A Damascus criminal court sentenced ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia Tuesday after convicting him of murder, torture, arbitrary detention, and crimes against humanity. This was the first judgment issued by Syria’s own courts against the head of a government that ruled the country for decades and put down a 2011 uprising [...]

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday urging states to scale back school immunization requirements and directing the Attorney General to pursue litigation against states that fail to provide religious and medical exemptions. The order declares a set of “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations” that would reduce the list of diseases against which all [...]

A US federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump likely lacks legal authority to demolish and rebuild portions of the White House without congressional approval. The ruling upholds an order that halts above-ground construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, setting up a Supreme Court test of how far a president can go in reshaping [...]

A $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund established to pay people who say the government unjustly prosecuted them was rescinded Sunday night. But the settlement between President Donald Trump and his own Justice Department that created the fund remains unchanged. The order, dated August 2 and signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, [...]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested on US soil, President Donald Trump declared Monday, an assurance that underscored a widening gap between international criminal law on paper and its enforcement in practice as Washington escalates its campaign against the court seeking his arrest. “Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, [...]

A federal judge blocked Paramount Skydance Corp.’s $110 billion purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery Inc. on Monday, temporarily freezing a deal that would place two of Hollywood’s five major studios under one owner while a dozen states press an antitrust challenge. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the US District Court for the Northern District of California [...]

The US will launch a diplomatic campaign aimed at dismantling the International Criminal Court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Rubio wrote that the US would work alongside allied governments to take the Court apart “brick by brick, if necessary,” using all tools at the [...]

President Donald Trump said Friday he will refuse to sign a bipartisan housing bill that cleared Congress by veto-proof margins, escalating a standoff over an unrelated voting measure and testing the limits of a president’s power to block legislation lawmakers have already approved. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he would withhold his [...]

President Donald Trump repeatedly missed legal deadlines and omitted business deals required under federal ethics laws designed to expose conflicts of interest, his latest financial disclosure reveals—lapses that fall to his own appointees to police. The 927-page annual report, filed with the US Office of Government Ethics (OGE) and released Tuesday, states that Trump paid [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down federal limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with their candidates, ruling 6-3 that the restrictions violate the First Amendment‘s free speech protections. The decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission overrules the court’s 2001 decision in FEC v. Colorado Republican [...]