law

Lawyers for victims of human rights abuses committed during Peru’s decades-long armed conflict have pledged to appeal to international bodies to overturn a law passed by the country’s Congress, which would grant amnesty to prosecuted military and police members, as well as other forces.

“We’re not only going to the domestic arena to seek its invalidation, but we’ve already taken some action at the international level,” lawyer Gloria Cano, director of the Pro Human Rights Association, said during a news conference on Thursday.

A congressional commission on Wednesday approved the bill granting amnesty to members of the armed forces, national police and local self-defence committees, said legislator Alejandro Cavero, third vice president of the country’s Congress.

Cano also said her association had already alerted the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and planned to go to the United Nations, as well.

After the Peruvian Congress passed the bill, Volker Turk, the UN’s national human rights coordinator, said on X that “impunity does not hide the crime, it magnifies it.”

Amnesty International earlier urged the legislature to side with victims and reject the bill. “The right to justice of thousands of victims of extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, torture, and sexual violence would be violated,” the rights group said on X.

A coalition of human rights organisations in Peru said the new law could wipe out 156 convictions and another 600 cases that are being prosecuted.

The law, which awaits President Dina Boluarte’s approval, benefits uniformed personnel who were accused, are still being investigated or are being tried for crimes stemming from their participation in the country’s armed conflict from 1980 to 2000 against left-wing rebels. Boluarte has not made any comment on the amnesty, even before its passage.

The bill was presented by Congressman Fernando Rospigliosi, from the right-wing Popular Force party of Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the late former leader Alberto Fujimori.

Fujimori’s decade as president from 1990 was marked by ruthless governance.

He was jailed for atrocities – including the massacre of civilians by the army – but released from prison in 2023 on humanitarian grounds.

The new law specifies that a humanitarian amnesty will be granted to people more than 70 years old who have been sentenced or served a prison sentence.

Critics have warned that the legislation would hinder the search for truth about the period of violent conflict, which pitted state forces against Shining Path and Tupac Amaru rebels, and killed about 70,000 people.

“Granting amnesty to military and police officers cannot be a reason for impunity,” Congressman Alex Flores of the Socialist Party said during debate on the bill.

There have been numerous attempts in recent years to shield the military and police from prosecution in Peru for crimes committed during the conflict – but opponents of amnesty have found success before at international bodies.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has at least twice previously declared amnesty laws in Peru invalid for violating the right to justice and breaching international human rights standards.

Human rights advocates believe that Peru’s membership of the Inter-American System of Human Rights and the obligations this entails make the amnesty law unconstitutional.

Amnesty laws passed in 1995 in Peru shielded military and police personnel from prosecution for human rights abuses committed during the conflict, including massacres, torture, and forced disappearances.

Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the majority of the conflict’s victims were Indigenous Peruvians caught between security forces and the Shining Path. It also found that there are more than 4,000 clandestine graves across the country as a result of the two decades of political violence.

In August 2024, Peru adopted a statute of limitations for crimes against humanity committed before 2002, shutting down hundreds of investigations into alleged crimes committed during the conflict.

The initiative benefitted the late Fujimori and 600 prosecuted military personnel.

The arrest comes after the court authorises former leader’s arrest, citing concerns he may destroy evidence.

South Korea’s former president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has been arrested for a second time and returned to a solitary jail cell over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law last December.

Yoon’s detention on Thursday came after a court in the South Korean capital, Seoul, ordered his arrest, citing concerns the former leader could seek to destroy evidence.

The 64-year-old politician, who is on trial for insurrection, is being held at the Seoul Detention Center, where he spent 52 days earlier in the year before being released four months ago on technical grounds.

Yoon plunged South Korea into a political crisis when he sought to subvert civilian government on December 3, sending armed soldiers to parliament in a bid to prevent lawmakers from voting down his declaration of martial law.

He became South Korea’s first sitting president to be taken into custody when he was detained in a dawn raid in January, after spending weeks resisting arrest, using his presidential security detail to head off investigators.

But he was released on procedural grounds in March.

South Korea’s Constitutional Court then removed Yoon from office in April, paving the way for a snap election, which was held in June.

The country’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, approved legislation launching sweeping special investigations into Yoon’s push for martial law and various criminal accusations tied to his administration and wife.

Earlier this month, the special counsel questioned Yoon about his resistance during a failed arrest attempt in January, as well as accusations that he authorised drone flights to Pyongyang to help justify declaring martial law.

Yoon has defended his martial law decision as necessary to “root out” pro-North Korean and “antistate” forces.

The latest arrest warrant against Yoon authorises his detention for up to 20 days, as prosecutors prepare to formally indict him, including on additional charges.

“Once Yoon is indicted, he could remain detained for up to six months following indictment,” Yun Bok-nam, the president of Lawyers for a Democratic Society, told the AFP news agency.

“Theoretically, immediate release is possible, but in this case, the special counsel has argued that the risk of evidence destruction remains high, and that the charges are already substantially supported.”

During a hearing on the arrest warrant on Wednesday, Yoon’s legal team criticised the detention request as unreasonable, stressing that Yoon has been ousted and “no longer holds any authority”.

The former president also spoke at the seven-hour hearing, saying he is now “fighting alone”, according to South Korean media.

“The special counsel is now going after even my defence lawyers,” Yoon complained. “One by one, my lawyers are stepping away, and I may soon have to fight this alone.”

Meanwhile, Yoon’s lawyers said that the former leader would not attend the 10th hearing of his insurrection trial on Thursday following his arrest.

Citing health concerns, Yoon’s lawyers submitted a written reason for his absence to the court shortly before the hearing was scheduled to begin, according to South Korea’s official Yonhap news agency.

His lawyers, however, attended in his place, the agency said.

If convicted, Yoon could face a maximum penalty of life in prison or death.

Europe’s top human rights court has ruled that Russia violated international law in Ukraine, marking the first time an international court has found Moscow responsible for human rights abuses since the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Judges at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg are ruling on four cases brought by Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia, encompassing a wide range of alleged human rights violations since the start of the conflict, including the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

Any decision will be largely symbolic. The complaints were brought before the court’s governing body expelled Russia in 2022, following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Families of the victims of the MH17 disaster see the decision as an important milestone in their 11-year quest for justice.

The Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down on July 17, 2014, using a Russian-made Buk missile fired from territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by separatist rebels. All 298 passengers and crew were killed, including 196 Dutch citizens.

More to come…

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — Elon Musk said he’s carrying out his threat to form a new political party after his fissure with President Trump, announcing the America Party in response to the president’s sweeping tax cuts law.

Musk, once an ever-present ally to Trump as he headed up the White House advisory team, which he calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, broke with the Republican president over his signature legislation, which was signed into law Friday.

As the bill made its way through Congress, Musk threatened to form the “America Party” if “this insane spending bill passes.”

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk said Saturday on X, the social media company he owns. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

The formation of new political parties is not uncommon, but they typically struggle to pull any significant support away from the Republican and Democratic parties. But Musk, the world’s richest man who spent at least $250 million supporting Trump in the 2024 election, could affect the 2026 elections determining control of Congress if he is willing to spend significant amounts of money.

His reignited feud with the president could also be costly for Musk, whose businesses rely on billions of dollars in government contracts and publicly traded company Tesla has taken a hit in the market.

It wasn’t clear whether Musk had taken steps to formally create the new political party. Spokespeople for Musk and his political action committee, America PAC, didn’t immediately comment Sunday.

As of Sunday morning, there were multiple political parties listed in the Federal Election Commission database that had been formed in the the hours since Musk’s Saturday X post with versions of “America Party” of “DOGE” or “X” in the name, or Musk listed among people affiliated with the entity.

But none appeared to be authentic, listing contacts for the organization as email addresses such as ” [email protected]″ or untraceable Protonmail addresses.

Musk on Sunday spent the morning on X taking feedback from users about the party and indicated he’d use the party to get involved in the 2026 midterm elections.

Last month, he threatened to try to oust every member of Congress who voted for Trump’s bill. Musk had called the tax breaks and spending cuts package a “disgusting abomination,” warning it would increase the federal deficit, among other critiques.

“The Republican Party has a clean sweep of the executive, legislative and judicial branches and STILL had the nerve to massively increase the size of government, expanding the national debt by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS,” Musk said Sunday on X.

His critiques of the bill and move to form a political party mark a reversal from May, when his time in the White House was winding down and the head of rocket company SpaceX and electric vehicle maker Tesla said he would spend “a lot less” on politics in the future.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who clashed with Musk while he ran DOGE, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that DOGE’s “principles” were popular but “if you look at the polling, Elon was not.”

“I imagine that those board of directors did not like this announcement yesterday and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities,” he said.

Price writes for the Associated Press.

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has signed his signature tax and spending bill, capping a months-long push to codify his top policy priorities into law.

The sweeping bill has prompted controversy among both Democrats and members of Trump’s own Republican Party for its deep cuts to social safety programmes and the hefty sum its tax cuts and spending are expected to add to the national debt.

Recent polls have also shown tanking public support for the legislation – which Trump calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill” – as many of its provisions come to light.

Still, Trump on Friday took nothing short of a victory lap, hosting a White House signing ceremony aligned with the Independence Day celebrations in Washington, DC.

The address began with a flyover from a B-2 Spirit bomber, the same jet used in US strikes on Iran last month.

“The last two weeks, there has never been anything like it as far as winning, winning, winning,” Trump said from the White House balcony.

“I want to tell you that I’ve never seen people so happy in our country, because so many different groups of people are being taken care of.”

He also took a moment to revisit his victory in the 2024 election and reiterate his belief that voters gave him an ironclad mandate to carry out his policy agenda. He signed the bill flanked by Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson and Representative Steve Scalise.

“The American people gave us a historic mandate in November,” Trump said. “This is a triumph of democracy on the birthday of democracy.”

Opponents, meanwhile, used the occasion to again condemn the bill, with the top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, again saying that the sweeping legislation is “betraying” US citizens.

“This bill isn’t freedom. This bill isn’t independence. This bill is betrayal,” Schumer wrote on the social media platform X.

A months-long journey

The legislation represents the most substantial salvo yet in Trump’s policy blitz, in which he has mostly relied on more presidential orders than on congressional action.

The passage of his mega-bill underscores the president’s deep hold on the Republican Party, which has largely been remade in his likeness since his first term from 2017 to 2021. The party currently controls both chambers of Congress.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” is set to add an estimated $3.3 trillion to the national debt, an increase that might once have been considered a sacrilege for the party’s fiscal hawks.

It also tightens eligibility for the low-income healthcare programme Medicaid and the food assistance programme SNAP, in a move that could hurt Republicans facing tough re-election campaigns.

Still, in the end, only three Republicans in the Senate and two in the House were willing to break from Trump, in both cases leaving opponents just short of the votes needed to scuttle the bill.

For their part, Democrats were unified in their opposition.

In a last-ditch and largely symbolic effort on Thursday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries embarked on a record-breaking speech to delay any voting on the bill.

Over the next eight hours and 45 minutes, Jeffries condemned Republicans for rushing to meet Trump’s July 4 deadline, accusing them of fast-tracking a bill that many conservatives had publicly voiced discomfort towards.

“We don’t work for Donald Trump. We work for the American people,” he said at one point. “That’s why we’re right here now, on the floor of the House of Representatives, standing up for the American people.”

He maintained Republicans would be punished at the ballot box over the bill during the midterm elections in 2026.

A wide-ranging bill

The legislation covers a range of issues, from immigration to tax reforms. For example, it extends sweeping tax cuts passed in 2017 during Trump’s first term, amounting to a total of $4.5 trillion in tax reductions.

It also allows taxpayers to deduct income earned from tips and overtime, as well as interest paid on loans for buying cars made in the US, while raising exemptions on estate taxes. It also extends a child tax credit.

The administration has hailed the cuts as a victory for working-class Americans, although several analyses have found that wealthier taxpayers are most likely to benefit.

Gains for lower-income taxpayers are likely to be offset by healthcare and food assistance cuts, according to Yale University’s Budget Lab.

All told, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, about 11.8 million more Americans will be uninsured over the next 10 years due to the Medicaid cuts, with another 4.2 million to lose health insurance due to cuts to pandemic-era subsidies.

The legislation also peels back green energy and electric vehicle tax incentives, part of Trump’s wider push to pivot away from clean energy and towards the influential fossil fuel industry.

It allocates $170bn for immigration and border enforcement funding, in what the American Immigration Council calls the “largest investment in detention and deportation in US history”.

Nonpartisan analysts have said the increase in the national debt from the spending has the potential to slow economic growth, raise borrowing costs and crowd out other government spending in the years ahead.

But on Friday, Trump dismissed the criticism.

“They [Democrats] have developed a standard line: ‘We can’t let them get away with it. It’s dangerous. Everybody’s going to die,’” Trump said. “It’s actually just the opposite. Everybody’s going to live.”

“After this kicks in, our country is going to be a rocket ship, economically.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Thursday to weigh in on the growing controversy over transgender athletes and decide if federal law bars transgender girls from women’s school sports teams.

“Biological boys should not compete on girls’ athletics teams,” West Virginia Atty. Gen. JB McCusky said in an appeal the court voted to hear.

The appeal had the backing of 26 other Republican-led states as well as President Trump.

In recent weeks, Trump threatened to cut off education funds to California because a transgender athlete participated in a women’s track and field competition.

Four years ago, West Virginia adopted its Save Women’s Sports Act but the measure has been blocked as discriminatory by the 4th Circuit Court in 2-1 decision.

Idaho filed a similar appeal after its law was blocked by the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco. The court said it would hear that case together with the West Virginia case.

At issue is the meaning of Title IX, the federal education law that has been credited with opening the door for the vast expansion of women’s sports. Schools and colleges were told they must give girls equal opportunities in athletics by providing them with separate sports teams.

In the past decade, however, states and their schools divided on the question of who can participate on the girls team. Is it only those who were girls at birth or can it also include those whose gender identity is female?

West Virginia told the court its “legislature concluded that biological boys should compete on boys’ and co-ed teams but not girls’ teams. This separation made sense, the legislature found, because of the ‘inherent physical differences between biological males and biological females’.”

California and most Democratic states allow transgender girls to compete in sports competitions for women.

In 2013, the Legislature said a student “shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions…consistent with his or her gender identity.”

The Supreme Court had put off a decision on this issue while the divide among the states grew.

McCusky, West Virginia’s attorney general, said he was confident the court would uphold the state’s law. “It is time to return girls’ sports to the girls and stop this misguided gender ideology once and for all,” he said in a statement.

Lawyers for Lambda Legal and the ACLU said the court should not uphold exclusionary laws.

“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Sasha Buchert, director of Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project at Lambda Legal.

“Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”

Two years ago, the justices turned down a fast-track appeal from West Virginia’s lawyers on a 7-2 vote and allowed a 12-year old transgender girl to run on the girls’ cross country team.

Becky Pepper-Jackson and her mother sued after the school principal said she was barred by the state’s law from competing on the girls’ teams at her middle school in Bridgeport, W. Va.

She “has lived as a girl in all aspects of her life for years and receives puberty-delaying treatment and estrogen hormone therapy, so has not experienced (and will not experience) endogenous puberty,” her mother said in support of their lawsuit.

ACLU lawyers said then the court should stand aside. They said B.P.J. was eager to participate in sports but was “too slow to compete in the track events” on the girls team.

Last year, West Virginia tried again and urged the Supreme Court to review the 4th Circuit’s decision and uphold its restrictions on transgender athletes.

The state attorneys also claimed the would-be middle school athlete had become a track star.

“This spring, B.P.J. placed top three in every track event B.P.J. competed in, winning most. B.P.J. beat over 100 girls, displacing them over 250 times while denying multiple girls spots and medals in the conference championship. B.P.J. won the shot put by more than three feet while placing second in discus,” they told the court.

Last year, the court opted to rule first in a Tennessee case to decide if states may prohibit puberty blockers, hormones and other medical treatments for young teens who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

On June 18, the court’s conservative majority said state lawmakers had the authority to restrict medical treatments for adolescents who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, noting the ongoing debate over the long-term risks and benefits. The ruling turned aside the contention that law reflected unconstitutional sex discrimination.

On Thursday, the justices released their final orders list before their summer recess granting review of new cases to be heard in the fall. Included were the cases of West Virginia vs. BJP and Little vs. Hecox.

In response to the appeals, ACLU lawyers accused the state of seeking to “create a false sense of national emergency” based on a legal “challenge by one transgender girl.”

The lawsuit said the state measure was “part of a concerted nationwide effort to target transgender youth for unequal treatment.” The suit contended the law violated Title IX and was unconstitutional because it discriminated against student athletes based on their gender identity.

West Virginia’s lawyers saw a threat to Title IX and women’s sports.

They said the rulings upholding transgender rights “took a law designed to ensure meaningful competitive opportunities for women and girls—based on biological differences — and fashioned it into a lever for males to force their way onto girls’ sports teams based on identity, destroying the very opportunities Title IX was meant to protect.”

Nine months ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged to more than double the annual amount of funds allocated to California’s film and television tax credit program.

Flanked by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, legislative leaders and union representatives, Newsom said the state “needed to make a statement and to do something that was meaningful” to stop productions from leaving the state for more lucrative incentives in other states and countries.

Though Hollywood was born in California and the entertainment business became the state’s signature industry, “the world we invented is now competing against us,” he said at the time.

On Wednesday, Newsom signed a bill that will increase the cap on California’s film and TV tax credit program to $750 million, up from $330 million. Industry workers say the boost will help stimulate production that slowed due to the pandemic, the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023, a cutback in spending by studios and streamers and the Southern California wildfires earlier this year.

“We’ve got to step up our game,” Newsom said in a speech before he signed the bill. “We put our feet up, took things for granted. We needed to do something more bold and significant.”

The bill was passed by the state legislature last week and came after intense lobbying from Hollywood.

Rebecca Rhine, Directors Guild of America executive and Entertainment Union Coalition president, credited Newsom for staying committed to the production incentive boost even after the wildfires in Southern California, federal funding cuts, the state’s budget deficit and the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles.

“You understand that our industry is vital to the state’s economy and cultural vibrancy, while also sustaining thousands of businesses and attracting visitors from around the world,” she said during the signing ceremony. “Now, let’s get people back to work.”

Critics of the program and taxpayer advocates have said, however, that the tax credit is a corporate giveaway that doesn’t generate as much economic effect as promised. California’s increase also comes as states like Texas and New York have also ramped up their own film and TV tax credit programs.

But the fight isn’t over yet. Lawmakers and Hollywood industry leaders are gearing up for a vote Thursday in the legislature on a separate bill that would expand the provisions of the film tax credit program, which they say is key to making production more attractive in California and must pair with the increased program cap.

That bill, AB 1138, would broaden the types of productions eligible to apply for the program, including animated films, shorts, series and certain large-scale competition shows. It would also increase the tax credit to as much as 35% of qualified expenditures for movies and TV series shot in the Greater Los Angeles area and up to 40% for productions shot outside the region.

California currently provides a 20% to 25% tax credit to offset qualified production expenses, such as money spent on film crews and building sets. Production companies can apply the credit toward any tax liabilities they have in California.

The bump to 35% puts California more in line with incentives offered by other states such as Georgia, which provides a 30% credit for productions.

“This bill is the second step,” Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur said during Wednesday’s press conference. “It’s about maximizing economic impact, prioritizing equity and turning the tide on job loss.”

Newsom also held out hope for the possibility of a federal film and TV tax incentive, which he had floated in May after President Trump called for tariffs on film produced overseas.

“We’d like to see [Trump] match the ambition that we’re advancing here today in California with the ambition to keep filmmaking all across the United States, here in the United States,” Newsom said. “I am hopeful that we, in the hands of partnership, continue to work with the administration.”

July 2 (UPI) — Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a ruling that invalidated an 1849 state law banning nearly all abortions and said Wisconsin women will continue to have access to critical abortion-related health services.

The 4-3 ruling by the Democratic-controlled state supreme court upheld a December 2023 decision by Dane County Judge Diane Schlipper in Kaul v. Urmanski that says Wisconsin’s strict abortion law did not apply to voluntary abortions, but did to feticide.

Justice Rebecca Dallet argued in the court’s majority opinion that the state effectively repealed its own 176-year-old law when lawmakers passed additional laws that regulated abortion access in Wisconsin, which was backed up in the lawsuit by state Attorney General Josh Kaul.

Dallet said the case was about “giving effect to 50 years’ worth of laws passed by the legislature about virtually every aspect of abortion, including where, when, and how healthcare providers may lawfully perform abortions.”

But she added that the state’s legislature, “as the people’s representatives, remains free to change the laws with respect to abortion in the future.

Then-Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, later appointed as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2001-2005 under former President George W. Bush, told UPI in 1990 that he would sign a bill that mandates minors seek parental consent for an abortion.

But Wednesday’s ruling by the state’s high court now ends statewide uncertainty over the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling struck down the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a woman’s constitutional right to abortion.

However, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of its conservative minority, was critical of the court’s majority opinion.

On Wednesday, Bradley wrote that her colleagues erased “a law it does not like, making four lawyers sitting on the state’s highest court more powerful than the People’s representatives in the legislature.”

Notably, this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race saw national attention when then-White House DOGE adviser Elon Musk drew the ire of Kaul, the state’s chief law enforcement officer, after Musk directly got involved in a push to elect conservative Brad Schimel in the court race Musk said had the “destiny of humanity” at stake.

“Any remaining doubt over whether the majority’s decisions are motivated by the policy predilections of its members has been extinguished by its feeble attempt to justify a raw exercise of political power,” stated Bradley.

“The majority not only does violence to a single statute; it defies the People’s sovereignty,” she wrote.

Iran is also considering an entry ban on IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, after rejecting his request to visit nuclear sites.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has signed a law suspending cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), amid growing tensions between Tehran and the UN nuclear watchdog over monitoring access and transparency, after United States and Israeli strikes on its most important nuclear facilities during a 12-day conflict last month.

“Masoud Pezeshkian promulgated the law suspending cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Iranian state TV reported on Wednesday.

The move comes a week after Iran’s parliament passed legislation to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, citing Israel’s June 13 attack on Iran and later strikes by the US on Iranian nuclear facilities.

According to the parliament resolution, IAEA inspectors will not be allowed to visit nuclear sites without approval from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

Iran’s foreign minister earlier this week said IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, whom Iranian officials have sharply criticised for failing to condemn Israeli and US strikes during the recent 12-day war, was no longer welcome in the country.

Officials have also criticised Grossi over a June 12 resolution passed by the IAEA board accusing Tehran of non-compliance with its nuclear obligations.

Iranian officials said the resolution was among the “excuses” for the Israeli attacks.

Iran has also rejected a request from IAEA chief Grossi to visit nuclear facilities bombed during the war.

“Grossi’s insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent,” said Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on X on Monday. “Iran reserves the right to take any steps in defence of its interests, its people and its sovereignty.”

Earlier this week, Pezeshkian decried Grossi’s “destructive” conduct, while France, Germany and the United Kingdom have condemned unspecified “threats” made against the IAEA chief.

Iran’s ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper recently claimed that documents showed Grossi was an Israeli spy and should be executed.

Iran has insisted no threats were posed against Grossi or the agency’s inspectors.

The 12-day war began when Israel carried out a surprise bombardment of Iranian nuclear facilities and military sites and assassinated several top military commanders and nuclear scientists. Tehran responded with waves of missiles and drones at Israel.

On June 22, Israel’s ally, the US, launched unprecedented strikes of its own on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz. A ceasefire between Iran and Israel took hold on June 24.

At least 935 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Iran, according to judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir, citing the latest forensic data. The deceased included 132 women and 38 children, Jahangir added.

Iran’s retaliatory attacks killed 28 people in Israel, according to authorities.

US President Donald Trump said the US attacks had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme, though the extent of the damage was not clear.

Araghchi has admitted that “serious” damage has been inflicted on nuclear sites.

But in a recent interview with US media outlet CBS Evening News, he said: “One cannot obliterate the technology and science… through bombings.”

Israel and some Western countries say Iran has sought nuclear weapons – an ambition Tehran has consistently denied.

DES MOINES — Iowa became the first state to remove gender identity from its civil rights code under a law that took effect Tuesday, meaning transgender and nonbinary residents are no longer protected from discrimination in their job, housing and other aspects of life.

The law also explicitly defines female and male based on reproductive organs at birth and removes the ability for people to change the sex designation on their birth certificate.

An unprecedented take-back of legal rights after nearly two decades in Iowa code leaves transgender, nonbinary and potentially even intersex Iowans more vulnerable now than they were before. It’s a governing doctrine now widely adopted by President Trump and Republican-led states despite the mainstream medical view that sex and gender are better understood as a spectrum than as an either-or definition.

When Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed Iowa’s new law, she said the state’s previous civil rights code “blurred the biological line between the sexes.”

“It’s common sense to acknowledge the obvious biological differences between men and women. In fact, it’s necessary to secure genuine equal protection for women and girls,” she said in a video statement.

Also taking effect Tuesday are provisions in the state’s health and human services budget that say Medicaid recipients are no longer covered for gender-affirming surgery or hormone therapy.

A national movement

Iowa’s state Capitol filled with protesters as the law went through the Republican-controlled Legislature and to Reynolds’ desk in just one week in February. Iowa Republicans said laws passed in recent years to restrict transgender students’ use of bathrooms and locker rooms, and their participation on sports teams, could not coexist with a civil rights code that includes gender identity protections.

About two dozen other states and the Trump administration have advanced restrictions on transgender people. Republicans say such laws and executive actions protect spaces for women, rejecting the idea that people can transition to another gender. Many face court challenges.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults believe that whether a person is a man or woman is determined by biological characteristics at birth, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in May found. But there’s less consensus on policies that target transgender and nonbinary people.

Transgender people say those kinds of policies deny their existence and capitalize on prejudice for political gain.

In a major setback for transgender rights nationwide, the U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors. The court’s conservative majority said it doesn’t violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.

Not every state includes gender identity in their civil rights code, but Iowa was the first to remove nondiscrimination protections based on gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank.

Incidents of discrimination in Iowa, before and after July 1

Iowans will still have time to file a complaint with the state Office of Civil Rights about discrimination based on gender identity that occurred before the law took effect.

State law requires a complaint to be submitted within 300 days after the most recent incident of alleged discrimination. That means people have until April 27 to file a complaint about discrimination based on gender identity, according to Kristen Stiffler, the office’s executive director.

Sixty-five such complaints were filed and accepted for investigation from July 2023 through the end of June 2024, according to Stiffler. Forty-three were filed and accepted from July 1, 2024, through June 19 of this year.

Iowa state Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, a Democrat and the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker, fears the law will lead to an increase in discrimination for transgender Iowans.

“Anytime someone has to check your ID and they see that the gender marker doesn’t match the appearance, then that opens up hostility, discrimination as possibilities,” Wichtendahl said, naming examples such as applying for a job, going through the airport, buying beer or getting pulled over in a traffic stop. “That instantly outs you. That instantly puts you on the spot.”

About half of U.S. states include gender identity in their civil rights code to protect against discrimination in housing and public places, such as stores or restaurants, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Some additional states do not explicitly protect against such discrimination, but it is included in legal interpretations of statutes.

Five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled LGBTQ+ people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. But Iowa’s Supreme Court has expressly rejected the argument that discrimination based on sex includes discrimination based on gender identity.

Changing Iowa birth certificates before the law took effect

The months between when the bill was signed into law and when it took effect gave transgender Iowans time to pursue amended birth certificates before that option was eliminated.

Keenan Crow, with LGBTQ+ advocacy group One Iowa, said the group has long co-sponsored legal clinics to assist with that process.

“The last one that we had was by far the biggest,” Crow said.

Iowa’s Department of Transportation still has a process by which people can change the gender designation on their license or identification card, but has proposed administrative rules to eliminate that option.

Wichtendahl also said she has talked to some families who are looking to move out of state as a result of the new law.

“It’s heartbreaking because this is people’s lives we’re talking about,” Wichtendahl added. “These are families that have trans loved ones and it’s keeping their loved ones away, it’s putting their loved ones into uncertain future, putting their health and safety at risk.”

Fingerhut writes for the Associated Press.

This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom touched one of the third rails of California politics. He hopes the result sends a shock through the state’s homebuilding industry.

Newsom strong armed the state Legislature into passing what experts believe are the most significant reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, since the law was signed in 1970.

The changes waive CEQA for just about any proposed low- or mid-rise development in urban neighborhoods zoned for multifamily housing. No more thousand-page studies of soils, the shadows the buildings may cast and traffic they may bring. No more risk of CEQA lawsuits from angry neighbors.

Wiping away these rules shows that no matter how challenging the politics, the state will remove the barriers it has built over decades that have ended up stifling housing construction and suffocating Californians’ ability to live affordably, the governor said when signing the legislation Monday evening.

“The world we invented has been competing against us,” Newsom said. “We have got to perform.”

Californians won’t have to wait long for the effects of the reforms. They took effect with the stroke of the governor’s pen.

At least in the short term, the result may be less of an immediate impact on construction and more of a revolution in how development in California cities gets done. Numerous hurdles both within and outside of the control of local and state governments — interest rates, availability of labor, zoning, material prices and tariffs among them — still will determine if housing is built. What’s changed is that the key point of leverage outside groups have wielded, for good and for ill, over housing construction in California communities is gone.

It can be hard to understand how CEQA became, in the words of one critic, “the law that swallowed California.”

At base, all CEQA says is that proponents of a project must disclose and, if possible, lessen its environmental effects before being approved. Yet the process CEQA kicks off can take years as developers and local governments complete reams of studies, opponents sue them as inadequate and judges send everyone back to start all over again.

Time is money, and project opponents soon realized that they could use this uncertainty to their advantage. Sometimes, if their complaints fell on deaf ears at City Hall, threatening a CEQA challenge was the only way to get themselves heard and avoid harmful outcomes. But in other circumstances, the law became a powerful cudgel wielded to influence concerns that at best had a tangential relationship to the environment.

Examples are legion. The owner of a gas station in San Jose sued a nearby rival gas station that wanted to add a few more pumps. Pro-life advocates sued a proposed Planned Parenthood clinic in South San Francisco. Homeowners in Berkeley sued the University of California over its plans to increase enrollment at the state’s flagship university and the traffic and noise that might result.

Over time, CEQA negotiations became embedded in California’s development regime, known and used by all the major players. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass once recalled that as a community organizer in South L.A. in the 1990s she used CEQA to try to stop liquor stores from opening. A company owned by billionaire developer Rick Caruso, Bass’ opponent in the most recent mayoral election and normally a CEQA critic, this year filed a CEQA lawsuit challenging a major redevelopment of a television studio near a Caruso shopping mall.

For housing, the primary interest group invested in CEQA at the state level has been labor organizations representing construction workers. Their leaders have argued that if legislators grant CEQA relief to developers, which boosts their bottom lines, then workers should share in the spoils through better pay and benefits.

This union opposition was enough in 2016 to prevent a proposal from then-Gov. Jerry Brown to limit CEQA challenges to urban housing development from even getting a vote in a legislative committee. A year later, a version of Brown’s bill passed but only because developers who wanted to take advantage were required to pay union-level wages to workers.

Just about every year since, lawmakers have engaged in this dance with labor groups. In 2022, the California Conference of Carpenters defected from the State Building and Construction Trades Council and supported a less-strict version of labor standards, which lawmakers ushered into multiple bills.

But housing construction hasn’t followed. The number of projects that have been issued permits are millions less than what Newsom promised to build on the campaign trail in 2018. Californians continue to pay record prices to house themselves, and those fleeing the state often cite the cost of living as the reason. Newsom and legislators decided they needed to do more.

“We don’t want to sit here and ram our head against the wall on the politics and then have nothing to show for it,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) at Monday’s signing ceremony.

Wicks authored legislation this year that waived CEQA rules for urban housing development without any labor requirements and was working it through the regular process. In May, Newsom grabbed Wicks’ bill and additional CEQA reform legislation and said he wanted them to pass as part of the budget. Doing so would fast-track the bills into law without the normal whittling down that happens in committee hearings.

As budget negotiations heated up, Newsom doubled down. In a rare move, he insisted on tying the approval of the state’s entire spending plan for this year to the passage of CEQA reforms. That meant legislators who otherwise would be opposed could only vote no if they were willing to torpedo the budget.

What emerged was a clean CEQA exemption for homebuilders in urban multifamily areas. Union-level wages for construction workers only are required for high-rise or low-income buildings, both of which often are paid now because of specialized labor required for taller buildings and other state and local rules for affordable construction.

CEQA doesn’t typically affect single-family home construction in established communities.

How much this is going to matter immediately for homebuilding isn’t clear. Studies are mixed on CEQA’s effects. One by UC Berkeley law professors found that fewer than 3% of housing projects in many big cities across the state over a three-year period faced any CEQA litigation. Another found tens of thousands of housing units challenged under CEQA in just one year. Still, more advocates of reform argue that it’s impossible to quantify the chilling effect that the threat of CEQA lawsuits have on development in California and how much the law has dominated the debate.

“This signals a seismic shift in Democratic politics in California from NIMBYism to abundance,” said Mott Smith, board chair of the Council of Infill Builders, a real estate trade group that advocates for urban housing. “You can touch this mythical third rail and live to see another day.”

Those who live across the street from a proposed five-story apartment building and oppose the housing will have to find a way other than a 55-year-old environmental law to stop it.

The thing about bullies is they don’t have real friends.

They have lieutenants, followers and victims — sometimes all three rolled into one.

Most of us learn this by about third grade, when parents and hard knocks teach us how to figure out whom you can trust, and who will eat you for lunch.

Elon Musk, at age 54 with $400 billion in the bank, just learned it this week — when his feud with our bully-in-chief devolved into threats that the president will have the South African native deported.

Speaking about Musk losing government support for electric cars, Trump this week warned that Musk “could lose a lot more than that.”

“We might have had to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said, referencing Musk’s cost-cutting effort called the Department of Government Efficiency. “DOGE is the monster that … might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible?”

Yes, I know. Schadenfreude is real. It’s hard not to sit back with a bit of “told ya” satisfaction as we watch Musk — who has nearly single-handedly demolished everything from hurricane tracking to international aid for starving children — realize that Trump doesn’t love him.

But because Musk is the richest man in the world, who also now understands he has the power to buy votes if not elections, and Trump is grabbing power at every opportunity, there’s too much at stake to ignore the pitiful interpersonal dynamics of these two tantrumming titans.

What does it have to do with you and me, you ask? Well, there’s a potential fallout that is worrisome: The use of denaturalization against political enemies.

In case you’ve been blessedly ignorant of the Trump-Musk meltdown, let me recap.

Once upon a time, nine months ago, Musk and Trump were so tight, it literally had Musk jumping for joy. During a surprise appearance at a Butler, Pa., political rally (the same place where Trump was nearly assassinated), Musk leaped into the air, arms raised, belly exposed, with the pure delight of simply being included as a follower, albeit one who funneled $290 million into election coffers. Back then, Musk had no concern that it wasn’t his own dazzling presence that got him invited places.

By January, Musk had transitioned to lieutenant, making up DOGE, complete with cringey swag, like a lonely preteen dreaming up a secret club in his tree house. Only this club had the power to dismantle the federal government as we know it and create a level of social destruction whose effects won’t be fully understood for generations. Serious villain energy.

But then he got too full of himself, the No. 1 sin for a lieutenant. Somewhere along the line, Trump noticed (or perhaps someone whispered in the president’s ear) that Musk was just as powerful as he is — maybe more.

Cue the fallout, the big “see ya” from the White House (complete with a shoving match with another Trump lieutenant) and Musk’s sad realization that, like everyone else in a bully’s orbit, he was being used like a Kleenex and was never going to wind up anyplace but the trash.

So Musk took to his social media platform to start bashing on Trump and the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed in the Senate on Tuesday, clearing the way for our national debt to skyrocket while the poor and middle class suffer.

“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE,” Musk threatened, conjuring up a new political party the same way he ginned up DOGE.

Musk even promised to bankroll more elections to back candidates to oust Trumpians who voted for the bill.

“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” Musk wrote. Presumably before he leaves for Mars.

It was those direct — and plausible — threats to Trump’s power that caused the president to turn his eye of Sauron on Musk, flexing that he might consider deportation for this transgression of defiance. It might seem entertaining if Musk, who the Washington Post reported may have violated immigration rules, were booted from our borders, but it would set a chilling precedent that standing up to this president was punishable by a loss of citizenship.

Because the threat of deporting political enemies didn’t start with Musk, and surely would not end with him.

For days, Trumpians have suggested that New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a U.S. citizen in 2018, should be deported as well, for the crime of backing policies that range in description from progressive to socialist to communist (pretty sure the ones labeling them communism don’t actually know what communism is).

On Tuesday, Trump weighed in on Mamdani.

“A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally,” Trump said, which of course, no one is except for Trump’s attack dogs. “We’re going to look at everything.”

Denaturalization for immigration fraud — basically lying or misrepresenting stuff on your official application — is nothing new. Obama did it, as did Trump in his first term, and it has a long history before that.

But combing the documents of political enemies looking for pretexts to call fraud is chilling.

“This culture of weaponizing the law to go after enemies, it’s something that is against our founding principles,” Ben Radd told me. He’s a professor of law and an expert in political science at UCLA.

“It is very much an abuse of executive power, but [Trump] gets away with it until there’s a legal challenge,” Radd said.

While Musk and Mamdani have the power to fight Trump in a court of law, if it comes to it, other naturalized citizens may not.

There are about 25 million such citizens in the United States — people who immigrated in the “right” way, whatever that means, jumped through the hoops, said their pledge of fealty to this country and now are Americans. Or so they thought.

In reality, under Trump, they are mostly Americans, as long as they don’t make him mad. The threat of having citizenship stripped for opposing the administration is powerful enough to silence many, in a moment when many immigrants feel a personal duty and impetus to speak out to protect family and friends.

Aiming that threat at Musk may be the opportunistic anger of a bully, and even seem amusing.

But it’s an intimidation meant to show that no one is too powerful to be punished by this bully, and therefore, no one is safe.

WASHINGTON — In a final push to prevent passage of President Trump’s signature legislation into law, Elon Musk, once his largest benefactor and later his top White House aide, threw the kitchen sink at his former boss.

The world’s richest man threatened to fund primary challenges against supporters of the bill “if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” He threatened to fund the creation of a third party based on fiscal responsibility. And he accused the president of using the bill as a vehicle to defund the ability of courts to enforce contempt orders, making it all but impossible to hold him and his allies accountable for violating the law.

There is still a slim chance that Musk succeeds. But a Senate vote approving the bill on Tuesday brought Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to the doorstep of passage. The only thing standing in its way now is a handful of Republican lawmakers in the House.

Trump reacted to Musk’s campaign on Tuesday with a pointed threat. The Department of Government Efficiency, a federal program Musk ran at the start of the administration that aimed to reduce federal spending, could be directed to gut Musk’s properties of federal contracts, the president warned.

“We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said. Musk owns SpaceX, an aerospace company with deep ties to NASA, as well as Tesla and the X social media platform. “You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon — wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.”

“If DOGE looks at Musk, we’re going to save a fortune,” Trump later added. “I don’t think he should be playing that game with me.”

The “Big Beautiful Bill” included several provisions that could have rankled Musk, including a phaseout of green energy tax credits passed during the Biden administration that have benefited companies like Tesla.

But Musk said his priority in the bill was not its impact on the electric vehicle market. Instead, his concern is its overall price tag — a ballooning of the federal debt over the next decades that he said fundamentally undermines his work in the administration.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the Senate version of the bill will add $4 trillion to the debt by 2034, and even more if Congress votes later on to remove a series of expiration dates built into the legislation.

Musk left the Trump administration at the end of his tenure as a special government employee in late May, honored in the Oval Office by Trump with a press conference and a custom embroidered key. But the men fell out dramatically days later, trading insults in an acrimonious public feud that included Musk taking credit for Trump’s election victory.

Even within the last few days, Trump has offered mixed messages on the state of his relationship with Musk, wishing him only the best in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business.

By Tuesday morning, he was telling reporters that he would “take a look” at deporting Musk, a U.S. citizen.

“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “and head back to South Africa.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court term that ended Friday will not be remembered for blockbuster rulings like those recent years that struck down the right to abortion and college affirmative action.

The justices scaled back their docket this year and spent much of their energy focused on deciding fast-track appeals from President Trump. His administration’s lawyers complained too many judges were standing in the way of Trump’s agenda.

On Friday, the court’s conservatives agreed to rein in district judges, a procedural victory for Trump.

What’s been missing so far, however, is a clear ruling on whether the president has abided by the law or overstepped his authority under the U.S. Constitution.

On the final two days of the term, the court’s conservative majority provided big wins for Republican-leaning states, religious parents and Trump.

The justices gave states more authority to prohibit medical treatments for transgender teens, to deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood clinics and to enforce age-verification laws for online porn sites.

Each came with the familiar 6-3 split, with the Republican appointees siding with the GOP-led states, while the Democratic appointees dissented.

These rulings, while significant, were something short of nationwide landmark decisions — celebrated victories for the Republican half of the nation but having no direct or immediate effect on Democratic-led states.

California lawmakers are not likely to pass measures to restrict gender-affirming care or to prohibit women on Medicaid from obtaining birth control, pregnancy testing or medical screenings at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

The new decisions echoed the Dobbs ruling three years ago that struck down Roe vs. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.

As the conservative justices noted, the decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health did not outlaw abortion nationwide. However, it did allow conservative states to do so. Since then, 17 Republican-led states in the South and Midwest have adopted new laws to prohibit most or all abortions.

On this front, the court’s decisions reflect a “federalism,” or states-rights style of conservatism, that was dominant in decades past under President Reagan and two of the court’s conservative leaders, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Both were Arizona Republicans (and in O’Connor’s case, a former state legislator) who came to the court with that view that Washington holds too much power and wields too much control over states and local governments.

With the nation sharply divided along partisan lines, today’s conservative court could be praised or defended for freeing states to make different choices on the “culture wars.”

The other big winner so far this year has been Trump and his broad claims of executive power.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has asserted he has total authority to run federal agencies, cut their spending and fire most of their employees, all without the approval of Congress, which created and funded the agencies.

He has also claimed the authority to impose tariffs of any amount on any country and also change his mind a few days later.

He has dispatched National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles against the wishes of the governor and the mayor.

He has asserted he can punish universities and law firms.

He has claimed he can revise by executive order the 14th Amendment and its birthright citizenship clause.

So far, the Supreme Court has not ruled squarely on Trump’s broad assertions of power. But the justices have granted a series of emergency appeals from Trump’s lawyers and set aside lower court orders that blocked his initiatives from taking effect.

The theme has been that judges are out of line, not the president.

Friday’s ruling limiting nationwide injunctions set out that view in a 26-page opinion. The conservatives agreed that some judges have overstepped their authority by ruling broadly based on a single lawsuit.

The justices have yet to rule on whether the president has overstepped his power.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett summed up the dispute in a revealing comment responding to a dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,” she wrote.

Missing from all this is the earlier strain of conservatism that opposed concentrated power in Washington — and in this instance, in one person.

Last year offered a hint of what was to come. A year ago, the court ended its term by declaring the president is immune from being prosecuted for his official acts while in the White House.

That decision, in Trump vs. United States, shielded the former and soon-to-be president from the criminal law.

The Constitution does not mention any such immunity for ex-presidents charged with crimes, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said a shield of immunity was necessary to “enable the the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution.”

Since returning to the White House, Trump has not been accused of exercising “undue caution.”

Instead, he appears to have viewed the court’s opinion as confirming his unchecked power as the nation’s chief executive. Trump advisors say that because the president was elected, he has a mandate and the authority to put his priorities and policies into effect.

But the Supreme Court’s conservatives did not take that view when President Biden took office promising to take action on climate change and to reduce the burden of student loan debt.

In both areas, the Roberts court ruled that the Biden administration had exceeded its authority under the laws passed by Congress.

Away from Washington, the most significant decision from this term may be Friday’s ruling empowering parents.

The six justices on the right ruled parents have a right to remove their children from certain public school classes that offend their religious beliefs. They objected to new storybooks and lessons for young children with LGBTQ+ themes.

In recent years, the court, led by Roberts, has championed the “free exercise” of religion that is protected by the 1st Amendment. In a series of decisions, the court has exempted Catholic schools and charities from laws or regulations on, for example, providing contraceptives to employees.

Friday’s ruling in a Maryland case extended that religious liberty right into the schools and ruled for Muslim and Catholic parents who objected to new LGBTQ+-themed storybooks.

At first, the school board said parents could have their young children “opt out” of those classes. But when too many parents took the offer, the school board rescinded it.

The clash between progressive educators and conservative parents reached the court when the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty appealed on behalf of the parents.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the parents believed the books and stories offended their religious beliefs, and he ordered school authorities to “to notify them in advance whenever one of the books in question is to be used … and allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.”

This decision may have a broader impact than any from this term because it empowers parents nationwide. But it too has limits. It does not require the schools to change their curriculum and their lessons or remove any books from the shelves.

The conservatives fell one vote short in a case that could have brought about a far-reaching change in American schools. Split 4 to 4, the justices could not rule to uphold the nation’s first publicly funded, church-run charter school.

In the past, Roberts had voted to allow students to use state tuition grants in religious schools, but he appeared uncertain about using tax money to operate a church-run school.

But that question is almost certain to return to the court. Barrett stepped aside from the Oklahoma case heard in April because friends and former colleagues at the Notre Dame Law School had filed the appeal. But in a future case, she could participate and cast a deciding vote.

California’s fight to rein in President Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles hinges on a 19th century law with a a blood-soaked origin and a name that seems pulled from a Spaghetti Western.

In a pivotal ruling this week, Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer ordered the federal government to hand over evidence to state authorities seeking to prove that the actions of troops in Southern California violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which forbids soldiers from enforcing civilian laws.

“How President Trump has used and is using the federalized National Guard and the Marines since deploying them at the beginning of June is plainly relevant to the Posse Comitatus Act,” Breyer wrote Wednesday in his order authorizing “limited expedited discovery.”

The Trump administration objected to the move and has already once gotten a sweeping Breyer ruling that would’ve limited White House authority over the troops overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

This time, the Northern District of California judge made clear he would “only allow discovery as to the Posse Comitatus Act” — signaling what could be the state’s last stand battle to prevent Marines and National Guard forces from participating in immigration enforcement.

The Posse Comitatus Act dates back to the aftermath of the Civil War when the American government faced violent resistance to its efforts to rebuild Southern state governments and enforce federal law following the abolition of slavery.

The text of the law itself is slight, its relevant section barely more than 60 words. Yet when it was enacted, it served as the legal epitaph to Reconstruction — and a preface to Jim Crow.

“It has these very ignoble beginnings,” said Mark P. Nevitt, a law professor at Emory University and one of the country’s foremost experts on the statute.

Before the Civil War, the U.S. military was kept small, in part to avoid the kinds of abuses American colonists suffered under the British.

Authorities back then could marshal a crew of civilians, called a posse comitatus, to assist them, as sometimes happened in California during the Gold Rush. States also had militias that could be called up by the president to pad out the army in wartime.

But law enforcement by the U.S. military was rare and deeply unpopular. Historians have said the use of soldiers to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act — which saw escaped slaves hunted down and returned to the South — helped spark the Civil War.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has used constitutional maneuvers invented to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act to justify using troops to round up immigrants. Experts said leaders from the antebellum South demanded similar enforcement of the law.

“The South was all for posse comitatus when it came to the Fugitive Slave Act,” said Josh Dubbert, a historian at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library in Ohio.

But by the time Congress sent federal troops to begin Reconstruction in earnest in 1867, the landscape was very different.

After white rioters razed Black neighborhoods in Memphis and mobs of ex-Confederate soldiers massacred Black demonstrators in New Orleans in the spring of 1866, “most of the South [was] turned into military districts,” said Jacob Calhoun, a professor of American history at Wabash College and an expert on Reconstruction.

“Most scholars, let alone the American public, do not understand the scale of racial violence during Reconstruction,” Calhoun said. “They only send these troops in after unimaginable levels of violence.”

At the polls, Black voters were met by white gangs seeking to prevent them from casting ballots.

“For most of American history, the idea of an American army intervening in elections is a nightmare,” Calhoun said. “[Posse Comitatus] is reemphasizing this longstanding belief but for more nefarious purposes.”

The Posse Comitatus language was tucked into an appropriations bill by Southern Democrats after their party won control of Congress in the election of 1876 — “possibly the most violent election in American history_,” Calhoun said.

Historians say white lawmakers in the post-war South sought to enshrine their ability to keep Black men from voting by barring federal forces from bolstering the local militias that protected them.

“Once they’re in control of Congress, they want to cut the appropriations for the army,” Dubbert said. “They attach this amendment to [their appropriations bill] which is the Posse Comitatus Act.”

The bill won support from some Republicans, who resented the use of federalized troops to put down the Railroad Strike of 1877 — the first national labor strike in the U.S.

“It is a moment in which white Northern congressmen surrender the South back to ex-Confederates,” Calhoun said. “With the Posse Comitatus Act, racial violence becomes the norm.”

Yet the statute itself largely vanished from memory, little used for most of the next century.

“The Posse Comitatus Act was forgotten for about 75 years, from after Reconstruction to basically the 1950s, when a defense lawyer made a challenge to a piece of evidence that the Army had obtained,” Nevitt said. “The case law is [all] after World War II.”

Those cases have largely turned on troops who arrest, search, seize or detain civilians — “the normal thing the LAPD does on a daily basis,” Nevitt said. The courts have stood by the bedrock principle that military personnel should not be used to enforce the law against civilians, he said, except in times of rebellion or other extreme scenarios.

“Our nation was forged in large part because the British military was violating the civil rights of colonists in New England,” Nevitt said. “I really can’t think of a more important question than the military’s ability to use force against Americans.”

Yet, the law is full of loopholes, scholars said — notably in relation to use of the National Guard.

Department of Justice has argued Posse Comitatus does not apply to the military’s current actions in Southern California — and even if it did, the soldiers deployed there haven’t violated the law. It also claimed the 9th Circuit decision endorsing Trump’s authority to call up troops rendered the Posse Comitatus issue moot.

Some experts feel California’s case is strong.

“You literally have military roaming the streets of Los Angeles with civilian law enforcement,” said Shilpi Agarwal, legal director of the ACLU of Northern California, “That’s exactly what the [act] is designed to prevent.”

But Nevitt was more doubtful. Even if Breyer ultimately rules that Trump’s troops are violating the law and grants the injunction California is seeking, the 9th Circuit will almost certainly strike it down, he said.

“It’s going to be an uphill battle,” the attorney said. “And if they find a way to get to the Supreme Court, I see the Supreme Court siding with Trump as well.”

Catholic pontiff says international rules have been ‘replaced by the presumed right to overpower others’.

Pope Leo XIV has lamented what he described as the rise of blunt power over the rules of international law as conflicts rage around the world and global institutions continue to fail to end abuses and war crimes.

“It is disheartening to see today that the strength of international law and humanitarian law no longer seems binding, replaced by the presumed right to overpower others,” the pontiff said in a social media post on Thursday.

“This is unworthy and shameful for humanity and for the leaders of nations.”

Leo did not elaborate on his remarks, but his statement comes amid growing calls for ending the Israeli assault on Gaza, which leading rights advocates and United Nations experts have described as a genocide.

Israel has faced growing accusations of violating international humanitarian law, a set of rules meant to protect civilians in conflict, during its conflict with Palestinians.

Backed by the United States, the Israeli military has levelled large parts of Gaza, displaced nearly its entire population and killed at least 56,156 in the territory, according to health officials.

Earlier this month, former US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller, who spearheaded Washington’s defence of Israel’s conduct during the Joe Biden administration, acknowledged that the Israeli military has “without a doubt” committed war crimes in Gaza.

Israel stands in defiance of several international resolutions, including rulings by the International Criminal Court, the top UN tribunal, against the Israeli blockade and killings in Gaza.

Last year, the ICJ also declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory – East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza – unlawful and called for its end “as rapidly as possible”.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over possible war crimes in Gaza, including using starvation as a weapon of war.

But most members of the ICC, especially in Europe, have maintained their deep trade and military ties to Israel despite the charges.

After succeeding the late Pope Francis in May, becoming the first pontiff from the US, Leo pleaded for an end to the war on Gaza.

“Ceasefire now,” Leo, the top spiritual authority for about 1.4 billion Catholics around the world, said in May.

“From the Gaza Strip, we hear rising ever more insistently to the heavens, the cries of mothers and fathers who clutch the lifeless bodies of their children, and who are continually forced to move about in search of a little food and water and safer shelter from bombardments.”

As the war in Gaza continues, deadly conflicts and reports of abuses in Sudan and Ukraine have also persisted.

AUSTIN, Texas — A group of Dallas-area families and faith leaders have filed a lawsuit seeking to block a new Texas law that requires copies of the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom.

The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims the measure is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state.

Texas is the latest and largest state to attempt a mandate that has run into legal challenges elsewhere. A federal appeals court on Friday blocked a similar law in Louisiana. Some families have sued over Arkansas’ law.

The plaintiffs in the Texas lawsuit are a group of Christian and Nation of Islam faith leaders and families. It names the Texas Education Agency, state education Commissioner Mike Morath and three Dallas-area school districts as defendants.

“The government should govern; the Church should minister,” the lawsuit said. “Anything else is a threat to the soul of both our democracy and our faith.”

Ten Commandments laws are among efforts, mainly in conservative-led states, to insert religion into public schools. Supporters say the Ten Commandments are part of the foundation of the United States’ judicial and educational systems and should be displayed.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Ten Commandments measure into law on June 21. He also has enacted a measure requiring school districts to provide students and staff a daily voluntary period of prayer or time to read a religious text during school hours.

Opponents say the Ten Commandments and prayer measures infringe on others’ religious freedom and more lawsuits are expected. The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation have said they will file lawsuits opposing the Ten Commandments measure.

Under the new law, public schools must post in classrooms a 16-by-20-inch or larger poster or framed copy of a specific English version of the commandments, even though translations and interpretations vary across denominations, faiths and languages and may differ in homes and houses of worship.

The lawsuit notes that Texas has nearly 6 million students in about 9,100 public schools, including thousands of students of faiths that have little or no connection to the Ten Commandments, or may have no faith at all.

The Texas Education Agency did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. The law takes effect Sept. 1, but most public school districts start the upcoming school year in August.

Vertuno writes for the Associated Press.

The complaint alleges that a law requiring the religious text violates ‘fundamental religious-freedom principles’ in the US.

A group of faith leaders in the United States have filed a lawsuit seeking to block the state of Texas from requiring the Ten Commandments, as detailed in the Old Testament of the Bible, to be displayed in public classrooms.

Their legal challenge on Tuesday comes just days after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the legislation, which would make Texas the largest state in the country to impose such a requirement.

In the lawsuit, the Christian and Muslim faith leaders argue that the law would subject nearly six million students across Texas’s 9,100 public schools to “religious mandates, every single school day”.

“This is wholly inconsistent with the fundamental religious-freedom principles … upon which our nation was founded,” said the lawsuit.

It further noted that children who attend public schools in Texas “follow various faiths and religions, or do not practice any religion at all”.

The US Constitution protects the right to practice — or not practice — a religion without interference from the government.

Meanwhile, the concept of the “separation of church and state” has long been seen as a bedrock principle in US law. While it is not directly referred to in the US Constitution, its roots have been traced back to the US colonial period.

Thomas Jefferson, the country’s third president, used the phrase to discuss the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion”. The concept has also been upheld by several Supreme Court rulings.

Still, a handful of conservative-led states have sought to pass laws mixing public education with elements from the Christian religion.

In 2024, Louisiana became the first state in the US to mandate displaying of the Ten Commandments in public schools. Last week, a federal appeals court blocked the requirement.

Arkansas also passed a similar law in April, which several groups say they plan to challenge.

Proponents of those kinds of laws argue that the Ten Commandments have historical significance beyond their religious context and are foundational to US society.

A sponsor of the Texas bill, Candy Noble, said the requirement to show the Ten Commandments concerns “what is historically important to our nation educationally and judicially”.

In Biblical narrative, the Ten Commandments were scrolled on two stone tablets and given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. Moses was then given the instruction to spread the teaching.

The commandments include rules such as “Thou shall not kill” and “Thou shall not steal”, as well as prohibitions against other gods, taking “the Lord’s name in vain” and not honouring the Sabbath day.

The Texas law requires public schools to display a poster or framed copy of an English version of the commandments, which should be no smaller than 16 by 20 inches or 41 by 51 centimetres.

Translations and interpretations, however, vary across denominations, faiths and languages and may differ in homes and houses of worship.

Several other groups have also vowed to challenge the law. They include the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

In a statement in May, the groups said the law “is religiously coercive and interferes with families’ right to direct children’s religious education”.

WASHINGTON — A top Justice Department official suggested the Trump administration might have to ignore court orders as it prepared to deport Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members, a fired department lawyer alleged in a whistleblower complaint made public Tuesday.

The whistleblower’s claims about Principal Assistant Deputy Atty. Gen. Emil Bove come a day before Bove is set to face lawmakers Wednesday for his confirmation hearing to become a federal appeals court judge.

In a letter seeking a congressional and Justice Department watchdog investigation, the former government lawyer, Erez Reuveni, alleges he was pushed out and publicly disparaged after resisting efforts to defy judges and make arguments in court that were false or had no legal basis.

The most explosive allegation in the letter from Reuveni’s lawyers centers on a Justice Department meeting in March concerning President Trump’s plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act over what the president claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Reuveni says Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could happen. Reuveni claims Bove used a profanity, saying the department would need to consider telling the courts “f— you,” and “ignore any such order,” according to the filing.

“Mr. Reuveni was stunned by Bove’s statement because, to Mr. Reuveni’s knowledge, no one in DOJ leadership — in any Administration — had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with” an expletive, the filing says. In the weeks after the meeting, Reuveni says he raised concerns in several cases about efforts to violate court orders through “lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation.”

Reuveni’s claims were first reported Tuesday by the New York Times.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche called the allegations “utterly false,” saying that he was at the March meeting and “at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.”

“Planting a false hit piece the day before a confirmation hearing is something we have come to expect from the media, but it does not mean it should be tolerated,” Blanche wrote in a post on X.

Reuveni had been promoted under the Trump administration to serve as acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation after working for the Justice Department for nearly 15 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Reuveni’s firing came after he acknowledged in an April court hearing that a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, should not have been deported to an El Salvador prison, and expressed frustration over a lack of information about the administration’s actions. After that hearing, Reuveni says, he refused to sign on to an appeal brief in Abrego Garcia’s case that included arguments that were “contrary to law, frivolous, and untrue.”

“The consequences of DOJ’s actions Mr. Reuveni reports have grave impacts not only for the safety of individuals removed from the country in violation of court orders, but also for the constitutional rights and protections of all persons — citizen and noncitizen alike — who are potential victims of flagrant deliberate disregard of due process and the rule of law by the agency charged with upholding it,” Reuveni’s lawyers wrote.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in April found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for violating his order to not deport anyone in its custody under the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg had told the administration to turn around any planes that already headed to El Salvador, but that did not happen.

The administration has argued it did not violate any orders, saying the court decision didn’t apply to planes that had lready left U.S. airspace by the time Boasberg’s command came down.

Trump nominated Bove last month to fill a vacancy on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He was already expected to face tough questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee given his role in some of the department’s most scrutinized actions since Trump’s return to the White House in January.

The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Dick Durbin, said Tuesday that the allegations from Reuveni are part of a “broader pattern by President Trump and his allies to undermine the Justice Department’s commitment to the rule of law.”

“I want to thank Mr. Reuveni for exercising his right to speak up and bring accountability to Mr. Bove,” Durbin said in a statement. “And I implore my Senate Republican colleagues: do not turn a blind eye to the dire consequences of confirming Mr. Bove to a lifetime position as a circuit court judge.”

Democrats have raised alarm about several other actions by Bove, including his order to dismiss New York Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case that led to the resignation of a top New York federal prosecutor and other senior Justice Department officials. Bove also accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the U.S. Capitol riot, and ordered the firings of a group of prosecutors involved in the Jan. 6 criminal cases.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

The Trump administration must turn over a cache of documents, photos, internal reports and other evidence detailing the activities of the military in Southern California, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, handing a procedural victory to the state in its fight to rein in thousands of troops under the president’s command.

Ordering “expedited, limited discovery,” Senior District Judge Charles R. Breyer of the federal court in San Francisco also authorized California lawyers to depose key administration officials, and signaled he might review questions about how long troops remain under federal control.

The Department of Justice opposed the move, saying it had “no opportunity to respond.”

The ruling follows a stinging loss for the state in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last Thursday, when an appellate panel struck down Breyer’s temporary restraining order that would have returned control of the troops to California leaders.

Writing for the court, Judge Mark R. Bennett of Honolulu said the judiciary must broadly defer to the president to decide whether a “rebellion” was underway and if civilians protesting immigration agents had sufficiently hampered deportations to warrant an assist from the National Guard or the Marines.

Bennett wrote that the president has authority to take action under a statute that “authorizes federalization of the National Guard when ‘the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.’”

But neither court has yet opined on California’s other major claim: that by aiding immigration raids, troops under Trump’s command violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which forbids soldiers from enforcing civilian laws.

Shilpi Agarwal, legal director of the ACLU of Northern California, argued the White House is abusing the post-Civil War law — known in legal jargon as the PCA — by having soldiers support Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.

“There isn’t a dispute that what the National Guard is doing right now is prohibited by the PCA — legally it absolutely has to be,” said Agarwal. “Going out with ICE officers into the community and playing a role in individual ICE raids really feels like what the Posse Comitatus Act was designed to prohibit.”

In his June 12 order, Breyer wrote that charge was “premature,” saying that there was not yet sufficient evidence to weigh whether that law had been broken.

The 9th Circuit agreed.

“Although we hold that the President likely has authority to federalize the National Guard, nothing in our decision addresses the nature of the activities in which the federalized National Guard may engage,” Bennett wrote. “Before the district court, Plaintiffs argued that certain uses of the National Guard would violate the Posse Comitatus Act … We express no opinion on it.

Now, California has permission to compel that evidence from the government, as well as to depose figures including Ernesto Santacruz, Jr., the director of the ICE field office in L.A., and Maj. Gen. Niave F. Knell, who heads operations for the Army department in charge of “homeland defense.”

With few exceptions, such evidence would immediately become public, another win for Californians, Agarwal said.

“As the facts are further developed in this case, i think it will be come more abundantly clear to everyone how little this invocation of the National Guard was based on,” she said.

In its Monday briefing, the Trump administration argued that troops were “merely performing a protective function” not enforcing the law.

“Nothing in the preliminary injunction record plausibly supports a claim that the Guard and Marines are engaged in execution of federal laws rather than efforts to protect the personnel and property used in the execution of federal laws,” the Justice Department’s motion said.

The federal government also claimed even if troops were enforcing the law, that would not violate the Posse Comitatus Act — and if it did, the Northern District of California would have only limited authority to rule on it.

“Given the Ninth Circuit’s finding, it would be illogical to hold that, although the President can call up the National Guard when he is unable ‘with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States,’ the Guard, once federalized, is forbidden from ‘execut[ing] the laws,’” the motion said.

For Agarwal and other civil liberties experts, the next few weeks will be crucial.

“There’s this atmospheric Rubicon we have crossed when we say based on vandalism and people throwing things at cars, that can be justification for military roaming our streets,” the lawyer said. “There was more unrest when the Lakers won the Championship.”