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In today’s issue:
- Trump administration’s appeals playbook
- Senate GOP plots path around budget snarls
- Young Democrats challenge the old guard
- Little progress during Russia, Ukraine peace talks
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to immediately intercede to allow the government to lay off thousands of federal workers in a sweeping plan that was blocked by a district court judge.
The administration’s race to the high court with an emergency appeal was another example of its eagerness to test the reach of President Trump’s authority and prove what it called “ongoing and severe harm” to the executive branch, based on its view of a “flawed” lower court ruling.
The idea that the government requires congressional authorization to carry out personnel decisions in agencies and departments is an “indefensible premise,” argued U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer. It was the administration’s 18th Supreme Court emergency appeal since January and the second time the federal layoffs dispute reached the justices.
A district court previously barred the president from implementing reductions in force across 21 federal agencies and prevented the administration from placing employees in those agencies on leave.
COURTING JUSTICES: Part of Trump’s plan at the outset of his second term was to lean on the conservative Supreme Court majority while he asserted his executive power across two branches of government, each controlled by Republicans. He has publicly lobbied justices to help “save America” by backing his policies amid dozens of legal challenges taken up by federal judges questioning the constitutionality or statutory interpretations of Trump’s actions. The president and conservative supporters have railed against nationwide injunctions issued by lower court judges, even temporary ones.
Trump has urged impeachment of federal judges who challenge his policies, a development publicly assailed by Chief Justice John Roberts.
The Supreme Court this term has been center stage in an unusually brisk and high-stakes legal and political drama in which its rulings test the limits of Americans’ trust in the courts and willingness to abide by verdicts perceived through the lens of politics.
June usually means the approaching conclusion of the Supreme Court’s term amid a crush of consequential rulings in cases argued since the first Monday in October. But the justices are increasingly juggling emergency challenges related to administration policies, NBC News reports.
The Hill: Supreme Court decisions and top cases to watch.
Separately, the Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear two cases that challenged separate bans in Maryland and Rhode Island on so-called AR-15-style assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, a blow to conservatives who turned to the high court after lower courts upheld the state bans. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch disagreed with the majority’s decision. The weapons issue may be back in the next “term or two,” suggested Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The Hill: Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, venture capitalist Michael Rothenberg,cardiologist Michael Jones and radio host and lawyer Warren Ballentine, who unsuccessfully sought pardons from former President Biden for non-violent federal offenses, used an op-ed to argue the former president’s clemency decisions should be re-examined amid fresh debate over his mental sharpness while in office.
The Hill: GOP senators predict the Supreme Court will resolve whether Trump has authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose broad tariffs. Privately, senators concede their lives would be easier if the courts put a stop to the president’s global trade war, which he conceived to take aim at China. The president on Monday turned to Truth Social to defend U.S. tariffs and to argue that “Economic ruination” would result if courts intercede.
SMART TAKE with NewsNation’s BLAKE BURMAN:
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh signaled Monday the high court could soon take up a big case: the constitutionality of AR-15 rifle bans. The court declined to take up a case involving Maryland’s AR-15 ban this term, but Kavanaugh wrote the court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next term or two.”
NewsNation legal contributor Jesse Weber told me he believes Kavanaugh is right.
“Not only will they hear it, they have to hear it,” Weber said. “There is so much confusion across courts about ‘When is a gun regulation unconstitutional?’”
Get ready to see this case in the high court at some point in the coming years.
Burman hosts “The Hill” weeknights, 6p/5c on NewsNation.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:
▪ The remains of dust clouds that blew out of the Sahara Desert and stretched for thousands of miles through the Caribbean are expected to hit Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi late this week and into the weekend. Allergy sufferers beware.
▪ Join The Hill’s Wednesday half-day summit, “Invest in America,” at 8 a.m. EDT featuring titans from Washington and Wall Street. Participants share insights about economic developments, tariffs, artificial intelligence, crypto, taxes and more. RSVP HERE.
▪ Also on Wednesday, check out The Hill’s Open Mic “Across the Aisle” with former Senate leaders Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.). Live stream starts at 2 p.m.; register HERE.
LEADING THE DAY
© Associated Press | Patrick Semansky
DEFICIT? WHAT DEFICIT? Republicans are using Congress’s official budget scorer as a whipping boy as they argue a major package of Trump’s tax priorities advancing in Capitol Hill is costless, write The Hill’s Aris Folley and Tobias Burns.
Multiple projections, however, place the plan’s price tag at trillions of dollars over the next decade. While the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has yet to release a final estimate of Republican’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Republicans have increased the attacks on the nonpartisan office over its cost projections of the party’s tax cuts plan — which seeks to permanently lock in expiring provisions in Trump’s 2017 tax plan, along with a host of other add-ons.
“The CBO sometimes gets projections correct, but they’re always off every single time when they project economic growth,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — on a mission to sell the bill to his own party — said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” asserting the bill “is going to reduce the deficit.”
Politico: Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Monday vowed not to overrule the parliamentarian on the pending budget bill.
Trump on Monday emphasized that he wants the bill on his desk before the Fourth of July.
“With the Senate coming back to Washington today, I call on all of my Republican friends in the Senate and House to work as fast as they can to get this Bill to MY DESK before the Fourth of JULY,” Trump said in a lengthy post selling his megabill.
The CBO won’t release a final growth projection for the GOP bill until later this week. However, the agency projected earlier this year that real gross domestic product will grow at an average rate of 1.8 percent annually over the next decade if current law remains unchanged.
Economists, meanwhile, are questioning the GOP bill, which — contrary to typical spending patterns — would add trillions to the national debt at a time when unemployment is low and the economy is solid by most measures. Experts warn that could make it harder to respond to future crises.
“I’m extraordinarily concerned about the fiscal implications of this,” David H. Romer, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, told The New York Times. “We’re starting from high levels of debt, high levels of deficits, projected growing budgetary pressure from an aging population. And the investors are already jittery about this, so this is not just hypothetical.”
▪ The New York Times: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) isn’t using “nice words” about life under Trump. The Alaska senator has no qualms about criticizing the president. She could play a make-or-break role in pushing back on the legislation carrying his agenda.
▪ The Washington Post: Congressional Republicans are pursuing changes to the Affordable Care Act that would mean 10.7 million fewer Americans using its insurance marketplaces and Medicaid.
▪ Politico: Insurers, states warn of Obamacare chaos due to the GOP megabill.
SALT-Y DEBATES: Among the most controversial provisions in the GOP megabill is the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap, which has fractured the Republican conference and faces an uncertain path ahead in the Senate. After members of the SALT Caucus threatened to spike the entire bill last week, House Republicans agreed to raise the cap to $40,000 from $10,000, quadrupling the deduction that was unlimited prior to Trump’s 2017 tax law.
On the surface, writes The Hill’s Burns, the SALT cap is controversial because it’s a tax break that benefits wealthier Americans in more affluent coastal states. However, those richer states tend to pay more in federal taxes than they get back in public services, effectively making them subsidizers of the poorer, typically Republican states that are seeking to make them pay higher taxes.
WHERE AND WHEN
- The House will convene at noon.
- The Senate today will meet at 10 a.m.
- The president has no public events on his schedule as of this morning.
ZOOM IN
© Associated Press | Mark Schiefelbein
PUSHING OUT THE OLD GUARD: A growing number of young Democrats have launched primary bids against the party’s older members in recent months, underscoring the generational tensions that burst into the open following former Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat in November.
Former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) this week drew a primary challenger 50 years his junior in Harry Jarin, who cast the long-serving lawmaker as representative of “a bygone era.” He follows a number of other young candidates who have filed to run or formally launched primary bids against veteran Democratic lawmakers. The Hill’s Julia Mueller reports the trend comes amid renewed anxiety within the party over the issue of age, a development spurred by new revelations about Biden and the recent deaths of a number of older House members.
“Six members of Congress have died in the last 16 months, and all of them were Democrats over age 65,” Jarin told The Hill. “So, I mean, I don’t see how you can look at the situation and not say, ‘Hey, we have a serious problem.’”
▪ Politico: Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is running for mayor in New York City, and he’s planning a national campaign to take on Trump — whose Department of Justice is reportedly investigating him.
▪ The Washington Post: Black Democrats fume over 2024 while “searching for a leader” in 2028.
▪ The Hill: Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) weekend town hall blooper inspired a Democratic challenger. Ernst pushed back against constituents who shouted that cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would cause people to die. “Well, we are all going to die,” the senator responded.
▪ NBC News: New York Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado launched a Democratic primary challenge against Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday.
IMMIGRATION: Trump and his administration are leaning into immigration and Biden’s border policies in the wake of an attack in Boulder, Colo., that targeted a pro-Israel gathering. Trump’s response to the attack so far has been to largely blame his predecessor, calling out Biden for what he deems a “ridiculous open border policy.”
The suspect, Mohamed Soliman, has been charged with a federal hate crime after he allegedly yelled “Free Palestine” as he was attacking the group, injuring multiple people with Molotov cocktails. Some Jewish groups as well as lawmakers are criticizing the Trump White House’s response, saying it doesn’t focus enough on preventing antisemitic attacks in the U.S., especially as Jewish Americans increasingly become targets as the war between Israel and Hamas wages on.
The Hill: The simmering tensions between the Trump administration and House Democrats are threatening to boil over after agents of the Department of Homeland Security forced their way into the office of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.).
ELSEWHERE
© Associated Press | Oleg Petrasiuk, Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade
HELLO, GOODBYE: Ukraine and Russia’s Monday negotiations in Istanbul proved to be brief. The two sides agreed on a prisoner exchange — and little else. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said Russia did not agree to an unconditional truce — Kyiv’s central demand — or a bilateral meeting between the two countries’ leaders.
Expectations were low before the talks started, as both sides remain deeply divided on how to end the war that has been raging since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Meanwhile, the effects of Ukraine’s weekend barrage of drone attacks on Russia’s bomber fleet — nicknamed “Operation Spiderweb” and planned over the course of 18 months — is still becoming clear. Ukraine was able to plant drones on Russian soil, just miles away from military bases, and on Sunday attack five different regions in Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 40 Russian aircraft, or 34 percent of Moscow’s strategic cruise missile carriers, were hit. Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, put the estimated cost to the Kremlin at $7 billion.
▪ The Guardian: Operation Spiderweb: a visual guide to Ukraine’s destruction of Russian aircraft.
▪ The New York Times: Ukraine hid attack drones in Russia. These videos show what happened next.
▪ The Hill: Senate Republicans are growing increasingly antsy to move their Russia sanctions package as they await the green light from Trump and fighting continues to escalate in the region.
IRAN: Contradicting public statements from top administration officials, the nuclear deal proposal the U.S. presented to Iran on Saturday would allow limited low-level uranium enrichment for a to-be-determined period of time, Axios reports. Both White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said publicly that the U.S. will not allow Iran to enrich uranium and will demand Tehran fully dismantle its nuclear facilities. But the draft proposal shows far more flexibility on both points.
“Under our potential Agreement — WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM!” Trump wrote on social media on Monday. Addressing the seeming contradiction, a White House official said Trump was speaking the “cold, hard truth.”
Meanwhile, Iranian, Egyptian and United Nations leaders met in Cairo on Monday to discuss Iran’s nuclear program after a report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Iran is further increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium.
▪ The New York Times: For 18 months, Hamas has pushed for a permanent truce in Gaza while Israel has held out for a temporary one. That wide gap has stymied efforts to end the war.
▪ ABC News: At least 27 people were killed and more than 90 injured by Israeli forces as they waited to collect humanitarian aid at a distribution center in southern Gaza on Tuesday morning.
OPINION
■ Antisemitism does not respect national borders, by The Washington Post editorial board.
■ Save us, senators, from a very expensive mistake, by Robinson Meyer, contributing opinion writer, The New York Times.
THE CLOSER
© Associated Press | John Leicester
And finally … 🐈🐈⬛ Do your cats really know you? Whether your feline friends have insight into your hopes and dreams is debatable. But a new study suggests that they can identify a specific thing about you — your scent.
The study, published in the journal PLOS One, established that cats respond differently to the scents of their owners than to the odors of strangers. The findings, derived from smell tests with 30 cats, suggest your four-legged friend knows what you smell like, in addition to what you look and sound like.
Carlo Siracusa, an associate professor of animal behavior at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine who was not involved with the study, told The New York Times the logistical feat of designing a study protocol deemed acceptable by its feline participants was remarkable.
“I really commend this group of scientists for being successful in engaging 30 cats in doing this stuff,” Siracusa said. “Most cats want nothing to do with your research.”
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