“The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the conviction of a government contractor found guilty of defrauding a state transportation program designed to promote diversity,” the Washington Post reports.

“The unanimous decision reversed a trend in which the justices have pushed back on how prosecutors pursue white-collar fraud.”

“The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to block an effort to open the inner workings of the secretive DOGE cost-cutting effort to public scrutiny,” Politico reports.

Vice President J.D. Vance called Chief Justice John Roberts’ comments earlier this month that the judiciary’s role is to check the executive branch a “profoundly wrong sentiment” and said the courts should be “deferential” to the president, CNN reports.

Said Vance: “I thought that was a profoundly wrong sentiment. That’s one half of his job, the other half of his job is to check the excesses of his own branch. And you cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they’re not allowed to have what they voted for.”

“The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Maine legislators to temporarily restore the voting power of a state lawmaker after she had been censured for a social media post that criticized transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports,” the New York Times reports.

Adam Serwer: “The Trump administration’s relentless assault on the rule of law is a kind of arson: It is setting so many blazes that the fire department is having trouble putting them all out at once. Last week, Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to cut off the water.”

President Trump endorsed the idea that the Supreme Court had placed an “illegal injunction” on him by temporarily blocking his administration’s ability to deport Venezuelans, The Independent reports.

“President Trump is considering nominating Emil Bove III, a top Justice Department official responsible for enacting his immigration agenda and ordering the purge of career prosecutors, to be a federal appeals judge,” the New York Times reports.

“Tucked deep in the thousand-plus pages of the multitrillion-dollar budget bill making its way through the Republican-controlled U.S. House is a paragraph curtailing a court’s greatest tool for forcing the government to obey its rulings: the power to enforce contempt findings,” the AP reports.

“It’s unclear whether the bill can pass the House in its current form — it failed in a committee vote Friday — whether the U.S. Senate would preserve the contempt provision or whether courts would uphold it. But the fact that GOP lawmakers are including it shows how much those in power in the nation’s capital are thinking about the consequences of defying judges as the battle between the Trump administration and the courts escalates.”

“The Supreme Court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump from moving forward with deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act for a group of immigrants in northern Texas, siding with Venezuelans who feared they were poised for imminent removal under the sweeping wartime authority,” CNN reports.

“The decision is a significant loss for Trump, who wants to use the law to speed deportations – and avoid the kind of review normally required before removing people from the country.”

NBC News: Supreme Court rules Trump administration must give Venezuelans more time to challenge deportation under Alien Enemies Act.

“The Supreme Court wrestled on Thursday with the Trump administration’s complaints that federal judges have exceeded their authority by temporarily blocking some of his policy moves for the whole country,” the New York Times reports.

“Several of the justices appeared torn between two concerns: They appeared skeptical that single district judges should have the power to freeze executive actions throughout the country.”

“But they also seemed troubled by the legality — and consequences — of the executive order underlying the case: An order issued by President Donald J. Trump on his first day in office ending birthright citizenship, or the practice of granting automatic citizenship to all babies born in the United States.”

Washington Post: Supreme Court divided over nationwide injunctions in birthright citizenship case.

New York Times: “For more than a century, most scholars and the courts have agreed that though the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution after the Civil War, it was not, in fact, all about slavery. Instead, courts have held that the amendment extended citizenship not just to the children of former slaves but also to babies born within the borders of the United States.”

“The notion that the amendment might not do so was once considered an unorthodox theory, promoted by an obscure California law professor named John Eastman and his colleagues at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank — the same professor who would later provide Mr. Trump with legal arguments he used to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

“The story of how the theory moved from the far edges of academia to the Oval Office and, on Thursday, to the Supreme Court, offers insight into how Mr. Trump has popularized legal theories once considered unthinkable to justify his immigration policies.”

“It has been a major impediment to President Trump’s agenda — the ability of a single federal judge in a single district to block a policy across the country,” the New York Times reports.

“On issue after issue, the White House has been stopped by judges from carrying out Mr. Trump’s initiatives while they are litigated in court, including his ability to withhold funds from schools with diversity programs, to relocate transgender women in federal prisons and to remove deportation protections from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants.”

“On Thursday, the Supreme Court will take up one such case, with potentially major implications for the power of the judicial branch.”

“On Thursday, the Supreme Court will take up a case that could decide how quickly President Donald Trump can implement his second term agenda as it hears arguments about nationwide injunctions that allow a single judge to block a policy for the entire country,” CNN reports.

“The issue arises from an appeal challenging rulings that have blocked Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, the longstanding practice based in the 14th Amendment of granting citizenship to any child born on US soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.”

Chief Justice John Roberts described the rule of law as “endangered” and warned against “trashing the justices,” but he didn’t point fingers directly at President Donald Trump or his allies for publicly excoriating judges who’ve ruled against aspects of Trump’s agenda, Politico reports.

Said Roberts: “The notion that rule of law governs is the basic proposition. Certainly as a matter of theory, but also as a matter of practice, we need to stop and reflect every now and then how rare that is, certainly rare throughout history, and rare in the world today.”

CNN: “When the Supreme Court gathers Thursday to hear oral argument in a high-profile emergency appeal involving Trump’s birthright citizenship order, the justices will technically be considering a procedural question about whether lower courts overstepped their authority by blocking the president’s efforts nationwide.”

“But the court’s answer to that question will have enormous on-the-ground consequences, even for people who are in the United States legally.”

“The Trump administration’s global tariffs face their first major legal test this week when a little-known Manhattan court considers one of the president’s most sweeping assertions of executive power,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“A three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade will hear arguments Tuesday on whether to halt the levies, which have unleashed a trade war with the world and threaten to upend the global economy.”

“The federal court, which has nationwide jurisdiction over tariff and trade disputes, operates for the most part in obscurity, rarely garnering a mention in major publications and staying off the radar of most attorneys.”

“Federal judges say unsolicited pizza deliveries to jurists’ homes that began in February may number in the hundreds across at least seven states, prompting increased security concerns and a demand from a Senate leader for a Justice Department investigation,” the Washington Post reports.

“Many of the deliveries have gone to judges presiding over lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s policies.”