The first criminal trial of a former US president is underway, with Donald Trump facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments allegedly made in 2016 to cover up an affair he had with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Here’s the latest—the key updates and absurd moments—from the historic trial. Public birthday wishes […]
I became reacquainted with Raffi in the spring of 2020, around my son’s first birthday. These were the early days of the pandemic: People had barely stopped hoarding toilet paper; we’d started going to the car wash for fun. It was on one of these drives that I first burst into tears to Raffi’s “All […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The world’s 3,000 billionaires should pay a minimum 2 percent tax on their fast-growing wealth to raise about $313 billion a year for the global fight against poverty, inequality, and global heating, ministers from four leading economies have suggested. In a sign […]
Donald Trump is on trial in Manhattan facing 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of another crime: conspiring to influence the 2016 election. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argues that, to squelch negative publicity that might hurt Trump’s 2016 campaign, Trump directed the creation of fake records to hide hush-money payments to women […]
On Thursday, the Supreme Court held oral arguments over former President Donald Trump’s claims that he enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for engaging in what he contends were his official duties while in office. And one justice, Samuel Alito, offered a particularly wild theory about how to preserve American democracy and the rule of […]
The attorney running the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity” effort has been criminally charged by the state of Arizona for her efforts to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election. This turn of events highlights the Orwellian meaning of the phrase “election integrity,” as used by Trump and the Republican Party: An effort to win […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Campus organizers at three universities filed legal complaints on Monday arguing that their schools’ investments in planet-heating fossil fuels are illegal, the Guardian has learned. The students from Columbia University, Tulane University, and the University of Virginia each wrote to the […]
This story was produced by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. In 2018, the Akron, Ohio-based utility FirstEnergy donated $2.5 million to a Republican Governors Association-affiliated dark money group backing GOP nominee Mike DeWine in a competitive race for Ohio governor, according to newly released records. The records show […]
When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) emerged onto the steps of Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library on Wednesday afternoon, he was greeted with a deafening sound: hundreds of booing students. Johnson had just emerged from meetings with Jewish students at the university to discuss what he, other Republicans, and some Democrats allege is rising antisemitism on campuses […]
John Cage, the influential composer and artist, is dead. So it’s technically impossible to know with absolute certainty how he would feel about the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University. But the question emerges after New York Times columnist John McWhorter, a music humanities and linguistics professor at Columbia, wrote that he was forced to stop students […]
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that presented the grim reality of the post-Roe v. Wade world the justices have created. Without a constitutional right to abortion, states are forcing women into grave yet preventable health crises by denying them emergency abortion care. And yet, it appeared that less than […]
In a little-noticed court filing earlier this month, federal prosecutors described Steve Bannon as a “co-conspirator” in a massive criminal fraud and racketeering case against a flamboyant, far-right Chinese fugitive, compounding the legal headaches of the former Donald Trump adviser. FBI agents in March 2023 arrested Guo Wengui, a self-styled anti-Chinese government activist Bannon once […]
Last November, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, announced a $100 million effort to unseat members of Congress who vocally supported calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. AIPAC and its allies have flooded the spring and summer primaries of Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and […]
It’s been said so often it’s almost become a cliché: Donald Trump poses a threat to American democracy. But his authoritarian impulses and hate-encouraging demagoguery are far from the only peril for the nation. Conservatives and Republicans for years have been striving on multiple fronts to weaken democracy by suppressing voter rights and pushing for […]
The Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider its third major abortion case in two years—and the third brought with the help of a legal nonprofit attempting to infuse American life with its far-right brand of Christianity. Not only is the group, Alliance Defending Freedom, behind legislation to ban abortion, it is also increasingly representing state […]
The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear arguments over former President Donald Trump’s unprecedented and novel theory that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for anything that involved alleged “official acts” while in office. But this long-shot theory was only one component of Trump’s overall legal strategy; his main goal was to delay his […]
Jaelyn was 19 weeks and five days into a much-wanted pregnancy when the cramping began—slowly at first, then in an insistent rhythm that signaled she was in labor. Several excruciating hours later, emergency doctors delivered a heart-wrenching diagnosis. The amniotic sac was protruding from her cervix; her baby was doomed. “There’s nothing we can do,” […]
Eli. Underwood likes the experience of voting in person, but they now have to vote by mail. Underwood went to a Detroit church to cast a ballot in the 2022 general elections, but chronic health conditions meant the two flights of stairs to the basement taxed them badly; living with Long Covid as well, Underwood was […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Wyoming governor Mark Gordon told the Environmental Protection Agency in 2023 that the state would not be applying for federal grant money to reduce pollution and greenhouse gases, he left most communities in the state without access to […]
On a rainy night in February, about 50 conservatives squeezed into a room at the Taylorsville Heritage Center to hear from several candidates running for office in Utah this year. The MAGA-friendly crowd had been organized by “rapping granny” Linda Paulson, the octogenarian great-grandmother who had earned 15 minutes of viral fame in 2022 by […]
On a rainy night in February, about 50 conservatives squeezed into a room at the Taylorsville Heritage Center to hear from several candidates running for office in Utah this year. The MAGA-friendly crowd had been organized by “rapping granny” Linda Paulson, the octogenarian great-grandmother who had earned 15 minutes of viral fame in 2022 by […]
Less than 24 hours after police arrested 120 people at a pro-Palestine rally at New York University, students and faculty walked out of their classrooms to call out alleged lies from the administration used to suppress peaceful political protest on college campuses of Israel’s war on Gaza. Hundreds gathered on Tuesday afternoon at the southeast […]
Once again, former President Donald Trump is about to find out just how far he can push a judge. On Tuesday morning, Trump’s attorneys faced an angry barrage of questions from New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, demanding they explain why Trump should not be fined for what prosecutors in his hush-money case say […]
Once again, former president Donald Trump is about to find out just how far he can push a judge. On Tuesday morning, Trump’s attorneys faced an angry barrage of questions from New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, demanding they explain why Trump should not be fined for what prosecutors in his hush-money case say […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Unilever is to scale back its environmental and social aims, provoking critics to say its board should “hang their heads in shame.” The consumer goods company behind brands ranging from Dove beauty products to Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream was […]
Beirut was the place to be if you were an action-junkie journalist in the 1980s. Civil War. Militias, the PLO, an Israeli invasion, the occupation of Lebanon. Car Bombings. Truck bombings. And more. It was an exotic city with an ancient corniche winding along the Mediterranean to the snow-capped Shouf mountains some 30 miles away. […]
Since last week, at Columbia University—as students have gathered to protest the war in Gaza and call for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel’s military campaign—the college radio station, WKCR, has taken on a new role: near-constant news. It has suspended its usual programming and doggedly covered the demonstrations on campus. And, […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Joe Biden marked Monday’s Earth Day by announcing a $7 billion investment in solar energy projects nationwide, focusing on disadvantaged communities, and unveiling a week-long series of what the White House say will be “historic climate actions.” The president was […]
A growing number of college students nationwide are staging encampments to protest their universities’ investments in Israeli entities in light of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has reportedly killed more than 34,000 Palestinians. The protests have sparked mass arrests and suspensions, including at Columbia University, where more than 100 students—including some from Barnard, the all-women’s […]
Last week, Justice Juan Merchan pulled off an impressive feat in the New York Supreme Court’s criminal division: He finished empaneling 18 jurors in the first-ever criminal trial of a former president. This was not easy. Donald Trump’s first criminal trial—of the four he faces in the coming months—concerns 34 counts of falsifying business records, […]
The first criminal trial of a former US president is underway, with Donald Trump facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments allegedly made in 2016 to cover up an affair he had with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Here’s the latest—the key updates and absurd moments—from the historic trial. “The people call […]
Helen Cruz has been a resident of Grants Pass, Oregon, for roughly four decades, but for the last five of those years, she’s had no home in which to live. She’s not alone. Her small mountain town with a population of 39,189 provides no public homeless shelters. She is among up to 600 people experiencing […]
Just weeks after the Supreme Court ended the Constitutional right to an abortion in the summer of 2022, Mylissa Farmer arrived at a hospital in Joplin, Missouri after her water broke at about 18 weeks pregnant. The doctors agreed that the fetus had no chance of survival and that she needed to end her pregnancy […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When US homeowners buy subsidized flood insurance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they make a commitment to build back better after flood disasters, even if it costs them. FEMA’s notorious 50 percent rule stipulates that if a home in a flood zone […]
Monday marks the Supreme Court’s final week of oral arguments until October 2024, and the justices have saved some of their most consequential matters for last. On the court’s schedule are cases regarding former President Donald Trump’s immunity, abortion rights, and the criminalization of homelessness. Here’s a preview of what will be on the docket. […]
For decades, unionizing in the American South was like cutting a five-acre field with nail clippers: time-consuming, grueling, and largely ineffective—though not technically impossible. But on Friday, hourly workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, defied the long-standing barriers by voting overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union (UAW). Late that night, the National […]
This story was originally published by Grist as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN. It is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it […]
On Saturday, the US House of Representatives voted to pass a $95 billion foreign aid package to assist Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, as well as a TikTok ban requiring the popular app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest from the platform within up to a year or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States. The […]
When Braven Glenn, a 17-year-old boy, was killed in a car wreck, the early details made little sense to his mother, Blossom Old Bull. Officials told her police chased Glenn for speeding, and he ended up in a head-on collision with a train. It took days for Old Bull to learn that the officer […]
Joshua Rubin, a Brooklyn software developer and founder of the pro-immigrant grassroots group Witness at the Border, spent his 72nd birthday in Eagle Pass, Texas. He gathered with another half a dozen volunteers at the border town across from Mexico’s Piedras Negras for a two-week vigil “to, according to the organization, “stand up against [Governor] Greg […]
This story was originally published by Yale E360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It is the jewel of the Adriatic. Its shimmering waters feed a rare colony of Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest freshwater birds, sustain the endangered Albanian water frog, and host loggerhead turtles on its encircling dunes. The Nartë lagoon […]
New Hampshire could soon beat Florida—known for its anti-vaccine Surgeon General—when it comes to loosening vaccine requirements. A first-in-the-nation bill that’s already passed New Hampshire’s state House, sponsored only by Republican legislators, would end the requirement for parents enrolling kids in childcare to provide documentation of polio and measles vaccination. New Hampshire would be the […]
With Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson struggling to hold onto the gavel in the face of eternal rebellion from some of his party’s most intransigent far-right members, Politico thought it would be a good idea to call up former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to ask him about the situation. And […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. With private investors poised to profit from water scarcity in the west, US senator Elizabeth Warren and representative Ro Khanna are pursuing a bill to prohibit the trading of water as a commodity. The lawmakers will introduce the bill on Thursday afternoon, the […]
A high-speed police chase. A 17-year-old Crow boy, dead. The police report? Nowhere to be found. The entire police department? Vanished. The excruciating question that still remains: What happened to Braven Glenn? The hunt for answers is at the heart of our searing new short film After the Crash, by reporter Samantha Michaels and filmmaker […]
The challenge to secure jurors for Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan bumbled further on Thursday morning after two jurors were excused—one after prosecutors questioned their truthfulness and another, an oncology nurse, who expressed concerns that the media had effectively outed her. The latter dismissal follows several media reports that featured biographical information about selected jurors. Fox […]
This article was produced by The Bittman Project and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. which supports independent journalists as they forward fresh narratives about inequality. It is co-published here with permission. EHRP’s high-quality journalism is co-published with mainstream media outlets, to help readers understand and address systemic hardship. Cooking and food shopping are very different in America […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was a relatively cool spring day in Phoenix, Arizona, as a tree-planting crew dug large holes in one of the desert city’s hottest and least shaded neighborhoods. Still, it was sweaty backbreaking work as they carefully positioned, watered and staked a […]
Cruising south down a two-lane highway in Montana, Braven Glenn looked out onto the open road, the evening sky chilly and dark. It was November 24, 2020—half a year into the pandemic and three months after his 17th birthday. He was a good student, on his way to pick up his girlfriend, a basketball player […]
New York City Police gathered in force outside of Columbia University on Wednesday, after students convened in the pre-dawn hours to erect dozens of camping tents on a campus lawn. The demonstration backing Palestine was launched hours before president Minouche Shafik began testifying at a Congressional hearing addressing allegations of anti-semitism on campus in the […]
In November, ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) issued a press release casting himself as a fierce opponent of China. It declared, “Since being elected to the U.S. Senate, Senator Scott has introduced dozens of bills to punish Communist China for its increased military aggression, continued […]
Last week, in a bid to clarify his historically nebulous stance on abortion, Donald Trump said that if reelected, he intends to leave abortion rights “to the states,” seemingly contradicting his prior stance in favor of a 16-week national ban. But Mary Ziegler, a law professor at UC Davis and leading abortion historian, thinks that […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves. Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, […]
Conservative Supreme Court justices on Tuesday questioned the Justice Department’s use of a 2002 statute against obstructing an official proceeding to prosecute a number of people involved in the January 6 attack on Congress. In pressing Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar on how broadly the DOJ can apply the law, several justices offered similar hypotheticals. “Would […]
State legislative bodies have always played a leading role in determining outcomes for fundamental but humdrum issues like state budgets, insurance regulations, road safety laws, and civil services. But the last few years have demonstrated their overriding importance in matters related to personal freedom and social wellbeing. One issue where this has played out powerfully […]
State legislative bodies have always played a leading role in determining outcomes for fundamental but humdrum issues like state budgets, insurance regulations, road safety laws, and civil services. But the last few years have demonstrated their overriding importance in matters related to personal freedom and social well-being. One issue where this has played out powerfully […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Blake Dollier spoke excitedly as he watched the construction crews pulverize concrete along a quarter-mile stretch of US Highway 52 where it passes through West Lafayette, Indiana. Soon, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), where Dollier works as the public […]
The justice system finally caught up with Individual-1—a.k.a. Donald J. Trump. On the opening day of Trump’s historic trial for his porn star/hush-money caper—no former president has ever been on trial for criminal charges—New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan had to clear up a few pending legal issues before moving to the arduous task […]
So, here we are. The first day of the first criminal trial of a former US president. Can it get more extraordinary than that? “He keeps setting new Guinness Records in terms of unprecedented history,” Mother Jones’ own David Corn explained in a new video outside a Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump’s trial kicked off this […]
Frustrated by the two-party system? Polling shows you’re not alone, with more Americans than ever supporting the idea of a third party. But the winner of November’s presidential election will be either Biden or Trump, and voters weighing other candidates need to consider if a protest vote to end the duopoly might instead help end […]
Frustrated by the two-party system? Polling shows you’re not alone, with more Americans than ever supporting the idea of a third party. But the winner of November’s presidential election will be either Biden or Trump, and voters weighing other candidates need to consider if a protest vote to end the duopoly might instead help end […]
Frustrated by the two-party system? Polling shows you’re not alone, with more Americans than ever supporting the idea of a third party. But the winner of November’s presidential election will be either Biden or Trump, and voters weighing other candidates need to consider if a protest vote to end the duopoly might instead help end […]
With our winner-takes-all elections consigning them to the margins or casting them as spoilers, third-party candidates are typically a political afterthought. But in the coming election, RFK Jr., Jill Stein, and Cornel West—none of whom stand a chance of becoming our next president—could play a central role in restoring Donald Trump to the White House. […]
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On a Thursday morning in late March, a group of Wenatchi-P’squosa people and a few dozen supporters assembled amid patches of snow and mud atop Badger Mountain in central Washington. The foggy sagebrush-dotted bluff is among dozens of […]
Frustrated by the two-party system? Polling shows you’re not alone, with more Americans than ever supporting the idea of a third party. But the winner of November’s presidential election will be either Biden or Trump, and voters weighing other candidates need to consider if a protest vote to end the duopoly might instead help end […]
Frustrated by the two-party system? Polling shows you’re not alone, with more Americans than ever supporting the idea of a third party. But the winner of November’s presidential election will be either Biden or Trump, and voters weighing other candidates need to consider if a protest vote to end the duopoly might instead help end […]
With less than 24 hours until his first criminal trial kicks off, Donald Trump is doing what you’d probably expect: attacking the judge presiding over the case. In a post on Truth Social, Trump alleged that Judge Juan Merchan might be “the most highly conflicted Judge in New York State history” and complained of a “Fake […]
A Biden administration official said this morning that the United States is “not looking for a wider war with Iran” following Iran’s launch of retaliatory strikes against Israel yesterday. White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press that President Biden does not “want to see this escalate,” […]
This essay was originally published on Dashka Slater’s Substack, A Sigh of Relief, which you can sign up for here. I was homeless when I started college at the University of California, Berkeley. First-year students weren’t guaranteed housing in those days, and I’d been unable to secure a spot in either the dorms or the […]
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. With its expanse of buildings and concrete, Mexico City may not look squishy—but it is. Ever since the Spanish conquistadors drained Lake Texcoco to make way for more urbanization, the land has been gradually compacting under the weight. It’s a phenomenon […]
Israel and its allies were scrambling to shoot down a fleet of Iran-launched drones on Saturday evening, according to both countries’ militaries, in a major escalation of a regional conflict sparked by the Israel-Hamas war. Iranian state media claimed that the country was coordinating the drones with a barrage of ballistic missiles. The unfolding aerial […]
In Gaza, the health care system has collapsed, but nearly 200 women each day still need to find a safe place to give birth. In this week’s episode of Reveal, reporters Gabrielle Berbey and Salmad Ahad Khan tell the story of one woman, 42-year-old Lubna Al Rayyes, as she deals with a complicated pregnancy in the midst […]
Days after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a near-total ban on abortion could be enforced in the state, Kamala Harris went after Trump for his position on abortion in a campaign speech Friday in Tucson. Harris said that the ruling, which granted abortion exceptions only when it was “necessary to save” a woman’s life, “demonstrated […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Another month, another global heat record that has left climate scientists scratching their heads and hoping this is an El Niño-related hangover rather than a symptom of worse-than-expected planetary health. Global surface temperatures in March were 0.1 degrees Celsius higher […]
Famine is already happening in parts of Gaza, a top US humanitarian official publicly acknowledged this week for the first time. After six months of Israeli war and blockades, an estimated 2.2 million people are facing acute or catastrophic food shortages. One in three children in northern Gaza are malnourished, and deaths due to hunger […]
On CNN, John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump and rabid war lover who wants to bomb Iran and North Korea (among others), revealed that he is voting for a write-in candidate in 2024. “I might as well say it now,” Bolton said, “I voted for Dick Cheney [in 2020]. And I’ll […]
Out of the four criminal cases that Donald Trump faces, the one scheduled to begin on Monday in a New York City courtroom is not the prosecution that most addresses the threat he posed (and still poses) to American democracy. But it carries powerful symbolism, for of all Trump’s cases, this one reminds the nation […]
Everyone seems to be talking about saving democracy this year. “American democracy, that’s what the 2024 election is all about,” Joe Biden has emphasized, painting the threat of Donald Trump’s return to power as the central issue in the 2024 campaign. “We have to prove that our model isn’t a relic of history.” But the […]
Everyone seems to be talking about saving democracy this year. “American democracy, that’s what the 2024 election is all about,” Joe Biden has emphasized, painting the threat of Donald Trump’s return to power as the central issue in the 2024 campaign. “We have to prove that our model isn’t a relic of history.” But the […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. With just two weeks left until the Democratic primary for western Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district, climate and environmental groups have overwhelmingly endorsed the anti-fracking incumbent, Rep. Summer Lee. One of the only contested Democratic congressional primaries in the state, the […]
Despite Elon Musk’s enshittification of Twitter, to borrow a term from the novelist and culture critic Cory Doctorow, his rebranded social media platform is still useful to journalists like me to communicate with certain people and to promote good stories, even if its algorithm now seems to further reward clickbait, disinformation, and right-wing trolls. But […]
In 2007, after Paul Ross Evans pleaded guilty to leaving a bomb outside of a women’s health clinic in Austin, he assured the judge: He never meant for anyone to get hurt. “Except,” he clarified, “for the abortionists.” For almost two centuries, the moniker “abortionist” has branded those who help terminate pregnancies as illegitimate, dangerous, […]
Famine is likely already underway in parts of Gaza, Samanta Power, the top US humanitarian official, said publicly for the first time on Wednesday. While testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Power, administrator of USAID and former US Ambassador to the UN, said that officials have “credible” information that famine is occurring in northern […]
Are you better off now than you were when Donald Trump was president? That’s a dumb question for Republicans to pose, because the answer by most measures would be, “Oh, heck yes!” But plenty of people feel otherwise, either because they are down a right-wing rabbit hole or because the poorer half of the population […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A group of advocates and Democratic senators gathered in Washington, DC, on Tuesday to decry utilities’ practice of spending customers’ money to advance a pro-fossil fuel agenda. “Americans are already paying the price of climate change,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) at […]
Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer for former president Donald Trump’s company, was sent to jail for five months on Wednesday morning. Weisselberg was taken into custody after pleading guilty to perjury, admitting that he lied under oath during Trump’s civil fraud trial last fall. Weisselberg worked for Trump for more than 30 years, […]
Shortly after the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a Civil War-era, near-total ban on abortion on Tuesday, Republican Senate hopeful and former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake blasted the decision as “out of step with Arizonans.” She declined, however, to explain the apparent about-face. Two years ago on the gubernatorial campaign trail, Lake eagerly praised the 1864 […]
Dostie Farm, an organic dairy in Fairfield, Maine, was thriving until one day in October 2020 when owner Egide Dostie Jr. got a call from Stonyfield, his exclusive buyer. Something was off with the farm’s milk: Tests had found that it contained three times the state’s allowable level of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, one of the class […]
This story is adapted from Ari Berman’s new book, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, which will be published April 23. A day ahead of the third anniversary of January 6, President Joe Biden traveled to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania—where George Washington encamped during the Revolutionary War—before […]
This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A plan to charge Toronto homeowners and businesses for paved surfaces on their properties is creating a public backlash, a deluge of negative international media attention and even derisive comments from Donald Trump Jr. The outcry reached such a crescendo last week, […]
The United States on Tuesday rejected charges that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its war against Hamas. “We don’t have any evidence of genocide being created,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a hearing. Austin told the committee that President Biden’s recent efforts to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin […]
On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a 1864 abortion ban, making nearly all abortions in the state illegal and potentially criminalizing healthcare providers with up to five years in prison. The justices said that after the fall of Roe a Civil War-era law, that existed before Arizona became a state, took precedence over a 15-week […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On March 18, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological center on Earth. According to their instruments, the region […]
Forbes’ annual list of the 400 richest Americans debuted in 1982 with shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig in the top slot. Ludwig’s wealth, the magazine reported, was $2 billion (about $6.3 billion in today’s dollars). That only 13 billionaires graced the first Forbes 400 now seems almost quaint. Who could have imagined billionaires would quickly subsume the […]
In a few hours, millions of people across North America will seize the rare opportunity to (hopefully safely) observe a total solar eclipse, when the moon covers the sun and darkens the skies for a few minutes. The Great American Eclipse will stretch from Mexico through parts of Texas all the way to Maine and into Canada, drawing […]
Donald Trump wants to pretend he isn’t to blame for the devastating consequences of overturning of Roe v. Wade—even as he boasts about being responsible for the momentous Supreme Court decision. In a more than four-minute-long video released on Truth Social this morning the presumptive Republican nominee attempted to clarify his nebulous stance on abortion rights. It […]
I am still suffering from Trump-era-induced brain melt. But even against the uncontrolled spigot of dumb that produced my malady, one especially dumb moment stands out: former President Donald Trump’s peek at a solar eclipse. As I wrote at the time, it was a deeply Trumpian incident that, true to character, defied both science and […]
Google “America’s Best Idea” and you’ll find there’s a clear frontrunner: our national parks. The United States has 63 now, including southern swamps and deep mountain canyons and forests of saguaro cacti, a collection of beloved landscapes that stretches, to quote the familiar song, “from sea to shining sea.” But America’s preeminent property rights activist, […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In response to growing pressure to address the plastic pollution crisis, Amazon has been cutting down on plastic packaging. Last July, the company said it used 11.6 percent less plastic for all of its shipments globally in 2022, compared to 2021. Much of […]
Georgia could become the next state to end the subminimum wage for disabled people, a widespread and now widely opposed exception to minimum wage laws that extends to some 40,000 workers with disabilities—and the first state where such an initiative would be led by Republicans. 16 states have passed bills to end or reform the […]