WASHINGTON (OSV News) — President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program Dec. 18 after the deceased suspect in the shootings of Brown University students and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was identified as a participant.
The same week, Congress concluded its work for the year, allowing enhanced Obamacare tax credits to expire, and lawmakers reacted to Jimmy Lai’s conviction in Hong Kong.
Trump suspends green card lottery program after shootings at Brown, MIT
Claudio Neves Valente was identified as the suspect in the shootings at Brown University that left two students dead and nine others wounded, as well as in the murder of an MIT professor. Law enforcement officers found him dead Dec. 18 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Neves Valente was a Portuguese national, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on X that under Trump’s direction, she would direct U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to suspend the green card lottery program in which he participated.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she wrote.
The program, which makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries with little representation in the U.S., was authorized by Congress, so its suspension is expected to face legal challenges.
Congress leaves for the year with enhanced Obamacare tax credits set to expire
The U.S. House of Representatives Dec. 17 passed a GOP-backed health care bill that did not include an extension of expiring enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s health care law, also known as “Obamacare.” The move left those subsidies on track to expire at the end of the year.
The subsidies, or tax credits, are used by lower-to-middle-income households to reduce their out-of-pocket costs for enrolling in the program. Some Republicans joined Democrats in seeking the extension.
The bill’s prospects in the Senate are unclear, as it would need support from several Democrats to reach the upper chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold in order to be sent to the president’s desk.
U.S. lawmakers respond to Jimmy Lai’s conviction
Trump, the State Department and members of Congress expressed concern after Hong Kong’s prominent Catholic media tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai was convicted of national security offenses under the city’s controversial national security law.
“I feel so badly. I spoke to President Xi (Jinping) about it, and I asked (him) to consider his release,” Trump said Dec. 15 at the White House in response to a question on Lai’s conviction.
“He’s not well,” Trump said of Lai. “He’s an older man, and he’s not well. So I did put that request out. We’ll see what happens.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and members of Congress were also among those who condemned the conviction and called for Lai’s release.
Claire Lai, Lai’s daughter and an attorney, told OSV News following his Dec. 15 conviction, “My father, he represents a lot of the values that we hold dear, but he also represents a lot of the values that made Hong Kong a financial success, and it’s off the backs of people like him that Hong Kong became the almost miraculous success story that it was.”
“And I would say — don’t let a man like that become a martyr behind bars. He has worked for over 60 years for the betterment of Hong Kong,” she said. “Don’t let a man like that become a martyr for truth and a martyr for freedom. It’s not a stain that they’ll be able to wipe off. If a British citizen dies behind bars, it will be a very big blow to the reputation of Hong Kong that once had a very enviable legal system.”
22 states back Archdiocese of Denver lawsuit alleging exclusion from Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program
Twenty-two states, representatives of multiple faith traditions and public policy groups were among those who filed 19 amicus briefs, also called friend-of-the-court briefs, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case involving two Catholic parishes with preschools in the Archdiocese of Denver who have alleged the state of Colorado excluded the religious preschools from participating in the state’s Universal Preschool Program due to their religious beliefs, Becket, a Washington-based religious liberty law firm, said Dec. 18.
In 2022, Colorado created its Universal Preschool Program to provide children access to a free preschool education the year before they are enrolled in kindergarten. Parents have to apply for the program, “which provides 4-year-olds 10 hours a week of tuition-free preschool in public school classrooms or private settings, such as child care centers, churches, or homes licensed to provide preschool,” according to the website of Colorado’s Department of Early Childhood.
Previously, St. Bernadette Catholic Parish and St. Mary Catholic Parish in the Denver suburbs of Lakewood and Littleton, respectively, and the Archdiocese of Denver, filed a lawsuit arguing the program’s requirement that preschool providers “accept any applicant without regard to a student or family’s religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity, and to prohibit schools from ‘discriminat(ing) against any person’ on the same bases” directly conflicts with their “religious beliefs and their religious obligations as entities that carry out the Catholic Church’s mission of Catholic education in northern Colorado,” their lawsuit said.
“We are humbled by this support for our preschools, who simply want to help parents educate their children in the richness of the Catholic faith using Colorado’s universal preschool program,” Scott Elmer, superintendent of Catholic schools and chief mission officer for the Archdiocese of Denver, said in a statement. “Our preschools aren’t asking for special treatment, just equal treatment. We pray the Court takes this case and upholds the promise of universal preschool for every family in Colorado.”
Nick Reaves, senior counsel at Becket and lead attorney for the preschools and families, added, “This broad coalition of states, faith communities, think tanks, and scholars shows just how important this case is.”
“The state is picking winners and losers based on their religious beliefs, while thumbing its nose at several recent Supreme Court decisions that should have stopped this religious discrimination in its tracks,” Reaves said in a statement. “The Supreme Court should step in and ensure that Colorado’s so-called universal preschool program actually lives up to its name.”
The high court has not yet indicated whether it will hear the case.
Wisconsin Supreme Court upholds Catholic Charities’ tax exemption
Wisconsin must declare the Catholic Charities Bureau of the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin, eligible for tax exemption from the state’s unemployment insurance program, under a June ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered Dec. 15.
In June, the high court overturned a previous ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which found that Catholic Charities is not exempt from paying into the state’s unemployment insurance system because its operations aren’t primarily religious under the definition in the statute requiring certain employers to do so.
Wisconsin law states religious employers in the Badger State are eligible for an exemption from paying into its unemployment benefit program if they operate primarily for religious purposes. The state argued, however, that the Catholic Charities Bureau does not meet that standard since it employs non-Catholics and does not make its service to the less fortunate contingent on Catholic religious practice, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court previously sided with the state, drawing a distinction between its mission or purpose and its “activities.”
The high court unanimously found the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling violated the First Amendment by creating a preference for some religious practices over others.
However, after the ruling, Wisconsin’s Attorney General Josh Kaul urged the state’s Supreme Court to throw out the religious exemption entirely to restore the “equal treatment” the U.S. Supreme Court sought in its ruling.
But the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected that argument, upholding the exemption and Catholic Charities’ eligibility.
“You’d think Wisconsin would take a 9-0 Supreme Court loss as a hint to stop digging,” Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, said in a statement. “But apparently Attorney General Kaul and his staff are gluttons for punishment. Thankfully, the Wisconsin Supreme Court put an end to the state’s tomfoolery and confirmed that Catholic Charities is entitled to the exemption it already won.”
“Wisconsin should have taken the L,” Rassbach added, using a slang term meaning to accept a loss. “Attorney General Kaul never should have doubled down on punishing churches. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s order today protects not just Catholic Charities, but every faith-based organization that relies on this exemption to serve the public. It turns out that penalizing charities is not a winning legal strategy.”
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
