The Supreme Court said Tuesday that Maine cannot exclude religious schools from a tuition assistance program that allows parents to use vouchers to send their children to public or private schools.

The 6-3 ruling is the latest move by the conservative court to expand religious liberty rights and bring more religion into public life, a trend bolstered by the addition of three of former President Trump’s nominees.

"Maine's 'nonsectarian' requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise."

Roberts was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The three liberal justices dissented.

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A group of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate on Tuesday released a compromise bill aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people, taking a substantial step to break a years long impasse in Congress over how to address gun violence.

While the legislation falls short of the sweeping gun control measures Democrats have demanded, if passed it would amount to the most significant action in decades to overhaul the nation’s gun laws.

The 80-page bill would enhance background checks, giving authorities up to 10 business days to review the juvenile and mental health records of gun purchasers younger than 21, and pour federal dollars into helping states implement so-called red flag laws, which allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed dangerous. The measure would also, for the first time, ensure that serious dating partners are included in a federal law that bars domestic abusers from purchasing firearms.

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Two Americans captured in Ukraine while fighting with Kyiv's military were "endangering" Russian soldiers and should be "held accountable for those crimes," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday in an interview with NBC News.

The interview marks the first time the Kremlin has commented on the cases of Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, both U.S. military veterans, according to NBC.

"They are not [in the] Ukrainian army, so they are not subject to the Geneva Conventions," the Kremlin spokesman said.

Last week, a Russian state TV channel aired videos on social media of Drueke and Huynh. 

The circumstances under which the two men were being held were not fully clear, nor who specifically was holding them. Peskov would only say they were being held by "authorities."

As to whether they could face the death penalty, Peskov said: "It depends on the investigation."

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Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers — a longtime Republican who voted for Trump and has said he would again — told the House committee investigating Jan. 6 that “I do not want to be a winner by cheating.”

“I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to,” the Mormon and father of seven said as his voice broke and his eyes filled with tears. “How else will I ever approach [God] in the wilderness of life, knowing that I ask for this guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course he led me to take?”

Bowers was the first of several witnesses at Tuesday’s hearing to detail efforts by Trump and his inner circle to undo the former president’s 2020 election loss by pressuring state officials to subvert the will of the voters and put forward false slates of electors.

The committee has previously described Trump’s “seven-part plan” to remain in power as a “seditious conspiracy.”

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Disgraced former Missouri governor and GOP Senate candidate Eric Greitens released a wild ad Monday calling on primary voters to order a “RINO hunting permit” in an attack on Republicans known for breaking with former President Donald Trump. 

“RINO” – which stands for Republican in Name Only – has been used to label Republican lawmakers who openly criticize the former president or publicly oppose his belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. In recent months, Trump has urged Republicans to vote out lawmakers that have crossed him – most notably Rep. Liz Cheney. 

The Greitens ad took the attack on his fellow GOPers to another level.

Monday’s campaign ad was strongly criticized by bipartisan lawmakers, commentators and political pundits – many of whom accused Greitens of inciting violence. 

“Eric Greitens is an abuser, a blackmailer, and less than ten years ago — a Democrat. There is no basement too low for him to cover up his past Obama support and blindfold Missourians into believing he represents their values,” Hartzler said in a statement. “To be clear: The only RINO featured in Eric Greitens’ web video is himself.”

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Vaccine advisers to the CDC had voted unanimously on Saturday in support of recommending the two-dose Moderna and three-dose Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines to children as young as 6 months.

The long-awaited development is both a triumph and a curiosity to many. The prospect of more protection for more people is, of course, good news. But consider the following:

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Legally Texas cannot secede from the union. There has been a myth that it can because of the way it was annexed but the Congressional order of annexation merely stated Texas could - at a future date - divide itself into five states. It says nothing about leaving the union.

The Texas Republican Party officially rejected the results of the 2020 presidential election over the weekend, passing a resolution that falsely blames election fraud in five battleground states for President Joe Biden's victory over former President Donald Trump. The resolution refers to Mr. Biden as "acting" president.

Texas Republicans also passed a number of other far-right resolutions in the platform. The platform calls for the complete abolition of abortion, prohibiting "the teaching of sex education, sexual health, or sexual choice or identity in any public school in any grade whatsoever," and refers to homosexuality as "an abnormal lifestyle choice." The platform also calls for Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, to be overturned.

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Juneteenth, also known as Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, and Black Independence Day was first celebrated by freed slaves on June 19, 1866, in Texas a year after slavery had ended there. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery in January of 1863—two and half years earlier.

It wasn’t until 1980 that the holiday was officially recognized anywhere. Texas became the first state to designate Juneteenth as a state holiday. In 2002, eight other states joined Texas and Missouri followed suit in 2003. In 2008, fifteen more states. 

By 2019, 47 states and the District of Columbia had finally recognized or commemorated the day in some way. Between 2020 and 2022, five states (Texas, New York, Virginia, Washington, and Illinois) made it a paid holiday for state employees. 

But for more than a century and half between 1866 and 2022, Juneteenth has primarily been a celebration confined to Black communities all across America

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Jan Wahl returns to KGO to discuss her favorite father's day movies with John Rothmann!

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John brings up Trump's accusations and crimes committed, but the question becomes.....should he face jail time? Many callers voice their opinion throughout hour two of the program.

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