Voter ID laws in jeopardy after Texas agrees to ease its rules

In agreeing last week to relax its voter-ID requirements for the November election, Texas showed how far the legal climate has shifted with respect to the wave of state laws enacted over the last decade. The agreement came less than two weeks after a federal appeals court said Texas's ID law was racially discriminatory.

Today in History: Aug. 8

On Aug. 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon announced his resignation, effective the next day, following damaging new revelations in the Watergate scandal. In 1911, President William Howard Taft signed a measure raising the number of U.S. representatives from 391 to 433, effective with the next Congress, with a proviso to add two more when New Mexico and Arizona became states.

North Carolina to seek Supreme Court stay of voter ID law

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said his state will petition the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and reinstate a voter identification law that was struck down by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the law discriminated against minorities. After overturning the North Carolina law, which requires voters to show a form of state-issued photo identification before voting and also cuts down on the amount of time allowed for early voting, the Fourth Circuit also refused to stay its order pending an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Military community split over Trumpa s feud with Khans

Robin Starck is a retired submarine commander who still lives in the shadow of America's largest naval base, and he's heard all the shouting about Donald Trump and his tangle with the parents of a U.S. Army officer killed in Iraq. "Trump goes to the extreme," said Starck, 79. "Sometimes he goes off the wall."

North Carolina takes case for voter ID law to Supreme Court

North Carolina will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to allow a state law requiring voters to show identification to stand, after an appellate court struck it down a week ago, Republican Governor Pat McCrory said on Friday. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday refused the state's request to put its decision on hold while North Carolina asks the Supreme Court to overturn it ahead of the U.S. general election on Nov. 8. McCrory said the state will ask justices by early next week to stay the appeals court's ruling, which found that sweeping changes to the state's voting rules in 2013 intentionally discriminated against African-Americans.

Election could determine transgender case at Supreme Court

In this Feb. 13, 2016 file photo, the Supreme Court building at seen sunset in Washington. The Supreme Court's order blocking a transgender male from using the boys' restroom at his Virginia school underscores how the presidential election results will shape the high court.

The nation in brief

The U.S. Supreme Court said a Virginia school board can block a transgender male from using the boys bathroom at his school until the court decides whether to intervene in his case. On Wednesday, the high court agreed to allow the Gloucester County School Board to bar Gavin Grimm from the bathroom that matches his gender identity until the justices decide whether to review an appeals court ruling in his case.

EDITORIAL: For many, it’s hard to imagine more confounding choices than Trump, Clinton

Some of us are old enough to remember when Labor Day weekend traditionally marked the real start of the presidential campaign season, when everyday voters finally took a closer look at the nominees and their platforms. Now the end-of-summer holiday serves only to remind us that we're entering the final stretch of what has been a bewildering, frustrating and exhausting presidential campaign unlike any in U.S. history.

U.S. Supreme Court’s Hold on School Bathroom Ruling Is Encouraging…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 3, 2016 CONTACT: J.P. Duffy or Alice Chao, FRC-NEWS or -372-6397 U.S. Supreme Court's Hold on School Bathroom Ruling Is Encouraging News for Schools Resisting Obama's Bathroom Edict WASHINGTON, D.C. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court put a hold on a court ruling that forced a Virginia school district to open a boy's bathroom to a biological girl who identifies as transgendered. Earlier this year, the Obama administration sent guidance to schools throughout the country directing school administrators to allow self-identified "transgender" students to use the restrooms and changing rooms of the student's choosing.

FAA ignored internal safety recommendations on balloon tours

A charter bus veered off a central California freeway before dawn Tuesday and struck a pole head-on, killing five people and sending at least five others to hospitals, authorities said. Leonardo Sanchez was sleeping peacefully on a bus carrying him to Oregon to pick blueberries when he was suddenly thrown face first into the back of the seat in front of him, awakening him to a horrific scene of chaos and... Prosecutors have filed three charges of aggravated first-degree murder against a 19-year-old accused of shooting his ex-girlfriend and two young men to death at a party in suburban Seattle over the weekend.

Former Virginia first lady asks court to vacate convictions

Lawyers for Virginia's former first lady say her corruption convictions should be vacated after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned her husband's convictions. News outlets report that Maureen McDonnell's attorneys asked the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate her convictions in a motion filed Monday.

It’s ‘Christmas’ for challengers to voting restriction laws

To say that the last few weeks have been good for challengers to voting restriction laws across the country would be an understatement. Kennedy points to a cascade of rulings from several states that she says "stood up for the basic principle that all Americans deserve to have their voices heard at the ballot box without manipulation or suppression."

Is SCOTUS a Good Reason to Support Trump? Libertarian and Conservative Legal Experts Weigh In

Donald Trump is hoping to pitch himself as the conservative legal movement's last best hope for securing the future of the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump says that if he's elected president he will name committed constitutionalists to the bench and will replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia with "a person of similar views and principles."