NEW YORK — President Donald Trump on Monday asked a New York appeals court to overturn his criminal conviction in the Manhattan hush money case that made him a felon as he plotted a path back to the White House last year. In a 96-page filing, Trump’s lawyers relied on many of the same arguments that Trump previously made before, during and immediately following the 2024 trial, including that the conviction should be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity and that the judge who oversaw the trial should have recused himself because he made political contributions. “This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,” his lawyers, a six-person team of Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys, wrote. The appeal is just one of Trump’s attempts to overturn his conviction last May of 34 counts of business fraud for his effort to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. He has separately asked a federal appeals court to transfer his state criminal case to federal court. Such a move would pave the way for Trump to eventually ask the Supreme Court to erase his criminal record by tossing his conviction on presidential immunity grounds. Though Trump has suffered few consequences as a result of the conviction — he won reelection in November and was subsequently sentenced to no punishment in January — he’ll still carry the title of felon unless an appellate court overturns the case. Trump’s lawyers argued in the filing Monday that the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, issued more than a month after a New York jury convicted Trump in the hush money case, meant prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office should have been precluded from using evidence connected to Trump’s “official acts” as president during his first term. That evidence, his lawyers wrote, included testimony about conversations between Trump and Hope Hicks, who was then the White House communications director, as well as Trump’s social media posts. Late last year, the trial judge, Justice Juan Merchan, rejected the notion that the immunity ruling applied to the evidence used in the case, finding that evidence at issue related not to Trump’s official acts, but instead to his private conduct — specifically, his effort to conceal a hush money payment to Daniels. Trump’s lawyers also took aim at Merchan himself, as they did numerous times during the course of the prosecution, writing that “his impartiality was reasonably in doubt” because of small-dollar political contributions he made to Democratic candidates or causes in 2020. They also cited his daughter’s work for a digital agency whose clients include a number of Democratic officials. When Trump’s lawyers made the same arguments in 2023, asking Merchan to recuse himself, the judge disclosed that he had sought guidance earlier that year from the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics about several issues Trump subsequently raised. The judge said the committee had issued an advisory opinion regarding his daughter’s employment that concluded: “We see nothing in the inquiry to suggest that the outcome of the case could have any effect on the judge’s relative, the relative’s business, or any of their interests.”

The State Department rebuffed a recent ruling from the International Court of Justice on Wednesday, defending Israel on a court opinion that found the Israeli government is obligated to facilitate a stream of aid to Gaza. The ICJ ruling — issued earlier Wednesday — asserted Israel has an obligation under human rights law to allow essential aid to reach Gaza in collaboration with United Nations agencies. In a post on X shortly after, the State Department slammed the decision as “corrupt,” defending both Israel’s and the Trump administration’s actions in the region while also reiterating long-held allegations tying the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees to Hamas. “As President Trump and Secretary Rubio work tirelessly to bring peace to the region, this so-called ‘court’ issues a nakedly politicized non-binding ‘advisory opinion’ unfairly bashes Israel and gives UNRWA a free pass for its deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism,” the State Department wrote in a statement. “This ICJ’s ongoing abuse of its advisory opinion discretion suggests that it is nothing more than a partisan political tool, which can be weaponized against Americans,” the agency continued. The Trump administration has looked to sever ties with UNRWA due to claims that some of its members were involved in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israel. The ICJ found Wednesday that Israel “has not substantiated its allegations that a significant part of UNRWA employees ‘are members of Hamas … or other terrorist factions.’” In Wednesday’s ruling, the court said the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services had investigated 18 UNRWA staff members, with the cooperation of Israel, and dismissed nine members who “might have been involved” in the attack. The court said investigators “found either no or insufficient evidence to support the involvement of the other ten investigated persons.” The court also demanded Israel “co-operate in good faith” with the United Nations by providing assistance to the region. “The State of Israel has an obligation under international human rights law to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including through the presence and activities of the United Nations, other international organizations and third States, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the court wrote. The court’s advisory opinion outlines other obligations Israel must adhere to as the country continues to take steps toward ending the war, like protecting access to medical services, prohibiting forcible deportations from the region and prohibiting the use of starvation of civilians as “a method of warfare.”

BIRMINGHAM — It had suits, wonks, outriders, sponsors, lobbyists, receptions, and a rapidly-growing party flock. But Reform UK’s conference remained in many ways the Nigel Farage show. From the scrum around the populist leader to the teal “No. 10” football shirts in his name, Farage — a 30-year veteran of right-wing insurgency — dominated. He filled most of the hall at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre for his Friday speech, despite a last-minute timing change. Much of Reform’s runaway lead in U.K. opinion polls is down to one man’s charisma. “It’s like going on tour with the Pope,” said one party figure, granted anonymity (like other officials and politicians quoted in this piece) to speak candidly. But to survive in government, Reform will need more. And Farage, who turns 65 in 2029, knows it. He and his allies are now conspicuously trying to emphasize that Reform is not just about him. Attendees could barely move for talk of new party structures and policy fringes. Farage tries to farm out media interviews and visits to his allies, particularly his deputy Richard Tice and new Head of Policy Zia Yusuf (neither of whom have ruled out eyeing the job of chancellor). Yet Farage’s word is still gospel. The leader personally pushed to have Aseem Malhotra, an adviser to Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, on the conference’s main stage due to his links with the U.S. administration, one party figure said. Malhotra then used the platform to suggest Covid vaccinations may have caused King Charles’ cancer (Reform distanced itself from his comments). Like the MAGA movement — reflected in the conference’s “Make Britain Great Again” caps, stage pyrotechnics and talk of the death of the old right — Reform is still vested in an ultra-high-profile figurehead. But Britain does not have presidents, and Downing Street has far fewer political appointees than the White House. Reform must prepare for a system that is bigger than the principal. That begins, for now, with policy. THE SMALL TENT Reform now has three fully-fledged paid policy officials, said a party figure, including Simon Marcus, a former Tory councilor in London. This is a small number for a party hoping to reach government, though soon he will have more backup. Reform is recruiting at least four more paid policy officials, several officials told POLITICO, including two on central policy and one each for Scotland and Wales ahead of devolved elections in May 2026. There are unpaid officials too, such as Yusuf, and the party relies on enthusiastic volunteers. In Scotland, where the party does not yet have a paid policy official, party figures pointed to an unpaid activist as the main backroom thinker on policy (as part of a committee). Neil Hall/EPA Broadly speaking, though, the circle of people in the room for key decisions is small. As well as key elected representatives and Yusuf, Reform figures who were asked by POLITICO pointed to Farage’s Director of Communications and effectively his chief of staff Dan Jukes; long-time Farage ally and strategist Chris Bruni-Lowe; Director of Operations Aaron Lobo; and Reform Director of Communications Ed Sumner. A second Reform figure described Farage’s core team as “very tight.” A third Reform figure suggested four people plus Farage were in the room at key moments, adding: “Ultimately Nigel is the leader and he makes the decisions.” Yusuf told a conference event that Reform’s recent immigration policy — a sprawling pledge that would lead to around 600,000 deportations — was drawn up “entirely in-house.” On policy, though, Reform figures are keen to show that they know they’ll need a wider pool of thinkers. “Our biggest weakness is we have no experience in government,” said a fourth Reform figure. “We have no one that knows the ropes.” Sometimes it seems to show. Farage’s big announcement in his Friday speech, to stop migrant boat crossings in the English Channel “within two weeks of winning government,” became “within two weeks of legislation being passed” by the time he gave press interviews Saturday. Tory strategists are separately keen to pick at what they paint as fiscal incoherence in Farage’s call to ease a two-child limit on benefits — a pledge that emerged from his desire for more British babies — at the same time as “serious cuts” to the welfare budget. A fifth Reform figure argued the leader is a factor: “Nigel’s not a huge policy guy,” they said. “Nigel’s role is to drive the party forward, to inspire the ranks.” AND SO, ENTER THE WONKS Reform’s nine-member party board met for the first time last week. It consists of Farage, Yusuf, chairman David Bull, racehorse trainer Andrew Reid, the former leader of UKIP (Reform’s predecessor party) Paul Nuttall, ex-GB News presenter Darren Grimes, regional mayor Andrea Jenkyns, former Tory Greater Manchester mayoral candidate Dan Barker, and Farage’s former press chief Gawain Towler. Yusuf, who Farage named as head of policy on Friday, told a fringe event that board will have a “subordinate committee” that essentially “rubber-stamps” party policy. Then there is a nascent ecosystem of think tanks including the Reform-friendly Centre for a Better Britain (referred to verbally by supporters as CFABB). Its chief executive Jonathan Brown — Reform’s former chief operating officer — meets Tice roughly every couple of weeks, said a person with knowledge of the meetings. While the group declined to say who funds it, a document leaked to the Sunday Times suggested it wanted to raise more than £25 million by 2029 — much of it from the U.S. (A CFABB official insisted to POLITICO that all current donors are either British or reside in Britain.) The chair of its advisory board, James Orr, has been a friend of U.S. Vice President JD Vance since 2019. Neill Hall/EPA But CFABB also has a British flavor — as a home for Brexit warriors of old. Veteran Tory Euroskeptic John Redwood is helping with some of its work. Christopher Howarth, the former fixer for the Tory European Research Group, is one of its seven or so current staff. Brown is in a WhatsApp group with right-wing Conservative peers, including Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost. And his fellow CBB director David Lilley — who has donated more than £250,000 to Reform — previously funded Johnson and the Vote Leave campaign. A CAST OF THOUSANDS Yusuf told members he will take the “best ideas” from right-wing think tanks — others include the Prosperity Institute (formerly known as Legatum) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance — at the same time as building out internal policy. But at other times they will disagree. Brown has also met Robert Jenrick, the ambitious Conservative shadow minister who is pushing on law and order. Reform is keen to stress that CFABB is independent of the party. Reform is involving its own MPs (Richard Tice, Lee Anderson and Sarah Pochin) in policy development, while Farage is also leaning on outsiders with real-world experience such as detective Colin Sutton and prison governor Vanessa Frake. Yusuf told a fringe event: “We have draughtsmen working on legislation. We will have thousands of pages of legislation ready to go.” Reform can rely too on its growing pool of elected officials in councils and mayoralties across England — expected to increase dramatically after May 2026 elections in Scotland and Wales. Yet this growing cast leaves some of Reform’s own foot soldiers in the dark. Helen Manson, interim chair of the South Cambridgeshire branch, told Yusuf — who focuses both on red meat policies such as migration and his personal interests like cryptocurrency — that she receives many questions on the doorstep about whether the party is ready for government. “We don’t know what Reform is doing. We can’t respond to that,” she said. Lobbyists at the conference for the first time felt similarly. One industry figure complained that Tice, when holding private business round tables, tends to lay out his “talking points” but does not respond well to challenge. A second said: “It was obvious that a small group of think tanks are currently the only engine room for ideas beyond Reform’s pet interests.” Speaking to POLITICO, Brown said: “You can’t really judge them on the policy for the next election because it’s early days. I think the idea is to build out a full and integrated policy platform and an implementation strategy before the next election.” But some senior Reform-linked figures resist opening the conversation too widely — as the center would lose control. Orr told a fringe event: “Don’t underestimate how much effect a small band of dedicated people in the cockpit of the nation can do.” Orr looked to an unlikely comparison — what he called Tony Blair’s “catastrophic and extremely consequential” Labour government in 1997. That, argued Orr, was run by “a gang of six … [and] they completely overturned the constitutional, legal, political and cultural landscape of the U.K. for 25 years. In fact, we’re going to spend the best part of the next 15 years trying to unravel it.” NO SUCCESSION PLAN? Small team or not, the importance of elevating the background players out of Farage’s shadow isn’t just desirable for Reform — it’s existential. When Farage denied on stage that his party is a “one-man band,” he used the example of the branded football shirts in the conference shop — pointing out that several other party figures had their names on shirts as well. Tellingly, when POLITICO visited the shop, only the “Farage” shirts were filling the shelves. An announcement that Farage was to sign shirts for 45 minutes (price for a signed shirt: £100) caused a jolt of excitement in the venue. More importantly, it was Farage’s return to the party last year that turbocharged its (already healthy) poll rating, and has senior Reform figures beginning to eye up which Whitehall department they would like to lead. Contrary to protestations by Farage’s allies, aides and the man himself, the party is still tied closely to him — to the point where some in Reform darkly wonder how the party would survive if he suddenly wasn’t on the scene. “If something happens [to Nigel] now, we’re fucked,” a Reform candidate in the last election said. In four years “maybe we’d be fine,” they said, but right now “there’s no one else with the charisma or the ability to pull people together.” Towler, his longtime former aide, has a more nuanced view. “There is nobody else in Britain who can do what he does,” he said, but “there is a bunch of driven people who want to change the country and I think they would still do it without him. It would be awful and it would be harder, but I really think the mood of the country is so febrile and so anti-the last two, that we need change. Nigel is a vector for that change — he’s not the only vector.” Farage is keen for the public to agree. He closed the conference by inviting all the main speakers for an on-stage singalong of the U.K’s national anthem led by the Greater Lincolnshire Mayor Andrea Jenkyns — who had earlier surprised attendees with a solo musical performance of her own-self written song Insomniac. The hope in Reform circles is that by boosting those around him, Farage will create figures substantial enough to be major players in a future government, while also reducing the party’s reliance on his oratory and leadership skills. “I think Reform is coming out of Nigel’s shadow to some extent,” said Brown. “All of a sudden there’s a raft of elected officials who are there. Are any of them Nigel yet? No, of course not. But Nigel has had 30 years so it’s very unfair to pick the consummate performer of his generation and say ‘why aren’t you like him?’ Nigel wasn’t like that in 2005.” Others point out that Farage, despite being electoral dynamite, remains a Marmite figure with harder-to-reach sections of the electorate. “Yes he’s a brilliant communicator and no one’s doubting that, but he’s a known quantity and a lot of voters don’t like him,” said one Labour Party official. Then there is the question of whether Farage — who spent years in lucrative TV work — really wants the grim responsibilities of being prime minister at all. His allies insist he does. Towler said: “He made a decision last year to get back involved. Is it his want, is it his ambition? Really, I don’t think it is. But does he think he’s the only person to break the duopoly of failure in this country? Yes. And he takes that responsibility deeply seriously.” Wherever things go from here, though, Farage remains a godhead for now — sometimes quite literally. “His body is stronger than anybody else’s,” said a sixth Reform figure, when asked about what the party would be without him. “He’s survived a plane crash and everything.” Some Reform figures are daring to dream of the party’s fortunes as similarly immortal. But things don’t always work out that way. John Johnston and Abby Wallace contributed reporting.

TURKEY’S ERDOĞAN BETS BIG WITH HIGH-STAKES KURDISH GAMBLE As the president’s traditional support wanes, he is seeking a risky deal with the Kurds to buy a political lifeline. But is there too much mutual mistrust for a deal? By ELÇIN POYRAZLAR Photo-illustrations by Tarini Sharma for POLITICO Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is making the biggest gamble of his career to save his political skin, just as popular opinion — even in traditionalist, conservative strongholds — swings sharply against him.  His goal? To bring the large Kurdish minority onto his side by ending Turkey’s most intractable political and military conflict that has killed some 40,000 people over four decades and has brutally scarred national life. His move? To give a place in Turkish politics to Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, an organization long proscribed as terrorists by Ankara, the U.S. and EU. It is a sign of Erdoğan’s plummeting fortunes that he is even contemplating such a radical step to keep his grip over the NATO heavyweight of 85 million people. But the Islamist populist knows this is his moment to try to consolidate his position as president — potentially for life — or risk being wiped off the political scene. Advertisement Since suffering crushing defeats at the hands of the secular opposition in the municipal elections of 2024 — most significantly in conservative bastions — Erdoğan has made an increasingly desperate lurch toward full authoritarianism. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu has been thrown in jail and the security services have launched a nationwide crackdown to arrest opposition mayors. The allies who supported Erdoğan on his rise to power have largely deserted him.   While the need for a new support base helps explain Erdoğan’s Kurdish gambit, it’s a high-risk move with no guarantee of success. Mainstream Turkish opinion is very wary of the PKK, and the Kurds themselves are extremely nervous about trusting the Turkish authorities. This deal is far from an easy sell. Some initial progress is expected on Friday with a first batch of PKK weapons to be handed over in northern Iraq, probably in the predominantly Kurdish province of Sulaymaniyah. Erdoğan is widely seen as the engineer of the Kurdish rapprochement when his regional diplomacy is also enjoying success. . | Mustafa Kamaci/Anadolu via Getty Images While publicly proclaiming the importance of his “terror-free Turkey” project for reconciliation with the Kurds, Erdoğan is also showing he is wide awake to the risks. He has conceded his project faces “sabotage” from within Turkey, and from within the ranks of the PKK. Sensing some of the potential hostility to his PKK deal, in an address to parliament on Wednesday, the president was careful to pre-empt any attacks from political adversaries that an accord could dishonor veterans or other casualties of the conflict. “Nowhere in the efforts for a terror-free Turkey is there, nor can there be, a step that will tarnish the memory of our martyrs or injure their spirits,” he said. “Guided by the values for which our martyrs made their sacrifices, God willing, we are saving Turkey from a half-century-long calamity and completely removing this bloody shackle that has been placed upon our country.”  Advertisement The jailed Öcalan, speaking in his first video since 1999, said on Wednesday that the PKK movement and its previous quest for a separate Kurdish nation-state were now at an end, as its core demand — the recognition of Kurdish existence — has been met. “Existence has been recognized and therefore the primary objective has been achieved. In this sense, it is outdated … This is a voluntary transition from the phase of armed struggle to the phase of democratic politics and law. This is not a loss, but should be seen as a historic achievement,” he said in his video. ISLAND PRISON No issue in Turkish politics is more bitter than the Kurdish conflict. Some Kurds describe themselves as the most numerous stateless people in the world — there are millions in neighboring Iraq, Iran and Syria, and in Turkey they account for approximately 15 to 20 percent of the population. Many Kurds say they have been denied their rights since the formation of the Turkish republic just over a century ago and have long been oppressed. In turn, many Turks see the PKK, which long waged war against the Turkish state, as a terrorist group — and its leader Öcalan, who has been confined to a prison island all this century, as a murderer. Given the explosive range of feelings about Öcalan, it is remarkable that such a personality will prove so central to securing Erdoğan’s deal.   Öcalan, center, calls on the organization to disarm, in a video recorded in prison and published Wednesday. | Tunahan Turhan/LightRocket via Getty Images Known as “Apo,” he is serving a life sentence for treason and separatism on the island of İmralı in the Sea of Marmara. Notorious in part due to the movie “Midnight Express,” İmralı is referred to as “Turkey’s Alcatraz” and has held Öcalan, for several years as its sole inmate, since 1999. He is no longer alone. During the peace process between 2013 and 2015, a number of PKK prisoners were transferred to İmralı to serve as part of Öcalan’s unofficial secretariat. While the Kurdish policy of Erdoğan and his AK Party has oscillated between crackdowns and conciliation during their 22 years in power, Turkey’s hard-line nationalists have long denounced the PKK as a threat and had little time for Kurdish rights. Perhaps the most outspoken enemy of Öcalan has been a veteran politician called Devlet Bahçeli, an ultranationalist leader, who is now Erdoğan’s main ally, helping him pad out his parliamentary majority.  Advertisement In 2007, Bahçeli had even called for Öcalan to be executed. Ten years ago he lashed out at Erdoğan over one of his sporadic attempts to negotiate with the PKK. But last October, in one of the sudden shake-ups that intermittently convulse politics in Turkey, Bahçeli suggested Öcalan could address parliament — as long as he dissolved the PKK. The significance of the volte-face can hardly be overstated — it was almost as if Benjamin Netanyahu had extended an invitation to Hamas — and behind it all was Erdoğan. The effect was dramatic. On Feb. 27, Öcalan sent a public message from his prison, calling for the PKK to give up its arms and terminate itself. Öcalan credited both Bahçeli’s call, and Erdoğan’s willpower, for helping “create an environment” for the group to disarm. “I take on the historical responsibility of this call,” he added. “Convene your congress and make a decision: All groups must lay down their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself,” he added.  The PKK Congress duly declared the end of the armed struggle on May 12, adding the group had “fulfilled its historical mission” and that, as Öcalan had instructed, “all activities conducted under the PKK name have therefore been concluded.” The statement was welcomed in Ankara, but so far, the gambit by Bahçeli and Erdoğan has yet to fully pay off. There is clearly more work to do. And sure enough, after the watershed statement from Öcalan in February, the prisoner gained more staff on İmralı. According to politicians from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party who spoke to POLITICO, three more prisoners were sent to expand the team available for striking a grand bargain. LITTLE TRUST Nurcan Baysal, a Kurdish human rights campaigner and author of the book “We Exist: Being Kurdish In Turkey,” said many Kurds remained wary of the government. “The government is presenting this as a ‘terror-free Turkey’ process and is trying to limit it to just the PKK laying down its weapons and dissolving itself. This is not peace!” she told POLITICO. Baysal said Öcalan’s declaration in February to dissolve the PKK was also met with disappointment among Kurds because he didn’t say anything about the Kurds’ cultural, linguistic, administrative rights and freedoms. Öcalan, flanked by masked officers on a flight from Kenya to Turkey, in 1999. | Hurriyet Ho via Getty Images “This is felt in all Kurdish cities. There is not the slightest enthusiasm about the process. A serious reason for this is that the Kurds do not trust [Erdoğan’s] AK Party government,” she continued. This mutual mistrust is partially the legacy of the failed initiatives of the past, and the fact that Erdoğan’s deal comes amid a major clampdown on the opposition. İpek Özbey, a political commentator for the secularist channel Sözcü TV, reckoned the Turkish government’s apparent moves toward a Kurdish rapprochement were neither sincere nor promising. Advertisement “We cannot talk about democracy in an environment where elected officials are in prison … and the independence of the judiciary is so much under discussion,” she said. “If there is no democracy, how will we democratize?” During the reporting of this article, several government-allied figures also made clear their unease with Erdoğan’s Kurdish initiative, describing the issue as explosive or signaling their own lack of belief in the process, but declined to talk on the record. ONLY ERDOĞAN From the government camp, Harun Armağan, the AK Party’s vice chair of foreign affairs, conceded that Turkish public opinion remained cautious about the PKK deal, but cast Erdoğan as the only man who could pull it off. He told POLITICO that the PKK reached the stage of laying down arms 10 years ago but “due to changing dynamics in Syria [where allied Kurdish fighters were on the rise], they thought investing in war rather than peace would put them in a more advantageous position. “Ten years later, they have realized how gravely mistaken that was,” Armağan continued. “Whether the PKK will truly disarm and dismantle itself is something we will all see together … Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the only leader in Türkiye who could initiate such a process.” Erdoğan has already served three terms as president. To remain in office he may need to change the constitution. | Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images “The only promise made by the government is to completely rid Türkiye of terrorism and to build a future in which all 85 million citizens can live in peace, prosperity, and freedom to the fullest,” he added. Erdoğan is indeed widely seen as the engineer of the Kurdish rapprochement when his regional diplomacy is also enjoying success.  He has been hailed by U.S. President Donald Trump as the main winner from the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria, where the new government has strong ties to Ankara. Erdoğan is trying to take advantage of his clout by severing ties between Syrian Kurdish groups and the PKK. Advertisement Baysal, the Kurdish human rights campaigner, reckoned the change of events in Syria is the main reason why the Turkish government initiated its Kurdish outreach. But Armağan, the AK Party official, insisted the two processes were distinct. “This [Syrian] process is entirely different from our own process of eliminating terrorism,” he said.  “The Syrian government has already called on all armed groups to join a central army, and the SDF [a prominent Syrian Kurdish group] has signed an agreement to this effect. These are promising developments,” he said. PRESIDENT FOR LIFE Some observers think Erdoğan, a formidable political operator, is using the Kurdish process inside and outside the country to extend his stay in power, trying to recruit Kurdish parliamentarians into his camp. That’s certainly the view of DEM Party Group Deputy Chair Sezai Temelli. But he’s cautious about whether it will work, given broader democratic backsliding. He argued the arrest of Istanbul Mayor İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s rival, was hurting this fragile process and that the “Kurdish democratic solution and the Turkish democratization process have a symbiotic relationship.” He added he would not be surprised to see Erdoğan seeking to capitalize on the process to stay in power, but noted that the CHP, Turkey’s main opposition party, had also pledged to resolve the Kurdish issue if it wins the next election. No issue in Turkish politics is more bitter than the Kurdish conflict. Some Kurds describe themselves as the most numerous stateless people in the world. | Tunahan Turhan/LightRocket via Getty Images “‘Who is not using it? Some use it [the Kurdish issue] to come to power, some use it to stay in power,” Temelli said. “But we say this could only be solved independently of election and power calculations.” Erdoğan has already served three terms as president. To remain in office he may need to change the constitution. Despite the support of Bahçeli, the president’s coalition does not have a sufficient majority for constitutional change so Erdoğan may be counting on the support of Kurdish members of parliament. He has already started speaking openly about a new constitution to replace Turkey’s 1980 charter, which was drawn up by a military regime after a bloody coup.  Advertisement “Türkiye for the first time in its history, has a real opportunity to draft its first civilian constitution. This is a significant opportunity for all of us to build a more prosperous, just, and secure country,” Armağan said. Not everybody agrees. Some look back at past constitutional changes under Erdoğan and say the main purpose of further revision to the charter would be, as in the past, to further the president’s political ambitions. Soner Çağaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Erdoğan was acting like a “parallel computer,” executing opposing political strategies — cracking down on the main opposition, while reaching out to the Kurds whose support he needs to stay in office — without the two competing policies tripping over each other. “He will do anything to get one more term as president and then basically install himself as president for life,” Çağaptay told POLITICO. Erdoğan’s Kurdish gambit is a high-risk move with no guarantee of success. | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images But Baysal observed not everything relied on Erdoğan’s ambitions. “Erdoğan is a politician who has the potential to use every issue for his own benefit, and he will not hesitate to instrumentalize the Kurdish issue. He will definitely want to use this to extend his presidency,” she said.  But it is not just the president who will decide, she said. Ultimately, whether Turkey’s tragic Kurdish conflict is consigned to history — and whether Erdoğan reaps the benefit — will depend in large part on the Kurds themselves. “I think the real issue here is not whether he wants it,” said Baysal, referring to Erdoğan, “but whether the Kurds want it.” Advertisement

As the Trump administration identified pro-Palestinian academics to target for deportation, it relied heavily on an anonymously-run pro-Israel website that has been criticized for doxxing, according to newly unsealed court documents and testimony at an ongoing trial. To support President Donald Trump’s deportation drive, the Department of Homeland Security assembled a “tiger team” of intelligence analysts who built dossiers on about 100 foreign students and scholars engaged in pro-Palestinian activity, the records show. More than 75 of those people were identified by the shadowy website Canary Mission, according to deposition testimony unveiled this week in a case challenging the Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestinian scholars. The federal judge currently overseeing a trial in the case unsealed the deposition transcripts, which contain hundreds of pages of sworn testimony by administration officials about the campus deportation effort. Some of the details in the transcripts were fleshed out in open court Wednesday as administration officials began to be called to the witness stand. In response to a query from POLITICO, Canary Mission said in a statement Wednesday that it “had no contact with this administration or the previous administration.” White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Immigration lawyers and pro-Palestinian activists have previously suspected that immigration authorities were plucking the names of academics from the Canary Mission site and seeking to revoke their visas with little independent research. But the depositions reveal for the first time how broadly Trump officials relied on the website. Testifying at the trial Wednesday, Homeland Security official Peter Hatch acknowledged the site’s significance to the Trump administration effort, but said any information taken from the site was independently verified. Canary Mission says its goal is to expose anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment on college campuses. It posts photos and social media profiles of pro-Palestinian academics and logs their protest activities. Critics accuse the group of McCarthy-like tactics by painting pro-Palestinian activists as antisemitic based on thin or irrelevant evidence. Canary Mission has not revealed its funders or details of who operates it. “We document individuals and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews. We investigate hatred across the political spectrum, including the far-right, far-left and anti-Israel activists,” the group said. The unsealed court records also reveal for the first time how deeply involved the Trump White House — in particular top Trump aide Stephen Miller — was in the effort to revoke the visas of pro-Palestinian academics studying and teaching at American colleges. The acting chief of the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, John Armstrong, testified that he’d had “at least a dozen” conversations with White House officials about the student deportation drive and that Miller was on interagency conference calls related to the issue “at one point at least weekly.” According to Armstrong, the conference calls with Miller lasted about 15 minutes to an hour and involved other officials from the Homeland Security Council, the State Department and Homeland Security Department. The extent of the White House’s involvement in singling out particular students remains unclear because the White House asserted executive privilege to conceal the details of Miller’s exchanges with agency officials. Still, the revelations shed new light on the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to target, detain and deport foreign academics who are living and working in the country legally. For months, Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to be the face of those efforts: He invoked a rarely used provision of immigration law to try to deport targeted scholars — including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumesya Ozturk — by declaring their presence in the U.S. in conflict with American foreign policy interests. ADMIN OFFICIALS REVEAL NEW DETAILS The detailed testimony about the administration’s controversial bid to deport pro-Palestinian academics emerged in more than 1,000 pages of documents and deposition transcripts made public as the trial challenging the policy began in federal court in Boston this week. U.S. District Judge William Young is presiding over the trial and will decide whether the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by targeting academics based on their speech and political views. The foreign-born academics were living and studying at American universities legally, either on student visas or green cards. But the administration has tried to revoke their legal status and force them to leave the country. Courts so far have intervened to prevent the immediate deportations of Khalil, Ozturk and others. Hatch offered new insight into the roles of outside groups in targeting academics. Called as a witness Wednesday at the ongoing trial, Hatch confirmed the key role of Canary Mission in the agency’s intelligence work related to deportations. “Many of the names or even most of the names came from that website, but we were getting names and leads from many different websites,” said Hatch, assistant director for intelligence at Homeland Security Investigations. “We received information on the same protesters from multiple sources, but Canary Mission was the most inclusive. The lists came in from all different directions.” Hatch added that he believed he was told verbally that his team needed to review the Canary Mission website and that it contained reports on more than 5,000 people. “Which shows why we needed a tiger team,” the Homeland Security official said. “A normal unit or section or group of analysts operating in a normal organizational construct couldn’t handle that workload.” Analysts assigned to a “counterterrorism intelligence” unit, among others, were re-assigned to the “tiger team,” Hatch said. Hatch also insisted that any information his analysts obtained from the Canary Mission site had to be corroborated before being included in official reports. “Canary Mission is not a part of the U.S. government,” he said. “It is not information that we would take as an authoritative source. We don’t work with the individuals who create the website. I don’t know who creates the website.” In his deposition, Hatch said “more than 75 percent” of the names his “tiger team” prepared reports on came from Canary Mission, and he believed others came from from Betar US, a group that uses the slogan “Jews fight back” and profiles pro-Palestinian activists on its website. In February, the Anti-Defamation League added Betar to a list of extremist groups, alleging that the organization “openly embraces Islamophobia and harasses Muslims online and in person.” Betar did not respond to a request for comment. However, within days of Trump’s return to the White House in January, Betar announced on X and in comments to news outlets that it had provided a “deport list” to Trump administration officials. The trial stems from a lawsuit filed in March by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, claiming that the “ideological deportation” policy violates the First Amendment. Administration officials called to give sworn depositions in the lead-up to the trial struggled to give precise definitions of what sorts of advocacy or activism would be deemed antisemitism or support for Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist group. Both grounds were primary justifications for the deportation drive and parallel efforts to deny visas to foreigners seeking to study or continue their studies in the U.S. Armstrong said in his deposition that a frequent chant at pro-Palestinian rallies, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” could be regarded as disqualifying for a U.S. visa because it could be viewed as calling for the destruction of Israel. “It could be in my opinion, because by definition, it means the elimination of Israel and the Israeli people,” the State Department official said. Armstrong went on to say that a call for institutional divestment from Israel, an arms embargo against Israel or an end to military aid to Israel could all be problematic. He added that calling the country an “apartheid state” would “probably” be considered anti-Israel activity. However, Armstrong said, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza would not be held against a visa applicant. “The president has called for a ceasefire. So no,” said Armstrong, who is scheduled to testify at the trial on Friday. Asked to explain what sort of anti-Americanism could result in denial of a visa under new Trump policies, Armstrong replied: “It would be a blanket condemnation: All Americans are fat and evil. It would not be: I hate hot dogs.” A MONTHSLONG DEPORTATION EFFORT The new details from Trump administration officials also show many aspects of the policy remain a work in progress, nearly six months after Trump returned to office promising a crackdown on foreign students he regards as troublemakers. Armstrong said he was unaware of any instructions given to consular staff about how to determine if particular speech is antisemitic. And the State Department official who oversees visa issuance, Stuart Wilson, was asked during his deposition two weeks ago whether his office has “been given any guidance about whether a student’s activism is consistent with their student visa.” “It’s still under discussion,” Wilson replied. Early reports about the student deportation drive cast Rubio as the key player in the effort and left unclear how officials at the State and Homeland Security Departments were deciding which of the roughly 1.1 million foreign students in the U.S. to zero in on for potential expulsion. Rubio has suggested a higher figure for the total number of student visas revoked than those discussed in the newly released depositions. During a March press conference, he said the number could be over 300. Rubio has also reinforced the idea that he is pivotal to the project. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa,” Rubio said. “Might be more than 300 at this point. Might be more. We do it every day.” However, administration officials said government discussions about revocations of visas for academics are sometimes grouped into broader discussions about revoking visas for others. At the trial this week before Young, a Reagan appointee, several professors testified about the chilling effect the administration’s crackdown has had. A Harvard philosophy professor who is a German citizen, Bernhard Nickel, testified Tuesday that due to fear instilled by the high-profile arrests of pro-Palestinian academics, he stopped attending protests, signing public letters and traveling internationally. “I actually just decided on a blanket policy that I would keep my head down completely,” Nickel said. Nickel said he defended some student activists at Harvard against university discipline. But, on the witness stand, he also expressed concern that aspects of the pro-Palestinian protests had sometimes veered into antisemitism, particularly one in Harvard Yard that featured a crude caricature of Harvard President Alan Garber, who is Jewish. “That’s just a very well known antisemitic trope,” he said. Young, who is hearing the case without a jury, shot down one aspect of the case plaintiffs hoped to present: evidence that American-citizen academics’ right to hear speech by their non-citizen colleagues was being impaired by Trump’s deportation policies. Young also raised doubts Wednesday about whether the suit brought by the academic groups can or does challenge the rarely invoked law protecting foreign-policy interests that Rubio used to set in motion many of the student deportations. “I don’t know that your clients have standing to challenge it, as the statute has never been used against any of them,” the judge said.

A Cabinet member in a council run by Reform UK accused colleagues of sacking him in an “ambush” hours after national leader Nigel Farage came to visit. Bill Barrett lasted less than two months overseeing transport on Kent County Council, where Farage’s right-wing populist party won 57 out of 81 seats at May’s local elections. Farage visited the council on Monday and gave an interview saying Kent’s £98 million-a-year budget for home-to-school transport was “beyond belief.” Later that day, council leader Linden Kemkaran issued a statement saying she had “made changes to my Cabinet team” and Barrett had left his role.  Her chief whip Maxwell Harrison told KentOnline on Monday: “Bill wasn’t sacked. He agreed to leave — it was an agreement. Bill was doing a good job and there was no bad blood.” Speaking to POLITICO Wednesday, however, Barrett said that story was “completely false.” He added: “It’s a complete lie. There was no mutual arrangement that we left. I walked into an office basically to an ambush, where they basically spent 50 minutes saying how shit I was.”  ‘I WALKED IN TO AN AMBUSH’ Farage met members of Kent’s Cabinet on Monday morning, a meeting in which Barrett spoke at length about transport and potholes on the county’s roads. “He walked over to me, shook my hand, and he smiled, and he said, well done,” said Barrett of Farage. Barrett said after lunch he went to a meeting with Kemkaran to find her deputy Brian Collins and Harrison also in the room. He said Collins questioned him about why he was not visiting highways inspectors in person to examine their work. Barrett also said that Kemkaran gave him one month to find cuts from a dossier on the highways department which officials had drawn up in recent weeks. Barrett, who accused his senior colleagues of being “conniving” and running a “toxic environment,” said he eventually walked out of the meeting after being warned that if he left, he would be gone. Barrett added: “My opinion is 100 percent that I’ve been sacked. I did not resign in paper, email or any other form. I walked out of her office. They were abusing me and bullying me.” He made no suggestion that Farage was responsible for his sacking. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage attends a meeting alongside the Head of Kent County Council, Linden Kemkaran, during his visit to the Reform UK group at Kent at Kent County Council at County Hall, Maidstone. | Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images ‘DISAPPOINTING’ Kemkaran pushed back at Barrett’s criticism, saying in a statement Wednesday evening: “Naturally it’s always slightly disappointing when a colleague who’s been given every chance to step up and improve their performance declines the opportunity and instead walks out of a meeting, knowing that it would mean they’d lose their position.” The council leader added: “We have a new cabinet member for highways and transport firmly in place and as far as we are concerned it’s business as usual, serving the people of Kent. “What I’m not going to do is give a running commentary on the Members’ positions here at KCC. We’re simply getting on with the job.” The incident shines a spotlight on Reform’s push to cut home-to-school transport costs, many of which are spent on children with special educational needs. More broadly, it comes as Reform gets to grips with running 10 councils in England where it gained overall control in the May local elections. Farage’s nascent party has only four MPs — a fifth, James McMurdock, gave up the whip this week after seeking legal advice about business loans during the COVID pandemic — but is leading U.K. national opinion polls. Barrett said he has filed a formal complaint to Reform’s National Chairman David Bull and to Kent County Council Chief Executive Amanda Beer.

National governments and lawmakers in the European Parliament are uniting in pushing against an intended withdrawal of a long-stalled proposal that seeks to crack down on discrimination in the workplace. Fourteen EU countries have sent a letter, dated July 1 and obtained by POLITICO, to Hadja Lahbib, the EU’s equality commissioner, urging the European Commission to reconsider its decision to axe the equal treatment directive.  The EU executive in February proposed to withdraw the 2008 bill aimed at extending protection against discrimination in the workplace on grounds such as race, religion, disability, age and sexual orientation after 17 years of deadlock in the Council of the EU, where EU capitals hash out positions, as further progress was deemed by the Commission to be “unlikely.” But social affairs ministers of Belgium, Estonia, France, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden want to save the directive from the chopping block. In the letter, they argued that “the support for this directive has never been greater” and urged the Commission to reengage with the remaining holdouts to “clarify what improvements can be made to arrive at the required unanimity.” The move follows another letter from Parliament President Roberta Metsola, dated June 16 and obtained by POLITICO, in which the committee on civil liberties — which handled the file in Parliament — expressed “strong” opposition to the Commission’s plan to axe the file. Lahbib emphasized in May in front of lawmakers that “it has not been possible to reach the required unanimity and there is no indication or clear prospect that unanimity could be reached in the foreseeable future.”  Twenty-four countries supported the file in the Council talks, but three countries — Germany, the Czech Republic and Italy — blocked the directive. “We need unanimity in the Council, and while abstention is enough, objection is not,” Lahbib told lawmakers from the committee.  If those three countries “specify which concerns prevent them from agreeing, or at least abstaining from a vote on the text,” this would allow them to find a compromise, Lahbib said, adding that “engaging with these three member states also has potential.” The Commission in February gave the Parliament and the Council six months to express their — non-binding — opinion to the list of proposals it wanted to withdraw.

LONDON — Who’d want to be Rachel Reeves right now? While Britain’s top finance minister has the full-throated support of her boss, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, it’s been a deeply bruising week for the country’s first female chancellor. A humiliating government climb-down on a money-saving welfare reform plan was followed by market-moving tears from Reeves in the House of Commons on what she has stressed is a personal matter. With unfortunate timing, the scene — mocked by opposition politicians — came just as Starmer failed to explicitly endorse Reeves staying in post. He has now very publicly backed her — but the fundamental economic challenges Reeves faces aren’t going anywhere. Reeves’ self-imposed fiscal rules restrict government borrowing. But, after the latest costly welfare climb-down, the keen chess player’s next move could involve tax hikes toxic to swing voters, spending cuts disliked by her Labour colleagues — or both. POLITICO courted the views of six wise heads who have been in the political trenches in the U.K. and further afield to gauge where Reeves might turn next. DON’T APPEASE — JARED BERNSTEIN, FORMER CHAIR OF JOE BIDEN’S COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS AND AN ARCHITECT OF ‘BIDENOMICS‘ Jared Bernstein — who saw Joe Biden lose to Donald Trump despite touting improvements in the economy — urged Reeves not to get too freaked out about public opinion. “If voters are perennially unhappy, they’ll always throw out the incumbents no matter what they do,” he said. “If you try too hard to appease … a deeply unhappy electorate, you won’t have time for anything else.” Reeves’ head is “in the right place” and she should keep her focus and do what she thinks is right, he added. Acknowledging the U.K. economic data is “quite tough” with an “uncomfortably low growth rate bumping up against uncomfortably high interest rates,” Bernstein argued the math is “pretty straightforward.”  “You have to cut spending, raise taxes, or some combination of both,” he said. On the tax-raising front, without breaking manifesto pledges, Bernstein thought there were options “including freezing [income] tax thresholds … for a couple of more years through to 2030.”  “I’ve seen ideas to raise the private health insurance premium tax, some pension tax reform,” he added. “I think there’s a proposal to reduce the revenue level at which businesses pay VAT. And that has potential … [to] be quite revenue-positive.” Chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers Jared Bernstein. | Samuel Corum/EFE via EPA He added: “One has to be mindful of raising the tax burden when growth is already underperforming. But I think some of the suggestions that I just walked through seem pretty marginal to me, so perhaps there’s some action there.” MANIFESTO PROMISES COULD GO — RUTH CURTICE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE RESOLUTION FOUNDATION Ruth Curtice, the Treasury’s former director of fiscal policy and now boss of a key living standards think tank, said Reeves should consider raising taxes and cutting Whitehall spending — including 2028-29 totals that were set at her spending review just weeks ago. But Reeves should not, Curtice cautioned, touch her fiscal rules. This is especially true because Reeves’ next budget will have less wriggle room. She’ll be working within a four-year timeline and not a five-year one, thanks to Reeves’ changes to fiscal rules. The Resolution Foundation has previously branded the freezing of income tax thresholds a “stealth tax,” but Curtice said Reeves should consider more freezes — and even manifesto-breaching rises in income tax, national insurance or VAT. “She shouldn’t rule out personal taxes, given the sums of money she needs to raise and the economic challenges of raising further business taxation,” said Curtice. “One option is freezing personal tax thresholds, but she might need to be bolder and explicitly break manifesto commitments if she needs big sums of money.” Curtice reckoned Reeves needs to show her general direction of travel much sooner than the fall to avoid a summer of speculation. “Some laying the ground on tax could be helpful … Speculation all the way from now until autumn could be unhelpful economically,” she added. USE BANK OF ENGLAND RESERVES — JAMES MEADWAY, FORMER ECONOMIC ADVISER TO SHADOW CHANCELLOR JOHN MCDONNELL James Meadway — who was once a policy adviser at the Treasury, went on to advise left-winger John McDonnell, and now hosts a podcast called “Macrodose” — suggested Reeves could save billions of pounds a year by moving to a system of “tiered reserves.” “The Treasury indemnifies the losses that the Bank of England somewhat notionally makes on quantitative easing,” he said. “If you introduced a system of not paying so much interest on the reserves that the commercial banks hold at the Bank of England, you could save several billion pounds a year on this.” Meadway acknowledged “the City [of London, Britain’s financial powerhouse] wouldn’t like it” — but reckoned it would be “a lot easier than making more cuts, or raising whacking great taxes elsewhere.” “It would free up billions for the Treasury to spend to get you through what is otherwise going to be an extremely tight budget,” he said, and “keep within the fiscal rules. “The problem that Rachel Reeves really sharply faces … is that you have pinned everything on the fiscal rules,” he argued. “If you say we are now going to change them, that will provoke a reaction of the kind we have just seen through bond markets.” DON’T SURPRISE THE MARKETS — RUPERT HARRISON, FORMER ADVISER TO GEORGE OSBORNE Rupert Harrison — a key Tory ex-aide who is now a senior adviser at investment management company PIMCO — agreed markets would be spooked by any watering down of Reeves’ fiscal rules, with investors already factoring in tax rises.  “The gilt market has already started to react negatively to news about the welfare bill, with yields rising relative to other countries, but the scale of that reaction has been limited by a widespread assumption amongst investors that the government’s response will be to raise taxes in the autumn,” he said. “Any suggestions that the government might look again at watering down its fiscal rules would start to risk a more negative market reaction given the U.K.’s well-known fiscal vulnerabilities,” Harrison added. “Markets now assume that cuts to welfare spending and departmental budgets are effectively off the table — if they start to sense that the political will to raise taxes is also lacking then concerns about fiscal sustainability will grow.” Gavin Barwell, former chief of staff to Theresa May. | Vickie Flores/EFE via EPA GIVE MPS A REALITY CHECK — GAVIN BARWELL, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO THERESA MAY Gavin Barwell, in the trenches as the Theresa May government faced huge disloyalty in the ranks over Brexit, thought Reeves needed to be better at forcing members of parliament to say what hard choices they would actually make. He drew parallels between the current government’s party management woes and the dilemma facing his former boss. “Different people kept putting to parliament different propositions of how to solve the Brexit question, and parliament just kept saying no, but it never had to say what its answer was,” he recalled. “You’ve got to do a better job of exposing to your backbenchers what the realm of possible options are. You can’t ultimately change the fiscal arithmetic. Does the government try and borrow some more money? It is quite difficult in the bond markets at the moment. “Does it tax more? If so, who does it tax? Does it cut spending? If you don’t want to cut spending from welfare, where do you want to cut spending?” He added: “You’ve got to find some way of confronting [MPs] with the reality of the situation, and having some collective decision-making about what are the least bad ways of trying to navigate out of that situation.”   ‘LABOUR MPS MUST DECIDE’ — LUKE SULLIVAN, STARMER’S FORMER POLITICAL DIRECTOR “Rachel Reeves’ position is significantly stronger than is often perceived,” Sullivan — an ex-aide to Starmer who is now a director at the consultancy Headland — pointed out. The prime minister’s “full-hearted support” and the “notable vote of confidence from the financial markets” to Starmer’s endorsement of her show “Reeves is not only secure in her position, but pivotal to the government’s economic credibility.” “While some policy adjustments, such as on welfare, may be understandable,” Sullivan said, he warned Labour MPs must not be under any illusion that the government’s ambitions need anything less than “rigorous fiscal discipline” met by “increased taxation, spending restraint, or other measures.” He added: “None of these choices will be politically easy, but they are necessary and Labour MPs must decide.”

For Donald Trump, it was a “monumental victory.” For the Trump resistance, there are signs of hope buried in the fine print. Those dueling interpretations emerged Friday in the hours after the Supreme Court issued its blockbuster decision in Trump’s challenge to three nationwide injunctions that have blocked his attempt to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born on American soil. And both contain an element of truth. The 6-3 decision has a single headline holding: Federal district judges “lack authority” to issue “universal injunctions,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the conservative majority. It’s a breathtaking pronouncement given that district judges, with increasing frequency, have been issuing those sorts of injunctions for decades. It was precisely the bottom-line result that Trump’s Justice Department asked for in the case. Sweeping injunctions have blocked many of Trump’s second-term initiatives, not just his executive order on birthright citizenship. Now, the Supreme Court has made clear, an injunction against a challenged policy should ordinarily apply only to the individuals or organizations who sued. For everyone else, the policy can take effect even if a district judge believes it’s likely illegal. But Barrett’s 26-page opinion leaves a surprising degree of wiggle room. Yes, conventional nationwide injunctions are off the table, but Trump’s opponents say they see alternative routes to obtain effectively the same sweeping blocks of at least some policies that run afoul of the law and the Constitution. The court appeared to leave open three specific alternatives: Restyle the legal challenges as class-action lawsuits; rely on state-led lawsuits to obtain broad judicial rulings; or challenge certain policies under a federal administrative law that authorizes courts to strike down the actions of executive branch agencies. The viability of these three potential alternatives is not yet clear. But the court explicitly declined to rule them out. That led Justice Samuel Alito — who joined the majority opinion — to write a concurrence to raise concerns that the court was leaving loopholes that could undercut its main holding. If lower courts permit litigants to exploit those loopholes, Alito wrote, “today’s decision will be of little more than minor academic interest.” Legal experts were unsure about the practical implications of the ruling — especially in the birthright citizenship cases, but also in other challenges to Trump policies. “One of the things that’s problematic about this decision is how difficult it will be to implement,” said Amanda Frost, a University of Virginia law professor whose scholarship was cited in the justices’ ruling. “I think it’s really hard to say.” THE CLASS ACTION WORKAROUND The court’s decision explicitly left open one avenue for legal challengers to obtain a broad ruling that can apply to thousands or even millions of people: File a class-action case. Class actions allow large groups of similarly situated individuals to band together and sue over a common problem. If a judge sides with class-action challengers against a federal law or policy, the judge can issue a binding order that protects everyone in the class from being subject to the law or policy. Within hours of the court’s decision on Friday, one of the groups challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship policy moved to refashion its case as a class action. But class actions are not a panacea for the Trump resistance. Federal rules require special procedures before a court can “certify” a class. Litigants seeking to use the class-action mechanism must meet several criteria that don’t apply in ordinary lawsuits. And the Supreme Court itself has, in recent years, raised the legal standards for people to bring class actions. Barrett wrote that these heightened requirements underscore the need to limit universal injunctions, which she labeled a “shortcut” around the stringent standards that accompany class-action suits. “Why bother with a … class action when the quick fix of a universal injunction is on the table?” she wrote. Alito, in his concurrence Friday, warned district judges not to be overly lax in green-lighting class actions. “Today’s decision will have very little value if district courts award relief to broadly defined classes without following” procedural strictures, the conservative justice wrote. BROADER RELIEF FOR STATES A second potential silver lining for Trump’s opponents is that the court recognized that states may sometimes be entitled to broader injunctions than individual challengers. Barrett wrote in the majority opinion that district judges are empowered to provide “complete relief” to litigants who are improperly harmed by government policies. And when states sue the federal government, it’s possible, legal experts say, that “complete relief” requires a sweeping judicial remedy. That remedy might take the form of an injunction that applies everywhere in the suing states. Barrett herself contemplated that it might be proper for lower courts to forbid Trump from applying his executive order on birthright citizenship anywhere within the states that have challenged the order. (About 22 Democratic-led states have done so.) That scenario would create an odd patchwork: Automatic birthright citizenship would apply in half the country but would disappear in the other half until the Supreme Court definitively resolves the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order. There is even a chance that “complete relief” for a state might extend beyond the state’s borders and apply nationally — because residents of one state frequently move to another. Still, the bounds of what the court meant by “complete relief” remain murky. Frost said that it’s unclear what an injunction that affords “complete relief” to a state, while stopping short of a “universal” or “nationwide” remedy, would look like. “I don’t know, and that’s a problem of the court’s own making,” she said. Nonetheless, Democrats like New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin seized on the “complete relief” opening, saying it was a reason for optimism and effectively an endorsement of what he and other blue state officials had contended since the start. He and other Democratic attorneys general emphasized that they argued at all levels of the court system the need for nationwide relief in the birthright citizen case — because it would be pure chaos if residents left one state where they were entitled to birthright citizenship and moved to another state where they were not entitled to it, or vice versa. “As I sit here now, as it relates to states, the court confirmed what we thought all along. Nationwide relief should be limited but is available to states,” Platkin said. Barrett, however, wrote that the court was not taking a firm position on the scope of any injunction the states might be entitled to. “We decline to take up these arguments,” she wrote, adding that the lower courts should assess them first. SETTING ASIDE AGENCY ACTIONS The third potential workaround for opponents of Trump policies involves a federal statute known as the Administrative Procedure Act. That law authorizes lower courts to “set aside” actions by regulatory agencies if the courts find the actions to be arbitrary, rather than based on reasoned analysis. That sort of wholesale judicial relief in some ways resembles a nationwide or “universal” injunction, but Barrett wrote in a footnote that the court’s decision does not address the scope of relief in lawsuits filed under the APA. Some of the lawsuits challenging Trump’s policies have been brought under the APA. For instance, a district judge in Rhode Island issued a nationwide injunction against Trump’s attempt to freeze vast amounts of federal spending after the judge found that the move would violate the APA. But not all policies are agency actions that would be subject to APA challenges. The birthright citizenship policy, for instance, was promulgated through an executive order, not through any federal agency. On the other hand, the order has a 30-day “ramp-up period” in which agencies will develop guidelines before implementing the order. Those guidelines might become targets for APA challenges.

The Supreme Court has handed President Donald Trump a major victory by narrowing nationwide injunctions that blocked his executive order purporting to end the right to birthright citizenship. In doing so, the court sharply curtailed the power of individual district court judges to issue injunctions blocking federal government policies nationwide. The justices, in a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, said that in most cases, judges can only grant relief to the individuals or groups who brought a particular lawsuit and may not extend those decisions to protect other individuals without going through the process of converting a lawsuit into a class action — a special type of litigation that requires challengers to clear procedural hurdles. “The universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation’s history,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. The ruling Friday came in connection with three lawsuits in which judges granted nationwide injunctions against an executive order Trump signed on the first day of his second term, seeking to deny American citizenship to children born in the U.S. to foreigners on short term visas and those without legal status. The judges said the order is patently unconstitutional because it conflicts with Supreme Court precedent and the text of the 14th Amendment, which says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The Supreme Court did not rule Friday on the underlying constitutionality of Trump’s executive order. The three liberal justices, in dissent, said the president’s directive is clearly illegal. “The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissent. While the court’s ruling appears to be a major victory for Trump, it does include an important caveat: The court left open the possibility of nationwide relief in lawsuits brought by state governments. That’s because, Barrett wrote, it’s possible a nationwide injunction could be necessary to fashion “complete relief” for states in the lawsuits they bring. Barrett said the court intentionally declined to answer that question and would allow lower courts to ponder it in the meantime. Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.