Former President Donald Trump has declined Vice President Kamala Harris’ offer of a second debate. He compared himself to a top boxer, declaring himself the winner and wondering why he should bother with a rematch.

Trump and Harris had their first debate Tuesday night on ABC. Shortly afterward—less than an hour, according to ABC News—the Harris campaign asked for a followup debate in October. Fox News offered to be the host, which should have appealed to Trump, considering he wanted Tuesday’s debate to be hosted on the conservative-leaning cable news outlet. But apparently, he’s changed his mind.

“In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night. Every Poll has us WINNING, in one case, 92-8, so why would I do a Rematch?” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday.

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Though Trump declared himself the winner, that is not a common belief. Many networks declared Harris the winner, including Fox News. Trump is correct that one poll did have him winning 92% to 8%, but that was an online poll from Newsmax. Newsmax is a far-right media outlet. It came to prominence during the 2020 election when Trump turned against Fox News for becoming the first outlet to declare President Joe Biden the winner in Arizona, a battleground state. Newsmax promoted Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud.

Trump shared a number of other polls on his Truth Social account shortly after the debate, but most were from explicitly pro-Trump outlets like the Daily Caller, or were taken on X, formerly Twitter, which has skewed right following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform.

Polls from more mainstream outlets, however, told a different story. Newsweek’s reader poll showed Harris ahead nearly 2 to 1. CNN’s poll had a similar spread, with Harris declared the winner by 63% of viewers. In the Washington Post’s poll of 25 uncommitted swing-state voters, 23 said Harris did better. YouGov’s polling was closer, but Harris still pulled ahead 43% to 32%.

Pundits and experts also awarded the win to Harris. NPR said the debate “wasn’t close.” The New York Times said Harris “rattled” Trump.

Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney predicted Sunday many Republicans will actually end up voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The former Wyoming representative appeared on ABC’s This Week to urge her fellow Republicans to dump former President Donald Trump and endorse Harris as she has.

“Given the closeness of this election, particularly if you’re going to find yourself voting in a swing state, you’ve got to take the extra step if you really do recognize the threat that Donald Trump poses. Then it’s not enough to simply say, ‘I’m not going to vote for him,’” she said.

READ MORE: Liz Cheney Stomps Mitch McConnell for ‘Political Calculation’ to Ignore Trump’s Election Crimes

But she also said that even if many Republicans don’t follow her lead and denounce the former president, they’ll take advantage of the privacy of the polls to secretly support the Democratic candidate.

“It’s a secret ballot,” Cheney said. “At the end of the day, you just have to wrestle with your own conscience when you’re there in the voting booth. And I would expect that you will see far more Republicans and independents, you know, when the time comes, and they’ve got to make that decision, make the right decision.”

This would be the opposite of what some believe happened in 2016. Polls at the time generally showed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the lead over Trump. But when the election happened, though Clinton won the popular vote, it wasn’t enough to tip the Electoral College in her favor.

Over 70% of Republican insiders felt the polls underestimated Trump’s support, according to a Politico article from October 2016.

“I personally know many Republicans that won’t admit that they are voting for Trump. I don’t like admitting it myself. It won’t matter if Hillary is up more than 5 points, but we might be in for a surprise if Hillary’s lead is less than 5 points on Election Day,” an unnamed Virginia Republican told the outlet at the time.

In a 2016 interview conducted before the election, Trump’s then-campaign manager Kellyanne Conway pointed out that Trump polled better in anonymous online polls than in more traditional polling, according to WJLA.

“It’s become socially desirable, especially if you’re a college-educated person in the United States of America, to say that you’re against Donald Trump,” she said.

A 2019 study found that this was indeed the case. The study found that 54% of those polled voted for Trump but kept their preference a secret publicly. When broken out by gender, 57% of men and 50% of women polled kept their Trump vote a secret.

Ohio Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, said Monday that if he were in former Vice President Mike Pence’s place, he would not have certified the election on January 6, 2021.

Speaking as part of a panel on the All-In Podcast, Vance told cohost Jason Calacanis the issue wasn’t necessarily Pence deciding not to “overturn the election results,” but rather that “Mike Pence could have done more to sort of surface some problems.”‘

Calacanis replied by asking Vance directly if he would have certified the election.

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“I happen to think that there were issues back in 2020, particularly in Pennsylvania. Even some of the courts that refused to throw out certified ballots did say that there were ballots that were cast in an illegal way. They just refused to actually decertify the election results in Pennsylvania,” Vance said. “Do I think that we could have had a much more rational conversation about how to ensure that only legal ballots are cast? Yes. And do I think that Mike Pence could have played a better role? Yes.”

Calacanis asked Vance again if he’d have certified the election, and Vance appears to back the plan to send fake electors to cause confusion in the certification process.

“I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we have. That’s what I would have done,” Vance said. “The important part is we would have had a big debate. And it doesn’t necessarily mean the results would have been any different, but we would, at least, have had the debate in Pennsylvania and Georgia about how to better have a rational election system where legal ballots are cast.”

Democrats heavily criticized Vance’s statement.

“Donald Trump picked JD Vance as his running mate because he knows that Vance will do what his last vice president wouldn’t—undermine our democracy and help him try to overturn election results. Now, Vance is making it clear: instead of certifying the 2020 election, Vance ‘would have asked the states’ to send slates of fake electors and throw our election into chaos to help Trump stay in power. Vance is clearly laying out the stakes of this election for our democracy and our basic freedoms, and showing voters that if given the chance, he’ll try to replace the rule of law with the rule of Trump,” Alex Floyd, the rapid response director for the DNC, said in a statement.

Vance’s claims of there being illegal ballots in Pennsylvania appears to be based on a claim from former President Donald Trump in 2022. Trump said that a then-recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that ballots sent in undated envelopes will not be counted in that year’s election meant that the 2020 election was “rigged, but they’ll let that result stand.”

The Associated Press debunked Trump’s claim, reporting that not only did Trump misrepresent the court’s ruling, but even if his claim was accurate, throwing out these ballots would not have mattered in the election.

Democratic vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz mocked the recent increase in anti-LGBTQ book bans during a speech for the Human Rights Campaign.

Delivering the keynote Saturday evening at the HRC’s National Dinner, Walz made fun of recent attempts to ban children’s books like And Tango Makes Three, according to LGBTQ Nation. That beloved kid’s book is based on the true story of two gay penguins in a zoo who raised a chick on their own.

“[In Minnesota], we banned banning books, especially banning LGBTQ books,” Walz said. “This is what these folks are focusing on, spending all their time. Like reading about two male penguins who love each other is somehow going to turn your children gay, and that’s what you should worry about.

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“But here’s what I’ll tell you, it’s a fact of life: Some people are gay. But you know what’s not a fact of life? That our children need to be be shot dead in schools. That’s not a fact of life. Folks are banning books, but they’re okay with weapons of war being in our schools.”

On Thursday, Ohio Senator JD Vance addressed the September 4 shooting at the Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Walz’s opponent in the vice presidential race was criticized for characterizing school shootings as a “fact of life.”

“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said, according to the Associated Press. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”

Attempts to block children from accessing LGBTQ-themed children’s books have ramped up in the last few years. In July, a law went into effect in Idaho that bans “obscene materials” from being seen by people under 18. While that may sound on its face to be unobjectionable, the law defines the term broadly. One of the types of content flagged as “obscene” is portrayals of “homosexuality.” There is no additional clarification to determine if this means sex acts, or the mere existence of gay people. If a library violates this law, it is hit with a $250 mandatory fine. If a patron should sue, there is no cap to the amount of money a judge could award them in damages, according to LGBTQ Nation.

LGBTQ-themed books are also frequently challenged and banned. In 2022, over half of the top 13 most-challenged books had queer themes or characters, LGBTQ Nation reported.

Walz has not made a secret of his support for the LGBTQ community. When he was a teacher, he was the advisor to his school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, according to the New York Times.

GOP vice presidential candidate and Ohio Senator JD Vance is responsible for a “surge” of new Democratic Party donors and volunteers, the House minority whip said on Monday.

Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) was interviewed on CNN Monday morning by Kate Bolduan about the November election. During her interview, she talked about what voters “in purple, red and blue districts” thought about Vance.

“They don’t trust JD Vance to order doughnuts. They certainly don’t trust him to order American families on if, when and how they can have children. So we’re seeing a surge of volunteers, a surge of first time donors, and we know that Kamala Harris is the underdog going into this, but momentum remains on her side,” Clark said.

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The line about ordering doughnuts refers to an August stop by Vance to Holt’s Sweet Shop in Valdosta, Georgia that was broadcast by C-SPAN and went viral. In the awkward clip, Vance ends up asking for “just whatever makes sense,” instead of ordering a specific type of doughnut. Vance later expressed sympathy for the doughnut shop clerk who served him in an interview with NBC News.

“I just felt terrible for that woman,” Vance said. “We walked in, and there’s 20 Secret Service agents, and there’s 15 cameras, and she clearly had not been properly warned, and she was terrified, right? I just felt awful for her.

“We don’t want to have these scripted events — I don’t want to go and do three takes of buying Doritos at a Sheetz. I like to get out there and talk to people, and we want to make sure we’re doing it but definitely make sure that people are at least OK with being on camera, or we’re going to walk in and you’re going to have a person who has, practically, a panic attack because she’s got 15 cameras in her face.”

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has made headlines for the amount of funding it’s raised. During August alone, her campaign raised three times more money than former President Donald Trump’s campaign, according to the Guardian. And in July, at the very start of the Harris campaign, over 170,000 volunteers joined with her, according to Axios.

Current polling shows Harris and Trump in a dead heat. A New York Times poll published Monday shows Trump leading Harris by only 1%, with 48% of polled voters saying they’d pick the former president.

Seven swing states have been declared toss-ups, according to new analysis of political polling.

The Center for Politics updated its prediction for the 2024 presidential election on Tuesday, moving North Carolina from “leans Republican” to “toss-up,” joining six other states. The full list of toss-ups is North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Not counting the swing states, the Center for Politics estimates that the Democrats will likely get 226 electoral votes, with the Republicans getting 219. That leaves a total of 93 electoral votes believed to be in play.

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When it comes to the seven swing states the Center for Politics listed, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all have Vice President Kamala Harris slightly ahead — by between 1.3% and 4%. Former president Donald Trump is leading in Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, by margins of 0.4% to 1.4%, according to 270toWin.com.

If the election breaks out along 270toWin’s current polling for these seven states, that would put Harris in the lead, picking up 55 of the remaining electoral votes, compared to just 38 additional electoral votes for Trump.

In 2020, Biden won six of these seven states, with North Carolina going to Trump. As the polling may suggest, these were by thin margins. Trump won North Carolina by 1.34%, and Biden won the other states by a range of 0.23% to 2.78%. Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin all had Biden win by less that 1 percentage point.

The reason why presidential elections usually fall to the swing states is due to the Electoral College. Each state is given a number of electoral votes based its number of senators and representatives, with all states having at least three. This gives smaller states a bit more power in choosing the president at the expense of larger ones.

Critics of the Electoral College system say this means that voters in larger states have less of a say in the presidential race.

“The fact that in presidential elections people in Wyoming have [nearly four] times the power of people in California is antithetical at the most basic level to what we say we stand for as a democracy,” Harvard University political scientist Gautam Mukunda told NPR in 2021.

Abolishing the Electoral College could prove difficult, however. As it’s enshrined in the Constitution, it would require a constitutional amendment to throw it out. An amendment needs to be passed by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress, but three-quarters of states also need to ratify it. Since that would include a number of the smaller states which have outsized power in the Electoral College, that’s unlikely to happen.

Lincoln Project cofounder George Conway has jokingly offered to provide free legal services to the SuperPAC should former President Donald Trump follow through with his threat to sue the organization over an advertisement.

The “Failures” advertisement aired on Fox News last week. It accused Trump advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles of failing to foresee that President Joe Biden would drop out of the election.

“They told you that Biden should never quit — that you should spend all that time, all that money, so much money, focusing on Biden. How he’s too old,” an announcer reads during the ad. “Now it’s Harris. She’s younger than you — by a lot. Faster on her feet. Better than Biden was on camera. They were wrong. But they’re wrong a lot. Wrong that Vance would help you. You know he’s terrible. Wrong that you have the race sewn up. It’s sad, Donald. They spend more time trying to keep you under control than trying to win.”

READ MORE: Watch: Lincoln Project ‘Double Dog Dares’ Trump to Sue After He Threatens Them Over Ad Saying He Waged ‘Biggest Scam’

On Friday, the Trump campaign sent the Lincoln Project a cease and desist letter, which the SuperPAC posted to Threads. Trump’s lawyer, David A. Warrington, claimed the “Failures” spot was defamatory to LaCivita, Wiles and the Trump campaign. Warrington said the ad’s claims “are a complete fabrication, and defame the Campaign’s leaders,” and “would harm the Campaign by discouraging future contributions.”

Tuesday morning the Lincoln Project confirmed that it would not be removing the “Failures” advertisement, and followed up with a new spot, “Futile.”

“This is the third time you’ve threatened to sue the Lincoln Project. This time, it’s because we told you the truth about how your campaign is failing, broken and dead in the water, wrong that you have the race sewn up. Sad, Donald. We told you, Chris and Susie made a mistake when they bragged that Biden would stay in the race. It’s embarrassing, Donald. Your whole campaign is a hot mess. You’re terrible on camera these days. You just look old, tired and [expletive] crazy America, America’s just done with you, Donald, and with the political team you have, there’s nothing you can do but, lose, lose, lose,” the announcer says in the new clip.

Conway shared “Futile” on Tuesday morning, along with a needling caption.

“If @realDonaldTrump’s campaign were to sue @ProjectLincoln, it would be required to produce all its electronic and physical documents, and to provide testimony from Trump and senior campaign officials, about their strategy and what those officials told Donald himself. I hereby volunteer to review those materials, and to conduct those depositions, pro bono,” Conway wrote.

Though a cofounder, Conway left The Lincoln Project in 2020 to “devote more time to family matters.” His wife at the time was Trump’s senior counselor and former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. In 2023, the couple announced they were getting divorced.

The Supreme Court has made its second ruling this week that limits government agencies’ ability to act on Friday.

Friday morning, the Court released its ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Prior to the ruling, fisheries were required to allow federal officials on board their ships to make sure that overfishing doesn’t occur; the base of the suit is that the fisheries objected to having to pay the salaries for these officials.

The legal precedent at the center of the case is what’s known as the Chevron doctrine, based on the 1984 case Chevron U.S.A. Inc v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. That ruling held that government agencies have the ability to interpret statutes in their sphere of influence where ambiguity exists, even if judges may disagree about an interpretation.

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In this case, the National Marine Fisheries Service has interpreted the law to mean that fisheries have to pay officials’ salaries, while the fisheries argued that this overstepped the agency’s bounds.

Critics of this ruling, including Justice Neil Gorsuch, have argued that Chevron gives agencies too much power.

“[Gorsuch] argues that it is fundamentally the province of courts to say what the law is, and that Chevron makes it too easy for courts to simply find ambiguity in text and then defer to government agencies. He and others argue that it systematically tilts the power in a case in favor of the government and allows judges to abdicate their responsibility to engage in vigorous statutory review,” Sanne Knudsen, professor of environmental law at the University of Washington School of Law, said in a 2023 interview.

In Friday’s 6-3 ruling, made along ideological lines, the Court agreed with Gorsuch’s take. The opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, explicitly overrules Chevron.

“[C]ourts need not and under the APA may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous,” Roberts wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas added that Chevron violates the separation of powers, as it “compels judges to abdicate their Article III ‘judicial Power,'” and “permits the Executive Branch to exercise powers not given to it.”

The mention of separation of powers is interesting, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the other ruling that limited an agency’s powers this week accuses the Court of threatening the concept of separation of powers.

“The majority today upends longstanding precedent and the established practice of its coequal partners in our tripartite system of Government. Because the Court fails to act as a neutral umpire when it rewrites established rules in the manner it does today, I respectfully dissent,” Sotomayor wrote.

In that case, SEC v. Jarkesy, the Court ruled that the Securities Exchange Commission was unable to issue civil penalties without a trial. The SEC was initially given this power as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The Court struck this element of Dodd-Frank down in a 6-3 ruling, again along ideological lines. The court ruled, in another decision written by Roberts, that it violated the Seventh Amendment, the right to a jury trial.

The liberal justices joined in a dissent that accused the Supreme Court of not acting neutrally in its ruling requiring jury trials for civil penalties.

Until the ruling in the case SEC v. Jarkesy, when the Securities Exchange Commission discovers securities fraud, the agency had the option of taking the offender to trial, or adjudicating the matter itself. Until 2010, though, if the SEC wanted to issue a civil penalty against an offender, it would have to go to federal court.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protect Act was passed in 2010, following the housing market crash in 2008. The new law allowed the SEC to issue penalties on its own.

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The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that this element of Dodd-Frank violated the Seventh Amendment, the right to a jury trial. The Court said that since the Seventh Amendment blocks Congress from the ability to “withdraw from judicial cognizance any matter which, from its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law,” and securities fraud is a matter of common law, it applies.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent and was joined by the other two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She argued that federal agencies have always had the ability to order civil penalties to those who violate the law without a jury trial. Sotomayor argued that agencies previously had the right to make the decisions, and though the adjudications were subject to review by the courts, it wasn’t required.

Both sides cite the 1977 case Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, which said that the Seventh Amendment did not apply to federal agencies adjudicating violations of public rights statutes. The conservatives argued that Atlas Roofing didn’t apply as the public rights exception was not “‘in the nature’ of a common law suit.”

The liberals disagreed, and argued that the ruling flew in the face of Atlas Roofing.

“Today, for the very first time, this Court holds that Congress violated the Constitution by authorizing a federal agency to adjudicate a statutory right that inheres in the Government in its sovereign capacity, also known as a public right,” Sotomayor wrote. “That is plainly wrong. This Court has held, without exception, that Congress has broad latitude to create statutory obligations that entitle the Government to civil penalties, and then to assign their enforcement outside the regular courts of law where there are no juries.”

Sotomayor’s dissent then accused the conservative majority of threatening the separation of powers the U.S. government is built on.

“Here, that threat comes from the Court’s mistaken conclusion that Congress cannot assign a certain public-rights matter for initial adjudication to the Executive because it must come only to the Judiciary,” she wrote.

“The majority today upends longstanding precedent and the established practice of its coequal partners in our tripartite system of Government. Because the Court fails to act as a neutral umpire when it rewrites established rules in the manner it does today, I respectfully dissent.”

A U.S. magistrate judge ruled that LGBTQ veterans discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” can proceed in their suit against the Department of Defense.

The suit, filed by five veterans, alleges that they faced discrimination because they were given other-than-honorable discharges from the military. The vets are asking the DOD to remove all references to sexual orientation from their discharge paperwork and for the discharges to be converted to honorable.

The plaintiffs say that the process to correct discharge paperwork is “burdensome, opaque, expensive, and for many veterans virtually inaccessible.” By having non-honorable discharges, LGBTQ vets are unable to reenlist. It’s also difficult for them to prove military service, the plaintiffs say, and they are blocked from veteran services via the Department of Veterans Affairs.

READ MORE: ‘So. Tell Me. Are You Transgender?’ — After DADT: Transgender Life In The US Military

“Because of the circumstances and language of my discharge, which served as a painful reminder of the trauma I experienced, I was never able to proudly say that I served my country,” said Steven Egland, a U.S. Army veteran and one of the plaintiffs.

“Following my Other Than Honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy, which was accompanied by terrible harassment on my ship, I experienced homelessness and shame,” Lilly Steffanides, another plaintiff and U.S. Navy Veteran, said. “After many years, I reconnected with the veteran community and do my best to act as a leader and supporter for other LGBTQ+ veterans like me. I am joining this lawsuit because I want justice for my LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters, and I want my service to my country to be recognized as honorable.”

The DOD argued that the suit should be dismissed because the process for correcting records is neutral. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero disagreed, saying that by not remedying this type of discharge, it “gives rise to a plausible inference of discriminatory intent,” according to Bloomberg Law.

The DOD also argued that the plaintiffs’ claims were untimely. Spero disagreed, ruling that the process of having to apply for their records to be corrected itself results in trauma, Bloomberg Law reported.

The suit says over 35,000 members of the U.S. military had been discharged for real or perceived homosexual behavior between 1980 and 2011, the year the homosexuality restriction was lifted. The original memorandum repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” said it was unnecessary to update the discharge paperwork for those thrown out of the military by the policy, according to Bloomberg Law.

In February 2024, the DOD said that it was working to upgrade LGBTQ vets’ discharges to honorable, according to DAV.org.

David Pressman, the openly gay U.S. ambassador to Hungary had harsh words for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at a Pride event. The speech came after the cancellation of an event about human rights scheduled to take place at the parliament building.

On Saturday, the ambassador to Hungary held a family Pride event at his home. During his speech, Pressman slammed Orbán and his government for using a “machinery of fear” as an apparatus to crush the LGBTQ community, according to the Guardian. He shared a story of how the country’s state-run media implied that he was a danger to children.

“At a Pride march organised by Hungarians in Pécs last year, I walked alongside a friend, fellow ambassador, and fellow parent,” Pressman said. “The cameras of the government-controlled media were trained on me – as they are right now – and filmed us as he introduced me to his 5-year-old child.

“The news that evening reported on ‘spotting’ my interaction with this child, and sinisterly described that I was seen ‘interacting with children’. They didn’t need to finish the sentence – they let fear do the rest.”

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The ambassador to Hungary had prepared the speech for a planned LGBTQ human rights event on June 21 at the parliament building. The event had been planned by Dávid Bedő, the chairman of the centrist opposition party, Momentum, according to The Daily Beast. Bedő had put in a request for the event, which was to take place in a meeting room, not on the floor of the parliament.

The speaker of the parliament, László Kövér, ignored the request until pressed. The day before the event was scheduled, Kövér denied the request, citing a bylaw that said the speaker must “protect the dignity of the parliament.” Kövér is one of the co-founders with Orbán of the far-right Fidesz party.

This Saturday was Budapest Pride, according to Pink News. The march brought out over 30,000 people, including Pressman. Homosexuality is technically legal in Hungary, but in 2021, Orbán’s government passed a law similar to Russia’s ban on LGBTQ “propaganda.” In the face of sanctions from the EU, Orbán refused to relent.

Two years ago, Orbán attended CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Texas. His speech condemned the LGBTQ community.

“Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage as a union of one man and one woman,” he said at the time. “Family ties shall be based on marriage or the relationship between parents and children. To sum up, the mother is a woman. The father is a man. And leave our kids alone. Full stop. End of discussion.”

Former head of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele accused the judge of dragging her feet in former President Donald Trump’s case about improper handling of classified documents.

On Friday, Trump’s defense lawyers put forth a motion to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith under allegations that he was illegally appointed, according to the Associated Press. Despite admitting that Smith’s appointment appears to be supported by precedent, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon agreed to a three-day hearing to determine the challenge’s validity, according to The Washington Post. While defense attorneys will often challenge the standing of the prosecution, not every challenge necessarily warrants a full hearing.

Steele called out Cannon on Sunday’s edition of Inside with Jen Psaki on MSNBC. He called the particular challenge against Smith a “long shot,” according to The Hill, and said most judges would dismiss it out of hand.

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“But apparently, Judge Cannon just had to have a hearing about it. It’s the last delay tactic from a judge who’s wasted countless months on frivolous motions. She has all but refused to allow Trump’s case to go to trial and still, still hasn’t even set a date for the trial to begin,” Steele said. He also accused Cannon of “effectively putting the prosecution on trial.”

Cannon has faced much criticism over her handling of the Trump documents case. In May, she postponed the trial indefinitely, putting the kibosh on hopes that the case would be heard before the November election. Her reasoning was that it would be “imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court,” referring to motions like the one to dismiss Smith.

Rulings like this have led legal experts to trash Cannon. Constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis called Cannon “incompetently bad.” George Conway, a lawyer and founder of the conservative anti-Trump The Lincoln Project, said Cannon “doesn’t know the most basic rule governing criminal conspiracies.” Conway’s comment was in response to Cannon appearing unfamiliar with the Pinkerton rule, which holds that everyone involved in a conspiracy can be held liable for crimes committed by co-conspirators. This appears to back up NBC News legal analyst Joyce Vance’s statement that Smith has to “spoon feed… the law” to Judge Cannon.

One month ago, Laurence Tribe, a top constitutional scholar and University Professor Emeritus at Harvard, said that Cannon would likely be removed from the Trump documents case.

“Cannon’s wildly lawless rejection of Special Counsel Smith’s clearly correct request for a gag order against fake and dangerous claims that the FBI was ordered to assassinate him is good news,” Tribe wrote on X. “It’s the smoking gun that will finally lead to her removal from the stolen secrets case.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the Supreme Court the “most corrupt in American history” in a video posted to X on Monday.

The video was posted on the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization. The decision overturned Roe v. Wade which guaranteed the right to an abortion. Ocasio-Cortez was speaking at a Biden-Harris campaign event focused on reproductive justice.

“Two years since six conservative justices topped Roe v. Wade, since our right to choose was taken from us, and pregnant women and people across the country have had their lives at risk. It’s been two years since our freedom over our bodies was seized by the most corrupt Supreme Court in American History,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Ocasio-Cortez has previously warned of a “crisis of legitimacy” over the Court, according to The Guardian. And it’s not just her. In a September 2023 Gallup poll, Americans’ approval rating of the Supreme Court is only one percentage point away from the record low. Only 41% of Americans approve of the Supreme Court’s performance. That record low — 40% — was from September 2021, about the exact same Court.

READ MORE: ‘Injustice’: Experts Condemn Supreme Court’s ‘Fundamentally Corrupt’ Trump Decision

The Court has had a number of recent scandals as well. Justice Samuel Alito said in May he wouldn’t recuse himself from cases about the 2020 election, even though his wife had raised an upside-down American flag three days before Biden’s inauguration. The upside-down flag, an international symbol for distress, is linked with the “stop the steal” movement that alleges Trump actually won the 2020 election. And this month, comments from a leaked audio recording saw many experts painting Alito as a “Christian nationalist.”

Chief Justice John Roberts has rejected requests from Senate Democrats to discuss whether Alito should be recused from election cases. Roberts said that justices themselves make the decision whether or not to recuse, not the Court — and that Roberts saw nothing about the flags posted at Alito’s homes that would require him to recuse himself.

Justice Clarence Thomas has always been controversial, from his initial hearings where he was accused of sexual harassment. Thomas has faced additional criticism recently over taking undeclared trips paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow.

The Supreme Court is expected to make a number of major decisions this week, including whether or not former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in cases alleging election interference.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is pushing a COVID vaccine myth that’s resurfaced.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Greene tagged the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic while reposting a video from the right-wing TV channel Real America’s Voice.

“.@COVIDSelect we need to investigate this by talking to embalmers,” Greene wrote.

The video claims that embalmers are finding “white fibrous clots” in “up to 50 percent or more of their corpses.” The clip claims that the clots only started appearing after the 2021 vaccine rollout.

READ MORE: DeSantis Pledges to Install His Surgeon General, Who Reportedly Said Anti-Vax Policies Are God’s Plan, at CDC

This particular COVID vaccine myth is, like many, based in a very small grain of truth. Blood clotting is a side effect of the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, according to a April 2021 PBS report, but they were very rare.

For example, out of 6.8 million people who had received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the time, only 6 people developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis—or, in layman’s terms, a blood clot in the brain. The clot stops blood from draining, and can cause a hemorrhage leading to a stroke, according to Johns Hopkins. Patients who took the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines were not affected.

It appears this vaccine myth of embalmers finding clots in many bodies originated with Richard Hirschman, an embalmer in Alabama, according to European news organization AFP. In a viral clip, Hirschman said he found clots in “50-to-70% of bodies,” and he shows a number of jars he says contains removed blood clots. His claims made up a good portion of the anti-vaccine documentary Died Suddenly, which is riddled with inaccuracies, according to McGill University’s Office for Science and Society.

“I am not a doctor or scientist not even a phlebotomy expert,” Hirschman told AFP. “But I am very familiar with embalming and I work with blood all the time.”

However, when AFP asked an actual doctor, they said it was impossible to tell what caused the clots from just looking.

“It is usually impossible to tell what caused the blood to clot in the first place by looking at the clot,” Pathologist David Dorward told the news service. “For example, a blood clot from a patient who had clots caused by Covid infection when compared to blood clots formed following prolonged bed rest after a major operation would look pretty much identical.”

Mortuary expert Monica Torres provided a more obvious explanation for the high number of clots.

“The blood clots are from refrigeration. It happens to many bodies,” Torres told AFP. “It’s just that there were so many bodies to process, many of them sat in refrigeration for long durations so they got blood clots. It’s not a big deal and these people are trying to make it a thing.”

Nikolaus Klupp, an associate professor of forensic medicine at the Medical University of Vienna, agreed with Torres’ explanation.

“The images look to me more like postmortem clots, mainly due to the color, the shape, and particularly because of the amount. Vital clots (clots that formed in a living person), for example in the context of disseminated intravascular coagulation are strongly attached to the vessel wall and are difficult to detach, in our experience,” he told HealthFeedback.org.

What’s more—according to esteemed medical journal The Lancet, a patient is much more likely to get blood clots from COVID-19 itself than any of the vaccines.

Canadian authorities said it’s irresponsible to speculate about the explosion at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing on Wednesday, as the investigation continues. Meanwhile, Fox News reported the explosion was an attempted terrorist attack without naming sources.

“We’re taking this circumstance very seriously, but to speculate on the origin of thisparticular circumstance, the reasons why this may have happened, until we have moreaccurate information is simply not responsible,” Dominic LeBlanc, Canadian Public Safety Minister, addressed reporters at about 2:20 p.m. local time.

At 2:30 p.m., Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the Canadian Parliament.

“We will continue to be engaged, we will provide updates. The update I can give rightnow is there are four border crossings that are right now closed, Rainbow Bridge,Whirlpool Bridge, Queenston Bridge and Peace Bridge. Additional measures are beingcontemplated and activated at all border crossings across the country. We are takingthis extraordinarily seriously,” Trudeau said.

READ MORE: ‘Shameful’: Trump’s Praise of Hezbollah Terrorists Denounced by Israeli Gov’t. Official

U.S. President Joe Biden has also been briefed on the explosion, according to The Guardian. The vehicle reportedly was coming from Canada into the U.S. when it was flagged for a secondary inspection by border officials. At this point, the car rapidly accelerated and drove through a fence and onto the bridge plaza, then drove towards the inspection lanes, hit a structure and exploded, according to the Niagara Gazette. The two men inside the vehicle were killed, and a border patrol official was injured.

Fox News called the explosion an attempted “terrorist attack” according to Reuters. Other outlets, however, including CNN, have said that it’s unclear whether or not it was an attack, an accident or a medical emergency that caused the acceleration. It is also unclear if there was an explosive device or if the car exploded on impact.

“Those bomb technicians are an absolutely essential part of this response. And theyshould be able to tell pretty quickly whether or not there was an explosive device in thatvehicle. If the answer is no, and this is entirely the result of either unintentional or aninadvertent vehicle crash, that’ll tell us how quickly they’ll be able to restore service tothat side of the bridge,” Andy McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, said on CNN.

Josh Campbell, CNN’s Security Correspondent, also pointed out that if the explosion is a terrorist attack, it doesn’t look like other terrorist attacks.

“Yeah, I’m just not seeing it,” Campbell said. “Most terrorists … their intent is to causeyou know, mass loss of life as much loss of life as they can. And so just the very natureof that you have two individuals who are in a vehicle at the same time, that’s unusual. Imean, typically if you have you know, two terrorists, for example, they would selectdifferent targets and work to try to maximize the harm.”

McCabe agreed with Campbell that what happened was “something that really any car could do,” regardless of whether or not it had explosives.

“I think there’s a lot of circumstances that point in that same direction, as JoshCampbell was saying just few minutes ago, from what we know about terroristoperatives, and the way that they stage attacks. If you had a vehicle that was … loadedwith explosives that you intended to detonate, you wouldn’t crash the car and thendetonate the explosives. You’d wait, you take the car in an unobtrusive way,unremarkable way, as close as you could possibly get to the target and then you wouldintentionally detonate it, and that doesn’t seem to be that doesn’t fit the circumstancesthat we’re aware of so far.”

However, McCabe also said that it wasn’t a sure thing that the explosion wasn’t an attack.

“It starts to look more like trying to potentially, you know, to people trying to essentiallypush their way across the border because they’re afraid of getting stopped if they tried itin the lawful way,” McCabe said. “But we can’t rule out the fact … that this could havebeen two people trying to make some sort of a statement that ended up unfortunately ina in a life-taking way for themselves.”

The Department of Justice filed a statement of interest Tuesday in a lawsuit against an Oregon city’s ordinance stopping a church from feeding the homeless more than two days a week.

St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Brookings, Oregon has been providing free lunches to homeless people and others in need since 2009. Initially, the church offered the free meals one day a week, but as the homelessness crisis worsened in the city, St. Timothy’s expanded its program. Between 2015 and 2020, the church gave meals every Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday, as well as every other Monday.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered other free meal services in the city, and St. Timothy’s expanded its program to fit the need, according to the DOJ. The service grew to five or six days per week. St. Timothy’s provides over 210 hot meals every week, according to its website.

READ MORE: ‘Worst Advice Ever?’: Tennessee Senator Tells Homeless They Still Have Hope, Because, Hitler

A neighbor of the church, however, complained to the city, saying they were concerned about “public safety and the personal expenses of homeowners living next to the church.” Another neighbor objected to how the church “hand[ed] out food all day and let transients hang out there and stroll over to the park to hang out,” according to the DOJ statement.

The neighbors brought Brookings officials a “Petition to Remove Homeless from St. Timothy Church.” The petition alleged “multiple crimes” had been committed by those the church had been helping, but the only crimes cited were littering and one instance of mail being stolen. In response, the city of Brookings passed a new ordinance requiring groups providing “benevolent meal services” to get an additional permit, and limited the distribution of meals to only two days per week at most.

St. Timothy’s sued the city, saying that the ordinance ran afoul of its First Amendment rights. Church officials said their religious beliefs compelled them to feed the hungry “when the need exists,” according to the DOJ. The Rev. James Bernard Lindley, vicar of the church, said he saw the program as “acts of worship critical to my Christian faith.”

“It is my deeply held religious belief that feeding the hungry, respecting the dignity of every human being, and building community are necessary acts during our time on Earth,” Lindley wrote in a declaration as part of the lawsuit.

The DOJ’s statement of interest urges the court to dismiss Brookings’ request for summary judgement. Brookings did not demonstrate a “compelling governmental interest” to limit the meal program, nor is it the “least restrictive means of protecting the city’s identified interest,” the statement says.

“Many churches and faith-based organizations across the country are on the front lines serving the critical needs of people experiencing hunger and homelessness,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “Discriminatory zoning restrictions that burden and limit religious organizations’ use of their land violate federal antidiscrimination laws. The Justice Department is committed to enforcing federal civil rights laws to ensure that all religious groups can freely exercise their religious beliefs.”

Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia's 8th District announced Friday morning that he would be running against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for House Speaker.

"I have filed to be Speaker of the House. We are in Washington to legislate, and I want to lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people," Scott wrote on X.

Earlier today, Scott told CNN correspondent Manu Raju that the GOP's removal of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy "makes us look like a bunch of idiots."

READ MORE: GOP Rep. Don Bacon Says Republicans Would Rather ‘Yell and Scream’ Than Govern

Though Scott has been in Congress since 2011, he's not as well known as Judiciary Chair Jordan or Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), who recently withdrew from the Speaker race. Scott serves on several committees in the House, including the Committee on Armed Services and its readiness and intelligence subcommittees; the Committee on Agriculture; and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and its CIA and NSA subcommittees. He's also a member of the International Conservation Caucus, a bipartisan caucus devoted to the conservation of natural resources.

Scott is less conservative than Jordan, though he still holds many of the standard Republican positions. He's against gun control, same-sex marriage, abortion and marijuana legalization. While he did sign an amicus brief supporting Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit contesting the 2020 election results, he also joined a letter saying Congressmembers had no authority to object to Electoral College votes without an investigation. He also spoke out against the January 6 riots, and attended the inauguration of President Joe Biden.

In 2001, when Scott was in the Georgia House, he was the first Republican to align with Democrats in removing the Confederate Stars and Bars from Georgia's state flag. In 2021, he was appointed to the commission to rename military bases named for Confederate figures. The following year, the commission recommended the military proceed with the plan to rename the bases.

Scott could be the choice for Republicans put off by Jordan. Jordan is the favorite among the far-right House Freedom Caucus, and his supporters include Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and former President Donald Trump. Critics of Jordan, however, include former athletes at Ohio State University, where Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach until 1994.

Jordan is accused of ignoring sexual abuse by team doctor Richard Strauss during his time at the school. Jordan denies the allegations, saying he never heard of any abuse happening. However, Jordan declined to participate in an investigation into the abuse allegations. The investigation later found that Strauss' abuse was an "open secret" among coaches and other team officials.

One wrestler, Adam DiSabato accused Jordan of calling him "crying, crying, groveling, on the Fourth of July … begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for half an hour," according to the Guardian.

"That’s the kind of cover-up that’s going on here. He’s a coward. He’s a coward,” DiSabato added.

About twice as many students have dropped out of a Florida college this year after Gov. Ron DeSantis installed a new president and board of trustees.

As the 2023-4 school year started up, Interim Provost Brad Thiessen at the New College in Florida said that 27% of the student body had decided not to return—or about 186 students, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. In the last two years, the student body had only gone down by about 90 students per year. A third of faculty members also left following the DeSantis takeover. In addition, the board of trustees denied tenure to five professors who had already been approved to receive it.

The New College of Florida had a reputation of being a small progressive state school, but that changed in February. That month, DeSantis appointed six members to the Florida college’s board of trustees—including Christopher Rufo, a right-wing activist known for fighting against “critical race theory”—and installed a new interim president, Richard Corcoran.

Corcoran was previously DeSantis’ education commissioner. He received $700,000 for the position—twice what the previous president had made, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Earlier this week, the trustees made Corcoran’s position permanent, and his compensation could increase, the Times reported.

While more students are leaving, additional students are coming in to replace them. Enrollment at the Florida college has increased by 41 students over last year. The school also had a record amount of incoming students, with 137 more freshmen choosing to attend New College than last year. Corcoran made it his goal to increase enrollment, focusing on recruiting student athletes. The school only created its athletic department this spring.

Before the takeover, the Florida college had ranked at No. 76 on U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of national liberal arts colleges and No. 5 on its list of public liberal arts colleges. This year, New College dropped to No. 100 on the national list and to No. 6 on the public liberal arts list. Other Florida colleges also dropped in the rankings, though New College fell the furthest.

CNN political analyst and former host of Meet the Press David Gregory was criticized online for a statement that seemed to blame Democrats for the chaos over the House Speakership.

CNN This Morning co-host Poppy Harlow asked Gregory why the House was unable to come together to name a Speaker, given the Hamas-Israel war and the looming government shutdown. Gregory said that he couldn’t explain why.

“I think it’s another embarrassment for the Republican Party. Mike McFaul, who is a very serious lawmaker from Texas from the Homeland Security Committee said the world is burning. The world is on fire. And we can’t seem to come to an agreement on a leader. It’s a real problem,” Gregory said, before appearing to call on Democrats to make a move.

“I actually have my eye on Democrats. How long are Democrats going to stand by in the world of identity politics, and zero-sum politics, and not be part of any solution? We’ll see. I think there’s more cards to be played before Democrats jump in,” he said.

Gregory’s name trended on X Friday afternoon, as users largely criticized Gregory. Critics said the blame lies solely at the feet of Republicans, and that it shouldn’t be up to Democrats to help them.

“David Gregory blames DEMOCRATS as the Republicans fail to fill the Speaker office they forced Kevin McCarthy out of: ‘How long are Democrats going to stand by in the world of identity politics, and zero-sum politics, and not be part of any solution?'” Ari Drennen of the left-wing media watchdog Media Matters For America wrote.

“One more sign that ‘identity politics’ has jumped the shark. David Gregory blames ‘identity politics’ and not ‘regular ass politics’ for why Democrats won’t vote their political opponents into positions of power,” Don Moynihan, policy professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School, wrote.

“Republicans *are* in control of the house, but can’t pick a speaker. If Dems *were* in control of the house, we’d already have a speaker. But saying that is too obvious and banal and boring. So, cue David Gregory,” Aaron Carr, founder and executive director of Housing Rights Initiative, wrote.

Earlier this month, when Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filed a motion to vacate against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), some pundits expected Democrats to vote “present”—effectively making no vote at all. But instead, every Democrat voted against McCarthy, joining eight Republicans, dooming his chances of staying Speaker.

“Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York wrote to his fellow Democrats at the time, according to CBS News.

As of Friday, there are two candidates for Speaker: Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Austin Scott (R-GA). Jordan is the preferred candidate of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, while Scott may appeal more to moderate Republicans.