The Supreme Court decided to hear arguments about whether kids born on US soil automatically become citizens, which stems from Trump trying to reinterpret the 14th Amendment. His executive order, back when he started his second term, said the government should stop giving citizenship documents to babies whose moms were here illegally or temporarily, unless the dad had legal status. Courts kept blocking the order throughout the year, with judges in New Hampshire and Seattle saying it violated constitutional protections.
The ACLU is representing plaintiffs in the case and said no president gets to mess with what the 14th Amendment guarantees. The citizenship clause has been understood since a 1898 ruling about a Chinese-American born in...
Human Rights Watch called out armed groups in Putumayo for terrorizing civilians, with Indigenous people getting hit the hardest. The groups are basically using peace negotiations as a cover to tighten their grip on the region near Ecuador and Peru. Locals told HRW they got forced to bury murder victims to hide how bad things really are, and people are being pressured into growing coca and joining sketchy protests to spring detained commanders.
The violence includes grabbing kids from boarding schools for recruitment, forcing curfews on Indigenous communities, and blocking cultural practices. President Gustavo Petro launched peace talks to cut down violence in exchange for judicial perks, and some progress happened with the Estado...
The Faroe Islands just barely passed a law letting people get abortions on request during the first twelve weeks. Parliament voted 17 to 16 to ditch their super-restrictive 1956 rules that only allowed terminations for rape, incest, health emergencies, or fetal issues. The autonomous Danish territory had one of the harshest abortion policies in Europe.
International groups have been pushing them for years to change things. A 2021 meeting with the UN pointed out that the old law was basically forcing women to either get unsafe procedures or travel elsewhere. Amnesty called the reform an important step forward.
Activists see this as just the beginning, though. They want full decriminalization down the line, with no criminal penalties...
Trump gave a pardon to Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar and his wife after they got hit with bribery charges last year. Federal prosecutors said the couple took roughly $600,000 from an Azerbaijani state-owned energy firm and a Mexican bank, laundering it through shell companies while Cuellar allegedly pushed US foreign policy to favor Azerbaijan. Trump posted that the Biden administration weaponized the justice system against Cuellar for criticizing border policies.
Cuellar has denied everything and thanked Trump for checking the facts. The pardon fits a wider trend of Trump clearing people who were being prosecuted by the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, which handles sensitive corruption cases but got downsized under his...
A Libyan prison boss got hauled before the ICC after Germany grabbed him on an arrest warrant. Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri ran the Mitiga facility near Tripoli and stands accused of a dozen counts split between war crimes and crimes against humanity for stuff that went down between early 2015 and 2020. Prosecutors say he personally tortured people, oversaw sexual violence against detainees, and tried to kill someone.
The court claims guards and other inmates raped five prisoners under his watch, one being a 15-year-old kid, and women got abused as well. His defense team already asked for an interim release, but the confirmation hearing got scheduled for next May.
This marks the first arrest in the ICC's Libya investigation that...
Human Rights Watch is calling out French President Emmanuel Macron to stop treating human rights like some separate checkbox when dealing with China. The group wants him to integrate rights concerns into broader policy talks during his visit to Beijing, specifically addressing forced labor in supply chains, Chinese-made commercial drones getting used by Russia against Ukrainian civilians, and Beijing's habit of going after critics who live abroad.
The watchdog pointed out that France and the EU keep splitting economic stuff from rights issues when they talk to China, which needs to change. They highlighted cases like Shein workers getting exploited with crazy hours and terrible pay, plus forced labor hitting Uyghur and Turkic Muslim...
Violence keeps hitting religious communities across Nigeria, and the country's legal protections aren't doing much to stop it. Armed groups linked to Boko Haram and ISWAP have been attacking churches, schools, and civilians in the Middle Belt and northern regions. Last month, militants grabbed over 300 students and a dozen teachers from a Catholic school in central Nigeria, while 25 schoolgirls were taken in Kebbi State. Niger State Governor Mohammed Umar Bago shut down schools in response. Most of the Kebbi victims got released, but hundreds of students and staff remain held.
Nigerian law guarantees the right to life and religious freedom through its Constitution, yet enforcement falls flat. The government faces obligations under...
Human Rights Watch is freaking out about what might happen at the 2026 World Cup after ICE grabbed an asylum seeker who showed up to watch the Club World Cup final in New Jersey with his family. The guy got busted for accidentally flying a drone near the stadium, which normally just gets you fined, but cops asked about his immigration status and handed him straight to ICE agents, who tried deporting him back to a place where he might actually get killed.
HRW says local police without 287(g) agreements should not even be asking people about immigration stuff or arresting them over it, and FIFA needs to step up before the World Cup turns into a complete disaster. The Trump administration has been running mass raids and detentions that...
Australia just forced social media platforms to start reporting how many under-16 accounts they ban each month after passing a law that kicks kids off major sites. The Online Safety Amendment hits Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, Snapchat, and Reddit with fines up to 50 million Australian dollars if they fail to block underage users, though Discord and Roblox got exempted because regulators decided gaming is their main thing.
Meta already started nuking half a million accounts from teens, and enforcement kicks off next week, even though companies will get some slack during the rollout. A group called Digital Freedom Project is trying to get the whole law tossed in court for violating free speech protections, but they have not...
