Supreme Court lifts restrictions on LA immigration stops set after agents swept up US citizens

News from the Supreme Court today….In a 6-3 decision, it blocked a federal judge’s ruling that restricted federal officers’ ability to conduct immigration stops in the Los Angeles area….

The Court also received… a formal request from the White House to let it hold back 4 billion dollars of congressionally approved foreign aid. The appeal comes after a federal judge ruled last week that the administration must spend the money…

-On Capitol Hill, multiple media accounts this afternoon say Congressional leaders are trying to de-escalate a standoff over the Sept. 30 government funding deadline, with both Republicans and Democrats saying they’d be open to a short-term bill that wouldn't include substantial funding cuts…. Meanwhile, Senate Republican leader John Thune is taking the first steps to change rules on executive nominations… This after Democrats blocked several of the president’s picks before August recess….

-From the Washington Post…A divided Supreme Court on Monday lifted a ruling by a lower-court judge who placed limits on immigration raids in the Los Angeles area after finding federal agents were indiscriminately targeting people based on race and other factors…

The justices sided with the Trump administration, which argued that a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge was hampering its ability to crack down on illegal migration and that the stops by authorities were not unlawful….

The Post goes on to write…The majority did not offer a rationale for the decision, which is common in cases decided on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket….

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion that illegal immigration is a major issue in the Los Angeles area….

He added…“To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors…

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Kentanji Brown Jackson sharply disagreed…

Justice Sotomayor wrote “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job…Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

That from The Washington Post…

Now….we'll hear what California Attorney General Rob Bonta had to say about the decision coming up…

But now to the White House request to hold back 4 billion dollars in federal aid…

NBC News' Lawrence Hurley reporting today…

The case marks a showdown over to what extent the president can refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated, a brewing issue as the Trump administration has embraced a sweeping view of presidential power since taking office again in January….

In the new filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer described the case as raising “a grave and urgent threat” to the power of the presidency….

Under the Constitution, it is the job of Congress to allocate funds that the president can spend….

While the Trump administration has said it wants to withhold the 4 billion dollars…it has said it plans to spend another 6.5 billion dollars that Congress appropriated...

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