Supreme Court could block Trump's birthright citizenship order but limit nationwide injunctions
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court seemed intent Thursday on maintaining a block on President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship while looking for a way to scale back nationwide court orders.
It was unclear what such a decision might look like, but a majority of the court expressed concerns about would happen if the Trump administration were allowed, even temporarily, to deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally.
The justices heard arguments in the Trump administration’s emergency appeals over lower court orders that have kept the citizenship restrictions on hold across the country.
Nationwide injunctions have emerged as an important check on Trump’s efforts to remake the government and a source of mounting frustration to the Republican president and his allies.
Judges have issued 40 nationwide injunctions since Trump began his second term in January, Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court at the start of more than two hours of arguments.
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Trump says the US and Iran have 'sort of' agreed on the terms for a nuclear deal
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that the United States and Iran have “sort of” agreed to terms on a nuclear deal, offering a measure of confidence that an accord is coming into sharper focus.
Trump, in an exchange with reporters at a business roundtable in Doha, Qatar, described talks between American envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as “very serious negotiations” for long-term peace and said they were continuing to progress.
Still, throughout his four-day visit to the Gulf this week, the president has underscored that military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities remains a possibility if the talks derail.
“Iran has sort of agreed to the terms: They’re not going to make, I call it, in a friendly way, nuclear dust,” Trump said at the business event. “We’re not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran.”
Without offering detail, he signaled growing alignment with the terms that he has been seeking.
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54 people killed in overnight airstrikes on southern Gaza city, hospital says
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Multiple airstrikes hit Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis overnight into Thursday, killing more than 50 people in a second consecutive night of heavy bombing, while another airstrike in the north of the Palestinian territory left more than a dozen people dead, authorities said.
The strikes come as U.S. President Donald Trump visits the Middle East, visiting Gulf states but not Israel. There had been widespread hope that Trump’s regional visit could usher in a ceasefire deal or renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month.
An Associated Press cameraman in Khan Younis counted 10 airstrikes on the city overnight into Thursday, and saw numerous bodies taken to the morgue in the city’s Nasser Hospital. It took time to identify some of the bodies due to the extent of their injuries. The hospital’s morgue confirmed 54 people had been killed.
The dead included a journalist working for Qatari television network Al Araby TV, the network announced on social media, saying Hasan Samour had been killed along with 11 members of his family in one of the strikes in Khan Younis.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes.
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Putin spurns Zelenskyy meeting but lower-level Ukraine-Russia talks are still on
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Russia and Ukraine are set to hold their first direct peace talks in three years, both countries said Thursday, but hopes for a breakthrough remained dim after Russian President Vladimir Putin spurned an offer by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet face-to-face in Turkey.
Zelenskyy said he is sending a team headed by his defense minister from the Turkish capital Ankara to Istanbul to meet a Russian delegation, even though Moscow's side doesn’t include “anyone who actually makes decisions.”
The Ukrainian side would be headed by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, and its aim is “to attempt at least the first steps toward de-escalation, the first steps toward ending the war — namely, a ceasefire,” he said.
Few had expected Putin to show up in Turkey, and his absence punctured any hope of significant progress toward ending the 3-year-old war amid peace efforts in recent months by the Trump administration and Western European leaders. It also raised the prospect of intensified international sanctions on Russia that have been threatened by the West.
Zelenskyy, who flew Thursday to Ankara after challenging Putin to sit down with him, accused Moscow of not making a serious effort to end the war by sending a low-level negotiating team that he described as “a theater prop.”
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Hospital tells family brain-dead Georgia woman must carry fetus to birth because of abortion ban
ATLANTA (AP) — A pregnant woman in Georgia was declared brain-dead after a medical emergency and doctors have kept her on life support for three months so far to allow enough time for the baby to be born and comply with Georgia’s strict anti-abortion law, family members say.
She could be kept in that state for months more.
The case is the latest consequence of abortion bans introduced in some states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade three years ago.
Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old mother and nurse, was declared brain-dead — meaning she is legally dead — in February, her mother, April Newkirk, told Atlanta TV station WXIA.
Newkirk said her daughter had intense headaches more than three months ago and went to Atlanta's Northside Hospital, where she received medication and was released. The next morning, her boyfriend woke to her gasping for air and called 911. Emory University Hospital determined she had blood clots in her brain and she was declared brain-dead.
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Cassie forced to read aloud explicit messages with Sean 'Diddy' Combs at his sex trafficking trial
NEW YORK (AP) — R&B singer Cassie was pressed to read aloud her own explicit messages to ex-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs in federal court Thursday, including texts that showed her expressing desire for the drug-fueled group sex she previously testified left her traumatized.
Lawyers for Combs sought to portray Cassie to the jury as a willing and eager participant in the music mogul's sexual lifestyle. Combs has pleaded not guilty to federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges. His defense says that, while he could be violent, nothing he did amounted to a criminal enterprise.
Prosecutors say he exploited his status as a powerful music executive to violently force Cassie and other women into these marathon encounters with sex workers, called “freak-offs,” which sometimes lasted days. Combs insists all the sex was consensual. He's also accused of using his entourage and employees to facilitate illegal activities, including prostitution-related transportation and coercion, which is a key element of the federal charges.
Messages between Combs and Cassie — both romantic and lurid — were the focus of the fourth day of testimony in a Manhattan courtroom. Defense attorney Anna Estevao read what Combs wrote, while Cassie recited her own messages about what she wanted to do during the freak-offs. Cassie’s testimony will resume Friday.
Combs, 55, has been jailed since September. He faces at least 15 years in prison if convicted.
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Theo Von riffs on drugs, disabilities and homosexuality before Trump speaks at US base in Qatar
AL-UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (AP) — When President Donald Trump addressed U.S. and Qatari troops at a military base in Qatar on Thursday, he assured the rank and file that “we don’t care if you’re politically correct.”
Anyone needing proof of that could have watched comedian Theo Von’s routine just a little earlier. Wearing a black T-shirt and backward baseball cap, the podcast host regaled the uniformed troops with jokes about drugs, developmental disabilities, homosexuality and their Qatari hosts.
He talked about snorting cocaine off a baby’s back but said it was “a mixed baby” so the white powder was visible on the baby's skin.
Von acted out various disabilities, including Down syndrome, and he insulted the U.S. Navy as “gay.” He also had a punchline about terrorism attacks, asking, “Where do you think the next 9/11 should happen?”
He joked about the lack of crime in Qatar, where he said it would be impossible to identify a perpetrator because everyone is named Mohammed and dresses in the same white robes. They were like a “Ku Klux Sandsman," Von said.
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Wisconsin judge pleads not guilty to helping a man evade federal immigration agents
MILWAUKEE (AP) — A Wisconsin judge pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges accusing her of helping a man who is illegally in the country evade U.S. immigration authorities seeking to arrest him in her courthouse.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan entered the plea during a brief arraignment in federal court. Magistrate Judge Stephen Dries scheduled a trial to begin July 21. Dugan’s lead attorney, Steven Biskupic, told the judge that he expects the trial to last a week.
Dugan, her lawyers and prosecutors left the hearing without speaking to reporters.
She is charged with concealing an individual to prevent arrest and obstruction. Prosecutors say she escorted Eduardo Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer out of her courtroom through a back door on April 18 after learning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were in the courthouse seeking to arrest him for being in the country illegally. She could face up to six years in prison if convicted on both counts.
Her attorneys say she’s innocent. They filed a motion Wednesday to dismiss the case, saying she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and therefore is immune to prosecution. They also maintain that the federal government violated Wisconsin’s sovereignty by disrupting a state courtroom and prosecuting a state judge.
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Autopsies misclassified deaths in police custody that were homicides, Maryland officials say
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — An audit of Maryland autopsies has uncovered at least 36 deaths in police custody that should have been considered homicides, state officials announced Thursday following a comprehensive review of such cases spurred by widespread concerns about the former state medical examiner’s testimony in the death of George Floyd.
Medical examiners under Dr. David Fowler displayed racial and pro-police bias, according to the review. They were “especially unlikely to classify a death as a homicide if the decedent was Black, or if they died after being restrained by police,” Attorney General Anthony Brown said during a news conference.
“These findings have profound implications across our justice system,” Brown said. “They speak to systemic issues rather than individual conduct.”
The auditors reviewed 87 in-custody death cases after medical experts called Fowler’s work into question because he testified that police weren’t responsible for Floyd’s death. The Maryland team focused on cases in which people died suddenly after being restrained, often by police, officials said.
Three-person panels evaluated each autopsy and, in 36 cases, they unanimously concluded that the deaths should have been classified as homicides but were not. In five more cases, two of the three reviewers came to that conclusion.
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Gene editing helped a desperately ill baby thrive. Scientists say it could someday treat millions
A baby born with a rare and dangerous genetic disease is growing and thriving after getting an experimental gene editing treatment made just for him.
Researchers described the case in a new study, saying he’s among the first to be successfully treated with a custom therapy that seeks to fix a tiny but critical error in his genetic code that kills half of affected infants. Though it may be a while before similar personalized treatments are available for others, doctors hope the technology can someday help the millions left behind even as genetic medicine has advanced because their conditions are so rare.
“This is the first step towards the use of gene editing therapies to treat a wide variety of rare genetic disorders for which there are currently no definitive medical treatments,” said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a University of Pennsylvania gene editing expert who co-authored the study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The baby, KJ Muldoon of Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania, is one of 350 million people worldwide with rare diseases, most of which are genetic. He was diagnosed shortly after birth with severe CPS1 deficiency, estimated by some experts to affect around one in a million babies. Those infants lack an enzyme needed to help remove ammonia from the body, so it can build up in their blood and become toxic. A liver transplant is an option for some.
Knowing KJ’s odds, parents Kyle and Nicole Muldoon, both 34, worried they could lose him.
The Associated Press
