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Mother Jones

The Latest Casualties of Idaho’s Abortion Ban: Babies

An Idaho hospital is ending its labor and delivery services in the wake of a Texas-style, near-total abortion ban signed into state law last year. Citing the state’s “legal and political climate,” Bonner General Health plans to stop delivering babies and providing other obstetrical services in mid-May, according to a press release. While the release doesn’t […]

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Mother Jones

62 Way Too Young to Retire, Says Only Rich Country With Falling Life Expectancy

To an American viewer, the current protests over raising France’s retirement age might look a little quaint: the country that once beheaded members of its aristocracy still gets in a tizzy when its president wears an expensive watch. In January, When President Emmanuel Macron revealed his plan to raise France’s minimum retirement age from a relatively young […]

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Extreme Weather Rips Through Mississippi, Killing Dozens

A powerful tornado ripped through rural Mississippi last night, killing at least 24 people and injuring dozens more. The tornado hit Rolling Fork—a town with a population of less than 2,000, and the supposed birthplace of Muddy Waters—particularly hard when it rolled through at about 8 p.m. local time Friday night. Nearly a third of […]

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In Utah, Protesting a Pipeline Might Get You Five Years in Prison

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In Utah, protests that hinder the functioning of fossil fuel infrastructure could now lead to at least five years in prison. The new rules make Utah the 19th state in the country to pass legislation with stiffer penalties for protesting […]

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Trump Is Holding His First Rally in Waco. That Shouldn’t Surprise You.

On Saturday, the first rally of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign will take place in Waco, Texas. The significance will not be lost on many of his supporters: The event coincides with the 30th anniversary of the FBI’s disastrous 51-day siege of David Koresh’s Branch Davidian complex. That siege ended on April 19, 1993, when FBI agents filled […]

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Congress Might Want a TikTok Ban, But Their Questions Suggest Going Further

What if the United States government banned every single social media app? Not just TikTok. All of them. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter–sayonara. It may sound ludicrous, but if you apply the logic behind the kinds of questions posed at Thursday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the data security risks and alleged harm to children posed […]

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The Cops Who Raided Afroman’s House Are Suing After Being Featured In His Music Videos

The law enforcement officials who raided the Ohio home of Afroman during a raid last year are suing the rapper after he used footage from the police search in music videos and on social media. A copy of the complaint, obtained by VICE News, claims that the seven Adams County Sheriff’s officers suffered “emotional distress” from Afroman’s […]

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He Took Part In a Right-Wing Florida Hospital Protest. Now, He Is Losing His Board Certification for Spreading Covid Disinformation.

Last week, I wrote about the far-right groups accusing Sarasota Memorial, a public safety-net hospital in Florida, of mistreating Covid patients. Despite a painstaking review showing that the hospital’s Covid outcomes have exceeded national standards, the groups—helmed by former Trump administration national security advisor Mike Flynn, QAnon adherents, and a key orchestrator of the January […]

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Should Your Car Know When You’re Too Drunk to Drive?

When President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill in 2021, he committed $1.2 trillion to rebuilding the nation’s roads and bridges. The president spearheaded one of the biggest investments in infrastructure in decades: more than $42 billion for broadband equity, $30 billion for public transportation, and $148 billion for national highways. But as the 2024 […]

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Supreme Court Hears Navajo Nation Demands in Colorado River Case

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 1849 and 1868, the Navajo Nation signed two treaties with the United States. The treaties created a reservation that would serve as a “permanent home” for the Navajo so long as the tribe allowed settlers to live on most of […]

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The Full Stormy Hush-Money Tale Features Plenty of Witnesses Who Could Be Trouble for Trump

With a possible indictment of Donald Trump, it’s a good moment to review how the porn-star-hush-money caper may make him the first president or ex-president ever to be charged with a crime. Such a refresher reminds us just how tawdry the Trump world has been, and it provides a cast of characters beyond Michael Cohen, […]

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Cancelling Your Subscriptions May Finally Get a Lot Easier

We’ve all been there. You sign up for a gym membership or online delivery service. You eventually lose interest or start tightening your budget, so you try to cancel. Yet, despite it only taking two clicks to sign up, the company requires you to call a hotline in order to escape. The result could end […]

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Rap On Trial Is Now Mainstream

For nearly a year, the rapper Young Thug has been behind bars in Fulton County, Georgia. The 31-year-old, born Jeffery Lamar Williams, is facing charges that could send him to prison for twenty years. Widely considered one of the most stylistically innovative rappers of his generation, Williams has been charged, along with 27 others, with […]

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Mother Jones

Why Chickens Aren’t Getting Their Flu Shots

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The wave of avian influenza H5N1—which so far has hit 76 countries, triggered national emergencies, and created the worst animal-disease outbreak in US history—keeps roaring through wild birds and commercial poultry. More than 140 million poultry worldwide have died from the […]

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It’s Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal.

This would be so much easier if we could make up donors from whole cloth, like George Santos may have done. Or if we impersonated a YouTube executive to sing our praises on a Zoom call, and raked in $83 million (but maybe minus being arrested for fraud in the end). Imagine if a billionaire […]

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Trump Reportedly Really Wants to Be Handcuffed

In preparation for the likely event that he may soon become the first-ever former president to get indicted, Donald Trump apparently wants to go big. I’m talking handcuffs, a perp walk, the typical hallmarks of a theatrical court appearance. That’s the latest, at least, from new reports on Trump’s frame of mind as the Manhattan […]

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We Need More People Like George Santos in Congress

George Santos, the first-term Republican representative from New York, may go down as the most famous fabulist in the history of Congress. In the run-up to his election last year from a district that includes parts of Long Island and Queens, he claimed to be a successful businessman, a college volleyball star, and the Jewish […]

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Why Your “Recycled” Grocery Bag Might Not Be

This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. To jumpstart a paltry market for recycled plastic, governments across the globe are pushing companies to include recycled materials in their products. Last year, the United Kingdom introduced a tax on manufacturers that produce or import plastic packaging containing less than 30 percent recycled […]

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Police Killed His Friend and Blamed Him. He Got 65 Years in Prison. He Was 15.

LaKeith Smith was 15 years old when he and four other Black teens broke into an empty house in Millbrook, Alabama, to steal an Xbox and other gaming equipment in 2015. The police arrived, and an officer shot and killed Smith’s 16-year-old friend A’Donte Washington, allegedly after Washington ran toward the officer with a weapon. […]

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The Trump Protests So Far: Mostly Press and Also Someone In a Diaper

When I arrived at Trump Tower on Tuesday afternoon, a man was heckling one of the only Trump supporters who’d shown up to protest a potential indictment of the former president—who had posted on his platform Truth Social to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK” after warning he would be arrested in connection with an investigation of […]

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Newly Released Footage Shows At Least Ten People Restraining Irvo Otieno

Surveillance footage from the Virginia psychiatric hospital where 28-year-old Irvo Otieno died on March 6 shows a group of sheriff deputies and medical staff piling on top of a handcuffed Otieno in the final moments before his death. According to Otieno’s family, Otieno had been experiencing a mental health crisis. Seven deputies and three hospital employees […]

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A MAGA Mogul Urged a “Flame Revolution.” After His Arrest, His Apartment Caught Fire.

Hours after the arrest last week of fugitive Chinese mogul Guo Wengui at his Upper East Side penthouse apartment in the tony Sherry-Netherland Hotel, a two-alarm fire broke out there. New York authorities are investigating what caused the blaze, which news reports said began while Guo was in custody and FBI agents were searching his […]

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Two New Films Tackle Christianity and Sex

Despite the paintings of shirtless saints and Jesus statues with abs, sex and Christianity are not known to mix. When they do, it’s either because someone is breaking a rule or it’s within the strict confines of marriage. But what happens when your marriage is also sexless? Guilt and a sense of duty have put Mamacruz, […]

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A New FCC Rule Will Guarantee Video Calls for Hearing Impaired Prisoners

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. For four years, while incarcerated in Maryland state prison, Alphonso Taylor, 49, said he was the only deaf man in his unit. […]

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Health Officials Delayed Report Linking Fluoride to Brain Harm

This piece was published originally by Capital & Main. Last May, the National Toxicology Program (NTP), a federal research agency, was set to release its eagerly awaited report into the cognitive and neurodevelopmental impacts on humans from fluoride exposure. The report was anticipated for several reasons, including its review of studies linking fluoridated water to cognitive harm in children. Water […]

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Scientists Deliver “Final Warning” on Climate: Act Now or It’s Too Late

his story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made […]

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Ron DeSantis Really Wants to Remind You That Trump Allegedly Paid Off a Porn Star

Amid pressure to denounce a New York prosecutor who might soon indict Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis has finally decided to weigh in on the hush-money case swirling around the former president. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, DeSantis insisted, is a politically motivated “Soros-funded prosecutor” seeking to weaponize his office against a political enemy. But almost immediately after […]

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We’ve Got What It Takes to End Poverty in America

Matthew Desmond, the 43-year-old Princeton sociologist whose last book, Evicted, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, is back with another one, Poverty, by America, that’s bound to generate fruitful debate—and perhaps even inspire some of us to get off our asses and tackle this scourge once and for all. “In a nutshell, poverty […]

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The Iraq Invasion 20 Years Later: It Was Indeed a Big Lie that Launched the Catastrophic War

Before there was Donald Trump’s Big Lie, there was George W. Bush’s Big Lie. Twenty years ago this week, Bush and his sidekick Vice President Dick Cheney launched a war against Iraq. They greased the way to this tragic conflagration with the false claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of […]

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Mother Jones

Do Solar Farms Really Hurt Property Values?

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A new study finds that houses within a half-mile of a utility-scale solar farm have resale prices that are, on average, 1.5 percent less than houses that are just a little farther away. The research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory […]

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