On Wednesday, the Supreme Court decided Callais. The last paragraph of the opinion stated:
The judgment of the District Court is affirmed, and thesecases are remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Well, it is not ordered right away. Under the Court's rules, the remand does not happen immediately. In this 2020 post, I described the process by which judgments are actually entered. Conflicts over the timing of the judgments have arisen in high profile cases, including Bush v. Gore, Boumediene, Trump v. Vance, Trump v. Mazars, DHS v. Regents, Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson, and others. Of course, after Obergefell was decided, jurisdictions outside the Sixth Circuit immediately issued marriage licenses to gay couples, even though they were bound by injunctions. Whatever, love won!
The private plaintiffs in Trump v. Callais have asked the Supreme Court to issue the judgment forthwith. Louisiana has taken no position on the request, because the issuance of the judgment is irrelevant:
The State notes that the Court's May 15, 2024 Order also states that, "[i]n the event jurisdiction is noted or postponed, this order will remain in effect pending the sending down of the judgment of this Court." That language can be read to conflict with the cited language above, which requires automatic termination of the Order if the lower court's judgment is affirmed. That potential conflict, however, has no bearing here because, whether the Order is already terminated or will be terminated when this Court sends down the judgment, nothing prevents Louisiana from adopting a constitutional map and process consistent with this Court's decision right now.
Louisiana is correct. The District Court did not issue an injunction. The Supreme Court affirmed the District Court's judgment. Nothing prohibits Louisiana from following the Supreme Court's decision as a precedent, even if there is no issued judgment. Moreover, once Louisiana adopts new maps in the next week or so, this entire dispute will be mooted.
Some excerpts from the long Complaint in Harpole v. Owens (M.D. Tenn.), just filed today (of course, recall that these are all just accusations, not court findings):
Plaintiff Brian Harpole is a citizen and resident of Texas. He is the founder and head of Integrity Security Solutions, a private security firm. In or around 2018, Harpole began working for the late Charlie Kirk, with Integrity Solutions providing security for Turning Point USA and protective services for Kirk from 2022 to 2025. Integrity Solutions provided these services for Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, where Kirk was fatally shot….
Shortly after the assassination, Owens began disseminating content asserting that Kirk was betrayed by individuals close to him, that the government orchestrated a cover-up of the assassination, that Turning Point USA was implicated in the event, and advancing numerous additional conspiracy theories suggesting that somebody other than Tyler Robinson was involved in the murder….
Since Charlie Kirk's assassination, Owens has intentionally proliferated a campaign intended to impugn the reputation of Harpole. Without even a modicum of substantiated evidence, she has publicly accused Harpole and Integrity Solutions of foreknowledge, participation in, and cover-up of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, as well as professional unfitness and criminal negligence. Despite Owens admitting that she had viewed Harpole's flight records, she continued to accuse him of attending a meeting at Fort Huachuca—based solely on unsubstantiated testimony from Defendant Snow. Furthermore, without any evidence that Harpole acted negligently or intentionally with regard to the assassination of Kirk, Owens spread conspiracy theories that he somehow and for some reason intended Kirk to die….
Between December 9, 2025, and December 28, 2025, Owens, through at least eight separate statements published on X and disseminated via her podcast, falsely and negligently, if not intentionally and with reckless disregard for the truth, alleged that Harpole attended a conspiracy meeting at Fort Huachuca on the day preceding Kirk's assassination and colluded with the government in connection with that assassination. She therefore also accused him of conspiracy to commit murder, a criminal offense. These statements include, but are not limited to:
The ImmigrationProf Blog site has been hosting a symposium on the birthright citizenship case oral argument, which took place before the Supreme Court earlier this month. They now have a post compiling links to the different posts, including one of my own. The other contributors are all prominent immigration law and constitutional law scholars. I include the links below:
An excerpt from Turner v. Abelle-Kiser, decided Tuesday by the Maryland Appellate Court (Judge Douglas Nazarian, joined by Chief Judge Gregory Wells and Judge Glenn Harrell):
This appeal arises from a custody dispute between appellant AshLee Smith Turner ("AST") and appellee Blair Abelle-Kiser ("BAK") over custody of their minor child, Z…. [AST] challenges the court's legal custody decision, and especially the decision to grant tiebreaking authority to BAK ….
The parties are parents to Z, a minor child. They married before they had Z and were granted a judgment of absolute divorce in June 2022. AST is cisgender, and BAK is transgender…. [In its child custody decision, the trial] court awarded joint physical custody … and, most relevant to this appeal, joint legal custody with conditional tiebreaking authority vested in BAK….
The court upheld the legal custody decision, and in the process said the following:
AST argues that … because Z has begun exploring their gender identity, because BAK is trans, and because BAK has been supportive in that exploration, the circuit court abused its discretion by establishing legal custody as the court did….
Importantly, AST does not challenge BAK having tiebreaking authority generally, but asks instead that the court carve gender identity-related parenting decisions out of the tiebreaker. She contends, in essence, that allowing a trans parent to have tiebreaking authority when a child has begun exploring their gender identity is inherently an abuse of discretion. We disagree.
One of the more unexpected aspects of the Birthright Citizenship case was the return of Justice John Marshall Harlan. But I think a more careful study of Harlan's lectures suggests that at least part of Trump's order may survive: specifically, the status of children whose mother is in the United States on a tourist or other limited visa. I discuss this question in a new Civitas Outlookessay. Here is the introduction:
The conventional wisdom is that the Supreme Court will strike down President Trump's entire birthright citizenship order. In 2018, I wrote that children of illegal aliens are citizens at birth. I'll admit that recent scholarship has made this question much closer than I had realized, but on balance, Trump's order should not stand for the children of illegal aliens who are domiciled in the United States. The analysis, however, differs for the second part of Trump's order, which applies to children of mothers on tourist or other temporary visas. And for authority, the Supreme Court can rely on an unexpected source who came up at oral argument: Justice John Marshall Harlan.
In a 1898 constitutional law lecture, which I analyzed more than a decade ago, Justice Harlan told his students that the children of tourists, "who cannot under the law become naturalized in the United States," would not be birthright citizens. During oral argument at the Supreme Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch and counsel for the ACLU dismissed Harlan's views because he dissented in the landmark case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. But that decision did not set a binding precedent on the status of temporary sojourners. More importantly, the views of the Great Dissenter, whose dissents were often vindicated by history, should not be dismissed so casually. If Harlan was right, then the Supreme Court could split the difference on Trump's order: the children of illegal aliens who intend to stay in the United States would retain birthright citizenship, but pregnant women could no longer come to the United States on temporary visas for the purpose of giving birth to citizens.
Wong Kim Ark certainly addressed the issue of birth to a tourist, but I do not think a holding was set on that question. If so, the value of Wong Kim Ark is persuasive, and not binding. Here, the Harlan dissent should warrant a closer look. After all, Harlan's other dissents have come to be vindicated:
The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868. Wong Kim Ark, which was decided three decades later, should not be seen as a clear reflection of the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. The justices in the majority and dissent, who all lived through the ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments, vigorously disagreed on that original meaning. The value of Wong Kim Ark lies in its status as a judicial decision. Wong Kim Ark set a precedent about the status of children born to aliens who are domiciled in the United States, but there is no similar holding about temporary sojourners who do not intend to stay in the United States.
Where there is not a binding precedent about the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, I would line up behind Harlan over other members of the Court from the late nineteenth century. Consider Harlan's track record. In 1896, the Supreme Court decided the notorious case of Plessy v. Ferguson by an 8-1 vote. The majority established the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine, which approved the Jim Crow regime. Justice Harlan was the only member who recognized that separate cannot be equal. Five members of the Wong Kim Ark majority also joined the Plessy majority. Harlan's dissents would also be vindicated in other landmark cases. In The Civil Rights Cases (1883), Harlan recognized that Congress had the power to eradicate the vestiges of slavery. In Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), Harlan found that the federal income tax was constitutional. In United States v. E.C. Knight (1895), Harlan found that Congress could regulate manufacturing as a form of commerce. In Lochner v. New York (1905), Justice Harlan upheld a law regulating bakers' hours. And I could go on. The track record for Justice Horace Gray pales in comparison.
Very little of the briefing focused on the birth tourism issue, so Harlan's lecture notes warrant a closer look.
From Carvajal v. Ferretti, decided yesterday by the Florida Court of Appeal, in an opinion by Justice Mark Klingensmith, joined by Justices Shannon Shaw and Johnathan Lott:
Wife and her husband separated in 2021 and initiated divorce proceedings in 2022. Girlfriend began a relationship with the husband in 2019, prior to the dissolution proceedings.
In October 2024, Wife filed a petition for an injunction for protection against stalking, alleging four categories of conduct occurring between August 2023 and October 2024:
August 2023 social media post: Girlfriend accused Wife of manipulating others, using her child to spy, and included language Wife perceived as threatening.
February 2024 social media post: Girlfriend again accused Wife of stalking behavior, tagged Wife's workplace, and warned others about her. Wife testified this led to a meeting with her employer.
October 16, 2024 text message: Girlfriend contacted Wife regarding a child support payment being sent via Zelle and requested identifying information. Wife provided the information and confirmed receipt through a court-approved communication application.
October 23, 2024 communications: Following an incident involving Wife's cousin, Girlfriend sent Wife a series of messages calling her derogatory names, accusing her of stalking, and telling her to stay away. When Wife blocked her number, Girlfriend resent the same messages via WhatsApp and email within minutes and referenced possibly appearing at Wife's workplace….
The trial court found the statutory requirements satisfied and entered a three-year injunction prohibiting Girlfriend from contacting Wife….
4/30/1789: President Washington's inauguration. He would appoint eleven members to the Supreme Court: Chief Justices Jay, Rutledge, and Ellsworth, and Justices Wilson, Blair, Cushing, Rutledge, Iredell, Johnson, Paterson, and Chase.
After much anticipation, the Supreme Court finally decided Louisiana v. Callais. (The Chief Justice pronounced it as waylay.) I have some preliminary thoughts.
First, more than five months elapsed from the oral argument in October till decision day. The longer this case dragged on, the harder it would be for Republican legislatures to redistrict. There was some speculation that the dissenters were dragging out the case to run out the clock. Are these insinuations accurate? Justice Alito's majority opinion in somewhat unusual in that it barely engages with the dissent. There are a few paragraphs on the penultimate page of the opinion that address the dissent. This isn't the sort of drafting process that required many opinions going back-and-forth for revisions. Moreover, there were no concurrences. The majority opinion had six clean votes. Indeed, I suspect Justice Alito circulated this draft shortly after conference. And I can't imagine there was much disagreement between Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson. Is five months an unusually long period of time for a 90-page decision when the majority doesn't respond to the dissent? Not usually, but where there is an incentive on one side to go quick, the other side may not have been in a hurry. (I will leave aside the claim in Molly Hemmingway's new book that the Dobbs dissenters refused to expedited the release of the opinion after the leak.) Let's wait to see what the leaks reveal.
Second, I think back to Allen v. Milligan, which was decided a few weeks before SFFA. At the time, there was speculation that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh (mostly) ruled against Alabama to soften the blow of (largely) ending affirmative action. Barely three years later, the Court relies on SFFA to (arguably) scale back Milligan. On the surface at least, there is no daylight between Justice Alito and the Chief Justice. Then again, it may have been Roberts's preference to not invalidate Section 2, to at least maintain the fiction of stare decisis. Remember, the Chief Justice knows to the decimal point what percentage of cases overrule precedents.
Third, this decision eliminates the Voting Rights Act asymmetry. Democrats will lose their bonus in conservative states. For the 2026 midterms, it is not clear how much of an impact this ruling will have. But in the long run, especially after the 2030 census, Callais will be significant. Still, I think it is shortsighted to think that political dynamics will not change. For the first time in generations, black and hispanic voters will live in districts where the winner is not preordained. Callais may shift how politicians on both sides of the aisle appeal to a demographic that historically has been neglected. Minority voters may even strategically vote in republican primaries to affect narrow races. As I often say, ignore all predictions that the sky will fall after a Supreme Court decision. Institutions can adapt to changed circumstances.
I've finished reviewing the Supreme Court's 92-page decision in Louisiana v. Callais (rhymes with waylay). I've distilled it down to about 16 pages for the 2026 Barnett/Blackman supplement. My focus here was on the ConLaw aspects of the case, so much of the history of Section 2, the 1982 amendments, and Gingles is trimmed. I also did not include the lengthy and complicated procedural posture. I'm not sure that it will matter too much as the Court found the application of the "updated" standard to be easy.
I'll have more to say about the case in another post.
Jane and I lay out the structure of American defamation law, using the recent lawsuits brought by FBI Director Kash Patel as a launching point. Special bonus: Almost no discussion of New York Times v. Sullivan (an important case but one that listeners have doubtless heard much about elsewhere).
In recent years, a lively scholarly discourse has emerged about whether and how the U.S. First Amendment protects generative AI outputs. Some have argued that such outputs are protected at the very least by the rights of AI users to receive information and to create their own speech. Others would not recognize gen AI outputs as receiving such First Amendment protections. The issue of whether gen AI program creators are entitled to free speech protections for such outputs has also spurred a variety of reactions.
As this discourse on the First Amendment and gen AI unfolds, it is also important to reflect on what the global freedom of expression standard has to say on the matter. This standard will affect discussions about national and regional regulatory approaches to gen AI throughout the world. In addition, global corporate responsibility standards call on companies to respect international human rights norms in their operations, which may also impact how businesses that provide gen AI services approach their activities.
Part I of this Article explores the scope of the existing global free expression standard. Part II considers the standard's application to gen AI outputs, including in various governmental and corporate contexts. Ultimately, this Article maintains that the global free expression standard protects the rights of individuals to seek and receive information of any kind, including gen AI outputs.
In addition, if human speakers share gen AI outputs as part of their own speech, this global standard also protects those speakers' right to impart information. Governmental attempts to restrict gen AI outputs are therefore subject to the standard's safeguards on how this human right can be limited. And companies providing general-purpose gen AI services should also respect human rights, including freedom of expression, in their operations.
Last November, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a Department of Energy energy efficiency standard for natural gas-powered consumer furnaces and commercial water heaters that effectively banned non-condensing units from the market. The panel decision might have been defensible (and understandable) in a Chevron world, but it (as Judge Rao's dissent demonstrated) it was hard to reconcile with the approach to statutory interpretation dictated by Loper Bright Enterprises.
At the time, I wondered why the Trump Administration had allowed this case to go to judgment. It could have asked the D.C. Circuit to put any decision on hold while DOE reconsidered the rule, but it didn't.
In January, a coalition of industry groups petitioned for certiorari in American Gas Association v. Department of Energy. Yesterday, the Solicitor General filed his response, asking the Court to GVR the case due to the D.C. Circuit's error.
Petitioners contend (Pet. 25-30) that the Department's December 2021 interpretive rule and resulting energy-conservation standards reflect an unduly narrow understanding of what constitutes a "performance characteristic[]" under EPCA. Following the change in Administration, the government agrees with that contention. The Court should accordingly grant the petition for a writ of certiorari, vacate the judgment below, and remand for further proceedings (GVR) in light of the government's position in this brieft.
Granting the government's request would send a message to the D.C. Circuit to take statutory interpretation more seriously and vindicate a powerful (and persuasive) Rao dissent. It would also save the Administration the time and trouble of trying to undo the rule in the shadow of the D.C. Circuit's decision. As I noted last fall, the panel opinion could make it difficult for the Trump Administration to rescind or modify the rule on the grounds that the best interpretation of the statute does not allow it. A GVR from the Court would solve this problem.
In First Choice, a unanimous Court concluded that a pro-life religious organization had Article III standing to challenge the constitutionality of a subpoena from the New Jersey Attorney General demanding information about the nonprofit's financial supporters. As occurred with the mifepristone litigation, the fact that this case touches on abortion did not prevent consensus among the justices.
Justice Gorsuch wrote for the Court, making quick work of the arguments accepted by the lower courts and advanced by New Jersey. As Justice Gorsuch notes, "the question before us all but answers itself." Nonetheless, three of the four lower court judges to consider the case reached the opposite conclusion.
From Justice Gorsuch's opinion:
This case presents a narrow question. We are not asked to decide the merits of First Choice's federal lawsuit, only whether it may proceed. Article III of the Constitution vests federal courts with the "judicial Power" to decide "Cases" and "Controversies." §2, cl. 1. Inherent in that assignment is a "standing" requirement consisting of three elements: "injury in fact, causation, and redressability." Diamond Alternative Energy, LLC v. EPA, 606 U. S. 100, 110– 111 (2025). Together, these elements help us distinguish cases and controversies fit for judicial resolution from questions of public policy reserved to the elected branches or abstract disputes better left to the debating hall. See ibid.
As this case comes to us, it centers on the injury-in-fact element. To satisfy that element, a case must involve "an injury that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent." Id., at 111 (internal quotation marks omitted). Because this standard tolerates suits involving "actual or imminent" injuries, a party need not always wait for the government to take coercive action against it before filing suit to challenge the government's conduct. Instead, a litigant may bring a pre-enforcement suit seeking prospective relief against government officials so long as it faces "a credible threat of enforcement." See Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U. S. 149, 161, 164–167 (2014).
Before us, First Choice advances two arguments for why it can satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement. First, the group submits that the Attorney General's subpoena itself—and specifically its demand for donor information— has caused it to suffer an actual and ongoing injury to its First Amendment rights by deterring donors from associating with it. Second, First Choice contends that it faces an imminent future injury because with the subpoena came a credible threat that the Attorney General would seek to enforce it in state court if the group failed to comply. For our purposes, it suffices to address only the first theory as it is enough to carry the day.
And the opinion concludes:
Since the 1950s, this Court has confronted one official demand after another like the Attorney General's. Over and again, we have held those demands burden the exercise of First Amendment rights. Disputing none of these precedents but seeking ways around them, the Attorney General has offered a variety of arguments. Some are old, some are new, but none succeeds. Accordingly, the judgment of the Third Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
"[S]tatements made to third parties can be 'directed at' the victim," and thus criminal harassment if they're repeated and likely to cause serious annoyance or distress, "when they are designed to provoke an adverse consequence against the victim."
A person commits harassment [a class 1 misdemeanor] if the person knowingly and repeatedly commits an act or acts that harass another person or the person knowingly … [c]ontacts or causes a communication with another person by verbal, electronic, mechanical, telegraphic, telephonic or written means….
"[H]arass" means conduct [excluding] a {lawful demonstration, assembly or picketing} [1] that is directed at a specific person and [2] that would cause a reasonable person to be seriously alarmed, annoyed, humiliated or mentally distressed and [3] the conduct in fact seriously alarms, annoys, humiliates or mentally distresses the person.
This pretty clearly covers certain kinds of unwanted communications to a person (e.g., repeated unwanted seriously annoying phone calls). But does it also cover communications about a person? The statute does specifically cover one such communication: making "a false report to a law enforcement, credit or social service agency against another person." But what about true statements, or expressions of opinion, about someone that are reasonably seriously upsetting—e.g., complaints to employers, which might put the target's job in jeopardy (surely something that would seriously alarm, annoy, humiliate, or mentally distress people)?
Monday's unanimous Arizona Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Timmer in Hernandez v. Loarca says the law does cover such speech about people:
Briana Hernandez and Luis Loarca had a past romantic relationship that resulted in the birth of their daughter …, who was ten years old at the time of the events at issue…. Hernandez obtained an order of protection against Loarca based on allegations that he engaged in domestic violence by harassing her at Daughter's school, where Hernandez was also employed. See A.R.S. § 13-3601(A)(2) (including harassment by one parent against the other as an act of domestic violence). Specifically, she alleged that Loarca harassed her by making negative statements concerning her to Daughter's teacher and the school principal….
We conclude that communications may be "directed at" a victim even when conveyed to a third party when they are designed to provoke an adverse consequence against the victim…. If such communications are designed to provoke an adverse consequence for the victim that would seriously alarm, annoy, humiliate, or mentally distress a reasonable person in the victim's position, and in fact do so, they constitute harassment. In short, § 13-2921(E) regulates conduct based on its target, not its transmission path.
As a recent Boston Globe article explains, the Trump Administration is trying to deport Russian dissenters against Vladimir Putin's war of aggression:
Russian asylum seekers are being rejected despite the likelihood they will be arrested back in Russia. It started during the Biden administration but has accelerated in President Trump's second term. Since Trump returned to office last year, US immigration authorities have deported possibly hundreds of Russian asylum seekers. This is according to estimates by Russian America for Democracy in Russia (RADR), an organization that assists antiwar Russians with finding legal aid and that has analyzed ICE data.
Russian refugee seekers deported by the administration include a 25-year-old man who defected from the army, was arrested upon his return to Moscow, and was charged with desertion. An opposition activist named Leonid Melekhin was sent to prison straight from the airport after his deportation flight from the United States in 2025, and he now faces a lengthy prison sentence. RADR estimates that another 1,000 Russians who have requested asylum are being held in US detention facilities.
Krasnov applied for asylum at the US-Mexican border back in 2023. He spent more than 14 months in detention until he was released in October 2024 after he joined a class-action lawsuit challenging unlawful detentions. Then he was detained once again during a check-in with ICE in February 2025.
Now he is certain that he will be sent to prison the moment he lands in Russia. One common fate for Russian prisoners is to be sent off to the Ukraine war. At one point, Russian prisoners accounted for 18 percent of all Russian casualties in the war. It baffles Krasnov that the Trump administration is providing more foot soldiers to fight against Ukraine, a US ally. "In Russia, every man is a potential cog in Putin's war machine. Why give him more cogs?''….
The Russians who have been detained by ICE include many immigrants who drive trucks for a living. It is a profession that has made them easy targets for immigration officials, who prowl the roads looking for suspicious-looking drivers or are able to look at their documents at checkpoints. "ICE officers are simply rounding up those who go right into their hands. Don't even have to make an effort to hunt anyone down,'' says Anastasia Topilina, whose husband, Alexander, was detained at a checkpoint in Laredo, Texas.
Alexander Topilin was being held in that detention center alongside about 20 other Russian-speaking truck drivers. His family had been forced to flee Russia because of threats from the police, who had singled Topilin out for his years-long participation in anti-Putin protests. After being detained at one of the rallies, he says that he was strangled with a "terry cloth towel'' to force him to confess to trying to "overthrow the current president.''
I previously wrote about this issue back in September of last year, and the points I made still apply:
[A]busive treatment of Russian dissenters fleeing Putin occurred under Biden, as well. And I condemned it at the time. But Trump's expansion of the deportations and collaboration with the Russian government is worse.
Beginning soon after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I have argued the US and other Western nations should open their doors to Russians fleeing Putin's increasingly repressive regime. It's the right thing to do for both moral and strategic reasons. Morally, it's wrong to bar people fleeing brutal repression and, in some cases, seeking to avoid being drafted into an unjust war of aggression. Strategically, we benefit from depriving Putin of valuable manpower and from enabling the Russian refugees to contribute to our economy and scientific innovation (Russian immigrants and refugees are disproportionate contributors to the latter). I have also advocated for Ukrainian refugees, whose interest I cannot easily be accused of neglecting.
I would add that the 1980 Refugee Act gives anyone crossing a US border the right to apply for asylum, and Russians fleeing persecution for opposing Putin's war have an obviously strong case for getting it. US law grants asylum to people who enter the United States and meet the legal definition of "refugee," defined as "any person who is outside any country of such person's nationality…. and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." Russians threatened with imprisonment and other repression because they oppose Putin's war undeniably qualify as victims of persecution based on "political opinion." In today's Russia, you can get a prison sentence for spreading what the Kremlin calls "false information" about the war, which includes such things as referring to Putin's "special military operation" as a "war."
Elsewhere, I have made the case for expanding the legal definition of "refugee," which excludes many people fleeing various types of horrific violence and oppression. But Russian war dissenters clearly qualify under the current narrow definition.
In sum, Trump's effort to deport Russian anti-Ukraine War dissenters is simultaneously unjust, illegal, and harmful to US foreign policy interests. But at least you can say Trump is consistent. His abusive treatment of Russian dissenters is of a piece with his efforts to deport people seeking to escape other oppressive anti-American regimes, such as those who fled Cuba and Venezuela, Iranian Christians, and Afghans who escaped the Taliban (including many who aided the US during the war).
Conservative Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby makes some additional related points in this article.
