Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal “This story was originally published by ProPublica. After the Trump administration upended the world’s largest foreign aid provider last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff, its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely. But because it is a congressionally created agency, President Donald Trump needed lawmakers’ permission to do so. So this year, Trump officials asked Congress for permission to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and dramatically reduce federal spending on food, medicine and lifesaving work around the world.  Congress said no. Lawmakers, who hold the government’s…

Sky York Journal “I don’t agree with everything Ron Paul thinks,” Tucker Carlson said in an interview at the 2008 Republican National Convention. “I don’t agree with everything I think!” Over the past three decades, Carlson has been saying whatever he thinks, even the things he doesn’t think, also the stuff he apparently does think but doesn’t agree with, even though he thought of it himself. Somehow, this has placed him at the very top of the right-wing media heap. It’s a godforsaken story of constant evolution, always optimizing his positions to retain and grow his audience. His latest act…

Sky York Journal Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) criticized President Donald Trump’s supposed peace deal with Iran on Thursday, saying he is concerned the agreement  “negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury.” “Since day one, I have supported President Trump’s efforts to end Iran’s 47-year threat to the United States and our partners. I am concerned that the memorandum of understanding negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the President’s goals,” Wicker said in a Thursday statement. Wicker’s statement comes after lawmaker complaints that they have not…

Sky York Journal The federal government is applying a McCarthy-era law to strip a Somalia-born Minneapolis man of his citizenship over actions that took place after he became a citizen.  It’s a fundamental break with how the government has attempted to denaturalize people. Bound by extensive Supreme Court precedent, the DOJ has long pursued these cases against people who lied on their citizenship applications or omitted something significant enough that, had the government known, it would have declined the person’s citizenship application: war criminals who did not disclose atrocities in which they were involved, for example, or people who omitted…

Sky York Journal A Senate hearing to start the process of confirming President Donald Trump’s pick to be the Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton, went up in flames early Wednesday morning. And, though at times Wednesday it looked as if the Senate might move forward despite the president’s erratic demands, by mid-afternoon Clayton’s path to director was a hopelessly tangled mess. The fracas saw even Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-AR), a dependable pro-Trump voice, grumbling publicly about the White House.  It all began with a predictably lengthy social media post, sent out shortly before 4 a.m, in…

Sky York Journal Throughout his confirmation hearing, Democrats didn’t trust that President Donald Trump’s new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh could remain independent from the president. Of chief concerns were Trump’s very open attacks on the Fed’s independence, which started on social media and in the press but went far beyond that when he tried to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook and allowed his Department of Justice to launch a criminal probe into former Chair Jerome Powell.  Cook’s case is still unresolved, with the Supreme Court expected to soon rule on whether Trump has the authority to outright fire a…

Sky York Journal After a tight May primary election that saw Trump-endorsed Georgia Lt. Governor Burt Jones leading billionaire Rick Jackson by a mere six percentage points, Jackson turned the tables and prevailed in Tuesday’s runoff election. Unlike the GOP Senate race, which saw an ultra-MAGA election denier face off against a conservative election affirmer (who still wanted to make it more difficult for Georgians to vote), both Republican hopefuls for governor profess to believe that the election was stolen. A win for either candidate in November could mean a blow to democracy in the purple, southern state. With 92%…

Sky York Journal In the Trump administration’s latest effort to meddle in election administration, investigate baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and sow doubt in the country’s election system ahead of the midterms, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators were reportedly granted access to voter files in counties in Texas and North Carolina. Election officials in Forsyth County in North Carolina and Webb County in Texas handed over individual voter files — which can include things like registration history, drivers license numbers, addresses, dates of birth, among other information — to ICE investigators, Axios was first to report. It’s…

Sky York Journal ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA — In a major blow to President Trump’s $1.776 billion anti-weaponization slush fund, a federal judge in Virginia issued a preliminary injunction blocking the fund. The Virginia case is just one of a handful of legal challenges to the slush fund, which was spawned by last month’s dubious settlement of Trump’s collusive lawsuit against the IRS. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued her ruling from the bench after a brief Friday hearing in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria (here’s her written order). The judge rejected the administration’s argument that the case…

Sky York Journal The Broadview Six case didn’t happen in a void.  In the month that Chicago federal prosecutors returned three times to the same grand jury to try to secure an indictment of the same set of protesters, their office was under intense pressure. Greg Bovino had arrived in the city the month before, heralding a surge of federal officers under so-called “Operation Midway Blitz” that prompted mass protests. Trump-appointed DOJ leadership was demanding that prosecutors bring the most aggressive possible charges against those involved in anti-ICE demonstrations. At the same time, those cases kept collapsing: in some cases,…