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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Gabrielle Canon in Oakland (now) and Amanda Holpuch in New York (earlier)

Report reveals Trump's plans for luxe Moscow tower – as it happened

Nancy Pelosi helps distribute food to furloughed federal workers in Washington DC on 22 January.
Nancy Pelosi helps distribute food to furloughed federal workers in Washington DC on 22 January. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Summary

We are closing down for the night – thanks for following along. Here are today’s key political developments:

  • The government has been shut down for a record 32 days and federal employees are about to miss their second paycheck of the year. Dueling bills to reopen the government will be brought to the Senate Thursday but so far leaders remain divided. Meanwhile, the FBI and TSA are both struggling to sustain security operations.
  • It’s been a while since an official White House press conference – a whopping 35 days, in fact. Amid calls for more transparency, Trump responded on Twitter, blaming the press.
  • It was a big day for the supreme court, which allowed a Trump administration policy that bars most transgender people from the military to stand as lower courts debate it.
  • Documents published by BuzzFeed show Trump’s pre-presidency plans for tower in Moscow included a $50m suite for Putin and a spa branded for his daughter Ivanka.
  • The State department’s top diplomat for European affairs resigned. The Guardian’s Julian Borger has more on that here:

See you tomorrow!

Speaking on a panel about the future of the oceans at the World Economic Forum today, former secretary of state John Kerry said his advice to President Trump is to resign. The comment, made as a response to a question, was met with laughs, followed by applause and cheers from the crowd.

Kerry also issued a scathing criticism of the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, saying “people will die because of the president’s decision” there damage from climate change will cost billions.

Trump has not commented on Kerry’s remark and did not attend the conference due to the ongoing government shutdown, but he did respond to criticism over his absence today on Twitter, with a jab at the news media.

Guardian political correspondent Lauren Gambino reports that The House Oversight Committee has just welcomed several high-profile progressives to the panel, which has jurisdiction over interrogating the Trump administration:

Freshman congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and second-term congressman Ro Khanna will sit on the committee, Democratic sources familiar with the appointments confirmed to the Guardian.

For the next two years, the Democratic-controlled panel will have a wide mandate to investigate Trump’s business conflicts of interest, personnel decisions and other actions by the Trump administration officials.

“They’ve certainly stacked the committee” with progressives, one source said.

Michael Cohen, the presidents long-time lawyer, is set to testify before the committee on 7 February. He may not know what he’s in for.

Following a New York Times report that Trump repeatedly told aides of his desire to pull the US out of Nato, the House resoundingly passed legislation reinforcing the military alliance and barring any use of funds for withdrawal. The legislation also calls for allies to fulfill their financial commitments to Nato, an issue the president has cited repeatedly when criticizing the organization.

Emphasizing the role the alliance played to end the Cold War and contain Russian power, Democratic House leader Steny Hoyer told reporters that the bill sent a strong message.

“This bill makes it clear the United States Congress still believes in the NATO mission and will prevent any short-sighted efforts to undermine the NATO or unilaterally withdrawal our country” he said.

On Thursday, the Senate will have the chance to vote on two competing bills to open the government — one backed by Republican Senate Majority leader, Mitch McConnell, which funds the President’s border wall and expands some protections for “dreamers” and a House package that provides funding through Feb 8 while negotiations continue.

Both require 60 votes to move forward.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has issued an official statement calling for support for her solution, and indicating Democratic disapproval for McConnell’s proposal.

Here is her statement in full:

On Thursday, the Senate will have the opportunity to put a bipartisan bill on the President’s desk to re-open government and end this senseless shutdown.

‘Families across the nation have been suffering under the shutdown for more than a month. There is no excuse for Senate Republicans not to pass this legislation, which contains the funding proposal that they have already supported.

‘Senate Republicans need to re-open government, not continue their complicity in the Trump Shutdown with a vote for the President’s unacceptable border and immigration schemes that only increase the chaos and suffering at the border.

‘The Senate GOP and President Trump must stop holding the American people hostage, and re-open government immediately”.

Closing out a month without pay, TSA agents are calling out from work at increasing rates, hampering security efforts at America’s busiest airports. Unexcused absences are more than double the norm, with more than 10% not showing up for work.

The agency is now requesting backup, CNN reports, hoping 250 volunteer agents will be willing to fill in and head out to understaffed areas.

In an email obtained by the news network, officials asked the unpaid workers to travel to some of its busiest cities, including New York, Chicago, and Atlanta — where the Super Bowl is scheduled for the first weekend in February, offering to cover travel costs.

This is the second request of this kind made by the agency during the shutdown, and roughly 160 volunteered last time.

Spokesperson Jim Gregory told CNN that the TSA is doing what it can to ensure security lanes aren’t closed:

“In coordination with the airlines and airport authorities, our federal security directors will implement contingency plans as necessary, which could mean lane closures” he told CNN, adding, “we have seen very few lane closures across the nation so far”.

Trump may have grounded his delegation’s trip to Davos for this year’s World Economic Forum, but he hasn’t escaped being one of the focal points in criticism and concern at the annual gathering of global elites.

Feelings toward Trump have chilled since last year’s conference, when business leaders were delighted by global growth trends and the promise of big corporate tax cuts in the US. Now, they are growingly uneasy as the government shutdown looms onward and the President continues a seemingly endless trade war with China.

Citing ongoing trade disputes as a big risk to the global economy, the . International Monetary Fund released a report reducing its growth estimates for the year ahead.

“After two years of solid expansion, the world economy is growing more slowly than expected, and risks are rising” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told reporters in at the conference.

According to the Washington Post, executives are becoming increasingly fearful of worldwide recision, despite Trump’s assertions that his policies will fill everyone’s pockets.

Chief executives ranked a global recession as their number one concern for 2019, according to a survey of nearly 800 top business leaders around the world released Thursday by The Conference Board. Global trade threats came in second. Even consumers, who power the U.S. economy, are on edge. Consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest level of Trump’s presidency, according to the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey out Friday.”

Updated

Gabrielle Canon here, taking over for Amanda Holpuch.

BuzzFeed News has released documents showing that Trump’s Russian real estate plans were much more developed than the president has let on, contradicting his previous claims that the project was just an idea that had barely gotten off the ground.

Trump Tower Moscow, a skyscraper on the Moscow river providing roughly 250 luxury condos to Russian elites — including a $50 million suite at the top offered for free to Putin — and a spa by Ivanka, branded by Trump’s daughter, and was expected to turn over $300 million in profits:

By the time Donald Trump signed the project’s letter of intent, he was four months into his presidential campaign — running for the highest office in America while conducting private business negotiations with a hostile nation.

Today that choice has produced controversy and possible legal risk. But back then, it seemed to be pure upside.

‘Let’s make this happen and build a Trump Moscow’ Sater wrote to Cohen shortly beforehand. ‘And possibly fix relations between the countries by showing everyone that commerce & business are much better and more practical than politics. … Help world peace and make a lot of money, I would say that’s a great lifetime goal for us to go after’”.

Representatives for some of the country’s largest immigrant rights groups aren’t mincing words – they say the latest Republican border proposal is “a trojan horse of poison pills.”

A coalition of advocates sent out their summary of the impact such a bill would have on immigrants.

Greg Chen, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA):

The President feigned concern for children and families seeking asylum from Central America, but this bill will bring to an end asylum for all minors from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala arriving at the US border. This historic change in asylum law would categorically block tens of thousands of children from ever applying for asylum. The only path the bill provides for these Central American children is a sham program limited to 15,000 children each year—a fraction of those in need.

Royce Murray, managing director of programs at the American Immigration Council:

For TPS holders, the proposal offers little relief to too few and makes it unreasonably hard to access. It would create a labyrinth of legal hurdles to seek “provisional presence” and charge exorbitant new fees to apply. It also makes dramatic changes to the future of the TPS program, risking deportation to disaster for anyone who is undocumented when their home country undergoes a crisis.

Patrice Lawrence, national policy and advocacy director at the UndocuBlack Network said:

This deal is not a deal. It is an extortion agreement or ransom note. TPS communities have continued to emphasize the importance of not harming themselves, their families or members of their extended community with any kind of immigration package. We cannot accept anything less than a deal that leads to a permanent path to citizenship for TPS holders. This deal leaves out all the African countries, all the black constituents who have TPS. This is not a deal, this is a sham.

Guardian political reporter, Lauren Gambino, notes that while the two bills are being voted on on Thursday, there is little evidence to suggest either can get enough support to make it through the Senate.

It’s far from certain whether either bill can garner enough support to pass the chamber. Democrats, who are opposed to a wall, likely have the votes to block Trump’s proposal. The Democratic proposal would have to win the support of at least 13 Republicans to reach the 60-vote threshold.

The Senate approved a short-term funding bill in December that would have averted a shutdown and kept the agencies running until 8 February. That measure passed the Senate without any opposition but Trump later said he would not support it because the plan did not include funding for his wall. The Republican-controlled House declined to vote on the measure. Since re-taking the majority in the House, Democrats have passed a number of bills that would re-open the shuttered agencies, but the Senate has refused to vote on them, arguing that they won’t take up legislation the president won’t sign.

Senate to vote on Thursday

The Senate will vote on Thursday on a pair of bills that would end the partial shutdown of the federal government now in its fifth week.

The first bill, a Republican-backed measure, would meet the president’s demand for a $5.7bn wall along the southern border in exchange for temporary protections for young undocumented immigrants and the second would extend funding for the agencies that are currently closed through 8 February.

The compromise, reached by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority leader Chuck Schumer, is the first sign of progress after a 32-day stalemate over the partial shutdown, which has left as many as 800,000 government workers without pay. They announced the compromise on the Senate floor on Tuesday, with Schumer predicting that the short-term funding proposal “could break us out of the morass we are in”.

“People are saying: Isn’t there a way out of this mess? Isn’t there a way to relieve the burden on the 800,000 federal workers not getting paid? Isn’t there a way to get government services open first and debate what we should do for border security later?” he said. “Well, now there is a way.”

It is 46 years since the supreme court voted in favor of a women’s right to access an abortion in the Roe v Wade case. The majority of Americans want to see Roe remain in place, but Trump’s conservative government has had many worried they would seek to overturn it.

But Anna North at Vox writes that the abortion rights movement is “optimistic” heading into 2019:

Planned Parenthood is seeing an awareness “that as we approach the 46th anniversary of Roe v Wade passing, we are once again in the fight of our lives,” said Dr Leana Wen, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In the midterm elections, she added, the group saw voters energized to support candidates who back abortion rights.

“We’ve seen women, particularly women of color, rise up in record numbers,” she said. One result was a House of Representatives with “more pro-choice members than ever before.”

Meanwhile, for some voters, the Kavanaugh battle raised awareness of an issue they may not have fully understood. “Most people just don’t know what the status is where they live of their ability to access abortion for themselves or a loved one,” Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, explained. The urgency around the Kavanaugh confirmation has “created a focus of attention that creates a phenomenal opportunity to close that knowledge gap,” she said.

The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, has more on the resignation of the State department’s top diplomat for European affairs:

Mitchell calls himself a devoted Atlanticist and insisted that “nothing could be further from the truth” that US membership of Nato was in question.

Mitchell was instrumental in promoting a friendlier US policy towards Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, and also helped broker a settlement with Greece over Macedonia’s name.

“Wess has been one of the pillars of this administration’s most constructive foreign policy ideas,” said Daniel Fried who did the same Europe assistant secretary job at state department in the George W Bush administration. “He has generated wide respect in Europe and his loss will be felt.”

“Mitchell was a strong supporter of Nato, particularly in Eastern Europe where he will be sorely missed,” said Thomas Wright, the director of the Centre on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution. “His departure comes follows the resignation of senior Pentagon officials – Robert Karem and Tom Goffus – working on NATO along with Secretary Mattis. Without this pro-alliance caucus, Nato is now more vulnerable than at any time since the beginning of the Trump administration.”

The US military said an American service member was killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan.

No other details, including the service member’s name or branch, were released pending the notification of the family.

The incident is being investigated, the military said.

The shutdown and border vote is officially on the schedule – and the odds are low either can drum up the support needed to pass.

The White House Correspondents Association president, Olivier Knox, issued a statement about the record absence of on-screen press briefings at the White House. It’s been 35 days since White House press secretary Sarah Sanders took questions from reporters, on-screen.

“This retreat from transparency and accountability sets a terrible precedent, “ Knox said. “Being able to question the press secretary or other government officials publicly helps the news media tell Americans what their most powerful representatives are doing in their name.

“While other avenues exist to obtain information, the robust, public back-and-forth we’ve come to expect in the James A Brady briefing room helps highlight that no one in a healthy republic is above being questioned.”

Vote on Trump's border proposal set for Thursday

Senate Majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said Democrats should support his bill to reopen the government and provide funding for a border wall.

“The opportunity to end all this is staring us right in the face,” McConnell said. “That’s why we’ll vote on this legislation on the Senate floor this week. All that needs to happen is for our Democratic colleagues to agree that it’s time to put the country ahead of politics, take yes for an answer and vote to put this standoff behind us.”

McConnell said the bill should appeal to Democrats hoping to extend protections to so-called “Dreamer” immigrants, though immigration lawyers have raised concerns that the bill barely offers protections while also introducing several harsh immigration restrictions.

McConnell emphasized this bill was the only legislation before Congress that would reopen the government and which Trump will sign.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the proposal was a “nonstarter” and told reporters the president must re-open the government before they can negotiate a border security bill.

Pelosi said Congress can’t fulfill Trump’s demands “every time he has an objection” and threatens to “hold the employees hostage” in case it sets a precedent.

The US health department secretary, Alez Azar, has declined to testify before Congress about the Trump administration’s family separation policy.

While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) separated families, it was the health department that was responsible for separated children, who were moved to its custody while their parents were put in immigration detention, released in the US or deported.

House Energy and Commerce chairman, Frank Pallone, said in a statement that Azar declined to appear before the committee in a scheduled hearing about the policy. Pallone said:

Azar has yet to testify before Congress at a hearing specifically on this cruel policy. The stonewalling must end, and Secretary Azar must agree to appear before the Committee to answer questions and take accountability for his agency’s actions. Azar’s denial to appear before the Committee in the coming weeks on the Family Separation Policy is unacceptable, and we are going to get him here at some point one way or another.

Last week, the health department’s internal watchdog reported that the Trump administration may have separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border for up to a year before family separation was a publicly known practice:

And here’s some scenes from the Senate, where lawmakers are debating how to bring an end to the shutdown.

Guardian political correspondent, Lauren Gambino, writes that FBI agents have warned the partial federal government shutdown has “hindered” the bureau’s ability to conduct operations and pursue investigations. Her report from today’s press conference on this new report:

Thousands of union members are among hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors now without pay for a fifth week.

As the FBI Agents Association released a report containing firsthand accounts of how the 32-day shutdown has affected operations, its president, Tom O’Connor, demanded Congress and Donald Trump fully fund the FBI.

“The failure to fund the FBI undermines essential FBI operations, such as those designated to combat crimes against children, drug and gang crime and terrorism,” O’Connor told reporters.

He declined to say whether Americans were less safe as a result of the shutdown.

“I will leave that question up to you to answer,” he said.

Update 2:16pm ET: White House sources told the Guardian Ingraham’s statement was inaccurate.

Conservative commentator Laura Ingraham said some of the the high school students who were filmed apparently confronting a Native American activist and military veteran in a video that went viral this weekend will be meeting with Donald Trump at the White House “as early as tomorrow.”

The students from the Covington Catholic high school, in northern Kentucky, were filmed appearing to mock a group of Native Americans taking part in the Indigenous Peoples March in Washington DC last Friday. The student at the centre of the footage, Nick Sandmann, later said he was confronted by one Native American activist.

Donald Trump defended the students, who were in DC to attend the anti-abortion rally, March for Life.

“Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be,” Trump wrote. “They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good – maybe even to bring people together.

“It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!”

Updated

Summary

It’s nearly 2pm on the east coast, where senators have just met in Washington DC to discuss a potential end to the shutdown. The government has now been partially closed for a record-breaking 32 days.

  • Today also marks 35 days since White House press secretary Sarah Sanders gave an on-camera press briefing. This, too, is a record.
  • It was a big day for the supreme court, which allowed a Trump administration policy that bars most transgender people from the military to continue as lower courts debate the policy’s merits.
  • The supreme court also agreed to hear oral arguments in the first case that involves the Second Amendment gun protections since 2010.
  • Vice president Mike Pence issued support for Venezuelans who oppose the presidency of Nicolás Maduro in a video message. Marches are planned in Venezuela tomorrow to express opposition to Maduro’s regime.
  • The FBI Agents Association, a non-governmental advocacy group for agents, reported today that the agency is facing operational challenges because of the shutdown - which has left agents working in counterterrorism and drug enforcement without adequate funds to pay informants.

And California senator Kamala Harris, a Democrat, raised $1.5m in the first 24 hours after officially announcing her run for president.

Kamala Harris raises $1.5m for 2020 election

In the first 24 hours after announcing she would run for president, Kamala Harris had raised $1.5m from 38,000 people, according to the Wall Street Journal:

The California Democrat saw a burst of $1 million in contributions in the first 12 hours after her appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and the simultaneous release of an online video, her campaign said, adding that the average donation was about $37.

Those initial donation numbers are competitive with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign kickoff. His team said at the time that he raised $1.5 million from 35,000 donors in the first 24 hours after his April 30, 2015, announcement. Mr. Sanders, who ultimately raised 85% of his $238 million in increments of $200 or less, is weighing another presidential run.

Harris, the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, launched her campaign on Monday – America’s Martin Luther King Jr Day holiday – in an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America.

“Let’s do this, together. Let’s claim our future. For ourselves, for our children, and for our country,” Harris , 54, said in a campaign video that was released to coincide with her appearance on the morning television show.

The Senate is currently meeting and is expected to discuss re-opening the government, 32 days into the partial shutdown.

It’s not a straightforward path as the president has declared he is comfortable keeping the government shutdown for “months and even years” and Democrats have taken a hardline against Trump’s funding proposals so far.

Here’s the latest on the Republican measure designed around Trump’s proposal for the border wall funding:

Immigration advocates are warning the president’s offer to re-open the government by including protections for certain immigrant groups in his latest border wall proposal masks much more dramatic changes to immigration policy.

This includes significant restrictions for asylum seekers and a 20% expansion in immigrant jail beds.

The bill would limit how many Central American minors could apply for asylum each year to 50,000 and only grant 15,000 of those applications, explained Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council. (His entire thread is worth reading).

The White House has set a new record for days without an on-camera press briefing by press secretary Sarah Sanders - 35 days.

Her last briefing was 18 December.

Trump responded to this milestone on Twitter:

Updated

A new survey of 760 registered voters from Democratic polling firm, Public Policy Polling, shows voters prefer any of seven likely Democratic candidates for president in the 2020 election over Donald Trump.

In the poll, Trump trails Joe Biden 53-41, Bernie Sanders 51-41, Kamala Harris 48-41, Beto O’Rourke 47-41, Elizabeth Warren 48-42, and Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand each 47-42.

Trump preparing two State of the Union speeches - report

Donald Trump is preparing two State of the Union speeches, each for a different audience, according to ABC News:

Sources told ABC News that the president was previously planning two separate versions of the State of the Union – one version if the government was still shut down and another if the government was open.

However, now the planning has evolved, assuming the government shutdown could drag on past next Tuesday – the expected delivery date of the address. If the president decides to deliver a speech in rally form, it would mark the first rally style event the president has attended since the partial shutdown began.

As part of the ongoing political tit-for-tat between Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Republicans are encouraging Trump to force Pelosi to officially disinvite him, by suggesting the president announce he still intends to deliver the State of the Union from the House chamber, according to Republican sources involved in the discussions

The Guardian has not independently confirmed this report.

The top US diplomat for Europe is resigning after only 16 months on the job. Wess Mitchell, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs, will step down next month said the state department.

This will be a blow to Trump administration efforts to maintain trans-Atlantic unity, according to the Associated Press:

Mitchell’s departure comes at a time of fractious relations between Washington and European capitals amid disagreements over trade, defense spending and the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

Mitchell took up the job in October 2017 under former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after 12 years at a think tank focused on Central European issues.

The FBI Agents Association, a non-governmental advocacy group for agents, just released a 72-page report about the impact of the shutdown on special agents. The report features anonymized testimonies from agents across the country.

“In my area of work, a lot of valuable information is gathered from informants,” wrote one agent in the Northeast region.

He continued:

With the government shutdown, we cannot secure safe places to meet with our informants and we cannot pay them for their information. In most cases, this means to being able to make regular meetings and missing out on information altogether, leaving a concerning gap in intel relating to national security.

Another agent who said they were working on an investigation targeting “kilo-quantity trafficking of methamphetamine and heroin by street gang members” warned that funding for his task force has been exhausted. The agent said:

Without money to pay sources and conduct controlled narcotics purchases, our task force is unable to continue these critical investigations. This task force is the only task force in this region specifically targeting interstate street gang criminal activities.

Agents said the general challenges they face because of the shutdown include delays in processing security clearances, limited operational funding and uncertainty about pay that could drive agents to find jobs elsewhere, according to the report.

Vice president Mike Pence has released to Venzuelans ahead of a protest scheduled for Wednesday led by the opposition to Nicolás Maduro’s presidency.

Pence issued support for the opposition, the National Assembly, in the video released Tuesday.

The vice president said the people of Venezuela had the “unwavering support of the United States.” Pence continued:

Nicolas Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power. He has never won the presidency in a free and fair election, and has maintained his grip of power by imprisoning anyone who dares to oppose him.

The United States joins with all freedom-loving nations in recognizing your National Assembly as the last vestige of democracy in your country, for it is the only body elected by you, the people. As such, the United States supports the courageous decision by Juan Guaidó, the President of the National Assembly, to assert that body’s constitutional powers, declare Maduro a usurper, and call for the establishment of a transitional government.

Pence concluded the address with a rallying cry in support of the demonstrators:

As you make your voices heard tomorrow, on behalf of the American people, we say to all the good people of Venezuela: estamos con ustedes.

We are with you, we stand with you, and we will stay with you until democracy is restored and you reclaim your birthright of libertad.

Muchas gracias y vayan con Dios.

US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, is set to testify before a Congressional committee in March about his decision to include a question about citizenship in the 2020 census.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform announced today that Ross, who oversees the Census, was scheduled to testify on 14 March.

A federal judge in New York ruled earlier this month that Ross “violated the public trust” by adding the question to the Census with a “sham justification.” The Trump administration is appealing the ruling.

Two members of the band Kiss are offering free meals to workers affected by the partial government shutdown at the chain of airport restaurants they apparently own.

Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, who are in Kiss and own Rock & Brews restaurants, said their airport chain will provide free meals to furloughed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers.

“While the TSA continues to work on our behalf without pay, we want to make sure we can at least provide them with a delicious meal to show our support,” Stanley said in a Facebook video.

Here’s a nice Guardian interview with Simmons from 2017 in which he does not mention his chain of airport restaurants:

The supreme court’s decision to allow the Trump adminstration to continue to restrict transgender’s people military service is not the end of this saga.

The policy will be in effect as lower court challenges to the plan play out.

A summary of how the supreme court got here from the Associated Press:

Until a few years ago service members could be discharged from the military for being transgender. That changed under President Barack Obama. The military announced in 2016 that transgender individuals already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly. And the military set July 1, 2017 as the date when transgender individuals would be allowed to enlist.

But after President Donald Trump took office, the administration delayed the enlistment date, saying the issue needed further study. While that study was ongoing, the president tweeted in late July 2017 that the government would not allow “Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” He later directed the military to return to its policy before the Obama administration changes.

Groups representing transgender individuals sued, and the Trump administration lost early rounds in those cases, with courts issuing nationwide injunctions barring the administration from altering course. The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted those preliminary injunctions.

One more, but not final, bit of supreme court news: the justices did not take action on a case about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a program ended by the Trump administration that allows hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children to temporarily work and live in the US.

By not taking up the case, the justices can only hear arguments in their next supreme court term. So, about 700,000 people protected by Daca will be able to keep these protections for the next few months.

Trump has raised Daca as a bargaining chip in his negotiations for a border wall, but it remains unclear how the ongoing court cases about the program would impact Daca’s inclusion in his proposed border wall funding plan.

The supreme court has allowed a policy that bans most transgender people from serving the military to continue. Under the policy, hundreds of transgender people already in the military can continue their service, but transgender people could not join the military. The policy also allows people who serve “in their biological sex” to join the military.

The LGBTQ civil rights group, Lambda Legal, said the supreme court’s decision was “perplexing to say the least.”

The group is involved with one of the court challenges to the transgender military restrictions.

Lambda Legal counsel, Peter Renn, said in a statement:

For more than 30 months, transgender troops have been serving our country openly with valor and distinction, but now the rug has been ripped out from under them, once again. We will redouble our efforts to send this discriminatory ban to the trash heap of history where it belongs.

The Supreme Court has also announced it will hear its first case about the Second Amendment since 2010 this term.

The case is a challenge to a New York City law that prohibits people licensed to have guns in their homes from transporting the weapons outside the city.

Transgender military restrictions to continue

The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to limit transgender people from serving in the military while the legality of such a plan continues to be debated in lower courts.

The court voted 5-4 in favor of issuing a stay on efforts to block a plan to restrict transgender people’s ability to serve in the military, meaning the plan can be implemented.

The dissenting justices were Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

An original Trump adminstration plan to completely block transgender people from serving from the military was blocked by a federal judge.

Updated

Good morning

Today, Congress is back in session after a holiday weekend. Lawmakers must first confront a government shutdown that has surpassed the one month mark. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers and their families have now gone without paychecks or work for 32 days – and there is no clear resolution in sight.

On Saturday, the president offered a new border wall proposal but it is strongly opposed by Democrats who argue Donald Trump must open the government before they can negotiate border wall funding.

Outside of negotiations between the White House and Congress, there are 651 days to go until the 2020 election and the Democratic party is already crowded with potential candidates. The group was joined by California senator Kamala Harris, who this weekend officially launched her presidential campaign.

After Monday’s federal holiday, this short working week will be packed with shutdown negotiations, further deliberations on the 2020 race and more on US relations with Moscow as the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, provides changing statements about Trump’s dealings with Russian officials.

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