The Supreme Court sided with Republicans in Wisconsin on Monday, ruling 5-3 along ideological lines that Wisconsin can count only those absentee ballots that arrive by Election Day — even if they were mailed days earlier. Since first-class mail has been taking an average of 10 days to be delivered in the state, Wisconsin's Democratic Party urged mail-in Democrats to hand-deliver their absentee ballots or vote in person.

The practical issue involves what happens with Wisconsin's 700,000 outstanding absentee ballots. "But the deeper issue is about the extent to which a ballot should be considered as valid," Phillip Bump writes in The Washington Post. In a factually sloppy concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh evidently embraced President Trump's baseless conspiracies about voter fraud and bizarre demand that the winner be announced election night.

Many states require absentee ballots to arrive by Election Day because they "want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election," Kavanaugh wrote. "And those states also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter."

Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissent, noted that "there are no results to 'flip' until all valid votes are counted. And nothing could be more 'suspicio[us]' or 'improp[er]' than refusing to tally votes once the clock strikes 12 on election night."

More broadly, Kavanaugh — and Justice Neil Gorsuch — embraced late Chief Justice William Rehnquist's concurring opinion in 2000's Bush v. Gore, which invented a legal theory "so radical, so contrary to basic principles of democracy and federalism, that two conservative justices" rejected it, even as they agreed to hand the White House to George W. Bush in what was supposed to be a one-off decision, Mark Joseph Stern writes at Slate.

Rehnquist argued that state courts cannot interpret state election laws in federal elections, Stern writes, "a breathtaking assault on state sovereignty" that would transform the Supreme Court "into a national board of elections with veto power over each state's election rules." With Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the court, the conservatives likely have five votes to enact Rehnquist's theory, throwing out ballots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina as well as Wisconsin, he added. "In other words, Barrett's first decisions as a justice may determine the outcome of the election." Peter Weber

The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday authorized Johnson & Johnson's single-dose COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, which means there will soon be three effective shots available for Americans.

The Johnson & Johnson candidate registered a 72 percent efficacy rate in the U.S. clinical trial. That falls short of the roughly 95 percent rates seen in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna trials, but, The New York Times notes, experts are still very pleased with Johnson & Johnson's results, especially since it also showed 85 percent efficacy against severe COVID-19 infections, and 100 percent efficacy against hospitalizations and deaths, suggesting it will be a crucial tool in the fight to end the pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, told the Times people shouldn't get wrapped up in the numbers and instead "accept the fact that now you have three highly effective vaccines. Period." And Dr. Danny Avula, the vaccine coordinator for Virginia, said he's "super-pumped about this," adding that the lack of hospitalizations and deaths among vaccinated trial volunteers is "all I need to hear."

Plus, Johnson & Johnson's vaccine requires just one dose for full inoculation and can be stored at standard refrigeration temperatures for three months, which will help states speed up their vaccination drives and make distribution easier. All told, Johnson & Johnson has pledged to provide the U.S. with 100 million doses by June, but four million doses should be ready to go as soon as possible now that the FDA has signed off, with another 16 million available by the end of the March. Read more at The New York Times. Tim O'Donnell

The Associated Press has obtained internal Louisiana State Police records that represent the first public acknowledgment that Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old black man who died in custody in May 2019, was mistreated.

The cause of Greene's death remains unexplained and is the subject of a federal civil rights investigation. Per AP, the records reveal that body camera footage — which has not been released — shows Master Trooper Kory York dragging Ronald Greene "on his stomach by the leg shackles" after a violent arrest and high-speed pursuit, and an attorney representing Greene's family who has reportedly seen the video told AP that other troopers can be seen choking, beating, and jolting Greene with stun guns. Police initially claimed Greene died as a result of a car crash.

York, who turned his own body camera off on the way to the scene (he said it was beeping loudly and he forgot to turn it back on), was suspended without pay for 50 hours after an internal investigation. Col. Lamar Davis, the State Police's new superintendent, reportedly told York he "would have imposed" more severe discipline, but the suspension was handed out by his predecessor who stepped down last year amid a series of scandals, AP reports. Read more at The Associated Press. Tim O'Donnell

On Friday, Myanmar's ambassador to the United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun, received an ovation from the U.N. General Assembly after he made an emotional request for help restoring democracy on behalf of the country's elected government that was overthrown in a military coup earlier this month.

But a day later, the military junta that now runs Myanmar announced it had fired him in response, BBC reports. A state television announcement said Kyaw Moe Tun had "abused the power and responsibilities" of his post and "betrayed the country and spoken for an unofficial organization which doesn't represent" Myanmar.

The news comes after another full day of anti-coup demonstrations across the nation. Police continued to crack down on the protesters, and there are reports that a woman was shot and taken to a hospital. A monitoring group reports more than 770 people have been arrested and sentenced since the rallies began three weeks ago. Read more at BBC. Tim O'Donnell

When former President Donald Trump makes his first major return to the public stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on Sunday, expect his rhetoric to be more reminiscent of his 2016 presidential campaign than his 2020 one, The New York Times' Maggie Haberman reports.

Rather than boast about his own accomplishments during his lone term in the White House, an adviser told the Times, Trump will instead deliver a fierce critique of President Biden's first few weeks in office. Reporting by CBS News' Ed O'Keefe appears to confirm the strategy, suggesting Trump will focus on Biden's immigration policy, school reopening plan, and "identity politics."

That said, Trump will reportedly find time to highlight and defend Operation Warp Speed and the COVID-19 vaccine development that took place under his administration, and he's also expected to bring up the future of the GOP. "There's a 99.99 percent chance" Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has steadfastly expressed her opposition to Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, will get a not-so-friendly mention from Trump, a source told O'Keefe.

Of course, Trump is known for going off script, so all bets are off. Read more about Trump's return at The New York Times. Tim O'Donnell

President Biden on Saturday praised House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her fellow Democrats who backed his administration's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill in the wee hours of the morning. Now, "there's no time to waste" as the package heads to the Senate, Biden added. "If we act now decisively, quickly, and boldly, we can finally get ahead of this virus, we can finally get our economy moving again," he said. "And the people of this country have suffered far too much for too long. We need to relieve that suffering."

The president didn't address the minimum wage issue in his comments, but his call for speed seems to be in line with his previous rhetoric on the matter. Biden has made it clear he'd prefer an item gradually increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour to remain in the bill, but he's also reportedly not interested in rewriting Senate rules or ignoring the parliamentarian who ruled against its inclusion in the package under budget reconciliation, the tool Democrats are using to push the bill through without Republican support. Biden has also previously said he didn't expect the measure to make it through with the rest of the bill. Tim O'Donnell

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) didn't exactly pull punches in an interview with Politico, going after congressional Republicans, Democrats, former President Donald Trump, and the Biden administration all in one go.

Sasse, who is facing imminent censure from the Nebraska GOP for voting to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, stands by that vote and says he's not bothered by the action his home state's Republican Party is taking against him, though he did say he thinks it's not "healthy." His comments to Politico seemed to back up that confidence. At one point, when asked about Trump loyalist Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Sasse simply said "that guy is not an adult," and described Congress, generally, as "a bunch of yokels screaming."

Sasse's candor is gutsy, but it's worth noting he's generally well-respected by his Senate colleagues and won re-election handily last year, so he's ensconced in the upper chamber until 2026, and likely doesn't need to look over his shoulder as of now.

While he's been in the spotlight for his intra-party criticism of late, Sasse did have words for Democrats, as well, per Politico. He said the Biden administration is "cowering" to the opinions of progressive lawmakers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and called the education spending plan in President Biden's COVID-19 relief package "disastrous." Read more at Politico. Tim O'Donnell