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Supreme Court Deals Trump Major Loss on Illinois National Guard Deployment
"Trump is losing his grip on the dictatorial power he so covets," said one legal analyst.
Dec 23, 2025
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt President Donald Trump a major loss by rejecting the administration's request to strike down a temporary restraining order that barred him from deploying the National Guard in Chicago.
In a 6-3 ruling that featured dissents from Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court determined that the Trump administration had not met statutory requirements needed to justify deploying the National Guard in a state over the objections of its own government.
The court noted that the administration justified its Illinois deployment—pursued alongside a federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants in and around the state's largest city—by pointing to a law stating that the president may federalize the National Guard in the event that he is "unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States."
However, the court found that the "regular forces" referenced in the statute refers to the US military, not civilian law enforcement officials. This is relevant because the president faces significant restrictions on his ability to deploy the military domestically under the Posse Comitatus Act.
"Because the statute requires an assessment of the military’s ability to execute the laws, it likely applies only where the military could legally execute the laws," the justices wrote. "Such circumstances are exceptional: Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited from 'execut[ing] the laws' 'except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or act of Congress.'"
The justices further said that the Trump administration so far "has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois" and has not invoked any statute that would provide an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act.
In conclusion, the court wrote that the federal government "has not carried its burden to show" that the law "permits the president to federalize the guard in the exercise of inherent authority to protect federal personnel and property in Illinois."
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who had sued the Trump administration over the deployment, cheered the ruling and said that "the extremely limited circumstances under which the federal government can call up the militia over a state's objection do not exist in Illinois."
Raoul added that he was "pleased that the streets of Illinois will remain free of armed National Guard members as our litigation continues in the courts."
Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor, celebrated the Supreme Court's ruling as a victory for the rule of law.
"Trump is losing his grip on the dictatorial power he so covets," Kirschner commented on X.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said he was "genuinely shocked" by the court's ruling, and he credited an amicus brief written by Georgetown University Law Center professor Marty Lederman with swaying the court, as it centered the definition of "regular forces" in the statute as central to determining the legality of Trump's actions.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen and co-chair of the Not Above the Law Coalition, hailed the court's ruling but warned that the danger posed by the Trump administration's authoritarian ambitions has not ended.
"With a lawful administration that understood the limits of executive power, this would be the end of the question," she said of the ruling. "Unfortunately, we are living under an authoritarian regime that persists in every possible effort to expand its power and override guardrails. With an administration that displays utter disregard for the Constitution, we must now watch diligently how it will respond to a decisive Supreme Court decision against its lawless power grab."
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Trump's Surging LNG Exports Cost US Consumers $12 Billion in Just 9 Months
"Trump explicitly promised voters he would slash utility bills by half within the first year, yet in the first nine months of his term, they surged," said the author of Public Citizen's new report.
Dec 17, 2025
Underscoring expert warnings that exporting liquefied natural gas not only worsens the climate emergency but also drives up energy prices for Americans, Public Citizen revealed Tuesday that as LNG exports surged under the Trump administration, US households paid $12 billion more in utility bills from January through September than they did last year.
In other words, "the costs borne by residential consumers in the first nine months of 2025 are up 22%," or an average of $124 per family, according to an analysis of federal data by Tyson Slocum, director of the consumer advocacy group's Energy Program and author of the new report. "LNG exports are also up 22% over that same time."
His report highlights President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign pledges, pointing to a Newsweek op-ed and various speeches across the country. Slocum said in a statement that "Trump explicitly promised voters he would slash utility bills by half within the first year, yet in the first nine months of his term, they surged, squeezing some of the country's most vulnerable households."
Now, "1 in 6 Americans—21 million households—are behind on their energy bills," which "are rising at twice the rate of inflation," the report states. "Even registered Republican voters are increasingly blaming President Trump for the affordability crisis."
"Limiting or prohibiting LNG exports would provide immediate relief for households across the country, but it would require action from the White House."
It's not just "higher domestic natural gas prices, driven primarily by record LNG exports," affecting US utility prices, the report acknowledges. Other factors include "electric transmission and distribution costs, which include extreme weather and wildfire liabilities. These costs are administered by state or federal regulators and have been exacerbated by climate change."
"Electricity demand load growth, driven by the rise of artificial intelligence data centers, along with transportation electrification," is also having an impact, the document details. Additionally, "Trump's unprecedented cancellation and revocation of billions of dollars of permitted renewable energy projects, combined with his unlawful abuse of emergency authorities to impose punitive tariffs, have injected chaos into domestic supply chains, stifling domestic investment in energy infrastructure."
As the report explains:
Of these four factors, record natural gas exports not only represent the largest impact on natural gas prices, but feature clear statutory solutions to help protect consumers. The Natural Gas Act—passed by Congress during the Great Depression—asserts in Section 1 that "the business of transporting and selling natural gas for ultimate distribution to the public is affected with a public interest," with the US Supreme Court affirming that the "primary aim" of this 87-year-old law is "to protect consumers against exploitation at the hands of natural gas companies." Section 3 of the law forbids exports of natural gas unless the Department of Energy determines the exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries are "consistent with the public interest."
Rather than living up to those obligations, Slocum said, "Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have acted as global gas salesmen, traveling to Europe to push exports and gut European methane regulations while attacking mainstream climate science. Meanwhile, Trump has done nothing to keep prices down at home."
"Limiting or prohibiting LNG exports would provide immediate relief for households across the country, but it would require action from the White House," he added. "Trump would need to stand up to some of his fossil fuel donors to make our energy more affordable."
It's not just Public Citizen pushing for action by the president. US Sen. Edward Markey (D–Mass.)—the upper chamber's leading champion of the Green New Deal—joined a press event for the group's new report. He stressed that "record-breaking levels of natural gas exports are breaking the bank on your monthly energy bill."
Public Citizen released the report just a day after Bloomberg also noted what the export boom means for US energy prices.
"We have been talking about, in apocalyptic terms, for a decade now when the world would start taking away America's cheap gas," Peter Gardett, CEO of Noreva, an energy trading platform specializing in power, told Bloomberg. "Well, we're here."
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'Make This Delay Permanent,' Say Child Advocates After Mattel Halts Release of First AI-Powered Toy
"AI toys are not safe for kids," said a spokesperson for the children's advocacy group Fairplay. "They disrupt children's relationships, invade family privacy, displace key learning activities, and more."
Dec 16, 2025
As scrutiny of the dangers of artificial intelligence technology increases, Mattel is delaying the release of a toy collaboration it had planned with OpenAI for the holiday season, and children’s advocates hope the company will scrap the project for good.
The $6 billion company behind Barbie and Hot Wheels announced a partnership with OpenAI in June, promising, with little detail, to collaborate on "AI-powered products and experiences" to hit US shelves later in the year, an announcement that was met with fear about potential dangers to developing minds.
At the time, Robert Weissman, the president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, warned: “Endowing toys with human-seeming voices that are able to engage in human-like conversations risks inflicting real damage on children. It may undermine social development, interfere with children’s ability to form peer relationships, pull children away from playtime with peers, and possibly inflict long-term harm."
In November, dozens of child development experts and organizations signed an advisory from the group Fairplay warning parents not to buy the plushies, dolls, action figures, and robots that were coming embedded with "the very same AI systems that have produced unsafe, confusing, or harmful experiences for older kids and teens, including urging them to self harm or take their own lives."
In addition to fears about stunted emotional development, they said the toys also posed security risks: "Using audio, video, and even facial or gesture recognition, AI toys record and analyze sensitive family information even when they appear to be off... Companies can then use or sell this data to make the toys more addictive, push paid upgrades, or fuel targeted advertising directed at children."
The warnings have proved prescient in the months after Mattel's partnership was announced. As Victor Tangermann wrote for Futurism:
Toy makers have unleashed a flood of AI toys that have already been caught telling tykes how to find knives, light fires with matches, and giving crash courses in sexual fetishes.
Most recently, tests found that an AI toy from China is regaling children with Chinese Communist Party talking points, telling them that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China” and defending the honor of the country’s president Xi Jinping.
As these horror stories rolled in, Mattel went silent for months on the future of its collaboration with Sam Altman's AI juggernaut. That is, until Monday, when it told Axios that the still-ill-defined product's rollout had been delayed.
A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed, "We don't have anything planned for the holiday season," and added that when a product finally comes out, it will be aimed at older teenagers rather than young children.
Rachel Franz, director of Fairplay’s Young Children Thrive Offline program, praised Mattel's decision to delay the release: "Given the threat that AI poses to children’s development, not to mention their safety and privacy, such caution is more than warranted," she said.
But she added that merely putting the rollout of AI toys on pause was not enough.
"We urge Mattel to make this delay permanent. AI toys are not safe for kids. They disrupt children's relationships, invade family privacy, displace key learning activities, and more," Franz said. "Mattel has an opportunity to be a real leader here—not in the race to the bottom to hook kids on AI—but in putting children’s needs first and scrapping its plans for AI toys altogether.”
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