Live updates on Supreme Court decisions: Latest news, reaction to bombshell rulings
WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court voted to lift temporary blocks on President Donald Trump's order ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who were in the country temporarily or without legal authorization.
The court ruled 6-3 that District Court rulings temporarily blocking Trump's order "likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts." It did not decide whether the order is constitutional - a question that is being argued in lower federal courts.
More: In win for Trump, Supreme Court orders courts to reconsider limits on birthright citizenship and other policies
In other decisions on the last day of the court's term, the justices ruled against a challenge to an Obamacare provision that forces health insurers to cover certain medicines and services, like HIV-preventive medication and cholesterol-lowering drugs; allowed parents to remove their elementary school children from classes where the books include gay characters; and upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for users of pornographic web content.
More: Supreme Court rejects conservative challenge to Obamacare health coverage
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has been targeted by some MAGA activists for siding against President Trump, but he had nothing but praises for her after a key decision.
Barrett wrote the majority opinion in a 6-3 decision limiting the use of nationwide injunctions by federal courts, something the Trump administration has railed against.
'I have great respect for her, I always have, and her decision was brilliantly written today,' Trump said June 27 during a press conference celebrating the ruling.
Barrett earlier had ruled against the Trump administration's efforts to freeze foreign aid funding, drawing criticism from the right.
-Zac Anderson
The Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify their users are at least 18.
The case pitted concerns about protecting minors against worries about violating the First Amendment rights of adults.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the 6-3 majority that the law survived 'because it only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults.'
Eighteen other, largely conservative states have enacted similar laws in recent years as access to a growing cache of online pornography has exploded and the material has become more graphic.
-Maureen Groppe and Bart Jansen
More: Supreme Court upholds Texas' age verification law for porn sites
The Supreme Court sided with a group of parents who want to withdraw their elementary school children from class when storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters are being read.
In a 6-3 decision that divided along ideological lines, the court said a Maryland public school district's refusal to allow opt-outs likely burdens parents' First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion. They said the school must allow opt-outs while the legal challenge continues.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed with the ruling, saying children of all faiths and backgrounds deserve an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society.
"That experience is critical to our Nation's civic vitality," Sotomayor said. "Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents' religious beliefs."
Their decision continues a recent trend of high court rulings backing claims of religious discrimination, sometimes at the expense of other values like gay rights.
-Maureen Groppe and Bart Jansen
The Supreme Court on June 27 upheld an $8 billion federal program that subsidizes high-speed internet and phone service for millions of Americans, rejecting a conservative argument that the program is funded by an unconstitutional tax.
The case was decided by a 6-3 majority, with Justice Elena Kagan writing the opinion.
The court endorsed the way the Federal Communications Commission funds its multi-billion dollar program to expand phone and broadband internet access to low-income and rural Americans and other beneficiaries.
The decision overturned a lower-court ruling that the FCC's funding mechanism employing mandatory contributions from telecommunications companies had effectively levied a "misbegotten tax" on consumers in violation of the Constitution.
The case raised questions about how much Congress can 'delegate' its legislative authority to a federal agency and whether the Supreme Court should tighten that standard.
-Maureen Groppe, Bart Jansen
The court ruled against a challenge to an Obamacare board that determines which preventative care must be covered by insurance companies.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration's appointment of a Department of Health and Human Services task force is constitutional.
The decision upheld a key part of Obamacare that helps guarantee that health insurers cover preventive care such as cancer screenings at no cost to patients.
Individuals and small businesses had challenged the structure of the task force that makes recommendations about preventive services that insurers would be required to cover at no additional cost to patients.
But Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the 6-3 majority that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. can remove task force members at will and can review their recommendations before they take effect.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch disagreed.
-Bart Jansen
The Supreme Court decided to lift nationwide blocks on President Donald Trump's order ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who were in the country temporarily or without legal authorization.
More: Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. How many people would that impact?
The court ruled 6-3 that District Court rulings that temporarily blocked Trump's order "likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority that the lower courts should review their temporary blocks on Trump's policy. She explicitly said the court wasn't deciding whether Trump's order was constitutional.
-Bart Jansen
Several important Supreme Court decisions will be announced after 10 a.m. Eastern time on June 27. These will be the final rulings of court's current term.
The opinions will be announced in order of the author, with the most junior justice going first.
The justice who wrote the opinion will read a summary of the decision, which usually takes several minutes. If there's a dissenting opinion, that may also be summarized but is usually done only in major cases.
That's happened only once so far this term. Justice Sonia Sotomayor read parts of her dissent from the majority's opinion upholding Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for minors.
-Maureen Groppe
One of the most hotly anticipated Supreme Court decisions of the year deals with President Donald Trump's order ending birthright citizenship for the children parents who were in the country temporarily or without legal authorization.
But how the justices will resolve case is anyone's guess.
The Justice Department asked the high court to ignore for now the constitutionality of Trump's executive order. Instead, the department asked the justices to allow his order signed his first day back in office to go into effect while the case is litigated.
But states and immigration advocates contend the order is clearly unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Lower courts in three states temporarily halted Trump's order while the cases are argued.
The justices could lift the pause on those lower-court rulings – or not. Or fully decide Trump's order is constitutional – or not. Or ask for more arguments for the next court session beginning in October. Or maybe something else.
-Bart Jansen
Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy warned 'freedom is at risk' as he expressed concern about the "tone of our political discourse" as he defended the role judges play.
More: How Trump's clash with the courts is brewing into an 'all-out war'
Kennedy made his comments during an online forum June 26 called 'Speak Up for Justice,' which featured judges from other countries warning about how attacks on courts can threaten democracies.
"And if they see a hostile, fractious discourse, if they see a discourse that uses identity politics rather than to talk about issues, democracy is at risk," Kennedy said. "Freedom is at risk.
Kennedy, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan and retired during President Donald Trump's first term, stressed that the rest of the world looks 'to the United States to see what democracy is, to see what democracy ought to be."
-Reuters
The latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act takes aim at 2010 law's popular requirement that insurers cover without extra costs preventive care such as cancer screenings, cholesterol-lowering medication and diabetes tests.
Two Christian-owned businesses and some people in Texas argue that the volunteer group of experts that recommends the services health insurance must cover is so powerful that, under the Constitution, its members must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
The Supreme Court decided only three cases out of more than 60 decisions along strict ideological lines during the current year-long term ending June 27.
The three cases so far decided on votes of the six justices appointed by Republicans and opposed by three justices appointed by Democrats were:
A decision June 18 upholding Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
A ruling June 26 siding with South Carolina's effort to deprive Planned Parenthood of public funding,
A case about unsolicited faxes.
-Bart Jansen
The Supreme Court has nine justices:
John G. Roberts
Clarence Thomas
Samuel Alito,
Sonia Sotomayor
Elena Kagan
Neil Gorsuch
Brett Kavanaugh
Amy Coney Barrett
Ketanji Brown Jackson
Six of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents and three by Democrats. But their rulings often do not split along strictly ideological lines, other than in political cases or those involving thorny cultural issues.
-Bart Jansen and Anna Kaufman
The Supreme Court still has to decide the last of three cases brought this year by religious groups. The justices will say if parents should be allowed to remove their elementary school children from class when storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters are being read.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court decisions live updates: Latest news on bombshell rulings
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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. That's because it will limit the power of courts to strike down other policies in the future. Presidents of both parties have complained about nationwide injunctions for years and Trump has noted, correctly, that there have been far more issued against him than presidents in the past. Lower courts, for instance, have used the orders to temporarily block his efforts to deport migrants under the Alien Enemies Act and prohibit transgender service members in the military. 'This was a big decision,' Trump said from the White House shortly after the ruling was issued. The president described the outcome as an 'amazing decision, one that we're very happy about.' But exactly how future litigation shakes out remains to be seen. Private parties – in the birthright citizenship case, a group of pregnant women who sued – may still be able to get a court to shut down a policy temporarily through a class-action lawsuit. 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. 'The court's decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution. The executive branch can now enforce policies that flout settled law and violate countless individuals' constitutional rights, and the federal courts will be hamstrung to stop its actions fully,' she wrote. The court's senior liberal member took the rare step of reading parts of her dissent from the bench on Friday for around 20 minutes. In doing so, she added in a line not included in her written dissent to invoke the court's landmark ruling last year that granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution. 'The other shoe has dropped on executive immunity,' Sotomayor declared from the bench. Separately, in a scathing solo dissent on Friday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared to raise the stakes of the injunction case even more, accusing her conservative colleagues of creating 'an existential threat to the rule of law' by allowing Trump to 'violate the Constitution.' '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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‘The Onion' CEO on That Brutal ‘New York Times' Op-Ed: ‘Expect Us in Weird Places'
Readers of Sunday's New York Times were treated to an unusual full-page ad from a rival newspaper — the venerated satire periodical The Onion. Most of the available space was taken up by a mocking editorial piece with a headline that blared: 'Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice.' In a note at the bottom of the page, the company revealed that print copies of the op-ed were being delivered to the very lawmakers it ripped apart as complacent do-nothings under an increasingly authoritarian Donald Trump. And, just by wild coincidence, the stunt came right as the administration barreled ahead with the bombing of Iran, a destabilizing and politically unpopular action that for many Americans recalled the preludes to other catastrophic wars the U.S. has initiated in the Middle East. Whether Congress can successfully challenge Trump's unilateral show of military force — something it is technically obliged to do under the Constitution — remains to be seen. But the smart money is almost always on The Onion's prescient cynicism. More from Rolling Stone 'The Onion' Mocks Congress' 'Cowardice' in 'New York Times' Full Page Editorial Judge Blocks The Onion's Bid to Take Over Alex Jones' Infowars He Wrote The Onion's Famous Mass-Shooting Headline. It Still Haunts Him Here, Ben Collins, who has served as CEO of the 37-year-old publication since it changed owners in April 2024, talks about why the staff decided to make a bold statement in the Gray Lady, the success of their relaunched print model, an ongoing legal battle with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and how The Onion's writers stay one step ahead of a surreal new normal. So, this op-ed. Can you tell me how that came together, and why this was the moment for it?[The writing staff] have been sitting around looking at the failure of the legislative branch, which I thought was a co-equal branch of our government, but I guess it isn't. We're learning a lot of new stuff all the time. And they really wanted to go for it. The only note that I give them is just, if you are ready to go for it, let's go for it as hard as we can. So we reached out to the New York Times for editorial space. We didn't even know what we were going to put in there yet, necessarily, months ago. I just wanted them to have the ability to do something in that space. And they came up with that headline, and they were like, it's time. They also came up with the idea to mail that headline to Congress. I don't know who was in the room, but somebody on editorial staff was like, why don't we just make this all one thing, let's mail it to Congress, publish it as a full page of the New York Times, and make it a big hairy deal. We're hitting the gas pedal here, and think it's working. Hopefully they should be showing up in the mailboxes of every single congressperson. What kind of a reaction are you expecting?I have no idea! The thing that The Onion does best is it creates, in my opinion, some catharsis. It [allows] people without the full vocabulary for the moment to create a complete sentence for themselves. It allows them to put up a protest sign. We wanted people to understand that they are not alone in feeling particularly helpless in this moment. And we want Congress to understand that maybe they could fucking do something at some point in any capacity about the litany of horrors that we have been subjected to in the last six months. It's also fun to do it in the in the , since their editorial section has advocated for some questionable things over the I mean, we're right back in 2003. The timing is crazy in terms of the the the Iran bombing — I almost called it Iraq, because the language and the op-eds are the same as when I was growing up. I read a David Shields book called War Is Beautiful, it's a collection of New York Times photos of Iraq and Afghanistan where they made war look like this beautiful Disneyfied fireworks display, and that's not what it is. War is fucking brutal and horrible and evil. And it does feel like we're back in this mode where completely disconnected elites are killing people for sadomasochistic enjoyment. I grew up with this, and so did The Onion. This is where The Onion is at its at its best, when they are fully lined up against what is very clearly 'The Man,' and the machine is in full swing, from cable news to the Times op-ed page to the government itself, with every Republican in Congress and some Democrats [embracing] the idea that if we just annihilate some of these people, there will be no consequences. We've been through this before. During the Iraq War, The Onion was one of the only places to stand up against it. It was just, like, The Onion and the fucking Dixie Chicks, and now we're right back in that moment. Thankfully, I think more people can smell that this reeks and are not buying the party line of lobbyists that appear in the mainstream news saying that this will end all of our problems in the Middle East. We're just doing what we did 20 years ago. It's been a little over a year since the leadership shakeup at . What have you learned in that time, and are you feeling a sense of accomplishment a year later?Things have dramatically changed in the media landscape, and the fact that we're important and viewed as truth-tellers is an incredible indictment of the rest of the press. It's insane. I will say I am so deeply proud of the independent journalists out there that have stepped up and have a lot to lose in the face of harassment campaigns and lawfare and the immense power against them — they've done some of the best work ever. That's why we gave the scoop to Marisa Kabas at The Handbasket, she is just one of many people in independent media right now who are doing some of the best and most unafraid journalism I've seen in my lifetime. What we've seen is people who have told the truth and not kowtowed and not just bent over for this administration, or tried to meet halfway on fascism. Those are the places that have done really well. We've gone all in on speaking the truth, despite how dangerous it is now — the truth is incredibly absurd, so it just happens to line up very nicely with our business model. But yeah, it's been both horrible and horrific and and heartening to see that our work is more important than ever. And, you know, I would guess that by the end of the year, we're going to be one of the biggest newspapers in the country by distribution. We ship this paper to all 50 states and over 50 countries. I'm proud of the people who work here because they stood up a newspaper in a three months and have only made it bigger and better and sharper and more incisive. A lot of people would look around at the state of the world and say it's beyond parody or satire. How do your writers think about that and face that challenge?That's a question that we get a lot, and I think that it just shows how hard this is and that you need professionals. What we do is incredibly inefficient, and it's art, and it's hard, and that's what makes us great. We throw away like 150 headlines a day. That's not an exaggeration. Every day, they go in there, they write usually over 150 headlines, and they whittle them down to two or three. Sometimes it's zero. Sometimes nothing comes out of that. And then they they decide, like, is this a video? Is something we grab as a NIB, which stands for 'news in brief.' Where does this live in the Onion universe, basically. And then from there, they build out the joke. It's surgery every single time on each verb and and article and everything. It's just a tremendous amount of work. If Sam Altman or whoever came in here and took over this company, it would be fucking obliterated instantly. Because it's an old-fashioned machine that we have that works really well. We have 40 years of institutional knowledge here. The thing that I've come to realize is there's a math and a science and art to this. I think most people feel that satire is like, turn everything up to 2x speed or just do the inverse or something. I think what The Onion does is like 1.25x speed. It allows you to see into some funhouse future. And it just allows [the writers] to cook a lot easier. They don't overdo it. And by doing that, it kind of like keeps it within the bounds of reality, but in a way that is both funny and biting. There's a strong tradition there, but in this last year, we've seen some big swings that we wouldn't have seen from the old . I realize it didn't quite work, but are we going to see more stuff like the out of bankruptcy?We're still working on that, brother. As I've said, Alex Jones is the Michael Jordan of evading justice. He's gummed up the work so substantially in every way, and scared every judge and every person that he can intimidate. So we're still trying to get through it, and we are confident we'll end up with it by the end of the day, but I don't know when the end of that day is, so we're still fighting. But yes, expect us in weird places. We constantly want to show up, saying the sentence that everybody's thinking but can't say in public right now. We have this incredible market advantage of not being beholden to anybody right now. And it's great for our bottom line. What I'm trying to say is, we're going to be rich. It's a gold mine for us, baby! Expect us to do both the right and the funny thing in incredibly surprising and weird ways in the next few months and hopefully years. We have a bunch of stuff lined up that will hopefully get people off their couch a little bit. We want to be able to say stuff that other people, for institutional reasons, can't say, or they're too afraid to say. You may be the only CEO in America making that in a unique position, certainly. And other places have to learn from this — being afraid all the time and just constantly making transactional moves. How long can you survive like this? What is even the point of being alive if you're just gonna continue managing rot? And it seems like that's what 98 percent of people are doing in these media companies right now. I don't know, take a chance. Nobody likes what's happening. Especially if you're a journalism company or a media company, you're [meant to be] actually reflecting what people want or what people believe. So get some guts and do something interesting. It's not that hard. So that's your advice to ?Him, no, he shouldn't. He should not do anything ever again. He should just stop whatever he's doing. [Those] people who have gotten us to a very bad spot should go take their boats into the ocean and do sea-steading or whatever they keep saying they're going to do. Go light fireworks in the ocean and look at them for the rest of your lives, just be happy. Go away from us, please. I have an ethics question. Your partner, Kat Abughazaleh, is . I was just wondering if you'll abuse your power to endorse her through the through the paper of record.I've been threatening all of everyone in Illinois with personal punishment if they don't say that she's the coolest person who's ever lived. I'm extremely rich. What I do is I drive my Lamborghini to everyone's house and I just berate them at their doorstep. So that's my plan. If you haven't been berated yet by me at your doorstep, or had me shouting at you from the Lamborghini, then, frankly, I haven't done my job. She's fucking great. I'm proud of her. She's doing so good. And yeah, the second that we get into internecine local politics at The Onion is the second that we've lost the plot. Though it is a Chicago paper, after is a Chicago paper. That's correct. I'm assuming we've done some Chicago stuff, right? I'm actually gonna look it up. I don't really know, but let me see if we did, like, a Rod Blagojevich story. Oh, these are fucking ancient. Let's see. 'Rod Blagojevich Trying To Sell Presidential Commutation to Cellmate For $2.8 Million.' Pretty good. So, yeah, there is Illinois politics in general. But no, that whole thing is very strange, because I've never been around actual politics, so to hear it in the other room when I wake up every day — she spends every day just like, pounding on doors and shaking hands. And it's very different lifestyle, certainly. It seems in the nature of that it's going to take rotten people down a notch rather than elevate good politics. But then you had this idea to put up information about gun violence on the Infowars site. Is there room for earnestness at , where it's not just sarcasm? I don't actually think so. I think there are words and there are actions. You can do good deeds with your actions, but in terms of the words that we put out on a day-to-day basis, we are going to remain stupid as fuck and silly, and we're going to try as hard as we can to get to the to the meat of stuff by not telling the truth. That is what The Onion is, writ large. We will obviously do stuff too, we will do whatever we can to make the world better. Hopefully, you'll see that in the next few months, as we kind of grow and build on top of this weird little newspaper empire established in a year. But we don't let anybody get in the way of the actual writing or the editorial or the videos they make, or anything like that. That stuff is sacrosanct, and if we can do some good on the side as a means of getting that writing in front of more people, even better. Good stories are kind of against the law right now. We want to show up in places and make people believe that good things are possible and that you're not going nuts, that things are actually quite exactly as bad as you think they are. And here's, like, a very short sentence that will allow you to think about the world through that construct. That's the whole goal here, man. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up
