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Federal data website outage raises concerns among advocates
Legal Interview |
2025/08/22 07:44
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A federal website that informs the public about what information agencies are collecting and allows for public comment went down last weekend, and it has only been partially restored. The outage has raised concerns among advocates who already were troubled by the disappearance of data sets from government websites after President Donald Trump began his second term.
The https://www.reginfo.gov/public/ website went offline at the end of last week and was partially restored this week. Data was missing after Aug. 1, according to dataindex,us, a collective of data scientists and advocates who monitor changes in federal data sets.
As of Thursday, the website’s landing page said, it was “currently undergoing revisions.” Emailed inquiries to the Office of Management and Budget and General Services Administration weren’t returned on Thursday.
In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s official public portal for health data, data.cdc.gov, was taken down entirely but subsequently went back up. Around the same time, when a query was made to access certain public data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s most comprehensive survey of American life, users for several days got a response that said the area was “unavailable due to maintenance” before access was restored.
Researchers Janet Freilich and Aaron Kesselheim examined 232 federal public health data sets that had been modified in the first quarter of this year and found that almost half had been “substantially altered,” with the majority having the word “gender” switched to “sex,” they wrote last month in The Lancet medical journal.
Former Census Bureau official Chris Dick, who is part of the dataindex.us team, said Thursday that no one is quite sure what is going on with the regulatory affairs website, whether there was an update with technical difficulties because of staffing shortages from job cuts or something more nefarious.
“This is key infrastructure that needs to come back,” Dick said. “Usually, you can fix this quickly. It’s not super normal for this to go on for days.”
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House Republicans grasp for response to demands for transparency in Epstein case
Legal Interview |
2025/07/16 12:11
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House Republicans were grasping late Thursday to formulate a response to the Trump administration’s handling of records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, ultimately putting forward a resolution that carries no legal weight but nodded to the growing demand for greater transparency.
The House resolution, which could potentially be voted on next week, will do practically nothing to force the Justice Department to release more records in the case. Still, it showed how backlash from the Republican base is putting pressure on the Trump administration and roiling GOP lawmakers.
The House was held up for hours Thursday from final consideration of President Donald Trump’s request for about $9 billion in government funding cuts because GOP leaders were trying to respond to demands from their own ranks that they weigh in on the Epstein files. In the late evening they settled on the resolution as an attempt to simultaneously placate calls from the far-right for greater transparency and satisfy Trump, who has called the issue a “hoax” that his supporters should forget about.
Yet the House resolution was the latest demonstration of how practically no one is moving on from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s promises to publicly release documents related to Epstein. Since he was found dead in his New York jail cell in August 2019 following his arrest on sex trafficking charges, the well-connected financier has loomed large among conservatives and conspiracy theorists who have now lashed out at Trump and Bondi for declining to release more files in the case.
“The House Republicans are for transparency, and they’re looking for a way to say that they agree with the White House. We agree with the president. Everything he said about that, all the credible evidence should come out,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday afternoon.
Democrats vehemently decried the resolution’s lack of force. They have advanced their own legislation, with support from nine Republicans, that would require the Justice Department to release more information on the case.
Rep. Jim McGovern, who led the Democrats’ debate against the Republican resolution Thursday night, called it a “glorified press release” and “a fig leaf so they can move on from this issue.”
Under pressure from his own GOP members, Johnson had to demonstrate action on the Epstein files or risk having Republicans support the Democratic measures that would force the release of nearly all documents.
“The American people simply need to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a news conference. “Democrats didn’t put this into the public domain. The conspiracy theory provocateur-in-chief Donald Trump is the one, along with his extreme MAGA Republican associates, who put this whole thing into the public domain for years. And now they are reaping what they have sown.”
Still, Democrats, who hold minorities in both chambers, have relished the opportunity to make Republicans repeatedly block their attempts to force the Justice Department to release the documents.
Trump in recent years has suggested he would release more information about the investigation into Epstein, especially amid speculation over a supposed list of Epstein’s clients.
In February, the Justice Department released some government documents regarding the case, but there were no new revelations. After a months-long review of additional evidence, the department earlier this month released a video meant to prove that Epstein killed himself, but said no other files related to the case would be made public.
A White House spokeswoman said Thursday that Trump would not recommend a special counsel in the case. But later Thursday, the president said he had asked Bondi to seek the release of testimony from grand jury proceedings in the case. |
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Supreme Court makes it easier to claim ‘reverse discrimination’ in employment
Legal Interview |
2025/06/05 11:51
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A unanimous Supreme Court made it easier Thursday to bring lawsuits over so-called reverse discrimination, siding with an Ohio woman who claims she didn’t get a job and then was demoted because she is straight.
The justices’ decision affects lawsuits in 20 states and the District of Columbia where, until now, courts had set a higher bar when members of a majority group, including those who are white and heterosexual, sue for discrimination under federal law.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court that federal civil rights law draws no distinction between members of majority and minority groups.
“By establishing the same protections for every ‘individual’ — without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group — Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” Jackson wrote.
The court ruled in an appeal from Marlean Ames, who has worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services for more than 20 years.
Though he joined Jackson’s opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a separate opinion that some of the country’s “largest and most prestigious employers have overtly discriminated against those they deem members of so-called majority groups.”
Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, cited a brief filed by America First Legal, a conservative group founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller, to assert that “American employers have long been ‘obsessed’ with ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives and affirmative action plans.”
Two years ago, the court’s conservative majority outlawed consideration of race in university admissions. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has ordered an end to DEI policies in the federal government and has sought to end government support for DEI programs elsewhere. Some of the new administration’s anti-DEI initiatives have been temporarily blocked in federal court.
Jackson’s opinion makes no mention of DEI. Instead, she focused on Ames’ contention that she was passed over for a promotion and then demoted because she is heterosexual. Both the job she sought and the one she had held were given to LGBTQ people.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars sex discrimination in the workplace. A trial court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ames.
The 6th circuit is among the courts that had required an additional requirement for people like Ames, showing “background circumstances” that might include that LGBTQ people made the decisions affecting Ames or statistical evidence of a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group.
The appeals court noted that Ames didn’t provide any such circumstances.
But Jackson wrote that “this additional ‘background circumstances’ requirement is not consistent with Title VII’s text or our case law construing the statute.”
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Justice Dept moves to cancel police reform settlements reached with Minneapolis
Legal Interview |
2025/05/21 07:53
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The Justice Department moved Wednesday to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, saying it doesn’t want to pursue the cases.
Following a scathing report by the Justice Department in 2023, Minneapolis in January approved a consent decree with the federal government in the final days of the Biden administration to overhaul its training and use-of-force policies under court supervision.
The agreement required approval from a federal court in Minnesota. But the Trump administration was granted a delay soon after taking office while it considered its options, and on Wednesday told the court it does not intend to proceed. It planned to file a similar motion in federal court in Kentucky.
“After an extensive review by current Department of Justice and Civil Rights Division leadership, the United States no longer believes that the proposed consent decree would be in the public interest,” said the Minnesota motion, signed by Andrew Darlington, acting chief of the special litigation section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The United States will no longer prosecute this matter.”
The Justice Department announced its decision just before the five-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. Then-officer Derek Chauvin used his knee on May 25, 2020, to pin the Black man to the pavement for 9 1/2 minutes in a case that sparked protests around the world and a national reckoning with racism and police brutality.
However, no immediate changes are expected to affect the Minneapolis Police Department, which is operating under a similar consent decree with the Minnesota Human Rights Department.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara reiterated at a news conference Tuesday that his department would abide by the terms of the federal agreement as it was signed, regardless of what the Trump administration decided.
The city in 2023 reached a settlement agreement with the state Human Rights Department to remake policing, under court supervision, after the agency issued a blistering report in 2022 that found that police had long engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination. |
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Turkish court orders key Erdogan rival jailed pending trial on corruption charges
Legal Interview |
2025/03/21 05:57
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A court formally arrested the mayor of Istanbul, a key rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Sunday and ordered him jailed pending the outcome of a trial on corruption charges.
Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was detained following a raid on his residence earlier this week, sparking the largest wave of street demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade. It also deepened concerns over democracy and rule of law in Turkey.
His imprisonment is widely regarded as a political move to remove a major contender from the next presidential race, currently scheduled for 2028. Government officials reject the accusations and insist that Turkey’s courts operate independently.
The prosecutor’s office said the court decided to jail Imamoglu on suspicion of running a criminal organization, accepting bribes, extortion, illegally recording personal data and bid-rigging. A request for him to be imprisoned on terror-related charges was rejected although he still faces prosecution. Following the court’s ruling, Imamoglu was transferred to Silivri prison, west of Istanbul.
The Interior Ministry later announced that Imamoglu had been suspended from duty as a “temporary measure.” The municipality had previously appointed an acting mayor from its governing council.
Alongside Imamoglu, 47 other people were also jailed pending trial, including a key aide and two district mayors from Istanbul, one of whom was replaced with a government appointee. A further 44 suspects were released under judicial control.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said Sunday that 323 people were detained the previous evening over disturbances at protests.
Largely peaceful protests across Turkey have seen hundreds of thousands come out in support of Imamoglu. However, there has been some violence, with police deploying water cannons, tear gas, pepper spray and firing plastic pellets at protesters in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, some of whom hurled stones, fireworks and other missiles at riot police.
The formal arrest came as more than 1.5 million members of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, began holding a primary presidential election to endorse Imamoglu, the sole candidate.
The party has also set up symbolic ballot boxes nationwide to allow people who are not party members to express their support for the mayor. Large crowds gathered early Sunday to cast a “solidarity ballot.”
“This is no longer just a problem of the Republican People’s Party, but a problem of Turkish democracy,” Fusun Erben, 69, said at a polling station in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district. “We do not accept our rights being so easily usurped. We will fight until the end.”
Speaking at a polling station in Bodrum, western Turkey, engineer Mehmet Dayanc, 38, said he feared that “in the end we’ll be like Russia, a country without an opposition, where only a single man participates in elections.”
In a message posted on social media, Imamoglu called on people to show “their struggle for democracy and justice to the entire world” at the ballot box. He warned Erdogan that he would be defeated by “our righteousness, our courage, our humility, our smiling face.”
“Honestly, we are embarrassed in the name of our legal system,” Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas, a fellow member of Imamoglu’s CHP, told reporters after casting his vote, criticizing the lack of confidentiality in the proceedings.
CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said Imamoglu’s imprisonment was reminiscent of “Italian mafia methods.” Speaking at Istanbul City Hall, he added: “Imamoglu is on the one hand in prison and on the other hand on the way to the presidency.”
The Council of Europe, which focuses on promoting human rights and democracy, slammed the decision and demanded Imamoglu’s immediate release.
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Mexico says it will impose retaliatory tariffs on US with details coming Sunday
Legal Interview |
2025/03/06 06:03
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Mexico’s president said Tuesday the country will respond to the 25% tariffs imposed by the United States with retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, with details to come.
Mexico will announce the targeted products and other measures Sunday at an event in Mexico City’s central plaza, a delay that suggests Mexico hopes to de-escalate the trade war set off by U.S. President Donald Trump.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said the government is “going to wait” because she had planted to speak to Trump this week. Mexico’s government has said since January it had a plan ready for this scenario.
“There is no motive or reason, nor justification that supports this decision that will affect our people and our nations,” Sheinbaum added.
China and Canada responded immediately with measures Tuesday.
Hours later, after stock markets took a hit, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in a video posted to X that he was on the phone “all day” with Mexican and Canadian authorities.
“It’s not going to be a pause. None of that pause stuff,” he said. “Somewhere in the middle will likely be the outcome.”
Some 80% of Mexico’s exports go to the United States, part of more than $800 billion in trade between the countries last year.
Sheinbaum called “offensive, defamatory and without support” the White House allegations that Mexican drug traffickers persist because of “an intolerable relationship” with the Mexican government. Trump has said he’s targeting Mexico to force it to crack down on migrants and drugs entering the U.S.
She listed the achievements of her young administration against Mexico’s drug cartels, including seizing more than a ton of fentanyl and dismantling 329 methamphetamine labs. She also noted that Mexico sent the U.S. 29 drug cartel figures it requested last week.
“It’s inconceivable that they don’t think about the damage this is going to cause to United States citizens and businesses,” Sheinbaum said. “No one wins with this decision.”
Mexico’s president also noted that Trump on Monday said he respected her, and she said she respected him as well: “The thing is finding a way to collaborate, of coordinating without subordinating anyone for the benefit of our people.”
Trade experts expressed doubt over how long Trump’s tariffs would last, saying they would boost prices for American consumers including Trump’s base.
“It is going to do nothing to help with the food inflation in the U.S.,” said Timothy Wise, an expert on agricultural trade between Mexico and the U.S. “I don’t see it as sustainable. I don’t find it plausible that corporate folks who surround Trump are going to sit back and allow him to destroy their foreign markets.”
Gabriela Siller, economic analyst with Mexican financial group Banco Base, said in the short term, the tariffs could boost inflation, disrupt economic trade flows and slow economic growth for both countries.
But as she watched the gradually falling Mexican peso, she also noted “the exchange rate and volatility have not skyrocketed, as the market speculates that the U.S. government could withdraw the tariffs soon.”
Mexico has the most to potentially lose in a trade war with the U.S., and economists say extended tariffs would plunge Mexico’s economy into a recession. |
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