WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump reignited his tariff agenda Friday by imposing new import taxes on products from dozens of top U.S. trading partners, immediately replacing temporary global tariffs he levied after the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major blow to his sweeping “Liberation Day” duties.

As of Friday morning, American importers will now pay an extra 10% to 12.5% of a product’s value on most goods from nearly 60 countries, including Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, among dozens more. The tariffs could affect 99.4% of imports, according to U.S. trade authorities.

The fresh round of import taxes, first announced late Thursday afternoon, replace a blanket 10% tariff on global goods under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which expired at midnight Friday. Those tariffs invited new legal challenges, including from Democratic-led states.

The latest tariffs were imposed after the Office of the United States Trade Representative allegedly found forced labor conditions in all of the economies investigated under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

U.S. Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer said in a statement Thursday that Trump “recognizes that decades of moral suasion have not eradicated forced labor from global supply chains.  The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same.”

Supreme Court ruling

The Office of the United States Trade Representative announced two broad investigations in March, less than one month after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s unprecedented global tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, commonly called IEEPA. 

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s blow to his IEEPA tariffs, which he announced in early April 2025 on what he dubbed “Liberation Day,” the government was on the hook for roughly $166 billion in refunds to American importers who already paid the duties.

The latest batch of duties, in effect as of Friday, is the second round of import taxes the Trump administration announced this week. The White House introduced 50% tariffs on most Canadian imports Monday, triggering the duties under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

The Depression-era provision, which has never before been enforced, authorizes the president to impose duties up to 50% of a product’s value in response to discrimination against U.S. commerce.

States Newsroom has spoken with numerous small business owners since 2025 about the effects tariffs have on their capacity to keep prices steady, hire employees, invest in new equipment and inventory, and just generally remain in operation.

‘Ridiculously blunt’

Critics slammed the administration’s new series of sweeping duties on a large swath of the country’s imports.

Scott Lincicome, vice president for general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote Thursday the outcome of the Section 301 investigations were “clearly predetermined” and “both ridiculously blunt and wildly out of proportion to any measurable economic distortion.”

“And the whole thing establishes precedent for an ‘automatic tariff generator’ that Trump or a future president can deploy at will. It makes a mockery of a real issue and might poison legitimate reform. And Congress probably won’t do anything about it,” Lincicome wrote.

Some Republicans in the U.S. House rebuffed Trump’s tariff agenda in February, but legislative change has not emerged. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Thursday the president has “has bled the inflation-battered American people dry with his tariffs.”

“Now he’s coming back for more. Trump’s chaotic tariff taxes have made life harder and more expensive for the American people. Families are paying more for everyday necessities. Small business owners are struggling to keep the lights on. Manufacturers are shedding jobs and farmers are getting squeezed. Meanwhile, Trump and his billionaire family and friends get richer on the backs of working families,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

The Yale Budget Lab estimates consumer prices could rise up to 1% under the new tariffs, increasing household costs by roughly $1,100.

If the duties remained in place, the U.S. would gain about $2 trillion in revenue over the next decade, though the number would likely be lower after accounting for negative impacts on the economy, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision makes it easier for political parties to put their stamp on the most important campaigns, just as the struggle heats up for control of Congress in the midterm elections. 

Simply put, the ruling “gives the parties more money to spend,” said David Kolker, senior counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

In a 6-3 decision on June 30, the court struck down limits on how much political parties could spend in coordination with specific candidates.

But will it make a difference, particularly in mega-money Senate races in Ohio, Maine, Texas, Iowa and elsewhere? 

In sheer dollars from big donors, maybe not. In strengthening the role of political parties and how they use those dollars to help campaigns, yes.

“The idea there will be an explosion of money that’s not already going to be there, I don’t really see that. The super PAC money is already there,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insight at OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan group that tracks and analyzes money in politics. Super PACs can spend unlimited sums independent of campaigns.

Don Levy, Siena Research Institute director, saw evidence in July of how eagerly the parties could spend money — or yank it back. 

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner’s now-defunct campaign was rocked by new allegations of sexual abuse, which he has denied. Siena conducts polls in Maine.

When the scandal broke, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, both of New York, issued a terse three-sentence statement in response.

One of those sentences was: “The DSCC will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot.” 

That indicated “money is top of mind” for the party, Levy said. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is seeking reelection in a state that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won in 2024 by 7 points.

The court and big money  

The Supreme Court has been methodically tearing down barriers aimed at limiting big money in politics.

In 2010, the Citizens United decision overturned decades-old restrictions on corporate independent expenditures, allowing them to spend unlimited sums from their corporate profits to support the candidates of their choice.

The ruling led to the creation of super PACs, allowing special interests to raise and spend unlimited funds to boost political candidates.

An analysis by Daniel Weiner, director, elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice, found that their funding “largely comes from a small group of the very wealthiest donors.”

From 2010 to 2022, super PACs spent about $6.4 billion on federal elections. They spent an estimated $2.7 billion in the 2024 election.

There were, and are, limits on contributions to specific candidates and political parties. Super PACs cannot coordinate with campaigns. 

Until the Supreme Court ruling, there were limits on how much the parties could coordinate. Not anymore.

Parties have “complained about being outspent by the outside super PACs. Whether that’s true or not you could debate,” said Kolker. 

The court decision, though, makes it easier for big donors to funnel money to the parties, knowing the parties can now seamlessly direct the funds to candidates they feel need it most.

Republicans pushed for the ruling, with many in the GOP believing that Democrats had the advantage of obtaining more, often smaller, contributions to their candidates, while Republicans relied on bigger donors who felt more bound by contribution limits and restrictions.

Republicans hailed the decision.

“By striking down these unconstitutional caps on coordinated spending, the Court has restored core political speech and ensured parties can compete on a level playing field,” said a joint statement from Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who chairs the GOP’s House campaign committee.

Democrats saw things much differently. The ruling “is a win for billionaire donors and special interests who want more influence over the GOP agenda and an invitation for corruption,” said a joint statement from Democratic Party Chairman Ken Martin, Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who heads the party’s House campaign committee, and Gillibrand.

Maine and other swing states for Senate control

Democrats need a net gain of four Senate and three House seats in November’s elections to win control of those chambers.

The biggest money is likely to pour into a handful of Senate races.

Maine has been a top Democratic target, though the turmoil over Platner’s candidacy makes it unpredictable.

It had been a competitive race. In the Siena/New York Times/Portland Press Herald poll June 19-26 poll, before the latest Platner controversy erupted, he led Collins by 2 points. Trump’s approval rating was 36%. 

Maine Democrats have until July 27 to choose a replacement for Platner, who left the race July 8.

The court ruling is “not going to be a huge game changer for the amount of money flowing into a competitive race. They already have super PAC money, and already have megadonors giving to parties,” said Glavin.

Money could matter more in Ohio, where big spending in 2024 – a non-presidential election record of $483.4 million, according to AdImpact – helped Republicans paint incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, as out of touch with the GOP-trending state. Brown lost to Republican businessman Bernie Moreno by 4 points.

“I think money made a difference last time as they drove up Brown’s negatives,” said Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Brown now will be able to tap more party expertise and funding as he runs this year against Sen. Jon Husted, a Republican appointed to the seat in 2025 to replace Vice President JD Vance.

Iowa is a different sort of money battleground. “Money could make a big difference if Democrats spend there,” Taylor said. Democrats are trying to win the seat now held by Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican who is not seeking reelection. State Rep. Josh Turek, a Democrat, is running against U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, a Republican.

Levy offered this example of where shifting party money could matter. Suppose polls hold up and former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, remains favored to win a North Carolina Senate seat now held by Republican Thom Tillis, in his campaign against Republican Michael Whatley.

“The national party could say we’ll write off North Carolina because Cooper has a big lead and is extremely well known in the state. It would be difficult to beat him,” Levy said. Maybe they’d direct more money to Texas, where state Rep. James Talarico and Attorney General Ken Paxton were tied in last month’s Siena poll.

The court ruling gives “a lot more power to party leaders who control how these funds are spent,” said Kolker, and probably more clout to Congress itself, making it easier to impose party discipline.

Does big money matter? 

Experts are quick to warn that big money is no surefire guarantee of success.

There are just too many moving parts influencing voters – their economic situation, their views of President Donald Trump and their disillusionment with the political establishment, to name a few.

“You want to have a robust TV program but the political environment is still going to matter in a lot of these races,” said Taylor.

What often matters most for a candidate and a political party is building an image and reputation and sustaining it, which is why in election after election, incumbents usually win.

“There is still an incumbent advantage. There are cycles where voter discontent and frustration reaches a point where the only way to express your frustration is to vote against whoever is in power,” said Todd Eberly, professor of political science at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Maine provides a strong example of the advantages and disadvantages of money.

Collins has been a senator since 1997. “Collins will play to her strength. The people of Maine, regardless of what the left may say, they feel she has good moral character and is in touch with the values of Mainers,” Levy said.

Democrats will undoubtedly try to tie her to Trump and the Washington establishment. At the same time, he said, “Maine is an inexpensive state and money will fly in there to say Susan Collins is in tune with Maine.”

The race will be a test of all the factors that influence a race, financial and otherwise.

“Candidates who spend more, their probability of winning has increased significantly,” said Eberly. “With one exception. If you’re an incumbent, it (big spending) doesn’t make much of a difference.”

Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Pedro Colón has an early fundraising advantage over Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette in the 2027 state Supreme Court race, campaign finance reports filed this week show. 

Colón, a former Democratic member of the state Assembly and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge who has been on the District 1 Court of Appeals since 2023, raised more than $250,000 in the first reporting period of the race. That total includes a $30,000 personal loan to his campaign and a $20,000 in-kind contribution in which he was given the email list of Judge Chris Taylor’s winning Supreme Court race from this year’s election. Taylor has also endorsed Colón. 

Colón’s top donors include a $20,000 contribution from Mark Thomsen, a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

“I am truly honored to see the excitement and support that our campaign is generating across this state,” Colón said in a statement from his campaign. “We are building the grassroots momentum needed to win next spring and I could not be more grateful to the nearly 600 people who chipped in what they could to move our campaign forward.”

Brunette, the former Clark County District Attorney, raised $145,000 in the first reporting period. Her top donors include $20,000 from Patrick Guarasci, a political consultant who worked on the campaign of Justice Janet Protasiewicz, and Milwaukee-area philanthropist Deborah Kern. 

Both candidates were elected to their prior partisan positions as Democrats. They’re vying to replace conservative current Justice Annette Ziegler, who is retiring. A conservative candidate has not yet entered the race. A Colón or Brunette victory in next spring’s Supreme Court election would give liberals a 6-1 majority on the Court.

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Billionaire Elon Musk likely broke Wisconsin law when he promised to hand out $1 million checks to voters in the 2025 state Supreme Court election, a bipartisan panel has found.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission last week referred two complaints to the Brown County district attorney’s office, which can choose to bring criminal charges over violating the state law against election bribery. Prosecutors have 40 days to report back to the commission.

Musk, the founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, was deeply involved in the effort to flip majority control of the highest court in battleground Wisconsin.

The tech titan and groups he supported spent at least $20 million on the candidate backed by Republicans, Brad Schimel. However, he lost by 10 percentage points to Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford.

A month after the lopsided loss, Musk announced that he would be spending far less on political campaigns. Spending on the election topped $100 million, making it the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.

The complaints, which are confidential under state law, were brought by voters in Milwaukee and Green Bay, which is in Brown County. Musk handed out checks at a rally there just days before the election.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, consisting of three Democrats and three Republicans, voted 5-1 in closed session on Thursday to refer the complaints to the district attorney, the commission’s spokesperson Emilee Miklas said.

Brown County District Attorney David Lasee, a Republican, did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday.

The motion approved by the elections commission said it found probable cause that Musk broke Wisconsin law by making a social media post offering $1 million to people who voted in the Supreme Court election “in order to induce them to vote in that election.”

Spokespeople for Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk gave $1 million checks to 3 Wisconsin voters

Three Wisconsin voters received checks from Musk, including two who got them in person at the Green Bay rally. Two weeks before the election, Musk’s political action committee, America PAC, offered $100 to voters who signed a petition in opposition to “activist judges,” or referred someone to sign it.

Crawford’s win kept liberals in control of the state Supreme Court, and their majority grew to 5-2 after Democratic-backed candidate Chris Taylor’s victory this year.

Musk’s spending on the 2025 race has already resulted in one lawsuit filed by a government watchdog group, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which seeks to prohibit him from ever again offering cash payments in the state.

That lawsuit is pending in Brown County. It alleges that Musk and two groups he funds violated prohibitions on vote bribery and unauthorized lotteries and that his actions were an unlawful conspiracy and public nuisance.

Attempts to stop Musk failed in 2025

Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general sued to stop Musk from handing over the checks to two voters, but was rejected by state courts.

Musk’s attorneys argued in legal filings in 2025 that Musk was exercising his free speech rights with the giveaways and any attempt to restrict that would violate both the Wisconsin and U.S. constitutions.

The payments are “intended to generate a grassroots movement in opposition to activist judges, not to expressly advocate for or against any candidate,” Musk’s attorneys argued in court filings.

Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the 2024 presidential election, offering to pay $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second amendments. A judge in Pennsylvania said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Elon Musk likely broke law by promising voters $1 million payouts, Wisconsin Elections Commission says is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has referred two complaints against billionaire Elon Musk to the Brown County district attorney's office, saying it found "probable cause" to believe Musk broke state election bribery laws last year.

The post Wisconsin Elections Commission says Elon Musk likely violated bribery law appeared first on WPR.

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress from both parties indicated Tuesday they will support additional security funding for the U.S. Supreme Court after two justices testified about a sharp rise in threats.

Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett told lawmakers on the House panel that writes the court’s annual funding bill an increase is needed to ensure around-the-clock security wherever they go and for upgrades to the building.

“Maybe I lack imagination, but I didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one,” Barrett said. 

Kagan told members of the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee during the hearing that the court’s budget has increased, on average, by 15% per year during the last five years, mostly due to safety concerns and inflation. 

“I first joined the court in 2010. Our security was very different at the time. The Supreme Court police focused almost exclusively on protecting the building. And our (information technology) department focused on supporting the latest BlackBerry devices,” Kagan said. “I didn’t have a security team of my own, and I was accompanied by security personnel only when I participated in work-related public events.”

The court, she added, began increasing its security spending around 2017 after members of Congress encouraged the justices to take their safety more seriously. 

Security threats have steadily increased since then. 

“The Capitol Police Chief recently testified that threats against Congress are up 50% this year,” Kagan said. “The Supreme Court police expect a smaller but still very substantial 38% annual increase in threats this year, which follows a 25% increase last year.” 

Proposed $29M increase

Subcommittee Chairman David Joyce, R-Ohio, said that regardless of how the court rules on any given case, the justices “must be able to do their jobs without fear for their safety or their family’s safety.”

Maryland Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, ranking member on the panel, said that given the “deeply divided country and increasingly violent rhetoric being directed at judges, Congress must provide sufficient funding to ensure the safety of all judicial personnel.”

The House subcommittee, he said, appropriated $207 million for the Supreme Court, which included a $28.9 million increase for security, in the bill it approved earlier this year. That legislation hasn’t yet gone to the floor for a vote. 

The Senate Appropriations Committee hasn’t yet released any of its dozen government funding bills for the next fiscal year ahead of the Oct. 1 shutdown deadline. 

Kagan rejects ‘shadow’ docket label

Lawmakers on the House panel pressed the justices about the court’s ethics policy and raised concerns over the increase in cases it takes up as part of its emergency, or shadow, docket. 

Hoyer said the justices deciding cases without a full briefing or oral arguments and then issuing a ruling with little or no explanation has had a negative impact on Americans’ trust in the court. 

Barrett noted that people “have long had the ability to seek interim relief from the court,” though she agreed with Hoyer that the justices have “seen a big change in the volume and the nature of such requests.”

Kagan responded she doesn’t believe it’s “appropriate” to refer to those cases as the shadow docket instead of the emergency or interim docket because the justices have done “a better job in the recent past” of “explaining ourselves at least to a moderate degree.” 

She added that a year ago she might have answered the question differently because the Supreme Court was providing such little explanation in those specific cases “that lower courts had a great deal of difficulty trying to figure out what” exactly the justices had addressed. 

“I don’t think that that’s so much a problem anymore,” Kagan said. “I think that as we’ve gotten more experienced in these constant requests that are coming to us for emergency relief, that we better recognize that at least sometimes there is a need for additional information. And we have issued opinions and sometimes majority and dissenting opinions accordingly.”

Ethics policy

Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, encouraged the justices to figure out a way to enforce the ethics policy the court instituted in 2023. 

Kagan testified the court “should work hard to try to figure out some enforcement system,” but emphasized any changes need to come from the justices themselves. 

“I will say that that’s an extremely difficult question for a pretty obvious reason, I think, which is that I don’t think that you would want an enforcement system that was controlled by the executive branch or by the legislature,” Kagan said. “And this is because of what you said in your opening statement about the importance of judicial independence.”

Barrett testified she was “completely committed to” the ethics code but that she was “less certain” about whether and how to enforce it. 

“I’m just not quite sure. The judiciary moves slowly. The court moves slowly. We have turtles everywhere because of that,” Barrett said. “And I think that if we had a body to enforce the code it would have to come from within the judiciary. And I just think then it’s a question of who selects the judges, how is the panel comprised. There’s just a lot of complexity.” 

Proposed screening center

The two justices testified before the Senate Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee in the afternoon. And while they addressed many of the same questions and concerns raised during the morning House hearing, they provided some additional details about security. 

The Supreme Court would like Congress to provide $6.5 million to begin the process of building an external security screening center, which Kagan said could be similar to the Capitol Visitor Center that sits underground just east of the building. 

“Right now visitors walk into the court and that’s where they are checked. That’s where they are sent through the magnetometer and checked for weapons and so forth,” Kagan said. 

As far as personnel, Kagan testified the Supreme Court has a goal of reaching 477 police officers but that the justices are “a ways away from that right now.”

“If we include people we get through contracting, we can probably do it within a couple of years,” Kagan said. “But in order to have our own employees get up to that mark, then we’re talking more about six years.”

Kagan was unable to answer a question from Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., about the types of training those police officers must complete and the facilities they would need. 

“I’m confident that the kind of training programs that we’ve put in place are good ones, but I can’t give you a whole lot of detail about that,” she said.  

Barrett told senators the need for more dedicated police officers comes, in part, from the U.S. Marshals Service telling the court months earlier than expected their officers could no longer provide security at the justices’ homes. 

“They themselves were just stretched thin,” Barrett said. “So we had always wanted to take it over ourselves, but we were forced to do that on a quicker timeline. And we are now fully doing it within the Supreme Court police through a combination of our full-time officers and contractors.”

The Wisconsin attorney general gets to control money from multistate lawsuits, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The post Wisconsin Supreme Court sides with Josh Kaul in latest lame duck decision appeared first on WPR.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Wisconsin Attorney General can determine where to send money the Department of Justice receives through settlement agreements. 

The 5-2 decision — which includes a partial concurrence from Justice Brian Hagedorn — strikes down a measure enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature to take power from executive branch agencies after the elections of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul in 2018. 

During that lame duck period at the end of a Republican administration, the Legislature enacted a law that requires the attorney general to deposit settlement money into the state’s general fund, which is largely controlled by the Legislature. However within the general fund are many sub-accounts through which many of the state’s programs and services are rendered. State law distinguishes between depositing money into the general fund and crediting money to specific programs. 

Since the lame duck law’s enactment, Kaul has put settlement earnings into the general fund and then credited the money to DOJ programs within the fund. The Legislature has argued that Kaul has been purposefully flouting the intent of the law, which was to give control over the money to legislative Republicans. 

The legal dispute in the case, including at the oral arguments in March, has flipped the usual script in which Republicans argue for laws to be interpreted strictly, following exactly what a statute says. 

“[The statute] entitled “Deposit of settlement funds,” provides in its entirety that ‘[t]he attorney general shall deposit all settlement funds into the general fund,’” Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote in the majority opinion. “This simple, declarative sentence identifies a class of state money (‘settlement funds’) and imposes a single, narrow restriction on where that money must be deposited (into the state treasury, specifically ‘the general fund’). It says nothing whatsoever about where that money may or must be credited after it is deposited.”

Dallet continued that the Court wasn’t buying the Legislature’s argument that a deeper meaning should be read into the language.

Quoting the Court’s precedent, Dallet wrote, “The problem with these arguments is that ‘we interpret the statutory language the legislature enacted, and will not read into a statute language that it does not contain or reasonably imply.’” 

In a dissent, Justice Rebecca Bradley, partially joined by Annette Ziegler — both of whom signed off on many of the lame duck laws and their specific intent to disempower Democrats — argued that the Court’s majority was only aiming to give a legal victory to an elected Democrat in an election year.

“The majority refuses to apply the law, which favors the Republican-controlled legislature over Democrat Attorney General Josh Kaul. Lady Justice wears a blindfold, not blinders,” Bradley wrote in an opinion that also cited the 2004 film “Dodgeball.” “This is not the first time justice has taken a back seat to political interests. The members of the majority extend the Democrats’ almost unbroken winning streak in litigation against the Republican legislature since the progressives took control.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by a conservative activist to obtain guardianship records in an effort to find ineligible voters in the presidential battleground state.

The post Wisconsin Supreme Court refuses to release voter records sought by conservative activist appeared first on WPR.

In a 5-2 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an activist group does not have the right to obtain the documents that notify election officials when someone is declared incompetent to vote by a circuit court judge. 

The group, Wisconsin Voter Alliance, has been extremely active in the state’s election denial circles since the 2020 presidential election. The organization is run by Ron Heuer, a prominent and vocal 2020 election conspiracy theorist, and Erick Kaardal, an attorney who was heavily involved in former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s widely discredited review of the 2020 presidential election. 

Kaardal’s involvement in the Gableman review included conducting videotaped interviews with residents of nursing homes alleged to have voted despite being old that were criticized at the time as exploitative and misleading about the law. 

Following that thread from the Gableman investigation, in 2022 the alliance filed open records requests in a number of counties seeking the notice of voting eligibility forms that circuit courts send to local and state election officials when a judge declares a person incompetent and ineligible to vote. The group then sued to force the release of those documents. 

The statute guiding declarations of incompetency and the process through which a person declared incompetent can lose their voting rights includes a provision that states court records “pertinent to the finding of incompetency” are closed. 

In the majority opinion written by Justice Janet Protasiewicz and joined by the other three liberal justices plus conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Court ruled that the NVE form is created as part of a guardianship case, therefore it’s pertinent to the finding of incompetency and shielded from public disclosure. 

Protasiewicz wrote that the Legislature crafted the guardianship law specifically to prevent information about people who have been declared incompetent from being made public — so it doesn’t make sense to interpret that law in a way that exposes those people’s status and private information. Additionally, the law specifically requires that someone must prove they have a legitimate “need” to find out if a person has been declared incompetent.

“The legislature created a procedure with ‘closed’ hearings and ‘closed’ records,” she wrote. “That provision would ring hollow if the fruits of those proceedings, like NVE forms, were available through public records requests. Even more revealing, a person who demonstrates ‘a need’ may access ‘[t]he fact that an individual has been found incompetent.’ Thus, the Legislature contemplated that even the fact that a person was found incompetent should be protected. We will not interpret the preceding sentence of [the statute] to allow any public records requester access to a form that gives away that very fact.” 

In a dissent, Justice Annette Ziegler, joined by Justice Rebecca Bradley, argued that because a judge determines if someone under guardianship must lose their vote separately from the initial declaration of incompetency and because the information gets communicated to election officials, the NVE is not “pertinent” to the incompetency finding and the public must be given access. 

“Even when an individual is found to be incompetent, a court may or may not be called upon to determine if the ward is ‘incapable of understanding the objective of the elective process,’” Ziegler wrote. “If and when such a determination is separately found, then NVEs are created to notify the WEC that the ward has lost the right to vote. But, the NVEs do not bear on the court’s separate, earlier finding of incompetency. And, as the NVE does not exist at the time of the incompetency finding, it could not be a court record pertinent to the finding of incompetency. Instead, an NVE is generated only after the incompetency finding is made and in response to the separate question of the right to vote.” 

Both Ziegler and Bradley have often sided with Wisconsin’s election deniers — including voting in late 2020 to overturn the results of Wisconsin’s presidential election after former President Joe Biden won in the state over  President Donald Trump. In the dissent, Ziegler echoed frequent right-wing talking points about “the integrity of the election process” and wrote that members of the public have the right to interrogate if their fellow citizens are eligible to vote. 

“The public records law declares that ‘a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate’ and that the public is entitled to the ‘greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government,’” she wrote. “That policy carries particular force here, where the records at issue bear directly on everyone’s voting rights and its administration. Undoubtedly, the public has a significant interest in ensuring that only those legally qualified to vote participate in elections. Improper ballots not only raise concerns of individual exploitation but also implicate the integrity of the electoral process as a whole.”

Following the decision, voting rights advocates celebrated the majority’s decision to protect voter privacy. 

“Like all Wisconsinites, individuals under guardianship deserve dignity and respect,” Law Forward Legal Fellow Taylor Gilbertson said in a statement. “It should go without saying that any effort to reveal their private voting records would risk a profound injustice. The Court was right to protect them.”

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Sensitive information about individuals who are judged mentally incapable of voting in Wisconsin is not accessible through the state’s public records laws, according to a 5-2 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling released Tuesday. 

Justice Brian Hagedorn, a frequent swing vote on the court, joined the liberal justices in the majority, which determined that state law shows the Legislature intended to keep Notices of Voting Eligibility closed from public access. The notices are documents the courts send to election officials after a judge concludes a person is found mentally incompetent to cast a ballot. 

“Our decision today is rooted in the legislature’s choice to protect the privacy of individuals subject to guardianship proceedings,” Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote for the majority. “The legislature said, with limited exceptions, ‘court records pertinent to the finding of incompetency are closed.’” 

In the same opinion, the majority provided specifics on what the court should consider when someone seeks to compel a public official to release public records, which is known as a “writ of mandamus.” The majority determined that the court “should consider only whether the requester has a right to the records,” which can be done through analyzing whether records exist, if there are statutory exceptions and if “the public policy balancing test weighs toward disclosure.” 

Bill Lueders, the president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said the court’s decision on mandamus actions “discarded an outdated standard for public records cases and reduced barriers to winning these cases in the future.”   

Conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented. In her dissent, Ziegler argued that the Notice of Voting Eligibility forms should be released because they are not relevant to incompetency proceedings and are created as “a communication of a finding” after that decision is made.

“The majority’s conclusion fails to recognize this important distinction: A finding of incompetency is distinct from a finding that one has lost the right to vote,” Ziegler wrote. “Instead, it adopts an overbroad and unworkable definition of what records pertain to a finding of incompetency to include NVEs. Holding that NVEs are shielded from the public records law runs counter to the statute’s language, scheme and the presumption of open government.” 

The case was originally brought in 2022 by the conservative Wisconsin Voter Alliance. The group filed lawsuits in 13 counties, arguing that having access to information about individuals who have been judged incompetent to vote would show inconsistencies in the state’s voter rolls. The alliance is led by Ron Heuer, who worked on the state’s partisan review of the 2020 presidential election results conducted by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. Heuer did not return phone calls or emails from Wisconsin Watch on Tuesday.

At the request of Wisconsin Watch, the Dane County clerk in 2023 conducted a review that  found 95 individuals who previously cast ballots despite a court finding them unable to do so. Election officials and state lawmakers have previously called for a legally binding process to track adjudicated incompetent voters, but no bill in recent years has made it through the legislative process. 

Disability advocates previously advocated for the information in Notice of Voting Eligibility forms to be kept private over concerns it could make vulnerable individuals more at risk of being scammed or exploited. 

Tuesday’s ruling is part of a complicated legal saga stemming from cases from Wisconsin Voter Alliance cases that have made their way through the state’s court system in recent years.

In 2024, the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals and the Waukesha-based 2nd District Court of Appeals issued conflicting opinions on separate but similar cases brought by the alliance. 

Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, who ran for the Wisconsin Supreme Court earlier this year, wrote the 2nd District opinion that supported the Wisconsin Voter Alliance’s position on access to the records. That opinion was released after the 4th District decision was published as precedent, but was revised after the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a ruling in January 2025.  

The high court in that 2025 decision only ruled on the differing Appeals Court opinions but did not reach a decision on whether Notices of Voting Eligibility are public records until Tuesday.

The case also became an attack point in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Justice-elect Chris Taylor in a debate before the April election pointed to Lazar’s Appeals Court opinion on access to sensitive records as evidence to claim that Lazar “brought an extreme right-wing political agenda to the bench.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects 2020 election investigator’s attempt to get voting eligibility records is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has stayed a case challenging the authority of county sheriffs to work with federal immigration authorities. The move by the state’s highest court gives an appeal […]

The post Wisconsin Supreme Court stays case challenging ICE detainers appeared first on WPR.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a stay Monday in the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera’s lawsuit against local sheriff’s departments partnering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declining to hear arguments in the case until a federal appeal is exhausted. 

Voces filed the lawsuit against ICE’s 287(g) agreements with local sheriff’s departments last year and in December, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to accept the case as an original action. Across Wisconsin, 23 sheriff’s offices have agreed to assist federal immigration enforcement efforts through the controversial program. 

The Court’s decision to stay the case comes as ICE has become more active across the country in recent weeks, including in southern Wisconsin where dozens of immigrants were arrested by ICE last week. 

After the state court agreed to hear the case, the sheriffs of Walworth, Brown, Marathon, Kenosha and Sauk counties sued to move the case to federal court. U.S. Judge William Conley ruled in May they waited too long to file the petition and sent the case back to the state court.

The sheriffs have filed an appeal of the district court decision. Voces had requested that the Supreme Court set a schedule for filing briefs and holding arguments while the federal appeal is pending. 

In its Monday order, the Court said it wouldn’t move forward with the state case until the federal appeals are exhausted.

“To avoid potential uncertainty and conflict, we decline the petitioner’s request to order a briefing schedule that would allow the case to proceed simultaneously with the federal appeal of the order remanding the case to this court, and we grant a stay pending further order of this court,” the Court ruled. 

According to federal court records, the sheriffs’ briefs to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals are due by August 5 and Voces’ response is due by September 4.

Immigrant rights advocates in Wisconsin are celebrating a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upholds the right to citizenship for people born in the United States.

The post Wisconsin immigrants’ rights advocates celebrate birthright citizenship ruling by US Supreme Court appeared first on WPR.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday struck down President Donald Trump’s attempt to redefine the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.

In the decision, a majority of the justices upheld the country’s long understanding of automatic citizenship by birth on American soil, regardless of the immigration status of a newborn’s parents. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., found the president’s executive order violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

While six of the justices agreed — Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — that the president’s executive order was unlawful, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented. 

Only five of the justices agreed that the 14th Amendment extends citizenship to the children of immigrants, with Kavanaugh partially dissenting along with Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch. 

Kavanaugh argued that Trump’s executive order did not violate the 14th Amendment, but instead violated federal statute. He added in his dissent that Congress could “enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But Congress has not yet done so.”

The White House did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment, but a day before the decision, Trump said in the Oval Office that he would accept the Supreme Court’s ruling. 

“It’s up to them, but in terms of for the good of the country, it’d be great if they … didn’t allow it,” Trump, who in a highly unusual move for a president attended the oral arguments on the case, said of birthright citizenship. 

After the ruling, the president called on Congress, which is controlled by Republicans, to pass legislation to codify his executive order into law, dismissing the need for a constitutional amendment. 

However, a constitutional amendment would be needed, not legislative law, because a majority of the justices still found that any change to birthright citizenship violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Utah’s GOP Sen. Mike Lee, who previously clerked for Alito, noted that “we’re going to need a constitutional amendment.” 

The opinion is a major blow to Trump, who has sought to redefine who is American as part of his broader immigration agenda. 

But it also follows two decisions from the high court that vastly expanded the president’s authority over immigration policy by allowing him to limit asylum seeker claims at the Southern border and strip legal protections for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.  

Tuesday’s decision is based on one of the first executive orders that the president signed on the first day of his second term. It aimed to deny citizenship to children born to parents who either do not have legal status, or hold temporary legal visas. 

Experts warned if the order were to take effect, it could create an entire class of stateless people and cause chaos for hospitals and local governments.

Case brought by expectant parents

The case, Trump v. Barbara, was brought by expectant mothers who feared their children would not be American citizens because of their immigration status.

During oral arguments in April, a majority of the justices seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s arguments, presented by Solicitor General D. John Sauer. 

Before the justices, Sauer argued that the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which is the basis for birthright citizenship, was meant to apply to newly freed African American slaves after the Civil War, not to children of immigrants. 

Most legal scholars and historians disagree with that interpretation and have argued the Supreme Court in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark already settled the idea that automatic citizenship was granted to children born on U.S. soil.

Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents. When he left California, he was denied entry back into the United States after visiting relatives in China. 

Officials at the time argued that because Ark’s parents were Chinese citizens in the United States on temporary visas at the time of his birth, and therefore were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., he was not a citizen. 

Ark took the issue to the Supreme Court. In 1898, the high court affirmed that he, along with any child born on U.S. soil, were guaranteed citizenship, and rejected the argument that the 14th Amendment only applied to newly freed African American slaves.

American Civil Liberties Union lead attorney Cecillia Wang, who argued before the justices, said that when the federal government tried to strip Ark of his citizenship, “largely on the same grounds (the Trump administration) raised today,” the Supreme Court at that time rejected those efforts and upheld the 14th Amendment.

“This Court held that the 14th Amendment embodies the English common law rule (that) virtually everyone born on U.S. soil is subject to its jurisdiction and is a citizen,” Wang, who is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, said.

Her parents were in the U.S. on student visas when she was born in Oregon, meaning that if Trump’s executive order were in effect at that time, she would have been denied U.S. citizenship.

Roberts agreed that the Supreme Court made the correct decision in 1898 about Ark’s case.

“What the Court held in Wong Kim Ark was simple: the Citizenship Clause incorporated the common law and granted citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States,” he wrote. “Not surprisingly, then, in the 128 years since, we have repeatedly understood the rule of Wong Kim Ark to guarantee citizenship to all children born in the United States and subject to its power.” 

“We see no reason to depart from that view today,” he continued. 

One of the mothers in the case, who appeared under a pseudonym, gave another ACLU attorney who worked on the case, Cody Wofsy, a statement following the high court’s decision.  

“It is a difficult time in the world to stand up. We were scared to come forward, but the decision today showed me that I stood up for the right thing,” Wofsy read from her statement during a virtual press conference.

14th Amendment argument

During April’s oral arguments, Sauer made that case that the phrase in the 14th Amendment “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means that children born to parents without legal status or temporary visitors are not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” and are instead subject to the laws of their home country. 

The 14th Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Roberts rejected Sauer’s position, and wrote that the Trump administration’s “[a]rguments for limiting birthright citizenship to those domiciled in the United States fail.”

“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” he wrote. “Under the Constitution, they are citizens at birth.”

The 14th Amendment was passed to rectify the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, in which justices ruled that neither free or enslaved Black people could have citizenship or rights. The amendment was also meant to give African Americans citizenship while also denying citizenship to the mass migration of Chinese laborers not born on U.S. soil. 

The “jurisdiction” language in the amendment, tribal scholars have said, was aimed to exempt Indigenous people who resided in Native nations — part of their tribal governments — from birthright citizenship, along with the children born to foreign diplomats.   

Congress in 1924 specifically passed the Indian Citizenship Act to grant birthright citizenship to Indigenous people, regardless of their residence in Native nations. 

Because of this, tribal scholars have explained the language “subject to the jurisdiction” was never meant to apply to immigrants and their home country, and instead refers to the political alliance of tribes.

Congress reacts

Following Tuesday’s decision, Democrats praised the decision.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that “despite Trump’s best efforts to bully them, the Supreme Court just reaffirmed that if you are born in America, you belong in America.”

“No matter how much President Trump tries to steal citizenship from people that the Constitution has said have earned it and reverse the grand American tradition of welcoming newcomers to our nation, the Supreme Court confirmed today that those born in America are American,” he said.

Chairs of the Congressional Tri-Caucus — the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus — issued a joint statement that the high court’s ruling was a rejection of “Trump’s dangerous and exclusionary vision of America.”

“We are American, we belong here, and we will continue to defend birthright citizenship for generations to come,” said New York Reps. Adriano Espaillat of the CHC; Grace Meng of the CAPAC; and Yvette Clarke of the CBC. 

Wang, of the ACLU, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, said in a statement that Tuesday’s decision reaffirmed a core American principle. 

“If you are born here, you are a citizen,” she said. “A president cannot change the Constitution by executive fiat.”

An immigration advocacy group that has also challenged the Trump administration’s efforts to redefine birthright citizenship, We Are CASA, said the decision was a victory for immigrant families. 

“The Trump administration’s attempt to deny citizenship to United States-born children, threaten generations of children with legal uncertainty, and overturn more than a century of settled constitutional law has failed,” said Shana Khader, the deputy legal director at We Are CASA.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday kept in place state laws banning transgender athletes from participating on women’s and girls’ sports teams.

The decision stems from challenges to bans in Idaho and West Virginia and marks a major setback for transgender rights across the country. The opinion also came as President Donald Trump’s administration has pursued a broad anti-trans agenda that has extended beyond athletics.

The nation’s highest court found, 6-3, that the bans in Idaho and West Virginia do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment — a key question in both cases before the court. 

The court was unanimous that Title IX, a landmark 1972 law that mandated sports teams be equally provided to male and female students, does not block bans like the ones in Idaho and West Virginia.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, rejected the argument from Becky Pepper-Jackson, the transgender West Virginia girl in the case, that excluding trans girls from girls’ teams ran afoul of a 1974 amendment to Title IX that schools set “reasonable” provisions about sports participation.

West Virginia’s law — similar to those imposed by 26 other states, the International Olympic Committee, the NCAA and other sports bodies — was at least reasonable, Kavanaugh said.

“Whether biological males may participate on women’s and girls’ sports teams may be a debated policy question,” he wrote. “But the legal question for Title IX purposes is whether West Virginia may limit women’s and girls’ sports teams to biological females. As a matter of text and history, West Virginia may do so.”

Liberals would impose more scrutiny

The court’s three liberal justices agreed that Title IX did not prevent laws such as West Virginia’s and Idaho’s.

But they disagreed on the equal protection issue, and would have remanded the case back to the West Virginia federal trial court for further fact-finding.

“In not taking this modest step, the majority badly errs in two ways,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

There is an “unresolved factual dispute” about if transgender and cisgender girls “are similarly situated,” Sotomayor said. And the majority invoked “scientific uncertainty” to give too much deference to West Virginia. Both matters could have been resolved at lower courts, Sotomayor wrote.

“None of this is to suggest what the eventual outcome of this litigation would have been, or even should have been, had the majority allowed the courts below to make the missing factual determinations and had those courts correctly applied heightened scrutiny with the benefit of those facts,” she said. “The point, rather, is that this Court’s equal protection precedents require a very different approach.”

Idaho law

The Idaho case contested the Gem State’s 2020 law categorically banning trans athletes from competing on women’s and girls’ sports teams.

Lindsay Hecox sued over the ban in 2020, just months before the law — the first of its kind in the nation — was set to take effect. 

Hecox wanted to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University, but the Idaho law would have prevented her from doing so because she is transgender. 

An Idaho federal court halted the law from taking effect later in 2020. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling in 2023 but later adjusted its scope in 2024 to only apply to Hecox, not other athletes.

In July 2024, Idaho appealed to the Supreme Court.

Hecox later asked both an Idaho federal court and the Supreme Court to drop the case. 

Though a federal judge in Idaho rejected that attempt in October, the Supreme Court deferred the request until after oral arguments were heard back in January. 

Idaho Republicans cheer

Several of Idaho’s leading elected officials, all Republicans, issued statements praising Tuesday’s ruling.

Gov. Brad Little noted in an emailed statement that the Idaho law was the first of its kind at the state level.

“We are leading the nation in supporting generations of women and men who fought hard to uphold Title IX protections and keep girls and women safe,” he said. “I want to thank the Idaho Legislature and Representative Barbara Ehardt in particular for her leadership on this issue of great importance to female athletes across Idaho and the nation. This is a historic moment for common sense!”

Ehardt,who sponsored Idaho’s ban in the state Legislature called the decision the end of an “amazing journey.” 

“I said from the very beginning that it would end up at the Supreme Court, and when it did, I was privileged enough to sit in that courtroom and listen,” Ehardt said. “I expected my legislation, and thus Title IX, to be upheld as it should be. Opportunities for girls and women should never be confused with male feelings!”

West Virginia law

The case in West Virginia surrounded a 2021 Mountain State law that also bans trans athletes from participating on women’s and girls’ sports teams.  

Pepper-Jackson wanted to try out for the girls’ cross-country team when starting middle school, but would have been prevented from doing so under the state law because she is transgender. 

In 2021, Pepper-Jackson’s mother sued on her behalf.

A federal appeals court in 2024 barred the state from enforcing the ban, which prompted West Virginia to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in. 

Trump’s anti-trans agenda

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has sought at the federal level to prohibit trans athletes’ participation in women’s sports teams aligning with their gender identity, including through an executive order Trump signed last year.

That executive order made it the policy of the United States to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.”

The NCAA promptly changed its policy to comply with the order, limiting “competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.”

Trump has signed other executive orders targeting trans people, including orders that make it the “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” restrict access to gender-affirming care for kids and aim to bar openly transgender service members from the U.S. military.

Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, to commend the justices.

“BIG WIN: The United States Supreme Court  just RULED AGAINST MEN PLAYING IN WOMEN’S SPORTS,” he wrote. “Wow! That takes that ridiculous situation off the table!!!”

Other reaction

Reaction poured in Tuesday from lawmakers and other officials, both in favor and against the court’s ruling.

Many who endorsed the decision, including U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg, made some version of the declaration that “women’s sports are for women.”

“Unfortunately, radical gender ideology bolstered by policies pushed under the Biden-Harris administration chipped away at Title IX protections. As a result, the very female athletes the law was meant to empower were sidelined in the name of ‘equality,’” Walberg, a Michigan Republican, said in a statement.

He added that he was “grateful” to the justices and said his committee’s Republicans “will always stand with women athletes.”

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito made a similar statement in a social media post

“Girls’ sports are for girls. It’s common sense,” the West Virginia Republican said. “I’m thankful SCOTUS has upheld West Virginia’s law protecting female athletes.”

Critics of the ruling vowed to continue efforts to create protections for trans people.

League of Women Voters CEO Celina Stewart said the decision “sends a dangerous message that some students are less worthy of dignity, opportunity, and belonging.” 

“Policies that intentionally target and marginalize young people simply for who they are weaken our democracy and violate the values of fairness and inclusion that define who we are as a nation,” she said. “The League stands in solidarity with all affected students, and we remain committed to ensuring that equality  becomes a lived reality for everyone.”

U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat who co-chairs the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said in a post to social media the decision centered on “whether LGBTQ+ rights are civil rights protected by federal law.”

“The answer is YES—and we will keep fighting until it is clear this is the law of the land!” she added.

And leaders in blue states that do not have laws like the ones upheld Tuesday said they would not be affected.

“Today’s ruling, while predictable, is yet another disturbing affront to personal liberties by providing states with a license to discriminate,” Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said. “The Court was clear that this decision had no bearing with respect to a state’s choice to include transgender athletes and as such, will not implicate the Department of Justice’s case against Maine.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld a decision allowing the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin to buy back parcels of land on its reservation, removing them from local property tax rolls.

The post What to know about the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling on Menominee land buyback appeared first on WPR.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, a blow to the Trump administration and some Republican states that had urged the justices to require all ballots to arrive by the close of polls.

In a 5-4 decision, the court found that federal law does not prevent states from accepting late-arriving ballots. The ruling is a victory for Democrats and voting rights advocates, who had said setting a hard, Election Day deadline for ballot arrival would risk disenfranchising voters amid fears of deteriorating mail service.

The case, RNC vs. Watson, centered on whether federal law overrides a Mississippi law that requires mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within five business days of the election. Thirteen states have similar laws, which extend a “grace period” to ballots that arrive through the mail after polls close.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, said that federal law didn’t preempt the state law because elections represent when voters make a decision, which must be done on or before Election Day. Voters who cast their ballot by mail have made a decision by Election Day, Barrett reasoned.

“The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received,” Barrett wrote.

Barrett cautioned that the decision rested on the interpretation of federal law, not the U.S. Constitution. She noted that the court was not considering the scope of Congress’ authority to regulate federal elections — suggesting that if Congress passes a nationwide ballot arrival deadline that the justices might uphold such a law.

Barrett was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. 

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined part of the dissent.

“If ballots received after election day are added to the set of ballots that dictate the election’s outcome, the electorate’s choice does not occur on election day, and the federal election-day statutes are violated,” Alito wrote.

States with grace periods

In addition to Mississippi, other states with some form of grace period include Alaska, California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.

David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, called the Supreme Court decision a win for these states, as well as 30 states that accept military and overseas ballots delivered after Election Day.

“This is a victory for all the states and for all those who respect the will of the Founders, who ensured the security of our elections by giving the power to run those elections to the states — not to one person sitting in Washington, DC,” Becker said in a statement.

Some local election officials had warned that requiring all ballots to be received by the close of polls would burden their offices as they try to quickly warn voters about the change just months before the midterms. More ballot drop boxes that let voters keep their ballots out of the mail could help, they say, but also cost money.

“Ultimately, the voters may be harmed as well,” election officials in California, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington wrote in a court brief, warning that some ballots may not be received in time, “despite best efforts by careful and proactive administrators and local governments.”

But some Republican secretaries of state had urged the justices to strike down “grace period” laws. Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry and Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray wrote in a court brief that an Election Day deadline “provides the bright-line rule that effective election administration demands.”

At least 725,000 ballots were postmarked by Election Day 2024 and arrived within a legally accepted post-election window, The New York Times has reported, citing election officials in 14 of 22 states and territories where late-arriving ballots were accepted that year. 

Overall, about 30% of voters cast a mail ballot in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

RNC challenged law

The Republican National Committee challenged the Mississippi law, which was defended by Mississippi Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson. The RNC argued a longstanding federal law that sets the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as Election Day for federal offices preempted state laws that allow ballots cast by Election Day, but received later, to count.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in October 2024 that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day. President Donald Trump last year also unilaterally attempted to require mail ballots to be received by the end of Election Day in a sweeping executive order on elections. Much of that order was blocked in federal court.

The Supreme Court “rejected the RNC’s radical attempt to rewrite election laws in a way that would have resulted in the rejection of hundreds of thousands of ballots and the disenfranchisement of voters nationwide through no fault of their own,” Elisabeth Frost, litigation chair at Elias Law Group, said in a statement. 

Elias Law Group represented two nonprofit voting rights groups, Vet Voice Foundation and the Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans, that had intervened as defendants in the case.

The Supreme Court issued Monday’s decision against a backdrop of uncertainty surrounding mail ballots. Trump signed an executive order in March that would restrict voting by mail by requiring states to provide lists of possible mail ballot voters to the U.S. Postal Service in advance. A federal judge recently blocked major portions of the order, triggering a near-certain appeal.

Republican National Committee chairman Joe Gruters accused Democrats of inviting chaos by allowing elections to “drag on” for days and weeks after ballots are cast. He said Republicans wouldn’t be deterred by the decision.

“If we want fair and secure elections, Election Day should mean exactly what it says, which is why this decision makes it even more imperative that Congress pass the SAVE America Act,” Gruters said in a statement, referring to restrictive voter legislation pushed by Trump that lacks the votes to pass the U.S. Senate.

Trump said the decision was a “tremendous loss” in a social media post and again urged passage of the SAVE America Act.

Paul Clement, an attorney for the Republican National Committee, said during oral arguments at the Supreme Court in March the prospect that the outcome of an election could change because of ballots arriving after Election Day would be unacceptable to losing candidates. After the 2020 election, President Donald Trump demanded election officials not count ballots that came in after Election Day, but states kept counting ballots.

“If you have an election and the election is going to turn on late-arriving ballots in a way that means what everybody kind of thought was the result on Election Day ends up being the opposite a week later, 21 days later, the losers are not going to accept that result. Full stop,” Clement told the justices.

Attorneys for Watson argued that both legal and historical precedent supported his position. States may decide that voters have made their final choices when ballots are submitted to state officials rather than when they’re received, according to Watson.

Watson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is a developing report that will be updated.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that law enforcement searches for the location history of cellphones near crime scenes are covered by the Fourth Amendment, requiring warrants to obtain the data.

But the high court left unsettled when searches for the information are reasonable — likely meaning the justices will eventually weigh in again on the privacy rights of Americans in the electronic era.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that police officers conducted a search for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment when they obtained cellphone location history data during an investigation into a bank robbery in Virginia. The amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information — even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion.

Kagan was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Kentanji Brown Jackson. Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred in the judgment but did not join the majority opinion.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett.

States ask warrants be upheld

Over the past two decades, geofence warrants have become a major tool of law enforcement. At a basic level, they allow police to identify phones within a geographic area for a certain period of time. The data can be tremendously valuable to investigators, offering a way to develop suspects in crimes where their identities aren’t otherwise known. 

Civil liberties advocates warned that geofence warrants ensnare people in digital dragnets, handing the government data on anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They argued that accessing data on anyone within a certain area — the geofence — amounts to a general warrant prohibited by the Constitution.

A broad bipartisan coalition of states urged the justices to uphold the warrants. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia filed a brief with the court arguing that geofence warrants can be more precise than many traditional investigative methods when supported by probable cause and appropriately tailored. In the brief, they urged the justices not to prohibit geofence warrants altogether.

Geofence warrants can generate critical leads when the perpetrators of crimes are otherwise unknown, they wrote. When suspects are unknown but the suspected wrongdoing is linked to a specific place and time, location data provides one of the narrowest available tools for finding leads, the brief argues.

Credit union robbery in Virginia

The case centered on a 2019 robbery of a federal credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. Okello Chatrie was convicted of armed robbery after surveillance footage showed the robber using a cellphone. A detective then obtained a geofence warrant directed at Google for devices within 150 meters of the credit union within an hour of the robbery.

Google initially provided anonymized data in response to the warrant. The detective then requested and received additional location data on nine users. Finally, the detective received de-anonymized information on three users, without obtaining an additional warrant.

While Google has since changed the way it stores location history data to limit geofence warrants, other apps and tech firms collect the data. Lawyers for Chatrie argued that geofence warrants open the door to the authorities requesting information on everyone at a sensitive location — perhaps an abortion clinic or a political convention — at a particular time.

The records serve as a “personal journal of a user’s movements,” Kagan wrote. Location history resembles other private materials like emails, documents, photos and calendars that, even if stored on Google’s servers, users reasonably view as their own, she wrote. Users, in turn, expect the data to be shielded from the “inquisitive eyes” of the government, Kagan wrote.

‘Reasonable’ question unanswered

But Kagan and the court’s majority didn’t wade into whether the search of Chatrie was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. While the warrant in the case was an uncommon, multi-step warrant, Kagan wrote, the lower appeals court found that a search did not occur, so it did not decide whether the warrant was reasonable.

“We are, as we have said many times before, ‘a court of review, not of first view,’” Kagan wrote. “It is therefore now up to the Court of Appeals to decide whether, at each step of the search process, the warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause.”

In his dissent, Alito wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision “further destabilizes” longstanding jurisprudence on the Fourth Amendment. He accused the majority of issuing an advisory opinion by not addressing whether the search of Chatrie’s data was reasonable.

“Indeed, by refusing to review the one question that could have at least theoretically given Chatrie some hope of relief, the Court carefully set the stage for its planned performance: striking a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age. I cannot support this irresponsible escapade,” Alito wrote.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump both a win and a loss Monday in allowing his firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, but ruling that he cannot remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors.

The 6-3 decision in Trump’s favor in the Federal Trade Commission case essentially expands the president’s authority over agency governing panels, further calling into question which bodies are independent of the executive branch.

The court, split along its familiar ideological divide, held that requiring for-cause removal for political appointees on the FTC’s five-member panel is “contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.”

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion.

“The FTC has the power to promulgate substantive rules carrying the force of law, investigate businesses and enforce statutes through in-house adjudications, and file civil suits on behalf of the United States in federal court,” Roberts wrote. “The FTC unquestionably exercises executive power and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive.”

The decision nullifies the court’s 1935 unanimous decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which overruled President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s removal of William Humphrey from the commission. The framework of the nearly century-old ruling “has not withstood the test of time,” Roberts wrote.

“If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, the Court overrules it. Humphrey’s has for decades been a result in search of a rationale …” he continued.

Trump hailed the decision in a post on his Truth Social platform Monday.

“To show the importance of the Slaughter Case, 90 years of precedent has been COMPLETELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY OVERRULED, greatly increasing Presidential Power at a time when it is most needed!” Trump wrote. 

Dissent presses for independence

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Sotomayor wrote that the structure of executive boards that manage nuclear energy, consumer products and workplace safety, among others, “allows the agencies to address complex problems while enjoying some independence from Presidential removal and thus absolute partisan control.”  

Trump fired Slaughter on March 28 in an email that said her “continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my administration’s priorities.” Slaughter sued and won in federal district court and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Slaughter has served as an FTC commissioner since 2018, during Trump’s first term. President Joe Biden reappointed her and the Senate unanimously confirmed her for a second term in 2023.

Alvero Bedoya, who served as FTC commissioner under Biden, said the decision reduces the commission to a “little lap dog” for Trump’s allies. 

Bedoya delivered the remarks during a press call organized by the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative.  

“The idea that putting the FTC under the direct control of Donald Trump is going to make people’s lives easier is laughable, and it is only going to make things worse,” Bedoya said. “The only people who are going to be helped by this are this president’s billionaire donors who are actively being sued by the Federal Trade Commission.”

Bedoya noted the commission is in litigation with Amazon and Meta, whose leaders, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, each donated $1 million for Trump’s inauguration. 

Cook firing disallowed

But the president’s power over firing members of governing boards falls short when it comes to the Federal Reserve, and when the targeted appointee is in the midst of a separate legal battle.

In a 5-4 opinion, also delivered by Roberts, the court denied the Trump administration’s application to stay a lower court ruling allowing Cook to remain a board governor while litigation plays out.

Trump fired Cook in August 2025 via post on social media after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, now Trump’s acting head of national intelligence, accused Cook of mortgage fraud.  

“The ultimate question of whether the President can remove Cook for cause will depend in part on the underlying facts,” Roberts wrote. “In this opinion, we have not addressed the facts, as they have yet to be found or analyzed under the relevant legal standards.”

Trump, critics note ‘procedural’ basis

Trump said the justices sent the case back to the lower court on a “strictly procedural basis.”

“We will take appropriate action immediately to make sure that someone who has committed wrongdoing will not be making vital decisions concerning the Welfare of the United States of America!” he wrote on Truth Social. 

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented. 

Thomas argued the court’s decision violates a president’s constitutional powers to remove executive officers at will.

“Cook’s office was not her ‘property’ because, in this country, government officials do not own the public offices in which they serve,” Thomas wrote. “Apparent mortgage fraud was a ‘cause’ to remove Cook. And, the statute authorizing the President to remove Cook for ‘cause’ says nothing about notice or a hearing, so it does not require notice and a hearing.”

Graham Steele, former assistant secretary of financial institutions at the Treasury Department, said during the Groundwork Collaborative call that the decision is “cold comfort.”

“It was a 5-4 decision,” Steele said. The “majority rests on a narrow set of procedural grounds, and it should have been obvious to members of the court how illegal the president’s actions were in trying to remove Governor Cook. And yet this was, to use a technical legal term, ‘a squeaker’ of a case when it came down to the opinions themselves.”

Trump and the Fed

The Cook ruling is a setback in Trump’s ongoing interest in exerting influence over the central bank. 

The Senate approved Trump’s new pick for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, last month.

Justices heard oral arguments in January over whether Trump overreached his authority in firing Cook. The arguments drew a high-profile appearance of then-Fed Chair Jerome Powell to the court.

Even conservative justices showed skepticism that Trump’s social media firing Cook was within his powers under the Federal Reserve Act, which stipulates presidents can only remove board governors “for cause.”

Trump claimed his firing of Cook, which accused her of “deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter,” was not reviewable in court.

Cook, a Biden appointee, denied any wrongdoing and challenged the termination, arguing that an “unsubstantiated allegation about private mortgage applications,” submitted prior to her Senate confirmation, does not amount to cause for removal. 

Cook also argued that Trump denied her due process in not giving her notice or a chance to respond to the allegations.