Politics
Barrett sought middle ground in Trump immunity case. This time Roberts said no
The Supreme Court ended its term divided into partisan blocs, with the Republican appointees ruling in favor of former President Trump’s claim of immunity while the three Democratic appointees voiced a bitter dissent.
It’s exactly the result many critics of the court might have expected, with politics driving the law. It’s also what Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has tried hard to avoid — at least most of the time.
For much of this year, Roberts and the justices succeeded in defusing partisan splits with narrow or procedural rulings.
By a 9-0 vote, they threw out a Texas lawsuit seeking to block millions of American women from obtaining abortion pills. They denied gun rights to people who are under a domestic violence restraining order in a 8-1 decision.
But the chief justice did not seek to bridge the partisan divide in the case of Trump vs. United States. He passed up the chance for a narrow consensus ruling offered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett that could have won over the court’s liberals.
A former Notre Dame law professor, Barrett saw no need for a broad ruling on presidential immunity in Trump’s case.
“Properly conceived, the president’s constitutional protection from prosecution is narrow,” she wrote in a concurring opinion. “The Constitution does not insulate presidents from criminal liability for official acts.”
Yes, the president cannot be prosecuted for the exercise of his “core” constitutional powers, she said, agreeing with the conservative majority on that point.
But she said the indictment before the court focused on Trump’s effort to overturn his election defeat by, for example, encouraging Republican state legislators to create false slates of electors claiming that Trump, not Biden, won in their state.
This is “private conduct,” Barrett said. “The president has no authority over state legislatures,” and the Constitution offers Trump “no protection from prosecution of acts taken in a private capacity.”
That was just the kind of middle-ground position that Roberts usually seeks. Instead, he dismissed it.
The court must uphold “enduring principles” involving the “separation of powers and the future of our Republic. … We cannot afford to fixate exclusively, or even primarily, on present exigencies,” he said, referring to the case before the court.
It wasn’t the first time Barrett split with Roberts this year in a high-profile case involving Trump. One week ago, Barrett disagreed with Roberts and said she would have upheld the obstruction charges against the Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She said Roberts did “textual backflips” to ignore what the law said.
Why did Roberts and the four conservatives on his right insist on a broad ruling on presidential immunity?
Unlike Barrett, all five have worked in Washington in Republican administrations and are attuned to how politics drives most investigations that involve presidents and their administrations.
Roberts and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh worked as White House lawyers for Republican presidents.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch was in high school when his mother, Anne Gorsuch, was forced to resign as President Reagan’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. House Democrats had voted to hold her in contempt for refusing to turn over documents at the behest of the White House involving hazardous waste dumps.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. came to the court after tough confirmation hearings in which they clashed with then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.). More recently, they have been steady targets of Democrats for their undisclosed vacation trips paid for by billionaires. They were the most likely to vote for Trump’s broad claim of immunity.
Many Republicans, not just Trump’s supporters, saw the prosecutions of the former president through a political lens. Never before, they said, had a former president from one party been indicted for crimes by the administration of the party that replaced him.
Moreover, the Trump case took shape in the last year as the former president prepared to run against the Democratic president who ousted him.
In November 2022, Trump announced he would seek the presidency again. Biden said he too would run. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, then appointed Jack Smith, a hard-charging prosecutor, as a special counsel to pursue the investigation of Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.
Last August, Smith indicted Trump for conspiring to overturn his election loss, and he sought a fast-track jury trial for early this year. He also indicted Trump in Florida for mishandling secret and highly classified documents.
Meanwhile in New York, Manhattan Dist.Atty. Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, indicted Trump on 34 felony counts for false bookkeeping entries intended to hide payments to a porn star. New York’s state attorney general, Letitia James, a Democrat, sought and won a $355-million civil penalty against Trump for allegedly inflating his assets. In Georgia, Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis, an elected Democrat, indicted Trump and 18 others on state racketeering charges involving the 2020 election.
Democrats and progressive groups cheered the indictments as signs that Trump was finally being held to account in the courts for his misdeeds. They were not prepared for what happened when Trump’s case reached the Supreme Court.
In early December, the special counsel petitioned the justices to take up Trump’s claims immediately. It is of “imperative public importance” the case move promptly toward a trial, he said. Two weeks later, his appeal was turned down without comment.
In February, the U.S. appeals court in Washington said the case may move forward, but the Supreme Court put it on hold and scheduled arguments for the end of April on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity.
Those arguments and this week’s opinion made clear that Roberts and the conservative justices saw the issue through an entirely different prism than the liberals and Democrats.
“No president has ever faced criminal charges — let alone for his conduct in office,” Roberts said. Responding to the fierce dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, he said she was engaged in “fearmongering” that ignores the “more likely prospect of an executive branch that cannibalizes itself, with each successive president free to prosecute his predecessors.” He foresaw “the enfeebling of the presidency” and “a cycle of factional strife.”
Roberts concluded by noting the newly declared immunity for presidents “applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy, or party.”
Which poses the greater danger to the nation — a president who can break the law knowing he is forever shielded from prosecution or a president under constant threat that they may face prosecution after leaving office by partisan opponents?
Georgetown law professor Irv Gornstein, director of its Supreme Court Institute, said that question explains much about the outcome.
“If you think that tit-for-tat prosecution of ex-presidents poses a greater risk to the presidency and democracy than Trump, you probably think that presumptive immunity for all official acts makes sense,” he said. “But if you think that Trump is the greater threat, as many Americans almost certainly do, you probably think the court cares more about Trump and his reelection prospects than it does about democracy and the rule of law.”
“When a sizable portion of the public has already lost confidence in the court, that is something the court ought to worry about,” he added.
Many critics on the left said the chief justice had made a colossal error of judgment that will overshadow his career.
Quinta Jurecic and Ben Wittes, writing in the Lawfare blog, called it a “decision of surpassing recklessness in dangerous times.”
The “court majority may flatter itself that it’s staying out of politics. But this is a fairy tale the justices are telling themselves — if they are, in fact, telling themselves this pleasant little tale,” the pair said. “In fact, they are handing a powerful immunity to an adjudged felon who may be about to assume the executive power of the United States.”
Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, a top Justice Department attorney under President George W. Bush, said in response that it will not be clear for some time whether the court made the right call. But he said the Democratic lawyers made a mistake by relying on the courts to stop Trump.
“It has been a fantasy for many years now to think that courts and prosecutors can purge the nation of a law-defiant populist demagogue,” he said. “Only politics, not law, can do that.”
Politics
Israel shares intelligence warning Iran plotted new assassination attempt against Trump: report
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Israel recently shared intelligence with the United States indicating Iran had developed a fresh plan to assassinate President Donald Trump, according to a Wall Street Journal report Thursday citing people familiar with the matter.
The reported intelligence would mark an escalation in the longstanding threats against Trump, who Iran has repeatedly vowed to retaliate against over the 2020 U.S. strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
The White House referred Fox News Digital to Trump’s remarks Wednesday when asked about the report.
TRUMP FACES UNPRECEDENTED THIRD ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. Trump addressed threats against his life after a report said Israel shared intelligence with the United States about an alleged new Iranian assassination plot. (Kerem Uzel/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“They want to take out the U.S. leader — me. I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists,” Trump said. “And, so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long. These are evil, sick people. And we have to root out that cancer. That cancer. You know what you do? You’ve got to cut out cancer early. And that’s the way I feel.”
Fox News Digital has also reached out to Israel’s Embassy in Washington and Iran’s Mission to the United Nations for comment.
The Journal reported the intelligence surfaced as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have diverged in recent weeks over how to proceed after last month’s conflict with Iran. Netanyahu has advocated for continuing military pressure on Tehran, while Trump has sought to preserve a fragile ceasefire after U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
NETANYAHU REJECTS REPORTS OF A RIFT WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP, SAYS THE TWO REMAIN ALIGNED ON IRAN
President Donald Trump, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House March 25, 2019. The leaders spoke Thursday after The Wall Street Journal reported Israel had shared intelligence with the United States about an alleged new Iranian plot targeting Trump. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Trump and Netanyahu spoke Thursday and agreed to continue coordination between the two countries, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office, which said Trump also updated the Israeli leader on recent U.S. activity in the Gulf.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)
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Iranian mourners at the funeral for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei chanted for Trump’s death and displayed a banner that said, “We Will Kill Trump,” according to the Journal.
Iran has publicly vowed for years to retaliate against Trump over the U.S. operation that killed Soleimani, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, in Baghdad in January 2020.
WASHINGTON — A tentative armistice between the United States and Iran reached less than a month ago appeared all but dead Wednesday after the two sides traded fresh military strikes, and as President Trump directed further attacks on the Islamic Republic.
The escalation marked a dramatic turn after the Trump administration spent weeks selling a diplomatic breakthrough with Tehran that proved controversial across the political aisle, lifting oil sanctions and a naval blockade on Iran in exchange for the promise of talks over the status of the Strait of Hormuz and its decades-old nuclear program.
Now, speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump said he believed the truce — which diplomats describe as a memorandum of understanding — was “over” and that it was a “waste of time” dealing with Iranian leadership.
“They’re scum. They’re sick people,” Trump said of Iranian leaders, whom he had characterized last month as “very rational people” and “very nice to deal with.”
The president’s dim views of the ceasefire agreement’s fate were shared by Iran’s foreign ministry, which issued a statement on Wednesday saying the American attacks, the reinstatement of a U.S. naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, and Israel’s continuing attacks in Lebanon rendered “important and fundamental” parts of the deal “ineffective.”
The truce’s unraveling was underscored by Trump ordering the U.S. military to launch a series of strikes against Iran on Wednesday afternoon to “further degrade their ability to threaten” the commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
“The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement on social media.
Earlier in the day, Trump signaled that the United States planned to “hit them hard” and floated the possibility of taking over Kharg Island, which is vital to Iran’s economy. His remarks quickly prompted oil prices to rise and global stock markets to fall, a worry that Trump acknowledged but which did not seem to sway his decision-making in relation to Iran.
“If we hit Iran, oil goes up a little bit, it is all right,” Trump said. He later added that the United States may “do some other thing that could lift it a little bit, but I don’t think it’s gonna lift it a lot at all.”
As Trump signals the continuation of fighting, his administration has been seeking more than $67 billion in funding to cover expenses related to the Iran war, a request that Congress has not yet approved as lawmakers have been split over the president’s handling of the conflict.
“The American people are paying the price for Trump’s total failure in Iran,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement Wednesday. “Our troops are back in harm’s way and high gas costs are continuing to punish working families.”
The president’s stance on the war marked the latest setback to a fragile truce that has barely held since the 14-page agreement was signed June 17, as the U.S. and Iran engaged over the last few weeks in cycles of attacks and counterattacks.
Trump was noticeably angrier at Iran on Wednesday as he cast doubt over the deal. Last month, Trump had complimented Iranian leadership for trying to reach a peace deal and celebrated the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route for the world’s oil and gas. But based on his remarks, it was clear he was out of patience.
“I am not happy with them,” Trump said. “They’re cuckoo. There’s something wrong with these people. For 47 years, they’ve been the bully of the Middle East and they are not the bully anymore. They are not the bully anymore.”
Trump expressed frustration with Iran’s negotiators and their resistance to abiding by U.S. demands to reopen the strait. When asked if he intended to send troops to Iran, the president dismissed the idea.
“Why would I go in now?” Trump said. “I’d go in when they’re completely eliminated or an agreement is made.”
Still, the president kept the door open for negotiations, saying that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner “want to negotiate.”
“They’re good people, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, but they have to come back to me,” Trump said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with [the Iranians]. They’re liars.”
The latest breakdown to the ceasefire followed a now-familiar chain reaction of tit-for-tat attacks, starting with a series of strikes on three oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, including a Qatari vessel carrying natural gas, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center.
The Qatari tanker was off the coast of Oman when it was hit and caught fire, the maritime monitor said, in what experts say was a move to thwart ships attempting to use an alternate transit route to the one Iran specified. Iran did not claim responsibility, but a report on Iranian state television said the Qatari tanker came under attack after ignoring warnings to turn back.
The two other vessels were damaged but were able to continue to their destination, according to the U.K. group.
Qatar, which has played a vital role in facilitating negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, condemned the attack on its tanker as “unacceptable.”
The U.S. responded with a wave of strikes against more than 80 Iranian targets aimed at “impos[ing] heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway,” according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. That tally included roughly 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in the strait.
Iranian state media said U.S. strikes targeted Sirik, Qeshm Island and Bushehr and Bandar Abbas, while a U.S. drone strike on the port city of Mahshahr killed one Revolutionary Guard member.
Ahead of the strikes, the White House revoked the 60-day temporary license given to Tehran to sell and deliver oil during the truce.
Iran’s military countered with its own strikes on 85 U.S. military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait; it also shot down an MQ-9 drone, according to a statement on Wednesday.
Kuwait said its military intercepted two ballistic missiles and 13 drones, but that none had resulted in material damage or casualties.
Global oil prices surged 6% on news of Trump’s reversal on the deal, rising to more than $78 a barrel, down from the peak during the war but still above prewar levels.
The renewed violence appeared to have little effect on the funeral for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli strike on Feb. 28, in the war’s opening hours.
The funeral, a days-long period of mourning, is set to end on Thursday, when Khamenei’s body will return from Iraq to be buried in the city of Mashhad, his birthplace. Negotiations were to begin once more.
In his remarks Wednesday, Trump said Iranian leaders had asked for a “timeout” to attend the funeral, and that he had promised not to kill them.
“And I said give it to them, and they start shooting missiles,” Trump said.
Whether those talks — which were meant to deal with the thorniest issues between the two countries, including the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program — will go ahead remains unclear. Iran, for its part, maintained a defiant attitude.
“The era of bullying and extortion is over,” wrote Mohammad Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker. “It leads nowhere. We don’t fold.”
Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to the supreme leader, posted on X that Trump’s policy had “driven the region towards fire.”
“We had previously warned that the region is not a place for the political gambling of small countries, and we have repeatedly proven that adventures are met with an immediate response,” he wrote.
He added that the Axis of Resistance — a reference to Iran’s network of allied groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen — would not be “silent against humiliation and adventurism” and has “its finger on the trigger.”
Bulos reported from Beirut and Ceballos from Washington.
Politics
Omar’s disclosures erased millions, leaving her with potential negative net worth. She won’t explain why.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., refused to address her revised financial disclosures that could imply she has a negative net worth after the progressive lawmaker dramatically reducing the reported value of assets tied to her husband’s business ventures.
“Can you tell us if your husband still has the consulting business and the wine business?” Fox News Digital asked Omar.
The congresswoman stayed silent as she was repeatedly questioned, after previously telling Fox News Digital that the original filing — showing Omar’s reported assets reducing by as much as $29.9 million — was inaccurate and “incomplete” information.
ILHAN OMAR’S OFFICE SAYS SHE’S ‘NOT A MILLIONAIRE’ AFTER $30M FILING REVISED DOWN TO UNDER $100K: REPORT
US Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, speaks during a press conference with family members of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as members of Congress call for US investigations into Israel’s actions and reintroduce the Justice for Shireen Act, outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, May 18, 2023. The Al Jazeera journalist, who was a dual US citizen, was killed on May 11, 2022. The Israeli army later admitted one of its soldiers likely shot the reporter. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The controversy surrounding Omar’s finances began when a 2024 financial report estimated that Omar and her husband possessed between $6 million and $30 million in assets, all while the Minnesota fraud scandal within the Somali community was beginning to come to fruition.
A more recent 2025 financial disclosure report shows Omar’s revised value of shared assets between her and husband to sit at a maximum of $125,000 — a multi-million-dollar drop from the year prior. The lower estimate of their assets, $20,000, compared to the low and high debt estimates, $30,000 and $100,000, would imply the Minnesota Democrat could have a negative net worth.
Both her and her husband have separate debts, each ranging somewhere between $15,000 and $50,000 — from her own student loans and her husband’s credit card debt, according to the disclosures.
WATCH: OMAR SILENT WHEN CONFRONTED ON ALLEGED TIES TO MASSIVE MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
RICHFIELD, MN – AUGUST 08: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (C) campaigns with her husband Tim Mynett (R) at the Richfield Farmers Market on August 8, 2020 in Richfield, Minnesota. Omar is hoping to retain her seat as the representative for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in next week’s primary election. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
The biggest change in the documents involved Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett. His reported ownership interests in both his winery and venture capital advisory firm, which were previously valued in the millions of dollars, are listed with no value now.
In Omar’s 2024 financial disclosure records, Mynett’s share in his winery was valued between $1 million and $5 million, and his share at the venture capital advisory firm was valued between $5 million and $25 million. Now, his equity interests are both listed at $0.
Omar’s office previously told Fox News Digital that Mynett has partners in both businesses and said the earlier disclosure mistakenly reflected the businesses’ total equity rather than his ownership interest. The office also said the original filing listed assets without accounting for liabilities.
VANCE REFERS TIM WALZ, MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL TO DOJ FOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OVER STATE’S ALLEGED FRAUD
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has publicly voiced his interest in the Ethics Committee opening an investigation into Omar’s personal finances after the 2025 financial reports came out showing the possibility of a $29 million drop in her net worth.
Vice President JD Vance also has previously said the U.S. Department of Justice will be opening a probe into her alleged fraud as part of the administration’s anti-fraud taskforce that he spearheads, though no formal investigations have been shared with the public at this time.
Omar has been reluctant to answer Fox News Digital’s questions about her financial fallout and potential probes to be opened against her.
The Minnesota lawmaker similarly dodged answering any of Fox News Digital’s questions just last month about the revised disclosures.
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“There’s also the possibility that it might rain on this sunny day,” Omar replied without responding directly to the content of the question.
Fox News Digital’s Robert Schmad contributed to this report.
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