James Sweeney was confirmed by a voice vote in a rare show of Senate bipartisanship. The next day, a Barnes & Thornburg colleague saw him at work and wondered why he was not taking at least a little time off. Sweeney said he wanted to pull his weight.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has added former Solicitor General Theodore Olson and former White House counsel John Dean to the list of witnesses who will testify next week in the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court.
Federal judges on Monday affirmed their earlier decision striking North Carolina’s congressional districts as unconstitutional because Republicans drew them with excessive partisanship. The Tarheel State is one of several in which lawsuits are challenging partisan gerrymandering.
Indiana’s top elections official is planning to use more than $7.5 million in federal funding to improve the state’s election security, but not to upgrade its voting machines. Indiana was among the states and territories to receive money from the $380 million approved by Congress amid ongoing threats from Russia and others.
U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter and his wife were charged Tuesday with using more than $250,000 in campaign funds to finance family trips to Italy and Hawaii, golf outings, school tuition, theater tickets — even fast food purchases — and attempting to disguise the illegal spending in federal records, prosecutors said.
Republican U.S. Rep. Christopher Collins of New York was arrested Wednesday on charges he fed inside information that he gleaned from sitting on the board of a biotechnology company to his son, helping others dodge hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses when bad news came out.
Despite demands for Indiana to be withdrawn from a federal lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, Attorney General Curtis Hill said he will continue to lead Indiana’s opposition to the “unconstitutional” law. Hill said “the foundation on which the Supreme Court built its justification for Obamacare’s constitutionality ceased to exist” when Congress repealed the individual mandate tax.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended his top deputy Thursday after a handful of congressional Republicans moved this week to impeach him.<
Democrats opposing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination are seizing on remarks he made in 2016 saying he would like to put the “final nail” in a Supreme Court precedent upholding an independent counsel law as constitutional. Republicans are pushing back, saying Kavanaugh’s comment is being distorted.
The heated debate over how Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh would vote on the Affordable Care Act might not matter. As long as five past defenders of the health care law remain on the nation’s highest court, the odds tilt in favor of it being allowed to stand. Some Democrats are warning that President Donald Trump’s designee could spell doom for the statute, even as some conservatives are portraying Kavanaugh as sympathetic to former President Barack Obama’s landmark legislation.
The Justice Department on Friday indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers on charges they hacked into Democratic email accounts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and released stolen information in the months before Americans headed to the polls.
The federal right-to-try law passed this year after similar legislation was adopted in dozens of states, including Indiana. While the law aims to give patients hope for a new treatments or cures, it does not guarantee they will have access because drugmakers can still turn down requests for their experimental medicines.
Dozens of immigrant children under the age of 5 will be released from government custody and reunited with their parents Tuesday after being separated at the border under President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy. A government lawyer said Monday at least 54 children under the age of 5 would join their parents by a court-ordered deadline, only about half the 100 or so children covered by the order.
The next Supreme Court justice will join the bench at a time when the public has more confidence in the high court than in Congress or the presidency. A Gallup survey in June found 37 percent of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the court, while another 42 percent have “some” confidence. Only 18 percent have little or no confidence in the court.
President Donald Trump interviewed four prospective Supreme Court justices Monday and planned to speak with a few more, as he powered forward with a speedy selection process to fill the fresh vacancy.
With another seat opening on the U.S. Supreme Court, Notre Dame Law School professor and 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett is being viewed as a leading contender on President Donald Trump’s list of potential nominees.
After receiving approval Thursday from the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the pair of nominees to Indiana’s two district courts are now advancing to the floor of Senate, but when they will be called for a confirmation vote is uncertain.
A judge in California on Tuesday ordered U.S. border authorities to reunite separated immigrant families within 30 days, setting a hard deadline in a process that has so far yielded uncertainty about when children might again see their parents.
Judicial leaders reiterated the urgent need for additional judgeships in the Southern District of Indiana and elsewhere before a House subcommittee Thursday. The Southern District is struggling under the weight of increasing caseloads and saw a 30 percent increase in cases in 2017.
A Kentucky man who had “had enough” of his congressman neighbor edging too close to his yard has been sentenced to 30 days in prison after he ran onto Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s property and tackled him. Rene A. Boucher, 60, after he assaulted Paul on Nov. 3, 2017.