A federal appeals court hears arguments Tuesday over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for actions he took after the 2020 election, one of the key questions that could determine the former president’s legal and political fate in 2024.
Trump plans to attend the oral arguments in the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where a three-judge panel will decide whether the federal charges brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith should be dismissed based on Trump’s claims of immunity.
Trump’s presence at the 9:30 a.m. ET hearing Tuesday – less than week before the Iowa caucuses – underscores how intertwined Trump’s legal and political worlds have become, as the former president has made the four criminal indictments against him a key part of his pitch to his supporters in the 2024 campaign.
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The immunity question is ultimately expected to end up before the Supreme Court, one of several consequential questions the high court will take up related to Trump this year. On Friday, the US Supreme Court said it would review next month the Colorado Supreme Court’s unprecedented decision to remove Trump from its state ballot.
Trump faces four counts from Smith’s election subversion charges, including conspiring to defraud the United States and to obstruct an official proceeding. The former president has pleaded not guilty.
Here’s what to know for Tuesday’s arguments:
District Judge Tanya Chutkan has declined to dismiss the election subversion charges against Trump, ruling that he does not have absolute immunity for what he said and did after the 2020 election.
“Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Chutkan wrote. “Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”
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Trump appealed that decision to the appeals court.
Trump’s attorneys have argued that his actions trying to overturn the 2020 election fell within his duties as president because Trump was working to “ensure election integrity” as part of his official capacity as president, and therefore he is immune from criminal prosecution.
CNN legal analyst breaks down strength of Trump’s immunity argument
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Smith in a filing last month pushed back on Trump’s claims of absolute immunity, arguing that Trump’s sweeping assertion “threatens to license Presidents to commit crimes to remain in office.”
The former president has also argued that because the Senate acquitted him on an impeachment charge in the weeks after the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, that the Justice Department cannot charge him with the same crime.
The three judges who will hear Trump’s case Tuesday are J. Michelle Childs, a Joe Biden appointee; Florence Pan, a Biden appointee; and Karen LeCraft Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee.
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Henderson has previously heard several cases involving the former president, including whether Congress could access Trump’s tax records and whether the House could enforce a subpoena on former White House counsel Don McGahn. She has repeatedly expressed concerns about safeguarding the special protections around the presidency in her previous opinions.
Childs took the bench in July 2022. She was on Biden’s shortlist to replace outgoing Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, but he ultimately picked Ketanji Brown Jackson. Before joining the appeals court, Childs was a federal judge in North Carolina since 2010.
Pan was nominated to the appeals court by Biden in mid-2022 to fill the seat vacated by Jackson after she was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Previously, Pan served as a judge for the Superior and District courts in DC for more than 10 years.
John Sauer will be the attorney arguing on behalf of Trump.
James Pearce will be the attorney arguing on behalf of the special counsel’s office.
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Trial timing and 2024 campaign on collision course
The appeals court hearing will be the latest courtroom that Trump will turn into part of his presidential campaign.
Trump is attending the arguments Tuesday, though he will not be asked any questions by the judges directly. He then goes ahead to Iowa ahead of Monday’s caucuses, though he will return to the east coast to attend closing arguments in his New York civil fraud trial on Thursday. (Both court appearances are voluntary.)
Trump has made the four criminal indictments against him, including two from Smith, a central part of his presidential campaign, and he’s repeatedly railed against both the criminal and civil prosecutions against him as alleged election interference.
For Smith, the appellate court’s work is significant not just for his indictment to withstand the former president’s challenge, but also because it will affect how quickly the trial against Trump could take place.
Chutkan had originally scheduled the election subversion trial for March, but the trial deadlines are paused while Trump’s appeal moves through the appeals process. The question of presidential immunity is likely to end up at the Supreme Court regardless of how the appellate court rules, meaning the timing of the trial remains up in the air and could be delayed.
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Smith took the extraordinary and unusual step late last year to ask the Supreme Court to skip the appeals courts and fast-track the issue of presidential immunity. But the justices denied that request without comment or noted dissent.
Once Tuesday’s hearing concludes in the federal election subversion case, the panel of appeals judges could issue a written ruling at any time. It will not rule from the bench.
In addition to an appeal to the Supreme Court, either side could also ask for the case to be reheard by the entire DC Court of Appeals, which could result in more delays.
The question of presidential immunity goes beyond the special counsel’s election subversion case.
On Monday, Trump made the same claims of immunity in the election subversion case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, saying it should be thrown out because he is protected from prosecution under presidential immunity.
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Several courts have already ruled against Trump on the question of presidential immunity and civil cases brought against the former president.
The DC appeals court ruled late last year that Trump was not immune from civil lawsuits brought by Democrats in Congress and Capitol Police officers related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.
“(W)hen he acts outside the functions of his office, he does not continue to enjoy immunity,” the court opinion reads. “When he acts in an unofficial, private capacity, he is subject to civil suits like any private citizen.”
A federal appeals court in New York also rejected Trump’s claims of presidential immunity in his effort to delay his defamation trial in a case brought by E. Jean Carroll. A trial is set to begin next week to determine damages Trump owes Carroll for defamation, after a federal appeals court denied Trump’s effort to delay the trial.
Workers at the university’s Vancouver campus fear mass layoffs after the approval of a $6 million budget reduction this week.
Washington State University Vancouver will feel the brunt of the university system’s budget cuts. In this undated, provided photo a student sits on the grounds of the Southwest Washington campus.
Courtesy Washington State University Vancouver
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Faculty and staff at Washington State University’s Vancouver campus say they are on pins and needles, as they wait to hear who will be impacted by the university system’s budget cuts.
In May, WSU’s Board of Regents announced the university would need to trim nearly $12 million from its core operating funds to run a balanced budget next fiscal year. Washington’s public universities are required to operate a balanced budget by state law.
The institution’s Vancouver campus will feel the brunt of the reductions soon. It was given a mandate to slash 15% from its budget. At just over $6 million in cuts, that’s close to half of the targeted cuts for the entire university system, which includes five campuses across Washington.
Amid Portland State budget cuts, a new plan for growth emerges
University leaders approved cuts to Vancouver’s budget on Wednesday. WSU spokesperson Brenda Alling said the university will not be releasing details of the plan.
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“What seems really problematic is this exceptional requirement that Vancouver get a significantly higher cut than any other campus in the whole state,” said WSUV Liberal Arts and History professor Sue Peabody.
Peabody is a tenured professor who has been teaching at the satellite campus since 1996. She said WSUV has weathered cuts in the past, including a 10% budget reduction just last year, but it has so far avoided layoffs.
“This time [WSU] is asking for very, very deep cuts that can only be met with personnel,” Peabody said. “There’s no other way to meet the 15% than eliminating employees.”
WSU is Washington’s land-grant university and it’s the second largest public university system in the state, with more than 25,000 students enrolled in 2025. The Vancouver campus is the institution’s second largest physical campus, enrolling close to 2,700 students.
Amid warnings of future cuts, University of Oregon trustees approve next year’s budget
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WSU is facing a multitude of financial headwinds, as are colleges and universities in Oregon and across the nation.
Washington State’s budget woes are primarily driven by decreasing state funds, anticipated losses in federal research grants, declining student enrollment and increasing personnel costs.
At a packed town hall-style meeting on Monday, university administrators acknowledged that the impending cuts are causing stress among the campus community.
“This is a time of incredibly high anxiety for us all,” Sandra Haynes, WSU executive vice president for statewide campuses, said at the June 15 meeting. “It’s hard not knowing what our futures will be. It’s hard not knowing how we’re going to take these cuts.”
In this provided photo Washington State University Vancouver faculty and staff filled a budget town hall hosted by university administrators on Monday, June 15, 2026.
Susan Lavender
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Administrators also attempted to clear up why the Vancouver campus is taking a disproportionate cut compared to the university’s other campuses and colleges.
According to Damien Sinnott, WSU senior vice president for finance and operations, Vancouver’s 15% cut reflects an effort to align per-student state funding across the WSU system.
“When you look at the Vancouver, Tri-Cities and Everett campuses, Vancouver receives substantially more state funding per student — about $2,500 more per student,” Sinnott explained to faculty last week. “So I think the board used that metric as a sign that Vancouver could withstand a larger budget reduction.”
Linfield University considers controversial program cuts to close budget deficit
Both Sinnott and Haynes said the approved budget cuts seek to minimize impacts to students, jobs and research at the campus. They said they would not be adopting a “do more with less” attitude in the coming fiscal year.
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But those statements are doing little to calm the frustration and fears that some faculty and staff are feeling over the mandated reductions.
“Those cuts will be felt by the students. Those cuts will diminish the quality of instruction at WSU Vancouver,” said WSU English professor Desiree Hellegers. “What we’re really seeing is a divestment from Southwest Washington.”
Hellegers has taught at the Vancouver campus for 33 years. She plans to retire this fall, partly to help shield some of her colleagues from layoffs.
“I know there’s a lot of young professors who may be on the chopping block,” Hellegers said. “To me, it’s kind of a question of, ‘What are administrators willing to sacrifice, themselves, in order to avert the worst of the damage?’”
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My grandmother met Harold Washington once. I was young when she told me the story, so I don’t remember every detail. What I remember is what she kept: a mug he gave her, which she held onto until the day she died.
I grew up on South Shore Drive, sold the Sun-Times for a quarter at a paper stand at 75th and Stony Island, right in front of the KFC, and graduated from Hyde Park Academy. I did not know then that I would spend my career studying the civil rights terrain Washington had walked. But I understood, even as a child, what it meant that he was there.
I am thinking about him now.
Harold Washington served barely two terms in Congress before becoming Chicago’s first Black mayor in 1983. In that brief time on Capitol Hill, he did something that does not get remembered often enough. From the House Judiciary Committee in 1982, he helped lead the extension of key sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, including protections requiring jurisdictions with documented histories of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing their voting rules.
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The Congressional Black Caucus chose Washington to manage that bill on the House floor, where he spent seven weeks in hearings fighting to keep the enforcement mechanisms that protected Black voters from states that would prefer to be rid of them.
He won that fight.
Now, more than four decades later, we are fighting it again.
I am recalling Mayor Washington because of the efforts by President Donald Trump and many Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, a proposed federal election law that would make it much tougher for many citizens to vote and is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate.
States curtail voting rights
Republican governors in Florida, Mississippi, Utah and South Dakota have already signed bills requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration or citizenship checks, with similar legislation passed in Tennessee. Five states, Arizona, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, will have show-your-papers requirements in place for the 2026 midterms.
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In New Hampshire, the law has already produced its intended effect: In 2025 town elections, married women who did not have their marriage license on hand could not register, with at least one woman required to come back three times.
The infrastructure of exclusion does not require a federal law to take effect. It requires the threat of one, and the states that were waiting have already moved.
Washington would have recognized this immediately. The Voting Rights Act extension he managed in 1982 was not a symbolic gesture. It was a structural intervention, closing the door on states that wanted to escape accountability for their documented histories of discrimination.
The SAVE Act opens that door again, not with a return to literacy tests or poll taxes as such, but with a documentary requirement that functions identically: neutral on its face, devastating in its application and concentrated in its harm on the communities Washington spent his life trying to bring into the democratic process.
Washington’s 1983 mayoral campaign brought together Black voters on the South and West sides, Latino voters long excluded from the machine’s benefits and progressive white voters who believed Chicago could be something other than what it had always been.
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His campaign was powered by a voter registration drive that added nearly 100,000 new voters to the rolls before the primary. He understood, instinctively and strategically, that expanding access to the ballot was not a prelude to political power. It was political power.
The SAVE Act would dismantle the registration infrastructure Black and Brown turnout campaigns depend on. Only 6% of voters register in person at an elections office. Washington’s coalition was built on the other 94%.
What Washington’s record demands of us
Washington deserves a reckoning, not a commemoration. He knew that formal equality was not enough, that the machinery of democratic participation had to be actively maintained against those who would narrow the circle.
His mug sat on my grandmother’s shelf for decades. She was not a politician. She was a Black woman on the South Side of Chicago who met a man running for mayor and felt, maybe for the first time, that he was talking to her. He gave her a mug. She kept it her whole life.
That is what is at stake. Not abstractions. People. The kind of people who keep a mug for decades because a politician made them feel like they mattered.
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Harold Washington fought this battle once, from the Judiciary Committee floor, in seven weeks of hearings most people have forgotten. We are fighting it again, this time against a bill that would quietly push millions back out of the process, with six states already implementing versions of it before Congress even acts. The least we can do is remember who showed us how.
Donathan L. Brown, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Northeastern University, a former U.S. Fulbright professor, and the author of five books on civil rights and voting rights. A native of the South Side, he graduated from Hyde Park Academy.
Washington state is currently experiencing an early-season flare-up of wildfire activity, particularly in the southeastern and central parts of the state, as well as the Upriver Fire, a fast-moving incident East of Spokane.
A combination of an ongoing statewide drought emergency and critical fire weather—including a strong, dry cold front with high wind gusts—has caused several fires to grow rapidly over the last few days.
The most significant other current active blazes include:
Omak Lake Road Fire: Things are moving fast up there right now. As of this afternoon (Wednesday, June 17), the Omak Lake Road Fire has officially merged with the nearby Kartar Fire, creating a massive blaze that has already burned roughly 6,500 acres on Colville Reservation land. Tule Fire (Yakima Region): Ignited on June 14 south of Toppenish, this is currently the largest wildfire in the state, having ballooned to approximately 20,665 acres with 0% containment. It is burning primarily in dry grass and brush and has been producing a massive smoke plume that is impacting air quality throughout the Columbia River Gorge. Juniper Dunes Fire (Franklin County): This fire has burned over 10,577 acres and is 10% contained. It has pushed into the challenging, roadless terrain of the Juniper Dunes Wilderness area, making ground access difficult for crews. A Red Flag Warning remains in effect across much of Eastern Washington due to sustained high winds and low relative humidity, meaning any ongoing fires face an extreme risk of rapid spread, and new starts can ignite easily.
Is smoke from around the state forecasted to arrive in NCW?
Right now, North Central Washington is in the clear. The active wildfire smoke is staying well away from the Wenatchee Valley and surrounding areas, and local air quality remains firmly in the “Good” category. The main reason for this breaks down to wind direction and fire locations: Westerly Winds are Our Friend: Strong winds blowing from the west across the Cascades are actively dispersing air over NCW and pushing regional smoke eastward.
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Where the Smoke is Heading Instead:
South: Earlier this week, massive plumes from the Tule Fire down in Yakima drifted west/southwest into the Columbia River Gorge and Portland-Vancouver metro. East: With the current wind shift, smoke from the large fires in the Columbia Basin (like Tule and Juniper Dunes) is now being carried east toward the Tri-Cities, Walla Walla, and the Palouse. North/Northeast: Up north, the Kartar and Omak Lake fires east of Omak are causing localized downwind smoke impacts, but the smoke is drifting east toward Nespelem and the Coulee Dam rather than dropping south into Chelan or Douglas counties. Because these breezy, dry conditions are expected to persist through the rest of the week, weather and air quality officials note that intermittent smoke impacts will mostly be a concern for communities situated directly downwind (east) of the active blazes.
Wildfire smoke (on file via Canva)Wildfire smoke (on file via Canva)
Where can I look online to see where wildfire smoke is coming from?
A few years ago, I discovered a Canadian website that not only shows you where wildfire smoke is coming from, but also how the smoke forecast will affect you in the coming days. It comes from the BC Wildfire Service. Click on this helpful wildfire smoke map and bookmark it. A couple of things to know about this BC Wildfire Service website. 1) When you first find the smoke map, select the Smoke Forecast button.
The map will come to life, showing where current wind conditions are directing wildfire smoke and where it is forecast to travel in the coming days. 2) Since it’s a service of the BC Wildfire Service, it doesn’t provide any information on fires here in the US, but it does show where smoke is forecast to come from any wildfires north and south of the border.
Where can I find updated information about wildfires in Washington?
The Watch Duty app for any device. The Washington DNR fire dashboard is active throughout the fire season and shows up-to-date information on wildfires affecting Washington state. View a full-screen version of the DNR fire dashboard with this link.
Oregon Coast Getaway Photos
Oregon Coast Getaway Photos
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Gallery Credit: KEVIN MILLER
LOOK: These Photos Show Why ’70s Cars Were Something Special (and Obviously Better)
Big, bold, and built different — these ’70s cars looked and felt like nothing on the road today. Take a ride back and see them in their prime. [And we did our best to identify the models and dates, so if we got it wrong, gearheads, don’t come after us!]
