The US supreme court’s trans rights case threatens decades of civil rights precedent, experts say

The US supreme court heard one of the most consequential LGBTQ+ rights cases in its history on Wednesday, with arguments that laid bare the conservative supermajority’s broad threats to civil rights, bodily autonomy and decades of legal precedent.

The Guardian

Analysis: How Marco Rubio could raise the stakes for Cuba if he becomes secretary of state

The son of Cuban exiles, Rubio has long made it his mission to ramp up the US trade embargo on Cuba. If confirmed, as is widely expected, Rubio will be perfectly situated to further tighten the screws on Cuba perhaps to the island’s breaking point.

CNN

Texas’ Hotbed of Taiwanese Nationalism

For decades, Houston families like mine have helped keep the flame of independence burning.

Texas Observer

Disappeared

How US border enforcement agencies are fueling a missing people crisis.

The Disappeared Report

Suddenly, Trump’s Ugliest Threats Are Facing Surprise GOP Resistance

One of Trump’s central campaign claims was that green energy and immigration pose a massive threat to American workers. But now it seems local Republicans think otherwise.

The New Republic

Many targeted for removal by Trump can’t be deported, ICE data shows

Barriers to sending some immigrants home are among the legal and logistical obstacles President-elect Donald Trump faces as he pledges mass deportations

The Washington Post

Thousands of Women Serve in Combat Roles. Pentagon Nominee Hegseth Says They Shouldn’t.

It’s unclear how Hegseth would lead the Defense Department, the largest federal department and among the world’s largest bureaucracies. But he has made clear, in his own words, that he is critical of military service by women and more specifically opposes female troops serving in combat roles.

Military.com

Trump’s billionaires set to take government by storm

It’s not hyperbole to call this a government of billionaires. Whether it acts as a government for billionaires — as Democrats argue is inevitable — could test and potentially tarnish Trump’s populist legacy.

Axios

9 states poised to end coverage for millions if Trump cuts Medicaid funding

With Donald Trump’s return to the White House and Republicans taking full control of Congress in 2025, the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion is back on the chopping block.

ABC News

A legacy of valor: Only 16 Pearl Harbor survivors remain. On the 83rd anniversary, they still share stories of heroism

“Maybe (I was) a dumb farm boy, but I know this is the beginning of that war that they’d been talking about and waiting for, and I know that if I’m going to lose my life here, I don’t want to lose it in that ditch,” Kohler, a Minnesota farm boy turned sailor, said in an interview recorded by the Library in the Congress. “I’m going to want my family and my country to know I died fighting, not hiding.”

CNN

‘We were demonized’: labor unions win big in ruling on Wisconsin’s Act 10

In response to a lawsuit alleging that a notorious law passed by the former Republican governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker in 2011 is unconstitutional, a county judge ruled on Monday that more than 60 sections of the law and several sections of a follow-up law in 2015, Act 55, are unconstitutional.

The Guardian

Border drownings rose as migrants rushed to cross and Texas clamped down

An investigation by The Washington Post and other news organizations found more deaths than Mexico or the U.S. have reported. Many were in Eagle Pass, where the Texas governor’s border crackdown is concentrated.

The Washington Post

UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting opens floodgates of Americans venting insurance frustrations

This week’s fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has unleashed a wave of public feeling — exasperation, anger, resentment, helplessness — from Americans sharing personal stories of interactions with insurance companies, often seen as faceless corporate giants.

PBS

Bahamas, Turks & Caicos tell Trump they will not be dumping grounds for U.S. deportees

Both countries issued statements on Thursday after NBC News reported that the Trump administration was preparing a list of countries to where it might ship migrants as President-elect Donald Trump seeks to make good on his promise for massively deportations from the United States. The migrants would be sent to the countries if rejected by their home countries. The news report specifically mentioned Panama, Grenada and the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British dependency at the southern tip of The Bahamas, which was also named.

Miami Herald

LGBTQ+ parents are rushing to adopt their children before Trump is sworn in

Attorneys have been inundated with requests for adoptions, a safeguard some queer families are using to make sure they retain parental rights to their nonbiological kids before a second Trump administration that may be hostile to LGBTQ+ people.

The 19th

Activists worry that Trump will bulldoze trans rights. Here’s how they’re preparing

“What I do believe is that LGBTQ people, specifically trans people, are a target for him, and are a target for his fan base,” Santiago, who is trans, says about the president-elect.

NPR

Israel seizes Golan buffer zone after Syrian troops leave positions

Israel’s prime minister has announced its military has temporarily seized control of a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, saying the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria had “collapsed” with the rebel takeover of the country.

BBC

Shocked Romanians Watch Their Country Go Into Political Meltdown

After the highest court voided the presidential vote, pro-EU forces face a showdown with the far right that’s now a familiar theme across Europe.

Bloomberg

Where is Assad? Russia solves the mystery of the Syrian dictator’s escape

As many in Syria celebrated the end of the long rule of Bashar al-Assad, rumors swirled about his whereabouts. After a day of intrigue, the mystery was solved when Russian state media announced he had landed in Moscow.

“Assad and his family have arrived in Moscow. Russia, for humanitarian reasons, has granted them asylum,” a Kremlin source said, according to TASS.

CNN

Fentanyl may enter the US from Mexico, but the drug of choice there is different

Use of crystal methis soaring among workers, partiers and the young and threatening a public health crisis

The Guardian

The Syrian Regime Collapsed Gradually—And Then Suddenly

As Hemingway once wrote of bankruptcy, the collapse of autocratic regimes tends to happen gradually and then suddenly—slowly, and then all at once. This is not just a literary metaphor. A tyrant’s followers remain loyal to him only as long as he can offer them protection from their compatriots’ wrath. In Syria, doubts about President Bashar al-Assad surely grew slowly, after his Russian backers began to transfer men and equipment to Ukraine, starting in 2022. The more recent Israeli attack on Hezbollah’s leadership hampered Iran, Assad’s other ally, from helping him as well.

The Atlantic

Syria’s Assad resigns and leaves the country after stunning rebel blitz, Russia says

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a Sunday morning statement that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “decided to leave the presidential post and left the country, giving instructions to transfer power peacefully.” Russia and Iran were the two most important foreign backers of Assad’s government. Assad’s whereabouts remain unknown.

The collapse of Assad’s government ends a 24-year reign, the president having succeeded his father Hafez al-Assad in 2000. The Assad family had ruled Syria since 1971.

ABC News

As Assad regime collapses, Iraq reinforces borders and receives over 1,000 Syrian troops 

Iraq bolsters border defenses and welcomes more than 1,000 Syrian soldiers, as Assad’s regime has collapsed and Syria in turmoil.

The New Arab

‘I can finally go home’: Syrians in Egypt rejoice at fall of Assad

Since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests sparked the civil war, around 1.5 million Syrians have sought shelter in Egypt, according to United Nations estimates based on government data.

Al-Monitor

Emmanuel Macron’s last act: France’s pretty-boy Napoleon faces his Waterloo

Macron was never the anti-Trump savior of democracy — now his vanity and arrogance have led France into chaos

Salon

Ukrainian war dead reaches 43,000, Zelensky says in rare update

Some 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, Volodymyr Zelensky has said in a rare admission of the extent of the nation’s casualties.

BBC