The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's week in the courts – big wins and big losses

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Federal courts ruled this week that President Trump has a lot of power over immigration, but not over how elections are run. We discuss the impacts of these rulings. Plus, what we just can't let go of. This episode: senior political correspondent Tamara Keith, immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo, voting correspondent Miles Parks and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It was a busy week for President Trump in the courts. He had big wins on immigration, but came up empty on his efforts to make changes to voting ahead of the midterms. What happened? Let's find out. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Hima Bustillo and I cover immigration. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. Let's talk about the immigration rulings at the Supreme Court. Two different rulings. We should go with TPS first or temporary. protected status. Jimena, remind us what that is and what happened here. So temporary protected status is a designation that the Homeland Security Secretary can

assign to a country. And typically that grants protections for people from that country to be in the U.S. and work in the U.S. legally because they might not be able to return to their home countries because of various challenges such as war, natural disaster, political instability, a whole host of potential other reasons the secretary can decide on. This has been a program since like the 1990s, and generally the designation lasts between six to 18 months. But for several countries, some of these statuses stay in effect for decades and decades. They've just been renewed and renewed and renewed because secretaries have deemed that these

countries are not safe. That gets us to this case before the U.S. Supreme Court and the court's decision. decision, what did they decide? So in a six three decision, the conservative majority decided that it is not the purview of the court to weigh in on the conditions of those countries and that it is within the power of the government to be able to terminate that status or not, you know, as it sees fit. This was particularly about the designations to Haiti and Syria, about 330,000 people. from Haiti, about 6,000 people from Syria that are affected by this decision. But a lot of advocates say it goes beyond that scope. Last year, we saw the Trump administration under former secretary Christy Noem one by one terminate every single TPS that came up for renewal last year. Countries like Venezuela, Cameroon, Syria, Afghanistan. And we only saw one sort of renewal. and that was last month for Lebanon. And it wasn't quite a renewal. It just kind of automatically

extended. There are a few other countries that are going to come up for expiration later this year. El Salvador, Ukraine are on that list. And so there's a lot of questions about how the administration is going to move forward with those that are still standing. And let's just be clear on what this means for those people. In theory, they just need to go back to their home countries or what happens with them? I mean, in practice, they need to return. You know, if they are not able to adjust their status, so basically find another way to legally be in the country, that could be like claiming asylum. Maybe they've been able to secure a green card. If they are not able to do something like that, then they are at risk of their permission to be in the country to expire. And if

they're here when that expires, they could be subject to an arrested detention and a deportation. And so this administration is really hoping that a lot of the folks who are under this program leave. Haminah, the court also issued a decision on asylum. What was the question before the court and how did they roll? The question was regarding a policy that is called metering, essentially if someone comes near or to a point. of entry, if Border Patrol agents can turn them away before they manage to cross. And now keep in mind, currently the ability to claim asylum at the southern border is very, very narrowed to only legal ports of entry. And so this ruling essentially further limited that option by allowing

border agents to turn people away before they have physically crossed into U.S. land. What does this mean for people now who want to seek asylum? Basically, you have to already be in the country to do so. And there are even limitations on that. You can only claim asylum. I believe it's within a year of being in the country. You know, I'm reminded of the Republican National Convention back in 2024. We were all there.

And there were a lot of people holding up signs that read mass deportations now. these rulings are about legal immigration. Maro, what do you make of this? Well, the politics of this are going to be very interesting to watch because mass deportations now, as those signs said, that idea was very popular with the Republican base. But when Trump came into office, he said he was going to focus on illegal immigrants, immigrants who are in this country undocumented, who had committed crimes. And that stand was very popular. So was securing the border. But as time went on, he did some other things.

He started to deport people who, some of whom had green cards, were in the country legally. Some American citizens got killed in protests about immigration. And polls showed that people started souring on the administration's implementation of its immigration agenda. Not the basic idea of a secure border. We don't want any criminal undocumented immigrants in the United States, but this was quite different. And this ruling was the first big ruling allowing the president to deport people who are here legally. And what I'm really interested in is how the public is going to react when their home health aides or people who work in a meatpacking plant. Some of these Haitians and Syrians who have TPS are very integrated into their communities.

They're working at a time when we have a labor shortage in this country. And I don't know if this is going to be as popular as the other people. parts of his immigration agenda. And then the overall message it sends, which is pretty simple, that the United States is no longer a welcoming country, even for legal immigrants. Well, and I think that, especially with TPS, though I think also asylum, the view of the Trump administration is that Democrats and the Biden administration were too lenient, that they were trying to expand legal immigration beyond what certainly those that are aligned with Trump view as, you know, what these programs were designed for.

Right. But when you get into legal immigration, you're in a whole different territory. The Trump administration has also talked about denaturalizing citizens. This whole process is about dedu documentation. It's not about finding criminals who are here in this country illegally anymore. Jimenez, did these rulings get the administration closer to its goal of mass deportations? Yeah. I mean, the agency being DHS definitely celebrated these rulings with, you know, a top official at DHS, even saying that these rulings give the administration more tools to secure the border.

And so they do see this as a way to get closer to that goal. But I think to Mara's point, you know, there is a technical, legal, maybe even difference to the public between, you know, targeting the quote unquote, worst of the worst, you know, people who did enter the country legally and have committed crimes versus people who were actually given a permission. to be here. And we have seen this administration, you know, expand the scope of how it's narrowing. It almost sounds like an axi-morum, but expand the scope of how it is narrowing the ability to stay as an immigrant and come in as an immigrant into the country. Yeah, and don't forget, Haitians have been in Donald Trump's sites for a long time. He's criticized them harshly and often falsely during the campaign. He said that Haitians in Ohio were eating people's pets without any. evidence of that. And he's also changed other parts of immigration. The refugee program has now been

pretty much shut down except for one group of people, which is white South Africans. It's a very clear message. Members of his administration have talked openly about trying to return America to what they call its European roots. You could read that as more white because the country is fast becoming minority white. As a matter of fact, there are projections that by 2044, the American population will be majority minority. And all of these efforts with asylum, with refugee status, TPS are all aimed at that goal. We are talking about two Supreme Court decisions, but there is one that we are waiting for, a big one. Yeah, we're still waiting on that major decision regarding birthright citizenship. And so that could continue to signal how the

court is feeling about the Trump administration policies, I think everyone's attention is going to be on that next week. Yes, absolutely. Well, we are going to let you get out and get back to reporting Jimena, but thank you for joining us today. Thanks. And when we come back, where the president fell short in the courts this week. And we're back with my co-host, Miles Parks. Hey, Miles. Hi, too. So in the previous segment, we talked about some wins the president had. You're here because the president also had some law. in the courts this week. His attempts to influence how people vote got slapped down by various courts. Walk us through what happened. So many courts and so many slaps down. I mean, so we let's take this into a few different buckets. One, all the different ways, I guess, that the president has tried to influence election policy basically have gotten slapped down by the courts. So executive orders,

one bucket. He has written two different executive orders, one last year that tried to implement proof of citizenship requirements to voting. One earlier this year, the people that's been in the news a lot recently, this idea of trying to get the USPS to police mail ballots and how mail ballots are delivered. USPS is the Postal Service. Yes, exactly. So both of these executive orders have now been struck down by federal courts. We had new orders in both of those this week. Another bucket, DOJ, the Department of Justice, trying to compel states to hand over their voter data. This is something we've talked about over and over again the last year. We're now up to close to a dozen cases where courts have stepped in to say no, states are not required to give you their voter data last bucket.

The Trump administration since last year, pod listeners might remember this because NPR was the first to report on it, has been building this data system at DHS to try to find non-citizen voters using, combining a bunch of different data sources. And this week, a federal judge stepped in there and said, no, that effort is illegal. So taken in totality, we have just seen loss after loss after loss. And I was actually at an event this week with a bunch of election officials and a former DOJ lawyer said the DOJ right now is the losingest law firm in America when it comes to elections cases. That is quite a quote. Also, I noticed you made a little flex in there, but you didn't fully flex because it was you that broke the story, not just NPR. That's true. It was me and Jude Jaffe Block. Thank you, Tam. Credit where credit is due. Also, we have to note that the U.S.PS, the U.S. Postal Service is one of NPR's financial support.

quarters. Mara, let's back up for a moment here. Unlike with immigration, which we talked about earlier, the president basically has no power to control elections, states control elections. That's in the Constitution. He just doesn't have the same level of executive power in this realm. At least that's how the courts have been ruling. Why do you think the White House is so interested in pushing this envelope. The president has been fixated on elections he doesn't win for quite some times. And he has said over and over again that if elections he doesn't win are false or rigged. And he has been relitigating the 2020 election where numerous judges have ruled that that election was free and fair and Donald Trump was the loser. But he is laying the groundwork to say that the

2026 elections have been rigged if they go against him and his party. He's not on the ballot, but both houses of Congress are up for grabs. So I think that he's trying to change public opinion about the safety and security of our elections, which Miles can tell you, are pretty darn secure and have been for a long time. And the instances of election fraud are minuscule. Yeah, and I mean, Mara, it's not just kind of like democracy watchers making that point. It's the voting officials themselves. Let's listen to a little bit of Republican Gabe Sterling. He's an election official who works for the Secretary of State there, Brad Raffensberger, who famously, post-2020 election was talking about the fact that President Trump was pushing misinformation about the election,

that there was essentially a pressure campaign on election workers to try to influence the results. And what Sterling said this week was that whether it's these executive orders trying to influence election policy or whether it's the Save America Act, which, as we know, President Trump is continuing to put. for in Congress, all of these are efforts that actually could end up affecting the midterms in some way or another. The reality of this is, my Republicans, my team are going to lose seats. But they're going to say, if we'd won these lawsuits, if we'd pass to Save America Act, if we did all these things, we would have won. And that's what they're building towards.

So it's a win-win either way. Well, and Mara, you mentioned that President Trump, you know, has long contested elections that he didn't win or that his people didn't win and said it was rigged. But there's this remarkable thing where he also has sewn out about elections where he did win and where his people did do well. And just in the last week, he has been talking about the California gubernatorial primary. And Steve Hilton, the Republican, is now one of the top two, made it through the primary, going on to the general election. But Trump tells this story of, well, it was looking like he wasn't going to make it. And I made a phone call. And then he was in the top two. I mean, Trump is talking about elections where his guy actually did well

as if it was rigged. Yeah, but what he's mostly trying to do is so doubt about elections being free and fair so that he can say any election he didn't win or his party didn't win was rigged. And he's had a lot of success with that. The number of people who tell pollsters that they don't believe in the safety and security of elections in the United States has grown. Also, we know that a lot of election deniers, people who agree with Donald Trump on his false narrative of what happened in 2020, have become the election officials in many states across the country. So not everyone is a Gabe Sterling or a Brad Raffensberger. Yeah. And I do feel like that cynicism that has sort of set in. I thought it was really interested in the same event, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson,

who also withstood a lot of pressure in 2020 and harassment that's been widely documented. And she talked about that a little bit. Let's hear it. So much of the work to undermine democracy is about creating this narrative that democracy can't be trusted. So that even if you lose in court, people have lost so much faith in the system that they give up on it and walk away, which we know when it comes to undermining democracies writ large in history. It's when citizens lose faith in their democracy, that democracies die. And you kind of hear it. It puts these officials in a really tough spot because they're basically like, we are winning in court. In some cases, that might not be enough if people still lose broader faith in the,

the system. Miles, where do these cases go, by the way? Could the Supreme Court rule for Trump in these cases? It definitely some of them could make it all the way up to the Supreme Court. Basically, all the cases I mentioned could potentially be appealed or are already in the process of being appealed. But I will also note that the two executive orders I mentioned, the moment they were drafted, I could not find an election lawyer in America who thought they were legal. So I would be hesitant to say that this is going to head up to the Supreme Court and that they will eventually be overturned or will rule in Trump's favor just because it is a pretty universal feeling in the election law community that Congress and the states run elections. Well, and this is, as a reminder, an election year. There are primaries

happening. There is a general election in November in every congressional seat in America and many others. It kind of feels like the clock is ticking here. Totally. And I think that's, One of the things that these voting officials are really freaked out about is that even if, like, all of these things we're talking about have not gone into effect or have been stopped from going to effect. But do you think every voter who saw the news last year that President Trump was signing a new executive order a couple weeks ago, this USPS order that somehow USPS is going to be policing who votes by mail, it seems unrealistic that every one of those voters who saw the initial news is now following the court cases to know where the rules stand now. And I think there's a lot of fear. Midterms are already such low turnout elections. And so I guess I'm wondering, a lot of people in this space are wondering, there are going to be people who are just so freaked out or so confused that they decide not to show up. Okay. We are going to keep our eyes on all of this or you will, Miles, you will.

I will indeed. And to be clear, NPR Politics. The podcast listeners are in the know on where these things stand. But I'm just more worried about the broader public, you know. All right. We're going to take one more quick break and then it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back and it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the pod where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't. can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. I am going first. And what I cannot let go of is the same thing the president can't let go of. And that is the reflecting pool. Oh, I thought you were going to say the 2020 election. I was like, really, Tam. Do we need to have a, are we going to do this right now? One track mind, Miles. One track mine. No, I am talking about the reflecting pool. This is the very large, shallow pool that is there to reflect the national monuments there on the national Mall. And it has had a long and sad history of algae blooms and funk. But President Trump,

he took this on, along with all of his many other remodeling projects and was like, I'm going to do this better than anyone has ever done it before. And Biden and Obama, they just couldn't get it done, but I can do it. And the president had the pool surfaced with something called rhino lining in American Flag Blue, and then it was filled with water, and then that water immediately turned green with algae, and now the liner, this, whatever it is, that's American Flag Blue,

is chipping and peeling and floating up to the surface. It feels like one of those classic cases where, I mean, we've talked about this a lot, where I don't know that anyone was thinking about the reflecting pool. And like, every time I walk by it, I live not that far away from it. I'm like, that's pretty. And now I feel like I'm like, I am like looking at it being like, well, that's not as good as it.

Wow. And like I feel like it is a problem kind of created by President Trump now making everyone focus on it. And now everyone's like, oh, there is algae. Oh, that is like he wasn't able to fix it. Like I don't know. It seems like one of the, another like self-fulfilling problems. Self-owns. He's an expert of that.

Is that the stric sand effect? He like drew attention to a thing. But anyway, Mara, what can't you let go of? Okay. My can't let it go is about Gracie. Gracie is a giraffe. Gracie lived in Texas. She was three years old.

But then she went missing. She has been missing for two weeks. She escaped her enclosure at the Cedar Hollow Ranch in the Texas Hill country. I don't like where this is going. I know. I don't like that Gracie is being talked about in the past tense at all. Well, we don't know where Gracie is. Vic Jones, who owns this remote property.

It's about 160 kilometers west of San Antonio. He sent up helicopters to look for her. He put out a $5,000 reward, but she still hasn't turned up. She's about the height of a tree, and we know the giraffes nibble on the leaves on tops of trees. And it's a very sparsely populated area. It's very rough, and there's no sign of Gracie. Now, what was interesting to me is that in addition to Gracie, the Texas Hill country, I just learned, has one of the largest concentrations of exotic captive animals in the country.

Apparently, the climate and the terrain are pretty similar to these animals' Native African environments. And perhaps the lack of regulation is conducive to personal zoos. I guess so. In other places, maybe you can't have a giraffe in your backyard. Unfortunately, Mara, I regret to inform you that I've now commissioned an eight-part podcast series where Mara Liason goes to Texas and finds out what happened to Gracie. All right, Miles, what can't you let go of? Mine is a politics can't let it go this week, vaguely-ish. Honestly, it's about Mary Peltola, who is running for Senate.

We've talked about her on the pod, running for Senate as a Democrat in Alaska. And I want to ask you both a question. If you had to guess how many long guns Mary Peltola owns, what would you guess? And I will, let me give you one fact to just help kind of center you on this question. She is the last Democrat who was endorsed by the NRA. I say 15. Okay, 15 long guns from Mara. Tam, any guesses?

I was just going to go with one. Like, how many long guns do you need? I mean, I guess like depends on where the bears are. Yeah. How about 176? Oh, wow. What if I told you Mary Paltola owns 176 long guns? And that's honestly, I have so many questions about that.

this, but I was reading an Atlantic profile about her. I just kind of mentioned this casually in like paragraph number six or seven or somewhere along the story. And I was like, wait, what? Can we just have a whole? I don't know why she owns all of these long guns. Obviously, she does live in a very rural place. She's talked a lot about hunting and, you know, everything that goes along with living in a remote part of Alaska. I get that. Maybe we should try to find out how many long guns every member of Congress has. Well, that was the other thought I had is I was like, does she own more long guns and like all the other Democrats combined in the in the Senate potentially i don't know i would guess yes you think i mean there aren't very many democrats from rural areas left yeah i don't know

that's just my fun fact for the day but the ones that are are packing a lot of long guns all right we are going to leave it there for now our executive producer is mithony maturi our producers are kacey morel and pria suggs our editor is rachel bay special thanks to dana farrington i'm tamar keith i cover politics I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.