The Supreme Court Rejects Ideological Orthodoxy Masquerading as Public Health

National Review Online

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

 

The power of government to regulate the professions, especially in medicine and law, has created a lot of levers to enforce conformity. That power can be exercised openly through lawmaking, and more subtly by delegating licensing and disciplinary powers to quasi-public cartels run by the professions themselves. In Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court struck a blow against the use of those powers to dictate orthodoxy and stifle disfavored opinions. Still more encouragingly, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s ringing opinion attracted a lopsided 8–1 majority, with only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent.

 

Chiles arose from yet another effort by Colorado to ban dissent from “LBGTQ+” ideology, which was yet again defeated by a legal team from Alliance Defending Freedom. A state law bans licensed counselors from engaging in “conversion therapy” with minors, on penalty of fines and loss of license. The law is flagrantly one-sided: It applies only to therapy that aims to resolve gender dysphoria or to reduce homosexual attraction, while permitting state-favored counseling in favor of gender transition and homosexuality. It is coercive and destructive of parental authority: While blue states have schemed to let public schools “socially transition” kids without telling their parents, Colorado won’t even let the disfavored therapists talk to minors when both the minor and the parent consent. It is speech-specific: Unlike red-state bans on irreversible surgeries and puberty-blocking drugs, the law applies to purely talk-based therapies. And it is harmful as well: Most children and teens suffering gender dysphoria can outgrow the problem and learn to live in their bodies; talking through their problems can help.

 

The Court called this what it is: discrimination against a particular viewpoint. As Gorsuch wrote, “Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.” Even Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, emphasized that “the case is textbook. The law distinguishes between two opposed sets of ideas—the one resisting, the other reflecting, the State’s own view of how to speak with minors about sexual orientation and gender identity.” To Kagan’s credit, she added that this is just as bad when her own side does it: “It does not matter what the State’s preferred side is.” Justice Jackson, who opened by urging that there is “no right to practice medicine which is not subordinate to the police power of the States,” could use a remedial course on that score.

 

The majority didn’t just strike down a one-sided state rule on speech. It also rejected the theory that licensing boards and “experts” can dictate terms to the rest of society on controversial questions. To the state’s effort to characterize therapist speech as “conduct,” Gorsuch rejoined: “The First Amendment is no word game. And the rights it protects cannot be renamed away or their protections nullified by mere labels.” To the state’s appeals to the power to license professions, the Court responded, “Whatever traditional interest a State may have in ensuring a professional possesses a particular set of qualifications, that interest does not automatically entail a right to dictate a professional’s point of view.” And to the state’s appeals to medical “experts,” the Court reminded us that “medical consensus . . . is not static; it evolves and always has. A prevailing standard of care may reflect what most practitioners believe today, but it cannot mark the outer boundary of what they may say tomorrow. Far from a test of professional consensus, the First Amendment rests instead on a simple truth: The people lose whenever the government transforms prevailing opinion into enforced conformity.”

 

Colorado’s brazenness made this an easy case; Kagan observed that “if Colorado had instead enacted a content-based but viewpoint-neutral law, it would raise a different and more difficult question.” Winning the easy cases, however, is the necessary first step. And the Court’s skepticism of white-coated censors bodes well for a culture in which it is legal to speak the truth.

The Self-Pity of Liberal Sportswriters

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

 

A few days ago, Devin Gordon wrote for the New York Times about the psychic pain he endures rooting for sports figures, namely the Mets, who include among them many pro-MAGA voices. He writes:

 

Then there’s the friend, a fellow Mets fan, with whom I’ve developed a soothing routine. He’ll periodically text me the name of a favorite player who he just discovered, to his horror, “is MAGA.” I’ll text back with a reality check: “They’re all MAGA,” which isn’t true but, if you follow major league baseball long enough, sure starts to feel true. He’ll reply with a sad emoji. He’s in Los Angeles, I’m in Boston, and this has become our bonding ritual, our bicoastal do-si-do. It’s also part of how he processes the guilt required to go right back to rooting for those particular players, at least while they’re in the uniform of the team he adores.

 

He and I understand that none of us need to surrender our convictions and clap like performing seals for someone whose beliefs or behavior offends us. Nor should we require ourselves to root for someone’s individual failure at the expense of our chosen team. Because here’s the thing: It’s still just sports.

 

I don’t want to go over again the terrain I covered in this post a few months ago. But, I am worried that progressives are getting so tuned up that they are alienating themselves from athletics altogether, almost guaranteeing that a culture of athletes remains conservative politically.

 

But I hope the author finds his way through. I’ve long since accepted that most of the brilliant actors, screenwriters, and musicians I love have progressive politics. My favorite pop-singer songwriter, Ben Folds, resigned his work at the Kennedy Center when Trump returned to office. I don’t even feel that I’m separating the art from the artist when I enjoy his work. I just accept that he sees the world differently than I do.

 

 

Trump Is Playing a Polling Trick on Himself

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

 

‘They did a poll,” President Trump told the viewers of The Five last week: “‘Is Trump losing MAGA support?’ The poll was 100 percent. It was 100 percent of the people — the MAGA people.”

 

As is his wont, Trump flitted seamlessly between those two groups: First, “the people,” and then, “the MAGA people” — the latter of which, he suggested, may as well be a synonym for “the whole Republican Party.” “I think I’m more popular than I ever have been,” he said, before claiming that he would be “leading every candidate” if he were permitted to run again in 2028. “We’re very popular. I mean, what can I say?”

 

Insofar as Trump is pushing back against the evidently incorrect claim that his foray into Iran has prompted his base to abandon him, his boasts are on solid ground. But he did not stop there. Instead, he berated as “fake” the polling that shows him at “42 percent” and claimed to have attracted a general level of acclaim that “bad” actors in the media — including Fox’s own polling department — refused to acknowledge. Critics of his, Trump insisted, “use fake numbers” and promulgate bad information that does “damage” to the nation and its denizens.

 

Which, in this case, is not really true, is it? Certainly, Trump remains popular with his base. But, in the sixth year of his presidency, that’s not a particularly useful metric. In the United States, elections are won — and, more important, agendas are advanced — with the support of the middle. And, at present, the middle does not like Donald Trump at all. With the middle, Trump is underwater on the economy, on immigration, on foreign policy, and on pretty much everything else. Pace Trump, if a presidential election were held today, he would not “lead every candidate”; he would be beaten badly by almost anyone. Heck, he might even lose to Joe Biden.

 

Why does this matter? Well, it matters because, once again, we are watching a president overinterpret his victory and focus on the wrong things. Because he is a brazen narcissist, Trump’s conflation of himself and his fans with the country at large is more explicit than usual: Without any attempt to hide what he is doing, he points to his approval rating among the Americans he likes and then denies that anyone disagrees. But, in kind, the habit is not unique in the modern age. Joe Biden destroyed his own presidency early on by allowing himself to be persuaded that, secretly, all voters agreed with his preferred policies but that some were just too stubborn or myopic or propagandized to acknowledge it. (That, invariably, is what Democrats mean when they say that they intend to govern for all Americans but then do exactly what the most vocal figures within the progressive movement ask them to do.) Whether conjured by Republicans or Democrats, this is a neat trick: First, you define your faction as being the sensible one; next, you declare that the public is sensible; and, hey presto, your faction and the public are as one.

 

There is just one small problem with that approach: It is absolute nonsense. The divisions in American life are real, because, like all peoples, Americans genuinely disagree with one another about politics. Naturally, there are times in which our political leaders must advance their narrow ideological plans, and there are times in which they must make hard decisions that alienate some, or most, of the electorate. But if they do this too much, they will lose the support of all but their groupies, and their national influence will dwindle. It is nothing short of remarkable that, for nearly two decades now, no president has been willing even to attempt translating his victory into a more durable political movement. Joe Biden won as a moderate in 2020, and then set about spending trillions of inflation-causing dollars on Democratic pet projects, trying to forgive half a trillion dollars’ worth of loans without Congress, and recruiting the Department of Justice to advance bizarre theories about gender on the national stage. In 2024, Donald Trump was returned to office in large part because of those mistakes, and, having been sworn in, almost immediately embarked upon a wildly unpopular tariff agenda from which he has never really recovered. Does nobody want to win in politics anymore?

 

The moment is fraught. Inflation has not yet abated. Interest rates, while about normal historically, are higher than they have been for 20 years. Housing is expensive. And the war in Iran has pushed gas prices up and the stock market down. Although he will be blamed for it all — and not too unjustly, given his ugly tendency to cast himself as a savior — not all of this is Donald Trump’s fault. Still, with the midterms approaching, he is duty-bound to try to improve his lot — and that will prove impossible indeed if, when using the bully pulpit, he can see only a third of the country at best.

Why MAGA War Opponents Point the Finger at Everyone But Trump

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, April 01, 2026

 

When President Trump spoke to the Saudi Future Investment Conference last Friday, he offered a pristine example of what he calls “the weave.” What detractors take for incontinent verbal rambling is, in his own telling, genius-level embroidery of a rhetorical mosaic.

 

While spinning his tapestry of soundbites, the wartime president declared that the Iranians “have to open up the Strait of Trump—I mean, Hormuz. Excuse me, for—I'm so sorry, such a terrible mistake. The fake news will say he ‘accidentally said’  [chuckle], now there's no accidents with me. Not too many. If there were, we'd have a major story. No. Well, we had that with the Gulf of Mexico. Remember the Gulf of Mexico? And one day I said, ‘Why is it the Gulf of Mexico?’”

 

Trump then digressed—sorry, weaved—for a while about the “renaming” of the Gulf of Mexico before getting back to the war.

 

If you watch the video, the “joke” about renaming the Strait of Hormuz was clearly deliberate. Trump said it was no accident. He has a tendency to float outrageous ideas as jokes to see how they fly—remember his “joke” that Canada should become the 51^st state?

 

Whether a joke or trial balloon, it was a terrible thing to say, and an even worse idea, lending rhetorical confirmation that the president’s ego is the author of this war.

 

But I don’t want to write a whole column about this relatively minor inanity. I just bring it up to illustrate a point. The president you see ad-libbing whatever pops into his head is the president we’ve got. When the commander in chief weaved in some observations about the Saudi crown prince “kissing my ass” because Trump isn’t a “loser” like previous American presidents, that was him, too.

 

In other words, there is no secret, serious, detail-oriented Trump with “encyclopedic molecular knowledge” about matters of state, as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims. What we see is what we’ve got.

 

This is very hard for some people to believe and even harder for some people to admit. These twin difficulties are the origin of all those clichés about Trump being a three- or four-dimensional chess master thinking many moves ahead of us mere checkers-playing mortals. When Trump does something unexplainable or indefensible, the best explanation and best defense for his superfans is to simply say the ways of Trump are mysterious—but rest assured he has a plan.

 

Entering our second month of the war with Iran, the superfans who oppose this war, for various reasons, are left in a pickle. How could this leader with an oak spine, unassailable instincts, deep knowledge, and wisdom make such a mistake? How could the man they’ve defended as a genius for so long make what is in their eyes such a monumental blunder?

 

He was misled, of course.

 

For some—as it so often is when events don’t go the way they want—blame lands on the Jews, or Israel (a tomayto-tomahto distinction for many). This is how Joe Kent, who recently resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, explained it. It’s Tucker Carlson’s explanation, too: We’re in this war because Israel’s prime minister “demanded it.”

 

Others make the same argument, at one remove. “As this thing goes south, we need to know exactly who talked him into it,” Megyn Kelly demands. “What representations were made to convince the president that this was a good idea. Who? Who specifically?”

 

Kelly blames Israel, of course, but also advisers and Israel supporters like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, and various Fox News pundits (revealingly, she excludes the crown prince of Saudi Arabia).

 

Now, I think some of these arguments are ahistorical, antisemitic, deranged nonsense (i.e., Joe Kent’s fevered anti-Israel paranoia). Trump has said “no” to Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu more than once, including during this war. But some claims have a patina of merit. If you buy the claim the war is a disaster, then the people around Trump have some culpability.

 

But not as much as the president himself. If Trump were like the senile “President Auto-Pen” he paints his predecessor to be, then maybe these claims would have more weight. But they don’t say that. They say this genius demigod infinity-level chess savant was deceived.

 

The leader cannot fail, he can only be failed.

 

The last resort for Trump’s defenders is to claim the decision to invade Iran was a “betrayal.” This claim at least grants Trump some agency. But for this to be true, the impulsive Trump we’ve seen weaving for a decade has to be different from the weaver-in-chief who launched this war. And I just don’t see it.

Gratitude for Those Standing in Solidarity with Jews

By Jack Lieblein

Wednesday, April 01, 2026

 

As Passover begins tonight, I’ll do what I’ve done for most of my life to mark the occasion by joining friends and family for a seder dinner. But for the past few years, this beautiful Jewish tradition has been more emotional and meaningful than ever before. That’s because the dinner I attend, near Bucknell University in central Pennsylvania, is joined by quite a few non-Jews. This was not the case in earlier years, but in the wake of the attacks of October 7, 2023, they’ve come to show support for the Jewish people and the State of Israel. It’s time they got some public credit.

 

I was a sophomore at Bucknell when the terrorists went on their spree of murder and rape across southern Israel. Like so many American campuses, mine was overrun with antisemitism in the days and months that followed. Protests swept across the quad, decrying not Hamas but Israel and her people. A Hebrew studies professor was the target of vandalism. Hateful messages were scrawled on walkways and walls all over campus.

 

Bucknell’s Jewish community is fairly small — about 300 students, or 7 percent of the student body. Most of us hunkered down, afraid of what would happen if we spoke out. One Jewish student, the leader of the campus Hillel chapter, took a different approach: She joined a protest and held a sign saying “Free Palestine” — and she didn’t mean that it should be freed from Hamas. For students like me, it felt like nowhere was safe and no one was on our side.

 

But I was wrong. Before October 7, I wasn’t very in touch with my faith. But after the massacre on the other side of the world, I began to study and appreciate Judaism in a new way, largely through the campus chapter of Chabad, a Hasidic Jewish organization dedicated to outreach to Jews everywhere. At the first Chabad event I attended, dozens of non-Jews were present as well.

 

Given the atmosphere elsewhere on campus, I was amazed. When I asked some friends what the Gentiles were doing there, their response was disarming. They told me that more and more non-Jews had been showing up after October 7. Not to attack or berate us but to support and strengthen us. Before the meeting was over, I had made several friends among the non-Jews who came to show solidarity — friendships that have lasted to this day.

 

The following Passover — the first since the massacre — I counted more than a dozen non-Jews at the Chabad house seder. Many were delightfully confused about the traditions they were witnessing and eager to learn. As our local Chabad chapter swelled in size, we found support from places we never expected. The Open Discourse Coalition, a nonprofit organization where I now work, has hosted every Chabad event for a major Jewish holiday since late 2023. None of its leaders are Jewish. But all of them recognize that Jewish students need allies at a time when antisemitism is resurgent.

 

I’ve asked Jewish family members and friends across the country whether my experience is unusual. Turns out, it’s par for the course since 2023. From coast to coast, Jewish holidays are regularly marked by Gentile attendance, which used to be vanishingly rare. My initial surprise at this show of support has turned into bewilderment that no one talks about it. Something extraordinary is happening, yet it’s entirely in the shadows.

 

Unlike the protesters who have dominated the headlines, none of these non-Jews standing with their Jewish sisters and brothers have sought media attention. Unlike the acts of violence and vandalism against Jews that persist to this day, their quiet and continuous acts of kindness go unreported. But they aren’t unseen. To the contrary: Jews like me see them very clearly. And with all the hate directed our way, we’re heartened that there are many people of goodwill who love the Jews and are willing to show it.

 

Heading into Passover, I couldn’t be more grateful for the outpouring of support that still surrounds me. I will thank those who join me at this year’s seder, which marks the start of a week of thanksgiving for the Jews’ deliverance. As we recline at table, we’ll listen together to the Four Questions, which center on why this night is different from all other nights. It has always been different, for thousands of years. But now, it is also different — and all the better — because of this fellowship.

The Definition of Bigotry

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

 

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) “working definition” of antisemitism, to which the U.S. government and 30 other nations subscribe, identifies several behavioral patterns that are indicative of anti-Jewish bias. Among them are the “double standards” that are often applied to Israel but are “not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

 

By way of logical inference, then, subscribers to the IHRA’s definition must concede that applying a standard to Jews at an individual level that no one else is compelled to observe must also fit that bill. That’s a corollary that Democrats don’t appear to recognize.

 

Reportedly, the Democratic National Committee will consider a resolution next month that would denounce the American Israel Public Affairs Committee by name — specifically, the money it spends in the effort to scuttle anti-Israel progressives’ campaigns.

 

“At a time when Democratic voters might really not have felt represented or seen when it came to Gaza or seeing their party support Palestinian rights or stand against military conflict,” said Allison Minnerly, the DNC member and activist sponsoring the resolution, “this could be one step toward bringing those voters back into the party.”

 

Increasingly, hostility toward interests that are remotely supportive of Israeli security policy is becoming the price of admission into national Democratic politics. AIPAC is only the most visible feature of this new litmus test. The party’s likeliest 2028 presidential hopefuls are racing to swear off AIPAC dollars, each with more revulsion over the pernicious influence of Israel-tainted money than the last. It seems that denouncing the Jewish State over its mesmeric influence over American politicians and for executing (imaginary) crimes against humanity is the sine qua non for success in the Democratic Party.

 

But AIPAC isn’t a lobby devoted to advancing foreign interests. Its activities are supported by Americans who enjoy a constitutional right to petition their representatives for the redress of grievances, which is all that lobbying is. But as Semafor’s Dave Weigel noted, the distinction that progressives are attempting to make is one that only the least discerning far-left “anti-Zionists” would recognize:

 

 

And the Democratic Party’s leading lights appear to recognize the degree to which the opprobrium heaped on those who benefit from pro-Israel expenditures will never be applied broadly:

 

 

Steyer maintains that tens of millions of dollars in contributions to Democratic candidates and causes over the years come from “disclosed funds,” not from the anonymous donations that constitute so-called “dark money.” But reporting over the years has indicated that Steyer and other prominent Democrats are not above associating with anonymously funded nonprofits and political action committees. Progressives don’t care.

 

Indeed, since the 2018 midterm cycle, Democrats have been the primary beneficiaries of “dark money” contributions. “Overall, dark money groups boosting Democrats put up about $1.2 billion to influence 2024 elections, while groups boosting Republicans accounted for about $664 million,” the Brennan Center reported. Nor are Democrats allergic to the largess provided by other foreign interests, even those with links to America’s adversaries abroad.

 

The Democratic Party is eager to convince progressive activists that its members are not susceptible to the influence associated with Je– rather, Israeli money. After all, those are the only divestments progressives are demanding. It’s a curious monomania, and it seems to fit within IHRA’s rubric.

Iran’s Other Enemies

By Rich Lowry

Wednesday, April 01, 2026

 

It’s not just Israel.

 

One of the least convincing arguments of opponents of the Iran war is that it is a conflict initiated by the Jewish state for its own benefit — the U.S. is just along for the ride.

 

This view not only discounts the U.S. interest in defanging Iran but neglects that there are other countries in the region besides Israel and Iran and that they, too, have a stake in the outcome of this war.

 

If there’s anything that Iran has succeeded in doing over the first month of battle, it is further demonstrating the intolerable threat that it represents to the region.

 

The so-called Gulf Cooperation Council states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — have the misfortune of being located just across the Persian Gulf from Iran, putting them on the front line of the war.

 

A key element of Iran’s strategy has been to impose economic pain on these states to force them to press the United States into staying its hand.

 

For all that the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz is indirectly harming the United States by driving up the global price of crude and other materials, it is a direct blow to the Gulf states, since the Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Emiratis send the majority of their oil through the waterway.

 

The Iranians have struck the Gulf states with missiles and drones by the thousands. The ongoing blitz is damaging energy infrastructure and destroying the reputation of the Gulf states as an oasis of calm and economic development in an otherwise turbulent region.

 

There’s no insurance policy against having a fanatic millenarian state as a neighbor, while nothing quite concentrates the mind like an unprovoked drone attack on one of your luxury hotels — or your airports, oil fields, and data centers.

 

Iran likes to pretend that it is only striking at military infrastructure, but that’s absurd.

 

As long as Iran is run on its current basis, it is a grave danger to these countries, which before the war tried to keep their heads down or even get closer to Iran as a way to mitigate the threat.

 

This is the approach that the Saudis tried after an Iran-backed attack hampered the country’s oil production in 2019.

 

That experiment is now done. According to published reports, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, privately urged President Trump to launch the war even as the Saudis talked up diplomacy in public, and now MBS has been telling Trump to go all the way and topple the Iranian government.

 

The New York Times relates that the Saudi leader “is concerned that if Mr. Trump pulls back now, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East will be left to confront an emboldened and furious Iran on their own.”

 

The UAE has been a particular Iranian target. Its ambassador to the U.S. wrote in the Wall Street Journal the other day, “We need a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats: nuclear capabilities, missiles, drones, terror proxies and blockades of international sea lanes.”

 

One is tempted to conclude that the Gulf states are “all neocons now.” That’d be overstating it, though. Despite getting hit by Iran, Oman is maintaining its traditional posture as a mediator, and Qatar is always a bad actor.

 

Much depends on how the war ultimately turns out, but it is easy to see the Gulf states looking to the United States for greater security guarantees and warming up further to Israel, which is demonstrating the military might to confront an Iran that has no compunction about lashing out at states that are doing it no harm.

 

It may be easy for hostile U.S. observers to portray the Iran war as about Israel and only Israel, but the Gulf states unfortunately know better — and have the battle damage to prove it.