Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the Trump administration can proceed with its plan to strip half a million migrants of the legal status granted to them under the Biden administration. Those migrants were part of the CPB One 'parole flights' program that shuttled migrants across the U.S. (at taxpayer expense, of course).
On April 15, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the Trump administration from stripping them of their status. The problem, of course, was that the Biden administration had already announced in 2024 it was not going to renew their status (because it was an election year and they were desperate).
Now that I've gone over the background, I want to point out the headlines concerning the Supreme Court's ruling and why they show a deep and fundamental problem with understanding American civics (both in and out of the media):
BREAKING: Supreme Court allows Trump administration to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to deportation. https://t.co/zutZag36PA
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 19, 2025
'Supreme Court allows' is, at best misleading.
And it wasn't just the AP, either.
Recommended
SCOTUS allows Trump to revoke legal status of migrants in Biden's parole program (guess the justice who was against it)https://t.co/KbXeA32k1Q
— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) May 19, 2025
The Supreme Court isn't allowing the Trump administration to do anything. The Constitution, however, is.
Several clauses in the Constitution give President Trump the authority to enforce our immigration laws, including Article II, Section 1, which pertains to executive power; Article II, Section 3, the 'take care clause,' which tasks the president with making sure the laws are faithfully executed; and Article II, Section 2, which outlines his role as commander-in-chief and his obligations to enforce our borders.
In Chae Chan Ping vs. United States (1889), the Supreme Court also recognized that the federal government has authority over immigration as part of national sovereignty.
Article III -- which is short for a reason -- deals with what the Supreme Court, and lower courts, can and cannot do. They are tasked with interpreting the laws and the Constitution as written. Not as they wish it to be, not as they think it is. Every word, clause, phrase, and comma means something. And a circuit judge in Podunk, Nowhere does not have the authority or jurisdiction to overrule the president.
In the same way that lower courts cannot stop the president, the Supreme Court does not allow the President to do anything. It does not have that authority.
This shows the problems of an inherently biased, ignorant, and ideologically skewed media. And it has created nothing but problems. We've seen -- time and again -- the propagandists at the AP, New York Times, and Washington Post turn to the courts as co-legislators on par with the president and Congress. They are not.
Nor should they be.
I think about all the times the Left has warned of an impending 'Constitutional crisis' because of the things the Trump administration is (or is not) doing. Yet -- time and again -- the real Constitutional crisis comes from the Leftists and media who use the courts as their legislative mulligan, the place they turn to when the democracy they love so much doesn't go their way.
Which is why they think the Court 'allowed' Trump to enforce the immigration laws he's obligated to follow.
Journalists and jurists should know this. I have an English degree and a nursing degree and I understand it better than the AP and Justice Jackson Brown. But that's a low bar.
The brilliance of the Constitution is that it's written so that it is explicitly clear to anyone who can read at a first-grade level. Children can comprehend what the Constitution says.
It takes a Harvard degree -- or a degree in journalism -- to misinterpret it.
