Hey everyone, happy Tuesday. It’s Senior Editor Will Kaback. Today is the last day of June, and it’s felt like a long month to me (not complaining, especially not in summer). I wonder how it’s felt for the Supreme Court, which seems to be releasing a new slate of front-page rulings every day. This time of year has become a de facto “SCOTUS Week” for us at Tangle, and 2026 is no different: Today, we’re covering Monday’s decision on Mississippi’s mail-in ballot law, with rulings on birthright citizenship and more expected to drop this morning. 

An additional piece of breaking news: Tangle’s newly minted associate editor, Carina Pacheco, is making her debut with a dissent to today’s take. We’re excited to get Carina in the mix, and you can expect to begin seeing her writing more regularly. 

Later in the edition, we have a look back at the only person to ever serve as both president and Supreme Court chief justice — and, I assume, the first person to check those two boxes and be rumored to have gotten stuck in a bathtub. Nevertheless. 

It’s a 14-minute read, and we’re off.

Quick hits.

1. In a 6–3 ruling, the Supreme Court overturned President Donald Trump’s executive order revoking birthright citizenship for children born to noncitizens, finding that the order violated the 14th Amendment. (The first ruling) Separately, the Supreme Court ruled 9–0 that Title IX allows states to establish separate men’s and women’s sports teams based on biological sex, and 6–3 that West Virginia’s law banning transgender women athletes from competing on women’s teams is consistent with the law. (The second ruling) Finally, in another 6–3 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down coordinated campaign spending limits. (The final ruling)
2. President Donald Trump nominated acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling to serve permanently in the role. (The nomination) Separately, President Trump nominated Oklahoma law enforcement official Lance Schroyer to serve as director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (The nomination)
3. The Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s appeal of a $5 million civil judgment against him in the defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. (The rejection)
4. President Trump downplayed the significance of the federal housing affordability bill passed by Congress last week, saying it is “so unimportant compared to the SAVE America Act.” The president has not indicated if or when he might sign the bill. (The comments)
5. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) is reportedly under federal investigation for campaign finance violations linked to a whistleblower complaint that he used campaign funds to pay for vacations. (The report)

Today’s topic.

Watson v. Republican National Committee. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 to uphold a Mississippi law allowing election officials to count ballots postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days afterward. In its ruling, the Court rejected the challengers’ argument that federal statutes setting a national Election Day required ballot receipt by that day. Instead, the Court held that Election Day refers to voters choosing a candidate, which is fulfilled when voting is completed, not when ballots are received. The ruling comes four months before the 2026 midterm elections and ensures that Mississippi’s law will remain in place for the state’s elections.

Back up: In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Mississippi changed its election laws to allow officials to count mail-in ballots received up to five business days after Election Day, provided they were postmarked by Election Day. The Republican National Committee led a group challenging the ballot deadline in 2024; a district judge upheld Mississippi’s law, but a panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling. Mississippi challenged the Fifth Circuit ruling to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in March.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered the Court’s opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Barrett wrote, “The defining element of an ‘election’ — the term used in all three federal statutes — has always been the electorate’s choice of candidate… while federal law dictates when ballots must be cast, state law dictates when they must be received.” She also referred to the 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act as proof that congressional election legislation has “presuppose[d]” that states have the power to set ballot-receipt deadlines.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch; Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined most of the dissent. Alito argued that “from this Nation’s founding until the last few decades of the 20th century — a period that spans the enactment of all three election-day statutes — having an ‘election’ on a particular day meant completing ballot collection on that day.” To illustrate his point, Alito focused on the rise of absentee voting for soldiers during the Civil War, noting that states’ strict adherence to federal Election Day guidelines likely followed from their understanding that elections included both ballot casting and ballot receipt.

On Monday, President Donald Trump criticized the Supreme Court’s decision. “In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote on Truth Social. 

Below, you’ll hear from the left and the right about the Court’s ruling. Then, Senior Editor Will Kaback gives his take.

What the left is saying.

• The left broadly supports the decision, viewing it as a common-sense outcome.
• Some say the dissent will further fuel claims of election fraud.
• Others claim the ruling will turn Republicans’ attention back to passing the SAVE America Act. 

In Vox, Ian Millhiser called the dissent “a fringe attack on voting rights.”

“It should go without saying that, when Congress set the Election Day in 1845, it did not intend for literally everything involving an election to occur on that day. Prior to an election, states must determine which candidates shall appear on the ballot, print those ballots, distribute them to polling places and individual voters, register voters, and perform numerous other tasks. Many states also allow for early voting,” Millhiser said. “The premise of the Republican Party’s lawsuit is that the task of gathering the ballots that have already been cast is somehow special, and it must happen on Election Day.

“But there’s no legal support for this position. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett writes for herself, her three Democratic colleagues, and Chief Justice John Roberts, when federal law set the date for the ‘election,’ it ‘set the day when the electorate must make its choice,’” Millhiser wrote. “Voters must actually cast their ballots by the deadline, but the same deadline does not apply to the ministerial task of gathering all those ballots into a state office where they will be counted.”

In Slate, Richard L. Hasen wrote “the Supreme Court rejected a bonkers idea about voting by a 5–4 margin.”

“The Supreme Court oral argument in Watson revealed that some of the more MAGA-friendly justices, including Justice Samuel Alito, were buying into a fever dream of voter fraud that could somehow justify limiting mail-in balloting opportunities,” Hasen said. “And in his dissenting opinion in Watson, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh (in part), Alito pumped up fears of ballot harvesters, fraud, and loss of voter confidence to justify his stingy reading of the election statute.”

“Watson is a small victory for voters — small because not many voters cast these late-arriving ballots and voters eventually would adjust to earlier ballot deadlines,” Hasen wrote. “The greatest significance of Watson is that a court majority (barely) rejected a bonkers reading of a federal statute on the basis of voter-fraud fantasies; had the court agreed with the RNC, it would have signaled that the court would avoid text, history, and precedent to further constrict voting. The scary part is that four justices were willing to do just that.” 

In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore said “Supreme Court deals Trump surprise loss on election law.”

“[Justice Alito] also warns that continuing to allow post-election mail ballot receipt will contribute to an appearance (if not the reality) of voter fraud,” Kilgore wrote. “Without question, Watson will intensify Trump’s already powerful obsession with the SAVE America Act. To be clear, the original House-passed version of the legislation does not address voting by mail at all. But what Trump is calling the ‘final version,’ which is stalled in the Senate, does ban post-election day receipt of mail ballots along with no-excuse voting by mail generally.” 

“It should also be noted that the furor over post-election ballot receipt is a bit of a red herring,” Kilgore said. “In California, so often cited (without evidence) as the locus of post-election voting shenanigans, 2.5% of ballots arrived after Election Day. So the idea that states are massively stuffing ballot boxes with votes received after Election Day is just made up. But the war over election rules will continue without a direct intervention from SCOTUS — for now, anyway.”

What the right is saying.

• The right largely opposes the ruling, arguing the decision muddies ballot-counting rules.
• Some call on Congress to enact stricter election laws.
• Others express disappointment that Justice Barrett authored the majority’s opinion.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board called the decision one of three “liberal wins” from Monday.

“Election Day is when ‘the electorate must make its choice,’ Justice Barrett writes in Watson v. Republican National Committee… She says states accepted tardy mail ballots amid World War I, while seven authorized the practice during the 1940s,” the board wrote. “Dissenting for four conservatives, Justice Alito argues those were ‘short-lived outlier rules’ that ‘shed little light on the original meaning of “election.”’ He focuses on voting during the Civil War and says states then didn’t accept late ballots: ‘When Congress enacted the three election-day statutes, having the “election” on a particular date meant that ballots would be collected by that date.’

“Also, what about late ballots without postmarks? If a handwritten date says Election Day is that fine? How about votes delivered to officials a week later by partisan ballot harvesters?” the board asked. “‘The majority’s decision opens Pandora’s box,’ Justice Alito says. The good news is Congress can override it by revising the Election Day laws. This would be a better push for Republicans than the doomed SAVE America Act.”

In The New York Post, Joel Pollak argued the ruling “underlines [the] need for voter ID.”

“The Supreme Court surprised observers Monday in Watson v. Republican National Committee by allowing states to count ballots that arrive after Election Day. But just because something is constitutional doesn’t make it right, or smart,” Pollak wrote. “The very idea that ballots can be counted if they arrive after Election Day creates suspicion. Why wouldn’t political campaigns just wait to see how many votes they need to make up after Election Night, then slip through as many ballots as they needed to make up the difference?”

“The dissent, by Justice Samuel Alito, states: ‘Allowing absentee ballots to pour in over the days and weeks after election day, by which point preliminary election returns are being publicly reported, creates greater opportunity for fraud and risks further undermining the public’s confidence in election integrity.’ Justice Barrett acknowledges that problem, but says that ‘policy arguments are properly directed to legislatures, not courts,’” Pollak said. “So — it’s up to the legislatures, and the voters, to restore trust in the American voting system.”

In Townhall, Matt Vespa said “the Amy Coney Barrett problem reared its ugly head again.”

“Six years [into her term], Barrett’s record has been mixed at best, although some have called it a total disaster. She’s not alone: Chief Justice John Roberts also joined the liberal wing, though his record of disappointment is a bit longer than Barrett’s. It’s the first time Roberts and Barrett have joined the three stooges on the Left here,” Vespa wrote. “The Watson v. RNC ruling was the latest example, where the Court ruled in a 5–4 decision that Mississippi’s law on mail-in ballots… does not violate federal standards on what constitutes Election Day.”

“In 2025, there were rumblings that we might have an ACB problem… On immigration, she again sided with the liberal wing on whether the Trump administration had the right to deport illegal aliens under the Alien Enemies Act,” Vespa said. “It’s a gut punch that Watson was handed down this way, and especially disappointing that ACB would betray us like this before our 250th birthday. If you can’t get your act together to mail in your ballot before Election Day, it shouldn’t count. There’s plenty of time.”

My take.

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• This outcome surprised a lot of people, and it’s a reminder that the Court doesn’t always rule predictably.
• Barrett’s opinion nails its conclusion that federal law only requires that votes be cast by Election Day.
• Alito’s dissent mostly rests on hypotheticals, and I’m glad the Court didn’t upend the midterms over concerns that weren’t salient to this case. 

Senior Editor Will Kaback: Reasonable people can ask why we need allowances for late-arriving ballots at all — with so many voting options and so much available information about how to cast a ballot, at what point do we put the onus on individual voters to ensure they cast their ballot in a timely manner? I’ve personally made it a point to vote in person during early voting in every election since I turned 18. When this Supreme Court case surfaced, I caught myself questioning why everyone couldn’t just be a bit more organized and make this issue moot.

Of course, that sentiment feels like common sense until your vote is in jeopardy through no fault of your own. I’ve been lucky: I’ve never had a major life event conflict with casting a ballot. But I’ll probably have to vote by mail at some point — who’s to say when I’ll come down with a poorly timed illness, or experience a natural disaster, or stare down a family emergency, or face some other unexpected challenge that causes me to mail my ballot back with little time to spare before Election Day? States ultimately have to decide whether they want to give voters leeway when these confounding obstacles arise. 

The plaintiffs in Watson v. Republican National Committee questioned states’ power to make that decision, and many people thought the Court was poised to hand President Trump and Republicans another major victory. After oral arguments, court watchers thought the Court would strike down Mississippi’s law, and commentators on the left preemptively bemoaned that the conservative, “conspiracy-brained,” misinformed justices were about to upend the midterms (though Isaac nailed his analysis). Many of these writers haven’t commented on this decision, and in our research for today’s edition, we struggled to find even three opinion pieces from the left on this ruling. Yes, it’s a busy week of SCOTUS decisions, but the dearth of commentary about this unexpected outcome is still striking. 

Some lawmakers aren’t even trying to hide their inconsistencies. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) recently called the Court “illegitimate” and last week castigated its “far-right” majority for its TPS decision, but on Monday, he welcomed the “big blow” it delivered to “Trump’s effort to rig the midterm elections.” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) went further, writing on Thursday, “Let’s stop pretending [the TPS decision] is about the law. We’ve seen the pattern. Time and time again, this Trump-influenced Court has handed this administration exactly what it wants.” Then, yesterday: “Well… would you look at that. After all those made-up lies about mail-in ballots, the Supreme Court just rejected this administration’s latest attempt to silence voters.”

It’s fine (and expected) to disagree with some Supreme Court decisions and agree with others, but it’s another thing to imply the Court’s majority is little more than a political arm of the Trump administration, then go silent (or even cheer) when the Court behaves like an independent body. Beyond its impact on mail-in voting, this case serves as a reminder that such black-and-white thinking doesn’t always comport with reality. 

So what did the Court actually decide here? The core question in Watson was whether states can set grace periods for late-arriving ballots. And I think the majority was right to find that Mississippi’s mail-in ballot law doesn’t clash with Congress’s definition of Election Day. 

Oral arguments in the case focused in part on historical understandings of the meaning of Election Day because, as Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted in the majority opinion, federal statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt — only that voters must make their decision by Election Day. The challengers tried to show that states have historically abided by a strict Election Day deadline for receiving absentee ballots because election law was so commonly understood to prohibit any such grace period. In their view, the Civil War provided a perfect example — in the plaintiffs’ retelling, states still rejected late-arriving ballots from soldiers, even in a uniquely tenuous time when some grace period would have otherwise been obvious and desirable.

Just one problem: While some states did require soldiers’ ballots to reach election offices by Election Day, others did not, such as those that permitted unit-level voting. Furthermore, the challengers’ argument that states’ absentee voting rules reflected their deference to federal law was lacking. Barrett writes, “Plaintiffs’ theory is that if the relevant States could have changed the rules, they would have changed the rules. Yet despite a deep dive into the historical record, plaintiffs have found no evidence that any of these States wanted to extend ballot-receipt deadlines, much less that they thought federal law prevented them from doing so.” 

As a kicker, she lists an array of historical reasons other than compliance with federal law that states might have set an Election Day deadline for absentee ballots, like a desire “to open soldier ballots in the public’s presence, which was possible only if ballots arrived by the day the community gathered for in-person voting” to promote public trust in the results. In other words: Historical precedent for ballots arriving by Election Day isn’t necessarily a story of legal tradition, but of practical rules that states worked out for themselves. 

Barrett then addresses a second key point. The federal Election Day laws at the center of the case were enacted when the U.S. had no mail-in voting (excluding the Civil War absentee systems, which operated much differently than how we vote by mail today). Wouldn’t it follow that 19th-century lawmakers inherently meant for only votes received by Election Day to count? Again, the justice delivers a strong rebuttal. 

“Plaintiffs’ theory is that because we are governed by 19th-century election-day laws, we are also governed by 19th-century voting practices,” Barrett wrote. “Carried to its logical conclusion, this theory would call into question the way modern elections work,” highlighting early voting — which also did not exist in 19th-century America — as another practice imperiled by the challengers’ logic. “Statutes do not ‘tra[p] in amber’ every contemporary practice on the same subject matter,” she concluded.

Hear, hear. Consider, for instance, maritime, railroad, and communication laws from the 1800s that are still operative today but have been reinterpreted to account for modern developments — despite Congress never enacting substantial updates. The Submarine Cable Act of 1888, originally passed to protect submarine telegraph cables, is still part of the legal framework that governs modern submarine communications cables. The law criminalizes intentionally damaging submarine telegraph cables connecting the United States to other countries. Should someone who destroys a fiber-optic cable be exempt from punishment because those cables didn’t exist in 1888? Should Congress have to update the law to account for every development in cable technology since 1888 and beyond? Or can we just apply the principle of the law to today’s technology? 

Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent had echoes of his majority opinions in last week’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and asylum rulings, homing in on a strict definition of a key word or phrase. Last week, he focused on when asylum seekers have “arrived in” the United States and the meaning of “temporary” in TPS; here, the key phrase is “Election Day.” Under his interpretation, early voting and mail-in ballots (when received by Election Day) are lawful because they are cast before or on the day of the election, but counting mail-in ballots received after that day interferes with “the critical act [that] occurs on election day: the completion of the collection of the ballots that embody the electorate’s collective choice.” 

Like much of Alito’s jurisprudence, that argument has a kind of common-sense appeal, but I think it misses a key point: The federal statute is much broader than the definition of Election Day that Alito advances. It does not say the election must be completed on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November; it just says that that day is Election Day. 

The justice goes on to list some practical consequences of counting these late-arriving votes, asking whether states should be able to create any grace period, allow couriers to deliver mail-in ballots, or permit something other than a postmark to show when someone voted. The first case isn’t hypothetical — Washington state accepts Election Day–marked ballots up to 21 days after the election — but the others are, and they amount to slippery slope arguments that aren’t salient to the narrow question of timing that Barrett emphasizes in her opinion. Perhaps these issues arise in the future, but they weren’t before the Court in this case. 

Speaking of practical consequences, this decision — while enormously important — would have had a much larger impact if the Court had struck down Mississippi’s law. Rather than upend mail-in voting nationwide, the ruling leaves each state’s mail-in voting rules as they are. Other widely adopted voting practices, like early voting, are also safe. Of course, in the future, state lawmakers can revise their election rules as they see fit; Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) has called on the legislature to repeal the current mail-in ballot law, and it’s well within its rights to do so if it wishes. But that will all happen within the normal legislative process — not through a sweeping high court ruling — which, to me, properly upholds states’ constitutional power to determine the times, places, and manner of holding elections.

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This day in history.

On June 30, 1921, William Howard Taft was nominated by President Warren G. Harding to be the 10th chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, and was confirmed the same day in a 60–4 Senate vote. When he was sworn in two weeks later, he became the first, and only, person to serve as both president and chief justice. Just one other person has led two separate branches of the federal government — James K. Polk, who was both president and speaker of the House. 

In his time as chief justice, Taft issued several landmark rulings on presidential power. In Myers v. United States, Taft ruled that firing appointed executive branch officials is a power only given to the presidency, a precedent that largely remains in place today. Taft additionally authored opinions expanding the pardon power and finding that Congress can delegate some authority on certain topics, such as tariffs, to executive agencies.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the Supreme Court’s ruling on universal injunctions.
• The most clicked link in our last regular newsletter was the report on a false allegation targeting Pete Buttigieg. 
• Nothing to do with politics: Watch the thrilling shoot-outs in yesterday’s Germany–Paraguay and Netherlands–Morocco World Cup matches.
• Our last survey: 1,921 readers responded to our survey on the Supreme Court’s decisions on asylum and Temporary Protected Status, with 58% saying they oppose both rulings. “To deny the racial animosity of both Mr. Trump and his administration’s policies beggars belief,” one respondent said. “The Roberts Court continues to push back on poorly written legislation that puts the onus on the judiciary to define,” said another.

Have a nice day.

Having some fun in the sun isn’t something that only children can do, as a group of senior citizens in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, proved. In June, the city’s fire department joined with football players from Middle Tennessee State University to provide a slip-and-slide to give elders in the community a chance to slip, slide, splash, and laugh like kids again. “I haven’t done anything like this in fifty years. My grandkids are going to be so jealous,” one senior slip-and-slider said. 102.9 The Buzz has the story.