Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. In early 2023, Paul Newby, the Republican chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court, gave the state and the nation a demonstration of the stunning and overlooked power of his office.  The previous year, the court — then majority Democrat — had outlawed partisan gerrymandering in the swing state. Over Newby’s vehement dissent, it had ordered independent outsiders to redraw electoral maps that the GOP-controlled legislature had…

Sky York Journal Quyen Dinh didn’t even remember that, in 2024, she was selected as one of 23 appointees to the Census 2030 Advisory Committee. The group has been disbanded since March by order of President Donald Trump, eradicating professional expertise from the planning of the decennial census. Dinh had also been involved, through her role as executive director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, in giving feedback and helping shape the first update to how the federal government collects race and ethnicity data in nearly 30 years. Called Statistical Policy Directive 15, or SPD 15, the Office of…

Sky York Journal The Supreme Court is, apparently, reading its amicus briefs — and one of them may provide an offramp from immediately having to decide whether President Trump has the power to deploy the National Guard into Illinois.  On Wednesday, the Court asked for further briefing on whether the term “regular forces,” in the context of the law that governs the federalization of the National Guard, means the regular military forces or the regular civilian forces. This definition is critical; Trump is attempting to deploy the Guard using a statute that suggests he can do so when “the President…

Sky York Journal The Trump administration wants everyone to see what it’s doing in Chicago. The city is bearing the brunt of mass deportations. Over the past several weeks, federal agents have staged aggressive, high-profile operations. They’ve prompted protests, violence and potential violations of court orders over the use of tear gas. Through that chaos, Oct. 4 stands out. That day saw ICE and CBP officers clash with protestors along Kedzie street on the city’s South Side, a strip of road that runs through neighborhoods with large Latino populations and industrial areas into a series of rolling suburbs. TPM obtained…

Sky York Journal The full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals voted Tuesday night to vacate a panel’s decision allowing the National Guard to deploy to Portland, and will rehear the case.  A “majority of nonrecused active judges” voted to vacate and rehear, per a brief order. A Circuit judge had requested the vote soon after a panel — composed of two Trump appointees and one Clinton appointee — last week blocked a lower court order protecting Portland from the deployment. In a scorching dissent from that ruling, Judge Susan Graber, the Clinton appointee, had asked her colleagues on the 9th…

Sky York Journal KISSIMMEE, Fla. — It’s not a rebrand. But the Moms for Liberty group that introduced itself three years ago as a band of female “joyful warriors” shedding domestic modesty to make raucous public challenges to masks, books and curriculum, is trying to glow up. The group’s national summit this past weekend at a convention center outside Orlando leaned into family (read: parental rights), faith — and youth. The latter appeared to be a bid to join the cool kids who are the new face of conservatism in America (hint: young, Christian, very male), as well as a…

Sky York Journal Succumbing to mounting pressure from the Trump administration and the president’s allies, Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun announced on Monday that a special session focused on redistricting will convene on November 3.  The announcement significantly bolsters the Trump administration’s pressure campaign to strongarm Republicans in red states across the country to redraw their congressional maps as a way to help ensure Republicans keep the U.S. House in the midterm elections. It has been unclear for weeks whether Republicans in the Indiana Senate had enough votes to pass redrawn maps.  “I am calling a special legislative session to protect…

Sky York Journal A Chicago federal judge on Friday demanded that CBP commander and federal escalation impresario Greg Bovino appear next week in her courtroom after he was accused of openly violating one of her orders. Attorneys in the case said on Thursday that Bovino had flung a canister of tear gas at a crowd of protestors in Chicago, days after he returned from a two-week absence due to a purported groin injury. They included an image and a link to a video that appeared to show him doing so. The judge in the case, District Judge Sara Ellis, issued…

Sky York Journal One year ago, Emil Bove was a simple defense lawyer for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. He had represented him throughout the Manhattan criminal hush money trial that led to his client’s conviction, and worked on the two federal cases against the then-former president. After Trump won, Bove became the president’s personal enforcer in the DOJ. He spearheaded the bizarre attempt to turn Eric Adams’ corruption case into a means to secure his loyalty to the president’s immigration policy, and purportedly pushed for defiance of the courts during the Alien Enemies Act removals to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.…

Sky York Journal In response to requests from state Republican parties, the Department of Justice announced plans on Friday to send federal election monitors to California and New Jersey ahead of November’s election.  And although election monitors are not necessarily unusual under appropriate circumstances, election experts are raising questions about this specific announcement, including which federal law the DOJ is enforcing and about the qualifications of the observers.  Both Democratic states are holding closely watched elections with high stakes for the MAGA coalition. California currently has a redistricting proposal on the ballot that would allow Democrats to redraw the state’s…