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Election Anxiety: While midterms were free of feared chaos voting experts are already looking to 2024

Before Election Day, anxiety mounted over potential chaos at the polls. Election officials warned about poll watchers who had been steeped in conspiracy theories falsely claiming that then-President Donald Trump did not actually lose the 2020 election. Democrats and voting rights groups worried about the effects of new election laws, in some Republican-controlled states, that President Joe Biden decried as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Law enforcement agencies were monitoring possible threats at the polls. Yet Election Day, and the weeks of early voting before it, went fairly smoothly. There were some reports of unruly poll watchers disrupting voting, but they...

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How Senator Tammy Baldwin worked with others to defy political gravity on same-sex marriage

Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin was on the Senate floor, but her mind was on the other side of the Capitol. The House was voting that July afternoon on Democratic legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriages in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the federal right to an abortion. And it was suddenly winning more Republican votes than Baldwin, or anyone else, had expected. Baldwin, who became the first openly gay senator when she was elected a decade ago, said she was “overjoyed” as she saw the votes coming in. She excitedly walked over to Ohio...

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Pandemic Problems vs. True Disability: Determining which kids qualify for special education services

The COVID-19 pandemic sent Heidi Whitney’s daughter into a tailspin. Suddenly the San Diego middle schooler was sleeping all day and awake all night. When in-person classes resumed, she was so anxious at times that she begged to come home early, telling the nurse her stomach hurt. Whitney tried to keep her daughter in class. But the teen’s desperate bids to get out of school escalated. Ultimately, she was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, failed “pretty much everything” at school and was diagnosed with depression and ADHD. As she started high school this fall, she was deemed eligible for...

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Historic Federal legislation protecting same-sex marriages and interracial unions clears Congress

The House gave final approval on December 8 to legislation protecting same-sex marriages, a monumental step in a decades-long battle for nationwide recognition of such unions that reflects a stunning turnaround in societal attitudes. President Joe Biden is expected to promptly sign the measure, which requires all states to recognize same-sex marriages. It is a relief for hundreds of thousands of couples who have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that legalized those marriages and have worried about what would happen if the ruling were overturned. The bipartisan legislation, which passed 258-169 with almost 40 Republican votes, would...

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House committee investigating January 6 attack will make criminal referrals to DOJ by end of year

The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will make criminal referrals to the Justice Department as it wraps up its probe and looks to publish a final report by the end of the year, the panel’s chairman said December 6. Representative Bennie Thompson, D-MI, told reporters that the committee has decided to issue the referrals recommending criminal prosecution, but did not disclose who the targets will be or if former President Donald Trump will be among them. “At this point, there’ll be a separate document coming from me to DOJ,” Thompson told reporters at...

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DOJ subpoenas Wisconsin officials as part of Grand Jury into Trump’s attempt to overturn 2020 election

Special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed local election officials in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania, asking for communications with or involving former President Donald Trump, his 2020 campaign aides and a list of allies involved in his efforts to try to overturn the results of the election. The requests, issued to Milwaukee and Dane counties in Wisconsin; Wayne County, Michigan; Maricopa County, Arizona; and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, are the first known subpoenas by Smith, who was named special counsel last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Smith is overseeing the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents...

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