- Texas moves to allow anyone to sue abortion pill prescribers, distributors.
The bill, backed by antiabortion activists and passed in the state Senate on Wednesday, allows private citizens to sue companies and individuals who manufacture or distribute abortion pills to patients in Texas. Winning plaintiffs would get a minimum of $100,000 in damages.
. . . In eight Democratic-led states, abortion providers can prescribe and mail the pills — typically a two-step drug regimen — to patients across the country under “shield” laws designed to give them legal cover from out-of-state prosecution.
- Judge rules Trump administration cannot withhold funding from Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs said freezing and canceling more than $2 billion in research grants and other federal actions violated Harvard’s First Amendment rights and amounted to “retaliation, unconstitutional conditions, and unconstitutional coercion.”
Her ruling, which is likely to be appealed, vacated the government’s funding freeze and barred it from using similar reasoning to block grants to Harvard in the future.
- Trump’s Sweeping Tariffs Invalidated by Appeals Court.
A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that many of President Trump’s most punishing tariffs were illegal, delivering a major setback to Mr. Trump’s agenda that may severely undercut his primary source of leverage in an expanding global trade war.
The ruling, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, affirmed a lower court’s initial finding in May that Mr. Trump did not possess unlimited authority to impose taxes on nearly all imports to the United States.
. . . The adverse ruling still cast doubt on the centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s trade strategy, which relies on a 1970s law to impose sweeping duties on dozens of the country’s trading partners. Mr. Trump has harnessed that law — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA — to raise revenue and to pressure other countries into brokering favorable deals. The law has typically been reserved for sanctions and embargoes against other nations.
- Judge Blocks Pillar of Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign.
The case focused on a policy shift announced during the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term that authorized the Department of Homeland Security to launch quick deportations, across the country and without court proceedings, of undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they have lived in the country for more than two years.
. . . Such quick deportations, known as expedited removal, have been carried out for decades, but they were concentrated among people arrested at or near the southern border. The Trump administration sought to expand the practice nationwide, to hasten the removal of people arrested deep inside the country.
In a 48-page opinion, Judge Jia M. Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the Trump administration had acted recklessly in a frenzied effort to quickly remove as many people as possible, likely violating due process rights and risking wrongful detentions.
