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      Kilmar Ábrego García was tortured in Salvadorian prison, court filing alleges

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      Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and detained in one of that country’s most notorious prisons, was physically and psychologically tortured during the three months he spent in Salvadorian custody, according to new court documents filed Wednesday.While being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador, Ábrego García and 20 other men “were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM”, according to the court papers filed by his lawyers in the federal district court in Maryland.Guards struck anyone who fell from exhaustion while kneeling, and during that time, “Ábrego García was denied bathroom access and soiled himself”, according to the filing.Detainees were held in an overcrowded cell with no windows, and bright lights on 24 hours a day. They were confined to metal bunk beds with no mattresses.Ábrego García’s testimony is one of the first detailed insights the world has into the conditions inside Cecot, a megaprison that human rights groups say is designed to disappear people.His lawyers say he lost 31 pounds during his first two weeks of confinement. Later, they write, he and four others were transferred to a different part of the prison “where they were photographed with mattresses and better food–photos that appeared to be staged to document improved conditions”.The filings also note that officials within the prison acknowledged that Ábrego García was not a gang member, and that his tattoos did not indicate a gang affiliation. “Prison officials explicitly acknowledged that plaintiff Ábrego García’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him ‘your tattoos are fine,’” per the filing, and they kept him in a cell separate from those accused of gang membership.The prison officials, however, threatened to move Ábrego García into a cell with gang members whom officials said “would ‘tear’ him apart”.Ábrego García is currently in federal custody in Nashville. The Trump administration brought him back from El Salvador after initially claiming it was powerless to do so. The US justice department wants him to stand trial on human-smuggling charges. The administration has also accused him of being a member of the street gang MS-13, and Donald Trump has claimed that Ábrego García’s tattoos indicate that he belonged to the gang.Ábrego García has pleaded not guilty to the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify the administration’s mistake in deporting him after the fact.On Sunday , a Tennessee judge ordered his release while his criminal case plays out, but prosecutors said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) would take Ábrego García into custody if that were to happen and he would be deported before he was given the chance to stand trial.A justice department lawyer, Jonathan Guynn, also told a federal judge in Maryland that the administration would deport Ábrego García not to El Salvador but to another, third country – contradicting statements from attorney general Pam Bondi that he would be sent to El Salvador.Amid the confusion, Ábrego García’s lawyers requested that their client remain in criminal custody, fearing that if he were released, he would be deported. Upcoming hearings in both Maryland and Tennessee will help decide whether Ábrego García will be able to remain in the US and be released from jail. More

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      Trump news at a glance: megabill hangs in balance as House Republicans struggle to convince holdouts

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      The House of Representatives was at a standstill on Wednesday as Republican leaders continued to try to rally holdouts against Donald Trump’s megabill, with speaker Mike Johnson saying “very positive” progress had been made toward passing it.The House stalled for hours on a procedural vote while Johnson and the White House worked to pressure a handful of Republicans to ensure they would vote to approve the sweeping tax-and-spending bill amid a razor-thin Republican majority and get it to Trump to sign in time for his self-imposed 4 July deadline.CBS parent company Paramount, meanwhile, agreed to pay $16m to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over a broadcast interview, in what is likely to be seen as a further example of capitulation by media companies hoping to smooth relations with the president.Here are the day’s key US politics stories at a glance:House to vote on Trump’s big policy billDonald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill was hanging in the balance as Republicans struggled to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives. A five-minute procedural vote remained open and tied on Wednesday, as Republican leaders told members they could leave the floor, suggesting they still did not have the numbers they needed.If passed, the bill would vastly expand the federal government’s immigration enforcement machinery and supercharge the president’s plan to carry out what he has vowed will be the largest deportation campaign in US history.Trump, vice-president JD Vance and speaker Mike Johnson spent much of the day trying to pressure conservatives to support the bill in the face of changes made by the Senate.Read the full storyParamount settles with Trump for $16m CBS parent company Paramount settled a lawsuit filed by Trump over a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris last October, in the latest concession by a media company to the US president, who has targeted outlets over what he describes as false or misleading coverage. Paramount said it would pay $16m to settle the suit, with the money allocated to Trump’s future presidential library and not paid to Trump “directly or indirectly”.Read the full storyChina transfixed as Musk turns against TrumpThe ill-fated bromance between the US president and the world’s richest man, which once raised questions about American oligarchy, is now being pored over by social media users in China, many of whom are Team Elon Musk.On Wednesday, the hashtag #MuskWantsToBuildAnAmericaParty went viral on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform similar to Musk’s X, receiving more than 37m views.Read the full storyUS tries to deport stateless Palestinian woman again despite judge’s orderThe US government has tried for the second time to deport a stateless Palestinian woman – according to court documents – despite a judge’s order barring her removal.Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old newlywed, was detained in February on her way home from her honeymoon in the US Virgin Islands. Last month, the government attempted to deport her without informing her where she was being sent, according to her husband, Taahir Shaikh. An officer eventually told her she would be sent to the Israel border – just hours before Israel launched airstrikes on Iran.Read the full storyPentagon says US strikes set back Iran nuclear program ‘one to two years’The Pentagon has collected intelligence material that suggests Iran’s nuclear program was set back roughly one to two years as a result of the US strikes on three key facilities last month, the chief spokesperson at the defence department said at a news conference on Wednesday.Read the full storyPlanned Parenthood warns budget bill could slash abortion access in blue statesPlanned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes the Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organisation’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban”.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      New Trump administration rules that give millions of people a shorter timeframe to sign up for the Affordable Care Act’s healthcare coverage are facing a legal challenge from Democratic mayors around the country.

      The US and Vietnam struck a trade agreement that sets 20% tariffs on many of the south-east Asian country’s exports after last-minute negotiations, Trump and Vietnamese state media said on Wednesday.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 1 July 2025. More

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      Pentagon says US strikes set back Iran nuclear program ‘one to two years’

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      The Pentagon has collected intelligence material that suggests Iran’s nuclear program was set back roughly one to two years as a result of the US strikes on three key facilities last month, the chief spokesperson at the defense department said at a news conference on Wednesday.The spokesperson, Sean Parnell, repeated Donald Trump’s claim that Iran’s key nuclear sites had been completely destroyed, although he did not offer further details on the origin of the assessments beyond saying it came from inside the defense department.“We have degraded their program by one to two years,” Parnell said at a news conference held at the Pentagon. “At least, intel assessments inside the department assess that.”Parnell’s description of the strikes marked a more measured estimate than Trump’s assertions about the level of destruction. A low-confidence Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report based on early assessments said Iran’s program was set back several months.The evolving picture of the severity of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program comes as US intelligence agencies have continued to push out new assessments, using materials that suggested the centrifuges at the key Fordow enrichment site were destroyed even if it was unclear whether the facility itself had caved in.Trump advisers have used that material, which include the use of video taken from B-2 bombers to confirm simulation models of shock waves destroying centrifuges and other Israeli intel from outside Fordow, to defend Trump’s assertions, two people familiar with the matter said.The extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program and the fate of the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium – which could quickly be turned into a crude nuclear weapon – is important because it could dictate how long the program has been set back.The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said on Sunday that Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months.“They can have in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium,” Rafael Grossi the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, adding “Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology … You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have.”The Pentagon’s preliminary DIA assessment, which was based on information from little more than 24 hours after the strikes, the Guardian previously reported, found the damage could range from Iran being able to restart the facility with new centrifuges to having to abandon it for future use.The DIA report assessed the program had been pushed back by several months, although that finding was made at the so-called “low-confidence” level, reflecting the early nature of the assessment and the uncertainty intelligence agencies have with initial conclusions.Trump advisers have pushed back on the DIA report and said privately the destruction of the centrifuges alone meant they had taken out a key component of Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons and meant it delayed the nuclear program by years.Battles over the conclusions of intelligence agencies have been at the center of American foreign policy determinations for decades, from warnings about Iraq’s weapons programs that the Bush administration used to justify the 2003 invasion that were later found to be false, to claims that a Chinese lab leak was responsible for Covid.Still, much of the controversy about the US strikes has been generated by Trump’s claiming that they “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites, which no intelligence agency has directly repeated because it is not a characterization used in intelligence assessments.Verifying the extent of the damage was made more difficult on Wednesday, after Iran put into effect a new law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA. Iran has accused the nuclear watchdog of siding with western countries and providing a justification for Israel’s airstrikes.A state department spokesperson called the move “unacceptable” and said Iran must fully comply with its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations, including by providing the IAEA with information on undeclared nuclear material and providing unrestricted access to any newly announced enrichment facility. More

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      Judge blocks Trump’s attempt to bar asylum access at US-Mexico border

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      A federal court has ruled that Donald Trump’s proclamation of an “invasion” at the US-Mexico border is unlawful, saying that the president had exceeded his authority in suspending the right to apply for asylum at the southern border.As part of his crackdown on immigration, Trump abruptly closed the southern border to tens of thousands of people who had been waiting to cross into the US legally and apply for asylum, signing a proclamation on the day of his inauguration that directed officials to take action to “repel, repatriate, or remove any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border of the United States”.In a ruling on Wednesday, US district judge Randolph Moss ruled in favor of 13 people seeking asylum in the US and three immigrants’ rights groups who argued that it was unlawful to declare an invasion and unilaterally ban the right to claim asylum.Moss ruled that nothing in the Immigration and Nationality Act or the US constitution “grants the president or his delegees the sweeping authority asserted in the proclamation and implementing guidance”.He also asserted the constitution did not give the president the authority to “adopt an alternative immigration system, which supplants the statutes that Congress has enacted and the regulations that the responsible agencies have promulgated”.The ruling will not take effect immediately; rather Moss has given the Trump administration 14 days to seek emergency relief from the federal appeals court. But if Moss’s ruling holds up, the Trump administration would have to renew processing asylum claims at the border.People fleeing persecution and danger in their home countries would still be subject to a slew of other measures that have restricted access to legal immigration pathways. But the ruling would require the homeland security department to offer people at the southern border at least some way to seek refuge in the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor now, crossings at the US-Mexico border have dropped sharply since the administration cut off legal pathways to enter and ramped up the active military presence in the region.But many who had journeyed to the border – fleeing extreme violence, authoritarianism and poverty in Central and South America, as well as Africa and Asia – remained stranded on the Mexican side, holding out hope in shelters for migrants. Others have dispersed into Mexico, seeking work or residency there.Advocates have warned that many of the migrants left in the lurch by Trump’s abrupt asylum ban have been put in vulnerable and dangerous situations. The plaintiffs in the case challenging Trump’s ban had fled persecution in Afghanistan, Ecuador, Cuba, Egypt, Brazil, Turkey and Peru. Some have already been removed from the US.The district court ruling comes after a landmark supreme court decision last week in a case challenging Trump’s attempt to unilaterally end the country’s longstanding tradition of birthright citizenship. On Friday, the country’s highest court ruled to curb the power of federal judges to impose nationwide rulings impeding the president’s policies.But because the case challenging Trump’s asylum ban was filed as a class-action lawsuit, it is not affected by higher court’s restriction. More

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      Planned Parenthood CEO warns Trump bill will lead to $700m loss and ‘backdoor abortion ban’

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      Planned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organization’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban”.“We are facing down the reality that nearly 200 health centers are at risk of closure. We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, said in an interview Wednesday morning. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”Anti-abortion activists have longed to “defund” Planned Parenthood for decades. They are closer than ever to achieving their goal.That $700m figure represents the loss that Planned Parenthood would face from a provision in the spending bill that would impose a one-year Medicaid ban on healthcare non-profits that offer abortions and that received more than $800,000 in federal funding in 2023, as well as the funding that Planned Parenthood could lose from Title X, the nation’s largest family-planning program. In late March, the Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars of Title X funding that had been set aside for some Planned Parenthood and other family-planning clinics.“Essentially what you are seeing is a gutting of a safety net,” said McGill Johnson, who characterized the bill as a “backdoor abortion ban” in a statement.Medicaid is the US government’s insurance program for low-income people, and about 80 million people use it. If the latest version of the spending-and-tax bill passes, nearly 12 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid coverage.Donald Trump has said that he would like the bill to be on his desk, ready for a signature, by 4 July.The provision attacking Planned Parenthood would primarily target clinics in blue states that have protected abortion rights since the overturning of Roe v Wade three years ago, because those blue states have larger numbers of people on Medicaid. Although not all Planned Parenthood clinics perform abortions, the reproductive healthcare giant provides 38% of US abortions, according to the latest data from Abortion Care Network, a membership group for independent abortion clinics.Among the clinics at risk of closure, Planned Parenthood estimated, more than 90% are in states that permit abortion. Sixty percent are located in areas that have been deemed “medically underserved”.In total, more than 1.1 million Planned Parenthood patients could lose access to care.“There’s nowhere else for folks” to go, McGill Johnson said. “The community health centers have said they cannot absorb the patients that Planned Parenthood sees. So I think that we do need to just call it a targeted attack because that’s exactly how it is.”Nationally, 11% of female Medicaid beneficiaries between the ages of 15 and 49 and who receive family-planning services go to Planned Parenthood for a range of services, according to an analysis by the non-profit KFF, which tracks healthcare policy. Those numbers rise in blue states like Washington, Oregon and Connecticut.In California, that number soars to 29%. The impact on the state would be so devastating that Nichole Ramirez, senior vice-president of communication and donor relations at Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties, called the tax-and-spending package’s provision “a direct attack on us, really”.“They haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion nationwide and they haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion in California specifically,” said Ramirez, who estimated that Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties stands to lose between $40m and $60m. Ramirez continued: “This is their way to go about banning abortion. That is the entire goal here.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post on X, the prominent anti-abortion group Live Action reposted an image of a Planned Parenthood graphic calling the provision “backdoor abortion ban”. “They might be onto us,” Live Action wrote.The Planned Parenthood network is overseen by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, but it also consists of dozens of independent regional affiliates that operate nearly 600 clinics across the country. In June, as the spending-and-tax bill moved through Congress, Autonomy News, an outlet that focuses on threats to bodily autonomy, reported that Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s accreditation board had sent waivers out to affiliates to apply for approval to cease providing abortions in order to preserve access to Medicaid funding. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a memo sent to the leadership of one California affiliate suggests that leaders there had considered ending abortion services.McGill Johnson said that there have been discussions within Planned Parenthood’s network about what it would mean to stop offering abortions. But no affiliates, to her knowledge, are moving forward with plans to stop performing the procedure.“Educating our volunteers and teams around hard decisions to stand and understand the impact of that is different than weighing and considering a stoppage of abortion,” McGill Johnson said.The budget bill and Title X funding freeze aren’t the only sources of pressure on the group. The US supreme court last week ruled in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its state Medicaid reimbursement program – a ruling that will likely give a green light to other states that also want to defund Planned Parenthood.At least one other organization that provides abortion and family-planning services, Maine Family Planning, will be affected by the provision, according to the organization’s CEO, George Hill. Maine Family Planning directly operates 18 clinics, including several that provide primary care or are in rural, medically underserved areas. If the provision takes effect, Hill estimates, the organization would lose 20% of its operating budget.“It’s dressed up as a budget provision, but it’s not,” Hill said. “They’re basically taking the rug out from under our feet.” More

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      House set to vote on Trump’s big bill as Johnson vows to ‘get it over the line’

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      Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill is hanging in the balance as Republicans struggle to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives.A five-minute procedural vote remained open and tied for more than an hour on Wednesday as Republican leaders told members they could leave the floor, suggesting they still do not have the numbers they need.Trump, JD Vance and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, had spent much of the day trying to pressure conservatives to support the bill despite changes made by the Senate.A preliminary motion on the sweeping tax-and-spending bill did gain approval on party lines with 214 in favor and 212 against, setting the stage for another vote later on Wednesday afternoon to adopt the rule. If that is successful, the chamber will debate the bill, then vote on its final passage.But with the House at a standstill, the timing of the all-important rule vote was uncertain. “Either you vote on the rule or you go home,” said the conservative Tennessee representative Tim Burchett as he exited the Capitol.The Senate passed the bill, with Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, on Tuesday, after a record-setting all-night session. Now the chambers must reconcile their versions: the sprawling mega-bill goes back to the House, where Johnson has said the Senate “went a little further than many of us would have preferred” in its changes, particularly to Medicaid, a program that provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans.But the speaker vowed to “get that bill over the line”. Trump has set a Fourth of July deadline for Congress to send the bill to his desk.According to CNN, Johnson told reporters: “When you have a piece of legislation that is this comprehensive and with so many agenda items involved, you’re going to have lots of different priorities and preferences among people because they represent different districts and they have different interests.“But we can’t make everyone 100% happy. It’s impossible. This is a deliberative body. It’s a legislative process. By definition, all of us have to give up on our personal preferences. [I’m] never going to ask anybody to compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good, and that’s what I think people are recognizing and come to grips with.”Early on Wednesday morning, the House rules committee advanced the measure, sending it to the floor for consideration. On their way into the Capitol, two conservative Republicans signaled optimism that the bill would get through the House.Congresswoman Nancy Mace told reporters: “I think these votes will take a little bit or a lot longer than usual. But that’s Washington. You guys are watching how the sausage is made, and that’s how business is run.”Like several other members, Mace wound up driving from her South Carolina district to Washington after a flurry of thunderstorms yesterday prompted major flight delays and cancellations around the capital.Smoking a cigar, Congressman Troy Nehls of Texas said: “There’s things in the bill I don’t like, but would I change the bill because I didn’t get what I wanted? I don’t think that would be good for America.”The House approved an initial draft of the legislation in May by a single vote, overcoming Democrats’ unanimous opposition. But many fiscal conservatives are furious over cost estimates that project the Senate version would add even more to the federal deficit than the House-passed plan.But Johnson’s wafer-thin Republican majority risks losing decisive votes from rightwing fiscal hardliners demanding steep spending cuts, moderates wary of dismantling safety-net programs and Republicans from Democratic-led states expected to make a stand on a contentious tax provision. Any one of these groups could potentially derail the bill’s passage through a chamber where the GOP can afford to lose no more than three votes.Trump celebrated the Senate’s passage of the bill as “music to my ears”. He has described the bill as crucial to his second-term agenda, and congressional Republicans made it their top priority.The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill in its current form would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit through 2034.It will extend tax cuts enacted during the president’s first term in 2017, and includes new provisions to cut taxes on tips, overtime and interest payments for some car loans. It funds Trump’s plans for mass deportations by allocating $45bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029.It also includes more than $50bn for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.To satisfy demands from fiscal conservatives for cuts to the US’s large federal budget deficit, the bill imposes new work requirements on enrollees of Medicaid. It also imposes a limit on the provider tax states use to fund their program, which could lead to reductions in services. Finally, it sunsets some incentives for green-energy technologies created by Congress under Joe Biden.In a floor speech on Wednesday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, warned: “This bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt. It militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away healthcare and basic dignity of the American people.“For what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires, the greedy, taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it and we will not support it. You should be ashamed.”Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi said of the policy bill: “Well, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then you, GOP, you have a very blurred vision of what America is about.“Is it beautiful to cut off food from seniors and children? Is it beautiful to cut off 17 million people from healthcare? Is it beautiful to do this? To give tax cuts to billionaires in our country? Is it beautiful to take money from education and the rest? The list goes on and on.” More

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      With his immigration bill, Canada’s prime minister is bowing to Trump | Tayo Bero

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      There are many stereotypes about Canada – that we are a nation of extremely polite people, a welcoming melting pot, and that we’re the US’s laid-back cousin who lives nextdoor.But right now, the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, is bucking all of that lore after pressure from the US in the form of Donald Trump’s “concerns” about undocumented migrants and fentanyl moving across the US-Canada border. In response, the recently elected Liberal PM put forward a 127-page bill that includes, among other worrying provisions, sweeping changes to immigration policy that would make the process much more precarious for refugees and could pave the way for mass deportations.If passed, Carney’s Strong Borders Act (or Bill C-2) would bar anyone who has been in the country for more than a year from receiving refugee hearings. That would apply retroactively to anyone who entered the country after June 2020. If they arrived on foot between official ports of entry, meanwhile, they would have to apply for asylum within 14 days of entering Canada – a disastrous outcome for people fleeing Trump’s persecution. The bill also gives the immigration minister’s office the authority to cancel immigration documents en masse.This bill has been widely condemned by politicians and advocacy groups such as Amnesty International and the Migrants Rights Network, who are rightly worried about just how much havoc a change like this could wreak. Jenny Wai Ching Kwan, a member of parliament for Vancouver East, told reporters the bill would breach civil liberties and basic rights.So what excuse does Canada have for this kind of 180 on its immigration legacy? According to the government, the aim of this legislation is to “keep Canadians safe by ensuring law enforcement has the right tools to keep our borders secure, combat transnational organized crime, stop the flow of illegal fentanyl, and crack down on money laundering”.In reality, Bill C-2 contains measures that the public safety minister, Gary Anandasangaree, has admitted were a response to “the concerns that have been posed by the White House”.“There are elements that will strengthen [our] relationships with the United States,” he said in a press conference. “There were a number of elements in the bill that have been irritants for the US, so we are addressing some of those issues.”Tim McSorley, the national coordinator for the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, condemned the federal government over the senselessness of this move. “If the government is serious about addressing concerns regarding illegal gun and drug trafficking, it must introduce legislation specifically tailored to that goal, as opposed to a wide-ranging omnibus bill,” he said.The demonization of immigrants has been a talking point for populist leaders throughout the west, so it’s not surprising to see Carney lean into that rhetoric in order to appease Trump. Spurred on by the xenophobic rhetoric coming out of the US, Britain, and large swaths of Europe, anyone who comes from away is forced to bear the blame for the economic messes and ensuing societal erosion these countries have found themselves battling.By feeding directly into this pipeline, Carney makes Canada not the powerful country poised to beat Trump at his dangerous games (elbows up, my foot), but a cowardly ally in the US’s campaign of terror against immigrants.

      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More

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      The supreme court is cracking down on judges – and letting Trump run wild | Steven Greenhouse

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      Ever since Donald Trump returned to power, he has carried out an unprecedented assault against the country’s rule of law. But we can be thankful that one group of people – federal district court judges – have bravely stood up to him and his many illegal actions.His excesses include gutting federal agencies, deporting immigrants without due process, firing thousands of federal workers despite their legal protections, and ordering an end to birthright citizenship. Intent on upholding the constitution and rule of law, district court judges have issued more than 190 orders blocking or temporarily pausing Trump actions they considered illegal. Their decisions have slowed the US president’s wrecking ball as it demolishes federal agencies, devastates foreign aid, decimates scientific research and demoralizes government employees.Those of us who held out hope that the supreme court, as rightwing as it has become, would join the district courts and stand up to Trump had our hopes dashed in a big way last week. The six hard-right justices delivered a major victory to Trump as they rolled over like puppies and ruled that district court judges can no longer, except in very limited circumstances, issue nationwide injunctions to halt Trump’s illegalities.In the 6-3 decision, the justices ruled that when district judges are convinced that a presidential action is illegal, they can issue injunctions that only cover the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit – they can only issue nationwide injunctions if they conclude that such action is the only way to assure complete relief to the plaintiffs. (The court wrote that plaintiffs might still be able to win broad injunctions by bringing class actions.)That case, Trump v Casa, involved Trump’s executive order that prohibited birthright citizenship – despite the 14th amendment’s language specifically guaranteeing it. In that case, Trump challenged district court judges’ nationwide injunctions upholding birthright citizenship – three district court judges had found Trump’s order to be unconstitutional and issued nationwide injunctions. In the Casa case, the justices limited their ruling to the validity of nationwide injunctions, without ruling on the constitutionality of Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship.In a stinging dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the court’s supermajority of “complicity” with Trump’s efforts to make a “solemn mockery of our Constitution”. With Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joining her dissent, Sotomayor wrote that “by stripping federal courts” of their extensive injunctive powers, the supreme court “kneecaps the Judiciary’s authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies”.There are two big problems with the Casa decision. First, it gives a red light to what has been the most effective check on Trump’s illegalities and authoritarian power grab. Second, the ruling gives a gleaming green light to Trump to speed ahead with more illegal actions, knowing that district court judges will be far less able to crack down effectively on his lawless acts.For the liberal justices and many Trump critics, a huge concern is that when a district court judge now finds a Trump policy to be unlawful, the judge can enjoin it only for the plaintiffs in the case. Meanwhile Trump can continue imposing that policy in the 49 other states. In her separate dissent, Jackson wrote: “The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”One thing seemed extraordinarily obtuse about the supermajority’s decision: they seemed infinitely more concerned that a district court judge’s nationwide injunction might exceed that judge’s legal authority than they were concerned about Trump’s unprecedented authoritarian actions and illegal excesses: his freezing of congressionally approved funding, his siccing the justice department on critics, his ordering retribution against law firms that hired lawyers he didn’t like, his freezing billions in grants to universities because they have diversity policies he detests.In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that judges don’t have “unbridled authority” to ensure that presidents comply with the law. While many political scientists are sounding the alarm that Trump is creating an authoritarian presidency insufficiently checked by the constitution’s separation of powers, Barrett warned of an “imperial judiciary”. The conservative supermajority failed to see the authoritarian forest for the trees; they seem blind to who is the real threat to our democracy. It isn’t district court judges upholding the law. It is a president who has suggested he’s above the law.The Casa decision continues a dangerous pattern in which the conservative justices bow to Trump. In another case last week, the court issued an unsigned decision, with the three liberal justices dissenting, that in effect said it was fine for Trump to deport immigrants to third countries, rather than their own, without giving them a chance to be heard about why that third country might be dangerous for them. Not only did the court let the Trump administration short-circuit due process in that case, but it gave Trump a victory in a case where his administration had twice disobeyed a district court judge’s orders. By failing to criticize the administration’s brazen defiance of a lower-court judge, the supermajority dangerously seemed to signal that it is OK for the administration to flout district judges’ orders.In another important case, the court ruled for Trump by halting a lower court’s order that Gwynne Wilcox be reinstated to the National Labor Relations Board, after Trump fired Wilcox without giving any reason, despite federal law saying NLRB members can be fired only for malfeasance. Then there was last year’s disastrous immunity decision, in which Chief Justice John Roberts, as if in a creative writing class, seemed to magically add new clauses to the constitution. Roberts’s majority ruling granted Trump presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for “official presidential acts” – a ruling that many legal scholars say has emboldened Trump to violate the law.Assuming the conservative supermajority wants to preserve our democracy and defend our constitution, it’s maddening and perplexing that they keep delivering victories to Trump. Perhaps they rule for him because they watch Fox News too much and believe Trump is a paragon of upholding the law. Or perhaps the justices fear that Trump will savage and ridicule them if they dare rule against the Maga king. Or perhaps the justices rule repeatedly for Trump because they fear he will defy their decisions if they rule against him – and they’ll become the first supreme court in history that a president repeatedly defies.In what is often called the most important supreme court case in history, Marbury v Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in 1803 that “it is emphatically” the role of the judiciary “to say what the law is”. Sadly, last week’s Casa decision turned Marbury on its head in many ways. By limiting the ability of district court judges to say what the law is and make sure the executive follows it, the court’s supermajority is giving Trump far more power than before to “say what the law is”. Without district courts able to issue quick nationwide injunctions to curb Trump’s many illegalities, it may take a year or two or more before the supreme court acts to put a nationwide halt to some of Trump’s more egregious illegal actions.Considering that Trump has described himself as king and talked of suspending the constitution, the supreme court is making a dangerous mistake in giving Trump more power while hamstringing the ability of brave, principled judges to rein in his excesses.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More