Kagan on the record: Scathing dissent unravels Supreme Court claim Trump wasn't racial using his own remarks

[cbabe]

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-racist-haiti/

Scathing dissent unravels Supreme Court claim Trump wasn't racial using his own remarks

Tom Boggioni
June 25, 2026 1:28PM ET

In her dissent from one of the Thursday Supreme Court decisions on immigrant rights, Justice Elena Kagan made sure Donald Trump’s litany of racist remarks would be a forever part of the court’s historical record.

…

The liberal justice used her dissent in a case where the conservative majority gave the president the legal authority to strip Temporary Protected Status from over 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, among others, to call out the president for his flagrant racism.

…

Looking at her laptop, she read, “’Haitians are eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets of the people that live in Springfield.’ And ‘Haitians are also,’ and this is the quote, ‘eating other things too that they're not supposed to be.’ And Haitians in the United States, quote, ‘Probably have AIDS’. And Haiti, is quote, 'A whole country which is,’ quote, ‘filthy, dirty and disgusting,’ end quote.” She continued, “And, Haitian immigration is, quote, ‘Like a death wish for our country.’ And Haitians, along with some others, are quote, ‘Poisoning the blood,' end quote, of our country. And finally, this is a statement from the president that ‘we only take people from s-hole countries like Haiti and Somalia. Why can't we have some people from Norway and Sweden?’”

…

“The majority briefly replies that those remarks are not 'overtly racial,' but it is hard to know what that means,” Kagan wrote, before adding, “Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.) The references—of filth, disease, and primitiveness—are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes. It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any white community.”

//

[hookaleft]

1. She read her dissent in open court, which is very uncommon

it is 35 pages.

[LymphocyteLover]

19. also apparently Alito made some nasty comment after she read her dissent, which is unheard of

[themaguffin]

23. though Alito making nasty comments in general is common...

[Goonch]

2. ;-{) THIS

[kimbutgar]

13. Accurate depiction of these evil MFers!

I pray karma will catch up to asap!

[FadedMullet]

15. Yes, but it would be a little more accurate if all six were looking to the "right".

[dave99]

3. DAMN !!! She is On Fire !!! Good for her.

[Scalded Nun]

4. To be honest, reading her words, I believe she was really holding back.

We all obviously have to deal with the fallout from these decisions, but she and her 2 sane colleagues have to sit there and watch this racism and corruption unfold and be proudly displayed right in front of them.

[relogic]

5. Imagine

what even a Justice slightly equipped with some intelligence and dexterity understanding our English language must think sitting in their esteemed, bone-weary benches.

“I’m endowed with power given me by a lower I.q., insane man and a corporate bought legislature that I endorse completely. Somebody, please pinch me (they say), this whole dictator s**t has turned out better than I expected.”

[3catwoman3]

6. Well done, Justice Kagan!

[malaise]

7. K & R

I am waiting to hear if the CJs two Irish children are American but children born in the US are not.

[ShazzieB]

8. Kagan is brilliant.

She's written some amazing dissents. As much as I hate that it's been necessary for her (and Sotomayor and Jackson) to do that, I derive a tiny bit of comfort from the knowledge that that these incisive and sharply worded dissents are now part of the permanent record, to be read by every scholar who studies those cases and every future Supreme Court justice who is called on to rule on a related case in the future.

I also take pleasure in imaging how certain other members of the Roberts Court (no need to name names!) will be eviscerated in the writings of future legal scholars.

[dalton99a]

9. Kick

[Lonestarblue]

10. I'm sure the three liberal justices are fed up with the blatant abuse of power by the Roberts cabal.

They gutted the Voting Rights Act even though it was Constitutional law passed by Congress. They gave special protections to evangelical Christians allowing them to violate anti-discrimination laws based on gender. They gave extraordinary power to wealthy people and corporations to buy elections. A d now they've basically said that the US has no asylum laws because their president can deny asylum based on his personal racism toward black and brown people.

I will no longer be surprised if this group of Republicans who have appointed themselves as the makers of law, not the interpreters of law, by negating Congress's role in passing the laws that don't support their personal religious and racist biases.

[LymphocyteLover]

11. 6 black robed racist psychopaths on SCOTUS... just sickening

[kimbutgar]

12. This ruling today has made me so depressed

I’m not Haitian but these are our fellow human beings who are now are going to be harassed and deported back to a country where they will have an uncertain fate.

And the repuke evil supreme court all say they are xtians but forgot the Bible verse I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

[electric_blue68]

16. Sooo THIS....

From kimbutgar: (my underline)

"And the repuke evil supreme court all say they are xtians but forgot the Bible verse I was a stranger and you welcomed me.".

I don't know if there's any way this can fought against. These poor, now newly endangered people.

Most immigrants in general, and maybe especially POC asylum seekers who are granted a life here; work hard. They know they're mostly lucky even w some of the problems of the US (racism being one of the biggest factors, exacerbating other problems).

[VTderry]

18. I wish Pope Leo would excommunicate

the Sycophantic Six. They certainly deserve it at least as much as anyone in history, if not more.

Oh, and J.D. Convenient Conversion while he's at it.

[maxsolomon]

14. It wasn't overtly racial in that MFer didn't say "blacks".

He said Haitians. Kagan called them on it, but the Trump 6 DGAF.

[Justice matters.]

17. Good!

Someone should tell the pedo felon Norwegians and Swedes have a lot happier life in their countries with Universal healthcare and a lot more weeks of paid vacations per year than they would in the US.

Who among them would be ignorant or just crazy to immigrate in the current United States led by his Fascist administration and lose all the advantages they have at home?

[LymphocyteLover]

20. This evil SCOTUS has completely destroyed the notion that racism can ever be acted against legally

[MadameButterfly]

21. I'm always bemused by Trump's tatement that he wants people from Norway and Sweden

Of course it's about race. But he wants people to come over who are from Social Democratic countries. I'm sure he hasn't figured that out, that they mostly are happier with their high taxes that fund government programs that he abhors, than what the US could offer. But if they did come, might we be importing Democratic Socialists?

[JPK]

22. If you have the opportunity

Read about the upbringing of Mr. Roberts. He is an avowed racist. From his whole education, his involvement with Ken Starr and others, his whole life has been one on couched racism. He's die in the wool KKK in a respected black robe. Don't let the school boy face fool you. Along with Trump's history, he will go down as the worst CJ in US history.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

24. MaddowBlog-Thanks to the Supreme Court, Trump is poised to betray a community he vowed to 'champion'

In 2016, Trump told Haitian Americans he wanted to be the community’s “biggest champion.” A decade later, the rhetoric rings like a cruel joke.

Around this time a decade ago, Trump stressed the “common values” he shared with Haitian Americans and vowed to be the community’s “biggest champion.”

Ten years later, the rhetoric rings like a cruel joke.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-06-26T13:57:41.403Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/supreme-court-trump-haitians-vowed-to-champion

Around this time 10 years ago, when Florida was still seen as a competitive battleground state, Donald Trump campaigned in Miami and spent some time at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, stressing the “common values” he shared with Haitian Americans.

“Whether you vote for me or not,” the candidate said at the time, “I really want to be your biggest champion.”....

And two years after that, a full decade after he stressed the “common values” he shared with Haitian Americans and vowed to be the community’s “biggest champion,” the Republican took steps to eliminate temporary status protection for hundreds of thousands of Haitians currently living legally in the United States.

The move sparked a court fight, culminating in a predictable ruling from the high court’s conservative majority. MS NOW’s Jordan Rubin explained:

The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority sided with the Trump administration over Haitians and Syrians on Thursday in a ruling on the administration’s attempt to end humanitarian safeguards under the Temporary Protected Status program.

Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion curbed the power of courts to review government decisions to terminate protections under the TPS program. For this case, the majority said that means Haitians and Syrians aren’t entitled to orders keeping their protections in place while their litigation proceeds, even though lower courts found serious legal problems with the administration’s attempt to end their protections.

Writing for the three-member minority, Justice Elena Kagan explained that without such postponement, “hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in this country will lose their legal status and work authorization” and that most of them “will have no legal option except to leave the country, even at the price of leaving family behind.”

Kagan went on to note that hundreds of thousands of lives “will be uprooted, most permanently, while this litigation to annul the Secretary’s (likely illegal) termination orders proceeds.”

By all appearances, the White House considers such consequences a feature, not a bug.

In her latest opinion piece for The New York Times, Kate Shaw, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, added that with the high court’s ruling, the administration “is now free to move forward with what immigrants rights advocates describe as the largest de-documentation in U.S. history.”

[LetMyPeopleVote]

25. Sotomayor blasts court's ruling allowing Trump to fire agency heads

With palpable anger, the Obama appointee read for 20 minutes from her sharp dissent, calling the decision one that “reshapes the structure of government.

Sotomayor blasts court’s ruling allowing Trump to fire agency heads

With palpable anger, the Obama appointee read for 20 minutes from her sharp dissent, calling the decision one that “reshapes the structure of government.”

— Julianne McShane (@juliannemcshane.bsky.social) 2026-06-29T15:44:38.222Z

https://www.ms.now/news/sonia-sotomayor-fiery-dissent-slaughter-case

Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered a fiery dissent Monday in the Supreme Court’s decision backing President Donald Trump’s power to fire members of independent federal agencies, describing the Republican-appointed majority’s ruling as one that cuts away at the Constitution.

Inside the chambers, Sotomayor spent nearly 20 minutes reading from the bench her dissenting opinion in Trump v. Slaughter — an uncommon practice for a dissenting justice.

In a defiant tone, and with palpable anger, she described the decision held as one that “reshapes the structure of government in a fundamental way,” by giving the president “a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once-coequal branches.”

The decision allowing Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, without cause upends a 1935 precedent that had protected the independence of agencies.

In doing so, Sotomayor said, the court is transforming the president’s “duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”

Alito has been getting pissed at Justice Sotomayor's dissents. It will be interesting to see how Alito reacts