WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) -A Florida judge on Friday rejected a Walt Disney Co request to dismiss a lawsuit by an oversight district, a move that could make it harder for the entertainment giant to pursue its own case against Governor Ron DeSantis as part of a yearlong feud.

The ruling allows the oversight district to pursue its case that seeks to void "backroom deals" favorable to Disney that were struck with a prior district board earlier this year. If those deals were voided, the district has said it would nearly wipe out Disney's federal case against DeSantis.

A Disney spokesperson said the decision "has no bearing" on the federal lawsuit seeking to "vindicate Disney's constitutional rights."

"We are fully confident Disney will prevail in both the federal and state cases," the spokesperson said in an email.

A spokesperson for the oversight district declined to comment.

The skirmish began last year after Disney criticized a Florida law banning classroom discussion of sexuality and gender identity with younger children. DeSantis, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, has repeatedly attacked "woke Disney" in public remarks.

With just a week and a half until the highly contested Aug. 8 election on Issue 1, there has been a surge in early voting across Ohio.

The first few weeks of early voting already surpassed many officials' expectations for voter turnout. While many were concerned that the initial surge in early in-person votes would fizzle out, data from the Secretary of State's office shows that the number of early voters per day has increased. The past few days have seen over 19,000 early in-person votes per day across the state, compared with around 16,000 per day in the first 10 days of early voting.

On July 24, some 20,573 Ohioans voted early. For comparison, the first day of early voting saw just under 15,000 votes statewide.

Voters have also returned more absentee ballots per day as Election Day draws closer. Statewide data from early this week shows over 13,000 absentee ballots are coming per day.

Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, said the continued turnout has been "fantastic."

Steve Vladeck
@steve_vladeck

Justice Alito has issued an “administrative” stay of Judge Reed O’Connor’s nationwide injunction in the “ghost guns” case—temporarily freezing that order while the full Court decides whether to stay it pending appeal.

This is *not* a sign of how the full Court is likely to rule.

TALLAHASSEE — If it hadn’t been for a fender bender on Interstate 75 near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Tuesday morning, most folks wouldn’t know that Gov. Ron DeSantis was using state government vehicles for his 2024 run for president.

Tuesday’s four-vehicle collision on the way to a campaign fundraiser draws a curtain back on the campaign’s use of state resources. But finding out who’s paying for it is nearly impossible thanks to a new law passed by the Legislature to protect the governor’s travel records from public view.

“The legislature has enabled him to hide his travel records so we don’t know and have no way to hold him accountable if he is using state resources in his campaign or if that is even the case,” said Ben Wilcox, research director for Integrity Florida, a nonprofit government watchdog.

It was frustrating enough when trying to monitor his use of government resources while traveling around the state, Rep. Anna Eskamani said, but to take those people and vehicles out of state is even worse.

“It’s absurd that he’s using public resources and public infrastructure to campaign.” said Eskamani, D-Orlando. “He’s using state resources to boost himself politically.”

During her confirmation hearing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson associated herself with two methodologies, originalism and textualism, that are prized by the conservative legal movement. It was not a feint. With her first term wrapped up, it’s safe to say that Jackson really does have zero interest in the “living Constitution” sometimes associated with liberal judging. In place of lofty odes to the majestic generalities of the Constitution, the justice has consistently favored its original meaning and a statute’s plain text over other considerations. It’s a stark departure from her predecessor, Justice Stephen Breyer, who could not write in the originalist style to save his life. But was it effective?

In short: Yes, to a point. Jackson may have helped stave off disaster in a handful of key cases, steering the court away from hard-right results through tactical deployment of originalist and textualist arguments. Unlike Breyer, she expertly wielded the conservatives’ own tools against them. She spoke the language of the right to promote left-leaning principles. And from time to time, she beat the 6–3 supermajority at its own game.

Jackson’s originalism has received the most attention in the context of race, and for good reason: Like most progressive originalists, she views the Constitution through the lens of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, passed in the wake of the Civil War. These amendments fundamentally altered the entire Constitution, expanding federal power over the states while extending civil rights and equal citizenship to all Americans. (In theory, at least.)

This Second Founding informs many liberals’ vision of the law today, including Jackson. Contemporary scholars on the left, for instance, point out that Congress enacted explicitly race-conscious measures after the Civil War to address past discrimination against Black Americans. Jackson laid out this evidence during arguments over the Voting Rights Act, when Alabama’s solicitor general claimed the law’s consideration of race was unconstitutional. The framers of 14th Amendment, Jackson explained, used “race-conscious” remedies to safeguard the rights of Black Americans. How could it be unconstitutional for the Voting Rights Act to do the same? It was, as the New York Times’ Adam Liptak has observed, “a kind of mission statement” from the brand new justice.

At the time, it seemed as if Jackson was sketching out her future dissent. But in a surprise move, the court sided against Alabama, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the three liberals, upholding the Voting Rights Act in full. As Cristian Farias noted in Vanity Fair, the chief justice’s reasoning seemed to reflect Jackson’s own comments at oral argument, especially in their embrace of race-conscious solutions to the political subjugation of Black Alabamians. Her views may well have persuaded—or shamed—Roberts and Kavanaugh to save what remains of the VRA.

Back when Florida was the nation’s premier political battleground, Democrats in the state had hundreds of thousands more registered voters than Republicans and a fairly simple formula for competing in presidential contests: run up the score in key metro areas like Miami-Dade County, and try to manage losses in the vast rural and exurban areas that stretch from the Panhandle to the Everglades.

But a statewide surge in GOP voter registration gave Republicans an edge over Democrats for the first time and foreshadowed Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 19-point victory in November. Democrats are rapidly losing their advantage in Miami-Dade, perhaps their most important market in Florida.

Just in the last four years, the number of registered Democrats in the county decreased by over 6,000 voters, and their advantage over registered Republicans was almost cut in half, dropping from a 15-point lead in August 2019 to eight in July 2023, according to a Miami Herald analysis of state voter registration data. Democrats had around 138,000 more registered voters than Republicans in Miami-Dade.

The shift has Democrats concerned about the party’s ability to stay relevant in 2024, when voters will cast ballots in the presidential election and local races. Party leaders are scrambling to make changes.

“There’s no way for Democrats to win statewide in Florida by having a voter registration meltdown in Miami-Dade County,” said Fernand Amandi, managing partner of the Miami-based political strategy and polling firm Bendixen & Amandi. “Democrats are now registering as Republicans and Republicans are out-hustling Democrats in the most important county in the state for Democrats.”

You may not have heard of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). But you should: It has saved more lives than any other US government policy in the 21st century. And now, for the first time in the program’s history, it is at risk of losing a critical vote in Congress — for reasons that say a lot about today’s Republican Party.

First passed in 2003 under President George W. Bush, PEPFAR is a vehicle for distributing HIV/AIDS drugs to people in poor countries who wouldn’t otherwise have access to them. It has been astonishingly effective: The most recent US government estimates suggest it has saved as many as 25 million lives since its enactment. It is currently supporting treatment for over 20 million people who depend on the program for continued access to medication.

Given its success, PEPFAR has historically enjoyed bipartisan support. In 2018, Congress reauthorized PEPFAR for another five years without a fuss. But this time around, things look different. Some House Republicans, prodded by an array of influential groups, are threatening to block another five-year reauthorization. Their argument is pure culture war: that PEPFAR has become a vehicle for promoting abortion.

In reality, PEPFAR is legally prohibited from funding abortion services, and the argument against the program on anti-abortion grounds is very thin. But in today’s political climate, where the culture war reigns supreme on the right, this is enough to jeopardize the continued good functioning of a program that the Republican Party used to champion.

The Senate on Thursday gave overwhelming approval to the annual defense policy bill, sidestepping a contentious debate over abortion access for service members and quashing efforts to limit aid for Ukraine in a show of bipartisanship that set up a bitter showdown with the House.

The vote was 86 to 11 to pass the bill, which would authorize $886 billion for national defense over the next year. It includes a 5.2 percent pay raise for troops and civilian employees, investments in hypersonic missile and drone technology, and measures to improve competition with China.

But its fate is deeply in doubt as the measure heads for what is expected to be a contentious negotiation between the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-led House, where right-wing hard-liners have attached a raft of conservative social policy mandates.

Republicans in the Senate decided not to pick such fights in that chamber, shelving amendments to restrict abortion access and transgender health care services for military personnel. The result is vastly different bills that could make it difficult for the House and Senate to hash out a bipartisan final agreement, something that has not eluded Congress in more than six decades.

“What’s happening in the Senate is a stark contrast to the partisan race to the bottom we saw in the House, where House Republicans are pushing partisan legislation that has zero chance of passing,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said on the floor Thursday. “We are passing important bipartisan legislation; they are throwing on the floor partisan legislation that has no chance of passing.”

An Ohio ballot measure in November that would enshrine abortion access in the state constitution stands to be a bellwether on the issue ahead of next year’s elections.

Groups on both sides of the issue say the vote in November could provide more insight into how salient the battle over abortion access remains more than a year out from the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

In particular, the vote will be closely watched by Democrats, who have signaled abortion rights will be at the center of their platform in next year’s presidential election.

Earlier this month, abortion-rights advocates submitted 710,000 signatures for a ballot measure on abortion, twice the 413,000 needed for a ballot measure. On Tuesday, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose certified abortion-rights advocates had enough signatures to place their measure on the ballot in November.

“Seeing this level of enthusiasm in Ohio shows that this is going to be a salient issue and is an issue that is top of mind for voters no matter where they live,” said Ryan Stitzlein, vice president of political and government relations at NARAL-Pro Choice America.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has signed onto a multi-state effort to push back on a rule from President Joe Biden’s administration designed to protect women who obtain abortions out of state.

But on Tuesday a spokesperson for Bailey said that the Republican’s office does not track women who leave the state for abortions or gender-affirming care and accused the president of pushing a false narrative.

“This is not about states needing access to medical information; it’s about halting Biden’s perpetuation of a false narrative and combating government overreach,” Bailey spokesperson Madeline Sieren told The Star in an email.

Sieren, in response to a follow up, said that Bailey’s office “does not keep track of Missouri residents who receive abortions in other states, nor do we plan to pursue legal action against mothers who leave the state to obtain abortions. Mothers are victims of the abortion industry.”

Bailey in June signed onto the letter from Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch along with 17 other Republican attorneys general. The letter called on U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to end a proposed rule change that would prevent states from using health information to investigate reproductive health care “that is sought, obtained, provided, or facilitated in a state where the health care is lawful and outside of the state where the investigation or proceeding is authorized,” according to a fact sheet on the proposal.