Supremes act right on gun control in New York

CNN - The Supreme Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of a New York law that requires residents to have “good moral character” to carry handguns. The law defined that term as “having the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself or others.” The court’s decision, which was a victory for New York officials and gun control groups, also left in place most of the state’s ban on carrying weapons in “sensitive” public locations, such as government buildings, schools, hospitals, stadiums and Times Square. Gun rights groups had challenged the law, claiming it was too broad. 

Mark Joseph Stern, Slate -  The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a major victory on Monday night, lifting a restraining order that had prevented the mass deportation of migrants to an El Salvador prison under an 18th century wartime law. By a 5–4 vote on the shadow docket, the justices crushed the migrants’ sweeping class action in D.C. and forced them to proceed with narrower suits through more hostile courts in Texas. The majority’s unsigned, thinly reasoned decision will make it significantly easier for the administration to illegally ship off innocent people to a Salvadoran prison, where all their constitutional rights—and quite possibly their lives—will be snuffed out. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a staggering dissent, “we, as a nation and a court of law, should be better than this.” But in the view of five justices, it seems that we, as a nation, are not.

Monday’s order lends undeserved legitimacy to a program that has been brazenly illegal from the start. In mid-March, Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify summarily deporting Venezuelan migrants to the notorious CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador. The act applies only to a “foreign nation” that conducts an “invasion or predatory incursion” into the United States during a “declared war.” Trump claimed that Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, constitutes a “foreign nation” that is “invading” U.S. territory, which is obviously untrue. Nonetheless, he immediately directed immigration officials to round up migrants, often on the basis of nonexistent evidence, and fly them to CECOT. On March 15, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg found this plot to be unlawful and ordered the government to turn around two planes carrying migrants to El Salvador. The Trump administration refused, defying Boasberg’s order, and contempt proceedings are ongoing.