In 2022, Kern County voters approved Measure J, limiting members of the Kern County Board of Supervisors to a maximum of two four-year terms.Read more

Esther Mejia and Kelly Merchant had a question Friday afternoon for their professors: Where were you?Read more

The Kern County Sheriff’s Office asked for the public’s help Monday in finding a man who went missing a year ago.Read more

Industry estimates of the size of this year’s California almond crop suggest an ample but not over-large harvest following what may be the first decline in the state’s bearing acreage in three decades, led by orchard removals in Kern County.Read more

Lawyers for Virginia Democrats and Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones asked the Supreme Court on Monday afternoon to allow the state to use a new congressional map in the 2026 elections. The lawyers contended that a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court invalidating an amendment to Virginia’s constitution giving the Virginia General Assembly the power to enact new maps was “deeply mistaken on two critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.”The 24-page filing was the latest in a series of filings asking the Supreme Court to intervene in state disputes over efforts to gain partisan advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives by redistricting before the 2026 elections.In February of this year, Virginia’s General Assembly adopted a new map that would have favored Democrats in 10 of the state’s 11 seats in the U.S. House – a potential increase of four seats from the current balance between Democrats and Republicans in Virginia. The implementation of the map hinged on obtaining approval for an amendment to the Virginia constitution that would give the state Legislature the power to draw a new congressional map outside of the normal cycle following the decennial census. In April, Virginia voters approved that amendment by a margin of three percentage points.By a vote of 4-3, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled last week that because the General Assembly had not followed proper procedures when it put the new amendment on the ballot, the referendum was not valid.Although the Supreme Court does not normally review decisions by state courts that rest on state law, the Virginia Democrats and Jones argued that the justices should intervene in this case because it implicates “two critical issues of federal law” – specifically, the meaning of the term “election” under federal law, and the idea that the state court so “impermissibly transgressed the ordinary bounds of judicial review” that its ruling should be reversed.Moreover, the Democrats and Jones added, the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling “overthrows [a] democratic outcome just days before the Commonwealth must begin its preparations to administer the 2026 midterm election.”Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency appeals from the area that includes Virginia, instructed the Republican legislators who had challenged the amendment process to file a response by 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday.Read more

The Supreme Court on Monday afternoon cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map that a lower court had blocked on the ground that it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The justices threw out the lower-court order barring Alabama from using the map, which it had adopted in 2023, and sent the dispute back to the lower court for another look. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from Monday’s decision, in a four-page opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. In her view, the court’s order was “inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”The dispute began five years ago, when Alabama enacted a new congressional map in the wake of the 2020 census. A group of Black voters and civil rights organizations went to federal court, where they alleged that the new map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, because it spread Black voters in southern Alabama across three congressional districts, leaving them a minority in each.The district court agreed that the 2021 map likely violated Section 2, and it barred the state from using the map. The Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2023 in Allen v. Milligan.Later that year, Alabama adopted a new map. But a federal court concluded that the 2023 map also likely violated Section 2 and prohibited the state from using it. The Supreme Court declined to pause the lower court’s ruling.A court-appointed special master ultimately created a new map, which the district court ordered the state to use going forward. In 2025, the court ruled after a trial that the 2023 map did indeed violate the VRA. It reasoned that the map was “an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way.”Alabama went to the Supreme Court, which delayed its consideration of the state’s appeals until after the justices issued their April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, in which it struck down Louisiana’s congressional map. On Friday, the state – which had asked the justices to expedite their consideration of those appeals – also sought to have the lower-court orders barring Alabama from using the 2023 map put on hold immediately because the justices are not scheduled to issue orders from their next private conference until Monday, May 18, just one day before the state’s primary election is currently scheduled to take place.Alabama told the justices on Friday that its “case mirrors Louisiana’s, and they should end the same way: with this year’s elections run with districts based on lawful policy goals, not race.” When it drew the 2023 map, Alabama said, it sought to “achiev[e] the State’s neutral goals (like protecting incumbents) and refus[ed] to let race predominate.” And on Saturday, Alabama told the court, the state’s Legislature passed a law allowing “a special primary election for affected Congressional districts” if a federal court permits the state to restore the 2023 map.In an unsigned, one-paragraph order on Monday afternoon, the Supreme Court granted Alabama’s appeal and sent the dispute back to the lower court for another look in light of its ruling in Callais. The justices did not provide any additional explanation for their decision.In her dissent, Sotomayor contended that there was “no reason” for the court to send the case back to the lower court because the district court had also concluded that “Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama. That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of,” she wrote, “and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais.”But in any event, Sotomayor continued, “it still would not be appropriate to vacate the decision below at this time. That is because,” she explained, “Alabama’s congressional primary election is next week, and vacating the District Court’s injunction will immediately replace the current map with Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan until the District Court acts, even though voting has already begun.”Finally, Sotomayor noted, “the District Court remains free on remand to decide for itself whether Callais has any bearing on its Fourteenth Amendment analysis or if its prior reasoning is unaffected by that decision.”Read more

Mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortions, which are the most common form of abortions in the United States, will remain widely available throughout the United States, at least for now. In a pair of brief orders, Justice Samuel Alito extended the temporary pause – known as an administrative stay – that he had placed on a ruling by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, which would require mifepristone to be dispensed in person. That pause, which had been scheduled to expire at 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, will now last at least until 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday, May 14.This is the second time that the Supreme Court has been asked to intervene in the battle over mifepristone. In 2024, in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the justices ruled unanimously that doctors and medical groups opposed to abortion did not have a legal right to sue, known as standing, to challenge the FDA’s roll-back of restrictions on access to mifepristone – for example, allowing the drug to be used through the 10th week of pregnancy rather than the seventh, and allowing it to be prescribed through telehealth appointments and dispensed through the mail.Louisiana went to federal court last year, seeking to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement. It contended that allowing mifepristone to be sent through the mail to women in Louisiana effectively circumvented the state’s strict abortion laws.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed that the state has a legal right to sue, and it granted the state’s request to restore the in-person requirement while litigation continues.That prompted two manufacturers of mifepristone, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, to come to the Supreme Court on May 2, seeking to pause the 5th Circuit’s order and allow mifepristone to be distributed by mail. GenBioPro told the justices that freezing the 5th Circuit’s order would simply “allow the years-long status quo to remain in force while the Food and Drug Administration (‘FDA’) completes its ongoing review” of mifepristone’s safety. If that order remains in place, it argues, “it would eliminate access to mifepristone through certified pharmacies and by mail, abruptly cutting off access for patients nationwide—including in the States that do not ban abortion.”Louisiana countered that it had suffered the kind of injuries that give it a legal right to sue. Not only had its sovereignty been injured by the violation of its laws and its inability to enforce those laws, it contended, but it has incurred financial costs to investigate cases in which mifepristone has been sent from out of state and cases in which women who take mifepristone have had to go to the emergency room, leading to large Medicaid bills that the state must shoulder.Alito on May 4 issued administrative stays – which put the 5th Circuit’s order on hold to give the justices time to consider the drug companies’ request – that were initially scheduled to last until Monday, May 11, at 5 p.m. EDT. But shortly before those stays were scheduled to expire, Alito extended them until Thursday, May 14, at 5 p.m. EDT.Read more