Travis Head's century leads Australia to an 8-wicket victory over England in Ashes series opener

PERTH, Australia (AP) — Travis Head flipped the narrative and dominated the England pace bowlers with one of the great centuries in Ashes cricket Saturday as Australia raced to an eight-wicket victory with three days to spare in the first test.

Head turned England’s attack-at-all-costs “Bazball” tactics back on the visitors, clobbering a century from 69 deliveries after being promoted up the order to open the innings when Usman Khawaja was injured.

“That innings from Travis Head was out of this world," Australia captain Steve Smith said.

In three innings across five sessions, fast bowlers were right on top as 30 wickets fell for 468 runs in 113 overs at Perth — 19 on a chaotic Day 1 and 11 before the tea interval on Day 2.

Set 205 to win, Head plundered 123 from 83 balls, clobbering boundaries to all parts of the ground as he hit the rope 16 times and cleared it on four occasions. Australian media reported it was the first time since 1921 that an Ashes test was won in two days.

Head was eventually caught in the outfield, trying to rush the victory, with Australia just 13 runs short.

Marnus Labuschagne leveled the scores with a six and was unbeaten on 51 when Australia reached 205-2.

England captain Ben Stokes said his team was “a little bit shell shocked," and described Head's innings as “phenomenal.”

The result, he said, “obviously hurts extremely, but then we’ve got to get our heads around it and move on."

Australia extended its unbeaten run in home Ashes tests to 16. England hasn't won a test in Australia since winning the 2010-11 series.

England was on top for most of the first four sessions but lost control with a batting collapse after the lunch interval on Day 2.

Stokes won the toss, batted and England was skittled for 172, with veteran Australian paceman Mitchell Starc leading an under-strength bowling attack with a career-best 7-58.

Australia was then bowled out for 132, giving England a 40-run first innings lead, with Stokes snaring a five-wicket haul after some early fireworks from express bowlers Jofra Archer and Mark Wood.

In its second innings, England was cruising at 65-1 until the big momentum shift. From 76-2, England lost three wickets without scoring and slid to be all out for 164.

That left Australia with 3 1/3 days to chase a modest victory target. Head achieved it in one session with the third-fastest test century ever by an Australian.

The stastistics suggested the Perth Stadium pitch was playing like a minefield for most of the first two days.

Starc had 10 wickets for the match including the 7-58 in the first innings, starting Day 2 with a spectacular return catch to remove Zac Crawley and also removing Joe Root and Stokes as England was dismissed for 164 in its second innings.

England lost three wickets without scoring in a momentum-shifting spell after lunch.

Australia's Scott Boland had Ollie Pope (33) caught behind and Harry Brook (0) caught at slip in the space of four balls. Two balls later, Starc removed Root (8) for the second time in the match.

Pope, Brook and Root were all out trying the same thing: needlessly reaching to play expansive drives.

And it could have been worse for England, but Khawaja dropped a regulation catch off Jamie Smith at slip before he'd scored.

Starc then dismissed Stokes (2) to really send a tremor through the England lineup at 88-6, collecting his 10th wicket for the match.

Gus Atkinson (37) and Brydon Carse (20) joined with the total at 104-7 and put on 50 in quick time to ensure a 200-plus chase for the Aussies.

The seventh England wicket to fall was dramatic, with the TV umpire taking four minutes to review the dismissal over-and-over to determine if Jamie Smith’s glove or bat touched a delivery from Brendan Doggett as it carried down legside to the wicketkeeper.

Smith started walking off but stopped as the TV umpire checked the “snicko” meter time and time again.

Head, fielding at short-leg, had appealed confidently for the nick, but the on-field umpire initially gave it not out. The decision is sure to spark some debate among rival fans.

Starc’s stunning catch to dismiss Crawley for a pair — ducks in each innings — was the highlight of a comparatively mild morning session Saturday. He removed the England opener in the first over of the second innings a day after dismissing him in the first over of the match.

Starc was fully into his follow-through after a delivering a ball at around 140 kph (87 mph) and had the athletic ability to lunge to his left and take the catch at full stretch just above ground level to remove Crawley. He was awarded player of the match.

The second test in the five-match series starts Dec. 4 at the Gabba in Brisbane.

AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket

England's captain Ben Stokes reacts in the field on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Marnus Labuschagne celebrates after Australia won the first Ashes cricket test match against England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Travis Head, left, is hugged by batting partner Marnus Labuschagne after the former got out on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Travis Head celebrates his century on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Mitchell Starc celebrates the wicket of England's captain Ben Stokes, left, on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Travis Head reacts after completing his fifty runs on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's players celebrate the wicket of England's Jofra Archer on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

South Africa's captain Temba Bavuma plays a shot on the first day of the second cricket test match between India and South Africa in Guwahati, India, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

England's fans cheer on their team on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Scott Boland, left, celebrates the wicket of England's Ollie Pope on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Mitchell Starc, left, lifts the ball to acknowledge his tenth wicket in the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

England's Zak Crawley reacts as he leaves the field after losing his wicket on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

England's Ben Duckett bats on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

England's Ollie Pope bats on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Mitchell Starc, right, celebrates with teammate Travis Head the wicket of England's Zak Crawley on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

England's Gus Atkinson bowls a delivery on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

England's captain Ben Stokes raises the ball after taking five wickets during the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Nathan Lyon bats on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

Australia's Brendan Doggett ducks a bouncer on day two of the first Ashes cricket test match between Australia and England in Perth, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Gary Day)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has begun hearing arguments over the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to someone in the country illegally or temporarily.

The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, is part of his Republican administration’s broad immigration crackdown.

Trump is in attendance; he is the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the nation’s highest court.

Every lower court to have considered the issue has found the order illegal and prevented it from taking effect. A definitive ruling by the nation’s highest court is expected by early summer.

Here’s the latest:

Trump spent just over an hour inside the courtroom. He apparently was only interested in hearing the arguments by the government’s lawyer, Solicitor General John Sauer.

The president departed shortly after Sauer wrapped up and the plaintiff was invited to present her case.

Cecillia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union legal director facing off against Sauer, often centered her arguments around American courts’ reliance on English common law, which provides for citizenship based on the legal concept of jus soli, or “right of soil.”

“When the government tried to strip Mr. Wong Kim Ark’s citizenship on largely the same grounds they raised today, this court said no,” she said, adding “this court held that the 14th Amendment embodies the English common law rule: Virtually everyone born on U.S. soil is subject to its jurisdiction and is a citizen.”

Justice Jackson is drilling down into exactly how the government would actually figure out who’s entitled to citizenship and who’s not.

“Are you suggesting that when a baby is born people have to have documents? Present documents? Is this happening in the delivery room? How are we determining when or whether a newborn child is a citizen of the United States under your rule?” she’s asking Sauer.

Sauer seems to be saying that it would fall to the computer systems that give out Social Security numbers, saying they would automatically check the citizenship of the parents.

Roberts says the word is used 20 times in the 1898 decision. “Isn’t it at least something to be concerned about?”

Wang says it’s true that the Chinese parents were domiciled in the U.S., but that the decision did not turn on that fact, but instead a long history of basing citizenship on where the child was born.

More than an hour in, it’s the opponents’ turn

The ACLU’s Wang has begun her presentation in defense of birthright citizenship.

Sauer noted that the government is “not asking you overrule Wong Kim Ark,” which extended citizenship to children born in the U.S. to foreign parents.

But he added that it was “totally unambiguous” that the 1898 ruling “relates to domiciled aliens,” and not what he called “sojourners,” or temporary visitors.

Judge Alito is asking Sauer about the humanitarian issue of people who have been in the U.S. for a long time and are “subject to removal” but in “their minds” have made a permanent home in America.

Alito also says that immigration laws in the U.S. have been “ineffectively and in some cases unenthusiastically” enforced over the years.

He’s asking Sauer to address the “humanitarian problem” that arises with how to deal with those people when it comes to birthright citizenship.

Sauer is saying that when it comes to birthright citizenship the U.S. is an “outlier among modern nations” and is pointing to places in Europe who don’t allow birthright citizenship and suggesting there doesn’t seem to have been any humanitarian fallout there.

Kavanaugh says Congress might have used different language in laws enacted in 1940 and 1952 if it wanted to make clear that children of people here illegally or temporarily were not entitled to citizenship.

Much of the early discussions revolved around the concepts of “domicile,” or a person’s permanent residence, and to which government that person owes “allegiance.”

Solicitor General D. John Sauer began his arguments by noting that the citizenship clause “was adopted just after the Civil War to grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and their children, whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile here.”

It did not, he said, “grant citizenship to the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens who have no such allegiance.”

Sauer insists that Trump’s order would apply “only prospectively.”

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor says the logic of the administration’s argument would allow a future president to try to strip citizenship from U.S.-born children years from now.

Sauer was asked by Chief Justice John Roberts about how significant is the issue of “birth tourism.”

Critics of birthright citizenship have long said that it attracts people from other countries who come to the U.S. in order to give birth so that their children can become American citizens. Then they go back to their home country.

Sauer was asked by Roberts about any data on how many people come to the U.S. for this reason. “No one knows for sure,” Sauer said, and cited “media estimates” for various numbers.

Thomas recounts that the aim of the 14th amendment was to make citizens of the freed slaves. “How much of the debates around the 14 Amendment had anything to do with immigration?”

Conservative and liberal justices are questioning Sauer’s history of the debates that led to the adoption of the 14th Amendment. Justice Neil Gorsuch says there’s precious little discussion about domicile, a key part of Sauer’s argument.

Justice Elena Kagan says part of Sauer’s case rests “on some pretty obscure sources.”

Many of the arguments in today’s case go back to the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in the case of Wong Kim Ark, which said a U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.

In that ruling, Justice Horace Gray wrote that Fourteenth Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory. That, he wrote, is “including all children here born of resident aliens.”

Roberts says it’s not clear how the recognized exceptions to citizenship, children of ambassadors and foreign invaders, can be applied to “a whole class of illegal aliens.”

Roberts says he’s not sure “how you get to that big group from such tiny and idiosyncratic examples.”

Sauer, Trump’s top Supreme Court lawyer, is at the lectern, defending the president’s birthright citizenship order. Trump is in the courtroom.

On American Samoa, an island cluster in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand, native-born children are considered “U.S. nationals” — a distinction that gives them certain rights and obligations while denying them others.

American Samoans are entitled to U.S. passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for the Selective Service. They can vote in local elections in American Samoa but cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections.

Those who wish to become citizens can do so, but the process costs hundreds of dollars and can be cumbersome. In 2022, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal seeking to extend birthright citizenship to American Samoa.

An Alaska appeals court is weighing whether to dismiss criminal charges against an Alaska resident born in American Samoa after she was elected to a local school board.

Crowds watched from the sidewalks as Trump’s motorcade drove along Constitution and Independence Avenues, passing the Washington Monument and the National Mall on the way to the court building.

Justice Felix Frankfurter, a native of Austria, was the last of six justices who were born abroad. The current court is American from birth.

Still, the citizenship issue hits close to home for some justices.

Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson are descended from enslaved people who eventually had their citizenship established by the 14th Amendment.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s parents were born in Puerto Rico, where residents became citizens under a 1917 law enacted by Congress. The justice most closely tied to an immigrant is Alito, whose father was born in Italy.

Way back in 1841, former President John Quincy Adams represented a shipload of African men and women who had been sold into slavery in the famous Amistad case.

Former President William Howard Taft became chief justice nearly eight years after leaving the White House in 1913. Charles Evans Hughes left the Supreme Court for a presidential run in 1912, which he nearly won, then returned to the court in 1930 as chief justice.

In 1966, Richard Nixon argued his only Supreme Court case, which he lost.

Twenty-four Democratic state attorneys general put out a statement Wednesday morning saying they’re “proud to lead the fight against this unlawful order.”

While Democratic attorneys general have sued the Trump administration scores of times, the plaintiffs in this case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups.

The Democratic attorneys filed court papers supporting their position. Twenty-five of their Republican counterparts filed a friend-of-the-court brief backing the Trump administration.

The only state sitting this one out is New Hampshire.

More than 250,000 babies born in the U.S. each year would not be citizens, according to research from the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute.

The order would only apply going forward, the administration has said. But opponents have said a court ruling in Trump’s favor could pave the way for a later effort to take away citizenship from people who were born to parents who were not themselves U.S. citizens.

The president and first lady Melania Trump showed up for the court ritual marking the arrival of a new justice following the confirmations of Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Justice Brett Kavanaugh a year later.

The ceremony for Trump’s third appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was delayed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump, who was no longer in office, did not attend.

Traditionally the president has avoided attending arguments to maintain distance between the government branches — since the executive officer’s presence is seen by many as a way to pressure the independent court to rule in their favor.

Given the unusual nature of it all — Trump’s presence in the courtroom spotlights how high the stakes are for him, as the court’s decision will have massive consequences on his longstanding promise to crack down on immigration.

Last year, Trump said that he badly wanted to attend a hearing on whether he overstepped federal law with his sweeping tariffs, but he decided against it, saying it would have been a distraction.

Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA, told the The Associated Press that Trump’s attending SCOTUS oral arguments signals how important the president views this case.

However, Trump’s presence “is unlikely to sway the justices,” Winkler said, adding that the SCOTUS justices “pride themselves in their independence, even if some agree with much of Trump’s agenda.”

The fanfare of Trump being in the courtroom will make for a different experience for the justices themselves, however, as “Trump’s presence will make the atmosphere a little bit more circus-like,” Winkler said.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer is making his ninth Supreme Court argument and second in as many weeks. Sauer’s biggest win to date was the presidential immunity decision that spared Trump from being tried for his effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Sauer was a Supreme Court law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia early in his legal career.

ACLU legal director Cecillia Wang, the child of Chinese immigrants, is presenting her second argument to the Supreme Court. In the first Trump administration, a 5-4 conservative majority ruled against Wang’s clients in another immigration case.

It’s not an April Fool’s joke. Alito was born this day in 1950. Only Thomas, who turns 78 in June, is older than Alito among the nine justices.

In the post-pandemic era, the other justices allow the 77-year-old Thomas, the longest-serving member of the court, to pose a question or two before the free-for-all begins.

In a second round of questioning, the justices ask questions in order of seniority. Chief Justice John Roberts, whose center chair makes him the most senior, gets the first crack.

The justices have routinely gone beyond the allotted time since returning to the courtroom following the Covid-19 pandemic.

A buzzer and the court marshal’s cry, “All rise,” signal the justices’ entrance from behind red curtains. The livestream won’t kick in for several minutes, until after the ceremonial swearing-in of lawyers to the Supreme Court bar.

FILE - The U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington on Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

People arrive to walk inside the U.S. Supreme Court, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. The Supreme Court justices will hear oral arguments today on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)