Summary of today’s supreme court rulings
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The supreme court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s bid to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, who were legally in the US and protected from deportation. In another boost to Donald Trump’s unprecedented hardline crackdown on immigrants, including many who have lived legally in the US for years, the court issued a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative-leaning majority. The decision leaves Haitians and Syrians in the US on TPS vulnerable to deportation even if they have applications for other forms of immigration status in progress.
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New York’s attorney general Letitia James called the decision “a betrayal of our values”, and New York representative Mike Lawler argued that “the situation on the ground in Haiti is a humanitarian and political disaster and continues to warrant an extension.” Indeed, the state department currently warns against traveling to either Haiti or Syria, citing widespread violence, crime, terrorism and kidnapping. Here’s José Olivares’s report.
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In another major immigration ruling, the high court gave the Trump administration a green light to turn back asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, in a decision that fundamentally reshapes the US asylum system. The Trump administration has sought for years to block migrants from setting foot on US soil, where federal law guarantees them the right to claim asylum and protection from persecution. The court’s 6-3 ruling will allow that practice to resume, concluding a battle that has spanned three administrations. Maanvi Singh reports.
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The supreme court also struck down a restrictive gun law in the state of Hawaii that bans people from carrying guns in certain public spaces and on private property without the permission of the property’s owner. The court’s 6-3 decision means that people can carry guns onto privately owned property like shopping malls and gas stations, unless the owners specifically say guns are banned at their establishments. Abené Clayton has the story.
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And finally, the court found in favor of the former Monsanto company in a ruling that is expected to block thousands of lawsuits filed by people alleging the key ingredient in the weed killer Roundup causes cancer. The chemical – glyphosate – has been scientifically linked to cancer in multiple studies, and was classified a probable human carcinogen by an arm of the World Health Organization in 2015.
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Kentucky Republican representative Thomas Massie called the decision a “blatant travesty of justice”. Democratic senator Cory Booker said the ruling was “a devastating blow” and allowed big corporations “to poison us with impunity”. Carey Gillam and Dharna Noor have this report.
Key events
Jeffries calls on Senate to pass bipartisan bill to restore Temporary Protected Status to Haitians after ‘cruel’ court decision
The House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries responded on Thursday to the “reckless” and “cruel” supreme court decision to allow the Trump administration to strip temporary protected status from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians who fled violence at home by calling on the Republican-led Senate to immediately pass a bill to restore TPS to Haitians which passed the House in April with bipartisan support.
“TPS holders from Haiti and Syria are our hardworking neighbors actively contributing to our communities, supporting our small businesses and filling critical labor needs”, Jeffries said in a statement. “This decision harms them, their families and the communities all across America that rely on their participation in the healthcare workforce and beyond.”
“Over the objection of Donald Trump and Mike Johnson, House Democrats passed legislation in April to extend TPS for Haitians and protect our communities from the inhumane and unacceptable policies of this out-of-control administration”, Jeffries added. “The Senate should immediately move Rep. Laura Gillen’s bipartisan bill in response to today’s reckless Supreme Court decision.”
Jeffries was referring to a bill directing “the Secretary of Homeland Security to “designate Haiti for temporary protected status until” three months after a new president is sworn in 2029. That measure, introduced by a Democratic congresswoman from a part of Long Island, New York where there are over 30,000 Haitian residents, was put to a vote over the objections of Republican House leaders after a successful discharge petition. It passed with bipartisan support, 224 – 204, more than two months ago, but has not been put to a vote in the Republican-led Senate.
Gillen echoed the Democratic leader’s call in a statement of her own on Thursday.
“The Supreme Court’s cruel and harmful decision to end Temporary Protected Status for hardworking, law-abiding Haitians in this country now puts our friends and neighbors’ lives at risk, as they could be forced to face the horrific violence and chaos in Haiti”, the lawmaker wrote.
“Removing our neighbors would not just be a humanitarian catastrophe; it would hurt our economy. Haitian TPS recipients are a part of the fabric of our daily lives and pillars of our economy and faith communities. They are a fundamental part of our vibrant identity on Long Island”, she added.
White House seeks extra funds for Iran war as part of $87.6bn request
Chris Stein
The White House has requested Congress approve $87.6bn in new funding, much of which would go towards the costs of Donald Trump’s war against Iran, but a top Democrat has signaled the party will not support paying for an unpopular conflict that lawmakers never authorized.
The Trump administration’s supplemental funding request released yesterday comes amid a logjam in US Congress sparked by the president’s demand that the Senate pass a measure to impose sweeping new restrictions on voting nationwide.
The standoff intensified this week, when Trump refused to sign a major housing bill approved with bipartisan majorities until the voting bill advances, after previously linking its passage to renewal of a key foreign surveillance law.
In a letter outlining the Iran war funding request, the White House office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, wrote that $67.1bn of the funds would be used to cover costs related to the conflict with Iran, and would include $21bn for munitions procurement and the defense industrial base.
The request also contains $1.4bn to respond to the outbreak of Ebola in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and $11.1bn for US farmers, who have been struggling with economic shocks related to the Trump administration’s tariff regime, as well as prices for fertilizer and diesel driven higher by the conflict with Iran.
The White House also wants Congress to codify in the proposal year-round sales of E15, a gasoline blend with higher ethanol content that can be cheaper but also cause more air pollution in warmer months.
The latest funding request comes on top of Trump’s proposed $1.5tn budget for the Pentagon, its largest in decades. While appropriators in the Senate and House of Representatives have advanced legislation to authorize $1.15tn of those funds, the White House’s request that the remaining $350bn be approved in a party-line measure has been met with skepticism from senior Republicans.
Democratic lawmakers have also scorned the idea of paying for the war with Iran, which Trump initiated in February alongside Israel without first requesting Congress’s permission. Surveys have shown the conflict is unpopular with the public, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week finding that just a quarter of Americans believe the United States has emerged stronger from the conflict.
DeSantis boasts of deporting 21,000 as ‘politically toxic’ Alligator Alcatraz jail closes
Richard Luscombe
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, boasted today of deporting 21,000 people from Alligator Alcatraz, as he confirmed the closure of the notorious immigration jail hastily erected in the Everglades that became a byword for cruelty and human rights abuses and environmental damage.
Standing beside Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s so-called border czar, at a press conference at the now dismantled site in Ochopee in the environmentally sensitive region in south Florida, DeSantis presented its year-long operation as a victory for the president’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda.
“Alligator Alcatraz fulfilled the role it was designed to serve,” he said, adding that all of the detainees held there until last week had been transferred into federal immigration custody elsewhere.
“When you start talking about 21,000 folks, that without question has made our state safer, and it’s made the country safer as well,” DeSantis added.
Critics, however, said the jail run by the Florida state, on which the governor was reportedly spending $1.2m a day of Florida taxpayers’ money, was a political liability for DeSantis.
There was a groundswell that publicity over the multiplying reports of “inhumane” treatment of undocumented detainees, including physical abuse and isolation from legal representation, was becoming untenable.
“Alligator Alcatraz is now shut down due to the relentless action of thousands of people who refused to stand idly by,” said Noelle Damico, director of social justice at the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that held a 47th and final weekly “freedom vigil” outside the remote jail on Sunday.
“We denounced the brutality, lawlessness, chaos and corruption that was Alligator Alcatraz. We, the people, made it politically toxic. We brought it to an end here, and we will bring it to an end everywhere.”
Read the rest of Richard’s report here:
In another fiery exchange with DeLauro, Mullin talked over her multiple times as she tried to ask him questions about Fema. Things got so heated that the Republican chair had to interrupt Mullin mid-ramble to remind him, “Mr Secretary … Mr Secretary, the floor is hers.”
Amodei added: “Actually, I gave it to her. You know there’s a chairman of a committee? That’s me, I gave it back to her. She’s got it.”
Here’s the clip.
A reminder that Mullin was grilled over his temper during his confirmation hearing back in March. Senate homeland security chair Rand Paul said he was a “man with anger issues” after Mullin previously called him a “freaking snake” and said he understood why a neighbor attacked Paul in 2017. Mullin did not apologize.
Here’s Mullin clutching his stress ball at today’s hearing (with decidedly mixed results).
This morning, Trump’s DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin got into some heated exchanges with Democratic lawmakers at his hearing before the House appropriations subcommittee on homeland security.
In one instance, he scolded ranking member Rosa DeLauro after the Connecticut Democrat criticized the administration’s efforts to reunite children separated from their families by its immigration policies.
DeLauro began to tell him that “3,900 children were separated from their families” at the US-Mexico border before Mullin interrupted her to claim: “450,000 kids were lost during the Biden administration and you didn’t say a word about it.”
“Mr Secretary! Do not interrupt,” said DeLauro, raising her voice. “Don’t you point your finger at me,” he retorted. “I will point my finger at you,” DeLauro replied. Mullin went on to call her a “hypocrite”.
“You should be as upset about the 450,000 kids that were lost. You didn’t say a word about it. For four years you never said a word,” Mullin yelled.
DeLauro then appealed to subcommittee chair, Republican Mark Amodei, “Could you put him in his place first?”
“You should be put in your place,” Mullin quipped, before he was shut down by Amodei, who allowed DeLauro to claim back her time.
“We are going to have something resembling order here. The time is the ranking member’s,” Amodei said, referring to DeLauro. To Mullin, he added: “If you would like to respond later on, there are methods to do that. but it’s not a who can respond louder into the mic.”
“Do not accuse me of lying,” DeLauro added. “Then don’t,” Mullin said.
Here’s the clip.
New evidence casts doubt on RFK Jr testimony before Senate
Michelle R Smith
New evidence has emerged that Robert F Kennedy Jr was on a vaccine-related “mission” when he visited Samoa ahead of a deadly measles outbreak in 2019, raising further questions about whether the US health secretary lied to the Senate when he said the trip had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
Records obtained by the Guardian show Kennedy’s colleague told Samoan officials in an email that he and Kennedy were coming as part of a mission to study the island nation’s medical records in the aftermath of a “discontinuity in vaccinations”.
“We all look forward to the opportunity to be of service to the people of Samoa with our mission,” Dr Michael Graven wrote.
Kennedy was at the time serving as chairman and chief legal counsel of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit group known for its anti-vaccine activism. Graven was the group’s chief information officer. Spokespeople for Kennedy at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Kennedy’s trip to the Pacific island nation is among the most heavily criticised activities he undertook before being named health secretary by Donald Trump. Kennedy has frequently claimed that his reason for going to Samoa was not about vaccines and that his visit did not influence people’s decisions on whether to vaccinate. At his Senate confirmation hearing last year, he said: “You cannot find a single Samoan who will say I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy.” Instead, he said he went to attend a Samoan independence celebration and to introduce a “state-of-the art” medical informatics system.
Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s visit bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists. A measles outbreak, which tore through the Pacific island nation a few months after Kennedy’s visit, sickened thousands and killed 83 people, mostly children under age five.
Summary of today’s supreme court rulings
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The supreme court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s bid to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, who were legally in the US and protected from deportation. In another boost to Donald Trump’s unprecedented hardline crackdown on immigrants, including many who have lived legally in the US for years, the court issued a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative-leaning majority. The decision leaves Haitians and Syrians in the US on TPS vulnerable to deportation even if they have applications for other forms of immigration status in progress.
-
New York’s attorney general Letitia James called the decision “a betrayal of our values”, and New York representative Mike Lawler argued that “the situation on the ground in Haiti is a humanitarian and political disaster and continues to warrant an extension.” Indeed, the state department currently warns against traveling to either Haiti or Syria, citing widespread violence, crime, terrorism and kidnapping. Here’s José Olivares’s report.
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In another major immigration ruling, the high court gave the Trump administration a green light to turn back asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, in a decision that fundamentally reshapes the US asylum system. The Trump administration has sought for years to block migrants from setting foot on US soil, where federal law guarantees them the right to claim asylum and protection from persecution. The court’s 6-3 ruling will allow that practice to resume, concluding a battle that has spanned three administrations. Maanvi Singh reports.
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The supreme court also struck down a restrictive gun law in the state of Hawaii that bans people from carrying guns in certain public spaces and on private property without the permission of the property’s owner. The court’s 6-3 decision means that people can carry guns onto privately owned property like shopping malls and gas stations, unless the owners specifically say guns are banned at their establishments. Abené Clayton has the story.
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And finally, the court found in favor of the former Monsanto company in a ruling that is expected to block thousands of lawsuits filed by people alleging the key ingredient in the weed killer Roundup causes cancer. The chemical – glyphosate – has been scientifically linked to cancer in multiple studies, and was classified a probable human carcinogen by an arm of the World Health Organization in 2015.
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Kentucky Republican representative Thomas Massie called the decision a “blatant travesty of justice”. Democratic senator Cory Booker said the ruling was “a devastating blow” and allowed big corporations “to poison us with impunity”. Carey Gillam and Dharna Noor have this report.
Reflecting pool liner was cut with a sharp knife or razor, National Park Service says
The liner along the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool was cut with a sharp knife or razor this month, causing damage to the foam sealant installed as part of Donald Trump’s $16m renovation project, a top official at the National Park Service has said.
This marks the first time the Trump administration has offered specifics for when and how the reflecting pool may have been damaged after work on the project was substantially completed, after Trump and other officials have repeatedly blamed, without evidence, unidentified “vandals” for peeling paint as well as a “350-foot gash” in the liner and other problems.
Six people have been arrested, Trump said earlier this week, without providing details, and the president has been under pressure to substantiate his claims of sabotage, particularly after claiming there was video and photo evidence.
The NPS reported the 9 June incident to US Park Police, said Frank Lands, deputy director of operations for the park service. Lands made the statement in a court document filed late yesterday as part of a lawsuit filed by a nonprofit organization to halt the Trump administration’s work on the project.
The police report indicates damage to the pool, “including a caulk over the foam sealant that was cut with a sharp knife or razor and destruction of delaminating surface material,’’ Lands said. About 70 fence post tops also were thrown into the pool, he said.
Trump pledged to beautify the century-old reflecting pool before the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations next weekend, draining its water and directing the bottom to be painted “American flag blue”. But since work was completed, the water has been plagued by algal blooms and pieces of the new coating peeling off the bottom.
Trump said yesterday that “sick people” had used razors and box cutters to slice portions of the lining.
The US Park Police posted surveillance footage yesterday evening and asked for help “identifying the individual depicted here in connection with a Destruction of Government Property investigation.” The grainy, 30-second video appears to show a person kneeling down, reaching into the reflecting pool and removing something from the water. Police said it was taken on Friday afternoon.
In his statement to the court, Lands said the parks agency plans to begin draining the reflecting pool following Independence Day celebrations to conduct repairs, including assessing and repairing any damage to the lining.
With the Associated Press.
The supreme court is continuing to face bipartisan backlash on its decision to allow the Donald Trump administration to end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians, with New York Republican representative Mike Lawler saying:
“While I have never disputed the ability of the President to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS), I strongly disagree with ending Haitian TPS at this time.
First, the situation on the ground in Haiti is a humanitarian and political disaster and continues to warrant an extension. The State Department has a level 4 travel advisory telling all Americans to evacuate and not travel there precisely because the gangs are in charge of the country, engaged in gun and drug trafficking, and kidnapping innocent Haitians. We want to root it out and allow for a stable government to be establish with a free a fair election, creating the conditions for a safe return for Haitians.”
He added that the ending of TPS for Haitians will “create a crisis in our hospitals, nursing homes, and in the I/DD community.” Lawler went on to urge the Trump administration to “allow for an orderly process by which Haitian TPS holders can maintain their work authorization while their immigration cases are adjudicated over the next six months, if the revocation of TPS moves forward.”
In addition to criticisms towards its ruling on the former Monsanto company, the supreme court is facing backlash towards its decision to allow Donald Trump’s administration to end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians.
Condemning the ruling, New York’s attorney general Letitia James wrote on X:
“The Supreme Court’s decision to strip TPS from Haitian and Syrian communities is a betrayal of our values and of the promise our country made to protect people from displacement and harm. I’ll never stop fighting for our immigrant neighbors and loved ones.”
George Chidi
The Trump administration’s plan to deny mail-in ballots to states that would not give their voter rolls to federal officials was blocked Thursday morning by a federal judge in Boston.
US district judge Indira Talwani ruled that the provisions of an executive order issued by Donald Trump on 31 March requiring the postal service to require the use of a barcode tracking system for ballot envelopes tied to US Citizenship and Immigration Services data was unconstitutional.
It comes amid a broader drive by the president and his officials to reshape rules and regulations around voting ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump is pushing Congress to pass the Save America Act, which would impose new ID requirements on voters and curtail mail-in voting.
Voting rights groups, joined by 23 states and the District of Columbia, sued the administration to stop the proposed rule, arguing that the US constitution provides no authority for the president to issue orders governing the administration of elections.
Similarly, Democratic senator Cory Booker called the ruling a “devastating blow,” saying on X:
“This is a devastating blow in our fight to hold big pesticide companies accountable for the harm caused by their toxic chemicals.
It is terrible that the Trump Administration convinced the Supreme Court to provide a liability shield to big corporations like Bayer, allowing them to poison us with impunity. I fought this decision tooth and nail in the courts and stood with the MAHA movement on the Supreme Court steps to oppose it.
This is not a liberal vs. conservative or right vs. left issue – it is a right or wrong issue. Now Congress must quickly act to reverse this liability shield.”
Reactions are starting to roll in on the supreme court’s decision favoring former Monsanto company in a case that limits how people can sue pesticide companies for alleged illnesses.
On X, Kentucky’s Republican representative Thomas Massie called the decision a “travesty of justice,” saying:
“SCOTUS rules Monsanto/Bayer can’t be sued for omitting a warning even if their herbicides do cause cancer. Even if the legal reasoning of the court is sound in this case, it’s a blatant travesty of justice. Congress and the President can fix this and we absolutely should.”
Supreme court rules in favor of former Monsanto company in pesticide case
Carey Gillam
The supreme court has ruled in favor of the former Monsanto company in a closely watched case that limits the way for people to sue pesticide companies for alleged illnesses or injuries.
The decision was made in a 7-2 vote, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh offering the majority opinion and Justice Jackson writing the dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The case, Monsanto v Durnell, specifically dealt with the question of whether a federal law that gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory authority over pesticides preempts state claims that a company failed to warn users of certain product risks when the EPA itself has not required such warnings.
In its ruling, the court said the EPA controls pesticide labels to ensure nationwide uniformity, and because the agency evaluated Roundup and decided a cancer warning was unnecessary, state-level lawsuits demanding such a warning conflict with federal law.
The case at the heart of the decision deals with Monsanto’s glyphosate – a weedkilling chemical used in the popular Roundup brand and numerous other herbicide products sold by the former Monsanto company, which is now owned by Germany’s Bayer.
The chemical has been scientifically linked to cancer in multiple studies, and was classified a probable human carcinogen by an arm of the World Health Organization in 2015.
Bayer has spent the last decade fighting more than 100,000 lawsuits filed by people who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma they blamed on exposure to the glyphosate weedkillers, and the company has paid out billions of dollars in jury awards and settlements. All of the cases include allegations that the company failed to warn that glyphosate could cause cancer.
Bayer maintains that its products don’t cause cancer, and also asserts that under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (Fifra), the EPA is the key authority for determining if its product necessitated a cancer warning. The EPA has not required such a warning and has taken the position that glyphosate is “unlikely” to be carcinogenic, so the company cannot be held liable for failing to warn, according to Bayer’s argument.
The court’s decision means the failure-to-warn claims included in several thousand lawsuits pending against Monsanto cannot go forward.
Similarly, thousands of such claims pending against pesticide maker Syngenta cannot proceed. In the Syngenta cases, plaintiffs allege they developed Parkinson’s disease due to exposure to the company’s paraquat weed killer. Syngenta maintains that the evidence linking paraquat to Parkinson’s disease is “fragmentary” and “inconclusive”.
Maanvi Singh
The vote was 6-3, with conservative justices Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett concurring. The court’s liberal justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor all dissented, with the latter penning a biting 35-page long dissent – notably almost twice as long as the Alito majority opinion.
US immigration law entitles migrants arriving in the US to seek asylum; the supreme court case hinged on what, exactly, it means to “arrive in”. When the court considered the case in March, chief justice Roberts and justice Barrett appeared to agree with the Trump administration’s argument – that to “arrive” in the US is to fully set food on US soil. If a migrant is turned back before they are able to cross the border, they are not entitled to asylum, the administration held.
Though much of the supreme court oral arguments about the case centered on the question about what it means to “arrive” in the US and whether the administration is entitled to deny asylum by preventing arrival, the court’s liberal justices also grappled with what it would mean to essentially end the proactive of providing asylum at the US border.
Justice Sotomayor compared the practice of turning away asylum seekers to the tragedy of the St Louis, a passenger ship with Jewish refugees that was turned away from the US right before the second world war. About half the passengers who were returned to western European countries were trapped and killed when Germany invaded.
In Alito’s opinion, he wrote: “In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place … before the person enters that place.”
Sotomayor pushed back strongly in her dissent, explaining the dire consequences of the decision, noting that the government may now circumvent a vast range of laws protecting asylum-seekers by simply blocking their entry at the border.
She wrote:
They may do so even if the asylum seeker is at the threshold of a port of entry designated to receive all noncitizens who seek entrance into the country. Even if the port of entry has ample capacity to inspect that person, including an available asylum officer trained to process asylum applications. Even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away.
The Court’s illogical interpretation is driven almost entirely by a fixation on a single word: ‘in.’ Words, however, must be read in context and with attention to how they fit into the statute as a whole. The majority ignores the statutory context and history, not to mention the longstanding position of the Executive Branch, all of which show that any noncitizen arriving at our doorstep and seeking admission must be inspected and allowed to apply for asylum, regardless of whether her foot has crossed the threshold. Because the Court today blesses the Executive Branch’s decision to slam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution, despite the detailed inspection and asylum system that Congress enacted and commands, I respectfully dissent.
