Posted inCongress & Federal Gov., National News, Syndicated

Supreme Court will take up state bans on gender-affirming care for minors

By MARK SHERMAN WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday jumped into the fight over transgender rights, agreeing to hear an appeal from the Biden administration seeking to block state bans on gender-affirming care. The justices’ action comes as Republican-led states have enacted a variety of restrictions on health care for transgender people, school sports participation, bathroom […]

Posted inCongress & Federal Gov., Housing & Homelessness, National News, Syndicated

Is Trump shielded from criminal charges as an ex-president?

By MARK SHERMAN WASHINGTON (AP) — In the coming days, the Supreme Court will confront a perfect storm mostly of its own making: a trio of decisions stemming directly from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Within days of each other, if not hours, the justices are expected to rule on whether Donald Trump has immunity […]

Posted inCongress & Federal Gov., Housing & Homelessness, National News, Syndicated

What’s left for the Supreme Court to decide? Here’s the list.

By MARK SHERMAN and LINDSAY WHITEHURST The Supreme Court is headed into its final week with about a quarter of the cases heard this year still undecided, including ones that could reshape the law on everything from abortion to social media. The justices are also still weighing whether former President Donald Trump is immune from criminal prosecution […]

Posted inNational News

Black Sabbath

By Hakim Bellamy I promise it was no hyperbole when I said to Dr. Opal Lee, in the presence of her granddaughter Dione Sims: “I hope it doesn’t make you blush when we rightfully call you a living, breathing national treasure.” Roughly 12 hours later, I would be on stage with Sims and Lee in […]

Posted inNational News, Syndicated

The beginner’s guide to celebrating Juneteenth

By TERRY TANG For more than one-and-a-half centuries, the Juneteenth holiday has been sacred to many Black communities. It marks the day in 1865 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas found out they had been freed — after the end of the Civil War, and two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Since it was designated a federal holiday […]

Posted inCongress & Federal Gov., National News

Heinrich-led bump stock ban gained speed, then stalls when one Republican objects

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled that it would take an act of Congress, not a Trump-era regulatory rule, to ban bump stocks for firearms. Monday afternoon, New Mexico’s U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, joined by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), announced that they had organized nearly two dozen […]

Posted inNational News, Syndicated

Severe, chaotic weather around US with high temperatures in Southwest and Midwest, snow in Rockies

By Anita Snow Extreme heat spread across Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas, Colorado and Kansas as severe weather swept across many parts of the U.S. on Sunday. There was unseasonable cold in the Pacific Northwest, snow headed to the northern Rocky Mountains and heavy rainfall forecast from the northern Plains to the Upper Midwest. The […]

Posted inCongress & Federal Gov., National News, Syndicated

Unanimous Supreme Court preserves access to widely used abortion medication

By MARK SHERMAN WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. The nine justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food […]

Posted inCongress & Federal Gov., National News, Syndicated

House votes to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for withholding Biden audio

By FARNOUSH AMIRI WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted Wednesday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview in his classified documents case, Republicans’ latest and strongest rebuke of the Justice Department as partisan conflict over the rule of law animates the 2024 presidential campaign. The […]