A Separation of Powers

Good morning. It’s going to be another hot one for much of the United States today. Stay hydrated and out of the sun if you can.

I’m going to start again with the Supreme Court, which ended its term yesterday with some big decisions. And then we’ll get to the rest of the news, including LeBron James’s decision to leave the Los Angeles Lakers.

A separation of powers

In some of its biggest rulings this year, the Supreme Court pushed back against President Trump. Its justices struck down his executive order to revoke the birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment yesterday, rejecting what was perhaps his most extreme assertion of executive authority.

Trump wasn’t cowed. In a social media post he said that the court’s decision was “too bad for our Country” and asserted that he could “easily make it up in Congress through Legislation,” and that “no long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary.” He called on Congress to start that work immediately.

Erica Green and Michael Gold, two of our reporters in Washington, said that Trump would likely need a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision, and that such a measure would face long-shot odds in both the House and the Senate. Legislation would require support from Democrats unlikely to provide it, and from Republicans perhaps unwilling to risk voters in battleground districts ahead of the midterm elections. Polls show that most Americans support the right to birthright citizenship, including 38 percent of Republicans.

But a reaffirmation that children born in the United States are Americans doesn’t mean the court hasn’t ruled in Trump’s favor on other occasions. They lifted limits on campaign spending, in a Republican victory, and continued Trump’s rollback of transgender rights by upholding West Virginia and Idaho laws that prohibit transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams.

“The headline might be: ‘Court checks Trump,’ but the through line is a concentration of power towards the presidency, towards the court itself and away from Congress, federal agencies and voters,” one lawyer who argues regularly before the court told my colleagues Ann Marimow and Abbie VanSickle. The decisions, he added, could “fundamentally change the relationship between citizens and their government.”

It’s Roberts’s court

Another takeaway from yesterday, and from the nearly 60 cases the court ruled on during this term that started in October? Ann and Abbie, joined by Adam Liptak, who has covered the court for decades, say it’s the lasting authority of the chief justice:

Chief Justice Roberts showed once again that he was in control of the court he joined more than 20 years ago. He voted in the majority more often than any of his colleagues. And he wrote for the majority in nearly all of the most significant cases this term, including the court’s decisions to block the president’s birthright citizenship order and his attempt to impose sweeping tariffs.
In those cases, the chief justice was able to assemble ideologically diverse coalitions with the liberal justices and one or more of the justices nominated by Mr. Trump in his first term.

Read more takeaways here. (We’ve made this story free for you to read, along with some others in this newsletter.)

Anger management

Justice Amy Coney Barrett was part of a few of those ideologically diverse coalitions. That infuriated some on the right, both in Congress and on the internet, who assailed her after she ruled on Monday, in a 5-to-4 decision, that Mississippi could count mailed ballots after Election Day.

“Remember Election Day? This disastrous SCOTUS decision, authored by Justice Barrett, guarantees we’ll keep drifting away from it — as our sacred elections get bogged down by endless mail-in ballots and never-ending counts,” Representative Abe Hamadeh of Arizona wrote on social media.

The former Fox News host Megyn Kelly was of the same opinion. “Amy Coney Barrett is a turncoat,” she posted. “She’s constantly siding with the left.”

According to a Times analysis, members of the court’s conservative bloc, including Barrett, have voted for a liberal-leaning result just 19 percent of the time.

More on the Supreme Court

Yesterday’s campaign finance decision, which rolled back restrictions on political party spending, is likely to benefit Republicans: Their committees are flush with cash, and they can start spending immediately on midterm battlegrounds.
NPR published, and then quickly retracted, an article by the veteran reporter Nina Totenberg saying that Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. A Supreme Court spokesman said the article was “inaccurate.”
In the video below, Adam Liptak explains how the Supreme Court rulings this week affected the power of the presidency. Click to watch.

SEEING GREEN

Trump made at least $2.2 billion during his first year back in the White House, including about $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses, according to a mandatory financial disclosure last night.

Trump is a major crypto operator and the industry’s top policymaker, dual roles that seemed to pay off.

Trump collected hundreds of millions of dollars from sales of his $TRUMP memecoin and World Liberty’s digital tokens.
His main family business, the Trump Organization, pulled in millions by licensing the Trump name to properties in places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

COLORADO PRIMARIES

Summer heat has taken over the Midwest and is spreading east. More than 160 million people in America are under extreme heat warnings.

Heat index values — a measure of what the temperature feels like to the human body, when humidity is considered with the air temperature — could reach as high as 115 degrees.

Explore maps and forecast data for your hometown. And here are tips for how to stay cool and safe (it’s a free link).

Ezra Klein talks to Chris Rufo about right-wing activism, D.E.I. and the future of the American republic. Click the video above to watch their conversation.

I’m gay, not queer, and that distinction matters, personally and politically, Matthew Vines writes. (This link is free.)

TODAY’S NUMBER

$2.77 trillion

— That is the value of corporate deals announced worldwide during the first half of this year. It is the highest midyear total since 2002. And a lot of the deals were big. Forty-seven of them, collectively worth about $1.3 trillion, were valued at $10 billion or more, up an astounding 62 percent year on year.

SPORTS

World Cup

France looked unstoppable in a 3-0 rout of Sweden. Kylian Mbappé scored twice, and now has the record for World Cup knockout-round goals.
Mexico blew away Ecuador. The 2-0 victory was Mexico’s first knockout win in 40 years.
Norway’s superstar, Erling Haaland, scored in the 86th minute to help his team past Ivory Coast, 2-1. Next up: Brazil.

More Sports

RECIPE OF THE DAY

We’re at just about peak strawberries here on the East Coast, and I’m not cooking them for anyone. No need. Just wash and dry and slice, then top with a simplified Swedish cream — a combination of sour and heavy cream anointed with sugar or honey. Summer!

SNUGGLE UP

“The Robin Byrd Show” ran on Manhattan public access television from 1977 until 1998, a sex-positive, freewheeling late-night party conversation. “More kitschy than carnal, the shows were fueled by a goofy exhibitionism and a winning enthusiasm for a wide variety of sexual orientations,” our critic Jeannette Catsoulis writes.

Now a new documentary, “Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story,” explores Byrd’s life as an entertainer and bikini-clad First Amendment warrior. The film’s “as saucy, warm and uninhibited as its subject,” Jeannette says, with “a ramshackle charm and a nostalgic heart.” Read her review. 👙

Ekjhalak Hindi