Last year on May 18, 2016, Representative Joseph Kennedy III (D-MA) introduced an amendment to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. That statute provides that “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.” The proposed amendment was referred to a congressional committee…
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US Pulls Out of UNESCO
Last Thursday, the Trump administration officially announced plans to pull out of UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. The United States originally left the organization in protest in 1984, citing a pro-Soviet Union bias, only to return in 2002. The most recent departure was announced by the…
Raising the Debt Ceiling
In a meeting with Congressional leaders on Wednesday, September 6, Trump proposed potentially eliminating the national debt ceiling. The conversation began with plans in the House to temporarily raise the debt limit in order to provide financial aid for states affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Republican leadership…
Cuban Diplomats Expelled in Response to Health Incidents
The rebuilding of U.S.-Cuban relations experienced a strange hitch on Tuesday, as the Trump administration expelled 15 Cuban diplomats following an alleged attack on the U.S. embassy in Havana. The nature of the attack remains a mystery, as the only evidence is a shared set of inexplicable symptoms experienced by 21 U.S. diplomats…
Trump Administration Rolls Back Birth Control Mandate
On Friday, October 6, the Trump administration expanded the rights of employers with religious or moral convictions to deny contraceptive insurance coverage to their employees. Employers can now opt out of including birth control in their health insurance plans, rolling back Obama-era requirements. While Obama was president…
Trump Demands Tighter Border Control Before Reaching DACA Deal
On Sunday, October 8, the White House revealed a list of demands that must be met in order for President Trump to strike a deal with Democrats on the future of the 800,000 DACA recipients and their legal statuses in the United States. Amongst these demands include tighter border control, specifically to prevent thousands of children…
Trump to Admit No More Than 45,000 Refugees in 2018
On Tuesday, September 26, Trump administration officials revealed that the President plans to admit no more than 45,000 refugees into the United States in 2018. This is the lowest number requested by any president since the passage of Refugee Act of 1980, which grants the President the legal authority to determine the number…
Trump and EPA Move to Repeal Clean Power Plan
Earlier this week, the Trump administration released a draft of the proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan (CPP). The CPP is an Obama initiative to regulate the power sector and curb the emission of climate-warming gasses, as well as specific carbon-cutting targets for corporations. While this draft represents the first substantial…
Response to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria
Over the past month, three devastating hurricanes have hit the United States. Hurricane Harvey has left a lot of Texas in shambles while the effects of Hurricane Irma hit Florida and some parts of Georgia as well. Although these hurricanes were extremely disastrous the United States government responded swiftly. The same cannot…
President Trump Addresses the UN General Assembly
In his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Trump extolled the importance of state sovereignty and denounced the perceived enemies of global democracy on the world stage. Following the path of isolationism and nationalism that he described in his inauguration speech, Trump promised that the United States…