Hey everyone. Happy Tuesday, and welcome back.
Our top story today: the Supreme Court just upheld birthright citizenship, striking down the executive order Donald Trump signed on day one of his second term. This was a signature piece of Trump’s immigration agenda and something he’s pushed for almost a decade, but the Supreme Court says it’s unconstitutional. A president doesn’t get to rewrite the Constitution with a signature, no matter how badly he wants to.
We’ll also get into Trump downplaying the housing crisis while he builds himself a ballroom, a plan to pardon 250 people for the country’s birthday, total confusion over whether we’re even talking to Iran, and a judge calling his tunnel funding freeze flagrantly illegal.
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Let’s get to it.
1. Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump's Bid to End Birthright Citizenship
This morning, in a 6 to 3 ruling, the Court held that the Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship to virtually everyone born on American soil. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion.
It struck down the executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office, the one that would have denied citizenship to babies born here to parents in the country illegally, or here legally on temporary visas, like students and workers.
And the 14th Amendment, written after the Civil War, is about as clear as it gets. It says, all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens. Roberts pointed back to a case from 1898 that settled this more than a century ago.
The stakes here were real. Over 250,000 babies a year would have been denied citizenship under that order. Some of them could have been born stateless, citizens of nowhere. And by the way, Trump’s claim that we are the only country that does this is just false. More than 30 countries have nearly identical laws.
His own appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, joined the majority. Trump spent months publicly attacking these justices, even calling some of his own picks weak, stupid, and bad. He showed up in person for the arguments in April, the first sitting president ever to do that.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was at a press conference when a reporter read him the ruling live. Just listen to the reaction from House leadership:
Johnson went on to say he was “very disappointed in the outcome.”
One thing to point out: the justices split 5 to 4 on a separate question, whether a future Congress could limit birthright citizenship by passing a law. Several said it could. It just hasn’t, which is why the President couldn’t do it on his own. And Republicans in Congress already have bills ready to go. So this fight is not completely over.
Two other rulings came down today. The Court let states ban transgender athletes from girls’ sports, and it loosened limits on how much parties can spend with their candidates. That closes out the Court’s term. They’re back in the fall.
2. Trump Calls Housing Crisis a "Big Yawn" While Building a $500M Ballroom
Last week, Congress passed a major bipartisan housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. The Senate passed it 85 to 5. The House, 358 to 32. Those are veto proof margins and show a rare moment in today’s politics.
The bill goes after the housing shortage, by blocking big Wall Street investors from buying up single family homes, creating programs to expand small mortgages, and makes home appraisals more fair. It’s the biggest housing reform in more than 30 years.
After being ready to sign it, Trump abruptly canceled the ceremony and decided to hold the bill hostage, to try to force Congress to pass his SAVE Act, which would add new hurdles to registering and voting, including a proof of citizenship requirement. You know, voter suppression.
And when he was asked on Monday whether he would even sign the housing bill, here is how he talked about it:
Now think about the implications of a statement like that. Housing affordability is at the very top of what Americans say they are worried about. In Gallup’s polling, the cost of living and the economy lead the list of the country’s problems.
The same week he is calling housing a yawn, the Washington Post revealed he signed a no bid contract worth up to 500 million dollars to build himself a new ballroom at the White House. It was routed through an office that doesn’t have to take competing bids or disclose much of anything. He promised for months that donors would pay for it. Turns out taxpayers are on the hook for about half, and the price has already tripled.
Look, you can think the housing bill is perfect, or you can think it is flawed. That is a real debate that happens all the time in Congress. But there are millions of Americans struggling to find affordable housing in this country. They aren’t yawning about this. Fortunately for the president, he has never had to go from home to home or worry about paying off a mortgage. He is out of touch with the American people, plain and simple.
3. White House Weighs 250 Pardons for America's 250th Birthday, Sparking a Lobbying Frenzy
The Atlantic reports that the White House is weighing a plan to mark the country’s 250th birthday by issuing as many as 250 pardons. Internally, they are calling it “250 pardons for 250 years.”
Now, Trump hasn’t formally signed off, and it may not happen. Some of his own advisers are worried about the blowback this close to the midterms.
But remember how he’s already used this power. On the very first day of his second term, he pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly 1,600 people tied to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. As we talked about a few weeks ago, since those pardons, dozens of these people have been arrested or charged with new crimes — including some serious ones.
But the mere rumor of these pardons has set off a lobbying frenzy. One defense lawyer called it a three ring circus. And it’s not cheap. Lobbyists are reportedly charging up to two million dollars for access to the people who decide. The names include people convicted of multi-billion dollar fraud, illegal lobbying, and forced labor.
The White House says any attempt to profit off pardons is “detestable,” and that there is a rigorous review process. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said to the Atlantic in a statement that, “President Trump takes his absolute constitutional power to issue pardons and commutations seriously.”
The pardon power exists to protect the law and justice. It’s one of the things that shouldn’t be abused under any circumstances. This president has abused it so severely that, as somebody whose job it was to investigate January 6th, I am really worried about the precedent that was set.
4. Mixed Signals on Iran Talks While Trump Orders Gas Stations to Cut Prices
After both sides traded strikes over the weekend, the White House sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Qatar today for what they described as high-level meetings with Iranian officials on the ceasefire deal. According to President Trump, the meeting was requested by Iran.
But Qatar’s foreign ministry said this morning that the envoys are only there to talk to Qatari mediators, and there won’t be a high-level meeting between the US and Iran. Iran later confirmed, saying that its own technical team being in Doha has nothing to do with the Americans.
While the ceasefire remains on shaky ground, Trump tried to dodge the cost of his war with an overnight Truth Social post.
With Americans struggling at the gas pump, he demanded retailers bring prices down to $2.50 a gallon, or, in his words, “big problems lie ahead”.
Here’s the reality. Oil and gasoline aren’t the same thing. Pump prices don’t drop the second crude does. We talked about this a few weeks ago. It takes time for prices to work their way down. The national average is about 3.86 a gallon, and stations make pennies on each one. The President can’t just demand gas stations lower their prices on Truth Social because he wants them to. Actions have consequences. He chose to start a war with Iran, that war sent prices up, and now he’s blaming gas stations for a mess he made.
5. Judge Calls Trump's Hudson Tunnel Funding Freeze "Flagrantly Illegal"
Last fall, the Trump administration suspended federal funding for the Gateway Tunnel Project, which laid off workers and stopped construction by February. This was a 16 billion dollar project to update century-old rail tunnels under the Hudson River, which carry more than 200,000 commuters a day between New Jersey and New York City. And even though Congress had approved the money, Trump acted like the call was his:
But that claim didn’t hold up in court, as a federal judge in New York ruled yesterday that the funding freeze was, in her words, “flagrantly illegal”. And she barred the administration from ever trying it again.
The ruling was straightforward: a president does not get to cancel spending that Congress has already approved. But what made the freeze even harder to defend in court was Trump’s motivation for it, which he was not shy about. He bragged in interviews that he was “cutting a $20 billion project that Schumer fought for 15 years to get”, a quote the judge used to show that the freeze was obvious political retaliation.
Trump choosing revenge over Americans is nothing new, of course. He withholds disaster aid from governors he doesn’t like. He won’t sign the “Pocahontas Warren centric housing bill” because Democrats like it too much. And now infrastructure that America’s biggest city depends on is frozen to spite Chuck Schumer. If he keeps treating the country’s needs as leverage in his own fights, a judge is not always going to be there to stop him.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in two other rulings this morning, before concluding its term for the summer. In the first, the justices upheld West Virginia and Idaho laws barring transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s sports teams at public schools, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing that Title IX lets schools set eligibility based on biological sex. In the second, the Court struck down federal limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with their own candidates, removing spending restrictions from the post-Watergate era.
The New York Times reported yesterday that the White House has pressed U.S. spy agencies to hand over a master list of foreign intelligence targets, including suspected spies, potential recruits, and criminal networks. Despite these efforts by newly appointed DNI Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience, senior counterintelligence officials at the CIA and FBI have refused. Pulte’s office says the list would cut down on duplicated effort and improve information sharing, but career officials warn that pooling those names in one place could blow covert operations, expose active investigations, and invite leaks. They also have not agreed on how such a list would even be built or kept secure.
