Judge issues order as part of discovery process in lawsuit brought by non-profit into now defunct compensation fund

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to reveal who set up the structure of a controversial $1.8bn “anti-weaponization fund” to recompense victims of so-called political lawfare that was reportedly dropped by the justice department last month.

Ivan Davis, the US magistrate judge for the eastern district of Virginia, issued the order compelling discovery materials from the government as part of a lawsuit brought by the Democracy Forward non-profit on behalf of plaintiffs including a fired prosecutor and a college professor acquitted of assaulting federal agents at a protest against an immigration raid in California.

Supreme court ruled in June against president’s earlier order to change citizenship rules for babies born in US

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s latest attempt to restrict birthright citizenship – the longstanding principle that all babies born in the US are guaranteed American citizenship.

The decision came nearly a month after the president tried for a second time to limit via executive order which people born in the US can become American citizens. The supreme court ruled in late June that Trump’s previous sweeping order denying birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors was unconstitutional.

Judge says US Postal Service has told her nothing about how it plans to regulate mail ballots for midterm elections

A federal judge in Boston said on Thursday the US Postal Service had told her nothing about how it would implement a plan to regulate mail ballots for the midterms as she considers whether to let the plan proceed in the weeks before election day.

US district court judge Indira Talwani is deciding whether to extend her prohibition on the proposed regulation of mail ballots, an effort undertaken as part of an executive order by Donald Trump. The hearing in the closely watched case came a day before the first state begins sending mail ballots to voters.

Trump administration has indefinitely stranded hundreds of kids and lawyers from over 50 organizations are fighting for their release

An army of attorneys is rallying to free hundreds of children from immigration custody, where they have been stranded indefinitely by the Trump administration without their parents or loved ones, the Guardian can reveal.

The effort is a counter strike to what critics see as unprecedented moves by federal officials to ride roughshod over children’s rights and increase deportations – while in the meantime corralling them in conditions that can allegedly lead to psychological harm.

Justices’ 5-4 ruling permits Trump administration appeal to block lower court order halting above-ground work

A divided US supreme court has permitted Donald Trump to continue building his controversial $400m White House ballroom despite legal challenges, raising the likelihood it will be completed.

In a 5-4 ruling, the justices permitted the Trump administration’s request to ⁠block a lower court order that had halted above-ground construction of the project while a lawsuit by a historic preservation group seeks to block it.

Newly obtained records indicate health secretary lied about Samoa trip during Senate confirmation hearings last year

A senior Democratic senator is calling for a criminal investigation into the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, following reporting by the Guardian that indicated he lied during Senate confirmation hearings last year.

Ron Wyden of Oregon said: “RFK’s platform is built on lies and grifts that leave a trail of dead children in their wake. There are consequences for lying to Congress.”

Letters obtained by Guardian and AP contradict testimony that 2019 visit to Samoa had ‘nothing to do with vaccines’

Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year, when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.

Letters obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press contradict that testimony. In one he wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the Pacific island nation. In it, he used the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times.

A recent memo claiming executive privilege over communications with private advisers invites corruption

A recent office of legal counsel memo on executive privilege maintains that private advisers to a president can avoid responding to a subpoena by asserting the president’s executive privilege. The ability of presidents to shield communications from public view through claims of executive privilege, whether their own or those of a senior adviser, was already a powerful tool for presidents to avoid accountability. But if courts accept the OLC’s new interpretation of presidential privilege, it will be substantially harder to call witnesses to testify before Congress or in court proceedings regarding possible wrongdoing by the presidents.

Equipping presidents with extensive power to block witnesses in legal proceedings is a dangerous practice that invites corruption by presidents and their advisers. Consider the former White House counsel Don McGahn’s 2019 refusal to testify in response to a subpoena by the House judiciary committee in connection with the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump. McGahn didn’t come up with that idea on his own. It was the Trump White House that sought to bar McGahn from testifying through an assertion of a type of executive privilege known as “testimonial immunity.” Ironically, Mueller was investigating whether Trump obstructed justice, among other things, by demanding that McGahn fire Mueller himself. Trump’s insistence that McGahn not testify, backed up by a 2019 OLC opinion, effectively made the first Trump administration complicit in the very obstruction under investigation.

Justices’ ruling comes after lower courts had blocked president’s election order ahead of November midterms

The US supreme court sided with Donald Trump on Monday in his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it remains unclear if his administration can take action ahead of the midterm elections in November.

Justices on the court voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction from June that a judge in Massachusetts placed on an executive order issued by the president. But a second injunction remains in place and the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.

Trump administration finalized rule to end Medicaid support for care including hormones and speech therapy

New Mexico will continue funding gender-affirming care for minors after a federal rule ending Medicaid support for such care goes into effect.

On 13 August, the Trump administration finalized a rule – set to go into effect on 13 October – that will end funding for gender-affirming care through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip).

A call revealing Todd Blanche’s plans to crack down on mifepristone lays bare the danger

The abortion pill is a miracle. Mifepristone, then called RU-486, was synthesized by a French lab in the 1980s; in combination with misoprostol, commonly used as ulcer medication, it cuts off the body’s supply of progesterone, halts the development of a pregnancy, and incites contractions, which empty the uterus. The drug allows pregnancies to be terminated with a shocking degree of reliability and ease. Gone are the concoctions of ergot and Spanish Fly dispensed by 19th century midwives, which only sometimes worked to induce a miscarriage; gone are the backroom procedures of the pre-Roe US, when drunk, lascivious, incompetent or cruel providers wielded bent coat hangers in dirty rooms. The abortion pill is safe, effective and cheaper than ever. And since Dobbs, it’s everywhere: even if you live in a state with an abortion ban, you can get the pills shipped to your house in the mail. Since Roe was overturned, there has not been a return to the terror of mass death that marked the pre-Roe era of septic abortion wards, where women routinely found themselves maimed, sickened or killed. There’s exactly one reason why: because illegal abortions were largely unsafe without the pill, and they are extremely safe with it.

So of course, the Trump administration and their allies on the American right are trying to get rid of it. And this month, they gained a powerful new ally when Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and an anti-abortion zealot, was confirmed as attorney general.