Author: Reporter

Within hours of a U.S. Supreme Court decision dismantling a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Texas lawmakers announced plans to implement a strict voter ID law that had been blocked by a federal court. Lawmakers in Alabama said they would press forward with a similar law that had been on hold. The ruling continues to reverberate across the country a decade later, as Republican-led states pass voting restrictions that, in several cases, would have been subject to federal review had the conservative-leaning court left the provision intact. At the same time, the justices have continued to take...

They are part of a small, vanishing group who lived at the epicenter of the struggle for voting rights six decades ago, an era driven by segregation, violence and the yearning for equality that eventually led to laws bringing the U.S. closer to its promise of democracy for all its citizens. As the country awaits a Supreme Court decision on whether one of those laws, the Voting Rights Act, will be reinforced or further eroded, they reflect on the times and their struggles, and why they are certain it all was worth it. Ten years ago the court halted...

Donald Trump said on June 8 that he has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, igniting a federal prosecution that is arguably the most perilous of multiple legal threats against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House. The Justice Department did not immediately publicly confirm the indictment. But two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly said Trump’s team had been informed that he had been indicted on seven counts and that prosecutors had contacted lawyers to advise them of the indictment shortly...

Governor Tony Evers announced on June 8 that he had reached a bipartisan deal with Republican lawmakers to provide more funding to local governments across Wisconsin, including allowing cash-strapped Milwaukee to raise sales taxes without voter approval. As part of the deal, the GOP-controlled Legislature agreed to spending an additional $1 billion on K-12 schools, along with increasing payments to families whose children attend taxpayer-funded private voucher schools. Governor Evers, a former state superintendent of education in the first year of his second term as governor, has made spending more on education a cornerstone of his time in office....

Widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking up to 15 cigarettes daily, costing the health industry billions of dollars annually, the U.S. surgeon general said in May, in declaring the latest public health epidemic. About half of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced loneliness, Dr. Vivek Murthy said in an 81-page report from his office. “We now know that loneliness is a common feeling that many people experience. It’s like hunger or thirst. It’s a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing,” Murthy told The Associated Press in an...

At the end of “The Searchers,” one of John Wayne’s most renowned Westerns, a kidnapped girl has been rescued and a family reunited. As the closing music swells, Wayne’s character looks around at his kin and then walks off toward the dusty West Texas horizon, lonesome and alone. It is a classic example of a fundamental American tall tale — that of a nation built on notions of individualism, a male-dominated story filled with loners and “rugged individualists” who suck it up, do what needs to be done, ride off into the sunset and like it that way. In...