Kari Lake hasn’t given up the election conspiracy theories.

The Arizona MAGA darling is asking the Supreme Court to revive a lawsuit that seeks to ban electronic voting machines. That lawsuit was filed during Lake’s failed 2022 gubernatorial bid.

Now she’s the frontrunner in the GOP primary for Arizona’s Senate race, and she’s once again stoking doubt about election security and looking to block electronic voting machines from being used. (Electronic voting machines have been used for years across the country; banning them would unleash chaos on elections.)

Lake, a former local TV news anchor, rose to prominence as a 2020 election denier who embraced former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. She has been a frequent litigant attacking Arizona’s elections in court and continues to carry that mantle, even as she has mode overtures to the party’s establishment — and “McCain Republicans” she famously dismissed — during her Senate run.

Lake and Mark Finchem, a fellow election conspiracy theorist who lost the Arizona secretary of state race in the midterms, filed a lawsuit in 2022 that claimed that electronic voting machines were untrustworthy and argued they shouldn’t be used in Arizona. The suit echoed much of Trump’s misinformation about the security of American elections. Trump narrowly lost the state in 2020, and it was one of the focal points of his and his allies’ efforts to try to overturn the results.

The case went disastrously for Lake. It was dismissed in federal court for a lack of standing. Her attorneys were also sanctioned, with a judge writing at the time that he would “not condone litigants … furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust at a time of increasing disinformation about, and distrust in, the democratic process.”

A federal appellate court upheld that dismissal, writing that there are “robust safeguards in Arizona law, the use of paper ballots, and the post-tabulation retention of those ballots” to guard the state’s election system.

Now, Lake is asking the nation’s top court to revive her case, claiming that new evidence will vindicate her. “By turning elections over to black boxes running software outside the public domain, we surrendered the ability to meaningfully verify the election process,” her attorneys write in a filing Thursday.

Lake’s plea to the high court was made on Thursday, according to the petition posted by AZ Law, a website covering the legal landscape in the state. It has yet to be formally docketed by the Supreme Court.

The case also shows that Lake and her allies are laying the groundwork to question the upcoming elections if their legal hail mary is unsuccessful.

“The weakness in voting infrastructure requires resolution before the 2024 election,” her attorneys wrote. “Without resolution, election results in the numerous states with Dominion voting machines — at the very least — cannot be trusted.”

House conservatives chided their leadership on Friday for considering a lengthy stopgap funding patch for the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that it would amount to surrender to Democratic border policies.

Top lawmakers are mulling an extension of funding through September for DHS as part of the six-bill spending package they’re working to finalize over the weekend, since they have struggled to reach a compromise amid partisan disputes over border security and immigration policy, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Clearing a full-year stopgap would not trigger any of the funding cuts or caps some House conservatives have pressured Speaker Mike Johnson to embrace as leverage in negotiations with Democrats. But a stopgap that expires before Sept. 30 would preserve that threat of across-the-board slashing, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) noted Friday.

A short stopgap for DHS “could help us gain leverage on border security,” Lee posted on X, adding that a full-year patch would instead “solidify Biden’s border-security disaster.”

“Secure the border,” Lee wrote. “Or shut it down.”

Roy questioned why GOP leaders are pushing for a spending package that would include “no policy reforms” for DHS, “while radical progressive” Democrats “force this horror on Americans?”

Of the dozen bills that Congress enacts to fund the government, top appropriators and congressional leaders have struggled most acutely to resolve disagreements over the Homeland Security spending measure. While the bill is always the most difficult when it comes to striking a bipartisan deal, lawmakers this time are working with very limited money and competing partisan priorities over border security, personnel and humanitarian needs.

While a stopgap through the remainder of the fiscal year would allow Congress to move forward with finally closing out a chaotic government funding cycle, the DHS spending bill represents the only real opportunity for lawmakers to send money to the southern border and push for improvements.

Democrats see the Republican criticism as hypocrisy, particularly after the implosion of the Senate’s bipartisan border security package last month.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who oversees the Homeland Security spending measure, said Thursday that lawmakers will have to start pivoting to a backup plan for Homeland Security funding “pretty soon.”

“Republicans need to make the decision that they want to get a deal on the border,” he said. “I worry that the same thing is happening on the appropriations bill that happened on the border bill.”

The U.S. should threaten to sink Iranian ships if the Houthis keep attacking American troops in the Red Sea, a Armed Services GOP senator recommended Friday.

In a letter to President Joe Biden, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) argued the Iran-backed, U.S.-designated terrorist group in Yemen has not been deterred from targeting commercial ships, despite numerous U.S. attacks to destroy their capabilities. The only way to stop the Houthis’ assaults, Sullivan wrote: Let Iran know it would face direct consequences for continued violence.

“Tell Iran that the next Houthi missile or drone launched at an American ship will result in the sinking of Iran’s spy ships that target our Navy,” the senator wrote in the letter. “If we ever expect Tehran to call off its terrorist proxies and make deterrence more than a temporary respite, Iran must be made to pay a price.”

Sullivan’s demand comes after a SASC hearing last week where Gen. Erik Kurilla, chief of U.S. Central Command, said Iran was not deterred from assisting Houthi strikes on U.S. military and civilian targets.

“They are not paying the cost,” he said. “There has to be cost in position on Iran.”

Last week, the Houthis struck a commercial vessel, killing three of its crew members. In a separate attack two days later, American forces also shot down 28 drones and missiles. No U.S. or allied vessels were damaged.

Sullivan suggested Kurilla could order attacks to sink Iranian vessels after such an event, since Iran is arming and financing the Houthis. The general said that wasn’t accurate and that Biden would have to issue an order for the operation.

Sullivan asked the CENTCOM commander if he had recommended sinking Iranian ships to Biden. “I provide options ranging everything from cyber to kinetic,” Kurilla answered, “and I also identify the risk of escalation and all of those options.”

Speaker Mike Johnson is planning to hold a vote next month on a stand-alone bill to reauthorize a controversial spy power, he told POLITICO in an interview Thursday.

It appears to be the first time Johnson has specified a timeline for bringing back up a floor vote on a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He’s already had to punt on the legislation two times, given deep divisions within his own ranks, and Republicans acknowledge persistent splits over the issue haven’t faded.

Congress has until April 19 to extend or make changes to the foreign surveillance power, which targets non-citizens outside of the United States but has come under fire because of its ability to sweep in American information.

“The current plan is to run FISA as a standalone the week after Easter,” Johnson said during an interview at the GOP retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. That timing would put a vote the week of April 8, when the House is slated to return from a two-week recess.

That commitment runs contrary to some fears that Johnson might attach a short-term extension of Section 702 to a government funding bill that leaders hope to clear next week. That possibility has caused significant heartburn for privacy hawks, who are hoping to make changes to the current law before reauthorizing.

During the interview, the speaker said his current plan is to stick with legislation that was negotiated by leadership and members of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Under that deal, Republicans on the two committees were expected to get amendment votes on their biggest priorities that weren’t included in the bill. But Johnson pulled the bill after Republicans on the Intelligence Committee threatened to block it from getting to the floor, citing two amendments proposed by privacy hawks. Those sticking points haven’t been resolved.

“The current deliberation is how to handle the two major amendments that are still pending,” Johnson said, referring to the two amendments.

One of those proposals would require a warrant, with some built-in exceptions, before searching the data for any information related to Americans — a higher standard that security advocates argue would neuter the authority. The second amendment would prevent data brokers from selling consumer information to law enforcement.

Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell isn’t ruling out an eventual vote on the House-passed TikTok bill that could eventually ban it from app stores. But she’s still considering possible changes to the text.

Cantwell (D-Wash.) said she hopes to move legislation “soon,” though she indicated she would prefer “more robust” legislation, like her own alternative proposal she unsuccessfully tried to add to a defense bill last year. That legislation would have empowered the Commerce Department to ban foreign-owned apps like TikTok. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has publicly backed that proposal.

“We were trying something a little more robust and long term, but we’ll consider this and hopefully we’ll figure out how to get the American people something that minimizes data collection and protects them,” she told reporters.

“We want something that’s constitutional that could do the job,” Cantwell said. “We haven’t heard from everybody.”

Asked about some of her former aides who are now lobbying on behalf of TikTok, Cantwell laughed: “I didn’t even know that.”

Cantwell indicated she hasn’t yet spoken to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer following the overwhelming bipartisan House vote on the TikTok bill, which would force the Beijing-based ByteDance to either sell it or face a ban from app stores. She also wanted to speak with the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — both of whom have said they support the House bill.

The Senate confirmed Dennis Hankins to become ambassador to Haiti, as the Caribbean nation faces a crisis of gang violence and a vacuum of elected leadership.

The Senate voted 89-1 to confirm Hankins. John Kennedy (R-La.) was the only vote against.

A 38-year U.S. foreign service veteran, Hankins has worked in Sudan and Congo and served as ambassador in Mali and Guinea. He is currently a foreign policy adviser in the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon.

Haiti is viewed as one of the toughest diplomatic postings. Earlier this week, the U.S. dispatched an elite unit of Marines to help secure the U.S. Embassy in Haiti as the country faces a turbulent political transition and widespread violence at the hands of powerful gangs. Nonessential embassy staff were airlifted out of Haiti last weekend.

Biden nominated Hankins back in May 2023 after the embassy had already been without a Senate-confirmed leader for 19 months.

The last ambassador, Michele Sison, ended her tour of duty in October 2021 after three years. And the former Special Envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote resigned in 2021 after disagreement with what he called the Biden administration’s “inhumane” deportation policy on Haiti.

This is the second time in recent months that the Senate has moved to confirm an ambassador as a nation erupted in crisis. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew was confirmed with a tight margin on Oct. 31, weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, West Virginia — The head of the House GOP campaign arm has some advice for Republicans who aren’t sure how to handle Donald Trump in battleground districts: “embrace him.”

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) isn’t personally pressuring anyone to do so, saying in an interview with POLITICO that candidates need to decide how to handle their own individual races. But generally, he said boosting the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee is a winning strategy across districts.

“I was one of the first people that endorsed Trump this cycle, and I’m proud to run with him. I think he’s a net positive everywhere for us. So if somebody asked, I tell them, ‘embrace him, he’s our nominee.’ I mean, he’s wildly popular everywhere right now. He’s winning every battleground state,” Hudson said.

Top GOP leaders, including the House Republican Congressional Committee chair, have been bullish about their chances of retaking the majority at the annual GOP policy conference this week at Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. They’ve cited President Joe Biden’s low polling numbers in battleground states and his struggles to address the influx of migrants at the border.

Hudson declined to say how many seats he predicts Republicans will win, calling such a question a “gotcha” if they fall short — likely remembering the embarrassment former Speaker Kevin McCarthy suffered after estimating the House GOP would win more than 60 seats in 2022, a “red wave” forecast that never materialized.

Both Hudson and Speaker Mike Johnson have so far avoided making any such grand claims, apart from projecting they will retain control of the chamber. Instead, Hudson merely said he thought they’d be fighting Democrats for “somewhere between 25 and 30 seats.” Johnson has said he believes as many as 37 races are in play this cycle.

To help win those seats, Hudson said the party needs to handle the abortion issue differently. In presentations to members and candidates, Hudson has recommended they clearly state their position on the matter, arguing that it was a “mistake” for the party to stay silent on it last cycle and allow Democrats to define their abortion stances.

“Last cycle, Democrats spent over $500 million telling voters what their voting position was. And Republicans kept quiet on it, and looking back on that — that was a big mistake,” Hudson said.

After doing some polling and hosting focus groups in battleground districts, he said Republican leaders concluded: “We don’t have a policy problem, we have a branding problem.”

“We have a wide variety of positions on this that range from states rights to some reasonable limits on abortion. So, we’re kind of across the spectrum, just like the American people are,” Hudson said.