US President Donald Trump issued Thursday an executive order targeting big law firm WilmerHale for their employment of individuals involved in the Mueller special counsel investigation, employment practices, and the nature of the firm’s pro-bono work. The order criticized the firm’s employment of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and top aides to the Russian election [...]
US District Judge Robert Pitman on Wednesday held Wednesday that the extreme heat in Texas prisons is “plainly unconstitutional” while denying a temporary injunction request to install air conditioning in the prisons. According to the court, “Texas has more than 130,000 people serving time in prisons, more than any state in the US. Only about a [...]
More than 30,000 petition signatories have demanded the immediate release of 27‐year‐old Egyptian student Oqba Hashad, Amnesty International reported Thursday. According to the group, Oqba Hashad was detained for nearly six years, solely because of his brother’s human rights activism. The group stated that Oqba Hashad was arrested on May 20, 2019 during a raid [...]
There’s much talk these days about democracy being under threat at home and around the world. Most of this discussion tends to be focused on efforts by autocrats and their supporters to erode the rule of law and the right to vote; their adoption of policies that discriminate against minorities and women; and their use [...]
In August 2021, the world watched as the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, sweeping away two decades of progress toward democracy, human rights and gender equality. While international headlines have since moved on to other crises, millions of Afghan women and girls continue to live under increasingly restrictive policies that have systematically stripped away their [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) condemned the sentencing of Moroccan political activist and human rights defender Fouad Abdelmoumni to six months in prison for his social media posts criticizing the government. The rights organizations urged the authorities to overturn the conviction and cease restrictive actions targeting journalists and [...]
On Sunday, I attended a training by the Diaspora Alliance about the worrying rise of instrumentalized antisemitism. The Diaspora Alliance describes instrumentalized antisemitism as the use by political actors of Jewish peoples’ legitimate fears in an antisemitic environment. The idea is, these actors will manipulate those fears to compel organized action ultimately aimed at shoring [...]
President Donald Trump’s administration asked the US Supreme Court on Wednesday to vacate an order by a district court that reinstated federal grants to address teacher shortages. The Trump administration argued that the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts lacked jurisdiction unless Congress “unequivocally” waives the government’s sovereign immunity. They further argued that [...]
Algeria’s Criminal Court of Dar El Beïda on Thursday sentenced renowned 80-year-old French-Algerian writer and outspoken critic Boualem Sansal to five years in prison and fined him 500,000 Algerian dinars. French lawyer François Zimeray, who represented Sansal in the early stages of the case, said the verdict betrayed the meaning of the word justice and [...]
The US Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Biden-era federal regulations on “ghost guns,” or mail-order kits that allow people to build untraceable weapons at home, handing gun control groups a rare win at the conservative high court. Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the court’s opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena [...]
