Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal WASHINGTON, DC—After months of delays, a federal judge is prepared to swiftly proceed with a contempt of court inquiry in the original Alien Enemies Act case. In a hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg signaled that he wants to begin taking testimony from Trump administration officials involved in the mid-March 2025 AEA deportations as soon as the Monday after Thanksgiving. Boasberg already found probable cause for contempt of court in April after the Trump administration defied his emergency order to stop the AEA deportations of Venezuelan nationals and turn back any planes en route to El…

Sky York Journal This article was first published as a collaboration between ProPublica, The Texas Newsroom and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas. Months after fighting to keep secret the emails exchanged between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s companies, state officials released nearly 1,400 pages to The Texas Newsroom. The records, however, reveal little about the two men’s relationship or Musk’s influence over state government. In fact, all but about 200 of the pages are entirely blacked out. Of those that were readable, many were either already public…

Sky York Journal We rang in our 25th anniversary in style last week, hosting a two-day celebration in New York City with TPM staff, alums, readers and some of our favorite journalists.  Abbie Krinsky snapped photos at our Nov. 6 event at the Metrograph in Manhattan, where executive editor John Light and deputy editor Nicole LaFond led readers through an oral history of 25 years of TPM, featuring commentary and anecdotes from editor-at-large David Kurtz, along with ProPublica reporter Paul Kiel, NOTUS reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro, and The Cut features editor Catherine Thompson, all TPM alums. Reporter Kate Riga and our…

Sky York Journal ALEXANDRIA, VA—In a stunning admission, prosecutors in the James Comey case conceded that the two-count indictment against the former FBI director was never presented to or voted on by a grand jury.  The paperwork snafu that has bedeviled the case from the beginning came into much sharper focus after persistent questioning from U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff in federal court Wednesday in Alexandria, Virginia. At issue is whether U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan — an insurance lawyer with no prior prosecutorial experience — followed proper procedure after the grand jury rejected count 1 of the original proposed indictment it…

Sky York Journal Standing up to pressure from the Trump administration to approve new mid-cycle congressional maps, several Republicans in the Indiana state Senate voted on Tuesday to adjourn until 2026, instead of convening in December for a special session on redistricting as previously expected.  It’s the latest in a series of significant setbacks in red states across the country for Trump’s ongoing gerrymandering pressure campaign as he tries to predetermine the results of the 2026 midterms.  The vote in Indiana comes just days after Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray announced that Indiana lawmakers would not convene for…

Sky York Journal In yet another blow to the Trump administration’s ongoing redistricting pressure campaign, a federal court on Tuesday enjoined the use of Texas’ new map and ordered it to use its previous map for the 2026 election. In his ruling, District Judge Jeff Brown, who is a 2019 Trump appointee, said in his ruling that the map is racially gerrymandered. “The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map,” Brown wrote. “But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas…

Sky York Journal The House on Tuesday comfortably passed the resolution to release the Justice Department’s files on the Jeffrey Epstein case. All present House Democrats and Republicans — except Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) — supported the measure in a 427-1 vote, sending the measure to the Senate for a potential vote. The House vote came after months of limbo surrounding the discharge petition that Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) created to force floor action on the Justice Department’s refusal to release its tranche of documents on investigations into Epstein, the convicted sex offender who was arrested…

Sky York Journal This story first appeared at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Online influencer Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist who has millions of young male followers, was facing allegations of sex trafficking women in three countries when he and his brother left their home in Romania to visit the United States. “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back,” Tate posted on X before the trip in February — one of many times he has sung the president’s praises…

Sky York Journal Since the September day when President Donald Trump symbolically renamed the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the U.S. military has conducted at least 21 strikes on Venezuelan boats, killing 83 people allegedly suspected of drug trafficking. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth convened an unprecedented and widely mocked pep rally of military generals and flag officers during which he pledged his commitment to the “warrior ethos.” And Hegseth has continued to fire or demote military generals and admirals, purging at least two dozen of them during his tenure, the New York Times reported. Last Wednesday, an…

Sky York Journal The extent of the prosecutorial and investigative misconduct in the James Comey case is even greater than previously known, a federal magistrate judge revealed in an extraordinary new ruling today. The judge was tasked with deciding whether Comey had met the very high bar for a defendant to be given full access to the transcripts and recordings of a grand jury proceeding. But it turns out that in addition to the reasons Comey argued for access to the grand jury material, the judge found from his own review of the materials a host of new problems that…