US supreme court expected to deliver ruling on birthright citizenship on last day of term
The US supreme court may rule on Friday on Donald Trump’s attempt to broadly enforce his executive order to limit birthright citizenship, a move that would affect thousands of babies born each year as the president seeks a major shift in how the US constitution has long been understood, Reuters reports.
The administration has made an emergency request for the justices to scale back injunctions issued by federal judges in Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts blocking Trump’s directive nationwide.
The judges found that Trump’s order likely violates citizenship language in the US constitution’s 14th amendment.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the US who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a “green card” holder.
Key events
Trump administration plans second deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García, but not to El Salvador
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.
Justice department lawyer Jonathan Guynn said during a hearing in federal court in Maryland that the United States does not have “imminent plans” to remove Ábrego García from the United States.
If deported, Ábrego García would be sent to a third country and not El Salvador, Guynn said. He did not name the country.
Ábrego García, a Salvadoran national, was deported and imprisoned in El Salvador in March despite a 2019 judicial decision barring him from being sent there because of a risk of persecution.
The Trump administration brought Ábrego García back to the United States earlier this month to face federal criminal charges accusing him of transporting migrants living illegally in the United States. He has pleaded not guilty.
The case of Ábrego García, 29, who had been living in Maryland with his US citizen wife and their young son, has become a flashpoint over Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.
The federal judge overseeing Ábrego García’s criminal case has ordered him released ahead of trial as early as today, but the Trump administration has said it plans to immediately take him into immigration custody.
His fate would then be unclear. Ábrego García’s lawyers have asked that Abrego be kept in Maryland and that the justice department, which is prosecuting the criminal case, and the Department of Homeland Security, which handles immigration proceedings, ensure he is not deported while the criminal case remains pending.
Federal judges in Maryland, where Ábrego García is suing over the March deportation, and Tennessee, where criminal charges were filed, are both yet to rule on his requests.
Robert McGuire, the top federal prosecutor in Nashville, Tennessee, told US magistrate judge Barbara Holmes at a hearing in the criminal case on Wednesday that he would coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security as best as he could but ultimately could not control their decisions about where to house Ábrego García and whether to deport him.
As we wait for the supreme court’s last official decision day of the term to get going at 10am ET, the case we’re all waiting for is the one we can’t be sure is coming, writes Politico. Per this morning’s Playbook:
Trump v. Casa started as a challenge to Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, but became an emergency appeal that took on a central legal question of Trump’s second term: “the Trump administration’s request to rein in the power of federal district court judges to block federal policies on a nationwide basis,” Politico’s legal reporter Josh Gerstein writes. “The court could tell judges to narrow those injunctions and future ones in other cases, or set some criteria for them, or could snub the administration by turning down the request.”
Or even this: The court could instead decide to punt the restraining order matter, and deal with the birthright citizenship question first. “That could push the whole fight off until sometime this fall, after the justices return from their summer break,” Josh writes.
The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said on Friday he was confident magnets would flow from China after Washington reached a rare earth deal with Beijing, Reuters reports.
“I am confident now that we as agreed, the magnets will flow,” Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business Network, adding that the US had put in countermeasures after China slowed the delivery of critical minerals.
“So what we’re seeing here is a de-escalation under President Trump’s leadership.”
Cuomo to stay in NYC mayoral race despite Mamdani besting him in primary – report
Edward Helmore
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.
Several news outlets reported late last night that Cuomo, 67, part of a long and powerful political dynasty in New York, would not withdraw after conceding the Democratic primary to democratic socialist newcomer Mamdani, who is now the favorite in the race and could become the city’s first Muslim mayor at the general election in November.
Cuomo is now expected to continue as an independent candidate on a “Fight and Deliver” ballot line. But Cuomo has not decided whether to actively campaign in the coming months.
The former governor, who stepped down in 2021 in the face of allegations of sexual harassment and bullying in the workplace, now joins the embattled incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, a Democrat who has relaunched his campaign as an independent.
Senate Republicans seek agreement as Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ in tatters one week out from 4 July deadline
US Senate Republicans are trying to reach a consensus over Donald Trump’s sprawling tax-cut and spending bill, including proposed healthcare cuts that have worried some of their more populist-minded members, Reuters reports.
Senate majority leader John Thune has the difficult task of keeping his 53-member majority in line, as they use a parliamentary manoeuvre to bypass unified Democratic opposition to Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which would extend his 2017 tax cuts and boost spending on border security and the military.
Thune’s task was further complicated this week as the Senate parliamentarian, a nonpartisan referee, informed Republicans that more than $250bn in healthcare cuts in the Republican bill did not qualify for inclusion under long-standing budget rules.
An earlier version of the bill passed by the House last month was forecast to add about $3tn to the federal government’s $36.2tn debt.
Trump yesterday expressed “hope” that the bill would pass before 4 July.
Kevin Hassett, Trump’s top economic adviser, said the president remains “highly confident” that Congress will pass the bill by the holiday.
However, it remains tight for GOP leaders trying to get the legislation over the line in time – just three Republican “no” votes in either chamber would be enough to scuttle the bill.
Iranian woman, who has lived in US for 47 years, taken by Ice while gardening
Marina Dunbar
A 64-year-old Iranian woman, who has lived in the US for 47 years, was detained by immigration agents on Sunday morning while gardening outside her home in New Orleans.
According to a witness, plainclothes officers in unmarked vehicles handcuffed Madonna “Donna” Kashanian and transported her to a Mississippi jail before transferring her to the South Louisiana Ice processing center in Basile, reports Nola.
Kashanian arrived in the US in 1978 on a student visa and later applied for asylum, citing fears of persecution due to her father’s ties to the US-backed Shah of Iran. Her asylum request was ultimately denied, but she was granted a stay of removal on the condition she comply with immigration requirements, a condition her family says she always met.
She has no criminal record but remains in Ice custody.
The timing of Kashanian’s detention came just hours after US airstrikes in Iran. Federal officials did not comment on her specific case, though the DHS released a statement highlighting the arrests of 11 Iranians nationwide over the weekend, according to Nola.
Ice also arrested two Iranian LSU students in Baton Rouge at their off-campus apartment earlier this week. Last week, Ice announced that they arrested 84 people during a raid at a south-west Louisiana racetrack. Of the 84, Ice said “at least two” had criminal records.
Statistics from early June, previously reported on by the Guardian, demonstrated an 807% increase in arrests of people without criminal histories since before Donald Trump’s second inauguration this January. Data suggests Ice is holding about 59,000 detainees in facilities across the country.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that the US navy is renaming USNS Harvey Milk to the USNS Oscar V. Peterson.
In a post on X, Hegseth said:
We are taking the politics out of ship naming. We’re not renaming the ship to anything political. This is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration. Instead we’re naming the ship after a US navy congressional medal of honor recipient, as it should be. People want to be proud of the ship they’re sailing in.
My colleague Maya Yang reported earlier this month that Hegseth had ordered the navy to strip the name of the prominent gay rights activist and navy veteran Harvey Milk from a ship during the middle of June. The timing of the announcement, during Pride month – a month meant to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community – was reportedly intentional.
The vessel was initially named after Milk in 2016 during the Barack Obama administration. Milk was a prominent gay rights activist who served in the US navy during the Korean war. He later went on to run for office in California where he won a seat on the San Francisco board of supervisors. As one of the US’s first openly gay politicians, Milk became a forefront figure of the gay rights movement across the country before his assassination in 1978 by a former city supervisor.
Here’s Maya’s earlier report.
US supreme court expected to issue rulings in six cases on last day of term
The US supreme court is meeting on Friday to decide the final six cases of its term, including Donald Trump’s bid to enforce his executive order denying birthright citizenship to US-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident (see earlier post).
As posted earlier, it is also to deliver a ruling on LBGTQ+ books in schools.
The justices take the bench at 10am for their last public session until the start of their new term on 6 October.
Decisions also are expected in several other important cases including:
A bid by Louisiana officials and civil rights groups to preserve an electoral map that raised the number of Black-majority congressional districts in the state and prompted a challenge by non-Black voters. State officials and advocacy groups have appealed a lower court’s ruling that found the map laying out Louisiana’s six US House of Representatives districts – with two Black-majority districts, up from one previously – violated the US constitution’s promise of equal protection, Reuters reports.
Free speech rights are at the centre of a case over a Texas law aimed at blocking children from seeing online pornography. Texas is among more than a dozen states with age verification laws. The states argue the laws are necessary as smartphones have made access to online porn, including hardcore obscene material, almost instantaneous. The question for the court is whether the measure infringes on the constitutional rights of adults as well, AP reports.
The Trump administration is readying a package of executive actions aimed at boosting energy supply to power the US expansion of artificial intelligence, according to four sources familiar with the planning, Reuters reports.
US and China are locked in a technological arms race and with it secure an economic and military edge. The huge amount of data processing behind AI requires a rapid increase in power supplies that are straining utilities and grids in many states.
The moves under consideration include making it easier for power-generating projects to connect to the grid, and providing federal land on which to build the data centres needed to expand AI technology, according to the sources.
The administration will also release an AI action plan and schedule public events to draw public attention to the efforts, according to the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Training large-scale AI models requires a huge amount of electricity, and the industry’s growth is driving the first big increase in US power demand in decades.
US-backed Gaza food distribution scheme is ‘slaughter masquerading’ as aid, says MSF
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said that “the Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid” as it called on the Israeli authorities to dismantle the scheme and end its siege on the devastated territory.
Palestinian witnesses and health officials say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowds heading toward desperately needed food, killing hundreds of Palestinian people in recent weeks.
Israel wants the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – an Israeli-backed logistics group – to replace a system coordinated by the UN and international aid groups. Along with the US, it accuses Hamas of stealing aid, without offering evidence.
The UN and aid agencies have denied that there has been any significant theft of their supplies by Hamas.
In a press release published on its website today, MSF wrote:
The Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza, Palestine, launched one month ago, is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies.
With over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled…
This disaster has been orchestrated by the Israeli-US proxy operating under the name Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The way supplies are distributed forces thousands of Palestinians, who have been starved by an over 100 day-long Israeli siege, to walk long distances to reach the four distribution sites and fight for scraps of food supplies.
These sites hinder women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities, from accessing aid and people are killed and wounded in the chaotic process.
You can follow more on the crisis over on our Middle East live blog:
We have more from Reuters on Lynne Tracy, the US ambassador to Russia, who is leaving Moscow.
The departure of the career diplomat appointed under the administration of former president Joe Biden comes as Russia and the US discuss a potential reset in their ties which sharply deteriorated after Moscow launched its full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022.
Donald Trump has said there are potentially big investment deals to be struck, but is growing increasingly frustrated that his efforts to broker a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine have so far not resulted in a meaningful ceasefire.
“I am proud to have represented my country in Moscow during such a challenging time. As I leave Russia, I know that my colleagues at the embassy will continue to work to improve our relations and maintain ties with the Russian people,” the embassy cited Tracy as saying in a statement.
The embassy said earlier this month that Tracy, who arrived in Moscow in January 2023 and was greeted by protesters chanting anti-US slogans when she went to the foreign ministry to present her credentials, would leave her post soon.
Her successor has not been publicly named.
Mamdani’s NYC primary win sparks surge in anti-Muslim posts, advocates say
Anti-Muslim online posts targeting New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani have surged since his Democratic primary upset this week, including death threats and comments comparing his candidacy to the 11 September 2001 attacks, advocates said on Friday.
There were at least 127 violent hate-related reports mentioning Mamdani or his campaign in the day after polls closed, said CAIR Action, an arm of the Council on American Islamic Relations advocacy group, which logs such incidents, Reuters reports.
That marks a five-fold increase over a daily average of such reports tracked earlier this month, CAIR Action said in a statement.
Overall, it noted about 6,200 online posts that mentioned some form of Islamophobic slur or hostility in that day-long time-frame.
Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist and a 33-year-old state lawmaker, declared victory in Tuesday’s primary after former New York governor Andrew Cuomo conceded defeat.
Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim and Indian American mayor if he wins the November general election.
“We call on public officials of every party – including those whose allies are amplifying these smears – to unequivocally condemn Islamophobia,” said Basim Elkarra, executive director of CAIR Action.
US supreme court expected to deliver ruling on birthright citizenship on last day of term
The US supreme court may rule on Friday on Donald Trump’s attempt to broadly enforce his executive order to limit birthright citizenship, a move that would affect thousands of babies born each year as the president seeks a major shift in how the US constitution has long been understood, Reuters reports.
The administration has made an emergency request for the justices to scale back injunctions issued by federal judges in Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts blocking Trump’s directive nationwide.
The judges found that Trump’s order likely violates citizenship language in the US constitution’s 14th amendment.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the US who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a “green card” holder.
The United States has postponed sanctions against the Russian-owned Serbian oil company NIS for a fourth time until 29 July, Serbia’s mining and energy minister Dubravka Đedović Handanović said on Friday.
NIS has so far secured three reprieves, the last of which was due to expire later on Friday.
“Sanctions have been formally postponed … overnight we have received written confirmations … after a hard and tiring diplomatic struggle,” she told reporters.
The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control initially placed sanctions on Russia’s oil sector on 10 January, and gave Gazprom Neft 45 days to exit ownership of NIS.
The United States Department of Treasury did not reply to a Reuters inquiry about the latest sanctions reprieve.
Briefing on Iran strikes leaves senators divided as Trump threatens new row
by Joseph Gedeon and Robert Tait in Washington
Republican and Democratic senators have offered starkly contrasting interpretations of Donald Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities after a delayed behind-closed-doors intelligence briefing that the White House had earlier postponed amid accusations of leaks.
Thursday’s session with senior national security officials came after the White House moved back its briefing, originally scheduled for Tuesday, fueling Democratic complaints that Trump was stonewalling Congress over military action the president authorised without congressional approval.
“Senators deserve full transparency, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening,” the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said following the initial postponement, which he termed “outrageous”.
Even as senators were being briefed, Trump reignited the row with a Truth Social post accusing Democrats of leaking a draft Pentagon report that suggested last weekend’s strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months – contradicting the president’s insistence that it was “obliterated”.
“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!” he wrote.
Read the full report here:
US supreme court set to deliver ruling on LBGTQ+ books in schools on last day of term
The US supreme court is expected to rule on Friday in a bid by Christian and Muslim parents in Maryland to keep their elementary school children out of certain classes when storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters are read, Reuters reports.
Parents with children in public schools in Montgomery County, located just outside of Washington, appealed after lower courts declined to order the local school district to let children opt out when these books are read.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has expanded the rights of religious people in several cases in recent years.
The school board in Montgomery County approved in 2022 a handful of storybooks that feature LGBTQ+ characters as part of its English language-arts curriculum in order to better represent the diversity of families living in the county.
The storybooks are available for teachers to use “alongside the many books already in the curriculum that feature heterosexual characters in traditional gender roles”, the district said in a filing.
The district said it ended the opt-outs in 2023 when the mounting number of requests to excuse students from these classes became logistically unworkable and raised concerns of “social stigma and isolation” among students who believe the books represent them and their families.
Japan and the US are arranging for US secretary of state Marco Rubio to visit Japan for the first time in early July, Kyodo news agency reported on Friday.
Rubio is also planning to visit South Korea alongside attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers’ meetings in Malaysia in July, Kyodo reported, without mentioning sources, Reuters reports.
Several measure’s in Donald Trump’s legislation ‘cannot be included in current form’, says Senate parliamentarian
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
We start with news that several key provisions in Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” must be reworked or dropped, a Senate parliamentarian has said.
The New York Times reports that Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian who enforces the Senate’s rules, has rejected a slew of major provisions, sending GOP leaders into a frenzy to try to salvage the legislation before next week’s 4 July deadline.
The publication reports that MacDonough has said several of the measures in the legislation that would “provide hundreds of billions of dollars in savings could not be included in the legislation in their current form”.
They include one that would “crack down on strategies that many states have developed to obtain more federal Medicaid funds and another that would limit repayment options for student loan borrowers,” the NYT reports.
The report added that MacDonough “has not yet ruled on all parts of the bill” and that the tax changes at the centerpiece of Trump’s agenda “are still under review”.
In his final pitch to congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday, Donald Trump also made no mention of deadlines, as his marquee tax-and-spending bill develops a logjam that could threaten its passage through the Senate.
Meanwhile, Robert F Kennedy Jr’s reconstituted vaccine advisory panel recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines containing specific preservative thimerosal – a change likely to send shock through the global medical and scientific community and possibly impact future vaccine availability. About two weeks ago, Kennedy fired all 17 experts on the panel and went on to appoint eight new members, at least half of whom have expressed scepticism about some vaccines, the New York Times reports. Separately, the panel also recommended a new treatment to prevent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants.
In other developments:
Donald Trump has threatened to sue the New York Times and CNN over the outlets’ reporting on a preliminary intelligence assessment on the US strikes in Iran that found the operation did less damage to nuclear sites than the administration has claimed.
NBC News is reporting that the White House plans to limit intelligence sharing with members of Congress after an early assessment of damage caused by US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites were leaked this week, a senior White House official confirmed to the network.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio has announced a new visa restriction policy he said was aimed at stopping the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs into the United States.
US ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy leaves Moscow, the US embassy in Russia says, according to Reuters.
The White House has recommended terminating US funding for nearly two dozen programs that conduct war crimes and accountability work globally, including in Myanmar, Syria and on alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine, according to three US sources familiar with the matter and internal government documents reviewed by Reuters.
Donald Trump has not decided on a replacement for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and a decision isn’t imminent, a person familiar with the White House’s deliberations said on Thursday, as one central bank policymaker said any move to name a “shadow” chair would be ineffective.
Donald Trump’s administration is planning to deport migrant Kilmar Abrego 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 on Thursday. The deportation will not happen until after Abrego is tried in federal court on migrant smuggling charges, a White House spokesperson said.
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