Author: rpnadmin

Robert Francis Prevost, the Chicago-born cardinal selected on Thursday as the next pope, is partially descended from Creole people of color, according to Jari C. Honora, a noted genealogist and historian.Mr. Honora works at the Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum in the French Quarter, and was a researcher on the TV show “Finding Your Roots” with the historian Henry Louis Gates Jr.Mr. Honora said in an interview that he found evidence that the new pope’s maternal grandparents were Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié, of New Orleans. In a Facebook post, he displayed records of a marriage certificate with those…

The Department of Health and Human Services has decided to effectively block the payout of overdue bonuses to many of its laid-off employees, multiple health officials say. The bonuses were tied to high performance by the workers last year, before they were cut from the department.”If the savings from the layoffs were pennies from the HHS budget, this is hundredths of a penny,” one current federal health agency employee said of the move.While bonus payments usually go out in April to high-performing federal employees, the department had stalled them from being deposited. Now payouts are scheduled to go out after…

The Protect Our Workers Enforce Rights Act can serve as a model for cities all across the country. Ad Policy May Day, May 1, 2025, in Philadelphia.(Zach D Roberts / NurPhoto / Associated Press) There’s no bad time to stand up and protect the rights of workers, but there’s no better time than right now. In just the first few months of his term, Donald Trump has dismantled the Department of Labor, illegally fired the former head of the National Labor Relations Board, dismissed hundreds of thousands of federal workers without regard for their union contracts, and now is attempting…

Four days after he was sworn in as defense secretary, Pete Hegseth directed the military service academies to scrub their curriculum of ideologies President Trump had deemed “divisive,” “un-American” and “irrational.”Hours later, department heads at West Point sent civilian and military professors emails asking for their course syllabuses.Some professors said they assumed the school would defend its academic program. Instead, the U.S. Military Academy’s leaders initiated a schoolwide push to remove any readings that focused on race, gender or the darker moments of American history, according to interviews with more than a dozen West Point civilian and military staff. Most…

Approximately half of the AmeriCorps programs terminated in a controversial decision by the Trump Administration are projects that serve states and communities President Trump won in the 2024 election, according to a review of the list of terminated AmeriCorps grant programs. CBS News has obtained the list of more than 1,000 Americorps grant programs terminated in recent weeks by the Administration.  Funding for AmeriCorps programs The wide-ranging list includes a child abuse prevention organization in Missouri, tutors for children in rural Alaska, a group that provides life-saving flood relief in West Virginia and an organization that has helped provide nearly 1…

Mary Anne Carter, who oversaw the National Endowment of the Arts during President Trump’s first term, was nominated Tuesday to lead the embattled agency once again, according to Senate records.Her nomination came just days after Mr. Trump proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the agency began withdrawing current grants from arts organizations across the country. The endowment was thrown into further turmoil earlier this week when a group of senior officials there announced their resignations.Ms. Carter was seen as a stabilizing leader of the endowment by many in the arts world during Mr. Trump’s first term. Although…

In his sharpest rebuke of the world’s richest man, a distinction he once held, Bill Gates accused Elon Musk at least twice in the past week of “killing” children in the world’s poorest countries by cutting foreign aid under the Trump administration.Mr. Gates, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, assailed Mr. Musk for the actions he has taken as the head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency during interviews with The New York Times Magazine and The Financial Times.He said that Mr. Musk bore responsibility for gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, a decision that he argued had…

Washington — The Senate is taking a key vote Thursday on a first-of-its-kind crypto regulation bill. But opposition from Democrats amid growing ties between the digital asset industry and the Trump family have threatened to tank the vote. Known as the GENIUS Act, the legislation would create a regulatory framework for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency tied to the value of an asset like the U.S. dollar. The measure advanced out of the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan support in March, but has since lost Democratic support amid concerns about President Trump and his family’s business ventures involving cryptocurrency.The Senate is…

Anti-abortion activists pray and protest in front of the Greenville Women’s Clinic in Greenville, S.C., in March. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption toggle caption Jim Urquhart for NPR On a chilly March morning, Jason Storms stood on a patch of lawn across from a women’s health clinic in Greenville, S.C. It’s one of three clinics in that state that perform abortions. Dozens of other anti-abortion rights activists joined him, from Wisconsin, Florida and Mississippi. Storms had convened the group there for a conference to highlight what he felt to be the failures of the anti-abortion movement since Roe v.…

A Michigan jury said it was deadlocked on Thursday in a murder case against a police officer who fatally shot a motorist during a traffic stop.Judge Christina Mims of the Kent County Circuit Court declared a mistrial after the jurors, who had been deliberating for four days, said they were unable to reach a verdict.The defendant, Christopher Schurr, formerly a police officer in Grand Rapids, Mich., took the stand during the trial and said that he feared for his life when he opened fire at the driver, Patrick Lyoya, after Mr. Lyoya grabbed his stun gun.“I believe if I didn’t…