Supreme court says it will review whether Trump administration can detain immigrants while they challenge deportation
The supreme court today said it will review whether the Trump administration can enforce its policy of denying bond hearings for immigrants to determine whether they should remain detained while their cases are adjudicated.
The novel move to impose mandatory detention is another feature of Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown during his second term in office, and has now made its way to the top court after several appeals court judges ruled that the policy violated federal law and fails to provide immigrants with due process.
However, those decisions conflict with rulings by the fifth and eighth circuits – which ruled that immigrants accused of illegally entering and remaining in the US must be detained while their deportation cases are pending.
The case that will be part of the supreme court’s docket for the 2026-27 term focuses on Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a citizen of Brazil, who authorities say he entered the US illegally two decades ago and applied for asylum in 2016 and was granted a work permit.
He sought a bond hearing after an immigration judge determined that his detention was mandatory after his September 2025 arrest. After Barbosa da Cunha sued, a federal judge ordered that be provided a hearing or released. An immigration judge found that Barbosa da Cunha did not present a flight risk or danger to persons or property, and ordered him released on bond. The administration appealed against the decision.
The number of people in immigration detention has shot up since Trump returned to office. It was more than 65,000 in July 2026, up from about 40,000 at the end of Joe Biden’s administration.
Key events
Donald Trump has not taken the stage yet, but he arrived at the Peterbilt Motors plant in Denton, Texas about 20 minutes ago and has been touring the facility.
According to the print pool reporter who arrived just after the president, a handful of protesters were outside with signs, including two that read: “Release the Epstein files” and “$5,000 doesn’t buy my vote”.
‘They love you there, Mr President,’ conservative reporter tells Trump of Oklahoma
The White House refused to let CNN travel with Donald Trump to Texas and Oklahoma on Thursday, but the president did stop to take some questions from reporters who were permitted to fly with him on Air Force after landing in Texas.
The exclusion of CNN meant that video of the president’s brief exchange with reporters on the tarmac was posted on social networks by two outlets, Real America’s Voice and One America News, that are openly partisan in their support of Trump and were invited to cover him, alongside non-partisan journalists from Reuters, NPR and the Los Angeles Times.
An example of how soft the coverage of Trump can be when his aides pick the reporters who are allowed to ask him questions came in the following exchange a short time ago.
“What do you have to accomplish tonight in Oklahoma?” a reporter asked.
“Just a speech; we’re going to give a speech on how well we’re doing”, Trump replied.
“They’re excited to see you, Mr President,” a member of the pool told him. “You won every county in Oklahoma, 77 counties. You won all all of those counties in Oklahoma, all of them. They love you there, Mr President.”
The brief gaggle ended with one of the partisan journalists teeing Trump up to hit Democrats.
“Mr President, how deleterious will the Democrats be to the growth that we’ve seen in your term if they take the House and the Senate?” the correspondent asked.
“I think if the Democrats get in, we will end up in a financial depression. We will go into a depression the likes of which we’ve never seen before. It’ll be 1929,” Trump replied.
South Korea disputes Trump’s claim it agreed to fund $54bn Alaska pipeline – report
While we wait for the start of Donald Trump’s remarks in Texas, let’s pause for a moment to note that the government of South Korea on Thursday reportedly denied that it had agreed, as the president claimed with great fanfare on Wednesday, to spend $54bn to build a liquefied natural gas pipeline in Alaska.
In an Oval Office announcement on Wednesday, flanked by Dan Sullivan, a Republican senator facing a tough re-election battle, Trump said that South Korea had agreed to pay to build an 807-mile (1,299km) pipeline to carry natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to a liquefaction facility on Alaska’s southern coast.
The Korean investment, Trump said, was part of a $200bn package of US projects that South Korea agreed to in 2025 as part of a trade deal in exchange for lower US tariffs on South Korean cars, auto parts and other products.
The White House then released video of Trump touting the investment.
On Thursday, however, the Wall Street Journal reported, the South Koreans insisted that they did not “agree to a specific dollar figure—or even to invest at all.”
South Korea’s industry ministry said that the government had only agreed to “initiate a review” of the pipeline deal.
South Korea’s industry minister, Kim Jung-kwan, took issue with to Trump’s characterization of the country’s Alaska LNG investment. “Putting out figures, or using definitive language, goes far beyond what was agreed,” he said at a briefing for reporters.
Reuters reported that the South Korean industry minister also he had expressed regret to the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, over the White House announcement, since it went beyond what had been agreed.
According to a live video feed from Reuters, a crowd is currently waiting for Donald Trump to arrive at a plant in Denton, Texas that manufactures diesel and electric trucks.
We are relying on the Reuters video because the White House on Thursday again refused to let CNN travel with him to carry out its designated pool camera duties.
The stage is adorned with large banners on either side of a podium that read “American Trucks” and “American Jobs”.
According to a local news report from Fox 4 Dallas, the company, Peterbilt, says that it plans to add more than 1,000 new jobs at the Denton facility as a result of tariffs Trump put in place on trucks made outside the US.
Among those seen on the feed waiting for Trump is Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate who was recently caught on an audio recording admitting that Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas had hurt his campaign. In the audio obtained by the New York Times, Paxton was asked if Trump was “a little bit of a drag” on his campaign against Democrat James Talarico.
Paxton replied: “when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped.”
Vance rallies Maga base in Florida, slamming Democrat Angie Nixon
Vice-president JD Vance rallied in Lakeland, Florida today, in a county that Donald Trump won by more than 20 points in 2024.
“I would say by the turnout today, it seems very obvious that Florida is Maga country,” Vance said, addressing the crowd and stumping for congressman Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, and incumbent GOP senator Ashley Moody who is facing a challenge from progressive Angie Nixon, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – but hasn’t been endorsed by the group.
“When Angie Nixon calls herself a socialist, I think the right response is to say, ‘then get the hell out of here, you don’t belong in America,’” Vance said.
During his address, a protestor was removed as he shouted about the war in Iran, high prices and the Epstein files. Vance accused him of people a “clown” and a “Democratic plant”.
“We kicked him out just like we’re going to kick out the rest of the Democrats,” Vance said.
Sam Levine
The Trump administration broke the law when it pushed through a last-minute change to the form overseas citizens use to register and request absentee ballots, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) said in a lawsuit filed on Thursday.
Until recently, the form, the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA), gave overseas voters four options to choose from when describing their geographic location. Voters could say they needed an overseas ballot because they were on active military service, living outside the US with an intent to return, or living outside the US and uncertain about their return. The form also allowed voters to check a box if they were a US citizen who had never lived in the country (38 states and the District of Columbia allow citizens born abroad to vote in at least some elections even if they have never lived in the country).
In August, as the deadline to send out overseas ballots approached, the Pentagon – the agency that oversees the form – submitted two emergency requests to modify the form. Among the changes, the Pentagon sought to eliminate the option allowing voters to say they were citizens who never lived in the US. The requests were quickly approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). NPR first reported the changes earlier this week.
“Trump and Republicans are so desperate to hang on to power that they are trying to eliminate the way some American citizens abroad register to vote and request mail ballots. They know that Americans, both at home and abroad, are going to reject their destructive agenda, and they are scrambling to disenfranchise as much of the electorate as possible by any means necessary,” said Ken Martin, the chair of the DNC.
The Pentagon did not return a request for comment.
The changes could confuse and discourage US citizens who have never lived in the country from registering and casting a ballot, experts said.
Read the full report here:
While en route to a truck manufacturing facility in Denton, Texas, Trump issued another jab to the Biden administration, blaming the former president for high prices, that are the direct result of the war in Iran that Trump began.
He also claimed, falsely, that “prices are way down from what Biden and the Dumocrats left us,” using his pejorative nickname for the party. In fact, inflation is actually higher than when Joe Biden left office in 2025. “Prices are coming down, RAPIDLY. It’s the Dumocrats’ fault, not the fault of the Republicans — But we are fixing it!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
As he headed to Texas today, Donald Trump explained his decision to campaign in two Republican strongholds – Texas and Oklahoma with just over a month until the midterm elections.
“Well, I won all of them by a lot. I’m going there just to make sure,” Trump said, noting that his support for businessman, Mike Mazzei, in Oklahoma’s gubernatorial primary, catapulted him to victory over the state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond.
The president was also asked about his daughter-in-law Lara Trump’s recent comments that the Iran war could “cost” Trump the midterms.
Instead, the president said the conflict “should help” because Iran “will not have a nuclear weapon”. This despite stalled negotiations, the increasing price of fuel in the US and low approval ratings for the administration’s handling of the war.
“Oil is going to come down very very soon,” Trump added. “Oil is coming down as soon as Iran is finished and they’re finished pretty much right now.”
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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The supreme court today said it will review whether the Trump administration can enforce its policy of denying bond hearings for immigrants to determine whether they should remain detained while their cases are adjudicated. The novel move to impose mandatory detention is another feature of Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown during his second term in office, and has now made its way to the top court after several appeals court judges ruled that the policy violated federal law and fails to provide immigrants with due process. More here
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Meanwhile, in a wide-ranging interview with Time magazine, Donald Trump did not rule out the possibility of sending federal immigration agents to polling sites in the upcoming midterms. When asked, the president said: “Haven’t thought of it” and said that he “could” use the Insurrection Act to declare a national emergency. “A lot of people think I should use it sometimes,” he added. However, it’s worth noting that legal experts say the law – which would allow the president to deploy troops domestically – doesn’t override the constitution, which prevents them from interfering with elections and appearing at polling sites.
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The White House has, again, blocked CNN from covering Donald Trump as part of the rotating press pool. The outlet was scheduled to be a part of the group of media traveling to Texas and Oklahoma with the president today, but was removed from list of newsrooms in place for the trip, per the White House schedule. This comes as a Trump-appointed federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the administration banning CNN, Politico and MS Now from the White House.
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In his Time interview, Trump insisted that he wasn’t defying the judge’s order by still preventing these outlets from covering the president at certain events. “I don’t have to go out of my way, these people write only bad stories,” he said. The White House communications director, Steven Cheung, added that the judge’s order required the president to restore the newsrooms’ access to the White House, “but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One”.
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The family of Renee Good, the woman killed by immigration agents in January in Minneapolis, have filed two federal lawsuits against the agent who shot her and several top officials in the Trump administration. In the lawsuits, Good’s partner, Becca Good, and her brother, Brent Ganger, alleged wrongful death and other violations of federal law, according to a press release issued by their lawyers. More here
Trump administration excludes UK, France and Baltic allies from Nato meeting in Poland – report
The Pentagon is set to host a meeting with several Nato members in Poland next month, however there are notable exclusions. Namely, the UK, France and several Baltic countries, according to Politico.
Citing six unnamed diplomats familiar with the planning, Politico reports that the gathering will be led by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, and will be a “working group focused on Nato’s future”.
Neither the White House or Pentagon responded to the Guardian’s request for confirmation or comment.
Along with the UK and France, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are also reportedly not included in the scheduled meeting, despite all of the countries spending significantly on military and defense.
The nations that are set to attend are Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. Colby has held two similar meetings with the invitees earlier this year.
One of the diplomats interviewed by Politico said that splintering the alliance by hand-picking which countries to include could only add to the already fractious relationship with the US.
“If they try splitting Nato into the good ones and the bad ones, it is dangerous for the US,” they told the outlet. “But for Europe, this is existential.”
Joseph Gedeon
Federal prosecutors in Washington DC can never again charge the former Olympic canoeist David Hearn over damage to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, a judge ruled on Thursday, closing a case the US attorney’s office had already conceded it should not have brought.
Judge Todd Edelman, of the DC superior court, dismissed the case with prejudice, siding with Hearn’s lawyers over the office of the US attorney Jeanine Pirro, which had wanted to keep the option of refiling.
Pirro, a Donald Trump ally, publicized the charges at a press conference in July. Later that month her office moved to drop the case, conceding that the damage resulted from flawed installation rather than anything Hearn did.
Trump, who had pressed for the prosecution, told reporters in the Oval Office on 3 August that Pirro had “choked” in abandoning the vandalism charges, and “folded like an umbrella”.
Edelman agreed to the dismissal in August but left open whether it would be with or without prejudice. Prosecutors argued for the latter, which would have allowed a future revival. Hearn’s lawyers countered that the case was politically driven and lacked factual support, and warned of a risk of “harassment and bad faith” if the door stayed open.
Donald Trump spoke to reporters briefly earlier, as he departed the White House for Texas and Oklahoma.
The president was asked about his comments to Time that Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh should’ve voted against the board of governors (which unanimously voted to raise interest rates earlier this month) and whether he had spoken to Warsh since the vote.
“No, I want him to vote the way he wants,” Trump told reporters, adding: “I personally would’ve voted against the raise because we’ve got inflation totally under control … The problem is interest rates will hurt our growth.”
In the Time interview, Trump was asked if he regretted nominating Warsh, to which he skirted: “Well, he’s controlled to a certain extent by the board.”
Asked if he still had confidence in Warsh, the president added:
We have a lot of people on [the Fed board of governors] that would love for our country to do badly. It’s become very political. I don’t blame you, Kevin. I think it’s too bad. Not fair. Look, our nation is going through a growth explosion like no nation’s ever seen. We’re blowing through the interest rates. But if we didn’t have to, it would be great.
Compared to his frequent personal attacks on Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, over the Fed refusing to cut interest rates, Trump has so far refrained from publicly criticizing his handpicked chair, and instead directed his ire towards the Fed “board” more generally.
