Yurii Tynnyi/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Russia carried out a massive aerial attack across central and eastern Ukraine overnight, killing at least four people and injuring 26 others, according to Ukrainian authorities.
The Ukrainian Air Force said in a Telegram post Saturday morning that Russia overnight had launched 503 projectiles — 458 drones and 45 missiles — of which 415 were shot down while the remaining 78 struck 25 different locations across Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post Saturday morning that the targets of the latest Russian strikes “remain the same: ordinary life, residential buildings, our energy system, and infrastructure.”
The city of Dnipro was hit hard, with three people killed and another 11 injured there, according to the regional military administration, which said children were among the casualties. A drone struck an apartment building in the city. Three more were injured in the nearby Samarskyi district of the wider Dnipropetrovsk region, authorities said.
In the Kharkiv region, at least one person was killed in the village of Rokytne; eight others were injured in the suburbs of Kharkiv city; one person was injured in nearby Chuhuiv; and another was injured in the village of Hrushivka, according to the regional military administration. The mayor of Kharkiv said in a Telegram post Saturday morning that the city is facing a significant electricity shortage.
Additionally, one person was injured in the Poltava region and another person was injured in the neighboring Kyiv region, according to the respective regional military administrations. The strikes on the Poltava region targeted energy infrastructure facilities, cutting off electricity, water and heating to some communities, authorities said.
The Russian strikes mark the ninth large-scale attack on Ukraine’s gas infrastructure since the start of October, according to Ukrainian state-run energy firm Naftogaz, which in a Telegram post Saturday morning accused Russian of deliberately “targeting enterprises that provide Ukrainians with gas and heat” during the winter months.
The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed in a Telegram post Saturday morning that it had targeted Ukrainian military and energy infrastructure in an overnight attack. The “massive strike” was carried out in response to “Ukraine’s terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Russia,” according to the Russian defense ministry.
(GRAND CANYON, Ariz) — A 65-year-old man died after slipping off the edge of the Grand Canyon and falling more than 100 feet, authorities in Arizona said.
The incident occurred at Guano Point on the canyon’s western rim on the Hualapai Reservation, according to the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office said it responded to assist the Hualapai Nation in a technical recovery Thursday afternoon.
A search and rescue crew located the man approximately 130 feet down into the canyon on a pile of rock fragments, according to the sheriff’s office.
Technical rope technicians used ropes to recover the body, which was then transported to the Mohave County Medical Examiner’s Office, authorities said.
The Hualapai Nation Police Department, Hualapai Nation Fire and Grand Canyon West security also assisted in the recovery, the sheriff’s office said.
The name of the man was not released.
Guano Point is known for its dramatic viewpoints of the Grand Canyon from the western rim.
ABC News has reached out to Grand Canyon Resort Corporation, which manages the Grand Canyon West area, for comment.
(PORTLAND, Ore.) — A federal judge ruled on Friday that Donald Trump “exceeded the President’s authority” when he sent federalized National Guard troops into Portland.
In a 106-decision, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut made permanent an order she issued last month blocking the deployment into the city.
“The evidence demonstrates that these deployments, which were objected to by Oregon’s governor and not requested by the federal officials in charge of protection of the ICE building, exceeded the president’s authority,” the judge wrote.
After a three-day trial, Immergut rejected the Trump administration’s argument that immigration-related protests amounted to rebellion or danger of a rebellion — the standard needed to justify a federal takeover of the National Guard.
“When considering these conditions that persisted for months before the President’s federalization of the National Guard, this Court concludes that even giving great deference to the President’s determination, the President did not have a lawful basis to federalize the National Guard” she wrote.
With Trump threatening to send the National Guard into Democratic-run cities across the country, Immergut acknowledged the magnitude of the issue in her order, writing the legal issue was bound for a higher court.
“The ‘precise standard’ to demarcate the line past which conditions would satisfy the statutory standard to deploy the military in the streets of American cities is ultimately a question for a higher court to decide,” she wrote.
In late September, Trump issued an order federalizing 200 members of the Oregon National Guard to protect federal property amid ongoing protests at a Portland ICE facility, despite objections from local officials.
The city of Portland and state of Oregon sued.
Around the same time, Trump sought to deploy Guard troops to Chicago — a move that was similarly opposed by local officials and blocked by the courts.
(WASHINGTON) President Donald Trump welcomed Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orban to the White House on Friday, praising him repeatedly as a “great leader” as met sat to discuss trade and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“I like and respect him,” Trump said as he and Orban sat for lunch with their teams in the Cabinet Room, specifically applauding Orban’s views on immigration and crime.
Orban in turn celebrated what he said will be a “golden age between the United States and Hungary” with Trump’s return to office.
Orban is in Washington seeking an exemption to new U.S. sanctions targeting Russia’s largest oil companies and their subsidiaries that will go into effect later this month.
President Trump was asked if he would grant Hungary’s request.
“We’re looking at it because it’s very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas,” Trump replied, expressing sympathy for Hungary’s geographic reliance on Russia for energy resources.
“It’s a big country. But they don’t have sea. They don’t have the ports. And so they have a difficult problem,” Trump said before turning to criticize European countries he said don’t have that issue but continue to buy Russian oil.
Orban called the issue “vital” for Hungarians.
Orban was recently going to play host to a summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, before Trump called the proposed meeting off amid frustration with the lack of progress in peace talks.
Trump said they had picked Budapest, Hungary, as the location because both he and Putin liked Orban.
On Friday, Trump reiterated that if he and Putin were to meet, he would like to do it in Budapest. Trump said he and Orban would be discussing a potential summit with Putin.
“We were talking about that with Viktor, he understands Putin and knows him very well,” Trump said, adding: “I think that Viktor feels we’re going to get that war ended in the not too distant future.”
As Orban gave his view on the war, Trump turned to him and asked, “So you would say that Ukraine cannot win that war?”
“You know, a miracle can happen,” Orban replied.
Trump previously welcomed Orban to the White House during his first term, in 2019, breaking from his predecessors who had shunned Hungary’s prime minister from Washington.
The two men met several times when Trump was out of office at his Florida estate, including during the summer of the 2024 campaign and after Trump became president-elect.
Orban has been embraced by many prominent American conservatives over his positions on immigration and LGBTQ issues, and has spoken several times at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Orban hosted a CPAC event in Hungary earlier this year.
Trump on Friday said it was an “honor to have a friend of mine here” at the White House.
“He’s done a fantastic job. He’s a very powerful man within his country … He’s run a really great country, and he’s got no crime, he’s got no problems, like some countries do,” Trump said.
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from removing Diana Patricia Santillana Galeano from the United States and transferring her to any federal jurisdiction outside of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, court documents show.
Santillana, 38, was detained at a day care center in Chicago earlier this week. Judge Jeremy C. Daniel has scheduled a hearing in her case on Nov. 13.
Santillana is currently detained at an ICE facility in Clark County, Indiana, her attorney, Charlie Wysong, said in a statement.
(NEW YORK) — Cornell University reached an agreement with the Trump administration to “immediately restore” its frozen federal funding after months-long negotiations over alleged civil rights violations, the school announced on Friday.
The multimillion-dollar agreement will be paid out over three years. Cornell agreed to invest $30 million into U.S. agriculture research and another $30 million will go directly to the federal government “as a condition for ending pending claims that have been brought against the university,” the school said.
This is the administration’s latest settlement with Ivy League institutions over alleged violations, following massive deals with the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Brown in recent months.
Similar to the other university leaders, Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff maintained that it had not done any wrongdoing or broken federal civil rights laws.
The administration halted federal funding to Cornell in April along with Northwestern University and many other Ivy League schools in its quest to root out so-called unlawful DEI practices. Cornell said it has been subject to more than $250 million in federal funding interruptions, which have disrupted the research of faculty and students across all campuses.
President Kotlikoff explained that the agreement is taking place after “good faith” discussions with the administration, which enabled the school to return to its education and research practices in partnership with the federal government.
In a statement to the Cornell community, Kotlikoff noted “the agreement explicitly recognizes Cornell’s right to independently establish our policies and procedures, choose whom to hire and admit, and determine what we teach, without intrusive government monitoring or approvals.”
“In short, it recognizes our rights, as a private university, to define the conditions on our campuses that advance learning and produce new knowledge,” the statement added.
Kotlikoff will also certify compliance with the agreement on a regular basis and provide anonymized admissions data while continuing to conduct campus climate surveys and carry out foreign gift and contract reporting, according to the statement.
In a post on X, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon applauded the latest deal as a “transformative commitment” to restore merit and end DEI policies on college campuses.
“These reforms are a huge win in the fight to restore excellence to American higher education and make our schools the greatest in the world,” McMahon wrote.
(WASHINGTON) — With almost a year as vice president — and one year until the midterm elections, JD Vance’s supporters say he is settling into his role in the Trump administration, being used as the president’s “fixer” and “enforcer,” a source familiar with their relationship told ABC News.
“Vance really has been an enforcer and fixer for the president and his administration, and he’s been able to do it on a wide variety of topics,” the source, someone familiar with the relationship between Vance and Trump, said. “Unlike past vice presidents who demanded a specific policy portfolio, Vance never did that, which allows the president to put JD in the game whenever he sees a need for him to be put in the game.”
This has allowed Trump to dispatch Vance to advance his agenda, the source said.
“I think that dynamic has benefited the president, the vice president and the entire administration,” the source added, saying trust between the two — and others in the administration with whom Vance has forged relationships for years — has led to Vance’s role.
Vance’s role in the Trump White House has sharpened as the 2026 midterm elections approach and his name has been floated as a possible 2028 presidential candidate — even by Trump himself.
Proponents of Vance say his role as the “enforcer” and “fixer” was on display last summer as the White House worked to push Trump’s massive tax and spending bill through Congress.
In the days leading up to the bill’s passage, Vance — who served as a senator from Ohio before becoming vice president — held a series of meetings with conservative and moderate holdouts and with Senate leadership to help move the bill forward.
“He was a big part of getting it across the finish line and then promoting it afterwards,” a former White House official told ABC News about Trump’s megabill.
When asked by ABC News how they view Vance’s role in the administration, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in a statement that Vance is Trump’s “trusted partner” who has helped deliver on Trump’s agenda.
“Vice President Vance is a trusted partner to President Trump and has played a critical role in helping the President keep all of the promises he made to the American people including delivering the largest tax cut in history for middle and working class Americans, securing the border, and putting American workers first,” Huston said.
Vance also took the lead in facilitating the TikTok framework that would transfer majority ownership of the app to Americans, but the deal has not been fully solidified. Vance was heavily involved in developing a strategy to reach the TikTok framework leading up to the U.S.-China summit in Madrid, where officials discussed the matter and joined Trump in the Oval Office when he signed the executive order on the framework.
A critical moment for Vance during this past year was his angry exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office where he chastised the world leader for not being thankful for the support the U.S. has provided to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
“Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media,” Vance said to Zelenskyy in February. “Right now, you guys are going around enforcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”
The eyebrow-raising exchange underscored Vance’s willingness to publicly defend Trump and the lengths he would go to do so. But Trump appeared to shut down Vance in the meeting: “But you see, I think it’s good for the American people to see what’s going on. I think it’s very important,” Trump said.
Vance and Trump have not always been aligned. In March of this past year, Vance showed a rare instance of appearing to break with Trump in a Signal group chat with other top US officials and questioned whether the president recognized that a unilateral U.S. attack on the Houthis to keep international shipping lanes open was at odds with his tough talk about European nations paying their share of such efforts.
Still, Vance’s skills as a communicator have been useful for the administration — especially during the ongoing government shutdown, the former White House officials said.
“I would say one thing there that sort of ties to where he’s been in general as a help in the administration, is that he’s a very good communicator, and like you saw when he took the podium at the beginning of the shutdown to talk about, you know, the White House’s position on it,” the official said.
Joel Goldstein, a vice-presidential scholar and former professor at Saint Louis University Law School, told ABC News that Vance follows the footprint of vice presidents as an administration spokesperson — but takes it even further.
“Vice presidents are generally spokespersons for the administration they serve, but Vice President Vance seems unusually active in this regard, including on social media, and more confrontational than most recent vice presidents in some of his rhetoric against political opponents and the discourse he uses or doesn’t rebuke,” Goldstein said. “He has also performed in visible diplomatic roles as have his predecessors, but has often been more confrontational towards traditional allies as he was at the Munich Security Summit and in the Oval Office meeting with Zelenskyy.”
Republican political operatives said Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference was a breakout moment as vice president.
In February, Vance delivered a stinging message to European allies, saying that the biggest threat to Europe did not come from Russia or China, but from within Europe itself, and that he was concerned Europe was moving toward censorship and away from democracy.
Vance added another title under his portfolio when he became the Republican National Committee finance chair, a key fundraising role in the organization and the first time a sitting vice president has held the position.
In a statement to ABC News, RNC press secretary Kiersten Pels said that Vance will be critical for the national party heading into next year’s midterms — calling Vance a “fundraising powerhouse for the RNC.”
Vance has also been involved in trying to maintain Republicans’ slim majority in the House ahead of next year’s midterm elections. In August, Vance traveled to Indiana, where he made the pitch to Republican lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional map.
With a year until the midterm election, a source close to the vice president said Vance will be involved.
“I think you can probably expect, as we get closer to midterms, for the vice president to be a regular presence on the campaign trail for Trump-endorsed candidates across the country,” the source said.
Next year’s election will also be critical for Vance as he’s viewed as a possible 2028 candidate and someone who could take on the mantle of leading the MAGA movement once Trump leaves office.
In a recent interview with Pod Force One, Vance shared that during a private lunch at the White House six months ago, Trump floated the idea of him and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the Republican ticket in 2028.
“It feels so premature, because we’re still so early. And what I always say to people is, if we take care of business, the politics will take care of itself,” Vance said to podcast host Miranda Devine.
Trump himself recently said Vance and Rubio would be “great” options as 2028 presidential candidates.
“I’m not sure if anybody would run against those two,” Trump said on Oct. 27 of Vance and Rubio. “I think if they ever formed a group it would be unstoppable.”
(WASHINGTON) Officials decided to gradually increase air travel reductions to 10% after the safety team determined it would be the safest approach, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters at Reagan National Airport.
Major airlines say they are planning to cancel hundreds of flights on Friday — out of thousands of daily flights — as the Federal Aviation Administration is set to begin limiting flight capacity at 40 major U.S. airports amid the government shutdown.
If the government shutdown continues, more air travel reductions could be on the way, Duffy said.
“I want it to be fixed, but also I have to continue to look at data and if this continues, and I have more [air traffic] controllers who decide they can’t come to work and control the airspace, but instead have to take a second job, with that you might see 10% would have been a good number, because we might go to 15% or 20%,” Duffy said.
This could likely cost airlines tens of millions of dollars, Duffy said.
The initial plan called for a 10% reduction starting Friday, but officials chose to gradually increase the reductions for safety, Duffy said.
Loss of separation — the minimum distance kept between aircrafts to keep them safe — in the airspace and complaints from pilots about stress from air traffic controllers are among the data points that led to the decision to reduce air travel, Duffy said.
“We’ve seen more breaches in regard to that loss of separation, we see more incursions on tarmac throughout the country, and we have more complaints from pilots about stress from air traffic controllers, and more complaints about the lack of responsiveness from controllers,” Duffy said.
“That data is going in the wrong direction, not in the right direction, which made us make the decision we have to actually take additional measures to reduce the pressure in our system,” Duffy said.
As of 2:30 a.m. ET on Friday morning, at least 814 flights within, into or out of the United States have been cancelled so far, per FlightAware
American Airlines said Thursday it will cancel about 220 of its roughly 6,000 departures starting Friday and lasting through this weekend.
United Airlines said in a statement it plans to cancel less than 200 of its more than 5,000 flights each day through the weekend. The airline has listed the flight cancellations on a special website along with other information for travelers.
A company spokesperson told ABC News that about half of customers who had their flights canceled were able to be rebooked within 4 hours of their original departure time.
Delta Airlines said it planned to cancel about 170 daily flights.
American, United and Delta — the three largest airlines in the U.S. — all have said they believe they will be able to accommodate most of the impacted passengers on other flights.
The cancellations are the latest — and perhaps biggest — disruption to air travel since the government shutdown began more than a month ago.
The FAA decided not to cut any international flights as it would be a violation of international agreements with the countries, according to Duffy.
“We have international agreements that we abide by, and because of those international agreements, I’m not going to impact those international flights. And because if I do, what will happen is we have other countries that are waiting to have a breach of those contracts from the US so they can cut down American flights, and then that would have a very long lasting impact on our ability to to to send travelers from the U.S. to those partners that have the agreements,” Duffy said.
Duffy said he has spoken to President Donald Trump about the flight reduction decision and that the White House is “fully read in” on it.
“The White House also looks to the safety team to help us make the right decisions to do the best we can to keep people safe. But there’s an easy answer. There’s an easy answer, open up the government, stop this,” Duffy said.
What travelers are saying Travelers began to be notified of the canceled flights on Thursday.
Caitlin Ladner, in Wisconsin, said she had planned to fly to Raleigh, North Carolina, on a Friday for a trip to surprise her parents with her sister but got a notice about her canceled flight on the United app.
“We’ve been planning it for a while …. It’s pretty upsetting,” she told ABC News.
Despite an offer to reschedule her flight, she said she decided to cancel it altogether.
“I don’t know when all this is going to end,” she said.
Meanwhile, other travelers across the country on Thursday were bracing for delays — and trying to make it home before the cancellations started.
At Reagan National Airport, just outside Washington, D.C., Frederick Ross, from Fort Myers, Florida, told ABC News the current travel headaches have him rethinking his upcoming holiday travel plans.
“It’s a big factor to have to possibly deal with delays and cancellations, and talking about traveling with the whole family, it’s easier to just take a road trip,” he said.
FAA order limits flights The FAA said earlier this week it was reducing flight capacity at 40 major airports across the country to alleviate staffing pressures. The reductions this weekend are starting out at 4% but will eventually climb to 10%, federal officials said.
Under an emergency order issued by the FAA on Thursday, airlines are required to reduce operations at the 40 “high-impact airports” by 6% by Nov. 11 and by 10% by Nov. 14. Any airline that does not comply will be fined $75,000 per flight over the limit, according to the FAA order.
That announcement came after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said earlier that the FAA would be forced to shut down the airspace in some areas if the shutdown continues into next week, warning of “mass chaos.”
Staffing shortages among air traffic controllers has been an ongoing concern and there have been scattered flight delays and cancellations over the past several weeks, as the shutdown has stretched on.
Last weekend, a surge in callouts among air traffic controllers led to strained staffing at multiple airports across the U.S. — including in the New York City area where 80% of controllers were absent at one point, the FAA reported.
Air traffic controllers, who are required to work without pay for the duration of the shutdown, are credited with helping end the most recent shutdown in 2019, when a series of absences delayed flights and heightened pressure on members of Congress.
The precise impact the flight cancellations will have on overall air travel is unclear.
“We’re not in the peak of summer, we’re not over a holiday period. So we feel confident that we have enough seats in these markets to accommodate all travelers,” United’s chief customer officer, David Kinzelman, told ABC News.
“There will not be chaos over the weekend,” he said, likening the impact of the reductions to a “medium-sized storm.”
He added, “We are going to cancel flights that we think have the least amount of disruption for customers. If you’re in a market with only two small regional flights and you cancel one or both of them, that’s a huge impact to that market. We want to avoid that. And so what we’re doing is really spreading it around the system.”
ABC News’ Ayesha Ali, Sam Sweeney and Rachel Scott contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) The United States has conducted its 17th lethal strike against a suspected drug vessel, killing all three on board, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on X overnight.
The strike took place in international waters in the Caribbean on Thursday, Hegseth said.
“As we’ve said before, vessel strikes on narco-terrorists will continue until their the poisoning of the American people stops,” said Hegseth in his social media post. “The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean and was struck in international waters. No U.S. forces were harmed in the strike, and three male narco-terrorists — who were aboard the vessel — were killed.”
Separately, six individuals were arrested and more than seven tons of cocaine were seized in the Atlantic Ocean “without fatalities,” Colombia President Gustavo Petro said in a post on X Friday morning.
Petro called it “one of the largest seizure days in my government, with the collaboration of our public security forces and the French authorities.”
The seizures were carried out on land and at sea, according to Petro. The nationalities of those arrested are unknown, Petro said.
President Donald Trump has called Petro an “illegal drug dealer” who “does nothing to stop” drug production.
At least 70 people have now been killed in strikes on vessels since Sept. 2.
On Sunday, the Trump administration gave more than a dozen Senate Republicans a secret target list for its ongoing military campaign in the Caribbean Sea, suggesting it is preparing for sustained operations against drug cartels and that it believed the military strikes could withstand potential legal challenges.
“To all narco-terrorists who threaten our homeland: if you want to stay alive, stop trafficking drugs. If you keep trafficking deadly drugs — we will kill you,” said Hegseth.
(WASHINGTON) The Supreme Court on Friday will consider whether to take up the appeal of former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who has directly asked the justices to overturn the landmark 2015 decision that extended marriage rights to same-sex couples nationwide.
Davis gained international attention after she refused to issue a marriage license to a gay couple on religious grounds in open defiance of the high court’s ruling and was subsequently jailed for six days. A jury later awarded the couple $100,000 for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees.
In a petition for writ of certiorari filed in August, Davis argues First Amendment protection for free exercise of religion immunizes her from personal liability for the denial of marriage licenses.
She also claims the court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges — which rooted marriage rights for LGBTQ couples in the 14th Amendment’s due process protections — was “legal fiction.”
“The mistake must be corrected,” wrote Davis’ attorney Mathew Staver in the petition.
“If there ever was a case of exceptional importance,” Staver wrote, “the first individual in the Republic’s history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it.”
Davis’ petition will be discussed during the court’s weekly private conference when justices cast secret votes on which cases to accept for argument.
Four must agree in order for a case to be heard. The court typically releases outcomes from the conference on the following Monday.
The Davis petition appears to mark the first time since 2015 that the court has been formally asked to overturn the landmark marriage decision. Davis is seen as one of the only Americans currently with legal standing to bring a challenge to the precedent.
An attorney for David Ermold and David Moore, the gay couple to which Davis’ owes damages, told the justices in a court filing that the former clerk does not make a convincing case that warrants being heard.
“Because Davis’s policy went beyond anything she arguably had a right to do, her First Amendment affirmative defense would fail even if such defenses are available to government officials engaged in state action,’ wrote attorney William Powell.
Davis, as the Rowan County Clerk in 2015, was the sole authority tasked with issuing marriage licenses on behalf of the government under state law.
“This is a relatively easy case that does not merit this Court’s review,” he wrote.
Lower courts have dismissed Davis’ claims and most legal experts consider her bid a long shot.
“Not a single judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals showed any interest in Davis’s rehearing petition, and we are confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis’s arguments do not merit further attention,” said Powell said in a statement to ABC News.
Davis’ appeal to the Supreme Court comes as conservative opponents of marriage rights for same-sex couples pursue a renewed campaign to reverse legal precedent and allow each state to set its own policy.
At the time Obergefell was decided in 2015, 35 states had statutory or constitutional bans on same-sex marriages, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Only eight states had enacted laws explicitly allowing the unions.
So far in 2025, at least nine states have either introduced legislation aimed at blocking new marriage licenses for LGBTQ people or passed resolutions urging the Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell at the earliest opportunity, according to the advocacy group Lambda Legal.
Last month, Texas courts adopted new rules allowing judges statewide to refuse to perform wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples if it would violate a sincerely held religious belief.
“Without this Court’s review, the First Amendment’s protections for public officials with sincerely held religious beliefs will continue to vary by jurisdiction,” Staver wrote to the justices Wednesday in a last-minute letter . “This case provides a suitable vehicle to establish the clear guidance that lower courts and government officials currently lack.”
Davis first appealed the Supreme Court in 2019 seeking to have the damages suit against her tossed out, but her petition was rejected. Conservative Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito concurred with the decision at the time.
If the court were to accept the Davis case, it is far from certain that a majority of justices would undermine or overturn the Obergefell decision.
Several conservatives, including Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, have publicly signaled that same-sex marriage rights should not be rolled back.
If the ruling were to be overturned at some point in the future, it would not invalidate marriages already performed, legal experts have pointed out. The 2022 Respect for Marriage Act requires the federal government and all states to recognize legal marriages of same-sex and interracial couples performed in any state — even if there is a future change in the law.
There are an estimated 823,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S., including 591,000 that wed after the Supreme Court decision in June 2015, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School. Nearly one in five of those married couples is parenting a child under 18.
