A US-Japanese trio on Monday won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for research into how the immune system is kept in check by identifying its “security guards”, the Nobel jury said.

The discoveries by Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell of the United States and Japan’s Shimon Sakaguchi have been decisive for understanding how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases.

Sakaguchi, a professor at the Immunology Frontier Research Centre in Osaka, told Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio: “It’s an honour for me. I’m looking forward to visiting Stockholm in December” to receive the award in person.

The Nobel committee was however unable to reach the two US-based laureates to break the news to them in person.

“If you hear this, call me,” the head of the Nobel Assembly, Thomas Perlmann, joked at the press conference announcing the winners.

The three won the prize for research that identified the immune system’s “security guards”, called regulatory T-cells.

Their work concerns “peripheral immune tolerance” that prevents the immune system from harming the body, and has led to a new field of research and the development of potential medical treatments now being evaluated in clinical trials.

“The hope is to be able to treat or cure autoimmune diseases, provide more effective cancer treatments and prevent serious complications after stem cell transplants,” the jury said.

Protecting the body

Sakaguchi made the first key discovery in 1995.

At the time, many researchers were convinced that immune tolerance only developed due to potentially harmful immune cells being eliminated in the thymus, through a process called “central tolerance”.

Sakaguchi, 74, showed that the immune system is more complex and discovered a previously unknown class of immune cells, which protect the body from autoimmune diseases.

Brunkow, born in 1961 and a senior project manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Ramsdell, a 64-year-old senior advisor at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, made the other key discovery in 2001, when they were able to explain why certain mice were particularly vulnerable to autoimmune diseases.

“They had discovered that mice have a mutation in a gene that they named Foxp3,” the jury said.

“They also showed that mutations in the human equivalent of this gene cause a serious autoimmune disease, IPEX.”

Two years later, Sakaguchi was able to link these discoveries.

The trio will receive their prize—a diploma, a gold medal and $1.2 million split three ways— at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.

Researchers from major US institutions typically dominate the Nobel science prizes, due largely to the US’ longstanding investment in basic science and academic freedoms.

But that could change down the line following massive US budget cuts to science programmes announced by President Donald Trump.

Since January, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has terminated 2,100 research grants totalling around $9.5 billion and $2.6 billion in contracts, according to an independent database called Grant Watch.

Trump eyeing Peace Prize

Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the committee that awards the Nobel Prize for Medicine, told AFP it was “no coincidence that the US has by far the most Nobel laureates”.

“But there is now a creeping sense of uncertainty about the US’ willingness to maintain their leading position in research,” he said.

Trump has meanwhile made no secret of the fact that he wants to win a Nobel himself— the Peace Prize.

Nobel experts have however said his “America First” policies and divisive style give him little chance.

“It’s completely unthinkable,” Oeivind Stenersen, a historian who has conducted research and co-written a book on the prize, told AFP.

“(Trump) is in many ways the opposite of the ideals that the Nobel Prize represents,” he said, citing “multilateral cooperation” as an example.

Trump “follows his own path, unilaterally,” Stenersen added.

Sudan’s networks of volunteers Emergency Response Rooms (ERR) helping people survive war and famine— are seen as a possible contender this year, as are media watchdogs the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Donald Trump’s unprecedented expansion of the powers of the US presidency will be put to the test when the Supreme Court returns for its fall term on Monday.

“The crucial question will be whether it serves as a check on President Trump or just a rubber stamp approving his actions,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School.

If past is prologue, the Republican leader is in line to notch up more legal victories from a conservative-dominated bench that includes three of his own appointees.

On the docket are voting rights, state bans on the participation of transgender athletes in girls’ sports and a religious freedom case involving a Rastafarian who had his knee-length dreadlocks forcibly shorn while in prison.

But the blockbuster case this term concerns Trump’s levying of hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs on imports and whether he had the statutory authority to do so.

Lower courts have ruled he did not.

But the Supreme Court has overwhelmingly sided with Trump since he returned to office, allowing, for example, mass firing of federal workers, the dismissal of members of independent agencies, the withholding of funds appropriated by Congress and racial profiling in his sweeping immigration crackdown.

“You’ve seen the court go out of its way, really bend over backwards, in order to green-light Trump administration positions,” said Cecillia Wang, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

‘Legal equivalent of fast food’

Many of those decisions have come on the controversial emergency or “shadow” docket, where the court hands down orders after little briefing, without oral arguments and with paltry explanation.

Samuel Bray, a University of Chicago law professor, described it as the “legal equivalent of fast food”, and the court’s three liberal justices have condemned the increasing use of the emergency docket.

Chemerinsky noted in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times that using the shadow docket, the six conservative justices have “repeatedly and without exception… voted to reverse lower court decisions that had initially found Trump’s actions to be unconstitutional.”

The high-stakes tariffs case, on the other hand, will involve full briefing and oral arguments and will be heard on November 5.

Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to unilaterally impose his extensive tariffs, bypassing Congress by claiming the country was facing an emergency due to the trade deficit.

“At least hundreds of billions of dollars or more are at stake and they may need to refund those billions of dollars if they lose in the Supreme Court,” said Curtis Bradley, a University of Chicago law professor.

Other high-profile cases involving the power of the president are to be heard in December and January when the court weighs in on Trump’s bid to fire members of the independent Federal Trade Commission and Lisa Cook, a governor of the interest-rate setting Federal Reserve Board.

Voting rights

On October 15, the Supreme Court will hear a voting rights case in which “non-African American” voters are contesting the creation of a second Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, claiming it is the result of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

A victory for the plaintiffs in the case would deal a severe blow to a section of the Voting Rights Act that allows for creation of majority-minority districts to make up for racial discrimination.

“The stakes are incredibly high,” said the ACLU’s Sophia Lin Lakin. “The outcome will not only determine the next steps for Louisiana’s congressional map, but may also shape the future of redistricting cases nationwide.”

Another notable case on the docket concerns challenges to state laws in Idaho and West Virginia that ban transgender girls from taking part in girls’ sports.

A religious freedom case to be heard on November 10 has unusually brought together legal advocates on both the left and the right.

Damon Landor is a devout Rastafarian whose hair was forcibly cut while he was in prison in Louisiana.

He is seeking permission to sue individual officials of the Louisiana Department of Corrections for monetary damages for violating his religious rights.

The Supreme Court is generally hostile to approving damages actions against individual government officials, Bray said.

At the same time, he noted, the right-leaning court has tended to side with the plaintiffs in religious liberty cases.

The Trump administration branded Chicago a “war zone” Sunday as a justification for deploying soldiers against the will of local Democratic officials, while a judge blocked the White House from sending troops to another Democrat-run city.

An escalating political crisis across the country pits President Donald Trump´s anti-crime and migration crackdown against opposition Democrats who accuse him of an authoritarian power grab.

In the newest flashpoint, Trump late Saturday authorised deployment of 300 National Guard soldiers to Chicago, the third-largest city in the United States, despite the opposition of elected leaders, including the mayor and state Governor JB Pritzker.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the move on Sunday, claiming on Fox News that Chicago is “a war zone.”

But Pritzker, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” show, accused Republicans of aiming to sow “mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone, so that they can send in even more troops.”

In a statement, the governor called the proposed deployment “Trump´s invasion,” saying “there is no reason” to send troops into Illinois or any other state without the “knowledge, consent, or cooperation” of local officials.

A CBS poll released Sunday found that 58% of Americans oppose deploying the National Guard to cities.

Trump — who last Tuesday spoke of using the military for a “war from within” — shows no sign of backing off his hardline campaign.

On Sunday, he falsely claimed that “Portland is burning to the ground. It´s insurrectionists all over the place.”

Key ally Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, echoed the president´s rhetoric Sunday, telling NBC that National Guard troops deployed in the US capital, Washington, had responded to a “literal war zone” — a characterisation at odds with reality.

No to ‘martial law’

Trump’s campaign to use the military on home soil hit a roadblock late Saturday in Portland, Oregon, when a court ruled the deployment was unlawful.

Trump has repeatedly called Portland “war-ravaged,” but US District Judge Karin Immergut issued a temporary block, saying “the president´s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”

“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Immergut wrote in her ruling.

Although Portland has seen scattered attacks on federal officers and property, the Trump administration failed to demonstrate “that those episodes of violence were part of an organised attempt to overthrow the government as a whole” — thereby justifying military force, she said.

One of Trump´s key advisors, Stephen Miller, called the judge´s order “legal insurrection.”

Another court order issued late Sunday blocked the deployment of National Guard soldiers from other states, according to Oregon´s attorney general and California Governor Gavin Newsom, who earlier announced he was suing to stop the mobilisation.

“A federal judge BLOCKED Donald Trump’s unlawful attempt to DEPLOY 300 OF OUR NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS TO PORTLAND,” said Newsom, whose press office has deliberately copied the president´s abrasive, all-capitals style.

“Trump’s abuse of power won’t stand,” Newsom added.