标签： North America

In a decision that marks another major win for gun rights advocates across the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated a longstanding Hawaii regulation that prohibited permit-holding gun owners from bringing concealed handguns onto privately owned land open to the general public. The 6-3 ruling, issued Thursday, aligned the court’s conservative majority with gun owners who argued that the geographic restriction on legal firearm carry violated the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms.

Writing for the majority, conservative Justice Samuel Alito rejected the lower court’s reasoning that Hawaii had the authority to ban concealed-carry permit holders from entering common public-facing private spaces including shopping malls and dine-in restaurants unless they obtained explicit permission from the property owner. Alito emphasized that the regulation placed unreasonable, crippling limits on law-abiding Hawaii residents who had already completed the state’s strict screening and qualification requirements to receive a carry permit. “This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,” Alito wrote in the opinion, concluding that “we hold that the law is unconstitutional.”

Critically, the court’s ruling only overturns the broad private property carry ban. It leaves intact all of Hawaii’s other existing gun restrictions, including prohibitions on carrying firearms in sensitive locations such as schools, government buildings, bars, public beaches, and public parks, according to reporting from CBS News, a media partner on the case’s coverage.

The legal challenge originated in 2023, when three Hawaii residents and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition filed suit against the regulation, arguing it violated Second Amendment rights. A federal district court initially ruled in the challengers’ favor, finding the rule most likely contravened the constitutional right to bear arms. But Hawaii state officials appealed the ruling, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit later upheld the challenged law, setting the stage for the Supreme Court to take up the appeal.

The Hawaii regulation, often derisively called the “vampire rule” by gun rights supporters, required permit holders to request explicit permission from every private property owner before entering their land with a firearm. Even a routine stop to refuel a car or pick up groceries at a supermarket could leave a permit holder facing misdemeanor charges, which carried a maximum penalty of up to one year in prison. The former Trump administration threw its support behind the gun owners in the case, echoing arguments that the rule put legally authorized permit holders at unnecessary risk of criminal penalty for ordinary daily activities.

The Supreme Court’s decision is expected to have ripple effects beyond Hawaii, as four other heavily Democratic-leaning states — California, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland — maintain nearly identical restrictions on private property gun carry. Currently, most U.S. states already allow permit holders to carry concealed firearms on publicly accessible private property, so only a small handful of state regulations will be directly affected by this precedent. This ruling marks the second time during the Supreme Court’s current term that the court has ruled in favor of gun rights expansion, building on a series of recent decisions that have rolled back long-standing gun control regulations across the country. The court’s three liberal justices issued a joint dissent opposing the majority’s decision.

In a closely watched decision that will reshape how asylum claims are processed along the US-Mexico border, the Supreme Court has delivered a 6-3 ruling upholding the Trump administration’s long-debated ‘metering’ policy, which restricts asylum access for migrants who have not yet physically entered US territory. The decision ends a years-long legal battle and paves the way for the policy to be reimplemented, nearly four years after it was rolled back by the preceding Biden administration.

The core of the legal fight centered on interpreting a key line of US federal asylum law, which states that only migrants who have ‘arrived in the United States’ are eligible to apply for protection from persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds. The Trump administration has long argued that this language explicitly excludes asylum seekers stopped while still on the Mexican side of the border, a position that was rejected by a lower court before the case was appealed to the nation’s highest court.

Writing the majority opinion for the court’s conservative majority, Justice Samuel Alito framed the question as a straightforward matter of common language interpretation. ‘In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place . . . before the person enters that place,’ Alito wrote. The ruling reverses the lower court’s finding that the metering policy was unlawful, in the case titled Noem v. Al Otro Lado, a prominent immigrant advocacy organization.

During oral arguments held in March, justices from both sides of the ideological spectrum pushed attorneys on both sides to clarify the legal threshold for what counts as ‘arriving in the US.’ Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned what specific, dispositive marker would qualify a migrant as having arrived in the country, while fellow conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch asked whether a migrant waiting in a queue at a port of entry, or standing at the water’s edge of the Rio Grande, would meet the standard.

Vivek Suri, an assistant solicitor general arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, told the court the answer was unambiguous: ‘You can’t arrive in the United States while you’re still standing in Mexico. That should be the end of this case.’ But Kelsi Corkran, an attorney from the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection representing the migrant plaintiffs, argued that migrants meet the arrival requirement once they reach the threshold of a port of entry, waiting to cross into the country.

The ‘metering’ policy gets its name from its core function: it allows US Customs and Border Protection officials to cap the number of asylum claims processed each day, citing limited staffing and overburdened processing systems as justification for turning away additional seekers. First introduced by the Trump administration in 2016, the policy was formally rescinded in 2021 when Democratic President Joe Biden took office. With Trump’s return to the White House in 2025, the administration moved to reinstate the policy, leading to the latest legal challenge that ended at the Supreme Court.

This ruling is not the final word on Trump’s broader border asylum agenda. Shortly after returning to office in 2025, Trump announced a separate, far more sweeping ban on asylum eligibility for most border arrivals, a policy that remains tied up in ongoing litigation and has yet to reach the Supreme Court.

Thousands of attendees have converged on Washington D.C.’s National Mall for the Great American State Fair, a public gathering organized by former President Donald Trump as part of a broader slate of events commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence. The high-profile gathering adds to a series of public activities being rolled out by Trump, tying national patriotic celebrations to his ongoing political engagement ahead of a critical election cycle. Located at the heart of the U.S. capital, the National Mall has long served as a venue for large-scale national celebrations and political gatherings, making it a symbolic choice for the event marking the country’s historic milestone. Organizers have framed the fair as a tribute to American heritage, drawing crowds from across the country who gathered to mark the semiquincentennial in what has become a politically charged patriotic event. The Great American State Fair stands as one of the most visible events in the lineup of celebrations planned by Trump, which are designed to highlight national identity and rally supporters around themes of American exceptionalism. As the U.S. marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, this gathering illustrates how major national anniversaries have become intertwined with contemporary political activity in the country.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly shared his first assessment of the possibility that Andy Burnham, the well-known British politician, could ascend to the position of UK Prime Minister. In his remarks, Trump sought to frame Burnham through two distinct descriptors, downplaying the UK politician’s profile by dismissing him as “the mayor of a town” while also attaching a strong ideological label by calling him “extremely liberal”.

This comment marks the first time that Trump has spoken on record about Burnham’s potential bid for the country’s top political job, bringing a surprising cross-Atlantic perspective into British domestic political discourse. Currently, Andy Burnham serves as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, a major metropolitan region in northern England that oversees a population of millions — a role that carries far more responsibility and public influence than the small-town implication of Trump’s phrasing. Political analysts have noted that the former U.S. leader’s characterization appears to be a deliberate attempt to minimize Burnham’s standing among potential conservative-aligned voters who may be skeptical of left-leaning policy platforms.

The intervention comes amid ongoing speculation within UK political circles about potential future leadership bids, with Burnham emerging as a prominent figure within the Labour Party often cited as a possible contender when the question of a leadership change arises. Trump’s unsolicited commentary has already sparked debate across British political spaces, with supporters of Burnham pushing back against the former American president’s framing of the mayor’s role and ideological positioning, while conservative commentators have echoed Trump’s description to criticize Burnham’s policy agenda.

More than four months after the official drawdown of Operation Metro Surge, a high-profile federal immigration crackdown launched by the Trump administration in Minneapolis and surrounding areas of Minnesota, the scars of the intensive enforcement action remain deeply etched into the state’s immigrant and refugee communities.

The operation, launched last December, was framed by the White House as a targeted effort to remove undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions, tied to a sprawling federal fraud probe into Minnesota’s childcare sector that the administration claimed disproportionately involved members of the state’s large Somali community. But what was billed as a targeted law enforcement action quickly spiraled into widespread public backlash after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, during separate anti-operation protests in January. By the end of February, facing growing cross-party condemnation, the administration pulled hundreds of deployed agents out of the region.

For many asylum seekers and green card holders who built new lives in Minnesota after fleeing conflict and persecution, the sudden surge of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents upended every part of daily life. Aliah, a 20-year-old Afghan asylum recipient and college student who requested partial anonymity over safety fears, thought her 2021 resettlement would bring stability focused on education and work. Instead, she and her family now live in constant fear the large-scale raids will resume.

“We don’t have anywhere to go if we go back to my country,” Aliah told reporters. “We’re still a little scared. Months after the operation ended, its effects still haven’t gone away.”

That persistent anxiety is echoed across communities. Fatima, a 19-year-old Somali refugee who only returned to in-person high school classes in April after months of virtual learning out of fear of raids on campus, says the uncertainty never fades. “I ask myself every day… if they come back, what are you going to do? I’m scared still if they come back,” she said.

Michelle Eberhard, director of refugee services at the International Institute of Minnesota, explained that the collective trauma of the large-scale enforcement action has had long-lasting psychological impacts. “When you have an invasion like this, people continue to experience the ramifications of that for a long time,” she said. “People are still living through that trauma. Even as the situation has shifted out of open chaos, we’re now in a very big period of ongoing uncertainty.”

That uncertainty extends beyond the threat of sudden raids. In January, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would re-vet 5,600 Minnesota refugees who had not yet secured green cards, deeming the prior administration’s vetting process “wholly inadequate” and planning to expand the program nationally. Eberhard says some refugees have already been transferred to out-of-state ICE detention for re-interviews without access to legal counsel, while others have received formal notices that the government intends to revoke their refugee status, and many more have heard nothing at all, left in limbo.

Local educators also report lasting damage to student populations. Katie, a Minneapolis public school teacher who organized community aid for impacted students during the height of the operation, says many families kept children home from school for months to avoid potential encounters with ICE. While the school wrapped up its formal aid program in April, it continues to distribute remaining emergency funds, and some students have dropped out entirely after family members lost their jobs during the crackdown.

Even for U.S. citizens like Katie, the impact remains inescapable. “The city is just this minefield of ghosts,” she said. “Even when you forget about it, it just pops up again when you pass the memorials for Pretti and Good. What these children have witnessed will affect our city for generations – it’ll shape what they vote for, what they believe in, what they think of our government.”

While official data confirms the bulk of deployed agents have left, the enforcement apparatus has not been fully withdrawn. Court filings from the ACLU of Minnesota show that as of March, 482 federal agents remained in the state, compared to just 190 assigned to ICE’s St. Paul office before the operation launched. Border Czar Tom Homan has confirmed that ICE will continue conducting targeted enforcement actions across the state, a practice the agency has maintained for decades.

Morgan Budiandri, of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), says the operation has just shifted its approach, becoming less visible in urban centers with heavy public scrutiny but continuing unabated in suburban and rural areas. “The deportation machine has kind of turned more surgical, so to speak. There’s less activity in the cities where there’s a lot more prying eyes,” Budiandri explained. “But out in the suburbs, we still have reports of officers coming to businesses demanding to see rosters of all employees.”

Data from Human Rights First, an international human rights nonprofit, also shows ICE deportation flights out of Minneapolis continue, with roughly 100 flights recorded so far this year, most heading to processing centers in El Paso, Texas.

Analysis of government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project undermines the administration’s framing of the operation as a crackdown on criminal undocumented immigrants: more than 60% of those arrested during the surge had no prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has defended the operation, releasing a list of 23 arrested immigrants facing charges or convictions for serious offenses including murder, rape, domestic violence, and theft, and calling the operation a necessary success to remove “vicious criminals, including murderers, rapists, gang members, and terrorists” from the country.

While some Minnesota Republicans supported the crackdown, even state Representative Joe McDonald, a backer of the policy, acknowledged earlier this year that “mistakes were made. We’re not perfect.” The backlash over the deaths of Good and Pretti ultimately led the Trump administration to remove Greg Bovino, the official leading the operation in Minneapolis, in January.

Beyond the psychological and personal harm, the operation has inflicted severe lasting damage to Minnesota’s local economy. The Lake Street corridor in south Minneapolis’ predominantly Hispanic Phillips neighborhood, home to hundreds of immigrant-owned small businesses, was hit particularly hard: during the height of the surge, at least half of all corridor businesses closed, according to the Lake Street Council, leading to an estimated $30 million in monthly lost revenue.

“The economic devastation to Lake Street businesses because of Operation Metro Surge was immediate and severe,” said Theresa Swaney, the council’s director of operations. “The terror inflicted on this community was significant, and its effects on Minneapolis and Lake Street in particular will be long-lasting.”

Widespread fear of detention kept thousands of workers home from their jobs, leading to massive wage losses across the Twin Cities. The U.S. Immigration Policy Center estimated in March that Minneapolis and St. Paul workers lost roughly $240 million in total wages during and after the surge, while local businesses lost a combined $610 million in total revenue. Statewide, eviction filings in 2026 are already up 8% compared to 2025, according to data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.

When asked to comment on the economic harm, DHS responded that “The cost of American lives saved is incalculable,” pointing to the arrests of convicted criminal immigrants. But immigration advocates say the long-term social and economic costs of the surge will shape Minnesota for years to come, as immigrant communities continue to grapple with fear, uncertainty, and the lingering fallout of the largest immigration crackdown in recent state history.