After a five-year legal battle, a sharply divided federal appeals court Friday upheld a St. Johns County School Board policy that prevented a transgender male student from using boys’ bathrooms at a high school.

Portions of Florida election law are being reinstated by a federal appeals court while the state appeals a lower court’s decision that the law was aimed at suppressing Black voters.

President Donald Trumps deep imprint on the federal courts is a rare point of agreement about the president across the political spectrum. The three Supreme Court picks could still be on the court at the 21st century’s midpoint, 30 years from now. In Trump’s first two years, they pushed through 30 appellate court judges and 53 district court nominees. “You know, when I got in, we had over 100 federal judges that weren’t appointed," he said. That nominee was Stephen Breyer, now a Supreme Court justice.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Air Force One and President Donald Trump will be on their way to Jacksonville on Thursday for a rally ahead of the November election. “On Feb. 18, 2017, President Trump pulled me out of the crowd and I ran up on stage and hugged our president and he gave me the microphone and I spoke to the world. This, this is who our president is,” said Gene Huber, referencing a shirt he was wearing showing Trump hugging him on stage during a rally. “This is the hug of the American people, because our president is the man of the people.”The president’s rally Thursday night is highly anticipated among Jacksonville supporters. Doors open to the venue at Cecil Airport at 4 p.m., and the president takes the stage around 7 p.m.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, leaves the Senate Chamber following a vote, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Sept. 21, 2020. No court nominee in U.S. history has been considered so close to a presidential election. Elsewhere, as tributes poured in for Ginsburg with vigils and flowers at the court’s steps, Democrats led by presidential nominee Joe Biden vowed a tough fight. Romney, the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee, dismissed that argument, saying “it was not unfair” for Republicans to refuse to consider Obama’s choice of Merrick Garland. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska for opposing a Senate vote before elections.

MIAMI – A daughter of Cuban exiles who has had a swift rise as a lawyer and judge is on President Donald Trump's short list to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. So she’s got a lot of things — very smart,” Trump said in a call-in interview with “Fox and Friends.”Asked whether politics would play a role in the decision, Trump responded: “I try not to say so. At 52, Lagoa would become the youngest member of the U.S. Supreme Court if nominated and confirmed. Before that, for less than a year she was a justice on the Florida Supreme Court after more than a decade on a Miami-based state appeals court where she wrote some 360 opinions. She was the first woman of Hispanic heritage on the state Supreme Court.

Trump said he expects to announce his pick by week’s end, before the burial of Ginsburg, the court's liberal icon, at Arlington National Cemetery. Up until now, the race has been largely a referendum on how Trump has managed or mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic. Conversations in the White House and McConnell’s office have been increasingly focused on Barrett and Lagoa, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. Trump said he is planning to name his pick by Friday or Saturday, ahead of the first presidential election debate. He gave a nod to another election battleground state, Michigan, and White House officials confirmed he was referring to Joan Larsen, a federal appeals court judge there.