When the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage 11 years ago last month, the reaction was sheer jubilation. Couples flocked to courthouses to formalize their unions. Thousands rallied in community celebrations. The White House glowed with rainbow lights (I know, it’s unfathomable today).

The Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges extended marriage equality to a group of Americans whose rights had previously been in doubt. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment was generous and inclusive:

“The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.”

Same-sex couples, the Court concluded, deserved that liberty: “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

Last week, however, the Supreme Court offered a starkly different vision of who in America deserves freedom and the protection of law. It ruled that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause do not shield trans athletes from transphobic discrimination. It gave the Trump administration sweeping powers to end the legal status of Haitian, Syrian and other refugees fleeing disasters and violence in their homelands. More than one million people now face the risk of mass deportation. Earlier this term, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, effectively empowering the disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South.

Granted, the Court also reaffirmed birthright citizenship, a win for millions of Americans born of immigrants (including me). But as Monthly Legal Affairs Editor Garrett Epps points out, the Court could hardly rule otherwise, given the weight of history, precedent, and the plain language of the Constitution. The Court’s ruling was less cause for celebration than relief—like when a Category Five hurricane swipes the coast before heading back out to sea.

Taken together, the Court’s rulings this session enable a Trumpian America that’s bigoted, mean and monochromatic (i.e., white): America not as a “melting pot” but as a cauldron of racial resentment. Especially appalling were Justice Samuel Alito’s weak protestations that Trump’s animus toward Haitians was not “overtly racial”—a characterization that Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson decisively punctured in their dissent. Trump’s remarks, they write, were “so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.” The dissenters had no such reservations. Reciting a long list of Trump’s most hateful slurs, their dissent exposed the president’s racism, the majority’s hypocrisy—and just how the far the Court has fallen since the lofty days of Obergefell.

More Supreme Court coverage from the Monthly….

Justice Alito—election denier? The Supreme Court’s decision this week allowing the acceptance of absentee ballots after Election Day (provided they’re postmarked on time) was good news for voters and state election officials. But voting rights expert Josh Douglas notes a troubling concern: Justice Samuel Alito’s seeming belief in widespread voter fraud. “Justice Alito’s constant acceptance of the myth of voter fraud, without evidence… should raise citizens’ alarms,” he writes, and this belief could justify more restrictive voting rules in the future. Read here.

An imperial presidency. An imperial Court. Though overshadowed by other rulings this week, the Supreme Court’s decision allowing the firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter might be its “biggest and most consequential” this term, writes Peter Shane. The Court not only grants the executive unprecedented power, it usurps power for itself as well. “Trump v. Slaughter arrogates to the Supreme Court power that the Constitution vests in Congress, not the judiciary,” Peter writes. For one thing, Peter argues, the end of agency independence could mean the end of administrative courts. Read his reasoning here.

Ideology over science. With its ruling in West Virginia in B.P.J., the Supreme Court threw open the doors to transphobic legislation, all the while disregardng science, evidence, and its own prior reasoning, argues University of Oregon professor Allison Gash. Among the facts that the Court ignored: neither of the plaintiffs, both trans women, experienced any advantage over cisgender female athletes. Read here.

And don’t miss…

Eggs-ploitation. Remember when egg prices were $6 a dozen, ostensibly because of bird flu? Turns out egg producers had hatched a plot to jack up prices too. Claire Kelloway was the first to propose this possibility, and a new settlement between egg producers and the Justice Department confirms as much. Get the details here.

Requiem for a dream. Historian Jack Rakove mourns how far America has strayed from the hopes of our Founding Fathers and even Ronald Reagan’s vision of the nation as a “shining city upon a hill.” John Adams, he writes, “exulted on being ‘sent into life at a time when the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to have lived.’” But today, “the revolutionary optimism that Adams … felt in the springtime of independence now seems a distant memory.” Read here.

Plus…

Jonathan Alter speaks with two experts on how Iran has weaponized the Strait of Hormuz to win its war with the U.S.
Health policy expert Merrill Goozner predicts that the share of Americans without health insurance could soar to 11 percent this year as a result of the Trump administration’s policies.
Matt Watkins documents the slow-rolling disaster of health care cuts over the last year, since the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act. Many patients have died.
Politics Editor Bill Scher and contributing writer David Atkins share competing views on the meaning of voter revolts in recent Democratic primaries. Bill argues these internecine contests haven’t accomplished much besides establish new purity tests on the left. David Atkins, on the other hand, thinks these results reflect widespread frustration with the establishment.
Bill also looks back to Calvin Coolidge’s sequicentennial remarks for what Trump could have said last night but didn’t.
Contributing writer James Zirin notes that while Trump has been siphoning off dollars from national parks to fund his pet renovations, park services and safety have suffered.

Coda (“Great American State Fair” edition…)

The “Great American State Fair” was a belligerent pageant of Trumpery that took residence on the National Mall last week. Far from great and wholly un-American, it was a singularly divisive event for what should have been a unifying moment for the country.

Organized by the Trump-aligned Freedom 250, the “fair” featured a pavilion dedicated to “faith and family” and prayer sessions on the main stage. Two booths hawked the chance to open “Trump Accounts.” At least ten states refused to participate, citing cost, logistics, or politicization.

Exhibits showcased Trump’s favored constituencies: billionaires, Christians, whites. The ultra-conservative Hillsdale College displayed an elaborate booth, as did Elon Musk’s SpaceX. A student art contest for “American heroes” merged with exhibits of paintings of Jesus.

The booth for “Truth,” featuring the right-wing conspiracy mongerers, One America News. Credit: Anne Kim

Its offensiveness was only matched by its sloppiness.

On the sweltering Wednesday afternoon when I visited (compelled by morbid journalistic curiosity), the Ferris wheel appeared to be broken (or moving very slowly), and the replica of the planned Trump arch really did evoke the Stonehenge scene from Spinal Tap.

Hastily constructed pavilions used grainy trompe l’oeil graphics (let’s call them “Trump l’oeil” graphics) to mimic classical architecture. The result was like the stage sets in a community theater production, not the handiwork of the richest nation on earth. Many booths, meanwhile, had the slapdash quality of a last-minute sixth-grade science project.

At least exhibitors didn’t have to fear much humiliation: there was no one to witness the debacle.