Morning Report

January 7, 2026 — Morning Report

Jan 7, 2026

0107 AM TT·0107 AM YT

State v. Johnson · 24-0326

Wyoming's Supreme Court just struck down the state abortion ban — unanimously — under the Wyoming Constitution's right to make your own health care decisions. The federal Dobbs ruling didn't factor in. This was state law, decided on state constitutional grounds.

Wyoming's abortion ban didn't survive a state constitutional challenge. The Wyoming Supreme Court applied strict scrutiny — requiring the legislature's ban to be the least restrictive means of achieving its interest — and found the law fell short, unanimously. The right at stake was Wyoming Constitution Art. 1, Sec. 38: "each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions." The court noted a differently worded voter referendum might clear the bar; this law didn't. Bryan flagged it as "more woke than I expected."

State constitutional law

Constitutional question: Post-Dobbs, states are the arena for abortion rights protection — this case is a clean example of state constitutions operating as independent sources of protection, insulated from the federal framework.

U.S. v. Garcia · 25-cr-00115

The government said the US Attorney in Tennessee decided independently to charge Kilmar Abrego Garcia — no DC involvement. Then a federal judge reviewed thousands of pages of emails and found the Deputy Attorney General's office appears to have been running point from day one. The January trial is canceled.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was stopped for a traffic violation in 2022, investigated by federal agents, cleared, and the file was closed. After SCOTUS ordered him returned from El Salvador in spring 2025, the government reopened the file and charged him criminally — a move his attorneys called vindictive prosecution, punishment for asserting his constitutional rights. The DOJ's defense: US Attorney Robert McGuire in Tennessee made the call alone, no DC involvement. But in a December 30 ruling (unsealed on Bryan's request), the district judge found emails suggesting the Principal Deputy Attorney General in Todd Blanche's Washington office — PDAG Akash Singh — was contacting McGuire from the day the file arrived in Tennessee, flagging it as a "top priority." McGuire's own email: "we want high command looped in." The judge ordered those communications produced and canceled the January trial.

Criminalselective prosecution

Constitutional question: Whether the executive branch can revive a previously abandoned criminal prosecution in direct response to a defendant prevailing on constitutional grounds in a parallel civil case — the vindictive prosecution doctrine applied to a politically charged context.

U.S. v. Carvajal-Barrios · 11-cr-00205

The case charging Nicolás Maduro with narcotics trafficking is technically a superseding indictment in an eleven-year-old case originally filed against a guy nicknamed "El Pollo" for five kilograms of cocaine. El Pollo has since pleaded guilty. Maduro hasn't been arrested. Next hearing: March.

U.S. v. Carvajal-Barrios started in 2011 as a straightforward drug case — one defendant, El Pollo (Hugo Carvajal-Barrios), five kilograms of cocaine. By 2020, superseding indictments under the same case number had added Nicolás Maduro. The 2026 version drops El Pollo — now in sentencing after a plea — but continues to build under the original 2011 docket. Bryan flagged the unusual procedural choice: running new, major charges through an eleven-year-old case after the original defendant pled out is strange, possibly deliberate to let the administration claim the Maduro prosecution predates the current administration. Next hearing is March 2026; the case, in Bryan's words, "is going to be an absolute circus."

Federal narcoticsextraterritorial jurisdiction

Constitutional question: Whether a sitting foreign head of state is subject to US criminal jurisdiction under federal drug statutes — the head-of-state immunity and extraterritorial jurisdiction questions will surface when Maduro's defense engages, if the case proceeds.

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