First Thing: Appeals court halts strict Texas immigration law

SB4 law allowing state authorities to arrest people suspected of entering the US illegally has encountered a new roadblock. Plus: young people becoming less happy

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Good morning.

Hours after the supreme court ruled to allow a strict new Texas immigration law, known as SB4, to take effect, a federal appeals court issued an order that prevented the state from enforcing it.

SB4 would allow Texas authorities to arrest, process and imprison people suspected of crossing the US-Mexico border illegally – thereby infringing on roles long reserved for federal authorities.

It could also be enforced elsewhere in Texas if someone is arrested on suspicion of another violation and their fingerprints link them to a suspected re-entry violation.

What did the supreme court decide? The supreme court didn’t address whether the law is constitutional and sent the measure to the appeals court. However, the panel did reject an emergency application from the Biden administration, which says the law is a clear violation of federal authority that would cause chaos.

In a dissent, the liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said their rightwing colleagues had invited “further chaos and crisis in immigration enforcement” by giving “a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos”.

How did the White House react to the supreme court ruling? The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said: “SB4 will not only make communities in Texas less safe, it will also burden law enforcement and sow chaos and confusion at our southern border.”

Biden and Trump sweep up more delegates in Tuesday’s primary elections

Donald Trump and Joe Biden picked up wins in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio in Tuesday’s primary elections as they set their sights on a rematch in November. Trump also won the Republican primary in Florida, where the Democrats are not holding a primary.

Despite no longer being in the race, the former South Carolina governor and presidential candidate Nikki Haley still captured a sizable fraction of the Republican vote in Ohio, Illinois and Florida.

US and UK doctors in Washington to warn of IDF’s ‘appalling atrocities’ in Gaza

In Washington DC this week, a delegation of American and British doctors is due to tell the Biden administration that the Israeli military is systematically destroying Gaza’s health infrastructure in order to drive Palestinians out of their homes.

The doctors, who have recently returned from volunteering at Gaza’s besieged hospitals, are expected to tell White House officials and senior members of Congress of the “appalling atrocities” they witnessed.

“The IDF are systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system,” said Prof Nick Maynard, the former director for cancer services at Oxford University who worked at al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza at the beginning of the year.

In other news …

Authorities have launched an investigation into the London Clinic over claims staff tried to access the Princess of Wales’s private medical records while she was being treated there.

The top two US generals who oversaw the evacuation of Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban in August 2021 blamed the Biden administration on Tuesday for the chaotic departure.

A black woman has posthumously won a settlement over her family’s ancestral South Carolina home.

A breast cancer drug may help thousands more women than previously thought.

Stat of the day: transport emissions in Europe have grown 26% since 1990

Polluting cars and the growing thirst for flights could lead to the transport sector pumping out nearly half of the continent’s planet-heating pollution by 2030. Should the sector continue with its policies, the greenhouse gases emitted when Europeans move around could make up 44% of the continent’s total emissions by the end of the decade, according to modelling from the campaign group Transport & Environment.

Don’t miss this: the migrant workers dying in Saudi Arabia

Half a million Bangladeshis, many of them young, healthy men, left their families to find work in Saudi Arabia in 2023. This pipeline of workers from Bangladesh to the Gulf kingdom is expected to increase dramatically if Saudi Arabia is awarded the right to host the 2034 World Cup by Fifa later this year.

But thousands of these migrants will never get a chance to return home. Between 2008 and 2022, at least 13,685 Bangladeshis died in Saudi Arabia, according to Bangladeshi government records. In 2022 alone, 1,502 died – a rate of more than four a day.

… or this: Young people are becoming less happy

New data has revealed that young people across North America were now less happy than their elders – a historic shift expected to follow in western Europe. The 2024 World Happiness Report found that declining wellbeing among under-30s has driven the US out of the top 20 list of happiest nations.

“To think that in some parts of the world children are already experiencing the equivalent of a midlife crisis, demands immediate policy action,” said Prof Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the Wellbeing Research Center.

Climate check: A decommissioned nuclear plant and New York’s rising greenhouse gas emissions

Environmentalists celebrated the closure of New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant in 2021. But since its closure, the state’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up. Despite its impact on the surrounding environment, the nuclear plant supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity – and it is gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has been filling that void.

“From a climate change point of view it has been a real step backwards and made it harder for New York City to decarbonize its electricity supply than it could have been,” said Ben Furnas, a climate and energy policy expert at Cornell University. “This has been a cautionary tale that has left New York in a really challenging spot.”

Last Thing: The huge yet humble lives of unofficial band members

They have played on some of the world’s biggest stages with some of the world’s biggest acts for years – but they are technically not part of the band. The Guardian takes a look at the fascinating lives of full-time touring players, who hold a place of honor in music history.

“I did think to myself: how am I going to add anything to this show? How can I give it a tone?” said Sarah Brown, who has sung with Simple Minds for the past 15 years. “That’s my job as a backing vocalist, to give it some color. I was really convinced I couldn’t add anything. But 15 years on I understand Jim’s voice a lot more, and I understand Simple Minds – they have different colours flowing through them.”

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