During a press briefing on Friday, US President Donald Trump announced that places of worship will be considered “essential” operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump stated that “they have places ‘essential’ that aren’t essential, and they open. And yet the churches aren’t allowed to open and the synagogues and—places of faith—mosques, places of faith.” Under [...]
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a bill into law Thursday that decriminalizes personal marijuana possession. The bill, SB 2, assigns a civil rather than criminal penalty for simple marijuana possession. SB 2 presumes marijuana possession in measurements of an ounce or less as simple possession. A summary of the bill as enacted by the governor’s [...]
The US Copyright Office issued a report on Thursday claiming that the safe-harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) now favors tech companies over rights-holders. After studying the issue for years and taking into consideration more than 92,000 comments, the Copyright Office suggests that “Congress may wish to fine-tune” the statute. The report [...]
Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, was released from federal prison into home confinement on Thursday as the Justice Department seeks to halt the spread of COVID-19 among inmates. Cohen’s release comes a week after President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was released from prison amid similar concerns. Cohen sought release [...]
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared an end to Palestinian commitments in the Oslo Accords in a meeting Tuesday in Ramallah. The Oslo Accords are a set of agreements designed to facilitate peace between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Under the terms signed in the 1990s, Palestinians were granted self-governance in parts of the [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Central District of California ordered last week that the City and County of Los Angeles humanely relocate approximately 7,000 homeless individuals currently “camping near freeway overpasses, underpasses, and ramps.” Judge David Carter found that living near highways exposes people to “toxic fumes, ‘hazardous waste concentrations of [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) actions in enforcing air quality standards across state lines were somewhat lacking. While the court determined that some of the EPA’s steps in evaluating air quality assessment requests under the Clean Air Act’s “Good Neighbor” provision [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed on Tuesday the Southern District of New York’s decision to reinstate the New York presidential primary on June 23, 2020. The court ruled that the cancellation of the presidential primary violated the plaintiffs’ right of association under the First and Fourteenth Amendment. Andrew Yang, a presidential [...]
A federal judge on Monday denied requests by defendants to stay proceedings in a civil case in which President Donald Trump, three of his children and his company are accused of participating in a scheme to defraud investors. The civil complaint, brought by unnamed plaintiffs who were among a potential class of plaintiffs, alleges that [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a ruling Monday that logs of visitors to the White House and President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida are exempt from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The three-judge panel affirmed Judge Katherine Polk Falia’s ruling, which favored the Secret Service’s argument that visitor [...]
