A legal expert shared a sobering warning on Thursday about President Donald Trump's continued efforts to dismantle birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court rebuffed his latest attempt. Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, told Michael Popok, a lawyer and host of "The Intersection" podcast, on a recent episode that the Trump administration's birthright citizenship case was "just the tip of the spear." Last year, the administration signed an executive order stripping birthright citizenship from people who are born in the country but whose parents are here illegally. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Wednesday that the executive order was unconstitutional. Wofsy warned during the interview that the Supreme Court's decision is not the end of the road for the Trump administration's efforts. "What cases like the Birthright decision show is that we can keep fighting and we can win these fights," Wofsy said. "There are battles so fundamental and central to who we are as a country that we can overcome.""I hope that gives some hope to those who may be feeling a little hopeless in this moment, but I also don't want to at all undercut that this is an incredibly frightening and demoralizing time for so many people in our communities," he continued. "This is an example of our allies, our communities, the American people, who stood up and said no to this idea of rewriting a fundamental constitutional guarantee, and we held the line in this case," he added. "It's an example of why we have to keep fighting, but it is by far not the end of the fight."
President Donald Trump's own government is warning residents in the Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland area that the July 4 fireworks display will likely cause air quality to reach the worst safety ratings on the scale.Politico's E&E News reported on Thursday that, ahead of the "massive" fireworks display, the president's planned activities for Saturday are likely to cause “hazardous” conditions.The National Park Service included the detail in a draft analysis given to Politico, saying that the 35- to 40-minute program will deploy more than 850,000 fireworks shells. That's more than 100 times what is typically launched on Independence Day, which shoots off 17,000 to 20,000 shells, said Northern Virginia Magazine. The usual event is touted as among the largest in the country each year. This year, Trump wants to set a record for the most fireworks ever used. The current record is 810,904, held by Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ) in the Philippines. It was set on New Year's Eve in 2016, according to Guinness World Records.The “worst-case” scenario, the National Park Service estimated that the explosions that are set to go off in 10 different locations will "create more than 2,000 micrograms of fine particulate matter — PM2.5 — per cubic meter on the National Mall." It's the kind of air quality seen during the 2023 wildfires in Canada, which blew smoke into the Northeast US. Los Angeles air quality has long been the worst air quality in the U.S. and at no point in the past 20 years has it reached the level that Washington will on the 4th, the American Lung Association data shows. A similar comparison would be Loni, India, is the worst and most polluted in the world currently, the "Live Air Quality Map" shows. In their case, the micrograms of fine particulate matter reach approximately 46.6 µg/m³. On the evening of the 4th of July, the Washington metro area will be approximately 4,190 percent worse than the most polluted city in the world. "The Capital Weather Gang," the irreverent local weather outlet for the city and the immediate area of the National Mall, will be the worst of the worst as the wind blows the smoke to the east. It means that southeastern Washington will get the brunt of the blast. Dr Tracey Lynn Perez Koehlmoos commented that those wards of Washington have "the worst pediatric asthma population in the U.S." The second-worst or "very unhealthy" category level will cover the lower half of the entire district. The northern part of the district and all of the northeast Virginia suburbs and Maryland east of the district, will likely be exposed to particulate matter that could be bad for those with existing breathing problems like asthma. That part of Maryland that is farther north of D.C. will have "moderate" air quality. According to the Washington Post, neither the Interior Department nor the National Park Service responded to questions about the warnings.
The primaries on Tuesday in Colorado weren’t a sweeping victory for the Democratic left like last week’s in New York, where three very progressive candidates won, knocking out two incumbent members of Congress along the way. But the defeats of Representative Diana DeGette and Senator Michael Bennet in his gubernatorial bid and the strong challenge to incumbent Senator John Hickenlooper are the latest signs of a shift happening across the country: It’s no longer enough for Democratic politicians to just vote the right way on key issues. The party base is looking for fighters and disrupters—and will cast aside solid politicians who they don’t think will aggressively battle Donald Trump, MAGA, and right-wing billionaires. Unlike New York, where there were three House candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and effectively running as a slate, Colorado’s primaries were more ideologically complicated. Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist who was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, Senator Bernie Sanders, and other progressive leaders and groups both in Colorado and across the country, fairly easily defeated DeGette, who has represented the Denver area since 1997. Kiros will likely defeat the longtime incumbent by double digits, a result no one would have anticipated a few months ago. State Senator Julie Gonzales, who was not endorsed by the DSA but had the support of many progressive groups in the state, lost to Hickenlooper but received more than 45 percent of the vote, an unusually high number when facing an incumbent senator. Attorney General Phil Weiser won comfortably in the gubernatorial primary over Bennet, who had been considered the heavy front-runner until recently. Weiser isn’t much more liberal than Bennet but positioned himself as more anti-Trump. He hammered Bennet for his votes to confirm several of Trump’s executive branch nominees last year and won the backing of the state’s Indivisible chapter. It’s normal to have multiple candidates seeking an open governorship (incumbent Jared Polis is term-limited), so Weiser’s decision to take on Bennet wasn’t unusual or surprising. But House Democratic incumbents rarely face strong primary challenges, and Democratic senators almost never do. And it’s not as if Hickenlooper or DeGette are Joe Manchin–style centrists. They strongly backed Joe Biden’s agenda and have opposed most of Trump’s. DeGette is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. While neither of them has been a leading critic of Israel, they haven’t been vocally pro-Israel like Representative Dan Goldman, who was defeated last week in New York. So why did DeGette and Hickenlooper get primary challengers, and why were those challenges so popular with voters? How did a man (Bennet) who has voted against nearly all of Trump’s proposals in Washington lose a contest over who would be the most anti-Trump? For the same reasons Mamdani won the Democratic primary in New York last year, Graham Platner won in Maine earlier this year, Abdul El-Sayed has surged in Michigan Senate polls, and other progressive candidates are gaining ground and winning around the country. Democratic voters are mad at party leaders for not defeating Trump in 2024 and then last year having to be coaxed by the base into aggressively opposing him. They are also curious if newer politicians will do a better job than those from the party establishment in fighting MAGA. Those two factors provide an opening for challenges to incumbents and front-runners, even those with fairly liberal voting records.“A big difference in this race is, what’s your approach to the Trump administration? Are you committed to fighting back, standing for our rights? Or, as Sen. Bennet has said, do you want to support some of these Trump administration Cabinet picks because you think maybe it’ll get you a better relationship?” Weiser told Deseret News in a preelection interview. I know there’s a lot of talk about how Democratic voters increasingly like socialism and hate the Israeli government. The left-wing candidates have something of a playbook: Call for Medicare for All and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement; declare what Israel has done in Gaza a genocide; bash the outsize role of billionaires and corporations in American politics. But these primaries are not simply ideological referendums. Many insurgent candidates don’t identify themselves as socialists or even progressives. The Denver DSA chapter is nowhere near as organized and powerful as the one in New York City. The Gaza war isn’t a huge issue in some races that upstarts are winning, such as the Maine primary. I suspect that Kiros (and New York’s Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier) won many voters who aren’t die-hard democratic socialists but rather are traditional Democrats who want to see if a fresh face in Washington might be more effective than the kind of people they’ve been sending to Congress for a long time.
When President Donald Trump used his black Sharpie on his first day back in office to sign an executive order in January 2025 limiting birthright citizenship, he said, "This is a big one."
The justices pushed back on some of President Trump’s signature moves, but they also expanded presidential power and supplied victories on long-sought conservative goals.
The primaries on Tuesday in Colorado weren't a sweeping victory for the Democratic left like last week's in New York, where three very progressive candidates won, knocking out two incumbent members of Congress along the way.
