President Donald Trump on Monday vowed more changes to the way elections are conducted in the U.S., but based on the Constitution there is little to nothing he can do on his own.
Relying on false information and conspiracy theories that he’s regularly used to explain away his 2020 election loss, Trump pledged on his social media site that he would do away with both mail voting — which remains popular and is used by about one-third of all voters — and voting machines — some form of which are used in almost all of the country’s thousands of election jurisdictions. These are the same systems that enabled Trump to win the 2024 election and Republicans to gain control of Congress.
Trump’s post marks an escalation even in his normally overheated election rhetoric. He issued a wide-ranging executive order earlier this year that, among other changes, would have required documented proof-of-citizenship before registering to vote. His Monday post promised another election executive order to “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm elections.”
The same post also pushed falsehoods about voting. He claimed the U.S. is the only country to use mail voting, when it’s actually used by dozens, including Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Similar complaints to Trump’s, when aired on conservative and conservative-leaning networks such as Newsmax and Fox News, have led to multimillion dollar defamation settlements, including one announced Monday, because they are full of false information and the outlets have not been able to present any evidence to support them.
Trump’s post came after the president told Fox News that Russian President Vladimir Putin, in their Friday meeting in Alaska, echoed his grievances about mail voting and the 2020 election. Trump continued his attack on mail voting and voting machines in the Oval Office on Monday, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The announcement signals yet another way that Trump intends to stack the cards in his favor in the 2026 midterm elections, after he already has directed his attorney general to investigate a Democratic fundraising platform and urged states to redraw their congressional districts to help the GOP maintain its majority in the House of Representatives.
Here’s a breakdown of Trump’s latest election post and why Congress is the one entity that can implement national election rules.
Trump’s post
Trump for years has promoted false information about voting, and Monday was no exception.
He claimed there is “MASSIVE FRAUD” due to mail voting, when in fact voting fraud in the U.S. is rare. As an example, an Associated Press review after the 2020 election found fewer than 475 cases of potential fraud in the six battleground states where he disputed his loss, far too few to tip that election to Trump.
Washington and Oregon, which conduct elections entirely by mail, have sued to challenge Trump’s earlier executive order — which sought to require that all ballots must be received by Election Day and not just postmarked by then. The states argue that the president has no such authority, and they are seeking a declaration from a federal judge in Seattle that their postmark deadlines do not conflict with federal law setting the date of U.S. elections.
Trump also alleged that voting machines are more expensive than “Watermark Paper.” That’s a little-used system that has gained favor and investments among some voting conspiracy theorists who believe it would help prevent fraudulent ballots from being introduced into the vote count. Watermarks would not provide a way to count ballots, so they would not on their own replace vote tabulating machines.
While some jurisdictions still have voters use electronic ballot-marking devices to cast their votes, the vast majority of voters in the U.S. already vote on paper ballots, creating an auditable record of votes that provides an extra safeguard for election security.
In his post, Trump also claimed that states “are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes” and must do what the federal government “as represented by the President of the United States” tells them to do.
Election lawyers said that’s a misrepresentation of the U.S. Constitution. It also flies in the face of what had been a core Republican Party value of prioritizing states’ rights.
Thousands of elections, none under presidential control
Unlike in most countries, elections in the U.S. are run by the states. But it gets more complicated — each state then allows smaller jurisdictions, such as counties, cities or townships, to run their own elections. Election officials estimate there are as many as 10,000 different election jurisdictions across the country.
A frequent complaint of Trump and other election conspiracy theorists is that the U.S. doesn’t run its election like France, which hand counts presidential ballots and usually has a national result on election night. But that’s because France is only running that single election, and every jurisdiction has the same ballot with no other races.
A ballot in the U.S. might contain dozens of races, from president on down to city council and including state and local ballot measures.
The Constitution makes the states the entities that determine the “time, place and manner” of elections, but does allow Congress to “make” or “alter” rules for federal elections.
Congress can change the way states run congressional and presidential elections but has no say in the way a state runs its own elections. The president is not mentioned at all in the Constitution’s list of entities with powers over elections.
Parts of Trump’s earlier executive order on elections were swiftly blocked by the courts, on the grounds that Congress, and not the president, sets federal election rules.
It’s unclear what Trump plans to do now, but the only path to change federal election rules is through Congress.
Although Republicans control Congress, it’s unclear that even his party would want to eliminate voting machines nationwide, possibly delaying vote tallies in their own races by weeks or months. Even if they did, legislation would likely be unable to pass because Democrats could filibuster it in the U.S. Senate.
Mail voting had bipartisan support before Trump turned against it during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election, but it’s still widely used in Republican-leaning states, including several he won last November — Arizona, Florida and Utah. It’s also how members of the military stationed overseas cast their ballots, and fully eliminating it would disenfranchise those GOP-leaning voters.
The main significance of Trump’s Monday statement is that it signals his continuing obsession with trying to change how elections are run.
The nation’s capital challenged President Donald Trump’s takeover of its police department in court on Friday, hours after his administration stepped up its crackdown on policing by naming a federal official as the new emergency head of the department, with all the powers of a police chief.
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a new lawsuit that Trump is going far beyond his power under the law. Schwalb asked a judge to find that control of the department remains in district hands and sought an emergency restraining order.
“The administration’s unlawful actions are an affront to the dignity and autonomy of the 700,000 Americans who call D.C. home. This is the gravest threat to Home Rule that the District has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” Schwalb said.
The lawsuit comes after Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday night that Drug Enforcement Administration boss Terry Cole will assume “powers and duties vested in the District of Columbia Chief of Police.” The Metropolitan Police Department “must receive approval from Commissioner Cole” before issuing any orders, Bondi said. It was unclear where the move left the city’s current police chief, Pamela Smith, who works for the mayor.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser pushed back, writing on social media that “there is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official.”
Justice Department and White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the district’s lawsuit Friday morning.
Chief had agreed to share immigration information
Schwalb had said late Thursday that Bondi’s directive was “unlawful,” arguing it could not be followed by the city’s police force. He wrote in a memo to Smith that “members of MPD must continue to follow your orders and not the orders of any official not appointed by the Mayor,” setting up the legal clash between the heavily Democratic district and the Republican administration.
Bondi’s directive came even after Smith had told MPD officers hours earlier to share information with immigration agencies regarding people not in custody, such as someone involved in a traffic stop or checkpoint. The Justice Department said Bondi disagreed with the police chief’s directive because it allowed for continued enforcement of “sanctuary policies,” which generally limit cooperation by local law enforcement with federal immigration officers.
Bondi said she was rescinding that order as well as other MPD policies limiting inquires into immigration status and preventing arrests based solely on federal immigration warrants. All new directives must now receive approval from Cole, the attorney general said.
The police takeover is the latest move by Trump to test the limits of his legal authorities to carry out his agenda, relying on obscure statutes and a supposed state of emergency to bolster his tough-on-crime message and his plans to speed up the mass deportation of people in the U.S. illegally.
It also marks one of the most sweeping assertions of federal authority over a local government in modern times. While Washington has grappled with spikes in violence and visible homelessness, the city’s homicide rate ranks below those of several other major U.S. cities and the capital is not in the throes of the public safety collapse the administration has portrayed.
Residents are seeing a significant show of force
A population already tense from days of ramp-up has begun seeing more significant shows of force across the city. National Guard troops watched over some of the world’s most renowned landmarks and Humvees took position in front of the busy main train station. Volunteers helped homeless people leave long-standing encampments — to where was often unclear.
Department of Homeland Security police stood outside Nationals Park during a game Thursday between the Washington Nationals and the Philadelphia Phillies. DEA agents patrolled The Wharf, a popular nightlife area, while Secret Service officers were seen in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.
Bowser, walking a tightrope between the Republican White House and the constituency of her largely Democratic city, was out of town Thursday for a family commitment in Martha’s Vineyard but would be back Friday, her office said.
The uptick in visibility of federal forces around the city, including in many high-traffic areas, has been striking to residents going about their lives. Trump has the power to take over federal law enforcement for 30 days before his actions must be reviewed by Congress, though he has said he’ll re-evaluate as that deadline approaches.
Officers set up a checkpoint in one of D.C.’s popular nightlife areas, drawing protests. Troops were stationed outside the Union Station transportation hub as the 800 Guard members who have been activated by Trump started in on missions that include monument security, community safety patrols and beautification efforts, the Pentagon said.
Troops will assist law enforcement in a variety of roles, including traffic control posts and crowd control, National Guard Major Micah Maxwell said. The Guard members have been trained in de-escalation tactics and crowd control equipment, Maxwell said.
National Guard troops are a semi-regular presence in D.C., typically being used during mass public events like the annual July 4 celebration. They have regularly been used in the past for crowd control in and around Metro stations.
An executive order signed by President Donald Trump late Thursday aims to give political appointees power over the billions of dollars in grants awarded by federal agencies. Scientists say it threatens to undermine the process that has helped make the U.S. the world leader in research and development.
The order requires all federal agencies, including FEMA, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to appoint officials responsible for reviewing federal funding opportunities and grants, so that they “are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.”
It also requires agencies to make it so that current and future federal grants can be terminated at any time — including during the grant period itself.
Agencies cannot announce new funding opportunities until the new protocols are in place, according to the order. The Trump administration said these changes are part of an effort to “strengthen oversight” and “streamline agency grantmaking.” Scientists say the order will cripple America’s scientific engine by placing control over federal research funds in the hands of people who are influenced by politics and lack relevant expertise.
“This is taking political control of a once politically neutral mechanism for funding science in the U.S.,” said Joseph Bak-Coleman, a scientist studying group decision-making at the University of Washington.
The changes will delay grant review and approval, slowing “progress for cures and treatments that patients and families across the country urgently need,” said the Association of American Medical Colleges in a statement.
The administration has already terminated thousands of research grants at agencies like the NSF and NIH, including on topics like transgender health, vaccine hesitancy, misinformation and diversity, equity and inclusion.
The order could affect emergency relief grants doled out by FEMA, public safety initiatives funded by the Department of Justice and public health efforts supported by the Centers for Disease Control. Experts say the order is likely to be challenged in court.
Federal immigration judges fired by the Trump administration are filing appeals, pursuing legal action and speaking out in an unusually public campaign to fight back.
More than 50 immigration judges — from senior leaders to new appointees — have been fired since Donald Trump assumed the presidency for the second time. Normally bound by courtroom decorum, many are now unrestrained in describing terminations they consider unlawful and why they believe they were targeted.
Their suspected reasons include gender discrimination, decisions on immigration cases played up by the Trump administration and a courthouse tour with the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat.
“I cared about my job and was really good at it,” Jennifer Peyton, a former supervising judge told The Associated Press this week. “That letter that I received, the three sentences, explained no reason why I was fired.”
Peyton, who received the notice while on a July Fourth family vacation, was appointed judge in 2016. She considered it her dream job. Peyton was later named assistant chief immigration judge in Chicago, helping to train, mentor and oversee judges. She was a visible presence in the busy downtown court, greeting outside observers.
She cited top-notch performance reviews and said she faced no disciplinary action. Peyton said she’ll appeal through the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent government agency Trump has also targeted.
Peyton’s theories about why she was fired include appearing on a “bureaucrat watchdog list” of people accused by a right-wing organization of working against the Trump agenda. She also questions a courthouse tour she gave to Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois in June.
Durbin blasted Peyton’s termination as an “abuse of power,” saying he’s visited before as part of his duties as a publicly-elected official.
The nation’s immigration courts — with a backlog of about 3.5 million cases — have become a key focus of Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement efforts. The firings are on top of resignations, early retirements and transfers, adding up to 106 judges gone since January, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents judges. There are currently about 600 immigration judges.
Several of those fired, including Peyton, have recently done a slew of interviews on local Chicago television stations and with national outlets, saying they now have a platform for their colleagues who remain on the bench.
“The ones that are left are feeling threatened and very uncertain about their future,” said Matt Biggs, the union’s president.
Carla Espinoza, a Chicago immigration judge since 2023, was fired as she was delivering a verdict this month. Her notice said she’d be dismissed at the end of her two-year probationary period with the Executive Office for Immigration Review.
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to halt indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in seven California counties, including Los Angeles.
Immigrant advocacy groups filed the lawsuit last week accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people in Southern California during its ongoing immigration crackdown. The plaintiffs include three detained immigrants and two U.S. citizens, one of whom was held despite showing agents his identification.
The filing in U.S. District Court asked a judge to block the administration from using what they call unconstitutional tactics in immigration raids. Immigrant advocates accuse immigration officials of detaining someone based on their race, carrying out warrantless arrests, and denying detainees access to legal counsel at a holding facility in downtown LA.
Judge Maame E. Frimpong also issued a separate order barring the federal government from restricting attorney access at a Los Angeles immigration detention facility.
Frimpong issued the emergency orders, which are a temporary measure while the lawsuit proceeds, the day after a hearing during which advocacy groups argued that the government was violating the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution.
She wrote in the order there was a “mountain of evidence” presented in the case that the federal government was committing the violations they were being accused of.
The White House responded quickly to the ruling late Friday.
“No federal judge has the authority to dictate immigration policy — that authority rests with Congress and the President,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. “Enforcement operations require careful planning and execution; skills far beyond the purview (or) jurisdiction of any judge. We expect this gross overstep of judicial authority to be corrected on appeal.”
Immigrants and Latino communities across Southern California have been on edge for weeks since the Trump administration stepped up arrests at car washes, Home Depot parking lots, immigration courts and a range of businesses. Tens of thousands of people have participated in rallies in the region over the raids and the subsequent deployment of the National Guard and Marines.
The order also applies to Ventura County, where busloads of workers were detained Thursday while the court hearing was underway after federal agents descended on a cannabis farm, leading to clashes with protesters and multiple injuries.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the recent wave of immigration enforcement has been driven by an “arbitrary arrest quota” and based on “broad stereotypes based on race or ethnicity.”
When detaining the three day laborers who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, all immigration agents knew about them is that they were Latino and were dressed in construction work clothes, the filing in the lawsuit said. It goes on to describe raids at swap meets and Home Depots where witnesses say federal agents grabbed anyone who “looked Hispanic.”
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in an email that “any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE.”
McLaughlin said “enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence” before making arrests.
After the ruling, she said “a district judge is undermining the will of the American people.”
ACLU attorney Mohammad Tajsar said Brian Gavidia, one of the U.S. citizens who was detained, was “physically assaulted ... for no other reason than he was Latino and working at a tow yard in a predominantly Latin American neighborhood.”
Tajsar asked why immigration agents detained everyone at a car wash except two white workers, according to a declaration by a car wash worker, if race wasn’t involved.
Representing the government, attorney Sean Skedzielewski said there was no evidence that federal immigration agents considered race in their arrests, and that they only considered appearance as part of the “totality of the circumstances”, including prior surveillance and interactions with people in the field.
In some cases, they also operated off “targeted, individualized packages,” he said.
“The Department of Homeland Security has policy and training to ensure compliance with the Fourth Amendment,” Skedzielewski said.
Lawyers from Immigrant Defenders Law Center and other groups say they also have been denied access to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in downtown LA known as “B-18” on several occasions since June, according to court documents.
Lawyer Mark Rosenbaum said in one incident on June 7 attorneys “attempted to shout out basic rights” at a bus of people detained by immigration agents in downtown LA when the government drivers honked their horns to drown them out and chemical munitions akin to tear gas were deployed.
Skedzielewski said access was only restricted to “protect the employees and the detainees” during violent protests and it has since been restored.
Rosenbaum said lawyers were denied access even on days without any demonstrations nearby, and that the people detained are also not given sufficient access to phones or informed that lawyers were available to them.
He said the facility lacks adequate food and beds, which he called “coercive” to getting people to sign papers to agree to leave the country before consulting an attorney.
Friday’s order will prevent the government from solely using apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, presence at a location such as a tow yard or car wash, or someone’s occupation as the basis for reasonable suspicion to stop someone. It will also require officials to open B-18 to visitation by attorneys seven days a week and provide detainees access to confidential phone calls with attorneys.
Attorneys general for 18 Democratic states also filed briefs in support of the orders.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents were already barred from making warrantless arrests in a large swath of eastern California after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in April.
A mother and her two young children from Honduras who had filed what was believed to be the first lawsuit involving children challenging the Trump administration’s policy on immigrant arrests at courthouses have been released from detention, civil rights groups and attorneys for the family said Thursday.
The lawsuit filed on behalf of the mother identified as “Ms. Z,” her 6-year-old son and her 9-year-old daughter, said they were arrested outside the courtroom after an immigration court hearing in Los Angeles. They had been held for weeks in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. Their identities have not been released because of concerns for their safety.
The lawsuit said that the family entered the U.S. legally using a Biden-era appointment app and that their arrest violated their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizure and their Fifth Amendment right to due process.
The family’s lawyers said the boy had also recently undergone chemotherapy treatment for leukemia and his mother feared his health was declining while in detention.
The family was released late Wednesday while their lawsuit was still pending, and they went to a shelter in South Texas before they plan to return to their lives in the Los Angeles area, said Columbia Law School professor Elora Mukherjee, one of the lawyers representing the family.
“They will go back to their lives, to church, and school, and the family will continue to pursue their asylum case. And hopefully the little boy will get the medical attention he needs,” Mukherjee said. “They never should have been arrested and detained in the first place. We are grateful they have been released.”
Department of Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. Last week, the agency posted on social media that the boy “has been seen regularly by medical personnel since arriving at the Dilley facility.”
Starting in May, the country has seen large-scale arrests in which asylum-seekers appearing at routine hearings have been arrested outside courtrooms as part of the White House’s mass deportation effort. In many cases, a judge will grant a government lawyer’s request to dismiss deportation proceedings and then U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will arrest the person and place them on “expedited removal,” a fast track to deportation.
Lawyers for the “Z” family said their lawsuit was the first one filed on behalf of children to challenge the ICE courthouse arrest policy.
There have been other similar lawsuits, including in New York, where a federal judge ruled last month that federal immigration authorities can’t make civil arrests at the state’s courthouses or arrest anyone going there for a proceeding.
“The Z family’s release demonstrates the power we have when we fight back against harmful, un-American policies,” said Kate Gibson Kumar, staff attorney for the Beyond Borders Program of the Texas Civil Rights Project.
The family’s lawyers have said that during their hearing before a judge, the mother said they wished to continue their cases for asylum. Homeland Security moved to dismiss their cases, and the judge immediately granted that motion.
When they stepped out of the courtroom, they found men in civilian clothing believed to be ICE agents who arrested the family, Mukherjee said. They spent about 11 hours at an immigrant processing center in Los Angeles and were each only given an apple, a small packet of cookies, a juice box and water.
At one point, an officer near the boy lifted his shirt, revealing his gun. The boy urinated on himself and was left in wet clothing until the next morning, Mukherjee said.
Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage Tuesday by the narrowest of margins, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks after a turbulent overnight session.
The outcome capped an unusually tense weekend of work at the Capitol, the president’s signature legislative priority teetering on the edge of approval or collapse. In the end that tally was 50-50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
Three Republican senators — Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined all Democrats in voting against it.
“In the end we got the job done,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said afterward.
The difficulty for Republicans, who have the majority in Congress, to wrestle the bill to this point is not expected to let up. The package now goes back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana had warned senators not to overhaul what his chamber had already approved. But the Senate did make changes, particularly to Medicaid, risking more problems ahead. House GOP leaders scheduled a Wednesday vote and vowed to put it on Trump’s desk by his July Fourth deadline, which is Friday.
It’s a pivotal moment for the president and his party, as they have been consumed by the now 887-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which was its formal title before Democrats filed an amendment to strip out the name. Republicans are investing their political capital in delivering on their sweep of power in Washington.
Trump acknowledged it’s “very complicated stuff” as he departed the White House for Florida.
“I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts,” he said. “I don’t like cuts.”
What started as a routine but laborious day of amendment voting, in a process called vote-a-rama, spiraled into an all-night slog as Republican leaders bought time to shore up support.
The droning roll calls in the chamber belied the frenzied action to steady the bill. Grim-faced scenes played out on and off the Senate floor, amid exhaustion.
Thune worked around the clock, desperately reaching for last-minute agreements between those in his party worried the bill’s reductions to Medicaid will leave millions more people without care and his most conservative flank, which wanted even steeper cuts to hold down deficits ballooning with the tax cuts.
The GOP leaders had no room to spare. Thune could lose no more than three Republican senators, and two — Tillis, who warned that millions of people will lose access to Medicaid health care, and Paul, who opposes raising the debt limit by $5 trillion — had already indicated opposition.
Attention quickly turned to two other key senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Collins, who also raised concerns about health care cuts, as well as a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for even steeper reductions.
Murkowski in particular became the subject of GOP leaders’ attention, as they sat beside her for talks. Then all eyes were on Paul after he returned from a visit to Thune’s office.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Republicans “are in shambles because they know the bill is so unpopular.”
An analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law. The CBO said the package would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion over the decade.
Pressure built from all sides. Billionaire Elon Musk said anyone who voted for the package should “hang their head in shame” and warned he would campaign against them. But Trump had also lashed out against the GOP holdouts, including Tillis, who abruptly announced his own decision over the weekend not to seek reelection.
Few Republicans appeared fully satisfied as the final package emerged, in either the House or the Senate.
Collins fought to include $50 billion for a new rural hospital fund, among the GOP senators worried that the bill’s Medicaid provider cuts would be devastating and force them to close.
While her amendment for the fund was rejected, the provision was inserted into the final bill. Still she voted no.
The Maine senator said she’s happy the bolstered funding was added, but “my difficulties with the bill go far beyond that.”
And Murkowski called the decision-making process “agonizing.”
She secured provisions to temporarily spare Alaska and other states from some food stamp cuts, but her efforts to bolster Medicaid reimbursements fell short. She voted yes.
All told, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, according to the latest CBO analysis, making permanent Trump’s 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips.
The Senate package would roll back billions of dollars in green energy tax credits, which Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide. It would impose $1.2 trillion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements on able-bodied people, including some parents and older Americans, making sign-up eligibility more stringent and changing federal reimbursements to states.
Additionally, the bill would provide a $350 billion infusion for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants.
The Supreme Court has been very good to President Donald Trump lately.
Even before he won a new term in the White House, the court eliminated any doubt about whether Trump could appear on presidential ballots, then effectively spared him from having to stand trial before the 2024 election on criminal charges he tried to overturn the 2020 election. That same ruling spelled out a robust view of presidential power that may well have emboldened Trump’s aggressive approach in his second term.
In the five months since Trump’s inauguration, the court has been largely deferential to presidential actions, culminating in Friday’s decision to limit the authority of federal judges who have sought to block Trump initiatives through nationwide court orders.
The decisions from a court that includes three justices Trump appointed during his first term have provoked a series of scathing dissents from liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They accuse the conservative supermajority of kowtowing to the president and putting the American system of government “in grave jeopardy,” as Jackson wrote Friday.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, author of the opinion limiting nationwide injunctions, responded to Jackson’s “startling line of attack” by noting that she “decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary.”
To be sure, the court has not ruled uniformly for Trump, including by indefinitely stopping deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador without giving people a reasonable chance to object.
That’s where the court deals with cases that are still in their early stages, most often intervening to say whether a judge’s order should be in effect while the case proceeds through the courts.
While preliminary, the justices’ decisions can signal where they eventually will come out in the end, months or years from now. Emergency orders are generally overshadowed by decisions the justices issued in the cases they heard arguments between last fall and the spring.
Almost since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the court’s emergency docket has been packed with appeals from his administration. For a while, the justices were being asked to weigh in almost once a week as Trump pushed to lift lower court orders slowing his ambitious conservative agenda.
Trump scored a series of wins on issues ranging from the revocation of temporary legal protections for immigrants to Elon Musk’s dramatic cost cutting at the Department of Government Efficiency.
And that was before Friday’s decision on nationwide injunctions, court orders that prevent a policy from taking effect anywhere.
Many of the recent orders are in line with the conservatives’ robust view of executive power.
The three liberal justices dissented from each of three cases involving transgender rights or LGBTQ issues more generally.
Trump has moved aggressively to roll back the rights of transgender people and the court has rebuffed attempts to stop him.
In another emergency appeal, the court’s conservatives allowed a ban to take effect on transgender members of the military, even after lower courts had found the policy unconstitutional.
In mid-June, Roberts wrote the opinion for a conservative majority that upheld Tennessee’s ban on certain medical treatment for transgender youth, rejecting arguments that it amounted to unconstitutional discrimination. The decision probably will affect a range of other pending court cases on transgender issues, including those involving access to health care, participation on sports teams and gender markers on birth certificates.
On the final day of decisions, the justices ruled in favor of Maryland parents with religious objections who don’t want their children exposed to public school lessons using LGBTQ storybooks. The case was about religious freedom, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the decision “threatens the very essence of public education.”
The Supreme Court is in the homestretch of a term that has lately been dominated by the Trump administration’s emergency appeals of lower court orders seeking to slow President Donald Trump’s efforts to remake the federal government.
But the justices also have 10 cases to resolve that were argued between December and mid-May. One of the argued cases was an emergency appeal, the administration’s bid to be allowed to enforce Trump’s executive order denying birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children of parents who are in the country illegally.
The court typically aims to finish its work by the end of June. On Wednesday it decided one of its most closely watched cases, handing down an opinion that upheld a Tennessee ban on some healthcare for transgender minors.
Trump’s birthright citizenship order has been blocked by lower courts
The court rarely hears arguments over emergency appeals, but it took up the administration’s plea to narrow orders that have prevented the citizenship changes from taking effect anywhere in the U.S.
The issue before the justices is whether to limit the authority of judges to issue nationwide injunctions, which have plagued both Republican and Democratic administrations in the past 10 years.
These nationwide court orders have emerged as an important check on Trump’s efforts and a source of mounting frustration to the Republican president and his allies.
At arguments last month, the court seemed intent on keeping a block on the citizenship restrictions while still looking for a way to scale back nationwide court orders. It was not clear what such a decision might look like, but a majority of the court expressed concerns about what would happen if the administration were allowed, even temporarily, to deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the country illegally.
Democratic-led states, immigrants and rights groups who sued over Trump’s executive order argued that it would upset the settled understanding of birthright citizenship that has existed for more than 125 years.
The court seems likely to side with Maryland parents in a religious rights case over LGBTQ storybooks in public schools
Parents in the Montgomery County school system, in suburban Washington, want to be able to pull their children out of lessons that use the storybooks, which the county added to the curriculum to better reflect the district’s diversity.
The school system at one point allowed parents to remove their children from those lessons, but then reversed course because it found the opt-out policy to be disruptive. Sex education is the only area of instruction with an opt-out provision in the county’s schools.
The school district introduced the storybooks in 2022, with such titles as “Prince and Knight” and “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding.”
The case is one of several religious rights cases at the court this term. The justices have repeatedly endorsed claims of religious discrimination in recent years. The decision also comes amid increases in recent years in books being banned from public school and public libraries.
A three-year battle over congressional districts in Louisiana is making its second trip to the Supreme Court
Lower courts have struck down two Louisiana congressional maps since 2022 and the justices are weighing whether to send state lawmakers back to the map-drawing board for a third time.
The case involves the interplay between race and politics in drawing political boundaries in front of a conservative-led court that has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life.
At arguments in March, several of the court’s conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.
Before the court now is a map that created a second Black majority congressional district among Louisiana’s six seats in the House of Representatives. The district elected a Black Democrat in 2024.
A three-judge court found that the state relied too heavily on race in drawing the district, rejecting Louisiana’s arguments that politics predominated, specifically the preservation of the seats of influential members of Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson. The Supreme Court ordered the challenged map to be used last year while the case went on.
Lawmakers only drew that map after civil rights advocates won a court ruling that a map with one Black majority district likely violated the landmark voting rights law.
The Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear an appeal from Chevron, Exxon and other oil and gas companies that lawsuits seeking compensation for coastal land loss and environmental degradation in Louisiana should be heard in federal court.
The companies are appealing a 2024 decision by a federal appeals court that kept the lawsuits in state courts, allowing them to move to trial after more than a decade in limbo.
A southeast Louisiana jury then ordered Chevron to pay upwards of $740 million to clean up damage to the state’s coastline. The verdict reached in April was the first of dozens of lawsuits filed in 2013 against leading oil and gas companies in Louisiana alleging they violated state environmental laws for decades.
While plaintiffs’ attorneys say the appeal encompasses at least 10 cases, Chevron disagrees and says the court’s ruling could have broader implications for additional lawsuits.
Chevron argues that because it and other companies began oil production and refining during World War II as a federal contractor, these cases should be heard in federal court, perceived to be friendlier to businesses.
But the plaintiffs’ attorneys — representing the Plaquemines and Jefferson Parish governments — say the appeal is the companies’ latest stall tactic to avoid accountability. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit already rejected similar arguments from Chevron.
“It’s more delay, they’re going to fight till the end and we’re going to continue to fight as well,” said John Carmouche, a trial attorney in the Chevron case who is behind the other lawsuits. He noted that the companies’ appeal “doesn’t address the merits of the case.”
Chevron’s counsel, Paul Clement said in a statement that the company was “pleased” with the Supreme Court’s decision. Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The court’s decision to hear the appeal offers the chance for “fair and consistent application of the law” and will “help preserve legal stability for the industry that fuels America’s economy,” said Tommy Faucheux, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, in an emailed statement.
In April, jurors in Plaquemines Parish — a sliver of land straddling the Mississippi River into the Gulf — found that energy giant Texaco, acquired by Chevron in 2001, had for decades violated Louisiana regulations governing coastal resources by failing to restore wetlands impacted by dredging canals, drilling wells and billions of gallons of wastewater dumped into the marsh.
“No company is big enough to ignore the law, no company is big enough to walk away scot-free,” Carmouche told jurors during closing arguments.
Louisiana’s coastal parishes have lost more than 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of land over the past century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which has also identified oil and gas infrastructure as a significant cause. The state could lose another 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) in the coming decades, its coastal protection agency has warned.
Chevron’s attorneys had argued that land loss in Louisiana was caused by other factors and that the company should not be held liable for its actions prior to the enactment of a 1980 environmental law requiring companies to obtain permits and restore land they had used.
The fact that the lawsuits had been delayed for so long due to questions of jurisdiction was “bordering on absurd,” the late-federal judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman remarked in 2022 during oral arguments in one of the lawsuits, according to court filings. He added: “Frankly, I think it’s kind of shameful.”
Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime oil and gas industry supporter, nevertheless made the state a party to the lawsuits during his tenure as attorney general.
“Virtually every federal court has rejected Chevron’s attempt to avoid liability for knowingly and intentionally violating state law,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement. “I’ll fight Chevron in state or federal court—either way, they will not win.”
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from limiting passport sex markers for many transgender and nonbinary Americans.
Tuesday’s ruling from U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick means that transgender or nonbinary people who are without a passport or need to apply for a new one can request a male, female or “X” identification marker rather than being limited to the marker that matches the gender assigned at birth.
In an executive order signed in January, the president used a narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of gender. The order said a person is male or female and rejected the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender.
Kobick first issued a preliminary injunction against the policy last month, but that ruling applied only to six people who joined with the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit over the passport policy.
In Tuesday’s ruling she agreed to expand the injunction to include transgender or nonbinary people who are currently without a valid passport, those whose passport is expiring within a year, and those who need to apply for a passport because theirs was lost or stolen or because they need to change their name or sex designation.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government failed to show that blocking its policy would cause it any constitutional injury, Kobick wrote, or harm the executive branch’s relations with other countries.
The transgender and nonbinary people covered by the preliminary injunction, meanwhile, have shown that the passport policy violates their constitutional rights to equal protection, Kobick said.
“Even assuming a preliminary injunction inflicts some constitutional harm on the Executive Branch, such harm is the consequence of the State Department’s adoption of a Passport Policy that likely violates the constitutional rights of thousands of Americans,” Kobick wrote.
Kobick, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, sided with the ACLU’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which stays the action while the lawsuit plays out.
“The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,” Kobick wrote in the preliminary injunction issued earlier this year. “That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.”
In its lawsuit, the ACLU described how one woman had her passport returned with a male designation while others are too scared to submit their passports because they fear their applications might be suspended and their passports held by the State Department.
Another mailed in their passport Jan. 9 and requested to change their name and their sex designation from male to female. That person was still waiting for their passport, the ACLU said in the lawsuit, and feared missing a family wedding and a botany conference this year.
In response to the lawsuit, the Trump administration argued that the passport policy change “does not violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution.” It also contended that the president has broad discretion in setting passport policy and that plaintiffs would not be harmed since they are still free to travel abroad.
A judge blocked New York City’s mayor from letting federal immigration authorities reopen an office at the city’s main jail, in part because of concerns the mayor invited them back in as part of a deal with the Trump administration to end his corruption case.
New York Judge Mary Rosado’s decision Friday is a setback for Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who issued an executive order permitting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to maintain office space at the Rikers Island jail complex. City lawmakers filed a lawsuit in April accusing Adams of entering into a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain” with the Trump administration in exchange for the U.S. Justice Department dropping criminal charges against him.
Rosado temporarily blocked the executive order in April. In granting a preliminary injunction, she said city council members have “shown a likelihood of success in demonstrating, at minimum, the appearance of a quid pro quo whereby Mayor Adams publicly agreed to bring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (”ICE”) back to Rikers Island in exchange for dismissal of his criminal charges.”
Rosado cited a number of factors, including U.S. border czar Tom Homan’s televised comments in February that if Adams did not come through, “I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’ ”
Adams has repeatedly denied making a deal with the administration over the criminal case. He has said he deputized his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to handle decision-making on the return of ICE to Rikers Island to make sure there was no appearance of any conflict of interest.
Rosado said that Mastro reports to Adams and “cannot be considered impartial and free from Mayor Adams’ conflicts.”
Mastro said in a prepared statement Friday the administration was confident they will prevail in the case. “Let’s be crystal clear: This executive order is about the criminal prosecution of violent transnational gangs committing crimes in our city. Our administration has never, and will never, do anything to jeopardize the safety of law-abiding immigrants, and this executive order ensures their safety as well,” Mastro said.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is running in the Democratic primary for mayor, called the decision a victory for public safety.
“New Yorkers are counting on our city to protect their civil rights, and yet, Mayor Adams has attempted to betray this obligation by handing power over our city to Trump’s ICE because he is compromised,” she said in a prepared statement.
Breaking Legal News - POSTED: 2025/08/18 21:11
