The US federal judge overseeing former president Donald Trump’s criminal case regarding his allegedly wrongful detention of classified documents rejected the former president’s motion to dismiss on Thursday in a short, two-page order. Trump sought to dismiss 32 of the 40 pending criminal charges against him in the case. However, Judge Aileen Cannon denied Trump’s [...]

The Mississippi House of Representatives passed on Wednesday a bill that seeks to define sex in strictly binary terms, impacting the recognition of transgender individuals’ identities within the state. The Mississippi Women’s Bill of Rights reflects a broader trend among Republican-controlled legislatures in the US to address and restrict the legal acknowledgement of transgender and [...]

The American Library Association (ALA) announced on Thursday that censorship demands and book ban attempts in public libraries and schools hit a record high in 2023. The ALA documented 1,247 demands to ban 4,240 different books. This is a 65 percent increase from 2022, when 2,571 books faced censorship demands. In 17 states, book ban [...]

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced via X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday over 250 officers and soldiers will be stationed at the Florida Keys and southern waters in preparation for a surge of migrants from Haiti. Speaking on the action, DeSantis said: For quite some time, the State of Florida has been dedicating significant resources to [...]

A federal district judge found the city of Flint, Michigan in contempt for its failure to finish the replacement of lead-contaminated pipes in the city’s water supply system according to a timeline laid out in a 2023 court order. The order, released Tuesday, granted a motion from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) which sought to [...]

The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bill that could ban TikTok in the US. If enacted, the bill would outlaw the distribution, maintenance, or updating of any app owned by or affiliated with the Beijing-based TikTok owner ByteDance, Ltd., or any successor or subsidiary if such is owned by “foreign adversaries” — a [...]

A Georgia judge on Wednesday dropped three charges pending against former US President Donald Trump as part of an ongoing election interference case. In August, Trump was indicted, accused along with several co-defendants of having orchestrated a racketeering scheme aimed at intentionally altering the results in Georgia of the 2020 US presidential elections. On Wednesday, [...]

Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys reached a settlement on Monday over the state law dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.” The parties came to an agreement after two years of litigation and an appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. This agreement paves the way for students and teachers in Florida [...]

An AP and CNHI News report published Sunday found that less than a third of US states have agencies to resolve citizen disputes regarding access to public records or open meetings. The only recourse for resolving transparency-related disputes in these states is for citizens to engage in expensive litigation. While some states like Arizona do [...]

The United States issued a statement on Friday condemning Zimbabwean authorities for their alleged attempts to intimidate US government officials and aid workers, subjecting them to unlawful overnight detention, prolonged interrogation and eventual forced deportation.  The US Agency for International Development (USAID) alleged that their aid workers, who were there to “support civic participation, democratic [...]