Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. Brown University, one of the most selective institutions in America, attracted nearly 50,000 applicants who vied for just 1,700 freshman seats last year. The university accepted nearly equal numbers of male and female prospects, even though, like some other schools, it got nearly twice as many female applicants. That math meant it was easier for male students to get in — 7 percent of male applicants were admitted, compared to 4.4 percent of female applicants, university data show. The Trump administration’s policies may soon…

Sky York Journal This story first appeared at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive ProPublica’s biggest stories as soon as they’re published. For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence. President Donald Trump branded one foe who did so “deceitful and potentially criminal.” He called another “CROOKED” on Truth Social and pushed the attorney general to take action. But years earlier, Trump did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of, records show. In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda…

Sky York Journal Lawsuits have been percolating over President Trump’s unprecedented attempt to undermine birthright citizenship since the beginning of his second term, but it took until Friday for the Supreme Court to announce that it will hear the case on the merits.  A previous iteration of the fight over Trump’s executive order — that would deprive the children of “temporary visitors” and “illegal aliens” of automatic citizenship if they’re born in the United States — had reached the Court already, although the Court did not rule on the actual question of whether Trump’s order complied with the Constitution. As…

Sky York Journal Indiana’s Republican-controlled state House approved a new gerrymandered congressional map on Friday, as expected.  While the new map had widespread support among Republicans in the state House — it passed by a 57-41 vote — the ultimate fate of the map remains unclear. The state Senate convenes on Monday, December 8 to make a decision on the matter.  The creator of the map legislation, Republican state Rep. Ben Smaltz, acknowledged during a House elections committee hearing on Tuesday that the maps are “politically gerrymandered,” but insisted that they were not racially gerrymandered.  The new map, which was…

Sky York Journal ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been one of the most vociferous defenders of President Donald Trump’s expansive use of executive authority, withholding billions of dollars in federal funding to states and dismissing protests of the White House’s boundary-pushing behavior as the gripings of “disenfranchised Democrats.” But court documents reviewed by ProPublica show that a decade ago, as a House member, Duffy took a drastically different position on presidential power, articulating a full-throated defense of Congress’ role as…

Sky York Journal The Supreme Court was simply hamstrung, Justice Samuel Alito wrote, unable to knock down Texas’ hyper-partisan, likely racial gerrymander because the election it would govern is so close. Said election, though, is a whopping 11 months away. Yet that near year of time — plus a March primary, which Texas could delay — counts as the “eve of an election,” Alito wrote in his concurrence, so close to voting that changing the maps risks confusing voters. He’s referring to the Purcell principle, which stems from a 2006 case that concerned a change in Arizona photo ID laws…

Sky York Journal The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 order, has put on hold a lower court ruling that blocked Texas’ aggressive gerrymander, a maneuver the state legislature had carried out on orders from the Trump administration and the president himself, hoping to preserve Republicans’ majority in the U.S. House in 2026. In a brief order, the conservative majority argued, among other things, that the District Court had intervened to block the maps too close to next year’s midterm election. Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito and Neil Gorsuch authored a short concurrence. The court’s three liberals authored a far more…

Sky York Journal After nearly five years, the FBI arrested a Virginia man on Thursday on suspicion of planting two pipe bombs on January 6, 2021. A charging document showed that Brian Cole Jr. faces one count of transporting an explosive device with intent to kill and a second count of “malicious destruction or attempted malicious destruction by means of fire and explosive materials.” Cole bought several components used the pipe bombs, an FBI agent said in an affidavit filed in the case. Those allegedly include electronics, wires, pipes, and other parts of the bombs. The agent, who wasn’t named in…

Sky York Journal President Donald Trump’s foreign trade policy has been marked by contradiction from the beginning of his second term. He says he’s using tariffs to help close the U.S. budget deficit while increasing that deficit by $2.4 trillion with his signature tax cuts and defense spending package. He ran as a populist promising to decrease inflation, but made inflationary tariffs his signature economic policy. He has cited national security threats to justify his emergency tariffs, but then applied sharp levies to Brazilian grocery goods after the country convicted and sentenced its former president, a Trump ally, to prison…

Sky York Journal Jackie Bray has been thinking about how quickly things could spiral out of control. Bray is the New York state emergency leader whom Gov. Kathy Hochul tasked with averting a Chicago or Los Angeles-style surge of immigration agents and National Guard troops. At the core of the job is a dilemma that the Trump administration has imposed on blue cities and states around the country: How can the state respond to aggressive, spectacle-driven immigration operations without triggering the showdown with federal agents that the administration is trying to provoke? It’s a problem only made more acute by…