SCOTUS's immigration decisions prove cruelty is still the point [View all]

SCOTUS’s immigration decisions prove cruelty is still the point
The Supreme Court's latest rulings signal that compassionate conservatism is officially dead

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published June 28, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) In accepting the Republican nomination for president in 2000, George W. Bush advocated for a political ideology he called “compassionate conservatism.” Reflecting on his message 18 years later, he said, “I felt compelled to phrase it this way because people hear ‘conservative’ and they think heartless. And my belief then and now is that the right conservative philosophies are compassionate and help people. Compassionate means you care about people and the policies you enunciate help people . . . It’s a simple political principle that good policy makes good politics, but good politics comes out of policies that affect people in a positive way.”

Twenty-six years after his election as president, Bush’s compassionate conservatism is dead at the hands of Donald Trump. The president and his MAGA Republicans didn’t just bury the political corpse, they dug it up out of the ground and killed it repeatedly.

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Mullin v. Doe is the worst of this trio of immigration rulings, ending Temporary Protected Status for an estimated 330,000 Haitians, 6,000 Syrians and potentially more than one million other immigrants who are in the United States under the auspices of that program. Created in 1990, T.P.S. protects immigrants who are unable to return to their home countries because of violence, natural disasters or other great danger.

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In politics, there are many ways to hurt — or help — hundreds of thousands, and potentially millions, of people. On Thursday, the unelected — and unaccountable — conservative Supreme Court majority chose to do so with brutality, dressed up in cold judicial language.

In her dissent, Sotomayor warned, “The consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.” ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/06/28/scotuss-immigration-decisions-prove-cruelty-is-still-the-point/