Sen. Joe Manchin is registering as an independent, according to a person familiar with the matter — a move that is sure to stoke speculation he could run for Senate or governor without a party affiliation this fall.
A longtime Democrat, Manchin’s decision comes ahead of a deadline for filing as an independent in West Virginia. He’ll have several more weeks to decide whether to run for his Senate seat or mount a bid for his old job as governor.

The move is no guarantee he will run for either office, however.

Manchin previously announced he would not run for reelection, a move that essentially ceded his seat to Republicans. But Democrats have held out hope he’d make a last-minute decision to run as an independent, and Friday’s move is sure to increase pressure on him to do so. Gov. Jim Justice, a Manchin rival, won the GOP primary and is heavily favored in November.

State Republicans are divided after a fierce primary in the governor’s race, which Attorney General Patrick Morrisey won. Manchin defeated Morrisey in the 2018 Senate race. Manchin is friends with the Democratic nominee Steve Williams, but he would likely be a more viable general election candidate.

Manchin will be the fourth independent in the Democratic Caucus and has long flirted with leaving a party he thinks is far too liberal. In recent interviews, he’s said his biggest fear is a future Senate that weakens the filibuster, a move he opposed last Congress.

West Virginia is one of the most conservative states in the nation, so either bid would be challenging for Manchin. But running as an independent would be easier than running as a Democrat in the deep-red state. And Manchin is a talented retail politician who has won both offices in the past.

Manchin likes to stay in the mix both nationally and regionally and may ultimately decide against running for anything. He turned down an independent presidential bid, for example, after considering one for months.

Speaker Mike Johnson said the Supreme Court should “step in” in the aftermath of guilty verdicts for former President Donald Trump on dozens of felony counts in New York.

“I do believe the Supreme Court should step in,” Johnson said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” on Friday. “I think they’ll set this straight but it’s going to take a while.”

Johnson added of the Supreme Court justices: “I know many of them personally, I think they’re deeply concerned about” faith in the U.S. justice system.

Trump must first be sentenced and then is expected to appeal his New York conviction, a process that could take months or even years to wind its way through the court system.

The comments come amid a swirl of ethics controversies for the high court, most recently due to flags displayed at properties of Justice Samuel Alito associated with the movement among some Trump supporters to overthrow Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

Alito has faced pressure to recuse himself from cases involving Jan. 6 and Trump due to the flag episodes, though he’s declined to do so. Justice Clarence Thomas has faced similar calls over the involvement of his wife, Ginni, in the events leading up to Jan. 6.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has declined a meeting request from two senior Senate Democrats amid a swirl of ethics questions surrounding the conduct of Justice Samuel Alito and, predating that flap, Justice Clarence Thomas.

In a letter to Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Roberts said such a meeting would be “inadvisable” given the proposed format: “a meeting with leaders of only one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the Court.”

“I must respectfully decline your request for a meeting,” Roberts wrote.

Democrats have pressured Roberts to intervene in the controversies engulfing the nation’s highest court, but the chief justice’s letter amounts to a formal stiff-arm of their push for him to answer questions about the episodes. Alito has faced scrutiny over reporting in The New York Times that two of his properties displayed flags with links to those flown by protestors during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack by supporters of President Donald Trump.

A defiant Alito rebuffed Democratic demands on Wednesday that he recuse himself from pending cases involving the Capitol riot and former President Donald Trump’s claims of immunity, in light of the display of the flags. Instead, he blamed his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, for the flags.

“My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not,” he wrote to Congress, denying that he or his wife knew of the ties between the gestures and groups who aimed to overthrow President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Durbin and Whitehouse’s meeting request, in that context, came as a sort of middle ground after the chair said he had no plans to call Alito or Roberts to testify before the committee, despite the wishes of other Democratic senators.

Prior to the latest Alito flap, the Judiciary Committee spent months battling with Thomas over significant lapses in his financial and gift disclosures and his ties to billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow. Thomas and Roberts held firm then in rejecting meetings and invitations to testify before the Judiciary panel.

Late last year, under pressure from Congress, the Supreme Court adopted a formal ethics code for the first time in its history — but without independent enforcement mechanisms that critics, including congressional Democrats, had pushed for.

Josh Gerstein contributed.

Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, is pushing an aggressive plan to build up the Pentagon budget, a blueprint he says is the “generational investment” needed to keep pace with worldwide threats.

As part of the sprawling plan unveiled Wednesday, the Mississippi Republican is proposing a $55 billion increase in defense spending above what President Joe Biden has requested, an amount that blows past caps on the Pentagon budget set last year under a bipartisan debt deal. Wicker aims to grow U.S. defense spending to a 5 percent share of GDP.

Wicker argues that world events, namely increasing cooperation between China and Russia, justify more money to make more missiles and air defenses, accelerate shipbuilding to grow the Navy fleet, and expand the Air Force’s aircraft inventory.

“We do not need to spend this much indefinitely — but we do need a short-term generational investment to help us prevent another world war,” Wicker argued in a New York Times op-ed outlining his plan.

“Regaining American strength will be expensive. But fighting a war — and worse, losing one — is far more costly,” he wrote. “We need to begin a national conversation today on how we achieve a peaceful, prosperous and American-led 21st century. The first step is a generational investment in the U.S. military.”

Wicker is expected to offer some form of his proposal as an amendment to the panel’s annual defense policy bill next month.

Uphill fight: The plan faces long odds. Some defense hawks are already backing the idea of exceeding budget caps, and it could pose a dilemma for some vulnerable Democrats. But any plans to bust the caps will have to navigate Democrats’ demands that any increase get a non-defense match.

The increase also busts spending caps in the debt deal. House Republicans stuck to an $895 billion defense limit in their version of the National Defense Authorization Act.

NDAA nexus: The proposal is emerging two weeks before Senate Armed Services kicks off closed-door debate on its version of the NDAA. Wicker has said he plans to propose a significant increase to the bill’s topline during the committee deliberations.

Shipbuilding: Wicker, whose state is home to Ingalls Shipbuilding’s production of amphibious warships and destroyers for the Navy, is also pressing to pour more money into shipyards to quickly build toward a 355-plus ship fleet.

His framework urged the Navy to lock in a multi-year deal to purchase several amphibious ships. And it recommends creating a large-scale industrial base program for warships. The plan also proposes boosting submarine shipyards to build three attack subs per year. And it calls for speeding up purchases of unmanned surface and undersea vessels.

Missiles: Wicker’s plan would also eliminate purchases of munitions that are below maximum manufacturing rates unless those programs are above total requirements levels. It also recommends alternative production lines to increase munition inventories in the short term.

Indo-Pacific: The proposal includes a fund to modernize Indo-Pacific Command’s command-and-control and make it easier to work with allies and partners. It also recommends “surging support for Taiwan and the Philippines — and accelerating their military modernization and buying then asymmetrical weapons.

It would also push for new nuclear-sharing agreements in the Indo-Pacific and bring U.S. tactical nuclear weapons back to the Korean Peninsula.

Aircraft: Wicker raises alarms about the Air Force inventory of aircraft, recommending buying at least 340 more planes over five years and blocking the service’s plan to scrap F-22 and F-15E fighters.

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday against two attempts to use the federal courts to force Congress to comply with access requests for records about official activities.

In a pair of unanimous opinions, the same three-judge D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel turned down journalist Jason Leopold’s effort to make public more than 100 Capitol Police directives in effect at the time of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, in addition to rejecting climate change skeptic Robert Schilling’s bid to force the House to reveal details of a committee’s alleged reliance on outside advocates during an investigation into the fossil fuel industry.

However, Judge Michelle Childs said in the Schilling ruling that outside parties might still be able to use the courts to obtain some congressional records more closely focused on official acts taken by committees or the full House.

Childs, an appointee of President Joe Biden, was joined in the rulings by Judges Nina Pillard and Robert Wilkins, both appointees of President Barack Obama.

While the appeals judges rejected Schilling’s claim outright, the ruling on Leopold’s case left the door open to him making a new bid for the Capitol riot-related records he sought.

Schilling’s lawyer, Matthew Hardin, noted the judges rejected the House’s argument that the Constitution’s speech or debate immunity entirely precluded this kind of lawsuit.

“This is very good news for advocates of transparency. The panel reaffirmed that the Common Law Right of Access applies to all three branches of government, and not merely to the executive branch,” Hardin told POLITICO.

“Mr. Schilling takes heart in knowing that records reflecting the ‘official decision’ of Congress — including its official decision to accept private staff, say, for purposes of targeting opponents of a particular agenda — appear to be subject to the Common Law Right of Access,” Hardin wrote.

Leopold worked for BuzzFeed News at the time he brought his suit in 2021 and now works for Bloomberg.

“The decision resolves several key legal issues in Mr. Leopold’s favor and provides him with an opportunity to refile. Mr. Leopold is reviewing his options, including whether to refile,” Leopold’s lawyer Jeffrey Light said via email.

A spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the rulings.

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday against two attempts to use the federal courts to force Congress to comply with access requests for records about official activities.

In a pair of unanimous opinions, the same three-judge D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel turned down journalist Jason Leopold’s effort to make public more than 100 Capitol Police directives in effect at the time of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, in addition to rejecting climate change skeptic Robert Schilling’s bid to force the House to reveal details of a committee’s alleged reliance on outside advocates during an investigation into the fossil fuel industry.

However, Judge Michelle Childs said in the Schilling ruling that outside parties might still be able to use the courts to obtain some congressional records more closely focused on official acts taken by committees or the full House.

Childs, an appointee of President Joe Biden, was joined in the rulings by Judges Nina Pillard and Robert Wilkins, both appointees of President Barack Obama.

While the appeals judges rejected Schilling’s claim outright, the ruling on Leopold’s case left the door open to him making a new bid for the Capitol riot-related records he sought.

Schilling’s lawyer, Matthew Hardin, noted the judges rejected the House’s argument that the Constitution’s speech or debate immunity entirely precluded this kind of lawsuit.

“This is very good news for advocates of transparency. The panel reaffirmed that the Common Law Right of Access applies to all three branches of government, and not merely to the executive branch,” Hardin told POLITICO.

“Mr. Schilling takes heart in knowing that records reflecting the ‘official decision’ of Congress — including its official decision to accept private staff, say, for purposes of targeting opponents of a particular agenda — appear to be subject to the Common Law Right of Access,” Hardin wrote.

Leopold worked for BuzzFeed News at the time he brought his suit in 2021 and now works for Bloomberg.

“The decision resolves several key legal issues in Mr. Leopold’s favor and provides him with an opportunity to refile. Mr. Leopold is reviewing his options, including whether to refile,” Leopold’s lawyer Jeffrey Light said via email.

A spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the rulings.

Pro-Israel groups are going all-out in a bid to dethrone a member of the House’s liberal Squad, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), ahead of her Aug. 6 primary battle.

Data tracked by AdImpact show approximately $320,000 in ad reservations for cable, radio, satellite and other formats from the United Democracy Project — the independent expenditure arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — through next week.

Bush, who won her seat by defeating a long-time incumbent, has been heavily critical of the Israel government’s handling of the war in Gaza and demanded an immediate cease-fire of hostilities. She’s also faced legal scrutiny of her campaign spending on her security (though she denies any wrongdoing).

Bush, who first assumed office in Missouri’s most Democratic seat in 2021, faces St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell in what’s expected to be a competitive primary.

“UDP, AIPAC, and their extensive network of far-right billionaires, anti-abortion extremists, and GOP megadonors have been promising to spend millions in their effort to defeat me ever since they first bribed my opponent to enter this race,” Bush said in a statement.

“Unfortunately for them, organized people beats organized money, and our community is ready to show that St. Louis is not for sale.”

Former President Donald Trump officially endorsed Rep. Bob Good’s primary challenger Tuesday morning, a huge potential liability for the chair of the House Freedom Caucus.

In a social media post, Trump called Good “BAD FOR VIRGINIA AND BAD FOR THE USA.” It’s not a shocking development — Good has now endorsed Trump for president, but only after he initially backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, prompting ire from Trump loyalists. Trump called Good’s endorsement “too late” in the Tuesday post.

Meanwhile, Good’s GOP opponent, Virginia state senator John McGuire, has closely aligned himself with Trump. The former president touted him as “strong on crime, will protect our great Military/Vets, and will always defend our under siege Second Amendment” in Tuesday’s post.

Early voting is already underway in the heated primary, which is on June 18. The Virginia district is solidly Republican, so the GOP winner is expected to easily win the congressional seat.

And it’s not just Trump who has come out against Good. Some of the conservative’s own House GOP colleagues have backed McGuire, with a half dozen attending a recent fundraiser. And allies of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who Good voted to boot last fall, have also been working to boost McGuire.