NOTN- An Alaska Senate committee on Wednesday advanced a resolution backing federal visa programs that lawmakers say are critical to the state’s seasonal workforce and public schools.
Senate Joint Resolution 28, heard in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, puts the Alaska Legislature on record in support of the J-1 and H-1B visa programs and urges the state’s congressional delegation to work with federal policymakers to preserve and strengthen them.
A similar resolution was heard in the Senate Education committee Wednesday as well, in support of H-1B international educators.
“Senate Joint Resolution 28 very simply, recognizes the important role that visa programs such as the J1 visa program, and the H-1B program, play to the economy and the education of children and young adults across Alaska.” Said legislative aide Mike Mason, “These international visa workers are vital to filling Alaska’s diverse workforce needs. If you travel around Alaska, especially this summer, you are going to see these visa workers filling very important jobs across the state. This resolution simply puts the Alaska legislature on record as supporting these visa programs.”
The measure also objects to a steep federal fee increase on certain H-1B petitions, from $5,000 to $100,000, which supporters say has effectively shut Alaska’s public schools out of the program.
“That fee effectively ended most employers ability to fill these open jobs through this program.” Mason said.
Lawmakers adopted an amendment, to explicitly include H-2B visas, which cover temporary nonagricultural workers.
Public testimony on the resolution was brief but supportive.
Jonathan Schaffer said his experience working with J-1 participants in seasonal jobs across the country showed clear benefits for both employers and workers.
“Having worked in seasonal employment across the United States with a number of J-1 enrollees, I can say that the program, in my opinion, benefits both employers and those enrolled in it. It is remarkable the opportunities that are provided for people in small communities to learn about the world around them from the people who travel there to serve visitors, who travel from all over the place. It is remarkable the benefit that those who enroll in the J-1 program have in gaining a more positive view of the United States, which they take back to their communities around the world.”
The committee voted without objection to move the resolution.
It now heads to further consideration in the Legislature.
Among the most disorienting things about President Donald Trump’s public language is how easily it can feel numbing and shocking in the same moment. He says something outrageous, the country recoils, and then the recoil itself begins to feel familiar.
As a scholar who studies presidential rhetoric, I know that over time that rhythm does its own kind of damage. It teaches the public to absorb the breach. What once might have sounded like a genuine political emergency or a violation of constitutional decorum begins to register as just another day in American political life.
But the past few days merit notice. The president’s demagoguery has taken a darker turn.
Trump’s rhetoric about Iran has become more than inflammatory. Beginning with posts to Truth Social in early April, he has used profanity-laden language – “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell” – to threaten attacks on the country’s infrastructure. He urged Iranians to rise up against their government. He warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not comply with U.S. demands.
The Associated Press treated those remarks as a significant escalation in the context of a live conflict, not merely as familiar Trumpian excess: “As the conflict has entered its second month, Trump has escalated his warnings to bomb Iran’s infrastructure.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross also issued the unusual reminder that the rules of war must be respected “in words and action,” suggesting that the rhetoric itself had become part of the danger.
But were Trump’s recent remarks really different from his many earlier outbursts?
What seems different about his words during the first week of April 2026 is the scale of violence his language primed people to imagine. His remarks about Iran moved beyond personal attacks or chest-thumping nationalism to take on a tone of collective punishment and civilizational destruction. The style was familiar. The horizon of harm was not.
President Donald Trump’s social media post of April 7, 2026, threatening the destruction of ‘a whole civilization,’ meaning Iran. Truth Social
Politics of fear
Presidential rhetoric is more about permission than persuasion. Presidents do not only argue. They signal.
Through those signals, they tell the public what kind of situation this is, what kind of danger is at hand, and what kinds of response are reasonable. In that sense, the president can function like a human starting gun. His words cue journalists, legislators, party allies and ordinary supporters about how to classify events before anyone has fully processed them.
Political theorist Corey Robin’s work on the politics of fear is a useful lens for understanding what is happening with Trump’s violent rhetoric.
Fear, in Robin’s view, is not simply a feeling that arises naturally in response to danger. It is politically manufactured. Power teaches people what to fear, how to name danger, and where to direct their apprehension. Presidential rhetoric is an essential tool for performing that work.
Thus, a president does not only describe a threat. He also gives it shape and scale. He tells the public how large it is, how close it is, and what kinds of response should feel reasonable in its presence.
A good example of a president doing this happened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when, while visiting ground zero in New York City, George W. Bush said, “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” With that sentence, Bush acknowledged the gravity of what had happened, but also promised to fight back and bring justice to the terrorists.
When it comes to statements like those Trump has recently made about Iran, the worry is not that the president has said something extreme. Instead, the larger concern lies in what repeatedly using extreme language does to the atmosphere in which judgment takes place.
Political hyperbole lowers the threshold of what the public can imagine as legitimate, as allowable. When presidents make threats like the ones Trump issued, mass suffering becomes more imaginable. The president’s words and social media posts test whether the public will continue to hear such language as over the line, or whether it will be absorbed as one more hard-edged negotiating tactic.
At ground zero after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush acknowledged the gravity of what had happened, but he also promised to fight back.
Shaping reality
Presidential rhetoric matters for reasons that go beyond persuasion or style.
It helps arrange reality. It tells the public what is serious, who is dangerous, whose suffering counts, and what forms of violence can be described as necessary. President Barack Obama did this in 2012, when he was speaking at a vigil to honor the shooting victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
“We bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours,” he said. “That we’re all parents; that they’re all our children.” With these words, Obama called everyone to feel, up close, the horrific loss of 20 children shot dead, and to work for a solution to gun violence.
People begin to doubt their own reactions. Surely this is appalling, they may think, but also, somehow, this is what he always does. That dual feeling is part of the harm. A damaged baseline makes serious escalation harder to recognize and judge.
The disorientation and disgust that so many people experienced in response to Trump’s thundering, violent proclamations is important. Even after years of erosion of what was deemed normal, some lines remain visible.
Paying attention now is not about pretending Trump has suddenly become someone new. It is about recognizing more clearly what his presidency has been teaching the public to hear as thinkable. The most serious harm may lie not only in what follows such rhetoric, but in the world it helps prepare people to accept.
Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Supporters visit Javier Flores, right, while he lived in sanctuary at Arch Street United Methodist Church in downtown Philadelphia in 2017.Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In the midst of a civil war, married couple Ernesto and Linda Fuentes fled their home country of El Salvador and headed for Philadelphia, via Mexico, in November 1983.
Ernesto was an activist who dispensed food and medicine in Salvadoran refugee camps. Linda was a union organizer for banks and clothing factories.
The Salvadoran government viewed activists, especially suspected guerrilla fighters and union leaders, as threats to its regime. It placed activists’ names on “death squad hit lists.” The couple decided to leave after receiving threatening letters and phone calls.
With false documents and the help of a humanitarian church group, they arrived at the Tabernacle United Church in West Philadelphia on May 12, 1984. The congregation declared itself a public sanctuary for undocumented refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. An estimated 500,000 undocumented Salvadorans lived in the U.S. around that time.
The Fuenteses used the pastor’s office as their bedroom. Church members were instructed to keep the doors locked and not admit strangers, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Accompanied by elected officials, clergy and community activists, the four undocumented children of Carmela Apolonio Hernández step out of sanctuary at the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia in 2018. Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images
A ‘welcoming city’ for immigrants
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker has emphasized since May 2025 that Philadelphia is a certified “welcoming city.” She notably does not call Philadelphia a “sanctuary city.”
The presumed goal of this phrasing is to keep Philadelphia off the Trump administration’s radar and protect its US$2.2 billion in federal funding for health and human services.
However, Philly was, at various points, an official sanctuary city.
In 2014, then-Mayor Michael Nutter signed an executive order detailing that local police were not required to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless the case involved a warrant or violent felon.
In 2018, Philadelphia won a lawsuit against the Trump administration that denied ICE access to police databases to find undocumented immigrants and prohibited city employees from assisting ICE.
Protesters camped outside Philadelphia City Hall march in July 2018 after Mayor Jim Kenney announced that Philadelphia would stop giving ICE access to a real-time arrest database. Kenney accused the agency of misusing the information to target people who were in the country illegally but were otherwise not accused of any crimes. AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma
Roots of sanctuary cities
The sanctuary movement started back in the 1960s. But it wasn’t immigrants who were seeking sanctuary. It was Americans.
Around 1968, drafted resisters who were opposed to fighting in the Vietnam War sought refuge in churches in the U.S. Northeast. One of the earliest cases involved Robert Talmanson, who received sanctuary in Boston’s Arlington Street Unitarian Church. He was later arrested by U.S. marshals and local police and incarcerated in Virginia for three years.
In November 1971, Berkeley, California, became the first sanctuary city in the country when 12 local churches inspired the City Council to pass a resolution offering sanctuary to draft resisters. It also banned city employees from “assisting in the investigation or arrest of any sanctuary seeker.”
On Nov. 6, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act. It granted undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before 1982 one year to apply for amnesty. If eligible, they would begin a five-year pathway to citizenship.
Approximately 3 million people successfully became naturalized citizens through the amnesty program.
In the Philadelphia area, at least 5,000 to 7,000 people were undocumented in 1986. Advocates at the nonprofit Nationalities Service Center and American Friends Service Committee noted that many immigrants wanted to apply for amnesty but feared the program was a trick.
A decade later, immigration enforcement got tougher.
Local police assist ICE
In 1996, Congress passed Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This granted local police the right to assist immigration officials in arresting and detaining unauthorized immigrants.
As of April 2026, over 1,600 law enforcement agencies in 39 states and two U.S. territories have a 287(g) agreement with ICE. The program offers local police free training in ICE procedures along with funding for equipment, vehicles and overtime pay.
While the Philadelphia Police Department has never signed a Section 287(g) agreement, about 68 Pennsylvania agencies have, including in neighboring Delaware County.
But these agreements aren’t always long-lasting. Between January and March 2026, two departments in Bucks and Chester counties rescinded their agreements with ICE to make residents feel safe after American-born protesters Renée Good and Alex Pretti were killed during ICE operations in Minneapolis.
After a 16-month detention, Javier Flores, a father of three, went into sanctuary at Arch Street United Methodist Church in Philadelphia in 2016. He spent nearly a year in sanctuary before his visa request was approved and ICE waived his previous removal orders. Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Community activism continues
According to Pew Charitable Trusts, nearly 16% of Philadelphia’s 1.6 million residents are immigrants, largely from Asia and the Caribbean.
The exact number of undocumented immigrants in Philadelphia is unknown. However, the Migration Policy Institute estimates that 250,000 immigrants in Pennsylvania – 1.5% of the state’s total population – are undocumented.
On Jan. 29, 2026, City Council members Kendra Brooks and Rue Landau introduced an “ICE Out” package. The bills aim to codify the right of police to not share immigration, citizenship and personal data with ICE, or detain and hand over arrested individuals to the federal agency.
The legislation also proposes a ban on ICE agents who wear masks or hide their badges, use unmarked cars and city vehicles, or use municipal spaces as staging areas for enforcement and raids. And it would prohibit city employees from giving ICE access to libraries, shelters, health centers and recreation centers without a judicial warrant.
Community activists have long used civil disobedience and humanitarian aid to protect undocumented immigrants who are searching for a fresh start in the U.S.
Menika Dirkson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
These calls have come from across the political spectrum, from Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and right-wing pundit Alex Jones. Unlikely allies seem to agree that the president has gone too far and needs to be reined in.
The Constitution’s 25th Amendment provides a way for high-level officials to remove a president from office. It was ratified in 1967 in the wake of the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy – who was succeeded by Lyndon Johnson, who had already had one heart attack – as well as delayed disclosure of health problems experienced by Kennedy’s predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower.
The 25th Amendment provides detailed procedures on what happens if a president resigns, dies in office, has a temporary disability or is no longer fit for office.
It has never been invoked against a president’s will, and has been used only to temporarily transfer power, such as when a president is undergoing a medical procedure requiring anesthesia.
Section 4 of the 25th Amendment authorizes high-level officials – either the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet or another body designated by Congress – to remove a president from office without his consent when he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Congress has yet to designate an alternative body, and scholars disagree over the role, if any, of acting Cabinet officials.
The high-level officials simply send a written declaration to the president pro tempore of the Senate – the longest-serving senator from the majority party – and the speaker of the House of Representatives, stating that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. The vice president immediately assumes the powers and duties of the president.
The president, however, can fight back. He or she can seek to resume their powers by informing congressional leadership in writing that they are fit for office and no disability exists. But the president doesn’t get the presidency back just by saying this.
The high-level officials originally questioning the president’s fitness then have four days to decide whether they disagree with the president. If they notify congressional leadership that they disagree, the vice president retains control and Congress has 48 hours to convene to discuss the issue. Congress has 21 days to debate and vote on whether the president is unfit or unable to resume his powers.
The vice president remains the acting president until Congress votes or the 21-day period lapses. A two-thirds majority vote by members of both houses of Congress is required to remove the president from office. If that vote fails or does not happen within the 21-day period, the president resumes his powers immediately.
Article II of the Constitution authorizes Congress to impeach and remove the president – and other federal officials – from office for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The founders included this provision as a tool to punish a president for misconduct and abuses of power. It’s one of the many ways that Congress could keep the president in check, if it chose to.
Impeachment proceedings begin in the House of Representatives. A member of the House files a resolution for impeachment. The resolution goes to the House Judiciary Committee, which usually holds a hearing to evaluate the resolution. If the House Judiciary Committee thinks impeachment is proper, its members draft and vote on articles of impeachment. Once the House Judiciary Committee approves articles of impeachment, they go to the full House for a vote.
If the House of Representatives impeaches a president or another official, the action then moves to the Senate. Under the Constitution’s Article I, the Senate has the responsibility for determining whether to remove the person from office. Normally, the Senate holds a trial, but it controls its procedures and can limit the process if it wants.
Ultimately, the Senate votes on whether to remove the president – which requires a two-thirds majority, or 67 senators. To date, the Senate has never voted to remove a president from office, although it almost did in 1868, when President Andrew Johnson escaped removal from office by one vote.
The Senate also has the power to disqualify a public official from holding public office in the future. If the person is convicted and removed from office, only then can senators vote on whether to permanently disqualify that person from ever again holding federal office. Members of Congress proposing the impeachment of Trump have promised to include a provision to do so. A simple majority vote is all that’s required then.
Kirsten Matoy Carlson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Newly arrived South Africans listen to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau deliver welcome statements in a hangar near Washington Dulles International Airport on May 12, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Whiteness appears to be an official immigration credential in the eyes of the United States government.
The new refugee cap, however, will mostly benefit white South Africans, known as Afrikaners. The State Department is building infrastructure to process 4,500 refugee applications per month from Afrikaners, a pace that would easily exceed the administration’s global cap.
Elon Musk, born in South Africa, posted on X in March 2025 that “there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide.” President Donald Trump agreed. “They’re being killed,” he said in May 2025. Casting blame on the news media, he said, “It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about.”
Tucker Carlson had spent years on Fox News pushing the claim that white South Africans were being murdered en masse. Trump had apparently been listening. The white genocide claim moved from fringe websites to cable television to the Oval Office.
As a historian who has spent years studying how racial supremacy gets weaponized as policy, I’d say these claims are worth examining carefully. The numbers don’t support the claims.
Over a year in 2023-2024, AfriForum, an Afrikaner civil rights organization, recorded 49 murders of Afrikaners. That’s .2% of the 27,621 murders across the country. As the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria concluded, “The idea of a ‘white genocide’ taking place in South Africa is completely false.”
Elon Musk listens as reporters ask President Donald Trump and South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa questions in the Oval Office on May 21, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
A useful fiction
White genocide is a contemporary rallying cry for a project that predates it by over a century: keeping English-speaking nations white. The claim persists because it’s useful. Claims of white genocide, partly rooted in the fear that nonwhite populations are growing while white ones are shrinking, has been a far-right organizing concept for decades. But that fear was called “replacement theory” well before that.
Afrikaner lobby groups have successfully embedded their cause within a transnational far-right network, projecting South Africa as a warning for the U.S. and Europe. The Afrikaner myth is supposed to be a warning: white people are already being crushed in South Africa, and the same fate awaits whites everywhere unless something is done.
Some English-speaking settler colonies explicitly identified themselves as “white men’s countries.” And in the early 20th century they coordinated immigration restrictions to keep them that way through a succession of acts passed in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States between 1901 and 1924.
These were pieces of a linked ideological network, as I trace in the book, with ideas and personnel circulating between countries that understood themselves as outposts of the same white civilization.
Australia passed immigration acts from 1901 onward that largely barred people from East Asia, Eastern Europe and the Pacific Islands. Attorney General Alfred Deakin justified the restrictions to Parliament in 1901 in the name of “the purity of race.”
In that same September 1901 debate, another member of the Australian House warned that Black political power in the United States offered a cautionary lesson: “The black people there have increased to such an extent, and have gained such power, that the jurists and statesmen there pause and look with fear upon them.”
Canada’s Immigration Act of 1910 gave the government authority to exclude “any race deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada,” implementing what historians call the “White Canada” policy. The aim was to limit immigration to “healthy, white, preferably British or American agriculturalists.” By the early 1920s, most nonwhite people were categorically excluded.
The United States passed its own Immigration Act in 1924 to preserve what its proponents called an “unadulterated” and “Nordic breed,” restricting immigration from southern and eastern Europe and barring most Asians entirely.
South Africa was part of this network. The career of one eugenicist, who promoted the theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations, shows how it worked.
Harold Fantham, who lived from 1876 to 1937, was educated in London, taught zoology at Cambridge, then moved to South Africa in 1917. There, he took a leading role in promoting racial immigration restrictions, arguing in the South African Journal of Science in 1924 that the goal was “safeguarding our nation from racial deterioration.”
He praised the U.S.’s 1924 act for barring “idiots, feeble-minded, paupers,” and admired Germany’s compulsory sterilization laws. He became president of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science. Fantham bore his ideas across the English-speaking world, picking up American and German models along the way.
Behind all these restrictions was a shared fear: that growing numbers of nonwhite people would overwhelm white populations. Eugenicists imagined a race to make babies that whites were losing. They believed democracy itself was a liability, because more nonwhite immigrants could mean more nonwhite votes.
Woodrow Wilson, who resegregated the federal civil service after taking office in 1913, agreed. His intellectual framework was plain. As he wrote in The Atlantic in 1889, only “races purged of barbaric passions” could be entrusted with self-governance.
Whiteness as proof of citizenship
The Afrikaner program reactivates this logic. It treats whiteness as a refugee status and frames a former colonial ruling class as victims. It sits alongside a deportation campaign targeting people the president says are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The countries that coordinated a century ago to build white nations are doing the same work again, with the same tools.
The majority of people suffering violence in South Africa are Black South Africans. They are not invited to the United States as refugees.
And while the Trump administration builds a race-based welcome for white South Africans, it’s also building a race-based enforcement apparatus.
In September 2025, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo that federal agents could use “apparent race or ethnicity” as a factor when stopping people to check their immigration status. Critics call the resulting detentions “Kavanaugh stops,” after Brett Kavanaugh, the justice who wrote the concurrence.
As justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in dissent, “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”
Whiteness is functioning as a credential on the streets of American cities. And white skin qualifies Afrikaners for expedited entry. Darker skin qualifies you for a stop.
John Broich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Nearby, Gen. George Washington’s army gathered to hear their commander read a document that would forever change the nature of their fight: the Declaration of Independence.
And contrary to how Americans now think of that document – as an inspiring declaration that detailed the grievances of Colonists against the British king and announced their independence from Great Britain – what Washington read to his army was also something else.
The Declaration of Independence was America’s first formal declaration of war. It planted a symbolic flag for Patriots to rally around. It transformed illegitimate rebels without hope of foreign aid into state-sponsored freedom fighters eligible for military alliances.
This foundational American text wasn’t just a philosophical breakup letter but a strategic move to secure vital support for the American war effort. America’s first declaration of war was a high-stakes geopolitical gamble essential to achieving independence.
British warships bombard the shore of Kip’s Bay, New York, on Sept. 15, 1776. Royal Museums Greenwich
Thomas Jefferson, the foremost writer of the declaration, relied heavily on the Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel’s 1758 treatise “The Law of Nations.” Vattel stressed the fact that in the eyes of European courts, providing aid to rebels was a violation of sovereignty and a dangerous precedent.
Vattel argued that for foreign powers to intervene legally in conflicts, the oppressed party had to formally declare its independence and assume the status of a state. Jefferson kept Vattel’s treatise open while he was working on the Declaration of Independence to ensure he used the specific terminology required to transform the American rebellion into a just war.
By framing independence as “necessary,” Jefferson was not just waxing philosophical. He was satisfying the legal requirement set out by Vattel that all peaceful avenues for reconciliation had been exhausted, which justified war to the “Powers of the Earth.”
A formal declaration of war, approved by Congress, increased support for the American military here at home. It rallied a divided and wary population. Even as late as 1776, there were Americans who remained fence-sitters, uncertain about the risks of a total break with the British Empire.
The declaration functioned as a public rallying flag that allowed Americans to identify themselves as a legitimate, unified group. Like Thomas Paine’s widely read pamphlet “Common Sense,” the declaration educated the uncommitted on the inescapable necessity of breaking away from the British Empire:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the declaration reads, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
By framing the fight in the universal language of the preamble, Jefferson sought to inspire and unite disparate Americans through a shared vision of a better life.
In doing so, he helped transform localized resistance movements into a collective national mission. In the words of the declaration, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
This public address was intended to transform the nature of their service. They were no longer disloyal subjects in rebellion against a legitimate sovereign, but soldiers of a new nation defending their own homeland. Through Jefferson’s words and Washington’s address, the declaration fueled enthusiasm for a new political system and rededicated America’s soldiers to a cause that was not yet won.
Washington told the troops he hoped “this important Event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer, and soldier, to act with Fidelity and Courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his Country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms.”
America’s first declaration of war bolstered troop morale at a pivotal point in the conflict. The Continental Army was going to square off against the largest expeditionary force in British history in the summer of 1776. And Washington’s troops consisted of approximately 19,000 militiamen.
The British army had the British navy. Washington had only minimal naval support. The arrival of the first waves of Hessian mercenaries, auxiliaries for Britain, in July 1776 only deepened American resolve to seek out their own foreign military allies.
Forging alliances
The declaration helped bring about much-needed support for the American war effort among foreign governments.
The primary strategic target of the declaration was the Bourbon monarchies of France and Spain, Britain’s chief rivals. The Continental Congress understood that the fledgling United States could not withstand British military might without receiving overseas shipments of gold and gunpowder, in addition to warships, sailors and soldiers.
Following the declaration, the Continental Congress intensified its appeals to Spain. Bernardo de Gálvez, the governor of Spanish Louisiana, became a central figure in this secret war. Even before Spain formally entered the war in 1779, Gálvez channeled over $70,000 worth of medicine, weapons and uniforms up the Mississippi River to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. This southern lifeline kept the American war effort viable in the Western theater and forced the British to maintain a defensive posture on multiple fronts.
Reframing the declaration as a strategic war measure highlights the Founding Fathers’ sophisticated understanding of power.
By transforming a localized insurrection into a state-sponsored homeland defense and an international conflict, the declaration ensured that the American Revolution would not be a mere sound of one hand clapping, but a successful geopolitical struggle that brought about independence.
Christopher Magra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
How conspiracies spread has changed immensely over the history of the United States, as technology and media have evolved. But the nature of conspiracies has not.
As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026, I have been thinking about the early history of Philadelphia and the controversial people, stories and ideas, including conspiracies, that permeated the city during the second half of the 1700s.
Conspiracy theories describe alternative versions of events – such as the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 – that contrast with the official, accepted versions of events. Conspiracies, however, involve small groups of people who act in secret for their own gain and against the common good. Examples of conspiracies include the Watergate scandal by President Richard Nixon and members of his administration, or the Tuskegee experiments in which U.S. public health professionals treated unsuspecting African Americans with syphilis with a placebo.
Colonial America was rife with perceived conspiratorial agendas. Many of these stemmed from the uneasy coexistence of political parties with religion – which was newly protected by the First Amendment – and with the Catholic Church in particular.
After the war ended in American victory in 1781, Philadelphia served as the capital of the U.S. beginning in 1790, until Washington, D.C., was chosen as America’s permanent capital in 1800.
During this period, the U.S. depended on contributions from its political and civic figures to develop future leaders with skills and intelligence. Among this group and some of the country’s leaders were Freemasons, the independent “brethren” of skilled stonemasons.
In England, landowners or even royalty owned many masons, but some masons were self-sufficient and enjoyed their freedom to work as they wished. When they made their way to America by the 1720s, their high standards of workmanship, fair trade and reason as they taught their craft made them influential in society.
Being a Freemason was a mark of sophistication. Freemasons were high-status, wealthy men. The fraternity provided a forum for networking – not just for stone shapers but other men who were successful in business, trade or even Colonial administration.
By the late 1740s, almost all of Philadelphia’s Freemasons were also merchants, shipowners or successful artisans. They were considered political, intellectual and creative leaders in Colonial Philadelphia.
The Tun Tavern was a popular hangout for Philadelphia Freemasons and other political brass in the late 1700s. Albert Moerk/Library of Congress
Freemasons built notable structures throughout the Philadelphia and southern New Jersey areas as well as in New York, Boston and other parts of New England.
But because the group’s rituals and oaths were shielded from public view and performed in clandestine sessions in Masonic temples, rumors spread about their activities. Some people believed Freemasons secretly conspired against American values – especially religion.
Freemasons believed in principles such as rationalism, which views science and logic – rather than sensory experiences – as the foundations of knowledge. Freemasons also held that everything in the universe is the result of natural causes rather than the supernatural or divine.
They treated all religions equally. They allowed participation in them but believed no faith was to be favored as possessing the one true God. This was in contrast with religions that argued their doctrine exclusively expressed the truth. In 1738, Pope Clement XII banned Freemasons from joining the Catholic Church, a prohibition that still exists today.
“Another “secret society” also peaked at this time in various parts of Europe, and it drew suspicion among Americans that members exerted influence over the new nation.
Members of the Illuminati, a movement that started in Germany in 1776, promoted Enlightenment values and ideas, including logic, secularism and education. Like Freemasons, they rejected superstition. Unlike Freemasons, however, they also rejected religion and its influence on society.
Europe mostly outlawed the movement before 1790 due to the group’s attempts to greatly lessen religious influence. The Illuminati occupied key roles in the educational system and government of Bavaria, where they weakened clerical authority.
The normally secretive Illuminati attracted attention through their attempts to attend and participate within Masonic temples. They used Freemason ideas along with their own ideas to recruit followers through these networks, hoping to promote an even stronger “one-world” government led by reason instead of religion and spiritualism.
As a result, religious – and specifically Catholic – leaders suspected an association between the philosophically consistent Illuminati and Freemasons.
In a letter to George Washington in 1798, Rev. G. W. Snyder from Maryland attempted to awaken Washington to the danger of the Illuminati and their influence on Freemasons. He wrote about a recently published book by the Scottish physicist John Robison called “Proofs of a Conspiracy” that, according to Snyder, “gives a full Account of a Society of Freemasons, that distinguishes itself by the name ‘of Illuminati,’ whose Plan is to overturn all Government and all Religion, even natural; and who endeavour to eradicate every Idea of a Supreme Being.”
Even today, conspiracy theories still promote the Illuminati’s existence, even after they were formally outlawed in Europe. Such theories suggest the Illuminati still work to degrade religious influence through civil upheaval. A myth survives that the Illuminati still operate secretly, support a world government and guide various governments on how to economically control the world.
But the Illuminati in the late 1700s seemed to dovetail with what people assumed were the basic ideas and agenda of Freemasons in America. Some in America suspected without obvious evidence that Freemasons used their status to boost fellow Freemasons to various governmental positions. They worried this would drive America to become godless, or even Satanic.
Concerns about the influence of Freemasons persisted in part because American presidents Washington and James Monroe were Freemasons. The American public was suspicious that these members reached high levels of government due to the influence of Freemasons. In fact, as many as 25 of the 55 men who attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were Freemasons. Founding father Benjamin Franklin was a devout Freemason for over 50 years. Thomas Jefferson was widely thought to be a Freemason, though there is little evidence to support this.
Many of these American leaders, including Franklin, John Adams and Jefferson, had spent time in Europe, especially France, during the late 1700s. Americans feared that European Illuminati members could directly access these political leaders and gain power and influence over the U.S. None of the leaders admitted to having any connection with the Illuminati.
In the 1796 election, Jefferson’s Republican Party accused Adams of wanting to be a king and also grooming his son, John Quincy Adams, to become president immediately after his father.
Adams’ Federalist Party and an anonymous writer in newspapers – suspected to be Alexander Hamilton writing under the pseudonym “Phocion” – spread rumors attacking Jefferson. Phocion suggested that while Jefferson was U.S. secretary of state in France during Washington’s presidency, the Illuminati influenced him in ways that would cause him to turn his back on religion.
Phocion also accused Jefferson of fathering children with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, whom he “kept as a concubine” when he returned with her from France in 1789. Historians believe Jefferson did, in fact, have up to six children with Hemings. The accusations also said Jefferson would free all enslaved people in America if elected.
Freemasons today have largely shrunk from their once quite prestigious influence in American society. Today they are a mostly philanthropic organization that supports many causes, such as children’s hospitals, homes for the aged and community services.
Visitors to Philadelphia might consider two stops where they can be reminded of the conspiracy theories that circulated 250 years ago.
A marker at 175 Front St. notes where Tun Tavern, one of America’s first brew houses, stood from 1691 until it burned down in 1781. It was a hangout for Freemasons, including Franklin and other famous patrons such as John Adams.
Most of the Masonic lodges the city constructed early in its history do not exist today. The first Masonic temple built in Philadelphia was erected in 1809 on Chestnut Street, between 7th and 8th streets, but burned down in 1819.
The current grand lodge for all of Pennsylvania was built in 1873. It faces City Hall and remains a major Masonic base today. The site is very popular among tourists and offers hourly tours Wednesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Derek Arnold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With U.S. bombs raining down on Iran and Tehran’s leaders responding by hitting targets across the Persian Gulf and restricting transit through the Strait of Hormuz, it is fair to suggest that the present moment represents a low in relations between the two countries.
The two countries have been particularly hostile to each other since Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, resulting in economic sanctions and the severing of formal diplomatic relations between the nations.
Some of the major events in U.S.-Iran relations highlight the differences between the nations’ views, but others arguably presented real opportunities for reconciliation.
In 1951, the Iranian Parliament chose a new prime minister, Mossadegh, who then led lawmakers to vote in favor of taking over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, expelling the company’s British owners and saying they wanted to turn oil profits into investments in the Iranian people. The U.S. feared disruption in the global oil supply and worried about Iran falling prey to Soviet influence. The British feared the loss of cheap Iranian oil.
President Dwight Eisenhower decided it was best for the U.S. and the U.K. to get rid of Mossadegh. Operation Ajax, a joint CIA-British operation, convinced the Shah of Iran, the country’s monarch, to dismiss Mossadegh and drive him from office by force. Mossadegh was replaced by a much more Western-friendly prime minister, handpicked by the CIA.
Demonstrators in Tehran demand the establishment of an Islamic republic. AP Photo/Saris
1979: Revolutionaries oust the shah, take hostages
After more than 25 years of relative stability in U.S.-Iran relations, the Iranian public had grown unhappy with the social and economic conditions that developed under the dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Iranian students at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran show a blindfolded American hostage to the crowd in November 1979. AP Photo
In October 1979, President Jimmy Carter agreed to allow the shah to come to the U.S. to seek advanced medical treatment. Outraged Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, taking 52 Americans hostage. That convinced Carter to sever U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran on April 7, 1980.
Two weeks later, the U.S. military launched a mission to rescue the hostages, but it failed, with aircraft crashes killing eight U.S. servicemembers.
The shah died in Egypt in July 1980, but the hostages weren’t released until Jan. 20, 1981, after 444 days of captivity.
The U.S. was concerned that the conflict would limit the flow of Middle Eastern oil and wanted to ensure the conflict didn’t affect its close ally, Saudi Arabia.
U.S. officials moderated their usual opposition to those illegal and inhumane weapons because the U.S. State Department did not “wish to play into Iran’s hands by fueling its propaganda against Iraq.” In 1988, the war ended in a stalemate. More than 500,000 military and 100,000 civilians died.
1981-1986: US secretly sells weapons to Iran
The U.S. imposed an arms embargo after Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. That left the Iranian military, in the middle of its war with Iraq, desperate for weapons and aircraft and vehicle parts to keep fighting.
The last shipment, of anti-tank missiles, was in October 1986. In November 1986, a Lebanese magazine exposed the deal. That revelation sparked the Iran-Contra scandal in the U.S., with Reagan’s officials found to have collected money from Iran for the weapons and illegally sent those funds to anti-socialist rebels – the Contras – in Nicaragua.
At a mass funeral for 76 of the 290 people killed in the shootdown of Iran Air 655, mourners hold up a sign depicting the incident. AP Photo/CP/Mohammad Sayyad
Either during or just after that exchange of gunfire, the Vincennes crew mistook a passing civilian Airbus passenger jet for an Iranian F-14 fighter. They shot it down, killing all 290 people aboard.
The U.S. called it a “tragic and regrettable accident,” but Iran believed the plane’s downing was intentional. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay US$131.8 million in compensation to Iran.
1997-1998: The US seeks contact
In August 1997, a moderate reformer, Mohammad Khatami, won Iran’s presidential election.
U.S. President Bill Clinton sensed an opportunity. He sent a message to Tehran through the Swiss ambassador there, proposing direct government-to-government talks.
Shortly thereafter, in early January 1998, Khatami gave an interview to CNN in which he expressed “respect for the great American people,” denounced terrorism and recommended an “exchange of professors, writers, scholars, artists, journalists and tourists” between the United States and Iran.
However, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei didn’t agree, so not much came of the mutual overtures as Clinton’s time in office came to an end.
In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush characterized Iran, Iraq and North Korea as constituting an “Axis of Evil” supporting terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction, straining relations even further.
Technicians enriched uranium inside these buildings at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
That was a violation of the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran had signed, requiring countries to disclose their nuclear-related facilities to international inspectors.
One of those formerly secret locations, Natanz, housed centrifuges for enriching uranium, which could be used in civilian nuclear reactors or enriched further for weapons.
Starting in roughly 2005, U.S. and Israeli government cyberattackers together reportedly targeted the Natanz centrifuges with a custom-made piece of malicious software that became known as Stuxnet.
An excerpt of the document sent from Iran, via the Swiss government, to the U.S. State Department in 2003 appears to seek talks between the U.S. and Iran. Washington Post via Scribd
In May 2003, senior Iranian officials quietly contacted the State Department through the Swiss embassy in Iran, seeking “a dialogue ‘in mutual respect,’” addressing four big issues: nuclear weapons, terrorism, Palestinian resistance and stability in Iraq.
Hardliners in the Bush administration weren’t interested in any major reconciliation, though Secretary of State Colin Powell favored dialogue and other officials had met with Iran about al-Qaida.
When Iranian hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in 2005, the opportunity died. The following year, Ahmadinejad made his own overture to Washington in an 18-page letter to President Bush. The letter was widely dismissed; a senior State Department official told me in profane terms that it amounted to nothing.
After a decade of unsuccessful attempts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Obama administration undertook a direct diplomatic approach beginning in 2013.
Iran, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom signed the deal in 2015. It severely limited Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium and mandated that international inspectors monitor and enforce Iran’s compliance with the agreement.
In return, Iran was granted relief from international and U.S. economic sanctions. Though the inspectors regularly certified that Iran was abiding by the agreement’s terms, President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in May 2018.
2020: US drones kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani
At the time, the Trump administration asserted that Soleimani was directing an imminent attack against U.S. assets in the region, but officials have not provided clear evidence to support that claim.
Hamas’ brazen attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, provoked a fearsome militarized response from Israel that continues today and served to severely weaken Iran’s proxies in the region, especially Hamas – the perpetrator of the attacks – and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
2025: Trump 2.0 and Iran
Trump initially saw an opportunity to forge a new nuclear deal with Iran and to pursue other business deals with Tehran. Once inaugurated for his second term, Trump appointed Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor who is the president’s friend, to serve as special envoy for the Middle East and to lead negotiations.
Negotiations for a nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran began in April, but the countries did not reach a deal. They were planning a new round of talks when Israel struck Iran with a series of airstrikes on June 13, forcing the White House to reconsider is position.
On June 22, in the early morning hours, the U.S. chose to act decisively in an attempt to cripple Iran’s nuclear capacity, bombing three nuclear sites and causing what Pentagon officials called “severe damage.”
In early 2026, successive rounds of indirect talks took place between Iran and representatives from the U.S. administration. They followed major unrest in Iran during which Trump told protesters that “help is on its way.”
Then, on Feb. 28, the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran in an operation the U.S. called “Epic Fury.” In the initial wave of airstrikes, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior members of the Islamic Republic were killed. Tehran responded by hitting targets across the Gulf, turning the conflict into a wider, regional affair.
While much recent attention has focused on Trump’s decision to fire Bondi, there has been less attention on what the attorney general actually does, or what happens when the attorney general gets fired.
The attorney general is the lawyer appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to lead the Department of Justice, known as the DOJ. Because the attorney general’s expansive responsibilities place the office at the forefront of both politics and the law, the position is one of the most important in the federal executive branch.
NAACP leader Roy Wilkins walks in front of U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy during an NAACP march on June 24, 1964, in Washington, protesting the disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Washington Bureau/Getty Images
File lawsuits, give advice
Congress created the position of attorney general in 1789 so the national government had a designated lawyer to conduct federal lawsuits for crimes against the United States such as counterfeiting, piracy or treason, and to give legal advice to the president and cabinet officials, such as the secretary of the Treasury.
Initially, the attorney general served part time. Indeed, for the first few decades of U.S. history, most attorneys general maintained private law practices and even lived away from the capital. But as the federal government began to do more, the role of the attorney general grew and became a full-time job.
The attorney general represents the United States in all legal matters. In doing so, the attorney general supervises federal prosecutions by the 93 U.S. attorneys who live and work across the United States to enforce federal laws. The attorney general also supervises almost all legal actions involving federal agencies – from the Department of Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency to the Social Security Administration.
In combination, these two aspects of the job, representing the U.S. and advising the cabinet departments, mean that the attorney general plays a key role in helping the president perform his constitutional duty to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed.
115,000 employees
Since 1870, attorneys general have had an entire executive department – the Department of Justice – to help them execute their duties.
Today’s department contains over 70 distinct offices, initiatives and task forces, all of which the attorney general supervises. There are currently over 115,000 employees in the department.
The DOJ contains litigation units divided by subject matter like antitrust, civil rights, tax and national security. Each of these units conducts investigations and participates in federal lawsuits related to its expertise.
The Justice Department also has several law enforcement agencies that help ensure the safety and health of people who live in the United States. The most well-known of these agencies include the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. branch of the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.
Additionally, the DOJ contains corrections agencies like the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Parole Commission. These agencies work to ensure consistent and centralized coordination of federal prisons and offenders.
Finally, the department manages several grant administration agencies. These agencies, such as Community Oriented Policing Services, the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking, or SMART, provide financial assistance, training and advice to state, local, tribal and territorial governments as they work to enforce the law in their own communities.
Given all the attorney general’s responsibilities, the role is both political and legal. As such, attorneys general historically have a difficult task in separating their jobs as policy adviser from their duties as chief legal officer of the United States.
For example, President George W. Bush’s attorney general, Roberto Gonzales, resigned from office amid accusations of the DOJ’s politicized firing of U.S. attorneys and misuse of terrorist surveillance programs. And Loretta Lynch, President Barack Obama’s attorney general, was criticized for meeting privately with former President Bill Clinton while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was under investigation by the DOJ.
The attorney general’s job is complicated by the fact that the president has the constitutional power to fire them for political reasons.
During his first term, Trump replaced Attorney General Jeff Sessions after Sessions angered Trump by recusing himself – removing himself – from overseeing the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Given the attorney general’s connection to the president and the attorney general’s position as the head of the DOJ, when Bondi originally got the job critics saw her as a key part of Trump’s plan to control the department’s agenda, including through the use of the FBI to pursue his perceived enemies.
Under current law, the president can designate a Senate-confirmed official in the administration or another high-ranking person who has worked within the DOJ for 90 days to serve as acting attorney general. Presidents across both parties historically have relied on these temporary appointments to steer the department as they decide whom to nominate officially for the position.
Trump is rumored to have discussed Lee Zeldin, the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, to be Bondi’s permanent replacement. Zeldin worked as part of Trump’s legal defense team during his first impeachment trial.
Blanche’s temporary appointment and Zeldin’s potential nomination have spurred more questions about the politicization of the DOJ.
Jennifer Selin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The U.S. Supreme Court found a Colorado law banning conversion therapy for gay and transgender minors likely violates free speech. Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images
In an 8-1 decision authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court held on March 31, 2026, that a Colorado law prohibiting licensed counselors from performing “conversion therapy” on minors was likely unconstitutional as applied to talk therapy. Justice Elena Kagan filed a separate concurrence, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
I am a law professor and political scientist who teaches and writes on free expression and discrimination. I see this holding as a potentially important decision at the intersection of free speech and health care.
Colorado’s law defines conversion therapy broadly. It bans practices that attempt not only to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” but also to reduce same-sex attraction. The law allows therapists to provide “acceptance, support, and understanding” of gay or transgender identity. However, they may not help a client suppress those identities. Penalties include fines, probation and loss of license.
Demonstrators with the Human Rights Campaign stand outside the United States Supreme Court during oral arguments in October 2025. The court released its decision on a free speech challenge to a ban on conversion therapy on March 31, 2026. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Kaley Chiles challenged the law as a violation of her First Amendment free speech rights. As a therapist who only offers talk therapy, Chiles’s objection was limited to her talk therapy. She didn’t contest the ban on what she called “long-abandoned, aversive” conversion practices. And – notably, considering she is an evangelical Christian – Chiles said she never set out to convert her clients. She says she respects her clients’ “fundamental right of self-determination” and determines her therapy approach only after a client identifies his or her own objectives. But she argued that some of her clients wish to “reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions (or) change sexual behaviors,” and the law prevents her from expressing support for any of those goals.
Colorado’s failed ‘professional speech’ argument
Colorado faced a major obstacle in defending the Colorado conversion therapy law. The law was transparently driven by the government’s views about the well-documented inefficacy and harmful effects of conversion therapy. And outside of certain contexts, such as government grants, public employees, advertising and threats, courts have treated such viewpoint-based laws as constitutionally dead on arrival.
Colorado’s best hope in defending the law, then, was to argue that it wasn’t principally a restriction on speech at all. Rather, the state framed the law as a restriction on professional conduct — an area where states have broad regulatory latitude. That framing would mean the law burdened Chiles’ speech only incidentally.
A CBS News Colorado report on Coloradans’ conflicted feelings about the Supreme Court ruling.
In NIFLA v. Becerra, decided in 2018, the court rejected the argument that professional speech was a less-protected category. But it acknowledged that laws “regulating conduct in ways that incidentally sweep in speech” – particularly where they “fall within the traditional purview of state regulation of professional conduct” – might survive under a lower standard of scrutiny.
Colorado attempted to demonstrate such a tradition here, citing medical licensing laws, informed-consent requirements and malpractice liability.
A divided 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had agreed with Colorado’s argument, as did Jackson in her dissent. But the Supreme Court majority rejected it. Gorsuch wrote that a government cannot evade First Amendment scrutiny by relabeling restricted speech as “conduct,” “treatment” or a “therapeutic modality.” Quoting the dissent of U.S. Circuit Judge Harris Hartz, he called Colorado’s argument a “labeling game.”
For Gorsuch, the key question is whether the law restricts speech in practice. And in Chiles’ case the answer was yes. Colorado was plainly restricting what she wished to tell her clients about their sex and gender issues.
Not just content but viewpoint discrimination
More than that, the majority noted, Colorado’s law doesn’t regulate therapists’ speech based on its content. The law discriminates based on viewpoint, permitting expressions of acceptance and support for a client’s self-identity while forbidding expressions that attempt to change it.
Under 1995’s Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, viewpoint discrimination is an “egregious form” of content regulation. Governments must “nearly always abstain” from it. The court remanded the Colorado case back to the 10th Circuit to resolve the case under this standard.
Jackson’s dissent: Medical treatment, not speech
Jackson’s solo dissent emphasizes that states have long enjoyed broad power to regulate how licensed medical professionals treat patients. To Jackson, the First Amendment should not interfere simply because a treatment is applied through words rather than instruments.
The court’s 2018 NIFLA decision, she argues, distinguished between speech restricted “as speech” and speech restricted “incidentally” as part of a medical treatment the state is otherwise entitled to regulate. According to Jackson, the majority arbitrarily collapses that distinction simply because the treatment is delivered orally. A talk therapy session and a drug infusion are both medical treatments, she argues, and the analysis should not turn on whether the provider uses a syringe or a sentence.
Jackson’s dissent also raises difficult line-drawing problems, such as the validity of less controversial potential prohibitions, such as those on encouraging a patient to smoke or to take their own life.
Implications are broader, narrower than most believe
First, only talk therapy is implicated.
The holding is narrow in this sense. It leaves room for policymakers still hoping to limit the practice of conversion therapy. Because Chiles challenged the statute only as applied to her, the majority’s analysis does not invalidate conversion therapy bans wholesale – neither Colorado’s nor those of more than 20 other states – but applies only to the extent they ban conversion talk therapy.
State legislatures can define conversion therapy a bit more narrowly, for example, by prohibiting the physical and more coercive techniques that initially gave rise to these bans. States can then leave the regulation of talk therapy to other legal and professional mechanisms, such as malpractice or enforcement of professional ethics.
Second, the standard of scrutiny that the lower court must now apply is not strict scrutiny; it is more demanding. Strict scrutiny is a legal test that validates a law if it is “narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.” Contrary to what some legal commentators have implied, Gorsuch never directs the lower court to use strict scrutiny.
The opinion emphasizes that the law doesn’t just discriminate against certain types of content – a trigger for strict scrutiny; it discriminates based on viewpoint. The strict scrutiny standard is demanding, but laws sometimes survive it. Viewpoint discrimination, on the other hand, is subject to a near-absolute prohibition: Governments must “nearly always abstain” from it. This language is stronger and more categorical than that for strict scrutiny. The implication is that the law should certainly be invalidated as applied to talk therapy.
Not a clear win for conservatives
Finally, the holding is a double-edged sword for conservatives with traditional views of gender identity. And for those discouraged by the outcome, seeing it only as a victory for religious conservatives, the holding’s logic offers a silver lining.
Kagan’s concurrence makes explicit that a “mirror image” law – one barring talk therapy that affirms gender identity – would raise the same constitutional problems.
Dr. John Fryer revolutionized mental health care by speaking publicly about being gay at a 1972 conference of psychiatrists. This NBC News report covers Fryer’s legacy.
The majority makes a similar point. As late as the 1970s, the American Psychiatric Association still classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Under Colorado’s position, a law from that era prohibiting counselors from affirming gay clients’ identities would have been constitutionally sound.
Today, more than 20 states have moved to restrict gender-affirming care, and the federal government is pressuring state medical boards to adopt skeptical positions on gender transition. It’s not implausible that a legislature would attempt to ban gender-affirming, talk-based therapies. If and when conservative policymakers attempt that move, Chiles will be a formidable obstacle.
Kevin Cope does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
