Borderline: The Supreme Court yesterday decided to leave in place, for now, the Trump era policy known as Title 42 that allows migrants who might otherwise qualify for asylum to be expelled from the country.

  It’s a temporary win for 19 mostly Republican-led states that have been fighting to stem the flow of migrants over the southern border. Thousands of migrants have been huddled at the Texas border in anticipation of Title 42 expiring.

  Title 42 was created as a measure to stop the spread of Covid-19 during the pandemic. The majority of the court decided to hear arguments about Title 42 in February.

  Among the dissenters in yesterday’s decision was conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who said, “The current border crisis is not a Covid crisis, and courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort.”

Terminal Meltdown: In effect, the entire Southwest airline has crashed over the Christmas travel season. Some passengers have been stranded for days.

  After being thrown into chaos during the giant winter storm over the Christmas weekend, Southwest has been unable to pull its system back together. The airline canceled 60 percent of its fights for yesterday and today, and a total of 11,000 since last Thursday. They said it could take days to restore normal operations.

  Thousands of travelers never got where they were going for Christmas. They can’t even get customer service to answer the phone. One man told CNN he’d been in an airport terminal since December 21^st.

  Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the airline will be held accountable.

  Southwest has suffered a breakdown in its computer programming that matches available flight crews with aircraft that need them. Managers have resorted to doing the complicated job manually. Representatives of the pilots union say Southwest managers have refused to keep their computer systems up to date.

Frozen: The number of dead in Erie County, NY … the Buffalo area … has risen to 31. Crews are clearing the roads while steering around abandoned and snowed-in vehicles.

  Warm weather including rain is expected, with flooding in the forecast.

The Long Count: Arizona’s Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs has joined Maricopa County in asking a state court to punish defeated Republican candidate Kari Lake for her unsupported lawsuit aimed at overturning the state’s election results. Hobbs has also asked to be awarded $600,000 for the expense of defending herself. She’s already been awarded $33,000 for paying expert witnesses.

  Lake said she will appeal the court decision throwing out her election lawsuit.

  Maricopa County deputy attorney Thomas Liddy has called the Lake lawsuit “groundless” and a “frivolous pursuit.” Lake had run as a denier of the 2020 presidential election and suggested the only result she would accept for herself in the election for governor would be if she won. She didn’t. 

  “Enough really is enough,” Liddy wrote in his motion. “It is past time to end unfounded attacks on elections and unwarranted accusations against elections officials.”

Open Window: Russian sausage oligarch and regional lawmaker Pavel Antov, who had condemned his country’s bombing of Ukraine, plunged to his death from a hotel window in India on Christmas day. This was just two days after a fellow Russian he was traveling with was found dead in the same hotel. 

  Antov, 65, joins a growing list of prominent Russians who have questioned the war against Ukraine and died under questionable circumstances. American diplomats have a name for this kind of Russian death … “smoking on the balcony.”

The War Zone: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he will ban oil exports to countries that have agreed to a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian oil. The European union has already banned most Russian oil imports.

Trump World: Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the January 6^th Committee that about a dozen times between December 2020 and mid-January 2021 she saw White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows burning documents in his office fireplace.

  She said she didn’t know what the documents were, whether they were originals or copies, or whether they were supposed to be preserved as a presidential record.

  This comes from transcripts being released by the committee revealing new information and in some cases confirming previous reports.

  The transcripts reveal that Hutchinson’s testimony became more open after she fired the lawyer provided to her by Trump’s allies. Hutchinson said she was present when Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke with Trump about QAnon conspiracies and followers who would be at the January 6^th rally.

  Hutchinson also said that Trump aide Peter Navarro would bring her suspect materials. “And at one point I had sarcastically said, ‘Oh, is this from your QAnon friends, Peter?’ Because Peter would talk to me frequently about his QAnon friends,” Hutchinson testified.

  “He said, ‘Have you looked into it yet, Cass? I think they point out a lot of good ideas. You really need to read this. Make sure the chief sees it.’” 

The Spin Rack: A man convicted of being a leader in the plot to abduct Michigan’s Democratic governor from her vacation home was sentenced to 16 years in prison.  Adam Fox had called Gov. Gretchen Whitmer a “tyrant,” ranted about her Covid-19 restrictions, and spoke of a second American revolution. — The House Ways and Means Committee plans to release former President Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday.

Below the Fold: The Washington Post notes that tech billionaires including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Mark Zuckerberg have collectively lost hundreds of billions of dollars in stock value over the past year and are down to their last tens of billions of dollars.

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