On January 23, 2025, U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, appointed by President Reagan, issued a temporary restraining order, labeling the executive action as "blatantly unconstitutional." This decision came in response to lawsuits filed by several states and civil rights organizations, which argued that the order violated the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment clearly states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." Legal experts have long interpreted this to mean that anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents' immigration status, is automatically granted citizenship. The Supreme Court reinforced this interpretation in the 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, affirming that the Constitution grants birthright citizenship to almost all children born in the United States.

The Supreme Court seemed likely Friday to uphold the law that could ban TikTok, with most of the justices appearing to take seriously the national security risks posed by the wildly popular app whose parent company is based in China.

U.S. government says Chinese authorities could force the company to hand over sensitive data on its massive American user base or influence the spread of information on the platform through its proprietary algorithm.

TikTok says those concerns are overblown and the law should be struck down because it violates the First Amendment.

The law would ban TikTok in the U.S., unless it’s sold away from its Chinese parent company.

The measure is set to take effect Jan. 19, the day before a new term begins for President-elect Donald Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on the platform. The Republican says he wants to “save TikTok.”

Congress passed the measure with bipartisan support, and President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed it into law in April.

TikTok’s lawyers challenged the law in court, joined by users and content creators who say a ban would upend their livelihoods. TikTok says the national security concerns are based on inaccurate and hypothetical information.

But a unanimous appeals court panel made up of judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents has upheld the law. The court normally takes months to decide cases, but the justices could take action on this case within days, lightning-fast movement by court standards.

TikTok lawyers want the justices to step in before the law takes effect on Jan. 19, saying even a monthlong shutdown would cause the app to lose about one-third of its daily American users and significant advertising revenue.

But during oral arguments, conservative and liberal justices seemed more receptive to the government’s arguments that the danger was real and the law’s biggest effect is on the parent company ByteDance, a foreign corporation without First Amendment guarantees.

The justices, most notably Neil Gorsuch, still had tough questions from the government about how the law might affect free speech of the people who post on the app, and whether the government should be in the business of preventing the spread of misinformation.

The law that could ban TikTok is coming before the Supreme Court on Friday, with the justices largely holding the app’s fate in their hands.

The popular social media platform says the law violates the First Amendment and should be struck down.

TikTok’s parent company is based in China, and the U.S. government says that means it is a potential national security threat. Chinese authorities could force it to hand over sensitive data on the huge number of Americans who use it or could influence the spread of information on the platform, they say.

An appeals court has upheld the law, which bans TikTok unless it’s sold.

The law is set to take effect Jan. 19, the day before a new term begins for President-elect Donald Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on the platform. The Republican says he wants to “save TikTok.”

The short-form video-sharing app could be shut down in less than two weeks if the Supreme Court upholds the law.

Congress passed the measure with bipartisan support, and President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed it into law in April.

TikTok’s lawyers challenged the law in court, joined by users and content creators who say a ban would upend their livelihoods. TikTok says the national security concerns are based on inaccurate and hypothetical information.

But a unanimous appeals court panel made up of judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents has upheld the law.

The justices will issue a decision after arguments Friday, a lightning-fast movement by court standards.

The conservative-majority court could drop clues about how it’s leaning during oral arguments.

TikTok lawyers have urged the justices to step in before the law takes effect, saying even a monthlong shutdown would cause the app to lose about one-third of its daily American users and significant advertising revenue.

The court could quickly block the law from going into effect before issuing a final ruling, if at least five of the nine justices think it is unconstitutional.

President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to call off Friday’s sentencing in his hush money case in New York.

Trump’s lawyers turned to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday after New York courts refused to postpone the sentencing by Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump has denied wrongdoing.

The justices asked for a response from prosecutors by Thursday morning. Trump’s team sought an immediate stay of the scheduled sentencing, saying it would wrongly restrict him as he prepares to take office. While Merchan has indicated he will not impose jail time, fines or probation, Trump’s lawyers argued a felony conviction would still have intolerable side effects.

The sentencing should be delayed as he appeals the conviction to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government,” they argued.

The emergency motion is from lawyers John Sauer, Trump’s pick for solicitor general, who represents the government before the high court, and Todd Blanche, in line to be the second-ranking official at the Justice Department.

They also pointed to the Supreme Court ruling giving Trump and other presidents broad immunity from prosecutions over their actions in office, saying it supports their argument that his New York conviction should be overturned.

Their filing said the New York trial court “lacks authority to impose sentence and judgment on President Trump — or conduct any further criminal proceedings against him— until the resolution of his underlying appeal raising substantial claims of Presidential immunity, including by review in this Court if necessary.”

The Republican president-elect’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, called for the case to be dismissed in a statement. Trump simultaneously filed an emergency appeal in front of New York’s highest court.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, said it will respond in court papers. Trump’s convictions arose from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election.

Daniels claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. He denies it.

The Supreme Court’s immunity opinion came in a separate election interference case against him, but Trump’s lawyers say it means some of the evidence used against him in his hush money trial should have been shielded by presidential immunity. That includes testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office.

Merchan has disagreed, finding they would qualify as personal business. The Supreme Court’s immunity decision was largely about official acts of presidents while in office.

The Biden administration is shelling out billions of dollars for clean energy and approving major offshore wind projects as officials race to secure major climate initiatives before President Joe Biden’s term comes to an end.

Biden wants to establish a legacy for climate action that includes locking in a trajectory for reducing the nation’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Former President Donald Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Biden’s landmark climate and health care bill and stop offshore wind development if he returns to the White House in January.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told The Associated Press on Friday it would be “political malpractice” to undo clean energy incentives that are benefiting all pockets of America, with most of the investments going to counties with below-average weekly wages and college graduation rates.

“A lot of it is going to parts of America who have felt left behind. And this is giving them opportunity,” she said. “Why would we take that away? And why would we prevent counties and cities and people and families from having future-facing jobs in industries like clean energy, which young people are very excited about being a part of?”

Still, Granholm said, she’s racing to commit funding and get contracts signed.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee after Biden dropped from the race this summer, has said she will pursue a climate agenda similar to Biden’s, focused on reducing emissions, deploying renewables and creating clean energy jobs.

Announcements of major environmental grants and project approvals have speeded up in recent months as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian said Biden is “sprinting to the finish” and delivering on promises to promote clean energy and slow climate change:

The Environmental Protection Agency made $20 billion from a federal “green bank” available this summer for clean energy projects such as residential heat pumps, electric vehicle charging stations and community cooling centers.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the nation’s 10th large offshore wind farm, the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, in September, reaching the halfway mark for Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. On Oct. 1, the agency gave a key approval to an offshore wind farm project in New Jersey.

In the past month alone, the Energy Department has made six announcements of a billion dollars or more, including more than $3 billion for battery manufacturing projects and a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear plant in Michigan. And just last week, Biden set a 10-year deadline for cities to replace their lead pipes, with $2.6 billion available from the EPA to help communities comply.

Besides the climate law, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden is seeking to spend billions in projects approved under the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 and the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. The $1 trillion infrastructure law includes cash for roads, bridges, ports and more, while the CHIPS law aims to reinvigorate the computer chip sector in the United States through tens of billions of dollars in government support.

The Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled Friday that nearly 98,000 people whose citizenship documents hadn’t been confirmed can vote in state and local races, a significant decision that could influence ballot measures and tight legislative races.

The court’s decision comes after officials uncovered a database error that for two decades mistakenly designated the voters as having access to the full ballot. The voters already were entitled to cast ballots in federal races, including for president and Congress, regardless of how the court ruled.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, and Stephen Richer, the Republican Maricopa County recorder, had disagreed on what status the voters should hold. Richer asked the high court to weigh in, saying Fontes ignored state law by advising county officials to let affected voters cast full ballots.

Fontes said not allowing the voters who believed they had satisfied voting requirements access to the full ballot would raise equal protection and due process concerns.

The high court, which leans Republican, agreed with Fontes. It said county officials lack the authority to change the voters’ statuses because those voters registered long ago and had attested under the penalty of law that they are citizens. The justices also said the voters were not at fault for the database error and also mentioned the little time that’s left before the Nov. 5 general election.

“We are unwilling on these facts to disenfranchise voters en masse from participating in state contests,” Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer wrote in the ruling.

Of the nearly 98,000 affected voters, most of them reside in Maricopa County, which is home to Phoenix, and are longtime state residents who range in age from 45 to 60. About 37% of them are registered Republicans, about 27% are registered Democrats and the rest are independents or affiliated with minor parties.

Arizona is unique among states in that it requires voters to prove their citizenship to participate in local and state races. Voters can demonstrate citizenship by providing a driver’s license or tribal ID number, or they can attach a copy of a birth certificate, passport or naturalization documents.

Arizona considers drivers’ licenses issued after October 1996 to be valid proof of citizenship. However, a system coding error marked nearly 98,000 voters who obtained licenses before 1996 — roughly 2.5% of all registered voters — as full-ballot voters, state officials said.

Veering from the campaign trail to a courtroom, Donald Trump quietly observed Friday as his lawyer fought to overturn a verdict finding the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

The Republican nominee and his accuser, E. Jean Carroll, a writer, sat at tables about 15 feet (4.5 meters) apart, in a Manhattan federal appeals court. Trump didn’t acknowledge or look at Carroll as he passed directly in front of her on the way in and out, but he sometimes shook his head, including when Carroll’s attorney said he sexually attacked her.

Trump attorney D. John Sauer told three 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges that the civil trial in Carroll’s lawsuit was muddied by improper evidence.

“This case is a textbook example of implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory, inadmissible” evidence, Sauer said, noting that jurors saw the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted in 2005 about grabbing women’s genitals because when someone is a star, “you can do anything.”

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told judges the evidence in question was proper, and that there was plenty of proof in the nearly two-week-long trial of Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room decades ago. She said the “Access Hollywood” tape, as the trial judge had noted, could be viewed as a confession.

“E. Jean Carroll brought this case because Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996, in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, and then defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she was crazy and made the whole thing up,” Kaplan said.

Carroll, standing with Kaplan outside the courthouse afterward, declined to comment.

Trump left court in a motorcade, then delivered a lengthy diatribe against the case at Trump Tower, where he said again that Carroll — and other women who had accused him of sexual assault — were making everything up.

“It’s so false. It’s a made up, fabricated story by somebody, I think, initially, just looking to promote a book,” Trump said. Carroll first spoke publicly about her encounter with Trump in a newly published memoir in 2019.

In remarks to reporters Friday, Trump repeated many claims about Carroll that a jury has already deemed defamatory, and added some new ones, like suggesting that a photograph of him and Carroll together in 1987 was produced by artificial intelligence. It was unclear whether his comments could lead to a new defamation lawsuit by Carroll.

“I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: all options are on the table,” Kaplan said after Trump’s news conference.

The three-judge panel, if it follows the pattern of other appeals, would be unlikely to rule for weeks, if not months.

A jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually abused Carroll. He denies it. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million.

Trump did not attend the trial and has expressed regret that he was not there.

The civil case has political and financial implications for Trump.

The South Dakota Supreme Court has reversed a judge's ruling from last month that dismissed a lawsuit aiming to remove an abortion rights initiative from the November ballot.

The court on Friday reversed the order of dismissal and sent the case back for further proceedings. The anti-abortion group Life Defense Fund had appealed Judge John Pekas's ruling that dismissed its lawsuit seeking to invalidate the measure. The group alleged myriad wrongdoing related to petition circulators.

Meanwhile, South Dakota's top election official has an Aug. 13 deadline to inform county auditors of what measures will be on the November ballot.

In a statement, Life Defense Fund co-chair Leslee Unruh said the group is thrilled the court expedited the case and sent it back to the lower court.

“(Measure leader) Rick Weiland and his paid posse have broken laws, tricked South Dakotans into signing their abortion petition, left petitions unattended, and much more. Dakotans for Health illegally gathered signatures to get Amendment G on the ballot, therefore this measure should not be up for a vote this November,” she said.

Weiland said, “This is just an ongoing effort by the Life Defense Fund and the right-to-life lobby to stop and impede voters’ right to weigh in on this measure, and they continue, and have for almost 18 months, to do everything that they can think of, now, to kick it off the ballot.”

Measure backers submitted about 54,000 petition signatures in May. Secretary of State Monae Johnson's office later validated the measure for the ballot.

The measure would bar the state from regulating “a pregnant woman’s abortion decision and its effectuation” in the first trimester, but it would allow second-trimester regulations “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.”

The constitutional amendment would allow the state to regulate or prohibit abortion in the third trimester, “except when abortion is necessary, in the medical judgment of the woman’s physician, to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman.”

South Dakota outlaws abortion as a felony crime except in instances to save the life of the mother, under a trigger law that took effect in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

Abortion-rights supporters have prevailed on all seven statewide abortion ballot questions since the Dobbs decision. Voters in several other states are set to weigh in as well later this year.