Author: FOX24 US

FOX 24 US This story was originally reported by Grace Panetta of The 19th. Meet Grace and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. The year was 2018, and Lawrence Krauss, the prominent physicist and scholar of the cosmos, was facing a Title IX investigation at Arizona State University. BuzzFeed News had just reported on allegations of sexual misconduct against him; he denied them. In March, he contacted a lawyer experienced in higher education cases. Krauss and Justin Dillon, the lawyer, exchanged a few friendly emails before speaking on the phone.  Then, Krauss presented him with an…

FOX 24 US In several cases across the country, judges have rejected or trimmed subpoenas from the Justice Department probing whether gender-affirming care provided to minors violates federal law.  The subpoenas seek extremely sensitive information. The DOJ is asking for names, dates of birth, addresses and social security numbers of child patients who have been prescribed puberty blockers and hormone therapy, as well as their families’ identifying information. But in four cases that have reached the decision stage, challengers have won at least partial victories — federal district court judges have either quashed the subpoenas altogether or limited the patient information…

FOX 24 US This story was originally published by ProPublica. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Minutes after a federal agent shot and killed a Mexican immigrant in a Chicago suburb last September, a group of police officers stood on the sidewalk trying to figure out the answer to a question of protocol: Who would investigate the shooting? “Wouldn’t it be state’s, at a minimum?” one Franklin Park officer asked, according to body camera footage. Chief Mike Witz shook his head. “No, because it’s a federal shooting,” he said. “You’re not going to investigate a federal…

FOX 24 US House Republicans barely passed a funding package on Tuesday, voting after more than a day of wrangling to approve five full-year funding bills plus a two-week continuing resolution to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Senate Democrats last month had demanded that, in exchange for their votes on funding packages, reforms and constraints be placed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. That prompted a standoff over the DHS funds and a short-lived partial government shutdown, which is now over.  But for how long? Members of Congress now have a behemoth task ahead of them: rein in…

FOX 24 US President Donald Trump last Friday announced his intent to nominate former Federal Reserve Board Governor Kevin Warsh to chair the central bank, tapping a Republican economist with industry and government street cred, but whose public displays of political obsequiousness could contribute to distrust in Fed independence. Trump’s insistence that federal agencies previously immune to presidential interference now bend to his desires have been made manifest across the government. His attempts to strong-arm the Fed into interest rate cuts began during his first presidential term, but Trump II has seen the political pressure on the central bank ratcheted…

FOX 24 US WASHINGTON, DC–Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon expressed shock Tuesday that the Trump Justice Department was asking him to break new First Amendment ground, the better to punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for speaking out against the administration.  “You’re asking me to do something that the Supreme Court has never done — that’s a bit of a stretch, is it not?” the George W. Bush-appointed judge asked DOJ’s John Bailey. The Trump administration tried during the hearing to argue that the diminished speech rights that apply to the active duty military — meant to preserve obedience and…

FOX 24 US Judge Eric Tostrud, a Trump appointee, handed down an often contradictory ruling Monday night lifting his order requiring the preservation of evidence surrounding Customs and Border Protection agents’ killing of Alex Pretti last month.  On one hand, he acknowledged that statements from Trump officials absolving the agents of any culpability for the killing immediately after they shot Pretti are “troubling.”  “They reflect, not a genuine interest in learning the truth, but snap judgments informed by speculation and motivated by political partisanship,” he wrote.  But the connection between the administration’s stance on the fatal shooting, and its intentions…

FOX 24 US Coming off the heels of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s demand for access to Minnesota voter rolls and the state’s decisive refusal to comply with that demand, President Trump is now spreading conspiracy theories about the state and is again threatening to try to exert control over the nation’s election systems. Last month, Bondi attempted to tie the Trump administration’s months-long campaign to seize sensitive voter information from various states across the country, with the recent killing of a U.S. citizen Alex Pretti by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. In a letter to Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz following…

FOX 24 US Across the country, federal prosecutors are upgrading what would have been routine prosecutions into terrorism cases when they involve people President Trump has cast as his political enemies. It represents a dramatic departure from how the Justice Department has historically used the federal material support for terrorism statute. For decades, counterterrorism prosecutors have largely reserved the statute — 2339A — for the kinds of audacious plots that wreak real, lasting damage or whose ambition forms the stuff of movie screenplays. It’s been used in recent years to charge the leadership of Hamas over the Oct. 7 attacks, pursue…

FOX 24 US This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Kristi Noem faces intensifying public scrutiny over her leadership of the Department of Homeland Security. Criticism of the former South Dakota governor has focused on her handling of the killing of Alex Pretti by a federal immigration agent and her oversight of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. The controversies have prompted calls from Democratic lawmakers — and a small but noteworthy group of Republicans — for her resignation or impeachment. The immediate flashpoint has been the January 24 killing of Pretti,…