Democrats urged the Wisconsin Supreme Court to overturn Republican-drawn legislative maps Tuesday, with conservative justices questioning the timing of the redistricting challenge, while liberals focused on the constitutionality of the current maps and what the process should be for adopting new ones.

The fight comes ahead of the 2024 election in a battleground state where four of the six past presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes, and Republicans have built large majorities in the Legislature under maps they drew over a decade ago.

The lawsuit was brought by Democratic voters the day after the court flipped to majority 4-3 liberal control in August. They want all 132 state lawmakers to stand for election under new, more favorable maps in 2024.

Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley most aggressively questioned the motives of Democrats and repeatedly referenced newly elected liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz saying during her campaign that the current maps are “rigged.”

“Everybody knows that the reason we’re here is because there was a change in the membership of the court,” Bradley said.

Attorney Mark Gaber, from the Campaign Legal Center, said the timing of the lawsuit had nothing to do with the election result. He said the challenge over whether the districts are unconstitutionally not contiguous would have been filed, regardless of the makeup of the court.

“I don’t see that as a partisan issue,” Gaber said.

Taylor Meehan, attorney for the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature, said the lawsuit was meritless, brought too late, and that Democrats only filed it because control of the court flipped.

The ad sounds like something out of the GOP 2024 playbook, trumpeting a senator’s work with Republicans to crack down on the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the U.S., getting tough on Chinese interests helping smugglers, and noting how he “wrote a bill signed by Donald Trump to increase funding for Border Patrol.”

It’s actually a commercial for Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat facing a tough reelection fight that will help decide control of the Senate.

“Ohioans trust Sherrod Brown to keep us safe,” says the narrator of the ad, sponsored by the Democrat-aligned Duty and Country PAC. His campaign declined to comment.

The message is one more indication of the political and security challenges the U.S.-Mexico border has presented for President Joe Biden. Some Democrats across the country are distancing themselves from the White House, and polls indicate widespread frustration with Biden’s handling of immigration and the border, creating a major liability for the president’s re-election next year.

The Biden administration this week took two actions seen by many as moving to the right on immigration.

The Department of Homeland Security waived environmental and other reviews to construct new portions of a border wall in South Texas after Biden pledged during the 2020 campaign that he would build “not another foot” of wall. And U.S. officials said they would resume deportations to Venezuela not long after the administration increased protected status for thousands of people from the country.

Both moves inflamed conservatives and liberals alike. Many Republicans accused Biden of being too late to adopt former President Donald Trump’s ideas on a border wall, while liberals who oppose additional border restrictions accused the White House of betraying campaign pledges.

“My frustration has been that we are not addressing immigration in a holistic way as a country. We are depending on the president alone,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, a Democrat who represents the border city of El Paso and is a national co-chair of the Biden re-election campaign. “We are treating people from different nationalities in a different way. And the pathways that have been created are being challenged in court consistently.”

Biden has said his administration moved forward with the border wall because it was required by Congress during the Trump administration, even though he considers it ineffective. His reelection campaign pointed to Trump’s record at the border, including his administration’s practice of separating immigrant families as a deterrence measure and the temporary detention of children in warehouses in chain-link cells.

“MAGA Republicans are running on the legacy of Donald Trump’s playbook of family separation, caging kids, and shouting ‘border!’ without any serious solutions,” said Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Biden’s reelection campaign, referring to supporters of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

Border crossings hit two-decade highs under Trump but fell during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with immigration authorities expelling most border crossers using public health authority known as Title 42.

Upon taking office, Biden paused border wall construction and canceled the Trump administration’s “ Remain in Mexico ” program, but kept expelling many people under Title 42 until this past May.

Still, border crossings are now skyrocketing, which some observers blame on his administration for creating the perception that the border was open. The White House counters that migration has surged across the Western Hemisphere due to regional challenges out of the administration’s control.

The chairman of a Senate investigations subcommittee issued a subpoena Wednesday for documents on Saudi Arabia’s new golf partnership with the PGA Tour, saying the kingdom had to be more transparent about what he said was its $35 billion in investments in the United States.

The move is the latest to challenge Saudi Arabia’s assertion that as a foreign government that enjoys sovereign immunity from many U.S. laws, it is not obliged to provide information on the golf deal.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s subpoena comes after the Connecticut Democrat’s unsuccessful requests to the head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Yassir al Rumayyan, to testify before Blumenthal’s Senate permanent select investigations subcommittee about the Saudi-PGA golf deal.

The surprise deal, which would join the venerable PGA Tour and a rival Saudi-funded golf start-up, LIV, was announced in June. It overnight gave the Saudi government a major role in one of the main institutions of U.S. sport. Terms of the agreement are still being worked out.

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, called the Public Investment Fund, or PIF, is controlled by the Saudi government.

“The Saudi’s Public Investment Fund cannot have it both ways: If it wants to engage with the United States commercially, it must be subject to United States law and oversight,” Blumenthal said at a hearing by his subcommittee on Wednesday.

The Saudi Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the subpoena, which names the Public Investment Fund’s New York-based U.S. subsidiary, USSA International.

This summer’s announcement of the PGA-Saudi golf deal ended a legal battle between the two rivals. As part of that court fight, a federal judge in San Francisco had ruled that Saudi officials would have to sit for depositions and produce documents. Exemptions for commercial activity meant the Saudi claim of sovereign immunity did not apply, the judge said in the ruling, which the Saudis had been fighting at the time the deal was reached.

Some central Florida lawmakers said they were considering “all legislative, legal and executive options available” to stop business owners in a small town from voluntarily displaying rainbow decals in their windows indicating that they are “safe place” for LGBTQ+ people who feel threatened.

Four Republican lawmakers wrote a letter to officials in Mount Dora two weeks ago warning that the new, optional city-sponsored program could put the central Florida community outside Orlando “in the crosshairs of potentially detrimental and absolutely unnecessary economic harm.”

The lawmakers cited boycotts of Bud Light and Target, which followed the brands’ efforts to promote diversity and inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community.

Mount Dora’s city council approved the Safe Place Initiative last month. The city of 17,000 residents is known for its antique shops and weekend festivals.

“The mission of the Safe Place Initiative is to provide the community with easily accessible safety information and safe places throughout the city they can turn to if they are the victims of an anti-LGBTQ+ or other hate crimes,” the city of Mount Dora said on its website.

Safe Place programs are visible throughout metro Orlando — as well as throughout the U.S. — including ones sponsored by the Orlando Police Department, Orange County Sheriff’s Office and Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, all in central Florida.

The council’s decision to approve the program has coincided with an uptick in anti-LGBTQ+ incidents, including vandalism last month at two LGBTQ+ centers in Orlando.

Democratic state lawmaker Anna Eskamani posted the Republican lawmakers’ letter on social media, saying it “might be the weirdest letter I’ve ever read.”

“Let LGBTQ+ (people) exist and stop politicizing everything!” wrote Eskamani, whose district is in Orlando. “So much manufactured panic from the right. Meanwhile families can’t even afford to live in Florida. Focus on that instead.”

In May, the Humans Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ rights organization in the U.S., joined other civil rights organizations in issuing a travel advisory for Florida, warning that newly passed laws and policies may pose risks to minorities, immigrants and gay travelers.

Vice President Kamala Harris said extremists want to “replace history with lies” as she traveled to Florida on Friday to assail Republican efforts to overhaul educational standards, plunging into a battle over schooling that has rippled through classrooms around the country.

“They dare to push propaganda to our children,” she said in Jacksonville. “This is the United States of America. We’re not supposed to do that.”

Her trip came two days after the Florida Board of Education approved a revised Black history curriculum to satisfy legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate who has accused public schools of liberal indoctrination. The new standards include instruction that enslaved people benefited from skills that they learned.

Vice President Kamala Harris said extremists want to “replace history with lies” as she traveled to Florida on Friday to assail Republican efforts to overhaul educational standards, plunging into a battle over schooling that has rippled through classrooms around the country.

“They dare to push propaganda to our children,” she said in Jacksonville. “This is the United States of America. We’re not supposed to do that.”

Her trip came two days after the Florida Board of Education approved a revised Black history curriculum to satisfy legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate who has accused public schools of liberal indoctrination. The new standards include instruction that enslaved people benefited from skills that they learned.

Harris, the first Black person to serve as vice president, spoke from the Ritz Theater and Museum, located in a historically African American neighborhood of Jacksonville.

She described “true patriotism” as “fighting for a nation that will be better for each generation to come,” and she said schools would better prepare students for the world if they don’t gloss over historical crimes.

President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that his administration will extend a pause on federal student loan payments while the White House fights a legal battle to save his plan to cancel portions of the debt.

“It isn’t fair to ask tens of millions of borrowers eligible for relief to resume their student debt payments while the courts consider the lawsuit,” Biden said in a video posted on Twitter.

The moratorium was slated to expire Jan. 1, a date that Biden set before his debt cancellation plan stalled in the face of legal challenges from conservative opponents.

Now it will extend until 60 days after the lawsuit is resolved. If the lawsuit has not been resolved by June 30, payments would resume 60 days after that.

Biden’s plan promises $10,000 in federal student debt forgiveness to those with incomes of less than $125,000, or households earning less than $250,000. Pell Grant recipients, who typically demonstrate more financial need, are eligible for an additional $10,000 in relief.

More than 26 million people already applied for the relief, with 16 million approved, but the Education Department stopped processing applications this month after a federal judge in Texas struck down the plan.

The Justice Department last week asked the Supreme Court to examine the issue and reinstate Biden’s debt cancellation plan. By extending the pause, the administration says it’s giving the court a chance to resolve the case in its current term.

Even before Republican legislators this summer made Indiana the first state to pass an abortion ban since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats started urging angry voters to take their revenge at the ballot box.

Indiana Democrats haven’t let up on that push in the final days of this year’s elections, although a limited number of competitive races on the Nov. 8 ballot for the currently Republican-dominated Legislature leave them with slim chances of being able to do much about abortion access that is also being debated during campaigns across the country.

Indiana Republicans, meanwhile, argue that voters are more worried about other issues such as inflation and crime — concerns widely believed to favor the GOP.

Democratic candidate Joey Mayer said the abortion ban has remained a top issue as she’s talked with voters in a northern Indianapolis suburban district where she’s challenging a four-term Republican House member who voted in favor of the ban when it passed in August.