Glenn Youngkin, Virigina’s first Republican governor to win statewide office since 2009, signed 11 executive orders on his first day that include banning “critical race theory” and rescinding vaccine mandates for state employees. In his inauguration speech Saturday, Youngkin mentioned education as his policy priority. He promised to raise standards of education and teacher pay, and stated [...]

The US District Court for the Southern District of New York Friday banned disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli for life from the pharmaceutical industry for using illegal tactics to keep other Daraprim (pyrimethamine) drug manufacturers out of the market. Daraprim is used to treat toxoplasmosis, which threatens the lives of people with weakened immune systems, [...]

The Ohio Supreme Court struck down the state’s new congressional map Friday, saying it violated a state constitutional amendment barring partisan gerrymandering. The 4-3 decision began by calling gerrymandering “the antithetical perversion of representative democracy.” It noted that Ohio voters passed two amendments to constrain the legislature’s ability to draw partisan legislative maps, in particular the adoption [...]

A Wisconsin county judge Thursday granted an injunction against the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in statewide elections. The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) issued guidance to county clerks about the use of drop boxes in March and again in August of 2020, in light of the growing COVID-19 pandemic. The guidance permitted, but did not [...]

California Governor Gavin Newsom denied parole to Sirhan Sirhan Thursday, the now 77-year-old man convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles in 1968. Sirhan shot Senator Kennedy and five bystanders in June 1968. While the bystanders survived their injuries, Senator Kennedy did not. A jury found Sirhan guilty of first-degree murder and five counts [...]

A federal grand jury in the US District Court for the District of Maryland Thursday indicted Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore City, with separate counts of perjury and submitting false mortgage applications. The four counts are for events taking place between May 2020 and February 2021, during which Mosby allegedly received pandemic relief [...]

The State of Texas submitted a complaint Thursday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas demanding Planned Parenthood repay $10 million in Medicaid reimbursements. Attorney General Ken Paxton submitted the complaint claiming that Planned Parenthood improperly avoided reimbursement of Medicaid funding after it was terminated from the program. The Texas Medicaid [...]

Account holders Thursday filed a class action lawsuit against PayPal in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Plaintiffs alleged that PayPal violated racketeering laws under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. PayPal also allegedly violated the Electronic Funds Transfer Act and the California Business & Professions Code. Plaintiffs [...]

The European Commission stopped Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings from acquiring Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Thursday in a bid to prevent the creation of an anti-competitive market. The Commission found that merging the two companies, both based in South Korea, “would have created a dominant position by the newly merged company and reduced competition in [...]

The US Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the social security claim of a National Guard member who served as a dual-status technician, categorized as both a civilian and a military employee. The US government had reduced his retirement benefits by about $100 per month under a statutory rule known as the “windfall elimination provision” which [...]