A death row inmate in Alabama filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of nitrogen gas executions. He argued that the first person in the nation put to death by this method experienced violent convulsions for several minutes in “a human experiment that officials botched miserably.” Bernard E. Harcourt, counsel for death row [...]

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US Customs and Border Protection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The US Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (HHS-OIG), the government watchdog responsible for oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), published a report Thursday alleging that significant deficiencies in safeguarding unaccompanied migrant children arriving in the US have been discovered. According to the report, HHS, which [...]

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The US Supreme Court on Friday denied an anti-affirmative action organization’s emergency application to block the US Military Academy, known as “West Point,” from using race in its admissions process. In September 2023, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the group that recently won the significant case of SFFA v. Harvard, challenging the constitutionality of race-based [...]

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Thomas R Machnitzki, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A bipartisan group of Tennessee state legislators unveiled a proposed state constitutional amendment on Friday to grant judges more discretion to detain individuals without bail before trial for specific violent criminal charges. Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-District 25) made the announcement at Memphis City Hall, flanked by Memphis’ Mayor Paul Young (D), Senate Majority [...]

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Alabama inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed Thursday night by nitrogen hypoxia after the US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, declined to intervene in the state’s second attempt to execute an inmate who had previously survived a botched lethal injection. The court’s three liberal justices expressed their willingness to hear Smith’s claims of cruel [...]

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U.S. Embassy Nigeria, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Thursday that the U.S. State Department has imposed sanctions on one individual and three Russian entities engaged in transferring and testing North Korea’s ballistic missiles, intended for use by Russia against Ukraine. The entities and individual subject to US-imposed sanctions include the 224th Flight Unit State Airlines, [...]

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White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Massachusetts voters filed an objection on Thursday to the state official responsible for overseeing elections seeking to remove former US President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot. Their efforts join with several others after Maine and Colorado already agreed to remove Trump from their respective ballots. In Thursday’s filing to the Massachusetts [...]

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The US Department of Justice (DOJ) arrested and charged Karrem Nasr, an American citizen residing in Egypt since July 2023, for attempting to provide support to al-Shabaab. Nasr, a resident of New Jersey, traveled to Kenya with the intent to join al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, following Hamas’ attack in southern Israel on October [...]

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Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A federal judge in Georgia approved on Thursday the state’s recently revised political maps for both the US Congress and the state’s legislature. A group of plaintiffs challenged the maps, arguing that they diminish the influence of Black voters in Georgia in violation of the Voting Rights Act. But US District Judge Steve Jones disagreed, [...]

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US District Judge Irene Berger dismissed a lawsuit on Thursday aimed at preventing former President Donald Trump from appearing on West Virginia’s primary ballot next year. Berger found that the plaintiff, John Anthony Castro, who identifies as a presidential candidate, did not have standing to bring the lawsuit. Castro argued that including Trump on the [...]

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