What we're watching
• The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to immediately fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, further cementing the Fed’s independence.
• The court, meanwhile, expanded the president’s power to fire officials, overturning the nearly century-old precedent Humphrey’s Executor. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent, said it “promises only chaos.”
• The justices also upheld state laws that count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, an unexpected rebuff of Trump’s longstanding attacks on mail-in voting. Trump immediately called for Congress to pass the “SAVE America Act,” which would limit mail ballots and install strict new ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting.
• The court also denied President Donald Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll verdict, meaning he must pay $5 million to the former columnist. Justices also denied Alan Dershowitz’s defamation appeal against CNN.
A campaign finance case gives the Supreme Court one more chance this term to shake up election law
Among the cases the Supreme Court will decide Tuesday is a GOP bid to loosen campaign finance limits. Republicans are challenging a part of the Federal Election Campaign Act that sets a cap for how much party committees can spend in coordination with a campaign.
In a case that started as a lawsuit brought by then Senate-candidate JD Vance, Republicans are arguing the caps violate the First Amendment. If successful, the lawsuit will be latest ruling by the high court dismantling the ways Congress has sought to regulate political spending, and it would shift the playing field in a direction more favorably towards Republicans. Lifting the caps will boost the way major Republican donors can counter the small-dollar contributions that have often given Democrats a fundraising edge.
A ruling in Republicans’ favor would give political parties a more central role in the flow of political money around election. Under the current system, large-scale contributions tend to go to super PACs, which are more opaque but are constrained in how they operate.
The case, however, presents an off-ramp for the court. Without deciding the constitutionality of the caps, the justices could instead reject the lawsuit for procedural reasons.
SCOTUS to rule on Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship
The Supreme Court is set to decide Tuesday whether President Donald Trump acted within the law when he signed an executive order on his first day back in office ending birthright citizenship as it has been understood for more than a century.
The decision will have enormous consequences for hundreds of thousands of children born every year in the United States to parents who are not citizens.
Trump has framed the effort as targeting “birth tourism,” but a ruling in Trump’s favor would also sweep in many people who are in the US legally — such as on visas or who are here in humanitarian programs
The 6-3 conservative court is widely expected to rule against Trump — even the president has suggested as much — but there is an open question of whether it will do so based on the language of the 14th Amendment or whether it will avoid the constitutional questions and focus on a law with the same language enacted in the 1950s.
Justices to decide whether states can ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams
The Supreme Court is expected to decide Tuesday whether states may bar transgender students from playing on girls’ sports teams, a decision that is expected to have major consequences for a long list of Republican-led states that have enacted such bans in recent years.
At oral arguments earlier this year, a majority of the conservative-dominated court appeared likely to side with two states that asked the justices to bless their bans, which had been deemed unlawful by lower courts.
In the last few years, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to side with LGBTQ interests in a range of cases, including ones challenging restrictions on gender identity care for trans youth and President Donald Trump’s policy of excluding trans Americans from serving in the armed services.
Some 27 states have enacted laws similar to those on the books in West Virginia and Idaho, with officials there arguing the laws promote both safety and fairness for cisgender girls.
Trump calls mail ballot ruling "a little bit surprising"
President Donald Trump called the Supreme Court’s mail ballot decision “a little bit surprising” and said it makes the “SAVE America Act” more important.
“The ruling, which a lot of people were waiting for, that was a ruling that was, I think, it was very detrimental to honest elections. But it is what it is. Basically, they’re keeping it a little bit the way it is now,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
Trump went on to bemoan that the voting legislation is “held up in the Senate,” while renewing calls for the elimination of the filibuster to get it passed and also suggesting the federal election overhaul bill could be included in a budget process called reconciliation, which would allow GOP senators to adopt it on a party-line vote.
However, that approach would have to get past the Senate parliamentarian, who acts as the chamber’s nonpartisan enforcer of its rules and precedents.
Trump was separately pressed on Monday on whether he’d discussed firing parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough with Senate Majority Leader John Thune. “I have,” Trump repeated.
“No, I can’t imagine why you keep a woman that was put there by Harry Reid and Barack Hussein Obama, I cannot understand it. The leader has the right to fire the person at will and put somebody else there … because we get so many negative rulings from her, the parliamentarian.”
But Thune has so far resisted Trump’s calls to fire MacDonough, telling CNN earlier this month, “That’s not a new request.”
“That’s a hard job. It’s a very specific skill set, and you need somebody that is going to be a fair referee when it comes to this stuff. So I don’t have anything to comment on that,” the majority leader said.
Fact check: Trump repeats false claims about mail-in ballots
President Donald Trump repeated long-debunked false claims while speaking about the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling on mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. Here’s a quick fact check.
Trump falsely claimed mail-in voting is “really dishonest”: In reality, mail-in voting is a legitimate method used by legitimate voters — including Trump himself — to cast legitimate ballots. Elections experts say the incidence of fraud tends to be marginally higher with mail-in ballots than with in-person ballots, but also that fraud rates in federal elections are tiny even with mail-in ballots.
The US isn’t the only country that uses mail-in ballots: Trump said, “We’re the only country in the world that does this type of mail-in ballot.” Trump didn’t explain what he meant by “this type,” but dozens of countries allow some or all voters to vote by mail; the countries that allow for widespread mail-in voting include Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland.
Trump falsely claimed former Democratic president Jimmy Carter said “you can’t have mail-in ballots” and led a commission that concluded “that if you do mail-in ballots, there’s gonna be cheating”: In reality, neither Carter nor the election reform commission Carter co-chaired two decades ago said “you can’t have mail-in ballots” or declared cheating was inevitable whenever mail-in ballots are used.
It’s true that the commission was generally skeptical of mail-in voting. Its 2005 report said that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud” and are “vulnerable to abuse in several ways.”
But the commission also wrote that Oregon, a state that has been conducting elections exclusively by mail-in ballot since the late 1990s, “appears to have avoided significant fraud in its vote-by-mail elections by introducing safeguards to protect ballot integrity, including signature verification.” The commission offered recommendations for making the use of mail-in ballots more secure and called for “further research on the pros and cons” of voting by mail.
Carter, who died in 2024, said in 2020: “I approve the use of absentee ballots and have been using them for more than five years.”
Takeaways from the wins and losses for Donald Trump
The Supreme Court issued a major opinion giving more power to President Donald Trump in his quest to fire independent agency officials on Monday, but dealt him defeats on the Fed and E. Jean Carroll cases.
Here are takeaways from the decisions:
- Split decision on presidential power
- Humphrey’s Executor executed
- Trump v. Cook fight will continue
- Unease over ‘destabilizing’ the economy
- Mail-in ballot ruling angers Trump
- Trump punished in the pocketbook
Police must obtain a warrant when seeking sweep of cellphone location data
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the use of a “geofence warrant” to capture location data from cell phones in search of a robbery suspect constituted a search for Fourth Amendment purposes, a decision that means officers will have to obtain a warrant to access such data in the future.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion for a majority that included both conservative and liberal justices. The court divided 6-3, with three of the court’s conservatives dissenting.
At a time when Americans store vast quantities of personal data in servers controlled by companies, the case raised thorny questions about the ability of police to access that information. In the end, the court steered out of the case with a relatively limited decision that will effectively require police to obtain a warrant when they’re requesting location information from a geolocation database.
“The Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified governmental intrusion on the privacy of the individual,” Kagan wrote.
Democratic secretaries of state say mail ballot ruling stopped potential chaos for voters
Democratic state election officials who defended laws allowing ballots to be received after Election Day said the Supreme Court decision rejecting a challenge to state mail-in ballot laws will prevent injecting chaos and uncertainty into the mail-in voting process just months before the midterm elections.
“Now voters get to have the same elections they’ve had the last few cycles, without any major changes,” Nevada Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told CNN. “And so we can continue to tell Nevadans that … the way you voted in ‘24 is the way you voted in the ‘26 primary, and it’s the way you’re going to vote in the general in ‘26.”
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge from the Republican National Committee to Mississippi law that allowed ballots postmarked on Election Day to be counted if they arrived as much as five days later.
More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia have similar laws on accepting ballots after Election Day, though the exact number of days can vary, and the Democratic secretaries of state said that the ruling upheld their states’ rights to run their elections.
“The post-Election Day grace period protects thousands of Oregonians’ votes from being thrown out because of delays at the Post Office,” said Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read. “This ruling means those legally cast ballots that arrive within seven days of the election will still be counted and those Oregonians’ voices will be heard.”
Many states still require ballots to be received by Election Day. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, praised the Supreme Court ruling but reminded voters in his state that it “does not change how elections are conducted in Arizona.”
Former FTC commissioner says she's "sad" for US after Supreme Court decision
The former Federal Trade Commissioner whose firing last year by President Donald Trump was upheld in a Supreme Court decision on Monday said she was “sad” for the country.
“I think that that is incredibly sad,” she added. “And that’s really what I’m focused on.”
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that Trump could fire leaders of independent agencies or commissions.
Last March, Trump fired Slaughter, who had served on the FTC since 2018 and is a Democrat, despite a federal law that permits the dismissal of FTC commissioners only for cause.
Today’s Supreme Court decision represented a major win for Trump and his authority to unilaterally rid the federal government — even nominally independent agencies — of his political opponents.
Trump promises further action after court allows Cook to remain at Fed
President Donald Trump said he will take “appropriate action immediately” after the Supreme Court rejected his attempt to immediately fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
“The Cook Lawsuit, having to do with her suitability in sitting on the Board of the Federal Reserve, was sent back by the Supreme Court on a strictly procedural basis,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding, “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!”
Trump attempted to remove Cook based on allegations of mortgage fraud, which she has denied. The court declined to resolve the underlying merits of Cook’s case but rather said that she was entitled to notice and a fair opportunity to respond to Trump’s claims.
Court spars over role fraud fears should play in mail ballot case
Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s majority opinion didn’t entirely discount concerns about how mail ballot grace periods could invite fraud, or at least a perception of fraud, into the election. Rather, she wrote, that legislatures — and not the court — should decide how those fears should be addressed.
“As we have said time and again, however, policy arguments are properly directed to legislatures, not courts,” she wrote. “The question today is not whether requiring ballots to be received by election day is a good or bad idea; the question is whether the idea has made its way into the United States Code.”
Justice Samuel Alito, in a dissent joined by three other conservatives, wrote at length about how the majority ruling “compounds” on the “vulnerabilities” of mail-in voting, suggesting that it could fuel “ballot harvest(ing)” by political parties, interest groups or even Uber drivers.
Barrett said those examples have “have nothing to do with this case,” since the court was only looking at the “timing” of the election, not the manner by which voters cast ballots.
Military and overseas voting law boosts majority opinion on mail ballot deadlines
A law passed by Congress in 1986 to make it easier for overseas military families and other Americans abroad to vote helped boost the Supreme Court’s mail ballot deadline ruling.
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act seemed to build upon the reality that states have freedom to set post-election deadlines for those ballots, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted in her majority opinion.
While 14 states allow for post-Election Day ballot receipt for all their voters, another 15 states have extended deadlines for certain ballots submitted by military families on deployment and US citizens overseas, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The Republican National Committee, which brought the lawsuit, and the Trump administration, which had submitted arguments also against mail ballot grace periods, had disagreed on the question of how to handle UOCAVA ballot deadlines.
The RNC said those deadlines also ran afoul of the federal Election Day statute, while the Justice Department said UOCAVA ballots should be carved out of a ruling otherwise striking down grace periods for mail ballots. The majority opinion highlighted the disagreement.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the dissenting conservatives, would have struck down the UOCAVA deadlines, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who otherwise dissented from the majority — declined to join that part of Alito’s ruling.
Democrats, voting rights advocates hail mail voting decision
Democrats and voting rights advocates cheered the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold state laws counting mail ballots that arrive after election day, saying the court rejected an attempt by Republicans to restrict and disenfranchise voters.
“The RNC’s lawsuit attempted to rip away democratically enacted safeguards for millions, including U.S. service members,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement.
The Supreme Court rejected arguments from Republicans that state laws allowing for late-arriving mail ballots postmarked by Election Day ran afoul of federal law. The lawsuit was brought by the Republican National Committee, challenging a Mississippi law that allowed for a grace period for ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrived late.
“Today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of our clients, Vet Voice Foundation and the Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans, affirming a simple principle: a lawful ballot cast on time should be counted,” said Elisabeth Frost, litigation chair of the Elias Law Group, which represented Mississippi groups in the case.
Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, said it was “a relief to see federal courts make clear that these attacks on mail and absentee voting are clearly illegal and unconstitutional.”
Alito's ballot deadline dissent embraces common Trump gripes about mail voting
Justice Samuel Alito’s dissenting opinion echoes the complaints that some Republicans — led by President Donald Trump — have made about mail voting, with Alito claiming that “Diverse sources have recognized that mail-in ballots increase the potential for fraud.”
Before Trump polarized mail voting with his baseless claims that it would bring mass fraud to the 2020 election, it was embraced by Democrats and Republicans alike. States with rural, sprawled out communities — communities that tend to lean Republican — were among the first to adopt expansive mail-in voting programs.
As Alito railed against the majority ruling for how it “compounds” the “vulnerabilities” of mail voting, he seized specifically on how the slower-paced process of counting mail ballots can dramatically shift which candidate is leading as those ballots are tabulated in the days and weeks after an election.
Just a few weeks ago, California was the focus of Trump’s ire — and the ire of even election experts not aligned with the GOP — for that dynamic in the count of its primary election.
“Even in the absence of partisan rhetoric, drawn-out ballot-counting ‘induces a large, significant decrease’ in Americans’ trust in elections,” Alito wrote. “By allowing States to continue receiving new ballots during these drawn-out processes, today’s decision will only exacerbate voters’ distrust.”
Samuel Alito does not appear on the bench for next-to-last opinion day
Days after an unusual exchange with a colleague during a release of opinions, Justice Samuel Alito did not appear on the bench Monday for the court’s penultimate release of opinions.
In response to questions from CNN, a court spokesperson said that Alito had “made an important personal commitment for today before the session was scheduled” and that he would take part in the court’s end-of-term conference meeting remotely.
All nine justices usually sit when the court is releasing opinions or hearing arguments, although several justices have missed appearances this term for various reasons.
Alito, a member of the court’s conservative wing, appeared to be taken aback Thursday when Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s senior liberal, read her dissent from the bench in a case involving asylum claims.
“There’s much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read,” Alito said, an unusual break from protocol during what is normally a highly scripted release of opinions.
On Friday, a court spokesperson said there had been a “misunderstanding” on Alito’s part over the choreography of the day.
“Justice Alito was notified in advance by Justice Sotomayor’s chambers that she would be reading a dissent from the bench,” the court spokesperson said Friday in a statement.
Trump says he will continue to fight E. Jean Carroll case despite Supreme Court loss
President Donald Trump said he would continue to fight his case against E. Jean Carroll despite the Supreme Court “surprisingly” denying his appeal in the civil case finding that Trump sexually abused and defamed Carroll.
“Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to ‘review’ a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met (Decades old celebrity photo line, standing with her husband, does not count!). I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
A spokesman for the president’s legal team previously said in a statement, “President Trump will keep winning against Liberal Lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to Make America Great Again.”
Trump renews call for "SAVE America Act" after Supreme Court loss
President Donald Trump again pressed for Congress to pass the “SAVE America Act” on Monday after the Supreme Court upheld state laws that count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.
“In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“There is no excuse for a politician,” Trump wrote, to oppose the federal elections overhaul bill, which would add strict new ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting. Trump has also ordered Republicans to add provisions that would end the widespread practice of no-excuse mail voting.
While the House passed earlier versions of the legislation, weeks of tumult fueled by Trump’s demands for it forced Speaker Mike Johnson to send his members home early last week because of a GOP rebellion over it on the floor.
And Trump on Monday specifically called out Republicans in the Senate — where the legislation does not have the votes to pass.
“Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and Mitch McConnell must vote to SAVE OUR COUNTRY,” Trump wrote.
Supreme Court will issue birthright citizenship and transgender sports decisions on Tuesday
The Supreme Court will hand down the final opinions of its term on Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts announced from the bench at the end of the court’s Monday session.
The court still has three major issues outstanding: Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship as it’s been understood for more than a century, transgender sports bans, and a case about campaign finance limits. The transgender sports issue is technically two cases, so the court is expected to hand down four opinions.
Trump lauds win in Slaughter case
President Donald Trump celebrated his one win at the Supreme Court Monday, calling the decision to uphold his dismissal of Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission “one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers.”
“BIG WIN just moments ago at the Supreme Court, in the Slaughter Case, confirming Presidential Power in our Country to remove Executive Branch Officers and Agency Appointees, or Representatives, under Article II,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“It is such an Honor to be the sitting President who won this Historic and Unprecedented Ruling, one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers,” he added.
He doubled down in a later post, saying, “90 years of precedent has been COMPLETELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY OVERRULED,” and praised the ruling for “greatly increasing Presidential Power at a time when it is most needed!”
In a trio of dissents, conservative justices say court should have let Trump fire Cook for now
In three separate dissents, four conservative justices said the Supreme Court was wrong to let Lisa Cook stay in her job at the Federal Reserve while she challenges President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her.
Justice Clarence Thomas said he didn’t think federal law required Trump to provide Cook with due process before she could be removed from her post, and that courts lack authority to wade into such issues.
In a separate dissent penned by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, Alito said he would have allowed Trump to keep Cook out of her job while the litigation continued.
And Justice Amy Coney Barrett argued in a solo dissent that the court wrongly decided “to go big” by both permitting Cook to remain in her job while also leaving the door open to Trump eventually being able to fire her lawfully.
“But if the Court wanted to leave the President in that position, it should not have denied the stay,” Barrett wrote.
