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(NEW YORK) — After victories in New York City, democratic socialists are taking their fight against the Democratic establishment to Colorado.

On Tuesday, Rep. Diana DeGette will face her toughest reelection fight yet, against 29-year-old attorney and democratic socialist Melat Kiros, who was born months after she won her seat in Congress, 30 years ago.

Kiros, who was fired from her law firm in 2023 after writing an open letter criticizing her employers’ response to pro-Palestinian protests, told ABC News she hopes to build on the movement’s momentum from last Tuesday in New York and channel voters’ anger with the political system.

“Ultimately, folks are really tired of the party failing to meaningfully represent the values and policies that are extremely popular with our base,” she said. “And we’re looking for leaders that are unbought and unafraid to stand up to a lot of these corporations and special interests that have gotten us into this mess in the first place.”

While Kiros has netted the endorsement of progressive stalwart Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and some left-leaning groups, the race does not break down evenly along ideological fault lines. DeGette is a leading member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who has led Democratic messaging on abortion rights and served as a House impeachment manager during President Trump’s second impeachment trial.

Unlike some incumbent Democrats facing primaries, she has criticized Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza and voted against additional U.S. military aid to Israel.

“Denver knows I don’t back down. That’s why I’m taking on Donald Trump to protect our reproductive freedom, abolish ICE, and pass Medicare for All. Together we’ll win and deliver on our progressive values,” DeGette said in a statement to ABC News.

In a recent interview with ABC affiliate KMGH-TV, DeGette argued that her time in Congress is an asset to her constituents.

But that long record has also made her a target for frustrated progressives, who sense momentum after democratic socialists Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez defeated establishment-backed Democrats in two New York City primaries – including the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus – last week, with the help of democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“They see Melat as someone who has put up a fight – not just against Republican fascism, but also against the Democratic establishment that has failed voters,” Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, told ABC News.

The group has helped Kiros and her allies knock on tens of thousands of doors and make more than 200,000 calls to potential voters since last week.

DeGette’s record “is very progressive, and she’s not a moderate,” Doug Friednash, an attorney who was chief of staff to former Gov. John Hickenlooper, told ABC News. “A lot of young voters are demanding change … they look at rising health care costs, gas prices, and there’s a view that the establishment hasn’t done enough.”

Outside of Denver, the Democratic establishment faces tests in primaries for governor and Senate.

Hickenlooper, now serving as Colorado’s junior senator, faces progressive state senator Julie Gonzales in the primary.

And Sen. Michael Bennet is locked in a competitive race against Attorney General Phil Weiser to replace outgoing Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

Weiser, who served in the Obama administration and as Colorado’s attorney general since 2019, has positioned himself as the insurgent in the race against Bennet, linking the longtime senator to Washington.

And in Colorado’s 8th district, a battleground seat currently held by a Republican, Democrat Manny Rutinel, a 31-year-old state representative, is vying for the Democratic nomination against former state lawmaker Shannon Bird.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Monday limited law enforcement’s use of sprawling “geofence warrants” that track a suspect using cellphone location data from a broad swath of users, including people with no connection to a crime. 

In a 6-3 decision, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that collection of location data through a geofence warrant implicates the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures — a setback for the federal government, which argued the warrants were a critical law enforcement tool that did not amount to a search at all.

“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information — even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company,” Kagan wrote for the majority. 

Kagan concluded that location data — which she described as “a personal journal of a user’s movements” — resembles other kinds of private materials such as emails, photographs or documents and should be “shielded from the ‘inquisitive eyes’ of the government.”

“Today’s decision follows from the same judicial obligation, to guard against the same risk of undue encroachment. The Fourth Amendment applies, too, when officials tap into Google’s ‘database of physical location information.’ That database is new, but the principle covering it is not: That principle is instead the one our history has given. The Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified governmental intrusion on the privacy of the individual,” Kagan wrote. 

In effect, the ruling requires authorities to obtain a narrowly tailored warrant before examining cellphone data of a broad swath of users in an area.

While the Supreme Court ruled that location data is protected by the Fourth Amendment, the justices did not weigh in on the legality of the search that prompted the legal challenge — instead leaving that issue for the lower courts to reexamine.

The landmark decision stemmed from a case involving a 2019 bank robbery in Virginia. Law enforcement was able to track down the robber using a geofence warrant that included the location data for every cellphone within a 150-meter radius of the robbery.

While Okello Chatrie, the suspect and Supreme Court plaintiff, eventually pleaded guilty to the armed robbery and was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison, his lawyers have argued that the warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights because it allowed law enforcement to “to search first and develop suspicions later.”

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett dissented. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Alito argued the ruling was an “irresponsible escapade” and “destabilizes longstanding Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.”

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(WASHINGTON) — In a ruling with direct bearing on the midterm elections, the Supreme Court on Monday narrowly upheld a Mississippi law allowing tabulation of late-arriving mail-in ballots so long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the 5-4 majority, wrote that federal election statutes — which say nothing about ballot receipt — do not override states’ ability to set their own policies for handling tardy votes by mail. 

“The Framers recognized the difficulty of crafting election laws applicable to every probable change in the situation of the country. So instead of constitutionalizing election law, they decided that a discretionary power over elections needed to be lodged somewhere. Suffice it to say, that power was not lodged in this Court,” Barrett wrote.

The decision is a loss for the Republican Party, which brought the case, and the Trump administration, which has pushed to override state election rules nationwide by imposing strict federal limits on voting by mail.

The president on Monday called the Supreme Court’s decision a “tremendous loss” and again called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, his signature election and voting reforms legislation.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said there aren’t enough Republican votes for it to pass.

The 29 states that currently accept some timely cast but late-arriving mail-in ballots — sometimes up to several days after polls have closed — will be able to continue providing a grace period.

In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, wrote that the decision flouts the meaning of “election day” as set forth in federal law.

“Not only is today’s decision inconsistent with statutory text, legal context, historical practice, and precedent; it also threatens to produce lamentable consequences,” Alito wrote. “The majority’s holding spawns a slurry of troubling election-law questions and risks further undermining Americans’ confidence in election integrity.”

The outcome is a win for Mississippi, which had defended its policy of accepting ballots up to five days after voting had ended, and voting rights advocates who had argued that decades of legal precedent supported the primary authority of states to run their own elections. 

Voters heavily reliant on the U.S. Postal Service, such as rural, overseas and disabled voters, had feared a higher risk of having ballots rejected if delivery is delayed, election watchdog groups said.

Lateness is the primary reason mail ballots are rejected nationwide, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

During the 2024 election, 28 million mail ballots were cast in the 14 states with postmark deadlines and grace periods, according to EAC. Roughly 725,000 were not counted because they were late. 

The Supreme Court ruling comes as Trump has pushed aggressively to increase federal oversight of mail-in voting. 

A Trump executive order signed in March 2026 would require states to submit approved voter lists to the U.S. Postal Service, which in turn would be tasked with ensuring ballots are only delivered to eligible residents. 

Last week, Federal District Court Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts put the order on hold, writing in her decision, “The Constitution reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone. Neither the Executive Branch nor Congress may interfere with this power.”

The Postal Service has not yet implemented a proposed policy change to comply with Trump’s order, but a top USPS official confirmed to Congress that his agency would refuse to deliver ballots unless states turn over lists of voters. 

“No law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS. The voting-related guidance currently issued by USPS is not binding on the States, merely recommended,” Talwani’s ruling said. 

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court has blocked for now President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Lisa Cook, over allegation of gross negligence and without any formal opportunity for her to answer the claims.

The decision means Cook, a Democratic appointee who has 10 years left on her 14-year term, will retain her position. She is the first Black woman to serve on the central bank’s advisory committee.

While the Court has recognized expansive power of a president over executive branch agencies, it has appeared to draw a line at the Fed, which has a long history of independence from direct White House interference.

Federal law allows presidents to remove a Fed governor, but only for cause.  The heart of Trump’s appeal before the high court involved what constitutes “cause;” who gets to decide that; and, what due process may be owed.

The president had asserted unchecked power, insisting allegations of mortgage fraud against Cook – raised by a member of Trump’s administration, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte – were sufficient basis alone for her removal.

Trump has claimed Cook illegally filed a mortgage application for a second home as a “primary” residence in an effort to secure more favorable loan terms, at the very least creating an impression of impropriety. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation.

Cook, who refused to resign and has not been charge with a crime, insists through her attorneys that relying on “one stray reference” in a 2021 mortgage document amounts to pretext for a politically-motivated effort to manipulate the Fed’s policy board.

The case was being examined by the court in a very preliminary posture, focusing primarily on Trump’s request to stay a lower court order that Cook be allowed to remain on the job as litigation continues. No lower court has thoroughly considered the legal or constitutional issues connected to the dispute.

The court’s decision is widely seen as a victory for the independence of the Federal Reserve – at least in the near term – in the face of Trump’s extraordinary effort to influence the central bank.  

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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