Judge Overturns Confederate Monuments Law
A Jefferson County circuit judge struck down a state law to preserve historical markers, saying the state violated the U.S. Constitution. The ruling comes after the state sued Birmingham for covering a Confederate monument and fined the city for violating the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act.
Judge Mike Graffeo says the state cannot force Birmingham to maintain a Confederate monument with a law passed by the state Legislature in 2017.
Lawyers for Birmingham argued the monument offended most residents.
David Dinielli of the Southern Poverty Law Center says cities express their values through their monuments, and says demographics were a factor in the ruling.
“The majority of the legislature, which is white, was issuing a rule that governed and limited the ability of Birmingham, which is a majority black city, to govern itself and make its own decisions,” Dinielli says.
The ruling may impact similar cases in other parts of the country, he says.
“To our knowledge, this is the first time that a court has held that one of these monument preservation laws violates the U.S. Constitution,” Dinielli says.
Alabama State Attorney General Steve Marshall sued Birmingham the day after it covered the monument in Linn Park. He says he will appeal the ruling.
Ukraine’s last eastern strongholds hang on as Russia fights to take Donbas
Russia is pushing to take over all of eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, where one resident tells NPR that she feels her "life depends on how our guys at the front hold on."
Are we in a recession? Maybe professional Santas can tell us
Demand for professional Santas and other seasonal workers seems to have cooled. Could that be a sign we're in a recession?
Black bear populations are bouncing back. Here’s how these Texas towns are coping
Historically, Black bears were the biggest predator to travel the Big Bend area of Texas. But overhunting and habitat loss led to their decline.
After NIH grant cuts, breast cancer research at Harvard slowed, and lab workers left
Amid NIH funding delays, reversals and uncertainty, a scientist at Harvard who studies breast cancer has lost one-third of her lab employees and wonders if she can continue her research experiments.
A 101-year-old runs the largest nutcracker museum in the U.S. Here’s a look inside
Arlene Wagner has been collecting nutcrackers for nearly 50 years. Now, she's got one of the largest collections in the world, housed at the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum in Washington.
The GOP has allowed Trump to expand his authority. Here’s where they’re pushing back
Republicans in Congress have shown some willingness to push back on President Trump, but it is not clear how far they are willing to push back against the leader of their own party.
