California Legislature to Consider Redistricting on Tight Deadline
Specifically, the series of bills under consideration—dubbed the Election Rigging Response Act —would establish new maps for congressional districts, give authorization for the redrawn map to replace the current one, and declare a Nov. 4 special election to seek Californians' approval of the change.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Supreme Court lets Trump admin cut $783 million in health research funds as part of anti-DEI push
The Trump administration can slash hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of research funding in its push to cut federal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, the Supreme Court decided Thursday. The split court lifted a judge's order blocking $783 million worth of cuts made by the National Institutes of Health to align with Republican President Donald Trump's priorities. The court split 5-4 on the decision. Chief Justice John Roberts was among those who wouldn't have allowed the cuts, along with the court's three liberals. The high court did keep the Trump administration's anti-DEI directive blocked for future funding with a key vote from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, however. The decision marks the latest Supreme Court win for Trump and allows the administration to forge ahead with canceling hundreds of grants while the lawsuit continues to unfold. The plaintiffs say the decision is a 'significant setback for public health,' but keeping the directive blocked means the administration can't use it to cut more studies. The Justice Department, meanwhile, has said funding decisions should not be 'subject to judicial second-guessing' and efforts to promote policies referred to as DEI can 'conceal insidious racial discrimination.' The lawsuit addresses only part of the estimated $12 billion of NIH research projects that have been cut, but in its emergency appeal, the Trump administration also took aim at nearly two dozen other times judges have stood in the way of its funding cuts. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said judges shouldn't be considering those cases under an earlier Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for teacher-training program cuts that the administration also linked to DEI. He says they should go to federal claims court instead. Five conservative justices agreed, and Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a short opinion in which he criticized lower-court judges for not adhering to earlier high court orders. 'All these interventions should have been unnecessary,' Gorsuch wrote. The plaintiffs, 16 Democratic state attorneys general and public-health advocacy groups, had unsuccessfully argued that research grants are fundamentally different from the teacher-training contracts and couldn't be sent to the claims court. They said that defunding studies midway through halts research, ruins data already collected and ultimately harms the country's potential for scientific breakthroughs by disrupting scientists' work in the middle of their careers. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a lengthy dissent in which she criticized both the outcome and her colleagues' willingness to continue allowing the administration to use the court's emergency appeals process. 'This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins,' she wrote, referring to the fictional game in the comic strip 'Calvin and Hobbes.' In June, U.S. District Judge William Young in Massachusetts had ruled that the cancellations were arbitrary and discriminatory. 'I've never seen government racial discrimination like this,' Young, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, said at a hearing. He later added: 'Have we no shame.' An appeals court had left Young's ruling in place. More on Politics Lawrence city councilor pleads guilty to voter fraud in election that put her in office 'Hypocrisy': Harvard orders removal of Black Lives Matter sign in office windows Trump official called protesters against National Guard in D.C. 'stupid white hippies' Appeals court throws out massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump Trump hits the street: He'll patrol DC with cops and military on Thursday Read the original article on MassLive.
Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
Here's where all the legal cases against President Donald Trump stand since his return to the White House
Before he battled his way back to the White House, President Donald Trump was in court battling a slew of civil lawsuits and criminal charges that threatened to upend his finances and take away his freedom. Those cases have mostly abated since his return to office, albeit with some loose ends. On Thursday, Trump declared 'total victory' after an appeals court threw out a massive financial penalty in New York Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit alleging that he exaggerated his wealth and the value of marquee assets like Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago. Other punishments affecting Trump's business still apply, but they can be paused pending further appeals. Since Trump's reelection in November, four separate criminal cases — including his hush money conviction and allegations of election interference and illegally hoarding classified documents — have either been dropped, resolved or put aside. On the civil side, several high-profile lawsuits against Trump have been quietly working their way through the appeals process. Here's a look at some of Trump's criminal and civil cases and where they stand now: Trump became the first former U.S. president convicted of felonies when a New York jury found him guilty in May 2024 of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex. Though Trump could have faced jail time, Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan in January sentenced him instead to what's known as an unconditional discharge, leaving his conviction on the books but sparing him any punishment. Trump is appealing the conviction. Trump was set to take office just days later, and Merchan said he had to respect Trump's upcoming legal protections as president, even wishing him 'Godspeed as you assume your second term in office.' In August 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 others with participating in a scheme to illegally try to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Willis cited Trump's January 2021 phone call to Georgia's secretary of state, an effort to replace Georgia's Democratic presidential electors with ones who would vote for Trump, harassment of a Fulton County election worker and the unauthorized copying of data and software from elections equipment. But the case stalled over revelations Willis had been in a relationship with the man she appointed to prosecute it. A state appeals court in December removed Willis from the case. She has appealed that decision to the Georgia Supreme Court, but even if the high court takes the case and decides in her favor, it's unlikely she can pursue criminal charges against Trump while he's in office. Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump in August 2023 with conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss to President Joe Biden in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Prosecutors allege Trump and his allies knowingly pushed election fraud lies to push state officials to overturn Biden's win and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to disrupt the ceremonial counting of electoral votes. But Smith moved to drop the case after Trump won reelection in November. Longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution. In a separate prosecution, Smith charged Trump in June 2023 with illegally retaining classified documents he took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after he left office in January 2021, and then obstructing government demands to give them back. Prosecutors filed additional charges the following month, accusing Trump of showing a Pentagon 'plan of attack' to visitors at his golf club in New Jersey. Smith also moved to drop that case after Trump's election victory. In May 2023, a federal jury found that Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and later defamed her. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million. In January 2024, a second jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages for comments Trump had made about her while he was president, finding that they were defamatory. Trump is appealing that decision. He also appealed the first jury decision, but a federal appeals court in December upheld it and then declined in June to reconsider. Trump still can try to get the Supreme Court to hear his appeal. On Thursday, a five-judge panel of New York's mid-level Appellate Division overturned Trump's whopping monetary penalty in James' lawsuit while narrowly endorsing a lower court's finding that he engaged in fraud by padding his wealth on financial statements provided to lenders and insurers. The judges ruled that the penalty — which soared to $515 million with interest tacked on each day — violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on excessive fines. At the same time, they left in place other punishments, including a bans on Trump and his two eldest sons from serving in corporate leadership for a few years. The decision will almost certainly be appealed to the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, and the upheld punishments can be paused until that court rules.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
California Supreme Court halts Republican redistricting lawsuit
LOS ANGELES – The California State Supreme Court denied a challenge from Republican state lawmakers to block Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposal to redistrict California's congressional map. An Aug. 20 order from six of the seven justices said that Sens. Tony Strickland and Suzette Martinez Valladares along with Assemblymembers Tri Ta and Kathryn Sanchez "failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief." The order showed no dissents but said that Justice Carol Corrigan, the only Republican appointee on the court, was absent and did not participate. The lawsuit, filed Monday, Aug. 18, challenged the bills to put the proposal to a vote in a Nov. 4 special election on California State Constitutional grounds, claiming that the initiative did not meet the 30-day threshold between being introduced in the chambers and the legislature voting on them. Legislative records show that lawmakers used the so-called "gut-and-amend" method on two previously unrelated bills in the State Assembly and Senate to create the Election Rigging Response Act. The original bills were introduced more than 30 days ago. The bills would require a two-thirds majority in both houses to pass and would put the proposed maps, which aim to flip five Republican held seats in the House of Representatives, to a vote in a Nov. 4 special election. California has an independent redistricting commission that is designed to limit partisan influence on the map-drawing process, but Newsom said the measure would allow a new process to draw maps that would go into effect for House elections in 2026, 2028 and 2030, before ceding power back to the commission to draw maps ahead of 2032. California currently has 43 congressional seats held by Democrats and nine by Republicans. The creation of five new Democratic-friendly districts could sway California's delegation to a 48-5 advantage for Democrats. Martinez Valladares, the Santa Clarita Senator, told USA TODAY in an Aug. 21 statement that the legislators would continue to fight the redistricting push. "California voters chose district lines drawn in the open, not engineered by politicians to serve themselves or their partisan agenda. All voters deserve fair, transparent elections and we will never give up fighting for that," she said. Contributing: Joey Garrison, USA TODAY This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: California redistricting challenge stopped by state's Supreme Court Play Farm Merge Valley
