A federal appeals court handed President Donald Trump a loss on Wednesday in his quest for the entire court to re-hear his appeal in the $83 million E. Jean Carroll civil defamation case.

CNN reports that the court’s decision now allows the president to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his claims arguing presidential immunity. The high court established broad criminal immunity for all presidents in 2024 for official acts.

A panel of judges earlier had affirmed a jury verdict that Trump had defamed Carroll in 2022 when he “denied her allegations of sexual assault, said she wasn’t his type, and suggested she made up the allegations to sell copies of her new book,” according to CNN.

Separately, the following year, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation “over an alleged assault that occurred in the mid-1990s at a New York department store and for statements he made in 2019 denying it happened.”

Trump has argued that the U.S. Department of Justice should have been substituted for him as the defendant. Since the DOJ cannot be sued for defamation, the case would have been ended.

Courthouse News adds that the majority of judges on Wednesday “concluded the court had correctly held that presidential immunity is waivable and that had Trump indeed waived it in the Carroll case.”

“If any other litigant had failed to raise an affirmative defense in this way, there would be no question as to whether he waived his right to assert it,” U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin wrote.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

READ MORE: ‘Mockery of the Law’: Supreme Court Weakens Voting Rights Act in ‘Earthquake’ Ruling

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Republicans are reaching back into their old playbook to try to attract voters to support them in the midterms: tax cuts.

But their efforts are tied to lowering taxes on capital gains — such as stocks and homes — which could disproportionately favor wealthy Americans.

Bloomberg News reports that some Republicans want to tie capital gains taxes to inflation, which could reduce the tax burden.

“It would be the biggest step we could do to counteract the massive inflation under Joe Biden and the Democrats and have a positive impact on affordability, particularly affordability of housing, between now and the midterms,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Bloomberg.

Cruz argued that the proposal would encourage homeowners to sell existing homes, which could free up the housing supply. He also said it would encourage Americans to sell stocks.

READ MORE: ‘Mockery of the Law’: Supreme Court Weakens Voting Rights Act in ‘Earthquake’ Ruling

“Despite enthusiasm among key Republicans, the proposal faces challenges. For starters, another big tax and spending bill would require near unanimous support in the fractured GOP,” Bloomberg reported. “Republicans have discussed compiling a fresh tax-cut package this year to serve as a follow-up to Trump’s 2025 ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ to demonstrate to voters that they are taking steps to address unease about the economy.”

Bloomberg reported that the “disproportionate benefit for the wealthy would hand Democrats another attack line heading into a midterms where the party has already painted Republicans’ recent sweeping budget law as a give-away to the rich.”

Brendan Duke, Senior Director for Federal Budget Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted:  “Only 1% of the benefits would go to the bottom 80%–after raising taxes on them thru tariffs, cutting Medicaid & SNAP, and letting ACA enhancements expire.”

Critics slammed the GOP proposal.

“I can’t think of a better indictment of the Republican party and the con they’ve played on working class people than their go-to idea for addressing affordability is a capital gains tax cut,” wrote Neera Tanden, who served as the Director of the Domestic Policy Council under President Joe Biden.

“Not for nothing, but this is another broken trickle-down hack idea,” declared Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen.

READ MORE: King Charles Discreetly Rebukes Trump in Historic Address to Congress: Report

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The majority-conservative Roberts Supreme Court on Wednesday further eroded the Voting Rights Act, tossing out Louisiana’s congressional district map after a group of non-African American voters sued, arguing the map constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Legal experts are warning the decision “will threaten Black and brown political representation for generations in Southern states.”

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the 6-3 ruling in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, with all six Republican-appointed justices in the majority and all three Democratic appointees dissenting. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, warned that the consequences would be “far-reaching and grave” and that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was now “all but a dead letter.”

USA Today reported that the “decision could ultimately reduce the number of Black and Hispanic members of Congress and boost Republicans’ chances of winning more seats in the U.S. House, where they have a thin majority.”

“It will now be easier for Republicans to draw maps that favor their party,” the paper observed, “particularly in the South where a voter’s race closely aligns with party preference.”

Critics and legal experts blasted the Court’s decision.

“Today’s VRA decision is intellectually dishonest and wrong,” wrote noted Democratic attorney Marc Elias. “The conservatives basically said: Black people can vote for their preferred candidates, as long as they prefer the right candidates — which will be Republicans. An [absolute] mockery of the law and stain on the court.”

READ MORE: King Charles Discreetly Rebukes Trump in Historic Address to Congress: Report

Elias also wrote that in its decision, the Supreme Court “kneecapped the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the landmark civil rights law that restricted racial gerrymandering and racial discrimination in voting for more than fifty years.”

The Democracy Docket social media account added: “Today’s decision will threaten Black and brown political representation for generations in Southern states.”

Democracy Docket, which was founded by Elias, also warned that today’s Supreme Court decision could usher in an additional 27 Republican-held seats in Congress and secure “GOP House control for at least a generation.”

Election law expert Rick Hasen slammed the Alito decision.

“It is hard to overstate what an earthquake this will be for American politics,” he wrote at his Election Law Blog. “Justice Alito knows exactly what he’s doing: make it seem like he’s not gutting the Voting Rights Act through technical language, turning both the statute and the Constitution on its head. It’s the product of his long mission: to favor the white Republicans he seems to think he represents on the Supreme Court, rather than all Americans.”

NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote that the decision “is a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act, and a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities.”

“The Supreme Court betrayed Black voters, they betrayed America, and they betrayed our democracy,” he added, calling it “a major setback for our nation” that “threatens to erode the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for.”

READ MORE: Trump ‘Frustrated’ by Ballroom Legal Battles — So GOP Wants You to Pay for It: Report

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