Judge to weigh blocking Trump on birthright citizenship despite supreme court ruling

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you the latest news lines over the next hour or so.

We start with news that a federal judge will consider today whether to prevent president Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing his executive order limiting birthright citizenship after the US supreme court restricted the ability of judges to block his policies using nationwide injunctions.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyers are set to ask US district judge Joseph Laplante at a hearing in Concord, New Hampshire, to grant class action status to a lawsuit they filed seeking to represent any babies whose citizenship status would be threatened by implementation of Trump’s directive.

Granting class status would empower Laplante, if he is inclined to do so, to issue a fresh judicial order blocking implementation of the Republican president’s policy nationally.

The ACLU and others filed the suit just hours after the Supreme Court on 27 June issued a 6-3 ruling, powered by its conservative majority, that narrowed three nationwide injunctions issued by judges in separate challenges to Trump’s directive. The suit was filed on behalf of non-US citizens living in the United States whose babies might be affected.

Under the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump’s executive order would take effect on 27 July.

Looking to seize upon an exception in the Supreme Court’s ruling, the lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the decision allows judges to continue to block Trump policies on a nationwide basis in class action lawsuits.

In other developments:

Donald Trump released an intemperate letter to Brazil’s president imposing a 50% tariff and complaining about the prosecution of his friend, former president Jair Bolsonaro, for the crime of simply trying to stay in office despite losing an election and then inciting a riot by his supporters to derail the transfer of power.
Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, rejected Trump’s demand that the charges against Bolsonaro be dropped, and pointed out that Brazil has an independent judiciary and does not, in fact, have a trade imbalance with the US.
Brazilians mocked Bolsonaro’s potential successor for supporting Trump, by remixing video of him in a MAGA hat on social media.
Amid concerns that a wave of staff reductions threaten the core missions of Nasa, Trump announced that he is asking the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, to also serve as interim administrator of the space agency.
Trump complimented the president of Liberia on his excellent English, revealing that he is unaware of that nation’s close ties to the United States, as a home for freed slaves.
The US supreme court maintained a judicial block on a Republican-crafted Florida law that makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants to enter the state.

Updated at 12.44 BST

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that the United States and Russia had exchanged new ideas for Ukraine peace talks, according to the Associated Press.

Updated at 13.35 BST

Rubio makes first trip to Asia as secretary of state as Trump escalates trade war

US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s visit to Kuala Lumpur marks the first time he has visited Asia since Donald Trump took office.

Rubio faces a bit of a difficult task as he meets with foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Reuters reports. He must convince them that America is committed to the region while Trump is poised to impose tariffs on seven Asean countries.

“It is our view, our strong view, and the reality that this century and the next, the story of the next 50 years, will largely be written here in this region, in this part of the world,” Rubio said at the gathering of Asean ministers. “When I hear … that perhaps the United States or the world might be distracted by events in other parts of the planet, I would say distraction is impossible.”

Updated at 13.36 BST

Mark Hertsgaard

The Democratic party and the climate movement have been “too cautious and polite” and should instead be denouncing the fossil fuel industry’s “huge denial operation”, the US senator Sheldon Whitehouse said.

“The fossil fuel industry has run the biggest and most malevolent propaganda operation the country has ever seen,” the Rhode Island Democrat said in an interview Monday with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now.

“It is defending a $700-plus billion [annual] subsidy” of not being charged for the health and environmental damages caused by burning fossil fuels. “I think the more people understand that, the more they’ll be irate [that] they’ve been lied to.” But, he added, “Democrats have not done a good job of calling that out.”

Whitehouse is among the most outspoken climate champions on Capitol Hill, and on Wednesday evening, he delivered his 300th Time to Wake Up climate speech on the floor of the Senate.

He began giving these speeches in 2012, when Barack Obama was in his first term, and has consistently criticized both political parties for their lackluster response to the climate emergency. The Obama White House, he complained, for years would not even “use the word ‘climate’ and ‘change’ in the same paragraph”.

Rubio meets Russia’s Lavrov in Malaysia

US secretary of state Marco Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Malaysia on Thursday, as Russia intensifies its attacks on Ukraine.

It was their second in-person meeting, at a time when US president Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Russian president Vladimir Putin as the war in Ukraine drags on.

Neither Lavrov nor Rubio made any comments to press at the start of the meeting.

Rubio met with Lavrov in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday evening, having already met with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in his first trip to Asia since taking office.

Rubio and Lavrov first met in Saudi Arabia in February as part of Trump’s effort to re-establish relations and help negotiate an end to the war.

The counterparts also spoke by phone in May and June.

Updated at 12.47 BST

The Trump administration this week pressed five African presidents to take in migrants from other countries when they are deported by the US, two officials familiar with the discussions told Reuters on Thursday.

The plan was presented to the presidents of Liberia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Gabon during their visit to the White House on Wednesday, according to a US and a Liberian official who both asked not to be named.

The White House and official spokespeople for the five nations did not respond to requests for comment. It was not immediately clear if any of the countries had agreed to the plan.

Since returning to office in January, US president Donald Trump has been pressing to speed up deportations, including by sending migrants to third countries when there are problems or delays over sending them to their home nations.