BATON ROUGE, La. — Even as a legal challenge is already underway over a new Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms, the details of how the mandate will be implemented and enforced remain murky. Across the country there have been conservative pushes to incorporate religion into classrooms, from Florida legislation […]
Oklahoma State Capitol Building (Photo by Kyle Phillips/For Oklahoma Voice) People often ask me about how sustainable Oklahoma Voice’s operations are. It’s a fair question in an ever-shifting media landscape that’s plagued by layoffs, publication closures and lots of uncertainty about the future of our industry. We’re lucky to be a part of States Newsroom. […]
Under Oklahoma law, religious institutions and private sectarian schools are not supposed to participate in the state’s charter school programs. As we discussed last year, however, officials on Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board nevertheless approved the application by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma to establish the St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School. As […]
The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled the state’s approval of the first publicly funded religious charter school in the nation violates state and federal law, and is unconstitutional. State Attorney General Gentner Drummond sued the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board on Oct. 20 after the board, by a 3-2 vote, approved the creation of St. Isidore of Seville […]
The US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas took at least three additional trips funded by the billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow that the conservative justice failed to disclose, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee said on Thursday. Crow, a Texas businessman and Republican donor, disclosed details about the justice’s travel between 2017 and 2021 in […]
More than $400,000 raised through sales of Protect Our Reefs specialty license plates was recently awarded in grants to help restore the Florida Reef Tract. The plate – created in 2003 through legislation sponsored by the late Nancy Detert when she was in the state Senate – has raised more than $7 million for coral […]
LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry has been given permission to appeal the British government’s rejection to provide him with publicly funded police protection in the U.K. The Court of Appeal gave the Duke of Sussex the go-ahead to challenge a ruling earlier this year in the High Court. The permission was granted in May but […]
Attorney General Josh Kaul is outsourcing the fight against climate change in Wisconsin. And the second-term Democratic politician is tapping a source tied to a deep-pocketed New York politician to get the job done. Earlier this year, Kaul hired Karen Heineman as the new special assistant attorney general’s position on environmental litigation at an annual […]
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general urged the state’s highest court on Tuesday to stop the creation of what would be the nation’s first publicly funded Catholic charter school. Attorney General Gentner Drummond argued the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board violated both the law and the state and federal constitutions when it […]
Beset by shrinking attendance and limited funds, Lord of Life Lutheran Church was slowly dying. Nothing seemed likely to change that. But an even bigger question hung over this tiny Northwest Austin congregation, a close-knit community where young families had grown their faith, worshippers had become friends, and people offered prayers and casseroles when someone […]
That’s all, folks. After an already lucrative month, Vermont took home an additional – and final – $28.5 million in congressionally directed spending for the fiscal year on Saturday, March 23. The state’s second batch of “earmarks” – part of a $1.2 trillion appropriations package passed by the U.S. Senate on the same day – […]
With his 15-month-old daughter Tlameha in hand, Daniel Cox explained to a crowd of sympathetic onlookers that quality child care hasn’t just become prohibitively expensive — it’s also hard to find. His family landed on the waitlist at three different centers. In the meantime, “we are paying more than our mortgage for child care costs,” […]