The U.N. Security Council voted Monday to deploy multinational armed forces to Haiti as the island nation combats worsening gang violence. The intervention, which came at the repeated request of U.S.-backed Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, will be led by Kenya, marking the first deployment of international security forces to Haiti in nearly 20 years. The proposal received 13 votes in favor, with Russia and China abstaining. The resolution was drafted by the United States and Ecuador, allowing foreign troops to remain in Haiti for one year, with a review after nine months. The Biden administration pledged at least $100 million to fund the foreign operation. This is the United States Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Jeffrey DeLaurentis.

Jeffrey DeLaurentis: “This mission comes at the request of the Haitian government and Haitian civil society to address the insecurity and dire humanitarian crisis the country has faced for far too long. The deployment of this mission will help to support Haiti’s critical near-term needs and to foster the security conditions necessary for the country to advance long-term stability.”

Kenya had previously offered to contribute 1,000 police officers; the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Antigua and Barbuda have also vowed to send forces. Many Haitians have opposed the move due to the disastrous history of U.N., U.S. and foreign interventions in Haiti. A U.N. mission that withdrew from Haiti in 2017 left behind an outbreak of cholera that killed some 10,000 people. U.N. officials were also accused of widespread sexual violence, including the abuse of children. Amnesty International has voiced concerns about the intervention and Kenyan-led armed forces, recently citing Kenya’s “continued unlawful use of force against protesters.”

Meanwhile, peace activists have denounced the move as a U.S.-led invasion. In 2021, the U.S. special envoy to Haiti resigned to protest the Biden administration’s policies in Haiti. In a resignation letter, the longtime diplomat Daniel Foote wrote, “What our Haitian friends really want, and need, is the opportunity to chart their own course, without international puppeteering and favored candidates but with genuine support for that course.”

No date has been confirmed for the deployment, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blnken recently said it could begin within months.

A United Nations mission has arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh for the first time in three decades, as Armenia’s government warns nearly all of the territory’s population of 120,000 ethnic Armenians has fled following Azerbaijan’s military blitz to seize the territory in September. A U.N. official in Armenia’s capital said registration centers have been overwhelmed with huge numbers of exhausted and frightened refugees, a third of whom are children.

Kavita Belani: “People are tired. This is a situation where they’ve lived under nine months of blockade. It’s not something that has just happened where you pick up and you go. They’ve suffered nine months of blockade already. And when they come in, they’re full of anxiety. They’re scared. They’re frightened. And they want answers. They want answers as to what’s going to happen next.”

Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing. On Monday, Armenia’s European Union envoy urged Western nations to sanction Azerbaijan, including its lucrative oil and gas industry, and requested military aid for Armenia.

The Supreme Court opened its new term Monday, hearing oral arguments in a case that will determine who’s eligible for reduced prison sentences under the the First Step Act, which rolls back mandatory minimum sentences for certain people convicted of nonviolent drug charges. Today Supreme Court justices are hearing a case brought by a predatory payday lending group challenging the leadership structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Legal experts warn the outcome of the case could undermine other regulatory agencies and federal programs, including Medicare and Social Security.

The Supreme Court has denied an appeal — without comment — by Texas death row prisoner Robert Roberson, who has always maintained his innocence. Roberson was convicted in 2003 of murdering his 2-year-old daughter; his lawyers say he was convicted on the basis of testimony by forensic experts who cited the “shaken baby syndrome hypothesis,” which was popularized in the early 2000s but never scientifically validated. Last month, a New Jersey appeals court ruled the theory is “junk science.”

In more news from the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas recused himself from a case Monday involving former Trump legal adviser John Eastman, who formerly served as a law clerk for Thomas. This follows reports that Justice Thomas’s wife, the Republican activist Ginni Thomas, corresponded with Eastman ahead of the January 6, 2021, insurrection about efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election to keep Trump in power. Justice Thomas, however, did not recuse himself from a case backed by New York landlords challenging the city’s rent stabilization policies. The anti-corruption group the Revolving Door Project wrote in response, “Justice Thomas’ billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow has a vested interest in weakening rent control laws across the country to buttress his real estate empire’s profits.”

On Capitol Hill, Republican Florida Congressmember Matt Gaetz introduced a resolution Monday to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his leadership position. Gaetz and other far-right Republicans blasted McCarthy after he brokered a deal on a short-term funding bill that averted a government shutdown. Gaetz also blamed McCarthy for making a “secret Ukraine side deal” with Democrats, which McCarthy denies.

Vice President Kamala Harris is swearing in a new member of California’s Senate delegation today, following the death of longtime Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein last week. Laphonza Butler becomes the first openly lesbian Black senator, and just the third Black woman to serve in the Senate in U.S. history.

Donald Trump appeared in a Manhattan courtroom Monday for the start of a civil trial brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump and his business partners — including his adult sons — are accused of fraudulently inflating the value of the Trump Organization’s assets to obtain loans and favorable business deals. James is seeking to fine Trump $250 million and is asking for a permanent ban on Trump family members running a business in New York.

Attorney General Letitia James: “No matter how powerful you are, no matter how much money you think you may have, no one is above the law. And it is my responsibility and my duty and my job to enforce it. The law is both powerful and fragile. And today in court, we will prove our case.”

Trump will receive a bench trial presided over by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, after Trump’s lawyers did not request a jury trial. Speaking to reporters outside the court Monday, Trump assailed Attorney General James — who’s African American — as a “racist” and called Judge Engoron a “disgrace.”

Donald Trump: “He’s a Democrat operative, and he’s a disgrace to people that call themself judges. … This is a judge that should be disbarred. This is a judge that should be out of office. This is a judge that some people say could be charged criminally for what he’s doing.”

On Monday, over 30 advocacy groups, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Public Citizen, published an open letter calling for the protection of juries in Trump’s four ongoing criminal cases. The letter cites Trump’s harassment of jurors in Georgia and Washington, D.C., adding, “These attacks threaten centuries-old American institutions designed by the Framers to hold to account any leader who would be king.”

The U.S. Department of Labor has launched an investigation into child labor at poultry processors Perdue and Tyson Foods. The probe comes after lawmakers grilled the head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about reports in The New York Times about migrant children getting burned and maimed on the job at Perdue and Tyson slaughterhouses. This is North Carolina Congressmember Alma Adams, ranking Democrat on the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee, whose repeated requests for a hearing on child labor violations have gone ignored by the committee’s Republican chair, Virginia Foxx.

Rep. Alma Adams: “Thanks to recent news investigations, we also know that children, especially unaccompanied migrant children, have been suffering all manner of harms in jobs that they should not be working on in the first place. But take a closer look at those stories: chemicals so caustic that they burn through multiple layers of gloves, machines without guards to prevent people’s arms or hands from getting mangled, food dust and cleaning chemical fumes that irritate the sinuses and lungs. These stories are not only about children in desperate circumstances, they’re also about workplaces that are dangerous to people of all ages.”

Click here to see our interview with The New York Times’s Hannah Dreier about her investigation into child labor in the United States.

The World Health Organization has approved the use of a more affordable and highly effective vaccine against malaria. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the recommendation Monday.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “In areas with seasonal transmission, it reduced symptomatic cases of malaria by 75% in the 12 months following a three-dose series of the vaccine.”

The vaccine was developed by Oxford University and is only the second malaria vaccine to be recommended by the WHO. Malaria is among the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, and the mosquito that carries it has been described as the “world’s deadliest animal.” In 2021, over half a million people, largely children under the age of 5, died of malaria — the vast majority of them in Africa.

In California, the longtime community leader and beloved bilingual newspaper publisher Dolores Sanchez has died at the age of 87. For nearly four decades, Sanchez presided over Eastern Group Publications, which operated 11 newspapers bringing news to Latinx communities on Los Angeles’s Eastside and neighboring cities.

Press freedom groups are calling on Congress to pass new legislation protecting media workers, on the fifth anniversary of the state-sponsored killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia in Istanbul in 2018. The Khashoggi Act, introduced Monday, would allow lawsuits in the United States against governments implicated in extraterritorial repression. The separate Khashoggi Resolution pledges U.S. action to hold the Saudi government accountable for human rights abuses. On Monday, elected officials in Los Angeles welcomed friends and family of Jamal Khashoggi to a street dedication ceremony on a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard outside the Consulate of Saudi Arabia. A sign declaring the space Jamal Khashoggi Square reads, “A journalist and advocate for human rights slain by the Saudi government.” In Washington, D.C., the National Press Club held a moment of silence to remember Khashoggi and other journalists whose killings have gone unpunished. Joining the ceremony was Michael Omer-Man, director of research for Israel-Palestine at DAWN, the organization founded by Khashoggi.

Michael Omer-Man: “Whereas Jamal’s death outraged the world and seemed for a moment to inject human rights into U.S. foreign policy in the MENA region, today, unfortunately, that no longer seems to be the case. That’s most apparent in Saudi Arabia, but not only. Following the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, we saw how the U.S. government literally tried to redefine 'accountability' in order to shield an ally from scrutiny. This is unacceptable. Jamal was murdered for the power of his ideas and because even in the face of mortal danger he refused to remain silent.”