2 October 2026: International Day of Non-Violence A retired social worker stands outside a courthouse holding a handwritten sign. Elsewhere, 13 people block the entrance to a federal building and wait to be cited. Neither raises a hand against anyone. Both acts fit within a long tradition of civil disobedience built around breaking a rule [...]

Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

California and six other states sued President Donald Trump and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought on Wednesday, alleging the administration unlawfully impounded congressionally appropriated funds. The suit also seeks to block the administration’s proposed rescission of an additional $810 million in federal funds. California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the complaint in [...]

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Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The US District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, marking the second time a federal court has enjoined enforcement of the policy. Applauding the court’s decision, Steve Bressler, senior legal adviser at the group Democracy Forward, stated: [...]

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The UN Working Group of Experts on People from African Descent warned on Wednesday that migrants from the African continent and diaspora face racism and discrimination throughout their journeys, attributing this mistreatment to discriminatory migration policies implemented worldwide. The UN experts stated: For Africans and people of African descent, freedom of movement continues to be [...]

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“Where are you, Sepehr?” The question is not philosophical when it is first spoken. It is a question asked by a body that has been deprived of the body it seeks. Somewhere inside an unidentified warehouse, thousands of corpses lie beneath identical coverings, arranged without the distinctions through which the living ordinarily recognize one another. [...]

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Aerra Carnicom, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

UN experts on Wednesday called on Pakistan to immediately release human rights lawyers Imaan Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha and to drop all charges against them, which they say have no justifiable basis. Mazari-Hazir and Chattha were re-arrested on September 17 on charges relating to an alleged illegal protest in March 2025. The arrest took [...]

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Tennessee governor Bill Lee on Thursday announced a pause on remaining scheduled executions in the state after Christa Pike, who was to be executed on Wednesday for her role in a 1995 murder, survived the two doses of lethal injections. After being administered two dosages of pentobarbital, a drug used in single-drug executions where a [...]

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Masser, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released a new report Wednesday finding that more than one in five households surveyed in Lebanon said their children went to bed hungry in the two weeks before interviews conducted in July. The report, entitled “An Enduring Nightmare,” documents the toll on children’s access to food, healthcare and education in an active conflict [...]

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Ghania0007, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday condemned the detention of South Sudanese political commentator Samuel Peter Oyay, who has been held in a prison in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for one year without charge. Joey Shea, senior UAW researcher for HRW, spoke on the UAE’s policies of repressing dissent, stating: The UAE government’s zero-tolerance [...]

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The State of Michigan has an opportunity to go above and beyond the minimum for all its voters. Given the stakes of the upcoming 2026 midterm elections and the challenges it will likely present, Michigan must expand early in-person voting beyond the mandatory nine days, up to the full 29 days authorized by law. Nationwide, [...]

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