Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal This story was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. Meet Chabeli and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. Congressional candidate JoAnna Mendoza can quickly rattle off prices from the grocery store in the small town of Eloy, Arizona, where she grew up. A couple of months ago, a pound of ground beef was going for about $13, a tomato was $1.50 and “a freaking cucumber was like $3.”  She knows because she’s a single mom to a 10-year-old, and she’s struggled with the same things most working women are facing: finding…

Sky York Journal When longtime Indiana politician Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) lobbed a powerful allegation against the Census Bureau last October, what had been a low-profile, fringe GOP conspiracy theory burst to the fore. Banks said he believed the Census Bureau had injected errors in the decennial population count and survey which were so severe, they netted Democrats more representation in Congress at the expense of Republican seats. “The Biden admin used a shady ‘privacy’ formula,” Banks wrote on X, adding that the 2020 census “scrambled the data and miscounted 14 states. It included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra…

Sky York Journal Through much of the course of the U.S.’s war in Iran, the Trump administration has tried to avoid calling the conflict “a war.” Those efforts led to an odd moment in the White House briefing room Thursday when Vice President JD Vance seemingly tripped over his own efforts to downplay the hostilities.  “I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting,” Vance said in response to a question about whether the war would be over before the midterm elections in November.  The comment from the vice president, who was filling the traditional press…

Sky York Journal A once controversial issue pushed only by the most progressive members of the Democratic Party is seemingly becoming a more common stance in the era of Donald Trump: reshaping the Supreme Court. The topic is top of mind for high-profile Democrats who are preparing for the possibility of regaining control of Congress or even having a trifecta in the coming months and years.  Some of these calls for Court reform remain vague and half-baked, and many lawmakers have yet to weigh in at all. But from congressional leadership to 2028 presidential hopefuls, a growing number of big…

Sky York Journal The Trump administration used a tool created in the early days of the War on Terror to obtain financial information without a search warrant as part of its broad crackdown on opposition groups, new documents show.  In newly released emails, agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) used the law, established by the PATRIOT Act, to canvas financial institutions across the country for an investigation. While the target of the search is not clear, DHS produced the emails through discovery as part of the case against a supposed Minneapolis “Antifa” cell. Fifteen people were eventually charged with conspiracy…

Sky York Journal A whistleblower complaint released this morning by the office of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D) offers a detailed and alarming portrait of the implementation of a new Postal Service rule as the agency scrambles to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. The rule, the whistleblower complaint says, creates multiple layers of verification that each individual ballot must go through before it is delivered to a potential voter. The entire system was produced rapidly, in a “slapdash” manner, and, at times, the whistleblower alleges, in violation of court orders. It has…

Sky York Journal To hear him tell it, Victor Marx has done many, many incredible things. Over his years as a Christian nationalist leader, author, and self-described “high risk missionary,” the Republican Party nominee for governor in Colorado has boasted of having personally rescued thousands of people from conflict zones and attaining multiple black belts in various martial arts. After Marx launched his political career last year, these claims have been extensively questioned. Yet, even with all of these dubious heroics, there is probably no wilder part of Marx’s mythos than his stories about performing what most people might call…

Sky York Journal The Trump administration wasted no time appealing a district judge’s Thursday night order temporarily keeping it from enforcing an executive order that would give the federal government unprecedented control over vote-by-mail. The government appealed the order to the First Circuit Court of Appeals Friday afternoon.  The recent flurry of litigation is all heading to one place: the Supreme Court, which will make the final determination of whether the executive order — which would create citizenship lists and stands to disenfranchise thousands of voters — can go into effect. The right-wing majority previously skirted ruling on the merits,…

Sky York Journal The most prominent throughline that has emerged in the 2026 Georgia Senate race is that one candidate, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), seems to be virtually surrounded by fringe figures. Collins himself has — at times slowly — responded to each new revelation by denouncing things he should, including antisemitism and racism. But his ties to out-right antisemites and racists have continued to emerge. Those ties, the most recent of which was exposed by a Washington Post article on Thursday morning, shine a new light on Collins’ own controversial social media presence, where he’s interacted with openly anti-Jewish…

Sky York Journal U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Wednesday lifted an injunction that was the last bulwark against President Donald Trump’s order to let the federal government take over large parts of voting by mail. But the executive order is unlikely to remain unblocked for long. Talwani wrote that the League of Women Voters’ complaint that led to the now-lifted injunction would likely be shot down by the Supreme Court on the same grounds that it turned back another challenge to the executive order on Monday: The agencies that the executive order directs to act hadn’t yet promulgated final…