The Supremes Sing: The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 yesterday that you can’t fire an employee or refuse to hire them because they are gay or transgender. The majority said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination “because of sex,” includes gay, lesbian, and transgender people. 

  Perhaps as stunning as the decision itself is that the majority was led by Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s first conservative appointee. Gorsuch is a strict “textualist” … the law says when the law says and you don’t ty to interpret it.

  “It is impossible,” Justice Gorsuch wrote, “to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”

  The decision was made on a collection of discrimination cases, involving both gay and transgender people. It comes just a week after President Trump rolled back healthcare discrimination protections for transgender people.

  Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin and sex. The question for the court was whether discrimination “because of sex” applies to gay and transgender people. 

 In a dissent joined by Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito wrote bitingly that the majority was writing law and that, “A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.” 

Shot Down: The court also decided not to take up gun rights cases, including the right to carry a gun in public, dealing a blow to gun rights advocates. 

  Perhaps more on point for the moment, the court declined to hear a case about qualified immunity for cops, the concept that frequently protects them when they wrongly kill someone.

Police Blotter: The district attorney in Atlanta said he’ll decide by midweek whether to file criminal charges against the police officer who shot the fleeing Rayshard Brooks twice in the back.

   Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms issued executive orders overhauling use of force by her police department. “It is clear we do not have another day, another minute, another hour,” Bottoms said of the orders, which came after the resignation of the city’s white police chief and firing of the cop who fatally shot Brooks.

  At least on the surface, procedures are changing quickly for police all over the country following the Minneapolis killing of George Floyd and other incidents since.

  New York is disbanding the Police Department’s anti-crime unit, 600 hundred plainclothes officers who target violent crime and have committed some of the department’s most questionable shootings. 

  The California attorney general wants to ban chokeholds and require officers to intervene against fellow cops who use too much force, and forbid officers from shooting moving vehicles.

  In Albuquerque, political leaders said the city will take money from its troubled police department to create a new community safety department for homelessness, addiction, and mental health.

Into the Cold: Diplomatic relations between the US and Russia took a turn for the worse after former US Marine Paul Whelan was sentenced to 16 years hard labor in a Russian prison after his conviction for espionage.

  The 50-year-old Whelan, 50, said throughout the trial that he was framed. His attorney, Vladimir Zherebenkov, said his client unwittingly received a flash drive containing “state secrets” while visiting Russia for a wedding in 2018. 

Voice of Trump: The top two editors at the editorially independent Voice of America resigned as the Trump administration is installing a new overseer and the operation is in an editorial fight with the Centers for Disease Control. A new Senate-confirmed CEO is expected to make the VOA speak for Trump.

  The White House had previously been criticizing VOA and over the weekend ordered the Centers for Disease Control not to provide representatives for interviews about the coronavirus pandemic. 

1099 Pennsylvania Ave.: A federal appeals court has ruled that President Trump must turn over his tax returns to the Manhattan district attorney, who’s investigating Trump’s pre-election payoffs to two women with whom he had affairs. Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance is seeking eight years of Trump’s tax returns.

  The three-judge panel wrote in their decision that “any presidential immunity from state criminal process does not extend to investigative steps like the grand jury subpoena at issue here.”

  Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said he will appeal to the Supreme Court.  “The issue raised in this case goes to the heart of our Republic,” Sekulow said. “The constitutional issues are significant.”

Viral News: Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott was among the NFL players who recently tested positive for COVID-19.

  President Trump claims in a tweet that a million people have applied for tickets to his Tulsa rally and that, “The Far Left Fake News Media, which had no Covid problem with the Rioters & Looters destroying Democrat run cities, is trying to Covid Shame us on our big Rallies. Won’t work!”

  This morning, 116,127 Americans are dead of the coronavirus. Worldwide, there have been more than eight million cases and 437,283 deaths.

  As restrictions are lifted, bars, restaurants and public venues re-open, researchers predict a sharp increase in deaths. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluationprojects that the US death toll will each 200,000 by October 1. 

The Bulletin Board: With relations deteriorating, North Korea has blown up its joint relations building with South Korea. — The 14-year-old boy who murdered Barnard College student Tessa Majors was sentenced to only 18 months in custody. — The Motion Picture Academy announced that it is putting off the Oscars from next February to April. — Mary Trump, niece of the President, is publishing a book called, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”  

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