Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal When President Donald Trump’s administration began its shakeup of the federal government, purging online data sets and demonizing previous federal policy, Laura Pegram saw that her organization could be in danger. She, along with others at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, or NASTAD, moved to restructure their website. “We very intentionally took down all of our staff bios, took down a vast majority of our drug user health resources,” Pegram said. “I still have them, of course. Just like I have all of the CDC and SAMHSA pages that used to affirm the…

Sky York Journal U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee, on Friday referred Justice Department lawyers for disciplinary proceedings after writing that the attorneys’ “reckless disregard for the duty of candor owed to a federal court is appalling.”  The order stems from the Trump administration’s attempt to trawl for sensitive information about trans kids by subpoenaing hospitals that provide gender affirming care. Some hospital systems — including the University of Michigan’s, as TPM first reported in August — stopped providing care altogether rather than fight the subpoenas. But others spawned lawsuits. McElroy, a judge in the District of Rhode Island,…

Sky York Journal Senate Republicans passed their reconciliation bill early Friday morning funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol until the end of fiscal year 2029. The, 52-47, largely party line final vote followed an all day vote-a-rama that stretched into the early hours of Friday. In the end, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was the only Republican to break with her caucus and vote against the bill. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), who is currently running to become the next governor of Colorado, did not vote as he was back in his state to participate in a gubernatorial debate.…

Sky York Journal Senate Republicans’ reconciliation package in its current form includes billions of dollars for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), effectively providing funding for those agencies until the end of fiscal year 2029. If the reconciliation package becomes law, the funding — combined with the money from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) — will be enough for ICE to operate at quadruple capacity for the next three and a half years. And the funding for Border Patrol, again combined with OBBB, will be more than enough to run it for the…

Sky York Journal Democrats seem to have avoided the nightmare scenario in California: with just under 60 percent of the vote in, only one Republican is currently poised to make it to the general election.  Just a couple months ago, the two Republican candidates in the race were polling first and second, threatening a Democratic lockout. In California’s jungle primary, the top two vote getters proceed to the general election regardless of party. Democrats fielded more than 20 candidates in the race, dividing voters. As of Wednesday afternoon, Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton leads with 28 percent of…

Sky York Journal The Supreme Court showed beyond a doubt Tuesday that it will never again put a stop to Republican states snuffing out the Black vote.  The six right-wing justices granted Alabama’s request for a stay, which clears the way for the state to hold its 2026 elections under a 2023 map crafted to deliver Republicans six congressional seats and Democrats only one. It does so by making Black Alabamians’ votes count for less than white ones’.  In Louisiana v. Callais, the Court made vote dilution nearly impossible to prove. It ignored Congress’ alterations to the Voting Rights Act…

Sky York Journal State Rep. Josh Turek (D-IA), a gold medal Paralympian, won the Democratic primary Tuesday and will now set his sights on the open Iowa U.S. Senate seat. While Iowa has seemed lost to Democrats since the 2010s white working class realignment, open races for Senate and governor, strong Democratic recruits and President Trump’s dismal approval rating may be enough to put the seat in reach. Turek beat state Sen. Zach Wahls (D-IA), who vowed to bring the fight to the Democratic establishment, especially Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Turek declined to say whether he’d vote for Schumer,…

Sky York Journal Two young state lawmakers are competing in Tuesday’s primary for the chance to be Iowa’s next and long-awaited Democratic senator in a year where they might just have a chance.  The two candidates, state Sen. Zach Wahls (D) and state Rep. Josh Turek (D), espouse similar ideologies but took different byways to national prominence. Wahls went viral at 19, when he delivered a speech to the Iowa state legislature in defense of gay marriage (Wahls has lesbian mothers). Turek, a gold medal Paralympian in wheelchair basketball twice over, in 2022 flipped a state House seat that had…

Sky York Journal This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. Republicans are focusing on one question in one of November’s top races: Is the Democrat a real man?  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who clinched the GOP’s nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday night, released a new ad Wednesday —his first of the general election — accusing his opponent, state Sen. James Talarico, of being too “low-T for Texas.” “Low-T” is a reference to testosterone levels and often used as an insult by influencers…

Sky York Journal The Broadview Six case didn’t collapse at once. Over the last few months, the case slowly crumbled, piece by piece, with federal prosecutors trying — and eventually failing — to salvage it. The end result was that after months of fighting and chipping away, the tables have been turned on Chicago federal prosecutors in the case. The judge encouraged the defendants to pursue a claim of vindictive prosecution; the case has now devolved into a long referendum on how far alleged instances of prosecutorial wrongdoing may have gone and who knew what, when. Much of that process, attorneys involved…