Supreme

WASHINGTON  — California and 22 other Democratic-led states urged the Supreme Court on Monday to block President Trump’s plan to take control of voting by mail through the U.S. Postal Service.

They said it is too late in the election year to impose a new set of regulations for mail ballots.

Doing so, they said, would lead to mistakes, including eligible and registered voters being told they are not on the federal government’s approved list.

“Because of the high risk of errors and the limited window for correcting mistakes, many of the millions of voters who rely on mail voting — especially voters with disabilities and those in rural areas — would likely be denied mail ballots and disenfranchised,” they told the court.

More broadly, they argued that the Constitution “entrusted the states and Congress — not the president — with the responsibility to set rules for federal elections.”

The justices are likely to act in a few days on whether to allow the Trump administration‘s plan to proceed pending the adoption of new and detailed guidelines.

Last week, Trump Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court contending judges in Boston moved too quickly to halt the administration’s new federal restrictions on voting by mail.

He argued judges should stand back for now, even though the midterm elections are only three months away.

Trump’s executive order required the U.S. Postal Service to use state-by-state lists of eligible voters who may send a ballot by mail.

Until now, states have had the constitutional authority to register voters for federal and state elections. And nearly a third of Americans now vote by mail.

Trump, however, has insisted that voting by mail leads to fraud, including by allowing noncitizens to vote.

Congress has refused to adopt new voting restrictions at Trump’s behest.

Instead, he issued an executive order on March 31 to enlist the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure “citizenship verification and integrity in federal elections.”

The order called on Homeland Security to compile state-by-state lists of citizens who are eligible to vote. And it told the postal service that it must use those lists to restrict who may vote by mail.

“The USPS shall not transmit mail-in or absentee ballots from any individual unless those individuals have been enrolled on a State-specific list,” the order said.

But a federal judge and the 1st Circuit Court in Boston ruled Trump’s new regulations may not be enforced this year, at least in the 23 Democratic-led states which sued.

On Monday, they told the court that USPS delivered nearly 100 million mail ballots to or from voters in 2024, with roughly 30% of all voters nationwide casting ballots by mail.

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas voters will decide Tuesday whether to elect state Supreme Court justices rather than have the governor appoint them, a push from conservatives who have chafed for years over court decisions they disagreed with on issues such as abortion, school funding and the death penalty.

If the constitutional amendment passes, supporters hope to elect at least four conservative, antiabortion justices to the seven-member court by 2033.

Kansas is considering the change amid concerns that increasingly contentious and expensive judicial elections in other states are making their courts more partisan and less independent. Spending in a single state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin last year topped $100 million.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a term-limited Democrat who opposes the measure, said gerrymandering and dark money have put the Legislature out of step with the state’s voters, and “to think you can make the judicial branch a part of that dysfunctional system is frightening.”

Rulings the GOP dislikes

GOP lawmakers cite rulings by Kansas courts over the last two decades as reasons a change is needed.

Most recently, a district court judge in July reinstated a three-day grace period for voters to return mail ballots after election day, which GOP lawmakers had eliminated. Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, called the decision “outrageous” and urged people to vote yes on the ballot question.

The same judge — a finalist to fill the most recent Supreme Court vacancy — blocked enforcement of a 2025 law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Masterson described him as “radical.”

The list of rulings Republicans criticize also includes rulings on education funding back to 2004. Supreme Court decisions forced lawmakers to increase funding to comply with the state constitution.

“If we elect our Supreme Court, they won’t force you to spend money on schools,” Masterson said in remarks in November to a conservative group, the Marion County Patriots for Liberty, the Marion County Record reported.

Abortion remains a key issue

Electing state Supreme Court justices gained currency among Republicans after a 2022 public vote affirming the high court’s landmark 2019 decision that Kansas’ Bill of Rights guarantees bodily autonomy and access to abortion. Total spending by both sides has exceeded $12 million.

Legislators who worked to overturn the Supreme Court’s protections, including Masterson, helped write this proposal.

Seven weeks after that 2022 vote, state Atty. Gen. Kris Kobach, then a GOP candidate for the office, told a Republican club in Wichita that electing justices would “slowly and quietly” put antiabortion justices on the high court.

The vote-yes campaign’s biggest donor — providing $1.7 million toward the campaign’s $3.7 million in spending — is a Nashville-based nonprofit that supports Republican candidates, groups and causes. Kansans for Life, the state’s most influential antiabortion group, has spent at least $87,000 in a recent 11-day span on mailers and texts.

“Kansans can bring an end to this reign of abortion by voting ‘yes,’” Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, said in an editorial written by a staffer on the antiabortion group’s website.

Meanwhile, the national and state affiliates for abortion provider Planned Parenthood contributed $1.6 million toward the vote-no campaign’s $8 million-plus in spending.

Jamie Swan, an engineer and college teaching assistant who knocked on doors for abortion rights in 2022, is doing the same to try to halt the proposal.

“I really believe that this is just a power grab,” she said.

Legislators have no say in appointments

Backers of the Kansas proposal brush aside arguments that electing the justices will give wealthy donors control over the Supreme Court.

“Globally and over history, even in its imperfection, the best system is democracy,” said Elizabeth Patton, state director of the low-tax, small-government group Americans for Prosperity, which has spent $935,000 to promote the vote-yes campaign.

Twenty-two states elect their top court’s judges, eight in partisan races. Governors in 26 states appoint them. In South Carolina and Virginia, legislators pick the justices.

Kansas elected justices for nearly 100 years before voters amended the state constitution in 1958. The governor now picks one of three finalists named by a nominating commission controlled by attorneys. Legislators have no role.

A review of every state’s current and past constitutions shows that the last state to add an amendment like the one Kansas is contemplating was Mississippi in 1914. Since then, 18 states’ amendments went the opposite way.

Voters weigh in every six years on whether a justice remains on the bench through a yes-or-no ballot question, but they’ve never booted a sitting justice. Conservatives say that means justices face no consequences for errant decisions.

Retirements and deaths on the bench allowed Kelly to appoint four of the current justices. Recently, the governor picked a district court judge who blocked enforcement of long-standing abortion restrictions in 2023.

“We don’t have a good way to fight back,” said state Sen. Mike Thompson, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican, who backs the measure.

Hanna writes for the Associated Press.

Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Ammori has been granted permission to challenge the UK government’s decision to designate the group a terrorist organisation at the Supreme Court.

By almost every measure, Latino communities are bearing the brunt of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, according to a new report.

The League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, a Latino civil rights organization, found that court-sanctioned racial profiling has contributed to the disproportionate targeting of Latinos regardless of their immigration status.

“The impact of mass deportation is falling on Latinos as an ethnic group, not on undocumented immigrants as a legal category,” the report read in part. “U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, work-authorized immigrants, and multi-generational American families are absorbing measurable harm: economic, physical, and civic.”

Although other immigrant groups have been targeted, LULAC found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have mostly focused on immigrants from Latin America, particularly workers with no criminal history, who are also more likely to face violence or be placed in detention centers with substandard conditions.

Citing a recent UCLA study, LULAC said from January to October, federal immigration agents arrested more than 187,000 Latinos and deported more than 126,000.

Latino arrests also jumped from under 3,900 to nearly 6,000 after Stephen Miller, White House senior advisor and chief architect of President Trump’s immigration policy, set a new goal of arresting 3,000 undocumented people a day.

In an email response to The Times, a spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security rejected the report’s findings.

“Allegations that DHS law enforcement engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” the spokesperson wrote. “What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.—NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity.”

“Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” the spokesperson added. “The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”

LULAC’s report comes amid recent court filings claiming that federal immigration agents were caught on body camera footage and in text messages using racial slurs when referring to Latinos.

Additionally, Congress recently approved nearly $70 billion in immigration enforcement funding to cover the rest of Trump’s term with at least $38 billion to go to ICE and $26 billion to Customs and Border Protection.

LULAC said in putting the report together it reviewed public data and published studies to provide a fact sheet that paints a broader picture about the impact mass deportations are having on Latinos.

“The people being removed are disproportionately working-age, employed and without criminal records — the demographic core of the workforce in construction, hospitality, agriculture, food processing, and care work,” the report read.

As of July 11, more than 65,000 people were being held in detention and about 70% of the population had no criminal convictions, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering organization.

ICE detention data show that about 40% of detainees were being held for civil immigration violations including visa overstays and work visa violations.

Unless previously deported, living in the country illegally is considered a civil violation rather than a crime and carries penalties such as arrests, fines and deportation proceedings.

The indiscriminate immigration raids that terrorized Latino communities appeared to have worsened after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in September, according to LULAC’s report.

The Supreme Court justices overturned a district court injunction that barred immigration agents in Los Angeles from roving around Home Depots and car washes, stopping brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking day laborers and others from arrest on immigration charges.

But once the injunction lifted, federal immigration agents descended once more on Latino communities, even stopping U.S. citizens, according to LULAC.

This month, the American Civil Liberties Union reviewed more than 1,200 enforcement incidents across eight states, identifying 155 U.S. citizens who were detained, targeted, or experienced law enforcement misconduct, and 437 incidents involving likely racial profiling. It also identified 214 children affected, including 32 Americans.

LULAC said the immigration raids had an economic impact. Citing a recent UCLA study, it said small business and Latino entrepreneurs in Los Angeles County saw foot traffic drop significantly, losing millions in potential revenue in June 2025.

A spokesperson for LULAC could not immediately be reached for comment.

WASHINGTON — President Trump and the Justice Department are asking the Supreme Court to toss an $83 million defamation verdict won by writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexual assault, saying he can’t be sued for comments he made while he was president.

It’s the second time Trump has asked the justices to nix damages awarded by a jury to Carroll, a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host. The Supreme Court refused in June to hear his appeal of another verdict, for $5 million, that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

The latest case centers on comments Trump made during his first term as president. The Justice Department wants to invoke the Westfall Act, which shields government employees from being sued for doing their jobs.

“Absent this Court’s intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office,” federal attorneys wrote. “That alone deserves this Court’s attention.”

The appeal was filed electronically and is expected to be formally docketed with the court Wednesday.

Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, argued that an appeals court “engaged in procedural contortions” to avoid addressing Trump’s claims that presidential immunity protects him from the $83 million award because he made the statements in question in 2019 while he was president.

The lawyers argued that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled in a manner that “cries out for this Court’s review in this unprecedented case” and called the damages “grossly excessive.”

“This is the first case in our nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a president for his conduct in office,” the lawyers wrote.

Carroll’s lawyers have declined to comment on the latest Trump filing.

Trump has long argued he cannot be sued over comments he made about Carroll during his first term where he disavowed knowing her and attacked her motivations for going public with her story in a recent memoir. He’s also asking the Supreme Court justices to reconsider their rejection of his appeal in the $5 million verdict.

The appeal comes about two years after the Supreme Court granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

Carroll testified twice before New York juries that Trump sexually assaulted her in spring 1996 in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower. She first went public with the claims in a 2019 memoir.

She sued Trump for defamation after he accused her of making up the allegation to help book sales, adding that he’d never met her and “she’s not my type.” He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

A Manhattan jury awarded her $83 million in damages in January 2024. Lower courts have so far rejected Trump’s appeals to overturn the verdict, though the New York-based appeals court split over the decision and agreed to delay that payout until the Supreme Court weighs in.

In 2023, another jury said Carroll was entitled to $5 million after concluding that Trump had subjected her to sexual abuse in the department store encounter and for defamation for remarks he had made after his first term ended. That judgment has been paid.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

Whitehurst and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. Neumeister reported from New York.

A lower court blocked the mail-in ballot restrictions, ruling Trump lacked authority to change state election rules.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to allow it to move ahead with sweeping restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections, as it continues its push to reshape how federal elections are run.

In an emergency filing on Monday, the Justice Department asked the country’s highest court to pause a lower court ruling that blocked parts of Trump’s March executive order in 23 Democratic-led states and Washington, DC. The pause would remain in effect as the legal challenges play out, per the request.

The executive order directed federal agencies to help create state lists of eligible voters and required the US Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. It also instructed the Justice Department to prioritise investigations into election officials accused of issuing ballots to ineligible voters.

US District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the order in June, ruling that Trump lacked the authority to unilaterally change how states administer federal elections. She noted that under the Constitution, states oversee voter-eligibility requirements.

Over the weekend, the First US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to pause that ruling, prompting the administration to take the issue to the Supreme Court.

In its request to the top court, the administration argued that the order amounted to “general policy guidance” rather than a directive dictating how states should administer elections.

Solicitor General John Sauer wrote: “The injunction is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order, yet the district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful.”

He urged the Supreme Court to act quickly as the new policy would have to be in place by August to be effective by the midterm election in November.

Trump has long claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud undermined the 2020 presidential election and has repeatedly questioned the security of mail-in voting, despite studies showing that such fraud is rare.

He has promised to end the widespread use of mail ballots before the midterms, which will determine which party takes control of the US House of Representatives and Senate.

Voting rights advocates say restricting mail-in voting could disproportionately affect Democratic voters, who have historically been more likely than Republicans to cast their ballots by mail.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to lift a judge’s order and clear the way for state-by-state lists of citizens who are eligible to vote by mail.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal and said judges in Boston had wrongly intervened too soon.

In March, Trump ordered the U.S. Postal Service to direct states to compile a list of citizens who are eligible to vote. This list would limit who may receive a mail ballot.

He also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to “compile and transmit state-specific lists of individuals who are citizens and will be 18 years of age or older at the time of an upcoming election,” Sauer said.

Lawyers for California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued, arguing the states, not the federal government, have the constitutional authority to set the rules for voting and elections.

In June, they won before a federal judge in Boston who blocked Trump’s order from going forward, at least in the 23 states which had sued. Her decision was upheld over the weekend by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.

In his appeal, Trump’s solicitor general focused on a procedural question, not the issue of whether the president has the legal authority to impose national rules on state-run elections.

Sauer said the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security had not issued final specific plans to comply with Trump’s directive.

“Courts cannot enjoin implementation of Executive Orders that leave open material issues that still need to be resolved by agencies,” he wrote.

He asked the court to lift or stay the “premature injunctions.”

Time is running short, he said.

“Absent a stay … there will not be sufficient time to obtain appellate relief before the November election,” Sauer said. “That is especially true because implementation efforts for any USPS rule or DHS policy will need to begin well before November … particularly given that absentee and mail-in voting begin (in some States) several weeks prior to Election Day.”

The justices asked for a response from the 23 Democratic states by Aug. 3.

A message attributed to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has promised “unforgettable lessons” to Washington during their escalating conflict. But it also homed in on another theme that tempered some of the fire of his warnings against the US, amid eight nights of renewed fighting between the two countries.

Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard from since being made supreme leader in March, said Iranians must uphold “sacred unity” as a fundamental imperative, particularly against the United States.

His message also stated that it was a duty for the Iranian population and officials to refrain from “division, political disputes, and increases in social differences”. Iran’s enemies, he said, likely referring to the US and Israel, “must not detect any sign of weakness from us”.

The call for national unity comes against the backdrop of events in June, when another Khamenei statement stirred debate and controversy among some of the most hardline supporters of the Islamic Republic regarding the recently signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the US.

Khamenei said that although he “held a different view” about the agreement to pause four months of fighting, he approved it after President Masoud Pezeshkian, as chairman of the Supreme National Security Council, accepted responsibility for the deal.

This fired up unyielding supporters of the Islamic Republic who continue to take to city squares and streets at night with backing from armed security forces, angered about the deal.

Critics believe Khamenei was being forced into accepting a bad deal, and hardline clerical lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian even resorted to reading from classified material on live television in an apparent attempt to derail the arrangement. He was removed from the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee earlier this month.

Others went as far as accusing officials of treason, and the president and other officials linked to the deal were heckled during the funeral ceremonies for assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier this month.

The MoU has been suspended by Tehran but was already effectively on the verge of collapse after Iran and the US traded fire over control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz over the past week.

Projection of military and political unity

Since Mojtaba Khamenei’s statement on Saturday, other officials have strived to present a united front between armed forces and the political and diplomatic apparatus, each with their own views on the MoU.

Ali Abdollahi, the head of Iran’s wartime joint command, vowed that the armed forces will heed Khamenei’s directive for “sacred unity and national cohesion”.

But he also warned the US, which he referred to as a “big Satan and criminal enemy”, that it will face a “decisive and destructive response” for its recent attacks on Iran, which has seen bridges, roads, and other civilian infrastructure destroyed.

President Pezeshkian thanked the supreme leader’s “wise” message and highlighted the part where he urged “trust” in the heads of government, parliament and judiciary.

“Adherence to the means of sacred unity and refraining from division and discord is the key to victory at this historic juncture,” he wrote on X.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliament speaker who has faced harsh criticism from hardliners as chief negotiator in talks with the Americans, said following Khamenei’s directive is critical to Iran’s success.

“We must regard obedience to this religious and national decree of the supreme leader of the revolution as an important part of our historical role in national resistance and governance of the country,” he also tweeted in Persian on Sunday.

These messages appeared aimed at foreign audiences, coming shortly after senior US officials, anonymously briefing media in Washington, tried to blame the Hormuz escalation on an “errant” hardline faction inside Iran seeking to obstruct negotiations.

The state-linked Khorasan newspaper published an editorial on Sunday saying that Khamenei’s latest statement carried the message that “criticism is accepted, but never accusations” against officials.

“To those who claim to be revolutionaries, the supreme leader’s message was an ultimatum for you: Stop telling lies about the authorities,” the article read.

Iran’s military and political officials did not directly address the claim earlier this month, but released more statements proclaiming a unified view on how to address the conflict and regarding control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Speaking during an interview released on Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi continued to back a negotiated end to the war, which has seen Iran’s civilian infrastructure systematically targeted in US air strikes over the past week.

“If we had reached the [April] ceasefire 10 days earlier, we still had Larijani, Khatib, Asaluyeh and Foolad Mobarakeh,” the chief diplomat said in reference to assassinated security chief Ali Larijani, intelligence minister Esmail Khatib, and the country’s heavily bombed petrochemical facilities and steel plants.

But as tit-for-tat strikes continue between the two sides, there is no sign of both parties returning to the negotiating table.

Mojtaba Khamenei says Trump’s signature is ‘worthless’ and that ‘bullying’ is a core element of US foreign policy.

Iran’s supreme leader has warned that the United States will suffer “unforgettable lessons” at the hands of Tehran and its regional allies, accusing the US of repeatedly violating the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two countries.

A written statement attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei was read out on state television on Saturday, in which the supreme leader said Washington’s breaches of last month’s MoU showed that President Donald Trump’s signature was “utterly worthless and invalid”.

“The repeated breach of agreements by the Great Satan vis-a-vis the accord has once again proven to all that the signature of the President of America is now utterly worthless and invalid, and that bullying, hegemonism and savagery are inseparable components of the American creed and doctrine,” the statement read.

“Now that the American enemy is seeking to foment war and suffer heavier costs and further humiliation, it should know that the dear nation of Iran and the Resistance Front hold unforgettable lessons for it,” it added.

The US dramatically escalated its attacks on Iran this week by targeting civilian infrastructure, including bridges, railway lines and water desalination plants.

Tehran has responded by successfully striking civilian infrastructure in Kuwait, with authorities there urging everyone to ration electricity.

The US-Israeli war on Iran, which began in February, is seen as existential by the country’s senior leadership.

Tehran has shown no sign of caving to the increasing demands from the Trump administration, as regional countries continue to push for an end to the conflict behind the scenes.

Khamenei said the US has “revealed its true face,” exposing its “deceitfulness, irrationality, unreliability and wickedness”.

He called on Iranians to trust the leadership to protect the country, urging people to remain “vigilant” and “active” as the fighting grinds on.

Reports have surfaced in recent days that the Houthis in Yemen could close the Bab al-Mandeb gateway to the Red Sea in support of their crucial ally Iran. That would further destabilise global energy markets, increase inflation and apply additional pressure on Trump to halt attacks.

The war is deeply unpopular in the US and has inflicted economic harm on Americans.

The MoU mediated by Qatar and Pakistan and signed last month aimed to create the conditions to bring the war to a permanent end.

However, Tehran and Washington have since declared the accord “over” after accusing each other of violating it.

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told lawmakers Tuesday that a sharp increase in threats targeting her and other justices is increasingly encroaching on their personal and family lives.

During a rare appearance by justices before Congress, Barrett said she had to wear a bulletproof vest home a few years ago, something she struggled to explain to her 12-year-old son.

“I didn’t expect that performing this service would put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was, why I had to wear one,” she said.

She and Justice Elena Kagan testified before a House appropriations panel in support of a request to increase security funding for members of the nation’s highest court.

Judges around the country have seen a rise in threats of violence and intimidation. Barrett’s home was also targeted by a swatting call to police in May.

The hearing comes two weeks after the conservative-majority court finished handing down a series of major opinions, including a decision that increased President Trump’s power over federal regulatory agencies and another that rejected his wide-ranging tariffs, sparking harsh personal criticism.

It’s the first time justices have testified before Congress since 2019, and the two justices are facing wide-ranging questions about the court’s work.

Security is central to the Supreme Court’s budget request

The Supreme Court requested a total of $228 million for next fiscal year, a roughly 10% increase over the year before. About $18 million of that is for maintaining the building and grounds.

Much of the requested increase, $14.6 million, would go to expanding personal protection for justices, with six more agents for each.

An additional $2 million would fund an off-site residential security post aimed at making emergency responses faster, as well as increasing the number of Supreme Court police officers.

The U.S. Marshals Service, responsible for protecting judges, reported 564 threats in the government fiscal year that ended in September, an increase from the year before.

That total includes threats to the hundreds of federal judges around the country, though the nine-member Supreme Court has not been immune.

In May, Barrett’s security detail worked with police to quickly deal with the swatting incident, a fake 911 call designed to provoke a police response. Last year, her sister was the victim of a bomb threat in Charleston, S.C., police said. No bomb was found.

In 2022, shortly after the leak of a draft opinion overturning the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision, a would-be assassin was arrested near the home of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh with weapons and zip ties. Threats to the Supreme Court increased after that leak and have continued to grow, Kagan said.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has condemned the threats to all U.S. judges, saying during a speech in March that criticism of judicial opinions is understandable, but personally directed hostility is “dangerous, and it’s got to stop.”

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservative justices say they decide cases based on the words and original history of the Constitution — and not on their personal or political views.

Following the lead set by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, they say they see history and “originalism” as a guiding principle to prevent judges from changing the Constitution to adjust to new and changing times.

This text-and-history approach is said to contrast with an evolving or “living Constitution” favored by progressives and liberal activists.

But this year saw a flip of sorts on birthright citizenship.

The foremost conservatives agreed with President Trump that the surge of illegal immigration called for reconsidering the promise of citizenship at birth set out in the 14th Amendment of 1868.

“The number of illegal immigrants in this country exploded” in recent years, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in dissent. The rule of citizenship at birth provides “a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally,” he added.

“The Constitution is an enduring document,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, but its rules and meaning must adjust to “modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers.”

In a concurring opinion, he said that “significant illegal immigration into the United States is a new circumstance that was largely unknown as of 1868.”

There were no federal immigration laws in the mid-19th century, but it was an era when a surge of Irish immigrants had settled on the East Coast and large numbers of Chinese immigrants came to California.

Under the law, their children were deemed to be citizens at birth.

Among the conservative originalists, only Justice Amy Coney Barrett signed the majority opinion that was written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and joined by the three liberals.

The opening words of the 14th Amendment of 1868 say: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”

In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld the rule of citizenship at birth in the case of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents.

In an executive order, Trump proposed to end birthright citizenship for the newborns whose parents were in the country illegally or temporarily.

Writing for the court, the chief justice said the words of the 14th Amendment were clear and were clearly understood at the time. He dismissed the “dramatically revisionist view” that has been cited recently.

Kavanaugh voted with the majority to block Trump’s order from taking effect. He did so because Congress had adopted birthright citizenship in a 1952 law.

“Consistent with the 14th Amendment, Congress could … enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship,” he wrote.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito wrote long dissents arguing that the framers of the 14th Amendment did not or would not have favored birthright citizenship.

They pointed to recent scholarship by law professors that raised questions about the accepted understanding of the 14th Amendment and the citizenship rule.

Thomas said citizenship of the child should turn on whether the parents were “domiciled” in this country. Black people who were enslaved were undoubtedly domiciled here, but the same is not true of temporary visitors.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch agreed in part with Thomas and questioned whether the newborns of temporary visitors should be deemed as citizens at birth.

Many court commentators were surprised by the close 5-4 divide on the constitutional issue.

“Given how clear the language was, I expected it to be 7 to 2,” said Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor. “I really gasped when I saw it was 5-4. This is not settled. We’re not done with this debate.”

Sarah Isgur, a podcaster and SCOTUSblog analyst, said that “originalism is getting more and more muddled. Either the history matters or it doesn’t.”

However, she agreed with Kavanaugh’s approach of leaving it to Congress to reconsider the issue.

Not all originalists are conservative.

Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar, a constitutional historian, argued that the history of birthright citizenship is clear and not subject to revisionist thinking. He said the Reconstruction Congress adopted this principle of citizenship at birth and stated their intent in clear words in the 14th Amendment.

“When a baby is born on American soil and an American flag flies above, that baby is a birthright citizen, as the Reconstruction Republicans across the land understood,” he wrote in February. This rule “has virtually nothing to do with the baby’s parents.”

Last week, he was mostly cheered by the court’s ruling.

“It’s a triumph, but it should have been 9-0,” Amar said on a review of the court term sponsored by SCOTUSblog. “Shame on the dissenters. They didn’t even the address the statute” and its wording.

But the majority led by Roberts “clearly affirmed the plain meaning of the constitutional text and its history. And that’s a win,” he said.

History has a recurring role at the Supreme Court.

Isgur noted the court will hear arguments in the fall on whether the 2nd Amendment of 1791 gives gun owners a right to have “assault weapons” like AR-15 rifles.

She said the court will decide then between history and changed circumstances.

At issue is whether these modern rapid-fire rifles fit within the history of the gun rights protected by the 2nd Amendment or instead represent a new and dangerous threat to public safety that was unknown in 1791.

Scalia’s opinion upholding gun rights in 2008 is often cited as a model of originalism, but it too emerged from a court divided 5-4.

The 2nd Amendment says, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bears Arms, shall not be infringed.”

For decades, the Supreme Court had all but ignored the 2nd Amendment, viewing it as a somewhat outdated provision involving militias, akin to the 3rd Amendment. It forbids having soldiers “quartered in any house … in time of peace.”

Four liberal dissenters in 2008 said the court should stand by that understanding of history.

Justice John Paul Stevens said the 2nd Amendment was added to the Constitution to protect state militias from federal interference. Moreover, the reference to “bear arms” suggests it was about militias, he said.

But Scalia’s opinion stands as the landmark precedent, and he said the dissenters had the history all wrong.

The right to have guns for self-defense arose in England and came to the American colonies. “By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects,” he wrote.

The 2nd Amendment did not establish a new right, he said. Rather, it “codified a pre-existing right [of] having and using arms for self-preservation and [defense],” he wrote.

“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history,” Scalia wrote, “that the 2nd Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

CONCORD, N.H. — Two transgender girls who were the first to challenge President Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” have withdrawn their lawsuit in New Hampshire based on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld state bans on transgender athletes in girls’ sports and their own personal hardships, their lawyer said.

“This case was always about two courageous young girls who simply wanted the same opportunities as their peers to participate in school life,” their lawyer, Chris Erchull of GLAD Law, said in a statement Thursday. “Their willingness to stand up to extraordinary hostility made clear the human cost of laws that target transgender youth.”

The teenagers, Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, took on Trump’s executive order last year, amending their 2024 complaint against New Hampshire’s law on banning transgender girls from school sports. A federal judge had granted a court order allowing them to play as the case proceeded.

For Tirrell, it meant being able to keep playing on her high school girls’ soccer team. For Turmelle, it was having a chance to try out for different sports.

Both sides agreed to pause the case and wait for a ruling from the Supreme Court as it considered similar state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school and college athletic teams in Idaho and West Virginia. Last month, the court upheld the laws. It also said that barring transgender girls and women doesn’t run afoul of the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.

One teen and her family decided to move from New Hampshire

Turmelle and her family moved out of New Hampshire last summer following proposed legislation against transgender people. One measure signed into law by Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte last year prohibits medical professionals from providing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy to new transgender patients under age 18.

“Though there may be a carve-out for people already receiving gender-affirming care, that is way too close a call for us to risk staying,” Turmelle’s mother, Amy Manzetti, wrote in an op-ed piece at the time. “Other New Hampshire laws also seek to erase her.”

Most Republican-controlled states in the past five years have adopted laws or policies limiting gender-affirming care for transgender minors and limiting which school bathrooms transgender people can use, as well as sports restrictions. The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that about 3% of youth ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender.

“The challenges with relocation are significant and burdensome — this includes having to find new employment, buying and selling homes, packing and moving possessions, integrating kids with a new school system, losing access to longstanding family and friends, and potential loss of income,” Corinne Goodwin, the executive director of Eastern PA Trans Equality Project in Pennsylvania, said in an email.

“But these families do so because they love their kids and know that supporting them with the care and opportunities they need is critical to their long-term success and happiness.”

The other teen gave up playing soccer at high school

Tirrell, 17, began her junior year last fall on the girls’ junior varsity soccer team. Things were fine at first, and each time she scored a goal, she got a round of ice cream from her parents. But a few weeks into the season, she decided to stop playing.

“With all of the political stuff going on, soccer wasn’t just about the game anymore,” her mother, Sara Tirrell, told The Associated Press in an interview.

It became more about preparing for the possibility of conflict.

“Were there any local Facebook groups where they were sort of agitating about potential protests and how do we prepare, and what are we walking into, and we never kind of knew,” she said. “We were on a lot of pins and needles, especially after the previous season.”

She was referring to a controversy at an away game where two dads from an opposing team were banned from school grounds for wearing pink wristbands marked “XX” to represent female chromosomes. They sued the school district and a judge ruled against them. They have appealed their case.

Last fall, there was an increased presence of school administrators at the games and bus drivers pulled in closer to the field so the students weren’t in the parking lot, she said.

“Parker didn’t talk about it a lot, but I think she could see that stress for everybody — for her, for her teammates, for her coaches,” Sara Tirrell said. “She felt kind of bad about pulling them all into that circus again. And so she ultimately said, ‘This isn’t fun anymore and I don’t want to do it.’”

Parker’s father described the atmosphere as “palpable tension.”

Even playing on her own turf, “there would typically be a couple of police officers at the home games where there weren’t previously,” Zach Tirrell said.

In the past, Parker also played soccer in a recreation league and could still do so.

“But I think it all kind of still sort of weighs on her,” her mother said. “It’s the same group of kids that she plays with who, honestly, have been very supportive and love to have her on the team and have expressed that to her many times over. But I think she still has that worry in her brain around, ‘What are other people going to say and do if I show up at a game?’”

Parker’s parents hope she’ll return to playing soccer some day. In the meantime, “she plans to be around and use her voice to continue standing up to discrimination,” her mother said. “In some ways she’s had to grow up a lot faster than some of her peers.”

McCormack writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, N.J., contributed to this report.

MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an attempt by a conservative activist to obtain guardianship records in an effort to find ineligible voters in the presidential battleground state.

The case has been wending its way through the courts for years and stems from attempts by conservatives to overturn President Biden’s victory in Wisconsin over President Trump in 2020.

Here’s what to know:

A conservative activist brought the case

The case tested the line between protecting personal privacy rights and ensuring that ineligible people can’t vote.

Former travel executive Ron Heuer and a group he leads, the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, brought the lawsuit in 2022 alleging that the number of ineligible voters doesn’t match the count on Wisconsin’s voter registration list. The lawsuit doesn’t specify how many people could be affected.

In Wisconsin, a guardianship order is granted by a court giving a person certain legal rights over another who is determined to be unable to make decisions about their life. A court has the power to remove the right to vote from a person under a guardianship order if the person is determined to be unable to understand “the objective of the election process.”

Heuer asked the state Supreme Court to rule that counties must release records filed when a judge determines that someone isn’t competent to vote so that those names can be compared to the voter registration list.

Heuer’s attorney, Erick Kaardal, argued that privacy concerns could be balanced with the public’s right to access government records by redacting identifying or sensitive information on the forms.

But the attorney for Walworth County said those seeking access to the records wanted to cross-check ineligible voters against the names of those registered. They can’t do that, attorney Sam Hall said during oral arguments, without releasing the person’s name and address.

Hall praised the ruling, saying it “protects the privacy of vulnerable individuals while preserving their dignity.”

Kaardal did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, which advocates for public access to documents but did not take a position on this case, said the court’s decision was “narrowly tailored and should not have a huge impact.”

The council praised the court for clarifying the standard for deciding similar cases in the future, but that “it’s always disappointing when access to public information is curtailed.”

Signs supporting Judge Susan Crawford, and voting and election officials adorn the front yard of a home on South 16th Street on election day April 1, 2025, in Milwaukee.

(Kayla Wolf / Associated Press)

Liberal justices who control Wisconsin Supreme Court reject the case

In the 5-2 ruling on Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority along with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn ruled that the records are not public as the conservative activist had claimed.

The court took the case after two lower state appeals courts issued divergent rulings. One appeals court, based in Madison, denied access to the records while another appeals court, based in Waukesha, said in 2023 that the records should be made public.

It ordered Walworth County to release them with birth dates and case numbers redacted.

The Supreme Court overturned the appeals court ruling that the records should be made public.

State law is clear that the records being sought are not public and “the Alliance has no right to the records,” Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote for the majority.

Conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented, saying the court adopted “an overbroad and unworkable definition of what records pertain to a finding of incompetency” to include the forms that indicate a person has been found ineligible to vote.

Those forms are not pertinent to the finding of incompetency and are therefore subject to the open records law, Ziegler and Bradley wrote.

The case was one of several targeting the 2020 election

The case was an attempt by those who questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential race to cast doubt on the integrity of elections in the presidential swing state. Heuer and the WVA filed lawsuits in 13 Wisconsin counties in 2022 seeking guardianship records.

Heuer and the WVA have pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in a failed attempt to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin. Heuer was hired as an investigator in the discredited 2020 election probe led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. The probe found no evidence of fraud or abuse that would have changed the election results.

The WVA also filed two unsuccessful lawsuits that sought to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin.

Trump won Wisconsin in 2024 after losing in 2020

Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and the recounts Trump requested. Trump won Wisconsin in 2024 by about 29,000 votes.

There are no pending lawsuits challenging the results of the 2024 election or calls to investigate the outcome.

Bauer writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Over the past year and a half, the Trump administration has turned repeatedly to the Supreme Court for clearance on its sweeping immigration enforcement plans. While the administration lost its bid this week to do away with birthright citizenship by executive order, its strategy has, in large part, been a success.

In a White House news release listing 60 actions the administration has taken as part of its America First agenda to restrict immigration, the first four actions were decisions by the Supreme Court.

After the court ruled in June that President Trump can, without judicial review, end temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, his administration celebrated the ruling as a “major victory for American sovereignty.”

The list of accomplishments also noted that the high court had granted immigration officers greater leeway to remove green card holders who are accused but not convicted of crimes; allowed the administration to limit how many people can apply for asylum; and gave it the green light to continue deporting immigrants to third-party countries where they have no connection.

The decisions raise significant consequences for immigrants who have made their lives in the U.S., and stand to reshape public views over the country’s historic position as a place of refuge. The administration has not only tried to restrict illegal immigration, it has also targeted people residing in the country legally and stepped up efforts to drive them out.

The court’s term that ended last week is the most robust judicial affirmation of executive power over immigration in the court’s history, said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. Chishti said the rulings signify that future presidents could continue to change immigration policies at their discretion.

“The biggest impact is that we have now fully understood the power of the presidency, especially in immigration matters,” Chishti said. “Where there is any discretion left to the president or the executive, this Supreme Court has widened the limits of that authority.”

One of Trump’s earliest wins since returning to the White House came last September, when the Supreme Court affirmed that immigration agents can stop anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally on the basis of their perceived race and ethnicity, job or the language they speak.

Afterward, federal officials launched enforcement operations in Chicago, North Carolina and Minneapolis, using increasingly aggressive tactics until two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by immigration agents in January and the administration shifted course.

The Supreme Court’s rulings have landed with particular force in South Florida, which is home to the largest share of Venezuelan immigrants in the country.

The end of Temporary Protected Status — a program intended to protect people in the event of a natural disaster — heightened concerns about deportation to a country that is reeling after twin earthquakes from June 24. More than 100 Venezuelans deported from the U.S. hours before the disaster are among those missing.

Some Florida Republicans called on the administration to renew the legal protections for Venezuelans in the U.S.

“Congress specifically included earthquakes in the TPS statute for moments exactly like this,” said Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.). “I urge the Administration to redesignate TPS for Venezuelans already in the United States because sending them back after this catastrophe is simply not the right thing to do.”

The White House did not respond to a request seeking comment on whether Trump would authorize humanitarian relief for Venezuelan immigrants.

Immigrants from El Salvador are now holding their breath for an upcoming decision on their TPS designation, which is set to expire Sept. 9.

About 1.3 million people from 17 countries were enrolled in the program when Trump took office last year. The administration has already terminated TPS for many of them, and the Supreme Court’s decision last week, which concerned Haitians and Syrians, clears the way for federal officials to continue.

“The implication of this is that at least most of the claims that have been litigated to challenge this administration’s illegal war on TPS are now foreclosed,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, who presented arguments for the Syria case.

The concern among advocates took on greater urgency after The New York Times and other outlets reported on Thursdaythat immigration officials, seeking to reach a goal of 2,000 arrests per day, had detained more than 10,000 people in less than a week.

Arnulfo De La Cruz, who leads a California union representing thousands of home care workers with temporary protected status, said he is alarmed by the Supreme Court’s many immigration rulings.

“We’re getting into really dangerous territory with, in some ways, the Supreme Court almost legislating the priorities of the administration,” said De La Cruz, who is president of SEIU California and SEIU Local 2015. “That’s the responsibility of Congress.”

In a blow to a centerpiece of the administration’s immigration agenda, the divided Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship — that, with few exceptions, a person born in U.S. soil is citizen.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired Cornell University immigration law professor, called the ruling one setback among Trump’s largely successful restructuring of how the U.S. treats immigrants. He pointed to a tracker led by a Stanford University law professor that lists more than 700 immigration policy actions by the Trump administration so far.

“Despite this seemingly historic loss, the Trump administration is winning its war on immigrants,” Yale-Loehr said.

And now some Republicans, including Trump, are saying Congress should lead the attack on birthright citizenship.

“You can’t have the kinds of immigration programs other countries have when you can just have a baby here, and now that child is an American citizen,” said Stephen Miller, a Trump aide who is behind much of his immigration agenda.

But Chishti, of the Migration Policy Institute, said in reality, “Congress can’t do anything — it was left powerless by the Supreme Court.”

Other conservatives called on the administration to lean on the considerable authority it already has.

Dale Wilcox, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a hard-line restrictionist group, said the birthright decision “makes it all the more urgent to step up enforcement to the maximum possible extent.”

Democrats, meanwhile, cheered the win while acknowledging that their fight against the administration’s immigration policies continues.

“We cannot rest,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). “Because this is certainly not the end of Trump’s attacks on our Constitution, our democracy, and the notion of what it means to be American.”

More immigration-related cases are among those in the Supreme Court’s docket starting in October and could offer further expansions of executive power.

One case concerns more than 50,000 petitions filed in federal courts in hopes of obtaining the release of detained immigrants. Those petitions ballooned after the administration began limiting the ability of many immigrants to seek release through bond hearings in immigration court.

The administration is expected to put up a fierce defense.

July 3 (UPI) — The Louisiana Supreme Court granted a stay on state Attorney General Liz Murrill’s indictment, less than 24 hours after a grand jury approved charges.

The New Orleans grand jury charged Murrill, a Republican, with 16 felony counts of malfeasance in office and public intimidation related to alleged threats contained in a letter she sent to Orleans Parish leaders in May.

The letter allegedly threatened recipients, including Democratic Mayor Helena Moreno and District Attorney Jason Williams, that they could lose their positions if they opposed a new law to combine New Orleans’ criminal and district clerks of court. The eliminates the position of newly-elected Clerk of Court Calvin Duncan, a Democrat.

The Louisiana Supreme Court halted the criminal proceedings Friday morning, citing potential conflicts of interest tied to special prosecutor Laurie White’s past actions representing Duncan.

The court’s ruling also questioned reports of incidents during the grand jury proceedings, including allegations that journalists were forcibly removed from the proceedings in handcuffs.

“While the record before this Court is undeveloped, there is considerable support for the view that the Attorney General is likely to succeed on the merits of a motion to quash this indictment on either a legal basis or due to apparent procedural irregularities,” The Hill quoted the ruling as stating.

“The Attorney General makes a compelling argument concerning the disturbing defects in the grand jury proceedings and in the trial court’s handlings of those proceedings. This indictment appears to turn the law on its head and flows from what appear to be extraordinary procedural defects and improprieties.”

Murrill praised the development in a statement posted to social media.

“I’m grateful to the Louisiana Supreme Court for swiftly issuing a stay in this matter. The constitution and laws of Louisiana impose a wide swath of duties on the Attorney General. I will continue to carry out those duties to the best of my ability,” she wrote. “This matter is not over. I will still need to file the necessary motions to seek a dismissal, which will be forthcoming.”

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, R, had earlier pledged to pardon Murrill.

“I would like to inform the great citizens of Louisiana who care about the rule of law, that our fabulous Office of the Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill will not have to worry about having her reputation tarnished by this kangaroo grand jury or the Orleans Kangaroo court as I will pardon her as fast as the law allows. The criminal justice system is a circus at its finest in Orleans and we will not have any of that,” he wrote on social media.

WASHINGTON  — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. led a fractured Supreme Court this year that both expanded a president’s power to run the government and dealt major defeats to President Trump.

In Trump’s second year back in the White House, Roberts and the court punctured his claim to have power with no limits.

The justices struck down his worldwide tariffs, ruling these import taxes are a matter for Congress, not the president.

They also threw out his executive order that would end the principle of birthright citizenship. The Constitution wrote this promise into law, Roberts said, and the president may not change it.

The court also ruled in December that the president did not have the power to put National Guard troops on the streets of Chicago.

The three decisions came over fierce dissents from conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and with Neil M. Gorsuch in two of them.

The three liberal justices dissented angrily when the court ruled the administration may end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians.

They did the same when the court ruled the president may replace the top appointees of semi-independent agencies.

But they joined Roberts in a 5-4 ruling that affirmed the independence of the Federal Reserve and blocked Trump’s move to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

Trump has won on most immigration fronts because Roberts and the conservatives believe Congress put the enforcement power in the hands of the administration. They point to the law authorizing temporary protection which says there shall be “no judicial review” of the decision to end the protection.

Roberts is a solid conservative who also tries to keep the court on a middle course. It’s an approach that rarely wins plaudits from the right and almost never from the left.

This year the chief justice prevailed with different coalitions.

This week, the court ruled by a 5-4 vote against the Republican National Committee and upheld state laws that allow for counting late-arriving mail ballots. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Barrett also joined the chief justice in the rulings on tariffs and birthright citizenship.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. speaks to the Georgetown Law School graduating class in 2025.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

This week, the court also limited the power of police to use cellphone data to look for crime suspects. This too came on a 5-4 vote when Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the three liberals.

Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, who has been a friend of Roberts’ since their time in law school, said the chief justice “is clearly working very hard” to put together majorities.

“It is not easy to formally preside over a court in which five of its members (Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch on the right and Justices Sotomayor and Jackson on the left) deride the kind of efforts at moderation that is the chief’s preferred signature and harshly condemn him when he strays from their own views.”

Washington attorney Roman Martinez, a former clerk for Roberts, said the court is “clearly right of center” but the decision on tariffs was the most important of the year.

“It is a huge deal for the court to say ‘no’ to the president on his major policy initiative,” he said.

Stanford law professor Michael McConnell agreed. “It’s hard to claim the court is in Trump’s pocket when he lost the major cases,” he said.

Trump responded to the tariff defeat by calling the justices in the majority a “disgrace to our nation” and “disloyal to the Constitution.”

They “sicken me,” he said of Justices Barrett and Gorsuch, his two appointees who joined Roberts in the 6-3 majority.

Trump went to the court in April to hear his top attorney defend his executive order on birthright citizenship. He left after an hour of mostly skeptical questions.

On the term’s last day, Roberts issued a clear and eloquent 26-page opinion setting out America’s history of according citizenship to children who were born in this country, without regard to their parents.

This view came from England “and crossed the Atlantic with the colonists — and was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution,” he wrote. “Nothing is better settled,” Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1830.

But it was unsettled by the fight over slavery.

“In the odious decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, this Court imposed the Southern States’ beliefs onto the Nation” and decreed Blacks could not become citizens, Roberts wrote.

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were among the many who condemned the court’s decision, he said.

“It took more than a decade — and the addition of names such as Antietam, Gettysburg, and Chancellorsville to our national canon — but Douglass’s vision of ‘our common humanity’ would be fulfilled,” he wrote.

The Reconstruction Congress wrote this rule into the 14th Amendment and said “All persons born” here are citizens by birth.

The principle of birthright citizenship had been upheld by the Supreme Court in 1898, the chief justice wrote, and it had gone unchallenged until Trump returned to the White House last year.

But Thomas filed a 91-page dissent arguing that immigrants must be “domiciled” here before their children may become citizens.

Alito filed a separate 39-page opinion branding the Roberts opinion a “serious mistake.”

On that note, the court adjourned for its summer recess.

An estimated 10 million mourners attended Iran’s first Supreme Leader’s funeral in 1989, making it one of the world’s largest gatherings. As Iran prepares for the funeral of Khamenei, it’s expecting even bigger numbers.

June 30 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday announced that it will decide if states and cities can bar people from owning semiautomatic weapons, including AR-15-style rifles.

The court had previously declined to hear this challenge in 2025 and other times previously, CNN reported. It includes an appeal from two Illinois residents who want to buy AR-15 rifles but cannot because of a county ordinance making it illegal to buy or possess some assault weapon types. The case will be combined with one involving Connecticut residents who challenged the state’s ban on the weapons.

The high court’s current 6-3 conservative majority often backs gun rights, NBC News reported. When the court declined to hear a similar case last year, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in an opinion that the court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon,” CNN reported. He said most states do not ban the weapons and those that do are “something of an outlier.”

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia ban the weapons.

People have used assault weapons such as AR-15 rifles and other semiautomatic rifles in multiple mass shootings, including the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Twenty children and six adults died in that shooting, leading to the change in Connecticut’s laws to ban the weapons. Nineteen children and two adults died in a similar shooting involving semiautomatic weapons in 2022 at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

The court will hear the challenge in its next term, which starts in October.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld laws in West Virginia and Idaho that forbid transgender athletes from competing on girls’ sports teams.

In a 6-3 decision, the court said the federal Title IX law envisioned separate teams for girls and boys based on their biological sex at birth.

“Separate sports teams for biological males and biological females are reasonable,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “Given the inherent physical differences between the sexes, allowing only biological females to play on women’s and girls’ teams can reduce the risk of physical injury and ensure fair competition.”

Kavanaugh, who has coached girls’ teams for many years, said 27 states have adopted laws prohibiting transgender athletes on girls’ teams.

But his opinion does not say states such as California must change their laws that forbid schools from discriminating based on gender. Instead, he stressed states are free to make their own decision.

“Consistent with Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that the states may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females. They may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex. The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America,” Kavanaugh said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in part. She said the state should have considered transgender students on a case-by-case basis to decide whether they had an unfair advantage. Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented as well.

The court’s decision is likely to bolster the Trump administration’s drive to pressure states, schools and universities that permit transgender athletes to compete on girls’ and women’s sports teams.

Because the Education Department provides federal funds to these states and schools, it can require them to comply with Title IX.

The sole plaintiff in the court case was Becky Pepper-Jackson. Now 15, she has carried on a lonely legal fight to compete on her school’s track team in Bridgeport, W.Va.

Designated male at birth, she says she is the only transgender girl competing in her state and has been the target of complaints and protests.

Her case drew strong reactions on both sides of the issue.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey hailed Tuesday’s decision as “one of the most important victories for women’s athletics” since the passage of Title IX in 1972.

“We defended a simple principle most Americans instinctively understand — that women’s sports exist to provide women and girls a fair opportunity to compete and succeed,” he said.

Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, said “it is self-evident that males and females are biologically different, and the U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed this truth. It is fundamentally unfair for a male who feels like a female to demand that biological categories be ignored to accommodate his desire to compete among females.”

Joshua Block, the ACLU attorney who argued the case, called it “a heartbreaking ruling for our clients and transgender girls like them who’ve asked for nothing more than the same opportunities afforded to their peers,” he said.

“The reality is that the equality of transgender women and girls takes nothing away from, and in fact promotes, the equality of all women and girls.”

“This ruling is deeply harmful for transgender women and girls who only asked for the ability to participate in sports with their peers,” said Sasha Buchert, senior attorney with Lambda Legal. “Countless studies have demonstrated the myriad benefits that come with participation in team sports.”

The sports career of Becky Pepper-Jackson reflects some of the difficulty of the issue.

In sixth grade, she participated in cross country and described herself as slow. She “routinely placed near the back of the pack,” her attorneys told the court.

Her court appeals focused on a wish to participate in sports, not to win. But upon reaching high school, she has been winning.

In 2024, she “placed in the top three in every track event in which B.P.J. competed, winning most,” the state’s attorneys said. In the spring of 2025, “focusing on strength events, B.P.J. bumped female competitors out of the state tournament, then placed third in the state in discus and eighth in shot put while competing against much older female athletes,” they told the court.

Her ACLU attorney explained she has been winning in the shot put and discus “through hard work and practice,” not because of an advantage based on biology.

He said she “received puberty-delaying medication and gender-affirming estrogen that allowed her to undergo a hormonal puberty typical of a girl.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will hear a 2nd Amendment challenge to the gun laws in Connecticut and Cook County, Ill., that ban most semiautomatic assault weapons.

Before leaving for the summer recess, the justices issued orders on new cases that will be heard in the fall. The new 2nd Amendment case figures to be a major test of what kinds of firearms and ammunition are off-limits to state or federal regulation.

The outcome will affect California and all the states led by Democrats that strictly regulate or prohibit semiautomatic rifles, such as the AR-15.

Gun-rights advocates say these are among the most common and popular weapons in the country, and they should not banned in some states.

In response, Connecticut state attorneys said only about 2% of Americans own assault weapons, and they rarely use them for self-defense.

Since 1989, California has prohibited the sale and possession of most semiautomatic rifles and pistols that can fire more than 10 shots before reloading. Nine other states led by Democrats have similar laws.

State lawmakers said these rapid-fire guns are not needed for self-defense but can be a weapon of mass murder. All of the blue-state bans could be struck down next year if the court’s conservatives rule in favor of the 2nd Amendment claim.

Gun-rights advocates say firearms in “common use” by law-abiding owners cannot be prohibited by the government.

Four of the court’s conservatives have said in past dissents they believe the state bans on assault weapons run afoul of the 2nd Amendment. They are Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

That suggests the fate of those state laws depends on Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Joining in support of the gun-rights challenge were the state attorneys for Montana, Idaho and 25 other Republican-led states.

They urged the court to prevent liberal judges and states led by Democrats from “rewriting the 2nd Amendment … to allow hostile jurisdictions to continue infringing on their citizens’ core constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

In 2016, California’s voters approved a ballot measure that makes possession of large-capacity magazines illegal. At least 10 states have similar laws, but they apply only to the manufacture and sale of large-capacity magazines.

Gun-rights advocates sued in San Diego, leading to nearly a decade of back-and-forth litigation. A federal judge struck down these restrictions under the 2nd Amendment, but the state appealed. They were eventually upheld by the 9th Circuit Court in an en banc ruling.

Meanwhile, the 7th Circuit Court in Chicago has upheld an Illinois law and the Cook County ordinance prohibiting semiautomatic rifles and pistols. Its opinion said rapid-fire guns do not differ significantly “from machine guns and military-grade weaponry,” which can be banned under the 2nd Amendment.

Before Tuesday, the justices had repeatedly refused to weigh in on whether the 2nd Amendment’s right to “keep and bear arms” includes the right to semiautomatic “assault weapons” and large-capacity magazines.

Since 2015, the court has turned down gun-rights appeals from blue states like Illinois and Maryland over their bans on “assault weapons,” despite dissents from Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch.

As an appeals court judge in Washington, D.C., Kavanaugh voted to strike down the city’s ban on assault weapons.

Three years after John Roberts became chief justice, the court ruled for the first time in 2008 that the 2nd Amendment protected individual gun rights, not just state militias. But the 5-4 decision simply struck down a city’s ban on having a hand gun at home for self-defense.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in District of Columbia vs. Heller said the Constitution gives law-abiding persons a right to have weapons in “common use” for self-defense, but not “dangerous and unusual weapons.”

Ever since, advocates for gun rights and gun control have been arguing over whether semiautomatic guns with large-capacity magazines can be regulated because they are uniquely dangerous or are protected because they are very common.

In the past two years, the Supreme Court has a mixed record on gun regulation.

Last year, the justices in a 6-3 decision struck down a federal regulation that banned “bump stocks,” which allow rapid-fire shooting with a semiautomatic rifle.

That regulation was adopted in the first Trump administration in response to the mass shooting at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas where a lone gunman fired as many as 1,000 shots from a hotel window.

The conservative majority ruled the bump stock devices did not fit the definition of a prohibited machine gun.

Earlier this year, however, the court in a 7-2 decision upheld a regulation prohibiting unregistered “ghost guns” that were made by parts kits.

The high court strikes down campaign spending limits, citing First Amendment protections in a 6-3 decision

On the final day of rulings for the Supreme Court’s current term, the top US court overruled a case that would limit campaign spending by rejecting restrictions on coordinated spending efforts between political parties and their candidates on free speech grounds.

The court handed down the ruling on Tuesday in a 6-3 split, with the six conservative judges in the majority, citing free speech grounds, and the three liberal judges dissenting.

The Supreme Court ruled that a spending cap on campaign spending, with input from candidates, violates the United States Constitution’s First Amendment after a lower court upheld the limits.

The decision, stemming from a Republican-led lawsuit, strikes down a provision of a more than 50-year-old federal election law limiting coordinated party spending. Among the Republican candidates at the centre of the lawsuit is now Vice President JD Vance. Vance was running for the US Senate in Ohio when the lawsuit challenging the restrictions was filed in 2022.

The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 regulates fundraising and spending in US elections by limiting the amount that can be spent on a candidate, aiming to prevent corruption.

Under that law, spending by a political party to advocate for or against a candidate that is not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign is considered an “independent expenditure” – and not subject to a cap.

Spending that is coordinated between a party and a campaign, however, has been restricted.

Tuesday’s decision overruled a 2001 decision in which the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee challenged the rule against the Federal Election Commission, but the high court had upheld the limits on a vote of 5-4.

In 2024, the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals had also upheld the limits.

On appeal, the plaintiffs said that developments in campaign finance over the intervening decades, including shifts in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, had eroded the rationale for that 2001 ruling and urged the justices to overrule it.

Then, when Donald Trump took office, the Federal Election Commission declined to defend the provision of federal law challenged by Vance and the other plaintiffs. The Supreme Court appointed lawyer Roman Martinez to do so. It also granted a request by the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to intervene to defend the spending limits.

These spending limits have varied by state, being lower in states with smaller populations and higher in those with larger populations. In 2025, restrictions ranged from about $127,000 to $3.9m for Senate candidates and from approximately $63,000 to $127,000 for House of Representatives candidates.

The Supreme Court issued its campaign finance ruling with the November midterm elections looming, as President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans seek to retain control of Congress.

The three major Republican committees – the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee — ended May with $256m in cash and no debt. That was more than double the roughly $126m held by their Democratic counterparts, who also carried more than $18m in debt.

Election implications

The Supreme Court has issued multiple rulings during its current term that have election implications.

The justices on Monday backed state laws that allow mail-in ballots received after Election Day to be counted, rejecting a Republican-led challenge to a five-day grace period in Mississippi and dealing a setback to Trump.

The court in April gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts ahead of the midterms. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

That decision prompted several Republican-led states to pursue redrawn electoral maps ahead of the midterms in an effort to threaten US House seats long considered safely Democratic.