海角大神

Welcome to your Daily. Today we look at high court rulings on partisan gerrymandering 补苍诲听citizenship as a census question, the guardrails of friendship between the leaders of the U.S. and Japan, the explosion of interest in women鈥檚 soccer聽in France, and the best movies of the month.

First, it鈥檚 late June. And, yes, that means it鈥檚 time once again for Washington journalism鈥檚 version of a barn raising:聽covering the last days of the term of the Supreme Court.

That can be a project that needs many hands. The work isn鈥檛 erecting heavy beams but deciphering and writing about the numerous big cases the court typically issues just prior to fleeing for summer vacation.

Increasingly justices leave their biggest decisions to last. Why? They don鈥檛 really say. But the most divisive cases often take the longest to resolve among the justices. There may be more writing, of both majority opinions and dissents. Decisions can be splintered with numerous points of view pro and con. The nine may have more difficulty putting together five votes for a majority outcome.

Case in point: today鈥檚 decision on possibly including a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. The Supreme Court said it would be OK to have such a question, but sent the case back to a lower court because five justices agreed they did not believe the Commerce Department鈥檚 stated reason for including it. Some justices affirmed some parts of this decision, but not others. Other justices dissented, but in different ways. (See our story, below.)

The decision that partisan gerrymandering is constitutional was fraught as well. You could almost feel arguments coming through the pages of the opinion, and dissent.

It takes more than one person to handle this on deadline as we search to explain the values and motivations behind some of the most consequential pronouncements of Washington鈥檚 entire year.