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News and Analysis
May 15, 2017 11:05 am | By 28188North Carolina’s Voter Suppression Law is Finally Dead
Good news from the Supreme Court on voting rights this morning: The justices announced that they will not hear North Carolina’s appeal in support of its draconian voter suppression law. The Fourth Circuit’s decision striking it down remains the law. Our…
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News and Analysis
May 10, 2017 5:05 pm | By 28189Comey Firing Drives Home Need for Independent Russiagate Prosecutor
This post originally appeared in the HuffPost. President Donald Trump’s surprise firing of FBI Director James Comey makes one thing perfectly clear—Americans need an independent prosecutor to investigate and enforce the law in the growing Russiagate scandal. Comey’s firing came…
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News and Analysis
May 10, 2017 11:41 am | By 28188Sessions Violated Two Recusal Oaths in Comey Firing
President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey raises grave concerns about preserving the rule of law in our nation. Among the many deeply disturbing aspects of this action is that the attorney general played an active role in the…
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News and Analysis
May 8, 2017 2:05 pm | By 28188The Trump Judiciary
In the opening days of his presidency, Donald Trump learned that he cannot rule by diktat, but that our nation’s federal court system serves as a vital buffer between liberty and tyranny. He was clearly not pleased. When Neil Gorsuch’s…
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News and Analysis
May 4, 2017 8:26 pm | By 28188The Johnson Amendment and Who the Right Would Leave Behind
With President Trump’s executive order today, the so-called Johnson Amendment is in the news again. For years, the Religious Right has been claiming that it muzzles religious voices. To see how absurd this claim is, it helps to have some…
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News and Analysis
May 4, 2017 10:45 am | By 41753Rabbi Saperstein Provides Needed Truth-Telling at Congressional Hearing on Johnson Amendment
The same day that President Trump gathered Religious Right leaders and their conservative Catholic allies to celebrate his executive order telling the IRS not to enforce legal restrictions on overt politicking by churches—the so-called Johnson Amendment—the House Committee on Oversight…
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News and Analysis
May 3, 2017 5:47 pm | By 28188Opposite ways to address anti-LGBTQ discrimination
The White House is preparing to release a “religious freedom” executive order that would extend legal protection to individuals, organizations, and businesses that discriminate, as long as they cite religion as justification. Among the main targets of this executive action…
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News and Analysis
May 3, 2017 12:29 pm | By 41753
Trump Reportedly Planning To Issue Anti-LGBTQ Executive Order On ‘Religious Liberty’
President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to use the National Day of Prayer on Thursday to sign an executive order on so-called religious liberty. If it’s anything like a draft order that leaked three months ago, it will be a…
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News and Analysis
May 2, 2017 9:20 am | By 28188The White House’s Threats to First Amendment Protections Remind Us that Courts Matter
The Trump administration is working on a way to eliminate First Amendment protections in order to deter or prohibit criticism of the president. We don’t have an anonymous leak to thank for revealing this grave threat to our democracy. White…
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News and Analysis
April 27, 2017 3:14 pm | By 41753Department of Education Study Shows DC Voucher Program Championed By Right Wing Hurts Student Achievement
A new congressionally mandated evaluation of the DC Voucher program has found that students using a voucher to attend private schools score worse in math a year later than their counterparts who applied for a voucher but were not offered…
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News and Analysis
April 27, 2017 9:46 am | By 44533Scott Pruitt Fundraising Speech Presents Conflict of Interest
UPDATE: Scott Pruitt has announced that he will no longer be attending the OKGOP Gala, citing the ethics concerns raised about his scheduled appearance. This week Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC)…
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News and Analysis
April 26, 2017 3:34 pm | By 28188Klobuchar & Hirono Probe Thapar on Money in Politics
One of the several concerns that have been raised about Sixth Circuit nominee Amul Thapar centers on a case in which he used a severely flawed First Amendment analysis to strike down Kentucky’s ban on state judicial candidates contributing money…
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News and Analysis
April 26, 2017 10:53 am | By 28192100 Days Of Trump: Delivering For The Extreme Religious Right
This was originally posted at Right Wing Watch. President Trump’s first 100 days in office, judging by his own campaign promises, have been a disaster, with his administration bogged down by scandals, infighting, and ineptitude. While Trump has now complained…
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News and Analysis
April 25, 2017 4:51 pm | By 43665GOP Should Not Hold the Government Hostage to Push Through an Extreme Agenda
Time is quickly running out for Congress to work out a spending bill, and while President Trump appears to have backed down from his dangerous insistence on including funding for a border wall in the must-pass legislation, the fight isn’t…
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News and Analysis
April 20, 2017 2:16 pm | By 41734The Changing Face of the Justice Department
Two years ago this Sunday, on April 23, 2015, Americans celebrated a milestone for diversity and justice when Loretta Lynch was confirmed as the first African American woman to lead the U.S. Department of Justice. Attorneys general play a powerful…
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News and Analysis
April 19, 2017 4:15 pm | By 28188Gorsuch Hears His First Church-State SCOTUS Case
Oral arguments were held today in what is perhaps the most high-profile case remaining to be argued this term: Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer. As discussed in our term preview last fall (when the name was Pauley rather…
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News and Analysis
April 19, 2017 3:33 pm | By 44533Trump’s America: For-Profit Prisons, Immigrant Detention and Shady Political Donations
The Trump administration recently awarded a $110 million contract to the GEO Group, one of the country’s largest private prison contractors, to develop and operate a new detention facility in Texas. Despite the fact that last summer the Obama administration…
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News and Analysis
April 19, 2017 2:08 pm | By 43665Anti-Feminist Zealot Stephen Miller Working on Women’s Issues in the White House
Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller thinks the pay gap “has virtually nothing to do with gender discrimination.” Ivanka Trump insists that her father, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women, is “a feminist.” Yet somehow, this duo appears to…
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News and Analysis
April 14, 2017 4:48 pm | By 44533Election 2016: Big Money By the Numbers
The final political spending numbers from the 2016 election are out—and it’s not good news for our democracy. According to a new report by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), the price tag for the last election comes in at…
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News and Analysis
April 12, 2017 4:45 pm | By 53562The 20-point Swing in Kansas Should Give Progressives a Lot of Hope
Backlash against Donald Trump is alive and well—even in Republican strongholds. Last night in the Kansas special election in Congressional District 4, Trump-embracing Republican Ron Estes only beat progressive Democrat James Thompson by a mere 6.8 points. Last November, Trump…