Articles Posted in Politics

According to news reports, since May the federal government has filed four condemnation lawsuits against local residents in the Brownsville, Texas area for the purpose of constructing a border wall along the southern border of the US. Some residents, who have been informed that the government wants access to their property for purposes of surveying land that would be involved in border wall construction, are contesting the government's terms for use of their land.

A judge in Washington, D.C. ruled that gifts from foreign governments to Trump businesses might violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

On Monday, March 4, 2019, The New Yorker published an article online written by Jane Mayer chronicling the ties between the White House and Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. The article, titled "The Making of the Fox News White House," will be published in the print edition of the March 11, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, under the headline "Trump TV." In the article, Mayer quotes a former White House official as stating that "[t]he President does not understand the nuances of antitrust law or policy. . . [b]ut he wanted to bring down the hammer" with regards to the AT&T/Time Warner merger. 

On Monday, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a federal employees labor union, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration related to the government shutdown.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Lance Walker rejected Maine Republican congressional incumbent Bruce Poliquin’s lawsuit, which sought to have the state’s ranked voting system declared unconstitutional.

Last week Congress voted to pass a farm bill that addresses the legalization of cultivating hemp in the U.S. as well as other issues such as nutrition, conservation, trade, energy, and forestry. The bill received support from both major parties, and is expected to be signed into law by President Trump.

Reports from CNN and New York Times state that the Trump administration will ban bump stocks, devices that allow semiautomatic weapons to mimic machine guns, within the next few days. CNN reports that the new legislation will mandate that people who own bump stocks must turn in or destroy the devices within 90 days.

A judge in New York has ruled that state Attorney General Barbara Underwood's case against the Trump Foundation can go forward. The case alleges that the charitable foundation engaged in a consistent pattern of illegal acts for over a decade, being used to settle business disputes and support the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. The judge ruled that U.S. Supreme Court precedent in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against then-President Clinton clearly states that the president is not immune from civil liability while in office.

On Wednesday, November 14, 2018, the United States Department of Justice provided a twenty page memo to President Donald J. Trump arguing that President Trump's appointment of Acting Attorney General Matthew G. Whitaker complied with federal statutes and the U.S. Constitution, and that the appointment is "[c]onsistent with our prior opinion and with centuries of historical practice and precedents."

A landmark bill aimed at protecting the rights of transgender Massachusetts residents in the context of public accommodations was upheld by voters on November 6.