California will ban private colleges and universities, including some of the nation’s most selective institutions, from giving special consideration to applicants who have family or other connections to the schools, a practice known as legacy admissions. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Monday that will prohibit the practice starting in the fall of 2025. The […]
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Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked an election-season bid by Democrats to advance legislation that would guarantee federal protections and insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization treatments, the second time in three months that the G.O.P. has thwarted the broadly popular measure. Democrats orchestrated the failed vote, just weeks before the November elections, in part to […]
Read MoreNo education beyond the sixth grade. No employment in most workplaces and no access to public spaces like parks, gyms and salons. No long-distance travel if unaccompanied by a male relative. No leaving home if not covered from head to toe. And now, the sound of a woman’s voice outside the home has been outlawed […]
Read MoreMy mission to understand the American elevator began in 2021 when I came down with a crippling post-viral illness. The stairs to my third-floor Brooklyn walk-up apartment would leave me dizzy and winded, my ears ringing, heart beating out of my chest. At 32, I’d joined the 12 percent of Americans who report “serious difficulty” […]
Read MoreWhen I read the majority opinion on Monday in Trump v. United States, which held that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for official acts within their “conclusive and preclusive” constitutional authority and presumptive immunity for all other official acts, I was genuinely and sincerely confused. The Supreme Court’s opinion is difficult to decipher, and in many […]
Read MoreI first learned about the opioid crisis three presidential elections ago, in the fall of 2011. I was the domestic policy director for Mitt Romney’s campaign and questions began trickling in from the New Hampshire team: What’s our plan? By then, opioids had been fueling the deadliest drug epidemic in American history for years. I […]
Read MoreA felony, as Associate Justice Clarence Thomas once wrote in a 1994 Supreme Court opinion, is “as bad a word as you can give to man or thing.” When Donald J. Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies in May, by a jury in a Manhattan courtroom, the nation was confronted with a historical novelty: […]
Read MoreJapan scrapped every regulation requiring the use of floppy disks for administrative purposes this week, catching up with the times 13 years after the country’s producers manufactured their last units. The floppy disk, invented in the 1970s, was once a ubiquitous part of computing. Other forms of memory like flash drives and internet cloud storage […]
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Whenever a politician cites “Judeo-Christian values,” I find it’s generally followed by something unsettling. Last month brought two flagrant instances. In both cases, Republican officials introduced state laws that formalize precepts of the Christian nationalist movement — in the words of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (A.D. 2019), “doing everything we can to restore […]
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The president of the small West African country of Sierra Leone signed a law on Tuesday that banned marriage for children age 18 and younger and would impose steep fines on adult spouses. The move was a victory for activists who had long fought to eradicate the widespread practice. The new legislation goes further than […]
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When New York legalized recreational marijuana in 2021, the future seemed bright. “It has been a long road to get here, but it will be worth the wait,” State Senator Liz Krueger, a sponsor of the legislation, told New Yorkers. Legalization, she and others said, meant a wave of new jobs and new tax revenue. […]
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The Biden administration awarded $504 million on Tuesday to a dozen projects across the country in a bid to transform communities that had been overlooked in the past into technological powerhouses. The grants will fund “tech hubs” that aim to bolster the production of critical technologies in regions including western Montana, central Indiana, South Florida […]
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After an unprecedented three-year timeout on federal student loan payments because of the pandemic, millions of borrowers began repaying their debt when billing resumed late last year. But nearly as many have not. That reality, along with court decisions that regularly upend the rules, has complicated the government’s efforts to restart its system for collecting […]
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The Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to hear two sets of Second Amendment challenges: to an Illinois law prohibiting the sale of high-powered guns and high-capacity magazines and to a federal law making it a crime for people convicted of felonies to possess guns. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they would […]
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The First Amendment was written in the 18th century with the noble and vitally important goal of ensuring robust political debate and a free press. For much of American history, First Amendment cases involving speech typically concerned political dissenters, religious outcasts, intrepid journalists and others whose ability to express their views was threatened by a […]
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In states like California, Ohio and Michigan, supporters of abortion rights have been undefeated in using ballot measures to ensure constitutional access to the procedure. But their approach is about to face perhaps its toughest test yet in Arkansas, a state with a near-total abortion ban and where conservative and evangelical values run deep. A […]
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Hotshot Wall Street lawyers are now so in demand that bidding wars between firms for their services can resemble the frenzy among teams to sign star athletes. Eight-figure pay packages — rare a decade ago — are increasingly common for corporate lawyers at the top of their game, and many of these new heavy hitters […]
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The Supreme Court on Monday avoided a definitive resolution of challenges to laws in Florida and Texas that curb the power of social media companies to moderate content, leaving in limbo an effort by Republicans who have promoted such legislation to remedy what they say is a bias against conservatives. Instead, the justices unanimously agreed […]
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Bret Stephens: Gail, in our last conversation I asked you whether you would join me in calling for Democrats to find a new nominee if Joe Biden had a disastrous debate performance. You replied that it would have to be “super disastrous.” Did the president’s performance on Thursday night meet your definition of “super”? Gail […]
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Nevada residents will vote on whether to protect the right to abortion in the state this November, as abortion rights groups try to continue their winning streak with measures that put the issue directly before voters. The Nevada secretary of state’s office certified on Friday the ballot initiative to amend the State Constitution to include […]
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Rarely has a Supreme Court case had less legal meaning and greater moral weight than the decision Thursday morning in Moyle v. United States. The case was of such little legal consequence that you might have already forgotten about it; you’ve lost it in the haze of a shocking presidential debate and a host of […]
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A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked Oklahoma from enforcing its new immigration law that would make it a crime to enter the state without legal authorization to be in the United States. The ruling, issued just days before the law was set to go into effect on Monday, is the latest legal setback for […]
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By Kurtis Lee and Ana Facio-Krajcer Photographs and Video by Adam Perez Reporting along Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles Growing up in Guatemala, Ruth Monrroy often spent time at her mother’s restaurant watching in awe of how she connected with customers. “I knew I wanted to have my own business,” Mrs. Monrroy said on a […]
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A spate of decisions over the past two years by the Supreme Court has significantly impaired the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to limit pollution in the air and water, regulate the use of toxic chemicals and reduce the greenhouse gasses that are heating the planet. This term, the court’s conservative supermajority handed down several rulings […]
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Twice in two days, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has issued sweeping rulings that cut against established precedents and will hamstring the ability of regulatory agencies to impose rules on powerful business interests. On Friday, the six Republican-appointed justices overturned a 40-year-old foundational part of administrative law, the Chevron doctrine, which will make it easier […]
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Nicole Miller had gone to the emergency room in Boise, Idaho, after waking up with heavy bleeding in her 20th week of pregnancy. By afternoon, she was still leaking amniotic fluid and hemorrhaging and, now in a panic, struggling to understand why the doctor was telling her that she needed to leave the state to […]
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The Texas Supreme Court upheld a state law on Friday that bans gender-transition medical treatment for minors, overturning a lower-court ruling that had temporarily blocked the law and dealing a blow to parents of transgender children. The court, whose nine elected members are all Republicans, voted 8 to 1 in favor of allowing the law, […]
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The Supreme Court on Friday upheld an Oregon city’s laws aimed at banning homeless residents from sleeping outdoors, saying they did not violate the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The decision is likely to reverberate beyond Oregon, altering how cities and states in the West police homelessness. The ruling, by a 6-to-3 vote, […]
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Superficially, abortion rights had a good run at the Supreme Court this term. Two weeks ago, the justices unanimously let an abortion pill remain widely available. On Thursday, the court dismissed a case about Idaho’s strict abortion ban, which had the effect of letting emergency rooms in the state perform the procedure when the patient’s […]
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President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump will face off Thursday night for the first time in four years, giving each ample opportunity to fling accusations about the other’s positions. Some will hew close to the facts, but there will most likely be ample exaggeration or statements lacking adequate nuance. The two candidates have […]
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Last week, Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, a Democrat, signed an executive order pardoning 175,000 marijuana convictions, saying, “Today, we take a big step forward toward ensuring equal justice for all.” But, he said, “this won’t be our last effort. We must continue to move in partnership to build a state and society that is […]
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