In a historic victory, the Irish nationalist Sinn Féin party has won the most seats in Northern Ireland’s parliament for the first time ever. Sinn Féin is the former political wing of the IRA — the Irish Republican Army — and favors reunification with the Republic of Ireland.

After the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion that may overturn Roe v. Wade, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida introduced a bill Friday to prohibit employers from deducting expenses related to their employees’ travel costs when seeking gender-affirming care for their children out of state, as well as for those seeking an abortion.

Alabama has become the first U.S. state to make it a felony to provide gender-affirming medical care to trans youth. A law went into effect Sunday that bans the use of puberty blockers and hormones, which can be lifesaving for trans children and teens. Doctors and others who are found in violation of the law could face up to 10 years in prison. The Alabama law is the latest in a series of escalating conservative attacks on LGBTQ people in the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended his invasion of Ukraine, saying it was a necessary blow against NATO. His remarks came during Russia’s annual Victory Day celebrations on May 9 marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, are increasingly describing the fighting in Ukraine as a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.

As the Supreme Court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade, we speak with law professor Michele Goodwin, who has written extensively about how the criminalization of abortion polices motherhood. She discusses how on the eve of the court’s oral arguments in the Dobbs case in November, she wrote about how an abortion saved her life. She describes how the U.S.

Governments around the world are eagerly returning back to pre-pandemic conditions by relaxing preventative restrictions, lifting mask mandates and pulling back public funding. Dr. Abraar Karan, infectious disease fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine, says these moves are overly optimistic and that the U.S. is not prepared for new variants spreading around the country. “We’re trying to say it’s over. It’s not true,” he says.

The World Health Organization says the coronavirus pandemic has now caused an excess of 15 million deaths globally. We look at how staggering death counts reveal broader political failures to protect public health and close the international vaccine gap.

We speak to Yale University historian Timothy Snyder about his latest article for The New Yorker, “The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War.” Snyder writes about the colonial history that laid the foundations for the Russian war in Ukraine, such as Russia’s imperial vision and how leaders including Hitler and Stalin have aimed to conquer Ukrainian soil on different premises. “The whole history of colonialism … involves denying that another people is real.