January 12, 2026 — Morning Report (SCOTUS Day 1, January Quackdown)

A federal judge in New York issued a two-page temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from freezing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds flowing to New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota. The freeze had been triggered after a right-wing online influencer produced content alleging fraud in the program. The TRO preserved childcare funding in five states for two weeks while the court scheduled further hearings.

Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana — the bird's foot of the Mississippi Delta — sued Chevron (successor to Gulf Oil and Texaco) over decades of environmental damage from oil drilling operations: unlined canals left unfilled, and produced water laced with arsenic and radium dumped into coastal wetlands. A state-court jury already awarded $740–$750 million in one related case; forty-plus more are waiting. Chevron sought to remove the case to federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 1442, arguing that because its predecessor was drilling under a wartime federal contract in 1942 — ramping up crude production to refine Avgas for the military — the damage was done "for or relating to" acts of a federal officer. Louisiana countered that Chevron was hired to refine oil, not drill for it, and that there was no nexus between the government order and the decision to drill. The broader stakes: if § 1442 removal is granted, Chevron gets a Fifth Circuit jury instead of a Plaquemines Parish jury, and a shot at derivative government immunity.