The Trump administration’s latest Supreme Court request could have consequences far beyond the treatment of transgender people in federal prisons, legal journalist Chris Geidner warned Monday.

In a new analysis in his Law Dork blog, Geidner called the Justice Department’s position an “alarming, all-encompassing argument.” He warned that allowing it to go into effect could “upend the legal status of trans people everywhere.”

The immediate dispute is over a Bureau of Prisons policy that would end gender-affirming surgeries, generally discontinue hormone treatment, and remove certain accommodations for transgender prisoners. Solicitor General John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to pause a judge’s order blocking that policy while the administration appeals.

But the Trump DOJ’s official legal position goes much further than prison administration.

“Sauer is asking the Supreme Court to say that the federal government no longer believes that trans people are justified in being trans in either the medical or social ways that allow trans people to live their lives authentically,” Geidner wrote Monday.

The legal journalist said he had warned about the “extremism and importance of these arguments" when the DOJ first made them before U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who blocked the prison policy.

“While the case is over trans people in federal prisons, let there be no doubt,” Geidner concluded, “the Trump administration is seeking to use the presumptive unpopularity of this group — and lack of coverage that such cases garner — to advance extreme gender-restrictive policies that could apply to all trans people and, ultimately, to everyone.”

The Supreme Court has asked the prisoners’ lawyers to respond by Oct. 8.

Ohio Republicans deliberately built a strategy around portraying Sen. Jon Husted as the underdog challenger rather than the sitting incumbent, hoping to capitalize on anti-establishment anger. Instead, the tactic appears to have genuinely confused voters about who actually holds the seat, reported The New York Times.

One anonymous GOP strategist told The Times the campaign intentionally framed Democrat Sherrod Brown as the incumbent, seeing it as a rare chance to channel frustration with the status quo at a moment when the GOP's own approval numbers are dismal. Husted's campaign poured millions into ads referring to his opponent as "Senator Sherrod Brown," even though Brown lost his Senate seat two years ago and Husted was the one appointed to fill JD Vance's vacancy when Vance became vice president.

The confusion is showing up on the ground. At the Delaware County Fair, 67-year-old Republican Debbie Grenko admitted she barely recognized Husted's name at all while grooming her pony.

"I don't know a whole lot about Husted," Grenko said. "It's Sherrod Brown in there, right?"

Another fairgoer, 72-year-old Ted Hull, watching a wiener dog race, said he planned to vote for Husted but believed Brown, who he assumed was still serving, had simply "become lazy" in office. A recent poll found nearly a quarter of Ohio voters believed Brown was the current incumbent.

Husted's campaign manager, Drew Thompson, defended the strategy, arguing name recognition isn't the whole game since voters already rejected Brown's actual record two years ago. "Name ID is not everything," Thompson said.

The Ohio Senate race has become one of the nation's most expensive, with nearly $400 million spent on advertising so far, and both sides now bracing for an unexpectedly close finish in a state Trump carried by double digits in 2024.

Republican strategist Jai Chabria, a longtime Vance adviser, insists the conventional wisdom declaring the race over is simply wrong. "The environment is bad, but there is a sense in D.C. that this race is over, and it's not," Chabria said. "Senator Husted is in a much better position than is conventional wisdom."

CNN host Kasie Hunt slammed President Donald Trump's White House on Monday for trying to defend the president's latest taxpayer-funded advertisements.

The ad was released during Sunday Night Football and featured a black-and-white video of Trump walking through the White House grounds, promising to "liberate" America from communists. It followed another taxpayer-funded ad that appeared on Fox News last week, featuring UFC CEO Dana White calling Trump "the most resilient person I've ever met." Both ads featured a disclaimer saying they were "paid for by the U.S. Government."

The Trump White House defended the ads as public service announcements, which other presidents have released in the past. Hunt wasn't buying it.

"Just ask yourself, do you really think they would be running ads like this if it wasn't an election year?" Hunt said on "The Arena." "I mean, come on!"

The taxpayer-funded ads have become a contentious issue within the Republican Party ahead of the midterm elections. On Sunday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) sharply criticized the ads.

"I don't think any public official ... should spend public money on private ads for themselves," Kennedy said.