The San Francisco Catholic archdiocese announced on Monday that it reached a $395 million settlement with over 500 survivors of childhood sexual abuse within the church. The terms of the agreement, which must still be approved by a judge, also require the church to comply with transparency and child protection demands, including maintaining an up-to-date [...]
The Supreme Court today upheld birthright citizenship in a 6-3 ruling in Trump v. Barbara, striking down President Trump’s executive order that sought to deny citizenship to children born on US soil to undocumented or temporary-visa parents. In a conversation published nearly a year ago, I spoke about the case with the controversial AI chatbot [...]
The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down federal limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with their candidates, ruling 6-3 that the restrictions violate the First Amendment‘s free speech protections. The decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission overrules the court’s 2001 decision in FEC v. Colorado Republican [...]
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states may bar transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, upholding bans in West Virginia and Idaho, and holding that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause requires schools to allow participation based on gender identity rather than biological sex. The court issued a 6-3 [...]
The UN on Monday welcomed the government of Sudan’s decision to keep the Adre border crossing with Chad open through September 30, though the organization warned of a rise in violence in the besieged city of El Obeid. The UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric commended the Sudanese government’s decision, highlighting that the Adre corridor remains critical [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens under the 14th Amendment, holding unconstitutional an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office in January 2025 that sought to deny them that status. In Trump v. [...]
In a case that drew national attention and a half dozen emergency amicus briefs from around the country, the Alaska Supreme Court yesterday summarily affirmed an Alaska state trial court’s ruling that the state’s director of the Division of Elections, Carol Beecher, wrongly removed a senatorial candidate, Dan J. Sullivan, from the ballot. Beecher contended [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Monday that Beijing has restructured Hong Kong’s governance in a way that reduces accountability and tightens social control. The new system answers to the Chinese Communist Party leadership rather than Hong Kong’s people, and builds on the existing “draconian” national security regime. Elaine Pearson, Asia director at HRW, stated: [...]
The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear President Donald Trump’s appeal of a $5 million judgment finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, ending his effort to overturn the 2023 verdict. The court denied certiorari in Trump v. Carroll in a brief and unexplained order, which is typical [...]
Human Rights Watch on Monday criticized insurgent armed groups, the Malian armed forces and allied militias, and Russian mercenaries, which have all committed “serious abuses of human rights against civilians” amid an insurgency fueled by long-standing ethnic tensions in the country. Commenting on the large scale of atrocities committed against civilians in Mali, senior Sahel [...]
