Search Results for: Massachusetts

The US Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments this week in a landmark case that will determine whether states are entitled to remove former president and current Republican frontrunner Donald Trump from election ballots over his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when the US Capitol was stormed by protesters. In anticipation of the [...]

The Supreme Court of Wisconsin, in a per curiam opinion, ordered state election officials on Friday to include US Representative Dean Phillips on the state’s Democratic presidential primary ballot. The court noted that, under Wisconsin law, the ballot selection committee has discretion to determine if candidates are “generally advocated or recognized in the national news [...]

Chinese music student Xiaolei Wu was convicted Thursday on charges that he harassed a democracy activist at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Wu was convicted following a four-day jury trial of one count of cyberstalking and one count of interstate transmissions of threatening communication. The incident leading to Wu’s arrest began on [...]

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled on Thursday that individuals under the age of 21 cannot be sentenced to life without parole, becoming the first state to do so. In a 4-3 decision overruling the previous legislative action, the court raised the minimum age from 18 to 21, citing brain development science and the Massachusetts [...]

The US Supreme Court agreed to hear former President Donald Trump’s appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court decision barring him from the state’s 2024 primary ballot. In a one-page unsigned order, the court scheduled oral arguments for February 8. Additionally, the court ordered Trump to submit a brief in support of his decision by January 18 and [...]

Massachusetts voters filed an objection on Thursday to the state official responsible for overseeing elections seeking to remove former US President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot. Their efforts join with several others after Maine and Colorado already agreed to remove Trump from their respective ballots. In Thursday’s filing to the Massachusetts [...]

Pope Francis on Monday showed concern when discussing the crackdown of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua. Official news outlet Vatican News quoted that as of Monday, Nicaraguan authorities have arrested at least 14 priests, one bishop and two seminarians over the past week. The Vatican News also reported the 26-year sentence of Bishop Rolando José Álvarez [...]

Every December 10th, international lawyers, governments, and advocacy groups commemorate Human Rights Day. This marks the day in 1948 when, improbably, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in Paris by a nascent United Nations General Assembly under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt. This year, as the Declaration turned 75, I found myself in [...]

US President Joe Biden reduced eleven non-violent drug prison terms and pardoned potentially thousands of marijuana possession offenses under federal law or in Washington, DC on Friday. Biden used his pardon power authority under Article II of the US Constitution to pardon the offenders. This power is limited to federal offenses, and the president cannot [...]

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce opened a formal investigation on Thursday into three of the US’s top universities’ and their responses to increasing antisemitism on campuses. The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology previously appeared before a congressional committee for a hearing on December [...]