Former Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark Explains How SCOTUS Colorado Ruling Will Protect Potential Trump Administration

Trump President

Jeff Clark, former acting assistant attorney general during the Trump administration, said the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson, which restores former President Donald Trump’s name on the Colorado ballot, will also protect a future Trump administration from a “whole bunch of Section 3 litigation in 2025.”

Clark said in addition to the unanimous 9-0 decision in the case, five of the Supreme Court justices went on to “decide another set of issues” in regards to states’ enforcement of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to regulate federal candidates.

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Julie Kelly Commentary: Lower Courts Dare SCOTUS to Act with Lawless Rulings, But Will They?

Throughout 2020, both Republicans and Democrats warned that the U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately determine the winner of the presidential election — albeit for different reasons.

Democrats feared a conservative majority would uphold what they called “voter suppression” laws to tighten voting requirements that might benefit President Trump. Republicans worried how the court would handle cases related to lax absentee voting measures enacted as a result of the coronavirus pandemic that gave Joe Biden a big advantage.

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Minnesota Woman Denied Unemployment After Refusing Vaccine Asks SCOTUS to Review Case

Tine Goede

A Minnesota woman who was fired for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine and then denied unemployment benefits has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her case, arguing that her First Amendment rights were violated.

“Religious belief is intimate and differs substantially among Americans. The promise of religious liberty in the First Amendment is that such differences may persist without punishment from the state. That promise is being broken in Minnesota,” James Dickey, senior counsel for the Upper Midwest Law Center, said in a petition filed with the court Monday.

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Commentary: Is SCOTUS Poised to Overturn Key J6 Felony Count?

An order published by the Supreme Court on December 13 represented a moment hundreds of January 6 defendants and their loved ones had been waiting for: the highest court granted a writ of certiorari petition in the case of Fischer v. USA.

In a nutshell, after more than two years of litigation before federal judges in Washington, SCOTUS will review the Department of Justice’s use of 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding, in January 6 cases. A “splintered” 2-1 appellate court ruling issued in April just barely endorsed the DOJ’s unprecedented interpretation of the statute, passed in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the aftermath of the Enron/Arthur Anderson accounting scandal.

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Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance Introduces Bill to Ensure Universities Comply with the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling

U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH)  introduced a bill to ensure colleges and universities comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

In June, SCOTUS determined that affirmative action violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, overruling a 2003 opinion that race could be a determining factor in the college admissions process.

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Liberal ‘Dark Money’ Groups Gave Millions to SCOTUS Watchdogs Targeting Alito, Thomas, Docs Show

Nonprofit organizations managed by the liberal “dark money” consulting firm Arabella Advisors gave millions of dollars to “nonpartisan” Supreme Court watchdogs, new documents show, after a campaign was launched earlier this year targeting conservative Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for not fully disclosing their finances.

Former Clinton appointee Eric Kessler founded Arabella Advisors in 2005, and its subsidiaries include the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Hopewell Fund, the New Venture Fund, the Windward Fund and the North Fund. 

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Montana AG Asks SCOTUS to Take Up Case Challenging State Agency That Encouraged Social Media Censorship

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen asked the Supreme Court Friday to hear a case that challenges a state agency’s efforts to police election-related “misinformation” on Twitter.

A group of nine attorneys general led by Knudsen filed an amicus brief Friday urging the Supreme Court to hear O’Handley v. Weber, a lawsuit challenging the California Secretary of State’s Office of Election Cybersecurity’s practice of flagging “false or misleading” election information for removal by Twitter. The states call the agency’s actions an “anathema” to the First Amendment and argue they reflect similar conduct occurring at the federal level.

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Supreme Court Will Take on Red Flag Law

The Supreme Court will hear a case this coming term challenging a federal “Red Flag” law that prohibits individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms, which is expected to shape the future of Second Amendment law.

Zackey Rahimi, the individual at the center of the case, was involved in five shootings between December 2020 and January 2021, in one instance firing shots into the air after his friend’s credit card was declined at a Whataburger, according to court documents. When police obtained a warrant to search his home, they found him in possession of a firearm, a violation of a civil protective order entered against him in February 2020 for allegedly assaulting his ex-girlfriend.

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Censorship Case Involving State Collusion with Social Media Companies Could Be Heard by the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court could hear a case questioning a California agency’s coordination with Twitter to censor election-related “misinformation.”

O’Handley v. Weber, which concerns the California Secretary of State’s Office of Election Cybersecurity’s work with Twitter to monitor “false or misleading” election information, was appealed to the Supreme Court on June 8. The case raises questions similar to those posed in the free speech lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, now being appealed in the Fifth Circuit: Can the government lawfully induce private actors to censor protected speech?

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Catholic Counselor Asks SCOTUS to Reverse Decision Allowing States to Limit Speech Outside Abortion Clinics

A Catholic sidewalk counselor petitioned the Supreme Court Friday to reverse a prior ruling that permits states to enforce laws targeting pro-life counseling outside abortion clinics.

In response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2020, Westchester County, New York passed a law creating a 100-foot “buffer zone” outside abortion clinics where it is illegal to approach another person to engage in “oral protest, education, or counseling” without consent. The law is similar to one the Supreme Court upheld in its 2000 Hill v. Colorado decision, which sidewalk counselor Debra Vitagliano, backed by Becket Law, now asks the justices to overrule.

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University of Minnesota Axes Legacy Admissions After SCOTUS Block of Affirmative Action

The University of Minnesota is ditching legacy admissions, a mechanism by which children of alumni get preferential treatment within the admissions process, following a Supreme Court ruling that blocked the use of race-based affirmative action policies, a university spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Supreme Court ruled in June that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s affirmative action admissions policies were unconstitutional. In light of the ruling, the University of Minnesota decided it will no longer consider race, ethnicity, legacy or employment in its admissions process, a university spokesperson told the DCNF.

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Ohio College Employees Could Be Held ‘Personally Liable’ for Violating Affirmative Action Ban: Attorney General

Ohio higher education employees “will face personal risk” if they violate the Supreme Court ban on considering race during admissions, state Attorney General Dave Yost wrote in a recent letter.

His office won’t be able to protect public colleges and universities if they act counter to the ruling, Yost wrote, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

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Commentary: SCOTUS Affirmative Action Decision Ignores Elephant in the Room

Growing up in the Jim Crow South, my parents grew up dreaming of a world where they didn’t have to use “colored-only” restrooms, sit in the back of the bus, attend segregated schools, and could sit in restaurants together with other Americans – regardless of their race, creed, or nationality.

They dreamed of equality for all. Yet, almost 70 years after the Supreme Court struck down “separate but equal,” the recent decision to strike down affirmative action makes it clear that many black progressives like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson – who benefited from the Brown v. Board of Education decision – still view the issues of race and equality through rose-colored glasses.

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SCOTUS to Take Up Second Amendment Case Next Term

After issuing a string of conservative rulings this week to close out the term, the Supreme Court will hear a key Second Amendment case later this year to determine whether a federal ban on gun possession affecting those under domestic violence restraining orders is constitutional.

At issue is a dispute involving Zackey Rahimi, whom Texas placed under a restraining order due to a violent altercation with his girlfriend, The Hill reported. He subsequently faced federal charges of possessing a firearm while under the order. He had challenged the constitutionality of the ban but pleaded guilty after losing the case.

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New Hampshire Democrats ‘No Comment’ on SCOTUS Racial Preferences Ruling

Across the country, Democrats reacted swiftly — and angrily– to Thursday’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court striking down Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s race-based admissions systems. Justices found they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Writing for the six-member majority, Chief Justice John Roberts noted race was the determinative factor for a “significant percentage” of Black and Hispanic applicants accepted by Harvard, with a similar admissions process used at UNC. Under its affirmative-action system, well-qualified Black applicants were 4 to 10 times as likely to be admitted to Harvard than similarly qualified Asian Americans, Roberts noted.

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Lawsuit Against Virginia Tech Bias Response Team May Land Before Supreme Court

A recent federal court ruling siding with Virginia Tech’s bias response team has prompted center-right watchdogs to call for the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case to protect free speech in higher education.

The controversy centers on a 2021 complaint from Speech First, a nonprofit committed to safeguarding freedom of speech on college campuses, which argued Virginia Tech’s Bias Intervention and Response Team policies and procedures infringe on students’ ability to speak freely about controversial issues.

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White House Quietly Prepares Back Up Plan If SCOTUS Strikes Down Student Loan Giveaway: Report

The Biden administration is quietly preparing for the possibility that the Supreme Court will strike down its controversial student loan forgiveness plan later in June, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The White House’s public position is that it expects the court to uphold the debt cancellation package, but several administration officials have conveyed private doubts about its prospects of survival upon review, according to the report. Behind the scenes, administration officials are exploring various legal and communications strategies to pursue in the event that the Supreme Court eventually overturns the signature Biden policy, according to the report.

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Kari Lake Announces Ballot Chasing Operation in Arizona, Plans to Go to SCOTUS with Election Case

Former GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake announces the launch of a ballot chasing operation in Arizona. “We are officially launching the largest, most extensive ballot chasing operation in our state’s history and frankly, possibly in American history,” Lake said during a press conference. “The courts just ruled that this corrupt election will stand. The courts just ruled that our elections can run lawlessly. The courts have ruled that anything goes. Well, we can play by those same rules.”

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Left-Wing SCOTUS Justice Took $3 Million from Book Publisher, Didn’t Recuse Herself from Cases

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a left-wing justice nominated by Barack Obama, repeatedly refused to recuse herself from cases involving the publishing company that paid her millions to publish her own books.

According to the Daily Wire, Sotomayor was paid $3.1 million by Penguin Random House over the course of two years; in 2010, she was paid $1.2 million by Knopf Doubleday Group, part of Random House’s conglomerate, and then received two separate advance payments in 2012, which amounted to $1.9 million when combined. These payments have made Penguin Random House her single largest source of income.

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Counseling Ban Promotes Gender Identity as Religion, Censors Science, Diverse Critics Tell SCOTUS

First Amendment speech protections may be circumscribed for therapists and medical professionals in the American West, critics warn, unless the Supreme Court scrutinizes a Washington law prohibiting any “regime that seeks to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Christian doctors, pro-life pregnancy centers, pediatricians, gender-critical feminists and a dozen states led by Idaho filed friend-of-the-court briefs last week urging the justices to review the so-called conversion law, warning it prevents providers from sharing research on the harms of hormonal and surgical procedures for gender-confused minors.

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Arizona Legislative Leaders Continue Fight Against Federal Vaccine Mandates

Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) announced Wednesday that he, along with House Speaker Ben Toma (R-Peoria), filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to halt any enforcement of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

“We will not allow President Biden to blatantly undermine the will of the Arizona State Legislature in the protections we’ve provided for our citizens to prevent a COVID-19 vaccine mandate from dictating employment opportunities,” said President Petersen. “The Biden Administration has made it clear that they are against any Americans who push back against this vaccine and will abuse their powers in order to force compliance as a stipulation of doing business with the federal government.”

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Supreme Court Declines to Hear Energy Companies’ Appeals to Climate Damage Lawsuits

The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear local governments’ climate damage lawsuits against energy companies on Monday.

The companies, who localities want to hold financially accountable for burning fossil fuels they allege damaged the climate, appealed their cases to the Supreme Court, asking it to weigh in on whether the claims should be heard in state or federal courts. The Court’s decision benefits the environmental activists behind the lawsuits, who prefer the matter to play out in state courts, where judges may be more inclined to rule in their favor, experts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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SCOTUS Justice Alito Halts Limits on Abortion Pill Access, Blocking Lower Court Rulings

Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito on Friday blocked lower court rulings that curtailed access to mifepristone while the court weighs a request from the Biden administration to defend the drug in court. The administration hopes to defend the drug’s approval in court in the face of a legal challenge from anti-abortion groups that had brought the initial suit, Reuters reported. Alito’s order asks both sides to submit arguments by Tuesday on whether the limits from the appeals court should take effect, pending litigation, the Associated Press reported.

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REVIEW: New Book ‘Rise to Greatness’ Explores How a Kid from Queens Became One of History’s Most Influential Supreme Court Justices

Antonin Scalia was a budding textualist long before he transformed the Supreme Court, and the nation, with his unique legal approach, a new biography of his early life reveals.

In the 1950s, the future Supreme Court Justice spent his mornings on the New York subway, commuting with his rifle to Xavier High School, a hybrid Jesuit-run Catholic school and military academy in Manhattan. His teacher’s response one day to a student’s sarcastic comment about “Hamlet” became a moment Scalia would never forget — and would refer to for the rest of his life as the Shakespeare Principle: “Mistah, when you read Shakespeah, Shakespeah’s not on trial; you ah,” Father Thomas Matthews said.

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Tennessee’s Skrmetti Among 33 Attorneys General Urging Supreme Court to Uphold Whistleblower Law

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong is leading 33 states attorneys general in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a pair of lower court rulings that could have broad implications for whistleblowers, and the government’s ability to go after public fraud.

In a 15-page legal brief, Tong and the other AGs are calling on justices to uphold a pair of federal whistleblower lawsuits accusing pharmacy operators of over billing government health insurance programs for prescription drugs. 

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Catholic Churches Have Suffered 118 Attacks Since SCOTUS Dobbs Leak

A recent report found that Catholic churches have suffered 118 attacks since the leak of the Supreme Court draft majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center in May 2022.

Churches and pregnancy centers across the United States came under attack after the opinion was leaked to Politico, indicating that the Supreme Court intended to overturn Roe v. Wade. CatholicVote (CV) updated its tracker Sunday that keeps track of assaults on Catholic Churches and found that 118 churches had reported attacks since May 2022.

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Goldwater Institute Calls on Tucson School District to Cease Unlawful Union Practices

The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute (GI) demanded Thursday that the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) stop an unlawful practice of making it difficult for employees to leave a union.

“We think it is critically important for government employers to respect public employees’ constitutional rights. Under the U.S. and Arizona constitutions, no one can be forced to remain a member of — or make payments to — any private organization, particularly if it engages in speech or political activity the person disagrees with. Unions are no exception and should not be making deals with government entities to trap public employees into being union members or paying union dues,” said GI Staff Attorney Parker Jackson in a statement emailed to The Arizona Sun Times.

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Denied: Supreme Court Will Not Hear 2020 Election Case; Petitioner Seeks Reconsideration

The Supreme Court announced Monday it will not hear a 2020 election lawsuit against former Vice President Mike Pence, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, 291 House members, and 94 senators.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated their oaths of office by refusing to investigate evidence of fraud in the 2020 election before accepting the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, allowing for Biden and Harris to be “fraudulently” inaugurated.

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SCOTUS to Vote on Hearing 2020 Election Case Against Biden, Harris, Pence, Senators, Congressmen

The Supreme Court is set to consider hearing a 2020 election case regarding actions taken on Jan. 6, 2021 by former Vice President Mike Pence, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, 291 House members, and 94 senators.

The lawsuit, filed by Raland J. Brunson, alleges the defendants violated their oaths of office by refusing to investigate evidence of fraud in the 2020 election before accepting the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, allowing for Biden and Harris to be “fraudulently” inaugurated.

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Nearly 30 Pro-Abortion Attacks Against Churches Have Occurred Since SCOTUS Overturned Roe v. Wade, Report Shows

Dozens of U.S. churches have been targets of pro-abortion “hostility” since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Family Research Council (FRC) report found.

On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling, causing an uproar among pro-abortion supporters. Nearly 30 attacks on churches were reported after the Dobbs decision that had explicit pro-abortion rhetoric, according to the report.

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Commentary: Moore v. Harper Terrifies Democrats for Good Reason

The U.S. Supreme Court finally heard oral arguments in Moore v. Harper last week. The case involves a mundane constitutional issue concerning the definition of “legislature” as used in the elections clause. Yet it has produced panic among Democrats and a torrent of portentous predictions about the death of democracy from various leftist law professors. In the Washington Post, for example, Harvard University’s Noah Feldman expressed alarm that the court took up the “insane” case at all.

Is Moore v. Harper really insane? Of course not. The case arose early this year when the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down a redistricting map produced by the state Legislature, then replaced it with a redistricting scheme of its own. The North Carolina General Assembly petitioned SCOTUS for relief on the grounds that this action violated Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution.

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Vermont Backs Down on Religion-Free School Choice after SCOTUS Knocks Down Maine Policy

Vermont families that want to send their children to religious schools will no longer be excluded from the state’s tuition benefit program, as a result of legal settlements in two cases brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

The plaintiffs who were denied funding under the Town Tuition Program, which provides tuition for students who live in areas without local public schools, will get reimbursement for money spent out of pocket on tuition. Other families denied funding can apply as well.

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Commentary: The Systemic Racism of the Teachers Unions

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could reverse the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, in which SCOTUS asserted that the use of an applicant’s race as a factor in an admissions policy of a public educational institution does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The current case specifically cites the use of race in the admissions process at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, maintain that Harvard violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, “which bars entities that receive federal funding from discriminating based on race, because Asian American applicants are less likely to be admitted than similarly qualified white, Black, or Hispanic applicants.”

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SCOTUS Considers Upending Legal Shield for Administrative State

Federal agencies can “trap” businesses and individuals for years in proceedings before administrative law judges (ALJs) who work for the agencies, rarely rule against them and can’t be removed by the president, constituting “here-and-now constitutional injuries,” according to lawyers for these targets.

Nonlethal weapons supplier Axon Enterprises and certified public accountant Michelle Cochran want the right to challenge the constitutionality of Federal Trade Commission and Securities & Exchange Commission ALJs in real courts, before the expense and emotional drag compels them to settle regardless of their guilt or the legitimacy of the proceedings.

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Commentary: Cake Maker Jack Phillips Is STILL in Court

Jack Phillips

The endless travails of the Colorado Christian baker Jack Phillips are a measure of America’s pathetic descent into coercive secularism. Phillips has spent at least a decade in court, beating back the ludicrous claims of ACLU-style militants who can’t rest until everyone has been dragooned into the LGBTQ revolution. Phillips was at first persecuted for declining trolling customer demands that he design cakes for gay nuptials. He survived that assault, but now faces fallout from the transgender lobby’s mau-mauing of his business. In 2017, a man pretending to be a woman sued him for not designing birthday cakes in honor of “gender transitions” — an obvious nuisance suit that the state of Colorado and activist judges have humored. Phillips is back in court fighting it.

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Mark Brnovich Joins Effort Supporting Religious Liberty of Navy SEALs to Refuse Vaccine Mandate

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) recently joined a coalition of 22 states in support of the religious liberty of Navy SEALs seeking exemption from universal COVID vaccination.

“It is absolute hypocrisy for an administration that purports to embrace diversity and inclusion to categorically dismiss the religious liberty and sincerely held beliefs of our most heroic service members,” Brnovich said in a press release. “Our Constitution and the brave men and women of our military are far more time proven than any COVID-19 vaccination.”

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Mark Brnovich Works to Protect the Best Interests of Native American Children

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) recently joined an effort to support the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), which helps a Native child’s ability to stay within their tribe.

“The greatest treasure of the Tribal Nations is their children,” Brnovich said in a press release. “The Indian Child Welfare Act works to protect the unique interests of these youngsters while promoting the stability and security of their tribes.”

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Rhodes College Alumni Petition School to Have Justice Barrett Removed from Hall of Fame

A pro-abortion contingent of alumni from Rhodes College in Memphis are circulating a petition to have Supreme Justice Amy Coney Barrett removed from the school’s Hall of Fame. 

“We, together with the undersigned alumni, are writing to you today to request that you remove Justice Amy Coney Barrett from the Rhodes College Hall of Fame. Our firm belief in the Rhodes Honor Code we all signed impels us to make this request,” said a letter notifying Rhodes College of the petition. “This request is based on Justice Barrett’s public breach of the Honor Code in her testimony before the United States Senate during her October 12 -15, 2020 confirmation hearings to become an  Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.”

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Mark Brnovich Files Lawsuit Against the USDA over Regulations That Threaten Nutritional Assistance for Schools

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Monday, which aims to stop the department’s recent guidance that makes a school’s nutritional assistance dependent on its gender policies.

“USDA Choice applies to beef at the market, not to our children’s restrooms,” Brnovich said in a press release. “This threat of the Biden administration to withhold nutritional assistance for students whose schools do not submit to its extreme agenda is unlawful and despicable.”

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Mark Brnovich Files Motion to Fully Reinstate Arizona Abortion Law Which Aims to Ban the Procedure

Mark Brnovich

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a motion in Pima County Wednesday, which seeks to lift a 50-year-old injunction that puts Arizona’s law banning abortions on hold following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision.

“We believe this is the best and most accurate state of the law,” Brnovich said in a press release. “We know this is an important issue to so many Arizonans, and our hope is that the court will provide clarity and uniformity for our state.”

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