Supreme Court wraps term with decisions on birthright citizenship and more

USA Today

11 hours ago

On Saturday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe recaps the final day of the high court's term. We discuss decisions ranging from birthright citizenship to Obamacare, LGBTQ+ books in public schools and more. Undocumented immigrants face massive fines under a new Trump rule. President Donald Trump says the U.S. will end trade talks with Canada. California Gov. Gavin Newsom sues Fox News for defamation.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Saturday, June 28th, 2025. This is USA TODAY's The Excerpt. Today we put the Supreme Court's busy end to its term in context, plus millions of people living illegally in the United States are facing stiff new fines. And California's governor sues Fox News. The Supreme Court handed down a slew of decisions to wrap up its term yesterday. I spoke with USA TODAY Supreme Court correspondent Maureen Groppe to break them down. Thanks for hopping on.
Maureen Groppe:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Let's start with the court's move to lift temporary blocks on President Donald Trump's order ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the country temporarily or without legal authorization. What are the implications here, Maureen?
Maureen Groppe:
It's a little unclear right now. The majority of the court said that the judges who had put the president's policies on hold everywhere in the nation, that they overstep their authority and they need to try to narrow the holes, but we don't know exactly how that's going to happen. And the court also left open other ways that those who are challenging the policy can try to do so. And in fact, the challengers already filed a class action suit to try to protect people while the president's policy is being challenged in court.
Taylor Wilson:
I mean, on that note, Maureen, 14th Amendment advocates are worried here. We've heard Oregon's Attorney General say that the state's fight on this issue is not over. So really what is next? Where do we go?
Maureen Groppe:
So the states who are fighting this, and they're not the only ones fighting it, immigrant rights groups are as well, but the states that are fighting this, they're going to continue to look for ways to keep the President's policy on hold while they continue to challenge the legality of what he's doing. And we could see some action on that in the next few months. So what the court did yesterday did not at all look at whether the president's policy is constitutional, and that's something that's going to be coming before them in the next few months, so probably when they come back after their summer break.
Taylor Wilson:
I know President Donald Trump has had some comments after this decision. How did the president react?
Maureen Groppe:
He was quite happy. His direct quote was very happy and he said the Constitution has been brought back. Although again, I will point out that the Supreme Court, their decision did not say anything about the constitutionality of his policy, but it does have broader implications beyond this particular policy. It's going to make it harder in general for people to challenge Trump's policies. It puts restrictions on how judges can put these temporary blocks on policies as they're being challenged.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Meanwhile, justices ruled against a conservative challenge to an Obamacare provision that forces health insurers to cover certain medicines and services. Maureen, what exactly was at stake here and what does this decision functionally mean?
Maureen Groppe:
Yeah, so this was about some cancer screenings, HIV prevention medications, some medication to prevent heart disease. These preventive care services that under the Affordable Care Act that health insurers have to cover as part of what you get for your premium, they can't charge copays or deductibles on those. And the challenge was whether the group of experts who recommend what services should be covered without extra cost, whether that task force had so much power that the experts should have been appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
And the Supreme Court said they were not. So that means that this task force can continue to make these recommendations, but in doing so, and that Supreme Court's decision saying that there's sufficient control by the Health and Human Services' secretary over this task force, that means that the secretary could have more influence now over these recommendations. And the current secretary may want to revisit some of the things. That's something that health experts are looking at to see, does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who has made some changes to vaccine policy, whether he's going to also want to get involved in these preventive care services?
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Well, the court also made a decision on LGBTQ plus books in school. Maureen, we've talked about this here on the show before. Who did they side with on this?
Maureen Groppe:
They sided with the parents. The parents in the Maryland school district who said they had religious objections to these books being used in the elementary school classes, and they wanted their children to be able to be excused from class when the books were being read. The school initially agreed to do that, but then found it was too difficult to administer the absences and figure out what else to do with alternate instruction for the students who were being excused from class. So they stopped allowing opt-outs and the parents sued and the Supreme Court sided with them and said they should be allowed opt-out. That it's a burden on their religious rights if they don't have the ability to remove their kids from the classroom when these books are being read.
Taylor Wilson:
Let's shift to Texas now. There's a law requiring pornographic websites verify users are at least 18 years of age there. How did this move through the courts and who is pitted against each other on this issue?
Maureen Groppe:
This case was about the First Amendment rights of adults versus the real interest that states have to try to protect minors, keep minors from accessing this explicit information online. The lower courts, the first judge that looked at this thought that this did burden adults First Amendment rights, but then the appeals court said it didn't, and the Supreme Court also found that it was not too much of a burden on adults to have this age requirement. The concern among the challengers was that having to upload identifying information to prove that they are over-rating that that information on a website might get hacked, might get leaked, its sensitive information. And they thought that there were other ways that Texas could try to limit minors access to these websites without requiring adults to have to upload identifying information about themselves.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Maureen, the court also weighed in on a conservative challenge to a phone and internet subsidy program. What did they decide and who are the winners and losers in this case?
Maureen Groppe:
Yeah, so this challenge was about whether Congress was giving away too much authority to a federal agency to decide how much money, what kind of fees to put on telecommunications carriers. That money that's raised to those fees goes to subsidize phone and internet and rural areas for libraries and things like that. The conservative challengers said that it was essentially an unconstitutional tax because it's a tax and Congress has to decide what the tax is. The Federal Communications Commission shouldn't get to be the one to decide how much should be raised and then spent on this program. But in a six three decision with three of the court's conservatives joining the court's three liberals, they said that Congress had put enough restrictions on this program when they set it up that they did not give away too much of their authority and this program can continue to operate.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Well, this was clearly a massive day for the court. Maureen, stepping back a bit, what's your biggest takeaway from this flurry of decisions we saw yesterday?
Maureen Groppe:
Most of the attention going into this was what the court was going to do about the birthright citizenship changes as well as what implications that would have for challenging other Trump policies. And it ended up being a big win for Trump. And this is the second year in a row that the Supreme Court has ended its term with a big win for Trump. Last year, the big decision that they handed down on their last day was won on presidential immunity. The court gave presidents broad immunity for their official acts as president, and that helped ensure that Trump did not have to face a trial before the election for attempting to overturn his election loss before. One of the things that tends to happen in the final decisions is you see a lot more ideological splits. The chief justice often likes to say that most of the cases that they're citing during the year are unanimous, or at least a lot of them are unanimous.
But it's at the end of the term where you see the court breaking down more along ideological lines. And we saw that yesterday with the six conservatives on one side and the three liberals on the other in the Trump case, the birthright citizenship case. Also on the case about Texas's age verification law for porn sites and on the case about the books in the schools that the parents objected to. But we also got two decisions that were six three splits, but in a different way. So in those two cases, the one about the challenge to Obamacare and the challenge to the internet subsidy program, there you had three of the courts conservatives, Justice Barrett, the Chief Justice and Justice Kavanaugh, they joined with the three liberals in rejecting those conservative challenges. So that's another interesting six three split that we've been seeing from the court this term.
Taylor Wilson:
That's a good explainer. So, Maureen, what does all this mean for next term?
Maureen Groppe:
We are probably going to be seeing more cases about Trump. So the cases that have been a lot of hundreds of challenges to Trump's policies moving through the court system. Right now, the challenges that have gotten to the court have been at a preliminary level, and we're going to see more of those. Even though the court is not in session over the summer, they will continue to take action on emergency appeals, and those are decisions that they take without the oral arguments and as much briefings, and they often don't say much. Their opinions are very limited on those, but you can expect them to be making decisions about various challenges to Trump's actions over the summer. And then next term, we could see them taking up some of those challenges more fully and ruling on the underlying legal issues, not just on whether his policies can stay in place while they're being challenged.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Maureen Groppe covers the Supreme Court for USA TODAY. Maureen, I thank you. I hope you can rest up here at some point. Thanks so much.
Maureen Groppe:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Millions of people living illegally in the United States are facing stiff new fines from the Trump administration as the White House pressures migrants to self-deport to their birth countries. A newly issued rule allows federal immigration authorities to find people up to $500 for illegally crossing the border and a thousand dollars per day for not leaving the United States if ordered to do so. The measure also allows a $10,000 fine for people who said they would leave voluntarily but have not. Crossing the border illegally or overstaying a visa is typically considered a civil violation, and the White House said the fines reflect the administration's efforts to reduce illegal immigration. Federal law has long given authorities the power to impose such fines.
Though they were rarely issued until the first Trump administration, and even then only rarely because officials found the process cumbersome. Previously issuing the fines required federal agents to either personally serve the notice upon a person by certified mail or to their attorney, and people had the right to contest it after being given a thirty-day warning that the fine was coming. The new rule gives people 15 days to appeal. Former President Joe Biden had halted the fines during his term.
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Taylor Wilson:
President Trump says the US will immediately terminate trade talks with Canada and hit the country with a new tariff rate in the next week. He cited in a post on truth social, a decision by Canada to leave in place its digital services tax on American companies, which he cast as a direct and blatant attack on the United States.
The announcement came after a White House news conference where Trump presented an ambiguous timeline for reciprocal tariffs. He put on most other nations to go into effect. Trump introduced the tariffs in April and then paused them, and if no further action is taken, they will resume on July 9th. Trump's administration was separately working on deals with Canada, Mexico, and China, and the trade relationship between Canada and the US appeared to be improving prior to the announcement. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's office responded to Trump's announcement by saying the Canadian government will continue to engage in these complex negotiations with the United States in the best interest of Canadian workers and businesses.
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Taylor Wilson:
California Governor Gavin Newsom has accused Fox News of defamation in a $787 million lawsuit saying it intentionally misled viewers during immigration enforcement protests in his state. The filing yesterday brought in a Delaware federal court says Fox News reporters and hosts incorrectly reported what President Trump said and edited video of Trump's comments to make it appear that Newsom lied about when the two men spoke during the events. In a statement, Fox dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous. Filings in the case repeatedly referenced the $787 million settlement that Fox agreed to in 2023 with Dominion, a voting machine company after the news network repeated Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen using their equipment. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Taylor Wilson:
True crime is more popular than ever, but some say it's long overdue for a moral reckoning.
Kate Winkler Dawson:
I think we're at a real inflection point with our audiences because my audiences are mostly women, a lot of them are survivors, they're all advocates, and we have a lot of content creators on the other hand, who are not policed by anyone.
Taylor Wilson:
Author and journalism Professor Kate Winkler Dawson joins my colleague Dana Taylor, to unpack the ethics of true crime and what responsible storytelling really looks like. You can find that episode right here tomorrow morning beginning at five AM Eastern Time. And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. As always, you can also email us at [e-mail]. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back Monday with more The Excerpt from USA TODAY.