A look at where things are on the GOP’s tax bill, and who stands to benefit and lose. Tax-policy reporter Richard Rubin with the Wall Street Journal has the details.After oral arguments, the Supreme Court appeared divided over how much power lower courts should have to issue nationwide injunctions. The Washington Post unpacks the issue.The Trump administration is rolling back some protections against forever chemicals. Mariah Blake tells Apple News In Conversation why there’s still optimism on the state level, and suggests some ways to protect yourself.Plus, a Milwaukee judge pleaded not guilty to attempting to block immigration arrest, a landmark moment in gene editing, and what to know about the WNBA’s new team. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Full Episode
Good morning. It's Friday, May 16th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, what's in the GOP's big tax bill, the EPA's regulatory rollback on forever chemicals in drinking water, and the world's first patient treated with personalized gene editing therapy. But first, the Supreme Court seems torn over what to do with the birthright citizenship case.
As we mentioned yesterday, the constitutionality of Trump's order calling to end birthright citizenship is not what the court is being asked to consider. Rather, justices yesterday were asked to weigh the limits of judicial power. and whether a lower court is allowed to block an executive order like this one from being enforced nationwide.
The Trump administration has asked the court to scale back the nationwide injunctions against his order so they can apply to only those who are pregnant, immigrant advocacy groups, and residents of the 22 states that challenged his order in the courts. Here's Solicitor General D. John Sauer arguing on behalf of the administration.
Respectfully, I think what we have are lower courts making snap judgments on the merits that ignore the fundamental principle of the 14th Amendment, that it was about giving citizenship to the children of slaves, not to the children of illegal immigrants.
For more than a century, most scholars and courts have agreed that the 14th Amendment is not exclusively about slavery and that it plainly states intent that every child born within the territory of the United States is a citizen. The defendants, meanwhile, argued that restricting the scope of injunctions would go against the Constitution and previous court rulings.
New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum said the Trump administration's request to let the injunction stand in some places, but not others for now, would lead to chaos.
Since the 14th Amendment, our country has never allowed American citizenship to vary based on the state in which someone resides. Because the post-Civil War nation wrote into our Constitution that citizens of the United States and of the states would be one and the same without variation across state lines.
This isn't the first time justices have been asked to weigh in on nationwide injunctions, and justices have expressed dismay in the past. Yesterday, Justice Clarence Thomas seemed to focus on the history of nationwide injunctions, suggesting at one point the United States had, quote, survived until the 1960s without using them.
From the liberal wing, Justice Elena Kagan acknowledged that critics of both the Biden and Trump administrations had used friendly jurisdictions to their advantage. But she asked Sauer how else states could tackle executive orders they perceived to be blatantly unconstitutional.
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