Strict voter ID laws, now on the books in 10 states, have gotten a lot of attention over the past several years. Supporters argue that they’re necessary to stop voter fraud, particularly voter impersonation. But critics argue that the laws, by restricting voting, make it harder for minority voters in particular to cast a ballot.

But a new study suggests that the laws, which require certain IDs to vote, may do neither.

The study, from Enrico Cantoni at the University of Bologna and Vincent Pons at Harvard Business School, found that voter ID laws don’t decrease voter turnout, including that of minority voters. Nor do they have a detectable effect on voter fraud — which is extremely rare in the US, anyway.

The implication: Despite the legal and political battles over voter ID laws, they don’t really seem to do much of anything.

The researchers caution that their results “should be interpreted with caution” and that they “do not see our results as the last word on this matter — quite the opposite.” Still, the findings join a growing body of research that suggests […]

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg takes questions from first-year students at Georgetown Law last September. Wednesday was her second day back at the court after lung cancer surgery.
Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednsesday that the Constitution’s ban on excessive fines applies to state and local governments, thus limiting their ability to use fines to raise revenue.

The court’s decision, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was announced by her on her second day back at the court. Ginsburg missed in-person arguments at the court for the first time in her quarter century on the Supreme Court bench after undergoing surgery for lung cancer late last year.

The court’s opinion came in the case of Tyson Timbs, whose $42,000 Land Rover was seized by the state of Indiana after he was arrested for selling a small amount of heroin to undercover cops for $400.

An Indiana trial court ruled that the fine was grossly disproportionate punishment on top of other fines and a year of house detention. The state Supreme […]

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China’s Academy of Space Technology is working on an orbital power plant that would capture solar energy in space and beam it back to Earth.

The plant would be able to harness solar power even when it’s cloudy back on Earth, since its photovoltaic array would be floating high above any terrestrial weather.

President Trump, who has an extensive track record of stiffing contractors who worked for his company, blocked a measure that would have given back pay to federal contractors who lost five weeks of wages during the last month’s extended government shutdown.

While hundreds of thousands of federal workers received back pay for the wages they missed during the longest shutdown in American history, employees of federal contractors were barred from working and are not entitled to back pay.

Democratic negotiators pushed to include back pay for as many as 580,000 federal contractors in the spending deal that would give Trump more than $1.3 billion toward a border fence but were rebuffed by the president.

“I’ve been told the president won’t sign that,” Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told reporters Wednesday, according to NBC News. “I guess federal contractors are different in his view than federal employees.”

The measure would have been the first ever to give back pay to contractors, who did not receive back pay after previous shutdowns.

A Trump administration official argued to HuffPost that the cost of giving back […]

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