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Supreme Court Restores Flawed Federal Voter‑Check System

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The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home

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Our National Debt Won’t Bankrupt Us. It Can Still Paralyze Us.

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How Anti-Bribery Laws Apply to Trump’s Promise of $5,000 Payments if Republicans Keep Control of Congress

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Beyond Campus Walls: Why the Attack on Minority Support Should Worry Every Donor

California court expedites Trump challenge to new tax returns requirement

California court expedites Trump challenge to new tax returns requirement

California's Supreme Court is expediting President Trump's challenge to a new state law that would require him to release five years of tax returns in order to get on the state ballot for the 2020 election.

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
Bill Theobald
By Bill TheobaldAug 22, 2019
Bill Theobald

Bill Theobald is senior writer at The Fulcrum, where he focuses on everything to do with voting. This December marks his 40th anniversary in the business, and he still believes -- now more than ever -- that the glow from great journalism can truly light the world.

See More Writings by author

The California Supreme Court is fast-tracking its review of a challenge to a new law that would require President Trump to make public his tax returns in order to get on the state's ballot for the 2020 election.

A lawsuit seeking to block implementation of the law was filed August 6 by the California Republican Party against Secretary of State Alex Padilla. It claims the law violates California's constitution.

Two other challenges, one filed by Trump's personal lawyers, are pending in federal court.

Trump refused to release his tax returns during the 2016 election campaign, bucking a practice followed by every presidential candidate for decades.

The court issued an expedited schedule on Wednesday requiring attorneys on both sides to file legal papers by mid-September, including anyone who wants to file briefs supporting either side.

The California law requires presidential candidates to release five years of tax returns in order to appear on the ballot. Democrats control both houses of the California Legislature and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill in late July.


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​Christa Pike
Rule of Law

How death penalty opponents share the blame for botched executions

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Education

The Future Of Puerto Rico: Consider Needs of The Children

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Rule of Law

The Questions We Should Be Asking About the Lindsay Clancy Case

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Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

Who Gets a Seat?: Florida’s New Bans on Undocumented Students in Public Higher Education

Each year, roughly 8,000 undocumented students graduate from Florida high schools. In 2026, Florida became the newest state to pass a regulation prohibiting this population from enrolling in state public colleges and selective universities. In June 2026, Florida State Board of Education passed Rule 6A-10.0240, which requires all 28 Florida College System institutions to certify admitted students as citizens of the United States or have lawful presence. In September 2026, a separate state board extended a similar ban to Florida’s most selective public universities.

Throughout the United States, there are three states that have historically upheld similar barring policies: Alabama and South Carolina ban undocumented students from all public colleges and universities, while Georgia bars them only from its most selective public universities. Florida’s restrictions are administrative rules and regulations, not state laws passed by the Legislature. Similar bills died in committee during Florida’s 2026 legislative session.

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Tattered American flag

Trump's "Restoring Truth and Sanity" order targets how museums and parks present slavery and racism. Why one writer says Americans should push back.

Nisian Hughes/Getty Images

Trump's Mendacious, Deceitful Rewriting of American History

History is made of two parts. One is indisputable facts and the other is the interpretation of those facts. The history of history is filled with varying interpretations of the basic facts, usually tinted by the perspective of the historian or commentator. That perspective can be the writer's political leanings, his philosophy, or any number of personal biases.

All historians, however, whether conservative or liberal, regardless of philosophy generally agree on the basic facts. For example, while there are fringe groups and individuals who deny that the Holocaust happened—that 6 millions Jews were killed by the Nazis—no reputable historian disputes that fact.

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​Paintings of Stalin

Paintings of Stalin on sale to tourists in Tbilisi's old quarter, Georgia

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The Stalinization of America

In the mid-1930s in the Soviet Union, under Joseph Stalin's leadership, the NKVD (the predecessor of the KGB) drove around Moscow and other cities in trucks with the word ХЛЕБ on the side. This translates into English as “Bread,” leaving the appearance that these were bakery trucks distributing fresh bread throughout the city. The stories are well told by some of the great dissident Soviet writers of the time, like the poet Osip Mandelstam, his wife Nadezhda, and several others. Osip Mandelstam was first arrested in part for his satirical poem about Joseph Stalin entitled The Stalin Epigram.

Recently, one is drawn to recognize the parallels between the NKVD bread trucks and black SUVs filled with ICE officers, who mask their faces and offer no identification as they snatch children and adults off the street because they have melanin in their skin or speak with an accent. Like the NKVD, ICE officers shoot people without substantive explanation, detain more than 66,000 people, many without criminal records, including occasional citizens, and ship them off to undisclosed detention centers. They have also deported hundreds of thousands of people, often without notice or due process.

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A female Marine completes an abdominal plank as part of her physical fitness test in 2022.

Lance Cpl. Elijah Hurtado/U.S. Marine Corps

Hegseth Made the Fitness Test Harder for Women in Combat Roles. Most Female Marines Are Passing.

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of generals and admirals from around the world to Quantico, Virginia, last September, he delivered a blunt message: Things were changing fast in the newly renamed Department of War.

“No more division, distraction, or gender delusions,” he said. “We are done with that shit.”

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