A judge for the US District Court for the District of Maryland blocked the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) on Tuesday from prohibiting a planned October 7 vigil commemorating those killed in the Israel-Gaza War. A student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), filed a lawsuit against UMCP after their request for the [...]

California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed Senate Bill (SB) 1047 on Sunday, concluding the bill was insufficiently broad in its regulation of large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) models, and lacked empirical support. Newsom viewed SB 1047 as premature and overly sweeping, noting that it “applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions” of AI, so long [...]

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted Thursday for impermissibly soliciting and accepting donations from foreign agents in exchange for political favors, as well as illegally obtaining public funds through the guise of small donor campaign contributions. The 57-page indictment accuses Adams of accepting benefits from Turkish foreign nationals that included plane tickets, hotels, [...]

Democratic US Senator Ron Wyden on Thursday introduced the Judicial Modernization and Transparency Act, a bill aimed at reforming the United States Supreme Court. The proposed legislation seeks to expand the court from nine to fifteen justices among other reforms.  Beyond adding six new justices to the Court, Senator Wyden’s proposal seeks to implement new [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday published their findings of abuse by the police department of Lexington, Mississippi. Lexington is a small rural town with a population of around 1,600. The town is located in one of the poorest counties in the country, with a median household income of approximately $39,000–roughly half the [...]

A new study published Thursday in scientific journal Nature Human Behavior connects anti-transgender legislation nationwide to “statistically significant” increases in suicide attempts by transgender youths in years subsequent to enactment. The study collected survey data between 2018 to 2022 and found that suicide attempts for transgender and non-binary (TGNB) youths increased by seven to 72 [...]

A US federal court on Wednesday partially blocked enforcement of an Alabama law criminalizing absentee ballot assistance. The court sided with a coalition of plaintiffs who argued the law would violate the rights of disabled, blind, and low-literacy voters. The judge enjoined several sections of Senate Bill 1 (SB1). The bills Submission Provision restricted an [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday called on the Texas legislature to impose stricter oversight and deny additional funds to the Texas Military Department (TMD), which oversees Texas’s National Guard (TNG) forces. This follows reports of TNG troops firing pepper-spray projectiles, commonly known as “pepper-ball,” against migrants at the US-Mexico border as part of Operation [...]

The Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), a non-profit organization advocating for Haitian immigrants, filed criminal charges against former US President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, his running mate in the current presidential race, on Tuesday. The charges, brought before a municipal court in Ohio’s Clark County, stem from false claims made by Trump and Vance [...]

Missouri carried out the execution on Tuesday of a man whose capital conviction had been marred by controversies over insufficient evidence, compromised witness testimony, and racial discrimination. In a statement, the Innocence Project, an advocacy group devoted to exonerating wrongfully convicted death row inmates, wrote of Williams’ passing: Mr. Williams’ story echoes that of too [...]