THE FRIDAY BRIEF OCTOBER 2

1. The Supreme Court Says Third-Country Deportations Can Continue — For Now

If it feels like you keep seeing headlines saying “Supreme Court lets Trump…”, you’re not imagining it. This week alone offers a good example of what those headlines do — and don’t — mean.

The Supreme Court voted 6–3 to temporarily allow the Trump administration to continue rapidly deporting some immigrants to countries other than their home countries — known as third-country deportations — while a legal challenge continues. The three liberal justices dissented.

Wait. You Can Be Deported Somewhere You’re Not From?

Potentially, yes — and the reason this issue reached the Supreme Court is because of places like South Sudan and Libya.

Normally, when someone is ordered deported, they’re sent back to their home country. But if that country won’t take them, the U.S. government has sought to send people to entirely different nations instead — in the cases behind this dispute, largely to South Sudan and Libya. For the people affected, that means being dropped into a country on another continent, often one they’ve never set foot in, where they say they could face imprisonment, torture, or persecution.

The legal fight isn’t over whether third-country deportations can ever happen. The central question is what process someone must receive before being sent to a country where they claim danger awaits. A federal judge had placed restrictions on the administration’s expedited process; the Supreme Court has now put those restrictions on hold.

Why Does It Seem Like the Supreme Court Keeps Letting Trump Do Things?

Because the emergency pipeline to the Court has grown dramatically — and not just under this administration.

One reason: this administration has taken a large number of executive actions that have been challenged in court. When a lower court blocks one of those policies, the administration can ask the Supreme Court to step in immediately rather than waiting months or years for the normal appeals process — and the current Court has frequently agreed.

But there’s an important distinction hidden inside those headlines. When the Supreme Court grants an emergency request, it usually isn’t ruling that the president’s policy is legal. It’s deciding what can happen while the courts decide whether it is legal.

2. Jack Smith Testifies — and a Congressional Hearing Becomes a Lesson in Oversight

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, publicly defending the federal investigations he led into Donald Trump.

Smith told senators that his team had gathered evidence he believed could have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump committed crimes related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He also defended the separate investigation involving Trump’s retention of classified documents after leaving office.

Trump has denied wrongdoing and has long argued that the investigations were politically motivated. Neither federal case ultimately went to trial, so Smith’s allegations were never tested before a jury.

That distinction matters.

A congressional hearing is not a criminal trial, and senators are not jurors. The hearing instead gave lawmakers an opportunity to question Smith about how the investigations were conducted, why certain decisions were made, and whether federal law-enforcement powers were appropriately used.

Then Came the Hawks

During questioning, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri accused Smith of perjury — claiming he had text messages showing Smith was in Atlanta on February 3, 2024, at an NBA game, on the day Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis disclosed her relationship with another prosecutor involved in a separate Trump case. The implication: Smith had been secretly coordinating with another prosecutor investigating Trump.

There was one problem. Smith hadn’t been in Atlanta. The game he’d actually attended that day was an Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball game in Maryland, featuring star player Caitlin Clark. “Hawks” and “Hawkeyes” — easily confused in a text message.

The exchange quickly spread online. Schmitt’s staff quietly removed the poster board. But the mistake itself isn’t particularly important. What it illustrates matters more.

Congressional hearings are supposed to provide oversight: lawmakers question government officials, investigate possible wrongdoing, gather information and create a public record. They can expose genuine misconduct and reveal information the public otherwise might never see.

But televised hearings also create an incentive for something else: the viral moment.

A dramatic accusation, poster board or 30-second exchange can travel much farther online than two hours of careful testimony. When the accusation turns out to be wrong, the correction doesn’t necessarily travel as far.

3. Trump, Hegseth and the Military: What Is the Military’s Role at Home?

Hundreds of America’s senior military leaders were summoned to Quantico, Virginia, this week for an unusual gathering with President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — coming as the military remains engaged in operations abroad.

Hegseth used the meeting to lay out his vision for reshaping military leadership and culture, including changes to physical fitness and grooming standards and a cut of roughly 20 percent of general and admiral positions — doubling a reduction he ordered last spring. He told officers who disagreed with the new direction that they should resign, and offered a blunt message to those already gone: “Those generals who… seemed to think civilian control of the military is simply a suggestion — well, they no longer work here.”

More than two dozen military leaders have been fired or forced to retire since the start of the administration, including the Army’s top uniformed officer — a decision that drew criticism from Republicans and Democrats in Congress alike. The departures have included the only two women then serving as four-star officers.

But some of the most consequential comments came from Trump.

Speaking to the assembled generals and admirals, Trump discussed deploying troops in American cities and suggested that dangerous cities could serve as “training grounds” for the military. He also described the country as facing an “invasion from within.”

Can a President Use the Military Inside the United States?

Yes — under some circumstances. But there are important limits.

The United States has a long tradition of separating the military from ordinary domestic law enforcement. The Posse Comitatus Act, enacted in 1878, generally restricts the use of federal armed forces to enforce civilian laws inside the country.

There are exceptions. Presidents can use federal troops in certain emergencies, and the Insurrection Act gives presidents additional authority under specific circumstances. The National Guard can also operate under different legal rules depending on whether troops remain under a governor’s control or are federalized by the president.

That is why headlines saying “the National Guard was deployed” don’t always tell you enough. Who ordered the deployment — a governor or the president — and under what legal authority can make an enormous difference.

Why the Speech Got Attention

Presidents are civilians, and civilian control of the military is a fundamental part of the American system. The president is commander in chief, and the secretary of defense is also a civilian official.

Civilian control, though, runs in both directions. The president controls the military — and the military answers to the Constitution, not to any individual leader. Members of the armed forces swear an oath to defend the Constitution and are required to follow lawful orders, no matter which party holds the White House.

That tradition becomes especially important when discussions turn toward using military forces inside American communities — and when Pentagon leadership is simultaneously removing senior officers it says resisted civilian control.

4. Congress Approved the Money. Can the President Just Refuse to Spend It?

Here is a fight over $810 million that is really about something much bigger: who controls the federal government’s wallet?

The Trump administration moved to cancel $810 million across eleven funding accounts — money Congress had already approved for refugee services, migrant education, foreign-language programs and other initiatives the administration called wasteful or ideologically driven. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’s nonpartisan watchdog, concluded that withholding the money violated federal law.

Now seven states — California, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon — have gone to court challenging the administration’s actions.

At the center of the dispute is an old constitutional principle known as the power of the purse.

Congress Holds the Checkbook

The Constitution gives Congress the authority to decide how federal money is spent. A president can propose a budget, recommend spending cuts and ask Congress to cancel money that has already been appropriated.

But presidents generally cannot simply decide, “Congress approved this spending, but I don’t want to spend it.”

Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 partly to prevent presidents from doing exactly that. The law was a direct response to President Richard Nixon, who repeatedly refused to spend money Congress had approved — and it was built specifically to stop that from happening again.

If a president wants to permanently cancel money Congress has appropriated, the law provides a process known as a rescission. The president proposes the cancellation to Congress, and Congress decides whether to approve it.

So What Is a “Pocket Rescission”?

Timing is what makes this dispute unusual.

Federal appropriations often expire at the end of the fiscal year. If an administration waits until very close to that deadline before proposing a rescission or withholding the funds, Congress may not have enough time to act before the authority to spend the money disappears.

The money effectively dies in the president’s pocket.

Hence the nickname “pocket rescission.”

This administration is proving how the math works. Trump’s $810 million package arrived five days before the fiscal year ended on September 30 — far too late for Congress’s 45-day review window to run. It was also the second time the tactic has been used: in August 2025, the administration withheld roughly $4.9 billion in foreign aid the same way, the first use of the maneuver in nearly 50 years.

The GAO has taken the position that a president cannot use timing to accomplish indirectly what the law doesn’t allow the president to do directly.

The administration disputes that interpretation. The Government Accountability Office has likened the practice to a line-item veto — a power letting a president strike pieces of laws Congress passed, which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 1998.

Criticism has not come only from Democrats. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Congress received the package “without warning or consultation” and called it an attempt to undermine Congress’s constitutional power of the purse.

5. The Cornell 7 Case Is Reopened: What Changed?

A sexual-assault case involving seven former Cornell University fraternity members is back under criminal investigation — nearly two years after prosecutors initially declined to bring charges.

The case involves a former Cornell student identified publicly as Jane Doe, who alleges that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024. The lawsuit alleges that alcohol and ketamine were involved. The men have denied the allegations, and none has been criminally charged.

But this week, the Tompkins County District Attorney announced that the criminal investigation has been reopened and that prosecutors intend to present evidence to a grand jury.

So what changed?

A Civil Lawsuit Brought the Case Back Into Public View

Earlier this month, Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the seven former fraternity members, Cornell University and several other parties. The lawsuit alleges that the university and law enforcement mishandled her original reports.

The case received renewed attention after text messages and other information connected to the allegations became public. Most notably, the lawsuit includes an image purportedly from a Snapchat fraternity group chat in which participants discussed the prospect of a sexual encounter with Doe in vulgar terms. Her attorney alleges investigators had access to this evidence in 2024 but never followed up.

District Attorney Matthew Van Houten acknowledged he was asked by the community to revisit the charging decision. He also defended the original decision, stating Doe’s sworn statement to police in November 2024 was “dramatically different” from what the civil lawsuit now alleges.

That doesn’t mean the new information proves a crime occurred. It does mean prosecutors now believe there is enough reason to take another look at a case they previously declined to prosecute.

And the next step matters.

What Does a Grand Jury Actually Do?

A grand jury does not decide whether someone is guilty.

Instead, prosecutors present evidence to a group of citizens who decide whether there is enough evidence to formally charge someone with a crime.

Unlike a criminal trial, the process generally happens privately, and the standard is much lower than “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

If a grand jury returns an indictment, that means a criminal case can move forward. The government would still have to prove the charges in court, and the defendants would still be presumed innocent.

If the grand jury does not indict, there would be no criminal trial based on those proposed charges.

Van Houten said he has assigned a senior sex-crimes prosecutor to prepare the case for presentation and that the grand jury could hear the case within weeks.