CIRCUIT COURT

MYRNA PÉREZ
Nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit


Myrna Pérez is the director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program at the New York University (NYU) School of Law. Ms. Pérez joined the Brennan Center in 2006. She has also been a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School since 2016. She previously served as an Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law from 2013 to 2015. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Ms. Pérez was a Civil Rights Fellow at Relman, Dane & Colfax, a civil rights law firm in Washington, D.C., from 2005 to 2006. Ms. Pérez served as a law clerk for Judge Anita B. Brody on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 2003 to 2004 and for Judge Julio M. Fuentes on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 2004 to 2005.

Ms. Pérez received her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2003, her M.P.P. from Harvard Kennedy School in 1998, and her B.A. from Yale University in 1996. Prior to law school, she was a Presidential Management Fellow, serving as a policy analyst for the U.S. Government Accountability Office on issues including housing and health care.


DISTRICT COURTS

SARAH A. L. MERRIAM
Nominated to the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut


Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam has served as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Connecticut since 2015. Previously, she served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the District of Connecticut from 2007 to 2015. Judge Merriam worked on political campaigns in Connecticut from 2006 to 2007. She was an associate at the Connecticut-based law firm Cowdery, Ecker & Murphy from 2003 to 2006. Judge Merriam served as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Meskill on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 2002 to 2003 and for Judge Alvin Thompson on the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut from 2000 to 2002.

Judge Merriam received an LLM from Duke Law School in 2018, her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2000, and her B.A. from Georgetown in 1993.


SARALA VIDYA NAGALA
Nominated to the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut


Sarala Vidya Nagala is the Deputy Chief of the Major Crimes Unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Connecticut, a role she has held since 2017. Ms. Nagala joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2012, and has served in a number of leadership roles in the office, including as Hate Crimes Coordinator. Previously, Ms. Nagala was an associate at Munger, Tolles, & Olson in San Francisco, California from 2009 to 2012. She began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Susan Graber on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2008 to 2009.

Ms. Nagala received her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law in 2008 and her B.A. from Stanford University in 2005.


OMAR A. WILLIAMS
Nominated to the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut

Judge Omar A. Williams has served as a Superior Court Judge in Hartford, Connecticut since 2016. In that role, Judge Williams has served on the New England Regional Judicial Opioid Initiative, the Sentence Review Division, and the Wiretap Panel. He was previously a Superior Court Judge in New London from 2014 to 2016. Prior to his appointment as a state court judge, Judge Williams was an Assistant Public Defender for the State of Connecticut Division of Public Defender Services from 2003 to 2014.

Judge Williams received his J.D. from the University of Connecticut Law School in 2002 and his B.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1998.


JIA M. COBB
Nominated to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia


Jia M. Cobb is a partner at Relman Colfax, where she has practiced since 2012. Her plaintiff-side litigation practice focuses on fair housing, disability discrimination, employment discrimination, and cases at the intersection of civil rights and criminal justice. Ms. Cobb taught trial advocacy as an adjunct professor at American University Washington College of Law in 2011 and was a faculty member at Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop in 2010 and 2011. Prior to her time in private practice, Ms. Cobb served as a trial attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia from 2006 to 2012. She began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Diane Wood on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 2005 to 2006.

Ms. Cobb received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, cum laude, in 2005 and a B.A. from Northwestern University, magna cum laude, in 2002.

It was supposed to be Triller time. But scratch that.

On Saturday night, stars were set to come out in full force for what was being billed as “Miami’s first full open seating event post-COVID” at the newly renamed loanDepot park (formerly Marlins Park).

But alas, the pandemic’s not over, people. The Triller Fight Club Event, a rap concert and 12-round match headlined by NYC’s Teofimo Lopez vs. “Ferocious” George Kambosos Jr., of Australia, will now take place later this summer.

The reason? Fox Sports 640 radio host Andy Slater tweeted Tuesday afternoon that Lopez tested positive for COVID-19.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants to expand how Michigan uses federal unemployment funds to incentivize Michiganders to return to work after the COVID-19 pandemic, she announced Monday.

The plan involves providing a bonus of $300 per week to specific employees returning to their previous jobs through the week of Sept. 4, Whitmer said during a wide-ranging news conference.

She did not say when the program would start, how many people are expected to be eligible or any eligibility dates for those returning to work.

The payments are currently available only to employers participating in the state workshare program who bring back people previously employed, Whitmer spokesman Bobby Leddy said.

But the governor is working with the Legislature to change the law to provide bonuses for any new employee hired by a business through a workshare program, not just those previously employed who are brought back. Leddy said additional details would be available later this week.

"We're going to use the federal $300 per week in unemployment benefits to our advantage, so we can incentivize people to get back to work, maximize a family's income and help employers fully build up their businesses and staff," Whitmer said.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Two more groups sued Florida over its new restrictive elections laws Monday, adding to a growing chorus of voter rights advocates who say the rules could keep some people from casting ballots.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee by the Fair Elections Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Head Count and the Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters.

The suit argues that the new law foments distrust against civic organizations that work to register voters by suggesting that residents use the government's website instead.

The lawsuit is designed to “protect our clients’ right to organize through voter registration activities, communicating their message that our democracy works better when all our voices are heard,” Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel at Fair Elections Center, said in a statement.

“Voter registration organizations serve their communities by building trusted relationships with Floridians for whom voting and participation may not otherwise be accessible,” she added.

At the core of the complaint is a requirement under the law that third-party voter registration groups use specific language to tell all residents who work with them that they might not submit a voter's application documents in a timely fashion.

The lawsuit contends that the groups are being forced to provide an “inaccurate warning” that is "self-denigrating, misleading, and contradictory" to the mission of the groups.

Enough with the Obama excuse, Florida Legislature.

In the past 14 months of this pandemic, we’ve seen that access to healthcare and decent insurance is critical. We’ve seen the virus disproportionately hurt minority and low-income communities, and those inequities have been worsened by the systematic kneecapping of Florida’s own public-health system through years of cuts.

But Republican state lawmakers — who control the Legislature — are continuing to flat-out refuse to help some 964,000 Floridians get insurance by broadening who qualifies for Medicaid because that would mean accepting federal money associated with the Obama administration and its Affordable Care Act.

A financial sweetener offered by the Biden administration this spring as part of the COVID-19 relief package would defray the cost to the state for two years, but the Legislature wouldn’t even consider the idea.

Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are continuing negotiations this week on a big spending package for roads, green energy and other supposed Biden priorities. Ten senators—five from each party—reportedly agreed on a $1.2 trillion plan and will now attempt to sell it to their colleagues, so that it can gain the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster.

But this effort is as doomed as the last bipartisan infrastructure push. What, you don’t remember the last bipartisan infrastructure push? That was when talks between the White House and Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia broke down in early June, with both sides accusing the other of intransigence. That’s the natural outcome when two parties fundamentally disagree, and it’s why the ongoing effort at a bipartisan deal is a smoke screen.

The Bipartisan 10 haven’t published their plan—assuming there really is one—but it reportedly includes poison pills that guarantee Democrats won’t go for it and President Biden would probably veto it if it arrived on his desk. One poison pill is a measure that would index the federal gas tax to inflation. This is a sensible idea Congress should have passed long ago. The gas tax has been stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, with inflation eroding its ability to raise needed funding for highways.

The Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands has asked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to carve out an exception for the cruise industry in the state’s new law banning businesses in Florida from asking customers their vaccination status.

USVI Governor Albert Bryan Jr. says the Florida legislation, set to take effect July 1, could impact the health and wellbeing of millions of Caribbean residents when cruises to the region resume.



“The bill you signed into law may negatively impact the United States Virgin Islands and other port of call destinations in the Caribbean region,” said Bryan, who highlighted CDC approvals for cruise ships to begin sailing this summer from U.S. ports with strict health and safety guidelines, such as the vaccination of 95 percent of passengers and 98 percent of crew members.

Bryan says reopening the cruise industry with vaccinated passengers is essential to the tourism economies of the USVI and the broader Caribbean.

(Reuters) -The Biden administration late on Thursday restored a $929 million grant for California's high-speed rail that former President Donald Trump revoked in 2019.

The parties, which also include the California High-Speed Rail Authority and the U.S. Transportation Department, agreed to restore the grant within three days, according to the settlement agreement: https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/California-v.-DOT-Settlement-Agreement-Final-May-26.pdf.

Talks began in March, around two months after Biden became president, to settle a suit filed in 2019 after Trump had pulled funding for a high-speed train project in the state hobbled by extensive delays and rising costs. Trump had repeatedly clashed as president with California on a number of fronts.

California's lawsuit claimed the Transportation Department lacked legal authority to withhold the $929 million the administration of former President Barrack Obama allocated a decade ago but had remained untapped.

Verda Tetteh earned a standing ovation as the class speaker at her Massachusetts high school graduation. But what she did next had the crowd in awe.

The Fitchburg High School student, who will be attending Harvard College in the fall on a full scholarship, won an additional $40,000 scholarship from her high school at last week's graduation ceremony. She could have used the scholarship for expenses, but instead, the 17-year-old gave it away shortly after it was awarded.

"I am so very grateful for this but I also know that I am not the one who needs this the most," she told graduation attendees.