Supreme court blocks Trump from cancelling Daca immigration program – as it happened

• The supreme court blocked Trump’s end to rescind Daca. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled the department of homeland security had violated a federal administrative law with its policy ending Daca, the Obama-era program allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children to live and work legally in the US.
• Following the decision, Trump insisted the country needed “new justices” to protect conservative values. Trump and Republican lawmakers accused chief justice John Roberts of playing politics by siding with his four liberal colleagues.
• Joe Biden and other Democrats celebrated the news. Biden vowed to develop a path to citizenship for Daca recipients and 11m undocumented immigrants on day one, if he takes office.
• The Air Force inspector general is investigating whether military aircraft were improperly used to monitor protestors, the New York Times reported. This comes after a top Pentagon official told congress that there was no surveillance of demonstrators during the recent protests against police brutality.
• Oregon’s governor was the latest to recognize Juneteenth. Kate Brown said she will submit legislation to have the day declared a state holiday next year. New York and Virginia have already proclaimed the day, which celebrates the end of slavery, a holiday. Meanwhile, the president took credit for bringing attention to Juneteenth, even though the holiday has been celebrated since 1866 and is observed in 47 states.
• Facebook pulled a Trump campaign ad that featured a Nazi symbol. The campaign claimed the symbol was associated with antifa, though experts disagreed and noted that the inverted red triangle was identical to one German Nazis used to designate political prisoners during Worl War II.
• The former Atlanta police officer charged with murdering Rayshard Brooks turned himself in. Garrett Rolfe faces 11 charges, including felony murder, after shooting Brooks twice in the back while he was running away. Rolfe’s fellow officer, Devin Brosnan, who faces three counts including aggravated assault, has also turned himself in.
• Four Confederate portraits were removed from the Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol. House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced this morning that the four portraits of former speakers who had served in the Confederacy would be removed ahead of tomorrow’s Juneteenth holiday.

A bill to send all California voters a mail-in ballot was approved by the state’s assembly, winning bipartisan support and clearing the last legislative hurdle before it can be signed into law.

If signed by governor Gavin Newsom, the policy will take effect immediately, allowing all Californians to vote by mail in November, when public health experts expect the coronavirus pandemic will pose a continuing risk.

“No one should have to risk their health and possibly their life to exercise their constitutional right to vote,” said Assemblyman Marc Berman. “This will ensure that every California voter has the option to vote from the safety of their own home.”

Both Democrats and Republicans supported the legislation, despite staunch opposition to mail-in voting from Donald Trump and national Republicans.

The Republican National Committee and Republican Party in California sued Newsom over his earlier executive order to send ballots to all voters. The legislation passed today clarified that counties will be allowed to use their own systems to track ballots and only active voters would be mailed the ballots.

19 Jun 202019.47 EDT

Oliver Laughland

A senior Trump campaign official has advised those at high risk of severe illness from Covid-19 not to attend the president’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma as coronavirus cases in the state continue to spike and tensions in the city rise before the event on Saturday.

Marc Lotter, the Trump campaign’s director of strategic communications, told the Guardian he would encourage those in “high risk categories” to watch the rally on television, but defended the president’s decision to hold a mass indoor rally during the pandemic, despite local health officials urging the campaign to reschedule.

“I personally would encourage anyone who might find themselves to be in one of the high risk categories and encourage them not to come. Watch it on television, protect yourself, protect your family if someone in your direct family has those kinds of high risk factors,” Lotter said in an interview outside Tulsa’s 19,000 capacity BOK arena, where Trump is due to appear.

Governor Kate Brown has officially recognized Friday as Juneteeth and said that she will introduce legislation to make it a state holiday next year. The announced the news in a tweet responding to musician Pharrell Williams.

New York and Virginia have already recognized the day as a state holiday via executive orders by state governors. The city of Portland, Oregon, also announced it would make Juneteenth a paid holiday for city employees.

The US air force inspector general is investigating whether military planes used to monitor protesters earlier this month were misused, the New York Times reports.

“Following discussions with the secretary of defense about shared concerns, the secretary of the Air Force is conducting an investigation into the use of Air National Guard RC-26 aircraft to support civil authorities during recent protest activity in U.S. cities,” Brig Gen Patrick S Ryder, the chief air force spokesman, told the Times.

The investigation comes after a top Pentagon official told Congress that the military did not spy on demonstrators.

Officials in Oakland confirmed that they are investigating an effigy hung from a tree as a hate crime. The local police and FBI are also investigating ropes hung from a tree that were discovered earlier this week.

“Symbols of racial violence have no place in Oakland and will not be tolerated,” Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, said in a statement Wednesday. “We are all responsible for knowing the history and present-day reality of lynchings, hate crimes and racial violence. Objects that invoke such terror will not be tolerated in Oakland’s public spaces.”

The effigy Thursday morning was discovered as California grapples with the death of Robert Fuller, a 24-year-old Black man who was found hanging from a tree in Palmdale last week. The family of a 38-year-old man who died in May in Victorville, California, are also raising questions about officials’ account of their relative’s death by hanging.

On Wednesday night, the half-brother of Fuller was killed by the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department, the same agency investigating the hanging.

From my colleagues Joanna Walters and Amanda Holpuch:

What is Daca?

Daca (pronounced dah-kuh) is a federal government program created in 2012 under Barack Obama. It allowed people brought to the US unlawfully as children the temporary right legally to live, study and work in America, instead of living in the legal shadows, fearing deportation. Those applying were vetted, and then action to deport them would be deferred for two years, with a chance to renew on a rolling basis. And they would become eligible for basics like a driving license, college enrollment or a work permit. The program is not designed as a path to permanent residency or citizenship.

Who are the Dreamers?

Those protected under Daca are known as “Dreamers” – by the time Trump announced his decision to rescind the program, many hundreds of thousands had been granted approval. To apply, they must have been younger than 31 on 15 June 2012, when the program began, have arrived before the age of 16 and been “undocumented”, ie lacking legal immigration status. Most Dreamers are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

What happens now?

The case before the supreme court hinged on whether the Trump administration followed proper procedure – not whether it could legally end Daca. The court agreed Trump has the power to end the program.

That leaves open the possibility that Trump could have another go at scrapping it, though it would be difficult to do before the November election – and largely unpopular with voters. So Daca survives, albeit still in limbo for now. Will it start back up again, allowing new applications?

If the program had been killed off, Dreamers faced the immediate threat of deportation to the countries where they were born but many have no familiarity with.

Joe Biden has pledged to make Daca permanent via legislation if he becomes president.

A survey of Black immigrant domestic workers in New York, Miami-Dade and Massachusetts found that 70% had lost their jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A survey conducted by The Institute for Policy Studies and the National Domestic Workers Alliance includes responses from 800 workers.

Half of those surveyed said they were afraid of seeking assistance from the federal or local government due to their immigration status. Just as the pandemic hit the US, the Trump administration’s public charge rule, which allows the government to deny green cards and visas to immigrants who rely on public benefits, took effect.

A senior state department official has resigned over Donald Trump’s handling of racial tensions.

Mary Elizabeth Taylor, the assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, submitted a resignation letter in which she said the president’s actions “cut sharply against my core values and convictions”, Washington Post reports.

Taylor, 30, is one of the highest-ranking African American leaders in the administration and had served since Trump first took office.

“Moments of upheaval can change you, shift the trajectory of your life, and mold your character. The President’s comments and actions surrounding racial injustice and Black Americans cut sharply against my core values and convictions,” she wrote in her resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which was obtained by the Post. “I must follow the dictates of my conscience and resign.”

Following the supreme court’s decision on Daca, Joe Biden promised to create a roadmap to citizenship for Dreamers and 11 million undocumented people in the US “on day one” that he takes office.

The Democratic presidential candidate’s immigration platform seeks to distance Biden from policies enacted during Barack Obama’s first term, when deportations were sped up. But Biden’s plan is otherwise fairly moderate – offering a continuation of Obama-era policies that stop short of making the sorts of radical reform that immigration activists have demanded.

Biden doesn’t seek to decriminalize unauthorized entry into the US, or abolish Ice. Instead, the former vice-president also plans to refocus immigration authorities on ‘toward threats to public safety and national security” and otherwise relaxing enforcement.

His platform promises to reverse various Trump policies, including family separation and travel bans.

My colleague Kenya Evelyn explores the question of whether it is time that Juneteenth, a day that millions of African Americans across the US celebrate freedom from slavery, becomes a federal holiday:

5:03

Facebook has taken down Trump campaign ads that feature a symbol used by Nazis to classify political prisoners.

The ads, which attacked what the campaign characterized as “Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups,” featured a red, upside-down triangle. The Trump campaign said the symbol was associated with antifa, but experts said there was no evidence to support that claim.

However, the red triangle featured in the ads “is practically identical to that used y the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps”, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum noted on Twitter that the triangle was “the most common category of prisoners” registered at the Auschwitz.

Moreover, contrary to claims made by the president and his campaign, there is little evidence that antifa — an umbrella term that denotes groups with far-left or anarchist tendencies — has been involved in coordinated violence or looting.

In a statement explaining why the Trump ads were removed, Facebook said that the company’s “policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”