WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court decided Thursday that a Catholic charity doesn’t have to pay Wisconsin unemployment taxes, one of a set of religious-rights cases the justices are considering this term.
The unanimous ruling comes in a case filed by the Catholic Charities Bureau, which says the state violated the 1st Amendment’s religious freedom guarantee when it required the organization to pay the tax while exempting other faith groups.
Wisconsin argues the organization has paid the tax for over 50 years and doesn’t qualify for an exemption because its day-to-day work doesn’t involve religious teachings. Much of the groups’ funding is from public money, and neither employees nor people receiving services have to belong to any faith, according to court papers.
Catholic Charities, though, says it qualifies because its disability services are motivated by religious beliefs and the state shouldn’t be making determinations about what work qualifies as religious. It appealed to the Supreme Court after Wisconsin’s highest court ruled against it. President Trump’s administration weighed in on behalf of Catholic Charities.
Wisconsin has said that a decision in favor of the charity could open the door to big employers like religiously affiliated hospitals pulling out of the state unemployment system as well.
The conservative-majority court has issued a string of decisions siding with churches and religious plaintiffs in recent years. This term, though, a plan to establish a publicly funded Catholic charter school lost when the justices deadlocked after Amy Coney Barrett recused herself.
The nine-member court is also considering a case over religious objections to books read in public schools. In those arguments, the majority appeared sympathetic to the religious rights of parents in Maryland who want to remove their children from elementary school classes using storybooks with LGBTQ characters.
They’ve long been hedging their bets. But Southeast Asian nations are caught in the dispute between the United States and China. The trade-dependent countries are under threat from Trump’s tariffs, too. They face a delicate balancing act between economic survival and strategic neutrality. The message was clear at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – ASEAN’s recent summit in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. Member countries are recalibrating their economic partnerships to insulate their economies. That includes a push to deepen trade ties with China and Gulf countries.
We’ve all heard it. The derisory chant from opposition fans when one of the so-called ‘big guns’ is having an off day.
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Six English teams will qualify for next season’s Champions LeagueCredit: Getty
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Either Tottenham or Man Utd will earn Champions League qualification this season despite finishing 17th or 16th in the Premier LeagueCredit: Getty
For example, Southampton supporters had every right to aim it at the multi-billionaires of Manchester City last weekend, when they couldn’t find a way past the worst team in the Premier League.
Only now what was once a mildly amusing terrace jibe sums up perfectly what the leading club competition in the world has become. A joke.
Next season there will be a record SIX English teams in the Champions League.
Almost one third of the entire Premier League will be waved straight into the bizarre league phase by Uefa’s welcoming doormen at an empty small town disco on a wet Tuesday night.
Anyone can come in. From Liverpool who finished top, right down to hapless Tottenham or abject Manchester United hovering above the relegation zone.
It is time to officially ban the phrase ‘elite competition’ whenever the Champions League is mentioned on TV and radio or written in print.
There was a time when you had to win your domestic league to progress into the highest level of European football the following season.
From winning five Premier League games in a row, they went winless in the next five and couldn’t string a pass together.
They lag 20 POINTS behind the bona fide champions of England from Anfield and are fifth.
Don’t bet against them being in next season’s Champions League.
The constant tinkering and chiselling away at a once simple game has led to Uefa getting its knickers in a right old twist.
Fifth in this year’s Premier League grants a free pass into the treasure trove of the Champions League thanks to the coefficients which measure success where once it was about winning.
A whole page is devoted to thrill-a-minute ‘coefficients’ on the governing body’s website to explain how a system that would baffle Stephen Hawking’s much cleverer cousin actually works: “Uefa calculates the coefficient of each club each season based on the clubs’ results in the Uefa Champions League, Uefa Europa League and Uefa Conference League.
“The season coefficients from the five most recent seasons are used to rank the clubs for seeding purposes (sporting club coefficient).
“In addition, the season coefficients from the ten most recent seasons are used to calculate revenue club coefficients for revenue distribution purposes only.”
And that’s just the overview.
There’s a gag in there somewhere about how many coefficients does it take to ruin a game of football? Only I can’t see a funny punch line.
There was a time back when the world was black and white in the 1950s when two imaginative French journalists took inspiration from South America and came up with the idea of the best clubs from each country competing for a trophy on our continent.
Ironically, it wasn’t called the Champions League back then. It was the plain old European Cup. A cup fought over by teams in Europe. Simple eh?
Liverpool’s first steps into the European Cup came in 1964, our sole representatives having won the league the previous season under Bill Shankly.
Next season they share the honour with five other English teams and some of them are pretty ordinary.
If Spurs win the Europa League and follow it up by winning the Champions League next year, the champions of Europe will come from a team currently 17th in England’s top division.
You can argue it won’t happen. Yet somehow a side which has lost more league games than it has won this season is in a European final next week.
That’s cup football for you and it’s a wonderful lottery. Qualification for the Champions League is not. It’s a boring carve up.
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The top five teams in the Premier League will qualify for the Champions League due to European coefficientsCredit: AFP
Hot on the heels of the success of Wigan and Warrington’s venture into Sin City in 2025, Hull KR and Leeds are the latest Super League entrants to make the trip over the Atlantic for the now annual Las Vegas event in tandem with the Australian NRL.
This time, RL Commercial have been more heavily involved in the process, after Warriors CEO Kris Radlinski and then Warrington counterpart Karl Fitzpatrick set the ball rolling for this year’s event off their own backs.
Both Hull KR and Leeds, and perhaps importantly from selling the game, brands, have a strong presence. They have shown themselves to be successful off the field of late as well as on it, and should provide the type of match-up which will show Super League in its best light.
Rovers could pitch up in Las Vegas as champions and Challenge Cup winners, and this would be another memorable experience for a fanbase that has shown itself to be loyal and high in turnout at major events in recent seasons – one of the key reasons for their inclusion.
Leeds still carry a cachet to an Australian audience from their legacy of success, their links with high-profile Australians over the years, and the fanbase again, and while some of the success from the years of annual Grand Final appearances has tailed off, there is a sense the club is now heading in the right direction.
Both clubs will take some financial hit on the trip, as did their predecessors, particularly in giving up a home game for one but the hope is there are ways of making the trip pay both tangibly and metaphorically.
The aim one day is that all clubs in the Super League will get a chance to show their wares, but right now, these two clubs need to be shrewd and provide a meaningful showpiece, and there will be confidence that neither will wilt in the glare of the Nevada sun.
President Trump has spent the first major overseas trip of his second administration — next stop Wednesday in Qatar — beating back allegations that he was personally profiting from foreign leaders by accepting a $400-million luxury airliner from the Gulf state’s royal family.
Trump has bristled at the notion that he should turn down such a gift, saying he would be “stupid” to do so and that Democrats were “World Class Losers” for suggesting it was not only wrong but also unconstitutional.
But Democrats were hardly alone in criticizing the arrangement as Trump prepared for broad trade discussions in Doha, the Qatari capital.
Several top Republicans in Congress have expressed concerns about the deal, including that the plane would be a security risk. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday said there were “lots of issues associated with that offer which I think need to be further talked about,” and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), another member of the Republican leadership team, said that Trump and the White House “need to look at the constitutionality” of the deal and that she would be “checking for bugs” on the plane, a clear reference to fears that Qatar may see the jetliner as an intelligence asset.
Criticism of the deal has even arisen among the deep-red MAGA ranks. In an online post echoed by other right-wing influencers in Trump’s orbit, loyalist Laura Loomer wrote that while she would “take a bullet for Trump,” the Qatar deal would be “a stain” on his administration.
The broad outrage in some ways reflected the stark optics of the deal, which would provide Trump with the superluxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet — known as the “palace in the sky” — for free, to be transferred to his personal presidential library upon his departure from office.
Accepting a lavish gift from the Persian Gulf nation makes even some stolid Trump allies queasy because of Qatar’s record of abuses against its Shiite Muslim minority and its funding of Hamas, the militant group whose attack on Israel touched off a prolonged war in the region.
Critics have called the deal an out-and-out bribe for future influence by the Qatari royal family, and one that would clearly come due at some point — raising serious questions around the U.S.’ ability to act with its own geopolitical interests in mind in the future, rather than Qatar’s.
Trump and Qatar have rejected that framing but have also deflected questions about what Qatar expects to receive in return for the jet.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in response to detailed questions from The Times, said in a statement that Trump “is compliant with all conflict-of-interest rules, and only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”
Leavitt has previously said it was “ridiculous” for the media to “suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit,” because he “left a life of luxury and a life of running a very successful real estate empire for public service, not just once, but twice.”
Ali Al-Ansari, media attache at the Qatari Embassy in Washington, did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyond the specific concern about Qatar potentially holding influence over Trump, the jet deal also escalated deeper concerns among critics that Trump, his family and his administration are using their political influence to improperly enrich themselves more broadly — including through the creation of a $Trump cryptocurrency meme coin and a promised Washington dinner for its top investors.
Experts and other critics have for years accused Trump of violating constitutional constraints on the president and other federal officials accepting gifts, or “emoluments,” from foreign states without the express approval of Congress.
During Trump’s first term, allegations that he was flouting the law and using his office to enrich himself — including by maintaining an active stake in his golf courses and former Washington hotel while foreign dignitaries seeking to curry favor with him racked up massive bills there — went all the way to the Supreme Court before being dismissed as moot after he’d been voted out of office.
Since Trump’s return to office, however, concerns over his monetizing the nation’s highest office and the power and influence that come with it have exploded once more — and from disparate corners of the political landscape.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), left, speaks with Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security oversight hearing on May 8, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
In a speech last month on the Senate floor, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) alleged dozens of examples of Trump and others in his family and administration misusing their positions for personal gain — what Murphy called “mind-blowing corruption” in Trump’s first 100 days.
Murphy mentioned, among other examples, the meme coin and dinner; corporations under federal investigation donating millions to Trump’s inaugural fund and those investigations being halted soon after he took office; reports that Trump has sold meetings with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for millions of dollars; and Donald Trump Jr.’s creation of a private Washington club with million-dollar dues and promises of interactions with administration officials.
Murphy also noted Trump’s orders to fire inspectors general and other watchdogs meant to keep an eye out for corruption and pay-to-play tactics in the federal government, and his scaling back of laws meant to discourage it, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Corporate Transparency Act.
“Donald Trump wants to numb this country into believing that this is just how government works. That he’s owed this. That every president is owed this. That government has always been corrupt, and he’s just doing it out in the open,” Murphy said. “But this is not how government works.”
When news of the Qatar jet deal broke, Murphy joined other Democratic colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a statement denouncing it.
“Any president who accepts this kind of gift, valued at $400 million, from a foreign government creates a clear conflict of interest, raises serious national security questions, invites foreign influence, and undermines public trust in our government,” the senators wrote. “No one — not even the president — is above the law.”
Other lawmakers — from both parties — have also weighed in.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) blasted Trump’s acceptance of the plane as his “lastest con” and a clear attempt by the Qatari government to “curry favor” with him.
“This is why the emoluments clause is in the Constitution to begin with. It was put in there for a reason,” Schiff said. “And the reason was that the founding fathers wanted to make sure that any action taken by the president of the United States, or frankly any other person holding federal public office, wasn’t going to be influenced by getting some big gift.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in an interview with MSNBC on Monday that he did not think it was a “good idea” for Trump to accept the jet — which he said wouldn’t “pass the smell test” for many Americans.
Experts and those further out on the American political spectrum agreed.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law and an expert in constitutional law, said the gift of the jet, “if it is to Trump personally,” clearly violates a provision that precludes the president from receiving any benefit from a foreign country, which America’s founders barred because they were concerned about “foreign governments holding influence over the president.”
Richard Painter, the top White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said that Trump accepting the jet would be unconstitutional. And he scoffed at the ethics of doing business with a nation that has been criticized as having a bleak human rights record.
“After spending millions helping Hamas build tunnels and rockets, Qatar has enough to buy this emolumental gift for” Trump, Painter wrote on X. “But the Constitution says Congress must consent first.”
Painter criticized the White House justifying the deal by saying that Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi had “signed off” on it, given Bondi’s past work for the Qatari government, and said he knew of no precedent for a president receiving a lavish gift without the approval of Congress. He noted that Ambassador Benjamin Franklin received a diamond-encrusted snuff box from France’s King Louis XVI, but only with the OK from Congress.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen, said that it was unclear whether Trump would heed the cautionary notes coming from within his own party, but that the Republican-controlled Congress should nonetheless vote on whether the jet was a proper gift for him to receive.
“If the members of Congress think this is fine, then they can say so,” Weissman said, “and the voters can hold them accountable.”
Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, a prominent backer of Trump, criticized the deal on his podcast Monday, saying that Trump supporters would “all be freaking out” if Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, had accepted it.
“President Trump promised to drain the swamp,” Shapiro said. “This is not, in fact, draining the swamp.”
