The Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for Idaho hospitals to provide emergency abortions, for now, in a procedural ruling that left key questions unanswered and could mean the issue ends up before the conservative-majority court again soon.

The ruling came a day after an opinion was briefly posted on the court’s website accidentally and quickly taken down, but not before it was obtained by Bloomberg News.

The final opinion appears largely similar to the draft released early. The 6-3 vote reverses the court’s earlier order that had allowed an Idaho abortion ban to go into effect, even in medical emergencies.

The limited ruling sidesteps a ruling that could have taken political center stage in an election year where abortion has been an animating issue. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 7 in 10 U.S. adults favor protecting access to abortions for patients who are experiencing miscarriages or other pregnancy-related emergencies.

The Biden administration sued Idaho to allow abortions in emergency cases where a woman’s health was at serious risk.

Dismissing the case now makes sense because the contours of the issue have changed in the last several months, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in a concurrence joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“I am now convinced that these cases are no longer appropriate for early resolution,” Barrett wrote, pointing to revisions Idaho made to its abortion ban and the Biden administration making clear that its arguments were aimed at rare cases.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the court should decide now, arguing the earlier order meant Idaho doctors were forced to watch as patients suffered or airlifted out of state for care.

“We had ample time to consider this issue,” she said, underscoring her views by reading a summary of her opinion aloud in the courtroom. “Not doing anything is problematic for several reasons.”

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, also disagreed with the decision to dismiss the case now, though he differed on why. Joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, he suggested the court should side with Idaho. Federal health care law “conclusively shows that it does not require hospitals to perform abortions,” he wrote.

The majority decision to dismiss the case means the issues at the heart of it remain unresolved and the same justices who voted to overturn the constitutional right to abortion could soon be again considering when doctors can provide abortion in medical emergencies.

The premature release marked the second time in two years that an abortion ruling went out early, though in slightly different circumstances. The court’s seismic ruling ending the constitutional right to abortion was leaked to Politico.

The ruling came in a case filed against Idaho by the Biden administration, which argued that doctors must be allowed to provide emergency abortions under a federal law when a pregnant woman faces serious health risks.

Democratic President Joe Biden said the court’s order ensures that Idaho women can get the care they need while the case continues to play out.

“Doctors should be able to practice medicine. Patients should be able to get the care they need,” he said.

Idaho had pushed back, arguing that its law does provide an exception to save the life of a pregnant patient and federal law doesn’t require expanded exceptions.

Doctors in Idaho said that the law wasn’t clear on when they could provide abortions in emergencies, forcing them to airlift pregnant women to other states for emergency care on several occasions since the high court had allowed the ban to go into effect in January.

The justices found that the court should not have gotten involved in the case so quickly, and majority reinstated a lower court order that had allowed hospitals in the state to perform emergency abortions to protect a pregnant patient’s health.

Leaving Washington behind, prominent far-right House Republicans who have repeatedly thrown this Congress into chaos showed up Thursday at Donald Trump’s hush money trial to do what they do best.

They stood outside Trump Tower filming their support for the indicted former president. They filed into the Manhattan courthouse “standing back and standing by,” as Rep. Matt Gaetz put it — invoking Trump’s call to the extremist Proud Boys. They were admonished to put down their cell phones.

And the House Republicans commandeered the spotlight — much like House Speaker Mike Johnson did earlier in the week — to rant against what they called the “kangaroo court” and the “political persecution” of Trump, as their day jobs waited for their return.

“President Trump is not going anywhere,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., as hecklers interrupted.

“And we are not going anywhere either. We are here to stand with him.”

The split-screen scene between New York and D.C. provided one of the more vivid examples yet of how Republicans have tossed aside the de rigueur tasks of governing in favor of the engineered spectacle of grievance, performance and outrage that powers Trump-era American politics.

As much of Congress stalled out yet again, unable to legislate through the country’s challenges, the Republicans chose to spend the day going viral.

The excursion was all the more remarkable because it comes as House Republicans were focused Thursday on moving to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress — part of a broader campaign attack on President Joe Biden.

The House’s Oversight and Judiciary Committee Republicans are demanding the Justice Department turn over evidence in the classified documents case against Biden, including an audio interview that is potentially embarrassing to the president as he stumbles through some answers. The Judiciary panel soldiered on Thursday, while the Oversight committee punted its hearing to evening, once lawmakers return.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, perhaps the most outspoken of Trump’s allies who joined him in New York when he was first charged in the case, lambasted her GOP colleagues for dashing to Manhattan when she said they should be back in Washington doing congressional business.

“I’m here doing my job,” Greene said on the eve of the trip.

Greene particularly criticized Johnson, the speaker she tried to oust, for “running up” to New York when she is pushing him toward her next big project, dismantling Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office and its federal indictments against Trump, including for trying to overturn the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

It all unfolds as Congress is on record as being among the most unproductive in recent times, with few legislative accomplishments or bills passed into law.

Republicans swept to House majority control in 2023, but became quickly consumed by infighting as traditional conservatives were pushed aside by Trump’s national populist Make America Great Again movement. They ousted their own leader, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, derailed priority bills and left Johnson forced to rely on help from Democrats to stay in power, an unheard of scenario.

Donald Trump was held in contempt of court Tuesday and fined $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order that barred him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his New York hush money case. And if he does it again, the judge warned, he could be jailed.

Prosecutors had alleged 10 violations, but New York Judge Juan M. Merchan found there were nine. The ruling was a stinging rebuke for the presumptive Republican nominee, who had insisted he was exercising his free speech rights. Trump stared down at the table in front of him as the judge read the ruling, frowning slightly.

Merchan wrote that he is “keenly aware of, and protective of,” Trump’s First Amendment rights, “particularly given his candidacy for the office of President of the United States.”

“It is critically important that defendant’s legitimate free speech rights not be curtailed, that he be able to fully campaign for the office which he seeks and that he be able to respond and defend himself against political attacks,” Merchan wrote.

Still, he warned, that the court would not tolerate “willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment.”

The ruling came at the start of the second week of testimony in the historic case. Manhattan prosecutors say Trump and his associates took part in an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by burying negative stories. He has pleaded not guilty.

Trump was ordered to pay the fine by the close of business Friday, Merchan ruled, and he must remove seven offending posts from his Truth Social account and two from his campaign website by 2:15 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Merchan said. The judge is also weighing other alleged gag order violations by Trump and will hear arguments Thursday.

Of the 10 posts, the one Merchan ruled was not a violation came on April 10, a post referring to witnesses Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels as “sleaze bags.” Merchan said Trump’s contention that he was responding to previous posts by Cohen “is sufficient to give” him pause on whether the post was a violation.

Among those he found to be violations, Merchan ruled that a Trump post quoting Fox News host Jesse Watters’ claim that liberal activists were lying to infiltrate the jury “constitutes a clear violation” of the gag order. Merchan noted that the words contained within the quotation marks in Trump’s April 17 post misstated what Watters actually said.

The Oregon Supreme Court said Thursday that 10 Republican state senators who staged a record-long walkout last year to stall bills on abortion, transgender health care and gun rights cannot run for re-election.

The decision upholds the secretary of state’s decision to disqualify the senators from the ballot under a voter-approved measure aimed at stopping such boycotts. Measure 113, passed by voters in 2022, amended the state constitution to bar lawmakers from re-election if they have more than 10 unexcused absences.

Last year’s boycott lasted six weeks — the longest in state history — and paralyzed the legislative session, stalling hundreds of bills.

Five lawmakers sued over the secretary of state’s decision — Sens. Tim Knopp, Daniel Bonham, Suzanne Weber, Dennis Linthicum and Lynn Findley. They were among the 10 GOP senators who racked up more than 10 absences.

During oral arguments before the Oregon Supreme Court in December, attorneys for the senators and the state wrestled over the grammar and syntax of the language that was added to the state constitution after Measure 113 was approved by voters.

The amendment says a lawmaker is not allowed to run “for the term following the election after the member’s current term is completed.” The senators claimed the amendment meant they could seek another term, since a senator’s term ends in January while elections are held the previous November. They argue the penalty doesn’t take effect immediately, but rather, after they’ve served another term.

The two sides also wrestled with the slight differences in wording that appeared on the actual ballot that voters filled out and the text of the measure as included in the voters’ pamphlet.

The ballot said the result of a vote in favor of the measure would disqualify legislators with 10 or more unexcused absences from holding office for the “term following current term of office.” It did not include the word “election,” as the text of the measure that appeared in the pamphlet did. What appeared in the pamphlet was ultimately added to the state constitution.

The state argued that in casting a “yes” vote in support of the measure, voters intended that legislators with that many absences be barred from running after their current term is up.

The senators’ lawsuit was filed against Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, who last August said the boycotting senators were disqualified from seeking re-election. She directed her office’s elections division to implement an administrative rule based on her stance.

A divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.

The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4-3 decision.

Colorado’s highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.

The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case. Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots.

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” wrote the court’s majority. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

Trump’s attorneys had promised to appeal any disqualification immediately to the nation’s highest court, which has the final say about constitutional matters.

Trump’s legal spokeswoman Alina Habba said in a statement Tuesday night: “This ruling, issued by the Colorado Supreme Court, attacks the very heart of this nation’s democracy. It will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order.”

Trump didn’t mention the decision during a rally Tuesday evening in Waterloo, Iowa, but his campaign sent out a fundraising email citing what it called a “tyrannical ruling.”

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel labeled the decision “Election interference” and said the RNC’s legal team intends to help Trump fight the ruling.

Trump lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and doesn’t need the state to win next year’s presidential election. But the danger for the former president is that more courts and election officials will follow Colorado’s lead and exclude Trump from must-win states.

Donald Trump said Sunday he has decided against testifying for a second time at his New York civil fraud trial, posting on social media a day before his scheduled appearance that he “very successfully & conclusively” testified last month and saw no need to do so again.

The former president, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican nomination, had been expected to return to the witness stand Monday as a coda to his defense against New York Attorney General Letitia James ' lawsuit.

James, a Democrat, alleges Trump inflated his wealth on financial statements used in securing loans and making deals. The case threatens Trump’s real estate empire and cuts to the heart of his image as a successful businessman.

“I will not be testifying on Monday,” Trump wrote in an all-capital-letters, multipart statement on his Truth Social platform less than 20 hours before he was to take the witness stand.

“I have already testified to everything & have nothing more to say,” Trump added, leaving the final word among defense witnesses to an accounting expert hired by his legal team who testified last week that he found “no evidence, whatsoever, for any accounting fraud” in Trump’s financial statements.

A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about his decision.

The decision was an abrupt change from Trump’s posture in recent days, when his lawyers said he was insistent on testifying again despite their concerns about a gag order that has cost him $15,000 in fines for disparaging the judge’s law clerk.

“President Trump has already testified. There is really nothing more to say to a judge who has imposed an unconstitutional gag order and thus far appears to have ignored President Trump’s testimony and that of everyone else involved in the complex financial transactions at issue in the case,” Trump lawyer Christopher Kise said Sunday.

Trump’s decision came days after his son, Eric Trump, ditched his return appearance on the witness stand. Trump said on social media that he’d told Eric to cancel. It also follows Trump’s first trip back to court since he testified in the case on Nov. 6. Last Thursday, he watched from the defense table as the accounting professor, New York University professor Eli Bartov, blasted the state’s case and said Trump’s financial statements “were not materially misstated.”

Trump’s cancellation caught court officials by surprise. Without Trump on the witness stand, the trial will be on hold until Tuesday, when Bartov will finish his testimony. State lawyers say they’ll then call at least one rebuttal witness.

House Republicans issued a subpoena Tuesday to a federal prosecutor involved in the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, demanding answers for what they allege is Justice Department interference in the yearslong case into the president’s son.

Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, called on Lesley Wolf, the assistant U.S. attorney for Delaware, to appear before the committee by Dec. 7, according to a copy of the congressional subpoena obtained by The Associated Press.

“Based on the Committee’s investigation to date, it is clear that you possess specialized and unique information that is unavailable to the Committee through other sources and without which the Committee’s inquiry would be incomplete,” Jordan wrote in an accompanying letter to Wolf.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The subpoena to Wolf is the latest in a series of demands Jordan and fellow Republican chairmen have made as part of their sprawling impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. His youngest son Hunter and brother James received subpoenas last week as Republicans look to gain ground in their nearly yearlong investigation, which has so failed to uncover evidence directly implicating the president in any wrongdoing.

The inquiry is focused both on the Biden family’s international business affairs and the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter Biden, which Republicans claim has been slow-walked and stonewalled since the case was opened in 2018.

Wolf, who serves with David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware in charge of the case, has been accused by whistleblowers from the Internal Revenue Service of “deviating from standard investigative protocol” and showing preferential treatment because Hunter Biden is the president’s son.

Republicans have claimed that it was clear that the prosecutors didn’t want to touch anything that would include Hunter Biden’s father. In one instance, Gary Shapley, an IRS employee assigned to the case, testified that in a meeting with Weiss and Wolf after the 2020 election, he and other agents wanted to discuss an email between Hunter Biden associates where one person made reference to the “big guy.” Shapley said Wolf refused to do so, saying she did not want to ask questions about “dad.”

Other claims relate to an August 2020 email in which Wolf ordered investigators to remove any mention of “Political Figure 1,” who was known to be Biden, from a search warrant. In another incident, FBI officials notified Hunter Biden’s Secret Service detail in advance of an effort to interview him and several of his business associates in order to avoid a potential shoot-out between two law enforcement bodies.

Justice Department officials have countered these claims by pointing to the extraordinary set of circumstances surrounding a criminal case into a subject who at the time was the son of a leading presidential candidate. Department policy has long warned prosecutors to take care in charging cases with potential political overtones around the time of an election, to avoid any possible influence on the outcome.