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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

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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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      Trump brings on Angolan journalist to praise him at White House event to mark Rwanda-DRC peace agreement – live

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      Donald Trump hosted top diplomats from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the signing of a peace agreement between the two countries on Friday. The African nations have been in a conflict since 2021 that has led to the deaths and displacement of thousands.While Trump called the peace agreement “a glorious triumph”, the war reportedly shows little signs of abating on the ground, according to a report by NBC earlier this month.Trump has touted the US’s role as a peacemaker and said the agreement today was ushered through by Massad Boulos, a senior adviser for Africa for the State Department and the father-in-law of his daughter Tiffany Trump. The president said on Friday that the US stands to get “a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo” for its efforts.The event, which took place at the White House, kicked off with an unusual start. Trump asked Karoline Leavitt, his press secretary, to introduce a friend. Leavitt said she knew a reporter from the “continent of Africa”, who had a “story to share”. Trump then invited the reporter to stand next him, saying “Why don’t you come up here and talk, so they can see.”The reporter is Hariana Veras, who works for the national broadcaster of Angola. Veras praised Trump for his work on the peace agreement and said that African presidents have told her he should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.When Veras was done speaking, Trump told her that Leavitt had said she was beautiful. He then added: “You are beautiful … I wish I had more reporters like you”.Immediately after, the White House clipped a video of Veras’s comments and posted it to its social media account on X.Federal agents appear to have blasted their way into a residential home in Huntington Park, California. A video released by the local NBC news station, shows what appear to be border patrol agents setting up an explosive device near the house and then detonating it – causing a window to be shattered. Then around a dozen agents charged toward the home.Jenny Ramirez, who lives in the house with her one-year-old and six-year-old kids, told NBC through tears that it was one of the loudest explosions she heard in her life.“I told them, ‘you guys didn’t have to do this, you scared by son, my baby,’” Ramirez said.Ramirez said she and her children are all US citizens. Apparently, the agents were searching for Ramirez’s boyfriend who was reportedly involved in a car crash with a truck carrying federal agents last week. He also lives in the home and is a US citizen, according to NBC.

      Donald Trump has abruptly cut off trade talks with Canada over its new digital services tax coming into effect on Monday that will impact US technology firms and said that he would set a new tariff rate on Canadian goods within the next week.

      Trump said he had not ruled out attacking Iran again and said he has abandoned plans to drop sanctions on Tehran.

      The supreme court, in a 6-3 ruling, delivered Trump a major victory by ruling that individual district court judges lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions, which Trump has complained have blocked federal government policies nationwide including his executive order purporting to end the right to automatic birthright citizenship.

      Speaking from the bench, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “a travesty for the rule of law” and “an open invitation for the government to bypass the Constitution” in a scathing dissent.

      Trump called the ruling “a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law in striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions interfering with the normal functions of the executive branch”. He said his administration “can now promptly file to proceed” with policies that had been enjoined nationwide. One of these cases would be ending birthright citizenship, he says, “which now comes to the fore”.

      US attorney general Pam Bondi said the birthright citizenship question will “most likely” be decided by the supreme court in October but said today’s ruling still “indirectly impacts every case in this country”, which the administration is “thrilled” about.

      United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said that the US-backed Israeli aid operation in Gaza is “inherently unsafe”, giving a blunt and grave assessment: “It’s killing people.” Guterres said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled”, aid workers themselves are starving and Israel – as the occupying power – is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout the Palestinian enclave.

      Guterres’s intervention followed calls earlier today from Médecins Sans Frontières for the scheme to be immediately dismantled and for Israel to end its siege on Gaza, calling the Israeli-US food distribution scheme “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid”. Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowds heading toward desperately needed food, killing hundreds of starving Palestinian people in recent weeks. The Israeli military has launched an investigation into possible war crimes following growing evidence that troops have deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians gathering to receive aid in Gaza.

      The Trump administration is planning to deport Kilmar Ábrego García for a second time, but does not plan to send him back to El Salvador, where he was wrongly deported in March, a lawyer for the administration told a judge yesterday. It is not clear when the deportation might occur or whether it would happen before the criminal case accusing him of smuggling migrants into the United States is complete. The justice department said there are no “imminent plans” to remove Ábrego García from the United States.

      The supreme court ruled in favor of Christian and Muslim parents in Maryland who sued to keep their elementary school children out of certain classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read in a landmark case involving the intersection of religion and LGBT rights. The justices in a 6-3 ruling overturned a lower court’s refusal to require Montgomery County’s public schools to provide an option to opt out of these classes. Our story is here.

      The supreme court also ruled against challengers to a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify the age of users in an effort to protect minors after the adult entertainment industry argued that the measure violates the free speech rights of adults. Story here.

      The supreme court also preserved a key element of the Obamacare law that helps guarantee that health insurers cover preventive care such as cancer screenings at no cost to patients. Read more here.
      As well as abruptly cutting off trade talks with Canada over its new tax that will impact US technology firms, Trump said that he would set a new tariff rate on Canadian goods within the next week.“We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period,” he wrote on Truth Social.The move plunges US relations with its second-largest trading partner back into chaos after a period of relative calm – only last week Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said he had agreed with Trump that their two nations should try to wrap up a new economic and security deal within 30 days.Canada is the US’s second-largest trading partner after Mexico, buying $349.4bn of US goods last year and exporting $412.7bn to the US, according to US Census Bureau data.In Trump’s surprise announcement that he was terminating trade talks with Canada, he accused Ottawa of “copying the European Union” with an “egregious” digital services tax on US tech firms.He wrote on Truth Social: “They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us, also. Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately.”We’ve yet to hear Canadian PM Mark Carney’s reaction to Trump’s outburst, which imperils a trading relationship that, according to the office of the US trade representative, totalled about $762bn last year.The tax, which will take effect on 30 June and be applied retroactively from 2022, will impact both domestic and international companies, meaning American giants Amazon, Google, Meta, Airbnb and Uber will have to start payments from Monday.Last week Ottawa refused to delay the tax in the face of mounting pressure and opposition from the Trump administration during trade negotiations.At the press conference earlier, Donald Trump sharply criticized Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, dropped plans to lift sanctions on Iran and said he would consider bombing Iran again if Tehran is enriching uranium to worrisome levels.Trump reacted sternly to Khamenei’s first remarks after a 12-day conflict with Israel that ended when the US launched strikes last weekend against Iranian nuclear sites.Khamenei said Iran “slapped America in the face” by launching a – largely symbolic and forewarned – attack against a major US base in Qatar following last weekend’s US bombing raid. He also said Iran would never surrender.Trump said he had spared Khamenei’s life. US officials told Reuters on 15 June that Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan to kill the supreme leader. In a Truth Social post, he said:
      His Country was decimated, his three evil Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED, and I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life. I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH.
      Trump also said that in recent days he had been working on the possible removal of sanctions on Iran to give it a chance for a speedy recovery. He told reporters today he has now abandoned that effort.
      I get hit with a statement of anger, hatred, and disgust, and immediately dropped all work on sanction relief, and more.
      Trump said he did not rule out attacking Iran again. When asked about the possibility of new bombing of Iranian nuclear sites if deemed necessary at some point, he replied:
      Sure, without question, absolutely.
      Trump’s border czar Tom Homan spoke at the end of the morning session at the Faith & Freedom Conference in Washington DC to applause and a standing ovation as he called for the prosecution of anyone who impeded his immigration enforcement, including lawmakers.Homan opened up by describing immigration enforcement as a moral duty – meant to stop the deaths, sexual assault and drug trafficking at the border. “In my 40 years I’ve seen a lot of terrible things,” he said. “Secure the border, save lives.”In a wide ranging, off the cuff speech, Homan touted his deportation figures and the lack of crossings at the border while defending Ice raids against non-criminals. “They’re in the country illegally so they’re on the table too,” he said. He attributed some of those arrests to sanctuary cities, where he said the lack of ability to arrest undocumented people in jail led to the increase of collateral arrests when Ice searched for them on the streets.Homan poked at protests, calling the Los Angeles protests misguided and misinformed and applauding Trump’s decision to deploy the national guard. He also called the protestors in his lake house town “morons” – those protests were followed by Ice releasing a family.Homan spent a good amount of his speech denouncing Biden’s policies and calling for the prosecution of anyone, including lawmakers who attempted to intervene with Ice enforcement. He said Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Department of Homeland Security under Joe Biden, should “go to jail”.
      You can hate Ice, you can hate me, I don’t give a shit. You can not agree with our priorities, but you better not cross that line.
      At the en,d Homan turned to his personal relationship with Trump, saying he respected the president as much as he does his own father.Lawyers for Kilmar Ábrego García have asked the judge to keep him in jail over deportation concerns. Prosecutors have agreed with a request by Ábrego García’s lawyers to delay his Tennessee jail release.Ábrego García’s lawyers asked a judge for the delay Friday because of “contradictory statements” by the Trump administration over whether he’ll be deported upon release. A judge in Nashville has been preparing to release Ábrego García to await trial on human smuggling charges. The judge has been holding off over concerns immigration officials would try to deport him.The justice department says it intends to try Ábrego García on the smuggling charges. A justice department attorney said earlier there were plans to deport him but didn’t say when. The Maryland construction worker previously was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.US representative Nydia Velázquez from New York called the supreme court ruling that individual district court judges lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions “an attack on the very foundation of our nation”. She wrote on X:“The Supreme Court just opened the door for Trump’s assault on birthright citizenship. As Justice Sotomayor warned in her dissent, ‘No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates.’ This ruling is an attack on the very foundation of our nation.”Representative Mark Takano of California expressed similar alarm. He wrote on X:“Today’s troubling ruling by the Supreme Court means that Trump’s un-Constitutional executive order denying many Americans their birthright citizenship will go into effect for anyone without the means to file a lawsuit to protect themselves.”Trump has accused Canada of a “direct and blatant attack” on the US after being informed that the country plans to tax US technology companies. Trump says the US will be “terminating all discussions on trade with Canada” as a result.Trump wrote on Truth Social:“We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products, has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country.They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us, also. Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately. We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”Environmental groups have filed a federal lawsuit to block the “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention center being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades.The lawsuit, filed Friday on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity and the Friends of the Everglades organization, seeks to halt the project until it undergoes a stringent environmental review as required by federal law. The lawsuit filed in Miami federal court says there is also supposed to be an opportunity for public comment.Florida governor Ron DeSantis said Friday on Fox and Friends that the detention center is set to begin processing people who entered the US illegally as soon as next week.The Trump administration is moving to terminate Temporary Protected Status for half a million Haitians, claiming that Haiti is a “safe” country to return to, despite the reality that large portions of the country have been overcome by gangs and civil governance has collapsed.The Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that conditions in Haiti have improved, and Haitians no longer meet the conditions for Temporary Protected Status, which grants deportation protections and work permits to people from countries experiencing turmoil.“This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.”

      The supreme court, in a 6-3 ruling, appears to have delivered Trump a major victory by ruling that individual district court judges lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions, which Trump has complained have blocked federal government policies nationwide including his executive order purporting to end the right to automatic birthright citizenship.

      Speaking from the bench, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the supreme court’s majority decision “a travesty for the rule of law”, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a scathing dissent.

      Trump called the supreme court’s decision “a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law in striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions interfering with the normal functions of the executive branch”.

      Trump said his administration “can now promptly file to proceed” with policies that had been enjoined nationwide. One of these cases would be ending birthright citizenship, he says, “which now comes to the fore”.

      In a press briefing US attorney general Pam Bondi was asked whether the administration is going to try to implement Trump’s order banning birthright citizenship in states where there isn’t a legal challenge. Bondi said the birthright citizenship question will “most likely” be decided by the supreme court in October but that Friday’s ruling still “indirectly impacts every case in this country”, adding that the administration is “thrilled” about this.

      Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo reportedly plans to run as an independent candidate in New York City’s mayoral race, days after finding himself bested in the Democratic primary by progressive insurgent candidate Zohran Mamdani.

      The Trump administration is planning to deport Kilmar Ábrego García for a second time, but reportedly does not plan to send him back to El Salvador, where he was wrongly deported in March.

      Trump reiterated that Tehran wants to meet following US strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, but gave no further details. More

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      Trump basks in triumph as supreme court kicks away another guard rail

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      He strode into the White House briefing room feeling invincible. In his own telling, he had fixed the Middle East. He had made Nato pay up. He had pacified the heart of Africa. And now Napoleon Trump had once again just been crowned emperor by the US supreme court.“We’ve had a big week,” Donald Trump, orange hair shimmering, blue tie drooping below the waist, mused from a lectern anointed with the presidential seal. “We’ve had a lot of victories this week.”The highest court had just handed the president another win by curbing the power of federal judges to impose nationwide rulings impeding his policies – though it left unresolved the issue of whether he can limit birthright citizenship.Unable to contain his glee, Trump came to talk to the press – something his predecessor Joe Biden rarely did – to goad the “fake news” while basking in glory from the Maga-friendly media.The president hailed the court’s decision as a “monumental victory for the constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law” and gloated – with some hyperbole – that “there are people elated all over the country”. He looked forward to taking aim at targets such as birthright citizenship, sanctuary city funding and refugee resettlement.In the abstract, there is a reasonable debate to be had over how much power the judiciary should have to curb an elected leader’s agenda. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, has described it as a “bipartisan problem” that has plagued five different presidents. A decade ago Barack Obama expressed frustration when a district court temporarily blocked his executive actions on immigration.In the court’s majority opinion, the conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s contention that they were neglecting their duty to protect the people from government overreach. “Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,” Barrett wrote.But context is everything. Trump has marginalised Congress, sued the media in an effort to chill free speech, assailed cultural institutions and universities and deployed the military against peaceful protesters. The courts have been leading the way in safeguarding democracy from his authoritarian impulses. Now they too are on the ropes.Asked by a reporter if the supreme court decision concentrates too much power in the White House, Trump insisted: “The question is fine but it’s the opposite. The constitution has been brought back.”Yet the supreme court that decided to make the strongman even stronger contains three Trump appointees and last year found that former presidents have presumptive immunity from prosecution for “official acts” – in effect putting Trump above the law. The four criminal investigations that once dogged him now feel like ancient history.View image in fullscreenTrump was asked a question by a reporter from LindellTV, a news organisation founded by Mike Lindell, a conspiracy theorist and founder of MyPillow, about whether he would like to see a justice department investigation of the judges whose rulings allowed the cases to proceed against him while he was out of office.“I love you,” Trump said in response to the question, adding: “I hope so.”It has been exactly 12 months since he debated with Biden and discovered an opponent in chronic decline. Democrats panicked and imploded, Trump survived an assassination attempt and rode his good fortune all the way to the White House.It is small wonder that the 79-year-old now considers himself untouchable, acting with impunity at home and abroad, holding freewheeling press conferences like Friday’s without fear of consequences.“Illegal crossings at the border are at zero now,” a reporter said.Trump interjected: “Zero! Does everyone hear that?”A cameraman in the briefing room shouted: “Trump 2028!”Later Trump reiterated his claim that Iran’s nuclear sites had been obliterated and lamented: “We had some fake news for a little while – the same people that covered the Hunter Biden laptop was from Russia … I don’t believe that they’re going to go back into nuclear anytime soon.”He also used the briefing to take a swipe at Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, for not lowering interest rates. “We have a man who’s not a smart man, and he probably has Trump Derangement Syndrome.”Later on Friday the White House would host leaders from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda to sign a peace deal to end years of fighting. Trump cheerfully admitted: “I’m a little bit out of my league in that one because I didn’t know too much about it.” He also noted that the US would gain access to critical minerals in the region.Trump even ruminated on threats to his life, including proxy groups from Iran that may issue threats, and referenced the bullet that struck his ear last summer in an attempted assassination. He gets “that throbbing feeling every once in a while”, he said.“What I do is a dangerous business. You know, I tell the story of the car companies and different people in different professions. You have race car drivers, as an example, one-tenth of 1% die. Bull riders, one-tenth of 1%. That’s not a lot, but people die. When you’re president, it’s about 5%. If somebody would have told me that, maybe I wouldn’t have run. This is a very different profession.”As raised hands in the room clamoured for attention his political lizard brain spotted an opportunity to bash his predecessor. “This is the opposite of Biden. Biden would take a half a question and he’d leave without answering it … You tell me when it gets boring, OK?” More

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      Liberal supreme court justices’ dissents reveal concerns that the US faces a crisis

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      On Friday the conservative-dominated US supreme court handed down a series of important judgments on issues ranging from the power of the judiciary to religious rights in schools. Media attention generally focused on the wording of the rulings and their impact.But the court’s liberal minority of just three justices penned dissenting opinions that were similarly potent, revealing the sharp divisions on America’s top legal body and also showed their deep concern at the declining health of American civic society and the authoritarian bent of the Trump presidency.Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered an acidic sermon against the court’s 6-3 decision to end lower courts’ practice of issuing nationwide injunctions to block federal executive orders, reading her dissent directly from the bench in a move meant to highlight its importance.The decision is seen as limiting the power of judges to halt or slow presidential orders, even those whose constitutionality has not yet been tested, such as Trump’s attempt to remove the right to automatic US citizenship for anyone born inside US borders.“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” states Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”As opinion season ends in the first months of Donald Trump’s second presidency, the court’s decisions have expanded the power of the presidency and limited the power of lower courts to block Trump’s agenda.The opinion in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v Casa Inc, in which the court was silent on the underlying question about the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order, nonetheless undermines the rule of law, Sotomayor said.Even though defending the order’s legality is “an impossible task” given the plain language of the 14th amendment, the court’s opinion means each person must challenge the order individually in states that are not a party to the suit, unless class-action status is granted.In a concurring dissent, Jackson explained the burden it places on people to defend their rights in court.“Today’s ruling allows the Executive to deny people rights that the Founders plainly wrote into our Constitution, so long as those individuals have not found a lawyer or asked a court in a particular manner to have their rights protected,” Jackson’s dissent states. “This perverse burden shifting cannot coexist with the rule of law. In essence, the Court has now shoved lower court judges out of the way in cases where executive action is challenged, and has gifted the Executive with the prerogative of sometimes disregarding the law.”Jackson added ominously, the ruling was an “existential threat to the rule of law”.Reading from the bench has historically been an uncommon act meant to emphasize profound disapproval of a justice to a ruling. The court’s liberal wing has made it less rare lately, inveighing against profound legal changes wrought by the court’s six-judge conservative bloc.Other decisions handed down on Friday also permit parents to opt their children out of classroom activities that depict LGBTQ+ characters in books (Mahmood v Taylor), and allow states to require age verification on pornographic web sites (Free Speech Coalition Inc, v Paxton), both decided on ideological lines.Age verification has already begun to drive porn website operators out of Texas, given a cost estimated at $40,000 for every 100,000 verifications, Kagan noted in her acerbic dissent.The Texas law creates a barrier between adults and first amendment-protected content that previous supreme court decisions on speech would not have permitted, she noted. Providing ID online is fundamentally different than flashing a driver’s license at a bar.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It is turning over information about yourself and your viewing habits – respecting speech many find repulsive – to a website operator, and then to … who knows?” she wrote. “The operator might sell the information; the operator might be hacked or subpoenaed.”The ruling granting a religious exemption will have a chilling effect on schools, which may strip classroom material of any reference to LGBTQ+ content rather than risk costly litigation, Sotomayor wrote in dissent.Her dissent highlights the deliberate work done by the Montgomery county school board to create an inclusive curriculum, adding “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” to its library in 2022. The children’s book, one of five with LGBTQ+ characters, describes a same-sex couple’s wedding announcement and plans.“Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools,” she wrote. “The Court’s ruling, in effect, thus hands a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards.”In three of the five decisions handed down on Friday, that conservative bloc had the majority. But in two cases the conservative bloc split: Kennedy v Braidwood Management, which reversed lower court rulings that declared an appointed board overseeing preventive care under the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, and FCC v Consumers’ Research, which upheld the constitutionality of fees collected for a rural broadband program.Each of these cases split conservatives between those who support more expansive executive power – Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett – and others at war with the administrative state: Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas.But collectively, conservatives on the court have continued to upend longstanding precedent, while weakening the legal avenues of challengers to use the courts to defend their rights, the court’s remaining liberal justices lament.“The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival,” Sotomayor wrote in dissent on the birthright citizenship case. “Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort.” 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

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      US supreme court clears way for Trump to deport migrants to countries not their own

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      The US supreme court cleared the way on Monday for Donald Trump’s administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show harms they could face, handing him another victory in his aggressive pursuit of mass deportations.The justices lifted a judicial order that required the government to give migrants set for deportation to so-called “third countries” a “meaningful opportunity” to tell officials they are at risk of torture at their new destination, while a legal challenge plays out.Boston-based US district judge Brian Murphy had issued the order on 18 April.The court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented from the decision.After the Department of Homeland Security moved in February to step up rapid deportations to third countries, immigrant rights groups filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of a group of migrants seeking to prevent their removal to such places without notice and a chance to assert the harms they could face.Murphy on 21 May found that the administration had violated his order mandating further procedures in trying to send a group of migrants to politically unstable South Sudan, a country that the U state department has warned against any travel “due to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict”.The judge’s intervention prompted the US government to keep the migrants at a military base in Djibouti, although US officials later said one of the deportees, a man from Myanmar, would instead be deported to his home country. Of the other passengers who were on the flight, one is South Sudanese, while the others are from Cuba, Mexico, Laos and Vietnam.Reuters also reported by that officials had been considering sending migrants to Libya, another politically unstable country, despite previous US condemnation of Libya’s harsh treatment of detainees. Murphy clarified that any removals without offering a chance to object would violate his order.As part of its pattern of assailing various judges who have taken actions to impede Trump policies challenged as unlawful, the White House in a statement called Murphy “a far-left activist judge”.The administration, in its 27 May emergency filing to the supreme court, said that all the South Sudan-destined migrants had committed “heinous crimes” in the United States including murder, arson and armed robbery.The dispute is the latest of many cases involving legal challenges to various Trump policies including immigration to have already reached the nation’s highest judicial body since he returned to office in January.The supreme court in May let Trump end humanitarian programs for hundreds of thousands of migrants to live and work in the United States temporarily. The justices, however, in April faulted the administration’s treatment of some targeted migrants as inadequate under US constitution’s due process protections.Due process generally requires the government to provide notice and an opportunity for a hearing before taking certain adverse actions.In March, the administration issued guidance providing that if a third country has given credible diplomatic assurance that it will not persecute or torture migrants, individuals may be deported there “without the need for further procedures.”Without such assurance, if the migrant expresses fear of removal to that country, US authorities would assess the likelihood of persecution or torture, possibly referring the person to an immigration court, according to the guidance.Murphy found that the administration’s policy of “executing third-country removals without providing notice and a meaningful opportunity to present fear-based claims” likely violates due process requirements under the constitution.Murphy said that the supreme court, Congress, “common sense” and “basic decency” all require migrants to be given adequate due process. The Boston-based 1st US circuit court of appeals on 16 May declined to put Murphy’s decision on hold.In his order concerning the flight to South Sudan, Murphy also clarified that non-citizens must be given at least 10 days to raise a claim that they fear for their safety.The administration told the supreme court that its third-country policy already complied with due process and is critical for removing migrants who commit crimes because their countries of origin are often unwilling to take them back. More

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      US supreme court declines to fast-track challenge to Trump tariffs

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      The US supreme court declined on Friday to speed up its consideration of whether to take up a challenge to Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs even before lower courts have ruled in the dispute.The supreme court denied a request by a family-owned toy company, Learning Resources, that filed the legal challenge against Trump’s tariffs to expedite the review of the dispute by the nation’s top judicial body.The company, which makes educational toys, won a court ruling on 29 May that Trump cannot unilaterally impose tariffs using the emergency legal authority he had cited for them. That ruling is currently on hold, leaving the tariffs in place for now.Learning Resources asked the supreme court to take the rare step of immediately hearing the case to decide the legality of the tariffs, effectively leapfrogging the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit in Washington, where the case is pending.Two district courts have ruled that Trump’s tariffs are not justified under the law he cited for them, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Both of those cases are on appeal. No court has yet backed the sweeping emergency tariff authority Trump has claimed. More

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      Appeals court likely to keep Trump in control of national guard deployed in LA

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      A federal appeals court on Tuesday seemed ready to keep Donald Trump in control of California national guard troops after they were deployed following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.Last week, a district court ordered the US president to return control of the guard to Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, who had opposed their deployment. US district judge Charles Breyer said Trump had deployed the Guard illegally and exceeded his authority. But the administration quickly appealed and a three-judge appellate panel temporarily paused that order.Tuesday’s hearing was about whether the order could take effect while the case makes its way through the courts, including possibly the supreme court.It’s the first time a US president has activated a state national guard without the governor’s permission since 1965, and the outcome of the case could have sweeping implications for Trump’s power to send soldiers into other US cities. Trump announced on 7 June that he was deploying the guard to Los Angeles to protect federal property following a protest at a downtown detention center after federal immigration agents arrested dozens of immigrants without legal status across the city. Newsom said Trump was only inflaming the situation and that troops were not necessary.In a San Francisco courtroom, all three judges, two appointed by Trump in his first term and one by Joe Biden, suggested that presidents have wide latitude under the federal law at issue and that courts should be reluctant to step in.“If we were writing on a blank slate, I would tend to agree with you,” Judge Jennifer Sung, a Biden appointee, told California’s lawyer, Samuel Harbourt, before pointing to a 200-year-old supreme court decision that she said seemed to give presidents the broad discretion Harbourt was arguing against.Even so, the judges did not appear to embrace arguments made by a justice department lawyer that courts could not even review Trump’s decision.It wasn’t clear how quickly the panel would rule.Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, opened the hearing by asking whether the courts have a role in reviewing the president’s decision to call up the national guard. Brett Shumate, an attorney for the federal government, said they did not.“The statute says the president may call on federal service members and units of the Guard of any state in such numbers that he considers necessary,” Shumate said, adding that the statute “couldn’t be any more clear”.Shumate made several references to “mob violence” in describing ongoing protests in Los Angeles. But mayor Karen Bass lifted a curfew for downtown Los Angeles Tuesday, saying acts of vandalism and violence that prompted her curfew a week ago had subsided.“It is essential that this injunction be stayed, otherwise, lives and property will be at risk,” Shumate said.Harbourt argued that the federal government didn’t inform Newsom of the decision to deploy the guard. He said the Trump administration hasn’t shown that they considered “more modest measures to the extreme response of calling in the national guard and militarizing the situation”.Harbourt told the panel that not upholding Breyer’s ruling would “defy our constitutional traditions of preserving state sovereignty, of providing judicial review for the legality of executive action, of safeguarding our cherished rights to political protest”.Breyer’s order applied only to the national guard troops and not the marines, who were also deployed to LA but were not yet on the streets when he ruled.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNewsom’s lawsuit accused Trump of inflaming tensions, breaching state sovereignty and wasting resources just when guard members need to be preparing for wildfire season. He also called the federal takeover of the state’s national guard “illegal and immoral”.Newsom said in advance of the hearing that he was confident in the rule of law.“I’m confident that common sense will prevail here: the US military belongs on the battlefield, not on American streets,” Newsom said in a statement.Breyer ruled the Trump violated the use of title 10, which allows the president to call the national guard into federal service when the country “is invaded”, when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government,” or when the president is unable “to execute the laws of the United States”.Breyer, an appointee of former president Bill Clinton, said the definition of a rebellion was not met.“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’” he wrote. “Individuals’ right to protest the government is one of the fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment, and just because some stray bad actors go too far does not wipe out that right for everyone.”The national guard hasn’t been activated without a governor’s permission since 1965, when President Lyndon B Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. 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