OnPolitics: SCOTUS sides with Ted Cruz over campaign loan repayment

Welcome to Monday, OnPolitics readers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Sunday that Congress will take action on the baby formula shortage plaguing states throughout the country.

The House is considering two pieces of legislation: first, a bill introduced by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., chair of the Education and Labor Committee, to "loosen some of the red tape," connected to how people can purchase formula. Pelosi told CNN that half of the formula is bought by WIC recipients.

The second bill is being put together by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., that will allow the U.S. to purchase formula from overseas. Mexico, Chile, Ireland and the Netherlands have a formula supply on hand that may be immediately available, Pelosi told ABC News Sunday.

"We must do something as quickly as possible," Pelosi said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

Buttigieg on the baby formula shortage: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called the formula shortage "very personal" to him and husband, Chasten. The couple adopted 9-month old twins last Summer.

It's Chelsey with today's top stories out of Washington.

SCOTUS sides with Ted Cruz over debt repayment

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, over a federal law, termed an "anti-corruption rule" by supporters, that limits the ability of campaigns to repay loans made by candidates.

In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that a federal law restricting how the loans are paid back "burdens core political speech without proper justification."

Congress capped the amount that campaigns may use from post-election funds to repay a loan made by the candidate at $250,000. The cap was created out of concern that unrestricted repayments would essentially amount to a donation for the candidate. Critics of the policy say it benefited incumbents.

Cruz argued in court papers that the regulation "deters candidates from loaning money to their campaigns, through the mechanism of restricting the campaign’s ability to repay those loans," thereby violating free speech protections under the First Amendment by impeding a candidate's ability to freely spend money.

In the ruling, the Supreme Court's six conservative justices wrote that the government was unable to "identify a single case of quid pro quo corruption in this context."

"This limit on the use of post-election funds increases the risk that candidate loans over $250,000 will not be repaid in full, inhibiting candidates from making such loans in the first place," Roberts wrote.

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Real Quick: stories that you should read

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• Psaki bids farewell: The White House Press Secretary, who served the Biden administration for nearly 15 months, had her final sendoff on Friday.

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Racist, extremist violence most lethal domestic threat

The mass shooting carried out by a white supremacist at a Buffalo, New York grocery store Saturday was a stunningly familiar scenario.

A lone, white gunmen propelled by racist ideology opened fire on shoppers in a mostly Black neighborhood with the apparent intention of taking Black lives.

The 18-year-old suspect, dressed in body armor and armed with a rifle, killed 10 and wounded three, police say.

The same incident involving an attacker motivated by hatred against certain groups has played out before in recent years in different cities, such as Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas; Pittsburgh and Charlottesville, Virginia.

In a testimony last year before a Senate committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray said racially motivated attackers represented the most deadly and “biggest chunk” of an estimated 2,000 open domestic terror investigations.

Based on an assessment of the threat landscape after the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, the Biden administration unveiled the National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism last year. The administration's assessment concluded that, "The two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat are ... racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race and antigovernmental or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists."

Protesters took to the street last weekend to demonstrate in support of abortion rights. Take a look at images from the nationwide events. — Chelsey

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SCOTUS sides with Ted Cruz over federal law campaign loan repayment