Equity & Justice

Pope Francis, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, offered his congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden during a call Thursday morning.

According to a statement from the Biden-Harris transition team, the pair discussed some policy areas in which Biden is likely to break from President Trump.

Updated at 3:28 p.m. ET

A federal appeals court in Boston has ruled Harvard doesn't intentionally discriminate against Asian American applicants in its admissions process.

The panel of judges upheld a federal district court's decision from last year, teeing up a possible case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

President-elect Joe Biden's win has some people asking if there's an opportunity for a 2020 census do-over.

Cash bond could be eliminated in Illinois if a push by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus is successful.

State Senator Robert Peters (D-Chicago) said his measure would benefit lower-income people who are sometimes detained as long as years waiting for their case to be brought to trial or dismissed because they can't make bail.

“It's a system where you have to pay to pass go. Iit doesn't mean someone is safe or unsafe, it means that someone is poor or rich,” he said,

A judge could order pretrial detention if a potential detainee is deemed dangerous.

Updated at 6:38 p.m. ET

The Los Angeles County coroner's office announced Tuesday it will open an independent inquiry into the sheriff's deputy-involved death of an 18-year-old man shot in June.

Lucille Bridges, who in 1960 braved a gauntlet of threats and racist slurs to escort her daughter to a formerly all-white school in New Orleans in what became a symbol of opposition to segregation, has died at age 86.

Civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, who walked up the stairs of William Frantz Elementary School six decades ago to become its first Black student, announced her mother's death on Instagram late Tuesday. She included a photo showing mother and daughter holding hands as they exited the school, flanked by U.S. marshals.

Twenty-five years in the making, a new monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., opens on Veterans Day — the National Native American Veterans Memorial.

"It's an article of faith in Indian country that Native Americans serve at a greater rate than basically any other group," said Kevin Gover, the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and a citizen of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. He said the steel ring sculpture over a carved stone drum, in a wooded area near the museum's entrance, will become hallowed ground.

North Minneapolis, one of the most racially diverse neighborhoods in Minnesota, was already dealing with high coronavirus infection and death rates when George Floyd was killed by police outside a corner store just 3 miles away.

An Indianapolis police officer who fatally shot a man after a high-speed car chase that was captured on Facebook Live will not face criminal charges.

A grand jury on Tuesday declined to indict Dejoure Mercer who shot and killed Dreasjon "Sean" Reed on May 6.

Eleven years ago, when she was 24, Katherine Standefer was working as a ski instructor and a climbing teacher in Jackson, Wyo., when she suddenly passed out in a parking lot. She later learned that she has long QT syndrome, a genetic heart condition in which the heart can suddenly quiver instead of rhythmically pumping blood.

Updated at 4 p.m. ET

A 19-year-old Wisconsin man has been charged with illegally providing the gun that prosecutors say Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, used to fatally shoot two men and injure a third during a protest this summer in Kenosha, Wis.

Updated at 11 a.m. ET

A new Vatican report on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked last year amid allegations of sexual misconduct that spanned decades, shows that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were aware of the accusations against him.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a celebrated moral thinker and globally renowned intellect of Judaism, died on Saturday after a short bout with cancer. He was 72.

Serving as the chief rabbi in the United Kingdom from 1991 to 2013, Sacks gained fame both in the secular world and in Jewish circles. He was a sought-after voice on issues of war and peace, religious fundamentalism, ethics, and the relationship between science and religion, among other topics. Sacks wrote more than 20 books.

When Kamala Harris stepped to the podium in Delaware on Saturday night to speak to supporters as vice president-elect, she made all kinds of history: She'll become the first woman to serve as vice president. The first woman of African descent (on her father's side) and also the first Asian American (on her late mother's side). The first graduate of a historically Black college or university (Howard)—and the first member of a Black sorority to sit a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Black voters came through for Joe Biden at pivotal moments on his path to the presidency: in South Carolina during the primaries, and in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania last week.

And as the president-elect thanked his supporters on Saturday night in Delaware, he thanked Black supporters specifically.

"And especially for those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me," Biden said. "They always have my back, and I'll have yours."

As of Jan. 20, 2021 — Inauguration Day — the federal government is about to get much more involved in health care and the COVID-19 pandemic response. Exactly how much more involved, now that Joe Biden is president-elect, depends on whether Republicans keep control of the Senate. And that likely won't be determined until early January, when Georgia's two Senate run-off races are held.

President Donald Trump and Joe Biden this year both looked to rally support among religious Americans, but the faith vote largely broke along familiar lines.

"The religious landscape in terms of voting has been remarkably stable," says Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute. "Since Reagan, we have essentially seen this: white Christian voters have tended to support Republican candidates, and Christians of color and everyone else, including the religiously unaffiliated, have tended to support Democratic candidates."

Ruby Bridges is a real person who became an indelible image of American history.

She was that six year-old girl, painted by Norman Rockwell, who was escorted into school by stout U.S. marshals, when she became the first Black student at the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960.

The four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of George Floyd will be tried together, a judge decided Thursday. He also rejected the former officer's requests to move the case outside of the Minneapolis area.

Democrats' long-term hopes for electoral success have long cited the growing Latino population in the country. But former Vice President Joe Biden's performance in heavily Latino areas of key states has concerned members of his party — and may have cost him Electoral College votes, according to groups and activists working to mobilize Latino voters.

Nationally, Biden appears to have gotten support from roughly twice as many Latino voters as President Trump, but that support looked very different depending on where you looked in three key states with large Latino populations.

Philadelphia city officials on Wednesday released "traumatic" bodycam footage worn by the officers who fatally shot Walter Wallace Jr. last week, urging the public to remain calm as the city comes under national scrutiny for the shooting.

The Philadelphia Police Department also released multiple 911 calls made by neighbors and Wallace's own family, pleading for help as the 27-year-old experienced a violent psychological episode.

First-year medical student Sean Sweat "didn't want to tiptoe around" issues of race when she sat down with 11 of her classmates to write a new version of the medical profession's venerable Hippocratic oath.

"We start our medical journey amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and a national civil rights movement reinvigorated by the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery," begins the alternate version of the oath, rewritten for the class of 2024 at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Elections come and go, but Supreme Court decisions can last forever. One of those potentially pivotal cases is before the court Wednesday. A case both poignant and profound, it pits the rights of a city to enforce its anti-discrimination policies in contracting against the rights of religious groups.