Supreme Court Justice Kagan won’t discuss Kavanaugh Source: AP

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan declined to talk Thursday about the confirmation process that could seat Brett Cavanaugh and tip the nation's highest court to a conservative majority. "I think given the events of today that's the one question I'm not going to answer," Kagan told law students during an appearance at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Appeals court rules 2nd Amendment allows open carry of guns Source: AP

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Second Amendment protects the right to openly carry a gun in public for self-defense. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Hawaii officials had violated George Young's rights when he was denied a permit to openly carry a loaded gun in public to protect himself.

Amanda Braun, Elizabeth Shirey

Amanda Danielle Braun and Elizabeth Anne Shirey were married June 16. Rabbi Laurie E. Green officiated at the Mill at Fine Creek, an events space in Powhatan, Va. Ms. Braun , 28, is the deputy organizing director and training director in the Richmond, Va., chapter of For Our Future, a political action committee that supports progressive issues and candidates.

Auto execs heading to White House in bid to contain CAFE chaos

Auto executives visiting the White House Friday, May 11, will to try to save the national fuel economy and emissions program from a Trump administration buzz saw that they fear could usher in years of litigation and uncertainty rather than the leeway they sought. Clean-air advocates have sounded alarms about a dramatic weakening of Obama-era efficiency and emissions standards described in a leaked draft proposal by federal transportation and environmental agencies.

Peter Morici: America’s youth is losing confidence in democracy, capitalism

NOVEMBER 19: University of California Los Angeles students Andrea Flores and Kendall Brown and other UCLA students and supporters demonstrate outside the UC Board of Regents meeting where members voted to approve a 32 percent tuition hike next year on November 19, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. Undergraduate fees for students at the California university system would be increasing by about $2,500.

Which American ‘then’ does ‘now’ look like? How about the Gilded Age?

In an impromptu speech to a crowd that gathered outside the White House on George Washington's Birthday in 1866, President Andrew Johnson rambled on for more than an hour, referred to himself 210 times , and said Republican lawmakers Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens were at least as treasonous as the leaders of the just-defeated Confederacy. A few days earlier, when a delegation of black leaders led by Frederick Douglass came to visit, Johnson had told them that poor whites, not blacks, had been the real victims of slavery in the South.

In the Age of Big Climate Change we have to stop Farting Carbon

This past year is what the era of Big Climate Change looks like. We are only at the beginning of the massive changes we are making to our environment by farting 41 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere every year, but we can already see the shape of the future and it is alarming.

Trump says he should have left UCLA players in Chinese prison

President Donald Trump says he should have left three American basketball players who had been detained in China on suspicion of shoplifting in jail, after the father of one of the players questioned the President's role in their release. "Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal," Mr Trump wrote.

It’s Official: Trump Directs Pentagon to Enact Trans Military Ban

Nearly one month after announcing via Twitter he'd ban transgender people from U.S. military, President Trump made good on his promise in a memo to the Pentagon Friday enacting a ban on their service -- although the fate of transgender people currently in the armed forces remains to be seen. In a memo dated Aug. 25 to the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security, Trump asserts the Obama administration "failed to identify a sufficient basis" to end the ban on transgender military service in June 2016 and directs the U.S. military to put the prohibition back in place.

Experts: Long road ahead for Trump offshore drilling order

President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to find new ocean expanses in the Atlantic and the Arctic for offshore drilling is unlikely to reach its goals anytime soon, but instead will kick off a yearslong review and a legal battle. The day before his 100th in office, Trump took his step Friday toward dismantling a key part of Barack Obama's environmental legacy.

Cold-War-Era Toxic Waste Could Be Released by Greenland’s Melting Ice

It may sound like a storyline straight out of a Godzilla movie, but researchers are warning that toxic waste from a long-abandoned Cold War-era camp could leach into nearby ecosystems as a result of warming temperatures in Greenland. It was thought that the hazardous waste would stay buried and frozen forever beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet , but climate change is warming the Arctic and causing portions of the ice sheet to melt, the researchers reported in a new study.