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Reuters
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Trump victorious again as US Supreme Court wraps up its term
WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on the last day of rulings for its current term gave Donald Trump his latest in a series of victories at the nation's top judicial body, one that may make it easier for him to implement contentious elements of his sweeping agenda as he tests the limits of presidential power. With its six conservative members in the majority and its three liberals dissenting, the court on Friday curbed the ability of judges to impede his policies nationwide, resetting the power balance between the federal judiciary and presidents. The ruling came after the Republican president's administration asked the Supreme Court to narrow the scope of so-called "universal" injunctions issued by three federal judges that halted nationally the enforcement of his January executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The court's decision has "systematically weakened judicial oversight and strengthened executive discretion," said Paul Rosenzweig, an attorney who served in Republican President George W. Bush's administration. Friday's ruling said that judges generally can grant relief only to the individuals or groups who brought a particular lawsuit. The decision did not, however, permit immediate implementation of Trump's directive, instead instructing lower courts to reconsider the scope of the injunctions. The ruling was authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of three conservative justices who Trump appointed during his first term in office from 2017-2021. Trump has scored a series of victories at the Supreme Court since returning to office in January. These have included clearing the way for his administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face and ending temporary legal status held by hundreds of thousands of migrants on humanitarian grounds. The court also permitted implementation of Trump's ban on transgender people in the military, let his administration withhold payment to foreign aid groups for work already performed for the government, allowed his firing of two Democratic members of federal labor boards to stand for now, and backed his Department of Government Efficiency in two disputes. "President Trump secured the relief he sought in most of his administration's cases," George Mason University law school professor Robert Luther III said. "Justice Barrett's opinion is a win for the presidency," Luther said of the decision on nationwide injunctions. "It recognizes that the executive branch is a bully pulpit with a wide range of authorities to implement the promises of a campaign platform." Once again, as with many of the term's major decisions, the three liberal justices found themselves in dissent, a familiar position as the court under the guidance of Chief Justice John Roberts continues to shift American law rightward. The rulings in favor of Trump illustrate that "the court's three most liberal justices are proving less relevant now than at any earlier point in the Roberts Court with respect to their impact on its jurisprudence," Luther said. The cases involving Trump administration policies this year came to the court as emergency filings rather than through the normal process, with oral arguments held only in the birthright litigation. And those arguments did not focus on the legality of Trump's action but rather on the actions of the judges who found that it was likely unconstitutional. "One theme is the court's struggle to keep pace with a faster-moving legal world, especially as the Trump administration tests the outer boundaries of its powers," Boston College Law School professor Daniel Lyons said. In other cases during the nine-month term, the court sided with a Republican-backed ban in Tennessee on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, endorsed South Carolina's plan to cut off public funding to reproductive healthcare and abortion provider Planned Parenthood, and made it easier to pursue claims alleging workplace "reverse" discrimination. The court also spared two American gun companies from the Mexican government's lawsuit accusing them of aiding illegal firearms trafficking to drug cartels, and allowed parents to opt elementary school children out of classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read. In several cases involving federal statutes, the message from the justices is that people unhappy with the outcome need to take that up with Congress, according to Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson. "The court is implicitly saying, 'That's Congress' problem to fix, and it's not the court's role to solve those issues,'" Levinson said. This is the second straight year that the court ended its term with a decision handing Trump a major victory. On July 1, 2024, it ruled in favor of Trump in deciding that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official actions taken in office. It marked the first time that the court recognized any form of presidential immunity from prosecution. The Supreme Court's next term begins in October but Trump's administration still has some emergency requests pending that the justices could act upon at any time. It has asked the court to halt a judicial order blocking mass federal job cuts and the restructuring of agencies. It also has asked the justices to rein in the judge handling a case involving deportations to so-called "third countries." Recent rulings "have really shown the court for what it is, which is a deeply conservative court," Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis said. The court's jurisprudence reflects a larger shift in the national discourse, with Republicans feeling they have the political capital to achieve long-sought aims, Kreis said. The court's conservative majority, Kreis said, "is probably feeling more emboldened to act."
The Independent
16 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Iraq War architect Condi Rice heaps praise on Trump admin for Iran strikes
Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who was a key player in the George W Bush administration during the War on Terror, has praised President Donald Trump 's decision to launch airstrikes against Iranian nuclear targets in support of Israel 's Operation Rising Lion offensive. Speaking on Fox News 's Special Report on Thursday, Rice applauded the actions of the U.S. and Israeli military and told anchor Bret Baier: 'We will eventually know precisely how much the Iranian program was damaged, but I think all of the evidence is that it was substantially, significantly damaged to the place that, for a while at least, it will be hard to build a nuclear weapon.' She said the strikes would provide a 'shot in the arm for American credibility' on the global stage following the 'disastrous' presidency of Joe Biden. 'Credibility is not something that you establish one day and then you sort of dial it in and say it's done,' Rice said. 'We have to keep establishing that the United States is going to try and shape the international system, not just be a victim of it. But what's happened in the last couple of days is very, very good for American credibility.' While Trump would normally be expected to welcome such a glowing endorsement, the Bush administration's legacy of dragging the U.S. military into long-term regime change commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq in response to 9/11 is not remembered favorably by Trump's MAGA base. Trump ran for the White House on the promise that there would be no more unpopular interventionist 'forever wars,' and the phrase 'neocon' to describe Bush-era Republicans is frequently thrown about as a pejorative by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Carlson, Bannon, and Greene were all opposed to Trump's decision to drop 12 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan and cheered his announcement of a ceasefire. The president's refusal to make the case or provide evidence that Iran was ramping up its ambitions to build a nuclear bomb prior to Saturday's attack has also been likened by critics to the Bush administration claiming that Saddam Hussein had a weapon of mass destruction, the basis for its invasion of Iraq in 2003, which turned out to be incorrect. As Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continue to rebuke The New York Times and CNN for reporting on a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that found the damage done to Iran's facilities was not as severe as they had indicated, Rice supported the administration's position. She told Baier she believed Iran's ambitions to become a nuclear power had received a significant setback and called the leak of the DIA assessment 'irresponsible.' 'When you look at what the Israelis were able to do to Hezbollah, what they were able to do to Hamas – the significant efforts against the Iranian military establishment, against scientists. This really is a now-crippled Iran, and a crippled Iran is good for the region.' Rice was dismissive about the value of engaging in further talks with the Iranians, telling Baier: 'We've had 46 years of the Iranians destabilizing the region, killing Americans. 'We've had 46 years of their proxies holding terror against Israel, against Iraq, against the people of the Middle East. So, no, they don't want peace.'
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump is making US intelligence parrot his line on Iran – we've been here before
In the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, journalists covering the preparations for war became familiar with the concept of 'stovepiping'. The term described the tactic of pushing intelligence to key political decision makers, bypassing checks and balances within the system. A more familiar word would be cherrypicking: in the case of the Iraq war, the administration of George W Bush believed that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction, and – minded to act on that belief – sought proof of its proposition. Convinced that it was right, it sought to streamline information that confirmed its bias. What fell by the wayside were conflicting views. Because intelligence is ultimately about assessing the likelihood of things which are difficult to know, stovepiping means a finger is put on the scale – and that process of assessment becomes flawed. If all this sounds uncannily familiar, it is because Donald Trump and some of his most senior officials – including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, Vice-President JD Vance, the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, and defence secretary, Pete Hegseth – appear to be stovepiping in the crudest way. While the Bush administration, supported by the government of Tony Blair in Britain, turned the intelligence justification for war into a slippery PR exercise that entangled senior intelligence and military officials, Trump has applied the same approach he does to everything. Now, his sweeping statements over the damage done to Iran's nuclear facilities have turned into an inevitable test of loyalty for his officials who have scrambled to toe the line, even as intelligence leaks have raised doubts over the veracity of his claims. After the US airstrikes on Isfahan, Natanz and Fordo, Trump said on Saturday that 'Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.' But on Tuesday a leaked assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) concluded that the attacks probably only set back the nuclear program by a few months – and that much of Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) may have been moved before the strikes. His ego piqued, Trump and those around him have made ever more outlandish claims: the attack was historically equivalent to the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs; the operation was the most sophisticated in human history. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also said Iran's stockpile of HEU could not be accounted for. But Trump denied that the HEU had been moved, posting on social media: 'Nothing was taken out of facility'. On Friday, Hegseth followed suit, saying he was unaware of intelligence suggesting the material had been moved. The world has become used to Trump's tantrums, but the trustworthiness of the intelligence – before and after the attack – is profoundly important because it speaks to the credibility of the US on the most important issues of international security. Indicative, and more important than Trump's outbursts over the level of damage, has been the way in which the intelligence justifying the attack has been reshaped. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion In testimony to Congress earlier this year, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's director of national intelligence reflected the intelligence community's official view. She conceded that Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was of a size 'unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons', but the spy agencies' assessment was that Iran had not recommenced work on building a nuclear weapon since that effort was suspended in 2003. Bullied by Trump, who last week dismissed her assessment, Gabbard quickly fell into line, claiming her remarks had been taken out of context by 'dishonest media' and that Iran could have been on the brink of making a weapon within 'weeks or months'. Trump's attack on Iran, as a Rolling Stone headline memorably put it last week, was based on 'vibes not intel'. Pressed by NBC why the Trump administration had chosen to ignore the intelligence estimate, Vance appeared to confirm this, saying: 'Of course we trust our intelligence community, but we also trust our instincts.' While the vice-president framed it as a collective stance, the reality is that Trump has long distrusted the US intelligence community – a friction that dates back to his first term when he pushed back at claims that Russian hackers had interfered to help him get elected, and appeared willing to believe Vladimir Putin's word over his own spy agencies. In that same period, Trump dismissed intelligence assessments and pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal signed between Iran and other countries. He also appeared to prefer his own 'vibes' over intelligence assessments of North Korea's eagerness for detente. It is that history of trusting his own feelings above the US intelligence community that appears to add weight to the suspicion that Trump was personally swayed by Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose claims on Iran's nuclear weapons he has often parroted. Looking forward, Trump's intervention on the issue of the damage done to Iran's nuclear facilities is also crucially important. By setting out the narrative that the spy agencies are loyally expected to adhere to, Trump is slamming shut a door on actual investigation and intelligence-gathering. Proper curiosity and scepticism, Trump and those around him have made clear, will not be rewarded but could be damaging to careers. In the postmortem of the Iraq war, much attention was focused on the shutting down of debate within US and UK intelligence agencies – not least the lack of a culture of oppositional 'red team' analysis designed to challenge orthodox assumptions. As the US president attempts to bend intelligence to his instincts, the problem now is not that there is no 'red team', but that the entire intelligence community is now expected to be Team Trump.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump draws Pentagon into Bush-era Groundhog Day over Iran as he shuns intelligence to justify war
George W. Bush and his administration of neocons spent years building a spurious case for the war in Iraq. They collated sketchy intelligence about supposedly hidden weapons of mass destruction, fed it to a pliant press, went through the motions of seeking United Nations resolutions and formed a ramshackle coalition of the willing before going to war. It took Donald Trump all of five seconds to create his own WMD scandal. That came aboard Air Force One Tuesday morning when he rebuked his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for sharing a U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran was not seeking a nuclear weapon. 'I don't care what she said, I think they were very close to having one,' he told the press corps. It's Groundhog Day in the Pentagon. The U.S. stands on the precipice of joining another war in the Middle East to relieve another dictatorial regime of its non-existent deadly arsenal, but there are at least some procedural differences this time around. In rejecting the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies in favor of his own instincts, Trump appears to want to skip every step in the Manufacturing Consent handbook and declare war based on instinct alone. Rather than send Marco Rubio to the United Nations with satellite photos, audio recordings and vials of undisclosed substances as Bush did with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Trump opted to simply declare that Iran could never have nuclear weapons and begin mobilizing the U.S. military to act in support of Israel's ongoing attack. Whereas Powell had a well of intelligence to draw on, however faulty, to build his argument in front of the world, it seems Trump has barely even glanced at his own agencies' work. Gabbard testified to Congress as recently as 26 March that 18 U.S. intelligence agencies continue to assess that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.' Trump's flippant dismissal of that assessment is no small thing. It could be the determining factor in whether the U.S. joins a war against a sovereign nation, potentially putting American lives at risk across the Middle East and beyond. Rather than busy himself with studying the intelligence that should weigh on those decisions, the president spent most of the last few days posting erratically on social media, calling on 10 million people who live in Iran's capital Tehran to evacuate, for Iran's 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,' and even threatening the assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. 'We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,' he wrote on Truth Social. Trump's position is all the more surprising given that his political rise was fuelled in part by his positioning as a critic of the so-called 'forever wars' of the Bush era, particularly the Iraq War. He shocked his fellow candidates during the Republican primary debates in 2016 when he accused them all of being complicit in the falsehoods that led to the war. 'I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction,' he said. This time around, Trump appears to be playing the opposing role in building a faulty premise for a destructive war in the Middle East. MAGA billed itself as the destroyer of neoconservatism, but now in the White House and with their hands on the missile launcher and the B-52's they look and sound much the same. This is also the same person who said of Barack Obama in 2011: 'Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran.' Trump's role in the build-up to this war didn't begin this week, either. His decision to dismantle a previously successful nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers paved the way for the carnage of today. In 2015, then-President Obama and a coalition of world powers managed to broker an agreement with Iran in which it agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program, place limits on how much uranium it could enrich, and open its facilities to inspections in return for sanctions relief. China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran all signed on to the deal — a remarkable feat of diplomacy. All believed the deal was working. Israel believed the deal was too lenient, and then-presidential candidate Trump campaigned on a promise to completely dismantle it. In 2018, as president, Trump pulled out of the deal and initiated new sanctions against Iran. Tehran started to increase uranium enrichment and build up its stockpile once more, and removed monitoring equipment from nuclear facilities. Over the past few years, Iran increased its enrichment to record levels of purity, close to the level needed to make a bomb. Still, U.S. intelligence agencies did not change their assessment that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapon, and the Trump administration was engaged in a new round of talks over the program. At the same time, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was signaling that he was readying an attack on Iran. He has claimed for decades that Iran was on the brink of building a nuclear weapon, a development that he insisted required a military confrontation to avoid. As early as 1992, as a member of the Israeli parliament, he claimed Iran was 'three to five years' away from a bomb. Three years later, in a book titled 'Fighting Terrorism,' he again claimed Iran was 'three to five years' away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. In 2012, he gave a widely mocked speech to the United Nations in which he held up a picture of a cartoon bomb while claiming Iran was roughly one year away from building a bomb. None of those warnings came to pass, but they were treated no less seriously. While Netanyahu believed military action was the only way to remove the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, he had been kept at bay by successive U.S. presidents. Earlier this year, it appeared he was closer than ever to making that move. In April, he asked Trump for the 30,000-pound American GBU-57 bunker buster bomb, which can only be carried by U.S. aircraft, to destroy a nuclear site deep underground at Fordo, according to the New York Times. Trump reportedly refused and asked Israel to allow his negotiations a chance. But as the talks dragged on through the months, Trump lost patience. When Israel decided to launch its attack this month, the U.S. and Iran were days away from meeting again. No new intelligence showing an increased nuclear threat has been presented or claimed by the Trump administration beyond the president's passing comment on Air Force One. And senior administration officials told the New York Times they were unaware of any new intelligence showing a rush to build a bomb. There are obvious differences with Iraq, of course. This war has already begun. Israel has already taken out Iran's air defenses and is bombing military and nuclear infrastructure across the country at will. It was Israel's fait accompli that appears to have brought Trump around. The war has already begun. Trump may be able to join it in a limited capacity and claim victory, but the days of claiming the mantle of an anti-war president are over.
CNN
3 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Analysis: 10 years after Obergefell, is a backlash brewing?
Marriage equality was a major political issue in the United States for a generation, but today it's no big deal. The vast majority of Americans now believe same-sex couples should have the right to get married. But there are some new signs of a brewing backlash this year, and a very different Supreme Court could, at least in theory, take away what it gave same-sex partners 10 years ago. Ten years ago this week, in 2015, the US Supreme Court gave same-sex couples access to marriage nationwide, which was controversial at the time but today seems obvious to a large portion of the country. Seventeen years ago, in 2008, California voters voted to ban same-sex marriage in their state. Twenty-one years ago, in 2004, President George W. Bush's reelection campaign won in part — maybe in large part — because Ohio was among 11 states that year where voters also approved state constitutional bans to outlaw same-sex marriage, potentially driving turnout. That year, in CNN's presidential exit polls, just one-quarter of Americans thought same-sex couples should be able to legally marry. A larger portion approved of civil unions. Twenty-nine years ago, in 1996, a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. But today, a decade after the Supreme Court's landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision, close to 70% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage, according to some polls. The country has done a 180. 'It's been transformative for so many people to be able to have a family that is recognized as a family under law,' said Mary Bonauto, who argued in favor of marriage equality before the Supreme Court and is senior director of civil rights and legal strategies at GLAD Law in Boston. The decision changed lives for millions of Americans, Bonauto said: They can file taxes together, get health insurance together and plan for families together. In that regard, it strengthened marriage in the US. Opposition to marriage equality has never been a part of President Donald Trump's populist political message, and it has gone largely unremarked that his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is a married gay man. Bessent is the first openly gay married man to be appointed by the Senate in a Republican administration. But while Trump has no issue with same-sex marriage, there is a brewing backlash among religious conservatives. ► Southern Baptists, at their annual meeting this month, called for the passage of laws challenging the decision. ► Symbolic resolutions calling on the court to revisit Obergefell have been introduced in at least nine state legislatures. ► Efforts to create a new legal class of marriage — covenant marriage, based on conservative religious teachings — that would be between a man and a woman and make divorce more difficult, have sputtered, so far, in Missouri and Tennessee this year. For context, House Speaker Mike Johnson entered into a covenant marriage in Louisiana. ► Kim Davis, a former county clerk from Kentucky who drew nationwide attention when she defied court orders and refused to issue marriage licenses in 2015 after the Obergefell decision, is still fighting to have the Supreme Court revisit the decision. There are Supreme Court justices who came to the bench decades ago, when opposition to gay marriage was a major political issue, who now — with a much more conservative court — would like to revisit the decision and take away nationwide marriage equality. When the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas called on justices to also revisit Obergefell. In answer, Democrats, who then controlled the House and Senate, worked with Republicans to pass a law, the Respect for Marriage Act, that voided the Defense of Marriage Act and would require states to honor marriage certificates in the unlikely event that the Supreme Court overturned Obergefell. Justice Samuel Alito, another vocal critic of the decision, has also endorsed taking another look. If Thomas and Alito were to get their wish, it's possible things could turn out differently. The ideological balance on the court has been upended in the past 10 years. Two justices who supported the majority in the Obergefell decision — Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg — have been replaced by more conservative justices. But conservative does not necessarily guarantee a vote against gay rights. It was Justice Neil Gorsuch, who replaced Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote a more recent landmark decision that extended federal civil rights protections to LGBTQ people. He has sided with Thomas and Alito in other decisions related to the LGBTQ community. Bonauto said she's optimistic the decision will hold, but 'that optimism also rests on continued vigilance since there are those who seek to undo it.' In opposing the Obergefell majority, Chief Justice John Roberts predicted that the court's action could actually mobilize opposition to same-sex marriage. Better to let states vote in favor of it in time, he argued. 'Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.' He was wrong, according to public opinion surveys. Marriage equality is now the norm — although Gallup polling has shown Republican support declining over the past three years, from a peak of 55% in 2022 to just 41% this May. Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and CNN contributor, wrote for the New York Times about polling she conducted with a coalition of GOP pollsters for the organization Centerline Liberties. 'Republicans remain very open to the idea that the government should not be in the business of meddling with or punishing people because they are gay or lesbian,' she concluded. But that openness does not extend to the entire LGBTQ community, Anderson wrote, which was clear from how much Republican candidates, including Trump, focused on trans issues during the 2024 election. 'Republican voters seem to have made a distinction between the 'L.G.B.' and the 'T,' she wrote, noting opposition to things like gender-affirming care and trans women in sports. I asked Bonauto if she sees any corollary between the very long fight for marriage equality and other LGB rights and the current fight for trans rights. 'What I see is that it was easy when people didn't know gay and lesbian Americans, bisexual Americans, to treat them as dangerous outsiders,' Bonauto told me. 'And I feel like that's what's happening with transgender people now, where so few people know a transgender person or have a transgender person in their family. It is, in fact, a small minority of people.' Aggressive legal actions by states regarding trans rights today do somewhat mirror efforts to limit marriage rights years ago. But Bonauto said she's an optimist. 'When you get to know people, it can be the beginning of a process of just sort of awakening to this idea of, okay, that's just another person.' Americans, she said, tend to help one another once they get to know each other.
