By Sarah Ferris, Annie Grayer, Lauren Fox, CNN

(CNN) — Republicans will control Washington for at least six more months, but they’ve already lost control of one-half of Congress.

Marred by infighting in his razor-thin majority, Speaker Mike Johnson no longer has a functional majority in the House. GOP leaders are struggling to fulfill the chamber’s most basic role on issues from government funding to authorizing critical spy powers that President Donald Trump himself has demanded, all just months before a critical midterm election.

“We can’t really agree on much of anything,” Rep. Troy Nehls, a Republican from Texas, said on Wednesday as leadership was trying to convince members to clear a procedural hurdle on the House floor to move ahead on key priorities, including the surveillance program extension. “This is our time to actually pass conservative legislation. That the American people gave us the gavel. They gave us the White House. … They gave us the Senate. And we have squandered an enormous amount of time away. We’ve squandered these opportunities.”

Johnson has tried to blame Democrats for the chaos, but frustrations are rising inside the US Capitol and at the White House – with many pointing to the House disarray for prolonging a 75-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that is threatening more chaos at airports in the coming weeks.

“The fact that this has gone on, what are we at? 70-something days? It’s a stunning testament to congressional dysfunction,” Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, an independent who formally left the party this year but still largely votes with the GOP.

And scrapped bills, venting behind closed doors and stalled floor activity this week has ratcheted up tensions in the conference.

On Wednesday alone, House GOP leaders held open a contentious procedural vote for three hours. They pulled one huge priority — the farm bill — from the floor and then brought it back hours later after a revolt from members. (“This place is insane,” Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky griped on X, when he learned of the switch.)

Late Wednesday evening, the House took a step forward in a GOP effort to fund immigration enforcement amid the ongoing DHS shutdown – a vote that succeeded but only after hours of arm twisting.

Johnson’s weakening grip on his members throws into doubt whether Trump and Hill GOP leaders will be able to deliver on any other major priorities ahead, including a funding package for the Iran war that could cost as much as $100 billion.

The speaker’s ability to keep his fractious House GOP in line was never simple in the smallest majority since the Great Depression. While he has tried to give his members space to work through their concerns, the mood in the chamber has dramatically soured in recent days. Republicans are coming to terms with Trump’s poor approval ratings, an unending war in the Middle East and spiking gas prices — with no apparent strategy in Congress to fix any of it.

Then there’s the group of increasingly rogue actors within the conference who are empowered in the narrow majority and seem willing to shirk both Trump and Johnson to achieve personal priorities — on top of a seemingly perpetual struggle with absences and ethics issues.

“Look, all it takes is two to shut this whole thing down,” House budget chief Jodey Arrington told CNN of the DHS funding standoff.

Rep. Steve Womack characterized the narrow majority as “chaos, that’s what we are.” “We are good at that,” the Arkansas Republican added.

Perhaps the biggest headache for leadership are hardliners like Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida or Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who have elevated their personal profiles as they force the House to take tough votes and join groups willing to hold up procedural ones. Then t

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst

(CNN) — The Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday rolling back protections for Black and Latino voters marks another dramatic turn in the long-fought effort by conservative justices to reverse measures vital to overcoming America’s legacy of race discrimination.

The decision also marks a defining moment for the court under Chief Justice John Roberts, who declared soon after joining the bench in 2005, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Three years ago, the justices by the same 6-3 vote as Wednesday ended racial affirmative action in higher education admissions. The newest decision, which follows a series of rulings led by Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito restricting the reach of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, will reverberate deeper.

Taken as a whole, the pattern would mean fewer chances for minority voters to elect candidates of their choosing. That, in turn, would mean fewer opportunities for the voice of Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and other minorities in government.

The gravity of such consequences and the entrenched divisions among the justices were clear as the opinion was announced from the courtroom bench.

As Roberts first revealed that the case of Louisiana v. Callais would be delivered, he said Alito had the majority opinion. Roberts, whose seniority gives him the assignment power, had turned the case over to a colleague with whom he has long worked on racial issues.

Belying the historic nature of the decision, Alito began in his usual dry tone, detailing the lower court action in the long running Louisiana case, which began with redistricting after the 2020 census. He related the intricacies of the VRA’s disputed Section 2 that prohibits discrimination and recounted the evolution of standards for assessing when Black and other minority voters may succeed in a challenge to district maps that dilute their voting power.

Such dilution can arise, for example, from legislative “cracking” and “packing” methods – that is, dispersing or concentrating Black voters among districts to weaken their overall voting power.

No longer would challengers be able to point to the effects of vote dilution, Alito said. Rather, they would have to show that state legislators likely had discriminatory purpose or, as Alito spelled out in his opinion, that “circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”

Alito’s bench statement and written opinion on behalf of the six conservative justices leaned heavily on the view of Roberts’ 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that voting safeguards enshrined in 1965 were no longer essential to America.

“(V)ast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South…” Alito wrote. Adapting a line from Roberts’ 2013 decision, he added: “As this Court has recognized, ‘things have changed dramatically’ in the decades since the passage of the Voting Rights Act.”

When Justice Elena Kagan, who sits next to Alito on the elevated bench, then spoke for the three dissenting liberals, she referred explicitly and emphatically to Shelby County and the line of cases eviscerating voting rights protections.

“This court’s project to destroy the Voting Rights Act is now complete,” she declared. Of the act, she said, “It was born of the literal blo

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CIF-SS Division 2 First Round:

Vista Murrieta 15, Dos Pueblos 6

Aliso Niguel 14, Santa Barbara 7

CIF-SS Division 3 First Round:

Cate 5, Simi Valley 4: Rams play Agoura in second round on Friday

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