The Hill: “The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a Tennessee law restricting some drag performances, allowing the first-in-the-nation law to remain largely intact.  In a brief, unsigned order, the justices denied a Tennessee theater company’s request to intervene in its challenge to the state’s limits on drag, first enacted in 2023 by…

AP: ” A North Carolina Supreme Court decision refusing to further accelerate the appeals over an unsettled November election for a seat on the court means an official winner likely won’t be finalized sooner, and the trailing candidate could benefit. A majority of justices rejected a request by the State Board of Elections to fast-track the case by…

WaPo: “McConnell, who announced on Thursday that he is retiring from the Senate after his term concludes in January 2027, was never elected or even a candidate for president. But his influence and power at times eclipsed the men who were in the Oval Office. I disagree with McConnell on most policy issues and don’t respect many…

NY Times: “Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and longest-serving Senate leader who played a pivotal role in obstructing major Democratic agenda items and stacking the federal courts with conservatives, said on Thursday that he would not seek another term in 2026. In a speech on the Senate floor that fell on his 83rd birthday,…

Independent: “First Amendment lawyers and press freedom advocates are sounding alarms after a Mississippi newspaper was forced by a judge to delete an editorial criticizing city officials in Clarksdale. The city sued the publishers of the Clarksdale Press Register over an editorial from February 8, which criticized officials for failing to notify the public about a hearing on proposed tax increases. On…

AL Political Reporter: “There is life within the Alabama Democratic Party — albeit at the county level.  On Saturday, Democratic county chairmen from across the state gathered in Birmingham to form the state’s first Alabama Democratic County Chair Association. The group said it plans to build off the work that county committees and county chairs…

HuffPo: “The North Carolina Democratic Party moved up the termination date of an employee who alleged in a formal complaint that a female supervisor had punished him for a sexual relationship they’d had, according to the text of the complaint and three people with knowledge of how it was handled. The NCDP offered the worker a severance…

Political Wire: “Daniel Cameron (R) is wasting no time in his run for U.S. Senate,” the Louisville Courier Journal reports. “Kentucky’s former attorney general and the Republican candidate for governor in 2023 announced Thursday plans to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Mitch McConnell.”

Mediaite: “Senate Armed Services Chair Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) pulled no punches on Tuesday in his description of Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggesting the dictator should be “executed” as opposed to being negotiated with. Wicker made the comments when asked about Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio meeting his Russian counterpart in Saudi Arabia earlier in the day to discuss…

WaPo: “A man is charged with two counts of attempted second-degree murder for allegedly shooting two people he thought were Palestinians in Miami Beach on Saturday night. … Both victims were injured but survived, the arrest report says. One was shot in the shoulder, and a bullet grazed the forearm of the other, it says….