WIN SOME, LOSE SOME: President Trump had a mixed day with the Supreme Court, winning a more executive power but losing his bid to restrict voting by mail as well as his last ditch appeal to avoid paying a $5 million judgment to writer E. Jean Carroll.

  In the one big win for Trump, the court vastly expanded presidential authority, ruling that the president can fire independent government regulators despite federal laws that protect their jobs. The court left an exception for the Federal Reserve, preventing the president from immediately removing one governor, Lisa Cook, from the central bank without any kind of process.

  Again, the three liberal justices were in the minority. The decision allows Trump to fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission, simply because she does not follow his political agenda despite the law that says commissioners can be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

  Trump in a social media post called the slaughter decision “the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years.”

  Setting back Trump’s campaign to make voting harder, the court also ruled that the laws in states that accept mail ballots delivered after election day are constitutional. The court ruling upheld a Mississippi law allowing mail ballots to be received up to five days after Election Day. Trump blames mail ballots, in part, for his defeat in 2020.

  Hitting Trump in the wallet, the court declined his request to throw out the $5 million civil judgment against him awarded in 2023 by a New York jury that found he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll.

  Trump has vowed to also appeal a second case that spun off Carroll’s allegations. In January 2024, a separate jury ordered  Trump to pay the writer $83.3 million in damages for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of the decades-old rape.

THE SUPREMES: In other Supreme Court businesses, the justices are expected to announce their decision today on President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship.

 Yesterday the court agreed to hear a challenge to two Arizona laws requiring its citizens to show proof of US citizenship to register to vote.  Proof of citizenship to register is another part of President Trump’s crusade to crack down on what he claims is massive voter fraud in America.

THE WAR ROOM: President Trump said the US and Iran would meet today in Qatar, at Iran’s request. Iran denies it.

  “In the coming days, we will have no negotiation meetings at any level with the American side, and the trip by U.S. representatives to Qatar is unrelated to the trip of the Iranian delegation,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said in a press briefing, according to state-run Iranian media.

  Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that “The meeting in Doha is going to be perhaps important, perhaps not. We’re going to find out.”

 INFINITE SCROLL:

— House Speaker Mike Johnson sent the White House the affordable housing act President Trump refused to sign, starting the 10-day clock for it to become law if Trump does not veto it. The 10 days does not include Sundays.

  Trump called the housing bill “a big yawn” and said he’s still not sure whether he will sign it.

— A federal judge yesterday ordered the Trump administration to permanently abandon its efforts to suspend funding for the $16 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River, calling those attempts “flagrantly” illegal.

  Trump cut funding putting 1,000 people out of work to punish New York Democrats and in particular Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer. “We’re cutting a $20 billion project that Schumer fought for 15 years to get, and I’m cutting the project,”  Judge Jeannette Vargas quoted Trump as saying last October. “The project is gonna be dead. It’s just pretty much dead right now.”

LIKE A HEAT WAVE: The temperature in Washington DC could hit 100 several days in a row as a heat wave settles into the East over the Fourth of July weekend. 

  Dangerous heat is predicted today all the way from Wisconsin and the upper Michigan peninsula to the Gulf Coast. An extreme heat watch is on through Saturday evening. 

THE MUSIC STOPS: A group of 119 current and former employees at Bard College’s Fisher Center cultural venue are demanding that the Board of Trustees end all of former college president Leon Botstein’s involvement with the institution.

  After leading Bard in the Hudson valley for 51 years, Botstein retired this spring following revelations that he had a relationship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Botstein has said he plans to continue at the Fisher Center as a musician, conductor, and faculty member.

  Over the years of his tenure, Botstein built Bard from a backwater college into a serious academic and cultural institution.

THE SPIN RACK: The Justice Department says it is investigating Arizona’s Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego for his possible use of campaign money for such personal expenses as family trips to Puerto Rico, Nantucket, St. Barth’s and Miami as well as more than $26,000 in child care. Gallego has been considered a possible presidential candidate for 2028. — The numbers show that the murder rate in the US is approaching an historic low going back to the 1960s. — The San Francisco archdiocese has agreed to pay a total of $395 million to 530 people who brought claims of sexual abuse by the clergy. — The dormant World Trade Center office building in Los Angeles is going to be converted to 512 units of affordable housing. Rents in the World Trade Center, to be renamed Sky Castle, are expected to start at $937 for a one-bedroom unit. 

BELOW THE FOLD:  Ford Motors rehired 350 experienced engineers because the company’s artificial intelligence wasn’t smart enough to do the job.

-30-