As his administration creates a unit to crack down on DEI in universities.
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Sustainable Switch
Sustainable Switch
By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital
Hello!
Today's newsletter continues to follow the myriad human-rights lawsuits in the United States Supreme Court as President Donald Trump targets migration protections, workers' rights, and diversity, equity and inclusion policies at universities.
Let's examine the Supreme Court case in which the justices granted Trump's administration permission to end temporary protected status that his predecessor, Joe Biden, granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States.
Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, is a program that provides deportation relief and work permits to people already in the U.S. if their home countries experience a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other extraordinary events.
Congress created the program in 1990 after a spike in migrants fleeing civil war in El Salvador.
The order from the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, was unsigned, as is typical when it acts on an emergency request. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole justice to dissent publicly.
Democrat Pramila Jayapal speaks, as people protest over restricting automatic birthright citizenship, outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., U.S. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Restricting birthright citizenship
The U.S. Supreme Court also dealt with Trump's attempt to broadly enforce his executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, a move that would affect thousands of babies born each year as the Republican president seeks a major shift in how the U.S. Constitution has long been understood.
The court's conservative justices seemed willing to limit the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide, or "universal," injunctions, as federal judges in Maryland, Washington, and Massachusetts did to block Trump's directive.
None of the justices, however, signaled an endorsement of Trump's order, and some of the liberals said it violated the Constitution and contradicted the court's own precedents.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she believed Trump's order violated multiple Supreme Court precedents concerning citizenship.
Sotomayor said the court should weigh the order's legality "if we are worried about those thousands of children who are going to be born without citizenship papers that could render them stateless" and leave them ineligible for government benefits.
Stopping federal workers from unionizing
Elsewhere, a federal appeals court lifted an order that blocked the U.S. administration from stripping hundreds of thousands of federal employees of the ability to unionizeand collectively bargain over working conditions.
The order exempted more than a dozen federal agencies from obligations to bargain with unions. They include the departments of Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services.
The union, which represents about 160,000 federal employees, argued the order violates federal workers' labor rights and the Constitution.
But the appeals court's majority said the union had failed to show it would suffer the type of irreparable harm that would justify the preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman on April 25.
The union and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
The Trump administration has filed separate lawsuits seeking to invalidate existing union contracts covering thousands of workers.
Cracking down on DEI in universities
Meanwhile, the United States announced the formation of a new unit that will crack down on federally funded universities that have diversity, equity and inclusion policies using a civil anti-fraud law, the Justice Department said in a memo.
The creation of the "Civil Rights Fraud Initiative" marks the latest escalation by the administration of Trump against colleges and universities that it has claimed are pushing antisemitic, anti-American, Marxist, and "radical left" ideologies.
Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche wrote in the memo that the new fraud initiative will be co-led by the Civil Division's Fraud Section and the Civil Rights Division.
He said that each division would assign a team of attorneys to "aggressively pursue" this work. He also said that each of the country's 93 U.S. Attorneys' offices will be required to tap a prosecutor to contribute to the effort.
Talking Points
An American flag is pictured among the debris in the Sunshine Hills neighborhood after a series of tornadoes hit Laurel County, in London, Kentucky, U.S. REUTERS/Seth Herald
Fatal U.S. tornadoes: At least 25 people in Kentucky and Missouri were killed after an unstable spring weather system spawned tornadoes in the U.S. Midwest and Ohio River Valley over the weekend. The tornadoes caused widespread damage to homes and property, said state and local officials.
Argentina floods: Severe flooding in the north of Argentina's Buenos Aires province led to the evacuation of thousands of residents over the weekend. The National Meteorological Service issued a red alert for the region and reported rainfall between 150 and 250mm (6-10 inches) between the cities of Zarate and Arrecifes. It warned that storms were "constantly regenerating," with more rain expected. The floods have also affected its agricultural heartlands.
Indonesia landslide: Torrential rains triggered a landslide in Indonesia's easternmost region of Papua, which killed six workers at a gold mine and injured four. Authorities will resume their search for the 14 people who went missing after the disaster, which engulfed temporary shelters used by miners. Small-scale and illegal mining has often led to accidents in Indonesia, where mineral resources are located in remote areas, in conditions difficult for authorities to regulate.
Gaza march: Tens of thousands of protesters marched through The Hague demanding a tougher stance from the Dutch government against Israel's siege on Gaza, where it has cut off medical, food, and fuel supplies over the weekend. A similar march took place in Britain's capital over the weekend, where thousands of pro-Palestine supporters demonstrated to mark the anniversary of the 1948 Nakba.
Harvard v Trump: Yet another U.S. federal department has terminated its funding for Harvard University as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that it was terminating $60 million in federal grants, citing the Ivy League's "failure to address antisemitic harassment on campus". Trump's administration has frozen or ended federal grants and contracts for the university worth nearly $3 billion in recent weeks.
ESG Lens
U.S. tariffs: In keeping with the theme for the Trump administration's executive orders from this year after the U.S. President imposed a blanket tariff of 10% on all global imports. Today's ESG Lens focuses on how global retailers are looking at spreading the cost of U.S. tariffs by raising prices across markets to avoid big hikes in the United States that could hurt sales. Click here for the full Reuters story.
ESG Spotlight
Alvaro Velasco president of the Group of Crocodile Specialists of Venezuela prepares an Orinoco crocodile hatchling at the Capanaparo River, near Elorza, Apure State, Venezuela.
Today's spotlight shines a light on animal conservation initiatives in Venezuela where experts are trying to preserve the endangered Orinoco crocodiles.
For decades, the men and women of the Venezuelan Crocodile Specialist Group have been raising younglings of the critically endangered species in captivity in a race against time to avoid its extinction.
But they say they are losing that race. Decades of poaching for leather pushed the Orinoco crocodile to the brink, and now locals who hunt the animals for meat and take their eggs for food threaten to deal the final blow.
Fewer than 100 Orinoco crocodiles – one of the largest living reptiles in the world – remain in the wild, according to Venezuelan conservation foundation FUDECI. The animal's natural habitat is in the Orinoco River basin, which covers most of Venezuela and spills into Colombia.
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