Today in History: June 26, US Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage
In 1945, the charter of the United Nations was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco, Calif.
In 1948, the Berlin Airlift began in earnest after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes to the isolated western sector of Berlin.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he delivered his famous speech expressing solidarity with the city's residents, declaring: 'Ich bin ein Berliner' ('I am a Berliner').
In 1993, President Bill Clinton announced the US had launched missiles against Iraqi targets because of 'compelling evidence' Iraq had plotted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush.
In 1996, in the case of United States v. Virginia, the US Supreme Court found that the Virginia Military Institute's male-only admission policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. (VMI enrolled its first female cadets the following year.)
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In 1997, the first Harry Potter novel, 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' by J.K. Rowling, was published in the United Kingdom. It was later released in the United States under the title 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.'
In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the US Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia as it affirmed, 5-4, that an individual's right to gun ownership is protected by the Second Amendment.
In 2013, in the case of United States v. Windsor, the US Supreme Court gave the nation's legally married same-sex couples equal federal footing with all other married Americans, and cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California in a separate decision.
In 2015, in its 5-4 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the country, ruling that state-level bans on same-sex marriage violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.
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Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
Israeli gunfire and strikes kill at least 25 in Gaza, many while seeking aid
DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes and gunshots killed at least 25 people overnight into Saturday, according to Palestinian health officials and the local ambulance service, as ceasefire talks appear to have stalled and Gaza faces famine. Gunfire killed the majority of people as they waited for aid trucks close to the Zikim crossing with Israel, said staff at Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were taken. Israel's army didn't respond to a request for comment about the shootings. Those killed in strikes included four people in an apartment building in Gaza City, hospital staff and the ambulance service said. Ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas were at a standstill after the U.S. and Israel recalled negotiating teams Thursday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday his government was considering 'alternative options' to ceasefire talks. A Hamas official, however, said negotiations were expected to resume next week and described the recall of the Israeli and U.S. delegations as a pressure tactic. Egypt and Qatar, which mediate the talks alongside the United States, called the pause only temporary and said talks would resume. They did not say when. The United Nations and experts say Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are at risk of famine, with reports of increasing numbers of people dying from causes related to malnutrition. And now children with no preexisting conditions have begun to starve to death. While Israel's army says it's allowing aid into the enclave with no limit on the number of trucks that can enter, the U.N. says it is hampered by Israeli military restrictions on its movements and incidents of criminal looting. The Hamas-run police had provided security for safe aid delivery, but it has been unable to operate after being targeted by Israeli airstrikes. Israel on Saturday said more than 250 trucks carrying aid from the U.N. and other organizations entered Gaza this week. About 600 trucks were entering per day during the latest ceasefire that Israel ended in March. The latest Zikim crossing shootings come days after at least 80 Palestinians were killed trying to reach aid entering through the crossing. Israel's military at the time said its soldiers shot at a gathering of thousands of Palestinians who posed a threat. During the shootings late Friday, Sherif Abu Aisha said people started running when they saw a light that they thought was from the aid trucks, but as they got close they realized it was from Israel's tanks. That's when the army started firing on people, he told the Associated Press. He said his uncle, a father of eight, was among those killed. 'We went because there is no food ... and nothing was distributed,' he said. Men carried the latest bodies through the rubble Saturday. A small boy wailed over a corpse. Israel faces growing international pressure to alleviate Gaza's catastrophic humanitarian crisis. More than two dozen Western-aligned countries and over 100 charity and human rights groups have called for an end to the war, harshly criticizing Israel's blockade and a new aid delivery model it has rolled out. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food, mostly near the new aid sites run by a U.S. contractor, the U.N. human rights office says. The charities and rights groups said even their own staffers were struggling to get enough food. For the first time in months, Israel said it is allowing airdrops of aid, requested by neighboring Jordan. A Jordanian official said the airdrops will mainly be food and milk formula. Britain plans to work with partners such as Jordan to airdrop aid and evacuate children requiring medical assistance, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office said Saturday. The office did not give details. But the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, warned on social media that airdrops are 'expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians' and won't reverse the increasing starvation or prevent aid diversion. Shurafa and Magdy write for the Associated Press and reported from Deir al Balah and Cairo, respectively.
CNN
4 hours ago
- CNN
See where gender identity care is restricted and where it's protected
The US Supreme Court's decision to uphold Tennessee's ban on gender identity care for transgender minors earlier this summer has fueled ongoing polarization around LGBTQ issues and controversial policies across the nation. The high court has also agreed to take on more cases dealing with trans rights in its next session that begins in October. Twenty-seven states have passed laws limiting access to gender identity health care for transgender children and teenagers, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy think tank. An estimated 40% of trans youth ages 13 to 17 live in these states. There have already been more anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures so far this year than in any full year since at least 2020, a CNN analysis of American Civil Liberties Union data found. These bills span various aspects of everyday life, including bathroom access, school sports and identification documents. CNN is tracking where these laws are being passed and where these bills are being introduced. This story will be updated. Gender identity care includes medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned sex— the one the person was designated at birth — to their affirmed gender, the gender by which one wants to be known. Most of the states limiting gender identity care for trans minors adopted their bans in 2023, a record-breaking year for such laws. So far this year, one state — Kansas — has passed a ban, prohibiting the use of state funds to provide or subsidize health care for transgender youth. Not all laws are currently being enforced, however. The ban in Arkansas has been permanently blocked by a federal court, though the state said it would appeal the ruling. Montana's ban is also permanently blocked, according to KFF. Though Arizona has a 2022 law on the books banning surgical care for transgender minors, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs signed an executive order in 2023 ensuring access to gender identity health care. Nearly 600 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced into state legislatures as of July 11, which is already more than any other year on record, according to the ACLU. Education and health care continue to be key targets. There were more bills restricting student and educator rights — enforcing school sports bans and targeting students' access to facilities consistent with their gender identities, for example — than any other category of bills, according to a CNN analysis of ACLU data. Legislators in Texas have introduced 88 anti-LGBTQ bills so far this year, more than double the number of bills being considered in any other state. Four of those — including one that limits changes to gender markers on state medical records — have been passed into law. In late July, Texas lawmakers are reconvening for a 30-day special session. On the agenda is a transgender bathroom bill. Lawmakers in every state, except for Vermont, have filed at least one anti-LGBTQ bill in 2025, according to a CNN analysis. Twenty-two states have signed those bills into law.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Food Aid in Gaza Has Become a Horror
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Capping off all the other horrors in wartime Gaza is the food-distribution situation that has prevailed since late May. Famished Palestinian civilians must approach one of very few aid-distribution locations under the auspices of the Israeli and United States governments. A shocking number of civilians seeking aid have reportedly been shot dead by Israeli soldiers or shot at by U.S. contractors on their way to these sites. According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in this scramble for sustenance since May 26. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke the last cease-fire in the Gaza war on March 18 by launching air strikes that killed more than 400 Palestinians in 36 hours, a reported 183 of them children. He had also imposed a total blockade on March 2, allowing no aid whatsoever into the Strip from March until late May. The resulting situation was untenable. But the Israeli government did not trust any of the international institutions with experience in humanitarian-aid distribution, so together with its U.S. backers, it cooked up an alternative: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit registered in Delaware and funded with $30 million from the Trump administration. According to one report, GHF has billed itself as seeking, among other aims, to 'facilitate President Trump's vision' for the Gaza Strip. Trump has said a variety of things about that vision, but one prospect he has articulated includes the forced removal of all Palestinians from the territory and its transformation into a 'Riviera' for 'international people.' According to The Washington Post, some for-profit companies are behind GHF, including McNally Capital, a Chicago private-equity firm. Among the entities initially involved with the group, some have since withdrawn, including the Boston Consulting Group. The foundation's initial head, Jake Wood, resigned on account of humanitarian concerns. GHF is now run by Johnnie Moore Jr., a pro-Israel evangelical activist and former aide to Jerry Falwell, and John Acree, a former USAID official. [Read: The worst-kept secret of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] GHF began operations on May 26 in the south of Gaza, near Rafah. Since then, it has operated four main aid-distribution centers (compare this to the more than 400 that the UN and other traditional aid agencies once ran). The aid boxes themselves have been described by Palestinians as woefully inadequate as Gaza continues its slide toward outright famine. The food-distribution points have practically become shooting galleries. Israeli troops told reporters from the newspaper Haaretz that they had been ordered to open fire on Palestinians with live ammunition as a means of crowd control. The newspaper quoted one soldier as describing the zones as a 'killing field.' The report singled out Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, commander of Division 252, which operates in northern Gaza. Vach reportedly told his men that 'there are no innocents in Gaza.' Some suggested that using live fire to disperse crowds in northern Gaza, for fear they would rush UN aid trucks, was Vach's policy more than that of the Israeli military command or government. But reports have also circulated about U.S. contractors deliberately shooting Palestinians and boasting about direct hits. Israel refuses to allow outside journalists into Gaza, making these and other related accounts difficult to confirm or disprove. What is indisputable is that GHF has an effective monopoly on delivering humanitarian aid into an ever more desperate Gaza Strip. Virtually all of the traditional distributors of aid have been barred by the Israeli authorities. And by most accounts, the results are ghastly. The UN relays that a third of the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza go days without eating, and credible reports suggest that infants and the elderly are dying of malnutrition and dehydration—according to one issued by a group of international nonprofits, more than 100 people have died of hunger, including 80 children. Agence France-Presse says that its local journalists are now in danger of imminent death from starvation. Israel claims that it is allowing ample food, water, and medicine into the Strip, but if that's the case, the supplies are apparently not reaching those who need them most. Much of the world is appalled by these conditions. On Monday, 30 governments, many friendly to Israel, plus the European Union, demanded an end to the war and condemned 'the drip feeding of aid' to the Palestinians in Gaza whose suffering, the group noted, had 'reached new depths.' More than 100 aid agencies have signed a letter demanding that Israel allow additional food, water, medicine, and other supplies into Gaza immediately. [Read: No rational aid-distribution system should work this way] Far from ameliorating Gazans' suffering, GHF has instead established a system that presents them with an impossible dilemma. Palestinians are drawn in desperation to four centers, where they must risk their lives in order to gain the supplies they need to live. Many also walk away disappointed but uninjured. There is no evidence that GHF, its founders, or its backers intended to create death traps rather than alternative distribution centers. But for many weeks, this is how the sites have functioned, and GHF's response has been to simply carry on as before. What GHF may have begun inadvertently, it now perpetuates without correction and with full awareness. Palestinians face a Hobson's choice between starvation and the real possibility of being shot down for no intelligible reason. For that there is no excuse—and quite possibly criminal culpability. Article originally published at The Atlantic
