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    Are the Courts Checking Trump — or Enabling Him?

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    A former federal judge weighs in.In this episode of “The Opinions,” the editorial director David Leonhardt talks to a conservative former federal judge, Michael McConnell, about the role of the courts in President Trump’s second term.Are the Courts Checking Trump — or Enabling Him?A former federal judge weighs in.Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.David Leonhardt: I’m David Leonhardt, the director of the New York Times editorial board. Every week I’m having conversations to help shape the board’s opinions.One thing that I find useful right now is talking with President Trump’s conservative critics. They tend to be alarmed by the president’s behavior, but they also tend to be more optimistic than many progressives about whether American democracy is surviving the Trump presidency. And that combination helps me and my colleagues think about where the biggest risks to our country really are.One area I’ve been wrestling with is the federal court system. I want to understand the extent to which the courts are acting as a check on President Trump as he tries to amass more power, or whether the courts are actually helping him amass that power.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Cost of Trump’s Bill, Canada Backs Down in Trade Dispute, Gen Z’s Retirement Plan

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      Listen to and follow “The Headlines”Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioOn Today’s Episode:Senate Bill Would Add at Least $3.3 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says, by Andrew DuehrenTillis Announces He Won’t Run Again as Trump Threatens Him With a Primary, by Annie KarniA Triumphant Supreme Court Term for Trump, Fueled by Emergency Rulings, by Adam Liptak and Abbie VanSickleCourts Will Have to Grapple With New Limits on Their Power, by Mattathias SchwartzCanada Will Scrap Tax That Prompted Trump to Suspend Trade Talks, by Matina Stevis-GridneffGen Z, It Turns Out, Is Great at Saving for Retirement, by Lisa Rabasca RoepeJell-O With Natural Dyes? It’s Not Easy Becoming Green, by Julie CreswellJohn Thune, the Senate majority leader, with reporters. Republicans delayed a rapid-fire series of votes on President Trump’s signature policy legislation until Monday morning as they grasped for support.Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesTune in, and tell us what you think at theheadlines@nytimes.com. For corrections, email nytnews@nytimes.com.For more audio journalism and storytelling, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

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      Supreme Court Punts Decision on Louisiana Voting Map Until Next Term

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      The justices asked that the case, which has implications for the political power of Black voters, be reargued next term.The Supreme Court declined on Friday to weigh in on Louisiana’s contested congressional voting map, instead ordering that new arguments be scheduled during its next term.There was no explanation offered for why the justices did not make a decision or set a date for new arguments. All but one paragraph in the six-page order was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the lone dissent.Justice Thomas wrote that it was the court’s duty to hear such congressional redistricting challenges and that the justices had “an obligation to resolve such challenges promptly.”It is the latest twist in a winding legal battle over whether Louisiana drew congressional districts that fairly empower all voters after the 2020 census. The case has been closely watched, given that a decision striking down Louisiana’s map could affect the balance of power in the narrowly divided House of Representatives.For now, the state’s latest map, which the State Legislature approved in January 2024, will remain in place. That map paved the way for a second Black Democrat, Cleo Fields, to join Representative Troy Carter, a New Orleans-area Democrat, in the state’s congressional delegation. It was the first time in decades that Louisiana had elected two Black members of Congress, and allowed Democrats to pick up a second seat in the state.One-third of the state’s population is Black.“Although we hoped for a decision this term, we welcome a further opportunity to present argument to the court regarding the states’ impossible task of complying with the court’s voting precedents,” Liz Murrill, the Louisiana attorney general, said in a statement shared on social media.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Orders Abrego Garcia Released on Smuggling Charges Before Trial

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      The order to release Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from criminal custody as he awaits trial was a rebuke to the Trump administration. But he is likely to remain in immigration custody.In a sharp rebuke to the Justice Department, a federal judge said on Sunday that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia should be freed from criminal custody as he awaits trial on smuggling charges after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador and return to the United States.In a scathing order, the judge, Barbara D. Holmes, ruled that Mr. Abrego Garcia was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. The decision undermined repeated claims by President Trump and some of his top aides who have described the Salvadoran immigrant as a violent gang member, even a terrorist.But the decision by Judge Holmes, filed in Federal District Court in Nashville, was likely to be a short-lived victory for Mr. Abrego Garcia and his defense team. The judge acknowledged that he would probably remain in the custody of immigration officials, as his charges of smuggling undocumented immigrants across the United States moved through the courts.Judge Holmes’s ruling was the first judicial evaluation of the charges filed against Mr. Abrego Garcia since he was suddenly brought back to U.S. soil last month after prosecutors indicted him in Nashville. The decision to get him out of Salvadoran custody came as the Justice Department was under mounting pressure in a separate civil case. The judge in that case has threatened to hold administration officials in contempt for their serial evasions and delays in complying with her order to free him from El Salvador.Federal prosecutors immediately asked Judge Holmes to put the decision to free Mr. Abrego Garcia on hold, even as his lawyers hailed it.“We are pleased by the court’s thoughtful analysis and its express recognition that Mr. Abrego Garcia is entitled both to due process and the presumption of innocence, both of which our government has worked quite hard to deny him,” Sean Hecker, one of the defense lawyers, said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Supreme Court Case on Trans Care Ruled Against My Daughter

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      There is something incredibly surreal about finding your family at the center of a landmark Supreme Court decision, from the robes and the formality to the long, red velvet curtains behind the justices. No mother imagines that her everyday fight to do right by her child would land her there.My daughter, L.W., came out as transgender late in 2020. She was just shy of 13. Four and a half years later, she is thriving, healthy and happy after pursuing evidence-based gender-affirming care. But the very care that is improving her life became a primary political target of the Republican supermajority in our home state, Tennessee. When the legislature banned my daughter’s care in 2023, we fought back by suing the state. Today, we found out that we lost that case when the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, to uphold Tennessee’s ban on such care.I am beside myself. Our heartfelt plea was not enough. The compelling, expert legal arguments by our lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal were not enough. I had to face my daughter and tell her that our last hope is gone. She’s angry, scared and hurt that the American system of democracy that we so put on a pedestal didn’t work to protect her.My family did not start this journey to land in Washington in front of that white marble hall of justice. We ended up there through parental and civic duty. My and my husband’s demands in our lawsuit against the ban felt quite basic: Let us do our job as parents. Let us love and care for our daughter in the best way we and our doctors know how. Don’t let our child’s very existence be a political wedge issue. Being a teenager is hard enough. Being a parent of a teenager is hard enough.Raising a transgender kid in Tennessee, we know that not everyone understands people like her or her health care — and that’s OK. We don’t need to agree on everything. But we do need our fundamental rights respected.I have devoted myself to finding our daughter consistent care in one state after another. The nightmare of our disrupted life pales in comparison to the nightmare of losing access to the health care that has allowed our daughter to thrive. After Tennessee passed its ban, we traveled to another provider in a different state. After that state passed a ban, we moved on to another one. We are now on our fourth state. The five-hour drive each way, taking time off work and school, is hard, but thankfully, we found a clinic and pharmacy that take our insurance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-Yankee Is Awarded About $500,000 in Damages for Moldy Greenwich Mansion

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      Josh Donaldson, a former American League Most Valuable Player with Toronto, sued his former landlord over the conditions at his $55,000-a-month rental property.A Connecticut jury on Wednesday awarded the former New York Yankees third baseman Josh Donaldson damages that are expected to top $500,000 from the ex-landlord of his $55,000-a-month Greenwich, Conn., rental mansion, which he complained was plagued by mold and squirrels.Mr. Donaldson, 39, terminated the lease about six weeks after moving into the five-bedroom, 4,800-square-foot home in April 2022 with his now-wife, Briana, who was pregnant at the time, and their 17-month-old daughter.In a federal lawsuit filed in Connecticut in June 2022, the now-retired baseball player accused the home’s owner, Bill Grous, of breach of contract and said that the rental in Greenwich’s backcountry section was a money pit.The neighborhood, sought after for its sprawling estates and privacy, is a magnet for professional athletes, other celebrities and financiers.Mr. Donaldson, a former American League Most Valuable Player with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2015, moved into the mansion a few weeks after being traded to the Yankees from the Minnesota Twins.His two seasons in New York were rocky. Mr. Donaldson struggled to replicate his success and was suspended by Major League Baseball in May 2022 for one game for repeatedly calling Tim Anderson, who is Black and was a shortstop for the Chicago White Sox at the time, “Jackie,” a reference to Jackie Robinson. In August 2023, Mr. Donaldson was released by the Yankees.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      MyPillow Founder Mike Lindell Defamed Former Dominion Executive, Jury Finds

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      He was ordered to pay $2.3 million in damages to Eric Coomer, a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems.The MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who spread baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, defamed a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems, a federal jury in Denver found on Monday.The jury awarded $2.3 million in damages to the former employee, Eric Coomer, after a two-week trial, according to one of his lawyers, David Beller.Mr. Lindell claimed without evidence that the vote had been rigged to prevent President Trump from winning re-election. Among his targets was Dr. Coomer, who is a former director of product strategy and security at Dominion, a Denver-based manufacturer of voting machines that was falsely accused of flipping votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Lindell called Dr. Coomer “a traitor to the United States” and said he should turn himself in to the authorities, according to court filings. Dr. Coomer sued Mr. Lindell in 2022, arguing that those attacks had effectively ended his career in the election industry and led to “frequent credible death threats.”“Mike Lindell not only hurt Eric Coomer with his baseless lies — he hurt the American people and the democratic process,” Mr. Beller said in a statement. “Dr. Coomer is now one step closer to putting his life back together.”The verdict was the latest in a long string of legal rulings that have upended the false theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump. In 2023, Dominion reached a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News after filing a defamation suit against the network, which had spread misinformation about the company’s voting machines. That same year, an arbitration panel ordered Mr. Lindell to pay a forensics expert who had met his $5 million challenge to debunk claims about election interference.Dr. Coomer became a target of election conspiracists partly because of posts on his Facebook page that were critical of Mr. Trump. In the complaint against Mr. Lindell, his lawyers wrote that Dr. Coomer was respected in his field and had worked with “elections officials — Republican, Democratic and independent — across the country to make sure the process was safe, secure and fair.”But his life was upended when Mr. Lindell and other conspiracy theorists turned him into “the face of an imagined criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scope in American history,” the lawsuit said.Lawyers for Mr. Lindell did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      Alex Polikoff, Who Won a Marathon Housing Segregation Case, Dies at 98

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      He notched a victory in a Supreme Court decision against the City of Chicago in 1976. He then spent over 40 years making sure the ruling was enforced.Alex Polikoff, who won a landmark discrimination case before the Supreme Court in 1976 showing that the City of Chicago had segregated Black and white public housing residents, and who then spent decades fighting to make sure that the court’s will was enforced, died on May 27 at his home in Keene, N.H. He was 98.His daughter Eve Kodiak confirmed the death.Mr. Polikoff’s class-action lawsuit, known as Gautreaux after its lead plaintiff, Dorothy Gautreaux, ranks among the most important decisions in the history of civil rights litigation.Ms. Gautreaux, a public-housing resident, and her five co-plaintiffs claimed that the Chicago Housing Authority had systematically funneled Black residents into a small number of poorly constructed high-rise complexes, which became havens of crime and drug use.Such segregation was an open secret in Chicago, and the subject of decades of protest — Mr. Polikoff filed the case in August 1966, just months after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began his own grass-roots campaign to desegregate the city.But Chicago, under Mayor Richard J. Daley, pushed back. Dr. King left the city without success, while Mr. Polikoff spent a decade fighting the city in court. Ms. Gautreaux died in 1968, eight years before the case reached the Supreme Court.By then, the lawsuit had been combined with a similar suit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In oral arguments before the court, Mr. Polikoff squared off against one of his former classmates from the University of Chicago Law School: Robert H. Bork, the solicitor general.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Reinstates Product Safety Regulators Fired by Trump

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      It’s the latest setback for President Trump in his effort to purge perceived political opponents from independent agencies.A federal judge in Maryland reversed President Trump’s firings of the three Democratic members of the five-member Consumer Product Safety Commission, which monitors the safety of products like toys, cribs and electronics.In the ruling, Judge Matthew J. Maddox of the Federal District Court in Maryland said that the law only allowed Mr. Trump to fire the officials for “neglect of duty or malfeasance,” while Mr. Trump had purported to fire them without cause.“Plaintiffs have performed ably in their roles,” Judge Maddox wrote, “and have never been accused of neglect of duty or malfeasance in office by either President Trump or President Biden.”It is the latest setback for Mr. Trump in his effort to purge perceived political opponents from independent agencies in the government, part of an assault on counterweights to his authority. Another federal judge ruled last month that Mr. Trump broke the law when he fired Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent civil liberties watchdog.The three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Mary T. Boyle, Richard L. Trumka Jr. and Alexander Hoehn-Saric, said in separate statements after Mr. Trump moved to fire them that they had been targeted for votes they cast to stop the importing of poorly made lithium-ion batteries and objecting to staffing cuts.Ms. Boyle’s term as a commissioner ends in October, and Mr. Trump will be able to pick her replacement, granting him a Republican-controlled majority on the commission. More