Matthew Chapman

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in favor of a Republican congressman, Rep. Mike Bost of Illinois, who is trying to sue over his state's mail-in voting rules.

The 7-2 decision, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, doesn't immediately change election rules anywhere; however, it establishes a precedent that potentially makes it easier for candidates for office to sue over election rules.

Bost filed a suit challenging Illinois' practice of counting mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day, even if they arrive days later. This practice varies from state to state, with some requiring all ballots be received by Election Day, and others merely requiring it be postmarked. Bost's contention was that the more permissive rule violates federal law.

Lower courts, including the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, ruled that Bost lacked standing to challenge Illinois' election laws because the disputed ballots would not have altered the outcome of the election.

The Supreme Court majority, however, disagreed with this logic.

"Candidates do not need to show a substantial risk that a rule will cause them to lose the election or prevent them from achieving a legally significant vote threshold in order to have standing," said the syllabus of the opinion, which was written by Chief Justice John Roberts. "Requiring such a showing could channel many election disputes to shortly before election day or after. Only then will many candidates be able to predict with any certainty that a rule will be outcome determinative."

Furthermore, continued the opinion, citing Roberts' own prior opinion in the landmark Rucho v. Common Cause case that limited federal courts' involvement in gerrymandering, "Premising standing on a candidate’s risk of election loss or failure to achieve a certain vote threshold would also convert Article III judges into political prognosticators."

House Republicans' headache of a week just got worse, as yet another piece of business legislation appears doomed to fail to an internal revolt of GOP lawmakers.

According to Politico's Meredith Lee Hill, the GOP is likely to cancel a scheduled vote on Thursday for the Save Local Business Act authored by Rep. James Comer (R-KY). This legislation would limit the circumstances in which businesses can be classified as "joint employers," a rule that protects labor rights for a number of workers from temps at staffing agencies, to farm hands, to janitors who serve multiple businesses.

A contingent of Republicans sympathetic to organized labor, which opposes the legislation, are reportedly revolting, with one lawmaker telling Hill, “If leadership insists on a vote, it’ll likely fail worse than today’s bill.” According to the report, leaders are likely to instead vote on a different joint-employer bill by Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) that is aimed at protecting franchise businesses.

This comes after a chaotic night on Tuesday, where Republican defectors defeated a pair of bills to weaken overtime pay protections, and another bill to change the definition of a tipped employee. Of the four Republican bills on the docket Tuesday, the only one to pass was the SHOWER Act, a bill that relaxes water conservation rules for shower heads with multiple nozzles.

This marks the latest headache for Republican leadership as a small but persistent wing of the party tries to force greater input for organized labor.

President Donald Trump managed to improve the GOP's standing with unionized workers in the 2024 election, and the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters controversially maintained neutrality rather than endorse Democrats, in return for having a say in Trump's nomination for Secretary of Labor. This has led certain Republicans to argue the party should soften its traditional anti-labor policy positions and exercise more caution in bills that are opposed by unions, putting them at odds with the majority who still advocate for business interests.

President Donald Trump started the morning with a call to expel Somalians from the country, including a smear against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a Minnesota congresswoman who has become a target for his hatred in recent months.

Trump, posting on Truth Social, was reacting to a story from the far-right website Just The News, which claimed that federal officials are investigating some $130 million in cash transfers from Minneapolis to destinations overseas by Somali immigrants, through the airport in Columbus, Ohio.

"They should be thrown out of the USA. Get it done, NOW!" wrote Trump. "That includes their loser Rep. Omar, who married her brother (gross!). President DJT."

Unproven far-right conspiracy theories that Omar's first husband was actually her brother have been circulating for years, originating from a now-deleted anonymous post on an internet forum for Somali immigrants, which claimed that the marriage was a sham to secure her brother a green card. It persists extensively in MAGA circles, though news outlets that have looked into the matter have found no evidence to back it up.

Trump has frequently pushed this claim, as well as called for Omar, who left Somalia as a child refugee, to be expelled from the United States, along with the Somali-American diaspora community in general.

President Donald Trump grew agitated when newly-hired CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil pressed him on persistent inflation numbers on Tuesday — and seemingly reminded him that he only got the job he's currently in thanks to the administration's legal machinations.

"The inflation numbers came out," said Dokoupil. "Overall not bad, but grocery prices—"

"Well, they're overall very good," said Trump. "Good for us. Good for our country. Joe Biden had the highest inflation numbers in history." (This is not even close to true.) "I have it down to a level that people have not seen in nine years."

"Mr. President, help me understand," said Dokoupil. "When I travel the country, and I go all over the place, and I talk to everyday Americans, they tell me they don't feel it."

"They're going to now. I've only been here for 11 months, okay?" said Trump. "And the first few months were really rough if you look at them, because I inherited a mess. I inherited a mess of crime, I inherited a mess of inflation, I inherited a mess of places closing up and going to other countries. And now we have the hottest country in the world. Tony, we have now the hottest country in the world, and a year ago our country was dead. We had a dead country. You wouldn't have a job right now, if she [Kamala Harris] got in. If she got in, you probably wouldn't have a job right now."

It's possible that Trump simply meant that without him, the economy would be worse to the point of layoffs in newsrooms. However, this also comes after the Trump administration personally shepherded through a deal that merged CBS' parent company Paramount with Skydance, and brought in right-wing commentator Bari Weiss to head up CBS, who in turn hired Dokoupil to his current position.

So far, the changes at CBS have been met with distaste from the audience, as viewership has declined by 23 percent compared to last year.

President Donald Trump debased his office when he lost control and flipped the bird at a heckler in Detroit who called him a "pedophile protector," MS NOW anchor and former Republican National Committee chief Michael Steele observed in a discussion with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on Tuesday's edition of "The Weeknight."

"So we all know we have a very, in my estimation, a very underdeveloped man sitting in the White House," said Steele to Khanna, one of the main sponsors of legislation to compel the White House to release the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files, which have still not been released in full despite legal deadlines.

"That was just a punkish move," Steele continued. "I don't know who he thinks he was impressing. I guess it's more impressive if the President of the United States flips you off. But put your big boy pants on, Mr. President, the country is a big country, and we have opinions. We have opinions about you. We have opinions about your actions. So that's all I want to say about that."

Furthermore, Steele added, "The fact that the White House response was 'a lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage,' their overdramatization of stuff is another bit of crap we have to put up with."

"Look, it's not a coincidence of what sets him off," said Khanna. "What set him off is the heckler saying you're a protector. I was just on a podcast with Shawn Ryan. Shawn Ryan is the number two podcaster in the country. He was all in on Trump, and he said, what lost [him] is Trump is protecting — that's what this Epstein issue is about. It has gotten under his skin because he knows he's losing the MAGA base on this. He was elected to expose the corruption, to hold these people accountable. Instead, every move they made is to protect people who raped underage girls."

"And now you have, today, a federal judge who responded to Marcy and my motion, quite a breakthrough, where he's now ordered the Department of Justice to brief him on whether he should appoint a special master to actually get these documents released," said Khanna.

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The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board had a dire assessment of Trump's current economy: he's effectively fiddling while it burns, rather than deliver on any of the GOP's more conservative, growth-focused policies.

"Regarding prices, the consumer-price index came in somewhat hotter than expected with an increase of 0.3% in December and 2.7% over the past 12 months. Overall inflation isn’t rising, but it also isn’t coming down. Increases last month were especially notable for categories of goods and services that Americans buy on a regular basis like shelter (0.4%), medical care (0.4%), food (0.7%) and energy bills (1%)."

The sectors that saw the most inflation disproportionately hit lower-income Americans, the board noted. Worse still, earnings aren't getting any better, the board wrote.

"Real average hourly earnings rose 0.7% during the first five months of this year, but income growth has since stalled. For production and nonsupervisory workers, real average hourly earnings have declined 0.2% since May. The reason is a bump in inflation in the summer months that erased the gains from wage increases."

"This goes a long way to explain why so many Americans feel as if they are treading financial water," wrote the board — and it makes Trump's legal bullying of the Federal Reserve to try to lower interest rates look even more counterproductive, since the Fed isn't even at its inflation target yet and doesn't have room to lower rates to what Trump wants.

Instead, the board concluded, Trump is scrambling to try to implement price controls — something that has been tried and failed in previous inflation spells — most recently controls on credit card interest.

"The President has recently been rolling out a flurry of counterproductive policies worthy of Bernie Sanders in the name of reducing prices (see the editorial nearby on credit-card interest rates). But what the President really needs is what he promised in the campaign, which is rising real wages," wrote the board. "That means further reducing inflation and letting deregulation and tax policy drive faster economic growth and productivity. That will make everything more affordable."

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is trying to kick off the new year with a series of bills focused on the economy — but he suffered a stunning defeat on Tuesday, as three out of the four bills on the schedule failed to pass.

The four bills under consideration were the Flexibility for Workers Education Act and Empowering Employer Child and Elder Care Solutions Act, two bills that carve out exceptions to when workers can claim overtime pay; the Tipped Employee Protection Act, which expands the definition of a tipped employee; and the SHOWER Act, which permanently codifies President Donald Trump's definition of a shower head to relax water conservation rules.

Of these three bills, just the SHOWER Act passed. And the failures didn't go unnoticed.

"House GOP defections sink labor bill to ease overtime rules — in a surprise defeat for Mike Johnson," reported Meredith Lee Hill of Politico.

Multiple Republicans who voted against the bill slammed it as an attack on labor rights, with Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) saying, “I believe hardworking Americans should be paid for their time, including when they’re training with their employer, and I will stand against efforts to take that pay away.”

"Bad start to 2026 for Johnson and House Rs," wrote CNN's Sarah Ferris on X. "A somewhat random coalition of Rs just tanked a workers education bill. Some had issues with it being anti-labor. Others had other random gripes. This comes as Johnson & leadership made a clear pivot toward more economy focused bills."

"What a mess for the House GOP. 4 minor bills on the schedule — and only one of them passes (the SHOWER Act)," wrote independent congressional reporter Jamie Dupree.

This comes as Johnson, who is fighting to keep his narrow House majority in this year's midterm elections, is facing a number of vacancies, including the unexpected death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA).

House Republicans, led by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), have put out what they claim is legislation to put an end to congressional stock trading — but it does nothing of the sort, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said in a lengthy thread on X dismantling the bill. In fact, she argued, it could actually make certain kinds of congressional stock trades easier and less transparent.

The main problem, she wrote, is that the only thing the bill actually prohibits is buying new stocks after taking office — not holding or selling the stocks lawmakers already have.

"This is NOT a Congressional stock trading ban. It’s leadership’s attempt to kill the existing bipartisan proposal," wrote Ocasio-Cortez. "Bill is a set of new vehicles and loopholes written by and for the wealthiest members of Congress to evade tracking of their trades. It lets them continue to own, trade, and sell stock - but with less transparency so YOU can no longer track them."

The bill, as written, Ocasio-Cortez continued, "allows members with massive holdings to continue to own individual stock and buy using their dividends," and "creates new exceptions for member's spouses and child dependents to buy ON BEHALF OF OTHER PEOPLE" — all while letting millionaire lawmakers continue to sell the stocks they already own, whenever they want.

"If anything, this bill makes it harder for public trackers of member trades to follow member investment activity," she concluded. "And they are hoping that if the public can no longer track their trades, that you will think they are no longer trading."

At the same time as Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats criticize the Steil bill's half-measures and lack of transparency, many Senate Republicans appear opposed to any change to congressional stock trading rules altogether, putting it in doubt whether the bill could even be taken up by the Senate if it passes.

Proposals to ban members of Congress from trading stocks have cropped up for years, as the existing rules — which allow stock trading but require full public disclosure — have proven ineffective and are frequently ignored.

Earlier this week, Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA), one of Congress's most notorious day traders, was exposed having purchased over $1,400 of stock in a supplier for artificial intelligence data centers, right around the same time he was pushing for tech companies to build more of these data centers in his own district. He denies any trading off non-public information, saying that his financial advisers made the purchase on his behalf without any input from him.

Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) was confronted on NewsNation with footage of a Minneapolis woman being accosted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents, and with new polling that indicates the American people are recoiling at the violence Trump's federal agents are inflicting in American cities — and her response was categorical denial.

"Supposedly this woman, the way she explains it, was saying that she was trying to get to a doctor's appointment and these immigration agents, federal agents busted into her car, ended up busting some of the windows, dragged her out of the car," said the anchor. "You know, I guess the basic question here is ... not whether the goal is to remove the people who are in the country illegally, or especially those who may have committed a crime, but what are we doing in terms of how we're going about this, and is it fair to say at this point that some, if not may, of these operations are simply just going too far?"

"I don't think that they're going too far," said Miller, a staunch MAGA supporter who has come under fire for praising Hitler. "These are people that have broken our federal immigration laws, they've bellied up to taxpayer benefits, they've, a lot of them have been involved in fraud in Minnesota and in Illinois, and now they are resisting arrest, and if you break the laws and resist arrest, it's not going to be pretty."

"Well, even if you tell an agent, I'm trying to get to the doctor, and this is what happens?" the host pushed back.

"She's here illegally, she's probably getting free health care, taxpayers are paying for — if she truly isn't an illegal, I just now am seeing this, I've been busy all day so I have not seen this, I don't know the background, the truth will come out like it always does," said Miller, backtracking. "But if she is here illegally, she's on her way to the doctor and she is resisting arrest, who cares? She's breaking the law and she is resisting arrest. The American people are fed up with this. The American people voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, he told everybody what he was going to do."

"But this part, we had a poll earlier in the week, only 39 percent support the president's approach, the way he's carrying it out," said hte host.

"Well, I don't believe that," said Miller. "I don't know how they're doing their polling. The people in my district want people that are breaking our federal immigration laws to be deported, and they want noncitizens off taxpayer-funded benefits."

President Donald Trump got a massive danger sign in a new poll released this week: for the first time, more voters support abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement than oppose doing so.

This comes amid a national uproar sparked by graphic video footage of an ICE agent in Minneapolis fatally shooting a mother of three in the head as she tried to move her car around them.

According to Forbes, "The poll published Jan. 13 from The Economist and YouGov found 46% of people support abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, compared to 43% who are in opposition of the movement; 12% were unsure. It represents a significant change in public opinion since July, when the same polling group found 27% were in support of ICE’s abolishment."

By contrast, the report noted, "When The Economist and YouGov asked the same question in 2019 — a year after the 'Abolish ICE' movement began — Americans showed an unfavorable opinion of the federal agency, but just 32% felt it should be eliminated."

Only a handful of Democrats have ever openly supported abolishing ICE up to this point, but Republicans aggressively used these positions in attack ads in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

While the United States has had immigration laws since its founding, and border security laws of some sort dating back to the 1920s, ICE as an agency, with its current structure, is relatively new, first being created as part of the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, replacing earlier agencies with a similar role like the Department of Labor's Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Not all activists or politicians who advocate abolishing ICE support the outright end of immigration enforcement, with some simply wanting it to be enforced by a smaller agency with reduced militarization or increased oversight, as used to be the case.

Short of ICE abolition, a growing number of Democratic lawmakers are demanding accountability reforms, including an end to the practice of ICE agents patrolling with masks to conceal their identities.

Courtroom drama unfurled on the docket Monday, as disqualified acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan joined up with Justice Department leaders Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche to write a furious brief punching back at U.S. District Judge David Novak, himself an appointee of President Donald Trump.

Halligan was disqualified from office after a court determined that the process the DOJ used to slot her in after the previous U.S. attorney was ousted was illegal — a move that blew up the Trump administration's politically-charged prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Several other Trump prosecutors appointed this way have also been disqualified, including Alina Habba in New Jersey, John Sarcone in New York, and Sigal Chattah in Nevada.

Despite this, Halligan has continued to work in the office and identify herself as a U.S. attorney. This drew the scrutiny of Novak, who ordered Halligan to explain why she is still using a federal title she does not have.

Halligan, Bondi, and Blanche responded with a scathing 11-page brief that accused Novak of not knowing what he's talking about and abusing his office.

"In violation of the Rules of Criminal Procedure and the principle of party presentation, the Court has initiated a sua sponte inquisition into whether it should strike Ms. Halligan’s title from the Government’s signature block," stated the brief. "The order launching this quest reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Judge Currie’s orders dismissing the indictments in United States v. Comey and United States v. James, and flouts no fewer than three separate lines of Supreme Court precedent on elementary principles like the role of federal courts, the effect of district court rulings, and the nature of our adversarial system."

The brief went on to accuse Novak of a "gross abuse of power," and said that the court that ruled Halligan was ineligible for office "did not purport to enjoin Ms. Halligan from continuing to oversee the office or from identifying herself as the United States Attorney in the Government’s signature blocks."

The adversarial language in the brief stunned All Rise News' Adam Klasfeld, who weighed in on the controversy on X.

"In this document, Halligan — fully backed by the top DOJ officials — characterizes Trump-appointed Judge Novak's order as an 'inquisition.' They call it an 'insult,' the judge's mere 'fixation,' 'gross abuse of power,' and a 'cudgel' against the executive branch. They accuse him of making 'rudimentary error,'" wrote Klasfeld.

"To put it mildly, this isn't the type of language one typically sees by a party addressing a judge."

President Donald Trump's Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, is facing a staffing crisis as not only are seasoned civil rights lawyers exiting in droves — she is unable to attract viable candidates to fill vacancies.

It follows a mass revolt of staff at the civil rights division over a refusal to investigate the fatal shooting in Minneapolis of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross. The matter was simply handed off to the U.S. attorney's office, and state and local officials are not being allowed to participate.

According to The Washington Post, "Dhillon has ... said that her office is being flooded with applicants to fill vacant roles. But people familiar with the division said that just a fraction of the open roles have been filled, a process impeded by a lack of qualified candidates and bureaucratic delays. Some of the sections within the division are so understaffed that they cannot effectively complete their workloads."

Vanita Gupta, who ran the civil rights division in the Barack Obama administration, had a grim assessment.

“This exodus is a huge blow signaling the disrespect and sidelining of the finest and most experienced civil rights prosecutors,” she told The Post. “It means cases won’t be brought, unique expertise will be lost, and the top career attorneys who may be a backstop to some of the worst impulses of this administration will have left.”

Dhillon, who previously represented California in the Republican National Committee, has rapidly become a controversial figure. Last month, she suggested that the DOJ won't honor the statute of limitations in criminally probing people who investigated the January 6 attack, then potentially violated the First Amendment rights of lawyers criticizing her.

President Donald Trump's Federal Housing Finance Agency director resorted to a bizarre stunt to persuade the president to go all in on a criminal investigation of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, Politico reported on Monday.

"Pulte, who spent months last year lambasting Powell on social media and on television, recently pitched Trump on ousting Powell, going so far as to bring 'wanted' posters of the Fed chief along with him, according to three of the people familiar," said the report. "A fourth person familiar said the White House is unhappy that the story about Pulte being the instigator got out and blame him for the leak." That person told Politico, “It undercuts the president’s comments that he knew nothing about the [Justice Department] plans.”

Pulte has denied this story, saying any probe of Powell is "outside my purview" and the role of the DOJ.

Powell is reportedly under investigation for allegations laid out by Pulte that he deceived Congress about the true cost and details of a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed headquarters in Washington, D.C. Powell has denied this allegation, which follows a number of efforts by Pulte to dig up mortgage fraud allegations on other critics of the Trump administration.

Pulte, who has often been called a "mini-Trump" or the president's "attack dog," has faced internal investigation for misusing his office to target political enemies; those investigators were later kicked out of the office, allegedly for violating Trump's anti-diversity policies.

In response to the criminal investigation, Powell took the highly unusual step of publicly accusing the administration of trying to intimidate the Fed into surrendering its independence and following Trump's demands for lower interest rates.

Even a number of lawmakers in Trump's own party are furious over the attack on the Fed. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has threatened to block any new Fed nominees until the Powell probe is resolved, and one unnamed House GOP lawmaker lamented to NBC News, “It’s like maybe we should lose the majority so the WH and leadership stop making stupid decisions. Our leadership and admin just keep doubling down on stupid.”

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has issued a statement about the Justice Department's criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, which hit the news explosively over the weekend and triggered backlash from a number of Republican lawmakers and even administration officials fearful that President Donald Trump is undermining the independence of the central bank.

Powell has denied any wrongdoing alleged by Trump administration officials, who claim he was not truthful to Congress about the costs of a major renovation at the Fed headquarters in Washington, D.C., and put out a statement accusing the president of trying to strongarm the Fed's monetary policy.

"I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one — certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve — is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure," said Powell. "The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President."

In Pirro's own statement published to X on Monday evening, she disputed there has been any decision to criminally charge Powell, and put the blame for the whole situation at his feet.

"The United States Attorney’s Office contacted the Federal Reserve on multiple occasions to discuss cost overruns and the chairman’s congressional testimony, but were ignored, necessitating the use of legal process — which is not a threat," wrote Pirro. "The word 'indictment' has come out of Mr. Powell’s mouth, no one else’s. None of this would have happened if they had just responded to our outreach."

"This office makes decisions based on the merits, nothing more and nothing less," she continued. "We agree with the chairman of the Federal Reserve that no one is above the law, and that is why we expect his full cooperation."

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) proudly announced on Monday that he is introducing legislation to allow President Donald Trump to seize control of Greenland — as the president's increasingly obsessive calls for the island to be purchased or annexed away from Denmark alarms both international actors and key figures in both parties.

"Huge News! Today, I am proud to introduce the Greenland Annexation and Statehood Act, a bill that allows the President to find the means necessary to bring Greenland into the Union," wrote Fine on X. "Let me be clear, our adversaries are trying to establish a foothold in the Arctic, and we can’t let that happen. By acquiring Greenland, we would prevent our adversaries from controlling the Arctic Region and secure our northern flank from Russia and China."

Fine accompanied this with a picture of himself standing in front of a Greenlandic village with a copy of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas erected next to it.

Fine, whose prior extreme statements calling for mass death in Gaza horrified even former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), earned swift backlash from commenters on social media, both at home and abroad.

"An American congressman introducing legislation to annex a NATO country," wrote University of Warwick professor Christian Soegaard. "He doesn’t fully understand the consequences of his actions."

"This man should never be allowed to enter any European country," wrote Danish economist Lars Christiansen.

"Denmark and Greenland have said NO," wrote Greenlandic commentator Orla Joelson. "The bill will not secure a majority in either the Senate or Congress. You should instead focus on addressing the United States’ internal challenges."

"How do you say 'everything is stupid and it’s only getting worse' in Greenlandic?" wrote gun rights analyst Cam Edwards.

"When sycophantic groveling flops are elected… you get Randy Fine," wrote former Virginia Rep. and House January 6 Committee adviser Denver Riggleman. "This is what a child would file — just insane and gibbering fealty to nuttery."