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      Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Tech Platforms’ Free Speech Rights

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      The justices returned both cases, which concerned state laws that supporters said were aimed at “Silicon Valley censorship,” to lower courts. Critics had said the laws violated the sites’ First Amendment rights.The Supreme Court on Monday avoided a definitive resolution of challenges to laws in Florida and Texas that curb the power of social media companies to moderate content, leaving in limbo an effort by Republicans who have promoted such legislation to remedy what they say is a bias against conservatives.Instead, the justices unanimously agreed to return the cases to lower courts for analysis. In the majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that neither lower appeals court had properly analyzed the First Amendment challenges to the Florida and Texas laws.The laws were prompted in part by the decisions of some platforms to bar President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Supporters of the laws said they were an attempt to combat what they called Silicon Valley censorship. The laws, they added, fostered free speech, giving the public access to all points of view.Opponents said the laws trampled on the platforms’ own First Amendment rights and would turn them into cesspools of filth, hate and lies.The two laws differ in their details. Florida’s prevents the platforms from permanently barring candidates for political office in the state, while Texas’ prohibits the platforms from removing any content based on a user’s viewpoint.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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      Nevada Residents Will Vote on Abortion Rights in November

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      A measure seeking to protect abortion access in the State Constitution will appear on the ballot. It is one of nearly a dozen such initiatives that could shape other races this election. Nevada residents will vote on whether to protect the right to abortion in the state this November, as abortion rights groups try to continue their winning streak with measures that put the issue directly before voters. The Nevada secretary of state’s office certified on Friday the ballot initiative to amend the State Constitution to include an explicit right to abortion after verifying the signatures required. The group behind the measure, Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, submitted 200,000 signatures in May, nearly 100,000 more than needed. The secretary of state’s office told the group that it had verified just under 128,000 signatures.Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped the constitutional right to abortion, 18 Republican-controlled states have banned the procedure in almost all circumstances or prohibited it after six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. At least a dozen states, most of them led by Democrats, have passed new protections to abortion since the decision.The ruling has sparked a movement among abortion rights supporters to enshrine the right to the procedure in state constitutions through ballot measures. They have been successful in putting them on the ballot in at least five other states this year: Florida, Colorado, New York, Maryland and South Dakota. Similar initiatives are also underway in states like Arizona, Arkansas and Nebraska — which all face deadlines to submit signatures this week — and come November, voters in as many as 11 states could get a chance to weigh in.In Nevada, abortion is legal through 24 weeks of pregnancy. But organizers of the ballot initiative are seeking to amend the State Constitution to protect abortion up to the point of fetal viability — also around 24 weeks — because it is harder to change the Constitution than repeal state law.“We can’t take anything for granted,” said Lindsey Harmon, president of Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom. “We know Nevada has always been overwhelmingly pro-choice, and there’s no reason it should not be in the Constitution.”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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      Oklahoma Law Criminalizing Immigrants Without Legal Status Is Blocked

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      The ruling by a federal judge is the latest setback for G.O.P.-controlled states that have passed their own laws on immigration. A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked Oklahoma from enforcing its new immigration law that would make it a crime to enter the state without legal authorization to be in the United States.The ruling, issued just days before the law was set to go into effect on Monday, is the latest legal setback for Republican-controlled states that have tested the limits of their role in immigration by passing their own legislation meant to crack down on people who crossed the border illegally. The Justice Department maintains that only the federal government can regulate and enforce immigration. A Texas law that would have given state and local police officers the authority to arrest undocumented migrants was put on hold by a federal appeals court in March. The Supreme Court had briefly let the law stand but returned the case to the appeals court, which decided to pause enforcement of it. Then, in May, a federal judge temporarily blocked part of a Florida law that made it a crime to transport unauthorized immigrants into the state. And in mid-June, an Iowa law that would have made it a crime for an immigrant to enter the state after being deported or denied entry into the country was put on pause by a district court. In the Oklahoma case, U.S. District Judge Bernard M. Jones wrote in his ruling that the state “may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration,” but the state “may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.” He issued a preliminary injunction, pausing enforcement of the law while a case over the law’s constitutionality continues. Under the new law, willfully entering and remaining in Oklahoma without legal immigration status would be a state crime called an “impermissible occupation.” A first offense would be a misdemeanor, with penalties of up to one year in jail and a $500 fine; a subsequent offense would be a felony, punishable by up to two years in jail and a $1,000 fine.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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      Iran’s Onerous Hijab Law for Women Is Now a Campaign Issue

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      In a sign that a women-led movement has gained ground, all of the men running for president have distanced themselves from the harsh tactics used to enforce mandatory hijab.Iranian officials insisted for decades that the law requiring women to cover their hair and dress modestly was sacrosanct and not even worth discussion. They dismissed the struggle by women who challenged the law as a symptom of Western meddling. Now, as Iran holds a presidential election this week, the issue of mandatory hijab, as the hair covering is known, has become a hot campaign topic. And all six of the men running, five of them conservative, have sought to distance themselves from the methods of enforcing the law, which include violence, arrests and monetary fines.“Elections aside, politics aside, under no circumstances should we treat Iranian women with such cruelty,” Mustafa Pourmohammadi, a conservative presidential candidate and cleric with senior roles in intelligence, said in a round-table discussion on state television last week. He has also said that government officials should be punished over the hijab law because it was their duty to educate women about why they should wear hijab, not violently enforce it.The hijab has long been a symbol of religious identity but has also been a political tool in Iran. And women have resisted the law, in different ways, ever since it went into effect after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.It is unlikely that the law will be annulled, and it remains unclear whether a new president can soften enforcement. Different administrations have adopted looser or stricter approaches to hijab. Ebrahim Raisi, the president whose death in a helicopter crash in May prompted emergency elections, had imposed some of the harshest crackdowns on women.Still, some women’s rights activists and analysts in Iran say forcing the issue to the table during elections is in itself an accomplishment. It shows that the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement of civil disobedience, which began nearly two years ago, has become too big to ignore.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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      Supreme Court Upholds Trump-Era Tax Provision

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      The tax dispute, which was closely watched by experts, involved a one-time foreign income tax, but many saw it as a broader challenge to pre-emptively block Congress from passing a wealth tax.The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a tax on foreign income that helped finance the tax cuts President Donald J. Trump imposed in 2017 in a case that many experts had cautioned could undercut the nation’s tax system.The vote was 7 to 2, with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh writing the majority opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and the court’s three liberals. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.The question before the justices appeared narrow at first glance: Is the tax in question allowed under the Constitution, which gives Congress limited powers of taxation?In the majority opinion, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the tax fell within the authority of Congress under the Constitution.Many tax experts had warned that striking down the tax could have wide repercussions. Such a move could have threatened to fundamentally change how income is defined, block efforts to tax billionaires’ wealth and undermine enforcement for all sorts of other taxes, which amount to billions in revenue for the government.Among the defenders of the law was Paul Ryan, the Republican and former House speaker who helped write the legislation. Upending the tax, Mr. Ryan said, could endanger up to a third of the U.S. tax code. He joined the Biden administration and some other conservatives in seeking to keep the law intact.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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      It’s Unanimous: In the Senate, Neither Party Consents to the Other’s Ideas

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      Democrats sought to quickly reinstate a ban on gun bump stocks after a Supreme Court ruling. It was the latest Senate floor fight to end in a predictable stalemate.In the Senate, the term “U.C.” stands for “unanimous consent” — usually verbal shorthand for an agreement by all senators to quickly take up and pass a bill. But with the November elections just months away, it might as well stand for: “You see? Our political opponents are dead wrong on this issue.”With the focus of the political universe turning to the upcoming fight for control of Congress and the White House, lawmakers are spending most of their time not on real legislative work but in trying to corner their rivals on hot-button issues.On the Senate floor in recent days, those efforts have often taken the form of unanimous consent requests that are designed to fail, thus spotlighting one party or another’s refusal to agree to a policy proposal.Such procedural skirmishes provide a shortcut to Senate showdowns on wedge issues or subjects on which one party believes it has the upper hand. That was the case on Tuesday, when Democrats attempted to quickly bring up and pass a bill that would outlaw gun bump stocks after the Supreme Court last week struck down a ban on the devices.Like similar recent maneuvers, Democrats knew the U.C. attempt would fail because of a Republican objection, but they tried anyway in a bid to give themselves a talking point against the G.O.P.“What today’s bill does is return things to the status quo set by Donald Trump, saying bump stocks are dangerous and should be prohibited,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Tuesday. “Senate Republicans by and large supported Donald Trump’s ban on bump stocks back then, so they should support this bill today.”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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      One Week That Revealed the Struggles of the Anti-Abortion Movement

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      The movement looks for a path forward: “Is the goal the absolute abolition of abortion in our nation?”The Southern Baptist Convention voted to condemn in vitro fertilization at its annual meeting in Indianapolis this week, over the objections of some members.Conservative lawyers pushing to sharply restrict medication abortion lost a major case at the Supreme Court, after pursuing a strategy that many of their allies thought was an overreach.Former president Donald J. Trump told Republicans in a closed-door meeting to stop talking about abortion bans limiting the procedure at certain numbers of weeks. In one chaotic week, the anti-abortion movement showed how major players are pulling in various directions and struggling to find a clear path forward two years after their victory of overturning Roe v. Wade.The divisions start at the most fundamental level of whether to even keep pushing to end abortion or to move on to other areas of reproductive health, like fertility treatments. A movement that once marched nearly in lock step finds itself mired in infighting and unable to settle on a basic agenda.In some cases, hard-liners are seizing the reins, rejecting the incremental strategy that made their movement successful in overturning Roe. Other abortion opponents are backing away, sensing the political volatility of the moment.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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      How California, Once Flush, Got Stuck With a Budget Shortfall

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      Lawmakers passed a preliminary budget that technically meets a legal deadline while they work out final details. State finances have fluctuated wildly in recent years.California’s state budget dwarfs the gross domestic products of some countries, supporting the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fifth-largest economy. When Golden State finances swing, there is an impact — and they can swing wildly. Two years ago, the state was projecting a record surplus; now, state lawmakers are confronting tens of billions of dollars in red ink.State law requires legislators to pass a balanced budget by June 15 each year or lose their pay and expense money. It’s typically a fraught process. This year’s negotiations have largely centered on how much social spending the state will cut and whether the state should postpone an increase in the minimum wage that was signed into law last year for nearly all health workers, many of whom work at state hospitals and clinics or at facilities whose patients are reimbursed through California’s version of Medicaid.On Thursday, the Legislature passed place-holder legislation that allows lawmakers to technically meet the deadline while talks with Gov. Gavin Newsom continue on some of the remaining sticking points. A final deal, to be written into a few supplemental bills, is expected in a few days. The budget takes effect on July 1.Why do California’s finances jump around so much?Volatility is a natural byproduct of California’s system of taxation. Designed to be progressive and fairer to low-income taxpayers, it relies heavily on taxes on personal income and capital gains.When rich taxpayers have a good year, the state government reaps a windfall. But when initial public offerings slump or the stock market reverses, revenue tanks. And the state has limited flexibility in raising revenue in times of shortfall because, in most cases, the law requires a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature to pass a tax increase.What has the state done to manage the volatility of its finances?Californians have chipped away for some time at the state’s budget dysfunction, which used to be much worse. In 2004, voters passed a constitutional amendment requiring the state to reserve 3 percent of general fund revenue every year, regardless of the state’s economic performance. But the reserve fund barely got off the ground before the 2008 financial collapse slammed the state.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