Politics

The New York Times reports: A federal judge on Wednesday granted the Justice Department’s request to halt enforcement of the recently passed Texas law that bans nearly all abortions in the state while the legal battle over the statute makes its way through the federal courts. In his 113-page ruling, Robert L. Pitman, a Federal District Court judge in Austin, …

Politico reports: Evan McMullin, the former undercover CIA officer best known for his 2016 presidential bid as an independent, announced Tuesday he is running for Senate in Utah to replace Republican Mike Lee in next year’s midterm elections. In a roughly three-minute campaign launch video, McMullin, who has long been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, argued Tuesday …

Reuters reports: Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen will appear before the US Congress Tuesday (Oct 5), where she is set to sharply criticise her former employer as “one of the most urgent threats” facing the country, and to demand transparency about its operations in order to better regulate it. Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, says the …

The Texas Tribune reports: U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green — both Houston Democrats — testified Monday at the Texas Capitol against proposed district maps that would break up communities of Black voters and pit the two incumbents against each other. “It doesn’t look right for the only two persons in the state of Texas to be running …

Via press release from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: I am saddened to report that Florida’s esteemed First Lady and my beloved wife has been diagnosed with breast cancer. As the mother of three young children, Casey is the centerpiece of our family and has made an impact on the lives of countless Floridians through her initiatives as First Lady. As …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: Evan McMullin, who won more than 21% of the Utahns’ votes for president in 2016, will challenge Sen. Mike Lee as an independent candidate for Utah’s Senate seat next year. An announcement of his candidacy is likely to come soon — perhaps very soon — a source in the McMullin camp told me over the …

The Associated Press reports: A new report sheds light on how world leaders, powerful politicians, billionaires and others have used offshore accounts to shield assets collectively worth trillions of dollars over the past quarter-century. The report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists involved 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries. It’s being dubbed the “Pandora Papers” because …

The New York Times reports: John Tye, the founder of Whistleblower Aid, a legal nonprofit that represents people seeking to expose potential lawbreaking, was contacted this spring through a mutual connection by a woman who claimed to have worked at Facebook. The woman told Mr. Tye and his team something intriguing: She had access to tens of thousands of pages …

The Associated Press reports: Former U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, a conservative Missouri Republican whose comment that women’s bodies have a way of avoiding pregnancies in cases of “legitimate rape” sunk his bid for the U.S. Senate and became a cautionary tale for other GOP candidates, died late Sunday. He was 74. Akin had cancer for several years, his son, Perry, …

The Insider reports: “I’m not considering anything beyond doing my job. We got a lot of stuff going on in Florida. I’m going to be running for reelection next year,” the Republican told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “We are also working on a lot of things in the state beyond the governor’s race. We got school-board races,” DeSantis added. …

The Miami Herald reports: Frank Pichel, a controversial candidate for mayor of the city of Miami, was arrested by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office early Friday morning on a felony charge of impersonating a police officer. According to the sheriff’s office, he was booked into county jail at midnight. He was released about two hours later after posting a $5,000 …

USA Today reports: More than half of police killings in the U.S. are not reported in official government data, and Black Americans are most likely to experience fatal police violence, according to a new study released Thursday. An estimated 55% of deaths from police violence from 1980 to 2018 were misclassified or unreported in official vital statistics reports, according to …

ABC News reports: Ex-President Jimmy Carter, the oldest former U.S. chief executive ever, will quietly mark his 97th birthday at home in southwest Georgia on Friday, an aide said. Slowed by age in recent years and keeping a low profile during the coronavirus pandemic, Carter doesn’t plan on any public appearances, said press secretary Deanna Congelio. Workers at the Jimmy …

Fox News reports: Liberal pundit-turned-politician Matthew Dowd once called for “White male Christians” like himself to be sidelined in politics. “As a [W]hite male Christian in America, I am part of a dwindling subset that has held the levers of power politically and economically in nearly every field for the entire history of the United States,” Dowd wrote. “Yes, the …

The Washington Post reports: Senate Democrats and Republicans on Thursday approved a measure to fund the government into early December, putting lawmakers one step close toward staving off a shutdown that is set to occur after midnight. The morning vote followed weeks of hand wringing between the two parties, after Democrats initially sought to move the measure along with another …

The Associated Press reports: French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was convicted Thursday and sentenced to a year of house arrest for illegal campaign financing of his unsuccessful 2012 reelection bid, will appeal the ruling, his lawyer said. The court said Sarkozy would be allowed to serve the one-year sentence at home by wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. Sarkozy’s lawyer, Thierry …

The DCist reports: More than a dozen states across the U.S. have already legalized marijuana sales, and later this fall lawmakers in D.C. will start debating whether to join that group. The D.C. Council has scheduled a public hearing on Nov. 19 to consider legislation from Chairman Phil Mendelson that would legalize the sale of recreational marijuana, alongside a separate …

The Associated Press reports: A Georgia city did not violate the constitutional rights of a Sons of Confederate Veterans group when it banned the Confederate battle flag from its annual parade honoring veterans of American wars, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. Richard Leake and Michael Dean sued Alpharetta, an Atlanta suburb, in August 2019 after city officials said the …

The Texas Tribune reports: Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for George W. Bush’s presidential reelection campaign who later split with the former president publicly, is running for lieutenant governor as a Democrat. Dowd also has worked for Bob Bullock, who in 1994 was the last Democrat elected as Texas lieutenant governor, and faces an uphill battle to unseat Republican Dan …

UPDATE: The first version of this post mistakenly called her a candidate for the Libertarian Party. My mistake! Yahoo News reports: Third-party candidate Princess Blanding derailed a gubernatorial debate between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Younkin, shouting from the audience and forcing moderators to take an unexpected commercial break. Blanding, representing the Liberation Party, is on Virginia’s general election …