Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Category Archives: US constitution and civil liberties
The trend is expected to continue, after the supreme court ruling earlier this year overturning strict limits on public gun-carrying
An estimated 6 million American adults carried a loaded handgun with them daily in 2019, double the number who said they carried a gun every day in 2015, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
The new estimates highlight a decades-long shift in American gun ownership, with increasing percentages of gun owners saying they own firearms for self-defense, not hunting or recreation, and choosing to carry a gun with them when they go out in public, said Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, and the study’s lead author.
Secretary of state Brad Raffensperger accepts judge’s findings and says far-right congresswoman, a Trump ally, is eligible to run
The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has accepted a judge’s findings and said the far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is qualified to run for re-election.
A group of voters filed a challenge saying Greene should be barred under a seldom-invoked provision of the 14th amendment concerning insurrection, over her links to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.
Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin says Hawley’s attacks should be ignored in confirmation hearings this week
The Missouri Republican Josh Hawley is wrong to attack Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s supreme court nominee, and should be ignored in confirmation hearings this week, the Senate judiciary chair said.
Hawley, the Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin said, is “part of the fringe within the Republican party … a man who was fist-bumping the murderous mob that descended on the Capitol on 6 January of the last year.
The US supreme court could “at some point” become “compromised” by politics, said Clarence Thomas – one of six conservatives on the nine-member court after Republicans denied Barack Obama a nomination then rammed three new justices through during the hard-right presidency of Donald Trump.
“You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the court,” said Thomas, whose wife, Ginni Thomas, has come under extensive scrutiny for work for rightwing groups including supporting Trump’s attempts to overturn an election.
Sarah Weddington, an attorney who argued and won the Roe v Wade supreme court case which established the right to abortion in the US, has died aged 76.
Susan Hays, a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, announced the news on Twitter on Sunday and the Dallas Morning News confirmed it.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not the only great supreme court justice to have made her name with dissent in the name of progress
The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent collar is a small part of a larger history. Unlike some other high courts, the US supreme court accepts strong dissent. Ginsburg stood in the tradition of John Marshall Harlan – the only justice with the courage, foresight, humanity and constitutional vision to object to the odious 1896 Plessy v Ferguson decision that approved racial segregation.
The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, slammed a federal judge’s decision to overturn his state’s three-decade-old ban on assault rifles as “a direct threat to public safety and the lives of innocent Californians”.
The supreme court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer have excoriated the Trump administration for carrying out its 13th and final federal execution days before the president leaves office.
Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend Donald Trump’s account in the wake of the storming of Capitol Hill on Wednesday continues to stoke fierce debate, supporters and critics split on partisan lines as they contest what the suspension means for a cherished American tradition: freedom of speech.
Donald Trump’s grip on the US presidency appeared increasingly tenuous on Saturday as Democrats advanced plans to impeach him for a second time, political allies continued to abandon him and Twitter banned his account, removing his most powerful way to spread lies and incite violence.
Confirmation of a sixth conservative on the nine-member court is due on Monday, the result of ruthless Republican politics
The almost certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court on Monday represents a “power grab” by Republicans facing possible wipeout at the ballot box, activists and analysts say.
Depending on your point of view, the woman seated before the Senate judiciary committee for her first day of questioning was either the female Scalia or the anti-RBG. Or maybe, of course, both.
Donald Trump’s pick for America’s highest court, Amy Coney Barrett, is an “ideological fanatic” who threatens abortion rights, healthcare and the environment, activists warned on Saturday, before Trump unveiled his third supreme court nominee in the White House Rose Garden.
A quick glance at the guest list for Amy Comey Barrett’s nomination ceremony today makes troubling reading. Among the guests were representatives from Judicial Watch, which has described climate science as a “fraud”; the Heritage Foundation (which has also pushed back against climate science); and the Family Research Council (which has opposed abortion, divorce and LGBT rights).
Attendees at Trump's SCOTUS nomination of Amy Coney Barrett: •Judicial Crisis Network's Carrie Severino Heritage Foundation's Kay Cole James •Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton •Family Research Council's Tony Perkins •Cleta Mitchell—a lawyer tied to many GOP 'dark money' nonprofits https://t.co/q5BzTkPBs9
Now that Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated for the supreme court, the senate hearings are likely to last from 12-15 October. And, as is more than likely, she will be confirmed by the Republican-held Senate by 29 October, well before the 3 November elections.
Donald Trump’s rival for the presidency, Joe Biden, has issued a statement saying the process should be delayed until after the election.
Election Day is just weeks away, and millions of Americans are already voting because the stakes in this election could not be higher. They feel the urgency of this choice – an urgency made all the more acute by what’s at stake at the U.S. Supreme Court.
They are voting because their health care hangs in the balance. They are voting because they worry about losing their right to vote or being expelled from the only country they have ever known. They are voting right now because they fear losing their collective bargaining rights. They are voting to demand that equal justice be guaranteed for all. They are voting because they don’t want Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for nearly half a century, to be overturned.
Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, made an urgent plea on Sunday to the conscience of Senate Republicans, asking them to defy Donald Trump and refuse to ram through his nominee to the supreme court before the November election.
On the question of supreme court nominees, the Republican senator Susan Collins has repeatedly threaded the same political needle. It is one with a shrinking eye.
The president’s West Point speech went smoothly but protests have focused a harsh light on his use of the military
Donald Trump attempted to solidify his bond with the US army on Saturday, delivering the graduation speech to cadets at the United States Military Academy and boasting of a “colossal” $2tn rebuilding of American martial might.
US president Donald Trump has claimed he has ‘total authority’ to supersede decisions made by state governors to ease social restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. ‘When someone is president of the United States the authority is total', Trump said during a White House press briefing. Reporters questioned the assertion, asking: ‘You said that when someone is the president of the United States their authority is total. That is not true. Who told you that?’ Trump replied ‘We are going to write up papers on this'. Although claiming he had the authority to ‘call the shots’ for each state's lock-down regulations, Trump insisted he was ‘getting on very well with the governors’ and is ‘certain there won’t be a problem’
Outraged by what they see as a coverup in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, grassroots activists are planning a massive “payback project” designed to punish Republican senators at the ballot box.