Ahead of Louisiana Primary, Trump Calls GOP Sen. Cassidy a “Disloyal Disaster”

As voters in Louisiana head to the polls for Saturday’s primary elections, President Donald Trump is doing all he can to ensure that incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy gets the boot.

Cassidy was one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial after the January 6 insurrection, and the president hasn’t forgotten. Cassidy is facing two primary challengers: State Treasurer John Fleming and Congresswoman Julia Letlow, whom Trump has endorsed. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote Saturday, Louisiana Republicans will head back to the polls on June 27 for a runoff.

“Senator Bill Cassidy is a Disloyal Disaster,” Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday morning. “Now he’s going to get CLOBBERED, hopefully, in today’s BIG election, by two great people!!!”

Beyond voting to convict Trump, Cassidy has clashed with the president over HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccination stance—though he also cast the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy to his position. Cassidy’s capitulation in the confirmation battle doesn’t seem to have helped him much with Trump’s and Kennedy’s loyalists. MAHA PAC, a group associated with Kennedy’s agenda, has spent six figures opposing Cassidy and supporting Letlow. Still, Cassidy outraised both of his challengers by millions of dollars.

Letlow has spent her time in Congress focused on the culture war in education, sponsoring a “Parents Bill Of Rights Act” that would require educators to notify parents if a child requests to use a different name or pronouns in school. It would also allow parents to review all educational materials, such as library books. Despite this, Cassidy’s campaign has spent heavily on ads calling her “Liberal Letlow.”

Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 and the seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict him, only four have subsequently managed to win reelection. Most retired, lost primaries, or were redistricted out of their seats.

If Trump gets his way, Cassidy will become the next apostate to be ousted. And three days from now, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie—a Republican who didn’t vote to impeach Trump but has opposed him on numerous other issues—will attempt to defend his seat against a Trump-backed challenger, too.

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Trump Meme Coin Contest: Win Exclusive Access to “World Football 2026 Final Game”!

Have you been struggling to get your hands on affordable World Cup tickets? Well, Donald Trump’s business partners have an “extraordinary” offer for you!

The president’s $TRUMP meme coin has been floundering for months, tumbling from a stratospherically absurd price of $74 per coin shortly before Inauguration Day to around $2.25 on Friday. To drum up interest in this crypto asset, Trump last month attended an exclusive gala at Mar-a-Lago for the top coin holders. But that didn’t seem to help much.

Now, Trump’s meme coin business partners are back with what appears to a new plan to lure investors: a chance to win box seats at the World Cup final in July. Or, as the meme coin’s official website eloquently puts it: “This Summer, Top Members Earn an Extraordinary 3-Day VIP Experience with a Private Luxury Suite at the World Football 2026 Final Game.”

Earlier this month, the coin’s website, which is run by Trump associate Bill Zanker, announced the creation of a special club for coin holders that would offer perks, including exclusive access to then-unnamed sporting events. Now the first details have been posted—the 19 highest ranking club members will be invited to attend a three-day party for the World Cup final. The precise rules for determining rankings are unclear but seem to include some combination of the number of coins investors own and the amount of time over which they’ve owned them.

Perks will include access to a swanky stadium suite, three nights at the St. Regis hotel, chauffeured rides to the stadium, an invitation to a gala, an “elite” afterparty, and “exclusive World Cup nightclub access.” The apparently AI-generated illustration on the website shows a generic stadium, with guests dining and facing away from the game. One figure is wearing a red hat that says “$TRUMP” instead of “MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN”—a not especially subtle clue about where the Trump presidency is heading.

Neither FIFA nor the club’s organizers responded to a request for comment on what exactly the “World Cup nightclub” is, or if the gala and afterparty are FIFA events. The site’s fine print does make clear that the World Cup and FIFA are not affiliated or connected in any way to the $TRUMP coin promotion. But on some levels, it’s a perfect match. The World Cup has already been harshly criticized for focusing its ticket sales on lavish hospitality packages. Trump has developed a close relationship with FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, who created a “peace prize” to award to Trump.

On Stubhub, the cheapest nosebleed seats for the final are currently going for around $8,700. So, as swanky and elite as the Trump Coin Club’s offerings aim to be, the plunging price of $TRUMP could perhaps turn it into an unexpectedly affordable way to get into the big game.

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Farmers Are Collateral Damage in Trump’s Iran War

It’s planting season, and 70 percent of American farmers can’t afford enough fertilizer to plant all their crops. About a third of the planet’s nitrogen fertilizer, the most widely used in global agriculture, must pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Thanks to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran, that waterway is essentially still closed to most ships.

It’s been described as a “slow-moving food crisis”: when farmers can’t buy fertilizer, they don’t plant as much, and months on, that shows up in scarcer, pricier food. United Nations estimates that 45 million people worldwide could go hungry thanks to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Though the situation is not quite as dire in the US, American farmers are feeling the squeeze, too: fertilizer prices are changing by the minute, soybean farmers are still facing export tariffs, and diesel costs are up, too.

In an Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee hearing Tuesday, Arkansas Republican Sen. John Boozman proclaimed that “food security is national security.” But the hearing offered few governmental solutions to the fertilizer shortage—particularly not ending the war.

Trent Kubik, president of the South Dakota Corn Grower’s Association, told the committee he’s had a hard season on his farm. “We expected our costs were going to be higher than normal, as we’d be purchasing [fertilizer] closer to peak demand season,” he said, but with the war on Iran, they’re “nearly doubling.”

He’s not the only one. In the first quarter of 2026, 86 American farms have already filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy. And while farmers suffer under the Hormuz blockade, fertilizer producers’ revenues continue to increase.

“The fertilizer industry is one of the most heavily consolidated industries,” Omanjana Goswami of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who studies agricultural policy, told Mother Jones. “At the same time that these companies are making billions of dollars in profits over the years, farmers have seen profit margins go down drastically because of the higher cost of fertilizer.”

Four major manufacturers control nearly the entire US fertilizer market—and they’ve increased nitrogen fertilizer prices 28 percent since the war on Iran began in February, according to recent University of Illinois data.

Meanwhile, farmers are scrambling, planting less food, and switching to less fertilizer-thirsty crops. “About 4 million acres of corn [in the US] have been switched over to soybean, just to make up for the fact that fertilizer availability was much less this spring,” Goswami said.

“That’s the thing that we feel the worst about,” Kubik, the corn farmer, said. “During the last 75 days, a lot of money was being made–but it wasn’t by farmers.”

“Farmers get thrown head first into a crisis every time global supply chains are hit,” Goswami said. That reoccurring crisis—which also happened when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020—is the product of an unsustainable agricultural model that requires massive amounts of fertilizer to be shipped from overseas. Some experts suggest that even if the war on Iran ends tomorrow, high fertilizer prices will persist through at least 2027.

The Iran war fertilizer shock, Goswami added, will likely impact wheat in particular.

Combined with some bad weather earlier this spring and an unrelenting drought in the plains states, the war is making this the worst year for wheat yields in decades. Most wheat grown in the US (unlike, say, corn or soy) is destined for consumption by humans, which means there’s a good chance we’ll see that price shock in the bread aisle later this year.

Meanwhile, beyond some efforts at mandating greater price transparency from fertilizer manufacturers, farmers haven’t been offered any real relief.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), at Tuesday’s hearing, was indignant. “Between the war in Iran, spiking fuel and fertilizer prices, and illegal trade wars, increasing the cost of equipment, and limiting market access, it’s no wonder that farmers in Georgia I talked to say that they can’t take much more,” he said at this week’s hearing. “Fertilizer prices are increasing. Diesel costs have increased by over $2 a gallon compared to this time last year and there’s no end in sight. At this point, the best-case scenario for farmers is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.”

It was open, he pointed out, before the war started.

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Antisemitic Hantavirus Conspiracy Theories Are Spreading—and the Platforms Are Hands Off

A popular social media conspiracy theory about a recent cluster of hantavirus cases claims that the word “hanta” means “scam,” “fraud,” or “nonsense” in “Hebrew slang.” That’s more or less where the theory ends and dark suggestion takes over. One is meant to conclude that the supposed Hebrew origins of the word mean that the hantavirus—a well-documented illness with outbreaks that go back several decades—is somehow a scam, perpetrated by either the Israeli government or some other undefined group of Jewish people.

None of this is true. Even the root linguistic claim is completely wrong: the word “hantavirus” comes from the Hantaan River in Korea, where the prototype virus was first identified. Nor is hantavirus, which is typically spread by close contact with infected rodents or their urine, saliva, or feces, a new illness: the virus was isolated in 1978 and cultivated in labs as far back as 1981. In New Mexico, hantavirus cases virtually occur annually; last year, Santa Fe resident Betsy Arakawa, the wife of actor Gene Hackman, died from the illness.

Yet in the past two weeks, the “Hebrew” claim has spread wildly across Instagram, Threads, TikTok, X, and YouTube, through a fusillade of virtually identical posts, mostly shared by people who are neither public figures nor widely followed. The way the false notion has spread is an excellent demonstration not only of how a conspiracy theory is created and reinforced in real time, but of the ways tech platforms are either unable or unwilling to take action against coded hateful claims.

“I can’t stress enough about how this post is not a dig at Jews.”

Almost all of the social media posts making these claims follow the same format, whether presented in screenshots or a video: the words “I wonder what Hanta means in Hebrew” appear, followed by an image of a Google search for the term, with the company’s AI Overview summary at the top, which claims: “In Hebrew slang, hanta (חַנְטָה) means nonsense, a lie, a scam, or something completely fake. It is often used colloquially as the equivalent of “that’s bullshit” or “a load of garbage.” As citations, Google’s AI overview links to an answer from Grok, X’s in-house AI chatbot, and to a Reddit thread that’s since been deleted. A virtually identical AI summary also currently appears on Instagram when a user searches for the phrase “What does Hanta mean in Hebrew.”

The rumors spread so widely on X that they, as Snopes pointed out, became a trending topic on the platform. Many of the posts had impressive reach, considering the posters’ stature. One of the most successful versions on Instagram, from a New Age influencer calling herself Divinely Sierra, has garnered over two million views. (In a comment added a day after she made the video, Sierra added, “I can’t stress enough about how this post is not a dig at Jews… This post is specifically talking about how this reality and everything we see come from the world stage is scripted.”) Another version on Instagram is approaching 200,000 views, posted by a small-scale hunting and masculinity influencer whose previous videos often didn’t crack 500 views. To drive the point home, his video includes audio from the Jewish folk song “Hava Nagila.”

Interestingly, the claims have spread widely even as very few recognizable public figures have engaged. Shock jocks Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew discussed the claim in a video that’s still up on YouTube but was removed by TikTok the day I contacted the company for comment. JP Sears, a far-right comedian, has posted versions of the claim on both X and Facebook—but at just over 200,000 views apiece, he’s done scarcely better than that hunting influencer.

Like false claims about the Talmud that circulated among some of the internet’s most unpleasant masculinity influencers in the summer of 2024, the hantavirus claims also rely on flatly wrong facts about Hebrew. Dr. Ghil’ad Zuckermann, a linguist and language revivalist, suggested to me that the claim is “based on confusing the Korean potamonym (river name) ‘hanta’ with khárta (חרטא), a common Israeli slangism meaning ‘bullshit, nonsense.’” (The Hebrew letters that make the N and R sounds, he points out, are “similar graphically.”)

Zuckermann says that another Israeli slang term, khantarísh (חנטריש) means “nonsense, worthless person, bullshitter.” “Theoretically, this term could be clipped (shortened) to khánta,” he says.

But, he adds, “I personally know hundreds of thousands speakers of the Israeli language and have never heard any of them saying khánta, whereas khárta is common.”

A TikTok spokesperson told me the company’s “Community Guidelines” disallow “misinformation that could cause significant harm to individuals or society,” including “harmful conspiracy theories, and other false information related to public safety or crises—when such content may lead to violence or cause public panic.” The spokesperson also told me that when users search for the word “hantavirus” on TikTok, they’ll now first see a link to a Mayo Clinic page.

While the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment, under Elon Musk, X maintains nominal policies against “hateful conduct.” Experts have found what one study called a “consistent spike” in hate speech after Musk bought the company in 2022. In an agreement with British regulators announced Friday, the company pledged to take stronger action against both hateful content and accounts linked to terrorist groups.

YouTube—where the claims are present, but not as prevalent—has policies that forbid “certain types of misleading or deceptive content with serious risk of egregious harm,” which the hantavirus claims don’t clearly fall into. A Meta spokesperson, meanwhile, told me that the company is “reviewing the content in question and will take action against anything that violates our policies.”

But like the videos spreading false claims themselves, the spokesperson added, the responses are also expected to come from users.

“As we announced in March 2025, Meta has rolled out a Community Notes feature that lets people add more context to Facebook, Instagram and Threads posts that are potentially misleading or confusing,” they told me. “Meta has always been clear that we don’t think we should be the arbiters of truth, and our approach has long been to surface information that people find helpful in deciding what to read, trust or share.”

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Watchdogs Urge Senate to Investigate Samuel Alito’s Oil Stock Conflicts

_This story was originally published b_y the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito, who owns stock in oil companies, may be violating court ethics codes by participating in certain cases that could benefit Big Oil, government watchdog groups say.

In a Thursday letter, a coalition of watchdog organizations called on the Senate judiciary committee to investigate Alito, the sole Supreme Court justice with holdings in energy companies.

“His irregular recusal practice in oil and gas industry-related cases is undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the Court,” says the letter, signed by green groups including League of Conservation Voters and Center for Biological Diversity, as well as progressive accountability watchdogs the Revolving Door Project and True North Research.

The high court in February agreed to take up a case brought by the oil majors Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil—the first time the court agreed to weigh in on such a challenge. The companies asked the justices to find that federal law prevents subnational governments from filing lawsuits against oil and gas companies for the climate-warming effects of their products.

The court did not say which justices supported weighing in on the petition. Alito did not recuse himself, the letter notes. “No judge on any court, including the high court, should be allowed to hear cases where he or she have a financial stake in those cases,” said Lisa Graves, a former senior justice department official who now directs True North Research.

In 2023, Alito recused himself from considering a petition brought by the same companies in the same lawsuit. That request, which would have required approval from four judges, was denied.

The justice’s most recent financial disclosure, which was filed last August and covers 2024, showed holdings in individual stock worth between $60,007 and $245,000 in ConocoPhillips, Phillips66, and five other oil and energy companies. Alito also has up to $100,000 invested in a Vanguard fund in which ExxonMobil is the third-largest holding, the letter says.

“These holdings alone should compel Justice Alito to recuse himself from the Boulder case and the parallel state climate deception cases,” the groups say, referring to lawsuits brought by more than 70 state and local governments accusing oil companies of misleading the public about their role in the climate crisis.

It is not clear if Alito has sold his stock in oil and gas companies since filing his last financial disclosure. The Guardian has contacted the Supreme Court and Alito for comment.

Justices will be required to report on their 2026 holdings next year; by then, the court may have already ruled on the Suncor case, Graves said.

“It’s really outrageous. The highest court in the country…should have the highest standards, not the lowest.”

The groups say Alito has another “apparent conflict of interest”—his relationship with the Republican billionaire donor Paul Singer. Singer founded and runs the hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, which owns more than 52 million shares of Suncor that are worth more than $2.3 billion.

ProPublica reported in June 2023 that Alito failed to officially disclose that he took a private jet ride to Alaska for a 2008 fishing trip paid for by Singer. Alito defended the trip in the Wall Street Journal, saying ethics rules didn’t require him to disclose that he took the trip and that he had no duty to recuse himself from any cases involving Singer discussed in the reporting. He wrote: “ProPublica suggests that my failure to recuse in these cases created an appearance of impropriety, but that is incorrect.”

Thursday’s letter from the watchdog groups says: “Alito’s decision to reverse course and participate in granting the companies’ most recent petition—when a finding in favor of the companies could directly and indirectly benefit both himself and his billionaire friend—is an indefensible breach of ethical boundaries.”

In 2023, the Supreme Court adopted its first-ever formal ethics code—a response to pressure over a slew of scandals focused on some of its senior right-wing justices. It says justices should recuse themselves from cases where their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” but allows the justices to make that decision themselves.

The code has been widely derided as toothless by experts due to its lack of an enforcement mechanism. Unlike standards for other federal judges, it also allows justices to stay on cases if their vote is necessary to resolve the case.

“It’s possible that Alito is using that rationale, [arguing] he’s needed to resolve the matter of the Suncor case,” said Graves. “It’s really outrageous. The highest court in the country…should have the highest standards, not the lowest ones.”

This year, the court also rolled out new software to scan challengers’ filings to identify potential conflicts of interest which might require justices to recuse themselves from cases. Parties before the court must list stock-ticker symbols for companies involved in cases to allow the new software to help identify conflicts.

But the outcome of each climate accountability lawsuit targeting Big Oil could affect the entire industry, said Hannah Story Brown, deputy research director at Revolving Door Project. That means holdings in any oil companies should disqualify justices from weighing in on any of the lawsuits, she said.

“A blanket refusal is the only consistently ethical option for Alito when faced with any of these parallel cases,” Brown said.

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The Oklahoma Communities Gutted by ICE

Cars and trucks pass by. Some slow down and hastily take a quick photo or video of local law enforcement and ICE agents making the arrest. The scene disappears in their rearview mirror as they drive on. The arrests are fast. Within minutes, the person operating the vehicle is no longer there, snatched and torn away from one life and forcibly transported into another that will never be the same. And, within minutes, the nameless and often faceless agents in the unmarked SUV’s and trucks apprehending them on highways and roads across Oklahoma disappear as well.

A white Ford Transit work van sits abandoned on the side of a street in the north suburbs of Oklahoma City. Work tools remain in the storage area in the back. A work order lies on the passenger seat. Take-out food rests on the dashboard. On the south side of the city, a maroon Ford Fusion is left stranded in the grass off Interstate 44. Construction gloves, a camouflage jacket, yellow safety vest, a cooler and a thermos with an Arkansas Razorbacks logo remain inside the car.

ICE stopped and arrested the man driving this small work truck the morning of February 20, 2026.

In a state where all seventy-seven counties voted to support Trump and his anti-immigrant policies in 2024, state and local law enforcement have signed on as important allies in the Trump administration’s immigration raids. Over thirty state and local law enforcement agencies in Oklahoma now have 287(g) agreements with ICE, which effectively deputize them to ICE. This includes the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, with over 700 state troopers who are now empoweredto make immigration arrests. Recently released data shows that more than 1,300 people were arrested by ICE in Oklahoma in the first two and a half months of 2026.

“Just because we don’t see the things that we’re seeing out of Minneapolis, doesn’t mean people aren’t being detained,” an Oklahoma City-based immigration lawyer said to me. “It doesn’t mean that people aren’t being taken and disappeared…because that is happening in Oklahoma.”

A prison bus passes through a residential neighborhood in Cushing, Oklahoma, transferring people detained by ICE from the local Cimarron Correctional Facility to other detention centers. A resident of the area said, “Big buses and vans, they come by here all the time, day and night.”

Years of criminal justice reform have left the state, several counties and towns, as well as the profit-driven private prison industry hungry to fill empty bed spaces or to explore new sources of revenue. Incarcerating and exploiting immigrants for ICE has proven to be an opportunistic and lucrative alternative. Jails in Kay, Logan, Grady, Blaine and Tulsa counties now detain immigrants for ICE. Cimarron Correctional Facility outside the town of Cushing operated by the private prison company CoreCivic, currently detains 600 immigrants per day.

And in late 2025, CoreCivic, DHS/ICE and the Oklahoma Department of Corrections cut a deal to repurpose and reopen Diamondback Correctional Facility, in Watonga, as an ICE detention center. The 2,000-bed prison in rural northern Oklahoma sat empty for ten years. Reopening Diamondback is expected to generate combined annual revenues of over $100 million for CoreCivic, the state, the county, and the city of Watonga, population some 2,500.

“We’re losing really, really wonderful people to this craziness.”

Attorneys, activists, churches, and community groups and organizers are respondingwith new strategies to serve and protect their communities. High school students—many from immigrant families—courageously walked out of class in protest of ICE activity and the racism and intolerance driving immigration policy.

Yet here in Oklahoma, ICE’s public elusiveness is also a menacing reminder of its presence everywhere. For individuals, mixed-status households and communities in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and smaller towns, the fear and anxiety of knowing but not seeing is often paralyzing.

The front doors at the ICE office on Sovereign Row in Oklahoma City close behind a Venezuelan man as he dutifully enters and presents himself for his scheduled check in with ICE. His friends sit in the car and cry when he never returns.

A Honda Civic sits in the parking lot of an apartment complex. The driver’s side window is shattered. A white plastic laundry basket remains in the front seat filled with clean clothes. Cars and trucks continue to pass by the white Ford Transit and the maroon Ford Focus. The day continues. Time moves on, yet inside that abandoned car or truck or van, time stands still. A worker doesn’t show up to the worksite or the office. A seat in a classroom is suddenly empty. A husband or wife, mother or father, brother or sister doesn’t return to their home in Oklahoma ever again. A life is violently suspended and replaced with absence and grief.

Detention

Grady County Jail reflected in the window of a local restaurant.

Grady County Jail, in Chickasha, Oklahoma is one of more than thirty counties, local law enforcement agencies and state agencies in Oklahoma with agreements to detain immigrants or perform immigration enforcement duties for ICE through an agreement with the US Marshals Service. In 2019, a 13,000-square-foot addition to the jail was completed, adding some 200 beds.

Diamondback detention facility.

Diamondback Correctional Facility, in Watonga is operated by the private prison company CoreCivic, formerly CCA (Corrections Corporation of America); it opened in 1998 and held federal prisoners until it was closed in 2010, sittingempty for almost fifteen years.

In late 2025, the facility reopened as an immigration detention center. CoreCivic said in October that it expects to earn $100 million annually from Diamondback once the facility isfully activated. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections receives an ‘administrative fee’ of $833,333 each month to monitor CoreCivic’s compliance and perform other administrative functions related to the facility.

Watonga

Watonga, Oklahoma

Watonga City Manager Leroy Alsup explains howrevenue from Diamondback could be utilized by the town: “It could be put into an equipment fund…being a small town, we’ve got a lot of dated equipment that could stand to be updated…Most municipalities have a lot of water and sewer lines that are aged and need to be replaced. When we apply for grants to update and replace water and sewer lines, we’ll have more funding for matching funds to get that. There’s a variety of ways that additional funding can help us. It’s just too early to show that impact yet, but the potential is there.”

Watonga Senior Center.

Watonga Senior Center plays a vital role in Watonga, offering exercise classes, inexpensive meals, social events, and serving as a meeting place for the Kiwanis Club. I spoke to four of the women working there: they’ve noticed the increased traffic at Diamondback.

“We don’t get a whole lot of information about who all is out there and how many. If you drive by there, it’s packed with vehicles, though. Big vans, which I assume are bringing in people,” one of the women says.

A collage of old Watonga High School yearbook photos dating back to the 1950s covers the wall of a local restaurant, the Eagle’s Nest.

Jim, long time resident of Watonga.

Jim owns a paint and body shop in Watonga. Regarding the reopening of Diamondback Correctional Facility for the detention of immigrants for ICE, Jim says it will profit CoreCivic, but is skeptical that it will do much for Watonga.

“I really don’t see much of a benefit…I don’t know where they will bring in the workers from. Out of this county or what, but you would think there would be some that live here that might work there. It might bring a few jobs.”

Mural in downtown Watonga.

A bus operated by Transcor America, LLC travels down a rural road from Cimarron Correctional Facility, which is operated by the private prison company, CoreCivic. Transcor America is a subsidiary of CoreCivic.

Impact

ICE arrested the driver of this car the morning of February 24, 2026.

After ICE arrested the driver of a nondescript sedan, the car was left on the side of the road. Several sets of chopsticks and air filter cartridges for a work mask were left on the floor. Construction gloves, a camouflage jacket, a yellow safety vest and a small cooler remained on the passenger seat. A yellow work helmet and some personal belongings remained in the back seat.

Federico has lived in Oklahoma for over 22 years. Released by ICE, he is required to wear an ankle monitor.

Federico, 39, was born in Mexico, but Oklahoma has been his home for over twenty-two years. He is married and has two children who are US citizens. In November 2025 he traveled on a bus with other musicians to perform a concert in Midland, Texas. In the city of Anson, Texas,local law enforcement asked to see the status of everyone on the bus. He spent the next six weeks detained by ICE. Eventually he was released on bond but was required to wear a GPS ankle monitor. Federico was one of more than 42,000 people ICE had shackled with GPS ankle monitors across the country as of February 2026.

“Having this monitor on my leg is a reminder that they have a hold on me by the foot. It’s them telling you that you’re not free.”

“I live with this fear that I’m always being monitored,” he explained to me. “It’s very complicated to have this thing on your leg when you’re going to sleep or during your routine in life every day. I’m always afraid of damaging it, bumping it on the edge of the table. I don’t want them to think I’m trying to damage it or trying to be free of it. Your life can’t go back to being normal. Nothing is back to normal. Having this monitor on my leg, it is a reminder that they have a hold on me by the foot. It’s them telling you that you’re not free.”

Students walk out at Santa Fe South High School in Oklahoma City.

Several hundred students walked out of classes at Santa Fe South High School in Oklahoma City on February 18, protestingagainst ICE and immigration enforcement threatening their community.

“We deserve to be heard. We deserve to be seen as people. We are not animals to be deported,” one student demonstrator said.

Inside an abandoned car of a Honduran man detained by ICE.

On February 22, 2026, a young man from Honduras spent the morning washing his clothes at a nearby coin laundromat. ICE arrested him when he returned home to his apartment.

“They pulled up three deep and surrounded him. They blocked him in first,” a neighbor who witnessed the arrest said. “I saw one of them pull out their gun and broke the front driver’s side window. They jacked him out and treated him like a fuckinganimal. It was disgusting. They pulled him out, took his phone from his hand and just threw him on the ground. Then they just threw him in the car and took off with him. They didn’t say nothing else.”

Witnesses say the ICE arrest was quick, no more than a few minutes. A bottle of Centrum multivitamins remained in the cupholder between the seats. A laundry basket filled with unfolded clothes rested on the passenger seat.

Bureaucracy

David L. Moss Justice Center

The David L. Moss Justice Center is the site of the Tulsa County Jail. According to the most recent data released by ICE, each day, the facility is jailing an average of 33 immigrants for the agency, who on average stay five days before they are moved to other detention centers in Oklahoma, Texas, or elsewhere in the country. More than three out of four people detained by ICE here have no criminal record.

The state Senate Judiciary Committee meets on February 25, 2026, at the Oklahoma State Capitol.

Of the thirty immigration-related bills filed by state legislators, most did not progress, including a bill prohibiting NGOs from providing assistance to undocumented people and asylum seekers, anothermandating all law enforcement agencies in Oklahoma to enter into287(g) agreements with ICE, and a law denying US citizenship to children born in Oklahoma to parents who are not US citizens or legal residents.

State Sen. Michael Brooks in his office at the Oklahoma State Capitol.

State Sen. Michael Brooks, DemocratofOklahoma City, sits in his office at the Oklahoma State Capitol. A lawyer by profession, he specializes in immigration law and is the author of Senate Bill 1470, which proposed access for state-level elected officials or religious leaders to enter and inspect privately owned correctional facilities, including immigration detention centers.

“There were at least three private prisons in Oklahoma that were either being used for other purposes or were vacant…If we’re going to allow these private prisons to come to the state of Oklahoma, I think it’s reasonable that state elected officials would be able to go and inspect them,” he said to me. Though it received strong support, the bill failed to advance.

Pushback

Staff members of the Spero Project.

Staff of the Spero Project assist a woman who has called into a rapid response hotline about her son, who was recently pulled over by local law enforcement while on his way to work, transferred into ICE custody, and placed in detention. She calls to try and find out where he is.

After searches through several online sources and phone calls, they locate the young man at Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, Oklahoma. An hour later, a different woman calls the hotline to ask how she and her partner can self-deport.

Since October 2025, in partnership with a group calledCritical Response Network Oklahoma, community volunteers and staff meet two days a week at an undisclosed location to operate the phone hotline.

“Any amount of information,” a hotline volunteer says, “even it it’s bad, helps them deal with the chaos” and lack of information. “When we’re able to find someone in the system and tell them where, and kind of explain what might happen—it’s terrible, but I think, especially the wives, that helps them kind of have something to deal with.

“They may not at that moment of crisis think of the questions to ask, but I think we generally tell them, this is where he is, this is what might happen, this is probably what the timeline will be. I think, in the midst of the chaos and tragedy, that little bit of information helps.”

“For somebody who doesn’t know where the person is, it’s really hard to find out. And the uncertainty creates a lot more stress and a lot more sadness to the family members,” the volunteer says. “It’s like, ‘I don’t know where he’s at. I don’t know where he is.’”

A free legal clinic in Oklahoma City offers assistance on immigration issues.

Elsewhere in Oklahoma City, vulnerable families and individuals attend free legal clinics where volunteers and immigration lawyers assist with powers of attorney, standby guardianship, community resources, and free legal consultations.

“We’re losing really, really wonderful people to this craziness,” says a member of Latitude Legal and Community Response Network, which organizes the clinic. “We’re losing community members. And what I think people are really beginning to understand is that we are in proximity with so many people that maybe have unstable legal status, and you would never know it.

“The way things have changed in policy over the past year and two months, it is making things increasingly difficult to stay in status. This argument of ‘come the right way’—well, they did come the right way, and those pathways are narrowing on them. We’ve changed the rules on them mid-game.”

Maria, 30, has to rely on friends, family, and volunteers, for rides to work and essential shopping.

Fear of ICE forces Maria, 30, to rely on friends, family, and volunteers, for rides to work and essential shopping.

“When President Trump came into office, everything changed overnight,” she said from the passenger’s seat during one ride. “Right now, you can’t go out without having constant fear that you’re going to get pulled over, or ICE is going to grab you. You almost don’t have a life, because you have to go to work, you have to go out to get groceries, but you’re going and looking in the rearview mirror to see if anybody’s there.

“Before you leave the store, you’re looking around to see if there’s a patrol out there waiting for you. It’s just being afraid for yourself, but also everybody around you. I’ve always been an independent woman, and I do my own thing and take care of my own life. It’s really hard to depend on other people to help me do things that I could do before.”

Rev. Kara Farrow leads a prayer at an event led by ACLU of Oklahoma and a community defense group.

Reverend Kara Farrow of the Fellowship Lutheran Church in Tulsa leads a prayer at a know-your-rights and rapid response training in March, held by the state’s ACLU chapter and Community Response Network Oklahoma, a community defense organization.

“Within the last two weeks, about twenty members of the congregation have received letters,” Farrow says, demanding their presence at ICE offices in Oklahoma City, Dallas, or Houston. “Last Wednesday, the man that serves as the assisting minister was detained in Cushing. And there are just appointments upon appointments upon appointments coming up. What is heartbreaking is that as much as we’ve tried, they’re taking them anyway. I just found out that another person who was detained two weeks ago is being sent back to Venezuela. And so it’s just week after week.”

Johnny, 53, kneels on the sidewalk at the corner of 23rd Street and May Avenue in central Oklahoma City. He was part of a small group that gathered in February to protest the Trump administration and ICE raids in the city and around the country.

Greg Constantine produced this work as part of the 2026 Bertha Challenge Fellowship.

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The Supreme Court Just Hit Pause on an Abortion Pill Showdown

The Supreme Court has rejected a federal appeals court’s attempt to end telemedicine and mail-order abortions, hitting pause on a fast-moving case that threatened to decimate access to abortion pills nationwide.

The one-paragraph SCOTUS order, issued late Thursday afternoon, means that for the foreseeable future, the abortion pill mifepristone can continue to be prescribed via telehealth and sent through the mail, even to patients living in states where abortion is banned.

Abortion patients, providers, and advocates have been in turmoil since May 1, when the far-right Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order suspending FDA rules that allowed online dispensing of mifepristone. That order was stayed by Justice Samuel Alito for 10 days while the Supreme Court struggled to decide how to proceed in a potentially monumental—and politically explosive—case.

Since the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, more than a dozen Republican-dominated legislatures have enacted laws that severely restrict or ban abortion within their borders. But over the past four years, the number of abortions has risen nationwide, including in states where abortion is almost entirely illegal.

Abortion foes blame Obama- and Biden-era FDA rule changes expanding access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used in the standard abortion-pill regimen, including a 2023 rule that eliminated a requirement for in-person dispensing. Now, almost two-thirds of abortions in the US happen with abortion pills, and nearly 30 percent occur by telemedicine.

Louisiana sued the FDA last fall, arguing that the 2023 rule change was arbitrary, capricious, and “avowedly political”—not based on sound science, the state claimed, but on Democrats’ determination to negate the Supreme Court’s intent in Dobbs to return abortion policy to the states.

The FDA had argued that the lawsuot would disrupt its own, ongoing review of mifepristone’s safety, announced last fall. Mifepristone’s manufacturers, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro Inc., warned of the potentially dire consequences of allowing states to upend drug regulations put in place years or even decades ago.

On Thursday, Alito—the arch-conservative who authored the Dobbs decision—was one of two justices who wrote in favor of letting the Fifth Circuit’s order go into effect. That would have cut off the supply of mail-order mifepristone to states like Louisiana, where telehealth providers are sending nearly 1,000 packages of abortion pills every month.

“Even this conservative Supreme Court is not willing to endorse anti-abortion extremists’ latest desperate attempt to deprive women of needed healthcare.”

Alito blasted his fellow justices’ decision to pause the Fifth Circuit order as “unreasoned” and “remarkable.” He also ranted about blue-state shield laws, which provide the legal protections that make it possible for telehealth providers to care for patients in states where abortion is restricted or banned. Such laws, he said, are “a scheme” to thwart states like Louisiana, which has some of the toughest anti-abortion restrictions in the country.

In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas brought up the Comstock Act, a Victorian-era federal criminal statute that conservatives argue remains the law of the land. If enforced, it would amount to a national abortion ban.

Comstock “bans using ‘the mails’ to ship any ‘drug . . . for producing abortion,’” Thomas wrote, and suggested that Danco and GenBioPro are engaged in a “criminal enterprise.” He said the drug companies—which appealed the Fifth Circuit ruling to SCOTUS—”cannot be irreparably harmed by [an] order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes.”

Abortion advocates expressed relief that the other justices—including several who have repeatedly ruled against abortion rights—did not let the Fifth Circuit ruling take effect. “Even this conservative Supreme Court is not willing to endorse anti-abortion extremists’ latest desperate attempt to deprive women of needed healthcare,” said Lizzy Hinkley, legal director of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine. She called the case “a deliberate effort to disrupt access to telemedicine abortion across the country and cause undue confusion among patients and providers.”

“The ban on mifepristone through telemedicine was never about safety,” said Dr. Angel Foster, a telemedicine provider and co-founder of The Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, or The MAP. “It was about controlling people’s bodies and lives.”

But the reprieve is only temporary, she added. “Lawmakers have made it clear they are desperate to block access to medication abortion by any means necessary.”

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Why the Next President Could Finally Be Elected by the Popular Vote

Something big happened in Virginia last month that you probably missed.

On April 13, Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill making Virginia the 18th state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

That’s an agreement among states to elect the president by the popular vote rather than the Electoral College.

The compact goes into effect when enough states sign onto it and reach a total of 270 electoral votes—the number needed to elect the president.

With Virginia’s support, states in the compact now have 222 electoral votes.

And the results of the midterms could push the popular vote effort over the top.

If Democrats take control of state governments in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, or Arizona, and legislatures in those states adopt the compact, that would put it over 270.

That means there’s actually a chance the president could be elected by the popular vote in 2028 instead of the fundamentally undemocratic Electoral College.

Watch our new video to learn more about how consequential this would be.

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Sam Altman Is Taking a Lot of Punches on the Witness Stand

Can you trust Sam Altman?

That was one of the central themes at the high-profile trial between the OpenAI CEO and Elon Musk in California this week, as Musk’s lawyers peppered Altman with questions on his work relationships, including his temporary ouster from OpenAI three years ago by a mistrustful board of directors. Steven Molo, Musk’s top litigator, referred to testimony from executives like former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, who said Altman had a habit of “creating chaos” by “saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person.”

Molo also cited an April New Yorker investigation in which a wide array of sources close to Altman described him as someone with an unrelenting drive for power.

Distraught text messages from Altman to Murati pleading for his job in 2023 raised parallels with how Altman’s team framed Musk’s explosive exit from OpenAI in 2018, after the Tesla head lost a reported power struggle for control of the company. Altman’s lawyers framed Musk’s 2024 suit againstOpenAI and its leadership as simple retaliation, unmotivated by any actual concern about OpenAI’s original, feel-good nonprofit mission to advance AI in a manner “to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”

Musk’s argument is that OpenAI abandoned its values for profits and should therefore return $150 billion to its nonprofit arm—but for Musk, the trial doesn’t particularly seem to revolve around the facts of the case.

The wins, such as they are, come in the form of peeling back the tireless hours of public relations strategizing and mythologizing to make OpenAI and Altman look ridiculous. Musk’s lawyers’ examination of Altman seems intended to extract as many unconvincing responses of “I don’t recall” and “I can’t say how other people think” as possible. (Honestly, just getting these guys to talk in environments they don’t have full control over does most of the job.) Molo’s questioning often devolved into pettiness:

Molo: “Are you completely trustworthy?”

Altman: “I believe so.”

Molo: “You don’t know whether you’re completely trustworthy?”

Altman: “I’ll just amend my answer to yes.”

The public doesn’t need to think Musk is right; they only need to think Altman lies a lot.

A lot of the work has already been done for Musk. According to a national NBC News survey from March, 57 percent of registered voters said the risks of AI outweigh its benefits. Sam Altman is one of the most prominent faces of the industry, and there were two separate attacks on Altman’s home in the span of three days last month.

So as closing arguments wrap up and jury deliberations begin next week, the result of the lawsuit may not even matter. The damage is already underway.

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Trump Taps Former Private Prison Exec to Run ICE

David Venturella, who spent more than a decade as an executive at the private-prison behemoth GEO Group, will be the next acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday. Venturella will oversee Donald Trump’s mass deportation operations—and the country’s rapidly expanding immigration detention system.

Venturella will begin leading the agency when current Acting Director Todd Lyons steps down May 31. (ICE has had a series of acting directors since 2017, meaning none of them have been confirmed by the Senate.)

This has been a banner year for GEO Group, the largest private prison contractor incarcerating immigrants in the US: ICE is its single largest client.

“Last year was the most successful period for new business wins in our company’s history, and we expect 2026 to be a very active year as well,” said GEO Group CEO George Zoley on a May 6 earnings call touting “new growth opportunities” the firm “captured in 2025 and are normalizing in 2026.”

ICE contracts drove a year in which GEO made “up to approximately $520 million in new incremental annual revenues…the largest amount of new business” the company has ever drawn in a single year, Zoley said on that call.

And with Venturella leading ICE, those contracts could get even bigger. GEO Group, Zoley said, has 6,000 “idle high-security beds that remain available.” If the company is able to fill those beds with detained immigrants, that alone “could generate in excess of $300 million in annual revenues.”

It’s not unusual for the Trump administration to hire from GEO Group’s talent bench. “Border Czar” Tom Homan—a longtime friend of Venturella’s—also contracted for GEO Group. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi worked as a lobbyist for the prison contractor.

And the pipeline goes in the other direction, too: at least six former ICE officials who left government over the past decade ended up working at GEO Group, as the Washington Post reported.

“If there was ever a classic example of the revolving door phenomena, it’s David Venturella,” who “has gone from high ranking positions at ICE to GEO Group to ICE once again,” said Silky Shah, of the nonprofit Detention Watch Network, in a statement. “Like Tom Homan, Venturella’s intimate knowledge of ICE will likely yield another spike of ICE detention facility openings in the coming months as the agency operates with impunity and unprecedented funding.”

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Trump’s Deceitful Medicaid Fraud Campaign Comes to California

The Trump administration is withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursement payments to California after officials alleged that the state failed to prosecute fraud in its own Medicaid program.

“There are California taxpayers and American taxpayers who are being defrauded because California isn’t taking its program seriously,” JD Vance, vice president and designated “fraud czar” said in his Wednesday announcement. “Fraudsters have actually encouraged false prescriptions and false administration of medications.”

Vance did not provide evidence of Medicaid fraud, though he did attack home care, also known as home and community-based services. Since 1983, qualifying disabled people and aging adults on Medicaid have been able to get services at home, allowing them to live outside of nursing homes and institutional settings.An essential part of the disability rights movement is for disabled people to be able to live in their communities.

“It provides everything from assistance with bathing, preparing meals, dressing, getting in and out of bed, shopping and even house cleaning, chores, laundry, etc,” Lindsay Imai Hong, the California Director of Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network, told Mother Jones. “It’s enabled so many Californians to be able to get the support they need to live in their homes and also with their families.”

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, claimed California must explain hundreds of millions of dollars in billing and in-homeservices related to coverage for undocumented immigrants. But undocumented immigrants do not have access to Medicaid.

On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office posted on X that the growth of home healthcare placements saves taxpayer money as it keeps “more people OUT of far more expensive nursing homes.” Disability and care advocates are currently trying to mitigate cuts to Medicaid-funded home care in California, which Newsom attempted to do previously even before Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill passed.

Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, posted on X on Wednesday that the Trump administration was targeting California “solely for political reasons.”

United Domestic Workers executive director Doug Moore also labeled the attack as politically motivated in a press release. “The real scandal is the carelessness with which politicians disregard our community members in order to line the pockets of their billionaire friends,” he said. “Last year, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress gave away $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, by cutting vital social service programs like Medicaid and SNAP.”

In his announcement, Vance also threatened to halt federal funding to all states who don’t sufficiently go after Medicaid fraud. The Trump administration’s decision in California draws parallels to its suspension of more than $250 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota based on fraud claims targeting Somali communities that led to unsubstantiated, right-wing conspiracy theories.

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Interior Secretary Claims Ignorance of Trump’s July 4 “Vanity Projects”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has taken a lead role in promoting President Donald Trump’s particular plans to mark America’s 250th anniversary. That includes helping fund Freedom250, an opaque, public-private partnership set up within Burgum’s department.

But how Freedom250 came about apparently is a mystery to the secretary—or so he said in congressional testimony on Wednesday.

Critics contend that the Trump administration is breaking laws, and dodging congressional oversight, by diverting funds appropriated for America250, a nonprofit organization set up by Congress to organize the country’s semiquincentennial, to Freedom250, a limited liability corporation that launched in December under the National Park Foundation, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, a federal agency that is part of the Interior Department.

At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing Wednesday on Interior’s budget request, Colorado Rep. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the panel, pressed Burgum, with little success, for information on the decision-making behind Freedom250.

Burgum said he did not order anyone at Interior to set up the group.

“Do you know who did?” Huffman asked. “Who made that decision? Who ordered it?”

“I’m not aware of the final decision maker on Freedom250,” Burgum said.

Their exchange highlights the secrecy and resistance to congressional oversight that the Trump administration seeks, even as it celebrates the birthday of a country that has traditionally celebrated divided government and a constitution that gives Congress control over federal spending.

Unlike America250, Freedom250 is not legally required to hold bipartisan events. Nor is it informing lawmakers how it spends funds. And the group this year has taken over planning for high-profile, notably Trumpy events that the administration says are connected to the anniversary, including an all-day prayer festival on the National Mall on Sunday, which administration officials say will celebrate “Christian values”; an MMA fight the president plans to hold at the White House on his birthday; and an IndyCar race around the Mall in August.

Even as Trump encourages corporations, many seeking presidential support for their priorities, to fund Freedom250, Interior is also reportedly steering taxpayer funds to the group. Freedom250 has refused to detail its finances, as has Interior.

Burgum appeared before the Congress to defend a budget request that includes deep cuts to most of his department, including the National Park Service. But he is also seeking $10 billion for a general fund the administration says will pay for beautification of federal land around Washington in connection with the 250th anniversary.

Burgum has said those funds do not cover a 250-foot arch Trump wants to construct by the Potomac River. Nor do they include the $1 billion the administration wants to spend for work including the ballroom Trump hopes construct after tearing down the White House’s East Wing.

But Democrats on Wednesday repeatedly referred to the $10 billion as a “slush fund” that the department would use to support “vanity projects” touted by the president.

In connection with the 250th anniversary plans, Interior has awarded lucrative contracts to contractors reportedly favored by Trump to repair foundation and other landscaping features in Washington. The New York Times has reported that the department has repeatedly used an “urgency” exception—typically justified by life-threatening emergencies like natural disasters—to sidestep federal procurement rules that require competitive bidding~~.~~ The administration says the exception is necessary to fulfill Trump’s wish to complete the work by July 4.

As the administration races to do so, costs appear to be increasing fast. A push to upgrade the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall by July 4, which Trump has claimed would cost $1.8 million, is now slated to cost more than $13 million, the Times reported. That project has drawn a lawsuit, and mockery, in part over images showing that contractors painted the base of the pool blue.

Burgum on Wednesday disputed some of lawmakers’ characterizations, even denying that contractors are painting the landmark.

“There is no painting going on on the reflecting pool,” he said. “It’s not paint. It’s a liner.”

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Should Trump Get $10 Billion in Apology Money? Mike Johnson Hasn’t Thought About It.

Apparently House Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t believe that Congress needs any oversight of President Trump’s actions.

During a Tuesday press conference honoring law enforcement officers as part of Police Week, Johnson dismissed a question about the Justice Department potentially settling Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service—essentially the federal government handing a $10 billion ransom in taxpayer dollars directly to the president.

“One of the things that is not in my purview is the Department of Justice, okay?” Johnson said, asked whether a settlement with Trump by an agency he runs represents a conflict of interest. “I haven’t thought about that or read into it.”

“Go ask the executive branch about it, alright?” Johnson concluded, before reminding everyone to celebrate Police Week.

Q: Do you think the DOJ ought to settle the president's $10b lawsuit? Is there a conflict of interest?MIKE JOHNSON: Um. One of the things that is not in my purview is the DOJ, ok? I haven't thought about that or read into it. I got enough to say grace over every day. Go ask the executive branch.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-05-13T14:49:06.161Z

The speaker’s response was yet another instance of his perennial shrugging off oflegislative responsibility to appease Trump. Johnson had a key role in passing cuts to essential health and food assistance programs—in large part due to accusations of “fraud and abuse”—but appears more than willing to let Trump raid government coffers on a multibillion-dollar scale.

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The President May Settle His Own Lawsuit With Your Money

The DOJ is considering settling Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, which could send about $10 billion taxpayer dollars directly into the President’s pockets, the New York Times reported Tuesday, citing three sources familiar with the matter.

In January, Trump and two of his sons sued the IRS, alleging that it failed to stop the unauthorized release of his tax documents by a government contractor who shared them with news outlets.

Trump oversees the IRS, the agency he is suing. (This, the Times delicately pointed out, raises some questions as to the validity of the lawsuit: “For a lawsuit to be valid, the two parties must actually be on opposite sides, otherwise the judge can throw out the case.”) The conflicts of interest don’t end there: the DOJ is led by the President’s former personal criminal defense lawyer.

If a settlement is reached, it could make it much harder for Trump’s finances to be investigated in the future: beyond the $10 billion taxpayer-fleecing operation, one of the settlement terms under review would require the IRS to drop any and all audits of Trump, his family, and his businesses.

Last month, Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill to prevent the President, the Vice President, and their families from collecting settlement money from the government. “While American families are getting flattened by skyrocketing costs, Donald Trump is trying to snatch up billions of taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets and settle personal scores,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) wrote.

And this isn’t the first time Trump has tried to use the Justice Department to profit. In October of 2025, he was reportedly seeking $230 million in damages from the Justice Department over the time federal agents seized classified documents he’d unlawfully brought to Mar-a-Lago and an earlier probe into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

“It’s awfully strange,” Trump said at the time, “To make a decision where I’m paying myself.”

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How Redistricting Is Upending America’s Midterms

Voters are heading to the polls for this year’s midterms, but the electoral maps are shifting under their feet in real time. Last month, the Supreme Court narrowed a provision in the Voting Rights Act that allowed states to consider race when redrawing maps. That decision set off a mad scramble by GOP state legislatures to alter their maps ahead of November’s elections, a move that could disenfranchise Black voters. It’s also supercharged a redistricting fight that began when President Donald Trump urged states to change their maps to mitigate possible losses in Congress.

Mother Jones national correspondent Tim Murphy describes the redistricting happening in Southern states as “a historic reversal of what the Voting Rights Act brought” and could lead to “homogenous white delegations to the South.”

Until recently, Democrats felt optimistic about their chances of taking back not only the House, but possibly the Senate. But they were dealt a major blow last week when their own redistricting efforts in Virginia were struck down by the state Supreme Court. Similarly, the US Supreme Court paved the way earlier this week for Alabama to revert to an electoral map with a single majority-Black district.

On this week’s More To The Story, Murphy and host Al Letson try to make sense of this unprecedented midterm season, gauge the Democrats’ chances of taking back Congress, and examine how Trump’s threats to the electoral system could play out in November.

Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.

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Trump’s Golden Dome Would Cost $1.2 Trillion

Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense dream might seem like something out of science fiction, but it would cost real dollars, the Congressional Budget Office says—about $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, according to a report the federal agency released today.

Trump has held the idea dear since his 2024 campaign, when he made “A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY” to “PREVENT WORLD WAR III” one of his 20 core campaign promises. Later, he rebranded it as the “Golden Dome,” and about a dozen major American weapons manufacturers (and over 2,300 smaller companies) started to compete for the privilege of building a massive interceptor-missile system in the skies over the United States.

As I reported in 2024 and again in 2025, scientists have a lot of questions about how this will work. It would nominally be modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome system, which is designed to protect a very small geographic area (something the US does not have) from improvised missiles launched from within 40 miles (which is also not happening here).

Given those constraints, the administration quickly moved to include satellite-based missile interceptors on their vision board. Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein admitted to the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee in April that this Star Wars–esque setup might not be cost-effective, either.

Trump estimated last May that his Golden Dome would cost around $175 billion and be deployable by the end of his term in 2029. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, however, says that estimate was off by approximately one trillion, seventy-four billion dollars.

Even at that staggering cost—almost the entire proposed Pentagon budget this year—the system still wouldn’t block all missiles, the CBO wrote in their report. “The system could be overwhelmed by a full-scale attack mounted by a peer or near-peer adversary,” they said.

“It would not be an impenetrable shield or be able to fully counter a large attack of the sort that Russia or China might be able to launch,” the CBO wrote. “As a result, the strategic consequences of deploying an NMD system with the capacity considered here are unclear.”

Even if the Golden Dome never intercepts a single missile, companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril are likely to profit: they’re among 12 companies that have already been awarded $3.2 billion in Golden Dome contracts.

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Marty Makary Wasn’t Anti-Abortion or Pro-Vape Enough for Trump

President Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration commissioner Marty Makary resigned on Tuesday following political battles over health policy that angered anti-abortion activists and industry executives.

Makary, who led the agency in charge of promoting public health through regulating food safety, medications, tobacco, vaccines, and more, stepped down after Trump pushed him to approve fruit-flavored vapes earlier this month. According to the Wall Street Journal, advisers told the president that flavored vaping was important to young MAGA voters. Makary resisted the idea, but last Friday, the FDA adopted a new policy that opens the door for tobacco and vape companies to sell the e-cigarettes anyway.

Makary also faced criticism from anti-abortion groups who demanded the FDA reverse their approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, which is used in most abortions, to be given out without requiring an in-person visit. A federal court ordered a nationwide in-person requirement earlier this month, and the Supreme Court is still reviewing the decision. Last week, it temporarily reinstated mifepristone access through telemedicine and mail.

This latest resignation opens up another hole in the Trump administration, which has not yet appointed a permanent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director and a surgeon general to Robert F. Kennedy’s health department. Trump has also axed other key officeholders for failing to do his bidding, like former attorney general Pam Bondi and former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem.

Trump confirmed Makary’s exit on Tuesday afternoon ahead of his trip to China to speak with President Xi Jinping. “He was having some difficulty. He’s a great doctor. He’s going to go on and do well,” Trump told reporters. “Everybody wants that job.”

Makary was perhaps an attractive FDA commissioner candidate to Trump due in part to his anti-abortion views and promise to quickly transform policy. As Julianne McShane wrote for Mother Jones when Makary was confirmed last March, the FDA commissioner has spread misinformation, including telling ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that fetuses feel pain in utero several weeks before science indicates.

This was not enough for Trump and his far right supporters.

Kyle Diamantas, a deputy commissioner within the FDA, will become the acting head of the federal agency, according to Politico, which first reported Makary’s resignation. Whether Diamantas—or whoever is confirmed next—follows the Trump administration’s lead remains to be seen.

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Trump Thought He’d Escaped the Abortion Trap

By all accounts, President Donald Trump really, really did not want abortion to become a major issue this election year. But here we are, six months before the midterms, and abortion pills are back at the Supreme Court, as the state of Louisiana and abortion drug manufacturers ask to fast-track oral arguments in what is shaping up to be a blockbuster case. Conservatives are invoking the Comstock Act. And Trump’s Food and Drug Administration has been AWOL, while its top official has been forced to resign.

The swift escalation of the showdown between Louisiana and the FDA over telemedicine abortion highlights just how little control Trump has over the abortion issue—both in terms of the timeline and the outcome. Meanwhile, the case is sparking confusion, uncertainty, and dread among patients, providers, and advocates across the US.

Just to recap how we got to this point. On May 1, the right-wing Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, siding with Louisiana, issued a nationwide order suspending FDA rules that allow the abortion drug mifepristone to be prescribed via telehealth and dispensed through the mail. A few days later, Justice Samuel Alito temporarily paused the order, and on Monday, he extended his stay until May 14.

The decision to take a few more days suggests that the full court is struggling to figure out its next steps in a case that could upend abortion access throughout the US—and possibly much sooner than many SCOTUS-watchers had thought likely.

All last week, justices were blasted with amicus briefs from parties with keen and conflicting interests in the outcome. Former FDA officials warned about the dire consequences of allowing states to upend drug regulations put in place years or even decades ago. Doctors and reproductive health advocates pointed to the mass of research from around the world showing that abortion pills are safe and effective, including via telemedicine.

“There’s a really long list of briefs, but nothing from the federal government. And in a case challenging the FDA’s authority, that’s remarkable.”

Conservatives, meanwhile, repeatedly brought up the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old anti-obscenity statute that hasn’t been enforced for decades. Named for the 19th-century anti-vice crusader who championed it, Comstock made it a federal crime to mail or ship “any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring an abortion.” Reviving the law could end legal access to most abortions nationwide and possibly threaten other reproductive health care, such as IUDs.

In its own brief to SCOTUS, Louisiana offered an audacious option: If justices don’t allow the Fifth Circuit suspension of mail-order mifepristone to take effect, they should put the case on the 2025-2026 docket and schedule oral arguments ASAP, so that a final decision could be made as soon as the end of June or the first days of July. Drug makers GenBioPro and Danco Laboratories also suggested the court should consider taking the full case on an expedited schedule. The current term already includes such hugely consequential issues such as birthright citizenship and Temporary Protected Status for asylum seekers.

The one interested party that did not weigh in was the agency that Louisiana sued in the first place: the FDA. Even though the Fifth Circuit’s order was directed at the federal drug agency, GenBioPro and Danco filed emergency appeals asking the Supreme Court to pause the order.

As of Tuesday, the FDA remained radio silent. “There’s a really long list of briefs, but nothing from the federal government on this,” says Naomi Cahn, a law professor at the University of Virginia. “And in a case that’s challenging the agency’s authority, that’s remarkable.”

Abortion historian Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, sees the FDA’s failure to speak up as yet more evidence that the Trump administration has backed itself into a very uncomfortable corner, caught between voters who overwhelmingly support reproductive rights and abortion opponents who are furious the president hasn’t worked harder on their behalf. “It’s clear,” she says, “that the Trump administration still doesn’t know what to do about this issue politically.”

The anti-abortion movement expected that when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortions would plummet across much of the US. The opposite has happened: In the four years since the Dobbs decision, the number of abortions has risen nationwide, including in states where abortion is almost entirely banned.

As abortion opponents have strategized to stop the flow of pills, they have focused much of their energy on attacking Obama- and Biden-era FDA rule changes for mifepristone, one of two drugs that make up the gold-standard abortion-pill regimen. Approved by the FDA in 2000, mifepristone was subject to extremely strict rules and placed in a program—known as Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS—normally reserved for the most dangerous drugs. Starting in 2016, some of those rules were relaxed, including a requirement for in-person prescribing and dispensing in 2023. Now, almost two-thirds of abortions in the US happen with abortion pills, and nearly 30 percent occur by telemedicine.

The first sweeping assault on the FDA rules, in a 2022 case that also originated in the Fifth Circuit, ended when the Supreme Court ultimately held that the plaintiffs—anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations—didn’t have standing to sue. But the justices made no determination on the underlying issue—the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone—and left the door open to other plaintiffs who might have standing.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill tried her luck with a narrower lawsuit last fall, arguing that the Biden administration’s decision to permanently ditch the in-person dispensing requirement was “arbitrary,” “capricious,” and “avowedly political.” It was not based on sound science, she argued, but on the Democrats’ determination to thwart the effects of the Dobbs decision that handed abortion policy to the states. Murrill claimed that the telemedicine rule interfered with Louisiana’s right to regulate abortion as it sees fit, while making it too easy for women to be tricked or coerced into having abortions they don’t want.

The FDA responded, not by defending the 2023 rules, but by pointing to its own ongoing review of mifepristone’s safety, which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and then-FDA commissioner Marty Makary announced last fall. At the time, Kennedy and Makary cited the Biden administration’s purported “lack of adequate consideration” before making the 2023 rules change; they also cited “recent safety concerns”—such as supposedly high rates of abortion pill complications—raised by the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center in a study that has been widely debunked as junk science. In its court filings, the FDA argued that Louisiana’s lawsuit threatened to “short-circuit the agency’s orderly review” and should be put on hold. It also argued that Louisiana didn’t have standing to sue.

But the FDA study has been widely seen as a delaying tactic by a president reluctant to take a stand on abortion that might alienate voters. Trump has blamed many of his past political setbacks on abortion, and in his second term has avoided sweeping actions that would put the issue on the political front burner. For example, in defiance of the hopes of many conservatives, his Justice Department has declined to enforce the Comstock Act. His failure to take meaningful action to stop the flow of pills in the US has infuriated anti-abortion leaders. “Trump is the problem,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the influential president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told the Wall Street Journal last week. “The president is the problem.”

“They’ve been under a lot of pressure—threading this needle of defending the agency’s past actions [on mifepristone], while a lot of people within the Republican Party are upset about them.”

In the Louisiana case, the anti-abortion ideologues on the Fifth Circuit did what Trump officials have not. Using the FDA’s sham mifepristone review, and citing the statements by Kennedy and Makary about the Biden FDA’s “lack of adequate consideration,” they have set up the circumstances to potentially gut access to abortion pills. “You have the FDA conceding that there’s a question about whether they did this properly [on mifepristone],” says Sonia Suter, a law professor at George Washington University. “That only heightens the Fifth Circuit’s belief that the FDA had no authority to [get rid of the in-person dispensing rule] in the first place.”

The FDA’s silence at the Supreme Court may well be construed to further bolster Louisiana’s case, Ziegler says. Louisiana is arguing that the FDA’s actions—or lack thereof—show that the agency agrees that the 2023 rules change was problematic. “The court could easily use the FDA’s silence the way Louisiana is using it.”

But Makary’s resignation, or perhaps firing, on Tuesday—which abortion opponents and others have been pushing for some time—also highlights the agency’s wider “disarray,” says Drexel University law professor David Cohen. “They’ve been under a lot of pressure—threading this needle of defending the agency’s past actions [on mifepristone], while a lot of people within the Republican Party are upset about them.” Given the politics and the chaos, he says, “I wasn’t surprised they didn’t file anything.”

The central question raised by Alito’s extension of his stay against the Fifth Circuit is, why? “The court seems to be really struggling,” Suter says, “not so much with the legal questions, but with how what they do is going to affect the integrity of the court.” Battered by reporting about the court’s shadow docket, she says, justices “may be worried about looking like they’re rushing too much” to resolve the kinds of hugely consequential issues that the FDA case raises—not just about abortion, but also about the rights of states to second-guess federal drug regulation.

Yet Louisiana and mifepristone manufacturers have all indicated that they want SCOTUS to take the case on its merits, perhaps on an expedited schedule during the current term. “Basically, they’ve said, We know what the district court is going to ultimately rule,” Suter says. “We know what the Fifth Circuit is going to ultimately rule…Why wait?”

If the Supreme Court does take the case, conservative groups have made clear they plan to use the opportunity to push the justices on the Comstock Act. At least two justices—Alito and Clarence Thomas—have signaled they think the long-defunct statute remains the law of the land.

In one amicus brief filed last week, more than 100 Republican members of Congress accused the Biden-era FDA of flouting Comstock when it ended the in-person dispensing requirement. “The FDA cannot purport to authorize conduct criminalized under federal law,” the brief contends. “[T]hat would exceed its constitutional authority.”

The far-right nonprofit Advancing American Freedom, writing for dozens of other groups, argues that by failing to comply with Comstock, “the FDA has directly harmed Louisiana and undermined the exercise of its authority to prohibit abortion drugs.”

Louisiana made similar arguments when it first sued the FDA last fall. But generally, Comstock has remained very much a background issue. The conservative briefs are aimed at “injecting” it back into the case, says Amanda Barrow, senior staff attorney at the UCLA Law Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy. “It’s just an extremely anti-democratic argument,” she says. Reviving Comstock would give abortion opponents “a no-exceptions nationwide abortion ban that they could never convince modern voters to enact.”

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New York Hospital Faces Criminal Subpoena in Texas Over Trans Youth Care

The Trump administration has sent subpoenas to dozens of hospitals across the nation over the past year, demanding access to information about children receiving gender-affirming care and the doctors treating them.

Those efforts have mostly failed. At least eight separate Trump administration administrativesubpoenas, which would force hospitals to release trans kids’ medical records, have been thrown out. Another massive slate of DOJ subpoenas against California hospitals was dropped in January.

Now, the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas is trying a new tactic: Its prosecutors sent out a grand jury subpoena to NYU Langone Hospital seeking confidential information about patients under age 18, according to a statement released by the hospital May 11. As S. Baum of the newsletter Erin In The Morning wrote, this means the federal government is pursuing a criminal case:

[T]his is a dire escalation…this round of subpoenas entails a criminal case, meaning providers or hospital officials face risk of arrest and jail time. It does not appear to target parents of trans kids or trans patients. News of the subpoena also means the federal government has assembled a grand jury, an important step towards criminal proceedings.

“We understand that these developments may be concerning to our patients, providers, and others,” the hospital told its patients. “Please know that NYU Langone takes the privacy of your protected health information very seriously and we are evaluating our response to the subpoena.”

Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, called the subpoena “a blatant attempt to harass and intimidate medical providers based on the this administration’s ideological opposition to transgender people and to this healthcare.”

Since prior attempts to pressure hospitals into handing over patient information have been unsuccessful, Minter said, the Department of Justice is now trying to get that same information by pursuing federal criminal charges. And by doing so in Texas, he added, they’re attempting “to find a jurisdiction that would would likely be sympathetic to the administration’s goals.”

“It’s just an egregious abuse of federal power,” Minter said. “This is mafia-type behavior.”

This isn’t the first time NYU Langone has been targeted for its work with transgender patients. It’s the latest in a long back-and-forth between the hospital, its patients, and various government bodies. January 2025, the hospital stopped accepting new patients into its Transgender Youth Health Program following a Trump executive order which attempted to prohibit federally funded hospitals from providing gender-affirming care to minors. They were met with protests at the time. Then, just over a year later, the hospital announced it was ending that program altogether “due to the current regulatory environment,” and were met with more protests from trans kids and their families, many of whom scrambled to find care elsewhere.

In early March, New York Attorney General Letitia James ordered the hospital to resume care. On March 18, then-Deputy US Attorney General Todd Blanche sent a letter to James demanding that the hospital not reinstate trans youth care. Meanwhile, trans community advocates in New York have pressed the hospital, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, to do more to protect gender-affirming care for all New Yorkers.

In New York, patients and doctors are theoretically protected by a state-level “Shield Law,” which is designed to protect those seeking or providing gender-affirming or abortion-related healthcare from out-of-state retaliation. “New York has strong protections in place to protect the privacy of patient records,” a spokesperson for the New York Attorney General’s office told Mother Jones. “Every health care institution in New York should seek to protect both patients and providers.” New York’s shield law applies to criminal investigations, not just civil ones; many other state-level shield laws do not.

And there is little case law indicating how such protective legislation would hold up in the face of federal investigations—and this particular investigation is coming from a court with a track record of repeatedly ruling that trans people are not protected by federal anti-discrimination law. “This could turn out to be a very important battleground,” Minter said.

More than 40 hospitals nationwide have terminated some form of gender-affirming care since Trump took office.

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In Approving Alabama Gerrymander, the Roberts Court Shows Its Naked Political Bias

In a stunning act of political partisanship, the Roberts Court on Monday night discarded its own precedents to green-light a last-ditch effort by Alabama to use a gerrymandered congressional map for the 2026 midterms. The move, which comes less than two weeks after the court destroyed the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, will reduce Black representation.

Monday’s 6-3 order, divided along partisan lines, shows how Republican-controlled states can use the high court’s April 29 Callais decision as carte-blanche to shut Black representatives out of Congress. In Alabama’s case, precedent, court doctrine, and a damning lower-court ruling stood in the way of the state throwing out its current map containing two majority-Black congressional districts represented by Democrats. Monday night’s decision of the Republican-appointed justices to toss all that aside shows how the court has not only unleashed a new wave of racial and partisan gerrymandering, but is sweeping away any obstacles so that Republicans nab as many seats as possible this November—enough to potentially prevent Democrats from retaking the House.

“There’s something bizarre going on with the court making choices that seem to very heavily benefit one party.”

Since the 2020 census, the Republican-controlled Alabama legislature has been pushing for a map that would give Black voters, who comprise 27 percent of the state’s population, the ability to elect their candidate of choice in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts. But after Callais, Republican leaders of the state legislature have gone further and vowed to eliminate both of the state’s majority-Black districts, which would mean that the state that gave rise to the civil rights movement and was the home of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, the Birmingham church bombing, and Bloody Sunday in Selma would have no Black representation in Congress. The court’s Monday intervention puts the 6-1 map into effect, but leaves open the door for the legislature to attempt a 7-0 map, if not in time for this year’s elections, then in plenty of time for 2028.

Just last week, Chief Justice John Roberts gave a speech where he insisted the justices were not “political actors,” but the court’s last-minute intervention in favor of Alabama violates every norm the court claims to follow. “The rank disrespect of the Chief Justice coming out and warning people that they shouldn’t assume that the court is partisan tests basic credulity,” says Kareem Crayton, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “I don’t think you have to have a law degree to recognize that there’s something bizarre going on with the court making choices that seem to very heavily benefit one party.”

Part of what makes Monday’s order effectively instituting Alabama’s preferred map so brazen is that the court had already rejected it—twice. Just three years ago, the court tossed an Alabama map with one Black majority district in Allen v. Milligan, ordering Alabama to create a second majority-Black district. It then reaffirmed Allen in the run-up to the 2024 election when Alabama Republicans attempted to evade the court’s order. After the Supreme Court’s intervention, a three-judge panel sitting in a federal court in Alabama found in 2025 that the state’s new map not only violated the Voting Rights Act, but was also shaped by intentional racial discrimination, which violates the Constitution.

In last month’s Callais decision, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court had “not overruled” Allen, even though it had clearly sapped the decision of any meaning. For example, in Allen, the court affirmed its long-held methodology for evaluating vote dilution claims under the VRA, as well as Congress’ power under the 15th Amendment to prohibit discriminatory effects in redistricting. Callais discarded both of those promises. But overturning a decision with still-fresh ink on a highly political issue reeks of partisanship, so Alito crafted his opinion to give the majority plausible deniability that its sweeping ruling was anything but a mere tweak to current law.

Monday’s order puts the lie to Alito’s claim that Callais is a mere “update” that left Allen undisturbed. “Callais also insisted that this Court’s prior decision in Allen remains good law,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent to Monday’s order. “These cases are, of course, Allen. So if Allen is good law anywhere, then it must be good law here.”

But Allen wasn’t the only decision the majority discarded Monday night. Just as galling, the order discarded that three-judge panel decision finding that Alabama had engaged in intentional racial discrimination when it refused to create a second majority-Black district in 2023. Instead of drawing a new majority-Black district following the Supreme Court’s Milligan ruling, the state legislature drew a seat that was only 40 percent Black and would have been easily carried by Trump. “We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature—faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a remedial plan that provides an additional opportunity district—responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” the court wrote.

Alito’s opinion in Callais claimed that the Voting Rights Act and 15th Amendment still prohibit intentional discrimination in voting—in fact, Callais is silent on the type of 14th Amendment constitutional violation that the district court found in Alabama. Undeterred, the majority threw out the district court’s meticulous, 268-page opinion that had found deliberate discrimination against Black voters in Monday’s one-paragraph order without any basis for doing so in Callais.

“The worst version of naked partisanship.”

“Nothing in the District Court’s Fourteenth Amendment analysis is affected by this Court’s opinion in Callais,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “It said not a word about the standard for Fourteenth Amendment intentional-discrimination claims like the one that the District Court decided.”

“This is a pretty disrespectful end to a long case that produced a lot of evidence showing Alabama’s commitment not to abide by the terms of the Voting Rights Act,” Crayton said.

The use of Callais to wipe out a ruling on something Callais did not touch is particularly egregious. “There may be serious arguments for the Supreme Court to revisit the Alabama trial court’s decision as a normal appeal, via the regular appellate process,” Justin Levitt, an election law expert at Loyola Law School, wrote to Mother Jones shortly before the court released its Alabama order. “But an emergency order here with a drive-by ruling on an argument that wasn’t at issue in Callais would be the worst version of naked partisanship.” That’s exactly what happened.

As Levitt pointed out, the court’s method for tossing the finding of intentional discrimination—a single, unreasoned paragraph on the court’s emergency docket—is a middle finger to the hard work of the district court. It’s just one of many such recent examples, where the court majority weaponizes the oft-called shadow docket to vacate lower-court findings it dislikes. “Factual findings like discriminatory intent are reviewed for clear error, meaning that if a district court’s factual determination is ‘plausible’ in light of the full record,’ then that determination ‘must govern,'” Sotomayor reminded her colleagues Monday. But that was just another rule her colleagues threw aside.

It may seem like the GOP’s post-Callais push for districts is coming rather late in the year. Indeed, in Monday night’s decision unleashing Alabama Republicans, the court’s GOP appointees didn’t just wantonly discard precedent in Allen and Callais. There is also the so-called “Purcell principle,” which the justices have often invoked to urge lower courts not to intervene in voting-related disputes in the middle of an election season for fear of causing voter confusion. In December, the Supreme Court reinstated a Texas gerrymander that a lower court found had discriminated against Black and Hispanic voters. They argued that it was too close to the election to stop it, even though the lower court decision was issued when the primary was 15 weeks away.

But on Monday they sided with Alabama just one week before the state’s primary, after mail voting had already begun. That’s the second time in recent days that the court has violated this norm to help Republicans. In Callais, they struck down the creation of a second-majority Black district in Louisiana just three weeks before the state’s primary, when mail voting was already underway, and 42,000 voters had cast ballots. Moreover, instead of waiting roughly thirty days to certify its decision, as is standard practice, the Court put Callais into effect immediately, which gave a green-light to Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s effort to suspend the state’s House primary to give the legislature time to eliminate one or both of the state’s majority-Black districts.

The Callais decision has triggered a frantic rush by Southern states to undo decades of progress for Black voters and could ultimately lead to the largest drop in Black representation since the end of Reconstruction. In a matter of days last week, Tennessee eliminated its lone majority-Black district. Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi are set to follow suit.

Republicans have regained a sizable advantage in the gerrymandering war started by Trump because of the Supreme Court’s decision to release the Callais opinion in the heat of the midterms. It’s clear that the court’s conservative justices have not had any second thoughts about what they’ve unleashed. The Republican appointees may claim to be apolitical, but they keep putting their foot on the gas to accelerate their party’s advantage, destroying whatever credibility the court still maintained in the process.

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Trump Broke His Own Record—For Economic Disapproval

A new CNN poll on Tuesday found that 70 percent of Americans disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling the economy.

Notably, Trump never reached a 50 percent disapproval rate over the economy during the entire duration of his first term, according to CNN. The Tuesday poll found that 77 percent of respondents—including a majority of Republicans—said that the president’s policies have increased the cost of living in their community.

The poll was conducted by Social Science Research Solutions, a survey and market research firm, and measured a random sample of 1,499 adults from April 30 through May 4.

Trump's disapproval rating on the economy has hit a whopping 70% in the new @cnn poll.

It never even reached 50% in his first term. pic.twitter.com/wuouabqyyu

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) May 12, 2026

The economy and cost of living, clearly, is an important issue: 55 percent reported it as their most important concern. This share is more than double any other problem, with the state of democracy being the second issue at 19 percent.

Thus, to develop policies that materially benefit Americans, numerous surveys suggest that government officials should concentrate on affordability. But, according to Tuesday’s CNN poll, the public is roughly evenly divided on which political party would better handle the economy.

Three-quarter said the US economy unjustly favors the desires of the elite. Conversely, nearly half of respondents said the government provides relief to too many people “who don’t deserve it”—almost 10 percentage points more than people who said the government is not helping enough people.

But there may be opportunity for Democrats in the lead-up to the midterms. If the votes really count, of course.

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Recent Close Calls for Michigan’s Dams Are a Warning to America

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in northern Michigan.

Flooding across northern Michigan last month pushed rivers to record levels, testing the limits of the state’s aging dams so severely that officials in one city nearly ordered evacuations as water threatened to spill over the top of a key barrier—a close call that highlights the growing risk that intensifying storms pose to similar infrastructure around the country.

Nationwide, the average dam is 64 years old and most were built for rainfall patterns that no longer reflect today’s changing climate. Thousands are classified as high hazard, meaning their failure could result in the loss of life. Dam safety experts say inspections are uneven and improvements often underfunded.

About 18 percent of the roughly 92,000 dams in the United States are considered high-hazard.

More than half of Michigan’s dams are beyond their 50-year design life, and the risks became clear as snowmelt and weeks of heavy rain swelled rivers. Rising water came within 5 inches of flowing over Cheboygan Dam in Cheboygan, a city of about 4,700 people, on April 16. In Bellaire, officials deployed about 1,000 sandbags to shore up a century-old dam.

“This needs to be considered not the worst we can experience. This needs to be considered as typical of the future,” said Richard Rood, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan who studies climate change.

There are about 92,000 dams in the United States. About 18 percent are considered high-hazard. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimates repairing all of these aging structures will cost more than $165 billion. In Michigan, that estimate is $1 billion.

Communities facing these risks are left with difficult choices. Given the cost of repairing and upgrading dams to withstand stronger storms, removing them is often cheaper. That can reduce long-term risk and restore rivers to a more natural state. But it often faces resistance from property owners and communities with economies built around the reservoirs those dams created.

As floodwaters recede across Michigan, local leaders, dam safety advocates, and experts are renewing calls to bolster safety regulations and deal with aging dams.

Bob Stuber, executive director of the Michigan Hydro Relicensing Commission, considers the April flooding a wake-up call and believes the solution is clear: upgrades where feasible and removal where it makes sense. “I think every opportunity we have to remove an aging dam, we should take advantage of it because it’s not going to get better,” he said. “It’s just going to get worse.”

Officials in Traverse City came to that conclusion in 2024 and removed the Union Street Dam along the Boardman-Ottaway River as part of a decades-long restoration project that includes FishPass, which will allow key species to pass while blocking harmful invaders like sea lamprey. Engineers said that removal and upgrade most likely reduced flooding impacts when waters surged to near-record levels last month, falling just short of a 500-year flood.

Many communities are reluctant to give up the lakes and waterfronts dams create: “There’s this emotional attachment.”

“Upstream would have been under 2 more feet of water, which would have been quite devastating,” said Daniel Zielinski, a principal engineer for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. “We actually had a really great stress test of the system. It functioned really well.”

Removals are increasing across the country, according to data from American Rivers. Since 2000, more dams have come down than gone up, and that pace is accelerating as aging infrastructure, safety concerns, and environmental benefits reshape how communities weigh their value.

In northern Michigan, conservation groups like Huron Pines help dam owners make that decision. It has managed nine removals in the last 13 years and has seen growing interest after the recent flooding, said Josh Leisen, a senior project manager for the organization. Removal reconnects river ecosystems and eliminates the need for expensive upkeep of aging structures, he said.

“There are costs associated with repair and there are risks associated with having a dam,” Leisen said. “Even if it seems to be in good condition, you get extreme weather events like we just had.”

Removing dams is not always straightforward. Beyond the technical challenges, many communities are reluctant to give up the lakes and waterfronts those structures create. “There’s this emotional attachment to that impoundment,” said Daniel Brown, a climate resilience strategist at the Michigan-based Huron River Watershed Council.

In other cases, dismantling isn’t practical. Some dams provide electricity or drinking water, linking them to local economies and infrastructure. Removal “is not really something that’s on the table because they are connected in this very practical way,” Brown said.

Still, Brown said, there are limits to how much aging structures can be adapted to a warming world. “[A dam] is this very long-term, huge, expensive infrastructure that you’ve put on the landscape that’s going to stay there. And that is not how climate change or nature or rivers behave,” Brown said.

Dismantling dams, like upgrading them, can come with steep costs. The Boardman-Ottaway River project—which removed three dams in the largest removal effort in state history—cost $25 million. Huron Pines is managing the removal of Sanback Dam in Rose City next month, at an estimated cost of $4 million.

Half of the expense is funded through a grant program from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, or EGLE, launched in response to the 2020 Edenville Dam failure which overwhelmed the downstream Sanford Dam. The twin catastrophes forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 residents, destroyed thousands of homes, and flooded ecosystems in a disaster that investigators later found was avoidable. The $44 million state program funded several dam removals, upgrades, and engineering studies before it ended last year.

Federal funding is available through programs administered by agencies such as FEMA or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But those resources fall short of the estimated $165.2 billion needed to address the issue, and some are at risk of elimination.

State governments regulate roughly 70 percent of the dams in the United States, with the federal government regulating hydropower dams and providing funding and guidance. This means inspection standards, regulations, enforcement, and resources can vary widely.

In Michigan, about 1,000 dams fall under state oversight, while 99 hydroelectric dams are overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The remaining 1,500 are smaller barriers that don’t fit the criteria for state regulation, according to the Michigan Dam Inventory.

[Dams] are either going to have to be removed or reengineered. Or they’re going to become a set of slowly unfolding failures.”

Now, state officials are renewing calls for more money and stronger regulations. “Dam safety may be an issue that isn’t partisan,” said Phil Roos, director of EGLE.

Proposed state legislation would bolster inspection rules, address private ownership, update design standards, and create more funding opportunities for upgrades or removals. “It’s so important to our state that we can come together, and whether it’s passing the legislation that was proposed, or improving procedures, or ultimately funding,” Roos said.

Michigan state Senator John Damoose has expressed concern about private dam ownership since the close call at Cheboygan Dam, which is under both state and private control. About 75 percent of the dams Michigan regulates are privately owned.

“Somebody made a point, ‘Well, we can’t have private companies owning these things.’ I tend to believe in private ownership but they might be right,” Damooose said during a Traverse City roundtable discussion on dam safety.

It’s not just a Michigan issue. Most dams in the United States are privately owned, meaning responsibility for maintenance, upkeep, and potential failure falls on individuals, not governmental agencies, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

Climate change is expected to bring more frequent and intense storms. As the world warms, the atmosphere holds more moisture, fueling more intense precipitation, according to Rood at the University of Michigan.

Recent flooding “has shown an incredible vulnerability,” he said. “[Dams] are either going to have to be removed or reengineered. Or they’re going to become a set of slowly unfolding failures.”

Luke Trumble, chief of dam safety for Michigan, said the state is already dealing with conditions that many dams were never designed to withstand. “It’s a little bit of a misconception that if we fix the dam issue, there’ll be no more flooding,” he said. “There’s still going to be flooding on rivers whenever we get rain like this, or rain on snow.

“What we can do with dam safety legislation is help ensure that flooding is not made worse by a dam failure,” Trumble said.

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Trump’s Energy Secretary: “I Can’t Predict the Price of Energy”

President Donald Trump’s energy secretary shrugged when asked on Sunday whether gas prices could rise to $5 per gallon and offered no clear plan to address the affordability predicament the administration has forced upon Americans.

“I can’t predict the price of energy in the short term or even the medium term,” Chris Wright told Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. And regarding potential solutions, he said, “we are constantly looking for different ideas.”

As Welker pointed out, in March, Wright said that it was “very possible” that gas prices would drop below $3 a gallon before the summer. He also told CNN’s Jake Tapper in April that “prices have likely peaked and they’ll start going down.”

According to the US Energy Information Administration, the price of regular gas in the US has increased more than 40 cents per gallon since Wright’s April statement.

So now Wright is backtracking his predictions, instead claiming during his Sunday interview that the US is in a “tremendous position,” as it is “by far the largest producer of oil” and “by far the world’s largest producer of natural gas.”

“Gasoline and diesel prices are up, and they’ll remain up while this conflict is in place,” Wright said, but after the war, “they’ll come back down lower than they were before.”

Wright’s claims come as the US and Iran remain locked in negotiations over a new ceasefire proposal. According to a Sunday report from the Associated Press, Iran wants to end the war on all fronts—including Israel’s strikes on Lebanon—and secure safe shipping in the region amid a US blockade of their ports. Iran’s leadership said it would discuss the latest US proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and scale back its nuclear program at a later time.

In other words, it does not look like the war will end any time soon. And even if transit through the Strait of Hormuz resumes to pre-war levels, it will take months to get oil and gas flowing due to the devastating strikes across the region.

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HHS Celebrates Mother’s Day With Pro-Life Pregnancy Advice

On Mother’s Day, the US Department of Health and Human Services launched a website that promotes pro-life pregnancy centers for new and expecting mothers.

The federal government’s newsite, Moms.gov, “offers guidance and information to support the health and well-being of mothers and their families,” according to a Sunday press release by HHS. The website also prominently features a link to find local pregnancy centers at Option Line. The pregnancy help contact center attempts to dissuade people from considering abortion, including by advising them to ask about the risk of physical harm from the procedure and by urging them to remember “it’s OK to change your mind.”

Decades of scientific research demonstrate that abortion is a safe way to end a pregnancy.

In addition to pregnancy centers, Moms.gov includes resources for nutritional guidance and links to set up $1,000 “Trump accounts” for children—allamid widespread cuts by Republicans to family support.

“Moms.gov delivers critical tools and support to help parents foster healthy pregnancies, strengthen young families, and create brighter futures for their children,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said in the press release. This is how you Make America Healthy Again.”

Option Line’s locator tool provides a list of their “participating pregnancy centers” that offer “peer counseling and accurate information about all pregnancy options.” Many of the facilities that Option Line recommends are crisis pregnancy centers, according to Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, a national directory led by Drs. Andrea Swartzendruber and Danielle Lambert, two professors from the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health.

Crisis pregnancy centers portray themselves as legitimate reproductive health care clinics but instead attempt to deter people from accessing abortion care and even some contraceptive options, according to the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists.

“As part of a pro-life, pro-family administration, HHS is committed to delivering critical tools to help parents foster healthy pregnancies, strengthen young families, and create brighter futures for their children,” HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard told Mother Jones on Sunday regardingthe agency’s promotion of Option Line. “The pregnancy centers and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) [which receive federal funding to provide primary care for underserved communities] listed on the website provide supportive services to expecting mothers.”

As my colleague Julia Métraux wrote last month, HHS has long pushed these crisis pregnancy centers, directly giving at least $34 million to 16 facilities between 2018 and 2024. In April, the Trump administration proposed plans to dismantle its Title X family planning program, switching from promoting contraception use andinstead urging providers to concentrate on “optimal health (defined as physical, mental, and social wellbeing), not just medical intervention.”

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Legislators Denounce “Appalling and Horrific Treatment” of Mothers in Immigrant Detention

As Mother’s Day approaches, a group of senators are raising the alarm about the “appalling and horrific treatment” of pregnant and nursing people in immigration detention. On Thursday, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin demanding information about the treatment of this vulnerable group, and urging the agency to release pregnant women from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

“There are virtually no legal safeguards for pregnant women in federal custody.”

Their letter comes on the heels of new legislation introduced this week by Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) that would establish care standards for federally incarcerated pregnant people—including those jailed in ICE and Customs and Border Protection facilities. The bill builds on one that the House already passed in 2022, which only applied to those in Bureau of Prison’s custody.

It’s hard to know how many pregnant people are in federal custody, and what percentage of those are immigrants. In 2023, more than 700 incarcerated mothers gave birth in prison, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Between January 1, 2025, and February 16, 2026, 363 pregnant, postpartum and nursing immigrants were deported, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Sixteen miscarriages were recorded during those six weeks. As of March, there were an estimated 126 pregnant women still being held in detention, according to the senators’ letter.

The care those who are pregnant in detention receive—or don’t receive—varies widely depending on the state they’re in, or even the individual facility. Federal guidelines are sparse: There are no federal rules on prenatal nutrition for incarcerated mothers, and some facilities still reportedly shackle pregnant inmates, even around their bellies. Some mothers are separated from their newborns only moments after birth. These practices can put mothers’ lives in danger, and can lead to miscarriages, psychological, and physical trauma.

Kamlager-Dove’s Pregnant Women In Custody Act would mandate adequate prenatal healthcare in federal prisons, jails, and ICE detention centers. It would prohibit the use of shackles during labor, and improve health-related data collection in federal facilities.

“It’s unacceptable that there are virtually no legal safeguards for pregnant women in federal custody, and this bill aims to right that wrong by ensuring healthier, safer futures for mothers and babies,” Rep. Kamlager-Dove wrote in a statement.

The senators who wrote to Secretary Mullin about the issue also wrote to two private contractors—Acquisition Logistics, LLC and Amentum Services, Inc.—which contracted with DHS to operate Camp East Montana, an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas. As the New York Times reported in March, there is no doctor onsite at that facility, yet pregnant women are held there. “When one experienced vaginal bleeding and requested medical care she was reportedly given only water, prenatal vitamins, and a temperature check,” the senators wrote.

“We write today with deep concern about the callous indifference with which this Administration appears to be mistreating this extremely vulnerable population,” they wrote in their letter to Mullin, adding: “We urge you to immediately resume the commonsense practice of presumption of release of pregnant women from ICE custody.”

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How Prescribed Burns Can Help Save Taxpayers Billions

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For decades, the US Forest Service has actively managed public lands to reduce wildfire risks by clearing underbrush and trees, or employing prescribed burns—something Indigenous nations have practiced for centuries. Scientists have generally lauded the ecological benefits of what is also known as “fuel treatment.” Now, they say there’s another reason to support this approach: It saves money.

According to a study published today in the journal Science, every dollar that the agency spent on such tactics avoided $3.73 in smoke, property, and emissions harm. “A lot of people have suggested that there could be potential economic benefits,” said Frederik Strabo, the lead author of the paper and an economist with University of California, Davis. “But it’s been a pretty understudied area.”

The study analyzed high-resolution data from 285 wildfires across 11 Western states between 2017 and 2023 that burned through areas where the Forest Service had reduced the fuel load. On average, the treatments decreased the total area burned by 36 percent and cut the amount of land burned at moderate to high severity by 26 percent. Researchers then modeled the economic benefits of those reductions.

The paper estimated that fuel treatments prevented $1.4 billion in health and workforce productivity losses tied to wildfire smoke, $895 million in structural damage, and $503 million in carbon dioxide emissions. Overall, that amounted to an average savings of about $3.73 for every dollar the government spent. The research also found that larger treatments—those covering more than 2,400 acres—were the most cost effective.

This research “provides further evidence that the administration’s current policy of full suppression in Western wildfire situations is misguided.”

“It’s a significant number, but when you compare it to the total cost of wildfires it’s small,” caveated Strabo, noting that the cost of the worst disasters can reach hundreds of billions of dollars. But he also said the boon could be even greater than calculated. The research didn’t, for example, examine any savings or benefits for the multibillion dollar outdoor recreation industry. “We’re only capturing a specific subset of benefits.”

Morgan Varner, the director of fire research at the conservation nonprofit Tall Timbers, called the work “the missing link for a lot of fuels treatment research,” and said that data like this can be extremely helpful in guiding decision-makers. “Studies like this round out the story and provide more evidence for the benefits of these treatments.”

David Calkin, who until last year was a Forest Service research scientist, also applauded the analysis, calling it “novel.” But he does not find the math entirely convincing, and questions the notion that such an intangible public good can, or should, be assigned a monetary worth. “A lot of the values of fuel management are non-market,” said Calkin, who wasn’t involved in the study. Ecological benefits, for instance, can be hard to quantify, as can things like public recreation access.

“I’m not trying to reduce the importance of fuel management and the value of it. It’s just highly uncertain,” he said. “I worry about trying to monetize the value of treatments on public lands.”

One issue Calkin notes is that such work on federal lands may not significantly mitigate the costliest fires, which ignite near communities and destroy homes and buildings. “The best way to protect a structure is at the structure itself,” he explained. That means the study could be overestimating the amount of property damage that clearing and prescribed burns avoid.

Strabo disagrees, saying that an unpublished portion of the analysis found that fires that interacted with fuel treatments accounted for a disproportionately large share of structure losses and suppression costs. “That suggests [those fires] were often among the more economically consequential wildfires,” he said, pointing to the 2021 Caldor Fire near Lake Tahoe as an example. “The fire still caused substantial damages, but treatments helped prevent it from becoming even more catastrophic.”

One thing the paper explicitly didn’t account for was the smoke and carbon dioxide emissions that intentional fires produce. “We’re finding that’s not a nontrivial amount in our research,” said Mark Kreider, a Forest Service researcher. Because wildfire is unpredictable, he explained, you inherently have to treat more of the landscape than will actually encounter flames. How to best factor those emissions in is part of Kreider’s ongoing work, but he says it could potentially even flip an analysis like the one in Strabo’s paper. Still, he said, that doesn’t undermine the core point that fuel treatments are effective.

“It’s very clear,” he said, “that on the whole they are very beneficial.”

Not everyone supports such tactics. Critics argue they can harm ecosystems, disproportionately target larger trees, and open forests to logging under the guise of fire prevention. Some opponents also contend that this approach is less effective against extreme fires, while others question whether public funds would be better spent hardening homes and communities.

The federal government’s approach to forest management has shifted since President Donald Trump returned to office. In 2022, the Forest Service released a 10-year wildfire plan that increased forest management and prescribed burns. The Trump administration, which has announced plans to radically remake the agency, has placed greater emphasis on fighting wildfires than preventing them. According the Forest Service, in 2025, the agency reduced vegetation on about 1 million fewer acres than in 2024.

A Forest Service spokesperson attributed most of that decline to elevated wildfire activity in the Southeast. The agency also called 2025 “one the most successful wildfire years in recent history.” But critics worry it is moving away from proactive forest management.

“The takeaway that I really got from this article was that it provides further evidence that the administration’s current policy of full suppression in Western wildfire situations is misguided,” said Heather Stricker, a climate and lands analyst with the Sierra Club. While that approach might sound protective, she said a large body of research shows that it can often backfire. “This paper reiterated a lot of that previous research, but then took it a step further to quantify the cost savings.”

The Trump administration has also announced plans to increase logging on federal lands. This has added to longstanding fears from environmental groups that instead of thoughtful, well-managed fuel treatment, the government could resort to clear-cutting. Even the paper notes this resistance. “Public pressure and risk aversion,” it reads, “skew wildfire management resources toward fire suppression rather than prevention.”

Strabo is hopeful that by adding to the range of evidence supporting forest management, his paper could help guide policymakers. “We could have these economic and ecological benefits if we scaled it up,” he said. “It’s a critically underfunded public good.”

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Polymarket’s Hot New Bet: Hantavirus

Over the past four days, bettors on the prediction platform Polymarket have wagered nearly $3 million on whether we’ll see a hantavirus pandemic this year. A cluster of cases of a particularly deadly strain of the virus erupted on a cruise ship last month, killing three people out of eight suspected cases linked to the vessel. Though the news has stoked fears, the World Health Organization currently classifies the risk of a full-blown pandemic as low.

But Polymarket users are spending big across several hantavirus-related propositions—including whether a vaccine will be developed this year and whether or not officials will tie the cruise ship outbreak to a “lab leak.” Polymarket declined to comment on hantavirus betting.

“I want to be unequivocal here. This is not the start of a Covid pandemic,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic management at the WHO, at a Thursday press conference. “This is not Covid, this is not influenza. It spreads very, very differently.”

Because outbreaks of this hantavirus strain have occurred before, infectious disease experts already know that the virus requires close contact to spread between people, and a person with the virus is only infectious for about a day. Just as those metrics allow public health officials to calibrate their response, they also inform how some online gamblers are placing their money.

Online gambling has been on the rise since sports betting was legalized by the Supreme Court in 2018, but the Covid pandemic gave it a huge boost. In 2020, sports betting revenues jumped up 69 percent over the previous year, though not too many sports events were happening.

But there were other bets to be placed, like how many people would die from Covid-19, a topic some people wagered on as early as April 2020. At the time, those bets were illegal, the subjects of online betting being more strictly regulated. But a 2024 court ruling took the rails off of websites known as prediction markets. Now, on mega-platforms like Polymarket and Kashi, users can bet on almost anything—including public health crises.

“Anybody who’s betting on a viral spread, I’m going to…guess that they have an addiction problem when it comes to gambling,” says John W. Ayers, a public health professor at University of California, San Diego. “If someone is very addicted to gambling, they’re more likely to find themselves interacting with these more fringe things you could possibly bet on.”

For several years, public health experts have been concerned that gambling addictions are on the rise, though the exact numbers are hard to pin down. A study Ayers led that came out last year found that Google searches seeking help for gambling addiction jumped 23 percent nationwide since the legalization of sports betting. Other researchers estimate about 10 percent of men ages 18 to 30 have a problematic relationship to gambling.

Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket grow based on use, helping the range of niche bets to multiply—and since taking off during the Covid pandemic, the prediction-market industry has multiplied in size many times. By 2030, it’s been estimated, prediction markets could grow to $1 trillion in annual trading volume.

That gambling is a public health issue in itself, Ayers says. Gambling addiction is correlated with other forms of addiction that are significant sources of premature deaths in the US. Financial stress isn’t great for your health, either.

“Culturally, it’s normalized, and now we give it this veneer of, ‘Oh, it’s not gambling. It’s a prediction market.’ Doesn’t matter,” Ayers says. “The harm still exists. Call it a prediction market or a sports book, you’re still losing money, and the house always wins on these bets.”

Unlike many other forms of addiction, gambling problems can often be invisible before someone hits rock bottom, especially now that most of these transactions are happening in an app. It is possible to regulate prediction markets and place barriers on addictive behaviors—some countries place limits on how many bets a person can take, restrict the use of credit cards, or institute mandatory rest periods between bets—but right now, the US more or less doesn’t. Instead, we bet on everything: viruses included.

“The fact that people will gamble on these things indicates to me the larger societal problem—everything becomes an opportunity for monetization,” Ayers says.

Or as Donald Trump put it earlier this year, “the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino…it is what it is.”

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Stop the Steal Never Stopped

When the FBI showed up at a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize hundreds of boxes of 2020 election records this past January, County Commissioner Dana Barrett thought it looked less like a criminal investigation and more like political theater.

It’s been more than five years since the election, the results already had been investigated multiple times, and the ballots had been counted, recounted, and recounted again.

The lie that the 2020 election was stolen has persisted. And the “Stop the Steal” movement’s most ardent believers now hold unprecedented positions of power, including on the once-sleepy State Election Board in the important swing state of Georgia. A lawyer known for his willingness to take on long-shot election cases has gone from a little-known private practice attorney to a role in the White House, overseeing the country’s election integrity effort—despite being sanctioned by a court for making “unequivocally false” assertions around voting. And everyday members of the movement are trying to change what they fervently believe is a broken system—at the risk of actually breaking it in the process.

This week on Reveal, Mother Jones reporter Abby Vesoulis and Reveal’s Najib Aminy examine how the long shadow of doubt over the 2020 elections is being weaponized and what it means ahead of the 2026 midterms.

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“It’s Life Alert or Rent”: Montana Trailer Park Tenants Are on Rent Strike

35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.

On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer.

Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord.

Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. But by unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing.

For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said.

Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions.

Members of Bozeman Tenants United, including Benjamin Moore and Shauna Thompson, rip up their rent increase notices. Jered McCafferty

“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”

For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move.

The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.

This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.

Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”

Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.”

Many of the tenants of King Arthur and Mountain Meadows parks rely on a fixed income to pay their rent.Jered McCafferty

Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.

Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.

Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.

“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”

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“Counterterrorism” Now Officially Means Targeting Trans People

On Wednesday, the White House released a new “United States Counterterrorism Strategy,” the first such directive since a 2021 Biden-era memo emphasizing the need to combat white supremacist violence, which has now been scrubbed from the White House website.

Wednesday’s document, masterminded by White House “counterterrorism czar” Sebastian Gorka, does not mention far-right violence at all. It identifies “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists” as a security threat of equal severity to “Legacy Islamist Terrorists” and “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs.” The administration will now apparently “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

In a bizarre but familiar turn, the document also blames transgender people for the shooting of Charlie Kirk. “Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.”

The Heritage Foundation has also worked to connect being trans with terrorism, campaigning for the FBI to designate trans advocacy as violent extremism.

Gorka told reporters at a press conference Wednesday that the administration would “crush” any threat, “whether it is the cartels, the jihadists or violent left-wing extremists like antifa—and like the transgender killers, the nonbinary, the left-wing radicals who killed my friend, Charlie Kirk, we will take them on, head on.”

In 2023, Trump claimed falsely that there had been an “incredible rise” in the number of transgender shooters, claims that now resurface whenever shootings occur.

But the document reads less like a plan than a list of targets. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the House Committee on Homeland Security’s ranking Democrat, noted in a press release that the document left out the far right—the group most likely to commit violent acts against civilians on US soil—“despite years of data proving that right-wing extremism has presented the most persistent and deadly threats to Americans for decades.”

Instead, Thompson said, the White House had produced “a document full of fake administration counterterrorism ‘achievements,’ including mass deportations and more than 40 unauthorized and deadly military strikes on vessels in the Western Hemisphere. There are zero strategic objectives, lines of effort, or agency assignments.”

Counterterrorism itself is a politicized term that came into common use following the September 11 attacks and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It formed part of the language of the policing apparatus that targeted Muslim and Arab Americans and legitimized surveillance of those communities as “terrorist threats.” That same language is now being applied to transgender people. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called Kirk’s death a “domestic 9/11.” The Heritage Foundation, too, has done its best to connect being transgender with the idea of terrorism, campaigning last year for the FBI to designate trans advocacy as violent extremism.

“We will…identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally,” the document says.

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