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Category: Law/Crime

For many American Muslims, the legacy of 9/11 lies in the battle for civil rights

For many American Muslims, the legacy of 9/11 lies in the battle for civil rights

NPR reports: Soon after [the attacks], like so many Muslims in the United States, a different fear set in [for Ali Malik]: that his faith would be associated with the 19 hijackers. What followed were two decades of policies that civil rights advocates say add up to the religious profiling and unlawful surveillance of Muslims in the U.S. under the broad banner of national security. “My life at that time was completely different I would say to my life afterwards,”…

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9/11 made the media whitewash what really happened in Bush v. Gore

9/11 made the media whitewash what really happened in Bush v. Gore

Jonathan Chait writes: By now nearly everybody, with the exception of a handful of Bush administration leftovers, understands that the September 11 attacks induced some form of mass psychosis into the American polity. The contours of this understanding vary. Nearly everybody now agrees that the post-9/11 impulse to divide the world into a Manichaean contest between Islamic terrorism and democracy was tragically misguided. A smaller group of Americans understands that the rally-around-the-flag atmosphere canonized and empowered a series of deeply…

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Biden vaccine mandate raises longstanding legal questions, experts say

Biden vaccine mandate raises longstanding legal questions, experts say

USA Today reports: Throughout the pandemic, public health experts have frequently pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts to justify state vaccine mandates. But experts say that case is unlikely to have much influence over the legal challenges raised to the new Biden administration policy. Henning Jacobson, a pastor from Cambridge, Mass., refused a smallpox vaccination during an outbreak of the disease in 1905, citing bad reactions he had to shots in the past. He was…

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The Capitol Police said Jan. 6 unrest on Capitol grounds would be ‘highly improbable’

The Capitol Police said Jan. 6 unrest on Capitol grounds would be ‘highly improbable’

Jason Leopold reports: The chief of the Capitol Police and its top intelligence officer personally approved permits for six demonstrations to be held on Jan. 6, 2021, despite signs that one of the applications was filed for an organization that didn’t exist and that five of them were a proxy for a group staging large, violent protests across the country. Capitol Police documented concerns that organizers had attempted to conceal their affiliation with Ali Alexander, the right-wing activist behind the…

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How the NYPD is using post-9/11 tools on everyday New Yorkers

How the NYPD is using post-9/11 tools on everyday New Yorkers

The New York Times reports: It was an unusual forearm tattoo that the police said led them to Luis Reyes, a 35-year-old man who was accused of stealing packages from a Manhattan building’s mailroom in 2019. But the truth was more complicated: Mr. Reyes had first been identified by the New York Police Department’s powerful facial recognition software as it analyzed surveillance video of the crime. His guilty plea earlier this year was not solely the result of keen-eyed detectives…

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Packaging generates a lot of waste — now Maine and Oregon want manufacturers to foot the bill for getting rid of it

Packaging generates a lot of waste — now Maine and Oregon want manufacturers to foot the bill for getting rid of it

Packaging for consumer products represents a large share of U.S. solid waste, and barely half of it is recycled. iStock via Getty Images By Jessica Heiges, University of California, Berkeley and Kate O’Neill, University of California, Berkeley Most consumers don’t pay much attention to the packaging that their purchases come in, unless it’s hard to open or the item is really over-wrapped. But packaging accounts for about 28% of U.S. municipal solid waste. Only some 53% of it ends up…

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Mexico’s Supreme Court rules that criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional

Mexico’s Supreme Court rules that criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional

The New York Times reports: Criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, setting a precedent that could lead to legalization of the procedure across this conservative Catholic country of about 130 million people. The unanimous ruling from the nation’s top court follows years of efforts by a growing women’s movement in Mexico that has repeatedly taken to the streets of major cities to demand greater rights and protections. The decision, which opens the door for Mexico to…

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The justices are telling us what they think about Roe v. Wade

The justices are telling us what they think about Roe v. Wade

Mary Ziegler writes: The five justices who upheld Texas’s anti-abortion law in the middle of the night this week insisted that their hands were tied: Texas had invoked sovereign immunity, and abortion providers had not proved that the state was wrong. Above all, the majority warned people not to overreact. Women in Texas might not be able to get an abortion anymore, and abortion providers might have already shut down, but worry not. The Supreme Court had not drawn “any…

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All of those ‘hysterical’ women were right

All of those ‘hysterical’ women were right

Laura Bassett writes: Last night, the Supreme Court quietly green-lit the most extreme abortion ban the United States has seen in half a century: a Texas law that prohibits abortions at six weeks from a woman’s last period, even in cases of rape or incest, and that deputizes citizens to spy on women and sue anyone who helps someone obtain a prohibited abortion. The rest of the states now have a road map to ban abortion almost entirely and put…

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After 9/11, the FBI turned Islam into the enemy

After 9/11, the FBI turned Islam into the enemy

Janet Reitman writes: By the end of September 2001, [Robert] Mueller told President Bush that Al Qaeda had 331 potential “sleeper” operatives inside the United States. By the following October, intelligence officials were estimating that anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 Al Qaeda terrorists might be hiding within various Muslim communities across the United States. Virtually all of these supposed terrorists turned out to be nonentities — “ghost leads,” as they were called. The U.S. response to terrorism would eventually take…

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There are two real ways to answer the Texas abortion law

There are two real ways to answer the Texas abortion law

Dahlia Lithwick writes: Thinking about a nondecision that never came down via the so-called shadow docket in the middle of the night that allowed the second-largest state in the country to overturn a 50-year-old precedent without the Supreme Court writing a word is a bit like dancing between the raindrops. By doing nothing at all on Wednesday night, the Supreme Court largely evaded top-of-the-fold coverage or glaring headlines even as—for all intents and purposes—abortions after six weeks simply stopped in…

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Federal judge strikes down Trump rule that allowed water pollution

Federal judge strikes down Trump rule that allowed water pollution

The New York Times reports: A federal judge on Monday struck down a Trump-era environmental rule that drastically limited federal restrictions against pollution of millions of streams, wetlands and marshes across the country. The Biden administration had already begun the lengthy process of undoing the policy, which President Donald J. Trump established in 2020 after farmers, real estate developers and fossil fuel producers complained that Obama-era rules had saddled them with onerous regulatory burdens. Mr. Trump’s policy allowed the discharge…

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Capitol Police officers sue Trump and allies over election lies and Jan. 6

Capitol Police officers sue Trump and allies over election lies and Jan. 6

The New York Times reports: A group of seven Capitol Police officers filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing former President Donald J. Trump and nearly 20 members of far-right extremist groups and political organizations of a plot to disrupt the peaceful transition of power during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. The suit, which implicated members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers militia and Trump associates like Roger J. Stone Jr., was arguably the most expansive civil effort to…

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Court blocks a vast Alaskan oil drilling project, citing climate dangers

Court blocks a vast Alaskan oil drilling project, citing climate dangers

The New York Times reports: A federal judge in Alaska on Wednesday blocked construction permits for an expansive oil drilling project on the state’s North Slope that was designed to produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years. The multibillion-dollar plan, known as Willow, by the oil giant ConocoPhillips had been approved by the Trump administration and legally backed by the Biden administration. Environmental groups sued, arguing that the federal government had failed to…

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Andrew Cuomo’s war against a federal prosecutor

Andrew Cuomo’s war against a federal prosecutor

Ronan Farrow writes: In April, 2014, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo placed a call to the White House and reached Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama. Cuomo was, as one official put it, “ranting and raving.” He had announced that he was shuttering the Moreland Commission, a group that he had convened less than a year earlier to root out corruption in New York politics. After Cuomo ended the group’s inquiries, Preet Bharara, then the U.S. Attorney…

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Trump asked his AG about legal strategy to overturn election, Rosen tells senators

Trump asked his AG about legal strategy to overturn election, Rosen tells senators

Politico reports: Donald Trump asked the country’s top legal official in late December about a conspiratorial draft complaint aimed at overturning the 2020 election results, according to a previously unreported account of Trump’s phone call with former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen persuaded Trump the lawsuit wasn’t a good idea, he told Senate investigators last weekend, two sources familiar with his testimony said. The previously unreported details underscore how hard DOJ lawyers worked to shoot down the increasingly harebrained…

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