Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal This story was originally reported by Kate Sosin of The 19th. Meet Kate and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. Sarah O’Neill loved her job as a data scientist at the National Security Agency (NSA).  “The government before last year was what I would consider to be a model employer,” O’Neill said.  She started the job in 2019, two years after she started her transition to living as a woman.   “That wasn’t an issue at all,” she said. “Everybody was supportive.” Everything changed in January 2025. That’s when President Donald Trump took office…

Sky York Journal The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s signature economic and foreign policy in a fractured 6-3 split decision issued Friday morning. Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to override Congress’s power of the purse by using an emergency declaration to levy widespread global tariffs, the majority held. The decision will now likely require an end to those tariffs, and could trigger the return of tariff revenue collected by Customs and Border Protection and deposited into the U.S. Treasury. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined in part by…

Sky York Journal As President Donald Trump’s actions targeting federal government unions and employees make their way through the courts, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests the president’s show of force against American public servants may have backfired. Since last March, Trump has moved to abruptly end union protections for hundreds of thousands of government workers. At the same time, largely through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the administration in 2025 fired tens of thousands of federal workers while tens of thousands more retired, quit, or accepted the DOGE “fork in the road buy out.”…

Sky York Journal A set of Supreme Court decision days, beginning Friday, could feature a body blow to the United States’ multiracial democracy.  Louisiana v. Callais “could completely erase all, or most, of the gains of the civil rights movement’s crowning achievement,” Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center, told reporters Thursday.  The Court could use the case to shred what remains of the Voting Rights Act, hobbling the section of the law under which voting rights groups challenge district maps that dilute minority voters. Prior to the Act’s passage, Black voting power and political representation, particularly…

Sky York Journal The White House wanted investigations into those it describes as left-wing activists and the groups that fund them. And now, FBI Director Kash Patel says, the FBI is delivering. The FBI is investigating funding associated with left-wing activism, Patel confirmed to longtime podcaster and brief FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino on his recently revived streaming show. “This FBI, thanks to what we stood up over the last year, has made significant headway under the NSPM-7 process in looking at those who funded these streams,” Patel told Bongino, adding that the bureau is “starting to arrest people who…

Sky York Journal This story was originally published by ProPublica. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published. For months, President Donald Trump has railed against Latin American narcoterrorists flooding the United States with “lethal poison.” He has used the scourge of drug trafficking as a rationale for dozens of military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, which have left more than 140 people dead. Last month, Trump cheered a military assault by U.S. forces that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and brought them to the U.S. to face…

Sky York Journal This article is part of TPM’s ongoing “Creating the Enemy Within” project, tracking the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent. When Amber Lowrey first heard that her sister had been arrested at a protest on July 4, it didn’t alarm her. Her sister, Savanna Batten, was a longtime animal rights activist. She’d been arrested before: nothing violent, once at an “Occupy Dallas” sit-in, once after blocking a highway during a Trump I immigration protest. Both cases were dismissed after Batten met certain conditions and checked in with the court. So when Lowrey heard that Batten…

Sky York Journal This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. The residents of Springfield, Ohio, had prepared for the arrival of immigration agents on February 3, the expiration date set by the Trump administration for Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, who account for nearly a quarter of the city’s population. A federal judge intervened at the last minute, pushing the deadline indefinitely. The agents never arrived.  Still, the city has found itself on edge this month and the threat is as unsettling as…

Sky York Journal Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) broke with most of his Republican peers Thursday, using his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security committee to press immigration officials on agents’ violent behavior.  He and ranking member Gary Peters (D-MI) teamed up to ask acting ICE chief Todd Lyons and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott questions about officers’ use of force as they played a frame-by-frame video of Alex Pretti’s killing. It was an unusual bipartisan display, indicative of Paul’s willingness, at least for now, to buck the Trump administration’s insistence on full-throated support for the agents.  “Because you…

Sky York Journal A federal judge ruled in favor of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) Thursday, finding that Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated the senator’s constitutional rights by attempting to downgrade his rank and retirement benefits.  Hegseth targeted Kelly after he participated in a video warning members of the military not to follow illegal orders; he was one of six lawmakers who participated in the video, which came out amid President Trump’s National Guard deployments and Venezuelan boat strikes.  This week, federal prosecutors tried and failed to secure an indictment against Kelly and the other five members of Congress…