The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the Biden Administration’s appeal of the ATF’s “frames and receivers” firearms rule which was previously overturned by a lower court, as the government works to preserve new gun regulations staunchly opposed by gun rights groups. The 2022 rule came about, according to the Biden White House, in response to the increased use of homemade firearms, or “ghost guns” in the commission of crimes. These unserialized weapons have been blamed for an uptick in gun crimes, and law enforcement agencies have expressed concern over their inability to track them. The high court ..read more

By GARY FIELDS (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump faces serious charges in two cases over whether he attempted to subvert the Constitution by overturning the results of a fair election and illegally remain in power. Yet it’s a New York case centered on payments to silence an adult film actor that might provide the only legal reckoning this year on whether the Republican tried to undermine a pillar of American democracy. Trump is charged in the hush money case with trying to falsify business records, but it was hard to tell that as the trial opened Monday. Lead p ..read more

By MARK SHERMAN (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has scheduled a special session to hear arguments over whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted over his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. The case, to be argued Thursday, stems from Trump’s attempts to have charges against him dismissed. Lower courts have found he cannot claim for actions that, prosecutors say, illegally sought to interfere with the election results. The Republican ex-president has been charged in federal court in Washington with conspiring to overturn the 2020 e ..read more

NEW YORK — Donald Trump tried to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election by preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public, a prosecutor told jurors Monday at the start of the former president’s historic hush money trial. “This was a planned, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.” A defense lawyer countered by assailing the case as basel ..read more

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and CLAIRE RUSH (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court wrestled with major questions about the growing issue of homelessness on Monday as it considered whether cities can punish people for sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking. It’s the most significant case before the high court in decades on the issue, and comes as record numbers of people are without a permanent place to live in the United States. The case started in the rural Oregon town of Grants Pass, which began fining people $295 for sleeping outside as the cost of housing escalated and te ..read more

By ERIC TUCKER, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and MARK SHERMAN (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is hearing arguments this week with profound legal and political consequences: whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a federal case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In addition to establishing a potentially historic ruling about the scope of presidential power, the court’s decision — whenever it comes — will undoubtedly go a long way in determining a trial date for Trump in one of the four criminal prosecutions that t ..read more

Michael Macagnone | CQ-Roll Call (TNS) WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will close out oral arguments for the term this week with two high-profile cases: whether federal law guarantees access to abortion in emergency rooms and whether former President Donald Trump is immune to federal criminal charges. The cases are emblematic of a term in which the conservative-controlled court is poised to broaden its impact on American law and politics in ways that could reverberate for years — as well as the remaining months before this fall’s presidential election. This term doesn’t have cases that could ma ..read more

By Alan Crawford, Bloomberg News In a year of elections, populist leaders from Europe to the Americas are pushing a narrative that migration is out of control. Yet for all the hysteria, the number of international migrants worldwide according to the latest United Nations estimate remains a small minority of the total population. Movement within national borders is still “overwhelmingly the norm,” it says. The real change of recent years, says the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), is that the core drivers of displacement — geopolitics, technology and climate change — are inte ..read more

By MICHAEL R. SISAK (Associated Press) NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial shifted to opening statements Monday, followed by the start of witness testimony. A jury of seven men and five women, plus six alternates, was picked last week. The trial centers on allegations the former president falsified his company’s internal records to obscure the true nature of reimbursement payments to his former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen, who arranged hush money payments to bury negative stories about him during his 2016 presidential race. The witnesses include a porn actor, a former t ..read more

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