The American Red Cross  today reported dangerously low levels of blood and platelet supplies, with 50,000 fewer blood donations than expected for the month of June. The Red Cross calls upon all those who are eligible to give blood to visit Red Cross or other collection centers to donate.

“Donations are down more than 10 percent across the country,” said Stephanie Millian, a spokeswoman  for the American Red Cross, told ABCNews.com. “We have almost half the amount of available blood on the shelves compared to last year.”

Blood donations usually drop  in the summer months, and the early heat wave, along with summer vacations, likely contributed to the severely limited supply. Millian also said that the midweek Independence Day holiday may have resulted in longer vacations, more businesses closing for the holiday and,  in turn, fewer overall blood drives.

The Red Cross hasn’t made a push for more donated blood since last summer when supply was also low.

“Elective surgeries can get canceled when blood shortage is low,” said Dr. Louis Aledort, an internist and hematologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. This can have a “big impact” on people who have taken time off of work for a surgery.

In such a case, physicians will bring in family members to donate blood, but rejection rates can be higher than for those who  come in voluntarily.

“Sometimes they don’t tell you they’re on an antibiotic or have a disease that may  get rejected as a blood donation,” said Aledort. “They still have to go through the same screening.”

While  Millian said blood inventory is  not at the  level where doctors would  have to delay surgeries, “we want to make sure they don’t get to that point,” she said.

All types of blood are welcome, but O negative is particularly needed. It is the universal donor blood type, and the type doctors turn to during  emergencies, because it can be transfused to anyone in need. Blood types O positive, B negative and A negative are in particularly  high demand, too, said the Red Cross.

“We need 38,000 units of blood every day to meet the needs of patients across the country,” said Millian.

She said blood is needed across the country, but recent severe weather and flooding in the southern part of the country has put it even more in need.

To find blood donation centers in you area, call 800-RedCross or visit www.redcross.org.

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The Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed its 2-year-old decision allowing corporations to spend freely to influence elections. The justices struck down a Montana law limiting corporate campaign spending.

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The justices also struck down key provisions of Arizona’s crackdown on immigrants but allowed one much-debated part of the law — police checks for immigration status.

In a morning of high drama, the court didn’t rule on the biggest issue of its agenda, the constitutionality of the landmark Affordable Health Care Law. The ruling on Obamacare is now expected Thursday, the final day of the court’s session.

The court also still has to decide cases on lying about military medals and real estate kickbacks.

By a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservative justices said the decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 applies to state campaign finance laws and guarantees corporate and labor union interests the right to spend freely to advocate for or against candidates for state and local offices.

The majority turned away pleas from the court’s liberal justices to give a full hearing to the case because massive campaign spending since the January 2010 ruling has called into question some of its underpinnings.

The same five justices said in 2010 that corporations have a constitutional right to be heard in election campaigns. The decision paved the way for unlimited spending by corporations and labor unions in elections for Congress and the president, as long as the dollars are independent of the campaigns they are intended to help. The decision, grounded in the freedom of speech, appeared to apply equally to state contests.

But Montana aggressively defended its 1912 law against a challenge from corporations seeking to be free of spending limits, and the state Supreme Court sided with the state. The state court said a history of corruption showed the need for the limits, even as Justice Anthony Kennedy declared in his Citizens United opinion that independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

In the Arizona immigration case, the decision upheld the “show me your papers” provision for the moment. But it took the teeth out of it by prohibiting police officers from arresting people on minor immigration charges.

Kennedy wrote the opinion that was unanimous on allowing the status check to go forward. The court was divided on striking down the other portions. Kennedy said the law could — and suggested it should — be read to avoid concerns that immigration status checks could lead to prolonged detention.

The court struck down these three major provisions: requiring all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers, making it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job and allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrants.

The Obama administration sued to block the Arizona law soon after its enactment two years ago. Federal courts had refused to let the four key provisions take effect.

Five states — Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah — have adopted variations on Arizona’s law. Parts of those laws also are on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case.

In other action, the court:

_  Declined to review how the trustee for Bernard Madoff’s customers calculates victims’ losses, a decision that could help speed a payout of billions of dollars. Without comment, the court let stand an August 2011 decision by a federal appeals court that approved of the calculation method employed by Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating the imprisoned Ponzi schemer’s firm.

_ Rejected an appeal by two U.S. investment funds that sought to seize $105 million of Argentina’s central bank deposits in New York to satisfy their claims from the country’s huge debt default a decade ago. The funds involved are EM Ltd, which is controlled by investor Kenneth Dart, and NML Capital Ltd, an affiliate of the investment firm Elliott Management Corp.

_ Said it’s unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life in prison without parole for murder. The 5-4 decision was in line with others the court has made, including ruling out the death penalty for juveniles and life without parole for young people whose crimes did not involve killing.

In the Montana case, 22 states and the District of Columbia, as well as Sen. John McCain and other congressional champions of stricter regulations on campaign money, joined with Montana.

Two liberal justices who were in dissent in Citizens United — Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — already had challenged Kennedy’s view that the independent campaign spending could not be corrupting by virtue of the absence of links to a campaign.

When the court blocked the Montana ruling in February, Ginsburg issued a brief statement for herself and Breyer saying that campaign spending since the decision makes “it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations `do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.’”

Ginsburg appeared to be referring to the rise of unregulated super PACs that have injected millions of dollars into the presidential and other campaigns. She said the case “will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway.”

The corporations that sued over the law said it could not remain on the books after the Citizens United decision.

Montana urged the high court to reject the appeal, or hold arguments and not issue what the court calls a summary reversal. The prevailing side in the lower court almost always strives to avoid high court review. But Montana and its supporters hoped a thorough debate over the Citizens United decision would lead to its reconsideration or at least limits on its reach.

Reuters contributed to this story.

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COLORADO SPRINGS – Donations are already pouring in for the people affected by the Waldo Canyon Fire.

The staggering volume of donated food, water, and other supplies nearly overwhelmed the Red Cross Sunday.

Bart Banks with Red Cross Emergency Disaster Services thanked the community for support while emphasizing that financial gifts are a more effective way to help.

“People have made a bunch of in-kind donations,” Banks said. “It’s hard for us to deal with these. We prefer monetary donations. However, we are going to use all of the water and Gatorade that has arrived.”

All day Sunday, cars dropped-off donations for firefighters, evacuees, even for pets. People not directly affected by the fire are doing everything they can to help their neighbors.

Some, like the Horton family of Colorado Springs, loaded up their pickup truck and drove for miles to deliver their donations.

“We bought cat food, dog food, some bird food because it’s Colorado, and you’ve gotta help everybody,” Pam Horton said.

The Hortons dropped off food for the firefighters at a command center. They drove to two shelters and delivered even more food.

“Just trying to bring it wherever they need it,” Becka Horton said.

There is plenty of need for the thousands of people ordered to evacuate, including Michael and Joan Clark who had to leave their home near the Garden of the Gods.

“It’s just wonderful that people care,” Clark said. “This is the kind of thing that brings out the good in people.”

Donations were literally piling up at Cheyenne Mountain High School on Sunday. Stacks of water and other supplies stretched the full length of a Red Cross truck volunteers served hot meals from.

“It’s been, it’s been all day,” Banks said. “We really do appreciate the community coming out and supporting us like this.”

People even dropped off Gatorade, coffee, and food for the troopers at various roadblocks around town.

Area resident Diana Wright came with her binoculars to get a closer look at the fire. Wright is off work indefinitely, because her office was evacuated along with hundreds of homes.

“There’s just a lot of hot spots up there,” Wright said. “All those people displaced. Their houses threatened, and the wildlife threatened, and the beautiful forest land. It’s just going up in flames, and it just breaks my heart.”

Pam Horton says dropping off donations is a much-needed distraction.

“It’s really sad to watch,” Horton said. “I don’t like to look at it a whole lot. I like the fact that so many people are helping. That’s what we do here in this state.”

Monetary donations will help the Red Cross the most. Other priority items include new batteries, underwear, and socks.

They’re also posting a list of those items on their website http://www.helpcoloradonow.org

(KUSA-TV © 2012 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)

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