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We Need to Protect College Sports from Ted Cruz

In this week’s Elie v. U.S., our justice correspondent looks at the many ways Ted Cruz’s college-sports bill threatens athletes’ labor rights. Plus: why our mail-in voting nightmare isn’t over.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, promotes the “Protect College Sports Act,” Monday, September 14, 2026.

In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s attempts to use the US Postal Service to manipulate the upcoming midterm election. The case was on the court’s shadow docket, so the justices in the majority didn’t bother to explain themselves. Alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh did offer a one-paragraph concurrence in which he argued that the Postal Service has the authority to implement Trump’s voter-suppression rules but that we are too close to the election for the rules to be changed. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Clarence Thomas. Alito argued, as he often does, that Trump should essentially be allowed to do whatever he wants to accomplish his goals.

I must point out that Thomas and Alito have the most direct interest in Republicans’ winning the midterms and maintaining control of the Senate. Their ability to retire in 2027 or 2028, under a Republican president, is directly tied to Republicans’ winning in November. I’m not exactly saying that their personal retirement planning influenced their opinions in this case, but that’s only because their extremist views of executive power happen to align perfectly with their retirement planning in this situation.

Despite their objections, this is a win. When the Supreme Court has ruled against Trump in the past, it’s usually with a wink and a nod toward how he might win the same case in the future. In this case, the court foreclosed Trump’s chance to use the Postal Service to limit mail-in voting and rig this election—and while Kavanaugh tried to throw Trump a bone for 2028, it does not appear that John Roberts or Amy Coney Barrett are interested in these particular shenanigans. The court did the right thing, and that happens rarely enough that it is worth acknowledging.

Trump, as is his wont, took the loss with the grace of a mob boss who believes the cops he’s got on the take have betrayed him. He criticized the justices he appointed to the court (Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch, who all voted to protect mail-in voting) by writing on social media, “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” and raging that the Supreme Court lacks the “courage” to “save America.” Ironically, I generally agree with Trump that the court lacks the courage to save America from him, but in this case Roberts seemed to find his inner Mike Pence and do the absolute bare minimum.

I assume Trump and his acolytes are busy planning a counterattack. Having failed to stop the ballots from being mailed, I imagine the next thing Trump will do is try to stop mailed ballots from being counted. It’s always the counting of votes that really bothers him anyway.

I expect we’ll all be back in front of the Supreme Court this November, waiting for them to tell us whether or not our votes matter.

Dick Durbin said that Democrats should not expand the Supreme Court or refuse to seat Trump nominees to the court should Dems win control of the Senate. In related news: Dick Durbin is retiring at the end of the year, so we are very close to the glorious time when he can no longer force the Democrats to repeatedly fail.

Trump says that AI doesn’t need “guardrails” and called AI warnings a “hoax.” If I were writing this movie, I’d have my protagonist standing before the evil AI superintelligence, about to destroy it, but then Claude would start playing a bunch of Trump clips and saying, “Do you really want more… of this?” And then my hero would just shrug, put down their water gun, and slink out of the server room, leaving the AI free to complete its takeover of humanity.

The family of a woman who died because she was denied an abortion is suing the state of Texas and its outgoing attorney general, Ken Paxton. I highlight this case not because I think the family has a great chance of winning but to remind people that women are literally dying because of the Supreme Court.

Bo French, a Republican running for Texas railroad commissioner, is so racist he’s lost Karl Rove.

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