Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee are taking steps to address corruption on the Supreme Court at a time when the Court is eroding the public’s rights at an unprecedented rate. On Monday, Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights Chair Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) announced in a…
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For decades, an elite group of ultrawealthy and influential Americans has boasted the membership of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and both the justice and the wealthy members of that network have benefited, a new investigation reveals. Over the past months, Thomas’s financial relationship with conservative billionaire Harlan Crow has made headlines. But, as a new report by The New York…
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The majority of voters disagree with the outcome of the Supreme Court’s latest anti-LGBTQ ruling allowing businesses to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, new polling finds. According to a survey from Data for Progress released this week, 65 percent of likely voters say that businesses should not be allowed to deny services to people based on their race, religion…
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has warned that the Supreme Court is rapidly expanding its own power and approaching the realm of authoritarianism after justices released another devastating slate of decisions last week that threaten to majorly disrupt higher education and LGBTQ rights across the country. In an interview on CNN on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez said that Supreme Court justices…
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Over the past decades, the fossil fuel industry has worked around the clock to exercise its influence over every level of politics — with moves including, as a new report reveals, injecting its lobbyists into the very groups that are purportedly working at the front lines to combat the climate crisis. According to a new database published by divestment advocacy group F Minus on Wednesday…
Monday, July 3, was the hottest day in recorded history, beating out all-time highs since at least 1979 and beating the previous record set in 2016, data shows. But it only held that record for a day as it was swiftly beaten by July 4, which eclipsed Monday’s record in a reminder of how swiftly the global climate is warming — and how this record will only continue to be topped.
After the far right Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan on Friday, activists almost immediately gathered behind two rallying calls: one, that Biden can and must still cancel student debt, and two, that the Supreme Court is illegitimate. The conservative justices’ decision, which rested on a fringe far right legal theory, yanks $430 billion in relief away from…
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday to strike down President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan, yanking away a chance at respite for tens of millions of borrowers across the country based on what advocates and experts have said are faulty, policy-driven viewpoints adopted by the far right Court. Justices ruled 6 to 3 on Biden v. Nebraska, a case brought by Republican state lawmakers…
On Friday, the Supreme Court is slated to rule on what could be a devastating case for LGBTQ rights based on what appear to be completely illegitimate claims for standing — including evidence filed by anti-LGBTQ petitioners who appear to have used a real man’s identity to make up a fake gay couple whole cloth. The case, 303 Creative v. Elenis, involves Lorie Smith, a self-proclaimed wedding…
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Far right Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has unveiled a list of four federal agencies he would completely eliminate if he were elected president, putting on display his wish to deeply destabilize the country’s social welfare system in an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. When asked if he would shutter any federal agencies, DeSantis said that “we would do Education, we would do Commerce…
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The U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action in college admissions on Thursday, overturning nearly half a century of legal precedent in a decision that will almost certainly have devastating impacts on racial equity in higher education and society at large. The majority of justices ruled in two closely related cases regarding Harvard University and the University of North…
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Ending the student loan payment freeze may push millions of people into economic precarity, as almost 7 in 10 student debtors either won’t be able to make student debt payments or will have to cut back spending in other areas when payments resume this year, a new survey found. The survey results were included in Morgan Stanley’s latest consumer pulse survey of roughly 2,000 people, per Insider.
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A group of Democrats is urging Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to open investigations into Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas following a series of allegations about the justices’ ties to Republican billionaires and their repeated violations of finance laws. Eighteen House Democrats sent a letter to Roberts on Tuesday, urging him to open an investigatory arm within the Court and…
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Democrats in Congress have reintroduced a proposal to ban the harmful, anti-LGBTQ practice of “conversion therapy” as Republicans are ramping up legislative and ideological attacks on LGBTQ people across the country. The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, introduced by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California) and Senators Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Patty Murray (D-Washington), would ban conversion therapy…
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The Delaware House has teed up a vote on a bill that would give businesses a vote in the town of Seaford, Delaware — a proposal with frightening implications for elections in a time when lawmakers are increasingly targeting voting rights. The bill allows Seaford — a town of roughly 8,500 people — to amend its charter to allow non-resident business owners to cast a vote in local elections…
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has ruled multiple times over the past year to slash climate regulations and aid the fossil fuel industry and developers — and new reporting finds that he may have an indirect personal financial stake in those rulings. As The Intercept reported on Monday, Samuel Alito’s wife Martha Ann Alito struck a deal with oil and gas company Citizen Energy III last year: She…
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In 1985, President Ronald Reagan nominated Charles Cooper, a deputy in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, to become assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. In need of a deputy himself, hardline conservative Cooper reached out to fellow DOJ employee and now-Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, with whom he had become friendly, and urged him to apply.
An Indiana chapter of the far right hate group Moms for Liberty posted a newsletter on Wednesday featuring a quote from Adolf Hitler on the front page — and is now attacking the news outlet that first reported on the incident. As IndyStar reported this week, the Hamilton County chapter of Moms for Liberty — a group most recently in the news for being labeled an extremist group by the Southern…
With the Supreme Court expected to hand down its ruling on student debt forgiveness any week now, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) is vowing to continue fighting for relief for borrowers even if the Supreme Court strikes it down. In a press conference with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez said that lawmakers in the caucus, as well as the Congressional Black…
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and a number of other progressives in the House have announced that they’re boycotting far right Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to Congress on Thursday, citing Modi’s abysmal human rights record and erosion of free press and religion rights in India. Modi is slated to speak before Congress as part of a trip to the U.S. on an invite from…
Democrats introduced a bill on Wednesday that would, for the first time, enshrine protections for LGBTQ people in a wide swath of situations and codify safeguards granted to the LGBTQ community under a landmark Supreme Court ruling. Rep. Mark Takano (D-California) — co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus and first openly gay person of color elected to Congress — and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D…
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Student debt advocates are urging Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from two key pending Supreme Court cases that could see the overturn of President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan after a stunning report has revealed a potential conflict of interest for the justice. GOP megadonor Paul Singer, who has suddenly found himself in the spotlight after ProPublica revealed his…
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In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito took a fishing trip to Alaska on a Republican billionaire’s private jet and never disclosed it, which experts have said was illegal. Then, as ProPublica unveiled in a bombshell exposé on Tuesday, Alito refused to recuse himself when that same billionaire’s hedge fund had business before the Supreme Court at least 10 times. Experts have condemned the…
House Republicans have advanced a bill that would majorly restrict access to abortion pill mifepristone as part of a quiet effort to attack abortion rights at the federal level. Last week, the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee advanced funding legislation regarding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that would revoke an FDA decision finalized earlier this year that greatly…
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is launching a sweeping Senate investigation into Amazon’s “abysmal” unsafe warehouse labor practices after reports have found for years that the company is a uniquely dangerous place to work. Sanders, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Tuesday demanding that the company answer to…
Far right Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed a bill last week that nullifies local laws mandating water and heat breaks for construction workers as work-related heat deaths in the state are rising and temperatures are hitting record highs. The provision is part of a bill called the “Death Star bill” by its opponents, which nullifies a host of local regulations that enact additional protections for…
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The Department of Justice has released a scathing, 89-page report of the Minneapolis Police Department conducted after the police murder of George Floyd, shedding light on the culture of unlawful police violence and rampant racism that laid the groundwork for Floyd’s murder three years ago. The report, released Friday, finds that the Minneapolis Police Department, referred to as MPD in the report…
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New data shows that the number of legal abortions plummeted by the thousands in states that banned abortion after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year, demonstrating the vast chilling effect that bans have had on people’s ability to access the procedure. According to data from #WeCount analyzed by FiveThirtyEight, states that had an abortion ban in place for at least one week…
The American health insurance system is expensive, actively antagonizes patients, and leaves millions of people without access to coverage — and, as a new poll shows, is often dysfunctional even for the majority of people who have an insurance plan. According to a new nationally representative survey of 3,605 people with health coverage released by KFF on Thursday, roughly 6 in 10 adults with…
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In a somewhat surprising ruling on Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), delivering a win to Native American communities by upholding a decades-old law aimed at keeping Native American children from being taken away from their families and tribes. In a 7-2 decision on Haaland v. Brackeen, justices struck down all challenges to the law, “some on the merits…