A conservative tilt on the Wisconsin Supreme Court has given Republicans victories on voting restrictions, gerrymandered legislative districts and other high-stakes cases in recent years.

Voters now have a chance to tip that balance toward the left, with implications for abortion rights and perhaps the outcome of the 2024 presidential election in one of the nation’s most closely divided political battlegrounds.

Tuesday’s primary will feature two conservatives and two liberals running for the seat of a retiring conservative justice. The top two finishers advancing to the April 4 general election.

The eventual winner will determine whether conservatives maintain the majority on the officially nonpartisan court or it flips to 4-3 liberal control for at least the next two years. The court came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden’s win in the state in 2020, and both major parties are preparing for another close margin in the 2024 contest.

The Supreme Court election campaign could break national spending records if a conservative and a liberal make it through the primary, with issues such as abortion, the fate of legislative maps, union rights and challenges to election results at stake.

Four of the past six presidential races in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point, including Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 and Biden’s win in 2020. In 2024, Democrats will try to reelect Sen. Tammy Baldwin and chip into Republican’s hold on six of the state’s eight congressional seats.

Islamic State gunmen killed American college student Nohemi Gonzalez as she sat with friends in a Paris bistro in 2015, one of several attacks on a Friday night in the French capital that left 130 people dead.

Her family’s lawsuit claiming YouTube’s recommendations helped the Islamic State group’s recruitment is at the center of a closely watched Supreme Court case being argued Tuesday about how broadly a law written in 1996 shields tech companies from liability. The law, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, is credited with helping create today’s internet.

A related case, set for arguments Wednesday, involves a terrorist attack at a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2017 that killed 39 people and prompted a suit against Twitter, Facebook and Google, which owns YouTube.

The tech industry is facing criticism from the left for not doing enough to remove harmful content from the internet and from the right for censoring conservative speech. Now, the high court is poised to take its first hard look at online legal protections.

A win for Gonzalez’s family could wreak havoc on the internet, say Google and its many allies. Yelp, Reddit, Microsoft, Craigslist, Twitter and Facebook are among the companies warning that searches for jobs, restaurants and merchandise could be restricted if those social media platforms had to worry about being sued over the recommendations they provide and their users want.

The North Carolina court system’s top administrator is stepping down soon to join a law firm, and his top deputy will succeed him.

Andrew Heath became Administrative Office of the Courts director in early 2021 as Chief Justice Paul Newby was sworn in following his election the previous November.

In news releases Friday, the Nelson Mullins firm said Heath would join its Raleigh office and the court system said Newby had appointed deputy AOC director Ryan Boyce as Heath’s replacement effective April 4.

Heath has held many state government positions previously, serving as a special Superior Court judge, state budget director to then-Gov. Pat McCrory and chairman of the North Carolina Industrial Commission.

Heath will focus on government relations and civil litigation at his new job, and he’ll also be a registered lobbyist, Nelson Mullins said.

Newby praised Heath in the AOC release, saying there are nearly 10% fewer pending cases in the courts compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed proceedings. An effort to switch court filings from paper to digital statewide began publicly this week with a four-county pilot.

Boyce led the court system’s governmental affairs activities under previous AOC directors and served as a lawyer within two other state departments.

An elected Florida prosecutor who says he was suspended by Gov. Ron DeSantis for political gain — and because he is a Democrat — is asking the state Supreme Court to reinstate him, citing a federal judge’s ruling that DeSantis violated state law and his First Amendment rights.

Andrew Warren, a twice-elected state attorney for Hillsborough County, filed the appeal late Wednesday. It comes a month after a federal judge in Tallahassee dismissed his lawsuit on technical grounds while agreeing with Warren that the Republican governor fired him inappropriately.

“We’re asking the Florida Supreme Court to affirm that finding and instruct the Governor to follow the law and reinstate me to office. We’re asking them to reiterate that no one is above the law — not even the Governor,” Warren said in a statement. He is also asking a federal appeals court to reinstate him.

The governor has refused to reinstate the Tampa-based prosecutor, and his press office did not immediately respond Thursday to an email and phone call seeking comment on the latest appeal.

No hearing date has been set. DeSantis appointed four of the seven Florida Supreme Court justices, with the other three appointed by his Republican predecessors.

Warren could also appeal his suspension to the Florida Senate, where Republicans hold a 28-12 advantage.

Warren is citing last month’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, who said that while federal law prevents him from returning Warren to office though a lawsuit centering on state law, he agreed that DeSantis’ actions violated both Warren’s First Amendment rights and the Florida Constitution.

Hinkle, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the evidence showed that DeSantis had no basis to find Warren incompetent or derelict in his duties, the two reasons cited for the suspension.

Instead, DeSantis targeted Warren because he’s a Democrat who has publicly supported abortion and transgender rights and because it would politically benefit him, Hinkle wrote. DeSantis is widely expected to run for president next year.

Hinkle called on DeSantis to voluntarily reinstate Warren “if the facts matter” to him. He said the governor and his staff never did a serious investigation of Warren before suspending him and ignored facts that argued against the dismissal.

A Pakistani court on Wednesday acquitted the parents of an exiled female human rights activist, a defense lawyer said, three years after the couple was arrested on charges of terror financing and sedition.

The 2019 arrests of Gulalai Ismail’s parents, Mohammad and Uzlifat Ismail, in the northwestern city of Peshawar, had drawn widespread condemnation. The U.S. State Department also expressed concern over the arrests.

On Wednesday, an anti-terrorism court acquitted the couple, saying the prosecution failed to prove the charges, according to the couple’s lawyer, Shabbir Hussain Gigyan.

Mohammad Ismail is a teacher and a social activist. His daughter fled to the U.S. in 2019 and she sought asylum there to avoid harassment by Pakistani security agencies over her investigations into alleged human rights abuses by soldiers.

In recent years, Pakistani activists and journalists have increasingly come under attack by the government and the security establishment, restricting the space for criticism and dissent. The criticism of the military can result in threats, intimidation, sedition charges and in some cases, being arrested with no warning.

A woman accused in a grisly killing and dismemberment case in Wisconsin attacked her attorney Tuesday during a court hearing, moments after a judge agreed to delay her trial.

Taylor Schabusiness, 25, was seated in a Brown County circuit court when her attorney, Quinn Jolly, asked the judge for an additional two weeks for a defense expert to review his client’s competency to stand trial.

Moments after Judge Thomas Walsh reluctantly agreed to postpone her March 6 trial, Schabusiness attacked Jolly and was wrestled to the courtroom floor by a deputy, WLUK-TV reported. The courtroom was then cleared before the hearing resumed.

Schabusiness is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and third-degree sexual assault in the killing of Shad Thyrion, 25, in February 2022. Authorities say she strangled Thyrion at a home in Green Bay, sexually abused him and dismembered his body, leaving parts of him throughout the house and in a vehicle.

Schabusiness has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. She is being held on a $2 million cash bond.

Following her courtroom outburst, the judge moved her competency hearing from Tuesday to March 6. The judge also proposed a May 15 trial date.

At the end of the hearing, Jolly told the court he would file a motion to withdraw from the case as Schabusiness’ attorney but the judge did not immediately rule on that matter.

Two jurors in the double murder trial of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh have COVID, leaving the future of the proceedings in some doubt as they enter their 16th day Monday.

Judge Clifton Newman decided keep the trial going in the packed Colleton County courtroom after the remaining 10 jurors and five alternates tested negative. They will be tested again on Wednesday. The clerk of court also tested positive for the virus.

Newman said jurors agreed to wear masks. He rejected suggestions from both the defense and prosecutors to delay the trial until that second round of tests Wednesday, reduce the over 200 people allowed to attend the trial each day or order everyone in the courtroom to wear masks other than testifying witnesses and questioning attorneys.

“At the moment, we are going to encourage everyone here to mask up for your own protection as well as the protection of these proceedings and each other,” Newman said.

Murdaugh, 54, faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted of murdering his wife, 52-year-old Maggie, and their 22-year-old son Paul near dog kennels at the family’s Colleton County home on June 7, 2021.

Monday marked the fourth week of the trial and the 13th day of testimony with prosecutors still presenting their case. They called state agents who tested evidence for DNA.

The trial started with six alternate jurors, but is now down to three.

“My only concern is we don’t create train wreck with this jury,” said defense attorney Dick Harpootlian, who immediately began wearing a mask.

Prosecutor Creighton Waters said he agreed with the defense that delaying the trial for a few days to make sure COVID isn’t spreading is much better than losing so many jurors there has to be a mistrial and three weeks of work is gone. He also suggested limiting the number of people inside the large, century-old courtroom. The trial is being livestreamed and shown on television.

“A little less numbers might be warranted. None of us want to limit anything, but we’re in different paradigm. Both of us have a concern about getting this thing to the end without COVID causing it to fall apart,” Waters said.

The judge said he would keep all options in mind, but for now the trial will continue without any changes.

“We just have to take precautions as we all do as we navigate through life during this period of time,” Newman said.