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The US House of Representatives approved the Emmett Till Antilynching Act by a 410-4 majority Wednesday, aiming to make lynching a federal hate crime. The bill is named after 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African-American Chicago boy who was kidnapped and lynched while visiting family in Mississippi in 1955 after allegedly flirting with a white woman. [...]

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The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Wednesday that the Department of Justice (DOJ) can withhold Bryne Program grant money from cities that refuse to comply with three immigration related conditions imposed by the DOJ. Congress created the Bryne Program Criminal Justice Assistance grants in 2006 to provide additional funding to crime [...]

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Utah’s House of Representatives on Wednesday approved SB 102, allowing consenting adults to engage in multiple romantic relationships simultaneously without penalty of law. The bill would make polygamy among consenting adults an infraction, a lesser offense than most traffic tickets. Currently, polygamy is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Polygamy occurring [...]

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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) unanimously ruled Thursday that journalist Khadija Ismayilova’s arrest and detention was an attempt to silence and punish her for her criticism of the Azerbaijani government. The court also ruled that the government’s actions violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court ruled that, because [...]

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Incarcerated women are treated more harshly than incarcerated men, according to a report from the US Commission on Civil Rights released Wednesday. “Women in Prison: Seeking Justice Behind Bar” compares the treatment of women in prison by prison officials, and focuses on the fairness of that punishment compared to male inmates. The study found that [...]

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The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday that YouTube is not a “state actor” for First Amendment purposes and thus the platform can exercise control over the content its users post. The conservative nonprofit group Prager University (PragerU) had complained that YouTube’s terms of use worked to censor the group’s right [...]

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The Scottish parliament approved a bill on Tuesday making sanitary products free to all women. The bill passed through the first stage of Scotland’s lawmaking process almost unanimously, with no opposition and only one abstention. Once enacted, the law would make women’s sanitary products freely available at designated public places. The bill, known as The [...]

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The US Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit on Wednesday upheld Texas’s winner-take-all system for awarding electoral college votes in presidential elections. The challengers, led by an organization called the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), had asserted that distributing all of Texas’s 38 electoral votes to the winner of the state’s popular vote, rather [...]

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The US Supreme Court oral arguments Wednesday in Lomax v. Ortiz-Marquez on prisoner legal complaints. In the oral argument, the petitioner argued that “ithout-prejudice dismissals for failure to state a claim are not strikes” under a statute which governs how many times prisoners may bring a claim that is then dismissed for failure to state [...]

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Donald J Trump for President, Inc. filed suit against the New York Times for libel Wednesday. The suit is in response to an article published by the Times titled “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo” by Max Frankle. According to the complaint, the article claims that there was an “overreaching deal between the Putin Oligarchy [...]

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