Biden condemns ruling against race-conscious admissions: ‘This is not a normal court’ – as it happened

Here’s a recap of today’s developments:

• The US supreme court, driven by its conservative supermajority, has ended race-conscious admissions at universities across the country. The conservative justices concluded that admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violated the US constitution’s equal protection clause. The court’s decision will limit the power of colleges and universities, particularly at selective institutions, to consider an applicant’s race as a factor in the admissions process.

• The six conservative-leaning justices on the nine-strong court prevailed over the three liberal-leaning justices, with the newest member and first Black woman on the court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, issuing a stark dissent saying the ruling meant it would “take longer for racism to leave us”. In a majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Harvard’s program resulted in fewer Asian American students being admitted to the university, violating the Equal Protection Clause’s standard that “race may never be used as a “negative”.

• Joe Biden said he was considering executive action and will ask the Department of Education to look into ways to maintain diversity in university student bodies. The US president said “this is not a normal court” of the bench, and said “discrimination still exists in America. Today’s decision does not change that. It’s a simple fact.”

• Biden also said the supreme court has “gone out of its way” to “unravel basic rights” more than any other court in recent history. In an interview on MSNBC, Biden said he found the court “so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”. He also admitted his polling numbers “are not good” but argued that “they were the same way when I ran and won”.

• The supreme court today also bolstered the ability of people to ask for religious accommodations in the workplace. In a unanimous ruling, the court made it more difficult for an employer to turn down a worker’s request for an accommodation due to their beliefs.

• The veracity of a key document in a major LGBTQ+ rights case before the supreme court has come under question, raising the possibility that important evidence cited in it might be wrong or even falsified. The supreme court is expected to issue a ruling on Friday in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, which deals with a challenge to a Colorado law prohibiting public-serving businesses from discriminating against gay people as well as any statements announcing such a policy.

• A judge has turned down Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss the advice columnist E Jean Carroll’s original defamation lawsuit against him, and rejected his defense that presidential immunity protects him from being liable for statements he made in 2019 that Carroll claims were defamatory.

The veracity of a key document in a major LGBTQ+ rights case before the US supreme court has come under question, raising the possibility that important evidence cited in it might be wrong or even falsified.

The supreme court is expected to issue a ruling on Friday in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, which deals with a challenge to a Colorado law prohibiting public-serving businesses from discriminating against gay people as well as any statements announcing such a policy.

The suit centers on Lorie Smith, a website designer who does not want to provide her services for gay weddings because of her religious objections.

In 2016, she says, a gay man named Stewart requested her services for help with his upcoming wedding. “We are getting married early next year and would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website,” reads a message he apparently sent her through a message on her website.

In court filings, her lawyers produced a copy of the inquiry.

But Stewart, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy, said in an interview with the Guardian that he never sent the message, even though it correctly lists his email address and telephone number. He has also been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years, he said. The news was first reported by the New Republic.

In fact, until he received a call this week from a reporter from the magazine, Stewart says had no idea he was somehow tied up in a case that had made it to the supreme court.

Read the full story here.

Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the supreme court ruling striking down race-based admissions in universities and colleges, but it was the three justices who make the court the most diverse in its 233-year history who marked the stark, embittered battle lines over affirmative action, AP News reports.

It was a moment heavy with history and emotion. Clarence Thomas, the longest serving justice and the court’s second Black justice, read a concurring opinion from the bench, pointedly rejecting the validity of using race as the basis for preferential consideration. He was followed by Sonia Sotomayor, its first Latina, whose dissenting opinion took aim at Thomas. Then came Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black woman, whose written dissent was its own biting, metaphor-laden rebuke.

The mood in the courtroom Thursday was somber, with most of the justices sitting expressionless, taking occasional sips of water. Both Jackson and Sotomayor looked straight ahead as Roberts read the majority opinion and Thomas his concurrence.

Mike Pence has tweeted about his visit to Ukraine this week where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Pence said it was “incredibly humbling to be in Ukraine” and “see firsthand the heartbreaking wreckage caused by Vladimir Putin and his unprovoked invasion”.

He’s now the first GOP presidential candidate to meet with the Ukrainian leader during the campaign.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign used the supreme court’s ruling today to take a dig at his rival Donald Trump, tweeting an old clip of the former president saying he was “fine with affirmative action”.

DeSantis’s campaign team posted the clip, from a 2015 interview with NBC, in which Trump said:

I’m fine with affirmative action. We’ve lived with it for a long time. And I lived with it for a long time. And I’ve had great relationships with lots of people.

Trump himself responded to the court’s decision to strike down race-conscious admissions programs at colleges and universities by saying that it was a “great day for America”, adding that it was “the ruling everyone was waiting and hoping for and the result was amazing”.

There are “still a lot of really good Republicans” in the Senate, Joe Biden said during his interview on MSNBC.

Biden said that six Republican senators have come to him since he was elected “to tell me, ‘Joe, I agree with you but if I’m seen doing it, I’ll lose a primary’”. He added:

I’m an eternal optimist. I still think there’s going to come a moment when they’re going to be able to break.

During his interview on MSNBC, Joe Biden admitted he knew his polling numbers “are not good” but argued that “they were the same way when I ran and won”.

Biden said he had “great faith” in the American people and that it was “important that they know that my value set is very different than the new Maga Republican party”.

He added:

Everybody thought I was gonna get clobbered in the primary. I got 80 million votes in the last election.

Here’s the clip:

Joe Biden refused to say whether he knew ahead of time about Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to march on Moscow.

“Every president is amazed that America is the lead in the world”, he told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.

He said he had focused on holding Nato together and on expanding the alliance to make sure that “the most significant invasion since world war two does not succeed”.

In an interview on MSNBC, Joe Biden was asked about a report that said senior officials at the justice department resisted investigating the possible involvement of Donald Trump and his associates in the January 6 Capitol attack.

Biden said he had made a commitment that he would “not in any way interfere” with the justice department, adding that he had “not spoken one single time with the attorney general on any specific case”.

He said he had “faith that the justice department will move in a direction that is consistent with the law”.

Joe Biden has said the supreme court has “gone out of its way” to “unravel basic rights” following its ruling on Thursday to strike down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard.

In an interview on MSNBC, Biden was asked what he meant at a press conference earlier today when he said the supreme court was “not a normal court”. He said:

What I meant by that is it has done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.

He said he found this court “so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”.

Across the board, the vast majority of American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court has made.

Biden said that although he believes the conservative majority on the court “may do too much harm”, he opposes expanding the court because it will “politicize the court forever in a way that is not healthy”.

Biden says he knows his polling numbers “are not good”, but argues that “they were the same way when I ran”.

Everybody thought I was going to get clobbered in a primary.

Biden says he’s “not spoken one single time” with the attorney general “on any specific case”.

Biden says he thinks if we start the process of trying to expand the court “we’re going to politicize it in a way that’s not healthy”.

Biden says he thinks it’s a “mistake” to expand the court. He says:

What I’ve done is I have appointed 136 judges, and … I picked people who are from various backgrounds.

We’ve appointed more women to the appellate courts, Black women to the appellate courts, than every other president in American history.

Biden says the vast majority of American people don’t agree with the supreme court’s ruling.

He says it “finds it so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”.

Biden is asked what he meant when he said earlier today that the supreme court is “not a normal court”.

Biden says the court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court”, pointing to its ruling last year to overturn Roe v Wade.

Joe Biden will in a few minutes appear from MSNBC’s New York City studios for a live interview with anchor Nicolle Wallace.

While Biden often responds to questions from reporters as he comes and goes from the White House or at the tail end of his speeches, he has done few press conferences compared with his recent predecessors, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Follow along here as the Guardian’s Léonie Chao-Fong covers the interview live.