This past week we’ve seen a further acceleration of the Trump administration’s attacks on the population. And, once again, the Supreme Court came down with a set of rulings that fully support these attacks.
The Supreme Court ruled (6 to 3) that the Trump administration could resume deporting immigrants to countries other than their own. The decision overturned a temporary order that gave people abducted by ICE time to contact lawyers and argue before a judge that their lives would be at risk if they were sent to these countries. Now these deportations can happen without any chance to see a judge. The Trump administration wants to round people up and send them to places they don’t come from, didn‘t choose to go to, and where they may not speak the language or know a single person. They have even tried to send immigrants to South Sudan, an East African country teetering on the brink of civil war. And now the Supreme Court has given a green light to this brutality.
This decision was followed by another ruling that opens the door to end what is known as birthright citizenship — the constitutional right established in 1868 that any person born in the U.S. is a citizen, regardless of the citizenship status of their parents. This ruling doesn’t explicitly allow the Trump administration to end birthright citizenship, but it makes it unlikely that the courts can stop them. And it makes it incredibly difficult for the courts to block any further executive orders. This will give even more power to the presidency, and practically eliminates the ability for lower courts to block the Trump administration’s policies.
These decisions come as ICE has ramped up its campaign of terrorism on immigrant communities. They have blown off people’s front doors in the middle of the night, and abducted people out of their beds and disappeared them from their families. They continue to kidnap people at their workplaces and their scheduled court appearances. Many of these abductions are extremely violent, with ICE agents tackling people to the ground and beating people with clubs before throwing them into unmarked vans. The Supreme Court’s rulings only sanction these acts of violent terrorism by ICE.
The Supreme Court also ruled this week to allow states to block Planned Parenthood from receiving any Medicaid funds. Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortion services in the country, with over half of its patients receiving Medicaid. What this ruling means is that any state can now choose to block all Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood for any reason. It is a major attack on Planned Parenthood, access to abortion, and other health care services for hundreds of thousands of low-income people, which puts their lives at greater risk.
The Supreme Court also ruled that parents have a right to opt their children out of public school instruction whenever they think it conflicts with their religious beliefs. This ruling is a major attack, and tries to deny the existence of LGBTQ+ people. The idea that parents can opt out their kids from acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ+ people is ridiculous — you can’t opt out of reality. This ruling is a blatant dehumanization of LGBTQ+ people, and encourages a further escalation of violence against them.
All of these decisions are happening as Congress is about to pass the latest Trump budget bill which hands over trillions of dollars in tax breaks to billionaires, paid through massive cuts to social services for the poor, and includes enormous increases to the military budget and funding for Trump’s ICE-led terror on immigrant communities.
As each day passes, what is happening couldn’t be any clearer. We are experiencing an assault and a declaration of war on our lives. And almost every attack that comes from the administration has the full backing of the courts. There are no judicial guardrails, and no outside force or politician is coming to save us.
This is all happening as we head into the 4th of July holiday, a time when the media and the politicians from both parties will recall the revolutionary war of Independence from the British Empire, and make huge declarations about how the U.S. is the greatest and most democratic country to ever exist.
But these rulings by the Supreme Court, and the latest attacks by the Trump administration tell a different story. Today we don’t face the tyranny of the British Empire. We face the rule of a tiny class of billionaires and their politicians who are waging a class war on our lives. This isn’t democracy — this is tyranny in 2025, a dictatorship of the billionaires.
To achieve real independence, we‘ll need to fight for real democracy, one that finally empowers working and poor people around the world to take control and run society to meet our needs. This would be real independence. This would be a true revolution deserving of celebration.
