#constitution

#constitution

Light illuminates part of the Supreme Court building in Washington on Nov. 16, 2022.Patrick Semansky/AP In a major victory for Native American rights, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld key provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act, a law enacted 45 years ago to remedy decades of past government abuse.

Former President Donald Trump visits with campaign volunteers at the Grimes Community Complex Park, Thursday, June 1, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa.Charlie Neibergall/AP That a former president is facing federal charges would be a big deal unto itself.It has never happened in this country before.But add to that, charges dropping while said former president is running and leading in the primary to get his old job back, and you have something truly unusual and extraordinary.

Republican presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson Sunday articulated vastly different plans for how they'd approach the federal indictment against former President Donald Trump should either capture the White House in 2024.Contenders for the GOP nomination are grappling to strike the right tone on Trump, seen as the GOP front-runner to take on President Joe Biden next year, as they look to build their support among Republican primary voters.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

It's a decades-old pursuit that's been attempted, thus far, unsuccessfully - but a group of El Dorado County residents are hoping to finally get their shot at breaking free from California.The new effort to separate from one of the largest states in the U.S. is brewing in one of its smallest counties.

This provision ignores scientific consensus that conditions like depression don't "cause" someone to be trans.These screenings don't provide access to gender-affirming care for trans youth; rather, they erect a formidable barrier to even obtaining mental health care.StockRocket / Getty Images In a concerning turn of events, Ohio has become the newest addition to the growing list of states progressing gender affirming care bans for transgender youth out of legislative committees.

A majority of Americans approve of the DOJ opting to indict Donald Trump, the poll also found.Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster following his appearance in a Miami court on June 13, 2023, in Bedminster, New Jersey.Spencer Platt / Getty Images It's been around 10 months since the FBI executed a search warrant at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, obtaining thousands of government documents in the process, including more than 100 marked "classified."

[ NB: check the byline, thanks./~Rayne]
Two days after a warrant was served on Mar-a-Lago last August, I wrote this:

We could have seen it coming after all this time.They're reliably predictable, no crystal ball required.Trump appears to be in trouble: The FBI serves a warrant on Mar-a-Lago, seizing papers.

The bigots' latest rallying cry is a crude, transphobic and embarrassingly low-quality rap song littered with slurs.A customer shops through Pride Month accessories at a Target store on June 6, 2023, in Austin, Texas.Brandon Bell / Getty Images When Newsweek reported that an anti-Target novelty song had topped the iTunes charts on May 30, besting pop star Taylor Swift's latest single in the process, both political journalists and music fans were left scratching their heads - surely no one was actually enjoying this sonic garbage?

The ban on gender-affirming treatments for trans youth in the state likely violates the Constitution, the judge wrote.People hold signs during a joint board meeting of the Florida Board of Medicine and the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine, on November 4, 2022, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, to establish new guidelines limiting gender-affirming care in Florida.

Nusrat Choudhury, a civil rights lawyer, was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday as a federal judge in New York, making her the first female Muslim American and first Bangladeshi American to hold that distinction in U.S. history.Judge Choudhury, mostly recently the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, was confirmed by a vote of 50-49, with every Democrat but one supporting her.

Wearing a T-shirt that read Free Bird, an Arizona man who spent nearly 28 years on death row was freed on Thursday after a judge overturned his conviction on charges that he had sexually assaulted and murdered his girlfriend's 4-year-old daughter.Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a bid by the man, Barry Jones, for relief.

A legal attempt to ban abortion in Iowa after six weeks of pregnancy failed on Friday, after the State Supreme Court deadlocked over whether to vacate a lower court's injunction and allow the ban to take effect.That means abortion will remain legal in Iowa through 20 weeks of pregnancy.As one state after another banned or sharply limited access to abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Iowa's status as a place where abortion remained accessible was at stake.

In a pair of opinions on Thursday, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch again demonstrated that he is the fiercest proponent of Native American rights on the Supreme Court.That does not surprise people who knew him when he served on the federal appeals court in Denver.He's from Colorado, said John E. Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund.

A landmark climate change trial was set to begin Monday in Montana, where a group of youths has sued government leaders, accusing them of embracing fossil fuels in ways that are destroying the environment and robbing the futures of the state's young residents.The lawsuit, more than a decade in the making, is the first of a number of similar efforts to go to trial in the United States.

"Far from justifying an exemption from the retrial rule, the historical background of the Venue and Vicinage Clauses supports the opposite inference."- SCOTUS
The U.S. Supreme Court today delivered a ruling that flows from a trade secrets theft case, holding that "the Constitution permits the retrial of a defendant following a trial in an improper venue conducted before a jury drawn from the wrong district."

"Far from justifying an exemption from the retrial rule, the historical background of the Venue and Vicinage Clauses supports the opposite inference."- SCOTUS
The U.S. Supreme Court today delivered a ruling that flows from a trade secrets theft case, holding that "the Constitution permits the retrial of a defendant following a trial in an improper venue conducted before a jury drawn from the wrong district."

ISTANBUL High-level talks on Wednesday in Turkey aimed at bridging differences over Sweden's application to join NATO ended with no progress being announced.Before the meeting, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey showed little sign publicly of easing his opposition to the Nordic nation's membership, a dispute that has strained his ties with Western allies amid the war in Ukraine.

The company claims that the plan to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices violates the First and Fifth Amendments.A Merck flag flies in front of the company's building on October 2, 2013, in Summit, New Jersey.Kena Betancur / Getty Images Merck announced on Tuesday that it is suing the government over a recently approved plan to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, aiming to stop one of the nation's first efforts to take a small step toward lowering sky-high drug prices in the U.S.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington on Tuesday, claims that the plan is unconstitutional and calls it a "sham" and "tantamount to extortion."

Congregants arrive at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.The megachurch founded by Rick Warren was one of two churches affected by a vote Wednesday at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting.Allison Dinner/AP The Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to uphold earlier decisions to expel two churches because they have women pastors.

The House turned back a Republican effort on Wednesday to formally censure Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, for his role in investigating and impeaching former President Donald J. Trump.The vote was 225 to 196 to table, or kill, a resolution by Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who has allied herself closely with the former president.

The House is expected on Wednesday to take up a censure resolution against California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for his role in investigations of the former president.The resolution, sponsored by GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, is expected get called up at the end of an afternoon vote series around 3:45 p.m. ET.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' crass stunt of flying desperate immigrants to California and dumping them on the doorstep of a Catholic Diocese headquarters showed us one thing: He's not fit to be America's president.It's not because of his sensible view that we must gain more control of our southern border.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday called for a U.S. constitutional amendment on gun control that would ban assault weapons and mandate background checks and waiting periods for purchasing firearms, a longshot proposal with little chance of passing in a nation deeply divided on the issue.

Suella Braverman has backed police over the handling of the coronation and insisted they had the right powers to crack down on Just Stop Oil protests.The Metropolitan Police has been criticised over the arrests of six anti-monarchy protesters and three charity volunteers who were all later released without charge.

Tests on Marcell Ozuna's hand all came back negative and he is day-to-day according to a report by Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Ozuna was hit in the hand leading off the fourth inning of Monday's 6-5 loss.He was replaced by Travis d'Arnaud in the fifth inning.Marcell Ozuna said all of his tests came back negative.

By now, most of Braves Country and a lot of the baseball world is at least aware of the lore from last season.After playing a calamitous baseball game on May 31 in order to lose 8-7 in extras to the Diamondbacks, the then-defending World Series Champion Atlanta Braves fell to 23-27 and had finally reached their nadir in the NL East race that year.

You know the current idiocy of trying to ban disliked ideas has reached its peak when the Bible itself, also called the Good Book, has been banned from elementary and middle schools in Utah's Salt Lake City school district for vulgarity and violence, a way of avoiding saying "sex" ("Utah district bans Bible from schools after citing vulgarity, violence," June 4).

Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets is an eye-opening docuseries about reality TV stars The Duggars.Prime Video It was the week the artist who sang an era-defining song walked to the sea, looking straight ahead, not at h/sh/me.It was the week the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation first began to crash against the shield-wall of sandbags that is the U.S. Constitution.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his proposal Thursday to pursue a Twenty-Eighth Amendment that would enshrine four "common sense" gun reform measures in the U.S. Constitution.The amendment would raise the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21 ("if you can't buy a beer, you shouldn't be able to buy a gun," he said in a video announcing his proposal), require universal background checks and a "reasonable waiting period" on gun purchases, as well as ban civilian purchases of assault weapons.

Even while raising concern over free speech, however, Warnock praises the law enforcement involved in the case.Sen. Raphael Warnock speaks at a press conference on Gun Safety legislation outside the U.S. Capitol Building on May 18, 2023, in Washington, D.C.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images After months of silence on the violent repression of activists organizing against a massive planned police militarization compound in Atlanta known as Cop City, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) has spoken up about the issue, sending a letter this week to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expressing concern over the potentiality of activists' First Amendment rights being trampled by the extremely dubious terrorism charges being hurled against them.

Carroll Cooley, a detective whose interrogation of a rape suspect named Ernesto Miranda helped lead to the landmark decision by the Supreme Court that compelled the police to make criminal suspects aware of their right against self-incrimination and their right to have a lawyer present, died on May 29 at his home in Phoenix.

Lazy Betty, the renowned modern and inventive restaurant from Chef-Partners Ron Hsu and Aaron Phillips, is set to relocate to Atlanta's Midtown neighborhood later this year.Located at 999 Peachtree, at the corner of Peachtree and 10th Street, the new space formerly housed Chef Hugh Acheson's beloved Empire State South.