The Obama Administration announced this week the opening of the nation's largest family immigration detention center in the rural Southern Texas town of Dilley. The center is being converted from former oil field workers camp and being prepared as authorities brace for another influx of mothers and children from across the U.S. border.
Families of nine of the victims killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, and an injured teacher, filed a lawsuit in Connecticut state court on Monday against the manufacturer of the rifle used in the 2012 massacre, plus the distributor and the gun store where it was sold.
New population projections based on the U.S. Census Bureau show whites will become a minority by 2044 while Latinos, Asians and multiracial populations are all expected to double in size over the next few decades. America will be a nation with a youthful, growing minority population juxtaposed against an aging, slow-growing, and soon to be declining white population.
The Supreme Court refused to allow Arizona to enforce stringent restrictions on medical abortions. That decision has left in place a lower court ruling in Planned Parenthood Arizona et al. v. Humble that blocked the rules that regulate where and how women can take drugs to induce abortion. The measure will remain preliminarily blocked while the case moves forward in the federal district court.
Congress approves $5.4 billion to be spent to fight Ebola and a UN commission issues a report on the socio-economic impacts of the Ebola virus on the African continent and presses for debt forgiveness.
The campaign to rein in the surveillance of Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA) has become even more difficult. Congress in its lame duck session has used a set of provisions that expand rather than curtail the agency's data-gathering power.
The U.S. Senate is expected to vote to pass the House-approved $1.1. trillion spending bill to keep the government running through to next September and to avoid a government shutdown.
New York City is making preparation to offer 8 million New York residents the chance to apply for a municipal identification card, IDNYC. Half of New York City residents, aged 16 and over, do not have a New York State Driver's License.
The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has released new information claiming the Bush administration misled the American people in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
As protests over the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown continue across the country, Mexicans living in New York and Los Angeles have been protesting the missing 43 students disappeared by local police in Iguala. This weekend, the two groups will march together to demand an end to human rights violations by the state against their own people.
Congress is due to vote on a 1,600 page federal budget Thursday which while keeping the government running could have implications for pensions, election campaigns, bank and environmental regulations because of amendments.
Since October, Arturo Hernandez has sought sanctuary in the basement of a church of the First Unitarian Society of Denver, Colorado after fleeing a threat of deportation. Immigration policy won't let agents enter a house of workshop to deport someone unless they have committed a serious crime.
Representatives from Google, Apple, Facebook and 20 other tech companies joined the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and his group Rainbow Push at a Silicon Valley summit, Diversity 2.0, to find solutions to the scarcity of women, blacks and Latinos at technology companies. It will be the first time companies will publicly address their lack of diversity.
The Central Park Five have filed a lawsuit seeking $52 million in damages against New York State in the court of claims for wrongful imprisonment. The five men received a $41 million settlement in a lawsuit for the some charge against New York City in September, without the city admitting culpability and law enforcement misconduct. Their claim was reactivated when the city settled.
Mayors from 25 U.S. cities met in New York City for a summit to discuss groundwork to implement President Obama's executive action to provide immigration relief to millions of undocumented people nationwide. The group worked out coordinating and sharing expertise, and strategies to push for immigration reform.
The federal judge selected to rule on a pending multi-state lawsuit over President Barack Obama's executive action on immigration reform has already been critical of the president's immigration policy.
In the wake of the choking death of Eric Garner by a New York City police officer, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced on Monday he'd asked Governor Cuomo to allow him to investigate, and if necessary, prosecute cases involving unarmed civilians killed by police officers.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is set to release a declassified 480-page report on Tuesday on the use of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11.
A White House report on Native American youth said they face education, socioeconomic, and health barriers that are "nothing short of a national crisis."
U.S. employers hired 321,000 people in November, the latest sign of steady growth and health job gains. The latest job figures mean 2014 is on track to be the strongest year for hiring since 1999, and 10 million jobs were lost during the financial crisis in 2008.
Nearly 6,000 military employees reported sexual assaults this year; an eight percent increase compared to 2013. The Pentagon called the increase in reporting "progress" for its handling of sexual assault, but critics call the numbers "appalling."
Republican lawmakers outraged by President Barack Obama's executive action on immigration reform plan to introduce a bill that could apparently include a provision to put an electrified wire on the Mexican border to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants.
New York City will spend $130 million to reform the way its criminal justice system handles mentally ill inmates, as well as those consistently cycling in and out of prison.
