Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

James 4:3

What are you passionate about?

God!

God knows our hearts. He knows not only what we ask, but why we ask. And when we ask with impure motives, seeking God only as a means to achieving our selfish desires, He gently corrects us. It is God’s desire that our hearts would turn to Him, for His sake, and be satisfied with Him. And in turn, He helps us to overcome our selfish desires as we set our minds on heavenly things.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is once again forcing postal workers to work on Sunday. In fact, the USPS refused to give our postal worker client an accommodation to continue going to church on Sunday.

We’ve been fighting – and WINNING – these types of cases for decades. And we’re currently representing numerous clients defending their right to go to church. We just won for one of our USPS clients and are sending a demand letter for another one TODAY. We helped win at the U.S. Supreme Court last year to protect your right to go to church on Sunday, and we’ll go back to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Church is essential, and our constitutional rights to religious liberty MUST BE PROTECTED. If they can block you from going to church, what’s next?

This is a critical moment to stop these attacks on faith and defend religious liberty in court.

As we send our demand letter TODAY to protect your right to go to church and religious liberty, take action with us.

Lord, too often my own desires and priorities get in the way of truly seeking You. Please transform my heart and renew my mind so that I may be more like You. Help me to put away selfish ambitions and lustful pursuits, and instead desire more of what is true, good, and right. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

June 12, 2024 View in browser
The Epoch Times
A wave of major Supreme Court decisions is expected in the next several weeks as the 2023-2024 term comes to an end this month.
The Court’s calendar has marked two days for potential opinion releases but will likely add more to the calendar. So far this term, the justices have released 32 opinions, or a little more than half of the 61 oral arguments they heard this term.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 29, 2024.

Among the cases pending are ones related to presidential power, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, abortion, gun rights, social media, and administrative authority.
“This term stands to be a critical one in articulating the proper role of the separation of powers and the limits on the federal government,” Judicial Crisis Network President Carrie Severino told The Epoch Times.
Former President Donald Trump’s appeal in his Washington, Jan.6-related case is expected to set game-changing precedent for presidential immunity while potentially bearing on the success of DOJ’s case against him. Experts have speculated to The Epoch Times that the justices will refine the legal scope of presidential immunity while remanding the case for further consideration in D.C. District Court.
Another case has challenged the Justice Department’s attempt to use a financial reform law to charge many Jan. 6 defendants. The Court’s ruling could bear on prior convictions as well as Trump’s trial in Washington.
Separation of Powers refers to the idea that each branch of the federal government has its own territory of authority. While the Constitution sets up checks and balances, various cases are questioning how the extent to which different branches affect each other.
Four major cases related to administrative power have gone before the Court this term. Two of them—Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce—could lead the Supreme Court to overturn a decades-old precedent known as Chevron deference.
Chevron deference generally refers to the idea that courts should defer to an agency’s interpretation of their authority under laws passed by Congress. The decision has been cited in thousands of cases and its undoing is expected to change the landscape of litigation for challenges to regulation.
Administrative law courts, or in-house tribunals for administrative agencies, may suffer a significant setback depending on how the Court rules in S.E.C. v. Jarkesy.
In May, the justices indicated they wouldn’t default to an anti-regulatory stance in these types of cases. One of the most conservative justices, Justice Clarence Thomas, penned the majority opinion upholding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s controversial funding mechanism.
The Biden administration is also asking the Court to lift what they say is an overbroad injunction on their ability to communicate with social media companies. Missouri and others have sued the administration, alleging that it coerced social media companies to do its bidding in content moderation related to COVID-19.
Other social media cases—Moody v. NetChoice LLC and NetChoice LLC v. Paxton—could help set parameters for how far state legislatures can go in regulating social media platforms’ content moderation.
Gun rights and abortion are back at the Court this term with controversial cases about the abortion pill, bumpstocks, firearm ownership for domestic abusers, and how federal law may or may not force physicians to perform abortions.
—Sam Dorman
NORTH DAKOTA REDISTRICTING DISPUTE
The Supreme Court has invited the Biden administration to submit a brief with its views in an ongoing redistricting dispute in North Dakota.
The state appealed a lower court decision upholding its creation of two new, minority-majority subdistricts. Although the state agreed with the outcome, it said the lower court’s reasoning was incorrect.
The Voting Rights Act (VRA), which was enacted in 1965 and prohibits racial discrimination in voting, is at the core of the dispute. The state of North Dakota sees the lower court decision as flawed because it assumes that attempting to comply with the federal VRA justifies racial discrimination in validating the new subdistricts.
Two Republican-affiliated voters tried to challenge the redistricting plan, which was approved by the state legislature, but U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota dismissed the voters’ lawsuit at the behest of the state and the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.
Doug Burgum, the state’s Republican governor and former 2024 presidential candidate, filed a reply brief in May stating that “as a matter of first principles,” the state is unable to defend the basis of the summary judgment.
Quoting Justice Clarence Thomas, the brief stated that if complying with a federal statute requires the state to engage in racial discrimination, “the proper conclusion is not that the statute excuses the state’s discrimination, but that the statute is invalid.”
Burgum asked the Supreme Court to review the basis of the lower court decision. More than a dozen other Republican-dominated states filed a brief supporting the voters in April, telling the Supreme Court “the stakes are high” and that states need to know what the VRA means.
The case came after years of court decisions surrounding the VRA, including in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP. In that case, the justices decided in May to uphold a redistricting plan in South Carolina.
Election lawyer J. Christian Adams told The Epoch Times: “You are not allowed to create them solely on the basis of race. Even if the Voting Rights Act requires that you’re not allowed to just say, ‘Okay, let’s make a black district.’ It’s more complicated than that.”
He described this area of law as “the most complicated … in the entire country.”
—Matthew Vadum and Sam Dorman
BOOKMARKS
Hunter Biden has been convicted of all three charges in his Delaware gun trial. Mr. Biden faces up to 25 years for having lied about his drug addiction in order to purchase a gun in 2018.
Microsoft has been forced to tighten cybersecurity measures for its Recall program, which takes constant screenshots of user’s computers. The program will now be disabled by default, and will require facial recognition to install.
An internal investigation at the DOJ revealed that it had no communications with the District Attorney of Manhattan on President Donald Trump’s N.Y. case. The DOJ had been accused by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and others of colluding with the Manhattan DA.
Economists at the World Bank say the United States is pushing global economic growth. Global growth rates are expected to reach 2.6 percent, instead of the predicted 2.4 percent.
A former AI researcher has warned that China could weaponize the latest developments in the technology. He expects AI to reach human levels of processing power by 2027.

LONG HAIR
Traditionally, long hair was always a symbol of masculinity. All of history’s great warriors had long hair, from the Greeks (who wrote odes to their heroes’ hair) to the Nordic, from the American Indians (famous for their long shiny hair) to the Japanese. And the longer and beautiful the hair was, the more manly the warrior was considered. Vikings flaunted their braids and samurai wore their long hair as a symbol of their honor (they cut their braid when they lose honor).
When a warrior was captured, his mane was cut to humiliate him, to take away his beauty. That custom resumed in what is today military service. There when new soldiers begin their training the first thing they do is cut their hair to undermine their self-esteem, make them submissive and make them see who’s boss.
The Romans were the ones who “invented” short hair so to speak, between the 1st and 5th centuries AD.. In battles they believed this gave them defensive advantages, since their opponents couldn’t grab them by the hair. This also helped them to recognize each other in the battlefield.
Short hair on men is a relatively new “invention” that has nothing to do with aesthetics.
But today we often see men being humiliated, sometimes called “gay” for wearing long hair, not knowing that short hair is actually the “anti-masculine” and is a repressive social imposition, while long hair symbolizes freedom