A U.S. Supreme Court ruling that narrows the Clean Water Act’s authority to regulate certain wetlands has met with disappointment, frustration and head-scratching among Great Lakes environmentalists.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin joined “Chicago Tonight” to talk about ethics reforms at the high court, the growing migrant crisis and the possibility that the federal government could default on the national debt.

The court denied an emergency request from groups challenging the law, which bans so-called assault weapons. The law’s opponents had asked the high court to put the law on hold while a court challenge continues. 

The gun rights advocates are challenging both a city ordinance passed last year by Naperville that bans the sale of assault rifles, and an Illinois state law enacted this year prohibiting the sale and possession of assault weapons and magazines.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who died in 2019, served on the court for nearly 35 years. In that time, the court decided cases on issues including abortion, affirmative action, presidential power, gun rights and the rights of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center.

A band of young women — most in their 20s, some in college, some married with children — banded together in Chicago to create an underground abortion network. The group was officially created in 1969 as the “Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation.”

The justices granted emergency requests from the Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, maker of the drug mifepristone. They are appealing a lower court ruling that would roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of mifepristone.

The call comes after Senate Democrats have raised questions about whether the ethical standards of the high court need to be reviewed or change in the wake of a ProPublica report that found Justice Clarence Thomas has gone on several luxury trips involving travel subsidized by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.

The justices are expected to issue an order on Wednesday in a fast-moving case from Texas in which abortion opponents are seeking to roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, mifepristone.

In an order signed by Justice Samuel Alito, the court put a five-day pause on the fast-moving case so the justices can decide whether lower court rulings restricting the FDA’s approval of the drug should be allowed to take effect in the short term.

Mifepristone was approved for use by the FDA more than two decades ago. In a ruling Friday, a federal judge in Texas blocked the FDA’s approval of the drug. At virtually the same time, a judge in Washington state ordered the FDA not to do anything that might affect the drug’s availability.

“We should put the right to choose on every ballot across the country in 2024 — not just with the candidates we choose, but with referendum efforts to enshrine reproductive rights in states where right-wing politicians are stripping those rights away,” Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker told CNN.

The report of the connection between Thomas and conservative businessman Harlan Crow is already adding to calls that Congress investigate potential ethical lapses. Key Senate Democrats were previously mulling using this year’s funding legislation for the Supreme Court to pressure the justices to adopt some sort of ethics code.

Idaho lawmakers passed a bill this week seeking to add the state to the list of those authorizing firing squads, which currently includes Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Interest comes as states scramble for alternatives to lethal injections after pharmaceutical companies barred the use of their drugs.

As clinics have been forced to shutter in Republican-dominant states with strict abortion bans, some have relocated to cities and towns just over the border, in states with more liberal laws. The goal is to help women avoid traveling long distances. Yet that effort does not always go smoothly. 

The Supreme Court is about to hear arguments over President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan, which impacts millions of borrowers who could see their loans wiped away or reduced.