News briefs

Tribune News Service on Apr 22, 2025

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Supreme Court appears to favor parents' right to opt out of LGBTQ+ stories for their children

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices sounded ready on Tuesday to give parents a constitutional right to opt out of public school lessons for their children that offend their religious beliefs.

At issue are new "LGBTQ-inclusive" storybooks used for classroom reading for pre-kindergarten to 5th grade in Montgomery County, Maryland, a suburb of Washington where three justices reside.

In recent years, the court's six conservatives have invoked the "free exercise of religion" to protect Catholic schools from illegal job-bias claims from teachers and to give parents an equal right to use state grants to send their children to religious schools.

During an argument on Tuesday, they strongly suggested they would extend religious liberty rights to parents with children in public schools. "They are not asking to change what is taught in the classroom," Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh told an attorney for the court.

—Los Angeles Times

Pete Hegseth claims attack plans shared with pals on Signal were ‘informal’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Tuesday claimed attack plans he shared with pals on a Signal group chat amounted to nothing more than “informal, unclassified” information.

The embattled Pentagon chief insisted he did nothing wrong by using his personal phone to share detailed plans for U.S. strikes on Houthi militants in Yemen with about a dozen associates, including his wife, brother and lawyer.

“What was shared over Signal … was informal, unclassified coordination for media coordination and other things,” he told Fox News. Hegseth blamed the mainstream media for what he called smear tactics against him and President Donald Trump. “Left-wing journalists….wanted to create a problem for the president,” he continued. “That’s what it’s all about. Trying to get at President Trump and his agenda.”

NBC News reported that the attack plans shared by Hegseth appear to have been shared with him minutes earlier by a top Pentagon general using a secure government communications channel. The new allegations amount to a second bombshell revelation about Hegseth and other senior Trump officials improperly using unsecure communication channels to discuss sensitive information.

—New York Daily News

UnitedHealth Group spent $1.6 million on executive security last year

MINNEAPOLIS — UnitedHealth Group significantly upped spending on security for top corporate leaders last year with the Dec. 4 killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson.

The Eden Prairie-based health care giant said it spent more than $1.6 million on security for five top executives last year, including CEO Andrew Witty, according to a regulatory filing Monday.

Thompson, who was CEO of insurance division UnitedHealthcare, is the only named executive for whom there was no security spending, which suggests the expenses for other corporate leaders were incurred after he was fatally ambushed in New York City.

For 2023, by contrast, the company listed no security expense for Witty, Thompson or any of the company’s named executives.

—The Minnesota Star Tribune

Vance calls for closer US-India ties as trade talks progress

Vice President JD Vance pushed for stronger ties between the U.S. and India across a range of areas from energy to defense, in remarks delivered during a four-day trip to the South Asian country that brought the two nations closer to a trade deal.

“This is very much a win-win partnership,” Vance said in Jaipur on Tuesday. “The future of the 21st century is going to be determined by the strength of the United States and India partnership.”

Vance highlighted trade, defense, energy and technology as areas of cooperation in his speech. He also called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to continue efforts to lower trade barriers and purchase more American goods.

The remarks are the among the clearest signs to date that the Trump administration sees India as one of its main partners at a time when it is resetting its relationship with allies around the world. Vance lavished praise on Modi and pledged that the Trump administration would not treat India with “condescension,” an attitude he said was shown by past U.S. leaders.

—Bloomberg News