Four African-American residents of Mississippi filed a lawsuit in federal court on Thursday seeking to block Mississippi’s process for electing statewide officials due to its discriminatory origins and impact. The plaintiffs challenge a Jim-Crow-era restriction unique to Mississippi: any candidate for statewide office must win not only a majority of the popular vote but a [...]

A group of plaintiffs who have been challenging the citizenship question on the 2020 census filed a motion for an order to show cause Thursday based on newly discovered evidence. According to evidence recovered off the hard drive of Dr. Thomas Hofeller, the plaintiffs allege that the citizenship question was created with a discriminatory purpose [...]

The US Supreme Court denied a stay of execution for Alabama inmate Christopher Lee Price on Thursday. Price was convicted and sentenced to death after he murdered a pastor in 1991. The Supreme Court had first denied the stay in April over the objections of the court’s more liberal wing. Price argued that the state’s use [...]

Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak on Wednesday signed two bills, restoring felon voting rights and sealing records related to decriminalized offenses. Assembly Bill 431 grants convicted felons the right to vote immediately after release from prison or discharge from parole or probation. Felons will not have to undergo a waiting period or further conditions to restore [...]

US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) announced Wednesday that it had apprehended 1,036 individuals immediately after they illegally crossed the Rio Grande river into El Paso, Texas. CBP described the group as the largest ever to be encountered by border patrol agents. The members of the group—all from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador—included 934 family [...]

US President Donald Trump announced intentions late Thursday to issue a 5 percent tariff on all goods entering the US from Mexico. The president’s tariff is being issued in response to his perception that migrants from Latin America are continuously crossing the border into the US. Immigration has been a major issue for Trump since [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed a bill enabling people with certain diseases to legally adopt children who are living with them. Before this bill was signed, a 2013 list of diseases created by the Russian government was used to enforce a ban on all adoption proceedings by disease-positive individuals. This ban prevented individuals [...]

Maine Governor Janet Mills on Wednesday signed a bill prohibiting licensed professionals from administering conversion therapy to minors, becoming the seventeenth state in the US to ban the practice. The bill forbids “advertising, offering and administering of therapy designed to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, also known as conversion therapy, to individuals [...]

The New Hampshire Senate on Thursday approved a bill to amend a controversial 2017 election law that required new voters to turn in documentation before voting. The new legislation was previously approved by the New Hampshire House and now goes to Governor Chris Sununu for final approval. However, Sununu has said that he opposes “any [...]

Louisiana’s Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards on Thursday signed a bill banning abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected by an ultrasound. The exceptions to the abortion ban include situations to prevent the pregnant women’s death or a serious risk of impairment of major bodily function, or when the pregnancy is medically futile, but do [...]