Tonight, in a letter to her senior leadership, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates ordered attorneys at the Department of Justice not to defend legal challenges to President Trump’s immigration order—which bans entry into the United States to travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and to refugees from around the world. Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Ranking Member of the House Committee on... Read more »
More than 160 House Democrats, led by U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) today introduced legislation to defund and rescind President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel from Muslim countries and suspending the refugee program. The SOLVE, or Statue of Liberty Values Act, introduced following profound confusion and fear after the implementation of an unpreced... Read more »
Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, issued the following statement in response to Trump firing Acting Attorney General Sally Yates: “President Trump has commenced a course of conduct that is Nixonian in its design and execution and threatens the long-vaunted independence of the Justice Department. If dedicated government officials deem his directi... Read more »
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-NY), House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), and House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) today sent a letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly to r... Read more »
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Congressman Cedric Richmond (D-LA) wrote to President Donald Trump to urge that if an investigation must be completed in regards to Trump’s voter fraud allegations, that it be completed by a non-partisan independent body and that the investigation also focus on voter suppression in the wake of th... Read more »
Today, the New York Times reported on a forthcoming Executive Order on “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants.” The order would permit the CIA “to reopen ‘black site’ prisons, like those where it detained and tortured terrorism suspects before President Obama shut them down.” The order would also reverse President Obama’s decision to give the International Committee of the Red Cross acce... Read more »
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) today released the following statement in response to President Donald Trump’s statements on voter fraud: “As the only Member in the Congress who was present when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965, and as a Member who has devoted his entire career to the cause of protecting voting rights, I was shocked to learn that ev... Read more »
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) welcomed four new Democratic Members to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and announced the new subcommittee structure for the 115th Congress. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) are new to the committee. Congressman Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, will serve in... Read more »
All House Judiciary Democrats, led by Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), today renewed their request to have House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) hold hearings to examine the federal conflicts-of-interest and ethics laws that may apply to President Donald Trump. The members of the committee originally requested a hearing in November 2016, after then President-elect Donald ... Read more »
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee Ranking Member Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) released the following statements after the White House announced the commutation of the sentences of hundreds of individuals this week, which brings President Obama’s record to 1,715 commutations in total: Ranking Member Conyers said, “One of the great ... Read more »
