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If you want to understand how the Supreme Court’s MAGA majority has undermined democracy, you need to understand the “shadow docket.”

The shadow docket — as the court’s emergency docket has come to be known — is one of the more dramatic and corrupt ways that MAGA-aligned justices are enabling President Trump to take away our freedoms.

Normally, the justices don’t hear a case until after lower courts have considered it fully and made a final decision. But a party to a case may describe it as so urgent that quick “relief” is needed from the Supreme Court, claiming that “irreparable harm” may occur while lower courts consider it.

That puts it on the emergency docket.

Since time is supposedly of the essence, the justices don’t hold oral arguments. And if they grant the “relief” and undo the lower court’s order, they often give us little if any explanation why. Lower court judges are left without much guidance on whether or how to use the decision to guide their own decisions.

With so little sunlight, no wonder the term “shadow docket” has stuck.

Sunday, December 7, 3:30pm
Whetstone Library, 3909 N. High St.
Register here

All over the country, ICE agents are targeting immigrants in and around Home Depot, attacking and terrorizing workers, customers, and surrounding communities. The raids are terrifying, chaotic, and sometimes deadly.

These atrocities are happening on Home Depot’s watch, on its properties, with its silence. The Home Depot company has not resisted or condemned these raids. It has not publicly demanded that the Administration stop assaulting and abducting people on and outside its properties. As far as we know, it hasn't even asked.

We will write postcards to Central Ohio Home Depot store managers and to Home Depot corporate leaders demanding an end to their complicity and promising not to shop at Home Depot until they stop allowing ICE to conduct raids on its properties.

Dr. Bob Fitrakis and Dan-o Dougan found a lot of artists who expressed their dislike of the Tangerine Man. Here they play the songs for you!

Listen here

Listen live at 11pm Fridays, December 6 and 12 streaming at wgrn.org or on the radio at 91.9FM
and
Mondays at 2pm streaming December 8 and December 22 at wcrsfm.org or on the radio at 92.7 or 98.3FM

Saturday, December 6, 2025 - 12:00pm
EN Broadway and N. High Street, Columbus, Ohio
AND
12noon at Goodale Park Gazebo, 12o W. Goodale

Bring a sign! 

Make your voice be heard

What if this Venezuelan murdering scheme is more than just Trump being a bully with manhood issues? Of course, it could be about trying to steal their oil, which one of his supporters already admitted to. With a supposed drug justification when there is no evidence of that, and even if there were, murder is not the way to deal with it.

But at the same time the murderous Trump administration is trying to say it if because of concern about drugs, he pardoned a known drug trafficker, Juan Orlando Hernandez. A White House official and Hernandez's attorney, Renato Stabile, confirmed December 2 that the pardon has been issued. Stabile said Hernandez was released early December 2 from a federal prison, where he was serving a 45-year sentence "for cocaine importation and related weapons offenses," according to the Justice Department.

Hernandez was convicted in March of 2024 after a three-week jury trial in New York City. He was "at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world," helping to bring more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S., the Justice Department said in a news release last year after his conviction.

Thursday, December 4, 7pm
Zoom

Hear how leaders across the country are working together to stop executions and advance bipartisan strategies to repeal the death penalty.

This is a free opportunity to learn about current strategies to stop executions—and how you can get more involved in the fight.

Register here

Hosted by @us_cedp with our own @furonda moderating!

#EndTheDeathPenalty #AbolitionNow #USCEDP #FreeWebinar #NooseToNeedle

Although President Donald Trump has claimed that “every policy” of his administration was “designed to lift up the American worker,” he has acted consistently, since returning to office in January 2025, to undermine workers’ chosen representatives, America’s labor unions.

The most flagrant Trump action along these lines occurred in March 2025, when he issued an executive order that terminated collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million federal government employees. This measure, the largest single union-busting action in American history, ended union representation and protections for 1 out of 14 unionized workers in the United States.

To the Editor:

As a resident of German Village and Chair of the German Village Society’s Historic Preservation Committee, I am writing out of deep concern for the ongoing and unnecessary destruction of historic sandstone curbs in our neighborhood. These curbs, hand-cut in the 19th century by immigrant stonemasons, are not just stones. They are part of the original streetscape that gives German Village its nationally recognized character.

In recent months, contractors working on behalf of the City of Columbus have demolished these curbs during ADA ramp installations — without public notice and without obtaining a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA). Every homeowner in German Village is required to secure a COA for any sidewalk, curb, or exterior work affecting historic materials. Yet the City has proceeded as though it is exempt from the very rules that residents must follow.

The result is permanent loss. Once these sandstone curbs are removed and replaced with modern concrete, they cannot be recreated. Their historic craftsmanship and material integrity are gone forever.

Mohan Karki is a Bhutanese-Nepali refugee from Ohio who has been held in detention at the St. Clair County jail for over six months and is at risk of an imminent deportation currently scheduled for Tuesday, December 2nd. See this article for more information about Mohan’s story and his likely fate if he is deported to Bhutan and expelled into statelessness.

Click here to send an email to the ICE Field Office Director Kevin Raycraft

Call the Detroit ICE Field Office at 313-771-6601

As one of the few surviving non-corporate owned sources of information in Columbus we pride ourselves in reading your opinions. One person had some illuminating observations about two recent stories. You deserve to read them.

Response to Political Theater Nov 27, 2025

https://columbusfreepress.com/article/political-theater

It’s no secret that the mayor is trying his best to expand and promote women’s sports in Columbus as he stated in his recent State of the City Address while claiming to position Columbus as the nation’s capital for women’s sports.