Politics
US Supreme Court weighing presidential powers in new term
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.
WASHINGTON: The White House has said that President Donald Trump is in good health, even as people continue to question how his age may affect his performance as the country’s most powerful man.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that a recent MRI conducted on President Trump was preventative in nature and revealed that he was in good cardiovascular health.
Speaking to reporters at a press briefing at the White House, Leavitt said men of Trump’s age benefited from such screenings.
‘President Trump’s cardiovascular imaging was perfectly normal, no evidence of arterial narrowing, impairing blood flow or abnormalities in the heart or major vessels,’ Leavitt said of the 79-year-old president.
‘The heart chambers are normal in size. The vessel walls appear smooth and healthy, and there are no signs of inflammation or clotting. Overall, his cardiovascular system shows excellent health. His abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,’ Leavitt said.
Trump underwent a magnetic resonance imaging scan during a recent medical evaluation, but did not disclose the purpose of the procedure, which is not typical for standard check-ups. The lack of details raised questions about whether full information regarding the president’s health is being released in a timely fashion by the White House.
Trump is sensitive about his age and well-being. He personally attacked a female New York Times reporter on social media last week over a story she co-wrote examining the ways that Trump’s age may be affecting his energy levels.
Politics
Tajikistan says five Chinese nationals killed in cross-border attacks from Afghanistan in past week
- China advises companies, personnel to evacuate border area.
- Embassy says Chinese citizens targeted in armed attack on Sunday.
- Another border attack on Friday killed three citizens: embassy.
Five Chinese nationals have been killed and five more injured in Tajikistan in attacks launched from neighbouring Afghanistan over the past week, Tajik authorities and China’s embassy in the Central Asian country said on Monday.
China’s embassy in Dushanbe, the capital, advised Chinese companies and personnel to urgently evacuate the border area.
It said that Chinese citizens had been targeted in an armed attack close to the Afghan border on Sunday. On Friday, it said that another border attack — which Tajik authorities said had involved drones dropping grenades — had killed three Chinese citizens.
Tajikistan, a mountainous former Soviet republic of around 11 million people with a secular government, has tense relations with the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan. It has previously warned of drug smugglers and illicit gold miners working along the remote frontier.
China, which also has a remote, mountainous border with Tajikistan, is a major investor in the country.
There was no immediate response on Monday from the authorities in Afghanistan to the Tajik statement.
But Afghanistan’s foreign ministry last week blamed an unnamed group, which it said was out to create instability, and said it would cooperate with Tajik authorities.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon’s press service said on Monday that Rahmon had met with the heads of his security agencies to discuss how to strengthen border security.
It said that Rahmon “strongly condemned the illegal and provocative actions of Afghan citizens and ordered that effective measures be taken to resolve the problem and prevent a recurrence of such incidents.”
Tajikistan endured a brutal civil war in the 1990s after independence from Moscow, during which Rahmon initially rose to power. The country is closely aligned with Russia, which maintains a military base there.
Millions of Tajiks, a Persian-speaking nation, live across the border in Afghanistan, with Tajikistan historically having backed Afghan Tajiks opposed to the Taliban.
A man in India’s south brutally killed his estranged wife at a women’s hostel and took a selfie with her dead body, according to NDTV.
The victim, identified as Sripriya, employed at a private firm in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, had separated from her husband, Balamurugam, who was from Tirunelveli.
Police said the suspect arrived at the hostel on Sunday afternoon, concealing a sickle in his clothes, and was seeking to meet her.
They had an argument soon after the couple met, and the feud turned into a violent attack by Balamurugan, who drew the sickle and hacked the woman to death.
Furthermore, the police said he then took a selfie with her body and shared it on his WhatsApp status, accusing her of “betrayal”.
The incident spread panic and chaos in the hostel.
Following the brutal murder, the suspect did not escape from the spot but waited until the police arrived, and he was arrested at the crime scene. The murder weapon was recovered.
The initial investigation suggested that he suspected his wife of being in a relationship with another man.
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