Supreme court opinion day ends without decisions on Trump immunity and abortion cases – live | US supreme court

The Supreme Court is likely to announce more opinions sometime in June. Meanwhile, in New York, jurors are in their second day of deliberations in Donald Trump’s business fraud case. To the Guardian Victoria Bekiempis reports two notes sent by jurors to the court that may offer clues as to how their deliberations went:

Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York entered its second day of jury deliberations Thursday with experts weighing whether a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels was part of a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election .

Jurors deliberated for about four and a half hours on Wednesday after beginning their deliberations at around 11.30am.

Outside the courtroom on Wednesday, Trump raved about the trial and looked like a saint, claiming in the hallway: “Mother Teresa could not have beaten these charges. The charges are trumped up. The whole thing is rigged.”

Earlier in the day, the jury sent two notes to the court in the afternoon. One letter was a request to hear some testimony from two key witnesses. The second message was a request to listen again to Judge Juan Murchan’s instructions to them.

After getting more input from jurors about which instructions they wanted reread, Murchan went through the requested directives: They wanted guidance on how to interpret evidence and draw inferences from the facts.

Jurors appeared attentive during Murchan’s re-reading. Some scribbled in notebooks. Others stared intently at Murchan as he read the instructions. One sometimes handled a pen in a way that seemed to heed the purpose of the fidget spinner; using the writing instrument as a passive physical activity while paying attention to the merchant and taking notes.

In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court allowed a case against New York state government by the National Rifle Association to proceed on the basis of free speech.

Here’s more from the Associated Press Regarding the court’s decision in National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo:

The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for a National Rifle Association lawsuit against a former New York state employee over allegations she violated free speech rights.

The unanimous opinion overturns a lower court ruling dismissing the gun rights group’s lawsuit against former New York State Treasury chief Maria Vullo. But that doesn’t protect NROs and other advocacy groups from regulation, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

“Ultimately, the critical takeaway is that the First Amendment prohibits public officials from exercising their power selectively to punish or suppress speech, either directly or (as argued here) through private intermediaries,” she wrote.

The NRA said Vullo pressured banks and insurance companies to blacklist him after that the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, resulting in the deaths of 17 people in 2018. The group was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Biden administration has argued that some of its claims should go forward.

The Supreme Court concluded the publication of opinions for the day without ruling Donald Trumpthe immunity claim of either or both of the abortion cases pending before the judges.

The court issued two unanimous decisions, one transaction with the banking regulations and the other on a free speech claim made in a lawsuit between the National Rifle Association and the New York Department of Financial Services.

It is third solution was a 6-3 split between the conservative supermajority and the liberal minority and overturned an appeals court ruling in a death penalty case.

The Supreme Court has issued two opinions so far, both under less politically charged matters before the court.

Additional solutions are pending and we will let you know what they are.

It’s almost 10 a.m. in Washington, D.C., which means the Supreme Court will soon begin issuing opinions, or at least an opinion.

We only find out which cases have been decided when the opinions come out. While the conservative-dominated court may issue its long-awaited rulings on Donald Trumpimmunity suit, emergency abortions or the abortion pill mifepristone, may also issue opinions on other less expected – but still important – cases.

We’ll know for sure in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, in New York, jurors will continue to deliberate on whether Donald Trump is guilty for falsifying business records to conceal silence-cash payments before the 2016 election to the Custodian Hugo Lowell reports that prosecutors have presented a mass of evidence pointing to his guilt — but whether jurors will agree, as always, is an open question:

When the jury began deliberations on Wednesday, Donald Trump there seemed to be little room to escape from the mass of evidence presented in the weeks-long case.

A recording of Trump ordering the money to be paid in cash. Handwritten notes from Trump’s former chief financial officer on how to reimburse Cohen. A parade of witnesses testifying as Trump’s campaign desperately tried to suppress the story of his affair with the adult movie star Stormy Daniels.

That evidence is part of the Manhattan district attorney’s case that Trump caused false entries in the Trump Organization’s business records and that the falsifications were carried out as part of a conspiracy to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business documents. And now the jury will have to decide whether prosecutors proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt or whether Trump’s defenders poked enough holes in the prosecution’s case.

Clarence Thomas‘c the wife called to cancel the 2020 elections. Samuel Alito there were right-wing flags in two of his properties. Yet both conservative justices will rule Donald Trumpseeking immunity from prosecution for his election meddling, despite calls from Democrats to withdraw from that and other cases because they conflict.

in opinion essay published in the New York Times, a Democratic congressman Jamie Raskina prominent Trump antagonist in the House of Representatives suggested a new way to force the two judges to recuse themselves from the case:

The U.S. Department of Justice—including the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, the Special U.S. Attorney Designate, and the Solicitor General, all of whom participated in various ways in the prosecution underlying these cases and oppose the constitutional and statutory claims of Mr. Trump – may petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves, not voluntarily, but by law.

The Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland can cite two powerful textual authorities for this proposition: the United States Constitution, specifically the Due Process Clause, and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality, 28 USC Section 455. The Constitution has come into play in several recent Supreme Court decisions, overturning decisions by stubborn lower court judges whose political impartiality was reasonably questioned but who threw caution to the wind to hear a case anyway. That statute requires potentially biased judges in the federal system to recuse themselves early in the process to avoid judicial unfairness and inconvenient controversies and reversals.

We’ll have to see if the DOJ buys it for that strategy. Meanwhile, Trump’s immunity case could be among those released at 10 a.m. ET when the high court issues rulings.

Good morning, readers of an American political blog. As soon as this morning, at 10 a.m. ET, the high court will issue opinions, potentially in some of the closely watched cases on which the justices have not yet ruled. It is among them Donald Trump‘c petition for immunity from federal charges brought against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election, as well as two cases related to access to abortion. One concerns whether the Biden administration may require hospitals in states with strict bans on performing the procedure in emergencies, and the other is engaged in a conservative effort to return stock of mifepristone abortion pills. With six conservative justices and three liberal justices, the court has a marked right-wing slant, but much uncertainty remains and, as always, we do not know in advance which cases they will rule on or how many opinions they will issue.

A decision in the Trump case would present an interesting split-screen with the scene in New York, where jurors begin their second day of deliberations in his business fraud case. It is not known when they will come out with a verdict, but nevertheless they find that the former president will undoubtedly cause a shock in the 2024 election campaign.

Here’s what else is happening today:

• A group of Senate Democrats urge the Justice Department to investigate oil companies and executives after the Federal Trade Commission charged a former oil executive with conspiring to raise gas prices.

• Joe Biden is spending the day in his home state of Delaware after yesterday making a push to unite black voters by holding a rare joint rally with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia.

• Jamie Raskincongressman democrat claimed in the New York Times that there is a way to coerce conservative chief justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas recuse themselves from cases related to the 2020 elections, among reports for their ties to right-wing causes.