Red State Judges No Longer Required to Marry Same-Sex Couples

In a massive rollback for LGBTQ rights, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that judges have the right to refuse to officiate gay weddings if they have a “sincerely held religious belief.”

This rule change came last week in a comment added to the state’s judicial code. “It is not a violation of these canons for a judge to publicly refrain from performing a wedding ceremony based upon a sincerely held religious belief,” the new rule reads.

This move essentially nullifies Canon 4 of the Texas judicial code, which blocked judges from doing things that would “cast doubt on their ability to act impartially or interfere with the proper performance of judicial duties”—like officiating weddings of straight couples but not gay ones. (In Texas, judges are not required to officiate weddings at all.)

In 2019, Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley was accused of violating the judicial code when she was given a public warning for refusing to officiate gay weddings. Hensley stopped doing all wedding officiating when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, but promptly started discriminating again when she returned to straight-only weddings the following year, refusing any same-sex couples who came to her. Hensley sued over the public warning she later received, but now, she’s been temporarily vindicated.

“Now going forward, every judge in Texas will enjoy the freedom Judge Hensley has fought so hard for in her case,” Hiram Sasser of the conservative First Liberty Institute said. “As for her case specifically, this amendment melts away the reasons the Commission relied on to punish Judge Hensley.”

“Judge Hensley treated them respectfully,” Texas Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock wrote, of the same-sex couples she refused. “They got married nearby. They went about their lives. Judge Hensley went back to work, her Christian conscience clean, her knees bent only to her God. Sounds like a win-win.”

Not everyone agrees.

“One of the claims that I think will be made in response to litigation that is likely is that, ‘Well, there are other people who can perform the wedding ceremony, so you can’t insist that a particular judge do it,’” law professor Jason Mazzone said. “But that, of course, is not how equal protection works, and it’s not how we expect government officials to operate.”

That one sentence at the bottom of the Texas judicial code is effective immediately, and may even have an impact on the right’s efforts to overturn gay marriage protections in the United States, adding the right to love to the list of quickly eroding liberties currently under attack.

Amid the crumbling relations with Russia and China, President Donald Trump is pushing for the United States to resume nuclear weapons testing.

As the president returned to the United States from his trip to Asia, he took to Truth Social to make an explosive announcement. “Because of other countries testing programs [sic], I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote Wednesday night. “That process will begin immediately.”

The president also claimed that the United States “has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country,” thanks to his efforts during his first term, followed by Russia and then China as a “distant third.” However, in 2025, the Federation of American Scientists found that Russia possessed more nuclear warheads than any other country.

Trump’s tremendous step backwards away from nuclear disarmament comes amid strained relations with both Russia and China, as well as a North Korean missile test on Tuesday.

After a falling out with Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin has resumed saber-rattling amid stalled peace negotiations with Ukraine. Russia tested the world’s first nuclear-powered missile on Saturday, and on Tuesday, it tested an underwater superweapon designed to trigger tsunamis. Trump warned Russia Monday that the U.S. was “not playing games” and had a nuclear submarine stationed offshore.

China has honored the moratorium on nuclear testing established in the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which Russia and the U.S. both signed. (The U.S. never ratified the treaty, and Russia later rescinded its ratification.) Still, China is reportedly rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal. Tense trade negotiations sparked by Trump’s sweeping tariffs have strained relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but Trump claimed Thursday the two leaders had had a productive meeting.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom Trump tried and failed to connect with during his tour in Asia, also tested strategic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons this week. North Korea is the only country in the world to conduct live nuclear weapons tests since the 1990s.

Nuclear weapons testing made an appearance in Project 2025, the authoritarian playbook for the second Trump administration. The plan called for the U.S. to “reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and indicate a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary.”

Donald Trump’s absolutely incredible, stupendous meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to have almost undone the damage of his own trade policies.

Details of the quid pro quo were remarkably vague but appeared to return trade relations between the two international powers closer to where they had been before Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One shortly after the meeting, Trump detailed that he and Xi had agreed to immediately drop the tariff rate on China by 10 percent (from 57 percent to 47 percent) in exchange for more aggressive policing of the Chinese fentanyl pipeline.

Trump also said that China agreed to pause its controls on precious rare earth minerals for the next year in order to avoid Trump’s threat of an additional 100 percent tariff that would have been enacted on Saturday.

“It was an amazing meeting,” Trump said. “From zero to 10 (with 10 being the best), the meeting was a 12.”

Soybean farmers also got a potential solution to a problem that Trump created. China will buy “tremendous amounts” of soybeans from American farmers starting “immediately,” per the president. Soybean farmers have been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy, practically begging the administration for a bailout since Trump’s previously unsuccessful attempts to trade with China resulted in axing access to the U.S. soybean industry’s number one foreign market.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—who was present at the meeting between Trump and Xi—elucidated those details hours later in an interview with Fox Business.

“The Chinese have agreed to buy 12 million metric tons of soybeans during this season, right now, between now and January, and then for the next three years they’re going to be buying a minimum of 25 million tons per annum for the next three years,” Bessent said.

Other purported gains out of the negotiation, however, seemed rather empty. Trump promised that a bigger U.S.-China trade deal was coming “pretty soon” and that he would travel to China again in April. He added in a lengthy Truth Social Post that China “may” make a “very large scale transaction” of oil and gas from Alaska.

But a couple details that emerged did not sound like they would benefit the U.S. in any way—perhaps most notably Trump’s decision to allow China to “talk to Nvidia and others” about scooping more computer chips. That alone is likely to rile GOP hawks who have clutched Nvidia as a precious stateside asset in the burgeoning AI tech wave.

“I said, that’s really up to you and Nvidia,” Trump recalled he told Xi. “We’re sort of the … referee.”

Trump also faltered on the topic of brokering peace in Ukraine, apparently allowing Chinese consumption of Russian oil to continue unchallenged.

Still, Trump was quick to celebrate his own work on brokering the deal.

“China—you know, I think they feel very strongly,” Trump told reporters early Thursday. “They congratulated me on the tremendous success that we’ve had, because there’s never been a country that has had so much money come into it for purposes of investment, for building, for auto plants, for AI, et cetera. So he was very strong on congratulating me on that.”

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley—92 years old, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and third in line for presidential succession—was not able to answer a basic, clearly stated question from a reporter on Wednesday, offering a response that had little to do with the topic at hand.

“Do you agree with your colleagues that Judge Boasberg should be impeached, and if so, what do you think that process would look like?” a reporter asked Grassley, referring to a federal judge who has drawn the ire of the Trump administration for his resistance to Trump’s deportation campaign, becoming a target of Attorney General Pam Bondi in the process.

Grassley paused for a beat to process the question. “Uh, I’m sorry. I’ve got hearing problems, so speak louder.”

The reporter repeated the question exactly.

“Well, first of all, we wanna make sure that we have all the documents, all the information that we can possibly get, so we know that these people who come before us, they know what to say or not to say,” Grassley replied, completely disregarding the question of Boasberg’s impeachment. “We gotta make sure that we have all the documents, all the information that we can possibly get, so we know when these people that come before us … they know what to say or not to say. And we gotta make sure that we got the documents so that when they lie to us, we can challenge ’em.”

Grassley’s rambling was so off-base that fellow GOP Senator Lindsey Graham had to jump in for cleanup.

“Can I say somethin’ about that? Uh, impeachment starts in the House,” Graham said.

It’s abundantly clear at this point that the United States has a gerontocracy issue. It’s not shocking that Grassley can’t hear well, that Senator Mitch McConnell has trouble with standing upright and zoning out, that D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton is showing signs of dementia, or that former President Joe Biden had visible cognitive issues on that debate stage in 2024—all of those people are over 80 years old. The issue is that elderly politicians are wielding immense amounts of power, and would rather die in office than cede their positions to someone even 20 years their junior.

ICE agents are making Portland worse, not better, according to local law enforcement.

Portland Police Commander Franz Schoening testified in court Wednesday that federal officers had escalated a No Kings protest in the city on October 18—not because of crowd violence, but because one of their own had accidentally shot tear gas onto the roof of an ICE facility, reported Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

That day, federal officers tried to use a launcher to fire tear gas at protesters occupying the ICE headquarters’ driveway. But they missed, and instead sent a can flying onto the roof of the building, where more federal officers were stationed. Those officers mistook the friendly fire for an attack by the protesters, and retaliated by firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd, ultimately hurting local law enforcement in the process, according to Schoening.

“The types and amounts of force being used by federal officers is disproportionate to the level of criminal conduct or violence we’re seeing down there,” Schoening said during the first day of a federal trial deliberating the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard to the supposedly besieged city.

The trial, before the U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, is the first instance in which a court weighs in on whether a protest at an immigration facility constitutes a rebellion. Oregon accused the White House in a 41-page legal complaint of having “trampled” the U.S. Constitution by federalizing Portland’s law enforcement, arguing that Donald Trump had legitimately threatened Portland’s peace by “inciting a public outcry.”

Schoening recalled that the city’s anti-ICE protests had been mild in September, but ramped up once Trump got the troops involved.

Rather than rely on data before commanding the National Guard across the country, Trump decided last month to target Rose City after he claimed he witnessed its “destruction” while “watching television.” He then directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland” in order to defend ICE and his immigration agenda, authorizing the use of “full force.”

Progressive Democratic congressional candidate and former journalist Kat Abughazaleh was indicted by the Justice Department Wednesday for allegedly preventing a federal officer from “discharging the duties of his office” at the Broadview ICE detention center near Chicago.

Abughazaleh and five others are accused of blocking a Department of Homeland Security vehicle from carrying out deportations, banging and scratching on the window.

“It was further part of the conspiracy that Abughazaleh joined the crowd at the front of the Government Vehicle, and with her hands on the hood braced her body and hands against the vehicle while remaining directly in the path of the vehicle, hindering and impeding Agent A and the vehicle from proceeding to the BSSA,” the court documents read. “[Abughazaleh] forcibly impeded, intimidated, and interfered with an officer of the United States.”

Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Palestinian American House candidate in Illinois’s 9th congressional district, condemned the indictment.

“This is a political prosecution, and a gross attempt to silence dissent, a right protected under the First Amendment,” she said in a video posted to social media Wednesday afternoon. “This is a major push by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish anyone who speaks out against them. That’s why I’m gonna fight these unjust charges.”

Federal forces have been particularly violent and confrontational in Chicago, where the Trump administration is carrying out its “Operation Midway Blitz” crackdown on immigration, resulting in shows of dissent from local residents. Abughazaleh herself was body-slammed and beaten by ICE at a previous protest in September. Other protesters in Chicago, such as Reverend David Black and United Methodist Reverend Hannah Kardon, have also been shot at with pepper balls.

“ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls, and tear-gassed hundreds of protesters, simply because we had the gall to say that masked men coming into our communities, abducting our neighbors, and terrorizing us cannot be our new normal,” Abughazaleh said.

“This case targets our right to protest, speak freely, and associate with anyone who disagrees with the government,” Abughazaleh added. “We cannot diminish ourselves in the face of these attacks. That’s why we have to unite and stand up for humanity, our rights, and everyone terrorized by Trump’s lawless secret police.”

Abughazaleh and the other five protesters face charges carrying up to eight years in prison if convicted.

FBI Director Kash Patel met his girlfriend at Penn State this past weekend to watch a wrestling match—but his travel to the university stadium appears to have been on the American public’s dime.

Patel made the trek to support his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, who performed a song as part of “Real American Freestyle,” a wrestling promotion co-founded earlier this year by the late Hulk Hogan. The federal law enforcement director was definitely there—Wilkins snapped and posted a picture of him.

While there’s nothing particularly controversial about attending a wrestling match, how Patel made his way to the college has become the focus of some unflattering attention. Former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin noted on X that it was a government jet that arrived at and departed from State College Regional Airport, the runway nearest Penn State, on Saturday.

The jet owner’s listed address, according to its FAA registration, is the FBI’s national headquarters in Washington.

After Penn State, the plane flew to Nashville, where Wilkins lives. The jet’s recent flight log pre–Penn State jaunt also matches Patel’s itinerary, paralleling his travel last week between Washington and Philadelphia, reported The Bulwark.

It’s a bit of a hypocritical development for the former podcaster, who used to regularly chastise government officials for needless spending before joining the Trump administration. He relentlessly hounded the man who previously filled his shoes—former FBI Director Chris Wray—even arguing in 2023 that the FBI should “ground” Wray’s private jet “that he pays for with taxpayer dollars to hop around the country.”

Meanwhile, the government has been shut down for more than 28 days. Thousands of federal workers have gone weeks without pay (not FBI agents), Affordable Care Act marketplace credits have lapsed in several states, some 42 million Americans stand to go hungry when SNAP benefits expire on November 1, and Donald Trump is building a $300 million ballroom.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted Wednesday that he doesn’t have “sufficient” evidence that pregnant people’s use of Tylenol can cause autism in their children.

While speaking about President Donald Trump’s controversial TrumpRx program, Kennedy made a crucial clarification about the administration’s recent claims linking autism to Tylenol, the number one drug prescribed to pregnant patients for pain relief and fever reduction.

“The causative association between Tylenol given in pregnancy and perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism, but it is very suggestive,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy’s comment came just one day after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Kenvue, Tylenol’s parent company, alleging that it failed to alert consumers that using its product during pregnancy posed a “significantly increased risk of autism” and ADHD. But that claim isn’t true by Kennedy’s own admission.

Several large studies have found “associations” between substantial use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and higher rates of neurodevelopmental disorders in children, but experts have stressed that these studies are not conclusive. During a Cabinet meeting earlier this month, Kennedy cited a number of studies that allegedly support his suspicions about Tylenol but said the existing evidence was “not proof.”

“We’re doing the studies to make the proof,” he admitted—which made the whole thing sound more like a hunch than anything else.

Speaking on Wednesday, Kennedy suggested that pregnant women should consult with their doctors before taking Tylenol, but generally, the Trump administration hasn’t been quite that diplomatic with its recommendations.

In September, Trump seemed to suggest that all Americans should stop taking acetaminophen (though he could hardly pronounce it), especially pregnant women and young children.

“You’ll take a Tylenol, but it’ll be very sparingly. Can be something that’s very dangerous to the woman’s health, in other words a fever that’s very, very dangerous and ideally a doctor’s decision because I think you shouldn’t take it,” he said.

And as recently as Sunday, Trump was still urging people, “DON’T USE TYLENOL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

“DON’T GIVE TYLENOL TO YOUR YOUNG CHILD FOR VIRTUALLY ANY REASON,” the president, who has no medical training, wrote on Truth Social.

Toyota has denied President Trump’s recent claim that the company recently pledged to invest $10 billion in the United States.

Trump bragged about the $10 billion figure at least twice during his trip to Asia this week, visiting an American naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, and meeting with the country’s newly minted right-wing Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Tuesday.

“Yesterday I was with Mr. Toyoda in Japan, and he’s just announced he’s gonna spend, uh, they’re gonna spend $10 billion, and they’re gonna build new car plants,” Trump said Tuesday, referring to the company’s CEO, Akio Toyoda. “And they’re gonna build ’em in numerous states, about six or seven different states.”

No such deal has been made, as Toyota made sure to clarify. On Wednesday, company executive Hiroyuki Ueda basically confirmed that Trump was either making it up or mixing it up with a deal from his first term nearly eight years ago.

“During the first Trump administration, I think the figure was roughly around $10 billion, so while we didn’t say the same scale, we did explain that we’ll keep investing and providing employment as before,” Ueda told reporters. “So, probably because of that context, the figure of about $10 billion came up. Therefore, we didn’t specifically say that we’ll invest $10 billion over the next few years.”

It seems that acting U.S. Attorney Bilal “Bill” Essayli couldn’t care less whether he was illegally appointed by President Donald Trump—or maybe he just didn’t read a judge’s order closely enough.   

U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright ruled Tuesday night that Essayli had been “unlawfully serving” as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California and was “disqualified” from serving in that role. Essayli was, however, properly appointed as a special attorney and could serve as “First Assistant United States Attorney.”

Essayli took to X soon after to assure his followers that everything would remain the same. 

“For those who didn’t read the entire order, nothing is changing. I continue serving as the top federal prosecutor in the Central District of California. It’s an honor and privilege to serve President Trump and Attorney General Bondi, and I look forward to advancing their agenda for the American People,” he wrote on X, posting a screenshot of the judge’s order. 

Incidentally, the excerpt he shared relayed that he was “never lawfully serving as Acting United States Attorney.”

Journalist Adam Klasfield pointed out the admission on X, adding: “If he’s claiming First Assistant US Attorney is the same thing (it isn’t), he shouldn’t mind identifying himself accurately.”

While the positions are functionally similar, some requests require the signature of the U.S. attorney specifically. 

The Trump administration has attempted to stretch the 120-day limits on interim appointments to avoid embarrassing Senate confirmation votes. Trump’s appointments of Alina Habba in New Jersey and Lindsey Halligan in Virginia have both summoned legal challenges. 

While illegally serving as acting U.S. attorney, Essayli provided cover for the Trump administration’s federal law enforcement crackdown in Los Angeles and pursued dozens of (mostly failed) cases against protesters opposing immigration raids earlier this year. Seabright declined to toss the cases Essayli had been prosecuting because they had been “lawfully signed by other attorneys,” and there was no evidence of due process violations.