Leaders of the House and Senate Agricultural Committee reached a bipartisan compromise and released the text of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 on Monday evening, which Congress will vote on as early as Wednesday. The bill notably eliminates a work requirement for beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) proposed by the House and [...]

The US Supreme Court declined to review two cases on Monday about a state’s ability to defund Planned Parenthood. By denying certiorari in Andersen v. Planned Parenthood and Gee v. Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court let decisions from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Tenth Circuits stand. Both held that 42 USC § 1396a(a)(23)  allows Medicaid [...]

The US Supreme Court agreed to add Kisor v. Wilkie to its docket on Monday. The court will limit its review to the first question presented by the petition for certiorari, which asks the court to reconsider precedent from Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand that directs courts to defer to [...]

Special Counsel Robert Mueller said in a court filing Friday that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort lied about his contacts with the Trump administration after President Donald Trump took office. In the heavily redacted document, Mueller also said that Manafort lied about his communications with Konstantin Kilimnik, an alleged Russian intelligence agent. As summarized [...]

Federal prosecutors filed a sentencing memorandum Friday seeking a “substantial” prison term for US President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. As set forth in the Probation Department’s Presentence Investigation Report … the applicable United States Sentencing Guidelines … range is 51 to 63 months’ imprisonment. This range reflects Cohen’s extensive, deliberate, and serious criminal [...]

US District Judge Royce Lamberth on Thursday ordered a reexamination of the Hilary Clinton private email lawsuit. In his 10-page opinion, he ordered a discovery plan focused on three issues, “whether Clinton used a private email to evade , whether attempts to settle the case despite knowing the inadequacy of its initial search constituted bad [...]

The Washington State Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a proposed initiative to block funding to open up safe injection sites in King County. In response to the opioid epidemic in 2016, Seattle and King County created a “Heroin and Prescription Opioid Addiction Task Force. This task force was created “to identify strategies and recommendations to improve [...]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday proposed changes to limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants. The proposed “Best System of Emission Reduction” would replace a 2015 rule that identified partial carbon capture and storage. The new proposal states partial carbon capture and storage is too costly, with limited geographic availability. The EPA [...]

A Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company, Actelion Pharmaceuticals US, Inc., settled with the US government for $360 million Thursday to resolve claims of illegally using a charity to receive kickbacks on Medicare patients. By donating to Caring Voice Coalition (CVC), the government alleges that Actelion induced patients to purchase company drugs and defrauded the Centers [...]

The Italian Court of Cassation, the nation’s highest court, on Wednesday ordered the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles to return a valuable Greek statue recovered by Italian fishermen and sold to the Getty Museum in 1977 for USD $4 million. “hree different judges have reaffirmed that the statue belongs to the Italian state [...]