WASHINGTON, United States: The US Supreme Court dealt a major blow Monday to President Donald Trump’s attempts to restrict mail-in voting before the November midterm elections, denying his request to lift an order halting the divisive plan.
Only two of the six conservative justices on the nine-member panel offered a dissent.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion with the majority, said Trump’s plan may ultimately be legal in the long run, but “state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”
Trump signed an executive order in March seeking to restrict mail-in voting, saying without evidence that it is vulnerable to fraud. The order quickly prompted multiple legal challenges.
Democratic-led states sued the administration on grounds that under the US Constitution, states — and not the federal government — retain broad control over the administration of elections.
Trump’s executive order would require the compilation of lists of eligible voters and for the US Postal Service (USPS) to deliver ballots only to voters who are on the lists.
Officials from several states had warned that a lack of legal clarity around the plan was sowing chaos months before the November 3 vote.
Several states, including North Carolina, have already begun sending mail-in ballots to voters.
A USPS whistleblower had also warned that millions of Americans may not receive ballots because the systems being used by the postal service have been put together in a “sloppy and rushed manner.”
Trump has long been a critic of mail-in ballots but has frequently used them himself, including last month when he voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary.
The president has for years claimed without evidence that mail-in voting is highly vulnerable to fraud, repeatedly linking it to his false assertion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him by Democrat Joe Biden.
Polls show that Trump’s Republican Party faces a serious threat of losing its narrow control of Congress in November, particularly the House of Representatives.
If Democrats win, they have signaled they would block Trump’s agenda and could even move to impeach him for the third time.
Israeli forces bar Israeli and Palestinian activists from delivering food and medicine to homes besieged by settlers.
Published On 4 Sep 20264 Sep 2026
Israeli police have killed a Palestinian man in Jerusalem and the Israeli army has blocked humanitarian assistance from reaching an occupied West Bank village besieged by settlers for weeks.
Officers opened fire on a 33-year-old Palestinian near Damascus gate in Jerusalem on Friday. Israeli police said its border guard “neutralised” the man, claiming he was attempting to stab one of them.
list of 3 itemsend of list
The Palestinian Wafa news agency identified the man as Ibrahim al-Hendi from East Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighbourhood. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Following the incident, Israeli forces deployed around Damascus Gate and the surrounding area of Jerusalem’s Old City, Palestinian sources told Al Jazeera.
Separately, the Israeli army said that it arrested Palestinians in the town of Qabatiya in the West Bank, alleging they were “planning to carry out an attack” against Israelis and security forces.
Ten other Palestinians were arrested during a 48-hour Israeli army operation in Nablus in the West Bank. The Israeli army said it seized more than “30 weapon production machines used to manufacture weapons” during the operation.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers and soldiers carried out attacks across the occupied West Bank on Friday, Wafa reported. Settlers stormed the Khirbet al-Hamra community in the northern Jordan Valley and assaulted one resident.
Israeli settlers, accompanied by soldiers, also attacked Khalet a-Nahlah in southern Bethlehem. Israeli forces also fired tear gas and concussion grenades at a crowd of Palestinians who gathered to resist the attacks.
As violence and harassment of Palestinians continues across the occupied territory, the Israeli army on Friday also prevented around 100 peace activists from delivering food and medicine to Palestinians who have been under siege in the town of Qusra for 28 days.
Since August 9, Israeli settlers have besieged three Palestinian homes in the northern occupied West Bank village, while the Israeli army has also prevented the families from entering or leaving them, claiming the area is a “closed military zone”.
“Day 28 of the blockade on Qusra. About 100 activists arrived to deliver supplies to the besieged families,” the Israeli Peace Now movement said in a post on X.
“The army blocked us at first, claiming Qusra was a ‘closed military zone.’ Then let us in but on the way back detained us for ‘violating a closed military zone’,” it added.
Qusra Mayor Abdel Azim Wadi also told the state-run Turkish Anadolu news agency that the Israeli army has been “preventing the delivery of basic necessities to three families trapped on Mount Ras al-Ain”.
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Israeli public broadcaster Kan on Friday that settler violence against Palestinians is “damaging the image of Israel as a nation and a people, warning that Israel “needs all the friends it can get” and “doesn’t need more enemies”.
Around 750,000 Israeli settlers live in 156 illegal settlements and 360 settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and carry out attacks aimed at forcibly displacing Palestinians, according to Palestinian figures.
Sept. 4 (UPI) — In a setback for Republicans, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled against the use of a GOP-favored congressional map in this year’s midterms, directing that a referendum on redistricting be put on November’s ballot.
The ruling came down Thursday, two months before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, and after Missouri already using the use of the now blocked maps.
GOP-led Missouri was seeking to use a state legislature-approved redrawn map that was expected to increase the number of Republican-held districts from its 6-2 majority to 7-1, but the state’s high court on Thursday ruled that the opposition had the the right to have the issue put to a referendum.
The state’s General Assembly passed the redistricting bill in September 2025. In December, organizers who submitted a referendum petition collected more than 300,000 signatures in support of the effort.
But then last month, an hour before the statutory deadline, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins issued a “Certificate of Insufficiency of Petition,” stating that the state’s Constitution “does not authorize a referendum on congressional redistricting plans passed by the General Assembly,” prompting Missouri voters to sue.
The state’s high court ruling on Thursday overturned a circuit court’s judgment, ordering Hoskins to issue a certificate of sufficiency as to the referendum petition to place it on the November general election ballot and enjoining him from implementing the General Assembly-approved map.
“The referendum petition was legal, sufficient and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise. HB 1 did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters,” Judge Ginger Gooch wrote in the ruling. “The congressional redistricting the General Assembly established in 2022 remains in full force and effect for the November 2026 general election.”
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, said the state will appeal to the conservative-leaning Supreme Court.
“Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election. This unprecedented decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full-fledged constitutional crisis,” she said in a statement.
“We are confident that the federal courts will not allow every Missouri voter to be disenfranchised — which is what today’s decision does.”
President Donald Trump also lambasted the decision on his Truth Social media platform.
“Not only was the ruling horrible, ridiculous and unConstitutional, but there won’t be enough time to change the map back with the Election coming up in a very short period of time,” he said in a statement.
“The Election Process, as usual, is being disturbed in America! Missouri must be able to use the map that was in effect just a couple of months ago, in the Primary. This is a Dark Day for ‘Justice’ in Missouri!”
The midterms have been a focus of Trump, who has warned Republicans that if they lose control of the House, Democrats will impeach him.
To improve their chances of holding on to the House, Trump has encouraged GOP-led states to conduct unorthodox mid-decade redistricting efforts, with Texas last summer being the first to redraw its maps to create additional GOP-favored districts. This kicked off a gerrymandering arms race, with Democratic-led states saying they would do likewise to counter the Republican efforts.
To date, 10 states — all but one being Republican-led — have changed their congressional maps, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, though several others have tried or are in the process of redistricting.
The Missouri Supreme Court has unanimously blocked a congressional map backed by United States President Donald Trump ahead of November’s midterm elections, restoring the state’s previous districts.
Thursday’s ruling delivered a rare judicial rebuke to Trump in the national battle over redistricting. But it is unlikely to be the final word in the case, with Republican officials already pledging to appeal the ruling.
list of 3 itemsend of list
At the heart of the case is a congressional map signed into law in September 2025, designed to help Republicans win an extra seat in the US House of Representatives this year.
But the partisan redistricting effort prompted a popular backlash, with nearly 300,000 Missouri residents signing a petition to instead put the new map to a vote.
Missouri’s Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected the petition as legally insufficient. That set up the legal fight, which the Missouri Supreme Court decided on Thursday.
“The referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise,” the court wrote in its ruling.
It added that the Missouri Constitution has made such petitions legal, and “no exception applies”. The court is staffed by seven judges, five of whom are Republican-appointed.
The decision, however, places Missouri in a complicated position. Two months remain until the midterm elections, and ballots will soon be printed.
There are also outstanding legal questions over whether a state’s general election can use different congressional districts than its primaries did.
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, said she would immediately appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court. She called Thursday’s decision a “full-fledged constitutional crisis”.
“Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election,” she said in a statement.
Trump also denounced the ruling in a social media post, calling it “horrible, ridiculous, and unConstitutional”.
“The Missouri Supreme Court just ridiculously ruled in favor of changing the maps back to what they were a long time ago. It’s called, Ancient History,” he wrote.
Last year, Trump triggered the nationwide redistricting fight when he approached Texas state lawmakers to redraw their maps in a way that would give Republicans an advantage.
Normally, congressional maps are redrawn once every 10 years to reflect census results.
But Trump encouraged Republican-led states to issue new maps mid-decade, as a strategy to help the right-wing party maintain control over the House.
Some 10 states ultimately decided to redistrict, including Missouri. Most tilted in favour of Republicans. California, meanwhile, redrew its map to skew Democratic.
Prior to Thursday’s ruling, Missouri’s Supreme Court affirmed that the special legislative action to change the state’s congressional map was lawful. In the US, no federal law bars partisan redistricting, known as gerrymandering.
But Thursday’s decision upheld the legality of the petition campaign to put the map up for a vote.
The Missouri Supreme Court barred the 2025 map from being used in November’s midterm election or any future election until Missouri voters approve it first.
The group People Not Politicians spearheaded the referendum petition. In a statement on Thursday, it applauded the state court’s decision, which overturned a lower court ruling.
“Supreme Court of Missouri has ruled: Missourians will vote on politicians’ rigged map,” the group wrote on social media.
It also blamed Missouri’s secretary of state for any hurdles to restoring the old map.
“Hoskins had the power to prevent all this confusion months ago — and he chose not to,” the group said.
A day before the court’s ruling, hundreds of people rallied outside the state Supreme Court, chanting: “Let us vote!”
Grant Christensen, a resident of Jefferson City and referendum supporter, said he had signed the petition.
“Gerrymandering is the same as voter suppression,” Christensen said. “Cutting up districts in order to steer them to vote one way or the other is not fair.”
Missouri’s 2025 congressional map had already shaped the state’s primary elections. Critics, however, point out that Hoskins did not reject the referendum until August 4, the day of the party primaries.
The outcome of the legal battle is likely to be most pivotal for Missouri’s 5th congressional district, currently held by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver. His district, which encompasses parts of Kansas City, was reshaped to favour Republicans.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Supreme Court has unanimously blocked new congressional districts backed by President Trump from being used in the November election and ordered a statewide vote on whether to uphold or reject the new map.
The decision Thursday marks a rare setback for Republicans in a national redistricting battle. Republicans had hoped Missouri’s new gerrymandered congressional boundaries could help them win an additional seat and hold on to their slim House majority in the midterms.
Missouri Atty. Gen. Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, said she would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, asserting that the decision “has thrust our state into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis.”
Missouri’s new districts were used in the August primaries. But the state Supreme Court said they cannot be used in the November general election — or ever again, unless voters first uphold the new districts passed by the Republican-led Legislature.
The court ruled that the new districts were effectively placed on hold last December, when opponents submitted more than 300,000 petition signatures seeking to put the map to a vote of the people. Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins waited until primary election day in August to reject the petition. He asserted that the referendum process cannot be used for congressional redistricting. A lower court agreed, but the Supreme Court overturned Hoskins’ decision.
“The referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise,” the court said in its ruling. The legislation containing the new districts “did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters.” As a result, the congressional map adopted after the 2020 census “remains in full force and effect for the November 2026 general election.”
Hanaway, whose office represented Hoskins, called the ruling an unprecedented violation of federal law. So did Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe, who proposed the new congressional map to lawmakers to favor the GOP.
“Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election,” Hanaway said in a statement.
The Missouri Constitution does not specifically say a referendum petition can be used for a congressional redistricting law passed by the Legislature. But the Supreme Court ruled that a constitutional provision allowing a referendum on “any act” of the Legislature encompasses congressional redistricting.
It rejected assertions from Hanaway’s office that federal law prohibits referendum petitions on congressional redistricting.
“This is what democracy looks like,” said Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, which sponsored the referendum petition. “The people of Missouri demanded a voice, and the court just confirmed what we’ve been saying all along. People, not politicians, will have the final say.”
Hoskins, acknowledging the loss, vowed to continue “the war to preserve our constitutional republic.”
The ruling, which capped a year of political maneuvering and legal wrangling, was one of two to go against Republican officials Thursday. The Supreme Court also ruled that Hoskins had wrongly rejected a petition for a ballot proposal making it difficult for politicians to change measures enacted by voters through ballot initiatives. The court also ordered that measure to be placed on the November ballot.
Missouri currently has six Republicans and two Democrats in the U.S. House.
After Trump urged Republicans to redraw congressional districts to their advantage, Kehoe called lawmakers into a special session last year to reconfigure the 5th Congressional District, held by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver.
Cleaver, who was unopposed in the August primary, has carried the Kansas City-based district with at least 60% of the vote in each of the last two elections.
Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin won an August primary in the gerrymandered 5th District, which had been stretched eastward to include rural Republican areas. About 59% of the district’s voters were new under the revised map, according to an Associated Press estimate.
Cleaver had not posted campaign signs in many of the new rural areas, explaining that he was waiting for the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision. But he had vowed to continue his reelection campaign regardless of the outcome.
“Despite the cynical and deeply shameful attempt to silence many of our neighbors, the people fought back and won,” Cleaver said in a social media post Thursday.
Brattin, a Marine veteran and founding member of the conservative Missouri Freedom Caucus in the state Legislature, said the decision disenfranchises thousands of primary voters who now will be shifted to different districts with candidates they didn’t get to choose.
The court “handed Democrats a decision they desperately needed in their effort to help national Democrats retake the U.S. House of Representatives,” Brattin said in a statement.
Congressional districts typically are redrawn at the start of each decade, based on new census data. But Trump’s quest for a midterm election advantage triggered an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle that spread to more than a dozen states, including California — and triggered a dozen lawsuits in Missouri alone.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruling was one of only a few nationally to go against Republicans’ redistricting efforts.
Prior to its latest ruling, Missouri’s top court already had rejected claims that the special session was illegal, mid-decade redistricting isn’t allowed and the new districts aren’t compact enough.
After the Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday, a few hundred people chanted, “Let us vote!” while rallying outside the courthouse. Grant Christensen, of Jefferson City, said he had signed the referendum petition to put the map to a vote.
“Gerrymandering is the same as voter suppression,” Christensen said. “Cutting up districts in order to steer them to vote one way or the other is not fair.”
Lieb writes for the Associated Press.
Sept. 2 (UPI) — A federal judge on Wednesday blocked U.S. President Donald Trump‘s latest attempt at limiting birthright citizenship, saying Trump’s order “is almost certainly unconstitutional.”
Trump signed two executive orders related to the topic on Aug. 6, about a month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his earlier order banning birthright citizenship.
One of the August orders expanded the list of non-citizens whose children would not be granted citizenship automatically. These categories include children of whom either parent is “an alien enemy” or “a foreign government employee.”
The other would ban so-called birth tourism, which is when a traveler enters another country specifically to give birth there for citizenship reasons – a practice that is already illegal.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman said in Wednesday’s ruling that the August executive orders are likely unconstitutional “for the simple reason that the Supreme Court … already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth” in its June ruling.
“This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them,” Boardman wrote.
Birthright citizenship stems from the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
In its June decision, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 against Trump’s original executive order, which sought to end birthright citizenship for any children born to parents who are not U.S. citizens.
Chief Justice John Roberts said there was “scant evidence” for Trump’s interpretation of the principles of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 after the U.S. Civil War to protect the rights ofthe formerly enslaved.
“Citizenship then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “… We keep that promise today.”
Trump said the Supreme Court ruling “was too bad for our Country” and called on Congress to pass legislation against birthright citizenship.
The ruling follows a 6-3 decision from the Supreme Court that found Trump’s effort to limit birthright citizenship was illegal.
Published On 3 Sep 20263 Sep 2026
A United States federal judge in Maryland has blocked President Donald Trump’s latest effort to roll back birthright citizenship, after the Supreme Court ruled that his last attempt violated the Constitution.
District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday against Trump’s new executive order, which was issued on August 6.
list of 3 itemsend of list
The new order took aim at what Trump has called “birth tourism”, the practice of intentionally giving birth on foreign soil.
It sought to deny citizenship to children of foreign nationals in certain groups, including those accused of engaging in a commercial transaction to obtain citizenship or classified as an “alien enemy”.
Boardman, however, said the order was unconstitutional for the same reason Trump’s previous effort failed. She cited the Supreme Court’s June decision in the case Barbara v Trump.
The order “is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth”, she wrote.
“This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them.”
In the Barbara case, the Supreme Court ruled six to three that birthright citizenship was protected under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
Birthright citizenship confers automatic citizenship on anyone born in the US, outside of a handful of narrow exceptions, such as the children of diplomats or invading armies.
The constitutional basis for birthright citizenship has been upheld in several Supreme Court cases over the years, most notably in US v Wong Kim Ark, the case of an American man born to Chinese parents.
But Trump campaigned for a second term as president on the pledge to crack down on immigration into the country.
One of his promises was to reform the concept of birthright citizenship. Trump and his allies have argued that children of temporary or undocumented immigrants do not qualify for the right, as they are not under the “jurisdiction” of the US.
Since the Supreme Court defeat in June, Trump and his allies have continued to probe for ways to challenge the constitutional protections for birthright citizenship.
Wednesday’s legal challenge was brought by immigrant rights advocates and families, including groups like the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.
They had previously won an injunction from Boardman last year, blocking the Trump administration from enforcing his initial executive order about birthright citizenship.
Last week, Boardman instructed the plaintiffs to revise their complaint to specifically address the second executive order, rather than relying on the same material used for the first.
But she signalled scepticism at the time about the constitutionality of Trump’s latest attempt, calling it “unprecedented”.
“The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth’,” she wrote in Wednesday’s decision.
donlucius/iStock via Getty Images
The U.S. Treasury Department has blocked certain journalists from covering G20 finance ministers’ summit in North Carolina this week.
Individual reporters from The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and The New York Times (NYT) were denied credentials to the
Court order rules that Pentagon acted illegally, punishing AI company for criticism of government.
Published On 28 Aug 202628 Aug 2026
A United States judge has blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of technology company Anthropic.
In a 59-page written order issued on Thursday night, District Judge Rita Lin ruled that the Department of Defense had acted illegally when it designated the company a supply chain risk to national security.
list of 3 itemsend of list
The decision marks the latest turn in the Claude maker’s high-stakes fight with the US military over artificial intelligence safety on the battlefield. The government is expected to fight the ruling.
The judge’s order rebuked the Pentagon, saying it had targeted and punished Anthropic for the company’s public criticism of the Defense Department’s stance on AI deployment on the battlefield.
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Lin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote.
Anthropic’s lawsuit in a California federal court alleges that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when he designated the company a national security supply-chain risk.
Hegseth’s move, which blocked Anthropic from military contracts, followed the company’s refusal to allow the military to use its Claude AI models for US surveillance or autonomous weapons.
Anthropic argues that AI models are not reliable enough for autonomous weapons and opposes domestic surveillance. The Pentagon maintains that private companies should not constrain military action.
Executives have said the ban could cost the company billions of dollars in lost business.
During a hearing on July 30, Lin described the government’s position as “really troubling” and “at odds … with the First Amendment”, adding that the record had “gotten worse for the government” over time.
In the same hearing, Department of Justice lawyers argued that the nature of AI models is “so staggeringly enormous and opaque” that the Pentagon cannot evaluate them like physical hardware.
Anthropic welcomed the ruling, stating it remained “focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology”.
The designation was the first time a US company has been publicly labelled a supply-chain risk under an obscure procurement statute aimed at protecting military systems from foreign sabotage.
In its lawsuit, Anthropic alleged the government violated its constitutional rights to free speech and due process by retaliating against its views on AI safety without allowing it to dispute the claim.
The lawsuit called the decision unlawful, unsupported by facts, and inconsistent with the military’s past praise of Claude.
There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon on the ruling.
The amended law was an attempt by state Republicans to crack down on unproven claims of voting by noncitizens.
Published On 25 Aug 202625 Aug 2026
A United States federal court has temporarily blocked an Ohio law that required proof of US citizenship from residents who wanted to register to vote while they obtained a driver’s license.
In his ruling on Tuesday, US District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr granted a preliminary injunction against the law, saying it likely violates the US National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) because it requires more information than necessary to determine a resident’s eligibility to vote.
list of 3 itemsend of list
“Election officials do not need documentary proof of citizenship to assess a voter registration applicant’s citizenship because signed attestation of citizenship is enough,” Oliver wrote.
The judge also pointed to a clause in the act that says each US state’s driver’s license application “shall serve as an application for voter registration with respect to election for Federal office unless the applicant fails to sign the voter registration application”.
Oliver said that Ohio must offer applicants the opportunity to register once they’ve submitted their driver’s license application, not after it’s been approved by the state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV).
“To interpret this section of the NVRA otherwise would allow States to make registering to vote at the BMV more onerous, and could result in fewer voter registrations because the opportunity to apply was not proactively offered to otherwise eligible citizens,” Oliver added.
In 1995, Ohio passed a so-called “motor-voter” law that allowed residents the opportunity to register to vote when they applied for a driver’s license
But that law was amended last year by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in an attempt to crack down on unproven claims, pushed in part by US President Donald Trump, that noncitizens were voting in the state’s election. US law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
The ruling marks a victory for voting rights advocates like Red Wine & Blue, which sued Ohio’s secretary of state, Frank LaRose, over claims that the law disenfranchised eligible voters and violated the NVRA.
One of the group’s lawyers, Ben Stafford, praised the ruling, calling it “a win for Ohio voters.”
“With the registration deadline just weeks away, eligible Ohioans will now have the opportunity to register to vote at the BMV without having to produce unnecessary paperwork that is not required by federal law,” Stafford, an attorney at Elias Law Group, said in a statement.
LaRose said his office disagrees with the decision and will appeal.