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Mother Jones

“It’s Just Like McCarthyism”: NYU Students and Faculty Push Back on Protest Crackdown

Less than 24 hours after police arrested 120 people at a pro-Palestine rally at New York University, students and faculty walked out of their classrooms to call out alleged lies from the administration used to suppress peaceful political protest on college campuses of Israel’s war on Gaza. Hundreds gathered on Tuesday afternoon at the southeast […]

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Did Trump Push the NY Judge Too Far?

Once again, former President Donald Trump is about to find out just how far he can push a judge. On Tuesday morning, Trump’s attorneys faced an angry barrage of questions from New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, demanding they explain why Trump should not be fined for what prosecutors in his hush-money case say […]

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Mother Jones

Did Trump Push the NY Judge Too Far?

Once again, former president Donald Trump is about to find out just how far he can push a judge. On Tuesday morning, Trump’s attorneys faced an angry barrage of questions from New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, demanding they explain why Trump should not be fined for what prosecutors in his hush-money case say […]

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Ben & Jerry’s Parent Backpedals on Social and Environmental Vows

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Unilever is to scale back its environmental and social aims, provoking critics to say its board should “hang their heads in shame.” The consumer goods company behind brands ranging from Dove beauty products to Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream was […]

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Terry Anderson Was a Pawn in a Nasty Game, and a Hero for Journalists

Beirut was the place to be if you were an action-junkie journalist in the 1980s. Civil War. Militias, the PLO, an Israeli invasion, the occupation of Lebanon. Car Bombings. Truck bombings. And more. It was an exotic city with an ancient corniche winding along the Mediterranean to the snow-capped Shouf mountains some 30 miles away. […]

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How Columbia’s Student Radio Station Is Meeting the Moment

Since last week, at Columbia University—as students have gathered to protest the war in Gaza and call for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel’s military campaign—the college radio station, WKCR, has taken on a new role: near-constant news. It has suspended its usual programming and doggedly covered the demonstrations on campus. And, […]

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Biden Unveils $7 Billion “Solar for All” Investment for Earth Day

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Joe Biden marked Monday’s Earth Day by announcing a $7 billion investment in solar energy projects nationwide, focusing on disadvantaged communities, and unveiling a week-long series of what the White House say will be “historic climate actions.” The president was […]

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Gaza Solidarity Encampments Are Spreading Far Beyond Columbia’s Campus

A growing number of college students nationwide are staging encampments to protest their universities’ investments in Israeli entities in light of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has reportedly killed more than 34,000 Palestinians. The protests have sparked mass arrests and suspensions, including at Columbia University, where more than 100 students—including some from Barnard, the all-women’s […]

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The Biggest Misconception From Trump’s Historic Jury Selection

Last week, Justice Juan Merchan pulled off an impressive feat in the New York Supreme Court’s criminal division: He finished empaneling 18 jurors in the first-ever criminal trial of a former president. This was not easy. Donald Trump’s first criminal trial—of the four he faces in the coming months—concerns 34 counts of falsifying business records, […]

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Who Is David Pecker—and What’d He Have to Tell Trump’s Jury?

The first criminal trial of a former US president is underway, with Donald Trump facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments allegedly made in 2016 to cover up an affair he had with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Here’s the latest—the key updates and absurd moments—from the historic trial. “The people call […]

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Will the Supreme Court Make Homelessness a Crime?

Helen Cruz has been a resident of Grants Pass, Oregon, for roughly four decades, but for the last five of those years, she’s had no home in which to live. She’s not alone. Her small mountain town with a population of 39,189 provides no public homeless shelters. She is among up to 600 people experiencing […]

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With This Week’s Abortion Case, Supreme Court Faces Grim Reality of Overturning Roe

Just weeks after the Supreme Court ended the Constitutional right to an abortion in the summer of 2022, Mylissa Farmer arrived at a hospital in Joplin, Missouri after her water broke at about 18 weeks pregnant. The doctors agreed that the fetus had no chance of survival and that she needed to end her pregnancy […]

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These Floridians Rebuilt Houses in Flood Zones. Now FEMA Is Cracking Down.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When US homeowners buy subsidized flood insurance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they make a commitment to build back better after flood disasters, even if it costs them. FEMA’s notorious 50 percent rule stipulates that if a home in a flood zone […]

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The Supreme Court Is About to Have a Very Busy Week

Monday marks the Supreme Court’s final week of oral arguments until October 2024, and the justices have saved some of their most consequential matters for last. On the court’s schedule are cases regarding former President Donald Trump’s immunity, abortion rights, and the criminalization of homelessness. Here’s a preview of what will be on the docket. […]

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UAW Triumphs in Tennessee Volkswagen Union Vote

For decades, unionizing in the American South was like cutting a five-acre field with nail clippers: time-consuming, grueling, and largely ineffective—though not technically impossible. But on Friday, hourly workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, defied the long-standing barriers by voting overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union (UAW). Late that night, the National […]

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Criminalization of Indigenous Land Defenders on the Rise, Says UN Report

This story was originally published by Grist as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. It is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it […]

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House Votes to Pass $95 Billion Foreign Aid Package for Ukraine and Israel

On Saturday, the US House of Representatives voted to pass a $95 billion foreign aid package to assist Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, as well as a TikTok ban requiring the popular app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest from the platform within up to a year or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States. The […]

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This Week’s Episode of Reveal: What Happens When a Tribal Cops Vanish?

When Braven Glenn, a 17-year-old boy, was killed in a car wreck, the early details made little sense to his mother, Blossom Old Bull. Officials told her police chased Glenn for speeding, and he ended up in a head-on collision with a train. It took days for Old Bull to learn that the officer […]

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In Eagle Pass, Fewer Migrant Crossings Leave Law Enforcement Idle

Joshua Rubin, a Brooklyn software developer and founder of the pro-immigrant grassroots group Witness at the Border, spent his 72nd birthday in Eagle Pass, Texas. He gathered with another half a dozen volunteers at the border town across from Mexico’s Piedras Negras for a two-week vigil “to, according to the organization, “stand up against [Governor] Greg […]

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Jared Kushner’s Ambition Threatens One of Europe’s Last Pristine Ecosystems

This story was originally published by Yale E360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It is the jewel of the Adriatic. Its shimmering waters feed a rare colony of Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest freshwater birds, sustain the endangered Albanian water frog, and host loggerhead turtles on its encircling dunes. The Nartë lagoon […]

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New Hampshire’s GOP Is Taking a Stand—Against the Polio Vaccine

New Hampshire could soon beat Florida—known for its anti-vaccine Surgeon General—when it comes to loosening vaccine requirements. A first-in-the-nation bill that’s already passed New Hampshire’s state House, sponsored only by Republican legislators, would end the requirement for parents enrolling kids in childcare to provide documentation of polio and measles vaccination. New Hampshire would be the […]

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Newt Gingrich Perfectly Describes How Everything Is His Fault

With Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson struggling to hold onto the gavel in the face of eternal rebellion from some of his party’s most intransigent far-right members, Politico thought it would be a good idea to call up former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to ask him about the situation. And […]

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Bill Would End Trading in Water Futures

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. With private investors poised to profit from water scarcity in the west, US senator Elizabeth Warren and representative Ro Khanna are pursuing a bill to prohibit the trading of water as a commodity. The lawmakers will introduce the bill on Thursday afternoon, the […]

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Watch Our New Short Film About a Mother’s Search for Answers on the Crow Reservation

A high-speed police chase. A 17-year-old Crow boy, dead. The police report? Nowhere to be found. The entire police department? Vanished. The excruciating question that still remains: What happened to Braven Glenn? The hunt for answers is at the heart of our searing new short film After the Crash, by reporter Samantha Michaels and filmmaker […]

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A Third and Very Dramatic Day for Trump’s Jury Selection

The challenge to secure jurors for Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan bumbled further on Thursday morning after two jurors were excused—one after prosecutors questioned their truthfulness and another, an oncology nurse, who expressed concerns that the media had effectively outed her. The latter dismissal follows several media reports that featured biographical information about selected jurors. Fox […]

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Good Recipes for Tough Times

This article was produced by The Bittman Project and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. which supports independent journalists as they forward fresh narratives about inequality. It is co-published here with permission. EHRP’s high-quality journalism is co-published with mainstream media outlets, to help readers understand and address systemic hardship. Cooking and food shopping are very different in America […]

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Mother Jones

“We Need Shade”: America’s Hottest City Rushes to Plant More Trees

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was a relatively cool spring day in Phoenix, Arizona, as a tree-planting crew dug large holes in one of the desert city’s hottest and least shaded neighborhoods. Still, it was sweaty backbreaking work as they carefully positioned, watered and staked a […]

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A New Police Force Chased a 17-Year-Old Boy to His Death. Then It Vanished.

Cruising south down a two-lane highway in Montana, Braven Glenn looked out onto the open road, the evening sky chilly and dark. It was November 24, 2020—half a year into the pandemic and three months after his 17th birthday. He was a good student, on his way to pick up his girlfriend, a basketball player […]

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Mother Jones

Police Loom as Pro-Palestine Students Occupy Columbia University

New York City Police gathered in force outside of Columbia University on Wednesday, after students convened in the pre-dawn hours to erect dozens of camping tents on a campus lawn. The demonstration backing Palestine was launched hours before president Minouche Shafik began testifying at a Congressional hearing addressing allegations of anti-semitism on campus in the […]

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Mother Jones

Sen. Rick Scott Says He’s a China Hawk. But He’s Made Lots of Money With China-Related Investments

In November, ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) issued a press release casting himself as a fierce opponent of China. It declared, “Since being elected to the U.S. Senate, Senator Scott has introduced dozens of bills to punish Communist China for its increased military aggression, continued […]

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