Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal Against the backdrop of immense pressure, primary threats from President Trump and physical threats from his supporters, Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, after much back and forth, announced that Indiana lawmakers would, in fact, convene to discuss whether to move forward with mid-cycle redistricting. The announcement came with a caveat. He said the state Senate would reconvene as part of the regular 2026 session in order to make a “final decision” on the matter.  The reversal, yet again, comes after Bray said earlier this month that lawmakers would not convene for a special legislative session…

Sky York Journal The administration governs by propaganda. There’s bluster, threats, and even real violence — all deployed to push a far-right agenda forward while dissuading as many people as possible from opposing it. But what happens when that all-out campaign to intimidate makes contact with reality? Nowhere has that approach been clearer than in Chicago. Spearheaded by deportation hype man Greg Bovino, federal law enforcement flooded the city in September. Under Bovino’s command, DHS officials used a military helicopter to raid an apartment building while apprehending undocumented immigrants and, in a single day, deployed more tear gas against protestors than…

Sky York Journal The original civil rights groups who challenged Texas’ new gerrymandered maps back in August of this year have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a lower court ruling that would temporarily block the use of the redistricted map in the 2026 elections.  The involvement of the Supreme Court in the dispute over Texas’s recently redrawn map is only one part of a larger redistricting war that the Trump administration has been waging across the country for months now. The Trump administration has been pushing red states to redraw their district lines to help Republicans flip seats…

Sky York Journal A federal judge has ruled that former insurance lawyer Lindsey Halligan was invalidly appointed as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and has dismissed the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The dual rulings by U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie of South Carolina are the most significant judicial rebukes yet to the politically motivated prosecutions driven by the White House of political nemeses of President Donald Trump.

Sky York Journal A federal judge ruled Thursday that Trump’s Defense Department illegally overstepped its authority in deploying 2,000 local and out-of-state National Guard to Washington D.C., part of President Trump’s crackdown on blue cities. While Trump has gotten mixed results elsewhere — a win at the appellate level in California, a loss in Illinois, a still-pending ruling from the Supreme Court — conventional wisdom has held that stateless D.C.’s was the weakest case.  But Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, found that while Trump may have powers akin to a governor’s over her state’s National Guard, those powers are…

Sky York Journal Federal prosecutors are beating a broad retreat from cases they had brought against people protesting the surge of CBP and ICE agents into Chicago. It is a stunning comedown. Prosecutors moved to abandon on Thursday three cases brought against protestors, two of which DHS described as being brought against “domestic terrorists” as part of a national media campaign to portray the situation in Chicago as demanding a military deployment. Now, the cases have come to nothing amid increasing scrutiny from the courts. In the case of Marimar Martinez, the 30-year old Chicagoan shot five ties in October…

Sky York Journal When Secretary of State Marco Rubio added four European anti-fascist groups to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations last week, he failed to tell the public one thing: how, exactly, these groups threaten Americans. It’s a critical omission. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Secretary of State can only label a group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization — a powerful tool that blocks access to the U.S. financial system and makes it a felony to provide support — if three criteria are met. First, the group must be foreign. That’s straightforward: of the four “violent Antifa” groups Rubio…

Sky York Journal Thanks to a 2009 medical breakthrough, researchers could be on the precipice of answering one reason why Black Americans are disproportionately diagnosed with kidney failure, and offering a solution to the issue. That discovery, doctors and researchers told TPM, may not have been possible without decades of analysis of federal race and ethnicity figures collected on every American citizen diagnosed with kidney failure. Now, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, have ceased collecting that information — data swept away  in President Donald Trump’s purge of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Dialysis is the…

Sky York Journal ALEXANDRIA, VA—This morning’s hearing on James Comey’s motion to dismiss for vindictive and selective prosecution was largely overshadowed by the revelation that the indictment may not be valid because it was botched by interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. You can read my initial report from court here. It would be an epic way for the weaponized prosecution of Comey to end: the Trump loyalist with no prosecutorial experience so badly mishandling the basic nuts and bolts of grand jury practice that no indictment ever attached to Comey. But a botched indictment only indirectly gets at the heart…

Sky York Journal There has been no clear reporting today on when exactly President Trump intends to sign the bill that will give the DOJ the green light to release the files it has on investigations into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. On Wednesday, the Senate approved the measure that had passed the House Tuesday, designed to compel the release of the documents. What was once a long shot bipartisan effort started by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), with very little support from Republicans, turned into a successful measure that passed the House with near unanimous support…