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| During the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. decided to put money into helping orphans with AIDS. The disease had left around 12 million children, mostly in Africa, without a parent. This year, the Trump administration halted most foreign assistance, including to this program. In the wake of aid cuts, Billiance Chondwe, also known as Pastor Billy, has been trying to find meds for 9-year-old Diana Lungu, an HIV-positive orphan in Zambia who can no longer get them. Without the pills, the virus would surge back. NPR’s Gabrielle Emanuel met with Pastor Billy and Lungu and learned from them how these abrupt changes could impact Lungu’s life. Listen to more about the pastor’s search for the meds and read the story here. |
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| When we tell stories about world events, global leaders making historic decisions, protesters demanding equality or court rulings that change the trajectory of a nation, it feels like we sometimes forget the people who make up the why behind it all. Individuals — so many with very little power — are the ones who live with the impact of policy, the ones who force change or are forced to accept imposed change. |
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Alex Wong/Getty Images North America |
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Today, on the anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in every state in this country, I want you to think about love — about Jim Obergefell and his late husband, John Arthur, who died from ALS.
John was Jim’s love, but they could only be married in 2013 when the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down. In Ohio, though, where they lived, it still wasn’t recognized. So Jim and his sick husband-to-be flew to another state to finally be husband and husband.
In death, though, Jim was reminded that their love, their partnership, was seen as less. He could not be included on his husband’s death certificate as a spouse. Ohio called John unmarried on that death certificate. That wasn’t true.
So Jim fought.
He fought to be equal and to be recognized as John’s husband in life and in death.
Today is the ten-year anniversary of the culmination of that fight, one that led to the Supreme Court decision that we commemorate today.
On this day, Jim thinks of John, and he wishes they had more than three months as husband and husband.
“But more than that, I think about those queer kids who have grown up in a world where marriage is just simply a possibility, one of many for their future. And that's what kids deserve,” he said.
Despite efforts to roll back LGBTQ+ rights and other rights of marginalized groups, Jim doesn’t get disillusioned.
“I just keep moving forward knowing that all we can do is use our voices and work hard to be included in with the people, and that's what we should all be doing,” he said.
Jim just wanted to be married to the man he loved. Because of that, he changed the country. There is power in love. Listen to our full conversation or read the story here. |
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Meet the women shaping the future of abortion
In the last few years, abortion restrictions in the U.S. have grown. In response, women are finding ways to end their pregnancies without a clinic.
On The Network, a new three-part series from NPR’s Embedded podcast and Futuro Media, witness how a network of activists and midwives, grandmothers and friends changed abortion access as we know it.
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| | Eric Johnson's husband, Dennis Hopkins, was given a 50% chance of surviving his next round of treatments for stage four lung cancer. During a hospital stay, the couple met their unsung hero: a nurse named Sherry, who offered straightforward insights that helped them navigate the following days with a sense of peace. |
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| | A federal judge in San Francisco on Monday ruled in favor of AI company Claude in a copyright infringement case against a group of authors. The first-of-its-kind ruling could allow AI companies to train their language models on copyrighted works. |
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| | Morgan Wallen's album I'm the Problem remains at the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart for the fifth consecutive week as it vies for “album of the summer.” |
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