A judge of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled on Friday that when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 reduced the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) shared-responsibility payment for not obtaining health insurance to $0, the provision ceased being a tax, making it an invalid exercise of Congress’s power to tax. This does not [...]

President Trump signed the Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act of 2018 into law on Tuesday. The bill establishes “US policy to ensure that humanitarian, stabilization, and recovery assistance for nationals and residents of Iraq or Syria, and of communities from those countries, is directed toward ethnic and minority individuals and communities with the greatest [...]

President Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution by a federal judge in New York on Wednesday. This comes following a request from federal prosecutors for a “substantial” prison term on December 7. Cohen plead guilty to lying to [...]

The Trump administration announced a new definition of “waters of the United States” at the EPA on Tuesday. The term’s new meaning will primarily limit the federal government’s regulation of waterways under the Clean Water Act to major waterways, their tributaries, and adjacent wetlands. This proposal follows the 2017 Executive Order “On Restoring the Rule [...]

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on Tuesday that the Senate will vote on the FIRST STEP Act, an expansive criminal justice reform bill, within the month. The bill passed the House in May of this year and has awaited a Senate vote ever since. McConnell previously said that the Senate would not vote on [...]

Leaders of the House and Senate Agricultural Committee reached a bipartisan compromise and released the text of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 on Monday evening, which Congress will vote on as early as Wednesday. The bill notably eliminates a work requirement for beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) proposed by the House and [...]

The US Supreme Court declined to review two cases on Monday about a state’s ability to defund Planned Parenthood. By denying certiorari in Andersen v. Planned Parenthood and Gee v. Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court let decisions from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Tenth Circuits stand. Both held that 42 USC § 1396a(a)(23)  allows Medicaid [...]

The US Supreme Court agreed to add Kisor v. Wilkie to its docket on Monday. The court will limit its review to the first question presented by the petition for certiorari, which asks the court to reconsider precedent from Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand that directs courts to defer to [...]

Special Counsel Robert Mueller said in a court filing Friday that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort lied about his contacts with the Trump administration after President Donald Trump took office. In the heavily redacted document, Mueller also said that Manafort lied about his communications with Konstantin Kilimnik, an alleged Russian intelligence agent. As summarized [...]

Federal prosecutors filed a sentencing memorandum Friday seeking a “substantial” prison term for US President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. As set forth in the Probation Department’s Presentence Investigation Report … the applicable United States Sentencing Guidelines … range is 51 to 63 months’ imprisonment. This range reflects Cohen’s extensive, deliberate, and serious criminal [...]