A Chinese national was charged Friday with destroying a hard drive during an FBI investigation into possible involvement with the transfer of sensitive software to China. The US Department of Justice said that Guan Lei, a 29-year-old Chinese national and researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, was arrested pursuant to a criminal complaint [...]

More than 20 states filed a lawsuit Friday against the US Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) over changes to a key environmental law. The lawsuit seeks to vacate a final rule, promulgated in July, which made various changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Since 1970, NEPA has served as the US’s “bedrock law [...]

Five nonprofit organizations, including Rock the Vote, Voto Latino, Common Cause, Free Press, and Maplight, have jointly filed suit in the US District Court of the Northern District of California against the Trump administration in connection with US President Donald Trump’s executive order from May expanding the government’s power over social media organizations. Trump passed [...]

The US Department of Justice on Wednesday executed Lezmond Mitchell, a 38-year-old member of the Navajo Nation who had been sentenced to death for the murder of Alyce Slim and her granddaughter, Tiffany Lee, in 2001. Mitchell’s death marks the fourth federal execution since the revival of federal capital punishment earlier this year. However, Mitchell’s [...]

The UN Security Council (UNSC) president, Indonesia, on Tuesday declined to take further action on the US’s request to reimpose all UN sanctions on Iran due to disagreement among the 15-member UNSC. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had filed a complaint with the UNSC to start a 30-day process (“snapback”) to reimpose international sanctions [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled on Wednesday that it was unlawful for a Virginia school board to deny a transgender student access to the bathroom that corresponded with his gender identity. The court determined that preventing the student from accessing the bathroom of his choice was a form of sex [...]

The US Mission to International Organizations in Geneva (US Mission) responded Wednesday to a UN panel that determined certain states “appear to be manipulating the COVID-19 crisis to curb access to essential abortion care.” In its response, the US Mission rejected the idea of an “assumed right to abortion” and denounced the panel’s interference. The [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Thursday that the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) new lethal injection protocol violates Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laws. This case arose when Keith Nelson, a prisoner sentenced to death in 2002, sued the government for failing to adhere to the Administrative Procedure [...]

A split US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit refused Tuesday to review a trial judge’s orders that paused a challenge to New Jersey’s ban on three-dimensional gun printing. The court found that the orders could not be appealed because they were not final. Attorneys general from several states initiated civil and criminal proceedings [...]

The Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis released a plan Tuesday to address climate change. In its press release, the Senate Democrats stated that “the new report—which comes after dozens of hearings, meetings, and input from experts, labor unions, mayors, environmental justice leaders, and native communities, among others—details how bold climate action from [...]