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WASHINGTON — At least two federal prosecutors who worked on cases against Jan. 6 rioters were fired Friday by the Justice Department, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials familiar with the dismissals.

A copy of one of the dismissal letters seen by NBC News was signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, notifying the recipient that they were “removed from federal service effective immediately.” No reason for the removal was stated in the letter.

One of the fired employees had been based overseas.

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.

Follow live politics coverage here.

The Trump administration in late January fired probationary federal prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and prosecutors who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump. The administration also demoted some career prosecutors who worked on the Capitol siege investigation.

Probationary workers are either recent hires or have taken new positions.

The firings on Friday, though, marked the first time that career prosecutors who had worked Jan. 6 cases and who were past their probationary period of federal employment had been fired. It was also the first time Bondi fired Justice Department lawyers involved in prosecuting Jan. 6 cases. Bondi was confirmed by the Senate in February, after the dismissal of probationary prosecutors.

The firings come at a time when the fallout from the Jan. 6 investigation — and Trump’s subsequent mass pardon of even the most violent rioters — continues to loom over employees at both the Justice Department and the FBI. Numerous current and former officials have told NBC News that the targeting of people who worked on the largest investigation in FBI history have had a chilling effect on the Justice Department workforce, and would leave career prosecutors and FBI officials hesitant to pursue cases against any Trump allies for fear of being targeted by the administration.

One federal law enforcement official called Friday’s firings “horrifying” and noted that both of the prosecutors had been serving in other capacities before the 2024 election.

“To fire them, without explanation, is a slap in the face not only to them, but to all career DOJ prosecutors,” the official said. “No one is safe from this administration’s whims and impulses. And the public certainly is not served by the continued brain drain of DOJ — we are losing the best among us every day.”

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Happy Friday! The weekend is upon us, unless you’re a member of the U.S. Senate who’s set to spend the next couple days working on the “big, beautiful bill.” Today also marks the one-year anniversary of the now-infamous presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

In today’s edition, our legal team breaks down what comes next after the Supreme Court’s major ruling in the birthright citizenship case. Plus, Kristen Welker previews her exclusive interview this weekend with Zohran Mamdani.

— Adam Wollner

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— Adam Wollner

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Supreme Court birthright citizenship ruling sparks new round of legal fights

By Lawrence Hurley and Gary Grumbach

Almost as soon as the Supreme Court released its ruling limiting the ability of judges to block President Donald Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship, challengers brought new legal claims seeking the same result by a different means.

While the Supreme Court said judges cannot issue sweeping “universal injunctions” that can apply nationwide in many cases, it left open the option of plaintiffs seeking broad relief via class action lawsuits.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed such a lawsuit in New Hampshire on behalf of immigrants whose children may not obtain U.S. citizenship at birth if Trump’s order was to go into effect.

In a separate case in Maryland, in which groups had previously obtained a nationwide injunction, lawyers filed an amended complaint seeking similar class-wide relief for anyone affected by Trump’s plan within hours of the ruling authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Under Trump’s plan, birthright citizenship would be limited to those who have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. That is at odds with the widely accepted understanding of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment — that it grants citizenship to anyone born in the U.S., with a few minor exceptions.

Samuel Bray, a critic of nationwide injunctions at Notre Dame Law School whose work was cited in the ruling, said both the states and individual plaintiffs can still get broad injunctions against the birthright citizenship executive order, potentially even on a nationwide basis.

“I don’t expect the executive order will ever go into effect,” he added.

How Trump is responding: At a news conference, Trump made it clear the administration would proactively use the Supreme Court ruling not just to bolster its birthright citizenship proposal but also to push forward on other policies that have been blocked by judges on a nationwide basis.

“Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” the president said.

Read more from Lawrence and Gary →

More coverage from the final day of the court’s term:

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Steve Bannon urges Republicans to take Zohran Mamdani’s rise ‘seriously’

By Kristen Welker

Zohran Mamdani pulled off a stunning upset in New York City’s mayoral primary this week, sending shock waves through the Democratic Party. A little-known state lawmaker, Mamdani ran a campaign that energized key Democratic constituencies and ultimately forced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to concede.

And now, even Republicans are starting to pay attention. Steve Bannon, a close ally to President Donald Trump, told me the GOP should take Mamdani’s rise seriously.

“He did something that AOC and Bernie haven’t been able to do — he connected populism to affordability,” Bannon told me. “Republicans better start taking this guy seriously and they better stop wishing that he wins, and they will automatically run against his policies in 2026. This guy is a very skilled politician. He’s clearly had a lot of training. He’s got radical ideas, but he presents them in a sunny upbeat way and people feel like he’s fighting for them, particularly on an issue that Republicans haven’t connected on yet: affordability.”

Mamdani has the momentum at the moment, but if elected mayor this fall, he would face immediate questions about whether he and his fellow democratic socialists can effectively govern the nation’s largest city. He would oversee a $115 billion budget, more than 300,000 city employees and the country’s largest police force.

Mamdani has pledged to expand affordable housing, make city buses free and lower the cost of living by raising taxes on large corporations and the top 1% of earners. But his record in Albany offers limited evidence of legislative success: The New York Times reported that only three relatively minor bills he sponsored became law.

Delivering on his promises would be difficult. Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul — who has said she’s not ready to back Mamdani yet — already rejected his proposed tax hikes on the wealthy, and making public buses free would require state approval.

So, if given the opportunity to govern, how would Mamdani do it, given these challenges?

I’ll talk to Mamdani about all of this in an exclusive interview on “Meet the Press” this Sunday.

Related read: Zohran Mamdani’s social media strategy was about more than viral videos, by Angela Yang and Bruna Horvath

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🎙️Here’s the Scoop

This week, NBC News launched “Here’s the Scoop,” a new evening podcast that brings you a fresh take on the day’s top stories in 15 minutes or less.

In today’s episode, host Yasmin Vossoughian discusses the Supreme Court’s ruling in the birthright citizenship case with NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett and senior Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley.

Listen to the episode here →

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✉️ Mailbag: Is Trump delivering on his deportation promises?

Thanks to everyone who emailed us! This week’s reader question is about Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

“The president says they are deporting rapists, drug dealers and child molesters. I was wondering how many of the arrests are of real criminals and how many are just illegal entry workers?”

To answer this, we turned to an exclusive report this week from our colleagues Julia Ainsley and Laura Strickler.

They obtained internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data of every person booked from Oct. 1 through May 31, part of which was during the Biden administration. It shows a total of 185,042 people arrested and booked into ICE facilities during that time; 65,041 of them have been convicted of crimes. The most common categories of crimes they committed were immigration and traffic offenses.

Last fall, ICE told Congress that 13,099 people convicted of homicide and 15,811 people convicted of sexual assault were on its non-detained docket, meaning it knew who they were but did not have them in custody.

The new data shows that from Oct. 1 to May 31, ICE arrested 752 people convicted of homicide and 1,693 people convicted of sexual assault, meaning that at the most, the Trump administration has detained only 6% of the undocumented immigrants known to ICE to have been convicted of homicide and 11% of those known to ICE to have been convicted of sexual assault.

Read more →

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That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Dylan Ebs.

If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]

And if you’re a fan, please share with everyone and anyone. They can sign up here.

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At least two North American airlines have been victims of criminal hackers recently as cybersecurity companies warn that a notorious cybercriminal group has been targeting the aviation industry.

Westjet and Hawaii airlines both said in June statements that they are responding to cyberattacks.

American Airlines also experienced a tech issue on Friday, though it’s unclear if it was related or caused in any way by hackers.

“A technology issue is affecting connectivity for some of our systems and we are working with our partners to fully resolve the issue,” an American Airlines spokesperson said in a statement. “Though we are experiencing delays as a result, we have not canceled any flights at this time.”

Cybersecurity companies that work directly with companies hit by hackers usually refrain from talking about specific victims, citing nondisclosure agreements. But both Google and Palo Alto Networks said Friday that they have observed a particularly effective cybercriminal group, nicknamed Scattered Spider by the cybersecurity industry, that tries to hack companies involved in aviation.

Scattered Spider is a loosely affiliated group of young, mostly English-speaking men who are extremely adept at sweet-talking their way into sensitive computer access at large companies. From there, they often hand that access to outside cybercriminals who install ransomware — malicious software that locks up computers, rendering them inoperable — and then demand an extortion payment.

The group has been tied to attacks on Las Vegas casinos in 2023 and British department stores earlier this year. After Google warned that Scattered Spider was targeting American retailers, a cyberattack hobbled a top Whole Foods supplier, leading to empty shelves across the country.

Charles Carmakal, the chief technology officer of Mandiant, Google’s cloud security company, said in an emailed statement that it was tracking “multiple incidents in the airline and transportation sector” where Scattered Spider had broken in.

“We are still working on attribution and analysis, but given the habit of this actor to focus on a single sector we suggest that the industry take steps immediately to harden systems,” he said.

Details on the effects of the attacks on airlines are still sparse.

A WestJet spokesperson told NBC News in an email that the company first noticed it had been hacked on June 13 and has made “significant progress” to resolve it. Hawaiian Airlines said in a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it discovered on Monday that it had been hacked and that “Flights are currently operating safely and as scheduled.”

Neither company responded to questions about whether any flights had been canceled or delayed because of the attacks.

The Supreme Court on Friday granted the HIV-prevention field a historic win — yet with a major caveat — as it upheld a federally appointed health task force’s authority to mandate no-cost insurance coverage of certain preventive interventions, but clarifying that the Health and Human Services secretary holds dominion over the panel.

The 6-3 decision in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc. essentially leaves in place a popular pillar of the Affordable Care Act, which mandates that most insurers cover various task force-recommended preventive screenings, therapies and interventions, with no out-of-pocket costs imposed on patients. The case reached the high court after a group of Christian businesses in Texas objected to being compelled to cover a certain drug used for HIV prevention, known as PrEP, given their claims that it “promotes homosexuality.”

“Since our efforts to address HIV in the U.S. are under attack on so many levels, preserving insurers’ requirement to cover preventive services, including PrEP, will help ensure access to people who need it,” said Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute, a patient advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

But the court clarified the scope of the task force’s independence, thus potentially compromising its impact. Addressing concerns that the 16-member volunteer task force’s power over insurers was unconstitutional, the justices asserted that the health secretary holds the authority to appoint and dismiss the panelists and to block their new recommendations from mandating insurance coverage. The secretary could also possibly direct the panel, including one stocked with his or her own hand-picked members, to revisit previous recommendations that have already gone into effect.

Given the unpredictable nature and unconventional approach to health policy of the current health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., HIV advocates are concerned that he might undermine the task force’s current or future endorsements of HIV-prevention medications, known as PrEP.

The ruling “is a victory in the sense that it leaves intact the requirement to cover task-force recommendations,” said attorney Richard Hughes, a partner with Epstein Becker Green in Washington, D.C., who represented a group of HIV advocacy organizations in submitting a friend-of-the-court brief in the casel. “It was always going to be a double-edged sword, as the political accountability that salvaged its authority comes with the ability to alter its recommendations.”

The U.S. has secured only a modest decline recently in HIV cases, and HIV advocates stand at a crossroads amid the Trump administration’s dramatic withdrawal of support for their cause.

Promisingly, the Food and Drug Administration last week approved a long-acting injectable form of PrEP, Yeztugo, made by Gilead Sciences. Injected every six months, Yeztugo overwhelmingly bested Truvada, a daily-pill form of PrEP also made by Gilead, at lowering HIV transmissions in clinical trials.

But Yeztugo has debuted as the Trump administration is gutting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV-prevention division and after it canceled scores of HIV-related research grants.

HIV experts have warned that this upheaval could lead HIV to rise again.

Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc.

The plaintiffs’ initial religious-liberty complaint was ultimately dropped from the case. The court more narrowly considered the constitutionality of an ACA provision that lent effective authority to a longstanding volunteer medical task force to mandate no-cost insurance coverage to preventive interventions that the expert group rated highly, including PrEP.

The plaintiffs argued that because the task force was not appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, granting it such power over insurance markets violated the Constitution’s appointments clause. The justices grappled with the task force’s balance of independence versus accountability. In particular, they sought to determine whether the task force members were appointed by the Senate-confirmed Health and Human Services secretary.

In addition to PrEP, the task force has issued high scores, for example, to screening for lung cancer, diabetes, and HIV; treatment to help quit smoking; and behavioral counseling to prevent heart disease.

Had the Supreme Court fully sided with the plaintiffs, insurers would have been free to drop such popular benefits or, at the very least, to impose related co-pays and other cost sharing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh found that the health secretary has the power “to appoint Task Force members, and no statute restricts their removal.” He was joined by an ideological mix of colleagues, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the right, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson on the left.

Concerns and uncertainty about Kennedy

HIV advocates expressed concern that Kennedy might undo the task force’s recommendation for PrEP, or at the least deprioritize ensuring that Yeztugo receives a clear coverage mandate.

Earlier this month, Kennedy dismissed the entire CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, and replaced them with his own hand-picked selections, including one notable anti-vaccine activist. At the first meeting of the newly formed committee this week, ACIP dropped recommendations for some flu vaccines over claims, widely debunked by researchers, that one ingredient in them is tied to autism.

Mitchell Warren, executive director of the HIV advocacy nonprofit AVAC, expressed concern about “what happened with the CDC ACIP this week, as it could be a harbinger of what a secretary of HHS can do to twist committees and task forces that should be composed of experts guided by science to ones that are guided by ideology and politics.”

In an email to NBC News, Carmel Shachar, faculty director of the Health Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, characterized Kennedy’s potential approach to overseeing the health task force as unpredictable.

“RFK has been skeptical of the medical approach to HIV/AIDS in the past, and that may color his attitude to revising PrEP guidance,” Shachar said.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the HIV advocates’ concerns.

In 2019, the health task force granted Truvada as PrEP a top rating. The drug was already widely covered by insurers. But under ACA rules, the task force’s recommendation meant that by January 2021, insurance plans needed to cease imposing cost-sharing for the drug.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, then clarified that insurers were also forbidden to impose cost sharing for the quarterly clinic visits and lab tests required for a PrEP prescription.

A CDC study published in October found that about 200,000 people were using PrEP at any point in 2023.

In 2019, the FDA approved another Gilead daily pill, Descovy, for use as PrEP. In late 2021, ViiV Healthcare’s Apretude — an injection given every two months — was also green lit.

The health task force gave top ratings to both of the newer forms of PrEP in 2023, which triggered a mandate for no-cost coverage to begin in January.

A generic version of Truvada emerged in 2020 and now costs as little as $30 per month. The list prices of the three brand-name PrEP drugs range from about $2,200 to $2,350 a month.

How the court’s ruling could play out for HIV prevention

Were Kennedy to appoint task force members who ultimately voided the PrEP coverage mandate, generic Truvada, at the very least, would still likely remain widely covered by insurance. But insurers would be free to demand cost-sharing for all forms of PrEP, including for required clinic visits and lab tests. And they could restrict access to the more expensive versions, including by imposing prior authorization requirements and higher cost sharing.

Research suggests that even a small increase in monthly out-of-pocket costs for PrEP can depress its use and that those who accordingly forgo a prescription are especially likely to contract HIV.

Johanna Mercier, Gilead’s chief commercial officer, said even before the health task force’s 2023 insurance mandate for Descovy went into effect in January, the drug’s coverage was still pretty solid. Private insurers provided unrestricted coverage of Descovy for PrEP to 74% of commercially insured people, and 40% of prescriptions for the drug had no co-pay. After the mandate went into effect — including after CMS released a clarification on the PrEP-coverage mandate in October — those rates increased to 93% and 85%, respectively.

This experience, Mercier said, has left the company optimistic that an increasing proportion of health plans will cover Yeztugo during the coming months.

Health-policy experts are not certain whether the existing PrEP rating from the task force automatically applies to Yeztugo, or whether the drug will require its own rating to ensure coverage comes with no cost sharing.

If Apretude’s history is any guide, a requirement for Yeztugo to receive a specific rating could delay a no-cost insurance-coverage mandate for the drug from going into effect until January 2027 or 2028.

It’s also possible that CMS could release guidance clarifying that the existing mandate for PrEP coverage applies to Yeztugo, which would likely have a more immediate impact on coverage.

However, Elizabeth Kaplan, director of health care access at Harvard’s Health Law and Policy Clinic, said in an email that “given this administration’s and RFK’s stated priorities,” the publication of a guidance on Yeztugo coverage by an HHS division “appears unlikely.”

A group of fifth-grade students were arrested last fall over an alleged plot to murder a fellow student after being overheard discussing their plans, according to a newly released police report.

Four students at the Legacy Traditional School in Surprise, Arizona, were accused of planning to fatally stab a fellow fifth grade student and forge a suicide note to make it appear self-inflicted, according to the police report. A parent alerted the school of the plot on Oct. 1, 2024, after their child overheard the group talking about it.

The students and their parents were instructed to come back to the school the following morning for the school’s investigation, per the report.

Through the investigation, it was found that one of the accused students, a girl, was allegedly in a “relationship” with the victim, a boy, who had cheated on her, according to the report. The girl hated him and wanted him dead, the report said.

During a lunch on Oct. 1, 2024, the students were involved in a conversation on how to “end him,” the report said. According to interviews with the suspects, the plan involved allegedly luring the boy to a bathroom and stabbing him in the stomach.

They would wear gloves so as not to leave behind fingerprints and forge a suicide note, the report said.

One of the students interviewed said she had walked over while the group was discussing the plot and made jokes about it, according to the report. But the girl insisted that she was joking while the other students “started to get serious” and she began to back off as a result, the report said.

Another student told police that he was part of the conversation because he didn’t want the others to think he was “weird and not wanting to do it,” according to the report. This student said he didn’t think the others would actually do it and that he didn’t want to be a part of it.

A third student said conversations about allegedly plotting to kill the student made her uncomfortable, but she ultimately thought her fellow students were joking, according to the report. When she was assigned the role of guard, she realized “they were serious,” she said.

The parent of the victim, who was identified in the report, told police that she wanted to “aid in prosecution of the students,” who allegedly plotted to kill her son, the report said. The parent did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The four students — two 10 year olds and two 11 year olds — were all arrested for one count of threatening and another count of disorderly conduct, per the report. The students were released into the custody of their parents and suspended, pending expulsion.

Three students and their families showed remorse and the students apologized, according to the report. A fourth student and her parent did not appear to be phased, and the student “would smile and laugh and made excuses for the actions,” the report said.

In a statement, Legacy Traditional School said the safety and well-being of their students is their top priority and that the school immediately addressed the incident after learning about it.

“Due to federal student privacy laws, we cannot discuss individual student disciplinary matters,” the statement read. “As outlined in the Legacy Student Code of Conduct, any student who makes or shares a threat may face disciplinary action, up to and including expulsion.”

Parents of the suspected students did not immediately respond to NBC’s requests for comment.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law aimed at restricting young people’s access to pornographic content online.

The justices in a 6-3 vote rejected a challenge brought by a pornography interest group called the Free Speech Coalition that said the measure violates the free speech rights of adults who want to access the content.

The law requires users of websites that host adult content to verify their age before they can access it. This requires the operator to view a government-issued identification, such as a driver’s license.

The law “simply requires established verification methods already in use by pornographic sites and other industries,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority.

It also “advances the state’s important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit material,” he added.

The challengers argued the law violates the Constitution’s First Amendment because it places a “content-based burden” on adults’ access to speech.

They cited a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that found a federal law also aimed at restricting access to pornography, called the Child Online Protection Act, was most likely unconstitutional.

A federal judge had ruled that the provision at issue was problematic because it did not merely restrict access to minors.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals then ruled for Texas and refused to put its ruling on hold pending further review.

As a result of that ruling, some online pornography platforms, including Pornhub, prevented people in Texas from accessing their sites out of concern about the provision’s going into effect.

The Supreme Court in April 2024 declined to block the law while the case continued.

After three seasons, hundreds of deaths, billions of Korean won handed out, and a seemingly infinite rollercoaster of twists and turns, “Squid Game” has now dropped its final episodes on Netflix.

A series that wasn’t originally designed for a second season, “Squid Game” became a phenomenon with hundreds of millions of views around the world.

Season 1 introduced audiences to the Korean series in which a secret game show was played on a remote island for the benefit of a few, wealthy, masked, VIPs, with only one winner allowed to take home the prize.

Seasons 2 and 3 returned that winner (Lee Jung-jae, who played Seong Gi-hun, aka Player 456) to the arena, but also delved into the lives of the armed, pink-suited guards and a bulldog detective determined to shut the whole system down.

Now that the final game (or so we think) has been played, who were the winners? Who were the losers? Let’s dig into what we know. But beware — things get dark in this “Game.”

Warning: Spoilers for all of “Squid Game” ahead.

Does Player 456 die in ‘Squid Game’? Seong Gi-hun’s fate, explained

Gi-hun went through the wringer in Seasons 2 and 3. He brought himself back into the game in order to subvert it, believing that his experience could foment a rebellion among the players. It turned out in the game — as often in real life — players preferred to vote for their own personal interests, rather than what was best for the collective, a brutal metaphor.

Disillusioned by humanity after several of the games, Gi-hun checked out of active participation as much as he could — until circumstances brought him a baby to protect during the game. The baby was given its late mother’s (Jo Yuri, playing Kim Jun-hee, aka Player 222) number, and permitted to “participate” in her stead.

In the final round of the Game, Gi-hun and the baby made it to the last stage. They’d had to face off numerous final players in the last test, which involved pushing players from the top of several tall towers. But on the final tower, Gi-hun, the baby, and Player 333 (Yim Si-wan, playing Lee Myung-gi, the baby’s father) were the only ones left standing. The rules dictated that one person on the tower must die for the game to end, but that person had to die after a button on the tower is pressed. Gi-hun and Myung-gi fight — and Myung-gi fell from the tower.

Unfortunately, the button wasn’t pushed before he fell, so time had not started and the death didn’t count. A death was still required to end the game. The VIPs in their protected booth expected Gi-hun to sacrifice the baby — but they clearly didn’t know him well. There’s no real winning at Squid Game, the show seemed to be saying — all that money didn’t make Gi-hun’s life a whole lot better. So Gi-hun kissed the baby, put her on the ground and turn to the camera to say, “We are not horses. We are humans.” Then he fell from the tower and died.

It’s a bittersweet ending, but a profound one — and answered the question Front Man asked Gi-hun in Season 3: “Do you still have faith in people?”

By not sacrificing an innocent baby, we got Gi-hun’s final answer.

So, who wins ‘Squid Game’ in Season 3?

Player 222, the infant.

What about the detective, Jun-ho, who’s been investigating the Squid Game?

Hwang Jun-ho (played by Wi Ha-joon) was too late to save Gi-hun, but he was able to send the Korean Coast Guard to the island.

Jun-ho did rescue the escaped Player 246 (Park Gyeong-seok, played by Lee Jin-wook), whose daughter was hospitalized with leukemia.

Jun-ho arrived on the island, looking for his brother (In-ho, aka Front Man, played by Lee Byung-hun), making it to the VIP chamber — just as In-ho retrieved Player 222/the baby from the top of the final tower.

Jun-ho considered shooting his brother, but couldn’t, afraid of harming the baby. Six months after the game ended, Jun-ho found the baby and the game’s prize money left for him (probably by In-ho).

Does the pink-suited guard No-eul survive?

Kang No-eul (aka Guard 011, played by Park Gyuyoung), had lost her daughter and bonded with Player 246’s child before coming to the island as a guard.

But when she discovered the organ harvesting operation going on between the guards and the dead players, she stepped up her efforts to help Player 246 escape.

She destroyed all evidence he had been on the island, and was prepared to die in the Front Man’s office when she saw Gi-hun’s sacrifice. Hearing the baby, she decided not to kill herself.

Six months later, she showed up visiting Player 246 in the amusement park where he still works, and where she used to work in a costume. He remained unaware that she was the one who saved his life, since she had her pink suit and mask on the whole time. She reunited with Player 246’s daughter, now healthy.

But there’s a twist: No-eul is a North Korean defector who was separated from her daughter. She gets news the child might be alive in China. We last see No-eul at the airport, ready to get on a plane to possibly visit her daughter.

If that sounds familiar, it’s similar to the way Season 1 ended, with Gi-hun about to go see his own daughter in Los Angeles.

Does Gi-hun live on?

Kind of. When we first met Gi-hun in Season 1, one reason he got into the Game in the first place was so he could support his daughter. But after he won, he became obsessed with ending the game.

With Gi-hun dead, In-ho (Front Man) made the trip Gi-hun didn’t: He went to the U.S. to see the late player’s daughter. He handed over a box of Gi-hun’s belongings to his daughter — a bloody uniform and a debit card, which probably had the remainder of Gi-hun’s winnings on it. Did In-ho change his own opinion about humanity’s worth? It seemed he was preparing to do so.

Will there be more ‘Squid Game’?

Based on the final scenes, we suspect yes.

In the last scene, after In-ho finished dropping off the winnings to Gi-hun’s daughter, he spotted a woman playing the introductory card-slap game with someone in an alley. And not just anybody — he saw a Recruiter, played by Cate Blanchett! They didn’t speak to each other, though she nodded with recognition at him and he moved on.

Season 1 informed us that Squid Games are played around the world, and last October Deadline wrote that an English-language version of the series was being developed with director David Fincher. Maybe we’ve just seen the first scene in “Squid Game: USA”?

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to an Affordable Care Act provision that set up a panel to recommend preventive care services that insurers must provide at no cost to patients.

The court, split 6-3, ruled in favor of the Trump administration, which was defending the law, saying the task force members are lawfully appointed under the Constitution’s appointments clause.

The task force members are under the supervision of the health and human services secretary, a position held by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which addresses any concerns that it is not accountable to the executive branch, the court found in an opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The task force members’ appointment is “fully consistent” with the Appointments Clause, Kavanaugh said. He also noted that Kennedy can fire the task force members at any time and has the authority to review their recommendations.

Three conservative justices dissented.

The case arose from a challenge brought by Christian employers Braidwood Management and Kelley Orthodontics, in addition to several individuals, who objected on religious grounds to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s approval of no-cost coverage for the HIV prevention medication known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

The plaintiffs asserted that their religious rights were violated “by making them complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior, drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.”

But by the time the case reached the Supreme Court, the legal issue was not the religious question raised under the Constitution’s First Amendment, focusing solely on the appointments issue.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends a wide array of preventive services related to such issues as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

The challengers said the structure of the task force was unlawful because members were not properly appointed via a presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. They added that the panel’s members are intended to be independent and not under the control of the health and human services secretary as the government argued.

The panel, composed of outside experts, has 16 members and was formed as an independent body appointed by the federal official who heads the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The dispute is the latest to reach the Supreme Court over the 2010 health care law — then-President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement — which Republicans have regularly attacked in court and sought to repeal.

This time, the Trump administration defended the provision in question after having taken over the case from the Biden administration.

The lawsuit was filed in 2020, leading to a federal judge in Texas issuing a ruling that said the structure of the task force was unconstitutional and all of its decisions should be considered invalid nationwide.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed that ruling somewhat last year. The Biden administration then took the case to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority that has regularly weakened the power of federal agencies.