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Mother Jones

A Large Percentage of Republican Primary Voters Can’t Stomach Trump

Former president Donald Trump easily swept to victory in a handful of additional Republican caucuses this weekend, looking ever more imperious in his bid for the GOP nomination. But new data from the Associated Press suggests his easy victories are hiding a serious potential problem: Never Trumpers aren’t changing their minds. The AP reported on […]

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Around the Globe, Virus Hunters Are Working to Avert the Next Pandemic

This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It all started when Christopher Mason’s 3-year-old daughter licked a subway pole. Like any parent, he was horrified, but also keenly curious: What types of microbes might be clinging to a metal pipe gripped by countless commuters every day? Mason, a […]

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YouTube’s Austin Ambitions Aren’t Going Well. Just Ask These Workers.

On Friday, a YouTube Music contractor named Jack Benedict took the podium before Austin’s City Council. He was there to urge the council members to encourage Google to negotiate with the Alphabet Worker’s Union-CWA Local 9009. Instead, mid-testimony, he learned that he and 42 of his colleagues had been laid off. The jaw-dropping moment, captured […]

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This Week’s Episode of Reveal: How to Catch a Corrupt Philly Cop

Philadelphia Police Detective Philip Nordo was an unusually lone wolf. In the tightly regimented bureaucracy that is big city policing, he was rarely supervised and often worked alone. The upside? He got results. Nordo was known throughout the department for having a hand in efficiently convicting more than 100 people. He was a third generation […]

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Nex Benedict’s Death Triggers Federal Investigation

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Education announced an investigation into an Oklahoma school district for allegedly failing to respond to reports of sex-based harassment after the death of Nex Benedict, a trans teen who died the day after an altercation with three girls inside a high school bathroom. The DOE dropped the news in […]

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US Cities Could Be Capturing Billions of Gallons of Water Per Day

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Your city is a scab on the landscape: sidewalks, roads, parking lots, rooftops—the built environment repels water into sewers and then into the environment. Urban planners have been doing it for centuries, treating stormwater as a nuisance to be diverted away as quickly […]

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Walgreens and CVS Will Sell the Abortion Pill—and the Pill’s Investors Could Make Bank

On Friday, Walgreens and CVS announced they would begin selling the abortion pill mifepristone in their pharmacies in select states, part of a plan to eventually expand access to about half of US states where abortion is still legal. The announcement is notable ahead of arguments in a Supreme Court case that could further restrict […]

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Nikki Haley Joins GOP Colleagues In Suddenly Pivoting on IVF

Just a week after saying that “embryos, to me, are babies,” Nikki Haley is now joining other Republicans in suddenly claiming to support IVF access in the wake of rising abortion restrictions and the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos can now be considered children under state law. “I think there should be federal […]

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It Can Happen Here

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here. In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published […]

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Trump Says Gov. Abbott, Who Doesn’t Want to Be Vice President, Is “Absolutely” A Contender for Vice President

Trump is considering Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as a potential running mate, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday…even though Abbott has said that he doesn’t want the job. When Hannity asked Trump if Abbott was on his short list during a joint interview with the two politicians in Eagle Pass, Texas—the epicenter […]

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Not Even a Child’s Death Can Stop These Lawmakers From Spewing Hate

Trans teen Nex Benedict died after an altercation in the girl’s bathroom of his public high school in Owasso, Oklahoma a bathroom he was required to use because of the state’s 2023 legislation forcing students at public and charter schools to use bathroom and changing facilities that match their biological, sex rather than their identity. The exact […]

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Donald Trump Has One Week Left to Pay E. Jean Carroll. But Will He?

Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll are urging the judge in her defamation case against Donald Trump to reject the former president’s last-minute request to avoid paying the $83.3 million Carroll had been awarded as he appeals the ruling. In a new filing on Thursday, Carroll’s lawyers blasted the request, arguing that it amounted to little […]

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How Todd Akin’s “Legitimate Rape” Debacle Previewed the Abortion Agenda of Today’s GOP

A few months before the 2012 elections, Todd Akin, the Republicans’ Senate candidate in Missouri, sent his party scrambling when he explained his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape with a now infamous line: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Republicans […]

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Utility Fraud and Corruption Are Threatening the Clean Energy Transition

This story was reported by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. At a press conference last month, flanked by sheriffs and attorneys, Ohio Attorney General David Yost announced the indictments of two utility executives who allegedly tried to “hijack” state electricity policy for their own corrupt ends by paying […]

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Washington State’s Biggest Union Backs “Uncommitted” Democratic Vote

Washington state’s largest labor union has followed Michigan voters‘ lead, urging its 50,000 members to vote “uncommitted” rather than for Joe Biden in its March 12 primary. The news, first reported by NBC today, comes as Biden faces growing protests from voters on the left about his support for Israel in its war in Gaza, and concerns about […]

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GAO Report Warns Climate Change Could Unearth US Nuclear Waste

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Ariana Tibon was in college at the University of Hawaiʻi in 2017 when she saw the photo online: a black-and-white picture of a man holding a baby. The caption said: “Nelson Anjain getting his baby monitored on March 2, 1954, by an […]

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Telehealth Abortions Continue to Rise—Even in Banned States, A New Study Shows

Telehealth abortions continue to grow in popularity, even in states where anti-abortion activists try to ban them, according to new data published today. Abortions obtained through virtual providers accounted for 15 to 16 percent of all abortions conducted between July and September of last year—amounting to about 14,000 abortions each month—up from 11 percent of […]

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Supreme Court Hands Trump a Win and Delays His Election Subversion Prosecution

The Supreme Court on Wednesday paused the federal criminal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election—handing Trump a major victory in his attempt to delay his trial until after the November election. The justices halted the case, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in August, while they consider Trump’s claim that […]

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Uncommitted Voters in Michigan Made Clear Their Disgust With Biden and the War

In 2012, voters in Michigan’s Democratic primary had two choices: Barack Obama and uncommitted. In Dearborn, the first city in the United States with an Arab-American majority, 87 percent voted for Obama, while 13 percent went uncommitted. In this year’s primary, which was held Tuesday amid protests of Joe Biden’s response to the war in […]

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Mitch McConnell’s Legacy Is the Return of Donald Trump

The last big thing Mitch McConnell did as the Senate Republican leader will likely be remembered as one of his most consequential—his decision in early 2021 not to hold Donald Trump accountable for the January 6 insurrection. At the time, McConnell was in a unique position to end Trump’s political career. But McConnell, who announced Wednesday […]

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Stop Cop City Activists Turn Up the Heat on Nationwide Insurance in Arizona

On Monday evening, three activists connected with the effort to stall construction of a vast police training facility just outside of Atlanta were arrested 1,700 miles away in Arizona as organizers target insurance companies connected to the project. Scottsdale Insurance Co., a subsidiary of Nationwide Insurance, is one of the primary insurers of the Atlanta […]

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What Happens If We Actually Treat Fetuses Like People?

In ruling that frozen embryos should be legally considered the same as children under a wrongful death law, the Alabama Supreme Court furthered a growing movement hoping to enshrine “fetal personhood”—the idea that a fetus or embryo should have the same rights as a child—into law. In Alabama, one consequence of such a doctrine became […]

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Ohio GOP Candidate JR Majewski Used a Slur, Considered Dropping Out (Again), but Will Stay in the Race

Ohio Republican Congressional candidate J.R. Majewski considered dropping out of his race (again) after backlash for saying that Democrats, like disabled people participating in the Special Olympics, are “retarded” in a podcast episode that aired earlier this month. Majewski, who apologized after backlash, told Politico that he would consider dropping out if his “comments put me […]

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How the Christian Right Became So Hostile to IVF

In a landmark ruling last week, Alabama’s Supreme Court declared that embryos created through in vitro fertilization were children, and therefore subject to the state’s abortion ban. The effects of the ruling are already apparent: Three IVF clinics have paused their services, and it’s unclear whether patients in the state will be able to decide […]

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Should Israel Be Held Accountable for “Ecocide”?

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When reports emerged in late December that the Israeli military planned to pump seawater into the underground tunnel networks used by Hamas fighters in Gaza, scientists and advocates around the world raised alarm over the prospect of an environmental disaster. Flooding […]

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Florida Man Facing 91 Criminal Counts Wins Michigan Primary

Donald Trump keeps losing in the courtroom, but that isn’t stopping him from prevailing at the ballot box. The former president is facing four indictments covering a combined 91 criminal counts. He’s racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in civl judgments against him. And still, he’s winning GOP primaries. On Tuesday, he won Michigan’s. […]

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Producers of “Forever Chemicals” Knew They Were Toxic, Say UN Experts

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In advance of a United Nations meeting this week where pollution is on the agenda, a UN human rights team has called out a PFAS manufacturing plant in North Carolina as a poster child for irresponsible behavior. Nine independent UN […]

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The Migrant Families Separated Under Trump Are Still in Legal Limbo

In the spring of 2018, attorney Christie Turner-Herbas returned from parental leave to her job at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a nonprofit serving unaccompanied migrant children, to find that her “universe was on fire.” During the previous summer, the Trump administration had quietly started to roll out a policy, which then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions would later […]

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Some Michigan Democrats Plan to Vote “Uncommitted” to Send Biden a Message on Palestine

In the Michigan primary tomorrow, some Democrats plan to vote “uncommitted,” instead of casting a ballot for President Joe Biden, to protest his administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. The Listen to Michigan campaign—which has attracted support from dozens of Michigan Democratic leaders, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib—comes as the death toll in Gaza has […]

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How Bad Will Your Town’s Air Be in 30 Years? This Tool Can Show You.

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. By 2054, parts of California, including Fresno and Tulare, could experience as many as 90 days of poor air quality—about three months’ worth—in a bad year. Areas of Washington and Oregon could see up to a month of it. […]

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