Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal Shortly after President Donald Trump on Friday signed a presidential memo directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees, a key House committee meeting descended into conspiracy theories as it debated whether to take action on a Senate bill that would do the same.  Trump’s executive action, on dubious authority, comes as the Senate-passed bill that would fund DHS without Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is stalled. “America’s air travel system has reached its breaking point,” Trump declared in the memo authorizing the payments. “I…

Sky York Journal President Donald Trump’s attempts to intimidate the Federal Reserve into doing whatever he says have so far done much more harm than good for the president.  Trump has, over the past year, sought to use social media threats and grumbles in the press to intimidate the Federal Reserve Board of Governors into lowering interest rates at his command and in spite of the governors’ interpretations of economic data. But by escalating those attacks into two highly dubious and politically unpopular legal battles, the administration appears to be doing more harm than good to Trump’s ultimate goal of…

Sky York Journal Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Republicans sent Senate Democrats “our last and final offer” for the ongoing Department of Homeland Security funding negotiations. “I think the Dems are now in possession of what I think is our last and final” offer, Thune told reporters on Thursday. “So let’s hope this gets it done.” Republicans’ “final” proposal comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been negotiating for weeks to end the DHS-specific government shutdown, which started on Feb. 14. Senate Democrats have been filibustering the DHS funding bill and demanding reforms and constraints be placed on…

Sky York Journal The momentum to end the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown picked up Monday evening.  Key Republican senators reportedly seemed more optimistic about a possible deal to restore funding to the majority of the agency following a Monday afternoon White House meeting. Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL), Steve Daines (R-MT), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) met with President Donald Trump, Border czar Tom Homan, Stephen Miller and other administration officials to pitch a plan to fund the majority of the DHS — including, critically, the TSA — and later addressing the ICE portion in a party-line…

Sky York Journal Airline travelers across the country were greeted with the sight of armed Department of Homeland Security and ICE agents on Monday. President Trump ordered the officers to be dispatched to at least 13 airports in what he claimed is an effort to ease long security lines caused by the ongoing shutdown of DHS.  What those agents are doing on the ground is less clear. Photos and videos from New York City’s JFK International and LaGuardia Airports, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson and Houston’s Bush Intercontinental — some of the facilities with the worst delays — showed armed, uniformed officers walking…

Sky York Journal BALTIMORE—In a stunning courtroom admission, a Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge Monday that the Trump administration has identified 91 cases where asylum seekers were deported despite a court-ordered class action settlement barring them from being removed before their asylum applications were adjudicated. The dramatic increase in the number of known wrongful deportations in the case from about a dozen to nearly 100 was an astonishing development in a case where the government has insisted that the number of such deportations was relatively small. “Obviously this is extremely troubling,” U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher said…

Sky York Journal The right wing of the Supreme Court happily churned out far-fetched hypotheticals as rationale to end a voting practice so common that 30 states use it — including ruby red Mississippi, which was defending its version during Monday’s oral arguments. Mississippi’s law, and the many like it, allows mailed ballots to be counted if they were sent by Election Day but arrived afterwards.  Voting by mail has become a contentious, political issue in the last several years, primarily fueled by President Donald Trump claiming falsely that it helped his shadowy enemies steal the election from him in…

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. Nabilah Parkes was inside the state Senate chamber in Georgia when she first saw the video. Her Republican colleague, state Sen. Greg Dolezal, had just released a 30-second ad, reportedly made using AI, as part of his campaign for lieutenant governor that depicted Muslims terrorizing white Georgia residents and ended with the message: “Keep Georgia sharia free.” Shariah is the body of Islamic religious law. The caption for the campaign ad, posted on…

Sky York Journal It would be unjust to say the U.S. real-estate-mogul-in-chief created today’s housing crisis. But it is fair to say that President Donald Trump’s policies today won’t make anything better and could make everything worse. “If you take one step forward, but you take 15 steps back, you have a very low odds of being able to achieve your objective, which is to give Americans some relief in the cost of housing today,” Mitria Wilson-Spotser, vice president and federal policy director at the Center for Responsible Lending, told TPM of White House housing policy. The domestic housing shortage,…

Sky York Journal This story is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.  My partner and I homeschool our four kids. We chose it for reasons that will sound familiar to many families who educate at home: flexibility, the ability to tailor instruction to each child’s interests and pace, and the chance to foster a learning environment that is more curious, humane, and inclusive than the one we experienced growing up. For my kids, homeschooling means learning real history in a global, interdisciplinary context, exploring niche interests and how they tie into broader issues, and using…