Raging Trump has lost again. But his sickening campaign has just begun
If you’re born in the United States, you’re a US citizen. That isn’t how it works in many European countries, including the UK, but that’s how things work in America.
Your parent might just have been on holiday, or a layover between flights, but if you’re on US soil when your mother gives birth, you’re an American. This is known as birthright citizenship, and it’s codified in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.
That is, at least, the view of five of the nine justices of the US Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling against the Trump administration handed down on Tuesday, the last day of the court’s current term.
Caroline’s mother Christine has called for an apology from the press and police over how she was treated before she died.
She made a documentary called Search for the Truth for Disney+ last year
Caroline Flack’s death has become a tragic parable about cancel culture, responsible use of social media, the intrusion of the tabloid press, the sensation of reality TV and the misunderstandings and stigmas about mental ill health, from which we were all supposed to learn and in which each of us who watched on as voyeurs was complicit.
People who have a strong chest and back may be less likely to have a heart attack, according to a new study.
Researchers said that people with strong pecs, back muscles and torso are also less likely to die within the next decade.
Experts from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said that it is “not just about being muscly”, as the size of people’s muscles was not linked to their risk of a heart attack or early death.
It said that all kinds of exercise, and not just strength training, can improve muscle density.
It is fascinating that people’s skeletal muscle could be linked to their risk of having a heart attack. I am now personally interested in exercises like cycling, planks and pilates, which I enjoy and may have an effect on these muscles.
What are the things that you do to keep yourself healthy? Your mind might jump straight to the run you do a couple of times a week, or the choices you make about what to eat, the amount of sleep you manage to get each night or the friends who make you feel seen and heard. And you’d be right. These are all things that keep us healthy.
Millions of Britons could pay higher energy bills than they need to if they do not submit a meter reading before the price cap rises on Wednesday.
The price cap, set by the regulator Ofcom, is set to rise, affecting 5.3 million households on a standard tariff.
How much the price cap will increase from Wednesday, 1 July.
The average gas and electricity bill will jump to £1,862 a year.
There are currently 27 fixed deals available that are cheaper than July’s price cap, with average savings of £285, so act now to save yourself money. The price cap is going up, but your bills don’t have to.
People are future-proofing their homes for sustainability and to protect themselves against unpredictable energy costs
The summer’s first full Moon is lighting up skies across the country this week.
To see the Stawberry Moon, look towards the south-east after sunset. That will be after around 9.20pm on Tuesday, 30 June. The moon will track southwards through the night, setting in the south-west before sunrise on Wednesday.
Angry people on social media claim the current high temperatures are nothing special but they ignore the long-term trends
The Government has said it will appoint a national maternity commissioner to drive change after a report concluded families have suffered from repeated failures in NHS care.
For too long women, babies and families have been failed by a system that didn’t listen. Their stories are heart-breaking and demand action.
Some forecasts suggest temperatures could begin to climb again as we enter July. Here is everything you need to know about another upcoming heatwave.
Although a return to heatwave conditions is looking increasingly likely for some areas, the likelihood of such extreme high temperatures or high levels of humidity as last week is currently low.
The UK just experienced it’s hottest June day on record with temperatures topping 36°C in some parts of the country. And while Britain has experienced hotter weather before, like the heatwave in July 2022, something about this one has felt particularly grim-humidity. But why does this make a difference? You can read Clare Wilson’s full article on The i Paper’s website. #heatwave #ukheatwave
Though the overall decision went against Donald Trump by six votes to three, the constitutional question was five-four – meaning that four justices held that the constitution did not guarantee birthright citizenship.
This was something the Trump administration had been trying to argue, in order to help its mass deportation efforts. It would allow the US to strip the children of illegal immigrants of their citizenship, and deport them – despite them having been born in the USA and having lived and worked there their whole lives.
The ruling is a defeat for the President and he is sure to react angrily against it, but it is no cause for celebration among his opponents.
This was not some complex or technical area of law: the Supreme Court was being asked to read a single sentence in the constitution and decide what the words meant.
Here is that sentence, the first of the 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
There is not much ambiguity there. It is not hard to tell what the authors meant. The only part that might cause some confusion was “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”, which was a qualifier added to exclude people born into Native tribes with their own sovereignty (along with children of foreign diplomats, and a few others), who were not subject to US rules.
Leaving that aside, the Supreme Court was being asked to pass a fairly simple reading comprehension test. Would they admit that sentence had an obvious meaning, or would they look for convoluted reasoning to abandon the constitution and give Trump what he wanted, yet again?
The court as a whole passed the test, but only just. Only the smallest majority of its justices sided with the US Constitution over Trump. The constitution has endured for almost 250 years, but at the moment hangs on more-or-less by a single heartbeat – if the wrong justice gets ill, or crosses the road at the wrong moment, its time may be over.
It is easy to overstate the Supreme Court’s role as a check on Trump’s power. On Tuesday, it handed the President two major victories alongside one defeat. The court upheld bans in several states against trans girls competing in girls’ sports in schools, and it also overturned one of the few remaining laws restricting campaign spending in US elections. Trump took almost immediately to Truth Social to celebrate: “The Supreme Court just took restrictions off political spending! A BIG WIN FOR REPUBLICANS and, more importantly, The First Amendment! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Trump is not the kind of president who takes two wins and a loss in his stride. He wants absolute fealty, and will settle for nothing less. He will surely rage at the court, and Republicans will almost certainly make other bids to overturn birthright citizenship – overturning Roe v Wade, after all, took decades.
Still, for now, the US Constitution has been upheld, if only by one vote. The state of the union is fragile, indeed.