Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) narrowly leads in a poll of Democrats on which political leader “best reflects” the “core values” of the party.

In a CNN survey released Sunday, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were asked to name one person when “thinking about Democratic leaders today” who “best reflects the core values of the Democratic Party.”

The open-ended question yielded a range of responses: 10 percent pointed to Ocasio-Cortez, 9 percent said former Vice President Kamala Harris, 8 percent said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and 6 percent said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.).

Former President Obama and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) each were named by 4 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent respondents, while Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) were named by 2 percent of respondents.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) rolled out a list of 26 vulnerable House Democrats it plans to target in the 2026 midterms.

The list includes California Reps. Josh Harder, Adam Gray, George Whitesides, Derek Tran and Dave Min, and Florida Reps. Darren Soto and Jared Moskowitz.

It also includes Reps. Frank Mrvan (Ind.), Jared Golden (Maine), Kristen McDonald Rivet (Mich.), Don Davis (N.C.), Chris Pappas (N.H.), Nellie Pou (N.J.) and Gabe Vasquez (N.M.), and Nevada Reps. Dina Titus, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford.

The final names on the list are New York Reps. Tom Suozzi, Laura Gillen and Josh Riley; Ohio Reps. Marcy Kaptur and Emilia Sykes; Texas Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez; Virginia Rep. Eugene Vindman; and Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.

Since James Ho was confirmed to the Fifth Circuit in 2017, he has not allowed a day to pass without thinking about how to parlay this gig to get what he really wants: a promotion to the Supreme Court the next time a vacancy should arise under a Republican president. Delivering paint-by-numbers speeches about the excesses of cancel culture, condemning the scourge of racism against white people, and writing unironic opinions bemoaning the rise of a “woke Constitution” are not the sorts of things federal judges typically do, unless they measure success in the number of times they are mentioned during the Fox & Friends A-block.

Earlier this week, Ho delivered yet another highlight. Back on March 4, the Federal Judges Association—which is, as the name suggests, a national association of federal judges—issued a statement condemning the escalating threats of violence against judges who have blocked Trump administration initiatives in some form or another. Days later, Ho announced to an audience of aspiring Fifth Circuit clerks at a Federalist Society student conference that he had up and resigned from the FJA in protest of this “sanctimonious” little stunt. I want to be clear about what James Ho is proud of here: throwing a semi-public tantrum over a fairly milquetoast assertion that it is bad when people threaten to kill his colleagues on the internet.

The gravamen of Ho’s complaint is that FJA had not, in Ho’s opinion, sufficiently condemned previous criticisms of Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, or Brett Kavanaugh, all of whom Ho hopes to one day have the privilege of serving coffee during conference. “You can’t say that you’re in favor of judicial independence only when it comes to decisions that you like,” explained Ho, whose commitment to defending “free speech” generally ends the moment someone has the temerity to disagree with speech he likes. “That’s not protecting the judiciary, that’s politicizing the judiciary.” Do you see what he did there? With the alliteration? Neil Gorsuch’s reign as the Court’s most insufferable writer might come to an end soon!

Perhaps aware that FedSoc speeches alone will not dislodge Aileen Cannon as the prohibitive favorite, Ho has also infused his opinions of late with conservative dogma that just so happens to align with the sitting president’s policy agenda. “A sovereign isn’t a sovereign if it can’t defend itself against invasion,” Ho wrote last year, in a case about Texas’s efforts to take immigration enforcement into his own hands. In a follow-up interview published by The Volokh Conspiracy, Ho argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship does not apply in cases of “invasion,” a word that, in his view, applies to people trying to enter the country with nothing more than the clothing on their backs.

Two prominent legal groups asked a federal judge Monday to force officials in the Trump administration to explain under oath whether they violated the judge's court order temporarily barring deportations by removing more than 200 people from the U.S. after the order was issued.

The request was the latest salvo in a high-stakes legal fight that began when President Donald Trump invoked a rarely used 1798 wartime law to remove immigrants over the weekend. It also marked an escalation in the battle over whether the Trump administration is flouting court orders that have blocked some of his aggressive moves in the opening days of his second term.

On Saturday night, District Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the administration not to deport anyone in its custody over the newly-invoked Alien Enemies Act, which has only been used three times before in U.S. history, all during congressionally-declared wars. Trump issued a proclamation that the law was newly in effect due to what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.

Trump's invocation of the act could allow him to deport any noncitizen he says is associated with the gang, without offering proof or even publicly identifying them. The plaintiffs filed their suit on behalf of several Venezuelans in U.S. custody who feared they'd be falsely accused of being Tren de Aragua members and improperly removed from the country.

Told there were planes in the air headed to El Salvador, which has agreed to house deported migrants in a notorious prison, Boasberg said he, and the government, needed to move fast. “You shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg told the government's lawyer Saturday night.

A federal judge on Sunday ordered the Trump administration to respond to allegations that U.S. immigration enforcement "willfully disobeyed" an order halting the deportation of a Rhode Island doctor.

The big picture: Dr. Rasha Alawieh, who according to court documents is a citizen of Lebanon who holds an H-1B visa, was detained last week upon her arrival at a Boston airport.

How it happened: In an order on Friday evening in response to a petition from Alawieh's cousin, federal Judge Leo T. Sorokin mandated 48 hours' notice before Alawieh could be deported.

But Alawieh was nonetheless placed on a flight to Paris, where she was detained as of Saturday.

It's unclear how much time elapsed between the order coming down and that flight departing, but attorneys representing Alawieh's cousin, Yara Chehab, alleged in a court filing that the government had received "actual notice" and "willfully disobeyed" the court's order. Alawieh was expected to fly to Lebanon on Sunday, per the filing.

The Trump administration has not said why Alawieh was detained, or why she was removed from the country despite the order. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment, while the State Department said it could not comment on individual cases.

ATLANTA (CN) — A law preventing Floridians under the age of 21 from buying rifles and other long guns will remain on the books after a divided en banc 11th Circuit on Friday dove deep into the history of America’s founding to reject the National Rifle Association’s claim that the law is unconstitutional and out of line with historical gun regulations.

In an 8-4 ruling, the Atlanta-based appeals court found the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act constitutional, upholding a Florida federal judge’s decision despite three fiery dissenting opinions by Donald Trump-appointed judges.

The law, which was passed after a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, prohibits people under 21 from buying a long gun but does not ban them from receiving them as gifts.

“The Florida law that prohibits minors from purchasing firearms does not violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments because it is consistent with our historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Chief U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor wrote on behalf of the majority. “From the founding to the late-nineteenth century, our law limited the purchase of firearms by minors in different ways. The Florida law also limits the purchase of firearms by minors. And it does so for the same reason: to stop immature and impulsive individuals, like Nikolas Cruz, from harming themselves and others with deadly weapons.”

The NRA has argued the law violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and flouts longstanding tradition allowing young adults to buy guns.

ATLANTA (CN) — A law preventing Floridians under the age of 21 from buying rifles and other long guns will remain on the books after a divided en banc 11th Circuit on Friday dove deep into the history of America’s founding to reject the National Rifle Association’s claim that the law is unconstitutional and out of line with historical gun regulations.

In an 8-4 ruling, the Atlanta-based appeals court found the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act constitutional, upholding a Florida federal judge’s decision despite three fiery dissenting opinions by Donald Trump-appointed judges.

The law, which was passed after a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, prohibits people under 21 from buying a long gun but does not ban them from receiving them as gifts.

“The Florida law that prohibits minors from purchasing firearms does not violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments because it is consistent with our historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Chief U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor wrote on behalf of the majority. “From the founding to the late-nineteenth century, our law limited the purchase of firearms by minors in different ways. The Florida law also limits the purchase of firearms by minors. And it does so for the same reason: to stop immature and impulsive individuals, like Nikolas Cruz, from harming themselves and others with deadly weapons.”

The NRA has argued the law violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and flouts longstanding tradition allowing young adults to buy guns.

The Trump administration has shut down a unit of the Department of Veterans Affairs created under President Joe Biden to address disparities in how the federal government provides disability compensation to military service members.

The closure of the Veterans Benefits Administration’s Office of Equity Assurance effectively hobbles internal efforts at the VA to investigate and eliminate long-standing racial inequities the department itself has acknowledged.

The office was eliminated as part of the Trump administration’s purge of programs broadly aimed at addressing diversity, equity or inclusion, according to emails obtained by ProPublica. But several VA sources said that the office was not exclusively focused on race, and that it takes on cases for a range of veterans to ensure no one is denied proper benefits — including for reasons of age, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation and geographic location.

Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat, criticized the Trump administration’s action as “excessive” and “reckless.”

“The closure of the OEA will undoubtedly have disastrous effects on the care we offer veterans,” Takano, former chair and now ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said in a statement to ProPublica. “This office was making it easier for minority veterans to access care and benefits. Its closure will directly impact the care and benefits received by minority veterans.”