Latest news with #AmyConeyBarrett
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Trump news at a glance: president boasts of ‘monumental' win after supreme court curtails power of federal judges
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: The 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 story The 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 story The 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 story More 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 story A 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 story The 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 story The 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 story Edward 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 story 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.
Al Jazeera
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
What cases did the US Supreme Court decide at the end of its 2024 term?
The United States Supreme Court has ended its latest term with a host of blockbuster decisions, touching on everything from healthcare coverage to school reading lists. On Friday, the court issued the final decisions of the 2024 term before it takes several months of recess. The nine justices on its bench will reconvene in October. But before their departure, the justices made headlines. In a major victory for the administration of President Donald Trump, the six-person conservative majority decided to limit the ability of courts to issue universal injunctions that would block executive actions nationwide. Trump has long denounced court injunctions as an attack on his executive authority. In two other rulings, the Supreme Court's conservative majority again banded together. One decision allowed parents to opt out of school materials that include LGBTQ themes, while the other gave the go-ahead to Texas to place barriers to prevent youth from viewing online pornography. But a decision on healthcare access saw some conservative justices align with their three left-wing colleagues. Here is an overview of their final rulings of the 2024 term. Court upholds preventive care requirements In the case of Kennedy v Braidwood Management, the Supreme Court saw its usual ideological divides fracture. Three conservative justices – Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts – joined with the court's liberal branch, represented by Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, for a six-to-three ruling. At stake was the ability of a government task force to determine what kinds of preventive healthcare the country's insurance providers had to cover. It was the latest case to challenge the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation passed under former President Barack Obama to expand healthcare access. This case focused on a section of the act that allowed a panel of health experts – under the Department of Health and Human Services – to determine what preventive services should be covered at no cost. A group of individuals and Christian-owned businesses had challenged the legality of that task force, though. They argued that the expert panel was a violation of the Appointments Clause, a section of the Constitution that requires certain political appointees to be chosen by the president and approved by the Senate. The group had previously secured an injunction against the task force's decision that HIV prevention medications be covered as preventive care. That specific injunction was not weighed in the Supreme Court's decision. But writing for the majority, Justice Kavanaugh affirmed that the task force was constitutional, because it was made up of 'inferior officers' who did not need Senate approval. Court gives nod to Texas's age restrictions on porn Several states, including Texas, require users to verify their age before accessing pornographic websites, with the aim of shielding minors from inappropriate material. But Texas's law came under the Supreme Court's microscope on Friday, in a case called Free Speech Coalition v Ken Paxton. The Free Speech Coalition is a nonprofit that represents workers in the adult entertainment industry. They sued Texas's attorney general, Paxton, arguing that the age-verification law would dampen First Amendment rights, which protect the right to free expression, free association and privacy. The plaintiffs noted the risks posed by sharing personally identifying information online, including the possibility that identifying information like birthdates and sensitive data could be leaked. The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, warned that Texas's law 'robs people of anonymity'. Writing for the Supreme Court's conservative majority, Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged that 'submitting to age verification is a burden on the exercise' of First Amendment rights. But, he added, 'adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification' altogether. The majority upheld Texas's law. Court affirms children can withdraw from LGBTQ school material The Supreme Court's conservative supermajority also continued its streak of religious freedom victories, with a decision in Mahmoud v Taylor. That case centred on the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland, where books portraying LGBTQ themes had been approved for use in primary school curricula. One text, for example, was a picture book called Love, Violet, which told the story of a young girl mustering the courage to give a Valentine to a female classmate. Another book, titled Pride Puppy, follows a child searching for her lost dog during an annual parade to celebrate LGBTQ pride. Parents of children in the school district objected to the material on religious grounds, and some books, like Pride Puppy, were eventually withdrawn. But the board eventually announced it would refuse to allow parents to opt out of the approved material, on the basis that it would create disruptions in the learning environment. Some education officials also argued that allowing kids to opt out of LGBTQ material would confer a stigma on the people who identify as part of that community – and that LGBTQ people were simply a fact of life. In the majority's decision, Justice Samuel Alito asserted that the education board's policy 'conveys that parents' religious views are not welcome in the 'fully inclusive environment' that the Board purports to foster'. 'The curriculum itself also betrays an attempt to impose ideological conformity with specific views on sexuality and gender,' Alito wrote. Court limits the use of nationwide injunctions Arguably, the biggest decision of the day was another ruling decided by the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority. In the case Trump v CASA, the Trump administration had appealed the use of nationwide injunctions all the way up to the highest court in the land. At stake was an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office for his second term. That order sought to whittle down the concept of birthright citizenship, a right conferred under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. Previously, birthright citizenship had applied to nearly everyone born on US soil: Regardless of their parents' nationality, the child would receive US citizenship. But Trump has denounced that application of birthright citizenship as too broad. In his executive order, he put restrictions on birthright citizenship depending on whether the parents were undocumented immigrants. Legal challenges erupted as soon as the executive order was published, citing Supreme Court precedent that upheld birthright citizenship regardless of the nationality of the parent. Federal courts in states like Maryland and Washington quickly issued nationwide injunctions to prevent the executive order from taking effect. The Supreme Court on Friday did not weigh the merits of Trump's order on birthright citizenship. But it did evaluate a Trump administration petition arguing that the nationwide injunctions were instances of judicial overreach. The conservative supermajority sided with Trump, saying that injunctions should generally not be universal but instead should focus on relief for the specific plaintiffs at hand. One possible exception, however, would be for class action lawsuits. Amy Coney Barrett, the court's latest addition and a Trump appointee, penned the majority's decision. 'No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law,' she wrote. 'But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation – in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so.'
CNN
5 hours ago
- Politics
- CNN
Amy Coney Barrett leaves no doubt that she stands with Trump and the conservative supermajority
For months, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has faced fierce criticism from conservatives over some of her decisions in cases involving President Donald Trump. That even included Trump at times. But after Friday's blockbuster opinion in the birthright citizenship case, that blowback was suddenly a distant memory. It was Barrett, who Trump nominated to the high court in September 2020, who delivered the president a clear and dramatic win, kneecapping the ability of lower court judges to block his agenda. Trump, who has privately complained about Barrett, was effusive in his praise. 'I want to thank Justice Barrett, who wrote the opinion brilliantly, as well as Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas – great people,' Trump said during a celebratory news conference at the White House. 'I just have great respect for her. I always have,' Trump said. 'And her decision was brilliantly written today — from all accounts.' Given the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative supermajority – cemented when Barrett succeeded the late liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – the court's liberal wing has always faced an uphill climb to wind up anywhere but in dissent. But at times, Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts have shown willingness to break from their more conservative colleagues. Many conservatives were apoplectic in March when Barrett voted to reject Trump's plan to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid. The backlash over that decision from some close to Trump was swift, with one conservative legal commentator describing her on a podcast as a 'rattled law professor with her head up her a**.' Others took to social media to describe her as a 'DEI hire' and 'evil.' The anger directed at Barrett, a former appeals court judge and law professor, intensified when the Supreme Court divided 4-4 in a high-profile case questioning whether a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma should be entitled to taxpayer funding. Barrett recused herself from taking part in the case – she had multiple ties to the attorneys representing the school – and the even split left in place a ruling from Oklahoma's top court that found the school unconstitutional. In private, some of Trump's allies had told him that Barrett is 'weak' and that her rulings have not been in line with how she presented herself in an interview before Trump nominated her to the bench, sources told CNN. 'It's not just one ruling. It's been a few different events he's complained about privately,' a senior administration official said earlier this month. So it was notable that Barrett, the second-most junior member of the court, was assigned Friday's major opinion. Because the senior-most justice on each side of a decision assigns the author of that decision, it means Roberts assigned the case to Barrett. Most court watchers assumed Roberts would write the opinion himself, or that it would be unsigned. It was, by far, the highest-profile opinion Barrett has authored on the court. And it was a major win for the president – the second time the Supreme Court has ended a term in as many years with a blockbuster ruling in his favor. Last year, the court ruled that Trump was entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution on federal election interference charges. Barrett's opinion doesn't necessarily mean that Trump will be able to enforce the birthright citizenship order. Lower courts are likely to move swiftly to shut it down through other paths, such as through class-action lawsuits. But it will at least make it harder for groups challenging future Trump policies to get those measures paused on a temporary basis. 'As the number of universal injunctions has increased, so too has the importance of the issue,' Barrett wrote, without addressing the fact that some of that increase has been the result of a president who had admittedly sought to push the boundaries of the law in his favor. 'As with most questions of law, the policy pros and cons are beside the point,' Barrett wrote. 'Under our well-established precedent, the equitable relief available in the federal courts is that 'traditionally accorded by courts of equity' at the time of our founding. Nothing like a universal injunction was available at the founding, or for that matter, for more than a century thereafter.'
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
5 takeaways from the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling
The Supreme Court handed President Trump a clear victory Friday, stopping judges from issuing nationwide injunctions that block his executive order narrowing birthright citizenship. But the cases aren't over yet, as a new phase of the battle commences in the lower courts. Here are five takeaways from the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling. Friday's opinion came from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's third appointee to the court who has recently faced a barrage of criticism from the president's supporters. The heat grew as Barrett this spring ruled against the administration in several emergency cases, including Trump's bid to freeze foreign aid payments and efforts to swiftly deport alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. By tradition, the most senior member of the majority decides who authors the opinion. So Chief Justice John Roberts would've assigned Barrett as the author soon after the May 15 oral arguments. On Friday, Barrett ultimately wrote for all five of her fellow Republican-appointed justices, being the face of the Trump administration's major win. Barrett rejected the challengers' notion that nationwide injunctions were needed as a powerful tool to check the executive branch. 'Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,' she wrote. Though the court curtailed nationwide injunctions, the decision leaves the door open for plaintiffs to try to seek broad relief by pursuing class action lawsuits. Within hours, one group of plaintiffs quickly took the hint. A coalition of expectant mothers and immigration organizations suing asked a district judge in Maryland to issue a new ruling that applies to anyone designated as ineligible for birthright citizenship under Trump's order — the same practical effect as a nationwide injunction. The Democratic-led states suing are also vowing to press ahead. 'We remain hopeful that the courts will see that a patchwork of injunctions is unworkable, creating administrative chaos for California and others and harm to countless families across our country. The fight is far from over,' California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said in a statement. And the American Civil Liberties Union brought an entirely new lawsuit Friday seeking to do the same. The efforts could quickly bring the birthright citizenship battle back to the Supreme Court. 'In cases where classwide or set-aside relief has been awarded, the losing side in the lower courts will likewise regularly come to this Court if the matter is sufficiently important,' Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a solo concurring opinion. 'When a stay or injunction application arrives here, this Court should not and cannot hide in the tall grass.' Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two of the court's leading conservatives, cautioned lower courts against creating a 'significant loophole' to Friday's decision by stretching when plaintiffs can file class action lawsuits. 'Federal courts should thus be vigilant against such potential abuses of these tools,' Alito wrote, joined by Thomas. Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the chief dissent, arguing the rule of law is 'not a given' in America and the high court gave up its 'vital role' in preserving it with Friday's opinion. Joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, she claimed the Trump administration sought to tear down nationwide injunctions because it can't prove the president's order narrowing birthright citizenship is likely constitutional. Trump's order made a 'solemn mockery' of the Constitution, she said, and his request to instead curtail nationwide injunctions is obvious 'gamesmanship.' 'Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way,' Sotomayor wrote. 'Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent.' Going further than her liberal peers, Jackson wrote in a solo dissent that the court's decision was an 'existential threat to the rule of law' — drawing a harsh rebuke from Barrett, a dramatic exchange between the two most junior justices. Jackson argued that the majority uses legalese to obscure a more basic question at the heart of the case: 'May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?' 'It is not difficult to predict how this all ends,' Jackson wrote. 'Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.' At another point, she said that 'everyone, from the President on down, is bound by law,' suggesting the Trump administration's efforts to 'vanquish' universal injunctions amounts to a request for permission to 'engage in unlawful behavior' — and that the majority gave the president just that. The rhetoric in Jackson's opinion amounts to a 'startling line of attack,' Barrett said, condemning her argument as 'extreme.' 'We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,' Barrett wrote. 'No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation — in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so.' She urged Jackson to 'heed her own admonition' that everyone, from the president down, is bound by law. 'That goes for judges too,' Barrett said. Trump and his allies hailed the ruling as a decisive victory for his administration, promising to move his sweeping second term agenda forward with judges' power significantly curtailed. 'It was a grave threat to democracy, frankly, and instead of merely ruling on the immediate cases before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation,' Trump said at a press conference Friday afternoon. He specifically slammed 'radical left judges' he said used nationwide injunctions as a tool to 'overrule the rightful powers of the president' to stop illegal immigration. The decision means his administration can now move forward on a 'whole list' of policy priorities that were frozen nationwide by federal judges, he argued, from birthright citizenship to freezing federal funding. 'We have so many of them,' Trump said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Amy Coney Barrett tears into liberal fellow Supreme Court justice over birthright citizenship
Friday's bombshell Supreme Court opinion featured brutal exchanges between Justice Amy Coney Barrett and dissenter Ketanji Brown Jackson, with legal discourse providing clues to growing discord on the court. Barrett, 53, a Trump appointee, repeatedly rips Jackson's arguments in her 6-3 majority opinion in a major birthright citizenship case, with comments that come close to mocking her intellectual rival. 'Rhetoric aside, Justice Jackson's position is difficult to pin down,' Barrett writes in just one of her missives. Some lines resemble jabs from a political debate. 'Justice Jackson appears to believe that the reasoning behind any court order demands 'universal adherence,' at least where the Executive is concerned,' goes one. In perhaps the most sneering comment, Barrett writes: 'We will not dwell on Justice Jackson's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.' The tough opinion – which gave Trump a freer hand to act without facing nationwide injunctions, raising alarms he couldn't be stopped from lawless actions – came in the a ruling on a major birthright citizenship case. The opinion immediately registered with President Donald Trump, who has reportedly stewing that Barrett has been 'weak' after joining with liberals on some key opinions. 'I want to thank justice Barrett, who wrote the opinion brilliantly,' Trump wrote, before running through the names of each conservative who voted for it. He called them all 'great people.' Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, had issued ominous warnings in her own blistering dissent. 'Disaster looms,' she warned. 'What I mean by this is that our rights-based legal system can only function properly if the Executive, and everyone else, is always bound by law. Today's decision is a seismic shock to that foundational norm. Allowing the Executive to violate the law at its prerogative with respect to anyone who has not yet sued carves out a huge exception—a gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound,' she wrote. 'What is more, to me, requiring courts themselves to provide the dagger (by giving their imprimatur to the Executive Branch's intermittent lawlessness) makes a mockery of the Judiciary's solemn duty to safeguard the rule of law,' she added. Jackson, 71, cited a ruling about the 'accretion of dangerous power, and wrote that the Court has 'cleared a path for the Executive to choose law-free action at this perilous moment for our Constitution—right when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law's constraints.' 'I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the Executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the Court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, and from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.' She warned of a 'rule-of-kings governing system' compared to a 'rule of law regime.' 'At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government's self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.' Jackson even began the opening section of her argument by dispensing with the traditional saying that she 'respectfully' dissents. 'With deep disillusionment, I dissent,' she wrote.
