| SUPREME COURT: Justices dealt an interim blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the census in time for the 2020 survey, ruling as the court’s term ended on Thursday that the government did not provide adequate justification to seek the new data. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal wing of the court in sending the controversial matter back to the Commerce Department to come up with a rationale more persuasive than its stated commitment to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Those who oppose asking households about citizenship status maintain the question will have a chilling effect on the number and quality of responses and will wind up skewing a population survey that helps determine federal benefits and political representation over the span of a decade (The Hill). Describing a “mismatch” in the administration’s paper trail between the Commerce Department and the Department of Justice, Roberts wrote that “the VRA [Voting Rights Act] enforcement rationale — the sole stated reason — seems to have been contrived.” President Trump expressed exasperation and tweeted from Japan that his administration is not giving up. "I have asked the lawyers if they can delay the Census, no matter how long, until the United States Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a final and decisive decision on this very critical matter," Trump wrote, suggesting officials can provide another justification for satisfactory to the courts (The Hill). "Can anyone really believe that as a great Country, we are not able the ask whether or not someone is a Citizen. Only in America!" Under federal law, the census must begin next year on April 1. A former director of the Census Bureau told The Associated Press he believes Congress would have to change the law for the population count to be delayed, as the president suggested. Gerrymandering: Conservatives were happier about a ruling Thursday in another much-anticipated case about challenges to boundaries for states’ congressional districts. The court’s conservative majority ruled that federal courts have no role to play in the dispute over the practice known as partisan gerrymandering. Voters and elected officials should be the arbiters of what is a political dispute, Roberts said in his opinion for the court. The decision could embolden political line-drawing for partisan gain when state lawmakers undertake the next round of redistricting following the 2020 census (The Associated Press). Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), a leading proponent of redistricting reform, said he and his allies on the issue will “continue to fight” what he says is a “national scandal” (The Hill). Former Attorney General Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement that “history will not be kind” to the Roberts court because it “has undermined voting rights and core Democratic principles in America.” Richard L. Hasen: The Supreme Court’s green light to partisan gerrymandering will drag it down further into the mud. Charles Lane: Progressives should be glad they lost the Supreme Court gerrymandering case. Leah Litman: The latest chapter in the Gorsuch-Kavanaugh saga is the most revealing yet. Emily Bazelon: The Supreme Court isn’t as naive as Trump hoped. Adam Liptak: After 14 years, Roberts takes charge. Michael Wines: Why the Supreme Court’s rulings on Thursday have profound implications for American politics. > High court vacancies: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Thursday that he would work with any Democratic president to get a hearing and a vote on a nominee to fill a potential Supreme Court vacancy. But the Senate majority leader said his conference would weigh the circumstances whenever a court seat is vacant. “A lot of it depends on the timing of the vacancy. Obviously if you have a vacancy in the first year of a term of a president, you’re not going to fail to fill that vacancy for a very lengthy period of time, no matter what the political composition is,” McConnell told reporters (The Hill). McConnell for a year prevented a confirmation hearing and Senate vote on former President Obama’s final nominee Judge Merrick Garland, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The majority leader’s decision subsequently opened the door to Trump’s 2017 nomination of a conservative pick, Justice Neil Gorsuch. 
© Getty Images *** CONGRESS: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did something Thursday that she hasn’t done much since she retook the gavel in January: She caved. Despite drum beats from the progressive wing of her party, Pelosi sided with the moderates and helped pass a clean version of the Senate’s $4.6 billion supplemental to address the crisis at the southern border after weeks of negotiations. As Juliegrace Brufke writes, the 305-102 vote marked a blow to Pelosi and liberal lawmakers who had demanded additional protections for migrant children, many of which were included in the House’s legislation. However with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency responsible for caring for migrant children, on the verge of running out of funding to take care of migrants at the border and the likelihood that if the House didn’t pass the Senate bill, it would take at least 10 days to pass any bill due to the Fourth of July recess, the House passed the Senate’s version. “We don’t need anyone, especially the U.S. Senate, to tell us what the needs are at the border,” Pelosi wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter to her conference. “The children come first. At the end of the day, we have to make sure that the resources needed to protect the children are available. Therefore, we will not engage in the same disrespectful behavior that the Senate did in ignoring our priorities. In order to get resources to the children fastest, we will reluctantly pass the Senate bill.” “As we pass the Senate bill, we will do so with a Battle Cry as to how we go forward to protect children in a way that truly honors their dignity and worth,” Pelosi wrote. Democrats voted in favor of the bill 129-95, while all but seven Republicans voted for it as well. Notably, seven members of leadership, six committee chairs and multiple key Pelosi allies all voted against the bill. Trump is expected to sign the bill into law, something he wasn’t willing to do for the House version that was backed by the progressives. The Senate version passed the upper chamber on Wednesday 84-8. Bottom line: This is a massive win for McConnell and House moderates, known also as the “front-liners,” who helped Democrats take back the House in November and one of their first opportunities where they’ve shown able to flex their muscle in the conference. It also comes at the expense of boisterous progressives who were on the short end of the stick Thursday and were not pleased about it. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, lit into the moderates over the push for the Senate bill and wondered on Twitter when the Problem Solvers Caucus had “become the Child Abuse Caucus.” The tweet was rebuked immediately by the moderates, with Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) confronting him on the House floor over it and telling reporters that Pocan made the comments “to get retweets.” 
© Getty Images > Iran vote: The Senate is voting today on an amendment from a pair of Democratic senators to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would block the president from using funding to carry out military action against Iran unless he has congressional approval. The amendment would be added to the bill retroactively if it passes. According to Jordain Carney, the vote on the amendment, proposed by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), comes amid heightened tension between the U.S. and Iran and the president’s decision this month to stop a military strike against the Iranians after the country shot down a U.S. drone. Democrats had threatened to block the NDAA bill unless they were granted a vote on the amendment. Republicans are confident they will be able to beat back the vote given that it will need 60 votes to pass, meaning Democrats will have to pick off 13 Republicans to pass the amendment. “I don’t think it will get 60 votes,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) told The Hill. “I think it will have all of the Democrats. Democrats are disciplined, Republicans aren’t, we know that. And we know also that there are going to be a few Republicans that will join.” Bottom line: Inhofe is right. There is no chance the amendment gets 60 votes. The Senate’s NDAA package provides $750 billion in total spending, including $642.5 billion in base budget for the Pentagon and $23.3 billion for the Department of Energy’s national security programs. It also gives $75.9 billion for the overseas contingency operations fund, an account that does not fall under budget cap restrictions. The Senate bill still must be reconciled with the House legislation, which stands at $733 billion. The House will take up their bill in July. The Senate opened the vote on the amendment at 5:02 a.m. and it is expected to remain open throughout the day so senators participating in Thursday night’s debate can return to Washington and take part. > Former special counsel Robert Mueller is being represented by Jonathan Yarowsky, a former special counsel for President Clinton and former House Judiciary Committee general counsel, as he readies for his appearance on Capitol Hill on July 17. Yarowsky is a former colleague at WilmerHale, his former law firm, and a registered lobbyist (Politico). | 
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