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The reformist government of Masoud Pezeshkian has lifted Iran’s ban on WhatsApp and Google Play, in a first step towards easing internet restrictions in the nation of 85mn people.

A high-level meeting chaired by the president on Tuesday overcame resistance from hardline factions within the Islamic regime, Iranian media reported, as the government seeks to reduce pressures on civil society.

“Today, we took the first step towards lifting internet restrictions by demonstrating unity,” Sattar Hashemi, Iran’s minister of telecommunications, wrote on X. “This path will continue.”

This move comes after Pezeshkian refused to enforce a hijab law recently ratified by the hardline parliament that would have imposed tougher punishments on women choosing not to observe a strict dress code.

His government has also quietly reinstated dozens of university students and professors who had previously been barred from studying or teaching.

The Islamic regime is grappling with mounting economic, political and social pressures both at home and across the Middle East, particularly after the unexpected collapse of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, which was a crucial regional ally. 

The regime has a long history of weathering crises and maintaining power. But the convergence of domestic and foreign challenges has prompted questions about whether the leadership would respond by tightening controls over the population — or embracing reforms.

Hardliners argue that the internet is a tool used by adversaries such as the US and Israel to wage a “soft war” against the Islamic republic. Reformists contend that repression only worsens public discontent.

Pezeshkian, who won the presidential election in July, campaigned on promises to improve economic and social conditions, with a particular focus on easing restrictions on women’s dress and lifting internet censorship.

Hardliners had imposed restrictions on platforms such as X, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram, but Iranians continued to access them through VPNs widely available in domestic markets.

Reformist politicians have accused hardliners of hypocrisy, claiming some of them both enforce internet censorship and profit from the sale of VPNs through alleged links with companies offering them.

Ali Sharifi Zarchi, a pro-reform university professor recently reinstated to his position, described Tuesday’s decision as “a first step” that was “positive and hopeful”. However, he added: “It should not remain limited to these two platforms.”

Starbucks’ union says workers are walking off the job at hundreds of stores across dozens of cities on Tuesday, the last planned day of what it is calling “the strike before Christmas.”

“Starbucks Baristas at over THREE HUNDRED stores have walked off the job to demand Starbucks bargain a fair contract from coast-to-coast,” Starbucks Workers United (SBU) wrote in an Instagram post, touting it as the largest unfair labor practices strike in the coffee chain’s history.

Workers United told NPR that “nearly 300 locations and growing are fully shut down” across 45 states as of midday Tuesday. Starbucks offered a different figure, telling NPR that only around 170 Starbucks stores did not open as a result of the strike.

The union says the strike is in response to Starbucks backtracking on its commitment to negotiate a “foundational framework” — for collective bargaining and resolving outstanding litigation on unfair labor practices charges — by the end of the year.

“Our unfair labor practice (ULP) strikes will begin Friday morning and escalate each day through Christmas Eve … unless Starbucks honors our commitment to work towards a foundational framework,” it said last week.

The strike began on Friday in three cities: Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago.

It has expanded every day since, with the list of participating stores now including Boston, Buffalo, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, Seattle and San Jose.

Starbucks said Monday that about 60 stores nationwide were closed due to the strike, but stressed that that the “overwhelming majority” of its more than 10,000 U.S. locations remain unaffected. It said some of the stores that closed during the weekend had already reopened.

“The public conversation may lack the important context that the vast majority of our stores (97-99%) will continue to operate and serve customers, and we expect a very limited impact to our overall operations,” Executive Vice President Sara Kelly said in a statement.

The union is urging customers to boycott Starbucks stores during the strike and show up at picket lines to show their support for workers.

Why baristas are striking

SWU, which first unionized in 2021, represents some 10,000 employees across 535 U.S. stores. It celebrated a milestone in February when Starbucks said it would work with the union to reach a labor agreement and resolve litigation by the end of the year.

But last week, with matters still unsettled ahead of the last scheduled bargaining session of 2024, a whopping 98% of union partners voted to authorize a strike to “to protest hundreds of still-unresolved unfair labor practice charges (ULPs) and win a strong foundational framework for union contracts.”

The union acknowledged that both sides have engaged in “hundreds of hours of bargaining” and “advanced dozens of tentative agreements” in recent months.

But it said hundreds of complaints accusing Starbucks of unfair labor practices — including retaliatory firings — remain unsettled, with more than $100 million in legal liabilities still outstanding. Plus, it said, the company “has yet to bring a comprehensive economic package to the bargaining table.”

People hold signs outside of a closed Starbucks as employees strike on Monday in New York City.

Adam Gray/Getty Images North America

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Adam Gray/Getty Images North America

Starbucks’ latest proposal included no immediate wage increase for union baristas, and a guarantee of just 1.5% wage increases in future years. The union called that “insulting,” especially compared to the salary of its new CEO, who started in September.

“This year, Starbucks invested $113 million into CEO Brian Niccol’s compensation package at a time when baristas’ wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of inflation,” it said. “Workers regularly struggle to receive the hours we need to qualify for benefits and pay our bills. Starbucks needs to invest in the workers who run their stores.”

Ruby Walters, who works at a Starbucks location in Columbus, told member station WOSU from the picket line over the weekend that most workers “have a very similar experience of the company not affording them enough resources that they need, not only to take home and improve their lives, but literally on the job.”

“So as far as I’m concerned, what we’re fighting for isn’t just for us,” Walters added. “It’s for all Starbucks workers across the country.”

What Starbucks is saying

Kelly, the Starbucks executive, said the union’s proposals amount to an increase in the hourly minimum wage of 64% immediately and 77% over three years, which she dismissed as unrealistic.

“These proposals are not sustainable, especially when the investments we continually make to our total benefits package are the hallmarks of what differentiates us as an employer — and, what makes us proud to work at Starbucks,” she said.

Those benefits include health care, free college tuition, paid family leave and company stock grants, Starbucks says, adding that the combination of average pay and benefits equates to an average of $30 per hour for the vast majority of baristas working at least 20 hours per week.

Workers United, however, disputes Starbucks’ characterization of its wage increase proposals — bargaining delegate Michelle Eisen, a 14-year Starbucks barista in Buffalo, N.Y., called it “false and misleading and they know it.”

“We are ready to finalize a framework that includes new investments in baristas in the first year of contracts,” Eisen told NPR.

The union is asking for a base wage of at least $20 an hour for all baristas with annual 5% raises and cost of living adjustments, enrollment in a Starbucks-sponsored retirement plan, more consistent schedules, enhanced paid leave protocols and better healthcare, among other initiatives.

In the final stretch of the four-day strike, it is calling on Starbucks to present a “serious economic offer at the bargaining table.”

The company, for its part, says the union “prematurely ended” the most recent bargaining session and is urging it to come back.

“The union chose to walk away from bargaining last week,” Kelly said. “We are ready to continue negotiations when the union comes back to the bargaining table.”

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Joe Biden has stamped his legacy on the federal bench after Senate Democrats raced to confirm more than 200 nominees to lifetime appointments in courts across the US, outpacing Donald Trump’s tally during his first presidency.

The number of Biden’s judicial nominees reached 235 as Congress ended its latest session last week, topping the 234 federal judges confirmed by Trump during his first term. It was the most judges appointed by a president during a single four-year term since the 1980s, Biden said in a statement.

As Biden’s presidency drew to a close, Democrats in the Senate — which is tasked with confirming federal judges — had pushed to secure as many confirmations as they could before control of Congress and the White House is ceded to Republicans next month.  

They hope that this final dash will counter the wave of judicial confirmations during Trump’s first term that fundamentally reshaped the US judiciary, swinging courts at all levels to the right. 

Trump’s appointment of three Supreme Court justices also skewed the ideological scale of the country’s most powerful bench, splitting it 6-3 between conservative and liberal justices. 

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has since handed down rulings that have reverberated across American society, including striking down a decision enshrining the constitutional right to an abortion — moves that in turn emboldened right-leaning judges in lower courts, many appointed by Trump, to rule in favour of conservative causes.

The growing boldness of the American judiciary coupled with an increasingly polarised political landscape have turned judicial appointments into a critical frontier of presidential power. Judges at all levels have the opportunity to weigh in on challenges to administrations’ rules and laws, providing a powerful check on controversial policies.

Democrats’ last-minute push, which started in the wake of Biden’s election loss in November, infuriated Trump. He called on the Senate to block Biden’s judicial nominations: “The Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door.”

“There has been increasing polarisation around the appointment of federal judges,” said Paul Butler, professor at Georgetown Law. The Republican party has historically prioritised judicial picks — and Biden has taken a leaf out of that playbook, Butler added.

Biden’s appointments also stand out for their diversity, including what he described as “a record number of judges with backgrounds and experiences that have long been overlooked”.

Approximately two-thirds of confirmed judges are women and people of colour. Biden has appointed more Black women to US circuit courts than all previous presidents combined, and his sole Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was the top court’s first Black woman.

“Biden’s focus has been on remedying all of the decades where people other than straight white men weren’t considered for the bench,” said Butler.

Biden has also picked a record number of public defenders, more than 45, as well as labour and civil rights lawyers — at least 10 and more than 25, respectively — for the federal bench. 

“It’s absolutely crucial for a thriving, multiracial democracy that there are judges who not only look like all of us, but who have studied and spent their careers understanding how the laws impact people’s lives,” said Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts programme at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a civil-rights group. 

The pendulum is set to swing back yet again. A new stream of conservative judicial appointments is expected once Trump returns to the White House next month and as Republicans take hold of the Senate.

“I’m incredibly proud of how the Senate Republican Conference worked as a team with former President Trump to shape the federal judiciary,” John Thune, the newly elected Republican Senate leader, said earlier this year. “I look forward to working with him to double down on our efforts during his next term in office.”