Congress regrets discriminatory laws targeting Asian immigrants

Explore the important legislation that has shaped US immigration policy

Read about pivotal immigration legislation from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act—the first law restricting immigration by nationality—through DACA, examining how economic conditions, national security concerns, and social attitudes shaped American immigration policy throughout history.

The 1924 Immigration Act established national-origin quotas favoring certain regions

The Johnson-Reed Act established stringent national-origin quotas favoring northern and Western Europeans while restricting immigration from other regions. This article chronicles the act's origins, its implications, and subsequent efforts to overturn these restrictions.

An 1898 Supreme Court case confirmed birthright citizenship for children of immigrants

In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment guaranteed US citizenship to Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants—establishing a lasting precedent for birthright citizenship regardless of parental status.

A 1990 law forced museums and federal agencies to return Native remains and sacred objects

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act required federally funded institutions to inventory and return Native American human remains and sacred items to descendant tribes.

Traveling yogis spread the practice across the US

After a 1923 Supreme Court decision ruled that Asians were ineligible for citizenship, many South Asian immigrants had relatively few job opportunities and began moving around the country teaching yoga and spirituality. At the time, yoga was viewed less as a physical practice and more as a mystical one, something many of the teachers embraced to attract students. South Asians regained the right to citizenship in 1946.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation and discrimination nationwide

The Civil Rights Act, signed into law in 1964, prohibited racial segregation in public accommodations and ended discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in employment, while also strengthening protections in education. It established protections enforced across federally funded programs.

The Pearl Harbor attack led to the mass internment of Japanese Americans

In the months after Pearl Harbor, the US forcibly removed and incarcerated about 120,000 Japanese Americans—two-thirds of them citizens. Driven by fear and racism, the policy is now recognized as a grave violation of civil rights.

Interracial and same-sex marriages have both been illegal at certain times during US history

June 12 marks Loving Day, the date when interracial marriage was legalized in 1967. A brave Virginia couple fought back against anti-miscegenation laws, which were finally struck down by the Supreme Court. The Court also ruled for the protection of same-sex marriages in 2015.

Congress temporarily raised the H-1B cap during the dot-com boom

To meet soaring demand for tech talent in the late 1990s, Congress lifted the H-1B cap from 65,000 to 195,000 visas between 2001 and 2003. The increase—tied to the dot-com bubble—lapsed once demand slowed, but an additional 20,000 slots for advanced degree holders were added.

Hear the stories of Black congressmen who served during Reconstruction

This podcast explores the Black congressmen of the 1870s, like Hiram R. Revels and Joseph Rainey, many of whom were born into slavery and symbolized the hope of a more racially equal post-Civil War America.

A poll from May 2025 found that a majority of Americans oppose ending birthright citizenship

As legal challenges progressed, a May 2025 NPR/Ipsos poll showed fewer than one-third of Americans supported eliminating birthright citizenship, despite broader public backing for other immigration restrictions.

Bills passed during the Civil War shaped postwar America

Despite the war with the South, Congress passed transformative laws like the Homestead Act and the Morrill Land-Grant College Act, which encouraged westward settlement and expanded higher education.

In 2025, Democratic-led states moved to counter with their own redistricting plans

In response to Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts, Democratic leaders in California, New York, Illinois, and Maryland signaled plans to revisit their own congressional maps.

The 1951 Refugee Convention established international refugee rights and state obligations amid mass World War II displacement

The international treaty defines refugee status and outlines refugees' entitled rights while establishing state obligations to protect them. The UNHCR explains the convention's significance in creating the legal framework governing refugee protection worldwide.

Read the resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress

Adopted October 19, 1765, the resolutions argued that taxation without colonial consent violated the British constitution, that admiralty courts without juries subverted English liberties, and that paying the tax in hard currency was practically impossible. Each grievance was framed not as rebellion but as a defense of rights the colonists already believed they possessed.

A trailblazing member of Congress was inspired to champion Title IX because of her own experiences

Patsy T. Mink (D-HI) was the first woman of color in Congress and one of the law’s biggest proponents. Before elected office, Mink was rejected from 20 medical schools because of her gender. She went on to law school instead, but still faced discrimination after graduation when she was turned down jobs because she was a married woman.

Congress is passing fewer laws than in previous decades

A Reuters analysis shows that legislative output in the US Congress has declined as polarization deepens, bipartisan cooperation erodes, and lawmakers rely more on sprawling, must-pass spending bills rather than regular lawmaking.

The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 made religious liberty a formal US foreign policy priority

Congress enacted the International Religious Freedom Act to make promoting religious freedom abroad a stated goal of US foreign policy. The law established an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom and mandated that the State Department report annually on the status of religious freedom.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

The lack of diversity in DNA databases limits their applications

European ancestry dominates genetic research, hindering the usage of genetic databases for precision medicine for other groups, including African Americans, who face higher health risks due to genetic variants. Many Indigenous communities have also resisted genetic research due to past exploitation. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

US lawmakers banned TikTok in 2024 for security purposes

After years of concerns about ByteDance Ltd.'s affiliation with the Chinese government, Congress passed a bill banning TikTok in the US. The main argument favoring the ban is that Beijing could use the wildly popular app to run foreign influence campaigns. Americans opposed to the ban say the law will negatively impact the livelihoods for TikTok shops and influencers.

The Supreme Court extended the ban on discriminatory jury strikes to include gender in 1994

In J.E.B. v. Alabama, the court ruled 6-3 that using peremptory challenges to exclude jurors based on sex violates the Equal Protection Clause, building on its 1986 Batson decision banning race-based strikes.

Examining golf's problems with race

In 1961, the PGA removed the "Caucasian-only" membership clause, marking the last major professional sports organization to desegregate. But unlike other sports, golf didn't see an influx of Black players following the change. This article from The Ringer's Lex Pryor examines golf's complicated history with race and gender, showing both the progress made and the challenges that remain.

The Missouri Compromise temporarily eased tensions over slavery's expansion

Passed in 1820, the Missouri Compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state—maintaining the fragile balance between proslavery and antislavery states in Congress. It also banned slavery north of latitude 36°30′.

The Eighth Amendment prevents cruel and unusual punishment and was borrowed from England

The exact wording of the amendment came from England's Bill of Rights, written more than a century before America's. Today, the Eighth Amendment governs death penalty standards, prison conditions, and sentencing limits, though its interpretation remains actively contested.

The status of federal pay transparency legislation

While many US states have pay transparency laws, no similar legislation has been passed at a federal level. However, the Salary Transparency Act was introduced in Congress in March 2023. For details about what that legislation would mandate and its status in the US House and Senate, click here.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024.

Planarian flatworms are small, aquatic worms with exceptional regenerative capabilities. When cut, the worms can regenerate multiple bodies in a matter of weeks.

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.