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      Supreme Court Upholds Biden Administration’s Limits on ‘Ghost Guns’

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      The administration had tightened regulations on kits that can be easily assembled into nearly untraceable firearms.The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld federal restrictions aimed at curtailing access to kits that can be easily assembled into homemade, nearly untraceable firearms.In a 7-to-2 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, one of the court’s conservatives, the justices left in place requirements enacted during the Biden administration as part of a broader effort to combat gun violence by placing restrictions on so-called ghost guns.The ruling in favor of gun regulations is a departure for the court, which has shown itself to be skeptical both of administrative agency power and of gun regulations. Two conservative justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas — each filed dissents.The Biden administration enacted rules in 2022 tightening access to the weapons kits, after law enforcement agencies reported that ghost guns were exploding in popularity and being used to commit serious crimes.The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimated that use of the gun components and kits in crime increased tenfold in the six years before the rules were adopted.Among the regulations: requiring vendors and gun makers to be licensed to sell the kits, mandating serial numbers on the components so the guns could be tracked and adding background checks for would-be buyers.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 U.S.A.I.D. and State Dept. to Pay Funds ‘Unlawfully’ Withheld

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      A federal judge barred the Trump administration on Monday from “unlawfully impounding congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds” that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development owed to grant recipients and contractors, requiring it to pay for work completed in the first several weeks of President Trump’s term.The ruling, handed down by Judge Amir H. Ali of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, was the latest step in a winding dispute over foreign aid payments since Mr. Trump has tried to vastly shrink the nation’s foreign assistance. While forcing the administration to pay for work completed before Feb. 13, Judge Ali said the limits of the case prevented him from ordering payments on future work or restoring canceled contracts.But he left no doubt that he believed that the administration had exceeded its authority in trying to block funding, a warning that could echo through a deluge of lawsuits over Mr. Trump’s efforts to unilaterally halt spending.“Here, the executive has unilaterally deemed that funds Congress appropriated for foreign aid will not be spent,” he wrote. “The executive not only claims his constitutional authority to determine how to spend appropriated funds, but usurps Congress’s exclusive authority to dictate whether the funds should be spent in the first place.”The order on Monday prohibited the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. from implementing much of a Jan. 24 memorandum outlining plans to reorient and shrink U.S. foreign aid. It further required them to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars still owed to a constellation of groups for work completed before Feb. 13, as Judge Ali had ordered last month.The order dealt with a broad freeze on foreign aid funding that Mr. Trump put into effect the day he took office. It stopped short of the much more significant step of invalidating the Trump administration’s decision to cancel thousands of contracts through what it described as an expedited line-by-line review, after the lawsuit was already underway. Judge Ali found that the court was restrained to addressing the specific harms laid out in the lawsuit, not “supervision of discrete or ongoing executive decisions.”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 to Hear Challenge to Law Banning Conversion Therapy

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      Colorado, like more than 20 other states, bars licensed therapists from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of minors in their care.The Supreme Court said on Monday that it will hear a First Amendment challenge to a Colorado law banning professional counseling services engaged in conversion therapy intended to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation.More than 20 states have similar laws, which are supported by leading medical groups. Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor, challenged the constitutionality of the Colorado law in federal court, saying it violated her rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.The challenged law prohibits licensed therapists in Colorado from performing conversion therapy, which it defines to include efforts “to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” That includes trying “to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”The law, adopted in 2019, allow treatments that provide “acceptance, support and understanding.” It exempts therapists “engaged in the practice of religious ministry.”Ms. Chiles’s lawyers told the justices in her petition seeking review that as “a practicing Christian, Chiles believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex.”In her lawsuit, Ms. Chiles said she wanted to help her clients achieve their goals, which can include “seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors or grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body.”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 Rejects Trump’s Bid to Freeze Foreign Aid

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      The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected President Trump’s emergency request to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid as part of his efforts to slash government spending.The court’s brief order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. It said only that the trial judge, who had ordered the government to resume payments, “should clarify what obligations the government must fulfill.”But the ruling is one of the court’s first moves in response to the flurry of litigation filed in response to President Trump’s efforts to dramatically reshape government. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberal members to form a majority.Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the four dissenting justices, said the majority had gone profoundly astray.“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) $2 billion taxpayer dollars? “ he asked. “The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.”The administration halted the aid on Jan. 20, President Trump’s first day in office. Recipients and other nonprofit groups filed two lawsuits challenging the freeze as an unconstitutional exercise of presidential power that thwarted congressional appropriations for the U.S. Agency for International Development.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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      Justices can find these speeches to Congress to be a trial.

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      Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. makes a point of going to the State of the Union address. But he does not enjoy it, once calling it “a political pep rally.”He was there again on Tuesday, accompanied by Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both appointed by President Trump; Justice Elena Kagan, appointed by President Barack Obama; and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who retired in 2018.“I’m not sure why we are there,” Chief Justice Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said in 2010, adding: “The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court, according to the requirements of protocol, has to sit there expressionless, I think, is very troubling.”But the chief justice has continued to attend, while other members of the court have long ago stopped going. Justice Clarence Thomas, who has said that he could not abide “the catcalls, the whooping and hollering and under-the-breath comments,” has not gone for more than a decade.Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. called the addresses “very political events” and “very awkward,” adding, “We have to sit there like the proverbial potted plant most of the time.”He did speak, sort of, in 2010 in response to President Obama’s criticism of the Citizens United campaign finance decision, then just a few days old. He mouthed the words “not true.” He has not been back since.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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      Trump Is Breaking Things We Can’t Just Fix

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      President Trump is doing damage to America that could take a generation or more to repair. The next election cannot fix what Trump is breaking. Neither can the one after that.To understand the gravity of the harm Trump has inflicted on the United States in the first month and a half of his presidency, a comparison with the Cold War is helpful. Republicans and Democrats often had sharp differences in their approach to the Soviet Union — very sharp. The parties would differ, for example, on the amount of military spending, on the approach to arms control and on American military interventions against Soviet allies and their proxies.Deep disagreement over Vietnam helped drive American political debate, both within and between parties, for more than a decade. During the Reagan era, there were fierce arguments over the MX, a powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, and over the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe.These differences were important, but they were less important than the many points of agreement. Both parties were committed to NATO. Both parties saw the Soviet Union as the grave national security threat it was. For decades, both parties were more or less committed to a strategy of containment that sought to keep Soviet tyranny at bay.At no point did Americans go to the polls and choose between one candidate committed to NATO and another candidate sympathetic to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The very idea would have been fantastical. American elections could reset our national security strategy, but they did not change our bedrock alliances. They did not change our fundamental identity.Until now.Consider what happened in the Oval Office on Friday. Trump and Vice President JD Vance ambushed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on live television. Vance accused Zelensky of being “disrespectful,” and Trump attacked him directly:You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country — this country — that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should.Trump’s attack on Zelensky is just the latest salvo against our allies. Back in office, Trump has taught our most important strategic partners a lesson they will not soon forget: America can — and will — change sides. Its voters may indeed choose a leader who will abandon our traditional alliances and actively support one of the world’s most dangerous and oppressive regimes.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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      Stunned U.S.A.I.D. Workers Return to Clean Out Their Desks

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      Democrats said a review mandated by executive order was “not a serious effort or attempt at reform.”Workers for the U.S. Agency for International Development who had been fired or placed on leave returned to their offices on Thursday to retrieve personal belongings, many still dumbfounded by the Trump administration’s sudden dismantlement of the 63-year-old aid delivery agency.Hundreds of workers who just one month ago never imagined that they would soon lose their jobs en masse returned to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington.They were given just 15 minutes each to clear out their old desks.The somber return came a day after the Trump administration revealed in court documents that it had completed a review of all U.S. foreign aid programs and was canceling nearly 10,000 contracts and grants, eliminating about 90 percent of U.S.A.I.D.’s work.The agency’s annual budget of about $40 billion pays for the distribution of food and medicine, as well as disaster relief, disease monitoring, development work, and pro-democracy and civil society programs. Its work has been heavily concentrated in poor and developing countries in Africa and Asia.Foreign aid makes up less than 1 percent of the federal budget.Supporters offered boxes and packing supplies to help fired U.S.A.I.D. workers clean out their desks on Thursday. Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesIn a joint statement, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee denounced the canceled funding, calling the foreign aid review — mandated by an executive order President Trump signed shortly after taking office last month — “not a serious effort or attempt at reform but rather a pretext to dismantle decades of U.S. investment that makes America safer, stronger and more prosperous.”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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      Trump Seeks Prompt Supreme Court Review of His Power to Fire Officials

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      The Trump administration told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that developments in the first case arising from the president’s blitz of executive actions to reach the justices would require prompt action.The court ruled last week that President Trump could not, for now, remove a government lawyer who leads the watchdog agency that protects whistle-blowers. But the court’s order said that it would hold the government’s emergency application “in abeyance” and might soon return to the issue.The ruling noted that a trial judge’s temporary restraining order shielding the lawyer, Hampton Dellinger, was set to expire on Wednesday.Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel.U.S. Office of Special Counsel, via ReutersAfter a hearing on Wednesday, the judge, Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington, extended her order until Saturday to provide time for her to write an opinion in the matter. In a letter to the justices, Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general, wrote that developments since they last acted had underscored the need for a prompt resolution.Mr. Dellinger has been busy, she wrote. In his role as the head of the Office of Special Counsel, he filed challenges to the firings of six probationary employees before the Merit Systems Protection Board, which temporarily reinstated them on Tuesday.“In short, a fired special counsel is wielding executive power, over the elected executive’s objection, to halt employment decisions made by other executive agencies,” Mr. Harris wrote. The merit board, moreover, she wrote, “is being led by a chairman who has herself been fired by the president, only to be reinstated by a district court.”All of that means the justices must act soon, Ms. Harris wrote.“The government respectfully asks that this court at a minimum continue to hold the application in abeyance, if the court does not grant it now,” she wrote. “Once the district court issues its final decision, presumably on March 1, it may become necessary for the government to request further relief.” More