Judge blocks Trump on birthright citizenship
A federal judge in New Hampshire has again blocked Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship and applied the injunction nationwide.
US district judge Joseph Laplante argued the plaintiffs could be represented as a class and blocked the executive order.
Key events
Oliver Milman
The future of the US government’s premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades.
Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life.
But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed.
A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website. The Guardian is replicating the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access.
Joseph Gedeon
Donald Trump has appointed his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, as interim administrator of Nasa, six weeks after withdrawing the nomination of Elon Musk ally and billionaire Jared Isaacman for the permanent role.
The president announced the appointment on Truth Social on Wednesday evening, praising Duffy’s work on transportation infrastructure and describing him as someone who will be “a fantastic leader of the ever more important space agency, even if only for a short period of time”.
Duffy, who will maintain his cabinet position while taking on Nasa duties, wrote on X: “Honored to accept this mission. Time to take over space. Let’s launch.”
The day so far
A federal judge in New Hampshire blocked Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, certifying the case as a nationwide class action. The decision from U.S. District judge Joseph Laplante comes after the US supreme court said federal judges could only issue nationwide injunctions if they certified plaintiffs as a nationwide class. The issue is expected to return to the US supreme court, which has not yet decided on the constitutionality of Trump’s order.
Here’s what else is happening:
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A Justice Department whistleblower turned over text messages and emails in support of his explosive claim that Emil Bove, a top department official, told lawyers they should be prepared to say “fuck you” and defy court orders.
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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov at the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur, where he said the US and Russia had exchanged new ideas for Ukraine peace talks
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Some Planned Parenthood affiliates are alerting patients that they can no longer accept Medicaid for care Because of a provision in the GOP reconciliation bill that passed earlier this month.
Carter Sherman
At least two regional Planned Parenthood affiliates have notices on their websites telling patients that, thanks to a provision in Republicans’ new tax-and-spending bill that “defunds” the reproductive healthcare giant, they can no longer accept Medicaid.
However, this provision – which abortion rights supporters have called a “backdoor abortion ban” – was recently blocked by a court order. Other Planned Parenthood affiliates are continuing to treat patients who use Medicaid to pay for treatment.
Although the Planned Parenthood network is overseen by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, it includes dozens of independent affiliates that directly provide care to patients.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington DC and Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains had notices on their websites alerting patients that they can no longer accept Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people.
Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, is taking on a conspiracy theory on Thursday about contrails – the white streaks that appear behind airplanes.
As CNN reported, there is a longstanding conspiracy theory that the streaks are actually chemicals sprayed by the US government to control the weather. The streaks are condensation trails, formed by water vapor that freezes around an aircraft’s exhaust.
“Americans have questions about geoengineering and contrails. They expect honesty and transparency from their government when seeking answers. For years, people who asked questions in good faith were dismissed, even vilified by the media and their own government. This ends today,” he posted on X.
The EPA announced it was launching a webpage explaining what contrails are. The page addresses the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory.
“It is a term some people use to inaccurately claim that contrails resulting from routine air traffic are actually an intentional release of dangerous chemicals or biological agents at high altitudes for a variety of nefarious purposes, including population control, mind control, or attempts to geoengineer Earth or modify the weather,” the page says.
The 14th amendment to the US constitution has long been understood to guarantee citizenship to any person born on US soil. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” the amendment says.
Trump has sought to overturn the longstanding interpretation of the law to say that a person can only be considered a US citizen if they have at least one parent who is a US citizen or a lawful permanent resident.
If the order were to take effect, it’s estimated that around 150,000 babies would be denied citizenship each year.
Judge’s ruling comes after US supreme court ruling on nationwide injunctions
Laplante’s order is significant because it comes after the US supreme court ruled 6-3 that district court judges could not issue nationwide injunctions unless the plaintiffs in the case had been certified as a nationwide class. The court did not rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship.
The plaintiffs before Laplante had asked to be certified as a class representing all babies whose citizenship could be affected by Trump’s order, according to Reuters.
Laplante’s decision to certify the class and issue an injunction shows that there is a path forward for the lawsuits, which are likely to quickly return to the US supreme court, which will likely return to the issue to address the bigger underlying legal issues in the order.
Judge blocks Trump on birthright citizenship
A federal judge in New Hampshire has again blocked Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship and applied the injunction nationwide.
US district judge Joseph Laplante argued the plaintiffs could be represented as a class and blocked the executive order.
“At this point why don’t we just submit an emoji of a middle finger as our filing,” Reuveni wrote in one text 19 March message. “A picayune middle finger.” “So stupid,” his boss wrote back. The messages provide an unusual and remarkable level of insight into how justice department lawyers knew they were defying court orders.
One of the newly-disclosed emails shows that Bove gave the OK to deplane the flights, despite an order from US district judge James Boasberg to turn planes carrying detainees around. According to the email, Bove gave the legal advice that it was OK to deplane the detainees because the planes had left US airspace before Boasberg’s written order had been filed on the court docket. Prior to issuing his written order, Boasberg had issued an oral order from the bench.
During a hearing before the senate judiciary committee last month, Emil Bove denied that he had ever instructed justice department attorneys to defy a court order.
“I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” he said.
The messages released by Erez Reuveni suggest that DoJ lawyers were, at the very least, aware of the possibility they might have to ignore judicial orders.
