United States | News & Politics

By Gayle Kirshenbaum May 8, 2026

At the University of Michigan’s recent commencement ceremony, history professor Derek Peterson delivered a five-minute speech in which he celebrated all those who have fought for justice at the university, my alma mater. Invoking our legendary sports-focused fight song, he asked the crowd to “sing” for suffragist Sarah Burger, who battled to get women admitted as students; for Moritz Levi, Michigan’s first Jewish professor; for all the students who fought for racial justice at Michigan as part of the Black Action Movement; and for the “pro-Palestinian student activists, who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”

Peterson’s address was a historian’s invitation to every student and parent in the Ann Arbor stadium to recognize that the fight for Palestinian rights shares roots with our greatest movements for justice, including the struggle against antisemitism.

The backlash, predictably, was swift. The university’s president apologized; the speech was condemned by pro-Israel Jewish organizations and outlets; and I know it upset many college parents, my Gen X peers — we who were raised to believe with all our hearts that Jewish identity and Zionist identity are inextricable.

This is cool, my country is now trying to kill me in yet a new and different way.

One of these days it is going to work!

One member calls for a Presidential Medal of Freedom for a baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Another calls for court interventions by the Department of Justice on behalf of Amish parents fighting New York vaccine requirements and Catholic nuns challenging that state’s requirement that they accommodate hospice patients’ gender identities.

And the chair of the Religious Liberty Commission is calling for a federal hotline with this automated recording: “There is no separation of church and state.”

These are just some of the recommendations that members of the advisory panel formed by President Donald Trump last year want to see included in the commission’s final report.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/51732813

A Chinese citizen accused by U.S. federal authorities of taking unauthorized photos of secretive aircraft at a Nebraska base moved to change his plea to guilty Monday.

Tianrui Liang, 21, faces up to a year in prison and a fine in the case on charges of violating a federal law barring the photographing or sketching of defense installations, a Class A misdemeanor — the most serious in the federal system. His case was investigated by the counterintelligence squad of the Omaha FBI Field Office.

In the motion, filed Monday morning, Liang’s attorney Jeffrey L. Thomas of the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Omaha said sentencing guidelines mean his client should get a term of zero to six months in prison, and pointed out Liang has already been locked up for 30 days.

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Legislation to open the door for small plug-in solar panels hit roadblocks, including safety concerns raised by the state’s electrical workers union

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