The Supreme Court's conservative majority sounds skeptical of state laws that allow the counting of late-arriving mail ballots, a target of President Donald Trump. The court heard arguments Monday in a case from Mississippi that also could affect voters in 13 other states and the District of Columbia, which have grace periods for ballots cast by mail. An additional 15 states that have more forgiving deadlines for ballots from military and overseas voters also could be impacted. A ruling is expected by late June, early enough to govern the counting of ballots in the 2026 midterm congressional elections. The court challenge is part of Trump's broader attack on most mail balloting.
The Supreme Court is allowing President Donald Trump to put his plan to dismantle the Education Department back on track and go through with laying off nearly 1,400 employees. With the three liberal justices in dissent, the court on Monday paused an order from U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston, who issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs and calling into question the broader plan. The layoffs "will likely cripple the department," Joun wrote. A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed.
A divided Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other than their homelands, lifting for now a court order requiring they get a chance to challenge the deportations. All three liberal justices dissented. The high court's Monday action came after District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston found the administration had violated his order by sending eight people to South Sudan in May. The migrants had been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S. and immigration officials have said they were unable to return them quickly to their home countries. Authorities instead landed the plane at a U.S. naval base in Djibouti.
The Supreme Court has again cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants for now. This pushes the total number of people who could be newly exposed to deportation to nearly 1 million. The justices on Friday lifted a lower-court order that kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The court has also allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case.
The Supreme Court has blocked an order for the Trump administration to return to work thousands of federal employees who were let go in mass firings aimed at dramatically downsizing the federal government. The justices acted Tuesday in the Republican administration's emergency appeal of a ruling by a federal judge in California ordering that 16,000 probationary employees be reinstated while a lawsuit plays out because their firings didn't follow federal law. The effect of the high court's order will keep employees in six federal agencies on paid administrative leave for now. The coalition of organizations and labor unions that sued says it's disappointed with the court's order.
The U.S. Supreme Court justices have sent Donald Trump's immunity case back to a lower court in Washington, dimming the prospect of a preelection trial. In a historic ruling, the justices said for the first time Monday that former presidents can be shielded from prosecution for at least some of what they do in the Oval Office. But rather than do it themselves, the justices ordered lower courts to figure out precisely how to apply the decision to Trump's case. The court also decided to keep a hold on efforts in Texas and Florida to limit how social media platforms regulate content posted by their users, returning to cases to lower courts.
