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.

LONDON — For a politician who spent the last year warning of a “black hole” in the public finances and doling out misery, Rachel Reeves was practically popping corks. The U.K.’s finance minister promised nothing less than “the renewal of Britain” in her review of government spending Wednesday, which set the framework until the next general election in 2029. Her narrative (along with £113 billion of capital investment) was aimed squarely at countering the threat of Reform UK, the upstart populist party now leading opinion polls. During her speech in parliament, Reeves took time out to poke fun at Reform leader Nigel Farage, who was sitting across the Commons chamber, laughing with his colleagues. But Reeves also admitted many voters feel a “sense that something has been lost” as she pledged to redirect cash beyond London to poorer areas where Farage poses a significant political threat. “The renewal of Britain must be felt everywhere,” Reeves said. Overall, she sought to strike a far more positive tone than she had done in the past. Reeves said “we are starting to see the results” of fiscal rectitude, with interest rate cuts and growth in GDP and real wages. It felt like an election pitch, four years early. The question is whether this is as good as it will get. For one thing, the Chancellor’s buoyant mood was at odds with the scale of her spending plans, and the pain they will inflict on some areas of the state. In truth, she is unable to put much taxpayers’ money where her mouth is because there’s not enough to go around: Reeves is hemmed in by a key election pledge not to raise major tax rates, her own fiscal rules and Britain’s vast public sector debt. Her plan contained tight spending settlements for many U.K. government departments, including the Foreign Office and the Home Office, especially from next year. Nervous ministers believe these could force a reality check on Labour’s mission to rebuild the state. In these seven takeaways, POLITICO examines the reality of Reeves’ spending review: 1) DON’T CALL IT AUSTERITY: THE MONEY IS REAL This is no throwback to the Conservative austerity of the early 2010s, when almost every department underwent steep real-terms cuts — several by more than 20 percent. Reeves and her aides boast that total “departmental expenditure limits” will grow by 2.3 percent a year in real terms between 2023/24 and 2028/29. (Though this rise is only 1.2 percent for day-to-day revenue spending from 2025/26. More on that spin shortly.) “Austerity was a destructive choice for the fabric of our society,” Reeves told MPs. “My choices are different.” In an age of trade and land war, Reeves even harked back to her Bidenomics-inspired mantra of “securonomics” — using the state’s heft to kickstart homegrown manufacturing. The Chancellor’s critics thought she had parked that idea while seeking economic ties with China. 2) BUT IT’S NO SPLURGE EITHER: WHERE THE KNIFE FALLS Revenue spending in several departments will fall sharply in real terms by 2028/29. Some of these seem to have easy explanations. Government officials say a 5 percent real-terms cut in day-to-day Department for Transport spending is due to scaling back post-Covid railway subsidies. A real-terms cut of 1.7 percent a year for the Home Office is mostly down to a pledge to end spending on hotels for asylum seekers by 2029, officials say. But ministers are being forced to tighten their belts. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs faces a real-terms cut of 2.7 percent a year, while Business and Trade spending is cut by 1.8 percent and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by 1.2 percent. The U.K. Foreign Office faces steep cuts of 6.9 percent per year, largely in the form of February’s decision to slash foreign aid spending. Day-to-day spending in the Department for Education will rise by 0.7 percent a year — yet most of this is accounted for by a big expansion of free school meals, said Paul Johnson, director of the nonpartisan Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank. 3) WHITEHALL GETS A HAIRCUT: CIVIL SERVICE JOBS Starmer’s Cabinet cheerleaders have made a big deal of “efficiency” in government. The review puts (some) flesh on what that’ll mean. Government departments (known collectively as Whitehall after the street in Westminster where many are based) are expected to cut their administration budgets by 10 percent by 2028/29, and 15 percent (£2.2 billion a year) by 2029/30.  Departments also need to find “efficiency gains” averaging 4 percent by 2028/29, a total of £13.8 billion per year. HM Revenue and Customs plans to save 13.1 percent of its spending through “AI and automation” and basing 85 percent of staff outside London, while the Department for Work and Pensions will use artificial intelligence to review jobseekers’ CVs.  Eleven central London government offices will be closed, including 102 Petty France (currently home to the Ministry of Justice) and 39 Victoria Street (used by the Department of Health), while overseas allowances for British diplomats are — hold on to your canapés — “being reviewed and revised.” Some of the precise calculations behind these efficiency savings still lack detail, though — and officials have declined to say exactly how many civil service jobs will be lost as a result. 4) THE SMALL PRINT HURTS: BUILDING HOMES The chancellor rattled off big numbers (often shorn of context) to prove she is opening the spending taps. As always, the devil is in the detail.  Many figures in the spending review are measured from the start of “phase one,” 2023/24 — when the Conservatives were still in power. Spending becomes far tighter in “phase two,” which starts from next year. Real-terms increases in day-to-day spending will slow from 2.7 percent in 2024/25 to just 1 percent a year from 2027/28. Some headline numbers are also spread over long periods. Reeves promised to deliver Labour’s manifesto pledge to build 1.5 million homes by 2029 with a £39 billion Affordable Homes Programme. Yet this is spread over a decade, and will only hit its stride (£4 billion a year) by 2029/30, around the time of the next election. Labour MPs will want to see houses built, and voters moving in, ASAP. Some sums are not all provided by central government. Reeves said she was raising “spending power” for police forces and councils — subject to tense last-minute negotiations — but this is based on individual councils deciding to hit voters with above-inflation rises in council tax. A £113 billion rise in capital investment by 2029 looks generous. But the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), a nonpartisan think tank, argued it is a figure that Reeves has measured against past plans for cuts that were “implausible.” 5) BIGGER ISN’T BIG ENOUGH: HEALTH AND DEFENSE Britain’s plans for defense spending will soon butt up against reality.  Defense spending will meet the U.K.’s target of 2.6 percent of GDP (including intelligence agencies) from 2027 onwards, but the review has no firm plans to raise it further. This is despite Labour’s “ambition” to hit 3 percent by 2034. More pressingly, NATO is holding talks with allies about raising their commitments to 3.5 percent. Discussions will reach a crunch point at the alliance’s summit later this month. The jewel in Reeves’ announcement was a 3 percent-per-year rise in spending on Britain’s ailing National Health Service. But this is less than what has been the average annual rise since the 1970s, of 3.8 percent. Johnson, the IFS boss, said Labour’s target to reduce treatment waiting times below 18 weeks will be “enormously ambitious – an NHS funding settlement below the long-run average might not measure up.” 6) PETER PAYS PAUL: ENERGY The budget of the U.K.’s new publicly-owned power company, Great British Energy, has been raided to fund a longstanding government commitment to develop mini nuclear reactors. Labour’s manifesto committed to £8.3 billion over five years for GB Energy to “deliver clean power” projects across the country. But Wednesday’s review assigned £2.5 billion of its funding package to a deal with Rolls Royce to develop small modular reactors (SMRs) — small-scale nuclear plants that will be relatively quick to build. Two government officials denied that the decision amounted to a cut to GB Energy’s budget, though a third government official said the decision had come “very last minute.” 7) THIS IS NOT THE END: WILL TAXES HAVE TO RISE? Reeves pitched her plan as a return to “stability,” vowing not to revisit the settlements until the next spending review, in 2027. But with a full budget due this fall, Treasury aides accept speculation about her next move will begin almost immediately. The NIESR said it was “almost inevitable” that taxes will need to rise — a warning leapt on by opposition MPs. Conservative Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride branded Reeves the “spend today, tax tomorrow chancellor.” Key details of the government’s plans are also yet to be unveiled. A 10-year infrastructure strategy and an industrial strategy are each due later in June, with a 10-year plan for the NHS, a national security strategy and audit of Britain’s relations with China all expected to follow in the coming months. Then there are — potentially — holes that departments will need to fill later.  Wednesday’s spending review warns pay rises for Britain’s 6 million public sector workers will need to be funded from departments’ existing budgets until 2029. Departments have estimated what these pay rises might be, but there won’t be certainty for years. At some point, someone will have to pay up. Reeves will be hoping it’s not her. Charlie Cooper contributed reporting.