At SCOTUS, Once Again, Religious Rights Are Only for Conservative Christians

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

The Logic Behind the Court’s New Carveout to Freedom of Religion

In a 6-3 decision yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that Damon Landor, a Rastafarian man, could not sue Louisiana prison guards who had forcibly shaved off his dreadlocks, in violation of his religious rights under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), the federal law that protects the religious liberties of the incarcerated. The conservative majority twisted itself into a pretzel to rule that the law did not authorize money damages against individual prison officials because, as if the law were a contract, they did not agree the law applied to them. It was a result, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent, that “magically transforms a federal statute into an invitation to be accepted or declined, deemed binding only if each particular defendant has explicitly agreed to be penalized.”

While the factual and legal particulars differ, it’s hard not to see the lengths to which the Court’s conservative majority will go to find no remedy for a non-Christian plaintiff whose rights were blatantly violated, and almost comically absurd remedies for conservative Christians. The Court started down this path in 2014, with the Hobby Lobby line of cases, in which it ruled that family businesses with religious owners did not have to comply with a federal requirement under the Affordable Care Act that employer-sponsored health insurance plans cover contraception. During Trump’s first term, the Court embraced his administration’s expansion of exemptions for non-profits opposed to contraception, to opt out of the coverage not only on religious, but also vaguely-defined “moral” grounds. The Court also has granted a religious exemption to a baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. It protected a website designer who had not even yet launched her business, from any remote possibility of a civil rights inquiry over her anti-LGBTQ stances. For the Court, even the mere prospect of an anti-LGBTQ Christian having to live in a world where LGBTQ people have rights is grounds for shielding them from the faith-crushing behemoth of human rights. For Damon Landor, though, they found an exception for the men who violated his rights by altering a religiously-mandated part of his body.

Remarkably, yesterday’s decision found a critic in the nation’s leading evangelical prison ministry. Prison Fellowship, founded in 1976 by Nixon White House special counsel Charles Colson after he found Jesus while serving a seven-month sentence for obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal, quickly faulted the decision. “At Prison Fellowship, we advocated for the passage of RLUIPA because we believe human dignity is central to how any justice system should operate,” Heather Rice-Minus, the organization’s president and CEO said in a statement. “When that dignity is violated, especially in matters of religious beliefs, it raises serious concerns about how we treat incarcerated individuals and whether their fundamental identity is being honored. We’re disappointed by the Court’s decision because the justice system must protect the worth and liberties of every individual, including those in prison.”

“A Hot Steaming Pile of DOGE Shit”

That’s what Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) predicted yesterday when reporters asked for his views on the firings President Donald Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte is reportedly carrying out. Tillis added, for good measure, that he considers Pulte an “incompetent sycophant.” Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) has introduced a bill that would prevent a president from installing an acting director to the position, and if there is a vacancy, require the elevation of the principal deputy director of national intelligence, who must be confirmed by the Senate, to the acting post.

Trump Claims He Directed the Outcome of California’s Gubernatorial Primary

During a speech at a Mack Trucks facility in Macungie, Pennsylvania yesterday, during which he was supposed to be “shifting” to talk about the economy, Trump blurted out that he told the Department of Justice to “take a look” at California’s gubernatorial primary election because he feared that the candidate he had endorsed, former Fox News contributor Steve Hilton, would not advance to the run-off. Trump said that during California’s notoriously slow but perfectly legal vote-counting process, he told the U.S. Attorney in central California, Bill Essayli, “‘Do me a favor. Take a look, they are trying to steal that election, too.’” Essayli publicly announced an investigation, and Trump falsely claimed that the only reason Hilton advanced to the run-off was because of Essayli’s intervention.

Trump Frustrating Senate Republicans With Relentless Push for SAVE America Act

Trump will be lunching with GOP senators today, pushing them once again to pass the SAVE America Act, even if it requires blowing up the filibuster or firing the Senate Parliamentarian. Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has consistently said the votes aren’t there for Trump’s voter suppression measure, and that Trump’s demands to end the filibuster or fire the parliamentarian in order to force it through are not going to happen. The president, who is drawing more vocal opposition from senators in his party of late, particularly over his vanity White House ballroom, his preposterously corrupt slush fund, and his disastrous prosecution of the Iran War, will not be Thune’s guest, however. He was invited by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), contributing to speculation that the close Trump ally is gunning for Thune’s job.

Dems Demand Answers on a Shady Trump Crypto Deal Involving Steve Witkoff

Senate Democrats are calling on their Republican counterparts to hold hearings on a shady deal between the Trump family’s cryptocurrency firm and figures in the United Arab Emirates. Citing reporting in Forbes, Reuters, and the New York Times, the senators write that “four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial (WLF) for approximately $500 million — with $218 million paid up front to entities tied to the families of President Trump and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.” A few months later, “the Trump Administration approved $1.4 billion in arms sales to the UAE, authorized the sale of 35,000 advanced AI chips to the UAE’s G42 firm despite national security concerns, and took steps to loosen cryptocurrency regulations — including disbanding the Justice Department’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.” 

Witkoff is one of the “negotiators,” along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, on the Iran “peace deal.” Trump’s war, though, has caused his popularity in the UAE to plummet, with one businessman telling the Washington Post, “we got played.” 

Did Right-Wing Groups Press the Trump Administration to Indict the Southern Poverty Law Center?

The New York Times reports that in a brief filed in federal court in support of its motion to dismiss the criminal case against it on the grounds of vindictive prosecution, the Southern Poverty Law Center argues its indictment was possibly triggered by a lettersent in September to Stephen Miller, signed by leaders of Christian right organizations including Turning Point USA, Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty, and others, who the SPLC had designated as extremist organizations in its Hate Map. An FBI document created a month later used some language that was identical to the letter to Miller, who also had been the subject of SPLC investigations into his ties with white nationalists. “Both the letter and the F.B.I. document also cited identical quotations from critics of the law center who called the Hate Map ‘a partisan progressive hit operation’ and ‘a willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks,’” according to the Times.

Military Leaders Finding Workarounds For Warrior Pete’s Anti-Vaccine Policy

After Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth eliminated the requirement that members of the military receive a flu vaccine, and the flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, military services are finding ways to get servicemembers and recruits vaccinated. They’re reinstituting the flu vaccine requirement, but apparently can’t say so; they’re calling it an “exception” to Hegseth’s policy. 

How Fascism Works

Paul Waldman reads Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s new book on Trump II, Regime Change, finding its main theme is how his sycophantic aides “enable him to be the worst version of himself, and in turn he makes them the worst version of themselves.” And architecture critic Philip Kennicott writes about the Reflecting Pool: “A place that was meant to amplify the ideals of our democracy by reflecting an image of its sacred monuments was now a police zone, where cops carried out what seem to be arbitrary arrests motivated by the president’s need to blame his own mismanagement on an imaginary enemy.”

Trump Is So Unpopular No One Wants to Name Their Kid Donald Anymore

Last year, the baby name Donald “hit its lowest point of popularity in U.S. history, according to data maintained by the Social Security Administration,” NOTUS reports.