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Liberal Justices Say Supreme Court ‘Fails to Act Neutral’ in SEC Ruling

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The liberal justices joined in a dissent that accused the Supreme Court of not acting neutrally in its ruling requiring jury trials for civil penalties.

Until the ruling in the case SEC v. Jarkesy, when the Securities Exchange Commission discovers securities fraud, the agency had the option of taking the offender to trial, or adjudicating the matter itself. Until 2010, though, if the SEC wanted to issue a civil penalty against an offender, it would have to go to federal court.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protect Act was passed in 2010, following the housing market crash in 2008. The new law allowed the SEC to issue penalties on its own.

READ MORE: Supreme Court Throws Out Perdue Bankruptcy Plan That Protects Sackler Family

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that this element of Dodd-Frank violated the Seventh Amendment, the right to a jury trial. The Court said that since the Seventh Amendment blocks Congress from the ability to “withdraw from judicial cognizance any matter which, from its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law,” and securities fraud is a matter of common law, it applies.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent and was joined by the other two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She argued that federal agencies have always had the ability to order civil penalties to those who violate the law without a jury trial. Sotomayor argued that agencies previously had the right to make the decisions, and though the adjudications were subject to review by the courts, it wasn’t required.

Both sides cite the 1977 case Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, which said that the Seventh Amendment did not apply to federal agencies adjudicating violations of public rights statutes. The conservatives argued that Atlas Roofing didn’t apply as the public rights exception was not “‘in the nature’ of a common law suit.”

The liberals disagreed, and argued that the ruling flew in the face of Atlas Roofing.

“Today, for the very first time, this Court holds that Congress violated the Constitution by authorizing a federal agency to adjudicate a statutory right that inheres in the Government in its sovereign capacity, also known as a public right,” Sotomayor wrote. “That is plainly wrong. This Court has held, without exception, that Congress has broad latitude to create statutory obligations that entitle the Government to civil penalties, and then to assign their enforcement outside the regular courts of law where there are no juries.”

Sotomayor’s dissent then accused the conservative majority of threatening the separation of powers the U.S. government is built on.

“Here, that threat comes from the Court’s mistaken conclusion that Congress cannot assign a certain public-rights matter for initial adjudication to the Executive because it must come only to the Judiciary,” she wrote.

“The majority today upends longstanding precedent and the established practice of its coequal partners in our tripartite system of Government. Because the Court fails to act as a neutral umpire when it rewrites established rules in the manner it does today, I respectfully dissent.”

 

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Trump Disavows Prediction Markets — His Family Has Financial Ties to Them: NYT

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April 24, 2026

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President Donald Trump on Thursday told reporters that he was “never much in favor” of prediction markets. “I don’t like it conceptually. It is what it is. I’m not happy with any of that stuff.”

“Well, you know, the whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino,” Trump, a former casino owner, told reporters. “And you look at what’s going on all over the world, in Europe and every place they’re doing these betting things.”

“I’m not happy with any of these sites,” Trump said. “They have predictive markets — it’s a crazy world, it’s a much different world than it was.”

And yet, Trump and some of his family members stand to benefit financially from those very markets, according to The New York Times.

“The president’s publicly traded media company unveiled its own prediction market product last year,” the Times reports. “And the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has ties to two of the industry’s top firms, including Polymarket.”

READ MORE: ‘Now Do Hanging’ Republican Demands After DOJ Announces Firing Squads for Executions

Ethics experts the Times consulted say Trump’s public statements directly contradict his family’s financial interests in the industry.

Despite Trump’s admonition, new regulations are not expected. Last year, the Trump administration “backed away from enforcement efforts against Polymarket, and it is unclear whether regulators will adopt any new oversight measures.”

The Times reports that the White House “has warned staff not to wager on government decisions, but his family’s involvement with these firms undermines the president’s message.”

U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) who is sponsoring legislation to ban government officials from betting on prediction markets using classified information, has raised concerns about national security risks. Chances that the bill would pass through a GOP-majority Congress are uncertain.

“It’s too politically dicey,” she said. “There is not a single important issue of the day where I don’t feel the shadow of Trump and his sons.”

READ MORE: Trump Believes He’s a ‘Savior’ Sent by God and Will Never Cede Power: Stoddard

 

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‘Now Do Hanging’ Republican Demands After DOJ Announces Firing Squads for Executions

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April 24, 2026

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A Republican member of Congress is calling for death row prisoners to be hanged after the U.S. Department of Justice announced it will move to expedite death row executions, including — for the first time in federal civilian history — by adding firing squads. The DOJ also said it will readopt lethal injections.

Declaring that it has a “solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences,” the DOJ said in a statement that it will work to clear the way for the Department to “carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals.”

The Department called the executions critical steps “to deterring the most barbaric crimes, delivering justice for victims, and providing long-overdue closure to surviving loved ones.”

The DOJ said it “has rescinded the Biden-Garland moratorium on federal executions and has authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.”

Before leaving office, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life in prison.

READ MORE: Trump Believes He’s a ‘Savior’ Sent by God and Will Never Cede Power: Stoddard

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

“Now do hanging,” demanded U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee.

Burchett last year suggested that House Republicans might offer convicted sex trafficker and Epstein partner Ghislaine Maxwell the possibility of a reduced sentence in exchange for her testimony.

In 2023, after the mass shooting deaths of three nine-year-olds and three adults at a Nashville Christian elementary school, Burchett told reporters nothing could be done.

“We’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals,” he told reporters.

READ MORE: Trump Found His New Favorite Reason to Void 2020

 

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Trump Believes He’s a ‘Savior’ Sent by God and Will Never Cede Power: Stoddard

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April 24, 2026

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President Donald Trump has little intention of leaving the White House says veteran political analyst A.B. Stoddard, arguing that he believes he is a “savior” and will either try to find some way to run for another term, cancel the election, or do something else radical.

“I don’t think he has any intention of leaving,” Stoddard told columnist Bill Kristol.

She believes there are “two paths” for Trump.

“He does not want to fall apart in public,” Stoddard said, adding that he will be forced to “make a calculation at some point.”

Asking if Trump can “serve and walk across stages, make speeches, be as visible as he wants to be, which he really needs?” she noted that the president “needs to be on camera as many days a week as he can.”

“I think he will make the calculation that he cannot run again if he’s feeling that he’s aging too quickly” for another term, she said.

READ MORE: ‘What Evil Looks Like’: Columnist Says Trump Presides Over a ‘Circus of Death and Chaos’

“He has no intention, I believe, of having any kind of successor that’s not in his family. So he’s either going to find a way to try to run for [another] term, or cancel the election, or do something very radical,” which is “not beyond him,” she said.

Stoddard says she could see Trump trying to pass his presidency off to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, his son, Donald Trump Jr. or his daughter, Ivanka Trump — but not Eric Trump. And he’s not going to walk away from the money he is making now — the most he’s ever made in his life.

It’s “absolute lunacy” to think that he is going to walk away from “the two things that soothe his demons,” which are “adulation and money.”

“I genuinely believe, Bill, that he believes that he is some kind of, you know, savior,” Stoddard declared.

“I mean, it’s always about how he was brought here by God,” she continued. “I don’t know that he has [the] specifics down, but he certainly believes he is special, and he craves that, that central, you know, all the attention has to be on him.”

She also said that had Trump lost the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton and never been president, he would have “just sat on Fox three days a week, just bashing her.”

She concluded that she cannot see Trump just going off “like an old man into the sunset.”

READ MORE: Pope Leo: Church Should Focus More on Justice and Less on Same-Sex Blessings

 

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