Passengers Left in Middle of Busy Traffic After Over 100 Self-Driving Taxis Stop Running in 'System Malfunction'

Over 100 self-driving taxis in China stopped mid-traffic due to a system malfunction, stranding passengers in busy streets

NEED TO KNOW

• No injuries were reported, though videos posted online showed widespread disruption and at least one crash involving a halted vehicle.

• The incident adds to growing concerns about autonomous vehicle safety, following recent issues in the U.S. involving driverless cars

Passengers in Wuhan, China, were left stranded in the middle of busy streets after a large group of self-driving taxis stopped working at the same time.

A mass outage involving at least 100 robotaxis caused the vehicles to halt mid-traffic on Tuesday evening, with authorities later attributing the disruption to a "system malfunction." Officials did not provide further details, and no injuries were reported, per theAssociated Press.

Videoscirculating on social media showed driverless cars sitting motionless in active roadways, some blocking lanes and intersections.In one clip, a crash involving a stopped vehicle could be seen, though theBBC reportedthere were no injuries and that passengers were able to exit the vehicles safely.

The vehicles are operated by Apollo Go, an autonomous ride-hailing service run by Chinese tech company Baidu. The company has been expanding its robotaxi operations across China and has plans to grow internationally, according toCNBC.

For passengers inside the cars, the experience was both confusing and unsettling.

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According to the Associated Press, one passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped shortly after turning a corner. A message displayed on the vehicle's screen read, "Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes." When no one arrived, the passenger pressed an SOS button and was again told that help was on the way. The rider was ultimately able to open the door and exit the vehicle on their own.

The Wuhan incident comes amid a series of recent issues involving self-driving vehicles, both in the United States and abroad.

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE's free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

In December, a widespreadpower outage in San Franciscoleft roughly 130,000 homes and businesses without electricity, PEOPLE reported at the time. During the blackout, driverless cars were unable to function properly without traffic signals, stopping in the middle of roads and contributing to traffic jams.

Read the original article onPeople

byVincento Seyarto

in

April 02, 2026

Passengers Left in Middle of Busy Traffic After Over 100 Self-Driving Taxis Stop Running in 'System Malfunction'

Over 100 self-driving taxis in China stopped mid-traffic due to a system malfunction, stranding passengers in busy street...

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Immigrants seeking asylum are ordered to countries they've never been to, but end up stuck in limbo

The Afghan man had fled the Taliban for refuge in upstate New York when U.S. immigration authorities ordered him deported to Uganda. The Cuban woman was working at a Texas Chick-fil-A when she arrested after a minor traffic accident and told she was being sent to Ecuador.

Immigration Third Country Deportations

There's the Mauritanian man living in Michigan told he'd have to go to Uganda, the Venezuelan mother in Ohio told she'd be sent to Ecuador and the Bolivians, Ecuadorians and so many others across the country ordered sent to Honduras.

They are among more than 13,000 immigrants who were living legally in the U.S., waiting for rulings on asylum claims, when they suddenly faced so-calledthird-countrydeportationorders, destined for countries wheremost had no ties, according to the nonprofit group Mobile Pathways, which pushes for transparency in immigration proceedings.

Yet few have been deported, even as the White House pushes forever more immigrant expulsions. Thanks to unexplained changes in U.S. policy, many are now mired in immigration limbo, unable to argue theirasylumclaims in court and unsure if they'll be shackled and put on a deportation flight to a country they've never seen.

Some are in detention, though it's unclear how many. All have lost permission to work legally, a right most had while pursuing their asylum claims, compounding the worry and dread that has rippled through immigrant communities.

And that may be the point.

"This administration's goal is to instill fear into people. That's the primary thing," said Cassandra Charles, a senior staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, which has been fighting the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda. The fear of being deported to an unknown country could, advocates believe, drive migrants to abandon their immigration cases and decide to return to their home countries.

Things may be changing.

In mid-March, top Immigration and Customs Enforcement legal officials told field attorneys with the Department of Homeland Security in an email to stop filing new motions for third-country deportations tied to asylum cases. The email, which has been seen by The Associated Press, did not give a reason. It has not been publicly released, and DHS did not respond to requests to explain if the halt was permanent.

But the earlier deportation cases? Those are continuing.

An asylum-seeker says she's in panic over possibly being sent to a country she doesn't know

In 2024, a Guatemalan woman who says she had been held captive and repeatedly sexually assaulted by members of powerful gang arrived with her 4-year-old daughter at the U.S.-Mexico border and asked for asylum. She later discovered she was pregnant with another child, conceived during a rape.

In December, she sat in a San Francisco immigration courtroom and listened as an ICE attorney sought to have her deported.

The ICE attorney didn't ask the judge that she be sent back to Guatemala. Instead, the attorney said, the woman from the Indigenous Guatemalan highlands would go to one of three countries: Ecuador, Honduras or across the globe to Uganda.

Until that moment, she'd never heard of Ecuador or Uganda.

"When I arrived in this country, I was filled with hope again and I thanked God for being alive," the woman said after the hearing, her eyes filling with tears. "When I think about having to go to those other countries, I panic because I hear they are violent and dangerous." She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal from U.S. immigration authorities or the Guatemalan gang network.

There have been more than 13,000 removal orders for asylum-seekers

ICE attorneys, the de facto prosecutors in immigration courts, were first instructed last summer to file motions known as "pretermissions" that end migrants' asylum claims and allow them to be deported.

"They're not saying the person doesn't have a claim," said Sarah Mehta, who tracks immigration issues at the American Civil Liberties Union. "They're just saying, 'We're kicking this case completely out of court and we're going to send that person to another country.'"

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The pace of deportation orders picked up in October after a ruling from the Justice Department's Board of Immigration Appeals, which sets legal precedent inside the byzantine immigration court system.

The ruling from the three judges -– two appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and the third a holdover from the first Trump administration -- cleared the way for migrants seeking asylum to be removed to any third country where the U.S. State Department determines they won't face persecution or torture.

After the ruling, the government aggressively expanded the practice of ending asylum claims.

More than 13,000 migrants have been ordered deported to so-called "safe third countries" after their asylum cases were canceled, according to data from San Francisco-based Mobile Pathways. More than half the orders were for Honduras, Ecuador or Uganda, with the rest scattered among nearly three dozen other countries.

Deported migrants are free, at least theoretically, to pursue asylum and stay in those third countries, even if some have barely functioning asylum systems.

Deportations have been far more complicated than the government expected

Immigration authorities have released little information about the third-country agreements, known as Asylum Cooperative Agreements, or the deportees, and it's unclear exactly how many have been deported to third countries as part of asylum removals.

According to Third Country Deportation Watch, a tracker run by the rights groups Refugees International and Human Rights First, fewer than 100 of them are thought to have been deported.

In a statement, DHS called the agreements "lawful bilateral arrangements that allow illegal aliens seeking asylum in the United States to pursue protection in a partner country that has agreed to fairly adjudicate their claims."

"DHS is using every lawful tool available to address the backlog and abuse of the asylum system," said the statement, which was attributed only to a spokesperson. There are roughly 2 million backlogged asylum cases in the immigration system.

But deportations clearly turned out to be far more complicated than the government expected, restricted by a variety of legal challenges, the scope of the international agreements and a limited number of airplanes.

Mobile Pathways data, for example, shows that thousands of people have been ordered deported to Honduras — despite a diplomatic agreement that allows the country to take a total of just 10 such deportees per month for 24 months. Dozens of people ordered to Honduras in recent months did not speak Spanish as their primary language, but were native speakers of English, Uzbek and French, among other languages.

And while hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants have been ordered sent to Uganda, a top Ugandan official said none have arrived. U.S. authorities may be "doing a cost analysis" and trying to avoid dispatching flights with only a few people on board, Okello Oryem, the Ugandan minister of state for foreign affairs, told The Associated Press.

"You can't be doing one, two people" at a time," Oryem said. "Planeloads -– that is the most effective way."

Many immigration lawyers suspect that the March email ordering a halt in new asylum pretermissions could indicate a shift toward other forms of third-country deportations.

"Right now they haven't been able to remove that many people," said the ACLU's Mehta. "I do think that will change."

"They're in a hiring spree right now. They will have more planes. If they get more agreements, they'll be able to send more people to more countries."

Associated Press reporters Garance Burke in San Francisco, Joshua Goodman in Miami, Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Molly A. Wallace in Chicago contributed to this report.

byVincento Seyarto

in

April 02, 2026

Immigrants seeking asylum are ordered to countries they've never been to, but end up stuck in limbo

The Afghan man had fled the Taliban for refuge in upstate New York when U.S. immigration authorities ordered him deported...

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US Senate clears way for House to pass funding bill to end DHS shutdown

By Richard Cowan and David Morgan

WASHINGTON, April 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate cleared the way early ‌on Thursday for the House of Representatives ‌to pass a Department of Homeland Security funding bill through September ​30 that was approved by the Senate late last week and would end a nearly seven-week partial shutdown.

The measure provides no additional funding for immigration law enforcement ‌activities that already ⁠are robustly funded.

It was unclear whether the House would quickly take up the legislation ⁠at a session that is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT).

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, speaking to a near-empty ​chamber, cleared ​the way for progress ​on ending the DHS ‌funding fight by killing a 60-day, stopgap bill that had been passed by the House but had no chance of getting enough support to pass the Senate.

The Senate ignored that bill on Friday and began ‌a recess that telegraphed its ​opposition to the measure.

Senate and ​House Republican leaders ​announced on Wednesday that they had reached ‌a deal to finally end ​the DHS ​shutdown. But it was unclear whether House Republican rank-and-file would support that agreement.

House passage of the Senate ​bill would ‌send it to President Donald Trump for signing ​into law.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and David ​Morgan; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

byVincento Seyarto

in

April 02, 2026

US Senate clears way for House to pass funding bill to end DHS shutdown

By Richard Cowan and David Morgan WASHINGTON, April 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate cleared the way early ‌on Th...

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Is Trump citizenship order doomed? 6 takeaways from birthright debate

WASHINGTON −President Donald Trump'seffort to redefine who is an American did not get the quick rejection from theSupreme Courtthat manyexpected going into the April 1 oral arguments, but key conservative justices seemed skeptical of the administration's arguments for its legality.

Every other court that has reviewed Trump's executive order severely restricting birthright citizenship ruled against it.

But the conservative justices, who have a 6-3 majority, also had probing questions for the other side, particularly about how to understand the court'slandmark 1898 rulingupholding the citizenship of a San Francisco-born man whose Chinese parents were barred from becoming citizens under the laws of the time.

Protests outside Supreme Court as birthright fight reaches justices

Still, the court can rule against Trump without agreeing what that ruling meant. That would be a major blow to the president, who attended part of the arguments in ahistoric first for a sitting president.

Here are six takeaways from the arguments:

Justices have more than one way to rule against Trump

The 14th Amendment grants automatic citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Trump argues that doesn't apply to the children of people who are in the country illegally or temporarily.

While the justices spent much time debating the original meaning of that clause and how to interpret the court's 1898 landmark ruling about it, there's another potential way for the court to decide the case.

A citizenship law passed in 1952 uses similar language that was well understood at the time to be different than Trump's interpretation of the 14th Amendment, meaning the court could reject Trump's order without settling every question about the amendment's intent or the 19th Century ruling.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, noted that the court's usual practice is to resolve issues on a statutory – not constitutional – basis when possible.

But Cecillia Wang, the ACLU attorney representing the challengers, said it's important for the court to back its landmark 1898 ruling about birthright citizenship.

"I just think it would be prudent for the court to go ahead and reaffirm that," Wang said, "but, of course, we'd be happy to take a win on any ground."

For his part, Solicitor General John Sauer argued that if the lawmakers who wrote the 1952 law misunderstood the 14th Amendment, theSupreme Courtcan correct that at the same time by upholding Trump's order.

But if the court is going to rule against Trump, Sauer added, the administration would prefer to lose based on the 1952 law and not on the Constitution. If that happens, Congress could still revoke birthright citizenship by changing the law, although that's extremely unlikely without large Republican majorities in both chambers. That would surely draw another legal challenge, likely sending the constitutional question back to the high court.

What does 'domiciled' mean?

A fierce point of contention is whether parents have to be "domiciled" in the United States, meaning that they are lawfully in the country and intend to remain, for their children to be considered citizens. The word "domiciled" appeared numerous times in the landmark 1898 decision upholding birthright citizenship but lawyers challenging Trump's order contend it isn't required for citizenship.

Sauer argued that domiciled means people who are lawfully in the country and have an intent to remain permanently. His position ruled out the children of undocumented immigrants or people visiting the country temporarily who wouldn't automatically be granted citizenship.

But Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, suggested that definition of birthright citizenship could be difficult to apply.

"You're not going to know at the time of birth, for some people, whether they have the intent to stay or not," Barrett said.

Chief Justice John Roberts noted that word "domiciled" appeared 20 times in the court's 1898 decision that confirmed birthright citizenship for nearly everyone born in the country.

"Isn't it at least something to be concerned about, to say since it was discussed 20 different times, and it has that significant role in the opinion, that you can just dismiss it as irrelevant?" Roberts asked Wang, the ACLU attorney.

Wang said birthright citizenship came from English common law that didn't require parents to be domiciled.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, suggested the purpose of the word "domiciled" in the 1898 decision is uncertain.

"It seems to me it's a mess," he said. "Maybe you can persuade me otherwise."

Birth tourism: Justices say Trump's policy concerns are irrelevant

Trump has hammered away at "birth tourism" – the practice of pregnant women coming to the United States to give birth so their babies will be citizens – as a main justification for curtailing birthright citizenship.

"It has spawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism as uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States in recent decades, creating a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States," Sauer told the court.

But the extent of birth tourism – and its threat to national security – is hotly contested. Estimates range from a "marginal" 2,000 babies a year to disputed allegations of100,000 per year during a 15-year span.

Pressed on the statistics by Roberts, Sauer acknowledged it's unclear how common the practice is.

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"No one knows for sure," Sauer responded.

More:USA Happy Baby, birth tourism and a blockbuster Supreme Court case

Regardless of its impact, Roberts made the point that policy considerations "have no impact on the legal analysis before us."

Kavanaugh, another conservative justice whose vote is often key to decisions, made the same point about the administration's complaint that most countries do not have birthright citizenship.

"You've mentioned several times the practices of other countries, and that obviously, as a policy matter, supports what you're arguing here," Kavanaugh told Sauer. "But obviously we try to interpret American law with American precedent, based on American history."

Some conservatives press Trump administration's argument

Some of the court's conservative justices appeared concerned with the breadth of the Trump administration's argument, or with the practicalities of how it may be applied.

Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said examples the Trump administration used to argue that children born in the United States to unauthorized immigrants aren't automatically citizensstruck him "as very quirky."

The administration pointed to children of ambassadors and children of enemies invading the country, suggesting that because those children weren't historically understood to be entitled to citizenship, children of unauthorized immigrants aren't, either.

"I'm not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples," Roberts said.

Sauer said there is historical evidence to support understanding birthright citizenship as going to people who don't owe allegiance to any other country.

Barrett suggested that the Trump administration's definition of birthright citizenship – whether the parent of a child born in the United States is "domiciled" in the country, meaning has a permanent intent to stay here –is tricky to apply.

Sauer said, as a practical matter, the president's executive order looks at the legal immigration status of a child's parents, so it doesn't require courts to evaluate a parent's intent.

Liberals skeptical of Trump stance on birthright citizenship

It was already clear ahead of the arguments that the court's three liberal justices were highly skeptical of the Trump administration's stance on birthright citizenship.

Ina June dissenting opinionin a case dealing with the power of lower court judges to halt Trump's citizenship order nationwide, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the order is "patently unconstitutional under settled law." Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan joined that opinion.

None of the three Democratic-appointed justices has changed her mind, judging by the April 1 arguments.

Kagan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, said "everybody has believed" the rationale backing birthright citizenship"for a long, long time."

Jackson suggested that a win for the Trump administration could fundamentally destabilize citizenship, because Congress could continually upend birthright citizenship simply by redefining what it means to be "domiciled" in the United States. (The Trump administration says a parent's place of "domicile" is key to whether a child has birthright citizenship.)

Sotomayor argued that, if the Trump administration wins, it could startstripping people of the citizenship they already havethrough a new executive order, even if the order at issue only applied to future children born in the United States.

"The government could move to unnaturalize people who were born here of illegal residents," she said.

Sauer argued that there have long been disputes about who has birthright citizenship, and the Trump administration isn't asking to undo birthright citizenship going back in time.

In unprecedented move, Trump attends Supreme Court argument

Trump demonstrated the importance of the case to him by taking the unprecedented step for a sitting president of attending the April 1 argument in person.

Trump's motorcade arrived at the court about 9:40 a.m., after passing school groups touring the National Mall on his way from the White House to the court across the street from the Capitol. He entered through a back entrance.

Trump's presence wasn't acknowledged by the justices or lawyers, but a few quiet gasps echoed through the room when he entered. He sat in the front row of public seats behind the counsel tables.

Trump left the argument after Sauer's main presentation ended, after a little more than an hour.

"We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow "Birthright" Citizenship!"Trump said on social mediaafter the argument ended.

According to the Pew Research Center, there are32 other countries that offer birthright citizenshipwith essentially the same terms as the United States, including Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

Contributing: Karissa Waddick

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:6 takeaways as Trump's citizenship order takes heat at Supreme Court

byVincento Seyarto

in

April 02, 2026

Is Trump citizenship order doomed? 6 takeaways from birthright debate

WASHINGTON −President Donald Trump'seffort to redefine who is an American did not get the quick rejection from theSup...

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Girl who went missing at 13 years old in 1994 is found alive

A 13-year-old Arizona girl who disappeared nearly 32 years ago has been found alive, the Gila County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday.

The disappearance of Christina Marie Plante from Star Valley, a small community in a mountainous area northeast of Phoenix, in 1994 sparked an extensive search that included volunteers, the sheriff's office said.

Although the case went cold, it was never closed, and it was periodically re-reviewed, the sheriff's office said. It was assigned to a cold case unit after the unit was formed.

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"Utilizing advances in technology, modern investigative techniques, and detailed case review, detectives developed new leads that ultimately led to a breakthrough," the sheriff's office said in a statement.

The sheriff's office said that out of respect for Plante's privacy, additional details were not being released Wednesday.

When she disappeared on May 16, 1994, she was reported to have last been seen going on foot to a stable where her horse was kept, the sheriff's office said in a missing person poster.

byVincento Seyarto

in

April 02, 2026

Girl who went missing at 13 years old in 1994 is found alive

A 13-year-old Arizona girl who disappeared nearly 32 years ago has been found alive, the Gila County Sheriff's Office...

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Midwives sue to challenge Georgia laws restricting their ability to practice

Twice a month, Sarah Stokely travels 4½ hours from her home in Rome, Georgia, to work for a week at a birth center in Blountville, Tennessee.

Stokely is a certified nurse-midwife — the title for registered nurses who specialize in midwifery. But Georgia laws make it difficult for her to practice there.

The state requires all nurse-midwives to have formal, written agreements with physicians that describe when physicians must intervene in evaluating or treating patients. Stokely said the agreement, which often requires midwives to pay physicians for their time and liability insurance, was too expensive. She was quoted around $500 per month, she said.

Midwives who don't have nursing degrees, meanwhile, aren't allowed to practice in Georgia at all. The laws make Georgia one of the country's most restrictive states for midwives.

Stokely and two other midwives sued the state Thursday, alleging that Georgia's policies violate the state constitution and don't ensure patients' safety.

In the suit, a draft version of which was shared exclusively with NBC News, the plaintiffs argue that their midwifery services are essential in Georgia. More than one‑third of the state's counties are consideredmaternity care deserts, meaning there are no obstetric providers or birthing facilities, according to the nonprofit group March of Dimes. The plaintiffs also say making it easier for midwives to practice could lower Georgia's high maternal mortality rate. For every 100,000 births in the state,30 mothers die from complicationsduring pregnancy or within six weeks afterward, according to March of Dimes.

"There are some places in the state where there's nowhere to give birth or access pregnancy care nearby. We have midwives, including our clients, who are ready and willing to fill that gap to serve those families, and the state is treating them like criminals," said the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Hillary Schneller, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Representatives for the state didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit is one of several filed in recent years to challenge state restrictions on the practice of midwifery. The cases argue that midwives play an important role in addressing provider shortages, which have become more acute ashospitals close obstetric units.

In January, the American College of Nurse-Midwives sued the medical licensure board of Mississippi, where midwives are also required to have collaborative agreements with physicians to practice. The lawsuit says the rule is "a major barrier to closing Mississippi's gaps in prenatal and postpartum care." In a court filing, the state disputed that assertion and said the regulations "speak for themselves."

In Alabama, meanwhile, a lawsuit that has been ongoing since 2023 challenges a regulation requiring birth centers — facilities where midwives oversee deliveries and administer pre- and postnatal care — to be licensed as hospitals. The lawsuit argues that the restriction (which isn't being enforced while the suit plays out) would make it difficult, if not impossible, for birth centers to operate. An Alabama court sided with the birth centers last year, but an appeals court reversed the decision in January. The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the birth centers, has asked the state Supreme Court to review the case.

"Georgia is not unique in the maternity care shortage it is facing and restrictions on midwives," Schneller said. "We've been in this broken system for a long time, and it's not like we don't know how to get out of it."

Midwives say physician agreements create barriers

Sixteen statesrequire some form of collaborative agreement with a physicianfor a nurse-midwife to practice.

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Proponents of the agreements argue that they're necessary for patient safety. Because midwives are trained to oversee low-risk pregnancies and usuallysend patients to hospitals if complications arise, agreements with physicians in theory should give midwives someone to consult or transfer patients to in such scenarios. But in practice, it's not guaranteed that physicians will be on call when midwives need them, and many midwives say the agreement implies they're incapable of making sound decisions on their own.

"There is a bit of mistrust that we can do things independently," Stokely said.

The plaintiffs in the new lawsuit also allege that it can be difficult to find doctors in Georgia willing to enter into the agreement.

"I don't think I've met a midwife yet that is opposed to working collaboratively with obstetricians, but I have met many OBs that are opposed to working with midwives," said Jamarah Amani, another plaintiff.

A patchwork of state regulations for midwives

Georgia is one of 38 states that don't allow licenses for certified midwives, who have master's degrees in midwifery. It's also one of 13 states that don't offer paths to licensure for certified professional midwives, who complete training and exams but don't have degrees. All 50 states recognize nurse-midwives.

Tamara Taitt, the third plaintiff in the Georgia lawsuit, said the restriction has led to staffing issues at the birth center she runs in Atlanta.

Because she can't hire midwives who aren't nurses, Taitt said, her pool of applicants is limited. As a result, she said, the practice is sometimes unable to take new patients, and midwives are sometimes stretched too thin to accompany their patients to the hospital when they need transfers.

"If you are invested in solving the problem of maternal mortality and infant mortality, it doesn't really make any sense that you're not leveraging all of the providers that you can," Taitt said.

Some states have also imposed regulations on home births, which have become increasingly popular in the U.S. In Nebraska, for instance, it's a felony for nurse-midwives to attend home births. A pregnant mother sued the state in January to challenge the law; the case was settled last month, with the state carving out a religious exemption to the ban.

Taitt and her fellow plaintiffs argue in their suit that Georgia's regulations limit pregnant women's options for their deliveries.

"The state needs to listen to its own citizens that are saying: 'We demand access to midwife care. We want to have our home births. We want to birth in birth centers,'" said Amani, who previously owned a home in Georgia.

She moved to Florida more than a decade ago and had planned to move her family back to Georgia eventually. But she never did because of Georgia's restrictions on midwives.

Years ago, Amani said, she and her family temporarily evacuated Florida because of Hurricane Irma and stayed briefly in Georgia. One of her patients fled there, as well, then called Amani after she experienced contractions. Amani was forced to tell the woman that she couldn't oversee the birth if it happened in Georgia.

"I remember her being so shocked and appalled," Amani said. "Her trusted care provider is down the street but can't legally attend her."

byVincento Seyarto

in

April 02, 2026

Midwives sue to challenge Georgia laws restricting their ability to practice

Twice a month, Sarah Stokely travels 4½ hours from her home in Rome, Georgia, to work for a week at a birth center in Blo...

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Leo, the first US pope, emerges as pointed Trump critic

By Joshua McElwee

VATICAN CITY, April 2 (Reuters) - Pope Leo last May became the first U.S. leader of the global Catholic Church, but for the initial 10 months of his tenure he mostly avoided comment about his home country and never once mentioned President Donald Trump publicly.

That era has ‌come to an end.

In recent weeks the pope has emerged as a sharp critic of the Iran war. He named Trump, for the first time ‌publicly, on Tuesday in a direct appeal urging the president to end the expanding conflict.

It is a significant shift in tone and approach that experts said indicated that the pope wanted to serve as a ​counterweight on the world stage to Trump and his foreign policy aims.

"I don't think he wants the Vatican to be accused of being soft on Trumpism because he's an American," said Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic who follows the Vatican closely.

Leo, known for choosing his words carefully, urged Trump to find an "off-ramp" to end the war, using an American colloquialism the president and administration officials would understand.

"When (Leo) speaks, he's always careful," said Faggioli, a professor at Trinity College Dublin. "I don't think that was an accident."

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, a close ‌ally of Leo, told Reuters the pope was taking up ⁠the mantle of a long line of pontiffs who have urged world leaders to turn away from war.

"What is different ... is the voice of the messenger, for now Americans and the entire English-speaking world are hearing the message in an idiom familiar to them," said ⁠the cardinal.

POPE SAYS GOD REJECTS PRAYERS OF WAR LEADERS

Two days before appealing to Trump directly, Leo said God rejected the prayers of leaders who start wars and have "hands full of blood", in unusually forceful remarks for a Catholic pontiff.

Those comments were interpreted by conservative Catholic commentators as aimed at U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has invoked Christian language to justify the joint ​U.S.-Israeli ​strikes on Iran that initiated the war.

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They also led to one of the Trump administration's first ​direct responses to a comment by Leo.

"I don't think there is ‌anything wrong with our military leaders or with the president calling on the American people to pray for our service members," White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, when asked about the pope's remarks.

Marie Dennis, a former leader of the international Catholic peace movement Pax Christi, said Leo's most recent comments and his direct appeal to Trump "reflect a heart broken by unrelenting violence.

"He is reaching out to all who are exhausted by this unrelenting violence and are hungry for courageous leadership," she said.

POPE RAMPING UP CRITICISM FOR WEEKS

Leo had previously taken aim at Trump's hardline immigration policies, questioning whether they were in line with the Church's pro-life teachings. In those comments, which drew backlash from conservative Catholics, ‌he refrained from naming Trump or any administration official directly.

The pope also carried out a major ​shake-up of U.S. Catholic leadership in December, removing Cardinal Timothy Dolan as archbishop of New York. Dolan, ​seen as a leading conservative among the U.S. bishops, was replaced by ​a relatively unknown cleric from Illinois, Archbishop Ronald Hicks.

Leo has been ramping up his criticism of the Iran war for weeks.

He said on ‌March 13 that Christian political leaders who start wars should go ​to confession and assess whether they are ​following the teachings of Jesus. On March 23, Leo said military airstrikes were indiscriminate and should be banned.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, a senior Vatican official, said the pope's voice would carry weight globally because "everyone can perceive that he speaks ... for the common good, for all people and especially the vulnerable."

"Pope Leo's moral voice is ​credible, and the world wants desperately to believe that peace ‌is possible," said the cardinal.

Leo on Thursday began four days of Vatican events leading up to Easter Sunday when he will deliver a special ​blessing and message from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica.

One of the most closely watched appointments on the Vatican's calendar, the Easter speech is ​usually a time when the pope makes a major international appeal.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

byVincento Seyarto

in

April 02, 2026

Leo, the first US pope, emerges as pointed Trump critic

By Joshua McElwee VATICAN CITY, April 2 (Reuters) - Pope Leo last May became the first U.S. leader of the glob...

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