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CNN
6 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Federal appeals court issues another blow to Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship
A federal appeals court on Wednesday issued another major blow to President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, ruling that it's unconstitutional and upholding a nationwide block against the controversial policy. The 2-1 ruling from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals is significant because the Supreme Court late last month ordered lower courts to take a second look at a set of nationwide injunctions issued earlier this year that halted Trump's implementation of his Day One order to ensure they weren't broader than necessary. The San Francisco-based appeals court decided that one such injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle in a case brought by a group of Democratic-led states did not represent a judicial overreach that needed to be reined in. 'The district court below concluded that a universal preliminary injunction is necessary to provide the states with complete relief. We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the states complete relief,' appeals court Judge Ronald Gould wrote for the majority. 'The states would suffer the same irreparable harms under a geographically-limited injunction as they would without an injunction,' Gould, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, added, explaining that a narrower injunction would require the states that challenged the law to overhaul their eligibility verification systems for various social services programs. Wednesday's decision also represents the first time an appeals court has fully concluded that Trump's order is unconstitutional. The Trump administration has the option of asking the full 9th Circuit to review the case, but it could also appeal the matter straight to the Supreme Court. 'The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order's proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,' Gould wrote in the ruling, which was joined by appeals court judge Michael Hawkins, also a Clinton appointee. He went on to say that Trump's order contradicts the Citizenship Clause of the Constitution, an 1898 Supreme Court case known as United States v. Wong Kim Ark and decades of Executive Branch practice. Trump's order is already blocked on a nationwide basis after a federal judge in New Hampshire barred enforcement of it against any babies who would be impacted by the policy in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. Such lawsuits are one of the ways the Supreme Court said plaintiffs can still try to broadly block Trump's order. Appeals court Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump appointee, partially dissented from the court's ruling on Wednesday. He said he didn't think the states who challenged Trump's order had the legal right — known as 'standing' — to bring the lawsuit in the first place. As a result, he said, he thought it was 'premature to address the merits of the citizenship question or the scope of the injunction.' US District Judge John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee in Seattle, was the first federal judge to block Trump's order. When he first issued an emergency order preventing enforcement of it in late January, he said it was 'blatantly unconstitutional.'
CNN
6 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Federal appeals court issues another blow to Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship
A federal appeals court on Wednesday issued another major blow to President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, ruling that it's unconstitutional and upholding a nationwide block against the controversial policy. The 2-1 ruling from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals is significant because the Supreme Court late last month ordered lower courts to take a second look at a set of nationwide injunctions issued earlier this year that halted Trump's implementation of his Day One order to ensure they weren't broader than necessary. The San Francisco-based appeals court decided that one such injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle in a case brought by a group of Democratic-led states did not represent a judicial overreach that needed to be reined in. 'The district court below concluded that a universal preliminary injunction is necessary to provide the states with complete relief. We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the states complete relief,' appeals court Judge Ronald Gould wrote for the majority. 'The states would suffer the same irreparable harms under a geographically-limited injunction as they would without an injunction,' Gould, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, added, explaining that a narrower injunction would require the states that challenged the law to overhaul their eligibility verification systems for various social services programs. Wednesday's decision also represents the first time an appeals court has fully concluded that Trump's order is unconstitutional. The Trump administration has the option of asking the full 9th Circuit to review the case, but it could also appeal the matter straight to the Supreme Court. 'The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order's proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,' Gould wrote in the ruling, which was joined by appeals court judge Michael Hawkins, also a Clinton appointee. He went on to say that Trump's order contradicts the Citizenship Clause of the Constitution, an 1898 Supreme Court case known as United States v. Wong Kim Ark and decades of Executive Branch practice. Trump's order is already blocked on a nationwide basis after a federal judge in New Hampshire barred enforcement of it against any babies who would be impacted by the policy in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. Such lawsuits are one of the ways the Supreme Court said plaintiffs can still try to broadly block Trump's order. Appeals court Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump appointee, partially dissented from the court's ruling on Wednesday. He said he didn't think the states who challenged Trump's order had the legal right — known as 'standing' — to bring the lawsuit in the first place. As a result, he said, he thought it was 'premature to address the merits of the citizenship question or the scope of the injunction.' US District Judge John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee in Seattle, was the first federal judge to block Trump's order. When he first issued an emergency order preventing enforcement of it in late January, he said it was 'blatantly unconstitutional.'
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
24 states sue over funding pause to after-school programs
Twenty-four Democratic states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the Trump administration's pause on education funding for after-school programs, along with other specialized instruction. The lawsuit argues the Trump administration has violated the Constitution and several federal laws by stopping $6 billion in funding allocated for after-school programs, English lessons for nonnative speakers, trainings for teachers, expansion of science and arts curricula and antibullying programs. The money, which is normally released on July 1, was held unexpectedly with no timeline regarding when the government may release it. 'The federal government cannot use our children's classrooms to advance its assault on immigrant and working families,' said New York Attorney General Letitia James. 'This illegal and unjustified funding freeze will be devastating for students and families nationwide, especially for those who rely on these programs for childcare or to learn English. Congress allocated these funds and the law requires they be delivered. We will not allow this administration to rewrite the rules to punish the communities it doesn't like.' The federal government says it has paused the funds to review where they are going, saying the priorities do not align with the goals of the administration. 'This is an ongoing programmatic review of education funding. Initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda. In one case, NY public schools used English Language Acquisition funds to promote illegal immigrant advocacy organizations. In another, Washington state used funds to direct illegal immigrants towards scholarships intended for American students,' a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said. The effects of this pause have been immediate, with the lawsuit alleging summer programs have already been canceled or put at risk, and classes for teacher development or English learners have been stalled or scaled back. The states say they had no time to make up the funding gap, as there was no prior warning on the pause. The states are seeking a preliminary injunction and for the judge to compel the federal government to release the funding. Along with New York, the lawsuit was joined by Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
The Guardian
17-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump administration sued by 20 states for cutting disaster prevention grants
A group of 20 mostly Democratic-led US states filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to block the Trump administration from terminating a multibillion-dollar grant program that funds infrastructure upgrades to protect against natural disasters. The lawsuit filed in Boston federal court claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) lacked the power to cancel the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program in April after it was approved and funded by Congress. Fema, part of the US Department of Homeland Security, has come under scrutiny for its response to deadly floods in Texas earlier this month, which has put renewed focus on the administration's moves to shrink or abolish the agency. 'By unilaterally shutting down Fema's flagship pre-disaster mitigation program, Defendants have acted unlawfully and violated core separation of powers principles,' said the states, led by Washington and Massachusetts. Fema and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Bric program, created in 2018 as an upgrade of existing grant programs, covers up to 75% of the costs of infrastructure projects, or 90% in rural areas, meant to protect communities from natural disasters. The funding has been used for evacuation shelters, flood walls and improvements to roads and bridges, among other projects. Over the past four years Fema has approved roughly $4.5bn in grants for nearly 2,000 projects, much of which went to coastal states, according to Tuesday's lawsuit. When Fema announced the termination of the program in April, the agency said it had been wasteful, ineffective and politicized. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in May urged Fema to reinstate the grants, saying they were particularly crucial for rural and tribal communities, and to work with Congress to make the program more efficient. The states in their lawsuit say that Congress made mitigating future disasters a core function of Fema, and the US constitution and federal law bar the Trump administration from altering the agency's mission without working with lawmakers. They also claim that Cameron Hamilton, who was the acting director of Fema when the program was terminated, and his successor, David Richardson, were not properly appointed and lacked the authority to cancel it. The states said they would seek a preliminary injunction requiring the program to be reinstated while the case proceeds. The lawsuit is the latest attempt by states to rebuke the Trump administration's approach to disaster funding. Many of the same states sued the administration in May over a policy tying grant funding for emergency preparedness to states' cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Massachusetts' attorney general, Andrea Campbell, in a statement said the recent flooding in Texas, which caused more than 130 deaths, has made clear how critical federal funding is to helping states prepare for natural disasters. 'By abruptly and unlawfully shutting down the Bric program, this administration is abandoning states and local communities that rely on federal funding to protect their residents and, in the event of disaster, save lives,' said Campbell, a Democrat.
The Guardian
16-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump administration sued by 20 states for cutting disaster prevention grants
A group of 20 mostly Democratic-led US states filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to block the Trump administration from terminating a multibillion-dollar grant program that funds infrastructure upgrades to protect against natural disasters. The lawsuit filed in Boston federal court claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) lacked the power to cancel the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program in April after it was approved and funded by Congress. Fema, part of the US Department of Homeland Security, has come under scrutiny for its response to deadly floods in Texas earlier this month, which has put renewed focus on the administration's moves to shrink or abolish the agency. 'By unilaterally shutting down Fema's flagship pre-disaster mitigation program, Defendants have acted unlawfully and violated core separation of powers principles,' said the states, led by Washington and Massachusetts. Fema and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Bric program, created in 2018 as an upgrade of existing grant programs, covers up to 75% of the costs of infrastructure projects, or 90% in rural areas, meant to protect communities from natural disasters. The funding has been used for evacuation shelters, flood walls and improvements to roads and bridges, among other projects. Over the past four years Fema has approved roughly $4.5bn in grants for nearly 2,000 projects, much of which went to coastal states, according to Tuesday's lawsuit. When Fema announced the termination of the program in April, the agency said it had been wasteful, ineffective and politicized. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in May urged Fema to reinstate the grants, saying they were particularly crucial for rural and tribal communities, and to work with Congress to make the program more efficient. The states in their lawsuit say that Congress made mitigating future disasters a core function of Fema, and the US constitution and federal law bar the Trump administration from altering the agency's mission without working with lawmakers. They also claim that Cameron Hamilton, who was the acting director of Fema when the program was terminated, and his successor, David Richardson, were not properly appointed and lacked the authority to cancel it. The states said they would seek a preliminary injunction requiring the program to be reinstated while the case proceeds. The lawsuit is the latest attempt by states to rebuke the Trump administration's approach to disaster funding. Many of the same states sued the administration in May over a policy tying grant funding for emergency preparedness to states' cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Massachusetts attorney general, Andrea Campbell, in a statement said the recent flooding in Texas, which caused more than 130 deaths, has made clear how critical federal funding is to helping states prepare for natural disasters. 'By abruptly and unlawfully shutting down the Bric program, this administration is abandoning states and local communities that rely on federal funding to protect their residents and, in the event of disaster, save lives,' said Campbell, a Democrat.
