Author: Reporter

Over seven weeks in 1989, student-led pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square became China’s greatest political upheaval since the end of the Cultural Revolution more than a decade earlier. Corruption among the elite was a key complaint, but the protesters were also calling for a more open and fair society, one that would require the ruling Communist Party to relinquish control over many aspects of life, including education, employment, and even the size of families. Today marks the 35th anniversary of the bloody crackdown that ended the protest. The government has never given a clear account of how...

Pride Month, the worldwide celebration of LGBTQ+ culture and rights, kicked off on June 1 with events around the globe. But this year’s festivities in the U.S. will unfold against a backdrop of dozens of new state laws targeting LGBTQ+ rights, particularly transgender young people. Here are things to know about the celebrations and the politics around them. WHY IS JUNE PRIDE MONTH? The monthlong global celebration began with Gay Pride Week in late June 1970, a public celebration that marked the first anniversary of the violent police raid at New York’s Stonewall Inn, a gay bar. At a...

The rights of LGBTQ+ students are protected by federal law and victims of campus sexual assault gained new safeguards under rules finalized in April by the Biden administration. The new provisions were part of a revised Title IX regulation issued by the Education Department, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Joe Biden. He had promised to dismantle rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who added new protections for students accused of sexual misconduct. Notably absent from Biden’s policy, however, was any mention of transgender athletes. The administration originally planned to include a new policy forbidding schools from...

A legal settlement in Florida, legislative action in Arkansas, and a lawsuit in Georgia have made waves in an ongoing national battle over the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans. Over the past three years or so, many Republican officials have been trying to limit those rights, imposing rules on which sports transgender students can play and which bathrooms they can use, among other policies. The conservative pushback has coincided with more younger people identifying as LGBTQ+. A Gallup poll released in March based on telephone interviews of more than 12,000 Americans finds that about 1 in 13 U.S. adults identify...

“What has happened to law and order … What has happened to the respect for authority, the fear of retribution by the courts, society, and the police for those who break the law, who wantonly trespass on the rights of others?” – Donald Trump (May 1, 1989) As Donald Trump lambasted the guilty verdict of his hush money trial, he stood inside a Manhattan courthouse that was the site of one of the most notorious examples of injustice in recent New York history. And he had a part in that. It was the same courthouse where five Black and...