The Trump administration on Wednesday filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to set aside a lower court order that has stopped construction of border barriers through the Big Bend region of Texas.

The order is a significant obstacle for one of President Donald Trump's signature initiatives. The administration has been moving quickly to build walls and related infrastructure along the southern border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

Local opposition and the October injunction

In Big Bend, the project has drawn pushback from ranchers, residents, business owners and environmental groups. They contend that the plan, which combines walls, vehicle barriers and surveillance technology, wastes money in a region where illegal crossings have historically been low, and that construction threatens the area's landscapes. Opponents have brought several lawsuits challenging the work.

In one of those cases, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone on Oct. 2 issued a preliminary injunction halting construction across the roughly 500-mile project area while the litigation continues. The order covers Big Bend National Park as well as state-owned and privately owned land upriver and downriver from the park. Opposition had been building for months but intensified in August, when bulldozers were seen clearing land inside the national park.

The waiver dispute

At the center of the case are broad waivers issued by the Secretary of Homeland Security that let U.S. Customs and Border Protection skip environmental and other regulatory requirements that would otherwise slow a project of this size.

The government maintains that Big Bend sees a high level of illegal entry and that a 1996 law expressly gives the secretary authority to waive such rules when needed to build barriers and roads near the border. Challengers counter that Congress limited that power to areas of high illegal entry, and that the remote, rugged Big Bend region does not qualify.

Judge Cardone agreed with the challengers, finding that they "are likely to succeed on the merits of their major questions doctrine claim that the Big Bend Waivers were issued in excess of the Secretary's authority."

What is at stake

Trump has long promised a wall along the approximately 2,000-mile southwest border. Last summer, congressional Republicans provided the Department of Homeland Security with $46 billion to complete it, using a combination of 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers and surveillance systems.

The administration warns that if Big Bend remains one of the few stretches without barriers, illegal crossings could shift there. Opponents respond that drones, surveillance towers and similar tools would be equally effective at a far lower cost than a wall.

Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against two former FBI officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, accusing them of giving false statements to Congress about their role in the bureau's handling of the Hunter Biden laptop matter before the 2020 presidential election.

Both previously helped lead an FBI task force focused on foreign interference in U.S. elections, a unit that has since been disbanded. Prosecutors allege that when questioned by lawmakers, the two denied taking part in FBI investigative work involving Biden, and that those denials were untrue.

The pair made their first appearance in federal court in Washington on Friday. Their lawyers asked the court to move quickly so they can challenge the allegations.

The case stands out for several reasons. Criminal prosecutions of former FBI employees by the Justice Department are uncommon. The charges were also brought by criminal complaint rather than grand jury indictment, a route prosecutors usually take when they need to detain someone quickly, for example because of flight risk or danger to the public. Both the defense and the judge commented on that choice in court. The Justice Department has had trouble in recent high-profile cases persuading grand juries in the capital to return indictments.

Timing has also drawn attention. The complaint came less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, as part of a wider review under FBI Director Kash Patel of past bureau episodes that have long been criticized by President Donald Trump's supporters. Patel was a vocal critic of the FBI before he took over the agency.

Lawyers for both defendants rejected the charges. Floris's attorneys described her as a career FBI intelligence officer with nearly two decades of service and argued the case was driven by politics rather than evidence, pointing to its timing so close to an election. Benavides's legal team called the complaint baseless and politically motivated, and said they expect the court process to clear him.

Because the case was filed by complaint, prosecutors have not yet presented it to a grand jury. Both defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a ban on distilling spirits in private homes more than 150 years ago.

Plaintiffs challenging the prohibition on home distilling claim the 1868 law is an antiquated relic of Reconstruction-era politics. They argue that Congress overstepped its taxation powers when it enacted the home distilling ban as part of a tax reform measure designed to curb fraud by commercial distillers.

Government attorneys counter that Congress properly restricted where spirits can be distilled to prevent producers from evading federal excise taxes. They warn that lifting the ban would violate Supreme Court precedent and erode congressional powers.

Federal law makes home distilling a crime punishable by a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Separate challenges to the law divided two federal circuit courts, which issued conflicting decisions in April, only 11 days apart.

A three-judge panel from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal ban in a case brought by John Ream, a brewpub owner from Newark, Ohio, who wants to distill whisky at home for his personal consumption.

A Fifth Circuit panel ruled in favor of different plaintiffs — members of the Texas-based Hobby Distillers Association — and concluded that statutory prohibitions on in-home distilling are outside the scope of Congress' taxing power under the Constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed to review the Fifth Circuit decision, which was the Justice Department's preference. Plaintiffs' attorney Robert Alt said they are "thrilled" that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

"Our country's founders would be rolling over in their graves to learn that a pastime in which even George Washington partook, which is as American as apple pie and certainly a lot older, has quite absurdly been turned into a federal crime," Alt said in a statement.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in both cases argue that Congress could ban a broad array of activities inside private homes — including cooking, gardening and remote work — under the government's interpretation of the 19th century law.

"The importance of this case and the questions it presents could hardly be overstated," the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote. "It presents fundamental questions of the extent of federal power and the powers reserved to the states and the people."

Justice Department attorneys said the government's regulation and taxation on the production of distilled spirits is as old as Congress itself. They noted that Congress outlawed home distilling to prevent those producers from evading taxes or government inspections.

"And because the location restrictions were enacted only after lengthy experience with tax evasion, upholding those restrictions would not open the door to hypothetical laws restricting other conduct lacking that history," they wrote. The government says Ream asked the Supreme Court to resolve an "additional question" of whether location restrictions on home distilling exceed the scope of Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. But the government urged the high court to avoid that question, saying it wasn't part of Ream's case or the government's current arguments in either case.