As the federal government shutdown drags on, the Trump administration has doubled down on a tactic of dubious legality that it has been pursuing since January: cancelling federal funding for already congressionally approved projects in blue cities and states. Back in the summer, the administration pulled $4 billion from the California high speed rail project. It followed up a month later by…
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At the end of August, Texas and Florida’s attorneys general asked to join GOP attorneys general from Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas in a yearslong lawsuit targeting mifepristone — breathing new life into the litigation attacking the most widely used method of abortion in the United States. Earlier this year, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice asked the courts to dismiss the suit — not based on…
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Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door. She calls it “the final mission.” But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe”…
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Two months after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was confirmed, she and a small team from the department met with leadership from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy group that works on behalf of millions of students with dyslexia and other disorders. Jacqueline Rodriguez, NCLD’s chief executive officer, recalled pressing McMahon on a question raised during her…
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Trump administration policies have made it easier to detain and deport immigrants who have been victims of domestic violence, human trafficking and other crimes — and who have pending visa applications based on their cooperation with U.S. law enforcement. A lawsuit filed Tuesday says those policies violate federal law. The lawsuit was filed by Public Counsel on behalf of a coalition of…
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