Author: Reporter

Valerie Laveus remembers when she first heard about an immigration program designed to allow people to come to the U.S. from four countries, including her native Haiti. “I said, ‘Whoa! This seems like it would work well for bringing my nephew and my brother into the country,'” said the Florida teacher, who received a WhatsApp message in January and verified with an immigration lawyer that the program was real. After years of trying to get a green card, her brother arrived with her nephew in early August, ready to start a new life. They are two of the roughly...

Sylvia Ann Miller-Scarborough remembers when people of color had to pay a poll tax to vote in Houston. She recalls her grandmother, undeterred by such obstacles, reminding her how important it was to be heard at the ballot box. Miller-Scarborough worries that much of the hard-won progress she hass seen in more than a half-century of voting in the largest county in Texas could be erased by Republican lawmakers. And she said it has gotten harder to convince her own grandchildren that it matters. “They don’t believe in voting,” she said. “They are all in their thirties, but they...

The U.S. citizenship test is being updated, and some immigrants and advocates worry the changes will hurt test-takers with lower levels of English proficiency. The naturalization test is one of the final steps toward citizenship, a months-long process that requires legal permanent residency for years before applying. Many are still shaken after former Republican President Donald Trump’s administration changed the test in 2020, making it longer and more difficult to pass. Within months, Democratic President Joe Biden took office and signed an executive order aimed at eliminating barriers to citizenship. In that spirit, the citizenship test was changed back...

With Donald Trump facing felony charges over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the former president is flooding the airwaves and his social media platform with distortions, misinformation, and unfounded conspiracy theories about his defeat. It is part of a multiyear effort to undermine public confidence in the American electoral process as he seeks to chart a return to the White House in 2024. There is evidence that his lies are resonating. New polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 57% of Republicans believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected as president....

The Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game franchise says it will not allow artists to use artificial intelligence technology to draw its cast of sorcerers, druids, fantasy characters, or scenery. D&D art is supposed to be fanciful. But at least one ax-wielding giant seemed too weird for some fans, leading them to take to social media to question if it was human-made. Hasbro-owned D&D Beyond, which makes online tools and other companion content for the franchise, said it did not know until August 5 that an illustrator it has worked with for nearly a decade used AI to create commissioned...