Author: Reporter

The Supreme Court’s decision siding with Black voters in an Alabama redistricting case gave Democrats and voting rights activists a surprising opportunity before the 2024 elections. New congressional maps would have to include more districts in Alabama and potentially other states where Black voters would have a better chance of electing someone of their choice, a decision widely seen as benefiting Democrats. It’s been more than three months since the justice’s 5-4 ruling, and maps that could produce more districts represented by Black lawmakers still do not exist. Alabama Republicans are hoping to get a fresh hearing on the...

In 2020, North Carolina seemed the model of an evenly-divided swing state. Then-President Donald Trump barely won, beating Democrat Joe Biden by just over a percentage point. Meanwhile, the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, won reelection by a relatively comfortable 5 points. Even last year, as Republicans won two seats on the state Supreme Court, North Carolina’s congressional delegation split evenly between Democrats and the GOP. But it is the Republican Party that is making the decisions in the state, thanks to recent seat gains in the legislature and aggressive stances from GOP lawmakers. It has passed voting changes...

The new proposal to spend $614 million on American Family Field in exchange for the Brewers agreeing to stay in Milwaukee through 2050 is not the deal it’s being sold as. It’s difficult to see this as anything other than the latest attempt by a sports team to extort massive amounts of cash to prop up an already-bloated bottom line. The stadium cost about $290 million when it was built two decades ago. What Legislators are now talking about is equivalent to more than the original construction cost, even accounting for inflation. Let’s break this down. The proposal gives...

Barack Obama, mindful of the urgent power of a president’s words, liked to say he was guarded with his language because anything he said could send troops marching or markets tumbling. His successor, Donald Trump, showed no such restraint. Now Trump is facing dozens of criminal charges in four separate indictments, two ofthem anchored in the Republican’s lie that he did not lose the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. And Trump’s propensity for falsehoods and his right to utter them are at the core of his legal defense. Though the U.S. presidency is vested with many overt...