The Courts

As a senator from Texas, Cruz has championed his state’s voter-ID law, the strictest in the country. The law—which allows voters presenting a handgun permit to cast a ballot, but not those with a student ID—has been blocked by federal courts on three occasions. Cruz’s website featured a petition calling on supporters to tell Obama:…

TRP News with James Andre. This week – can Sanders win the Democratic primary? Do Clinton’s emails really matter? What do you know about the Senate elections? Two states fail to draw legal voting district maps, migrants storm the Macedonian border, and the Koreas exchange artillery fire in the middle of a joint U.S. –…

TRP News with James Andre. This week – the Jade Helm military exercise brings out the crazies, Potential Reid successor Senator Schumer bucks White House on Iran deal, voting rights on the 50th anniversary of the voting rights amendment, an update on the HIV outbreak in Indiana, the EPA accident polluting a Colorado river with…

TRP News with James Andre. This week Fast Track has passed and been sent to the President, the Islamic State turns one year old and calls for a month of disaster, SCOTUS hands down several important decisions including same sex marriage, the Iran talks overrun but are said to be near completion, and the politics…

On March 4, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a lawsuit designed by conservative advocates to destroy Obamacare. If the plaintiffs prevail, about 8 million people could lose their health insurance. Premiums are likely to skyrocket by 35 percent or more, threatening coverage for millions of others. Health policy experts…

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson today ruled an Alabama law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals is unconstitutional, saying that it poses an undue burden on women’s right to abortion.Abortion providers sued to block the law, passed in 2013, saying it would force three of Alabama’s five abortion clinics to close.The…

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the Washington Redskins trademark registration, calling the football team’s name “disparaging to Native Americans. ”The landmark case, which appeared before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, was filed on behalf of five Native Americans. It was the second time such a case was filed. “This victory…

Republicans in the Senate have made no secret of their efforts to block the President’s constitutional responsibility to appoint federal judges. They have filibustered unquestionably qualified nominees, like Caitlin Halligan. And their obstruction of the confirmation process kept several nominees waiting more than a year for a vote.  In fact, on average, our judicial nominees…

The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., is sometimes called the second most important court in the country, regularly delivering the final word on major environmental, labor and national security cases. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has a whopping four vacancies, the most in the nation, including one…

A Texas civil rights group filed a complaint against Judge Lynn N. Hughes, a Ronald Reagan-appointee to a federal district court in Texas, criticizing his “outlandish racial comments” in a case brought by a South Asian man alleging employment discrimination: At one point, during a hearing in a racial discrimination case, Hughes reportedly said, “Eleanor…