Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal Before Todd Blanche could be confirmed as the second-highest official at the Justice Department, he had to satisfy the concerns of ethics officials. Blanche, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney during his New York criminal trial last year, was a cryptocurrency investor with holdings of between $159,000 and $485,000, records show. To prevent possible violations of the federal conflicts of interest statute, Blanche promised to dump his digital assets no later than 90 days after his Senate confirmation in March, according to his government ethics agreement. He also pledged not to participate in any matter that could have…

Sky York Journal Rural health systems had already been struggling for years when, earlier this year, they became a legislative focus for President Donald Trump and some GOP congress members. As the president prepared to make the most sweeping cuts to Medicaid and Medicare in the programs’ histories, a handful of GOP senators initially withheld their support for Trump’s major tax cut and defense spending package until Senate Republican leadership did something to make up for the devastating cuts to health care for low income and elderly Americans, especially those from states with large rural populations. Republican leadership added a…

Sky York Journal National Guard troops still patrol non-state Washington D.C. after President Trump announced the end of deployments (or attempted deployments) in Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles.  “We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact,” Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday, adding: “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!” “A much different and stronger form” seems…

Sky York Journal For months now, the Trump administration has been aggressively pressuring red states around the country to gerrymander their congressional maps. It’s part of a sweeping and unprecedented scheme for which President Trump has often been a mouthpiece, aimed at making it easier for Republicans to maintain control of the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm elections.  The Trump administration saw some early wins in its pressure campaign, but more recently it has faced a series of significant setbacks that indicate the larger effort may be losing steam. With the passage in November of California’s redistricting proposal, Prop…

Sky York Journal When is Wisconsin not electing a Supreme Court justice?, weary voters may ask.  The seemingly rapid-fire judicial elections have captured national attention since at least 2020, when liberal Jill Karofsky upset Trump-endorsed incumbent Dan Kelly and reduced the court’s conservative majority to a bare 4-3. Three years later, Janet Protasiewicz beat the returning Kelly again, in what was then the most expensive judicial race in United States history (and one that gave the liberals a majority). That spending record was shattered in 2025 when liberal Susan Crawford won, maintaining the liberal majority despite Elon Musk’s $25 million…

Sky York Journal One of Jan. 6’s enduring mysteries, that of who planted pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC, has, according to the DOJ, been solved. Prosecutors charged Brian Cole, a Virginia man, over the incident; per a Sunday filing in his case, he confessed to FBI agents after his arrest. But there’s another question that persists: how will the MAGAfied DOJ deal with Cole’s motive in the case? The initial indictment was notably silent on what Cole may have believed he was accomplishing by allegedly planting pipe bombs on Jan. 5. An affidavit said agents had tied him…

Sky York Journal The thread of partisan power and control is stitched through America’s public education system. In the name of the revisionist Lost Cause history — which holds that the South fought the Civil War over states’ rights and not to maintain the institution of slavery — the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in the early 20th century leveraged the group’s considerable political influence and went after school curricula. The UDC lobbied for ahistorical, pro-South school materials, and its members joined Southern state textbook commissions where they helped control which books would be deemed suitable for children and…

Sky York Journal Another possible standoff over government funding may be brewing on Capitol Hill. Congress has until Jan. 30 to pass the remaining appropriations bills to fund the federal government for the remainder of this fiscal year, or to vote on a new continuing resolution to keep the government open. That self-imposed deadline is the result of a deal congressional lawmakers made just last month to reopen the government after 43 days of stalemate that led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The shutdown was triggered by Democrats’ efforts to try and save Affordable Care Act subsidies…

Sky York Journal This post first appeared at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. In November 2024, Democrat Josh Stein scored an emphatic victory in the race to become North Carolina’s governor, drubbing his Republican opponent by almost 15 percentage points. His honeymoon didn’t last long, however. Two weeks after his win, the North Carolina legislature’s Republican supermajority fast-tracked a bill that would transform the balance of power in the state. Its authors portrayed the 131-page proposal, released publicly only an hour before debate began, as a disaster relief measure for victims of Hurricane Helene. But much of…

Sky York Journal Dr. Jessica Weisz, a pediatrician in D.C., has seen more and more parents who are skeptical about vaccinating their children.She cares for about 15 families a day, and said that what used to be monthly questions about vaccine safety have become weekly ones. But, she emphasized, that was not yet the norm. “Overwhelmingly, most parents and caregivers want their children to be vaccinated,” Weisz, who is also president of the D.C. chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), told TPM. Last Friday, the Washington Post published an article outlining plans for new childhood vaccine guidelines coming…