Latest news with #StateoftheJudiciary
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mills among six regional governors inviting Canadian leaders to summit on cross-border relationship
Maine Gov. Janet Mills enters the House chamber for the annual joint State of the Judiciary address on Feb. 25, 2025. (Photo by Jim Neuger/ Maine Morning Star) Gov. Janet Mills and the leaders of five other northeast states extended an invitation to Canadian leaders Monday to discuss the importance of cross-border relationships amid actions from the Trump administration that have threatened them. While additional details regarding the time and date of the meeting were not available, the leaders proposed to meet in Boston in 'the near future,' according to a news release from Mills' office. 'Our economies and our cultures have enjoyed strong relationships for generations, which is now strained by the president's haphazard tariffs and harmful rhetoric targeting our northern neighbors,' Mills said. She added that she looks forward to telling her Eastern Canada counterparts that Maine values their partnerships and 'will work to ensure our historic friendship and deeply intertwined economies endure for generations to come.' The invite came from Mills, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee, and Vermont Gov. Phil Scott — the only Republican in the group. It was sent to the premiers of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, and Québec. As President Donald Trump has gone back and forth on imposing tariffs, some as high as 25%, on Maine's northern neighbor, Mills, along with Maine's business community, has warned that any new tax would have a significant negative impact on the state. In radio addresses and other statements, she has also underscored how vital Canada is to the state's economy, especially as a trade partner. Every year, Maine exports $1.4 billion in goods to Canada and in turn imports more than $5 billion worth of goods. Mills specifically said that any new tax could increase costs for daily essentials such as gasoline and food. The most heating oil dependent state in the nation, Maine imports more than 80% of its heating fuel and gasoline from Canada, the release said. Similarly, the agriculture sector said in early April that the tariffs could incite a trade war that would increase costs for consumers and eat away at already thin profit margins. Mills is also concerned that Trump rhetoric about Canada could harm Maine's summer tourism season. Last year, Canadian visitors spent nearly half a billion dollars in Maine, but Mills' office said estimates show that the state could see Canadian tourists drop by about 25%. 'Whether Canadians decide to visit this summer (and we truly hope they do) or at a later time, they will always find a warm welcome in Maine,' said Carolann Ouellette, director of the Maine Office of Tourism. While it's not clear whether or how much the tariffs will directly impact electricity, the Maine Office of Public Advocate has raised concern about the potential impact on customers, especially 58,000 ratepayers in Aroostook and Washington counties who live along the border and have little choice but to rely on Canadian energy to keep their lights on. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
San Francisco Chronicle
25-04-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
The FBI arrested a judge in an immigration dispute. California officials are livid — and watching closely
The FBI's arrest of a Wisconsin judge on Friday represents the exact scenario California officials have tried to prevent at courthouses around the state. The criminal complaint against Judge Hannah Dugan accuses her of allowing a criminal defendant facing domestic abuse charges to exit through a jury door in order to avoid encountering federal immigration officers who were there to take him into custody. Dugan has not publicly commented on the arrest. Dugan's arrest is the latest development in the Trump administration's escalating war on judges and the rule of law. In an appearance on Fox News Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi called judges who refuse to assist immigration agents 'deranged' and told them 'we will come after you and we will prosecute you.' California officials on Friday condemned the arrest. State and local laws prevent law enforcement officials from participating in federal immigration enforcement. Another state law shields people from arrest while attending proceedings in a courthouse. 'Donald Trump and JD Vance are arresting judges now. Deleting the tweet won't undo the constitutional crisis you have just thrust us into,' Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, wrote on X Friday, referring to a since-deleted X post written by FBI Director Kash Patel announcing Dugan's arrest. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, wrote on BlueSky that President Donald Trump '*must* be removed from office immediately,' citing Dugan's arrest, as well as an executive order Trump issued Thursday targeting a prominent Democratic fundraising platform. California Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, the first Latina to serve on the court, has been outspoken about the importance of providing safe, unfettered access to state courthouses. 'We can all perform our independent obligations consistent with our constitutional mandates in support of the rule of law,' Guerrero told the Legislature in March during her annual State of the Judiciary address. 'The federal government can focus on federal immigration enforcement within the confines of the constitution; local officials can focus on local public safety; and our courts can focus on providing access to justice to every single person who comes before us.' California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office issued a 34-page document providing guidance to courthouses on how to limit immigration enforcement, which can result 'in a chilling effect on immigrant residents who need access to California's courts.' The document recommends several ways court officials can thwart immigration enforcement, including by invoking a state law that limits that enforcement in places of public employment, using pseudonyms for people participating in cases and conducting some court functions remotely. Policies like California's that limit state and local authorities' ability to assist with immigration enforcement have been a major target for Trump during both of his terms in office. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge William Orrick blocked the Trump administration from withholding billions of dollars in funding to San Francisco and other local governments with sanctuary policies. Orrick blocked a similar policy during Trump's first presidency in 2017. In the current case, numerous Bay Area law enforcement officials detail in sworn declarations how sanctuary policies keep their communities safe and foster collaboration between immigrant communities and police. 'The District Attorney's Office has experienced instances in which its criminal prosecution falls apart from lack of witness cooperation, either because others who witnessed the crime are hesitant to come forward or because initial witnesses are afraid to come to court,' Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen told the court. 'Fear of deportation by victims, witnesses, and families and friends of undocumented victims and witnesses poisons our ability to detect and prosecute crime, thereby making the entire community less safe.'
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Underscoring ongoing gender disparity, Gov. Mills declares March 25 Equal Pay Day
Maine Gov. Janet Mills enters the House chamber for the annual joint State of the Judiciary address on Feb. 25, 2025. (Photo by Jim Neuger/ Maine Morning Star) In order to catch up with the amount of pay the average man made last year, a full-time working woman in the United States would need to toil through March 25. As a symbolic reminder that 'there's more to do to ensure Maine women receive equal pay for equal work,' Gov. Janet Mills issued a proclamation declaring March 25 National Equal Pay Day in Maine. The proclamation notes that even though Maine Equal Pay Day is recognized annually on the first Tuesday of April, the national day symbolizes how far into the year women in the U.S. must have worked to earn what men had earned by December 31, 2024. 'Ensuring equal pay and access to good-paying jobs is not just about fairness — it strengthens families, reduces poverty, and drives economic growth,' said Maine Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman in a news release. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the difference between median earnings for men and women in Maine who worked full-time, year-round in 2023 was roughly $8,900. Men earned a median of $61,300, while women earned $52,400. Those gaps are even bigger between white, non-Hispanic or Latino men and American Indian and Alaska Native women ($30,100), and Black or African American women ($25,200). Asian women experience a smaller gap of $1,600 less than white or Latino men. 'Equal Pay Day highlights the ongoing struggle to appropriately value and support the work of Maine women — and the full Equal Pay Day calendar shows how the burden of the wage gap falls disproportionately on mothers, women of color, disabled women, and the LGBTQ+ community,' said Elinor Higgins, executive director of Maine's Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, a group appointed by the governor that advises the state on policy and social issues related to women and girls. The governor pointed to recent progress on this front, namely a law passed in 2019 that discourages employers from basing wages on an employee's salary history. Last week, the Legislature's Labor Committee split on a bill (LD 799) that would require employers to annually report gender-based wage gaps to the Bureau of Labor Standards. The Mills administration did not take a formal position on the legislation but raised several questions about implementation and enforcement. Though Maine's Equal Pay Law requires that employers pay workers an equal amount for work that is comparable in skill, effort, and responsibility, the 2019-2023 American Community Survey 5-year Estimates highlights persistent gaps in legal, health, sales, production and maintenance occupations in Maine. In December, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women released its 2024 biennial report, which found that gender disparities persist in part due to disproportionate caregiving responsibilities and insufficient access to services such as affordable, high-quality child and elder care. 'The gender wage gap is not about individuals, it's about systems,' said Destie Hohman Sprague, executive director of the Maine Women's Lobby. ''Women's work' (traditional roles such as care and caregiving) pays less, and women earn less over a lifetime because of their unpaid caregiving roles.' 'Systems are solved with policies, and Maine policymakers have an opportunity to address this gap once by supporting bills that address pay transparency and workforce segregation,' Hohman Sprague continued. 'They also must continue to build the caregiving structures, such as paid family and medical leave, childcare, and direct care, which supports pay equity over the long term.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Reuters
19-03-2025
- Business
- Reuters
After disastrous bar exam rollout, California Supreme Court to boost test oversight
March 19 (Reuters) - The California Supreme Court will step up its oversight of the state's lawyer admissions following the chaotic February bar exam, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said during her annual State of the Judiciary address. The February exam — the debut of a hybrid in person and remote exam without any of the components of the national bar exam California has used for decades — was marred by widespread technical and logistical problems. Some test takers were unable to log in to the exam at all, while others faced delays, computer crashes, lax exam security, distracting proctors, and a copy-and-paste function that didn't work. The State Bar of California, which administered the faulty test, has commissioned an independent investigation of the exam's many problems, and some February test takers, which totaled about 4,300, are demanding remedies ranging from an automatic score increase to a diploma privilege that would enable them to practice without passing the attorneys licensing exam. A trio of test takers in February filed a proposed class action lawsuit, alleging that exam vendor Meazure Learning failed to provide a functioning test platform despite ample warning of technical troubles. Meazure did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. 'It is literally life-changing for many students,' Guerrero said of the bar exam during her Tuesday address. 'The additional stress, frustration and anxiety faced by some examinees is inexcusable.' State Bar Board of Trustees Chair Brandon Stallings said in a prepared statement that the agency 'welcomes' guidance from the court and others on 'ways to continue strengthening the State Bar.' Guerrero said the high court will consider bolstering the role of the state bar's Committee of Bar Examiners, which she said has been 'diminished' in recent years. That committee generally makes recommendations on lawyer admission matters to the state bar's board of trustees. The court will explore restoring bar exam budget and administration oversight to that committee, Guerrero said. The new bar exam was spurred by the State Bar's ongoing financial problems. The hybrid exam was expected to save as much as $3.8 million annually by eliminating the need to rent out convention centers and other large meetings spaces for in-person testing. But the 2025 exams are now expected to cost significantly more, as the California Supreme Court has ordered the July bar exam to be given in person and the state bar is allowing February bar examinees who failed or withdrew ahead of the test to take the July exam for free. The Supreme Court's interest in clarifying the role of the Committee of Bar Examiners 'will help us move forward effectively, efficiently, and transparently,' Stallings said.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Extremists have shown us their plan to ban abortion in Kansas. Why don't we believe them?
Anti-abortion demonstrators place signs inside the Statehouse ahead of the Jan. 15, 2025, State of the Judiciary address. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) If there's one lesson to be learned from the anti-abortion movement, it's playing the long game. Since the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Roe v. Wade, national anti-abortion extremists slowly chipped away at that constitutional protection. Over decades, they put state and national laws in place that would undermine or outright ban abortion if Roe were ever overturned. They invested endless money into political campaigns and lobbied on judicial selection. Eventually, they won. Roe was overturned, 50 years of legal precedent was broken, the federal right to an abortion was eliminated, 15 states had trigger laws that immediately banned abortion, and about 1 in 3 people found themselves in states where abortion was inaccessible. Kansas was the first state to respond, when we rejected the Legislature's proposed constitutional amendment to remove the Kansas right to an abortion. Still, in the aftermath of that August 2022 vote, lawmakers and anti-abortion lobbyists are walking hand in hand passing laws to again chip away at our constitutional freedoms. Still, much ink is being spilled on why we need to be polite when it comes to anti-abortion laws — that we shouldn't be alarmed when these bills are introduced. We are told that they aren't that bad. Though voters support reproductive rights, even some Democrats have said that the most recent bill to chip away at our constitutional protections wasn't 'the end of the world' and that the tradeoff of our freedom for tax breaks was making 'lemonade out of lemons.' This makes obvious to me that the stakes are higher than ever, and the risks to our freedoms are dire despite our historic victory defending abortion rights less than three years ago. Just as we saw happen nationally, we can see this same strategy to overturn our constitutional right to an abortion playing out in Kansas. Multimillion dollar organizations connected to national anti-abortion extremist movements, such as Kansans for Life and Kansas Family Voice, spend an enormous amount of money in our elections. The candidates they fund are beholden to doing their bidding if they want to keep their reelection campaigns funded. Since these organizations failed to overturn our constitutional protections at the ballot box, they are now focusing their efforts on undermining democracy. They advocate politicizing the judicial selection process. They want judges to be selected by partisan elections so they can buy those seats and control the court. They lobby in favor of voter suppression laws so they can pick their voters. They introduce bills to eliminate campaign finance restrictions so right-wing billionaires can buy judges and politicians. But even if they put all of those pieces in place, there has to be legal justification for judges to overturn a constitutional right. That's where fetal personhood laws come in. Fetal personhood laws are about establishing legal precedent that a fetus has more rights than a pregnant person. They do this by adding language throughout different areas of Kansas law to convince the courts that legal personhood begins at the moment of conception. This isn't a secret — national anti-abortion extremists are open and honest with their intention to do this when speaking with supporters. This isn't a new tactic. In 2025 alone, more than 20 fetal personhood bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country. This isn't an ineffective tactic either, as fetal personhood laws were the legal justification for the notorious Alabama Supreme Court ruling to stop IVF. When national extremists tell us that these laws are about chipping away at our right to an abortion and reproductive health care, why do our lawmakers get away with saying these bills have nothing to do with that? This year's most prominent fetal personhood bill was originally about making the current court practice of considering pregnancy expenses during child support hearings part of Kansas law. Even bill proponents agree this bill doesn't actually change anything about how the courts would deal with child support expenses. As Brittany Jones of the anti-abortion Kansas Family Voice said about a previous version of this same bill: It 'does not mandate any method or modify the courts' procedures regarding (child support) in any way. The court is still allowed to use its discretion in making these determinations.' So if this bill isn't actually about child support, then all that's left is putting anti-abortion language into family law. Still, our elected officials insist that this bill isn't about that, while rejecting amendments to remove the anti-abortion text. Last week, Democratic Sen. Patrick Schmidt added one of the top legislative priorities of Kansans for Life as an amendment to this dangerous bill, which expands fetal personhood into Kansas tax law. This amendment is essentially the same as previous legislation introduced on behalf of Kansans for Life, giving fetuses tax breaks and state IDs while establishing a registry of fetuses with the Kansas Department of Revenue. Defenders of this amendment say it doesn't really matter because fetal personhood is already established in the original bill and other parts of Kansas law. I would argue that this amendment is far more harmful than the underlying bill itself, because it requires a government recognition of fetal personhood right now. While the original bill didn't make any changes to how the government operates, this amendment would require entire systems be built within the Kansas Department of Revenue to legally recognize personhood from the moment of conception. They will have to develop policies and procedures to track miscarriages and abortions. They will have to investigate if they suspect a pregnant person of fraud with medical documentation. How will the paper trail of a pregnancy be kept secure to protect our right to privacy? What if a low-income person doesn't have access to the type of medical care that would provide the correct documentation? Kansas has a shortage of OB-GYNs, with rural communities described as maternal health care deserts. What do those communities do? Is it only mothers who are eligible, or can fathers get this tax break too? The state government will have to resolve all of these issues, and that action further qualifies the legal personhood of the fetus. This might not seem like much to the general public, but this could be a big deal in the eyes of the courts. Schmidt has since said that he intended this amendment to be a poison pill for the bill. Even so, I can't get over how casual defenders of this amendment and fetal personhood laws are about the threats they pose to our constitutional rights. As a woman and as a Kansan, this enrages me. I am angry that I have so many men telling me that gambling on my freedom is worth a tax cut. I am angry that the anti-abortion movement is so dishonest and conniving that they can package incredibly dangerous policies as no big deal. I am angry that we have to deal with this at all, after the people of Kansas spoke loud and clear when they rejected the Legislature's constitutional amendment to remove the right to an abortion. Our freedom is not for sale, and our rights are not something we can let politicians play political games with. Any and every fetal personhood bill is about banning abortion. It is not about child support. It is not about tax cuts. It is not about protecting women or families or children. It is about banning abortion. We the people of Kansas said no before, and we must remain vigilant. Melissa Stiehler is the advocacy director for Loud Light and Loud Light Civic Action, a Kansas-based nonprofit organization focused on civil and voting rights, government transparency and increasing civic engagement. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
