Darlene Williams died in 2020, more than a dozen years after the $8 million sale of a fossilized skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue that was found on her family’s ranch in South Dakota in 1990. Now, her children are fighting over who should inherit her money, pointing to conflicting wills that Ms. Williams…
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday over which drug offenses trigger mandatory 15-year sentences under the Armed Career Criminal Act, which is a kind of federal three-strikes law. The justices had three choices. By the end of the arguments, most of them seemed to have settled on a middle ground. The law imposes the…
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in a legal challenge that could undo one of the most aggressive gerrymanders of legislative districts in the country, and open the door for a radical shift in political power in the state, where Republicans now have a strong grip on the State Legislature. The…
Georgia’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s prohibition of abortion Tuesday, rejecting arguments made by doctors and advocacy groups that the law was unconstitutional when the state legislature approved it in 2019, more than three years before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling means that abortion remains banned in the state, with…
The Maryland Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments on Thursday morning in the long-running case of Adnan Syed, the subject of the podcast “Serial” who has spent more than 23 years fighting charges that he killed his high school girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. The state’s high court is considering whether the Baltimore City Circuit…
Mr. DeSantis, a former congressman who helped found the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, has leaned into the spending fight, and blamed Republicans for overspending during the Trump years. In a private call this week, which was first reported by Politico, Mr. DeSantis encouraged some of his congressional backers who are also pressing for spending…
The police in South Carolina said on Thursday that they were investigating whether a court clerk improperly communicated with jurors who later convicted Alex Murdaugh for the murder of his wife and son in one of the most famous criminal trials in the state’s history. The investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division was…
Republicans in Wisconsin are coalescing around the prospect of impeaching a newly seated liberal justice on the state’s Supreme Court, whose victory in a costly, high-stakes election this spring swung the court in Democrats’ favor and threatened the G.O.P.’s iron grip on state politics. The push, just five weeks after Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined the…
A panel of federal judges rejected Alabama’s latest congressional map on Tuesday, ruling that a new map needed to be drawn because Republican lawmakers had failed to comply with orders to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.” In a sharp rebuke, the judges ordered that the new map be independently drawn,…
While a federal judge was fast-tracking the start of former President Donald J. Trump’s election interference trial in Washington on Monday, the sprawling prosecution of Mr. Trump and 18 co-defendants by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., on similar state charges showed signs of slowing to a slog in Atlanta. The two cases, stemming…