Edward Francis McElwain, R.I.P. My late Georgetown University roommate, would have turned 71 today. He was a brilliant, ethical, good and decent man who spoke out for the rights of Native Americans, becoming tribal planner for Havasupai and Hualapai Nations in Arizona. Ed's efforts helped halt uranium mining near Grand Canyon. He gave me the drawerful of his research for Sen. Gary Hart, which helped persuade Congress to kill coal slurry pipeline eminent domain legislation in 1978. On a Spring Break visit to Arizona in 1985, Ed McElwain clued me in on Native Americans being denied public defenders in the Indian Civil Rights. My indignation led to me asking an unanswerable question at a legal services panel at the ABA Law Student Division annual meeting in 1985. It led to me being invited ,as a third year law student, to write "Tribal Rights, Anglo Rights" (Student Lawyer, March 1986), the first civil rights article I ever published in an American Bar Association publication. Ed McElwain, R.I.P.
Saturday, February 28, 2026
ANNALS OF TRUMPI$TANL: Roberts Is Losing Patience With Trump. (Linda Greenhouse, NY Times, February 24, 2026)
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Roberts Is Losing Patience With Trump
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Ms. Greenhouse, the recipient of a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008.
Chief Justice John Roberts doesn’t waste words.
His majority opinion in last week’s tariff ruling was, characteristically, a model of succinctness. In a mere 21 pages (Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion, by contrast, clocked in at 46 pages, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent at 63), he explained why, as a matter of statutory interpretation and the constitutional separation of powers, President Trump lacked the authority he had claimed, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, to impose a hodgepodge of tariffs on countries all over the world.
There was, however, one exception to the opinion’s conciseness: a meaty paragraph describing the roller-coaster course of Mr. Trump’s tariff regime. Here, with citations to seven separate executive orders omitted for the sake of readability, is the chief justice’s account:
Since imposing each set of tariffs, the president has issued several increases, reductions and other modifications. One month after imposing the 10 percent drug trafficking tariffs on Chinese goods, he increased the rate to 20 percent. One month later, he removed a statutory exemption for Chinese goods under $800. Less than a week after imposing the reciprocal tariffs, the president increased the rate on Chinese goods from 34 percent to 84 percent. The very next day, he increased the rate further still, to 125 percent. This brought the total effective tariff rate on most Chinese goods to 145 percent. The president has also shifted sets of goods into and out of the reciprocal tariff framework ([e.g.,] exempting from reciprocal tariffs beef, fruits, coffee, tea, spices and some fertilizers). And he has issued a variety of other adjustments ([e.g.,] extending “the suspension of heightened reciprocal tariffs” on Chinese imports).
For all the attention the decision in this case, Learning Resources v. Trump, has received, this paragraph has gone largely unremarked. I understand why; it’s unnecessary to the opinion’s argument. If, as a matter of law, the tariffs are invalid, it doesn’t matter whether they were imposed sensibly or capriciously. The paragraph is, in a word, gratuitous, something that can rarely be said about a passage in a Roberts opinion. So what is it doing there?
The answer, I think, is that the chief justice is sending a message not necessarily or not only to Mr. Trump but also to the waiting world. Something along the lines of, “People, this is what we’re dealing with.” The point being not that “some fertilizers” are now exempt from reciprocal tariffs but that a reckless president is sowing chaos in America and around the globe.
We don’t need to know Chief Justice Roberts’s innermost thoughts about Mr. Trump — whatever they were before the president, in reaction to the tariff decision, described him and his majority as “fools” and “lap dogs” swayed “by foreign interests” — to discern his exasperation.
For the past year, the Trump administration has trolled the Supreme Court, sending up one emergency application after another to demand temporary relief from adverse lower-court rulings. The administration frequently got what it wanted: a stay of the ruling while an appeal proceeded. Powerful dissenting opinions from the three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, made sure the public knew that these orders, while making no law, had the real-world effect of enabling the president to carry out his agenda, including slashing the federal work force and gutting lifesaving foreign assistance programs. Chief Justice Roberts was usually in the majority on these unsigned and generally unexplained orders; obviously he thought the stays were called for. But he probably isn’t happy with the drip-drip-drip of public perception — reflected in polls and social media chatter — that the court was handing the president a blank check.
Something different happened in late December when the justices denied the administration’s request for a stay of a district-court decision barring its use of the National Guard in Illinois. The order was unsigned, with Justices Samuel Alito, Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissenting. The three-page order essentially made new law by narrowly defining the circumstances under which a president could federalize a state’s National Guard.
This was a very big deal. The president promptly acceded to the order, removing the federalized Guard from Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., as well as Chicago. Yet the court’s action, coming on the day before Christmas Eve, received far less attention than the tariff case. In discussions about the court today, few people even seem to remember it. It is as if the view of the court as the administration’s lackey was so entrenched that evidence to the contrary was too discordant to be fully absorbed.
The tariff decision was the first of the court’s rulings, after full briefing and oral argument, on the merits of one of the second Trump administration’s cases. A decision on the administration’s effort to fire a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors may be next. In that case, the administration claims sufficient cause to dismiss a Fed governor, Lisa Cook, based on assertions it claims she made in mortgage agreements. During oral argument, Chief Justice Roberts seemed to recoil from the overwrought tone of Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s argument, which began with, “Deceit or gross negligence by a financial regulator in financial transactions is cause for removal,” even though there has been no judicial finding that Ms. Cook engaged in either.
“You began by talking about deceit,” Chief Justice Roberts said to Mr. Sauer. “Does what you said after that apply in the case of an inadvertent mistake contradicted by other documents in the record?” Mr. Sauer’s answer, “We would say yes,” hung unsatisfactorily in the air as the argument proceeded for the next two hours.
It’s worth remembering that Chief Justice Roberts is the head of the entire judicial branch. It is in that capacity that his vexation with Mr. Trump verges on acute concern. The president has denounced judges who have ruled against him, including by calling for a Federal District Court judge’s impeachment. Mr. Trump has helped create an atmosphere in which judges appropriately fear for their personal safety and that of their families. Many people expected the chief justice to address this issue directly in his year-end report in December, but he did not. In two decades as the nation’s top jurist, he has at times spoken directly in defense of the judiciary, as in his 2024 report. But these occasions have been infrequent, as if the only messages this notably self-possessed and buttoned-down man cares to send are those his opinions deliver.
Noted.
ANNALS OF DeSANTISTAN: Supporters say ‘Blue Ribbon’ bill would mean smart growth — critics fear it will spur sprawl The latest version lets local government deny a project that is ‘substantially inconsistent’ with a comp plan (Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix, February 27, 2026)
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By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
A proposal to allow developments of 15,000 or more contiguous acres with at least 60% of the land set as “reserve area” and 40% for commercial and residential use on land already designated for future use was approved in its final committee stop in the Florida House on Thursday.
Labeled “Blue Ribbon Projects,” the proposal has drawn substantial criticism from environmental groups, which contend that, as originally written, the bill would have fast-tracked massive developments with little meaningful input from local governments and the public.
During a House State Affairs Committee meeting Thursday, however, Naples Republican Rep. Lauren Melo introduced an amendment to her measure (HB 299) that changed to how it was originally conceived.
Initially, the bill said that Blue Ribbon projects could be developments of 10,000 or more continuous acres located on land with a future land use designation. It further stated that a comprehensive plan amendment or rezoning “may not be required for approval of a project.”
Melo’s amended proposal now says a local government could reject a Blue Ribbon project plan upon a finding that it is “substantially inconsistent with the provisions of the governing comprehensive plan.”
Also as originally written, the bill said that approval would be given “administratively,” meaning no public hearings. The amended bill says a local government must conduct two public hearings.
“The vision is simple. Protect more than we build,” Melo told lawmakers about the concept. “It’s smarter growth that preserves our environment.”
The bill still says development rights would be allowed for up to 50 years, and still says a plan is not required to demonstrate need based on projected population growth or any other basis.
‘Not good governance’
Several members of the public warned that, even as amended, the bill would lead to massive sprawl in parts of Florida.
“This is not a conservation bill,” said Hugh Long, an FSU student. “Under this bill, you could go into farmland protection areas in places like Madison County, buy up all the land, and turn more of our beautiful working lands into literally city-sized subdivisions with no demonstration of need, while completely and totally ignoring the voices of local communities. That’s not good governance. That’s not home rule.”
St. Augustine resident Sarah Strohminger said that nearly 50,000 acres in Southwest St. John’s County would be at risk of development.
“I can tell you unequivocably, this does not comply with our comp plan. If we cannot argue compliance based on future land use, we cannot argue that based on zoning, then what can we argue that on? ” she said. “It does not follow along the standards that we have right now.”
St. Johns County has “quadrupled” in size since she was born, but the infrastructure hasn’t kept pace, Strohminger said.
“The roads have not quadrupled in size,” she said. “Our sewage has not quadrupled in size. The number of schools and firemen that we have have not quadrupled in size.”
Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, conceded that Melo’s amended language made the proposal “a little less aggressive,” but said she still couldn’t get “behind the concept of granting almost like a fast pass to what really is sprawl.”
Rep. Lindsay Cross, D-St. Petersburg, originally said she was a “soft no” on the bill.
“I think there still need to be a little more clarity on how local governments and the public would argue that something is substantially inconsistent with a local government comp plan and how they would put the brakes on something like this,” she said.
However, she ultimately voted for the measure.
Definitions
“I think that this is a bargain and I can tell you that if I owned 500 acres and I went in to seek development from the local government, the chances are that I could do better than a 60% set aside,” said Rep. Richard Gentry, R-Astor.
Melo said she had ensured that golf courses, data centers, and solar farms would not be allowed in Blue Ribbon projects.
The “reserve area” as written in the bill means land set aside for “environmental conservation, wildlife corridors, wetland and wildlife mitigation, lakes, passive recreation, productive agriculture and silviculture, conservation agreements granted to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.”
The “development area” includes a maximum residential density of 12 units per gross acre, and a maximum nonresidential intensity of 85% impervious surface ratio per gross acre is permitted within the development area. At least 20% of the units built would have to be “affordable housing.”
“I don’t understand again how we can’t look past a small amount of developed area for the sake of a large amount of undeveloped area,” Melo said.
The measure was approved in the committee, 21-5, with Cross and Lake Worth Rep. Debra Tendrich the only Democrats to join all of the Republicans in supporting the bill.
The measure’s Senate companion (SB 354), sponsored by Ocala Republican Stan McClain, has one more committee stop before reaching the floor of that chamber.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: in**@************ix.com. Banner photo: Residential development in Florida (iStock image).
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