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☆ Voting-Rights Decisions Get Second Look in North Carolina
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

State lawmakers petitioned the state North Carolina Supreme Court to reconsider two of its recent election-law decisions. North Carolina’s highest court this week will reconsider two of its recent election-law decisions that endorsed a broad view of voting rights, an unusual move that comes after the November elections flipped the court to a Republican majority. The cases, involving the swing state’s voter-identification requirements and the shape of its electoral maps, resulted in rulings last year against the GOP-led state legislature. In one, the North Carolina Supreme Court said lawmakers in 2021 unlawfully gerrymandered congressional and state legislative districts for partisan advantage, in violation of the state constitution. In the other, the court ruled the ID law was intended to discriminate against voters of color, who were more likely to struggle to meet the new requirements.

☆ BBC engulfed in an impartiality storm of its own making
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Rob Picheta | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +12 min

“There is a long-established precedent in the BBC that if you’re an entertainment presenter or you’re a football presenter, then you are not bound by those same rules” on impartiality, former director-general Greg Dyke told BBC Radio 4 over the weekend. BBC Director General Tim Davie has made protecting impartiality one of his major priorities. Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty ImagesMore problematic still is that the same thorny questions about impartiality extend to the BBC’s leadership. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?” former BBC executive Peter Salmon told the cooperation’s flagship political presenter Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday. “He’s got views, he’s got passions … it may be that Gary has outgrown the job, and his role in the BBC.”

☆ Kansas legislature passes bill to ban transgender athletes from girls' sports
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] Transgender rights activist waves a transgender flag at a rally in Washington Square Park in New York, U.S., May 24, 2019. REUTERS/Demetrius FreemanMarch 9 (Reuters) - Kansas' Republican-led legislature on Thursday passed a bill that would ban transgender athletes from playing girls or women's school sports if they were born male. Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, is expected to veto the bill, as she vetoed two similar measures in the previous two years. Opponents and LGBTQ advocates say the laws are unnecessary, given the small number of transgender athletes in school sports. At least 18 states have passed or enacted legislation preventing transgender students from playing on school sports teams matching their gender identity.

☆ Why lithium-ion batteries found in many products keep exploding
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Officials believe the incident stemmed from a lithium-ion battery of a scooter found on the roof of an apartment building. “In all of these fires, these lithium-ion fires, it is not a slow burn; there’s not a small amount of fire, it literally explodes,” FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh told reporters. For starters, lithium-ion batteries are now in numerous consumer tech products, powering laptops, cameras, smartphones and more. Despite the concerns, lithium-ion batteries continue to be prevalent in many of today’s most popular gadgets. For example, LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries don’t overheat as much as other types of lithium-ion batteries.

☆ Florida Republicans Propose Abortion Ban After Six Weeks of Pregnancy
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has suggested he would sign a so-called heartbeat bill. Florida Republicans on Tuesday introduced a bill that seeks to ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, a measure that appears to have strong support from prominent state GOP leaders and would further reshape the U.S. abortion landscape. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June and cleared the way for states to ban abortion, Florida has been one of few outliers in the South, allowing the procedure up until 15 weeks of pregnancy. Since then, abortion has presented a tricky political balancing act for Republican Gov.

☆ Tennessee Governor Signs Bill Restricting Transgender Healthcare for Minors
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Mariah Timms | Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Tennessee lawmakers made these measures a priority for this year. NASHVILLE—Tennessee’s governor on Thursday signed legislation that blocks physicians from providing treatments to minors related to their gender identity, one of dozens of bills moving through legislatures that would impose limits on access to transgender healthcare for children and teenagers. The law, signed by GOP Gov. Bill Lee , prohibits doctors from providing certain treatments to anyone under 18 even with parental consent if the procedure is used as part of transgender healthcare. Those treatments could include prescribing medications that can delay the onset of puberty or hormones that can cause physical changes such as the development of facial hair or breasts.

☆ What Florida’s Dying Oranges Tell Us About How Commodity Markets Work
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Why Housing Can Skew Inflation Numbers Housing is one of the most weighted categories when tracking inflation, but it's also one of the most complicated to measure. WSJ’s David Harrison explains how the shelter index is calculated, and why it can muddy the inflation outlook for the Fed. Illustration: Laura Kammermann

☆ Women Face Abortion Delays as Clinics Report Surge in Demand
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Laura Kusisto | Photos Angela Owens The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Mr. Jackson said women sometimes arrive hoping for a shorter or less invasive procedure, and when they learn they are too late, they have to return home because of employment or child-care responsibilities. “Every week just gets more stressful” for a patient, he said.

☆ A generation of high-profile women tech leaders have stepped aside. What’s next?
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

The tech industry has now lost an entire generation of trailblazing women leaders and replaced them mostly with men. And in the wake of the pandemic, women leaders in corporate America more broadly are more likely than ever to quit, according to the most recent Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org. Now that she’s departing, Big Tech is facing a new reckoning over its failure to promote and support women leaders, and what this could mean for the next generation of women in the industry. “Without women in the C-suite who have come before them, it could make this transition period tougher for next generation women leaders,” Kray said. “I think that what she achieved and what she modeled will be something that will live on beyond the fact that now we don’t have a female Big Tech CEO.”

☆ How a Little-Known Committee Determines the Start of a Recession
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

CHARLOTTE, N. C.—Seven months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, some abortion clinics say new state bans on the procedure are pushing abortions later into pregnancy. Since the high court’s decision to remove constitutional protections for abortion, the procedure has become largely inaccessible in nearly one-third of the states, either because a ban is in place or because clinics have shut down owing to legal uncertainty.

☆ New York Rent Regulation Is Upheld by Appeals Court
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Landlords unsuccessfully argued that New York state’s new stricter rent regulations amounted to an unconstitutional government taking of private property. A federal appeals court Monday upheld New York state’s decades-old regime regulating rents on some 1 million apartments. The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected a challenge by landlords to a state law passed in 2019 that made it significantly more difficult for them to free up apartments for market rates or other uses. Judge Barrington D. Parker, writing for a three-judge panel, affirmed a longstanding legal principle that government restrictions on landlords who voluntarily rent their apartments to the public don’t constitute an unlawful intrusion on property rights.

☆ Justice Department Can’t Reopen Realtor Antitrust Probe, Court Rules
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Under a settlement with the Justice Department, the National Association of Realtors agreed to help provide more transparency to buyers about commissions. A federal judge Wednesday said the Justice Department must honor an agreement it made with the real-estate industry’s largest trade association to close an antitrust investigation into rules governing how agents market properties and set commissions for home sales. During the Trump administration, the Justice Department investigated whether a lack of transparency to buyers around the roughly 5% to 6% commission rate for agents had caused artificially high transaction costs, despite disruptive forces such as the proliferation of online listings and venture capital-funded startups. In nearly every residential real estate transaction in the U.S. the buyers’ agents are paid by the home seller and not directly by the buyer.

☆ Greedflation: 'Entirely possible' that food brands are profiteering from price hikes, says Tesco chairman
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Karen Gilchrist | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Consumers have been feeling the pinch from higher food prices as inflation soars. The chairman of Tesco, one of Britain's largest supermarket chains, said Sunday it was "entirely possible" that some food firms are profiteering from inflation at the cost of some of the poorest consumers. Tesco has created a team to monitor food input costs against price rises and is challenging companies it believes are lifting prices disproportionately, Allen said. Tesco told CNBC that it was unable to provide further comment. Food suppliers have hit back at the claims.

☆ States Weigh Abortion Regulations After Push for Legislation Stalls in Washington
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-22 | by ( Catherine Lucey | Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

WASHINGTON—A push by the White House and Democratic lawmakers who support abortion rights to renew protections for the procedure is expected to stall in Congress along with Republicans’ efforts to further limit abortion access. That will leave the issue largely determined by states, as the Supreme Court intended when it overturned Roe v. Wade in June and ended the constitutional right to an abortion. Several Republican-controlled states are now pursuing new restrictions, while states under Democratic control, including Michigan, are looking to protect access.

☆ Jury convicts Kansas man of threatening to kill congressman
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

Jurors found Chase Neill, 32, of Lawrence, guilty of a single count of threatening a U.S. government official. The judge had Neill give his testimony Thursday as a narrative from the witness stand because he was representing himself. Neill admitted in court that he left the June 5 voicemail and others with more death threats the next day. Hunting told jurors that it was reasonable for LaTurner and his staff to take Neill’s words seriously as threats. “I’m really trying to explain how I interact with God, and it’s a difficult explanation,” Neill told jurors during his testimony Thursday.

☆ ‘FDR’s Gambit’ Review: Playing the Numbers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Adam J. White | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

The judiciary, Alexander Hamilton warned, “is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by” the political branches of government. That year, President Franklin Roosevelt waged political war against a Supreme Court that had stifled his ambitious New Deal policies. FDR was at the height of his prewar authority, and the court’s counter-majoritarian decisions had put the institution in genuine peril. In “FDR’s Gambit: The Court Packing Fight and the Rise of Legal Liberalism,” she seeks to “challenge the conventional wisdom” about FDR’s attacks. She sees not presidential overreach but “shrewdness.” And Ms. Kalman’s account is thorough: From congressmen to administration officials to judges to columnists to pollsters to interest groups, “FDR’s Gambit” recounts seemingly everyone who supported, opposed or analyzed Roosevelt’s war on the court.

☆ New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Faces Test Amid Opposition to High-Court Pick
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Jimmy Vielkind | Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ALBANY, N.Y.— Kathy Hochul ‘s nominee for chief judge of New York’s highest court has divided her fellow Democrats and is shaping up to be her first major political test since being elected governor. The state Senate’s judiciary committee on Wednesday will consider Hector LaSalle to lead the New York State Court of Appeals. He currently runs a regional mid-level appellate court based in Brooklyn. More than a dozen Democrats in the chamber said they will vote against Justice LaSalle’s nomination to the chief judge role because of his previous rulings on workers’ rights and other matters, highlighting the increasingly political nature of state judicial appointments. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins , a Democrat, has said the judge doesn’t have the support needed to be confirmed.

☆ As Cities Get Tough on Homelessness, Legal Battles Follow
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Cities across the U.S. have been introducing tougher measures to address the growing problem of homelessness, prompting a number of court challenges that could set guideposts on how far municipalities can go. Local governments have been experimenting with a range of homeless policies, such as involuntarily removing people from the streets when they appear to be mentally ill, confiscating belongings or evicting the homeless from public property. City officials say the measures are necessary to address situations that are threatening public safety and leaving homeless people themselves living in conditions that are unsafe and unsanitary.

☆ FTC Weighs Stiff Penalties on Deceptive ‘Green’ Marketing
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Dieter Holger | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Officials are seeking public comment until Feb. 21 on nonbinding guidelines for how companies can make environmental marketing claims without breaching federal laws prohibiting deceptive advertising. “People who want to buy green products generally have to trust what it says on the box.”The agency’s so-called Green Guides, launched in 1992 and last updated in 2012, outline principles that apply to environmental marketing claims. The FTC has brought federal lawsuits against companies for making deceptive environmental claims, and the guides are cited in marketing laws in states such as California. The breadth of terms being considered reflects the significant evolution of green marketing over the past decade and companies need clearer guidance, said Caiti Zeytoonian, a lawyer at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP who advises companies on green marketing and represents them before the FTC. Ms. Koss declined to say if the Supreme Court decision triggered the FTC’s consideration of new rules on green marketing.

☆ U.S. EPA tightens soot standards for first time in decade
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Valerie Volcovici | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Fine particulate matter, or soot, comes from sources ranging from power plants to cars and trucks. It causes lung and heart damage and has been found to disproportionately affect low-income communities, according to EPA. "Fine particulate matter is both deadly and extremely costly," EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters, adding the decision was "based on sound science and a rigorous evaluation of the data that we have at hand." The EPA said it would also take public comment on revising the level to as low as 8 µg/m3, and as high as 11 µg/m3. The EPA also opted to retain the current primary 24-hour PM 2.5 standard of 35 µg/m3, despite a CASAC recommendation to lower that number to 25 µg/m3.

☆ South Carolina’s 6-Week Abortion Ban Ruled Unconstitutional
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Jennifer Calfas | Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The South Carolina court said laws limiting abortion access must allow enough time for women to determine whether they are pregnant and get an abortion. The South Carolina Supreme Court permanently blocked enforcement of the state’s ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, ruling the 2021 law violated the right to privacy in the state constitution. In a 3-2 decision Thursday, the court ruled state constitutional protections for a person’s privacy included decisions about whether to get an abortion. The decision marks the first major victory for abortion-rights groups in a state high court since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal constitutional protections for the procedure.

☆ Texas Abortion Law Still Faces Questions After Roe v. Wade’s Demise
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A novel Texas law caused a national stir in late 2021 by allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers and others for monetary damages, essentially ending state abortion access months before the Supreme Court removed legal protections for the procedure. The law’s practical significance faded this year when the high court overruled Roe v. Wade in June, but it continues to complicate the legal landscape and inspire imitation laws, leaving questions for the courts heading into 2023.

☆ Appeals Court Upholds Florida School Board’s Transgender Bathroom Policy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Laura Kusisto | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

In recent years, federal courts have generally affirmed the rights of transgender students to use a bathroom consistent with their gender identity. A federal appeals court ruled a Florida school district can require that students use bathrooms according to their biological sex, rejecting a legal challenge by a transgender student and teeing up the issue for potential review by the Supreme Court. The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 7-4 that the St. Johns County school board’s decision to segregate bathrooms by sex passes constitutional muster because it advances a legitimate objective of protecting students’ privacy and shielding their developing bodies from the opposite sex.

WASHINGTON — The 2022 midterm elections were full of surprises. Republicans began the year favored to notch big victories, yet they fell short and barely captured control of the House. Lake was widely seen as the election-denying candidate with the best chance to win a statewide race in a key battleground in the 2022 elections. Secretary of state contenders who echoed Trump’s fabricated claims of a stolen election lost, including Mark Finchem in Arizona, Kristina Karamo in Michigan and Jim Marchant in Nevada. Their wins led Democrats to win every competitive House race and gain control of the state House for the first time in more than a decade — although recent vacancies have called that majority into question.

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