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A federal judge is declining to halt President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to create a national list of eligible voters and limit mail voting. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols late Wednesday rejected arguments by Democrats and civil rights groups that the provision exceeds Trump’s powers. The Constitution gives the states and Congress the power to set election rules. When a Republican voting bill stalled in Congress, Trump issued his order creating a list of eligible voters and directing the Postal Service to send mail ballots only to those on the list. Attention now shifts to Boston, where another challenge to the executive order is in federal court.

For the first time since he was an infant, Kyle Adler boarded a plane in February to meet his birth mother. The 36-year-old Chilean American, who was taken from his mother at 9 months old and adopted by a U.S. family in 1990, is one of thousands who were illegally adopted during the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and among hundreds who are now reconnecting with their birth parents thanks to DNA tracing and organizations that are helping Chilean adoptees investigate their pasts. A team from The Associated Press spent time with Adler in Miami ahead of his flight and captured the moment he was reunited with his mother Ana Maria Navarrete in Santiago nearly 35 years later.

Attorneys for former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon argue in a new court filing that recent examples of grand jury misconduct by the U.S. Department of Justice across the country warrant the release of transcripts from the normally secretive proceedings in his case. Lemon made the new arguments in a court filing Wednesday. Lemon pleaded not guilty in February to federal civil rights charges, following a protest at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor. Lemon’s attorneys argue that “the past 15 months have seen an unprecedented and growing distrust in the Justice Department’s use of the grand jury process.”

Families in a toxic-waste polluted area around Naples are preparing to meet Pope Leo XIV during a pastoral visit. They carry years of grief and hopes for justice after losing children to cancer linked to a mafia waste-dumping racket. The visit to the "Land of Fires" on Saturday coincides with the 11th anniversary of Pope Francis’ ecological encyclical, Laudato Si. The European Court of Human Rights validated residents’ complaints last year, finding Italian authorities failed to address pollution. The pope will meet families who lost young relatives, highlighting the human cost of environmental pollution.

Federal judges in Maine and Wisconsin have dismissed lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice seeking to compel the states to hand over voter registration information to the federal government. U.S. District Judge James Pederson dismissed the Wisconsin lawsuit, saying the state’s voter registration list is not a record that can be requested under the Civil Rights Act of 1960. In Maine, Chief U.S. District Judge Lance Walker described the government’s claim as half-hearted and granted a state motion to dismiss it. Thursday's rulings were the latest in a string of defeats for the Trump administration in its attempts to force states to turn over voter rolls.

Experts say free speech claims by a white livestreamer charged with shooting a Black man outside a Tennessee courthouse don't constitute a blanket shield if unwanted interactions escalate and result in violence.  As more users of livestreaming social media platforms find being performative with racist language can draw big bucks, the line is blurring between freedom of expression and freedom for people to feel safe. Even within livestreaming communities, some assert they have a right to say whatever and earn revenue while others support setting boundaries. Racial justice advocates worry throwing money into the equation will only heighten and normalize racist antics. Dalton Eatherly, who goes by the moniker “Chud the Builder,” is facing attempted murder and other charges.