Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal After a tight May primary election that saw Trump-endorsed Georgia Lt. Governor Burt Jones leading billionaire Rick Jackson by a mere six percentage points, Jackson turned the tables and prevailed in Tuesday’s runoff election. Unlike the GOP Senate race, which saw an ultra-MAGA election denier face off against a conservative election affirmer (who still wanted to make it more difficult for Georgians to vote), both Republican hopefuls for governor profess to believe that the election was stolen. A win for either candidate in November could mean a blow to democracy in the purple, southern state. With 92%…

Sky York Journal In the Trump administration’s latest effort to meddle in election administration, investigate baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and sow doubt in the country’s election system ahead of the midterms, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators were reportedly granted access to voter files in counties in Texas and North Carolina. Election officials in Forsyth County in North Carolina and Webb County in Texas handed over individual voter files — which can include things like registration history, drivers license numbers, addresses, dates of birth, among other information — to ICE investigators, Axios was first to report. It’s…

Sky York Journal ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA — In a major blow to President Trump’s $1.776 billion anti-weaponization slush fund, a federal judge in Virginia issued a preliminary injunction blocking the fund. The Virginia case is just one of a handful of legal challenges to the slush fund, which was spawned by last month’s dubious settlement of Trump’s collusive lawsuit against the IRS. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued her ruling from the bench after a brief Friday hearing in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria (here’s her written order). The judge rejected the administration’s argument that the case…

Sky York Journal The Broadview Six case didn’t happen in a void.  In the month that Chicago federal prosecutors returned three times to the same grand jury to try to secure an indictment of the same set of protesters, their office was under intense pressure. Greg Bovino had arrived in the city the month before, heralding a surge of federal officers under so-called “Operation Midway Blitz” that prompted mass protests. Trump-appointed DOJ leadership was demanding that prosecutors bring the most aggressive possible charges against those involved in anti-ICE demonstrations. At the same time, those cases kept collapsing: in some cases,…

Sky York Journal This article was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Trump administration officials earlier this year killed a federal criminal investigation into the coal empire owned by Sen. Jim Justice, a Republican from West Virginia and a close ally of the president’s. The investigation examined potential criminal violations of the Clean Water Act by the multistate mining operations largely run by Justice’s son, Jay, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter. The criminal probe was a significant escalation…

Sky York Journal While the outcome of Tuesday’s primary was never in doubt, the margin was; a mediocre showing against Maine Governor Janel Mills (D), who dropped out after running a begrudging campaign, would suggest that Democrat Graham Platner had taken on water from his recent stream of scandals. As of Wednesday morning, with about 88% of the vote tabulated, there were no such warning signs.  Platner’s Percentage of the Vote Paces Gideon’s  Sara Gideon, former Maine House speaker and the Democrat who ran against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in 2020, got 71.5% of the primary vote against two longshot…

Sky York Journal This story about Winooski was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. WINOOSKI, Vt. — The day’s class started with a writing prompt: Do you feel safe in school? Why or why not? The students — whose families hail from across the globe and speak languages including Arabic, Nepali, Spanish and Somali — wrote their responses before reading them aloud. “I feel safe in school because I saw the school doors are locked every time,” one student said, “and I heard…

Sky York Journal Two erstwhile allies of President Trump who gave up their seats in Congress to run for governor of South Carolina failed to make it into a runoff election on Tuesday. Pamela Evette, the Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor, came in first place, followed by Alan Wilson, the state’s current attorney general. The two colorful members of Congress, Ralph Norman and Nancy Mace, lagged far behind.  Like most Republican primaries in this MAGA era, South Carolina’s gubernatorial race was defined by President Donald Trump’s famous “Complete and Total Endorsement.” The race also showed the level of loyalty Trump demands in…

Sky York Journal When President Donald Trump’s administration began its shakeup of the federal government, purging online data sets and demonizing previous federal policy, Laura Pegram saw that her organization could be in danger. She, along with others at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, or NASTAD, moved to restructure their website. “We very intentionally took down all of our staff bios, took down a vast majority of our drug user health resources,” Pegram said. “I still have them, of course. Just like I have all of the CDC and SAMHSA pages that used to affirm the…

Sky York Journal U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee, on Friday referred Justice Department lawyers for disciplinary proceedings after writing that the attorneys’ “reckless disregard for the duty of candor owed to a federal court is appalling.”  The order stems from the Trump administration’s attempt to trawl for sensitive information about trans kids by subpoenaing hospitals that provide gender affirming care. Some hospital systems — including the University of Michigan’s, as TPM first reported in August — stopped providing care altogether rather than fight the subpoenas. But others spawned lawsuits. McElroy, a judge in the District of Rhode Island,…