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In Maryland, Cracking Down On A Crime Wave That Doesn’t Exist

March 6, 2025 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
Here in this deep blue state, a coalition of judges, attorneys, youth advocates, civil liberties and racial justice organizations are trying to persuade Maryland lawmakers to amend Draconian legislation that requires prosecutors to charge children as young as 10 in adult criminal court for a wide range of felony offenses. At issue is Senate Bill 422 , which, if passed by Maryland’s General Assembly in this legislative session, would reduce by nearly two-thirds the 33 criminal offenses for which juveniles in Maryland are automatically charged as adults.

Free Yves Engler

February 25, 2025 Owen Schalk, Canadian Dimension. , , , , , ,
On February 20, long-time Canadian Dimension columnist and contributor Yves Engler was arrested by Montréal police at the behest of pro-Israel media personality Dahlia Kurtz. In today’s Canada, offending Zionist influencers is apparently enough to land you behind bars. Canadians involved in progressive politics, from the left-wing of the NDP and Greens to the Communist Party, read Engler’s work and admire his commitment to social struggle. For decades, he has organized in support of just causes, from helping stop war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Concordia University in 2002, to tirelessly confronting Canadian politicians about their complicity in the genocide in Gaza, to penning a vast catalogue of work that shatters complacent illusions about Canada’s benevolence and reveals the often cynical, profit-driven, anti-democratic heart of Ottawa’s foreign policy.

Luigi Mangione Draws Crowd For First Court Hearing

February 23, 2025 Michael R. Sisak, AP News. , , , , ,
The defendant wore a bulletproof vest and shackles. A woman in the crowd wore a “Free Luigi” scarf. Outside, throngs of people cheered and chanted his name. So it went Friday at a court hearing for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel on Dec. 4. Mangione, who has become something of a cause célèbre for people upset with the health insurance industry, made his first court appearance since his Dec. 23 arraignment on state murder and terror charges. Mangione, 26, didn’t speak at the hearing.

The Fall Of Eric Adams

February 22, 2025 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
New York City residents are wondering if mayor Eric Adams will resign, or be removed from office by the governor, or be summoned to an Inability Committee , or limp along ineffectively until his term ends on December 31, 2025. The city’s mayoralty is hanging by a thread with four Deputy Mayors resigning, and top staff under indictment or leaving. Depending on a judge’s ruling, Adams may no longer be under indictment himself because Donald Trump interceded with the United States Attorney on his behalf. So egregious was the action that six prosecutors with solid republican bona fides resigned rather than sign onto the obvious travesty of justice.

How Movements Can Make Courts Play A Role In Defending Democracy

February 22, 2025 Doug Coltart, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
Courts are often seen as a last line of defense for democracy. In the month since Donald Trump took office, over 60 legal challenges have been filed against his administration’s executive actions. Yet many Americans are concerned with how U.S. courts will fare in the new tests to their role as defenders of democracy. What if the courts are compromised or politicized? Do they still have a role and can they still be influenced? In my country, Zimbabwe, our parliament is gearing up to change the Constitution to extend the president’s term of office (and its own term) indefinitely, effectively abolishing the need for future elections.

Green Groups Sue Over Oil And Gas Drilling In Protected Waters

February 22, 2025 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
Conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed two separate lawsuits against the Trump administration on Wednesday. Both complaints focus on the administration’s moves to open more of the nation’s waters to drilling for oil and gas. “President Trump’s executive order would roll back millions of acres of ocean protection, jeopardizing our coastal economies and the people who rely on healthy, thriving oceans,” said Joseph Gordon, Oceana campaign director, in a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity.

RCMP Violated Charter Rights During CGL Arrests, Court Finds

February 20, 2025 Amanda Follett Hosgood, The Tyee. , , ,
A B.C. Supreme Court decision issued yesterday is “precedent setting,” according to a lawyer for three Indigenous land defenders arrested in 2021 along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route. “The courts found the conduct of the police officers abused the court’s process. This is an extraordinarily rare finding, and it demonstrates how serious the police officers’ misconduct was,” Frances Mahon said during a press conference following the decision. “In particular, it was a rebuke to the C-IRG members who thought it was appropriate to say the most egregious, racist things about beautiful Indigenous women when they thought nobody could hear them.”

Burying The CIA’s Assange Secrets

February 19, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , ,
A United States judge dismissed a lawsuit pursued by four American attorneys and journalists, who alleged that the CIA and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo spied on them while they were visiting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuador’s London embassy. “The subject matter of this litigation,” Judge John Koeltl determined, “is subject to the state secrets privilege in its entirety.” Any answer to the allegations against the CIA would “reveal privileged information.” Few publications followed this case as closely as The Dissenter. It unfolded at the same time that the U.S. government pursued the extradition of Assange, making any outcome potentially significant.

Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition Prevails Over Housing Commission

February 18, 2025 Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition, Popular Resistance. , , ,
On February 11, the Montgomery County Circuit Court (the “Circuit Court”) sided favorably with the motion for equitable relief from the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition (BACC) against the Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC.) The BACC filed a lawsuit to stop HOC from selling Moses African Cemetery to a private developer, Bethesda based Charger Ventures. The decision was appealed to the MD Supreme Court. In a split decision, the Maryland Supreme Court remanded the case back to the Circuit Court and provided BACC and plaintiffs with the opportunity to amend their complaint and demand equitable relief, including financial damages for HOC’s desecration of Moses Cemetery.

Defend Lisa Davis

February 18, 2025 Black is Back Coalition, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
The attacks on the Uhuru Movement Continue. On March 31st, 2024, Lisa Davis, vice chair of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace, and Reparations, was attending a pro Palestine weekly vigil in South Orange, New Jersey, when a disturbed zionist aggressively ran towards the protestors, verbally assaulted her and aggressively got into her face. The crowd had to intervene to make him back off. It is clear from the videos that it is the zionist who was the aggressor against Lisa and the demonstrators. But New Jersey is protecting him and is falsely charging Lisa Davis with organizing a special event without a permit and for making excessive noise while using an amplification device.

Federal Judge Mandates Return Of Scrubbed Health Resources

February 15, 2025 Zane McNeill, Truthout. , , ,
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to reinstate content that was recently removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) websites, including LGBTQ-inclusive informational pages. “The judge’s order today is an important victory for doctors, patients, and the public health of the whole country,” Zach Shelley, an attorney with Public Citizen’s Litigation Group and lead counsel on the case, said in a press release. “This order puts a stop, at least temporarily, to the irrational removal of vital health information from public access.”

Pennsylvania Governor Sues Trump Administration Over Frozen IRA Funds

February 15, 2025 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. , , , ,
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced a lawsuit on Thursday against President Donald Trump’s administration for freezing funding made available through the Inflation Reduction Act. As Utility Dive reported, Trump ordered a freeze to IRA funds in an executive order made his first day in office. According to the governor’s office, Pennsylvania state agencies have not been able to access the Solar for All funds or other IRA funding, despite a federal judge ruling on Monday that the current administration must comply with a previous order that blocked the IRA funding freeze, CBS News reported.

Trump Is Provoking A Constitutional Crisis

February 14, 2025 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , ,
States, public interest organizations, schools, doctors, unions, immigrants, federal workers and individuals have filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging Trump’s legal authority to take these actions. At least nine judges throughout the country have temporarily halted several of them. Courts have put temporary holds on Trump’s attempts to: end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, freeze billions of dollars in federal spending appropriated by Congress, transfer incarcerated transgender women to men’s prisons, remove scientific data from the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, give his de facto co-president Elon Musk unfettered access to sensitive Treasury Department records, and put 2,200 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) employees on leave.

Princeton Students Go To Trial Nearly A Year After Gaza Encampment

February 13, 2025 Sam Carliner, Mondoweiss. , , , , , , ,
Nearly one whole year after students at Princeton University held an encampment on their campus in solidarity with Gaza, 12 students and one postdoctoral fellow will head to trial. In a statement released by Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD) — the main organization behind Princeton’s Gaza solidarity encampment — organizers claim that the trial date “arose from a dangerous process of intimidation and coercion.” The trial is scheduled for April 14-16 and the students face charges of “defiant trespass” for briefly holding a building occupation at Clio Hall, home of the Princeton Graduate School’s administrative offices.

US Court Blocks Trump Administration Sending Immigrants To Guantanamo

February 10, 2025 Fatma Zehra Solmaz, Anadolu Ajansı. , , , ,
A federal court on Sunday halted the Donald Trump administration’s attempt to transfer three Venezuelan immigrants, detained in New Mexico, to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Earlier that day, the men's lawyers argued in a legal filing that the detainees "fit the profile" of those the administration had targeted for transfer to Guantanamo. The filing also stated that they were "Venezuelan men detained in the El Paso area with (false) charges of connections with the Tren de Aragua gang," CNN reported. The lawyers urged a US District Court in New Mexico to block the transfer, arguing that the "uncertainty" surrounding the detainees’ legal rights and access to lawyers warranted an injunction.
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