Summary of the day
Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
A federal judge set a date for a second defamation trial brought by E Jean Carroll, the New York writer who last month won a $5m jury verdict against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. US district judge Lewis Kaplan signed an order on Thursday scheduling the trial for 15 January 2024, “unless this case has previously been entirely disposed of”.
US district judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s latest criminal case, issued her first order since the former president’s arraignment earlier this week. Cannon has ordered defense attorneys to contact the justice department to expedite the process of obtaining security clearances, suggesting that, for now, she may be interested in moving the proceedings along without delay.
The supreme court ruled that Native American children can continue to be protected under federal law against being removed from their tribal communities for fostering or adoption, rejecting a petition from a white couple who argued that the provision was a form of racial discrimination. The supreme court’s decision upholds decades of federal law that gives Native Americans and tribal members preference in the adoption or foster care of Native American children.
The supreme court’s decision was supported by Native Americans, tribal leaders and top Democrats. Following the announcement of the court’s 7-2 decision, several tribal leaders commended the supreme court’s ruling, calling it a “major victory for Native tribes, children and the future of our culture and heritage”.
Former New York mayor Bill de Blasio was ordered to pay $475,000 for misusing public funds on a police security detail during his failed 2020 presidential bid. De Blasio “plainly violated” the city’s prohibition on using public resources to advance a political campaign, the chair of New York’s conflicts of interest board said. The fine is the largest ever handed out by the board.
The mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Suarez will be an outsider in a crowded field dominated by two other Florida men: Donald Trump, the twice-indicted former president, and Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor.
Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old US airman accused of leaking confidential intelligence and defense documents online, was indicted by a federal grand jury, the Department of Justice said on Thursday. Teixeira, of North Dighton, Massachusetts, has been charged with six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense, the justice department said.
Texas governor Greg Abbott’s decision to bus migrants to Los Angeles this week has been decried as a “despicable stunt”, as advocates in California reported that the group was not offered food during the 23-hour trip. Abbott has faced increasing scrutiny for his bussing program over the last year, which immigrants’ rights groups have said can be exploitative and cruel.
The Senate confirmed the former American Civil Liberties Union attorney Nusrat Jahan Choudhury as the first Muslim woman to serve as a federal judge on Thursday. Choudhury, 46, is also the first Bangladeshi American to serve in this lifetime position. She will serve as a judge on the US court for the eastern district of New York.
Updated
Race has emerged as a central issue in the 2024 Republican presidential race, with the GOP’s primary field featuring five candidates of color: Miami mayor Francis Suarez, South Carolina senator Tim Scott, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and radio host Larry Elder.
The candidates of color are considered underdogs in the field currently dominated by Donald Trump and Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis. But AP reports that the Republican party’s increasingly diverse leadership suggests it may have a real opportunity in 2024 to further weaken the Democrats’ grip on African Americans and Latinos.
It writes:
Those groups have been among the most loyal segments of the Democratic coalition since Republican leaders fought against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Republican presidential contenders of 2024 walk a fine line when addressing race with the GOP’s overwhelmingly white primary electorate. In most cases, the diverse candidates in the Republican field play down the significance of their racial heritage. They all deny the existence of systemic racism in the United States even while discussing their own personal experience with racial discrimination. They oppose policies around policing, voting rights and education that are designed to benefit disadvantaged communities and combat structural racism.
Updated
Donald Trump’s insistence on holding on to the contents of his boxes – and demanding them to be returned – is typical of the former president’s behavior, according to a report.
During his time in the White House, Trump’s aide referred to the boxes of documents he kept close as the “beautiful mind” material, the New York Times reports. It says:
Starting in the early months of his administration, Mr. Trump began using a cardboard box to bring papers and documents from the West Wing up to the residence at the end of the day.
In the White House, according to two people familiar with the practice, Mr. Trump was generally able to identify what was in the boxes most immediately around him. One of those people said he was “meticulous” in putting things in specific boxes — notwithstanding a picture released by the Justice Department showing classified documents spilled on the floor of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago.
Shortly after John F. Kelly took over as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff in July 2017, Mr. Kelly and other aides grew concerned that some documents were likely presidential records and might go missing if they were kept in the residence. They impressed upon Mr. Trump that the papers had to be tracked, but he was not especially interested, the people said.
Aides started examining the boxes to check for presidential records, but Mr. Trump still found ways to bring items to the residence. And the boxes began to multiply.
He could point to specific boxes that he wanted to take with him on Air Force One when he was traveling, and decline to take others, appearing aware of the contents inside the boxes he chose, both officials said.
Trump has claimed that he “hadn’t had a chance to go through all the boxes” as an explanation for why he failed to return the classified documents.
“It’s a long tedious job. Takes a long time, which I was prepared to do, but I have a very busy life,” he told his supporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Wednesday.
Updated
Former New York mayor Bill de Blasio has been ordered to pay $475,000 for misusing public funds on a police security detail during his failed 2020 presidential bid.
The fine by New York’s conflicts of interest board – which de Blasio is challenging in court – is the largest ever handed out by the board, and comes after a years-long investigation into his use of taxpayer money to cover travel costs of NYPD officers who accompanied him on 31 out-of-state campaign trips.
De Blasio “plainly violated” the city’s prohibition on using public resources to advance a political campaign, according to the board’s chair, Milton Williams.
Lawyers for de Blasio described the ruling as “reckless and arbitrary”, arguing that recent “unprecedented threats of political violence” underscored the security needs of public servants.
De Blasio has previously faced allegations of misusing his security detail. Under today’s ruling he will be forced to reimburse the city for $320,000 for the expenses the NYPD incurred, as well as a $155,000 fine.
Updated
Donald Trump has just taken to Truth Social to demand that all charges against him be dropped and for “everything that was illegally taken” from his home to be returned.
The post reads:
So now that everyone understands that the Presidential Records Act, plus the Clinton socks case, totally exonerated me from the continuing witch hunt brought on by corrupt Joe Biden, the DoJ, deranged Jack Smith, and their radical left, Marxist thugs, when are they going to drop all charges against me, apologize, and return everything that was illegally taken (Fourth Amendment) from my home? This was nothing other than election interference!!
Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old US airman accused of leaking confidential intelligence and defense documents online, has been indicted by a federal grand jury, the Department of Justice said on Thursday.
Teixeira, of North Dighton, Massachusetts, has been charged with six counts of wilful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense, the justice department said.
Updated
E Jean Carroll defamation trial against Donald Trump set for January 2024
A federal judge has set a date for a second defamation trial brought by E Jean Carroll, the New York writer who last month won a $5m jury verdict against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation.
US district judge Lewis Kaplan signed an order scheduling the trial for 15 January 2024, “unless this case has previously been entirely disposed of”.
It comes after a ruling earlier this week allowing Carroll to pursue her $10m defamation case against the former US president that was filed following the publication of her 2019 book in which she accused Trump of rape and his claim she was lying.
Here’s a look at Trump’s schedule of legal proceedings, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney:
Trump schedule of legal proceedings, as of now:
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 15, 2023
-July-August: Likely Fulton indictment
-Oct: NY State civil trial against Trump Org.
-January: E. Jean Carroll trial
-March: Manhattan criminal trial
-TBD: Documents criminal trial, likely Fulton County criminal proceedings
Updated
Texas governor Greg Abbott’s decision to bus migrants to Los Angeles this week has been decried as a “despicable stunt”, as advocates in California reported that the group was not offered food during the 23-hour trip.
On Wednesday, 42 migrants, including 15 youth and three babies, arrived at Union Station in downtown LA, said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, the communications director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights-Los Angeles (Chirla), who met the group when they arrived. The travelers he spoke to came from Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti, and one came from China, he said, adding some told him they had been on the bus for nearly a day without any food or drink.
Abbott tweeted that it was the “1st bus of migrants” arriving in LA, claiming Texas border towns “remain overrun & overwhelmed because Biden refuses to secure the border”. Recent reports, however, have found that the number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border is at its lowest levels since the start of Joe Biden’s presidency. Abbott has faced increasing scrutiny for his bussing program over the last year, which has reportedly sent tens of thousands of migrants to Democratic-run cities, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington.
Immigrants’ rights groups have said the practice can be exploitative and cruel, noting last year that one bus Abbott sent to Philadelphia had a 10-year-old girl on it who had to be hospitalized from dehydration and a high fever. Last month, the governor sent buses to vice-president Kamala Harris’s residence in Washington.
Read the full story by my colleague Sam Levin here:
Updated
This first order by Aileen Cannon, the Florida district judge assigned to oversee Donald Trump’s classified documents case, suggests she may be interested in moving the proceedings along without delay.
Cannon was appointed to the federal bench by the former president three years ago, and gave him a favorable ruling at an earlier hearing last year. But she was later rebuked by an appeals court panel for granting Trump’s request for an independent special master to review the documents. That action slowed the justice department’s investigation and prompted questions over her impartiality.
There is no certainty she will remain on the case. But while she is the assigned jurist, Cannon will have broad authority to control almost every aspect, including which evidence is admissible, the ability to slow down or speed up proceedings, and even the legal viability of the justice department’s case.
My colleague Richard Luscombe has a handy explainer on Who is Aileen Cannon, the judge assigned in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago case?
US district judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s latest criminal case, has issued her first order since the former president’s arraignment earlier this week.
Cannon ordered defense attorneys to contact the Justice department to expedite the process of obtaining security clearances. The order reads:
On or before June 16, 2023, all attorneys of record and forthcoming attorneys of record shall contact the Litigation Security Group of the U.S. Department of Justice, if they have not done so already, to expedite the necessary clearance process for all team members anticipated to participate in this matter.
Joe Biden’s re-election bid has won the support of four major American environmental groups, who say he’s done more to fight climate change than any other president.
The endorsement from the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, NextGen Pac, and NRDC Action Fund marks the first time the four groups have jointly endorsed a presidential candidate.
“President Biden has acted courageously during a critical inflection point in the climate fight,” Sierra club national executive director Ben Jealous said in a statement. “No other administration has done more to move us forward. The stakes could not be higher and the choice could not be more clear. We need President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris back in the White House for another four years.”
President and CEO of the NRDC Manish Bapna warned, “A GOP presidency would throw the country’s hard-won climate gains into hard reverse, condemning our children to cascading crises of climate, nature, and inequity. We cannot allow that to happen.”
“For everyone who grasps the stakes in this existential fight, Joe Biden is the clear choice for 2024. We’re counting on him to take the climate fight to the next level in a second term — and he can count on our support,” Bapna said.
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients is cheering the Senate’s confirmation of Joe Biden’s judicial nominees.
It’s been a priority for the president ever since he took office, and has become even more so since Democrats lost control of the House, and their ability to pass Biden’s agenda:
We continue to demonstrate what a priority this is for @POTUS https://t.co/SnJKVTL1gw
— Jeff Zients (@WHCOS) June 15, 2023
The latest heading to the bench is Nusrat Choudhury, the first Muslim woman to serve as a federal judge, and the first Bangladeshi American:
CONFIRMED: Nusrat Choudhury to be a US District Judge for the Eastern District of New York!
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 15, 2023
She's an ACLU Legal Director and I was proud to recommend her to @POTUS.
She makes history as the first Bangladeshi American and first Muslim American woman to serve as a federal judge. pic.twitter.com/Mnpcgacljf
Democrats plan long-shot abortion rights push in House
House Democrats will attempt a rarely deployed parliamentary tactic to force a vote on a bill protecting abortion rights, Axios reports.
Democrats will next week file a discharge petition on the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill the chamber has approved in prior congresses when Democrats have controlled the House, but which has attracted no Republican support. The GOP currently controls the House in the current Congress and has shown no willingness to bring the proposal up for a vote, and the discharge petition would force them to do so – but only if it is in signed by all Democrats and at least five Republicans.
Axios reports that the absence of any Republican defectors means the tactic is unlikely to succeed, and is more about keeping the pressure on the GOP after a midterm election in which the party’s candidates underperformed, in part due to voter anger over the end of Roe v Wade.
Democrats have increasingly turned to discharge petitions as part of their strategy now that they’re in the minority in the House. Earlier this week, they filed petitions on two bills dealing with gun control issues, which Republicans have thus far ignored.
There are those who would call Donald Trump a cult leader, but don’t count former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin among them, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:
The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin courted controversy when she denied that supporters of Donald Trump behaved like cult members.
Palin’s attempt to deny that Trump has a cultlike following, however, prompted predictable pushback on social media by those who thought her attempt to define a cult actually precisely described Trump’s enthusiastic fan base.
“The definition of a cult,” Palin told the rightwing network Newsmax, “is a group of people who are excessively supporting one another and a cause. [It’s] all about conformity and compliance and intolerance of anyone who doesn’t agree with what their mission is.
Say what you will about Donald Trump, but he knows how to please a crowd, and that skill was on display on Tuesday when, following his arraignment at Miami’s federal courthouse, he headed to famous Cuban restaurant Versailles.
“Food for everyone!” he declared to a crowd of admirers after walking in. But as the Miami New Times reports, it was a promise the former president did not keep:
So, New Times wondered, did Trump — who famously fancies his chicken from KFC and his steaks well-done and slathered with ketchup but isn’t exactly known for picking up the check — treat his fan club to a spread of croquetas, pastelitos, and cubanos chased with cafecitos?
It turns out no one got anything. Not even a cafecito to-go.
A knowledgeable source assures New Times that Donald Trump’s stop at Versailles totaled about ten minutes, leaving no time for anyone to eat anything, much less place an order.
Of course, with a long campaign ahead of him — possibly punctuated with additional South Florida court appearances — Trump will have plenty of opportunities to make good on Tuesday’s promise.
Updated
In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Republican senator Marco Rubio fretted that special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Donald Trump will just mean more vitriol directed at the FBI and justice department.
But of course, most of those attacks are coming from Rubio’s fellow Republicans. Listen to the Florida lawmaker’s interview here:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) says Special Counsel Jack Smith should have decided that prosecuting Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case was “not worth subjecting our country to.” pic.twitter.com/uDZBKkQPm4
— The Recount (@therecount) June 15, 2023
In other 2024 news, former president Barack Obama has weighed in on Republican presidential contender Tim Scott’s approach to racism and systemic inequality in America.
Scott, the lone Black Republican in the Senate, has downplayed the impact of systemic racism in the country. Obama pushed back on that:
Fmr. Pres. Obama criticizes 2024 GOP pres. candidate Sen. Tim Scott’s (SC) rhetoric on racism:
— The Recount (@therecount) June 15, 2023
“If a Republican … doesn’t have a plan for how do we address crippling generational poverty that is a consequence of hundreds of years of racism … then people are rightly skeptical.” pic.twitter.com/bYqGRMmgy0
This is what it’s like to be a Republican presidential candidate today.
You throw your hat into the ring, only to find yourself immediately set upon by Donald Trump’s surrogates. Miami mayor Francis Suarez found this out when Carlos Gimenez, a Republican lawmaker representing Miami’s suburbs in the House, went on Fox News to denounce him:
Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), who endorsed Trump, reacts to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (R) running for president:
— The Recount (@therecount) June 15, 2023
“I don't think that he's qualified to be president of the United States in any way, shape, or form ... He's not qualified to be VP, he's not qualified to be anything.” pic.twitter.com/7pqBq8iRK0
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Trump-aligned Super Pac Maga Inc is circulating an email titled “What Conservatives Need To Know About Francis Suarez,” which includes the line, “Francis Suarez represents everything wrong with swampy, RINO politics.” Quite the welcome for Suarez to the 2024 field.
The mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, is due to make a speech at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, later today as he launches his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
Suarez officially launched his campaign with a video released this morning, alongside the caption:
My dad taught me that you get to choose your battles, and I am choosing the biggest one of my life. I’m running for president.
Suarez will be an outsider in a crowded field dominated by two other Florida men: Donald Trump, the twice indicted former president, and Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor. Trump leads most polling averages by more than 30 points. The former vice-president Mike Pence leads the rest of the pack, way back.
The New York Times noted an ad buy in early voting states charging Biden with failing to control crime. The paper also referenced an FBI investigation that could damage Suarez’s run. The Times said:
Mr Suarez is little known outside his state, and he is facing emerging allegations of influence-peddling on behalf of a real estate development company.
The editorial board of the Miami Herald said “$10,000 monthly payments [Suarez] received from a developer for consulting work – while serving as mayor”, while “small potatoes compared to Trump’s legal problems … look like a conflict of interest”. The board added:
Is being president really Suarez’s goal?
Updated
The Republican Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has called on the Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, to “stop pussyfooting around” on whether he is going to run for president in 2024.
DeSantis, at a press conference in Fort Pierce, Florida, suggested Newsom had “real serious fixation on the state of Florida” while he had his own “huge problems” in California. He said:
What I would tell him is, you know what? Stop pussyfooting around.
He added:
Are you going to throw your hat in the ring and challenge Joe? Are you going to do it? Or are you going to sit on the sidelines and chirp? Why don’t you throw your hat in the ring, and then we’ll go ahead and talk about what’s happening.
DeSantis’ remarks came after Newsom said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he would debate the Florida governor in a forum moderated by Hannity. “I’m all in. Count on it,” Newsom said in the interview, aired on Monday.
“You would do a two-hour debate with Ron DeSantis?” Hannity asked. “Make it three,” Newsom replied, adding:
I would do it one day’s notice with no notes. I look forward to that.
In the same interview, the California governor insisted he did not intend to challenge Biden to the Democratic presidential nomination next year.
Kamala Harris has released a statement supporting the supreme court’s decision upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act.
In the statement, the vice president said the decision was a “victory for Tribal sovereignty and Native communities”. She added:
For centuries, Native children were torn away from their families and their communities. These acts were not only violations of the basic human rights of those children and their families but also an attack on the very existence of Tribal Nations.
The Indian Child Welfare Act – or ICWA -was passed to address this systemic injustice. As District Attorney of San Francisco, I represented children and families in ICWA cases. As Attorney General of California, I partnered with Tribal leaders, child welfare agencies, and law enforcement officials to enforce ICWA. So I have seen firsthand how essential this law is to the safety and wellbeing of Native children.
Harris said she and Joe Biden would “continue to fight to protect Native families, children, and communities”, and to “stand with Tribal Nations in defense of Tribal sovereignty”.
The day so far
The supreme court’s liberals together with most of its conservative majority united to reject a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act, which protects Native American children from being removed from their tribal communities for fostering or adoption. While the decision was a win for indigenous rights and the Biden administration, the nation’s highest court has plenty of high-stakes decisions left to make in its term, including cases dealing with affirmative action, Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan and congressional redistricting. Those could be among the verdicts released tomorrow at 10am eastern time, when the court will announce more decisions.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Donald Trump hired a lawyer who tried to convince him to negotiate with the justice department over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, but the former president declined to do so, according to a report.
The Senate’s Republican leader Mitch McConnell expressed hope the court would stop Biden’s attempt to relieve federal student loan debt.
Interior secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, welcomed the supreme court’s upholding of the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Deb Haaland, secretary of the interior, welcomes court decision
Deb Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, and made history as the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary when she was confirmed to lead the interior department under Joe Biden.
Haaland was also among the petitioners in Haaland v Brackeen, the just-decided supreme court case upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act. Here’s what she had to say about the decision:
My full statement on the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act pic.twitter.com/V8e97j1sgg
— Secretary Deb Haaland (@SecDebHaaland) June 15, 2023
Updated
One of the major outstanding cases before the supreme court is a challenge to Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some federal student loan debt.
The plan is currently on hold due to a court ruling, and opposed by most Republican and a few Democratic lawmakers. On the Senate floor today, Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s powerful Republican minority leader, expressed hope that the court would soon issue a ruling stopping the plan for good:
In the coming days, the Supreme Court will rule on President Biden’s plan to impose student loan socialism on millions of working families across America.
The Court’s decision will settle whether the President is allowed to use two-decade-old’“emergency’ authorities dating back to the early days of the War on Terror to put $430 billion in debt on the American taxpayer’s tab without Congressional approval.
But the American people don’t need to wait for the Supreme Court to explain to them why letting wealthy people dine and dash doesn’t make sense. They know the Biden Administration’s plan adds up to a raw deal.
He concluded his remarks: “The Biden Administration’s student loan socialism plan is painfully unfair. And very soon, we’ll find out if it isn’t just downright illegal.”
The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer also hailed the supreme court’s decision upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act.
“The Indian Child Welfare Act has been the law of the land for decades and today the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutional right of tribal sovereignty,” the New York lawmaker said in a statement. “For hundreds of years, indigenous communities have fought for their very existence, and today is nothing short of a momentous day that ensures that indigenous children maintain a connection to their culture.”
Biden cheers supreme court upholding protections for Native American children
Joe Biden has released a statement of strong support for the supreme court’s decision upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act. Here’s what the president has to say:
I stand alongside Tribal Nations as they celebrate today’s Supreme Court decision. This lawsuit sought to undermine the Indian Child Welfare Act – a vital law I was proud to support. The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed to protect the future of Tribal Nations and promote the best interests of Native children, and it does just that. The touchstone law respects tribal sovereignty and protects Native children by helping Native families stay together and, whenever possible, keeping children with their extended families or community who already know them, love them, and can help them understand who they are as Native people and citizens of their Tribal Nations. The Indian Child Welfare Act safeguards that which is most precious to us all — our children. Today’s decision from the Supreme Court keeps in place a vital protection for tribal sovereignty and Native children.
Our Nation’s painful history looms large over today’s decision. In the not-so-distant past, Native children were stolen from the arms of the people who loved them. They were sent to boarding schools or to be raised by non-Indian families — all with the aim of erasing who they are as Native people and tribal citizens. These were acts of unspeakable cruelty that affected generations of Native children and threatened the very survival of Tribal Nations. The Indian Child Welfare Act was our Nation’s promise: never again.
Tribal Nations fought hard to pass the Indian Child Welfare Act, and I am proud to have joined them in the ongoing efforts to defend it. Vice President Harris and I will continue to stand with Tribes to protect Native children, honor tribal sovereignty, and safeguard the essential principals of the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Updated
Supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch is among the court’s conservative majority, and has lent his support to opinions overturning Roe v Wade, expanding the ability to carry a concealed weapon, and other rightwing priorities.
But, in an example of the nuances to these justices’ legal philosophies, Gorsuch has shown a surprising amount of support for Native American tribes when issues concerning them have come before the court. Here’s Slate, with more on that:
Don't ask me to explain why, but Justice Gorsuch is the strongest and most consistent ally of Native American tribes ever to sit on the Supreme Court. And it's not particularly close. https://t.co/spqRRwCZSW pic.twitter.com/kSwQtZ5sYG
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) June 15, 2023
Here’s more from NBC News on the split between conservative justices that led to the court upholding protections for Native American children, and how that could signal the court’s mood as it weighs the fate of affirmative action.
Today’s decision concerning the Indian Child Welfare Act was authored by conservative Amy Coney Barrett, and joined by the court’s three liberals and three of its conservatives – the exceptions being Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who dissented:
Barrett wrote that the challengers were seeking a "constitutional carveout" saying that Congress cannot legislate on family law, but since the founding of the United States it has been clear that Congress has broad authority.
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 15, 2023
"Family law is no exception," she said.
Alito & Thomas dissent.
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 15, 2023
Alito wrote that although Barrett said the law concerned vulnerable children, the ruling "disserves the rights and interests of these children and their parents, as well as our Constitution's division of federal and state authority."
This ruling means that in 2 of 3 cases this term in which conservatives were pushing "race neutral" theories of law, this conservative court has ruled against challengers in both cases decided so far. Affirmative action still to come...
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 15, 2023
Here’s the reaction to the supreme court’s upholding of the Indian Child Welfare Act from Chuck Hoskin Jr, principal chief of America’s largest tribe, the Cherokee Nation:
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief @ChuckHoskin_Jr issues statement after #SCOTUS upholds #ICWA pic.twitter.com/AtV83oNGBb
— Cherokee Nation (@CherokeeNation) June 15, 2023
That’s all for today’s supreme court decisions, but the justices will issue more tomorrow, at 10am eastern time.
As usual, we won’t know what they are until they come out, but the court still has to release opinions in cases impacting congressional redistricting, affirmative action, and Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan.
Besides upholding a law that protected Native American children, the court issued two other opinions. The justices found that bankruptcy code takes precedence over tribal sovereignty, and that a defendant can be retried if the first proceedings took place in the wrong venue before a jury drawn from an incorrect pool.
Last year, the Guardian’s Cecilia Nowell took a deep dive into the Indian Child Welfare Act, which the supreme court just upheld. Here’s more about what the law does, and why it was challenged:
When Kimora Toledo was a little girl, she and her mother Malisha would make the hour-long drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jemez Pueblo at least once a month. Malisha, who is from Jemez and Tesuque Pueblos, had moved her family to Albuquerque for a better job, but her father was a Jemez medicine man and it was important to her that Kimora be immersed in that heritage. On one of those visits to Jemez, Malisha remembers dancing alongside Kimora – who’s Jemez, Tesuque, Diné and Black – during the feast day celebrations. She hoped it would be the first of many times they’d dance together.
But Malisha battled a criminal record and her ex, Kimora’s father, managed to gain custody over Kimora and her younger brother. The two children would spend several years living at their dad’s house in Albuquerque, without those monthly visits to the pueblo.
When Kimora was 11, the New Mexico children, youth and families department removed her from her father’s home over abuse she was experiencing. Kimora would spend the next three years in and out of group homes and rehabilitation centers, eventually landing in foster care when she asked not to be returned to her father’s.
Kimora had never felt more disconnected from her culture and traditional ways of healing. Her foster mother, a Mexican woman, suggested Kimora take Spanish as an elective in school. But Kimora desperately missed her mother and grandfather, and the language they’d spoken during her childhood. “I missed a lot of my childhood and our traditions,” she said, just weeks before her seventeenth birthday.
Supreme court rejects challenges to law meant to keep Native American children in communities
The supreme court has turned down a challenge to a law that keeps Native American children in their communities for fostering and adoption.
Here’s more on the decision, from the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington:
The US supreme court has ruled that Native American children can continue to be protected under federal law against being removed from their tribal communities for fostering or adoption, rejecting a petition from a white couple who argued that the provision was a form of racial discrimination.
The supreme court’s decision in a case that ultimately pitched the Brackeen family of Texas against the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, for the US government, amounts to a victory for hundreds of tribal groups. They had united to call for a retention of the law which requires Native children to be placed as a priority within their own extended families, tribes or other Native communities. They argued that the status quo was essential for the survival of tribes themselves.
The decision preserves the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Since it was enacted in 1978 the law has helped stabilize Native American families and uphold tribal sovereignty.
Updated
Supreme court to release decisions
We’re a few minutes away from 10am eastern time, when the supreme court is slated to begin releasing its latest batch of decisions.
We won’t know which decisions they release until they are out, but there are 21 cases left to decide, including closely watched petitions dealing with affirmative action, congressional redistricting and Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student loan debt – all issues the court’s conservative majority could decide to majorly change.
Follow along here as the decisions are released.
Updated
As Donald Trump’s legal troubles continue, Republican presidential candidates are now under pressure to commit to pardoning him if they win the White House – including his former vice-president-turned-critic, Mike Pence. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly:
Mike Pence is “fine with Donald Trump being put in prison” which is “pretty disrespectful” given he was Trump’s vice-president, a rightwing radio host told Pence in a testy exchange.
Pence was Trump’s vice-president when Trump sent a mob to the US Capitol on January 6, in an attempt to block certification of the 2020 election. Trump did little to call off the mob when it placed Pence in danger, some chanting for him to be hanged.
Trump could yet be indicted for his election subversion but Pence’s exchange with Clay Travis was about a more pressing problem, the 37-count federal indictment over the handling of classified records to which Trump pleaded not guilty this week.
Donald Trump refused to negotiate with prosecutors after classified documents found - report
Earlier this week, Americans watched as Donald Trump appeared in federal court to answer the first-ever indictment brought against a former president. But it all might have been avoided if he had taken the advice of one of the attorneys he hired after the FBI retrieved boxes of classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago property last August, the Washington Post reports.
According to their story, Christopher Kise, a former Florida solicitor general Trump retained after the search of his resort last year, suggested that he approve opening under-the-radar negotiations with the justice department to resolve potential charges related to his possession of government secrets, but the former president refused.
Here’s more from the story:
One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department.
The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents.
But Trump was not interested after listening to other lawyers who urged a more pugilistic approach, so Kise never approached prosecutors, three people briefed on the matter said. A special counsel was appointed months later.
Kise, a former solicitor general of Florida who was paid $3 million upfront to join Trump’s team last year, declined to comment.
That quiet entreaty last fall was one of many occasions when lawyers and advisers sought to get Trump to take a more cooperative stance in a bid to avoid what happened Friday. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment including more than three dozen criminal counts against Trump for allegedly keeping and hiding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
Trump, 77, now faces the most legally perilous moment of his life playing out in a federal court — charges that could bring decades in prison. He pleaded not guilty in Miami on Tuesday and vowed to fight the charges.
“President Trump has consistently been in full compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which is the only law that applies to Presidents and their records,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “In the course of negotiations over the return of the documents, President Trump told the lead DOJ official, ‘anything you need from us, just let us know.’ Sadly, the weaponized DOJ rejected this offer of cooperation and conducted an unnecessary and unconstitutional raid on the President’s home in order to inflict maximum political damage on the leading presidential candidate.”
Supreme court decision could have major impacts in fight for Congress
The supreme court could today issue a decision in a case with big implications for how legislative maps are drawn nationwide, potentially impacting the balance of power as Republicans and Democrats vie for control of Congress in the 2024 elections.
The case is Moore v Harper, which comes out of North Carolina and deals with the ability of state courts to strike down congressional maps drawn by their legislatures. Here’s what the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington wrote about the case, when justices heard arguments in December:
Republicans from North Carolina who brought the case argue that a provision of the US constitution known as the elections clause gives state lawmakers virtually total control over the “times, places and manner” of congressional elections, including redistricting, and cuts state courts out of the process.
The Republicans are advancing a concept called the “independent state legislature theory”, never before adopted by the supreme court but cited approvingly by four conservative justices.
The direction of questioning at Wednesday’s hearing suggested that three of those conservative justices – Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas – were open to the idea of adopting the theory, despite decades of precedent from their own court dismissing it. They seemed to have the slightly more tentative backing of Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the legal team in 2000 that assisted George W Bush through Bush v Gore, the case that in modern times put the independent state legislature theory on the map.
On the other side of the argument, the three liberal-leaning justices were profoundly critical of the notion that state legislatures should be given free rein to control federal elections virtually unrestrained by state constitutions and judicial review from state courts. Questions from John Roberts suggested he might be seeking a more narrowly-drawn compromise position.
Which left all eyes on Amy Coney Barrett, the third of Donald Trump’s three appointees. Potentially, she might find herself casting the decisive vote.
Though it gives little clue as to which side of the fence Barrett will be standing on when the ruling comes down, she did ask several probing questions of the lawyer representing North Carolina’s Republicans. She said that those pushing for state legislatures to be freed up from oversight had a “problem” defining their terms, and she questioned whether the theory had any bearing in legal text.
But after that hearing, a twist emerged: the North Carolina supreme court reversed itself in the issue that had been brought before the US supreme court, leading to a split in the parties that brought the case over whether the issue is moot. There’s speculation that the supreme court will end up not ruling on the matter at all, though some court watchers believe that, if they were going to do that, it would have happened already.
It’s a complicated issue that, again, could have major impacts on control of Congress, one of the most important political battles out there.
Here’s more from Scotusblog on the late developments in the case:
The lawyers involved in a major election law case once again disagreed on Thursday about whether the Supreme Court has the power to reach a decision in the case in light of a ruling last month by the North Carolina Supreme Court in the underlying dispute. Three sets of challengers and the Biden administration, which filed a “friend of the court” brief supporting the challengers, urged the justices to dismiss the case. But a group of Republican legislators, who prevailed in the new state supreme court ruling, insisted that the justices should go ahead and decide the case – a view shared by Common Cause, one of the group’s opponents.
In December, the justices heard argument in Moore v. Harper, in which a group of Republican legislators from North Carolina argued that the “independent state legislature theory” – the idea that the Constitution’s elections clause gives state legislatures nearly unfettered authority to regulate federal elections – barred the North Carolina Supreme Court from setting aside a congressional map adopted by the state’s legislature. But late last month, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed its earlier ruling, holding that it does not have the power to review the challenges to the map at all.
The North Carolina Supreme Court’s April 28 decision prompted the Supreme Court to request additional briefing on the impact of that decision. In a four-page brief filed on Thursday afternoon, the Biden administration told the justices that they should dismiss the case. The Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar explained, granted review to decide whether the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause bars state courts from considering whether the redistricting map enacted by the North Carolina legislature violates the North Carolina constitution. The question, Prelogar continued, comes to the court in the context of the challengers’ claims that the new congressional map adopted by the state legislature violated the state constitution’s ban on partisan gerrymandering. But the North Carolina Supreme Court threw out those claims last month, Prelogar noted, holding that there is no role under the North Carolina constitution for state courts to consider partisan gerrymandering claims. Therefore, Prelogar reasoned, a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the “independent state legislature” theory would have no effect on the challengers’ claims.
Supreme court decisions could today kill Biden's student loan plan, affirmative action
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today at 10am eastern time, the supreme court will issue a new batch of decisions in 21 cases. Last year, the court’s six-justice conservative majority made clear their willingness to upend longstanding precedent by overturning Roe v Wade and allowing states to ban abortion, and handing down other rulings expanding gun access and prayer in schools.
Today, the court has a similarly weighty batch of cases it could announce decisions on, including a challenge to Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some federal student loan debt, and another petition urging it to end race-conscious admissions at some universities.
There’s no telling which decisions will actually come out, and the court has plenty of more obscure cases it’s considering, too. But even if they don’t issue their verdicts in those cases today, they’ll have another chance soon, since they’ve announced they could also issue decisions tomorrow.
Whichever way it goes, we’ll be covering it live here.
Here’s what else we expect to happen today:
Miami’s mayor Francis Suarez, the latest entrant to the Republican presidential race, is spending today hyping up his campaign, including with a speech in the evening at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in California.
The AFL-CIO trade union federation will soon formally endorse Biden’s re-election, the Wall Street Journal reports, showing that his vow to be “the most pro-union president” is paying off.
Republicans were the victors in last night’s Congressional Baseball Game, an annual charity event.
