Six months ago, tens of thousands of people converged in Washington, DC, from all corners of the country to decry what they erroneously believed to be a stolen election.

The raucous protest culminated on January 6 with a deadly riot at the US Capitol, a landmark stain on American democracy.

In a long-awaited decision, the Supreme Court rejected a right-wing challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in California v. Texas, preserving health insurance for 21 million people who are predominantly low-income and people of color.

Today the Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling that one taxpayer-funded religious agency in Philadelphia has a right to renew its contract to provide foster care services to the city, despite its unwillingness to comply with the city’s non-discrimination requirement, because the city’s contract had a mechanism for allowing individualized exceptions to its non-discrimination policy that it did not grant to that agency. Importantly, the court did not rule (as the agency asked) that there is a constitutional right for government contractors such as the foster care agency to discriminate in their work for the city based on religious beliefs. This means that governments can and should continue to enforce their non-discrimination laws in all contexts.

The growing divide in the United States between Zionists and supporters of Palestinian rights has led to pronounced tensions in academia. Much has been said about increasing pro-Palestinian student protests as well as the activities of pro-Israel boards of governors, presidents, deans, etc. The latter try to guard their campuses from pro-Palestinian faculty, student clubs, invited speakers and the like.