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Donald Trump Outlines Next Steps After Supreme Court Rulings

Donald Trump Outlines Next Steps After Supreme Court Rulings

Newsweek4 hours ago

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
President Donald Trump during a press conference midday Friday said he will "act very quickly" to advance policies blocked by federal judges, including birthright citizenship restrictions, after the Supreme Court ruled in his favor against lower courts.
When asked if this ruling clears the way for him to pursue his legislative agenda, Trump first said that it was a question for "the lawyers," but then added: "This is really a decision based on common sense. It didn't work the other way. It was a disaster."
"We've overturned many of the decisions, but it would take years to do it, and we have to act quickly when it comes to illegal immigration," Trump said. "We have murderers, killers, we have drug dealers, we have - what they've allowed to come into our country should never be forgotten. It should never be forgotten what they've done to our country, and we have to be able to act very quickly, and we're going to do that."
"The Constitution has been brought back," Trump told reporters when asked about fears that this decision will concentrate too much power in the White House.
This is a breaking news story. Updates will follow.

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Takeaways from the Supreme Court's ruling on power of judges and birthright citizenship
Takeaways from the Supreme Court's ruling on power of judges and birthright citizenship

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  • CNN

Takeaways from the Supreme Court's ruling on power of judges and birthright citizenship

The Supreme Court delivered a major win to President Donald Trump on Friday in his ongoing war with the federal judiciary, limiting the power of courts to step in and block policies on a nationwide basis in the short term while judges review their legality. Though the case was intertwined with Trump's executive order effectively ending birthright citizenship, the ruling does not settle the issue of whether the president can enforce that order. And there were signs that lower courts could move swiftly to block the policy. But the high court's decision does mean that Americans seeking to challenge Trump's future policies may have to jump through additional hoops to succeed. Exactly how that will work remains to be seen and will be hashed out by lower courts in coming days. Here's what to know about the court's decision: The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling could have far-reaching consequences for Trump's second term, even if his birthright citizenship order is never enforced. 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And states may still be able to secure a hold on an administration's policies in the short term as well. By siding with Trump, the conservative Supreme Court ended a term with a second blockbuster decision in his favor for the second time in as many years. Last year, a 6-3 majority ruled that Trump – and other presidents – are at least presumptively immune from criminal prosecution for actions taken in office. The decision allowed Trump to avoid a trial on federal election subversion charges that were pending against him. And since taking office again in January, Trump has won case after case on the Supreme Court's emergency docket. A decision earlier in the week allowing Trump to deport certain migrants to countries other than their homeland marked the 10th time the court has granted a request from Trump on the emergency docket, though a few of those cases amounted to a mixed win for the administration. The court has allowed Trump to fire board members at independent agencies, remove transgender Americans from military service and end other protections for migrants, even those in the country legally. Friday's ruling, from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump has disparaged behind closed doors, is his biggest win yet. The court's three liberals split from their conservative colleagues' blockbuster ruling in blistering dissents, ringing the alarm on how the decision will permit Trump or future presidents to enforce unlawful policies even as legal challenges to them play out. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the liberal wing, said the majority had 'shamefully' played along with the administration's 'gamesmanship' in the case, which she described as an attempt to enforce a 'patently unconstitutional' policy by not asking the justices to bless the policy, but instead to limit the power of federal judges around the country. 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'I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, and from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends,' she wrote. 'Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional republic will be no more.' Though the court significantly curtailed the ability of Trump's legal foes to get the type of court orders that block or slow down his enforcement of various policies nationwide, the conservative justices left on the table one key legal avenue: class-action lawsuits in which a litigant sues on behalf of a larger group of similarly situated individuals to get relief for all people who could be potentially be affected by a policy. Several groups moved quickly Friday to do just that. The immigrant rights groups and pregnant women challenging Trump's order in Maryland pressed the federal judge who previously blocked the policy to do so again through a class action lawsuit. Such class-action litigation could potentially lead to the same outcome as nationwide injunctions – and during arguments in the case, several justices questioned the significance of shifting the emphasis to class-action suits. One difference is that a judge generally must take the extra step of thinking about who should be covered by an injunction. During arguments in the case in May, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the difference may be nothing more than 'technicality.' 'We care about technicalities,' he said at the time. 'And this may all be a technicality.' Lawyers for the Maryland plaintiffs asked US District Judge Deborah Boardman to certify a nationwide class that would include any children who have been born or would be born after February 19, 2025, and would be affected by Trump's order. 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'That's one of the ways in which people who are harmed around the country by President Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship will be able to go and get protection from the courts for this fundamental American right,' ACLU national legal director Cecillia Wang told CNN. Barrett was careful to say that parties could still seek nationwide relief to pause a policy if that was required to address their harm. That is precisely the argument nearly two dozen Democratic states made challenging the birthright policy and while the court didn't directly address it, it left wide room for states to make that claim again. The states had argued they needed a nationwide block on Trump's birthright citizenship policy because it was too easy for people to cross state borders to have a baby in New Jersey – where that child would be a citizen – rather than staying in Pennsylvania, where it might not. Now, the states will likely return to a lower court and argue that the birthright policy should remain on hold while courts decide its constitutionality. 'We believe that we will prevail and that we've made the case already, and when the lower courts, under the instruction of the US Supreme Court, do that review, we will secure a nationwide injunction to provide relief to the plaintiff states,' California Attorney General of California Rob Bonta, a Democrat, told reporters. 'It's now up to the lower courts to reconsider if the nationwide injunction is appropriate and necessary to provide complete relief to the states whose AG's sued to challenge this order,' he said. That litigation could eventually work its way back to the Supreme Court. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration was 'very confident' the Supreme Court would eventually rule in its favor on the merits of Trump's executive order. 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