Progressive search for action

18+ min ago (424+ words) The Supreme Court is poised to hear Trump v. Slaughter, a case that could fundamentally reshape the balance of power between the presidency and Congress. At issue is whether President Donald Trump can fire the heads of independent federal agencies at will " a power the Constitution does not explicitly grant and which the Supreme Court unanimously rejected nearly a century ago, wrote New York Times columnist Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "Today's Republican-appointed justices appear to be firmly under the sway of an atextual and ahistoric theory " the unitary executive theory " that demands complete presidential control over essentially every government agency and insists that the power to fire agency heads at will is an indispensable part of such control," Shaw wrote. This represents a dramatic departure from the 1935 Humphrey's Executor decision, where the Supreme Court ruled…...

19+ min ago (623+ words) This is'Trans News Tracker, a biweekly Autostraddle roundup and analysis of the biggest trans news stories. To support this vital work we do, consider'becoming a member. In what is one of the cruelest and most heinous acts of violence committed against trans and intersex people by the Trump administration, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is halting all protections for trans and intersex people who are currently incarcerated in federal, state, and local prisons, jails, and youth detention facilities according to a memo obtained by Prism late last week. This means that while Gregg and the rest of the DOJ "analyze" the protections for trans and intersex prisoners enshrined in PREA to decide whether or not they're at odds with the Trump administration's executive order, they are taking these protections away even though PREA is still very much the law. Court…...

35+ min ago (347+ words) A turn against Europe from President Donald Trump could be an attempt appease MAGA supporters' "hatred of freedom," according to a Nobel Prize winner. Krugman, writing in his Substack, explained, "Clearly, MAGA hates Europe for its freedom. The people trying to turn America into an authoritarian, white supremacist state, who want us to forsake democratic ideals in favor of Volk, of blood and soil nationalism, want to see Europe go down the same path." The Nobel Prize winner would go on to suggest MAGA has no interest in the "rule of law" and would prefer to see Trump rule as he sees fit. Krugman wrote, "MAGA, however, doesn't want to be part of that world." "In fact, it doesn't want a world of democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law to exist. The Trump administration has become especially hostile…...

35+ min ago (382+ words) Bruna Ferreira, the mother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's nephew, said she "made a mistake" by "trusting" her in-laws after she was arrested by ICE and cast by the administration as a "criminal" and absent parent. Ferreira was arrested on November 12 by ICE and faces deportation to Brazil, after overstaying a visa from when she was a child in 1998. Her arrest was captured on video as multiple unmarked SUVs surrounded her car. She shares an 11-year-old son with Michael Leavitt, the press secretary's brother, and claimed in an exclusive video interview with the Washington Post from a detention center in Louisiana on Sunday that at one point she even asked Karoline Leavitt to be her son's godmother. "I asked Karoline to be godmother over my only sister," she said Thursday. "I made a mistake there, in trusting. Ferreira…...

36+ min ago (296+ words) Happy Monday! Get your week started the right way by joining our live blog during today's oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter. Our conversation will kick off at 9:30 a.m. EST. The executor's effort to recover backpay made it to the Supreme Court in 1935, which considered whether the Federal Trade Commission Act's removal restrictions " it states that commissioners can only be removed "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office" " unlawfully limit the president's executive power. In Slaughter, the Trump administration contends that the FTC has changed significantly over the past 90 years and now exercises much more executive power than "Humphrey's Executor attributed to the 1935 FTC." But the administration also argues that Humphrey's Executor should be overturned altogether, because it places impermissible limits on presidential authority. We shall see if a majority of the justices agree. " Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in…...

38+ min ago (572+ words) On Thursday, Navy Admiral Frank "Mitch" Bradley met behind closed doors with members of the House and Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, and they watched video of the incident that the most transparent administration in history is quite keen to not make public. And the story gets even more ghoulish. Apparently 41 minutes elapsed between strikes, where the survivors were clinging and waving from the overturned hull of the boat, not armed, and not a threat. And not radioing for backup like Defense WAR department sources had claimed at one point. And the boat was not even pointed in the direction of the US, but headed to Suriname, in the exact opposite direction. Also, it was not two strikes, some Shirley Temple double-tap, but at least four. And "FOG OF WAR," come the fuck on, this guy was watching a…...

41+ min ago (196+ words) Scott Presler at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 16, 2023 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr) GOP organizer Scott Presler is an unlikely figure in the Republican Party. The 37-year-old Presler is openly gay, yet his history is that of a far-right MAGA culture warrior " from anti-Islam events to defending Christian nationalists. In an article published by Slate on December 8, journalist Aymann Ismail stresses that Presler is trying to put his past behind him but may have difficulty doing so. The Slate journalist, a Muslim, notes that Presler "hates talking about his past," including "a long stint trafficking in anti-Muslim propaganda" as well as "'Stop the Steal' activism." "Can someone build a shiny new political identity on top of years of dehumanizing rhetoric aimed at people like me, and simply bury that past altogether?," Ismail writes. "Presler clearly…...

48+ min ago (619+ words) Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson writes in The Guardian with women's rights champion Julie Roginsky that while President Donald Trump was a close friend of deceased convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, he wasn't his most powerful ally. Carlson's 2016 sexual harassment lawsuit against former Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes became a pivotal moment in the global #MeToo movement and led to landmark legislative changes. Along with Roginsky, Carlson in 2022 helped pass The Ending Forced Arbitration for Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, which ensures that survivors can bring their claims to court rather than being sent into the secret chamber of forced arbitration, and The Speak Out Act, which limits the use of NDAs that silence survivors before misconduct even occurs. "Focusing on the lurid details of his life and eventual death obscures the far more unsettling truth…...

50+ min ago (732+ words) In 2016, as then-presidential candidate Donald Trump vowed that US troops would carry out even his most extreme battlefield orders as commander in chief " some of which former military leaders said would be illegal " Pete Hegseth warned that service members had a duty to refuse unlawful orders from a potential President Trump," CNN reports. The Best Laptop I've Ever Used In 25 years of running Political Wire, no computer has ever served me better than the latest MacBook Air. It's the rare machine that's powerful enough to handle my entire workflow yet light enough to take everywhere " and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's on sale now for an astonishing 21% off. Paul Krugman: There was a time, not so long ago, when America was the leader of the free world. It was the first among equals within an alliance of nations…...

54+ min ago (352+ words) Legendary actress Dame'Judi Dench'said she believes convicted sex offender'Harvey Weinstein "has done his time," claiming she can forgive him because "to me it's personal." Dench sat down for an interview with Radio Times in which she discussed her previous friendship with both Weinstein and actor'Kevin Spacey, who was found not guilty of charges of sexual assault in 2023. Spacey is facing additional allegations of sexual assault, and is set to be tried next October. "Kevin has been exonerated and I hear from Kevin, we text," said Dench. "I saw a bit of film of Harvey walking with two sticks and you think, "Well" I knew Harvey and I knew him well and worked with him, and I had none of that experience " very fortunately for me," she said. Dench said she can extend forgiveness to Weinstein, who is currently serving out…...