Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) has been a central figure in the ongoing efforts to resist President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push in New York City. And, when Trump delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, Goldman is making sure some of the observers who have been monitoring the masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in court and helping detained immigrants win their release will be in the room.  Goldman has invited Father Fabian Arias of Saint Peter’s Church in Manhattan and Peter Melck Kuttel as his guests for the presidential speech. The pair have…

Sky York Journal This story was originally reported by Mariel Padilla of The 19th. Meet Mariel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. Pastor Doug Wilson is a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist who advocates for a patriarchal society where sodomy is criminalized, women submit to their husbands and women lose the right to vote. He also preached at the Pentagon this week after being personally invited by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a member of the pastor’s church network.  Wilson’s presence in the nation’s capital highlights how a fringe conservative evangelical Christian belief system has gained more…

Sky York Journal Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) has never quite fit in with the ever-growing contingent of MAGA lawmakers on Capitol Hill who show blind loyalty to the president. He is one of the few Senate Republicans who have publicly and repeatedly criticized President Donald Trump for his actions, though he has not always backed up that criticism with votes. But in one career-defining case, he did. He was one of seven Republicans — ultimately not enough — who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  At the time of…

Sky York Journal This story was originally reported by Kate Sosin of The 19th. Meet Kate and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. Sarah O’Neill loved her job as a data scientist at the National Security Agency (NSA).  “The government before last year was what I would consider to be a model employer,” O’Neill said.  She started the job in 2019, two years after she started her transition to living as a woman.   “That wasn’t an issue at all,” she said. “Everybody was supportive.” Everything changed in January 2025. That’s when President Donald Trump took office…

Sky York Journal The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s signature economic and foreign policy in a fractured 6-3 split decision issued Friday morning. Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to override Congress’s power of the purse by using an emergency declaration to levy widespread global tariffs, the majority held. The decision will now likely require an end to those tariffs, and could trigger the return of tariff revenue collected by Customs and Border Protection and deposited into the U.S. Treasury. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined in part by…

Sky York Journal As President Donald Trump’s actions targeting federal government unions and employees make their way through the courts, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests the president’s show of force against American public servants may have backfired. Since last March, Trump has moved to abruptly end union protections for hundreds of thousands of government workers. At the same time, largely through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the administration in 2025 fired tens of thousands of federal workers while tens of thousands more retired, quit, or accepted the DOGE “fork in the road buy out.”…

Sky York Journal A set of Supreme Court decision days, beginning Friday, could feature a body blow to the United States’ multiracial democracy.  Louisiana v. Callais “could completely erase all, or most, of the gains of the civil rights movement’s crowning achievement,” Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center, told reporters Thursday.  The Court could use the case to shred what remains of the Voting Rights Act, hobbling the section of the law under which voting rights groups challenge district maps that dilute minority voters. Prior to the Act’s passage, Black voting power and political representation, particularly…

Sky York Journal The White House wanted investigations into those it describes as left-wing activists and the groups that fund them. And now, FBI Director Kash Patel says, the FBI is delivering. The FBI is investigating funding associated with left-wing activism, Patel confirmed to longtime podcaster and brief FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino on his recently revived streaming show. “This FBI, thanks to what we stood up over the last year, has made significant headway under the NSPM-7 process in looking at those who funded these streams,” Patel told Bongino, adding that the bureau is “starting to arrest people who…

Sky York Journal This story was originally published by ProPublica. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published. For months, President Donald Trump has railed against Latin American narcoterrorists flooding the United States with “lethal poison.” He has used the scourge of drug trafficking as a rationale for dozens of military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, which have left more than 140 people dead. Last month, Trump cheered a military assault by U.S. forces that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and brought them to the U.S. to face…

Sky York Journal This article is part of TPM’s ongoing “Creating the Enemy Within” project, tracking the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent. When Amber Lowrey first heard that her sister had been arrested at a protest on July 4, it didn’t alarm her. Her sister, Savanna Batten, was a longtime animal rights activist. She’d been arrested before: nothing violent, once at an “Occupy Dallas” sit-in, once after blocking a highway during a Trump I immigration protest. Both cases were dismissed after Batten met certain conditions and checked in with the court. So when Lowrey heard that Batten…