Colorado voters will not get a say this November on whether to replace the state’s congressional districts with ones that could help Democrats win additional seats in future elections.

The state Supreme Court on Monday struck down a series of proposed ballot initiatives that would have sidestepped the state’s independent redistricting commission and authorized new U.S. House districts for the 2028 and 2030 elections. The court said the measures addressed multiple subjects in violation of the state constitution.

The rulings marked another setback for Democrats in a nationwide redistricting battle that could affect control of Congress. Earlier this year, courts also invalidated Democratic redistricting efforts in Virginia and New York that were aimed at the midterm elections, though Democrats could try again there before the 2028 elections. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for people of color, opening a pathway for Republicans in several Southern states to redraw majority-Black districts that had elected Democrats.

Redistricting is typically done immediately after a census at the start of each decade.

President Donald Trump kickstarted an unusual mid-decade redistricting fight last year when he called on Republicans in Texas to redraw congressional districts in a bid to win several additional seats in the midterms and hold on to control of the closely divided chamber. Other Republican-led states followed, and several Democratic-led states tried to counter. Republicans prevailed in more states with new districts that they hope could net as many as 10 additional seats in November.

Colorado’s U.S. House delegation is evenly split between four Democrats and four Republicans under a map drawn by the state’s independent redistricting commission after the 2020 census. A constitutional amendment would be needed to draw different districts before the next census.

A Democratic-backed amendment would have authorized mid-decade redistricting and created new districts that could have helped Democrats gain up to three seats. Supporters offered two options: a single amendment combining both proposals, and a pair of initiatives separating redistricting authorization from the new map that would take effect only if both passed. The Colorado Supreme Court said both versions violated the multi-subject prohibition.

The court cited the same grounds while also invalidating identical Republican-backed ballot initiatives submitted to counter the Democratic ones.

NEW YORK (AP) — A self-exiled billionaire Chinese business tycoon once believed to be among China’s wealthiest men was sentenced Monday to 30 years in a U.S. prison for a massive financial fraud.

Guo Wengui, who fled China a decade ago and reinvented himself as a U.S.-based Communist Party critic, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan.

Given a chance to speak before hearing his sentence, Guo protested his treatment in jail, saying he fainted and fell down at 5 a.m. Monday. He said doctors at a hospital said he should stay there for treatment, but he was returned to jail and repeatedly vomited on the trip back. He said a doctor visited him in jail before he was brought to the courthouse.

“When I came here, I said I have a stomach ache, I need to go to the bathroom, I don’t feel well,” Guo said through an interpreter.

“The reason I came to the U.S. was to destroy the CCP,” Guo said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

The judge, in sentencing him, read snippets of letters she received from victims who described losing their life savings and developing fear, severe anxiety and losing family members.

“Mr. Guo preyed on those seeking to bring democracy to China,” Torres said.

She also said that to this day, Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one.” She said he “has called upon supporters to harass and intimidate those who dare to speak out against him.”

Guo grew so close to conservative political strategist Steve Bannon that they announced a joint initiative to overthrow the Chinese government in 2020. He lived in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park and had joined President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida golf club before his New York arrest and detention without bail three years ago.

Prosecutors had asked that he serve at least 30 years in prison, saying his “astonishing” fraud from 2018 to 2023 “destroyed hundreds of lives” and left “a wreckage of victims and families who have been devastated financially, emotionally, and psychologically” despite his claims that many followers still trust him.

Prosecutors said in court papers that his ill-gotten riches fueled “a lifestyle of extraordinary excess and indulgence, a gilded life of mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes and luxury furnishings.”

Guo was convicted of nine of 12 criminal charges during a seven-week trial that prosecutors said showcased his deception of thousands of investors in bogus deals that enabled Guo’s lavish lifestyle.

In a court filing, Guo’s lawyers wrote that he was the victim of the Chinese Communist Party’s “grand, pervasive, and life threatening” pursuit of him. They alleged that the party recruited elites in U.S. business, entertainment and politics to conspire against him.

They said in presentence court papers that a lengthy prison term would only validate China’s smear campaign and “embolden further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life.” They said defendants sentenced in similar cases received prison terms of two to four years.

The lawyers noted that a court probation officer wrote to the sentencing judge that Guo, also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, had scars and disfigurements from physical torture he endured in China and subsequent surgeries he underwent from 1993 to 2022 to repair the injuries.

The Probation Department recommended a 25-year prison sentence and cited “astronomical losses” of over $1 billion for victims, the government noted in court papers.

Defense lawyers said Guo’s wealth grew as his family became the largest shareholder of China’s largest publicly traded securities company, but he became a target of Chinese government officials as he exposed them as corrupt and they began to claim he was a U.S. operative. Eventually, the lawyers wrote, Guo moved to Hong Kong, London and then New York in 2017.

Chinese authorities accused him of rape, kidnapping, bribery and other crimes, but Guo said those allegations were false and designed to punish him for criticizing leading Communist Party figures.

Prosecutors say Guo convinced hundreds of thousands of people to invest more than $1 billion, total, in entities he controlled, including his media company, GTV Media Group Inc., and his so-called Himalaya Farm Alliance and the Himalaya Exchange.

Guo, the government alleged in presentence court papers, was “entirely unrepentant” for his crimes after he took advantage of lax U.S. asylum laws to flourish in America.

“He does not even offer the lip service of remorse or acceptance of any responsibility for the harms he caused so many individuals and their loved ones, some of whom have been pushed to consider suicide as a result of his crimes, and some of whom confronted him directly by bravely testifying at trial about how he brainwashed, cheated, and harmed them,” prosecutors wrote.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Five years after becoming the first Southern state to legalize possession of marijuana, Virginia has approved a legal way to sell it to recreational users.

State budget legislation enacted Monday will allow up to 350 cannabis shops to open across Virginia beginning July 1, 2027. The move marks the latest expansion of access to the drug — which remains illegal at the federal level — through state-level policymaking.

“Virginia legalized adult possession years ago, but without a regulated retail market, we left the illicit market to fill the gap,” state Sen. Lashrecse Aird, a Democrat and legislative leader on the issue, said in a statement earlier this month. “This compromise gives us a smarter and safer path forward — one that protects consumers, keeps products tested and accurately labeled, and creates a legal marketplace that is affordable and accessible enough to actually compete.”

Here’s what to know about Virginia’s new law, the long process of enabling retail sales and how the state’s changes fit into the national picture:

Virginia already had a medical marijuana program that allowed patients to purchase the drug through dispensaries. Now, state regulators will begin accepting applications for retail licenses on Feb. 1, ahead of the July 1, 2027, start date for recreational sales to adults 21 and older.

The law increases the state’s possession limit from 1 ounce to 2 ounces (28 grams to 5 gr7ams) and it will continue to allow people to cultivate a small number of plants at home.

The state will levy an excise tax on top of its sales tax, and that mix is expected to generate about $51 million in revenue for the state in the program’s first year, according to legislative budget documents.

Democrats have driven the state’s push toward legalization and recreational retail sales. They have cast the issue as a matter of equity after state data found Black Virginians were disproportionately policed and convicted of using marijuana. Only a sliver of the state’s Republican lawmakers have backed legalization, and many have raised public safety and health concerns.

Legalization advocates have generally cheered Virginia’s legislation, though many objected to a provision increasing the civil fine for public consumption, arguing it could again lead to disproportionate enforcement based on race.

Chelsea Higgs Wise, a grassroots organizer whose group Marijuana Justice was among those that called on Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger to rethink the increased fine, said the legislation was still an exciting development after years of uncertainty.

For the past five years, “Adults that want to reasonably consume have been confused, rightfully so,” she said.

Marijuana is legal in most U.S. states for either medicinal or recreational use, with about half allowing it for recreational use, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates for legalization and tracks policy developments around the country.

Virginia remains an outlier in the South for its permissive approach.

Despite the fact that nearly all states permit some form of cannabis use, the U.S. government maintains its longstanding prohibition on the drug.

But in a major policy shift, the Trump administration in April announced it was reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less dangerous drug and accelerating the process for a broader reclassification.

During the 2010s, Virginia gradually expanded access to marijuana for medical treatment. Then, in 2021, Virginia became the first Southern state to legalize marijuana with the passage of a law that allowed adults 21 and over to possess and cultivate the drug.

But lawmakers didn’t fully enact a framework for retail sales outside of the state’s medical marijuana program. Partisan control of Virginia government flipped in November 2021, and the issue stalled out for years. In 2024, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a bill that would have established recreational retail sales.

Spanberger, who assumed office in January 2026, pledged support during her winning campaign for legislation setting up a retail market. While the governor did veto Democratic legislation that emerged from this year’s legislative session, she eventually worked out a compromise with lawmakers. Those provisions were rolled into a state budget bill that reached final passage Monday and now becomes law, according to the governor’s office, after lawmakers accepted all of Spanberger’s amendments.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese has agreed to pay $395 million to settle more than 500 lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by church officials, plaintiffs’ attorneys said Monday.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone will have to write an apology letter to each survivor as part of the settlement.

The settlement also requires the archdiocese to implement a series of child protection and transparency reforms, including creating a list of clergy accused of abuse, said Jeff Anderson, an attorney representing dozens of child sexual abuse victims.

The settlement comes three years after the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy and will cover approximately 530 survivors of child sexual abuse, Anderson said. It is the latest agreement over clergy sexual abuse claims. In 2024, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to a record $880 million settlement.

Several archdioceses in California filed for bankruptcy after facing hundreds of lawsuits brought under a California law approved in 2019 that allowed decades-old claims to be filed by Dec. 31, 2022.

Cordileone, the archbishop, said in a statement that he believes the settlement provides “a path toward fair compensation for survivors who have borne the weight of this abuse for a lifetime.”

“The hope is that this proposal will allow us collectively to move forward,” he said,

“We accept full responsibility for what happened, and I sincerely apologize to all those who have been harmed,” Cordileone added.

Margie O’Driscoll sued the archdiocese alleging she was sexually abused almost 50 years ago by a priest while she was a student at Marin Catholic High School in Kentfield, a community north of the Golden Gate Bridge. She said the settlement was hard-fought and puts the responsibility on church officials, not survivors.

“I, like every survivor, have carried this pain and shame along like a ball and chain for a very, very long time,” O’Driscoll said during a news conference. “Ashamed and confused about what happened, scorned by the archdiocese, and sometimes not even believed by family and friends, and I think today shame is gonna change sides.”

Anderson said a committee of survivors who spent thousands of hours over the last three years negotiating with Cordileone is empowered with establishing protocols on how to distribute the funds. He said every survivor will be given an opportunity to submit their story of abuse to an allocator hired by the committee to receive what Anderson said would be “an equitable distribution based on the unique circumstances of that survival.”

Besides the funds, the archdiocese will be required to follow 14 child protection and transparency demands that include maintaining and making public a comprehensive, up-to-date list of all accused clergy that details allegations and the outcomes of investigations. The archdiocese will also be banned from imposing confidentiality agreements that silence survivors.

“I’ve been working with survivors for decades and I’ve never heard of anything quite as significant, as rigorous, as robust as what is being required of the Archdiocese of San Francisco,” Anderson said.

MIAMI (AP) — More than 100 people just deported from the United States were being held in a hotel when earthquakes struck Venezuela, setting off a scramble to find survivors and bodies buried in the rubble, according to survivors.

A deportation flight from Miami arrived in Venezuela hours before Wednesday’s earthquakes. On board were 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, according to ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First, which tracks deportation flights. They were transported to a hotel in La Guaira.

Lisbeth Portillo, 58, said she escaped the rubble from the hotel with about 20 other deportees who walked the streets looking for help. They saw people running, some naked and others barefoot as they emerged from the rubble of the building in La Guaira, one of the areas that was hardest hit in Wednesday’s 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes.

“We walked about five kilometers, and I cried and cried … there was no communication,” Portillo said in a phone interview from her home in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

They reached a National Guard building, where they had a chance to call relatives.

“I was born again; God gave me a second chance,” said Portillo. “I am traumatized,” she said after a pause, weeping.

The Venezuelan government says more than 1,700 people were killed.

Portillo was caught up in the Trump administration’s drive for mass deportations. In May, ICE Flight Monitor tracked 288 deportation flights to 38 countries, including Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile and the Ivory Coast.

The U.S. ran 12 deportation flights to Venezuela in May, operating three days a week, according to ICE Flight Monitor. Deportation flights to Venezuela resumed in February 2025 after a 13-month pause.

Portillo said the government took them to the Hotel Santuario La Llanada, where they underwent medical exams and got identification documents. They were told they would go home the next day.

Portillo was staying in a second floor room with 16 other women. She stepped onto a balcony to look at the sea and saw that the sky was black; it was very hot. She returned to the room, laid on a bed, and began to feel herself being shaken.

“I started hearing ‘papa, papa papapa,’, and I saw the women next to me start to fall,” she said, describing the sounds from the earthquake. “They were all screaming for help.”

And almost immediately, the second earthquake.

“I fall and end up buried and covered by a beam, but the shaking shifted everything where I was buried and I was able to get out,” said Portillo, who has bruises all over her body.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for information from the AP.

A video from the Venezuelan government posted on social media showed images of the deportees being received by Venezuelan authorities upon their arrival at the Caracas airport on Wednesday.

Jenny Rodriguez, 24, told the Telemundo network that she was on the flight and taken to the hotel.

“I was trapped under the rubble. A colleague who had been on the same flight came by; I managed to free my hand from the debris, grabbed him by the trousers, and begged for help”, she said. “Thanks to God — and to him — I was able to get out of there.”

Liliana Rojas told Telemundo that she has been trying to locate her 33-year-old partner. The detention center where he was held in El Paso, Texas, says only told that he was deported.

“No one is giving an answer about anything,” Rojas said.

Portillo, who crossed the U.S. border with Mexico in November 2021 and said had an pending asylum claim, couldn’t remember her children’s phone number. She called her husband in the United States.

“I said to him, ‘Cesar, I’m alive. Help me.’ And my husband kept saying, ‘It can’t be,’” she said. “‘I’m alive, I made it out of the rubble, I’m alive,’ I told him.”

Her husband called their children, who picked her up and were able to reunite with their mother the following night.

“I was born that day; on the 24th, I was born again,” said Portillo, who lived in South Florida for more than four years.

___

This version corrects the headline to say the hotel was in La Guaira.

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — A wildfire that killed three firefighters along the Colorado-Utah border is one of the deadliest for firefighters since an Arizona wildfire 13 years ago.

The Yarnell Hill Fire that killed 19 firefighters on June 30, 2013, remains the deadliest event on record for U.S. firefighters since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the deadliest for U.S. wildland firefighters in over a century.

The firefighters died 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Prescott, Arizona, after trying to escape flames fanned by shifting winds. They were deploying fire shelters — small, heat-resistant tents that can offer a chance at survival — when flames reached them in a brushy box canyon.

Temperatures reached 2,000 degrees (1,100 Celsius).

On Saturday, a wildfire west of Grand Junction, Colorado, killed three firefighters and injured two others. That fire has burned 44 square miles (114 square kilometers). The five firefighters were members of a Helitack crew who are dropped by helicopter into remote areas to saw and dig away vegetation and create fire-resistant barriers ahead of advancing flames.

As at the Yarnell Hill Fire, the firefighters decided to stop fleeing and use fire shelters to try to survive.

A complete investigation could take several months. Full knowledge of what happened could be elusive.

Investigators of the Yarnell Hill Fire could not verify radio communications from the firefighters for a half-hour period that may have shed light on their decision-making process.

The final investigation report ultimately did not fault the firefighters, saying they were fully qualified, staffed and trained and “followed all standards and guidelines.” Their commanders likewise made reasonable judgments and decisions in rapidly worsening conditions, according to the report.

“Complexity can outpace organizational attempts to respond,” the report concluded.

Fire shelters are a last resort, offering roll-of-the-dice odds under otherwise impossible circumstances. In a 2015 wildfire in Washington state, two firefighters who used such tents survived, while three who were in a truck died.

How much the protection the tents provide depends on the conditions in which they are deployed. They are not designed to withstand direct flame, Riva Duncan, president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a firefighter advocacy group, said Monday.

“It’s your last-ditch effort to try to survive,” Duncan said.

By Nate Raymond

June 29 (Reuters) – Four U.S. Supreme Court justices earned more than $2 million in combined book payments in 2025, according to financial disclosure reports released on Monday that also detailed lucrative teaching positions the court’s members held and free concert tickets that one received from Bad Bunny’s record label.

Eight of the nine justices disclosed their 2025 outside income and gifts, as required for certain senior government officials. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito was granted a 90-day extension to file his financial disclosure report.

The filings showed the outside income, gifts and investment transactions for the justices last year. Such filings have garnered increased interest in recent years following revelations that some of them previously failed to report luxury trips, including on private jet flights and yachts, and real estate transactions.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson reported a $1.18 million book advance last year from Penguin Random House, which published her memoir “Lovely One” in 2024. That is on top of nearly $2.07 million in book advance income she reported receiving from Penguin in 2024.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor reported $88,100 in royalties from Penguin for her children’s books “Turning Pages” and “Just Ask!” Sotomayor said those amounts were net of her literary agent’s commission, and that Penguin advised her it spent $7,473 to support the sale of “Just Shine!”

Sotomayor also disclosed that she had received concert tickets worth $4,333 from the record company Rimas Entertainment, which “provided tickets for a concert for me and guests while I was on a private trip to Puerto Rico in August 2025.”

Her disclosure report did not identify what concert Sotomayor attended. The performers that the Puerto Rican record label represents include the rapper Bad Bunny, who was at the time in the midst of a high-profile, 30-plus concert series in San Juan.

The court and Rimas did not immediately respond to requests for more information on Monday.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who in 2025 published a book titled “Listening to the Law,” reported earning $849,071 in book royalties from Javelin Group, a literary agency. 

Barrett and conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh also reported earning $33,285 each in teaching income from the University of Notre Dame Law School, where both are adjunct professors.

Chief Justice John Roberts reported that he was paid $25,000 by New England Law, a private Boston-based law school. He had last year disclosed teaching a two-week course in Galway, Ireland, in July 2024 for the school, but his compensation was not reported at the time because he was paid in February 2025.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas likewise reported teaching income, $18,000 from Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law.

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch reported $30,380 in teaching income from George Mason University and $361,000 in book royalty income, mostly from HarperCollins. The publisher recently published a children’s book he co-wrote titled “Heroes of 1776: The Story of the Declaration of Independence.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday said the Federal Reserve, unlike any other agency in Washington, has a measure of independence from the presidency and day-to-day politics. But the court didn’t define to what extent.

The case is the latest round in an unprecedented fight between the Fed and President Donald Trump. More political interference at the Fed could upend financial markets around the world, which closely follow its interest rate moves.

Trump has repeatedly demanded that the central bank cut its key interest rate to lower borrowing costs for homeowners, businesses, and even the government itself. Trump sought to fire a Fed governor, Lisa Cook, last August after accusing her of mortgage fraud — a charge she denies. Cook was appointed by former President Joe Biden and removing her would give Trump the opportunity to name a more amenable official in her place.

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that the president cannot fire the seven members of the Fed’s board of governors without a clear cause. The decision endorses the Fed’s independent structure even as the court eliminated such protections for leaders of other agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, whom the president can fire at-will.

“That’s a big deal,” said Scott Alvarez, the central bank’s former top lawyer. “That’s one of the things that makes the Fed independent.”

While the decision is a boost for the Fed, it does leave Cook vulnerable to further attempts by the Trump administration to fire her. Trump said on his social media site, Truth Social, that “we will take appropriate action immediately” to remove Cook. But for now, she will keep her job while the case is fought in lower courts.

Here is what the court decided, and why the Fed’s independence matters.

In a separate case Monday, the justices ruled 6-3 that the Constitution allows the president to fire the heads of federal agencies that had previously been considered independent. But in the Cook case, the court carved out a clear exemption for the Fed.

The Fed has a “unique historical status and role,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, similar to the First and Second Banks of the United States that existed in the early 1800s and that operated “at a deliberate remove from the ordinary political process.”

If the president could fire a Fed governor for any reason, it would undermine that official’s ability to make decisions independently, Roberts wrote.

“Nothing could be more corrosive of the independence that Congress sought to preserve,” the chief justice’s opinion said.

The ruling provides some additional protection for new chair Kevin Warsh, who was nominated by Trump but has said that getting inflation back to the Fed’s 2% target is his top priority. About half the Fed’s policymakers support a rate hike to achieve that goal, while Trump has spoken out against hikes.

Still, Kathryn Judge, a law professor at Columbia University, said the justices’ decision to strike down the independence of other agencies erodes the Fed’s standing by leaving it as the only remaining such body in Washington. The principle of independent, non-political judgment has been undercut, she added.

“Fed independence lives on for another day, but is not as robust as it was prior to these decisions,” she said.

And the court did not fully close the door on Trump’s efforts to fire Cook. Trump’s lawyers accepted that Trump could only fire her “for cause,” but they argued that the White House could define the cause and it couldn’t be second-guessed by courts.

The Supreme Court instead said that “for cause” likely involved serious misconduct that wasn’t related to their professional duties, but didn’t provide much detail. More importantly, they also threw out the higher standard that Cook’s lawyers had pushed, which would have allowed governors to only be fired for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance on the job. Since the alleged mortgage fraud occurred before she joined the Fed, such a standard would have likely shut down the case.

The court also said that Cook had to be given formal notice of her firing — the president only announced it last August on Truth Social — and an opportunity to formally respond, though the court did not specify what the process should look like. Indeed, Roberts included a footnote in his opinion noting that nothing forbids Trump from “trying again” to fire her, provided she is given proper notice and a chance to contest it.

Trump could seek to provide a bare-bones procedure while firing Cook again to bolster his case in the lower courts, legal experts said.

“That’s an area of vulnerability still for the Federal Reserve and for Lisa Cook,” Alvarez said.

The court battle will likely further define the boundaries of Fed independence.

The Fed wields extensive power over the U.S. economy. By cutting the short-term interest rate it controls — which it typically does when the economy falters — the Fed can make borrowing cheaper and encourage more spending, accelerating growth and hiring. When it raises the rate — which it does to cool the economy and combat inflation — it can weaken the economy and cause job losses.

Economists have long preferred independent central banks because they can more easily take unpopular steps to fight inflation, such as raise interest rates, which makes borrowing to buy a home, car, or appliances more expensive.

The importance of an independent Fed was cemented for most economists after the extended inflation spike of the 1970s and early 1980s. Former Fed Chair Arthur Burns has been widely blamed for allowing the painful inflation of that era to accelerate by succumbing to pressure from President Richard Nixon to keep rates low heading into the 1972 election. Nixon feared higher rates would cost him the election, which he won in a landslide.

Paul Volcker was eventually appointed chair of the Fed in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, and he pushed the Fed’s short-term rate to the stunningly high level of nearly 20%. (It is currently 3.6%.) The eye-popping rates triggered a sharp recession, pushed unemployment to nearly 11%, and spurred widespread protests.

Yet Volcker didn’t flinch. By the mid-1980s, inflation had fallen back into the low single digits. Volcker’s willingness to inflict pain on the economy to throttle inflation is seen by most economists as a key example of the value of an independent Fed.

Most investors prefer an independent Fed, partly because it typically manages inflation better without being influenced by politics, but also because its decisions are more predictable. A Fed swayed by politics would be harder to anticipate, and investors could demand higher yields on Treasurys before buying them. That would raise borrowing costs throughout the economy.

By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK, June 29 (Reuters) – The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco on Monday announced a $395 million settlement with about 530 people who said they were abused as children by priests, a deal that would resolve the archdiocese’s bankruptcy case.

It is the largest settlement reached in bankruptcy by any Catholic diocese. Before it becomes final, the deal must be approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali in San Francisco.

The Archdiocese, which serves nearly 450,000 Catholics in California’s San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties, also committed to publish the names of priests who had been credibly accused of sexually abusing children and to adopt additional safeguards aimed at preventing future misconduct.

“We remain committed to the healing and care of survivors who have suffered because of past sins of Church ministers,” San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said in a statement. “We pray for all survivors of sexual abuse, for our Archdiocese, parish communities and schools, and for the eradication of this shameful crime from our midst and from society as a whole.”

San Francisco’s archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2023. More than two dozen Catholic dioceses have done the same in recent years, after California, New York and other states enacted laws that temporarily enabled victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits over decades-old crimes. 

The settlement surpasses a $323 million bankruptcy deal reached by the diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island, New York, which was previously the largest bankruptcy settlement by a Catholic organization. The archdioceses of Los Angeles and New York reached larger sex abuse settlements in recent years, without filing for bankruptcy. 

Steve Moreno, who served on a court-appointed committee of abuse survivors in bankruptcy, said that the deal was a positive step forward after years of litigation.

“No amount of money can erase the pain and shame associated with carrying the burden of my child abuse in silence for over 50 years,” Moreno said in a statement.

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Daniel Wallis)

WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Monday supporting Americans’ ability to repair their own vehicles. 

While Americans are generally free to repair their own vehicles, federal law prohibits tampering with emissions-control systems, and automakers have long restricted independent mechanics’ access to diagnostic software, repair information and specialized tools.

Right-to-repair advocates argue that those restrictions make repairs more expensive and limit consumer choice, while automakers say they are needed to protect vehicle safety, cybersecurity and emissions compliance.

Trump said the action was a continuation of a similar order he signed earlier this year covering farm equipment and non-road machinery, adding it was prompted by reports that people faced legal consequences for repairing their own vehicles.

“It’s really common sense,” Trump said, adding that many Americans are better at fixing their own cars than mechanics.

(Reporting By Jacob Bogage and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)