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The US supreme court ruled on Monday that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution, handing a big victory to Donald Trump and likely gutting the 2020 election subversion case against him.
The court’s conservative majority, which Trump helped create, found 6-3 that presidents were protected from prosecution for official actions that extended to the “outer perimeter” of his office. “With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote.
Joe Biden denounced the ruling as a “dangerous precedent”. “No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” he said in a five-minute speech from the White House. “With today’s supreme court decision on presidential immunity that fundamentally changed for all practical purposes. Today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits to what the president can do.”
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What does this mean for the criminal cases against Trump? Trump is accused of overseeing a sprawling effort to subvert the 2020 election by spreading false claims of election fraud, plotting to recruit fake slates of electors, pressuring US justice department officials to open sham investigations into election fraud, and pressuring his vice-president, Mike Pence, to obstruct Congress’s certification of Biden’s win. The US district judge Tanya Chutkan will now have to review the indictment line by line to determine whether Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results were official acts.
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What about Trump’s other criminal cases? Trump’s lawyers have already asked the New York judge who presided over his hush-money trial to set aside his conviction and delay his sentencing so the judge can weigh the high court’s decision and how it could influence the case.
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How did Trump react to the ruling? He called it a “big win for our constitution and democracy”.
Hurricane Beryl ‘flattens’ island in Grenada as it strengthens to category 5 storm
Hurricane Beryl ripped off doors, windows and roofs in homes across the south-eastern Caribbean on Monday after making landfall on the island of Carriacou in Grenada. The National Hurricane Center warned that Beryl had strengthened into a “potentially catastrophic category 5 hurricane” and was expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to Jamaica later this week.
Fuelled by record warm waters, Beryl is the earliest category 4 storm in the Atlantic. In response to the hurricane, the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines decried a lack of political will in western Europe and the US to tackle the global climate crisis.
Former US defense official warns of US being drawn into regional conflict if Israel and Hezbollah go to war
Harrison Mann, a former major in the Defense Intelligence Agency who left the military last month over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, told the Guardian that Israel risked going to war against Hezbollah to ensure Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival. Such a disastrous new war would likely pull the US into a regional conflict, Mann said.
In other news …
Stat of the day: 76% of European travellers are adapting their plans around the climate crisis
Rising temperatures are changing how European travellers plan their holidays, with 33.7% avoiding destinations where extreme weather events were likely and 17.3% avoiding places with severe temperatures, according to a survey by the European Travel Commission. Some travellers are exchanging the sun-soaked beaches along the Mediterranean for cooler climes in the north, with some travel agencies reporting increased interest in destinations less affected by heat. “Nearly all of these clients state the reason for selecting Scandinavia as being cooler than other European countries in summer,” said Laura Greenman, the managing director of Magnetic North Travel.
Don’t miss this: the rapper ordered to have all future songs approved by the US government
Music stars including Megan Thee Stallion, Jay-Z, Coldplay and Christina Aguilera have long condemned the prosecutorial practice of using rap lyrics as evidence in criminal courts, saying it disproportionately targets Black artists. For rapper BG, who fell under scrutiny from federal probation officers after associating with other artists with prior felony convictions – he performed at a concert in Las Vegas alongside fellow rapper Boosie and released an album with 2020 Grammy nominee Gucci Mane – a US federal judge has taken that practice one step further.
While the judge refused prosecutors’ request to prohibit BG “from promoting and glorifying future gun violence/murder” in songs and at concerts while on supervised release from prison, the judge ruled that BG must provide the government with copies of any songs he writes moving forward, before their production or promotion – and, if they are deemed to be inconsistent with his goals of rehabilitation, prosecutors could move to toughen the terms governing his supervised release. His attorneys are arguing that preemptively ordering their client to avoid certain subject areas amounted to “an unconstitutional prior restraint of free speech”.
Standup comics are showing off their crowd work on social media, flooding TikTok and Instagram with footage from their gigs that show off their wit through off-the-cuff interactions with the audience. While most people attending these shows are terrified of audience interaction and stay clear of the front row, these exchanges allow performers to display their natural comedic talents rather than their written material.
Climate check: protections for US workers in extreme heat
In more extreme heat news, the Biden administration has announced a long-awaited proposal to protect workers from extreme temperatures. The proposal would require employers to establish heat safety coordinators, undergo extreme heat safety training, create and regularly update emergency heat response plans, and provide workers with shade and water. If finalized, the rule will establish the country’s first-ever federal safety standard for excessive heat exposure in the workplace and protect as many as 36 million indoor and outdoor workers.
Last Thing: the Olympic women standing as their countries’ only female qualifiers in their chosen fields
Ahead of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, the Guardian spoke to three Olympians who are standing as their countries’ only female qualifiers in their chosen fields, overcoming conflict, discrimination, the Taliban and a lack of funding to get to where they are.
Manizha Talash, Afghanistan’s first female breakdancer, will be participating as part of the refugee Olympic team. “For girls in Afghanistan this is impossible, they’re not allowed to study or even leave the house,” Talash said. “I want to go to the Games to do something for them.”
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