by Jordan Rubin | May 13, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority has handed a series of wins to Republicans who are trying to make their congressional maps redder ahead of the midterm elections. Now, the high court faces an urgent appeal from Virginia Democrats who are trying to salvage their response to GOP gerrymanders after their voter-approved effort was struck down by the state Supreme Court.
So, will the justices similarly bless Virginia’s gerrymandering amid the nationwide redistricting war that started with Texas’ Trump-backed map?
There’s reason to doubt it.
And that’s not only because it’s a Republican-dominated court considering a Democratic appeal.
Another challenge Virginia officials face is the extent to which the ruling against them was based on the state court’s interpretation of the state constitution, as opposed to the Voting Rights Act and other federal issues that the justices have been deciding.
In a 4-3 ruling last week, Virginia’s high court majority said the legislative process that put the constitutional amendment for a new congressional map on the ballot violated Virginia’s Constitution.
The state’s amendment procedures are, per the majority, admittedly “laborious” and “slow-walk[ed]” to “guard against hasty changes.” The majority explained that the process gives voters two chances to weigh in on a proposed amendment, the first time indirectly and the second time directly. The first, indirect time is after legislators initially propose the amendment, because voters can then choose to retain those representatives based on their position on the amendment. The second, direct time occurs if it gets on the ballot, as this one did when voters approved it in April.
To get a measure on the ballot, it actually needs to be approved twice by the
by Jordan Rubin | May 9, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. So much for easing into a sleepy season of waiting around for the rest of the term’s opinions to drop. Coming off last week’s final hearings, the Supreme Court was rather busy this week, with emergency litigation on mifepristone, sniping over fallout from the huge voting rights ruling and Chief Justice John Roberts sharing his latest naivete.
Mifepristone’s nationwide availability is at stake in an urgent appeal from Louisiana. A three-judge panel issued an order late last week that would halt the widely used abortion pill from being mailed not only to Louisiana, but also the entire country. Justice Samuel Alito, who’s assigned to field emergency motions from that region, agreed on Monday to temporarily pause the lower court order while he and his colleagues consider the matter further.
For now, the practical effect is that the drug remains available without needing to visit a doctor in person.
“It bears emphasis how unprecedented the Fifth Circuit’s order is,” mifepristone maker Danco Laboratories told the justices. “Never before has a federal court purported to immediately enjoin a several years’ old drug approval,” the company said of the order that came from a panel of all GOP appointees. Likewise, GenBioPro, which makes a generic version of the drug, said it’s “yet another unprecedented Fifth Circuit order suspending existing, years-old FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone.”
Louisiana defended the order, telling the high court that the Biden administration’s move to ditch the in-person dispensing requirement was part of a plot to circumvent the 2022 Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. “This assault on pro-life states has worked as intended,” Louisiana’s
by Jordan Rubin | May 7, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
If left standing, a ruling from judges appointed by President Donald Trump would let his administration “escape scrutiny and accountability for a transparently deliberate attempt to evade judicial review of its unconstitutional actions and then ignore a judicial order.”
That’s what lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union told Washington’s federal appeals court, while urging the court’s full slate of judges to rehear a case decided last month by a three-judge panel. That divided panel ruling, with two Trump appointees in the majority and a Biden appointee dissenting, granted the government’s extraordinary request to terminate contempt proceedings stemming from last year’s deportation flights to El Salvador.
According to D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao’s majority opinion, it wasn’t Trump officials who might be faulted for possibly ignoring U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s orders in their quest to hurry migrants to El Salvador under the president’s legally dubious invocation of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act. Rather, per Rao and fellow Trump appointee Justin Walker, it was Boasberg’s attempt to understand what happened that risks upending the constitutional order.
Rao’s ruling bemoaned the “widening gyre” of the Obama-appointed Boasberg’s “inquest,” as she put it, calling his fact-finding effort “a clear abuse of discretion.” She said the administration already cooperated enough with the judge by naming now-former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as the official responsible for the transfer of migrants to the notorious Salvadoran prison known as CECOT.
“The panel’s ruling undermining the district court’s authority to enforce its orders will have implications well beyond this case, as the Executive Branch has continued to violate court orders,” ACLU lawyers wrote in their rehearing petition.
“Judges around the country have followed Chief Judge
by Jordan Rubin | May 1, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The Supreme Court issued one of its most anticipated rulings and held its last hearings of the term this week. We now enter the final stretch, as the justices resolve the remaining cases before their summer recess.
The Voting Rights Act was at stake in that closely watched case, Louisiana v. Callais. In a 6-3 split, the Republican-appointed majority struck down the state’s congressional map, on the grounds that it wrongly took race into account in creating a second majority-Black district. That made the map what Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion called an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” He was joined by all five of his fellow GOP appointees, including Chief Justice John Roberts, whose crusade against the Voting Rights Act began long before he took the bench.
But while Alito claimed that his opinion kept the landmark act intact, Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent argued that it rendered a key voting rights protection “all but a dead letter” and marked the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” She wrote that in states where the act “continues to matter — the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting — minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”
Kagan read her dissent from the bench, a rare move that highlights a justice’s intent to sound an alarm.
The implications of Callais extend nationwide. The Associated Press reported that Louisiana “suspended its congressional primaries Thursday as early voting was about to get underway, while pressure mounted on Republican officials in other states to redraw their U.S. House maps” in light of the ruling.
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 28, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
“Why is Cole Tomas Allen being charged with attempting to assassinate the president when he was nowhere near Donald Trump and not even in the same room as Trump or the other attendees?” – VB
Hi VB,
Allen’s lawyers might make that argument, but it won’t necessarily succeed. The defendant is presumed innocent, and it’s the government’s burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. But the allegations, if proved, could support the serious charge of attempted assassination.
Let’s consider two other examples of attempted assassination cases in thinking about this: the one in which Ryan Routh was convicted of trying to kill Trump when he was a candidate in 2024, and one from decades ago in which a man named Francisco Duran was convicted of trying to kill then-President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
Prosecutors summarized Routh’s actions like this in their sentencing memorandum:
The Defendant plotted painstakingly to kill President Trump, and took significant steps toward making that happen, culminating on September 15, 2024 at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, when he sat in a sniper hide that he had carefully constructed, chambered a round in the military-grade SKS rifle that he possessed illegally, and pointed it toward President Trump and his protective detail. Routh was only thwarted in his assassination attempt by a Secret Service agent who noticed and disrupted Routh before Routh could fire a shot.
So even though Routh didn’t fire a shot at Trump, that didn’t stop him from being convicted of attempted assassination.
The jury instructions in Routh’s case said jurors needed to find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he intended to kill a major
by Carol Leonnig | Apr 28, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Trump Justice Department has charged former FBI Director James Comey again, following the dismissal of his first indictment due to the illegal appointment of the prosecutor who secured it.
The new indictment involves allegations that Comey made threats against President Donald Trump in a May 2025 social media posting of a picture of shells on the beach that spelled out “8647,” a source familiar with the matter told MS NOW.
The number 86 is a slang term whose definitions include “to reject” or “to get rid of,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which also notes that it has more recently been used as a term meaning “to kill.” And Trump is the 47th U.S. president.
Comey, whom Trump fired as FBI director during his first presidential term, pleaded not guilty in October to the first indictment, which charged him with lying to and obstructing Congress in connection with his 2020 Senate testimony. The charges centered on his testimony over whether he authorized anyone at the bureau to be an anonymous source in news reports related to an FBI investigation. The indictment accused him of falsely stating that he hadn’t granted such authorization.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
The post Trump DOJ brings charges against James Comey a second time appeared first on MS NOW.
