which our ideals don't match up to our practices , our current practices. And so I'm really going to july fourth , grappling with whether or not the ugly ghosts of our country have us by the nape of the neck, Mika . And that's the question. When you look at the difficult ies of the past and the things that we have overcome as a country , do you still have hope at a moment like this? I don't know, you know, I'm really , how can I put this that the country that made my life possible is being destroyed right in front of me ? That there are those who believe that I should just simply play a minor bit part, that black and brown folk, that the diversity of the nation isn't really its strength , it's actually it's Achilles fail . There are those who are imagining the country as just simply a white republic . And they are in many ways me trying in every way, shape, form or fashion to make it so. So we can talk about progress and we could try to pat ourselves on the back. I think that's true, but we have to look squarely in the face where we are now, and that is that there are those who are trying to in so many ways undermine a kind of robust and expansive understanding of American democracy. And in my way , and in my view, they are really betraying the best of the American tradition . Professor, great to see you this morning. Obviously, the American story has been one of progress slow and painful in many ways, perhaps blunted in these last few years. Democratic Senator John Os of Georgia facing a tough reelection campaign gave his take on what America two hundred and fifty means. Here's a little what he had to say during a rally over the weekend in Savannah Just think two hundred and fifty years on what the founders would see if they visited us today . But wait, they would see that slavery had been abolished. They would see that Americans without land and then women's and then the descendants of slaves had secured voting rights. They would see that our science and discovery propelled human knowledge to unimaginable heights and that those thir teen colonies had grown into a superpower that defeated the Nazis and Communists . They'd see a pluralist democracy. People of all colors descended from every point on earth stitched together out of many nations into one . But they'd also see a nation that at the height of its wealth and power fell into fell into the very traps they most feared , devouring itself in bitter conflict between warring factions captured by special interests . And they'd see a faithless president exploiting this rot to pursue the absolute power they overthrew . Eddie, kind of the point you've been making here, which is progress for centuries , of course, again , not always as quickly as most people would like it to happen . But in this moment, two hundred and fifty years on, a man and a young nation that overthrew a king and decided didn't want to be ruled by one now sort of living under one who would aspire to be a king. Well, well said Willie. I think what John Ossoff just laid out is the divided soul of America. And that has been the case since our founding. We've imagined ourselves at once as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic . And that white republic takes the form where greed and selfishness and grift and hatred overwhelm in so many ways our attempt to overwhelm and over run our most basic principles . And that divided soul in so many ways is in full view in our current moment. And a choice has to be made, it seems to me, who are we going to be? Who are we as Americans? Who are we going to be? Are we going to lean into the value of the diversity of this nation of the principles that make us or can make us who we claim to be? Or are we going to double down on the ugliness that, white well that Melville wrote about and let that in so many ways choke out the life of the country . I believe in this two hundred fiftieth we have to make a choice . America in so many ways has to leave behind this guaranteed innocence, William, and confront who we actually are, so that we can release ourselves into being otherwise. Otherwise, we're not going to make it to the other side of this madness, it seems to me. So I'm walking barreling towards july fourth with great trepidation, but hoping that the great diversity of this country will make itself known and we can beat back some of these ugly forces because remember, JD Vance doesn't believe that the Creed defines who we are. He believes in something more sinister, that there's something more fundamental about who we are as Americans that we need to reject, I think, outright . You know, Eddie, I have to tell you I still sing the Star Single Banner at ball games . I still tear up when I walk through certain cemeteries . I still enjoy seeing an American flag flapping in the w ind on a wonderful clear, sunny day . But I also know that we live under a constitution where the words all men are created equal was written by a slave owner . And I also know that we're a country that we fail to remember what Lincoln once said . We cannot escape history and we cannot escape our own history, but we can improve it , I think. And we can celebrate it without thinking that we're carrying a millstone around our neck because of the political activities that have taken place in the last certainly the last six or seven years . But my question to you is , do you see optimism at the end of this july fourth rainbow? No , no, Mike, I don't. And it comes about. I think that that orientation follows from my own formation . I don't think I've ever teared up around Patriot ism. I don't ever think I found joy in singing the Star Spangled Banner . It has something to do with the tradition out of which I've come , the way in which I have had to live and the people that I come from have had to live the contradiction of America itself, even as we have struggled for its promise . So I'm not optimistic. You know, I have a blue soaked hope, my friend , a blue soaked hope. And that is that the world is what it is, it's ugly . The country has this tremendously burdensome past that has it has it by the throat in so many ways. But you know, human beings can be monstrous, but they can also be miracles . And that faith in the miraculous potential of human beings is what I have , not in the abstraction. So I bring the fullness of my tradition to bear in this moment . And so what I need to do is just bear with love and see how we make it to the other side, my friend. Author Eddie Glaw Junior, thank you very much. We really appreciate what you've had to share this morning. I reflect your feelings . We have challenges . Miracles do happen as well . So here we are . Eddie, thank you very much . We are three minutes past the top of the hour. The Supreme Court yesterday handed down a new series of split decisions for the administration. The court upheld a Mississippi law that allows mail and ballots to be received up to five days after election day. The decision emphasized the Constitution gives election authority to state legislatures and Congress , not the president . This was a five four opinion with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining with the court's three liberal justices in the majority. The Supreme Court also cleared the way for President Trump to fire heads of most independent federal agencies at will . In a six three decision, the Justices rule, Trump can fire Rebeccaaughter S froml the Federal Trade Commission overturning a unanimous decision from the court in nineteen thirty five that protected the independence of government agencies . The ruling effectively makes FTC commissioners and those who staff independent federal agencies serve at the president's discretion and eliminates Congress's bipartisan requirement for the agency, but the court is making an exception , one exception for independence at the Federal Reserve, at least for now. In a separate five to four decision, the court ruled Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can keep her job as she fights dubious mortgage fraud claims from Trump and his allies . Chief Justice John Robertson and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices in the majority on this ruling. Joining us from outside the Supreme Court is MSN Legal Affairs reporter Fallon Gallagher . Also with us M,SN legal analyst Charles Coleman. Ballon, I'll start with you for more headlines on these decisions. What struck you? Yeah, Miga, yet I cannot underscore the significance of the slaughter decision that we got yester day, the court upended ninety one years of its own precedent, which is no small feat. And this is going to fundamentally reshape the way that presidents have power . Before this decision, there were statutory protections from Congress that prevented the president from firing these independent agency heads at will. He needed to have cause, meaning that there needed to be negligence or malfeasance or neglect of duty. Now, he's going to be able to fire these people at more than a dozen agencies at a whim simply because they disagree with his own policy. If you remember back to when he actually fired Rebecca Slaughter, the email that fired her said that he was doing so because her priorities were different from the administration . So this is going to fundamentally reshape his power and continues to strengthen the executive branch and chip it the way at the power of Congress. Now on the other hand, the Lisa Cook decision wasn't totally a surprise. In fact, the justices actually signaled the way that they were approaching these two cases differently when they decided to take them off of the emergency docket because they allowed the block on Lisa Cook's firing to remain in effect while this case continued. Now this is this is a more preliminary ruling at this point and they're kind of dodging the actual merits of the Fed, although they hint very heavily that they view the Fed differently from the other independent agencies, but they're blocking the Trump administration's bid to pause the lower court's ruling that had blocked her firing. So this will go back down to the lower court for further litigation because this was in the early stages, but with the Supreme Court saying, you know, the Fed is different. And that's you mentioned that Kavanaugh was in the majority there. That's something that he's actually signaled during arguments. He made a point that what goes around comes around. And if we give the President this power right now to fire members of the Fed , that could come back to bite the president or the party in future presidencies . Charles, you were live on the air as these decisions were coming down yesterday less than twenty four hours ago, now with some time to process and think through the significance of them as we think about the ability of a president, any president now to fire independent regulators, something that had been protected for almost a century, as Fallon said there, this allows those departments, those organizations to become almost explicitly polit ical with appointees from the president. We've had so much conversation, Willie about the notion of an authoritarian government or an authoritarian administration coming into play , but most of that has been rooted in the rhetoric that we've heard from Donald Trump . Yesterday, these Supreme Court decisions, particularly the two that we've been discussing with regards to the FTC and the Fed , they made that more of a reality. And I was very curious going into yesterday how they were going to told the line between the two agencies and make a difference. And it seems to me that the impact that they understood these justices knew that this could have with respect to Lisa Cook and the Federal Reserve on the economy as a whole , and the implications going forward likely played a role in how they decided that case. On the other hand, when you're talking about the amount of power that has now been given to the president and the executive branch to make these unilateral decisions about administrative agencies. That is a scary thing to think about because of the fact that these willie are supposed to be independent organizations. These are supposed to be independent agencies that don't get into the type of polit icized nature of what Donald Trump would like to see happen from his leadership. So what is the distinction as you see it between