On January 22, U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin asked the plaintiffs in the birthright citizenship case to file a brief by January 24, giving their view as to whether their case, State of New Jersey v Trump, is really closely related to another case that had been filed a few hours later on the same subject. That case is Doe v Trump, 1:25cv-10135. That case had been randomly assigned to Judge Sorokin. Then, a few hours later, when the New Jersey case was filed, the plaintiffs in that case aid that their case is closely related to the Doe case, and therefore Judge Sorokin should be on that case also. But Judge Sorokin is not persuaded that the two cases should be linked. If, after reading the New Jersey brief on that point, he decides that the two cases are not related, the New Jersey case will go through the random procedure of choosing a judge. Of course, it is then conceivable that the random process would end up picking Judge Sorokin anyway.

Reason Magazine has this interview with national Libertarian Party chair Angela McArdle, titled, “What Role Did the Libertarian Party Play in Freeing Ross Ulbricht?”. It is approximately 20 minutes long. McArdle explains the history of her work on this subject, which began in 2023. She mentions that the Trump campaign was accutely aware that the Libertarian Party had polled 1,865,724 votes for President in 2020

New Mexico has always had closed primaries since primaries were first established in 1938. On January 21, two New Mexico State Senators introduced SB 16, to let independent voters vote in the primary of their choice. The sponsors are Senators Peter Wirth and Natalie Figueroa.

Over the last decade, this bill has been introduced in every session, but so far it hasn’t passed.