Supreme Court set to issue rulings on birthright citizenship and 5 other cases on its final day
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to conclude its nine-month term on Friday with a flurry of rulings including a closely watched case concerning President Donald Trump's attempt to end automatic birthright citizenship.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has six cases left to decide of those in which it heard oral arguments in the current term, which began in October.
Other cases are on such issues as voting rights, religious rights and health care.
The one that has attracted most attention is the birthright citizenship dispute, which focuses not on the lawfulness of the proposal but whether federal judges had the power to block it nationwide while litigation continues.
What the court says about so-called nationwide injunctions could have wide-ranging impacts, with judges frequently ruling against Trump on his broad use of executive power. The court also has the option of side-stepping a decision on that issue and instead taking up the merits of the plan.
Birthright citizenship is conferred under the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which states: 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.'
The longstanding interpretation of the provision as understood by generations of Americans, including legal scholars on the left and right, is that anyone born on U.S. soil is an American citizen with a few minor exceptions, including people who are the children of diplomats.
Along with birthright citizenship, the other five cases the court has to decide concern:
Whether conservative religious parents can opt their elementary school-age children out of LGBTQ-themed books in class.
Long-running litigation over whether congressional districts in Louisiana are lawful.
A law enacted in Texas that imposes .
A challenge to the Affordable Care Act's preventive care task force.
A Federal Communications Commission program that subsidizes phone and internet services in underserved areas.
The justices typically break for the summer and return for a new term in October, although they will still likely have to continue acting on cases that reach them on an emergency basis. Such cases have been reaching the court with increasing frequency since Trump took office.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mirror
16 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
Firm part owned by mega rich UK family wants taxpayer cash to save factory
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds hit out at conglomerate Associated British Foods as it launches closure plans while talks continue An industry giant part owned by one of Britain's richest families yesterday ratcheted-up pressure on the government for taxpayers' money to save one of its factories. Associated British Foods, better known for owning high street fashion chain Primark, kicked off a consultation to close its Vivergo Fuels plant near Hull, with the loss of 160 jobs. The site makes bioethanol, which is used in petrol. ABF says the plant is losing £3million a month and blamed the government for failing to tackle an influx of cheap bioethanol from abroad, which to set to worsen under Labour 's trade deal with US President Donald Trump. But the move to an 'orderly wind-down' drew criticism from Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, given negotiations are ongoing. Speaking to reporters at the British Chambers of Commerce annual conference in London, he said: 'We are willing to engage with them and potentially put government money into a restructure. I regret Vivergo's decision to start consultations as to let the workforce go and close the plant. It is premature because we are in good faith in those negotiations.' The plea for government money comes despite ABF having a stock market value of £14.6billion, and making more than £1.9bn profit last year. The Weston family was ranked sixth in this year's Sunday Times Rich List, worth £17.7bn. They own a just under 21% stake in conglomerate ABF's majority shareholder. George Weston is chief executive of ABF. Chancellor Rachel Reeves said last week "the answer can't always be yes" when industries request support. But it comes days after the government revealed its flagship Industrial Strategy to boost investment in the UK. Insiders said the timing of the consultation was that ABF wanted to conclude the process, if needed, by the end of its financial year. Bioethanol is a "green" alternative used in fuels such as petrol and diesel. It is a plant-based material that is produced by fermenting and distilling crops such as wheat and corn. The Vivergo plant began operating in late 2012. The future of Britain's other major bioethanol producer, German-owned Ensus in North Yorkshire, is also unclear. In a statement, ABF later added: 'ABF cannot continue to absorb losses at the plant. That is why a timely solution is vital. Our clear preference is to find that solution through this process and to get back to running a business that can thrive in the long term."
NBC News
22 minutes ago
- NBC News
White House plans to limit intelligence sharing with Congress after leaking of early Iran report
WASHINGTON — The White House plans to limit intelligence sharing with members of Congress after an early assessment of damage caused by U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites leaked this week, a senior White House official confirmed to NBC News. The administration specifically plans to post less information on CAPNET, the system used to share classified material with Congress, the official said. The decision, which almost certainly won't sit well with Democrats, comes as top Cabinet officials are set to provide a classified briefing to members of the Senate on Thursday afternoon about the strikes. 'The administration should immediately undo this decision," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told NBC News Thursday. 'They seem not to want to see the facts to get out. Just Trump's version of the facts, which we know is often false." Axios first reported the administration's intention of limiting the information provided to Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., echoed outrage from President Donald Trump and his allies Thursday over the reporting of the Defense Intelligence Agency's early assessment of the U.S. strikes on Iran, which said they only set the nuclear program back by only three to six months. 'There was a leak, and we're trying to get down to the bottom of that. It's dangerous and ridiculous that happened. We're going to solve that problem, and we'll keep the coordination,' Johnson told NBC News. When asked if he thought the leak came from Congress, the speaker replied, 'That's my suspicion.' Lawmakers had access to the initial assessment regarding the strikes from the Defense Intelligence Agency and were able to view it in a secure location in the Capitol, known as a SCIF, as NBC News previously reported. The assessment was transmitted to leadership through these official channels. The Senate is expected to receive a classified briefing on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon, which was originally scheduled for this past Tuesday. Democrats have decried the administration's delay as an effort to hide information about the strikes from Congress. The White House is expected to send four senior administration officials to brief senators today including, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two sources with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard won't be present at the briefing. 'CIA Director Ratcliffe will represent the intelligence community tomorrow while Tulsi Gabbard continues her critical work at DNI. The media is turning this into something it's not," a senior administration official said. Trump administration officials have been engaged in a full-court press since the strikes — and the early assessment — defending the military's targeting of three major nuclear facilities in Iran and claiming their total "obliteration." Hegseth and Caine held a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon Thursday morning in which the defense secretary scolded reporters for publishing information about the classified early assessment and Caine detailed what went into the operation and the impact the strikes were expected to have in Iran. The defense secretary emphasized that the assessment as preliminary and pointed to the statement from Ratcliffe Wednesday in which the CIA director said that Iran's nuclear program was "severely damaged" by the strikes and that several key sites were "destroyed."
Times
24 minutes ago
- Times
Trump hates the media. This is the one journalist he loves
The whizzing noise could have been mistaken for fireworks, but Salena Zito owned a gun and knew the sound of one. Those were shots flying over her head in Donald Trump's direction. Four of them. Zito was in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 last year because she was a local journalist and Trump was her beat. She had chronicled his upset win in 2016, his loss in 2020, his political exile, his unlikely comeback. Minutes earlier she had been backstage talking to the president about his re-election campaign, and he was upbeat. Now she was standing only four feet away from the biggest moment of his campaign, possibly his life. As blood trickled down his cheek and Secret Service agents stormed the stage, Trump raised his fist in the air and shouted 'USA!' Amid the chaos, Zito had been pinned to the ground by a security detail. Her shocked face and splayed-out legs, clad in her signature cowboy boots, were broadcast live on Fox News. Her daughter, a photographer, and son-in-law were all next to her, also on the ground. 'I knew I was a witness to history,' Zito told me. But also, she said, 'I had a job to do.' • Meet Zohran Mamdani, the man who promises to make NYC affordable That meant filing a piece the next day, breaking the news that Trump was ripping up the speech he had planned to give at the Republican National Convention later that week. 'The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would've been two days ago,' he told Zito. 'This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together.' 'If there was any doubt,' Zito said of Trump's chances of re-election before then, 'Butler sealed the deal.' Zito writes about this pivotal moment in her new book, Butler. She has already sold the rights to Pennsylvania-based Pensé Productions, which plans to make a film about that day and her decade covering Trump, first as a reporter for her local paper and now as a full-time journalist for the Washington Examiner. For the past ten years, Zito has portrayed the Maga base with affection — an approach that critics say makes her too sympathetic and cosy with the president. But it has also given her an advantage: she correctly called Trump's win in 2016 when everyone believed he would lose, earning her the nickname 'the Trump whisperer'. 'It's not that I'm particularly brilliant, it has to do with where I come from,' she told me over a video call from her tidy home in western Pennsylvania, her untamed curls threatening to take up the entirety of my screen. 'I've watched these voters move from the left to the centre-right with Trump,' she said. 'People in western Pennsylvania decide elections and they aren't understood by the mainstream media.' In a 2016 piece for The Atlantic, Zito explained why Trump — a brash and wealthy playboy from New York, running on a Republican ticket — was winning old-school working-class Democrats. 'The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally,' she wrote. Her ability to read the pulse of Maga has meant that Trump himself has expressed a fondness for her that is surprising, considering his disdain for the media. Backstage before his rallies, he sometimes calls her 'my Salena', and since his second inauguration, they have spoken on the phone twice and text each other often, she told me. 'It comes in spurts,' she said of his texting. 'But it's always with a purpose.' • Trump should not defy judges' orders, exclusive poll says Last month, speaking to a group of workers at a steel plant in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, the president said of Zito, who was in the crowd: 'She understands people and me, better than we do.' Zito laughed as she told me that Trump's communication team texted her before that event: 'So, Salena, how would you like to go on Air Force One?' At first, Zito hesitated, thinking about the logistics of it all. 'The plant is in my backyard. It's nine miles from my house,' she said. She would have to travel to Washington to catch a flight on Air Force One to the plant and then fly back to the capital, which is a four-hour drive from her home town of Murrysville. But the invitation was from the president, and she accepted. Initially, Zito sat in a conference room on Air Force One until White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, came to collect her. 'Karoline said, 'No, no, no, Salena, come back here, the president wants you to come up and sit with him,'' Zito recalled. 'I went into the executive suite, sat down across from President Trump and rode the whole way with him.' I asked what they talked about on board. 'He was just really happy for me,' Zito said. 'He said, 'You work really hard. That's one thing I really like about you, Salena, is that you work really hard.'' Zito said she and the president would always 'be tied together', not only because of his unique fondness for her, but because of where she's from. 'One of Trump's superpowers is that he's most curious about the people who do the jobs: police officers, janitors, beauticians,' she said. 'He understands that the American people have been lacking that sort of connective tissue with the person that's leading the country.' Zito, who grew up in western Pennsylvania and never left, came to journalism late in life. In her mid-thirties, while going through a divorce and raising two kids, she got a job working for the Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter. It was there, she said, that she developed a feel for local politics and the average people affected by them. People like her. 'I've worked at a sewer treatment plant. I've been a shampoo girl, a cafeteria lady. I've worked in a daycare centre,' said Zito, 65, a grandmother of four children aged two to nine. Eventually she became a political reporter covering steel country for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. To properly capture her subjects, Zito says she doesn't take 'interstates or highways, only back roads', because 'I would miss what is happening on the ground. That's where you see where the country is going.' That is why Scott Sander, the owner and co-founder of Pensé Productions, told me he wanted to make a movie about Zito's life, which is expected to be released next year. Sander, who produces movies about 'real people and real stories', praised Zito's doggedness in covering the heartland and its people. 'She's the living embodiment of the type of journalist that is desperately needed and swiftly dying,' he said. 'She's very adept about interacting with people and finding the truth about the story.' Zito has been accused, by other outlets, of bias in her coverage of Trump, focusing more on feelings than facts. In 2018, she was accused of making up quotes and plagiarising her stories — claims she refuted in a piece for the New York Post. She says many journalists do not like her style of reporting about Trump's base because they 'despise and don't understand who they cover', adding that she is 'fine with her objectivity'. (Like many in her state, Zito has fluctuated in her party allegiance: she became a registered Democrat in 1977 before switching to the Republican party in 1998.) • Change of tune as Donald Trump praises Zelensky and criticises Putin But even Zito has not escaped Trump's accusations of being a 'fake news' journalist. After she interviewed the newly re-elected governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, in 2023 when he was eyeing his own presidential run, Trump posted an angry message on Truth Social accusing her of writing a 'puff piece'. She said she found the post 'funny'. One year later, Trump called her and gave her his personal phone number. The next time she came face to face with him was backstage in Butler, minutes before he was shot. She told Trump that she was convinced Pennsylvania was leaning red again, after breaking for Joe Biden in 2020. 'Interesting,' Trump replied. By the end of that day, Zito realised that the horror in Butler — and Trump's reaction to it — had probably won him re-election. Was it just a photo-op, I asked. Or was he truly defiant and composed in the face of death? The day after the shooting, Trump called her. 'He told me he needed to show strength and resoluteness so that the American people wouldn't panic,' Zito said. 'He wanted to make sure that people knew it was OK, that the country was going to be OK.' But, she said, Trump cannot forget Corey Comperatore, the 50-year-old firefighter and father of two who was killed that day. 'I don't think that'll ever leave him,' Zito said. 'There is a deep sadness within him. The thing that has hit him the hardest is that someone died because they came to see him.' When I suggested we might have moved on too quickly from that day, the near assassination of a former and future president having got lost in our fast-moving news cycle, Zito agreed. But she said she thought Trump's speed and intensity — the social media posts, the sudden immigration raids, the Doge cuts, the recent attack on Iran — were driven by the fact that he almost died one year ago in Butler. Zito said Trump believes there was 'a reason he was saved'. 'He believes he has this obligation as someone who was saved to live up to that moment. The swiftness with which this new administration is acting is reflective of that day,' she said. 'There's this urgency of 'now'. The realisation that we are not always guaranteed a tomorrow.' Read an excerpt from Butler (Hachette), out July 8
