A health care system that operates hospitals and clinics in two states has agreed to pay more than $1 million to settle allegations it discriminated against religious employees.
Mercyhealth, which operates in Illinois and Wisconsin, reached the settlement after years of pre-litigation negotiations, following an investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
The probe found evidence that Mercyhealth engaged in discrimination by denying employees religious exemptions to its COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Mercyhealth also fired the workers, or lowered their wages, and discriminated against other workers by denying them a chance to even request religious accommodation, instead terminating them or withholding pay, according to the EEOC.
“At the start of my tenure as acting chair of the EEOC, I committed to focusing our agency’s resources to address the very real problem of religious discrimination, and this resolution is just the beginning,” EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas said in a statement. “This is an example of what our agency can accomplish when we work with employers to ensure that the doors of our workplaces are equally open to religious employees.”
If a settlement was not reached, then Mercyhealth could have faced lawsuits alleging violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law states in part that an employer cannot “fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
The settlement features back pay and damages to the workers and former workers who were affected. Mercyhealth has also agreed to re-distribute its policies, train personnel on how to handle religious accommodation requests, and report to the EEOC about the requests and decisions on system-wide vaccination programs.
A Mercyhealth spokesperson confirmed that a settlement was reached.
“Mercyhealth respects the religious beliefs and practices of its employees,” Kara Sankey, vice president of clinical operations and chief nursing officer for Mercyhealth, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement
Sankey said that the health system had lots of work to do during the COVID-19 pandemic, “while doing its best to protect the health and safety of its patients and employees and complying with federal rules requiring all hospital staff receive vaccinations.”
She added: “The balancing of these critical goals could not be achieved without the dedication of our doctors and staff in times of significant personal risk, and Mercyhealth appreciates the work and assistance of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in resolving these remaining disputes. The process permits Mercyhealth to demonstrate its long-held commitment to employee rights and to close another chapter in its work during the pandemic.”
A Texas judge has tightened the legal vise on former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, slapping him and his political group, Powered by People,with an expanded restraining order that also ropes in ActBlue and any banks handling their funds.
The move came Saturday after Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an urgent motion a day earlier, accusing O’Rourke’s outfit of funneling cash to Democrats who fled the state to derail redistricting votes.
Eight days ago, a district court first barred O’Rourke’s group from raising or distributing money to the runaway lawmakers. But the Democrat firebrand thumbed his nose at the order - holding rallies, posting fundraising videos online, and defiantly declaring, “Still here, still raising and rallying to stop the steal of 5 congressional seats in Texas.”
That open defiance pushed Paxton to seek contempt charges. In an amended filing, he demanded Powered by People’s charter be revoked, blasting O’Rourke for “deceptively fundraising and handing out ‘Beto Bribes’” to lawmakers in exchange for abandoning their posts.
O’Rourke and Powered by People "have deceived donors, bought off Texas politicians, and unlawfully assisted runaway Democrats in avoiding arrest,” Paxton charged, adding that the court should “throw Beto behind bars” and shut the group down, Just the News reports.
The AG’s complaint went further - accusing the organization of steering donations into luxury perks like private jets, swanky hotels, and fine dining “disconnected from any legitimate legislative purpose."
According to the amended complaint, "O’Rourke and Powered by People are directing consumers to political fundraising platforms, such as ActBlue, for the express political purpose of ‘fight[ing]’ Republicans and protecting Democratic seats from ‘corrupt republicans,’ meanwhile the funds are actually being used for lavish personal expenditures (i.e. travel on private jets, luxury hotel accommodations, and fine dining that is disconnected from, and has no legitimate purpose relating to, their legislative positions)."
Judge Megan Fahey agreed the state faced “imminent harm,”expanding the order through Sept. 5 and setting a Sept. 2 hearing on a possible injunction. She ruled the fundraising violated Texas consumer protection laws, saying it “harms Texas consumers” and that freezing the cash flow was in the public interest.
Paxton wasted no time in declaring victory: “His fraudulent attempt to pad the pockets of the rogue cowards abandoning Texas has been stopped, and now the court has rightly frozen his ability to continue to send money outside of Texas. The cabal of Democrats who have colluded together to scam Texans and derail our Legislature will face the full force of the law, starting with Robert Francis O’Rourke.”
Still, O’Rourke showed no signs of backing down. On Saturday he headlined another rally in Austin, thanking supporters “in this fight for Texas” and boasting that more than $1 million had already been donated to the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, the Texas House Democratic Caucus, and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus during the special session.
Ahead of the planned Monday meeting between President Trump and Ukraine's Zelensky in the Oval Office, which will also have the attendance and participation of a growing list of European and NATO leaders, there's increasing talk of seekingAmerican-supported "Article 5-style" security guaranteesfor Ukraine as part of any broader peace deal with Russia.
According to CNN, citing a senior European official, the proposed plan wouldn't involve NATO directly - and would effectively remove the question of membership in the military alliance - but would aim to offer Ukraine protections similar to NATO's collective defense clause.
The specifics of the proposal remain undisclosed and unclear, and there's also the practical reality and major hurdle of just how such 'guarantees' would be enforced.
The Kremlin would likely balk at such a condition, given Russian leadership has said it would never allow any Western troop deployment or NATO-style force in Ukraine.
There has actually for years throughout the grinding war been talk among European capitals of the idea of deploying a "reassurance force" in Ukraine.
One thing that all the Western allies agree on at this early stage is that the initiative would never get off the ground without the United States officially backing and supporting it. And yet if the European leaders going to the White House lobby hard for this, it's almost certain this would break the negotiating process with Russia.
For Moscow, assurance of permanent Ukrainian neutrality remains a top priority, and so talk of an Article-5 style system which would 'protect' Ukraine in the instance of future Russian attacks is likely to a complete non-starter as an option.
But it's especially the hawks which are pushing this, and likely Moscow is going to see it as simply NATO placing its security blanket over Kiev under a different guise, or just under the cover of differing semantics.
On Sunday, more and more European leaders have confirmed they will be joining Ukrainian President Zelensky on his trip to the White House on Monday.
According to a BBC list, the below top officials have confirmed they will be attending:
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz
Finnish President Alexander Stubb
French President Emmanuel Macron
Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
This comes after most leaders on this list have strongly complained that Europe and even Ukraine have been left behind, and cut out of the negotiating process. They back Zelensky who says all decisions taken without direct Ukrainian participation are 'stillborn' on arrival.
President Trump's hope is that this swiftly moving process of talks which started with Putin in Alaska on Friday will lead to a final, and permanent peace settlement to end the war. But much of the entire Western establishment - whether government officials or the mainstream press - seems to want this process to fail...
Trump said on social media on Saturday, "President Zelenskyy will be coming to D.C., the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people's lives will be saved. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
The White House on Saturday dismissed and mocked a report by National Public Radio (NPR) that claimed US government documents containing sensitive and secretive details about President Trump’s summit with Russian President Putin were found in an Alaskan hotel.
The NPR story began, "Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage."
It continued, "Eight pages, that appear to have been produced by U.S. staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employee."
But White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly has rejected that there's anything relevant here, going so far as to call out NPR for exaggerating its significance. She characterized the documents as nothing more than a "multi-page lunch menu" and blasted NPR for sensationalizing the discovery.
“It’s hilarious that NPR is publishing a multi-page lunch menu and calling it a ‘security breach,’” Kelly told ABC News. She said:
“This kind of so-called ‘investigative journalism’ is exactly why people don’t take them seriously anymore - and why they’re no longer taxpayer-funded thanks to President Trump.”
NPR in its report observed that the documents went so far as to provide phonetic guides for Russian names, such as "Mr. President POO-tihn."
The report further cited 'experts' who alleged this shows carelessness and lack of proper security protocols in handling sensitive documents involving top level meetings with the US president and world leaders.
A lunch menu and scheduling... pundits are framing this as some major scandal and breach...
Still, the NPR story didn't make much of a splash, given the avalanche of other, much more important headlines which came out of the 'constructive' Alaska summit.
The mainstream US press has tended to present the historic summit with a perspective that Trump is somehow being 'compromised' by Russia's Putin - though there's zero evidence that this is the case.
While federalizing the local police and deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump has suggested he could flex his authority to fight violent crime elsewhere.
“We have other cities also that are bad, very bad,” the president said during an Aug. 11 press conference.
He listed Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Baltimore among the cities of concern.
Although homicide and other violent crimes have recently dipped across America, the numbers from big cities are still high—in some cases, higher than they were before surges one to two decades ago.
Trump’s power to deploy the National Guard outside the nation’s capital is also under debate. A federal judge is deciding whether his deployment of troops to Los Angeles was lawful.
Here is what you should know.
The President’s Powers
Trump federalized D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department after declaring a crime emergency.
He did so under Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which lets him control the district’s police for up to 30 days without Congressional authorization.
He wants Congress to extend that power, suggesting a national emergency declaration could be a means of sidestepping the legislature if it does not act.
There is no equivalent to the D.C. Home Rule Act in the other big cities Trump named. There, state and local authorities have control over law enforcement.
The National Guard is a trickier question.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer is assessing whether Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles and nearby municipalities violated the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA).
In Washington, the president has deployed the District of Columbia National Guard, which is under clear presidential control.
He did so while keeping them under Title 32 duty status. That shields the president from allegations of violating the PCA. It also leaves them under local authority as they back up the police who are making arrests.
Trump highlighted other possible solutions involving Congress, which is currently in its August recess.
“We’ll count on the Republicans in Congress and the Senate to vote” to end no-cash bail, he said, referencing a legal reality in many cities and states that have drawn his ire.
Illinois, Chicago’s home state, eliminated cash bail in 2023. Los Angeles County did so too for almost all offenses. New York State made a similar change in 2019.
“Maybe they’ll self-clean up, and maybe they’ll self-do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all of the things that caused this problem,” Trump said.
Chicago
Although his local authority outside Washington may be limited, Trump has floated interventions against crime outside the capital.
The Second City seems to be first in his mind.
“If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago,” he said during his Aug. 11 press conference.
The Chicago Police Department recorded 573 homicides in 2024, more than any other U.S. city. That is down from 620 in 2023.
Shootings and the number of shooting victims also fell, though both still numbered in the thousands. Vehicular hijackings have declined, too.
There were 188 homicides during the first half of 2025, marking a 32 percent decrease from the same period in 2024.
Chicago’s homicide rate stood at more than 21 per 100,000 in 2024.
That homicide rate, though high, has trended down from even higher rates during the 1990s.
Yet, rates were lower than today during the 2000s and early 2010s, according to an analysis from the University of Chicago Crime Lab.
An Illinois Policy Institute analysis found that the arrest rate for homicides has also fallen, declining from 42 percent a decade ago to 27 percent from June 2024 through June 2025.
New York City
“I’m going to look at New York in a little while,” Trump said.
Though rates and numbers differ, New York City’s violent crime trends resemble Chicago’s.
Homicides and other serious felonies have recently trended down, but, in some cases, remain higher than they were 10 or 15 years ago.
In 2024, for example, there were 382 murders and non-negligible manslaughters in the Big Apple, according to city data on crime complaints.
That is below a recent peak in 2021, which saw 488 such cases, and well below much higher totals decades ago, like in 2000, when there were 673 murders and non-negligible manslaughters.
Yet, 2024’s figure tops the numbers for 2013 through 2019, the start of Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty. Those totals dipped as low as 292 in 2017 before surging to the recent 488-murder peak during his last year in office.
As of Aug. 10, the New York Police Department had recorded 188 murders in 2025—down 23.6 percent from the same period in 2024. Robberies and felonious assaults were also down relative to the same period, while rape was up 21.6 percent.
In 2024, there were 29,461 felonious assaults in the city, up from recent years and from troughs as low as 16,284 in 2008. Rape was also up, with 1,748 incidents that year as compared to 1,455 in 2023.
Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Oakland
“Hopefully L.A. is watching,” Trump said during his press conference.
He also referenced another California city, Oakland, and nearby Baltimore, saying the two are “so far gone.”
Federal Bureau of Investigation data show 264 homicides in Los Angeles in 2024. That’s down from 327 in 2023 as reported by the Los Angeles Police Department.
In 2013, there were 251 murders in the city.
Los Angeles recorded a major decline in murders during the first half of 2025. Mayor Karen Bass touted a trend that suggests numbers could hit lows in 2025 not seen in 60 years.
In 2024, Oakland witnessed 81 murders and non-negligent manslaughters, according to FBI data. The city saw 120 murders in 2023 as recorded by the Oakland Police Department in its end-of-year report.
The 2024 figure is comparable to lows from the late 1990s and early 2000s, as recorded in an analysis from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. During the early 1990s, Oakland regularly had more than 140 homicides.
During the first half of 2025, Oakland recorded a 21 percent decline in homicides relative to the first half of 2024.
Baltimore saw 201 homicides in 2024, down from 260 in 2023, according to the Baltimore Police Department. Last year’s total is on par with numbers from a decade ago.
The 2024 numbers give it a homicide rate of more than 35 per 100,000, making it one of America’s deadliest large cities.
Charm City’s midyear report in 2025 recorded 68 homicides, down from 88 over the same period in 2024.
Three people were killed and eight others wounded when multiple gunmen opened fire inside a Brooklyn hookah lounge and restaurant around closing time Sunday morning.
Officers responded to calls of a shooting inside Taste of the City Lounge at 903 Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights just before 3:30 a.m., NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a press briefing.
The three people killed were all men, ages 27, 35 and one whose age wasn’t immedialtely known, cops said. All three were pronounced dead at the scene.
3 people were killed and 8 others wounded in the shooting.LoudLabsNYC
No arrests were made in the shooting, and the suspects have yet to be identified.
The eight wounded victims — five men and three women — were taken to local hospitals with what cops said were non-life-threatening injuries.
The oldest injured victim was 61.
At least 36 shell casings were found from the scene of the shooting, which was reportedly sparked by a dispute inside the crowded lounge.
Detectives recovered a firearm from the vicinity of Bedford Avenue and Eastern Parkway, but are still investigating whether this weapon was tied to Sunday morning’s shooting.
“We have the lowest number of shooting incidents and shooting victims seven months into the year we’ve seen on record in the city of New York,” Tisch said. “Something like this is, of course, thank god, an anomaly and it’s a terrible thing that’s happened this morning.”
The NYPD has opened an investigation into the early morning shooting.NYPD personnel stood inside the business near a pool of blood and broken glass, according to video posted on X.
