The networks of two major players who helped capture the U.S. Supreme Court — anti-abortion lawyer Leonard Leo and oil billionaire Charles Koch — have also long targeted state courts to advance their regressive agenda. One of their tactics, influencing the way that state justices are selected nationwide, is being borne out in Kansas. On August 4, voters in Kansas will decide the fate of a…
Source
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with a fund that opponents fear will be used to pay off the president’s political allies. Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia issued a brief order halting the Department of Justice, the Treasury Department and other high-ranking administration officials from taking any additional…
Source
Arizona coffee roaster Gabe Hagen is wondering if he’ll ever recoup the tens of thousands of dollars he paid in tariffs to import beans from the world’s major coffee-growing regions in South America, Africa and the Indo-Pacific. Weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs as illegal, Hagen is among an army of small business owners who are unsure…
Source
In a pocket of Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley,” Black residents bear the generational toll of “plantation country” becoming “pollution country.” Seven times as many people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer than the national average in these disproportionately Black communities. Now, a federal district court has given those residents something they almost never get: a chance to…
Source
A divided federal appellate panel ruled Friday in favor of the Trump administration’s policy of locking up most undocumented immigrants without bond, a decision that legal experts called a serious blow to due process. A three-judge panel of the right-wing 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled 2-1 that President Donald Trump’s reversal of three decades of practice by previous…
Source
At a press conference on January 3, President Donald Trump announced that the United States had carried out strikes on Venezuela and captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Trump alleged that Maduro oversaw the Cartel de los Soles and had sent members of the Tren de Aragua gang to the United States to terrorize Americans. Unlike previous U.S. presidents…
Source