Morning Report

TODAY’S SUPREME COURT story

Trump visits Supreme Court for birthright case

What happened
Donald Trump yesterday became the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court, sitting in the audience for an hour as Solicitor General John Sauer defended Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship. Justices across the board appeared skeptical of his efforts to unilaterally reinterpret the 14th Amendment and decades of federal law, and Trump left shortly after the ACLU’s Cecillia Wang began defending the citizenship rights of children born in the U.S.

Who said what
If a “president known for shattering norms and grabbing public attention intended to make the day about himself,” The Washington Post said, he wound up being “a silent observer, along with several hundred others” including Attorney General Pam Bondi and actor Robert De Niro. And “if, as some legal experts said, Trump was trying to intimidate the justices, the tactic is unlikely to work,” The Associated Press said.

The justices, “even among the conservative supermajority, seemed inclined to strike down his policy,” Quinta Jurecic said at The Atlantic. But “the fact that this case got as far as it did — and that the justices had to consider it seriously enough to spend their time rebuking it — is itself a scandal.”

What next?
The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the case, Trump v. Barbara, by early summer.

TODAY’S POLITICS Story

GOP leaders unveil plan to end DHS shutdown

What happened
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) announced yesterday they had reached a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security “on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process.” The tentative agreement resurrected a bipartisan Senate bill to end the seven-week DHS shutdown by funding all agencies except those carrying out President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Who said what
Johnson (pictured above right, with Thune) and Trump “had angrily rejected” Thune’s two-prong strategy last week, The New York Times said. But Trump “signaled a retreat was coming when he posted a demand” that Republicans send him a GOP-only bill to fund ICE and Border Patrol by June 1.

“Johnson and House conservatives” got a “sweetener” in the deal, CNN said: the “public promise for a second Trump megabill.” Using reconciliation to fund ICE could get Republicans to “unify behind new legislation,” The Washington Post said, “but it won’t be simple,” and the process is full of political pitfalls.

What next?
GOP leaders hope to push through the first bill “without any debate or formal vote” as early as this morning, the Times said. “Hard-right Republicans irate about the deal signaled they might not allow it to move quickly.”

It’s not all bad

Kids at 400 children’s hospitals can experience the joys of visiting the zoo through the Wildlife Explorers Channel. The San Diego Zoo’s 24-hour streaming service allows the young patients to watch animal encounters, live feeds from zoo enclosures and educational programming. Because many of them have weakened immune systems, they are “unable to go to places like the zoo, and the channel has brought the zoo to them,” Margaret Fitzgerald of Rady Children’s Hospital told Good News Network.

Under the radar

The T. rex has been cut down to size

“When you come for the king, you best not miss,” said New Scientist, “particularly if the king in question” is the Tyrannosaurus rex, a 10-ton dinosaur with the “biggest teeth of any known land predator in history.” Researchers have found that the mighty T. rex may not have ruled over the dinosaur “landscape” in a “one-species monopoly,” said Scientific American, but instead coexisted in a “tiered guild of hunters” that included the Nanotyrannus, a hotly contested small-bodied tyrannosaur.

For decades, palaeontologists have argued whether the single skull used to define the Nanotyrannus represented a true species in its own right or whether it was merely a young T. rex. But this thorny question has finally been resolved, according to a study in the journal Science: Nanotyrannus was nearly fully grown and not a juvenile T. rex.

The Tyrannosaurus rex has quite a fan base, and they aren’t conceding the new species designation without a fight. The “tyrant lizard king” has “developed tremendous loyalty,” said Greg Paul, a dinosaur researcher. “There’s even a rock band named for the animal.”

But study co-author James G. Napoli, a palaeontologist at New York’s Stony Brook University, insists that his team has “corrected the record on Nanotyrannus.” And “we think it’s possible that other smaller tyrannosaur fossils are misidentified and that there may be many more species awaiting recognition,” he told Scientific American.

It’s not often that “opinions on a high-profile dinosaur change so rapidly and so dramatically,” said New Scientist. This latest shift has “profound implications” because it means that we “may need to completely rethink the way that dinosaur ecosystems were organized” and “how and why the dinosaur-dominated world came crashing down.”

On this day

April 2, 1792

President George Washington signed the Coinage Act, establishing the United States Mint. The law also set the silver dollar as the standard currency in the U.S. Today, four active U.S. mints produce coins in Denver, Philadelphia, San Francisco and West Point, New York.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Back to the moon’

“Trump: U.S. forces will press on,” The Dallas Morning News says on Thursday’s front page. “Trump vows to ‘finish the job’ in Iran,” The Mercury News says. “Trump issues threat to leave NATO,” the Los Angeles Times says. “Court hears arguments on birthright citizenship,” The Philadelphia Inquirer says. “Justices express doubts on order over birthright,” The New York Times says. “U.S. growth fueled by immigrants, study shows,” says USA Today. “Trump is loath to ask Congress for ballroom,” The Washington Post says. “Trump seeks federal control of mail voting; legality questioned,” The Minnesota Star Tribune says. “Trump’s push against mail ballots irks voting clerks,” says The Boston Globe. “Back to the moon after 50-plus years,” says the Houston Chronicle.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Barbie’s Dreamhouse of Cards

The three-day Barbie Dream Fest in Florida is being compared to other “failed” events like the disastrous Fyre Festival in the Bahamas and Willy’s Chocolate Experience in Glasgow, said The New York Times. Attendees were told they could step into a life-size Barbie Dreamhouse, but it was actually a “2-D cardboard cutout,” and a space-themed exhibition was an “oversize Barbie box decorated with a ringed planet.” Tickets started at $149, and following complaints, organizer Mischief Management is offering refunds.

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Chas Newkey-Burden, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.