Senator Mitch McConnell is upset that two Democratic judges are reversing their decisions to retire, complaining Monday that “this sort of partisan behavior undermines the integrity of the judiciary.”

After Donald Trump was elected to his second term as president last month, two judges appointed by Democratic presidents changed their minds about retiring. U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn, appointed by President Obama, announced that he would remain active on the court for the Western District of North Carolina after previously saying he would move to part-time status in 2022.

Before Cogburn, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley, a Clinton appointee, changed his mind about moving to senior status on the court for the Southern District of Ohio. To McConnell, this “exposes bold Democratic blue where there should only be black robes.

“It’s hard to conclude this is anything other than open partisanship,” the former Senate majority leader added, before offering a warning to Democrats: “It would be especially alarming if either of the two circuit judges whose announced retirements created the vacancies currently pending before the Senate—in Tennessee and North Carolina—were to follow suit.”

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, highlighted McConnell’s hypocrisy in his complaints about partisanship, pointing out that McConnell blocked President Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland for one year in 2016. The Kentucky senator’s delay tactic allowed Republican Donald Trump to appoint Justice Neil Gorsuch immediately upon taking office.

“When I hear the senator come to the floor, from Kentucky, and talk about whether there is any gamesmanship going on, I don’t know but I can tell. We saw it at the highest possible level in filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court when Antonin Scalia passed away,” Durbin said.

McConnell made it his personal mission to confirm as many conservative federal judges as possible when his party controlled the Senate during Trump’s first term. The appointees generally signed off on whatever Republicans and Trump wanted and were younger and less qualified than previous judicial appointments. They also gave the GOP favorable decisions in restricting voting rights to help Republican candidates.

It was all part of McConnell’s legacy of serving the interests of powerful conservative billionaires. He’s crying foul now because Democrats are using tactics that he pioneered when he was in power. In fact, he probably would have far exceeded them. While McConnell has now ceded leadership of Senate Republicans, and by extension the Senate, to his ally John Thune, it remains to be seen if the next Senate majority leader will pursue Republican goals as brazenly as McConnell.

When it came time to hit the voting booths, Americans sided with Donald Trump on their top three biggest concerns.

A poll published Tuesday by Navigator Research revealed that Trump’s stance on—and his ability to elevate—three key issues drastically swayed American voters at the ballot box. Those issues included inflation and the cost of living, immigration and the border, and jobs and the economy. Navigator Research surveyed 5,000 voters in the 2024 general election, some of whom self-reported as new Trump voters.

Across the survey pool, 43 percent of voters ranked inflation as their top priority, followed by a tie between immigration and the economy for second and third place with 31 percent of the vote. Swing voters and first-time Trump voters were even more concerned by those same issues, with approximately 45 percent of swing voters ranking inflation as their first priority and 55 percent of new Trump voters doing the same.

And Trump’s messaging resonated with those voters, with the president-elect winning by double digits on those issues over Vice President Kamala Harris. On the issue of inflation, voters sided with Trump by a matter of 34 points. He won by 31 points with voters who ranked jobs and the economy as one of their most important issues and by a massive 71 points with voters who prioritized immigration and border policies.

Harris won on the next four issues most significant to voters, though the significance of the issues was obviously relatively minimal. Those included abortion, Social Security and Medicare, health care, and threats to democracy—the last of which Harris won by 60 points.

The Democratic candidate also won on guns and climate by 43 and 70 points, respectively, though voters ranked those issues much lower on the totem poll.

A few Supreme Court justices went out of their way to fight back against enforcing the court’s new ethics rules, The New York Times reported Tuesday—and it’s not that surprising.

In a series of secret offline memos and meetings, the justices toiled away over how they would formulate their code of ethics, and—crucially—whether it could actually be enforced.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson all supported enforcement rules for the court’s code of ethics. Kagan even pitched a panel of “safe harbor” judges that justices could go to about ethics concerns. Her proposal failed to gain wider support.

Meanwhile, Justice Neil Gorsuch railed against enforcement of the ethics code, essentially arguing that not abusing his seat of power should be........

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