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CNN
7 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Federal appeals court issues another blow to Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship
Donald Trump Supreme Court Trump legal casesFacebookTweetLink Follow 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.'
E&E News
22-07-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Zeldin pulls Biden-era permitting proposal
A mothballed legal clash over industrial air pollution permitting requirements dating back to President Donald Trump's first term could resume after EPA scrapped a package of proposed changes. On Monday, Administrator Lee Zeldin withdrew the 2024 draft, which would have overhauled a policy set seven years earlier that loosened the threshold for deciding whether expansions and other major upgrades at a variety of industrial facilities require permits under the agency's New Source Review program. In opting to pull the proposal, released during former President Joe Biden's tenure, Zeldin wrote that he agreed with critics who said it 'would impose additional burdens and uncertainty on regulated stationary sources without clear and justifiable corresponding benefits.' Advertisement Zeldin's move had been expected. It could now lead to a restart in dormant legal challenges to the Trump-era policy known as 'project emissions accounting' brought by environmental groups and a coalition of Democratic-leaning states.
Wall Street Journal
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
New Federal Tax Credit Boosts School Choice—but Blue States Face Big Decision
School-choice advocates won a major victory with President Trump's tax megabill—but it comes with a catch. The federal government will now subsidize private-school tuition, via unusually generous tax credits for donations to nonprofits. However, governors must opt into the program. Democratic-led states may reject it, derailing school-choice advocates' goal for a nationwide effort.
Reuters
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
US to release over $1 billion after-school funding that it withheld, official says
WASHINGTON, July 18 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration will release more than $1 billion for after-school and summer education programs it froze two weeks ago under a review that withheld money for a range of K-12 school programs, a senior administration official said on Friday. Early in July, the Trump administration said it would not release funding previously appropriated by Congress for schools and that an initial review found signs that money had been misused to "subsidize a radical leftwing agenda." States have said $6.8 billion in total was affected by the freeze. This week, a coalition of mostly Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit challenging the move, and 10 Republican U.S. senators wrote a letter urging the Republican Trump administration to reverse its decision. The money covered funding for education of migrant farm workers and their children; recruitment and training of teachers; English proficiency learning; academic enrichment and after-school and summer programs. The senior administration official said the review had been completed for after-school and summer programs. "Funds will be released to the states," the official said. "Guardrails have been put in place to ensure these funds are not used in violation of Executive Orders," the official added without elaborating. The Trump administration has threatened schools and colleges with withholding federal funds over issues like climate initiatives, transgender policies, pro-Palestinian protests against U.S. ally Israel's war in Gaza and diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
CNN
17-07-2025
- Politics
- CNN
20 states sue FEMA for canceling grant program that guards against natural disasters
Twenty Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Federal Emergency Management Agency, challenging the elimination of a long-running grant program that helps communities guard against damage from natural disasters. The lawsuit contends that President Donald Trump's administration acted illegally when it announced in April that it was ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. FEMA canceled some projects already in the works and refused to approve new ones despite funding from Congress. 'In the wake of devastating flooding in Texas and other states, it's clear just how critical federal resources are in helping states prepare for and respond to natural disasters,' said Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts, where the federal lawsuit was filed. '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.' FEMA did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment. It said in April that the program was 'wasteful and ineffective' and 'more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.' The program provides grants for a variety of disaster mitigation efforts, including levees to protect against floods, safe rooms to provide shelter from tornadoes, vegetation management to reduce damage from fires and seismic retrofitting to fortify buildings for earthquakes. During his first term, Trump signed a law shoring up funding for disaster risk reduction efforts. The program then got a $1 billion boost from an infrastructure law signed by former President Joe Biden. That law requires FEMA to make available at least $200 million annually for disaster mitigation grants for the 2022-2026 fiscal years, the lawsuit says. The suit claims the Trump administration violated the constitutional separation of powers because Congress had not authorized the program's demise. It also alleges the program's termination was illegal because the decision was made while FEMA was under the leadership of an acting administrator who had not met the requirements to be in charge of the agency. The lawsuit says communities in every state have benefited from federal disaster mitigation grants, which saved lives and spared homes, businesses, hospitals and schools from costly damage. Some communities have already been affected by the decision to end the program. Hillsborough, North Carolina, had been awarded nearly $7 million to relocate a wastewater pumping station out of a flood plain and make other water and sewer system improvements. But that hadn't happened yet when the remnants of Tropical Storm Chantal damaged the pumping station and forced it offline last week. In rural Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, town officials had hoped to use more than $4 million from the BRIC program to improve stormwater drainage and safeguard a vulnerable electric system, thus protecting investments in a historic theater and other businesses. While the community largely supports Trump, assistant town manager Erin Burris said people were blindsided by the lost funding they had spent years pursuing. 'I've had downtown property owners saying, 'What do we do?'' Burris said. 'I've got engineering plans ready to go and I don't have the money to do it.'
