Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on abortion bans was a predictable, three-hour medley of left- and right-wing talking points. Republicans accused Democrats of wanting abortion policies in line with those of North Korea and China; Democrats accused Republicans of promoting repressive policies that are comparable to how the Saudi and Iranian regimes treat women. The […]
Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit Florida, has been ripping through the state, leaving behind millions of dollars worth of damage and reports of fatalities. Today, the Federal Emergency Management Agency briefed President Joe Biden on the storm’s impact. “This could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history,” said Biden […]
This story was originally published by Slate‘s Future Tense partnership and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On Monday, Danish officials broadcast a warning to ships navigating its nearby waters: There was a massive leak from Nord Stream 2, the Russian-owned pipeline built to transfer natural gas from the former Soviet Union to Germany through […]
This past weekend, activists, economists, politicians, and members of the public packed a room at the California Science Center in Los Angeles to talk about reparations. Members of the California Reparations Task Force, a first-of-its-kind group, gathered for their tenth meeting to grapple with some of the difficult questions they have yet to answer about […]
An Iranian journalist who reported on the death of Mahsa Amini has been thrown into solitary confinement, with no information about the charges against her, amid a major crackdown on the press in the country. Niloufar Hamedi, a reporter at the Tehran-based Shargh newspaper, was among the first to write about Amini, 22, who fell […]
At a White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health on Wednesday, President Joe Biden outlined a bold plan to eliminate hunger in the United States over the next decade. “I know we can do this, end hunger in this country by 2030, and lower the toll that dietary-related diseases take on too many Americans,” […]
Earlier this month, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced that his administration would seek to roll back the rights of transgender and nonbinary students in Virginia. But Gen-Z’s approach to direct political engagement is once again striking back, this time with young Virginians rallying to protest the proposals they say are a political stunt that would harm trans […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Some 15,000 miles of new oil pipelines are under development around the world, a distance equivalent to almost twice the Earth’s diameter, a report has revealed. The projects, led by the US, Russia, China, and India, are “dramatically at odds […]
Donald Trump has always blustered about his wealth. But the $250 million civil fraud lawsuit filed last week by New York’s attorney general paints a truly astonishing picture of the former president’s alleged financial exaggerations. At his Park Avenue condo building, Trump valued 12 unsold units at $49 million—but they were actually rent-controlled apartments that […]
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton isn’t just running for a third term while under indictment for securities fraud—he’s running from process servers too. On Monday morning, according to an affidavit filed in federal court, Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, embarked on a Coen Brothers-esque escape from a man who was attempting to […]
In the coming days, Louisiana officials will incarcerate about two dozen children inside the old death row of Louisiana State Penitentiary, also called Angola, a massive maximum security prison for adult men that was once notorious for its violence. Children as young as 10 with a history of assault may be transferred from their current […]
On Friday, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention quietly updated its masking policy and removed its recommendation for universal masking in health care settings, The Hill reports. The new guidelines say that health care facilities in areas that are not experiencing high levels of Covid transmission can “choose not to require” masks. “Updates were […]
On his website, the international underwear model, “influencer,” and January 6 defendant John Strand compares himself to David fighting Goliath in his trial on charges related to storming the US Capitol. “I will not bend the knee to tyranny,” he writes defiantly, while calling the insurrection a “federal entrapment tool” and his prosecution part of […]
In 2006, Congress ended a controversial program that allowed married couples to combine their student debts into a joint loan. No new spousal consolidation loans were originated after that, but the borrowers who had previously combined their loans were unable to separate them—even in cases of divorce or domestic violence. As past Mother Jones investigations […]
In the disquieting fog of grief, no one expects to be industrious. But after the violent murder of a beloved friend, Hua Hsu instantly started taking notes. To what end, Hsu didn’t know at the time; he was in college and knew vaguely that he wanted to be a writer. “I had all these pages […]
Dr. Seema Yasmin grew up, as she describes it, in a “family of conspiracy theorists.” As the daughter of immigrants living in England, the doctor-turned-journalist recalls, for instance, entertaining some outlandish beliefs about the British Royal Family. One book she and her cousins read and reread “told us that the Queen of England was a […]
When Bryan Hickson and Patricia Soto found out they were going to have a baby, the thrilled couple jumped into action. They watched YouTube videos about parenting, prepared healthy meals, and, since they planned to stay in their separate places to start, bought cribs and baby clothes for each of their homes. When Soto went […]
The infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, which was organized by white supremacists and neo-Nazis to celebrate white nationalism and that led to the tragic killing of counter-protester Heather Heyer, became an early defining moment of Donald Trump’s presidency when he declared there had been “very fine people on both […]
This story was originally published by the Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The most tragic aspect of this week’s catastrophe in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Fiona has wrecked infrastructure and knocked out electricity for millions of residents, may be that solutions for protecting the island and its population from extreme-weather events like this […]
Early polls out of Italy following its Sunday election suggest that Giorgia Meloni, an ultra-conservative leader known for her opposition to gay rights and immigration, will become its first female prime minister—and the most extreme right-winger to run the place since, you guessed it, Benito Mussolini. Meloni’s victory makes her party, Brothers of Italy, the […]
Earlier this month, when railroad workers threatened to strike over “grueling” conditions—like formal discipline for taking any time off at all—the Biden administration brokered a tentative deal, avoiding a work stoppage that could have crippled supply chains and cost the US billions of dollars a day. Crisis averted. Or not. As more details of the deal […]
House Rep. Liz Cheney, the lame-duck Wyoming Republican and longtime anti-Trumper, said this weekend that she’ll leave the Republican Party if it nominates Donald Trump a second time. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he is not the nominee,” Cheney said at the Texas Tribune Festival on Saturday. “And if he is the […]
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On a hot morning in early August, a group of college- and high-school-aged climate activists decided to hold a funeral. They were drinking hot cocoa on a camping trip to Antelope Island, an island in Utah’s Great Salt Lake […]
In response to a question this summer, Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota said he didn’t want 79-year-old President Joe Biden to run for reelection in 2024, at which point Biden would be 81. “I think he’s a man of decency, of good principle, of compassion, of empathy, and of strength. But to answer your question directly, […]
On Friday, investigators working for the United Nations delivered a sobering statement to the UN Human Rights Council detailing evidence of Russian war crimes committed as part of the nation’s ongoing occupation of Ukraine, including the rape of children, torture, beatings, electric shocks, forced nudity, and the disappearance of people taken into Russian detention. These […]
Before Arizona was even a state, its first territorial legislature enacted a total ban on abortion in 1864. On Friday, a state judge lifted a decades-old injunction blocking that law. Now, any person who helps “procure the miscarriage” for a pregnant person, “unless it is necessary to save her life” risks spending two to five […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Millions of Americans are now routinely exposed to unhealthy plumes of wildfire smoke that can waft thousands of miles across the country, scientists have warned. Wildfires cause soot and ash to be thrown off into the air, which then carries […]
For decades, many California cities, like Los Angeles and San Diego, have been synonymous with sprawl. But by eliminating parking minimums in areas near public transit, the Golden State just took a major step to change that. Barring a few progressive exceptions, most California cities required all new construction to include a certain number of […]
Prosecutors at the Justice Department have recommended that Rep. Matt Gaetz not be charged in connection with a sex trafficking investigation, sources familiar with the case told the Washington Post. According to the paper, the federal prosecutors involved in the probe have advised their superiors at DOJ that they are worried about the credibility of two key […]