The Supreme Court’s decision in the 2010 Citizens United case transformed the world of politics. It loosened restrictions on campaign spending and unleashed a flow of anonymous donor money to nonprofit groups run by political activists.

In the months before the ruling dropped in January of that year, a group of conservative activists came together to create just such an organization. Its mission would be to, at the time, block then-President Barack Obama’s pet initiatives.

The activists included Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo and his ideological soulmate, a hard-edged activist named Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

“Ginni really wanted to build an organization and be a movement leader,” said a person familiar with her thinking at that time. “Leonard [Leo] was going to be the conduit of that.”

She also had a rich backer: Harlan Crow, the manufacturing billionaire who had helped Thomas and her husband in many ways, from funding luxury vacations to picking up tuition payments for their great-nephew.

Dr. Heather Skanes’ team at the Oasis Family Birthing Center in Birmingham, Alabama, started turning away patients this spring as state officials cracked down on alternative childbirth options.

The center had offered patients with low-risk pregnancies a place to deliver their babies outside of a hospital, where cesarean sections weren’t performed, epidurals weren’t administered and midwives took the lead. Some women labored in an inflatable aqua birthing pool, in what Skanes saw as a more supportive environment in which Black women in particular would feel more comfortable and heard.

But in March, officials with the Alabama Department of Public Health told Skanes that they considered the previously unregulated facility to be a hospital that didn’t have proper permission to be open, according to her attorneys.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state Public Health Department on behalf of Skanes over what it has called a “de facto ban” on freestanding birth centers. The court battle is unfolding as the agency is weeks away from implementing licensing regulations for the facilities.

Alabama has an alarming record on keeping expectant and new mothers alive, with a higher share of residents dying in pregnancy and during or shortly after childbirth than almost any other state. More than a third of counties in Alabama lack hospitals with labor and delivery units or practicing obstetric providers, according to a report last year from the March of Dimes.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.

“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Escaped prisoner Danelo Cavalcante was spotted twice Friday within the Chester County search area, Pennsylvania state police said, as officials appear to narrow in on the fugitive by reducing the search zone.

Authorities said these were "visual sightings" in the zone around Longwood Gardens, a public esplanade in the county. They did not provide further details. A new wanted poster was released Saturday.

Around 400 law enforcement officers from various agencies have assisted in the search. A perimeter of about 4 square miles was being searched Saturday, down from the roughly 10-mile perimeter they had on Friday.

Officers have used heat-sensing technology, K9 dogs and helicopters as they combed through portions of Chester County. Lt. Col. George Bivens with the Pennsylvania State Police said the search had been complicated by heat and high humidity, but officers "are up to the task."

A reward of up to $20,000 is being offered for tips that lead to Cavalcante's arrest.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) is calling for the Senate to change its rules amid Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) continued blockade of over 300 military promotions continues.

“I wish the Senate would change their rules so that one senator doesn’t have that kind of power, so that we actually would have a democracy where you have a fair vote,” Smith said of the upper chamber of Congress in an interview on CNN.

He added that it’s clear to him that Tuberville doesn’t believe in democracy.

“He doesn’t believe in the system of government that we’ve set up,” Smith argued. “You have a vote, you lose you move on.”

Smith, who served as a state senator in Washington in the 1990s, called the House Freedom Caucus and Tuberville’s approach to governance “incredibly destructive.”

“What he and the Freedom Caucus believe is ‘if you don’t get what you want, do as much damage as you possibly can’ to the government,” he said.

“In this case, it’s incredibly destructive to the defense of this country, to the national security of this country, to not be able to have top leaders appointed to their position nearly undermines our ability to protect this country bottom line, Smith added.

Over the past year, Mike Lindell sat for three depositions in a defamation lawsuit brought by Eric Coomer, a former Dominion Voting Systems executive who was the subject of a false conspiracy theory that he was on an "Antifa conference call" to rig the 2020 election.

None of them went well.

Throughout the depositions, the MyPillow CEO called Coomer and his lawyer "criminals," "disgusting slime," and "evil" and rambled so much that the court reporter transcribing one deposition refused to show up the next day, according to court filings and deposition video and transcripts reviewed by Insider.

During the final deposition, on August 23, Lindell left the room in the middle of questioning to call into Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast, where he hawked his company's pillows, sandals, and dog blankets.

"Well, Steve, I'm in the middle of a deposition for a big attack on MyPillow right now, and it's disgusting," Lindell told Bannon during the episode, before telling listeners they could get a discount on pillows with the promo code "WARROOM" for the company's 20th-anniversary sale.

"We have the MyPillow beds — the best beds in history," Lindell continued. "You haven't even heard about 'em yet."

"Mike Lindell, you're a patriot and a hero," Bannon responded. "Go back into your deposition and give them hell. Give them hell from the War Room."

When Lindell returned to the deposition, he insisted on keeping his cellphone with him, according to a filing from Coomer's legal team. When he stood up to take a call in the middle of questioning, Coomer's lawyers called it a day.

"Dr. Coomer's counsel finally suspended the deposition when Mr. Lindell again stood up and walked out of the room to take a call, shouting that Dr. Coomer's counsel was a 'jerk' as he left," Coomer's lawyers wrote. "The video record of these events is provided herein and is demonstrably worse than any attempt to describe the conduct."

The details of the depositions were recounted in a motion Coomer's attorneys filed Thursday asking a judge to sanction Lindell for his conduct.

The motion asked the judge to force Lindell to pay for all the costs associated with the depositions and to force him to sit in front of a judge for seven hours to finish answering questions.

The annual summit of the Group of 20 economies is the largest gathering of world leaders ever in New Delhi, with attendees including President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and others.

They will be greeted by some of the cleanest streets New Delhi has seen, ornamented by hundreds of thousands of lush flowers potted on freshly painted pavements. What they will not see are the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced, or the slums that have been flattened or obscured by temporary fences bearing the G20 summit’s logo and photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi’s government hopes the beautification project will help showcase the best of what the world’s most populous country has to offer, further cementing its position on the global stage.

Anything that might disrupt that effort is unwelcome.

The race to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein increasingly looks like it’s going to be a SoCal showdown.

The two leading Democrats in the race — Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter. Schiff currently leads the way with 20 percent support, the poll found, and Porter close behind at 17 percent.

Schiff, who hails from Burbank, is a regular on the political talk show circuit and one of the most prominent politicians in the nation. He has flourished in his role as the party’s attack dog against former President Donald Trump. Around two-thirds of voters polled said they hold an opinion on Schiff, and he’s tapped into that name recognition to build a war chest of $29.8 million for the Senate race, as of figures released in July — including a staggering $8.3 million haul in the second quarter.

Porter, a rising star in the party who’s held onto a competitive Orange County district, raised $3.2 million in the second quarter, and received largely favorable reviews from the 57 percent of voters who offered an opinion on her.

Record-breaking rainfall paralyzed much of Hong Kong on Friday, with flash flooding submerging metro stations and trapping drivers on roads, as authorities suspended schools and urged the public to seek safe shelter.

Photos and videos showed residents wading through murky brown floodwaters as heavy rain continued to fall. In some low-lying areas, streets were transformed into surging torrents, with authorities forced to rescue motorists stuck in their vehicles.

The deluge began late Thursday night, with the Hong Kong Observatory recording more than 158 millimeters (6.2 inches) in rain between 11 p.m. and midnight, the highest hourly rainfall since records began in 1884, the government said in a news release.

Some parts of the densely populated city of 7.5 million saw almost 500 mm (19.7 inches) of rainfall in 24 hours, according to online weather data site OGimet.

Paqui, the maker of extremely spicy tortilla chips marketed as the “One Chip Challenge,” is voluntarily pulling the product from shelves after a woman said her teenage son died of complications from consuming a single chip.

The chips were sold individually, and their seasoning included two of the hottest peppers in the world: the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper.

Each chip was packaged in a coffin-shaped container with a skull on the front.

Lois Wolobah told NBC Boston that her 14-year-old son, Harris Wolobah, ate the chip Friday, then went to the school nurse with a stomachache. Wolobah said Harris — a sophomore at Doherty Memorial High School in Worcester, Massachusetts — passed out at home that afternoon. He was pronounced dead at the hospital later that day, she said.

Until sales of the product were suspended, Paqui's marketing dared people to participate in the challenge by eating a chip, posting pictures of their tongues on social media after the chip turned it blue and then waiting as long as possible to relieve the burn with water or other food.

The challenge has existed in some form since 2016.

Republican strategists are exploring a shift away from “pro-life” messaging on abortion after consistent Election Day losses for the GOP when reproductive rights were on the ballot.

At a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans this week, the head of a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., presented poll results that suggested voters are reacting differently to commonly used terms like “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, said several senators who were in the room.

The polling, which NBC News has not independently reviewed, was made available to senators Wednesday by former McConnell aide Steven Law and showed that “pro-life” no longer resonated with voters.

“What intrigued me the most about the results was that ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ means something different now, that people see being pro-life as being against all abortions ... at all levels,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in an interview Thursday.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the polling made it clear to him that more specificity is needed in talking about abortion.

“Many voters think [‘pro-life’] means you’re for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and ‘pro-choice’ now can mean any number of things. So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that they’ve shifted. So if you’re going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific,” Hawley said Thursday.

Hundreds of people have protested in southern Syria to urge President Bashar al-Assad to step down, capping nearly two weeks of demonstrations that had erupted over poor living conditions but have spiralled into renewed calls for political change.

“Bashar out! Syria free!” shouted a large crowd on Friday in the city of Sweida, according to the Reuters news agency.

Syria is in a deep economic crisis that has seen its currency plunge to a record low of 15,500 Syrian pounds to the dollar last month in a rapidly accelerating free fall. It had traded at 47 pounds to the dollar at the start of Syria’s war 12 years ago.

The protests were initially driven by surging inflation and the war-torn country’s worsening economy but have quickly shifted focus with marchers calling for the fall of al-Assad’s government.

Centred in the government-controlled province of Sweida, the heartland of Syria’s Druze, a religious minority that had largely stayed neutral in the conflict between al-Assad and the Syrian opposition, the protests are unusual.

Open criticism of the government had remained rare in government-controlled areas, but as the economic situation has grown worse, the discontent has gone public.