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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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      Clarence Thomas Took Other Trips on Harlan Crow’s Jet, Documents Show

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      A congressional committee released documents showing that Justice Clarence Thomas had not disclosed three private jet trips paid for by the Texas billionaire Harlan Crow.Justice Clarence Thomas never disclosed three trips aboard the private jet of the Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, according to documents obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee released on Thursday.The documents, obtained by Democrats on the panel, list three visits that have not previously been reported: one to a city in Montana, near Glacier National Park, in 2017; another to his hometown, Savannah, Ga., in March 2019; and another to Northern California in 2021.The purpose of each trip was not immediately clear, nor was the reason for their omission on the justice’s disclosure forms. However, all of the flights involve short stays: two were round trips that did not include an overnight stay.The revelation underlined the extent to which Justice Thomas has relied on the generosity of his friends over the years and the consistency with which he declined to report those ties.Justice Thomas has said that he had been advised he did not need to disclose gifts of personal hospitality from friends who did not have cases before the Supreme Court.The announcement is all but certain to fuel the fight over greater transparency at the Supreme Court. Lawmakers’ efforts to require that justices be held to ethics standards similar to those for the executive and legislative branches have faltered. And even as the court, under immense public scrutiny, announced its first ethics code in the fall, experts immediately pointed out its lack of an enforcement mechanism or penalties should a justice have violated it.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 Backs Starbucks Over ‘Memphis 7’ Union Case

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      In a blow to the National Labor Relations Board, the justices cited inconsistent standards for courts to order employers to reinstate fired workers.The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Starbucks on Thursday in a challenge against a labor ruling by a federal judge, making it more difficult for a key federal agency to intervene when a company is accused of illegally suppressing labor organizing.Eight justices backed the majority opinion, which was written by Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a separate opinion concurring with parts of the majority opinion, dissenting from other portions and agreeing with the overall judgment.The ruling came in a case brought by Starbucks over the firing of seven workers in Memphis who were trying to unionize a store in 2022. The company said it had fired them for allowing a television crew into a closed store, while the workers said that they were fired for their unionization efforts and that the company didn’t typically enforce the rules they were accused of violating.After the firings, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint saying that Starbucks had acted because the workers had “joined or assisted the union and engaged in concerted activities, and to discourage employees from engaging in these activities.” Separately, lawyers for the board asked a federal judge in Tennessee for an injunction reinstating the workers, and the judge issued the order in August 2022.The agency asks judges to reinstate workers in such cases because resolving the underlying legal issues can take years, during which time other workers may become discouraged from organizing even if the fired workers ultimately prevail.In its petition to the Supreme Court, the company argued that federal courts had differing standards when deciding whether to grant injunctions that reinstate workers, which the N.L.R.B. has the authority to seek under the National Labor Relations Act.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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      What Is Mifepristone and How Is It Used?

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      Mifepristone is one of two drugs used in a medication abortion. It is combined with a second drug, misoprostol, to end a pregnancy.Mifepristone blocks a hormone called progesterone that is necessary for a pregnancy to continue. Misoprostol brings on uterine contractions, causing the body to expel the pregnancy as in a miscarriage.In U.S. studies, the combination of these pills causes a complete abortion in more than 99 percent of patients, and is as safe as an abortion procedure administered by a doctor in a clinic. A variety of research has found that medication abortion has low rates of adverse events, and a study published in The Lancet in 2022 found that patients are generally satisfied with it.Growing evidence from outside the United States suggests that abortion pills are safe even among women who do not have a doctor to advise them.While the only F.D.A.-approved method in the United States is to use both pills, misoprostol can also end a pregnancy when used alone, and its availability was not affected by the ruling on mifepristone. Misoprostol — which is around 80 percent effective on its own, although it sometimes has to be taken more than once — is also prescribed to treat ulcers, and is available over the counter in many countries, including Mexico.The Food and Drug Administration has approved medication abortion for up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, while World Health Organization guidelines say it can be used up to 12 weeks at home and after 12 weeks in a medical office. The vast majority of abortions occur before 12 weeks.More than half of people who get legal abortions in the United States — and three-quarters in Europe — use medication abortion. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it became more common because patients wanted to avoid going to clinics in person, and a change in federal regulation made it easier for them to get prescriptions via telemedicine and to fill them in a pharmacy.Since nearly two dozen states banned or restricted abortion following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, some women in those states have turned to mail-order abortion pills instead. Clinicians in several states have mailed pills into states with bans, protected by so-called shield laws. And foreign nonprofit groups and entrepreneurs have shipped some women pills from overseas.The court’s decision does not influence the availability of the overseas pills, which operate outside the bounds of the legal U.S. health care system. More

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      Hunter Biden Is Expected to Appeal Conviction on Gun Charges

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      Lawyers for Mr. Biden are considering a number of challenges to the guilty verdict, including one based on the Second Amendment.Hunter Biden is expected to appeal his felony conviction for falsifying a federal firearms application, likely arguing that the judge in the case violated his constitutional rights in her instructions to the jury, according to people in his orbit and legal experts.Mr. Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell has also signaled that any appeal would be based on the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in 2022 that vastly expanded gun rights, a ruling that spawned legal challenges to the part of the federal firearms form at the center of the Biden case. In Mr. Biden’s case, it included a question asking buyers about their drug use.Any appeal would be an uphill climb, and the lawyers representing President Biden’s son cannot officially file one until he is sentenced at the courthouse in Wilmington, Del., within 120 days, or about a month after he is scheduled to go on trial on federal tax charges in Los Angeles.There is still a possibility that David C. Weiss, the special counsel in the case, will seek a plea agreement before the tax trial begins, and would have leverage in negotiations now that Mr. Biden is already a convicted felon, according to former prosecutors. Mr. Biden might have greater incentive to reach a deal to avoid another public airing of his personal ordeal beyond what was presented in Wilmington last week.On Tuesday, after deliberating for a little more than three hours, a jury convicted Mr. Biden of three felony counts related to lying on a federal firearms application and illegally possessing a weapon.Mr. Lowell suggested that he might appeal, vowing to “vigorously pursue all the legal challenges available to Hunter.” President Biden said in a statement that he would “accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.”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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      Senate Republicans Block Supreme Court Ethics Measure Pushed by Democrats

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      Democrats made what they knew was a doomed attempt as they faced pressure from the left to do more to try to hold the court accountable.Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked an effort by Democrats to quickly pass Supreme Court ethics and transparency legislation they had pushed forward in the wake of disclosures about justices taking unreported gifts and travel and other ethical issues surrounding the high court.The unsuccessful outcome was predetermined, but represented an effort by Senate Democrats to show they were pressing the case against the court. It was also aimed at demonstrating the limits of their power given the narrow divide in the Senate and deep Republican opposition to Congress taking action to impose stricter ethics rules on the justices.“The ethics crisis at the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, is unacceptable,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said in calling for the measure to be approved. “It is unsustainable and it’s unworthy of the highest court in the land.”Republicans assailed the bill as a naked effort by Democrats to undercut the court because of ideological disagreements with its decisions, particularly with major rulings about to be handed down. They accused Democrats of trying to intimidate the justices.“Let’s be clear: This is not about improving the court, this is about undermining the court,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, who lodged the objection to taking up the bill. “This will be an unconstitutional overreach. This would undermine the court’s ability to operate effectively.”The move by Democrats came as progressives have been ramping up their demands for more aggressive action in the Senate.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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      Justice Alito’s Wife, in Secretly Recorded Conversation, Complains About Pride Flag

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      In a conversation with a woman posing as a conservative supporter, Martha-Ann Alito appeared to push back against having to look at a symbol of L.G.B.T.Q. rights.Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s wife, Martha-Ann, recently told a woman posing as a conservative supporter that she wanted to fly a Catholic flag at the couple’s Virginia home in response to a Pride flag in her neighborhood.“You know what I want?” the justice’s wife said to the woman, Lauren Windsor, who secretly recorded the conversation during a black-tie event last week at the Supreme Court. “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.”But Ms. Alito said that after she suggested the Sacred Heart of Jesus flag as a retort to the symbol for L.G.B.T.Q. rights, her husband said, “Oh, please, don’t put up a flag.”She said that she had agreed, for now, but that she had told him that “when you are free of this nonsense,” “I’m putting it up and I’m going to send them a message every day, maybe every week. I’ll be changing the flags.”She added that she would come up with her own flag, which would be white with yellow and orange flames and read, in Italian, “shame.”The comments from Ms. Alito were posted online late Monday by Ms. Windsor, who describes herself as a documentary filmmaker and “advocacy journalist.” Ms. Windsor, who has a reputation for approaching conservatives, including former Vice President Mike Pence, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, posted edited recordings of Ms. Alito, as well as separate edited recordings of Justice Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., 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