US President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued a memorandum announcing his decision not to extend the Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) protection for Liberians that had been in place since the 1990s. In the memo, Trump justified this action by explaining that the situations in Liberia, namely the civil war that had prompted the protected status [...]
The Kentucky House of Representatives on Tuesday approved one of the strictest abortion bills in the US, which bans a termination procedure after the eleventh week of pregnancy. The procedure dilation and evacuation accounts for about 16 percent of Kentucky’s abortions . HB 454 deems it illegal to perform the procedure after the eleventh week [...]
Paul Manafort on Tuesday filed a motion to dismiss in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia requesting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment against him be struck due to the criminal charges exceeding the authority of Mueller’s appointment as they occurred several years prior to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. The charges [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in Benisek v. Lamone , a high-profile partisan-gerrymandering case out of Maryland. The case involves the 6th congressional district in Maryland, which was predominantly Republican for two decades. However, in 2011, during the redistricting, the 6th district political designation shifted. According to the petitioner, this redistricting [...]
Attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center and New York City-based firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday arguing that Mississippi’s disenfranchisement laws for people convicted of particular felonies, and the extensive process for restoring voting rights, is unconstitutional. The suit alleges the Mississippi’s lifetime voting ban for certain crimes was [...]
After nearly 10 hours of extensive debate, the Vermont House of Representatives voted 89-54 on Tuesday to approveS.55 , a piece of major gun legislation. The bill mandates universal background checks, raises the purchasing age to 21, and bans both bump stocks and the sale or possession of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. [...]
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry on Tuesday announced that the state will not be filing charges against the two Baton Rouge police officers involved in the 2016 fatal shooting of Alton Sterling. Coupled with the statement, the the Louisiana Department of Justice (LADOJ) released 34 page report detailing the key findings of the investigation and [...]
The US Supreme Court heard arguments in two matters today; Hughes v. United States and Koons v. United States . Hughes asks how attorneys should determine the precedential effect of Supreme Court opinions that end in a plurality—a term used to refer to cases in which no opinion receives a majority of five votes. In [...]
Three plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit on Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey alleging that BMW cheated during emissions tests of their diesel vehicles. The plaintiffs, individual customers from Colorado, Maryland and Pennsylvania, allege that they and similarly situated customers “would not have purchased their vehicles because they [...]
A Brazilian appeals court unanimously upheld the corruption conviction of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday. The ruling brings da Silva one step closer to being barred from running for Presidency and serving his sentence in prison. Da Silva was convicted in July 2017 of corruption for making a deal with a [...]
