Lunar Mission, Venezuela, and Birthright Citizenship in the United States: Nightly News

The four astronauts of the Artemis 2 mission have departed for the Moon. “For the first time in over fifty years, astronauts launched from Earth are headed towards the Moon,” rejoices Space.com. The NASA’s most powerful rocket, the SLS (Space Launch System), “lit up the night sky” in Florida as it took off incident-free from the Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. local time, carrying four astronauts on a ten-day journey around the Moon. This is the “first crewed mission to the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972,” the site enthuses. The Orion capsule, carrying the astronauts, detached from the rocket’s first stage eight minutes after liftoff and reached orbit. It will orbit Earth for twenty-five hours before continuing its journey to the Moon, where it is expected to arrive on Monday. The Artemis 2 mission members – including a woman, a person of color, and a Canadian, marking three firsts for a lunar flight – will only “fly over” the satellite, notes Space.com. However, “even though they will not orbit the Moon or land on it, this mission still represents a decisive step in NASA’s renewed efforts to expand humanity’s footprint beyond low Earth orbit,” it adds. The return of humans to the lunar surface is planned for 2028, provided that the lunar landers, still in development by SpaceX and Blue Origin, are ready on time.

The United States lifts sanctions against Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela. The U.S. government lifted sanctions on Wednesday against the current interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, in place since 2018. “This lifting comes about three months after the January 3 military operation, during which the United States captured Nicolás Maduro and allowed Ms. Rodríguez to take over the Venezuelan government,” notes Efecto Cocuyo. Since then, the interim president has “criticized the capture of Mr. Maduro while expressing willingness to maintain cooperative and respectful relations with the United States,” the site continues. She welcomed the decision, seeing it as “a step towards normalization and strengthening of relations” between Caracas and Washington, and called for the lifting of the remaining sanctions on her country. “The sanctions included freezing Ms. Rodríguez’s assets in the United States and prohibiting American citizens from doing business with her,” the Venezuelan media specifies.

The U.S. Supreme Court skeptical about Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court judges, mostly conservative, expressed skepticism on Wednesday towards President Donald Trump’s arguments to eliminate automatic birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrant parents, observes CNN. Birthright citizenship has been part of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution since 1868. “In response to the Trump administration’s argument that the world has changed since 1868, the Chief Justice, John Roberts, retorted: ‘It’s a new world, but it’s the same Constitution,'” reports the American channel. Conservative judges Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch also “questioned the main arguments put forward by Mr. Trump,” it adds. Donald Trump, who attended part of the hearings – a first for a sitting president – could face another setback if the Court invalidates his arguments, following the February ruling that invalidated most of his tariff powers. The decision from the justices is expected in July.