Today’s edition of quick hits.
* SCOTUS news: “A unanimous Supreme Court sided with a straight woman in her discrimination appeal, ruling that a lower court applied too strict a standard against her. The justices sent her case back to that lower court for further litigation under the proper standard.”
* Oddly enough, this ruling was unanimous, too: “The Supreme Court sided with the firearms industry in ruling that Mexico’s novel lawsuit didn’t plausibly allege that gun companies had aided and abetted unlawful sales routing guns to Mexican drug cartels.”
* A win for due process: “When a judge starts a lengthy ruling by quoting from Franz Kafka’s ‘The Trial,’ a novel associated with an absurd legal ordeal, that could be a bad sign for the government. And so it was, in the 69-page opinion Wednesday from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. It marked a step toward righting the Trump administration’s wrong of sending scores of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process.”
* Speaking of the administration losing in court: “The Trump administration on Wednesday lost a bid to lift a federal judge’s order temporarily blocking the U.S. Education Department from laying off about half of its more than 4,000 employees.”
* In other news related to the administration losing in court: “Last week, the Labor Department said it would pause Job Corps operations at 99 contract-operated centers by the end of June, leaving thousands of students in limbo. A judge on Wednesday issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Department of Labor from taking steps to close Job Corps. The judge ordered a hearing later this month on the issue.”
* In still more news related to the administration losing in court: “The Trump administration must restore hundreds of millions of dollars in AmeriCorps grant funding and thousands of service workers in about two dozen states, a federal judge ruled Thursday. U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman granted a temporary block on the agency’s cancellation of grants and early discharge of corps members, but only for the states that sued the administration in April.”
* The latest in Trump’s war on Harvard: “President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will deny visas for foreign students trying to come to the United States to attend Harvard University, his latest attack on the prominent Ivy League college.”
* Carol is headed home: “An immigrant waitress from Hong Kong whose looming deportation brought home the reality of President Trump’s immigration crackdown to her conservative Missouri hometown was freed on Wednesday after more than a month in jail. ‘They released me,’ the waitress, Ming Li Hui, better known as Carol to everyone in Kennett, Mo., said in a voice mail message left for her lawyer and relayed to The New York Times.”
* A brutal elections-have-consequences moment: “The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year eliminates funding for programs that provide lifesaving vaccines around the world, including immunizations for polio.”
See you tomorrow.