The next big battle over abortion politics is headed for your own backyard.

With the US Supreme Court on the brink of overturning one of its most consequential decisions in modern history, the fight to ban and restrict abortion will move to 50 different state supreme courts scattered across the country.

In a world in which Roe v. Wade is overruled, it is these state courts that often operate outside the national media spotlight that will have the last word on interpreting the right to abortion under each state's constitution.

These judges, who don't get lifetime appointments like US Supreme Court justices, except in Rhode Island, are set to be the ones deciding whether to uphold or overturn slews of state-specific abortion bans and restrictions.

And a quarter of these justices' jobs are on the line in 2022.

In all, 86 state supreme court seats, out of 344 total in the nation, are on the ballot in November. Elections for state supreme court justices may now be the most direct avenue for voters to shape abortion policy for a generation.

Foreign-made baby formula could be made available in the U.S. in an attempt to ease the ongoing shortage, the Food and Drug Administration told CNN Monday.

An announcement may come by the end of the day, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf told the cable network's Kaitlan Collins in an interview.

Offering this formula in U.S. stores "would have a big effect because we'll have access to a lot more formula from different manufacturers," said Califf.

The imported formula could boost supply so that it's "back to normal" within a few weeks, Califf said.

Califf also provided an update on an Abbott plant in Sturgis, Michigan, that was shut down amid a recall earlier this year, helping to cause the formula shortage.

Once Abbott and the FDA reach an agreement on how to reopen the plant and guarantee product safety, he said it should begin shipping formula within two weeks and that the factory would be back up to full speed a few weeks after that.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been at war with campaign finance laws for more than a dozen years, stretching at least as far back as its decision in Citizens United v. FEC (2010). On Monday, the Court’s six Republican appointees escalated this war.

The Court’s decision in FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate is a boon to wealthy candidates. It strikes down an anti-bribery law that limited the amount of money candidates could raise after an election in order to repay loans they made to their own campaign.

Federal law permits candidates to loan money to their campaigns. In 2001, however, Congress prohibited campaigns from repaying more than $250,000 of these loans using funds raised after the election. They can repay as much as they want from campaign donations received before the election (although a federal regulation required them to do so “within 20 days of the election”).

The idea is that, if already-elected officials can solicit donations to repay what is effectively their own personal debt, lobbyists and others seeking to influence lawmakers can put money directly into the elected official’s pocket — and campaign donations that personally enrich a lawmaker are particularly likely to lead to corrupt bargains. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) manufactured a case to try to overturn that $250,000 limit, and now, the Court has sided with him.

Indeed, now that this limit on loan repayments has been struck down, lawmakers with sufficiently creative accountants may be able to use such loans to give themselves a steady income stream from campaign donors.

According to the Los Angeles Times, for example, Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) made a $150,000 loan to her campaign at 18 percent interest in 1998 — before the 2001 law was enacted. Though Napolitano did eventually reduce the interest rate on this loan to 10 percent, the high-interest loan allowed her to make a considerable profit from donors.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) can now hit up donors to help pay himself back for the $555,000 he loaned to his campaigns in 2012 and 2018.

Cruz won the ability to recoup his loans with political donor money after the court ruled that a 2002 campaign finance law creates an unconstitutional burden on freedom of speech. That law prohibits candidates from raising up to $250,000 in post-election contributions to repay loans made during a federal political campaign.

The court’s decision could create a new way for political candidates to finance their campaigns through personal loans that would be paid back later by donors. That could also enable politicians to personally make money on their campaigns by charging interest on loans later repaid by donors. And it could also signal a further weakening of the already teetering edifice of campaign finance regulation.

But in the immediate term, the court’s decision will allow one candidate ― Cruz ― to raise money from rich donors and political action committees to repay the more than half-million dollars he loaned to his two Senate campaigns.

The case of Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate emerged in the final days of Cruz’s reelection campaign in 2018 against Democrat Beto O’Rourke. Cruz loaned his campaign $260,000, choosing this amount on purpose because it was $10,000 over the limit on post-election fundraising aimed at paying off personal loans. His intention in making the loan was to challenge this limit in court. And by winning he will not only get to recoup the $10,000 over the limit he loaned himself, but also another $545,000 he loaned his campaign in 2012 and hasn’t recouped.

The $250,000 limit on post-election fundraising to repay loans was enacted as part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ― more popularly known as McCain-Feingold after its lead Senate sponsors. The law allows candidates to pay off loans with money raised pre-election, but only if they do so within 20 days after the election.

The justification for these limitations is that post-election contributions to a candidate, particularly a winning candidate, to help them repay a loan present an increased potential for corruption or the appearance of corruption because “when a campaign uses a contribution to repay the candidate’s loan, every dollar given by the contributor ultimately goes into the candidate’s pocket,” the Justice Department argued in a brief to the court.

“A post-election contributor also usually will know whether the recipient of the contribution has prevailed in the election,” the DOJ brief continues. “The contributor therefore can know ― rather than merely hope ― that the recipient will be in a position to do him official favors.”

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a federal restriction that applied to candidates who loan large amounts of money to their own political campaigns, a victory for Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who challenged it.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court said the law, adopted in 2002, was a violation of a political candidate’s free expression, applying longstanding rulings that said because money buys the ability to spread a political message, limits on expenditures implicate the First Amendment.

Under the law at issue, candidates who contributed money to their own campaigns could be paid back from the pool of other campaign contributions. But the repayments were capped at $250,000.

Sen Cruz loaned his re-election campaign $260,000 — intentionally going above the limit in order to trigger a legal challenge — when then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke ran against him in 2018.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Six months after the signing of President Joe Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure package, the government said Monday there are 4,300 projects underway with more than $110 billion in funding announced — milestones the administration is publicly heralding as midterm politics intensify.

White House senior adviser Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, said the roads, bridges and other projects are laying “a foundation for tremendous growth into the future.” Landrieu said Biden and members of his administration have made more than 125 trips to highlight the bipartisan investments in infrastructure. He declined to predict how much the storytelling will resonate with voters as construction starts.

“I think that if Americans step back, we will all have to admit that for the last 50 years we’ve had the need to do this and we haven’t found the will or the way to get it done,” Landrieu told reporters. He added that this is a “wonderful down payment” on infrastructure needs in the country that total roughly $7 trillion.