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A defunding assent, a big beautiful deadline and an ICE death

 
Today's Supreme Court story

Supreme Court lets states ax Planned Parenthood funds

What happened
The Supreme Court yesterday ruled that Planned Parenthood and one of its clients cannot sue South Carolina over its push to withhold Medicaid funds from the women's health organization under a 2018 executive order from Gov. Henry McMaster (R). The court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in the case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, with the three liberal justices dissenting. 

Who said what
McMaster cited Planned Parenthood's abortion operations in ordering the state to withhold funds, but yesterday's ruling mentioned abortion "only in passing," focusing instead on the procedural question of whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue to enforce Medicare's provisions, The New York Times said. The decision nevertheless "made it easier for states to deny funding to Planned Parenthood," particularly given the Trump administration's "hostility to abortion rights." 

Federal funds can't be used to pay for abortions, with rare exceptions, but Medicare can reimburse Planned Parenthood for its other services, like cancer screenings and birth control, under a provision that lets patients go to any qualified provider that will accept their insurance. The court's conservative majority acknowledged that part of the law but decided it "does not make it a right enforceable in court," The Associated Press said. That closed off Planned Parenthood's "primary court path to keeping Medicaid funding in place: patient lawsuits."

Because the decision blocked such lawsuits, Jezebel said, it would allow states to "'defund' providers simply because they provide gender-affirming care, or even birth control." Yesterday's decision is "likely to result in tangible harm to real people," Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said in her dissenting opinion. It will deprive Medicaid patients of the "deeply personal freedom" to "decide who treats us at our most vulnerable."

What next?
The Supreme Court is expected to hand down its "six final decisions" of the term today, The Washington Post said. The "major rulings" outstanding include "whether to limit nationwide injunctions," notably Trump's ban on birthright citizenship, and the "legality of requiring age verification to access online porn."

 
 
Today's POLITICS story

GOP races to revise megabill after Senate rulings

What happened
Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough dealt Republicans a setback yesterday as they scrambled to get the GOP's massive "One Big Beautiful Bill" to President Donald Trump's desk by his July 4 deadline. MacDonough said several changes to Medicaid were not permissible under the Senate rules Republicans are using to pass the bill with a simple majority, leaving a $250 billion hole in their budget math.

Who said what
Republicans were counting on the disqualified measures, which included cutting provider taxes states use to fund Medicaid and barring certain immigrants from health care programs, to offset more than $3.8 trillion in tax cuts and other costly items. MacDonough has "determined that dozens of provisions do not pass muster," in most cases because they made "policy changes with only incidental effects on the budget," The New York Times said. Republicans said they "plan to rewrite some of the struck provisions to make them compliant."

Democrats are "unified against the package as a tax giveaway for the wealthy at the expense of American safety net programs," The Associated Press said. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the slimmer House version of the megabill would give the wealthiest households $12,000 more a year, while costing the poorest $1,600 and leaving at least 10.9 million Americans without health insurance and 3 million without food assistance.

What next?
Republicans "aren't panicking," but they are "preparing to stay in town and vote through the weekend," Politico said. And "for all the anxiety about the parliamentarian decisions," the "more profound issue" for Republicans is their "internal divides," including in the "narrowly divided House — where pockets of Republicans" are furious about changes their Senate colleagues made to the House bill.

 
 
Today's IMMIGRATION Story

Canadian man dies in ICE custody

What happened
A 49-year-old Canadian citizen with permanent U.S. residency died in ICE custody at a federal detention center in Miami on Monday, the agency said yesterday. Johnny Noviello was detained May 15 at a parole hearing and was being held "pending removal proceedings," ICE said in a news release. His cause of death was "under investigation." 

Who said what
ICE said it planned to revoke Noviello's 1991 green card and deport him because of a 2023 drug trafficking conviction for selling prescription opioids. He served four months of a 12-month sentence in county jail, his lawyer told the Miami Herald. Noviello's death "came as ICE agents have made sweeping arrests" nationwide to meet steep quotas set by President Donald Trump and his deportation architect, Stephen Miller, The New York Times said. The subsequent "ICE arrests in courts, restaurants, hotels and factories have prompted widespread protests." Noviello wasn't "the only Canadian to have been arrested in the U.S. since the ICE sweeps began," the CBC said. 

Noviello was the ninth person to die in ICE custody this year and the fourth in Florida, the Herald said. Two of the Florida deaths were ruled natural causes, "but a Miami Herald investigation found delayed medical treatment and questionable care."

What next?
Polling suggests that Trump's immigration push, once one of his top issues, is increasingly unpopular. In a Quinnipiac University survey released yesterday, 41% of respondents approved of his handling of immigration while 57% disapproved. The only higher disapproval number, 39%-59%, was for deportations, and voters similarly disapproved of ICE's job performance 39%-56%. (The poll of 979 voters had a margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points.)

 
 

It's not all bad

A cat named Kiki spends her weekdays walking 10-year-old Sonny Scott and his friends to Kelvindale Primary in Glasgow, Scotland, then waiting for them on the playground until school is out for the day. Her sweet gesture earned Kiki a spot on the shortlist for Britain's National Cat Awards. "She's really sociable," owner Michelle Scott said to STV News. "She really loves children and has done so from the moment we got her."

 
 
Under the radar

The "pharaoh's curse" fungus may sound ominous, but scientists have discovered that certain molecules it contains stop the proliferation of cancer cells as effectively as FDA-approved drug treatments. The fungus, officially named Aspergillus flavus, can be used to fight leukemia, according to a study published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. 

The fungus is "linked to the deaths of several archeologists who opened ancient tombs" around the world, including the "famous discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the 1920s," said Popular Mechanics. At the time, many believed the deaths to be the result of an ancient curse rather than fungal inhalation.

Aspergillus flavus, commonly found in soil, can infect a wide range of key agricultural crops. Exposure to it can lead to lung infections, but it also contains peptides that can fight cancer when modified. 

Four molecules that researchers were able to isolate from A. flavus "demonstrated medical potential when mixed together with human cancer cells," said Popular Science. Two of the four molecules, which they named asperigimycins, "had potent effects against leukemia cells." 

Asperigimycins are part of a class of molecules called ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides, or RiPPs. A number of them have been found in bacteria, but they are "rare in fungi and notoriously hard to study," said Wired. Still, "almost all of them have strong bioactivity," study co-author Qiuyue Nie said in a statement. 

Fungi have long been a source of medicine, perhaps most importantly for the antibiotic penicillin. This research implies there's more where that came from.

 
 
On this day

June 27, 1923

The first aerial refueling of an airplane was performed. The maneuver took place between a pair of DH-4B Army Air biplanes at Rockwell Field in San Diego. This technology has been improved over the years and is now commonplace in aviation, especially between military planes. 

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

"Iran's leader warns of payback for new attacks," the Detroit Free Press says on Friday's front page. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "claims victory over Israel," The Palm Beach Post says. "Iran ceasefire fuels push to end Gaza war," The Washington Post says. "Israel-Iran war is realigning Middle East in unforeseen ways," as "military successes fan regional concerns about Jewish state's increasing power," says The Wall Street Journal. "Gay marriage is turning 10," The New York Times says. "Will it hit 11?"

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Warm welcome for cold sores

A fake tourism campaign heralding New Zealand as the best place to have herpes won big at the Cannes Lions Awards. The event celebrates creativity in advertising, and the New Zealand Herpes Foundation took home the Grand Prix for Good award for its ads aiming to destigmatize the disease. Former national rugby coach Sir Graham Henry starred in the humorous campaign, which included him writing "HERPES" on a chalkboard and declaring that New Zealand needs "something big and brave to put us back on the map."

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images; Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images; Giorgio Viera / AFP via Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images