Politics

The Trump administration has codified its efforts to strip some Americans of their US citizenship in a recently published justice department memo that directs attorneys to prioritize denaturalization for naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes.

The memo, published on 11 June, calls on attorneys in the department to institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either “illegally procured” naturalization or procured naturalization by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”.

At the center of the move are the estimated 25 million US citizens who immigrated to the country after being born abroad, according to data from 2023 – and it lists 10 different priority categories for denaturalization.

According to the memo, those subjected to civil proceedings are not entitled to an attorney like they are in criminal cases. And the government has a lighter burden of proof in civil cases than they do in criminal ones.

Edit: According to the Miami Herald, it depends on where you live:

The Supreme Court’s ruling means the judges’ injunctions blocking Trump’s executive order only affect the jurisdictions where immigrant groups filed their lawsuits — leaving the rest of the country, including Florida, subject to the president’s citizenship order. The turn of events is likely to lead to more federal lawsuits, including a class action case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in New Hampshire on Friday.

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Instead of rooting out examples of anti-American ideology, however, commenters have responded by criticizing mosquitoes and staffing cuts and praising the parks’ natural beauty as well as its employees.

The comments overwhelmingly praise the parks as beautiful national treasures, with dozens complimenting rangers for their knowledge and navigational help. Many called for undoing funding cuts and rehiring staff who were fired by the Trump administration.

“The vast majority of public comments show what we’ve always known — people love their national parks and deeply value the dedicated staff who protect them every day,” said Theresa Pierno, president of the NPCA.

“Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to members of the community, local leaders and stakeholders across the country,” Lee wrote on the social platform X on Saturday. “While there has been a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies — about my bill, many people brought forward sincere concerns.”

The provision would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell as much as 1.225 million acres of public property in 11 Western states. Proponents had argued that the region has a severe shortage of affordable housing and that developers could build new homes on these tracts.

In his post, Lee said that, because of the strict rules governing the budgetary process that Republicans are using to pass the bill, he was “unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.”

In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.

In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a group of Maryland parents have a right to opt their elementary-school-aged children out of instruction that includes LGBTQ+ themes. By a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with the parents – who are Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox – that the Montgomery County school board’s refusal to provide them with that option violates their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito acknowledged that “courts are not school boards or legislatures, and are ill-equipped to determine the ‘necessity’ of discrete aspects of a State’s program of compulsory education.” But he emphasized that “what the parents seek here is not the right to micromanage the public school curriculum, but rather to have their children opt out of a particular educational requirement that burdens their well-established right ‘to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children’” under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

The US Supreme Court on Friday upheld a key provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires health plans to fully cover many preventive health care services recommended by a federal panel.

The ruling means that tens of millions of Americans can continue getting a variety of preventive services for free under their plans. Those cost-free services include an array of screenings, such as cancer screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies, as well as screens for obesity, lead exposure in children, high blood pressure, diabetes, and some sexually transmitted diseases, to name a few. The free services also include recommended vaccines for children and adults, well-baby and well-child doctor visits, birth control, statins, PrEP HIV prevention drugs, and fluoride supplements and varnishes for children's teeth.

Donald Trump’s realty firm is representing one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies in its effort to offload a $12 million New York condo—an arrangement that represents yet another apparent conflict of interest for the 47th president of the United States.

The condo on the 39th floor of the Trump International Hotel and Tower at Columbus Circle has been on and off the market for several years but hasn’t been successfully sold. According to real estate websites, it was listed by a different realty firm, Sotheby’s, until late last month. Around that time, it was listed for sale on Trump International Realty’s website. If it sells at its current listing price, it would likely earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions for Trump’s firm.

According to New York real estate records, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche bought the swanky 3,000-square-foot condo back in 2006. The two-bedroom unit features “sweeping views of Central Park,” along with “lacquered custom tray ceilings with custom lighting, custom pocket doors, Steinway black lacquered doors, Corian counters, subzero refrigerator, Wolf convection oven, wine cooler and marble bath.” It’s unclear why Roche—which has offices across the United States—originally purchased the property or why it recently turned to Trump’s real estate firm for help. Roche and its American biotech subsidiary, Genentech, did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did the Trump Organization or Karina Lynch, an attorney with the powerhouse firm DLA Piper, who was recently announced as the Trump Organization’s “outside ethics adviser.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law requiring pornography websites to verify users’ ages to prevent access to minors.

The Texas law, passed in 2023, requires companies that distribute “sexual material harmful to minors” to use any commercially available online system, including ones that verify users’ government-issued IDs, to confirm visitors are over age 18.

Websites that don’t comply can face fines of up to $10,000 per day and up to $250,000 if a minor is exposed to explicit content.

Relying on an emergency order issued in January 2023 in response to a flood of Cuban and Haitian migrants arriving by boat in the Florida Keys, DeSantis is seizing county land, mobilizing a team of private companies to build a facility big enough to hold 3,000 detained immigrants and deploying Florida National Guard troops to secure the site. The rush of migrant arrivals ended long ago, but the order, which cites then-President Joe Biden’s “inadequate” response to immigration, has been repeatedly extended.

“This is not our first rodeo,” DeSantis told Fox News on Friday while touring an airfield owned by Miami-Dade County that has quickly been turned into a small grid of heavy-duty tents and trailers.

“Democracy is at risk. Freedom is at risk,” he told attendees of a webinar Thursday.

“Democracy doesn’t live on automatic pilot. You don’t take a DNA test to see if you believe in freedom,” he added. “Freedom and democracy are taught, and teaching is a conscious act, and that’s what our judges do.”

Kennedy delivered the remarks during the latest edition of Speak Up for Justice, a nonpartisan effort and virtual forum to advocate for upholding and protecting the authority of the judiciary. Joined by other American judges as well as judges from Poland, South Africa and Venezuela, Kennedy — who retired from the bench during the first Trump presidency in 2018 — cautioned that the political polarization and erosion of the judiciary’s integrity pose a threat to freedom and democracy in the United States.

“His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people,” McGraw told Wired.

Coristine may have previously worked for the SSA, but reporting on his employment history is conflicted.

The Trump administration plans to limit sharing classified information with Congress after someone leaked an internal assessment suggesting that Saturday's bombings of Iran's nuclear facilities weren't as successful as President Trump claimed, four sources tell Axios.

Democrats see the Trump decision as a significant escalation in what they say is the White House's attempt to stonewall Congress about the Iran conflict.

The primary in staunchly liberal New York is likely to determine who becomes mayor in November's election.

The former governor's loss marks the "biggest upset in modern NYC history," Trip Yang, a political strategist, told the BBC.

"A massive win for Zohran Mamdani that shows that when Donald Trump is President, New York Democrats want to see their leaders fight with enthusiasm and courage, and that's what Zohran showed voters."

In an interview with the New York Times, Cuomo said he was still examining whether he would run in the general election in November on the independent line.

The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority ended the term by ruling against the adult entertainment industry in a First Amendment case involving pornography. In an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court said the power to require age verification to access sexual content online is within a state’s authority to prevent children from accessing explicit content.

While agreeing about the importance of protecting children, Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent for the Democratic appointees emphasized that the First Amendment protects sexually explicit material for adults. “So a State cannot target that expression, as Texas has here, any more than is necessary to prevent it from reaching children,” she wrote.

An adult industry trade group and others challenged the law on constitutional grounds, arguing that the verification process imposes too great a burden on adults’ access to legal content. Texas said it’s trying to protect kids in a public health crisis of pornography.

The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trump’s trade wars disrupted business, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in an unexpected deterioration of earlier estimates.

First-quarter growth was weighed down by a surge of imports as U.S. companies, and households, rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them. The Commerce Department previously estimated that the economy fell 0.2% in the first quarter. Economists had forecast no change in the department’s third and final estimate.

The January-March drop in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — reversed a 2.4% increase in the last three months of 2024 and marked the first time in three years that the economy contracted. Imports expanded 37.9%, fastest since 2020, and pushed GDP down by nearly 4.7 percentage points.

A battered dollar is taking another beating as investors, unnerved by fresh signs of an erosion in U.S. central bank independence, waste no time in pushing the greenback back to its lowest levels in over three years.

The dollar was back at multi-year lows against a basket of other major currencies on Thursday , erasing a brief respite provided by safe-haven flows related to Middle East tensions earlier in the week.

Down 10% so far this year and set for its worst year since 2003, the dollar was expected to weaken further as renewed concern about Fed independence comes amid increased expectations for rate cuts and a looming July 9 deadline for trade agreements.

Federal agents on the lookout for undocumented immigrants to deport paid a visit recently to the offices of a state-funded children’s shelter in the Florida Keys.

Trying to find the undocumented parents of a child living in the shelter, the agents staked out the parking lot of the office building, assuming they would eventually come there to visit their youngster.

At a program dedicated to the welfare of families, federal agents were seeking to tear one apart.

The stakeout, detailed during a meeting this month between Florida’s privately-operated foster care providers and the state, is just one example of how the Trump administration’s mass-deportation campaign is encircling vulnerable children who were previously off-limits — and squeezing the social welfare agencies tasked with caring for them.

“The Trump administration’s decision to invoke a highly questionable regulation for terminating funds based on their changed ‘agency priorities’ is unlawful,” Colorado Attorney General Weiser said in a statement. “We are challenging this action because Colorado and other states accept hundreds of billions of dollars a year to combat violent crime, educate students, protect clean drinking water, conduct lifesaving medical and scientific research, and safeguard public health. All these priorities are at risk of funding cuts based on the misuse of this regulation.”

The lawsuit argues the Trump administration has used the clause for the basis of a “slash-and-burn campaign” to cut federal grants.

“Defendants have terminated thousands of grant awards made to Plaintiffs, pulling the rug out from under the States, and taking away critical federal funding on which States and their residents rely for essential programs,” the lawsuit added.

Key elements of the sprawling Republican budget package—including major components of its assault on Medicaid—are crumbling under scrutiny from Democratic staffers and the Senate parliamentarian, who has deemed dozens of provisions in violation of reconciliation rules.

On Thursday, Elizabeth MacDonough—who was appointed as parliamentarian in 2012 and has served under both Republican and Democratic leadership—advised against nine provisions of the GOP legislation that are under the Senate Finance Committee's jurisdiction.

Judge James Donato ruled Tuesday night that Trump “applied the national security label to an unprecedented swath of federal agencies, including whole cabinet departments for the first time in history,” and “greatly exceeded” the scope of any other similar executive order.

Donato also determined Justice Department attorneys representing the Trump administration “had a hard time” justifying how some agencies, like the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, should primarily be considered as having a national security mission.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the lead plaintiff in the case, argued the Trump administration’s selective enforcement of the executive order — allowing agencies to recognize some unions while barring others — amounted to unconstitutional retaliation, targeting unions that speak out against the administration’s federal workforce polices and challenge them in court.

The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in curbing nationwide injunctions granted against his birthright citizenship order, in a 6-3 ruling with the court’s Republican appointees in the majority and the Democratic appointees dissenting.

“These injunctions — known as ‘universal injunctions’ — likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in a decision that didn’t decide the underlying legality of President Donald Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship. Litigation will continue on the issue in the lower courts and individual plaintiffs can still bring additional challenges against the order.

Barrett wrote that such broad injunctions were a relatively recent development in the law that’s “conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation’s history.”

Several former and current top aides of Attorney General Ken Paxton are trading explosive accusations in legal and administrative filings, the latest of which alleges that Paxton's right-hand deputy obstructed justice and tampered with witnesses during his 2023 impeachment.

The public feud could become a distraction for Paxton just as he’s overcome a series of legal troubles, including the impeachment charges, which he was acquitted of by the Texas Senate, and as he launches his bid to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s Republican primary.

Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old given unprecedented access to some of the most private information on Americans, has reportedly quit his role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency according to Wired. If you don’t remember the name Coristine, you probably remember his nickname, the thing he reportedly told people to call him while he plundered the nation’s data. He went by Big Balls.

Officially, Coristine was an employee of GSA but was working across multiple government agencies, according to Wired. Big Balls was reportedly rooting around in government systems for USAID, the Department of Education, and the Small Business Administration, among others. It’s not clear how much data to which Coristine ultimately got access. Nor do we know what he, or anyone else affiliated with DOGE, has done with it.

Coristine made an infamous appearance on Fox News where he tried to strengthen Musk’s case that the federal government was riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse. But he wound up accidentally revealing that he simply had no idea how anything works. Coristine and Musk seemed to believe that because they didn’t know how various things in the government worked, some kind of nefarious activity had been exposed. But it did nothing of the sort.

The Trump administration has launched a major reorganization of the U.S. fight against drug traffickers and other transnational criminal groups, setting out a strategy that would give new authority to the Department of Homeland Security and deepen the influence of the White House.

The administration’s plans, described in internal documents and by government officials, would reduce federal prosecutors’ control over investigations, shifting key decisions to a network of task forces jointly led by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, the primary investigative arm of DHS.

Current and former officials said the proposed reorganization would make it easier for senior officials like Miller to disregard norms that have long walled off the White House from active criminal investigations.

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that if states decide to unilaterally cut off Medicaid funding to a healthcare provider—in this case Planned Parenthood—patients cannot sue to stop them.

Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the decision in the case, known as Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. In his opinion, he wrote that the Medicaid provision that protects patients’ ability to choose their doctor lacks the “rights-creating language” needed for patients to bring federal lawsuits when a state restricts their choice.

In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision would gut the landmark Reconstruction-era civil rights law giving ordinary citizens the ability to sue in federal court when their rights are violated. “South Carolina asks us to hollow out that provision so that the State can evade liability for violating the rights of its Medicaid recipients to choose their own doctors,” she wrote.