Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson continues to speak out when she believes her colleagues are misusing their power. The latest example came Monday, when the Biden appointee dissented from a Supreme Court ruling in favor of law enforcement in a Fourth Amendment case.

In District of Columbia v. R.W.the high court majority disagreed with a ruling from D.C.’s appeals court that said a police officer violated the amendment by stopping a person without reasonable suspicion. In an unsigned through the court opinion, the justices said the D.C. court failed to properly consider the “totality of the circumstances.” The justices summarily reversed the lower court.

Jackson, however, saw the maneuver by her colleagues as heavy-handed.

In her dissent, she wrote that if the court’s intervention “reflects disapproval” of the D.C. court’s “assessment of which particular facts to weigh and to what extent, I cannot fathom why that kind of factbound determination warranted correction by this Court.” She deemed the move “not a worthy accomplishment for the unusual step of summary reversal.”

A notation at the end of the majority’s opinion said that Justice Sonia Sotomayor would have denied D.C.’s petition for high court review, but she didn’t join Jackson’s dissent or write her own to elaborate.

Jackson’s dissent follows a lecture she gave last week at Yale Law School in which she criticized what she saw as her colleagues’ disrespect of lower courts’ work.

Monday’s ruling appeared among several high court actions on a 25-page order lista routine document containing the latest action on pending appeals. The list is mostly unexplained denials of petitions for review, but sometimes it contains opinions and justices writing separately to explain themselves.

In another case on the list, Sotomayor, Jackson and the court’s third Democratic-appointed justice, Elena Kagan, all noted their dissent from the majority’s unexplained summary reversal in favor of law enforcement in a qualified immunity case.

It takes four justices to grant review of a petition. That simple math underscores the lack of power wielded by the three Democratic appointees, especially on the most contentious issues.

On that note, one of the new cases the court took up on Monday involves its latest foray into religion in public life, which the religious side has been winning at the court. The new case is an appeal from Catholic preschools in Colorado that want public funding while still admitting, as they wrote in their petition“only families who support Catholic beliefs, including on sex and gender.” The case will be heard in the next court term that starts in October.

Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.

About a month ago, when Donald Trump spoke at a conference for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment fund, it was hard not to notice the complexities of the circumstances. On the one hand, Riyadh has helped steer the White House’s policy in Iran. On the other hand, the president’s son-in-law, having already received billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, recently turned to the Middle Eastern country for more money for his private investment firm.

All the while, Saudi officials remain focused on private dealings with Trump’s family business, as the Republican extended his public support to the sovereign investment fund, ignored Pentagon concerns about selling F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and designated Saudi Arabia a “major non-NATO ally” as part of a new security agreement.

The trouble is, it’s not just the Saudis.

The New York Times reported on wealthy interests in Syria with ambitions plans for the nation’s future who needed the U.S. to drop the economic sanctions that crippled the country during Bashar al-Assad’s reign. One Syrian-born businessman, Mohamad Al-Khayyat, secured a meeting with Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, who recommended that plans for a luxury golf course carry the Trump Organization brand as a way of getting the American president’s attention.

The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that the businessman was way ahead of the congressman. He’d already planned to propose a Trump-branded resort. The same businessman’s brothers, who enjoy the backing of Thomas Barrack, the American president’s special envoy to Syria, were also negotiating a real estate partnership with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

The Times summarized the broader context nicely:

Such a mixing of personal and diplomatic affairs has long been the norm in Middle Eastern nations, where a small set of players have historically run, and profited from, their dominant role in society. But it has become the way Washington operates in Mr. Trump’s second term, too.

Business discussions involving the president’s family … are consistently blurred with important policy decisions or consequential nation-to-nation negotiations.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but developments like these aren’t supposed to happen in the U.S. If a foreign country wants a change in federal economic sanctions, it’s supposed to go through proper diplomatic and economic channels as part of a formal process to prevent corruption and potential conflicts of interests.

In 2026, that model has been torn down — and replaced with what the Times described as “a warped system of executive patronage,” which is awfully tough to defend.

The article added:

Mohamad Al-Khayyat returned to Washington late last year toting a special stone celebrating the proposed golf course, carved with the Trump family emblem. He presented it to Mr. Wilson in his Capitol Hill office to deliver to the White House. Mr. Al-Khayyat then joined meetings with other lawmakers to push the sanctions repeal.

Weeks later, legislation for a permanent repeal won approval in Congress and was signed into law by Mr. Trump in late December.

This was no doubt noticed by officials and monied interests elsewhere, sending a clear signal about how to interact with the U.S. government (at least until January 2029).

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* This week’s biggest election is in Virginia, where voters will decide whether to advance a Democratic redistricting effort. Ahead of Tuesday’s balloting, Barack Obama filmed one last pitch to the electorate in the commonwealth.

* With former Rep. Eric Swalwell out of California’s gubernatorial race, billionaire Tom Steyer is spending heavily to claim the front-runner slot. The Associated Press reported“Data compiled by advertising tracker AdImpact show Steyer has spent or booked over $115 million in ads for broadcast TV, cable and radio — nearly 30 times the amount of his nearest Democratic rival.”

* On a related note, the California Teachers Association, which had backed Swalwell, threw its support behind Steyer’s bid last week.

* When Donald Trump held an event in Nevada last week, many watched to see whether Joe Lombardo, the state’s Republican governor who is facing a tough re-election fight in the fall, appeared at the gathering. He did notthough Lt. Gov. Stavros Anthony spoke at the event.

* In Pennsylvania, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman isn’t up for re-election until 2028, but Punchbowl News asked every other Democratic member of the state’s congressional delegation whether the incumbent senator should run for a second term as a Democrat. Not one said he should.

* Jack Daly, a political operative who pleaded guilty in 2023 to defrauding thousands of conservative political donors, has lost some Republican clients of late, but the National Republican Senatorial Committee has continued to use the services of Daly’s firm.

* And in Tennessee, Republican Rep. Andy Ogles appears to be running for re-election, though his fundraising is badly lacking: As of the end of March, the far-right incumbent only had around $85,000 cash on handwhich lags his GOP primary opponent, former Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher, who has around $150,000 in his campaign account.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”