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May 21, 2026

6 entries on this date.

USCIS memo requires most green-card applicants to leave the U.S. and apply abroad

On May 21, 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, reclassifying adjustment of status — the process by which eligible immigrants obtain a green card without leaving the country — as an "extraordinary" form of relief and an act of "administrative grace" rather than a routine pathway. The memo directs officers to treat an applicant's choice to pursue adjustment of status inside the United States, instead of consular processing abroad, as an adverse factor weighing against approval, a change that would force most green-card seekers — including spouses of U.S. citizens, students, and employer-sponsored workers — to leave the country and apply through a U.S. consulate. The restructuring affects an estimated half-million cases a year and was made by internal agency memorandum, without legislation or notice-and-comment rulemaking; USCIS says it implements existing law, while former officials of both parties call it largely unprecedented.

FBI moved to interview Milwaukee police and Wisconsin election officials in DOJ 2020-election reinvestigation

In May 2026, FBI agents working for a Trump-administration Justice Department probe of Wisconsin's 2020 presidential election moved to interview Milwaukee Police Department officers who had been posted at polling places and the city's central ballot-counting site on Election Night 2020, and sought interviews with current and former Milwaukee election officials and Wisconsin Elections Commission deputy administrator Robert Kehoe. The Wisconsin effort extended a multi-state federal campaign — already underway in Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan — to reinvestigate Joe Biden's 2020 wins despite audits, recounts, and court rulings that found no widespread fraud. Election-law experts described the interviews as intended to intimidate election officials, noting that the federal statute of limitations for 2020-election conduct had expired.

Federal prosecutors drop all charges against Chicago 'Broadview Six' over grand jury misconduct

On May 21, 2026, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois moved in open court to dismiss with prejudice all remaining charges against the "Broadview Six" — protesters criminally charged over a September 2025 demonstration outside the Broadview ICE facility — after his office acknowledged misconduct in the grand jury proceedings that produced the indictment. Defense counsel said the transcripts showed prosecutors improperly vouched for evidence, concealed that an initial grand jury had refused to indict, re-presented the case after excluding grand jurors who disagreed, and redacted transcript pages without telling the court. U.S. District Judge April Perry, who reviewed the transcripts, said she had never in her career seen prosecutorial conduct as bad, and signaled a possible separate hearing on sanctions.

Louisiana House committee advances congressional map eliminating a majority-Black district

On May 21, 2026, the Louisiana House and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 10-7 along party lines to advance Senate Bill 121, a mid-decade congressional redistricting plan, to the full House, adopting an amendment by Rep. Dixon McMakin. The map dismantles the majority-Black 6th District held by Rep. Cleo Fields, reducing Louisiana's majority-Black congressional districts from two to one, and is projected to give Republicans a 5-1 advantage in the state's six-seat U.S. House delegation. The redraw follows the U.S. Supreme Court's April 29, 2026 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down the state's two-majority-Black-district map and weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Cromaine District Library Board voted to relocate more than 160 challenged LGBTQ-themed books to its adult section without review

On May 21, 2026, the Cromaine District Library Board of Trustees in Hartland Township, Michigan, voted 4-1 to relocate more than 160 challenged books — most of them LGBTQ-themed — from the children's and teen sections to the adult section, without completing the review its own appeals process required. The board had read only 58 of 218 challenged titles before abandoning the review, after earlier rewriting the library's collection-development policy with assistance from Alliance Defending Freedom and removing the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights protections.

Tennessee's execution physician botched Tony Carruthers' lethal injection; governor postponed execution one year

On May 21, 2026, the Tennessee Department of Corrections attempted to execute Tony Carruthers at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, but the appointed execution physician, Dr. Mark Fowler, spent more than 90 minutes failing to place the intravenous lines required by protocol before Governor Bill Lee called off the execution and postponed it one year. Fowler had not performed a central IV line procedure since 2013 and held no hospital privileges; the state had sought to conceal his identity under a secrecy law.