Tag: Decisions and Verdicts

Trump Prepares Yet Another Strategy to Resurrect Global Tariffs

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The Trump administration has cycled through trade law after trade law as it tries to find a sound legal basis to impose the steep tariffs on foreign products that President Trump wants. It is poised to try yet another approach. A global 10 percent tariff that Mr. Trump imposed in February after the Supreme Court struck down his earlier global tariffs is set to lapse at 12:01 a.m. on Friday. The administration has a new batch of tariffs ready to go to replace it, which could be announced as soon…

China Wants A.I. to Flourish, but Not at the Expense of Jobs

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When a Chinese court ruled late last month that a tech company had illegally laid off a worker after replacing him with artificial intelligence software, it delivered an implicit warning to other employers. “The development of artificial intelligence technology should be applied to liberating labor, promoting employment and improving people’s livelihood,” the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court wrote. “Labor law allows employers to undertake technological changes and upgrade their operations, but it should also take into account the protection of workers’ legitimate rights and interests. The case — the third time…

The Great Political Realignment of 2026

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The Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Voting Rights Act has supercharged a redistricting frenzy in states across the country. The Times Opinion contributors Robert Siegel and E.J. Dionne and the SCOTUSblog editor Sarah Isgur discuss the ruling’s implications for future elections. Ms. Isgur makes the case that voters are over reality TV politics and warns Democrats against embracing Trump-style candidates. Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the…

How the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket Upended Climate Policy

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In 2016, a surprise decision from the Supreme Court “sent both climate policy and the court itself spinning in new directions,” Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak wrote in an investigation published last week. The one-paragraph ruling halted the Clean Power Plan, President Barack Obama’s signature environmental policy, which was aimed at reducing emissions from power plants. The decision signaled the birth of the court’s modern “shadow docket,” which the court uses to issue short opinions and bypass the time-tested procedures of hearing oral arguments and publishing detailed explanation of the…

Chinese-Australian Writer Yang Given Suspended Death Sentence in China

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An Australian writer and businessman who has been detained in China on national security charges since 2019 has been declared guilty and was given a death sentence with two years’ probation on Monday, according to the Australian government, in a blow to warming relations between Australia and China. If the businessman, Yang Hengjun, does not commit any crimes in those two years, the sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment, Penny Wong, the Australian foreign minister, said in a statement. She described the verdict as “harrowing.” The long detention of…

Real Estate Giant China Evergrande Will Be Liquidated

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Months after China Evergrande ran out of cash and defaulted in 2021, investors around the world scooped up the property developer’s discounted I.O.U.’s, betting that the Chinese government would eventually step in to bail it out. On Monday it became clear just how misguided that bet was. After two years in limbo, Evergrande was ordered by a court in Hong Kong to liquidate, a move that will set off a race by lawyers to find and grab anything belonging to Evergrande that can be sold. The order is also likely…

3 Convicted of Harassing Family on Behalf of China’s Government

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Three men were convicted in Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday of stalking a family in the New Jersey suburbs on behalf of the Chinese government. The defendants, Michael McMahon, 55, Zhu Yong, 66, and Zheng Congying, 27, were found guilty of stalking and a related conspiracy charge. Mr. Zhu and Mr. McMahon were also found guilty of acting as unregistered foreign agents, and Mr. Zhu was convicted on a second conspiracy charge. Speaking outside the courthouse on Tuesday, Mr. McMahon, a retired New York Police Department sergeant turned private investigator,…

China Sentences a U.S. Citizen to Life in Prison for Espionage

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A Chinese court said it sentenced a 78-year-old American citizen to life in prison on Monday on unspecified charges of spying, the latest in a wave of espionage cases the authorities have pursued amid growing wariness of foreign influence in the country. The Intermediate People’s Court in the southeastern city of Suzhou said in a short statement that it pronounced John Shing-Wan Leung guilty of espionage and sentenced him. It said that Mr. Leung was arrested in April 2021 by state security officials, but provided no details about the charges…

Chinese Dissident Sentenced to 8 Years After He Tried to Fly to His Dying Wife

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A court in southern China has sentenced one of the country’s most unyielding human rights activists to eight years in prison for essays he wrote and a website he created, in the ruling Communist Party’s latest warning blow against political dissent. The activist, Yang Maodong, was detained in 2021 when he tried to catch a flight to the United States to be with his wife, who was gravely ill. Mr. Yang — who is better known by his pen name, Guo Feixiong — was sentenced at the end of a…

In Fiji’s Closely Observed Election, a Former Coup Leader Is Ahead

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It was a clash between two former coup leaders, set against the backdrop of a remote and palm-fringed vacation destination that has, of late, taken on outsized importance in a battle for primacy in the Pacific between the United States and China. And with the military constitutionally permitted to intervene if it saw fit, that contest was one with the potential to become extremely volatile. So, as voters went to the polls for the general election on Wednesday, focus turned to Fiji, an island nation known regionally for its stormy…