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      Trump news at a glance: Republicans scramble to pass ‘one big, beautiful bill’ as deadline looms

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      Senate Republicans are racing to meet Donald Trump’s self-imposed 4 July deadline to pass the president’s massive tax-and-spending “one big, beautiful bill”. In a marathon session, senators convened at the Capitol to propose amendments to the legislation over many hours.Democrats, who universally oppose the bill, are expected to use the process to force their opponents into politically tricky votes that they will seek to wield against them in elections to come.Even if it passes the Senate, the bill will still need to go back through the House, which is being called back to session for votes as soon as Wednesday.Here’s the latest:US Senate Republicans make final push to pass Trump’s one big beautiful billAs the marathon session kicked off on Monday morning, Senate majority leader John Thune sounded optimistic that the measure would soon clear his chamber. “Let’s vote. This is good for America, this is good for the American people, it is good for working families,” he said.Chuck Schumer the Senate minority leader said the bill “steals people’s healthcare, jacks up their electricity bill, take away their jobs – all to pay for tax breaks for billionaires”. He said Democrats would offer amendments to “see once and for all if Republicans really meant all those nice things they’ve been saying about ‘strengthening Medicaid’ and ‘protecting middle-class families’, or if they were just lying”.Republican Senator Thom Tillis said “this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” a few hours after announcing he would not seek re-election in politically competitive North Carolina.Read the full storyDoJ moves to strip US citizenship from some naturalised AmericansThe Trump administration has codified its efforts to strip some Americans of their US citizenship in a recently published justice department memo that directs attorneys to prioritize denaturalization for naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes.The memo, published on 11 June, calls on attorneys in the department to institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either “illegally procured” naturalization or procured naturalization by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”.Read the full storyWhite House says Canada ‘caved’ to Trump demand to scrap tech taxThe United States has said that Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney “caved” to demands from the White House after his government abruptly scrapped their digital services tax on US technology companies, which was set to go into effect on Monday.“It’s very simple. Prime minister Carney and Canada caved to president [Donald] Trump and the United States of America,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a daily briefing.Read the full storyTrump administration reportedly concludes Harvard violated students’ civil rightsThe Trump administration has concluded that Harvard University violated federal civil rights law in its handling of Jewish and Israeli students, and it threatened the school with a potential “loss of all federal financial resources” as a result, according to the Wall Street Journal.In a Monday letter addressed to the Harvard president, Alan Garber, administration attorneys stated that the university was aware Jewish and Israeli students felt unsafe on campus but failed to take meaningful action. The letter, obtained by the Journal, accused Harvard of “deliberate indifference” toward those concerns.Read the full storyTrump signs executive order on lifting some Syria sanctions Donald Trump has signed an executive order to lift some financial sanctions on Syria in a move that the White House says will help stabilise the country after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad.Read the full storyUS dollar has worst first half in more than 50 years amid Trump tariffsThe US dollar has had its worst first half-year in more than 50 years, as the financial markets over the last six months were dominated by geopolitical crises and Donald Trump’s trade war.The dollar has fallen by 10.8% against a basket of currencies since the start of 2025. That is its worst performance over the first six months of any year since 1973, and the worst half-year since the second half of 1991.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The US Department of Homeland Security has for the first time built a national citizenship database that combines information from immigration agencies and the social security administration.

      The Trump administration is on track to oversee one of the deadliest years for immigrants in detention after the recent deaths of two men – one from Cuba and another from Canada – while in federal custody.

      The US supreme court agreed on Monday to hear a case that could further erode restrictions on money in politics, in a challenge that comes in part from vice-president JD Vance.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 29 June. More

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      Two more Ice deaths put US on track for one of deadliest years in immigration detention

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      The Trump administration is on track to oversee one of the deadliest years for immigrant detention as of late after the recent deaths of two men – one from Cuba and another from Canada – while in federal custody.A 75-year-old Cuban man died last week while being held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), CBS News reported, citing a notification sent to Congress. This would mark the 13th death in its facilities during the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October.At least two of those have been classified as suicides.In comparison, Ice reported 12 deaths in the fiscal year 2024.Advocates and immigration attorneys say deteriorating conditions inside an already strained detention system are contributing to the rise in deaths, which has unfolded as the administration aggressively ramps up efforts to deport millions of migrants.Under the past three administrations, the worst year saw 12 deaths in Ice custody. If the current pace continues, the total for 2025 could double those numbers.Critics say the system is collapsing under the pressure of Ice’s target of detaining about 3,000 people each day. As of mid-June, more than 56,000 migrants were being held – that is 140% of the agency’s stated capacity.“These are the worst conditions I have seen in my 20-year career,” Paul Chavez, litigation and advocacy director at Americans for Immigrant Justice, told the New York Times. “Conditions were never great, but this is horrendous.”Among the recent fatalities are 49-year-old Johnny Noviello, a Canadian who was found unresponsive on 23 June at a detention facility in Miami. Another is Jesus Molina-Veya, 45, who died on 7 June while in Ice custody in Atlanta.Molina-Veya, from Mexico, was found unconscious with a ligature around his neck, according to officials. His death remains under investigation.In response to Noviello’s death, the Canadian government has pressed US authorities for more information.“The government of Canada was notified of the death of a Canadian citizen while in custody in the United States. Canadian consular officials are urgently seeking more information from US officials. I offer my sincere condolences to the family,” Anita Anand, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, wrote on X.Despite the high death toll, immigration enforcement remains a top funding priority for the Trump administration. Border and immigration enforcement have been making up two-thirds of federal law enforcement spending.Under Trump’s proposed “big, beautiful bill”, the US would commit $350bn to national security, including for the president’s mass deportation agenda. More

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      Throwing their bodies on the gears: the Democratic lawmakers showing up to resist Trump

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      A flock of Ice agents, some masked, some sporting military-operator fashion for show, smooshed the New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, up against a wall and handcuffed him in the hallway of a federal courthouse in early June, shuffling the mild-mannered politician into an elevator like the Sandman hustling an act off the stage 10 miles north at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.Like at the Apollo, Lander’s arrest was a show. News reporters and cellphone camera-wielding bystanders crowded the hall to watch the burly federal officers rumple a 55-year-old auditor asking for a warrant.“I’m not obstructing. I’m standing here in this hallway asking for a judicial warrant,” Lander said. “You don’t have the authority to arrest US citizens.”“This is an urgent moment for the rule of law in the United States of America and it is important to step up,” Lander told the Guardian after the arrest. “And I think the dividing line for Democrats right now is not between progressives and moderates. It’s between fighters and folders. We have to find nonviolent but insistent ways of standing up for democracy and the rule of law.”The act of showing up is resonating with voters who have seen the limits of social media activism. Be it Senator Cory Booker’s speech in April or the arrest of lawmakers trying to inspect an Ice detention facility, the images of administration opponents physically interposing themselves as a disruption hearken back to an earlier era in American politics, of sit-ins and full jails, where opponents meant to grind the apparatus of government to a halt as a means of resistance.“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,” Mario Savio, a student leader in the free speech movement, a campaign of civil disobedience against restrictive policies on student political activity, said 60 years ago during a campus protest. “You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.”That can look like Booker’s 25-hour record-breaking stand at the dais from 31 March through 1 April this year, presenting a litany of protest against the actions of the first 71 days of the Trump administration in the longest speech in Senate history. Technically, it was not a filibuster, unlike the previous record-holder, the South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond’s speech delaying passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1957.As an act of political protest, it required presence. The rules of a Senate floor speech are exacting. No sitting. No breaks. Continuous, corporeal effort. As the spectacle grew, Booker acknowledged that Democratic voters had been demanding more of their leaders.“I confess that I have been imperfect,” Booker said. “I confess that I’ve been inadequate to the moment. I confess that the Democratic party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue. I confess we all must look in the mirror and say: ‘We will do better.’”Activists had been in the street from the day of Trump’s inauguration. But Booker’s speech was a demarcation point after which Democratic leaders started confronting the right more directly. It also marked them being confronted in return.Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin judge, allowed a man to leave through the back doors of her courtroom, allegedly in response to the presence of immigration officers waiting to arrest him. FBI agents subsequently arrested Dugan in her Milwaukee courtroom on 25 April, charging her with obstruction.The FBI director, Kash Patel, posted comments about her arrest on X almost immediately, and eventually posted a photograph of her arrest, handcuffed and walking toward a police cruiser, with the comment: “No one is above the law.” Digitally altered photographs of Dugan appearing to be in tears in a mugshot proliferated on social media. Trump himself reposted an image from the Libs of TikTok website of Dugan wearing a Covid-19 mask on the day of her arrest.Three days later, Trump issued an executive order to create “a mechanism to provide legal resources and indemnification”, including “private-sector pro bono assistance”, for cops it describes as “unjustly incur[ring] expenses and liabilities for actions taken during the performance of their official duties to enforce the law”.The order also seeks “enhanced sentences for crimes against law enforcement officers”, and calls for federal prosecution of state or local officials who the administration says obstruct law enforcement.View image in fullscreenTaken together, the order sent a clear signal to federal police agencies to take the gloves off – that accusations of misconduct would be defended against and that placing the bodies of public officials into handcuffs and squad cars was fair game.Three days after that, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, suggested more arrests were on the way. “Wait till you see what’s coming,” he said in response to a question about future arrests of officials.But the warnings have not stopped Democrats from showing up at Ice detention centers and other demonstrations.Four more elected or appointed Democratic officials and one Democratic senator’s staffer have been detained, arrested or charged by federal agents since Trump’s executive order. Each of the arrests has become a media spectacle.Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, visited Delaney Hall, a privately owned Ice detention facility he accuses of violating safety protocols, on 9 May. He was with three members of Congress at the time, who have the explicit right by law to inspect Ice facilities. Video captured by body-worn cameras shows a tangle of bodies as Ice agents arrest him, with beefy federal officers bending him over in handcuffs as they walk him through an outraged crowd.Amid the scrum is the freshman representative LaMonica McIver in her red coat, who stands out in videos as she walks through the gate. She appears to bump a masked law enforcement officer as she’s caught in the chaotic scene. Her intentions are far from clear, and witness video from other angles contradicts the government’s claim that members of Congress stormed the facility.Ten days later, the acting US attorney, Alina Habba, charged McIver with forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers, even after dropping similar charges against Baraka. For the administration and its supporters, the high-visibility arrests play out as payback for what they see as the politically motivated prosecution of Trump and of January 6 rioters. The Republican representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina filed a House resolution to expel McIver. Baraka’s arrest and McIver’s charge became fodder for conservative media.But it also galvanized Newark. Protesters filled the streets awaiting Baraka’s release.“History will judge us in this moral moment,” he told the crowd. “These people are wrong. And it’s moments like this that will judge us all – as cowards or, you know, as heroes.”Three weeks later, a staffer for the representative Jerry Nadler – whose name has not been released – allegedly impeded homeland security agents searching for “rioters” at a protest about immigration enforcement abuses. The agents handcuffed and detained her. Video circulated widely on social media and cable television.View image in fullscreenOn 8 June, as protesters flooded downtown Los Angeles intent on gumming up the streets around the Metropolitan detention center, the Democratic representative Jimmy Gomez of California posted a video on Instagram describing how chemical irritants had been deployed around the detention building. “They’re spraying something to try to get us to leave,” he said. “This is just to prevent us from doing our jobs.”Homeland security briefly released guidance last week asking members of Congress to give Ice facilities 72 hours of prior notice before visiting a facility. The demand conflicts with federal law allowing members of Congress immediate access for inspections. The guidance is no longer posted on the DHS website.The Democratic senator Alex Padilla of California attempted to confront the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, about protests in Los Angeles on 12 June. Before he could get a word in, when he approached to ask a question, Secret Service and FBI agents dragged Padilla out of the room and handcuffed him. The DHS falsely claimed that Padilla had failed to identify himself, releasing a statement describing Padilla’s inquiry as “disrespectful political theatre”.“The only political theater happening in Los Angeles is Trump using thousands of troops in Los Angeles as political props in response to overwhelmingly peaceful protests,” Padilla said in response.It has only been half a year that Trump has been president, but Democrats and other critics are finding that it’s the balance of civil rights tactics with 2025 TikTok-era virality that is cutting through the noise. Paired with some of the biggest protests in American history, it seems they are only getting started.“Authoritarians are looking to stoke fear and conflict and send a signal [that] if they are going to do this to elected officials – if they’re going to do it to white male US citizens with passports or elected officials, I think their goal is to make everyone afraid,” Lander said.“There is a pattern here, you know, from Senator Padilla to Ras Baraka to me, and an on-the-record statement from the attorney general about … trying to quote-unquote ‘liberate’ cities from their elected officials,” he added. “So, I take them at their word.” More

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      As Trump targets birthright citizenship, the terrain is once again ‘women’s bodies and sexuality’

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      One day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, five pregnant immigrant women – led by an asylum seeker from Venezuela – sued over the president’s executive order limiting automatic birthright citizenship, out of fear that their unborn children would be left stateless.The case went before the supreme court, which sided with the Trump administration Friday by restricting the ability of federal judges to block the order.The legal drama recalls a scene a century and a half earlier, when a different cohort of immigrant women went to the country’s highest court to challenge a restrictive California law. In 1874, San Francisco officials detained 22 Chinese women at the port after declaring them “lewd and debauched” – a condition that allowed for denial of entry.The supreme court sided with the women and struck down the law, delivering the first victory to a Chinese litigant in the US. But its ruling also established the federal government’s exclusive authority over immigration, paving the way for the passage of the Page Act of 1875, the first piece of federal legislation restricting immigration.Trump’s hardline immigration-enforcement strategy, which has focused on birthright citizenship and sparked a family-separation crisis, bears resemblance to the restrictive laws against Chinese women in the late 19th century, which historians say led to lasting demographic changes in Chinese American communities. Political campaigns of both eras, experts say, sought to stem the growth of immigrant populations by targeting women’s bodies.“What the Page Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act and birthright citizenship all have in common is the battle over who we deem admissible, as having a right to be here,” said Catherine Lee, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University whose research focuses on family reunification in American immigration. “And the terrain on which we’re having these discussions is women’s bodies and women’s sexuality.”The Page Act denied entry of “lewd” and “immoral” women, ostensibly to curb prostitution. While sex workers of many nationalities immigrated to the US, experts say local authorities almost exclusively enforced the law against women of Chinese descent. More than curbing immigration, Lee said, the legislation set a standard for determining who was eligible for citizenship and for birthing future generations of Americans.The law placed the burden of proof on Chinese women themselves, research shows. Before boarding a ship to the US, the women had to produce evidence of “respectable” character by submitting a declaration of morality and undergoing extensive interrogations, character assessments and family background checks.At the same time, doctors and health professionals smeared Chinese women as carriers of venereal diseases, Lee said. J Marion Sims, a prominent gynecologist who led the American Medical Association at the time, falsely declared that the arrival of Chinese women had caused a “Chinese syphilis” epidemic.Bill Hing, a law and migration studies professor at the University of San Francisco and author of Making and Remaking Asian America, said the Page Act was “an evil way at controlling the population” to ensure that the Chinese American community wouldn’t grow.The law did drastically alter the demographics of the Chinese population. In 1870, Chinese men in the US outnumbered Chinese women by a ratio of 13 to 1. By 1880, just a half decade after the law’s passage, that gap had nearly doubled, to 21 to 1.One legacy of the Page Act, Hing said, was the formation of “bachelor societies”. The de facto immigration ban against Chinese women made it virtually impossible for Chinese men to form families in the US, as anti-miscegenation laws forbade them from marrying women outside their race.Today, Hing said, attempts to repeal birthright citizenship is another way of suppressing the development of immigrant populations. “It falls right into the same intent of eliminating the ability of communities of color to expand,” he said.View image in fullscreenTrump’s January executive order, which would deny citizenship to US-born babies whose parents aren’t citizens or green-card holders, employs a gendered line of argument similar to that of the Page Act, Lee said. (The government has lost every case so far about the executive order, as it directly contradicts the 14th amendment.)In a 6-3 vote Friday, the supreme court ruled that lower courts could not impose nationwide bans against Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The ruling, which immigrant rights advocates say opens the door for a partial enforcement of the order, doesn’t address the constitutionality of the order itself.“Birthright citizenship assumes that women are having sex,” Lee said, “and whether she’s having sex with a lawful permanent resident or a citizen determines the status of her child.”Congressional Republicans continue to employ gendered and racialized rhetoric in their attacks on birthright citizenship and so-called “birth tourism”, the practice of pregnant women traveling to the US specifically to give birth and secure citizenship for their children. Political and media attention on the latter issue has been disproportionately focused on Chinese nationals.Last month, the Republican senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee introduced a bill that bans foreign nationals from “buying” American citizenship. She called “birth tourism” a “multimillion-dollar industry” exploited by pregnant women from “adversaries like communist China and Russia”.Although the extent of “birth tourism” is unknown, studies have shown that it comprises just a small portion of US-born Chinese infants. Many are born to US citizens or permanent residents, who form more than a majority of the foreign-born Chinese population. (A decade ago, Chinese “birth tourists” accounted for just 1% of all Chinese tourists visiting the US.)Virginia Loh-Hagan, co-executive director of the Asian American Education Project, said a long-lasting ramification of the Page Act is the “exploitation, fetishization and dehumanization” of Asian women that has led to deadly hate crimes, such as the spree of shootings at three Asian-owned Atlanta spas in 2021.“If immigrants in this country were denied the opportunity to build families and communities,” Loh-Hagan said, “then they have less community strength, less voice and power in politics and governance of this country.” More

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      US sees spate of arrests of civilians impersonating Ice officers

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      Police in southern California arrested a man suspected of posing as a federal immigration officer this week, the latest in a series of such arrests, as masked, plainclothes immigration agents are deployed nationwide to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation targets.The man, Fernando Diaz, was arrested by Huntington Park police after officers said they found a loaded gun and official-looking documents with Department of Homeland Security headings in his SUV, according to NBC Los Angeles. Officers were impounding his vehicle for parking in a handicapped zone when Diaz asked to retrieve items inside, the police said. Among the items seen by officers in the car were “multiple copies of passports not registered under the individual’s name”, NBC reports.Diaz was arrested for possession of the allegedly unregistered firearm and released on bail.The Huntington Park police chief and mayor accused Diaz of impersonating an immigration agent at a news conference, a move Diaz later told the NBC News affiliate he was surprised by.Diaz also denied to the outlet that he had posed as an officer with border patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). At the news conference, police showed reporters paper they found inside his car with an official-looking US Customs and Border Protection header.The arrest is one of several cases involving people allegedly impersonating immigration officials, as the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants intensifies.Experts have warned that federal agents’ increased practice of masking while carrying out immigration raids and arrests makes it easier for imposters to pose as federal officers.Around the country, the sight of Ice officers emerging from unmarked cars in plainclothes to make arrests has become increasingly common.In March, for instance, a Tufts University student was seen on video being arrested by masked Ice officials outside her apartment, after her visa had been revoked for writing an opinion article in her university newspaper advocating for Palestinian rights. And many federal agents operating in the Los Angeles region in recent weeks have been masked.In late January, a week after Trump took office, a man in South Carolina was arrested and charged with kidnapping and impersonating an officer, after allegedly presenting himself as an Ice officer and detaining a group of Latino men.In February, two people impersonating Ice officers attempted to enter a Temple University residence hall. CNN reported that Philadelphia police later arrested one of them, a 22-year-old student, who was charged with impersonating an officer.In North Carolina the same week, another man, Carl Thomas Bennett, was arrested after allegedly impersonating an Ice officer and sexually assaulting a woman. Bennett reportedly threatened to deport the woman if she did not comply.In April, a man in Indiantown, Florida, was arrested for impersonating an Ice officer and targeting immigrants. Two men reported to the police that the man had performed a fake traffic stop, and then asked for their documents and immigration status.Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the Guardian last week that the shootings of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, by a suspect who allegedly impersonated a police officer, highlights the danger of police not looking like police.“Federal agents wearing masks and casual clothing significantly increases this risk of any citizen dressing up in a way that fools the public into believing they are law enforcement so they can engage in illegal activity. It is a public safety threat, and it’s also a threat to the agents and officers themselves, because people will not immediately be able to distinguish between who is engaged in legitimate activity or illegitimate activity when violence is occurring in public,” he said. More

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      Ice arrests of US military veterans and their relatives are on the rise: ‘a country that I fought for’

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      The son of an American citizen and military veteran – but who has no citizenship to any country – was deported from the US to Jamaica in late May.Jermaine Thomas’s deportation, recently reported on by the Austin Chronicle, is one of a growing number of immigration cases involving military service members’ relatives or even veterans themselves who have been ensnared in the Trump administration’s mass deportation program.As the Chronicle reported, Thomas was born on a US army base in Germany to an American citizen father, who was originally born in Jamaica and is now dead. Thomas does not have US, German or Jamaican citizenship – but Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency deported him anyway to Jamaica, a country in which he had never stepped foot.Thomas had spent two-and-a-half months incarcerated while waiting for an update on his case. He was previously at the center of a case brought before the US supreme court regarding his unique legal status.The federal government argued that Thomas – who had previously received a deportation order – was not a citizen simply because he was born on a US army base, and it used prior criminal convictions to buttress the case against him. He petitioned for a review of the order, but the supreme court denied him, finding his father “did not meet the physical presence requirement of the [law] in force at the time of Thomas’s birth”.From Jamaica, Thomas told the Chronicle: “If you’re in the US army, and the army deploys you somewhere, and you’ve gotta have your child over there – and your child makes a mistake after you pass away – and you put your life on the line for this country, are you going to be OK with them just kicking your child out of the country?”He added, in reference to his father: “It was just Memorial Day [in late May]. Y’all are disrespecting his service and his legacy.”In recent months, US military veterans’ family members have been increasingly detained by immigration officials, as the administration continues pressing for mass deportations.A US marine veteran, during an interview on CNN, said he felt “betrayed” after immigration officials beat and arrested his father at a landscaping job. The arrested man had moved to the US from Mexico in the 1990s without documentation but was detained by Ice agents this month while doing landscaping work at a restaurant in Santa Ana, California.In another recent case, the wife of another Marine Corps veteran was detained by Ice despite still breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter. According to the Associated Press, the veteran’s wife had been going through a process to obtain legal residency.The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to detain and deport people nationwide. During a May meeting, White House officials pressed Ice to increase its daily arrests to at least 3,000 people daily. That would result in 1 million people being arrested annually by Ice.Following the tense meeting, Ice officials have increased their enforcement operations, including by detaining an increasing number of people with no criminal record. Being undocumented is a civil infraction – not a crime.According to a recent Guardian analysis, as of mid-June, Ice data shows there were more than 11,700 people in immigration detention arrested by the agency despite no record of them being charged with or convicted of a crime. That represents a staggering 1,271% increase from data released on those in Ice detention immediately preceding the start of Trump’s second term.In March, Ice officials arrested the daughter of a US veteran who had been fighting a legal battle regarding her status. Alma Bowman, 58, was taken into custody by Ice during a check-in at the Atlanta field office, despite her having lived in the US since she was 10 years old.Bowman was born in the Philippines during the Vietnam war, to a US navy service member from Illinois stationed there. She had lived in Georgia for almost 50 years. Her permanent residency was revoked following a minor criminal conviction from 20 years ago, leading her to continue a legal battle to obtain citizenship in the US.Previously, Bowman was detained by Ice at a troubled facility in Georgia, where non-consensual gynecological procedures were allegedly performed on detained women. In 2020, she had been a key witness for attorneys and journalists regarding the controversy. According to an interview with The Intercept from that year, Bowman said she had always thought she was a US citizen.In another recent case, a US army veteran and green-card holder left on his own to South Korea. His deportation order was due to charges related to drug possession and an issue with drug addiction after being wounded in combat in the 1980s, for which he earned the prestigious Purple Heart citation.“I can’t believe this is happening in America,” Sae Joon Park, who had held legal permanent residency, told National Public Radio. “That blows me away – like, [it is] a country that I fought for.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: president boasts of ‘monumental’ win after supreme court curtails power of federal judges

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      Donald Trump has hailed a supreme court decision to limit federal judges’ powers to block his orders on a nationwide basis as a “monumental victory” and vowed to “promptly file to proceed” with key policies – including banning birthright citizenship.The supreme court ruling on Friday, written by the conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett, did not let Trump’s policy seeking a ban on birthright citizenship go into effect immediately and did not address the policy’s legality.Trump celebrated the ruling as vindication of his broader agenda to roll back judicial constraints on executive power. “Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” Trump said from the White House press briefing room. “It wasn’t meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on a vacation.”US attorney general Pam Bondi said the birthright citizenship question would “most likely” be decided by the supreme court in October.Here is more on this and other key US politics stories from today:US supreme court limits federal judges’ power to block Trump ordersThe US supreme court has supported Donald Trump’s attempt to limit district judges’ power to block his orders on a nationwide basis, in an emergency appeal related to the birthright citizenship case but with wide implications for the executive branch’s power. The court’s opinion on the constitutionality of whether some American-born children can be deprived of citizenship remains undecided and the fate of the US president’s order to overturn birthright citizenship rights was left unclear.Read the full storyTrump says he is ending Canada trade talks amid tech tax disputeThe president has announced he is ending trade talks with Canada, one of the US’s largest trading partners, accusing it of imposing unfair taxes on US technology companies in a “direct and blatant attack on our country”.The news came hours after the US had announced a breakthrough in talks with China over rare-earth shipments into America, and announcements from top officials that the US would continue trade negotiations beyond a 9 July deadline set by Trump.Read the full storyUS supreme court rules key part of Obamacare constitutionalThe US supreme court has ruled that a key provision of “Obamacare”, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, is constitutional. The case challenged how members of an obscure but vital healthcare committee are appointed.Read the full storyUS says Haitians can be deportedMore than half a million Haitians are facing the prospect of deportation from the US after the Trump administration announced that the Caribbean country’s citizens would no longer be afforded shelter under a government program created to protect the victims of major natural disasters or conflicts.Read the full storyMother arrested at LA court alongside six-year-old son with cancer sues IceA Honduran woman who sought asylum in the US is suing the Trump administration after immigration agents arrested her and her children, including her six-year-old son, who was diagnosed with leukemia, at a Los Angeles immigration court.Read the full storyGavin Newsom sues Fox News for defamation and demands $787mThe governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has sued Fox News for defamation and demanded $787m, almost exactly the same amount Fox paid in a previous defamation case over election misinformation.In the new lawsuit, filed on Friday, Newsom accuses the Fox host Jesse Watters of falsely claiming Newsom lied about a phone call with Donald Trump, who recently ordered national guard troops into Los Angeles.Read the full storyHegseth gives new name to navy ship named after Harvey MilkThe US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has formally announced that the US navy supply vessel named in honor of the gay rights activist Harvey Milk is to be renamed after Oscar V Peterson, a chief petty officer who received the congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in the battle of the Coral Sea in the second world war.Read the full storyEx-Doge employee ‘Big Balls’ gets new job with TrumpEdward Coristine – a 19-year-old who quit Elon Musk’s controversial so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) earlier this week, where he gained notoriety in part for having used the online moniker “Big Balls” – has in fact been given a new government job, this time at the Social Security Administration.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The US supreme court ruled that a Texas law requiring that pornography websites verify the ages of their visitors was constitutional on Friday, the latest development in a global debate over how to prevent minors from accessing adult material online.

      In a bizarre start to a Rwanda-DRC peace agreement event at the White House, Donald Trump brought on an Angolan correspondent so she would praise him in front of the assembled officials and reporters. Hariana Veras praised Trump for his work on the peace agreement and said African presidents have told her he should be nominated for a Nobel peace prize.

      The president of the University of Virginia, James Ryan, has resigned from his position after coming under pressure from the Trump administration over diversity efforts.

      Harvard University and the University of Toronto and have announced a plan that would see some Harvard students complete their studies in Canada if visa restrictions prevent them from entering the US.

      Environmental groups, immigration rights activists and a Native American tribe have decried the construction of a harsh outdoor migrant detention camp in the Florida Everglades billed by state officials as “Alligator Alcatraz”.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 26 June 2025. More

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      US supreme court limits federal judges’ power to block Trump orders

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      The US supreme court has supported Donald Trump’s attempt to limit lower-court orders that have so far blocked his administration’s ban on birthright citizenship, in a ruling that could strip federal judges of a power they’ve used to obstruct many of Trump’s orders nationwide.The decision represents a fundamental shift in how US federal courts can constrain presidential power. Previously, any of the country’s more than 1,000 judges in its 94 district courts – the lowest level of federal court, which handles trials and initial rulings – could issue nationwide injunctions that immediately halt government policies across all 50 states.Under the supreme court ruling, however, those court orders only apply to the specific plaintiffs – for example, groups of states or non-profit organizations – that brought the case.The court’s opinion on the constitutionality of whether some American-born children can be deprived of citizenship remains undecided and the fate of the US president’s order to overturn birthright citizenship rights was left unclear, despite Trump claiming a “giant win”.To stymie the impact of the ruling, immigration aid groups have rushed to recalibrate their legal strategy to block Trump’s policy ending birthright citizenship.Immigrant advocacy groups including Casa and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (Asap) – who filed one of several original lawsuits challenging the president’s executive order – are asking a federal judge in Maryland for an emergency block on Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. They have also refiled their broader lawsuit challenging the policy as a class-action case, seeking protections for every pregnant person or child born to families without permanent legal status, no matter where they live.“We’re confident this will prevent this administration from attempting to selectively enforce their heinous executive order,” said George Escobar, chief of programs and services at Casa. “These are scary times, but we are not powerless, and we have shown in the past, and we continue to show that when we fight, we win.”The decision on Friday morning decided by six votes to three by the nine-member bench of the highest court in the land, sided with the Trump administration in a historic case that tested presidential power and judicial oversight.The conservative majority wrote that “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts”, granting “the government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue”.The ruling, written by the conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett, did not let Trump’s policy seeking a ban on birthright citizenship go into effect immediately and did not address the policy’s legality. The fate of the policy remains imprecise.With the court’s conservatives in the majority and its liberals dissenting, the ruling specified that Trump’s executive order cannot take effect until 30 days after Friday’s ruling.Trump celebrated the ruling as vindication of his broader agenda to roll back judicial constraints on executive power. “Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” Trump said from the White House press briefing room on Friday. “It wasn’t meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on a vacation.”Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a scathing dissent. She argued that the majority’s decision, restricting federal court powers to grant national legal relief in cases, allows Trump to enforce unconstitutional policies against people who haven’t filed lawsuits, meaning only those with the resources and legal standing to challenge the order in court would be protected.“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,” Jackson wrote. “Given the critical role of the judiciary in maintaining the rule of law … it is odd, to say the least, that the court would grant the executive’s wish to be freed from the constraints of law by prohibiting district courts from ordering complete compliance with the constitution.”Speaking from the bench, the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor called the court’s majority decision “a travesty for the rule of law”.Birthright citizenship was enshrined in the 14th amendment following the US civil war in 1868, specifically to overturn the supreme court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision that denied citizenship to Black Americans.The principle has stood since 1898, when the supreme court granted citizenship to Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who could not naturalize.The ruling will undoubtedly exacerbate the fear and uncertainty many expecting mothers and immigrant families across the US have felt since the administration first attempt to end birthright citizenship.Liza, one of several expecting mothers who was named as plaintiff in the case challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship policy, said she had since given birth to a “happy and healthy” baby, who was born a US citizen thanks to the previous, nationwide injunction blocking Trump’s order. But she and her husband, both Russian nationals who fear persecution in their home country, still feel unsettled.“We remain worried, even now that one day the government could still try to take away our child’s US citizenship,” she said at a press conference on Friday. “I have worried a lot about whether the government could try to detain or deport our baby. At some point, the executive order made us feel as though our baby was considered a nobody.”The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) condemned the ruling as opening the door to partial enforcement of a ban on automatic birthright citizenship for almost everyone born in the US, in what it called an illegal policy.“The executive order is blatantly illegal and cruel. It should never be applied to anyone,” Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.Democratic attorneys general who brought the original challenge said in a press conference that while the ruling had been disappointing, the silver lining was that the supreme court left open pathways for continued protection and that “birthright citizenship remains the law of the land”.“We fought a civil war to address whether babies born on United States soil are, in fact, citizens of this country,” New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew Platkin, said, speaking alongside colleagues from Washington state, California, Massachusetts and Connecticut. “For a century and a half, this has not been in dispute.”Trump’s January executive order sought to deny birthright citizenship to babies born on US soil if their parents lack legal immigration status – defying the 14th amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens – and made justices wary during the hearing.The real fight in Trump v Casa Inc, wasn’t about immigration but judicial power. Trump’s lawyers demanded that nationwide injunctions blocking presidential orders be scrapped, arguing judges should only protect specific plaintiffs who sue – not the entire country.Three judges blocked Trump’s order nationwide after he signed it on inauguration day, which would enforce citizenship restrictions in states where courts had not specifically blocked them. The policy targeted children of both undocumented immigrants and legal visa holders, demanding that at least one parent be a lawful permanent resident or US citizen.Reuters contributed reporting More