Supreme Court Says Greg Abbott’s War With Feds Better Stay on Hold

President Joe Biden just got another win in his monthslong standoff with Texas Governor Greg Abbott. On Monday, the nation’s highest court ruled that the implementation of Texas Senate Bill 4 would be further delayed until the legal challenges against it are settled.

The court waited until the eleventh hour to issue a ruling—even allowing the delay to lapse for several minutes—before extending the administrative stay indefinitely.

“It is ordered that the stay issued on March 4, 2024 is hereby extended pending further order of the undersigned or of the court,” read a court order issued by Justice Samuel Alito.

S.B. 4 proposed allowing Texas police to question and arrest anyone they believed might have illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, and granting them the authority to charge them with misdemeanors for first-time offenders and felonies for repeat offenders. It also would have allowed Texas law enforcement to deport immigrants back to a port of entry along the border. The contentious bill was signed into law by Abbott and was supposed to take effect on March 5—until the Justice Department and several civil rights groups got involved, arguing that the bill went way too far, stepping on the toes of the federal government. Earlier this month, Alito placed a temporary stay on the case, which expired at 4 p.m. CDT on Monday.

Local authorities, however, have indicated that their policies will remain relatively unchanged by the outcome.

“We are aware of the governor signing SB4 into law effective March 2024. Given the stated goals and implementation parameters discussed in the state legislature, we will comply with the law and do not expect to make any substantive changes to SAPD policy or practice,” the San Antonio Police Department told NewsNation on Monday.

Biden and Abbott have had a similar legal showdown over a length of concertina wire along the U.S.-Mexico border, which ended in a 5–4 ruling by the Supreme Court that sided with Biden.

“Texas has the sovereign right to construct border barriers to prevent the entry of illegal aliens,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said at the time.

A conservative influencer has been arrested for participating in the January 6 insurrection.

Isabella Maria DeLuca faces a total of five misdemeanor counts: one each for theft of government property; entering restricted buildings or grounds; disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted area; disorderly or disruptive conduct in the Capitol Building; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building, according to federal charges unsealed Monday.

The documents show DeLuca was arrested on Friday in Irvine, California. Her case was assigned to a magistrate judge in Washington, D.C.

DeLuca currently works as a conservative social media influencer, boasting more than 330,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter). Before that, she interned for far-right Representatives Lee Zeldin and Paul Gosar.

DeLuca, who according to a post on her LinkedIn is in her midtwenties, shared many details about her January 6 visit to Washington with her social media followers. Court documents show she posted an Instagram story the night of January 5, 2021, complaining about how her train to Washington had broken down and she needed a ride. (Her Instagram profile was private at the time of publication.)

On the afternoon of January 6, DeLuca tweeted, “Fight back or let politicians steal an election? Fight back!” She then sent private messages to an Instagram follower saying she was walking to the Capitol.

Surveillance footage from the attack shows DeLuca inside the restricted area of the Capitol grounds. She stood near one of the doors, taking photos or videos on her phone. Eventually, DeLuca climbed through a window and helped pass furniture outside to the mob. One of the items she passed out, a table, was later used as a weapon against Capitol police.

More than 1,200 people have been arrested in connection with the January 6 insurrection, and the numbers just keep going up. Many said they went to Washington because they felt Donald Trump had personally called on them to fight for him.

Donald Trump has finally admitted he can’t secure the bond for his New York civil fraud trial, as his lawyers filed a request Monday to delay execution of the judgment.

The former president was fined $354 million for committing real estate–related fraud in New York. With interest adding $112,000 per day, the total sum has already exceeded $467 million. Trump’s lawyers say that to obtain the bond, they would need to post collateral worth $557 million—which they say is a “practical impossibility.”

“Defendants stated their expectation that it would be ‘impossible to secure and post a complete bond,’” the Monday court filing said.

Trump’s lawyers explained they have asked about 30 different organizations to underwrite the bond. The list of companies they can ask is limited, since the bond is so large that it would require a company to have cash reserves of nearly $1 billion, according to the court documents.

“Critical among these challenges is not just the inability and reluctance of the vast majority of sureties to underwrite a bond for this unprecedented sum, but, even more significantly, the unwillingness of every surety bond provider approached by Defendants to accept real estate as collateral,” Trump’s lawyers said.

Trump’s lawyers indicated that if the judge does not grant them a stay, they intend to appeal the decision. If the appellate court does not intervene, then Trump has just one week left in the 30-day post-judgment window to pay up. New York Attorney General Letitia James has said she intends to start seizing Trump’s assets if he fails to post bond.

Unfortunately, Trump has no one to blame but himself for his current predicament. He has repeatedly bragged about how rich he is, which no doubt contributed to such a hefty judgment. By his own account, he can handle it—despite reportedly only having about $413 million in cash assets.

Trump’s real estate fraud trial also revealed that the former president was in the habit of inflating the value of his real estate assets to make himself look better when trying to secure loans. So it’s no wonder that bond providers don’t want to accept real estate as collateral. There’s no way they can be sure the property is worth the amount they underwrite for Trump’s bond.

The companies are also likely loath to subject themselves to the scrutiny that has fallen on the Chubb Corporation, the insurance group that backed Trump’s $91.6 million bond in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit.

Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg, whom Trump appointed in 2018 to a White House advisory committee for trade policy and negotiations, had to send a letter to Chubb’s clients last week assuring them that the decision was not a political one and that the company’s assets were “fully collateralized,” or protected against failure of repayment.

Trump still owes Carroll $5 million for sexually assaulting her and defaming her a separate time. He also owes $400,000 to The New York Times, thousands of dollars for gag order violations, and $382,000 to Orbis Business Intelligence, the consulting firm owned by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Trump had sued Orbis over a dossier Steele compiled in 2016 that alleged Trump and members of his inner circle had been “compromised” by Russia’s security service.

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case that, on its face, appears to set a double standard for Donald Trump and every other private citizen in this country.

On Monday, the nation’s conservative-majority high court upheld a ban preventing former New Mexico official Couy Griffin from running for office within the state again due to his specific criminal history: In 2022, Griffin was convicted on misdemeanor offenses for his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, ultimately costing him his job as county commissioner.

It’s the Supreme Court’s first decision on the Fourteenth Amendment since it axed a Colorado decision earlier this month to keep Trump off the state’s GOP presidential primary ballot, and the first time that the “insurrectionist clause” has been used to bar someone from office since it was created to keep ex-Confederates from reattaining high office following the Civil War. By allowing the Fourteenth Amendment to be used against Griffin, the Supreme Court seems to have, circuitously, deemed the January 6 riot an insurrection.

“I just found out (through the media) that my appeal to the SCOTUS has been denied,” Griffin wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Very disappointed. I don’t even know what to say. But I thank you for your prayers and for standing with me through this.”

The rationale for the discrepancy between Trump’s and Griffin’s cases, however, likely boils down to state election specifics—whereas Colorado attempted to bend national electoral precedent by keeping Trump off the ballot, New Mexico’s case keeps Griffin out of New Mexico politics.

But the Cowboys for Trump founder didn’t stay down for long, instead turning to social media to make it clear he was available for other, more national roles serving the GOP presidential nominee.

“Has @realDonaldTrump picked a Vice President yet? Would be such an honor to only be considered,” Griffin posted on X.

Donald Trump had a very coherent response when asked if he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin had a hand in the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Just kidding.

Trump, who has repeatedly praised Putin, was loath to criticize the Russian leader during a Sunday interview on Fox News. Navalny died in one of Russia’s harshest penal colonies in February, and the international community, including President Joe Biden, has largely laid the blame for his death on Putin.

When asked if he thought Putin had a hand in Navalny’s death, Trump said, “I don’t know, but perhaps.”

“I mean, possibly, I could say probably,” he continued. “I don’t know.”

Host Howard Kurtz pointed out that Navalny had survived a poisoning attempt in 2020 and that the circumstances of his death were very mysterious. “How could anything like that happen without Putin and high-ranking Kremlin officials sanctioning it?” he pressed.

“Well, I don’t know. You certainly can’t say for sure, but certainly that would look like something very bad happened,” Trump replied.

Trump has made no secret of his fondness for Putin or other pro-Russian autocrats. Just last week, Trump swore that if he is reelected, the United States will cease all aid to Ukraine. He is also reportedly considering hiring his former campaign chair Paul Manafort to help with Trump’s 2024 presidential run, which could reignite suspicions of Russian collusion.

When Trump has commented on Navalny’s death in the past, he has managed to leave Putin out of it altogether and focus attention on himself. Trump claimed Navalny’s death highlighted how bad things are in the U.S., and later compared his own being found liable for rape and fraud to Navalny’s political work.

Putin, meanwhile, doesn’t seem quite so enamored with Trump. In an interview with Russian state media last week, Putin recalled a private conversation with Trump in 2020, during which the American president grew jealous that Putin liked Biden and began acting like a spurned girlfriend.