Few Americans would read the facts in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety without being disturbed. According to Damon Landor and the state of Louisiana, prison officials shaved his dreadlocks against his will and in violation of his religious beliefs as a devout Rastafarian. Even more appalling is the fact that Landor told the officers his dreadlocks were protected by his First Amendment “free exercise” rights, and he handed the officers a written opinion by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals directly on point. The officers ignored the court’s opinion. The issue in the case that made its way to the Supreme Court wasn’t whether the officers’ conduct was outrageous—it was. The narrow legal question presented to the Supreme Court was whether “appropriate relief” under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) may include money damages in suits against government officials in their individual capacities. In a 6–3 decision written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court held that RLUIPA does not authorize money damages against state corrections officials in their individual capacities. The Court reasoned that Congress enacted RLUIPA under its Spending Clause authority, which binds only those who voluntarily and knowingly accept federal funding conditions. Because the individual prison officers were not part of any agreement with the federal government and did not personally consent to liability under RLUIPA, Landor could not pursue damages against them. The Court therefore affirmed the judgment of the Fifth Circuit. Landor argued that RLUIPA permits money damages against government officials in their individual capacities because the statute authorizes claimants to obtain “appropriate relief against a government.” The United States, supporting Landor, submitted an amicus brief where it argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Tanzin v. Tanvir interpreted identical language in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to allow damages against individual government officials. Because RLUIPA and RFRA are often described as “sister statutes,” the government argued that they should be interpreted consistently. The United States further contended that damages are sometimes the only meaningful way to remedy violations of religious liberty. Once Landor’s dreadlocks were cut, there was no way to undo the harm. Allowing damages, supporters argued, provides accountability for officials who violate clearly established religious rights and ensures that victims receive a meaningful remedy. The Louisiana Department of Corrections and the National Sheriffs’ Association had a different view. They argued that RLUIPA was designed to prevent ongoing burdens on religious exercise through injunctions and policy changes rather than to create personal liability for individual officers. They maintained that the Court’s decision in Sossamon v. Texas treated RLUIPA’s authorization of “appropriate relief” as too ambiguous to clearly authorize damages. They also argued that because RLUIPA was enacted under Congress’s Spending Clause authority, liability should extend only to entities that receive federal funds, not individual officers who are not direct recipients. Expanding RLUIPA to allow personal capacity damages, they warned, would expose sheriffs, jail officials, and correctional officers to personal lawsuits that go beyond what Congress intended. Justice Gorsuch explained that the Constitution’s Spending Clause may confer on Congress the power to spend money on the “general welfare,” but it does not “endow Congress with any power to regulate conduct.” And while Congress can attach strings to the funds it distributes, if a recipient violates those conditions, Congress can move to terminate the funding. In this case, the Louisiana’s Department of Corrections (LDOC) accepted federal funding and agreed to comply with RLUIPA’s requirements, but the individual correctional officers employed by LDOC did not “voluntarily and knowingly” consent to the terms of the agreement between the federal government and the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections. Because Congress lacks a general power to regulate individuals through the Spending Clause, the Court concluded that personal liability may be imposed only on parties who knowingly and voluntarily consent to the conditions attached to federal funds. The majority also rejected arguments based on agency law, indirect receipt of federal funds, and the Necessary and Proper Clause, reasoning that allowing damages suits against nonconsenting individuals would improperly expand federal power beyond its constitutional limits. Justice Jackson authored the dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan. The dissent argued that RLUIPA requires local and state prisons that accept federal funding to accommodate a prisoner’s religious exercise, and that the statute specifically authorizes damages suits against government employees in their individual capacity. The majority “magically transforms a federal statute into an invitation to be accepted or declined, deemed binding only if each particular defendant has explicitly agreed to be penalized.” As a result, prison officials will have little incentive to accommodate the free exercise rights of prisoners, knowing full well that if they violate the law, they won’t be held personally liable.

President Donald Trump said that his Wednesday luncheon with senators will focus on ways to pass the SAVE America Act. “We have to get—we have to pass the SAVE America Act, which is voter ID, which is proof of citizenship, et cetera,” he said Tuesday in response to a question from the Daily Signal. “We have to pass it, so we’re going to have to talk about that, and many other things.” NEW: I asked @POTUS about his lunch with senators tomorrow on the SAVE America Act. “We have to get, we have to pass the Save America Act, which is voter ID, which is proof of citizenship, etc. We have to pass it, so we're going to have to talk about that, and many other… pic.twitter.com/pFML3Rw6R3— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) June 23, 2026 Trump is attending the closed-door Senate luncheon at the invitation of Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott. “He wants, we all want to get the SAVE America Act done,” Scott told Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany on Saturday. “I’ve invited him to lunch on Wednesday to meet with Republican senators.” The SAVE America Act would mandate photo identification and proof of citizenship in federal elections, terminate vote-by-mail, and require local governments to regularly purge their voter rolls. It would also ban men from women’s sports and prohibit transgender procedures for children. Scott said the Senate can begin passing the package piecemeal. “Let’s do a vote just on voter ID,” he said. “Let’s do a vote on just, you have to be American to vote, maybe just to share voter rolls. We’ve got to get this done.” Scott said the Senate needs to stay in session to pass the package as quickly as possible. “We all need to figure out how to come together,” he said. “If we have to stay in D.C. to get it done, let’s stay in D.C. to get this done. This is important. Secure these elections.” Scott wants senators to strategize with the president about passing the bill despite tight margins. Though the act is a top White House priority, four Senate Republicans recently joined Democrats to keep the voter ID provision out of a reconciliation package. As a result, Congress’ only remaining option to pass the bill may be to terminate the filibuster, to which Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly expressed opposition. “Let’s talk about how we get it done. What can he do? What can we do? But we’ve got to get the SAVE America Act passed,” he said. Last week, Trump demanded that the bill be attached to an extension of a spy powers provision, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “I think the president wants to add SAVE America to pretty much everything,” Thune told reporters. “But that, obviously, is not realistic to get the FISA bill done. And we want to get the FISA bill done.” Reuters contributed to this report.

The Supreme Court held Tuesday that immigration law doesn’t require the government to have clear and convincing evidence that a green card holder has committed a crime before deeming him an applicant for admission. The case involved removal proceedings against an immigrant legally residing in the United States who was charged with selling counterfeit products. It had the potential to affect the operations of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and immigration courts. In a 6-3 ruling, the majority—with Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the Court—reversed the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that held the Immigration and Nationality Act requires border officers to have compelling evidence that a lawful immigrant committed a crime of “moral turpitude” before blocking readmission to the United States. The plaintiff, Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese national residing in the U.S. with a green card, was charged with counterfeiting before leaving the country and was convicted after returning and being placed on parole. The Immigration and Nationality Act says that green card holders who leave the country and re-enter are generally not regarded as seeking admission to the United States. However, an exception exists for a “crime involving moral turpitude,” which would include fraud or theft. “The Government correctly regarded Lau as an applicant for admission, so it properly charged him with inadmissibility. Nothing in the INA required the border officer to have clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude,” Thomas wrote for the majority. Lau, a lawful permanent resident in the United States, was charged in May 2012 on New Jersey state charges for selling almost $300,000 worth of knockoff Coogi shorts, according to SCOTUSblog. Before his trial, he left the country but returned on June 12, when immigration officers at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York stopped him. Immigration officers determined that Lau was subject to the “moral turpitude” exception and paroled him. That allowed him to stay in the U.S. temporarily to face prosecution but deferred his eligibility for admission. A year later, he pleaded guilty to trademark counterfeiting and was sentenced to two years’ probation. In March 2014—during the Obama administration—the Department of Homeland Security began removal proceedings against Lau on the ground that he wasn’t eligible for admission. Lau challenged immigration officials’ decision to parole him rather than admit him into the country in June 2012, contending that he was improperly classified. The case is Blanche v. Lau, renamed for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche after initially being named Bondi v. Lau for former Attorney General Pam Bondi. “The Supreme Court 6-3 majority issued a short, straightforward decision because the analysis of the immigration statute is straightforward,” Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, said in a public statement. “The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) does not require Customs and Border Protection agents to have clear and convincing evidence that an alien seeking to enter the U.S. has committed a crime involving moral turpitude. Nor would such a requirement be practical, as port agents have very limited time to inspect plane loads of passengers at a time.”  Ries added: “Lau benefited from the border agent paroling him into the country in lieu of denying admission outright or detaining him while his criminal case proceeded. Nonetheless, Lau demanded even more—full admission into the U.S., despite his crime and contrary to the INA. He overreached, and the Supreme Court rightly steered his case back to the law.” 

After a Muslim-only cemetery that claims to follow “Islamic rule over U.S. law” raised concerns from the public and elected officials alike in Texas, Rep. Keith Self told the Daily Signal the graveyard is a prime example of Islamic secrecy that threatens America’s national security. “I don’t have a problem with Muslim-only cemeteries, but I have problems with the fact that we don’t know anything about deaths in the Islamic community,” Self stated. Self, a former county judge, said that, during his tenure, local law enforcement officials repeatedly raised those concerns with him. “The senior Plano detective told me that he has never received a call on an unattended death from the Islamic community. We do not know how these people are dying,” Self said. Aside from the secrecy over the deaths of those who are buried in the Muslim-only cemetery, Self added that the secrecy of Islamic law concerns him. He described the issue as a national security concern. “There are U.S. Laws that they have to follow,” Self said. “My issue is [that] we don’t know anything about Islamic law.” “One of those things that we do know, for instance, is that a Muslim man has the right to four marriages. The Muslim community is so insulated and closed off that we don’t know about three of the four marriages. The first happens in court, but the rest is unknown.” JUST IN “MUSLIM ONLY” cemetery in Texas brags on its website that “Islamic laws govern ALL matters concerning this community.”Wake up, Texas! Ignore this at your own peril! pic.twitter.com/NEwFEhypq4— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) June 21, 2026 During his interview with the Daily Signal, Self said the reason Islamic rule is unknown to non-Muslims is not because there is no interest or curiosity from the public to uncover the secrecy of Islamic communities in America. Instead, it’s because the Islamic community is using “our very generous laws” to “hide behind the curtain of the First Amendment, which prevents us from knowing the details.” Self fears this trend will continue as Islam makes inroads throughout the United States. “They are going to hide behind this freedom-of-religion curtain. Who is going to have the courage to call them out?” Self concluded.

Starting under the Biden administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills into New Mexico because Justice Department prosecutors wanted to bring a bigger criminal case against traffickers, the Associated Press first reported. The AP cited three current and former DEA agents as well as government records showing that, between 2023 and 2025, the DEA monitored fentanyl shipments but didn’t seize the highly lethal drugs. “We poisoned our community to make cases,” DEA Special Agent David Howell told AP. “Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, ‘We don’t really know what happened to the drugs.’ But we 100% got people killed.” The AP cited one DEA report that said traffickers delivered 74,000 pills as part of a deal. “We did nothing but sit back and watch,” Howell said. A spokesperson for the administration, Amanda Wozniak, told the AP, “Public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts.” She added the investigation involved court-authorized wiretaps “in which agents and prosecutors conducted real-time surveillance, intelligence gathering, and operational analysis targeting larger drug trafficking organizations.” Former U.S. Attorney Alex Uballez of New Mexico, who President Joe Biden nominated in 2022, oversaw and defended the program. “The bigger fish are worth catching,” Uballez told the AP. He added, “that will save more lives.” He said authorities would allow drug shipments to pass through in order to gather intelligence and build cases against major drug traffickers. The operation primarily affected the Albuquerque area. According to the DEA, fentanyl is about 100 times more potent than morphine, but illicit fentanyl is often mixed with other illicit drugs to increase its potency. The combination of drugs can often be fatal. As little as two milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal, according to the DEA. The operation is reminiscent of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program under President Barack Obama’s administration dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious,” that allowed illegal guns to flow from the United States into Mexico for the purpose of tracking them to build a case against drug cartels. However, the government lost track of some of the guns, one of which was used in the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. During the first Trump administration in 2017, the Justice Department began to issue new “Fentanyl Protocols” that called for law enforcement to seize or otherwise prevent the distribution of fentanyl “as soon as practicable.”