Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
Osha Vaccination

Investigations Committee Releases COVID Vaccine Adverse Effects Report, Research Debated across Party Lines

Silver sign of Department of Justice on a classical concrete wall with plants as foreground.

The Ku Klux Klan Returns to Power

May 5 primary ballot issues affect Ohioans' daily lives

May 5 primary ballot issues affect Ohioans' daily lives

Independents and Republicans May Hold the Power in Los Angeles – If They Actually Vote

Independents and Republicans May Hold the Power in Los Angeles – If They Actually Vote

Medicare Health Insurance Card. Social Security Card with Stethoscope and pen

Saving Medicare Republicans Are Privatizing Medicare

California court expedites Trump challenge to new tax returns requirement

California court expedites Trump challenge to new tax returns requirement

California's Supreme Court is expediting President Trump's challenge to a new state law that would require him to release five years of tax returns in order to get on the state ballot for the 2020 election.

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
Bill Theobald
By Bill TheobaldAug 22, 2019
Bill Theobald

Bill Theobald is senior writer at The Fulcrum, where he focuses on everything to do with voting. This December marks his 40th anniversary in the business, and he still believes -- now more than ever -- that the glow from great journalism can truly light the world.

See More Writings by author

The California Supreme Court is fast-tracking its review of a challenge to a new law that would require President Trump to make public his tax returns in order to get on the state's ballot for the 2020 election.

A lawsuit seeking to block implementation of the law was filed August 6 by the California Republican Party against Secretary of State Alex Padilla. It claims the law violates California's constitution.

Two other challenges, one filed by Trump's personal lawyers, are pending in federal court.

Trump refused to release his tax returns during the 2016 election campaign, bucking a practice followed by every presidential candidate for decades.

The court issued an expedited schedule on Wednesday requiring attorneys on both sides to file legal papers by mid-September, including anyone who wants to file briefs supporting either side.

The California law requires presidential candidates to release five years of tax returns in order to appear on the ballot. Democrats control both houses of the California Legislature and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill in late July.


Latest news

A billboard that reads, "We've got your six," and "Confidential abortion support for service members, veterans, and their families. You make the appointment, we handle the rest."
Health

All Women Left Behind

Highschoolers in a classroom, sitting down at their desks and raising their hands.
Media & Technology

My School’s So Worried I Will Cheat With AI It Isn’t Teaching

Read More

From Colombia to Connecticut: The urgent need to end FGM in the Americas

Journalists gather in front of the Connecticut State Capitol Building during a press conference on SB259 and an anti-FGM art installation

Bryna Subherwal, Equality Now

From Colombia to Connecticut: The urgent need to end FGM in the Americas

Across the Americas, hundreds of thousands of women and girls are living with or have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). These affected populations are citizens and residents of countries where protections are incomplete, entirely focused on criminalisation, inconsistently enforced, or entirely absent.

FGM is not a “foreign” issue. It is a human rights violation unfolding within national borders, one that all governments in the Americas have the legal and moral responsibility to address.

Keep ReadingShow less
House Democrats and Republicans Clash over Free Speech in Higher Education

Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, addresses the chamber in front of a portrait of George Miller.

(Matthew Junkroski / MEDILL)

House Democrats and Republicans Clash over Free Speech in Higher Education

WASHINGTON — Witnesses and representatives sat in silence as Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, spoke about how universities should strive for intellectual diversity and introduce controversial ideas. Rep. Alma S. Adams, D-N.C., agreed with his rhetoric, but went on to criticize her Republican colleagues for standing in the way of free expression.

“Unfortunately, what we often see, especially in hearings like this, is not a good faith effort to strike that balance, but a selective narrative,” Adams said. “My colleagues on the other side of the aisle frequently claim that there’s a free speech crisis on college campuses, arguing that universities lack viewpoint diversity and silence certain perspectives.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Republican Attacks on Citizen Ballot Measures Undermine Democracy

Election workers process ballots at the Orange County Registrar of Voters one week after Election Day on November 12, 2024 in Santa Ana, California.

Getty Images, Mario Tama

Republican Attacks on Citizen Ballot Measures Undermine Democracy

In October 2020, Utah’s Republican Senator Mike Lee delivered a startling but revealing civics lesson in the aftermath of that year’s vice-presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. He tweeted, The United States is “not a democracy.”

“The word ‘democracy,’’’ Lee wrote, “appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic….Democracy isn’t the objective….” The senator said that the object of the Constitution was to promote “liberty, peace, and prospefity (sic).”

Keep ReadingShow less
Key Senate panel advances Trump’s pick for Fed chair

Kevin Warsh testified in a Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing for Fed chair last week.

Photo provided

Key Senate panel advances Trump’s pick for Fed chair

WASHINGTON – The Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday voted 13 to 11 to advance Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Federal Reserve chairman despite Democrats’ concerns that he would not be independent from President Donald Trump.

The banking committee’s vote fell along party lines, with all 13 Republicans voting in favor of the nomination and all 11 Democrats voting against it. Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in a press release that it was the first time a vote on a Fed chair nominee was entirely partisan.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026