standing up for your rights

Four detainees at the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in the U.S. filed a federal lawsuit on Saturday alleging human rights abuses, "horrific" conditions and "severe medical neglect" at the facility.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, details "inhumane" treatment inside Camp East Montana on the U.S. Army's Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas. The suit describes a litany of abuse allegations, including a lack of medical care and physical violence at the hands of guards, and accuses the government of human rights and constitutional violations.

WASHINGTON – A federal judge today issued a Temporary Restraining Order, prohibiting the National Park Service (NPS) from taking any action against Accountability Now USA for displaying an “8647” flag as part of the group’s permitted public demonstration on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. The demonstrators are represented by the ACLU of the District of Columbia (ACLU-D.C.).

In his order, U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss wrote, “The government seeks to squelch core political speech without any articulable—much less evidentiary—basis for concluding that the speech actually threatens the life or safety of the President.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Trump administration policy illegally banned transgender troops from military service, a divided panel of federal appeal court judges ruled on Monday.

WATCH: Transgender military members fight to continue serving despite Trump's ban

The majority opinion by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit largely upholds a March 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C. Reyes concluded that President Donald Trump's executive order to exclude transgender troops from military service likely violates their constitutional rights.

The House approved a war powers resolution that would halt the U.S. military action against Iran, defying the president as a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to end the three-month-long war that has reordered politics at home and abroad.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had tried to prevent an outcome that would show the mounting opposition to the war, abruptly shutting down floor action two weeks ago when the war powers resolution was on the verge of approval.

Legal challenges to the fund and its addendum have been growing. A bipartisan group of 35 ex-federal judges on 27 May filed a motion appealing to a federal judge in Miami who oversaw Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS to reopen the case, and launch an inquiry to determine if Trump and DoJ’s unorthodox deal to settle the lawsuit involved fraud. The jurists’ charge that the settlement fund’s creation was a “fraud on the court”.

In an extraordinary turnaround on 29 May, the Miami judge reopened Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS to explore whether the court had been deceived by the parties involved including DoJ, and the deal was “premised on deception”.

Separately, responding to a lawsuit filed by a former January 6 prosecutor who the DoJ fired, plus other individuals and entities who say they have faced Trump administration attacks, a Virginia federal judge ruled on 29 May temporarily blocking further moves to set up the fund and fund dispersals until at least a hearing on 12 June.

In his Friday June 5 decision, McConnell described the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ actions as “contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious” in legal terms, according to a statement published by AP News.

A federal judge has approved a settlement agreement between the NAACP Virginia State Conference and the Virginia State Board of Elections that will make it easier for college students to register to vote and ensure fewer of their registration applications are rejected. 

The agreement represents a major victory both for students and voting access more broadly in the Old Dominion.

In November, the Virginia NAACP filed a lawsuit accusing state election officials of unlawfully rejecting college students’ voter registrations. The civil rights organization said the students’ applications were often denied for missing address information — such as a dorm name or room number — that students aren’t required to include. 

After initially fighting the lawsuit, the state eventually came to an agreement with the plaintiffs. Now, Virginia officials cannot reject applications solely for missing a campus mailing address, dorm room number or campus mailbox number. 

A federal judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against Oliver and his HBO show’s production company, Partially Important Productions, over a 2024 Medicaid segment—preserving what Oliver has described as the show’s undefeated record in court.

As is often the case with legal proceedings of this nature, the win was a long time coming. The segment at the center of the suit aired in April 2024. Dr. Brian Morley, a former medical director for AmeriHealth Caritas, filed his lawsuit nearly a year later, in March 2025. And now U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams has dismissed the case, more than two years after the original broadcast.

The segment itself was a characteristically blistering takedown of privatized Medicaid programs. As part of that critique, Oliver discussed the cancellation of nursing services for Louis Facenda, an Iowa man with cerebral palsy who, according to the segment, lost services including in-home bathing and diaper-changing after a managed care organization got involved.

Lake credited “School House Rock,” the animated kids’ show covering topics from civics to technology to the bop of catchy rock songs, as part of his inspiration behind KYR-U. After School House Rock ended in 2004, a gap was left in educational programs dedicated to children. Now, the ALCU is working to change that with Know Your Rights University.

“It just felt like this is a perfect time for us as an organization. We’ve always wanted to do something like this. We wanted to do more proactive education versus just reactionary,” Lake continued. “We know that the best way for all of us to help our country move forward is to keep asking questions and to have that understanding of ‘Never forget, you have rights.’”