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"Massive scale" shut-down of polling places in districts known for suppressing black voters

"Massive scale" shut-down of polling places in districts known for suppressing black voters. Almost half of all Texas counties in our sample closed polling places since Shelby, resulting in 403 fewer voting locations for the 2016 election than in past years. These closures come as the state’s voter ID law has become a leading example of voting discrimination since Shelby and include reductions in counties like Medina, Caldwell, Nueces, and Galveston-each with established records of discrimination and recent violations of the Voting Rights Act.

Trump's SCOTUS pick founded club called 'Fascism Forever'

Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch founded and led a student group called the ‘Fascism Forever Club’ at  his elite high school, DailyMail.com can reveal. The  club was set up to rally against the ‘left-wing tendencies’ of his  professors while attending a Jesuit all-boys preparatory high school  near Washington D.C.

Supreme court nominee Neil Gorsuch calls Trump judge attacks 'demoralizing'

Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s nominee to the supreme court, called the president’s tweet attacking the federal district court judge James Robart “disheartening and demoralizing”, his spokesman has confirmed. Gorsuch criticized Trump in a private meeting with Senator Richard Blumenthal on Wednesday.

Neil Gorsuch Has Web of Ties to Secretive Billionaire

Mr. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court pick, represented the mogul Philip F. Anschutz as an outside counsel and has links to other executives at his companies. In 2006, Mr. Anschutz successfully lobbied Colorado’s lone Republican senator and the Bush administration to nominate Judge Gorsuch to the federal appeals court. And since joining the court, Judge Gorsuch has been a semiregular speaker at the mogul’s annual dove-hunting retreats for the wealthy and politically prominent at his 60-square-mile Eagles Nest Ranch.

Senate Republicans Deploy ‘Nuclear Option’ to Clear Path for Gorsuch

Senate Republicans changed longstanding rules on Thursday to clear the way for the confirmation of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch to serve on the Supreme Court, bypassing a precedent-breaking Democratic filibuster by allowing the nomination to go forward on a simple majority vote.In  deploying the so-called nuclear option, lawmakers are fundamentally  altering the way the Senate operates — a sign of the body’s creeping  rancor in recent years after decades of at least relative bipartisanship on Supreme Court matters.

With Gorsuch’s Vote, Supreme Court Allows Arkansas to Execute Ledell Lee

On Thursday night, Arkansas executed Ledell Lee—the state’s first  execution in 12 years. Lee’s final plea to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected by a 5–4 vote. Justice Neil Gorsuch cast the deciding vote allowing Lee to die. It was his first recorded vote cast as a justice of the court. Lee insisted upon his innocence from the day of his arrest through the night of his execution. He implored Arkansas to let him take a DNA test and compare the results to DNA collected at the scene of the murder he allegedly committed, but the state refused.

Trump has just begun massively reshaping American appeals courts

President Trump is reportedly naming 10 nominees to federal courts  on Monday — and, intriguingly, at least two of the people he's appointing are likely contenders for the Supreme Court in the future. By putting Larsen (who’s only 48), Stras (42), and Thapar (48) on appeals courts, Trump is further burnishing their credentials for future Supreme Court vacancies. The most likely next vacancies are either Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an 84-year-old two-time cancer survivor who might need to retire for health reasons, and Anthony Kennedy, who’s now 80 and who former clerks told Reuters is pondering retirement this year or next, especially now that his former clerk Gorsuch is on the Court. Replacing either of them with Larsen, Stras, or Thapar would create a bloc of five solid conservatives (Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas, and the new justice) who could consistently overrule the remaining liberal bloc.

Supreme Court Will Hear Travel Ban, Which Is Partly Reinstated

In a win for President Trump, the court said it would hear arguments in October on a case that sets the stage for a major ruling on presidential power. But those challenging the travel ban said the court’s opinion would protect the vast majority of people seeking to enter the United States to visit a relative, accept a job, attend a university or deliver a speech. The court said the travel ban could not be imposed on anyone who had “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

The radical ideology of this Trump nominee makes even the most conservative SCOTUS justices uneasy

Justice Don Willett is charming. Best known outside legal circles for his Twitter feed, @JusticeWillett, the Texas Supreme Court justice — and now a Trump nominee to a federal appeals court — tweets largely apolitical commentary about Calvin and Hobbes, his children, and Oxford commas. This would all be well and good, if not for one other factor. This charming, intelligent, knowledgeable man also wants to dismantle much of the last 80 years of American law.