Kimberly Atkins Stohr

Washington

Contributor at MSNBC

Senior Opinion Writer at The Boston Globe

Columnist at The Emancipator

Host at #SistersInLaw

No hyphen. ✍🏾: @GlobeOpinion. 📺: @MSNBC. 🗣: #SistersInLaw. Dumped my X for 🧵

Articles

The Supreme Court missed a chance to check Trump’s autocracy. Its next shot may be its last. - The Boston Globe

1 week ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

This is what autocracy looks like, brought to you in part by the US Supreme Court. Monday, after President Trump welcomed President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador into the Oval Office and the two exchanged flattery about how popular they are, Trump cut right to the point. “You know what I want them to do?
After SCOTUS ruling, new battle begins in Trump’s war on Venezuelan immigrants - The Boston Globe

2 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

Fresh on the heels of a high court ruling giving the Trump administration the green light to continue deportations to a Salvadoran prison, two judges — one in New York and another in Texas — again temporarily blocked the Justice Department from using the Alien Enemies Act for such removals.
The Supreme Court has given up its power - The Boston Globe

2 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

Given the way Congress has abdicated its own power by refusing to serve as a democratic check on the Trump administration, I’d hoped the Supreme Court would take a different tack. After all, the judicial branch is led by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who is, or at least was, known for his desire to protect the court’s reputation as an independent body, not an ideological one. True, Roberts and his colleagues have often failed to live up to that hype.
The Supreme Court and the false flag of ‘religious liberty’ - The Boston Globe

2 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

In 2022, just weeks after delivering the defining opinion of his Supreme Court tenure so far — the Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade — Justice Samuel Alito traveled to Rome to speak at the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit. “Religious liberty is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power,” Alito said during his keynote.
Trump doesn’t know what an executive order is. But you should. - The Boston Globe

3 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

Given the frenetic pace of executive orders President Trump has issued — purporting to do everything from changing election laws and citizenship eligibility to freezing foreign aid and dismantling federal agencies — a casual observer might think Trump has the powers of a king. But he doesn’t, even if he likes to pretend he does. The easiest way to understand what executive orders are is with an explanation of what they are not: laws. Only Congress can make laws at the federal level.
Supreme Court ghost busters - The Boston Globe

4 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

It’s a good day when the Supreme Court doesn’t wipe out a common-sense federal gun regulation. Such was Wednesday, when the court ruled that a Biden-era rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives placing “ghost guns” — untraceable firearms sold in quick-assembly kits — under the same regulations as other firearms did not exceed the agency’s authority. This should have been, and turned out to be, a no-brainer.
How the Supreme Court can curb one Trump attack on judges - The Boston Globe

4 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

There is no institution or person President Trump seems unwilling to attack in order to expand his own power. Among Trump’s most recent targets: federal judges. “He should be disbarred!” Trump fumed in a Truth Social post Monday, referring to US District Judge James Boasberg, the Washington, D.C.-based jurist who issued an order blocking the administration’s use of a wartime law to swiftly deport Venezuelans with alleged gang ties without so much as a hearing.
Louisiana vs. the ‘non-African Americans’ - The Boston Globe

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

If “I’m rubber and you’re glue” were a legal argument, it would look a lot like the one a group of self-identified “non-African American” Louisiana voters are gearing up to make on March 24 at the Supreme Court. They claim that the state’s congressional redistricting map, drafted after the previous map was struck down by a federal court for unlawfully diluting the votes of the state’s Black voters, also needed to be thrown out because state lawmakers considered — wait for it — race.
All vaccine policy is local, and Massachusetts has fallen behind - The Boston Globe

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

When it comes to preventing infectious diseases, all public health policy is local. Certainly, global institutions like the World Health Organization and federal agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention serve vital roles in ensuring that people have the best available protections against contagious illnesses like COVID-19, influenza, measles, and Ebola. But those bodies can only be effective if they are robustly funded and led by people who believe in that mission.
Alito decries judicial ‘hubris,’ then demonstrates it - The Boston Globe

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

The Supreme Court dealt a major blow Wednesday morning to the Trump administration’s efforts to halt $2 billion of congressionally approved foreign aid funding — the biggest brushback President Trump has faced yet from the justices as he tries to reshape the federal government in his image.