Supreme Court Starts Consequential Term, and Illinois Governor Warns of ‘Trump’s Invasion’

0:13From the New York Times, it's the headlines. for a new term that could have profound consequences for the country. Usually this new term comes after a lull, a summer break, where the justices are traveling and giving public speeches. But this year, there's been no break at all. My colleague Abby Van Sickle covers the court for The Times. She says that in the past few months, as the Trump administration has pushed the bounds of presidential power, the court has churned through more than 20 emergency applications on its so-called shadow docket. It's issued a number of brief rulings, often without any explanation at all, weighing in on everything from deportations to federal funding cuts.

0:56Those decisions, though, were technically just temporary placeholders. So far on the emergency applications, the Trump administration has been winning victory after victory before the justices. But this term is really shaping up to be a blockbuster because we will see how the Trump administration fares when the justices confront the central issues of his policies head on. Three of the biggest cases of the term involve Trump administration actions and policies since he returned to the White House. And those are cases about tariffs, about the president's power in firing heads of independent agencies, and a case about the Federal Reserve and whether the president has the power to fire Lisa Cook, who is one of the leaders of the Fed.

1:40We will get to see whether the justices, having handed the Trump administration all these temporary victories, actually then greenlight these policy items or whether the justices push back against the president. Abbey says that beyond the questions about the president's power, the court is also expected to weigh in on a series of other hot-button issues. That includes potentially revisiting a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and challenges to state laws barring trans athletes from competing in women's sports.

2:21They want mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone so that they can send in even more troops. We cannot normalize the approach he is taking with the military in our own country. It's not warranted. It is not American. In Oregon and Illinois, President Trump's push to deploy troops to major cities has left governors and the courts scrambling to keep up. The facts on the ground in Oregon haven't changed. There's no need for military intervention in Oregon. There's no insurrection in Portland. There's no threat to national security. In Portland, which the president has portrayed as a city on fire, where protesters have overwhelmed federal immigration agents, he'd moved to deploy hundreds of the state's National Guard troops.

3:05On Saturday, a federal judge who Trump appointed said that was unlawful because the protests there were, quote, not significantly violent or disruptive, and that Trump seemed to have overstepped his authority to deploy the troops. The White House then tried to get around that ruling by sending troops to Oregon from California's National Guard against the wishes of both states' governors. But in an emergency ruling last night, the federal judge blocked that deployment too, accusing the administration of trying to circumvent her order. Now, the Trump administration is trying out another new strategy, saying it will send hundreds of National Guard troops from Texas to Portland and to Chicago.

3:45The governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, said no one from the federal government had contacted him to coordinate or discuss the deployment, and he said that the White House was trying to escalate tensions in the heavily Democratic city, writing in a statement, quote, We must now start calling this what it is, Trump's invasion.

4:13It's now day six of the government shutdown, and there's no sign of it ending soon, with both Democrats and Republicans doubling down on their positions and showing no urgency about breaking the logjam. Well, there's not a lot to negotiate. The Democrats just need to open up the government. Right now, we're at a stalemate. Republicans are still laying the blame on Democrats, saying they're effectively holding the government hostage and that they need to help pass a short-term spending bill. And Democrats are still saying Republicans won't come to the table to discuss their demands over health care funding.

4:46The last time there was a conversation with Republican leadership was in the White House meeting last Monday. And unfortunately, since that point in time, Republicans, including Donald Trump, have gone radio silent. While the Senate is expected to vote again today on a spending measure, the House is not even in session. House Speaker Mike Johnson has canceled votes, telling members they can stay home for the third straight week. In the meantime, the shutdown has left hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, with others, including TSA agents, working without pay. So are these layoffs definitely happening?

5:21Because Russ Vogt said on Wednesday it would happen within one to two days and still nothing. I think that if the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere, then there will start to be layoffs. The White House, meanwhile, has kept up its threats to carry out mass firings of federal workers during the shutdown, describing it as an unprecedented opportunity to dismantle federal programs.

5:53In the Middle East today, Israel and Hamas will begin a new round of negotiations to discuss the sweeping peace plan outlined last week by President Trump. The two sides will meet in Egypt, talking through intermediaries about some of the 20 points laid out in the proposed ceasefire deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is open to the plan, and Hamas said on Friday that, for its part, it is willing to release hostages, a key part of the proposal. Under the outlined deal, Hamas would release at least 20 living hostages and the bodies of about two dozen others in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and 1 ,700 Gazans detained during the war.

6:37But details of that part of the agreement, along with many others, are still far from being worked out. Is this now the end of the war in Gaza? Well, not yet. There's some work remains to be done. Over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio underscored just how far apart the two sides are on one of the most fundamental parts of any lasting ceasefire, whether or not Hamas will lay down its weapons and give up political power. Who's going to run Gaza moving forward? It can't be Hamas. It can't be a terrorist organization. and the details on that part of the deal are going to be difficult to work through.

7:10For the moment, fighting on the ground in Gaza continues, even as the Israeli military says it's shifted to a defensive posture. A military spokesman warned Gazans that Israeli soldiers were still surrounding Gaza City and, quote, attempting to return there poses extreme danger.

7:34And finally, the Times has been covering the rise of precision farming, where cutting-edge technology has increasingly become an essential part of agriculture. Starting in the 90s and early 2000s, satellite imagery helped change the way farmers did their work. And in the past few years, the vast majority of America's large farms have leaned into futuristic tech, like auto-steering tractors and cameras that help measure how crops are growing. Recently, that Silicon Valley influence has also been taking hold among livestock farmers. A growing number are now using digital collars that track their animals' health.

8:11Think of it kind of like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, but for a cow. The Wi-Fi-equipped collars have motion sensors that measure chewing to help track digestion. When something's off, it sends an alert with the cow's biometric data to the farmer, letting them get ahead of any potential illnesses. One dairy farmer in South Dakota said the collars had let her farm expand its herd from 2 ,700 cows to 5 ,000 without hiring any more workers, and had also boosted the amount of milk each cow produces. Another farmer in Merced, California, told The Times the collars let him and his team adjust ingredients in the cow's feed down to the ounce to help keep them healthy.

8:51The collars, he said, are, quote, the closest thing we can get to talking to the cows.

9:00Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, a look at White House Budget Director Russell Vogt, the man at the center of the Trump administration's push to reshape the federal government. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Will Jarvis. We'll be back tomorrow.