2025 MAC Cross Country Championships

NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, his wife, Cristina, and their children were killed in a plane crash on Thursday in North Carolina.

Biffle and his family were on board a private jet when the plane crashed and burst into flames at an airport in Statesville, North Carolina, at about 10:20 a.m. ET, where low clouds, rain and poor visibility were reported.

Rep. Richard Hudson announced their deaths in a post on X:

"I am devastated by the loss of Greg, Cristina, and their children, and my heart is with all who loved them. They were friends who lived their lives focused on helping others. Greg was a great NASCAR champion who thrilled millions of fans. But he was an extraordinary person as well, and will be remembered for his service to others as much as for his fearlessness on the track. The Biffles flew hundreds of rescue missions in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. The last time I spoke with Cristina, just a couple of weeks ago, she reached out to ask how she could help with relief efforts in Jamaica. That’s who the Biffles were. Our prayers are with their family, friends, and everyone grieving this unimaginable loss."

It's unclear what caused the crash. The investigation was ongoing.

Biffle was nominated for the NASCAR Hall of Fame this year. He raced 14 full-time seasons, collecting 19 wins in over 500 starts, and was a perennial playoff contender. Biffle finished in the top 10 in the standings six times, including a runner-up finish in 2005.

The Hall of Fame called Biffle one of NASCAR’s 75 "greatest drivers."

Two American university professors Friday warned the "noxious" Supreme Court can no longer be saved.

Harvard law professor Ryan Doerfler and Yale law professor Samuel Moyn wrote an opinion piece published by The Guardian about how the high court's legitimacy has been increasingly damaged under President Donald Trump's second term. Conservative justices have handed Trump and the MAGA movement a number of wins, including overturning of Roe v. Wade, "what remains of the Voting Rights Act," and losing its "nonpartisan image."

The role of the court has shifted and with the conservative majority, the liberal justices had previously "proceeded as if their conservative peers would continue to take their own institution’s legitimacy seriously."

But over the last several months, that has also changed.

"Yet with the conservative justices shattering the Supreme Court’s non-partisan image during Trump’s second term, liberals are not adjusting much," Doerfler and Moyn wrote. "The liberal justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – have become much more aggressive in their dissents. But they disagree with one another about how far to concede that their conservative colleagues have given up any concern for institutional legitimacy. Encouragingly, Jackson pivoted to 'warning the public that the boat is sinking' – as journalist Jodi Kantor put it in a much-noticed reported piece. Jackson’s fellow liberals, though, did not follow her in this regard, worrying her strategy of pulling the 'fire alarm' was 'diluting' their collective 'impact.'"

By now, Trump has used a "shadow docket" of emergency orders to his advantage and to advance his policies.

"Similarly, many liberal lawyers have focused their criticism on the manner in which the Supreme Court has advanced its noxious agenda – issuing major rulings via the 'shadow' docket, without full-dress lawyering, and leaving out reasoning in support of its decisions," according to the writers.

Critics have argued that the conservative-majority Supreme Court, including Trump's appointees, has used the shadow docket to issue consequential rulings on controversial issues like abortion, voting rights, and immigration with minimal explanation or public deliberation, effectively allowing the court to reshape law through expedited procedures that bypass traditional briefing and oral argument requirements.

Now, "progressives are increasingly converging on the idea of both expanding and 'disempowering' federal courts and looking to see how to shake up the status quo."

"Rather than adhere to the same institutionalist strategies that helped our current crisis, reformers must insist on remaking institutions like the US supreme court so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised," Doerfler and Moyn wrote.

"In Trump’s second term, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court has brought their institution to the brink of illegitimacy. Far from pulling it back from the edge, our goal has to be to push it off," the writers added.