After two full days of early voting in Georgia, the state’s remarkable midterm turnout was on track to exceed that of the 2020 presidential election. The contentious Senate race between former college football star Herschel Walker and incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock could help determine the makeup of the upper house of Congress. Georgians are also […]
A record $16.3 billion will be spent on 2022 state and federal elections, according to research published Wednesday. The eye-popping figure comes from a new report released by OpenSecrets, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign finance. OpenSecrets estimates at least $9.3 billion will be spent on federal races—a runaway record for a mid-term election year—and at […]
Editor’s note: This below article is a revised column that first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter is written by David twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media; his unvarnished take on the events of the day; film, book, television, podcast, and music recommendations; interactive audience […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The US funders of a climate activist group that poured tomato soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London have vowed similar attention-grabbing stunts will take place in various countries in the weeks ahead. […]
Some Republicans would have you believe that voter fraud looks like a nefarious group of computer programmers rigging election machines. Others, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, say that the fraudsters are convicted felons who have done their time, completed parole, and registered to vote at the suggestion of Florida Department of Motor Vehicles employees. On […]
Here’s a video of one of the two people from Just Stop Oil explaining why they threw a can of soup at “Sunflowers” by Van Gogh last Friday at London’s National Gallery. listen to her explain the Van Gogh soup protest. she’s got a point, no? pic.twitter.com/cObcWNx8aP — michael mezz (@michaelmezz) October 18, 2022 “I recognize […]
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has paid a little more than $20,000 to a law firm tied to Donald Trump’s failed scheme to overturn the 2020 election. NBC News, which first obtained Johnson’s financial disclosure forms, reports that Johnson’s campaign made two payments to the law firm of James Troupis, Trump’s attorney in Wisconsin, including […]
Monday was a busy day in Georgia politics. In the morning, Georgians could begin early voting. In the evening, Georgia could see their options for governor—Republican incumbent Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams—participate in their first televised debate since they both ran for the Georgia governor’s mansion in the contentious 2018 gubernatorial election. The […]
During a Moms for Liberty summit session called Gender Ideology in Our Schools, a presenter introduced a term I’d never heard before: “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” She cited the work of a former Brown University physician and researcher named Lisa Littman, who, in a 2018 study published in the journal PLOS One, had argued that the […]
It’s become de rigueur for Republicans—especially Republican candidates—to blast away at Big Tech, assailing it for an assortment of ills, such as privacy violations and a presumed (and often unproven) bias against conservatives. Two GOP Senate candidates, in particular, JD Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona, have pounded technology companies. Yet both have […]
Ahead of the Florida primaries in August, Gov. Ron DeSantis went on an “Education Agenda Tour” across the state to endorse candidates for school board races. His efforts paid off. Out of a pool of 30 school board hopefuls who had been handpicked by the governor for aligning with his “parent-centered,” so-called anti-woke, platform, 19 […]
This story was originally published by Pattrn and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A beloved bird is in decline along coastal Louisiana, thanks to the effects of Climate Change. The brown pelican is seeing its habitat shrink as land sinks and sea levels rise. Experts estimate that the state loses a football field’s […]
Another day, another moment of Kanye West tossing his impressive musical legacy into the garbage and disappointing us all. On Monday, it was announced that rapper and producer Ye—as West is now known—agreed to acquire Parler, a struggling conservative social media app. This comes just one week after the musician was restricted from Twitter and Instagram […]
The Justice Department wants Steve Bannon imprisoned for six months and fined $200,000 for contempt of Congress, a charge resulting from Bannon’s refusal to cooperate with the House’s January 6 committee. In a sentencing memo filed Monday ahead of Bannon’s October 21 sentencing, prosecutors said that Bannon had refused to disclose his finances as part […]
Reality television has never been known for its diverse casting, especially on dating shows. Multiple shows have either been sued for racial discrimination or been adamantly called out on social media by fans and non-fans alike. Over the years, some shows have added more people of color to their cast and attempted to change the […]
Netflix’s dating experiment Love Is Blind went viral at the same time Covid did, debuting the day before Valentine’s Day in 2020. The show’s (heteronormative) premise encamps men separately from women, permitting them to talk with one another solely via what are known as “pods”: individual, private windowless cubicles wired so that pairs can get […]
Our democracy may be crumbling. Millions of Americans still deny the results of the 2020 election. And a former president is unlikely to face any consequences for inciting an attack on the US Capitol. But, thanks to the writers at Saturday Night Live, at least we can have a laugh about it. Saturday’s cold open […]
Donald Trump has had it with Jewish people. On Sunday, the former president said on Truth Social that people of the faith have not been “appreciative enough” of all he’s done for Israel and lamented his low approval ratings among Jewish voters in the United States. “No President has done more for Israel than I […]
The St. Paul Police Department held an award ceremony this week to honor Alex Mingus, a Minnesota resident who performed “an act of gallantry and valor” in response to a shooting. But upon accepting the award, Mingus called out the lack of police action on the scene. On October 8, 2021, Mingus was on his […]
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If you stand on the coast of Israel and gaze out across the Mediterranean Sea, you’ll spy deep-blue, calm waters that have sustained humans for millennia. Beneath the surface, though, something odd is unfolding: A process called stratification is messing […]
The Washington Post reported Saturday that a former executive with Trump Media, which owns Donald Trump’s struggling social media platform, Truth Social, is alleging the company broke federal security laws, and that another executive was ousted for refusing Trump’s demand that he give his shares in the venture to Trump’s wife, Melania. Will Wilkerson, who […]
Attempts by businesses to appeal to Gen Z are getting really weird. On October 12, a Twitter user innocently tweeted about singer Katy Perry’s appearance at 2010 Kid’s Choice Awards, where the singer got absolutely blasted by a slime cannon hidden in a box. For whatever reason, the Twitter account of Duolingo, a public company, chimed […]
This story was originally published by YaleE360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was perhaps the most spectacular failed tree planting project ever. Certainly the fastest. On March 8, 2012, teams of village volunteers in Camarines Sur province on the Filipino island of Luzon sunk over a million mangrove seedlings into coastal […]
On Friday night, incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock, a Baptist pastor, and challenger Herschel Walker, a former football star, convened for a debate in Savannah, Georgia to answer questions about the policy issues Americans routinely rank as most important: Things like Abortion. Healthcare. Crime. Warnock’s assignment was to prove he should keep the job. Walker’s mandate […]
This article is produced as a collaboration between Bolts and Mother Jones. For the first time since the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020, voters in Minneapolis and greater Hennepin County will vote for their new top prosecutor. County Attorney Michael Freeman, whose office came under intense scrutiny that […]
In a rambling letter responding to the January 6 committee, Donald Trump waxed nonsense about a witch hunt, Black Lives Matter, and television ratings—littering the entire document with his trademark chaotic capitalizations and election lies. But despite dedicating 14 pages to the matter, the former president declined to answer the only question of consequence: whether […]
It’s an obsolete relic of the 1970s oil crisis. It’s dangerous to pedestrians. And, if you drive a car in the United States, you likely do it every day. It’s time to get rid of right-turn-on-red. If you roll up to a red light in a car in Europe, you have to wait for the […]
On the spring day last year the Supreme Court announced it would hear a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, Sarah Lipton-Lubet knew immediately how the case would end: the court, stacked with six conservative Justices, would kill the right to abortion. A veteran reproductive rights advocate and lawyer who was consulting for multiple reproductive […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Amazon deforestation has soared ahead of Brazil’s environmentally vital presidential election, with an area almost the size of Greater London lost last month alone. Government satellites show a 562-square-mile area of rainforest was destroyed in September, as environmental criminals raced […]
Feel sympathy for the members of the January 6 House Select Committee. They were handed a task simultaneously easy and arduous: demonstrating to the American public that a president—fully supported by one of the nation’s two main political parties—plotted to overturn election results to remain in office, incited violence to prevent the peaceful transfer of […]
The congressional committee investigating January 6 on Thursday revealed new evidence that Donald Trump had a preexisting plan to falsely declare victory on election night in 2020—part of a plot to use made-up voting fraud claims in an attempt to retain power. For the second time, the committee played leaked audio first reported by Mother Jones […]
New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a judge on Thursday to appoint an independent financial monitor to oversee Donald Trump’s finances until her $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against him is resolved. James cited what she said was ongoing evidence of continuing fraud on the part of Trump and his company, including the creation […]
A Florida jury spared Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz the death penalty on Thursday, recommending that he be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The recommendation comes as the result of a three-month sentencing trial to determine whether Cruz would be put to death after he pleaded guilty last year to 17 […]
When Sen. Raphael Warnock addressed several dozen supporters at Atlanta’s East Point Avenue United Methodist Church on Wednesday night, what he didn’t say spoke more loudly than what he did. Warnock’s speech at this outreach event for Latino voters was full of religious and pro-immigration sentiments. “I am a Senator for all Georgia—no matter what […]
The night before the January 6 attack on Congress, Roger Stone danced on a stage in Washington’s Freedom Plaza to a rap song featuring his own money-raising slogan: “Roger Stone did nothing wrong.” Minutes later, the longtime Trump adviser—clad in a pinstriped suit and tan fedora—declared that the “fight” to keep the defeated president in […]
On Thursday, the Social Security Administration is expected to announce its largest cost of living adjustment for beneficiaries in four decades, an inflation-driven raise of up to 8.7 percent that will take effect in December 2023. That increase would match the average annual COLA from 1975 through 1982, an era of recessions and high inflation. Annual Social […]
During his time in the White House, no target provoked as much anger from Donald Trump as the American press. In 2017, he declared, “The press, honestly, is out of control.” In 2019, he called it “truly the enemy of the people.” His reelection campaign sued the Washington Post and the New York Times. Some […]
This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Amy Soranno could have said she was sorry. She knew that was her last, best shot at avoiding prison for her role in organizing the occupation of the Excelsior hog farm near Abbotsford, British Columbia, on the morning of […]
Alex Jones and Free Speech Systems, InfoWars’ parent company, have been found liable for Jones’ Sandy Hook lies—to the tune of nearly $1 billion. The conspiracy theorist had spent years claiming that the deadliest elementary school shooting in US history was a “giant hoax” and accusing victims’ family members of being “crisis actors.” (As I’ve reported […]
In February 2021, as the new vaccines that would tame the Covid pandemic were being released to the general public, an article sourced to an osteopath in Cape Coral, Florida, claimed that the vaccines were “a medical fraud” and did not counter the disease. The shots, it said, “alter your genetic coding, turning you into […]
This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On a snowy January morning in 2022, I walk into Duo, an exclusive little restaurant in the heart of the southern Italian town of Lecce, carrying a polystyrene box filled with two frozen plate-sized jellyfish. Antonella Leone, a senior researcher […]
In Puerto Rico, cheap labor and generous tax breaks—since 2017, more than $100 billion worth—have made US-based pharmaceutical firms the biggest economic players in town. Drug manufacturers have brought in tens of thousands of jobs, albeit with a tax-break price tag of more than $1 million each. But a new report by the nonprofit Center […]
If Matthew DePerno wins his race to unseat Michigan’s Democratic attorney general in November, he’ll become the state’s top lawyer. He will have a staff of more than 500 people, and his duties will include everything from investigating voter fraud to “protecting consumers and addressing illegal business practices.” But as a practicing attorney, DePerno—a vocal […]
Justice Department prosecutors cited Mother Jones on Tuesday in the trial of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. The defense had argued that messages Rhodes sent to a woman whom he later claimed was a lawyer for his far-right group were covered by attorney-client privilege. But based partly on my reporting, prosecutors deemed that argument “a ruse.” Rhodes […]
At the 59 minute mark of [S]election Code—the Mike Lindell-produced documentary on Tina Peters, the Colorado election official who tried to prove that the 2020 election was stolen—there’s a three shot sequence that has haunted me: an image of a computer uploading files, a Thomas Jefferson quote, and then a closeup of Peters caressing a […]
On Tuesday, the Department of Labor released a new proposal for determining whether independent contractors are employees, according to the New York Times. The measure would be a small but significant lowering of a Trump-era standard that could allow more workers to gain the benefits of employment, like guaranteed minimum wage and overtime. The DOL has the ability to set […]
I no longer find the the overwrought drama over whether Elon Musk will acquire Twitter interesting. The showdown has simply overextended itself, featuring more inexplicable legal jargon with each new development. So, until some sort of resolution emerges, I’ll be ducking every headline dedicated to the billion-dollar saga. Still, I am all in for Musk gossip […]
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the late 1970s, a physicist and textiles engineer in Texas named Robert Steadman published a paper called “The Assessment of Sultriness.” The title reflected an unpleasant sort of steaminess—how temperature and humidity combine to make life hard on the body. […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. This year’s midterm elections will decide the direction of a massive legislative package meant to tackle the nation’s agricultural problems. Republican Senate and House members are already vowing they won’t pack it with climate “buzzwords.” Roughly every five years, lawmakers pass The Farm […]
At a rally for Nevada Republican candidates on Saturday, Republican nominee for secretary of state Jim Marchant promised that he and his fellow GOP nominees, if elected next month, would reinstall Donald Trump in the White House in 2024. “We’re gonna fix the whole country and President Trump is gonna be president again,” Marchant promised as Trump stood […]
On Saturday, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) implied Black Americans were “the people that do the crime” in comments railing against reparations. Speaking at a Donald Trump rally for Republican candidates in Nevada, Tuberville described Democrats as engaged in a battle to take from white people and give to Black people whom he stereotyped as criminals. Democrats […]
Ohio’s near-total abortion ban will remain on hold as a challenge to the law proceeds in state court, a judge ruled Friday, allowing abortions up to 20 weeks gestation to proceed. The case, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood last month, has already showcased the harmful effects of Ohio’s abortion ban […]
This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Week by week, thanks in large part to climate change, it seems we hear new stories of natural disasters and their horrific effects across the United States: hurricanes slamming Puerto Rico and Florida, droughts in the American Southwest, wildfires scorching the Pacific Northwest as well as punishing heat […]
New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc told supporters last week that abortion decisions “belong” to “gentlemen” in the state legislature. At a Wednesday night town hall in Auburn, Bolduc said, “It belongs to the state. It belongs to these gentlemen right here, who are state legislators representing you. That is the best way I […]
Rikers Island, New York City’s main prison complex, has long been scrutinized as a hotbed of chaos and violence. Now, new images published in a recent Gothamist exposé give a startling look at the squalid, dangerous conditions inside the jails. We obtained & published exclusive photos from inside Rikers Island jails, icymi. They were shown […]
TV Host Jon Stewart received a flurry of praise on Friday for his unyielding interview with Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who fought for legislation denying anyone under 18 access to gender-affirming treatments. The law, passed last year, is the subject of a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union. A trial on whether […]
Patrick Orlando is trying to get Donald Trump’s attention. With a critical shareholder vote fast approaching, the CEO of the beleaguered Digital World Acquisition Corp.—a so-called SPAC that is supposed to merge with the former president’s social media company—needs all the help he can get. In recent weeks, Orlando has repeatedly tagged Trump on TruthSocial […]
“Ralph who?” my teen asked the other day as I waited on hold to be connected with Ralph Nader. I wasn’t too surprised—it’s been a long time since Nader helped launch the modern consumer advocacy movement, starting with the revelation that the auto industry was cold-bloodedly prioritizing profits ahead of drivers’ lives. Nader was perhaps […]
This story is a collaboration between The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Mother Jones, and Enlace Latino NC. When the tobacco giant Reynolds American cut a check for Brent Jackson’s political campaign in November 2019, it was well aware of the accusations against the Republican North Carolina state senator. Jackson—dubbed “the only mega-farmer” in the North […]
The US military has spent decades cultivating a corrosive environmental legacy around the world. Just last December, about 6,000 people became sick when jet fuel from a World War II-era Navy storage facility reportedly leaked into the drinking water aquifers of Hawaiian residents. Famously, at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune military base, up to 1 million […]
If you’ve watched even a sliver of the campaign ads ahead of the midterms, you’d be forgiven for believing that American cities have turned into cesspools of crime. In a recent ad for New York’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Lee Zeldin, a montage of grainy video footage shuffles between images of pedestrians and even children […]
On Thursday, President Joe Biden said that he would pardon all prior federal marijuana possession offenses. President Biden announced the change—aimed at remedying the socioeconomic disadvantages that people, particularly Black and brown people, face for convictions of marijuana possession—to “relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions.” Since many marijuana possession charges are filed at […]
On Monday, the Daily Beast reported that Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker—who supports forcing women to carry pregnancies to term with no exceptions, even if doing so could lead to death—once asked a woman he impregnated to get an abortion, and then paid for the procedure. Walker vowed that evening that he would sue […]
In the immediate aftermath of such horror, it’s challenging to think beyond the profound suffering of all the people victimized by a mass murder and to focus on the constructive. Yet, initial reporting on Thursday’s massacre of at least 38 people in northern Thailand, a majority of them children, has already revealed behavioral patterns from the […]
I met my husband in 2008 and therefore skipped the whole online dating universe that dominates how we hook up and fall in love in 2022. So I was pretty excited to try out The Right Stuff—the Peter Thiel-backed dating app for conservatives—you know, for journalism, and end my personal streak of dating-app virginity. “Inae […]
In August 1944, just two months after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (a.k.a. the GI Bill of Rights), Harry McAlpin, Washington correspondent for the National Negro Publishers Association, warned that the new law, though race-neutral on its face, would exclude Black veterans. The GI Bill included funding for housing, college, and […]
Editor’s note: This essay is anonymous in order to protect the writer from potential reprisals. Russia is not at war, despite what you may have heard. Despite the mobilization of reservists, the stories and images of destruction and death, despite the refugees fleeing. Russia is not at war, as Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the […]
This video was created by Pattrn and is shared here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. North Carolina’s Outer Banks are home to beautiful beaches, historic sites, and native wildlife. They are also a vacation destination for thousands of people each year. But rising seas and declining beaches have put it all in jeopardy. The islands, and people’s […]
After Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) clinched the Republican nomination for Congress in the state’s right-leaning third district, it seemed like she was a shoo-in for the general election. But recent polling suggests that Boebert’s re-election isn’t as sure as it appears. A new poll by Keating Research has shown Boebert to have the support of […]
As the death toll continues to rise from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ian, President Joe Biden on Wednesday visited several storm-ravaged communities in Florida to meet with survivors and thank first responders working tirelessly on the ground. “We’ve got a long road ahead of us,” said Biden. “I want the people of Florida to […]
Two months before the 2020 election, Joe Kent, a 40-year-old former Green Beret, was being interviewed on a little-watched show called There Will Be Bourbon. With his wavy shoulder-length hair, beard, and T-shirt, Kent looked to be enjoying the privileges of civilian life. But he was disturbed by parallels he was seeing between Iraq and […]
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If you want to cross the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, anytime between October and July, you probably won’t need a boat, a bridge, waders or even waterproof shoes. Most of the year the river […]
The Central Intelligence Agency has a penchant for producing hagiographic narratives about itself. Its new podcast is no exception. The Langley Files, which debuted on September 19, bills itself as a show that provides the public with a “unique look behind the curtain,” sharing interviews with CIA officials and other “exciting” guests, educating the world […]
The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority often rely on “originalism,” professing to apply the Constitution as they believe the founders intended—and did so last term to issue rulings eroding Americans’ rights to abortion and gun control. On Tuesday, during her second day of arguments as a Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson applied this same originalist […]
Editor’s note: This column by David Corn first appeared in his newsletter, Our Land. But we wanted to make sure as many readers as possible have a chance to see it. Our Land is written by David twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media; his unvarnished take on the events of the […]
“Violations of the [Voting Rights Act] should not be made too easy to prove,” a young John Roberts wrote when he worked in the Reagan administration in 1982, “since they provide a basis for the most intrusive interference imaginable by federal courts into state and local processes.” Forty years later, the court’s conservative majority seems […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Los Angeles is living through a historic drought, but that hasn’t stopped some of its most famous residents from keeping their mega mansion lawns and ornate gardens well watered. In response, local authorities have turned to a surprisingly simple trick for keeping […]
When Emile Fox learned that the Florida Board of Medicine, the rule-making body for doctors in his state, was considering banning transgender medical care for youth, he thought about his own transition. Fox, a 27-year-old barista in Orlando, says he had suffered serious mental health problems throughout his teen years and into young adulthood. But […]
The Justice Department’s case against five members of the Oath Keepers militia group is so extensive that it is expected to take a month lay out. But it is also pretty simple: Members of the far-right militia came to Washington on January 6 with a plan to use violence to keep Donald Trump in power. During […]
For years the National Women’s Soccer League ignored allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct against coaches and maintained a culture of “systemic abuse of players,” according to a new report released Monday by former acting attorney general Sally Yates and the law firm King and Spalding, on behalf of the United States Soccer Federation. Yates was […]
A new report suggests that despite the statements of outrage and promises to reevaluate PAC donations, corporate donors have continued to support members of Congress who objected to certifying the 2020 election. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an liberal-leaning watchdog group, said on Friday that a new analysis shows that the 147 members of […]
Maybe it makes sense that “DEATH WISH” was the part that garnered headlines. After all, a record of inciting real-life violence renders such a message concerning. But even as someone who’s on the payroll to keep abreast of the relentless garbage, I didn’t catch the Coco Chow bit until well after a solid day later. […]
Senators in both parties are taking aim at the Brookings Institution, demanding details on funding agreements that, according to the lawmakers, could have allowed foreign governments to secretly influence policy prescriptions produced by the renowned establishment think tank. The scrutiny follows the June resignation from Brookings of retired four-star general John Allen after news emerged […]
Every year, the US Department of Agriculture spends billions of dollars propping up large-scale farming of commodities like corn and soybeans. These crops in turn suffuse the food system, fattening animals on America’s factory-scale meat farms and providing the bulk of sweeteners and fats in processed foods. This style of agriculture doesn’t just underwrite a […]
New York Attorney General Letitia James recently filed a $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump and his adult children, alleging the family had deliberately misled banks, insurance companies, and tax authorities about the value of Trump’s various properties. The heart of that allegation isn’t new—James has been fighting with the Trumps for nearly […]
It’s mostly surprising that it took this long. CPAC has deleted a tweet that called on Democrats to “end the gift-giving to Ukraine.” The tweet featured a Russian flag and referred to “Ukraine-occupied territories.” Most Americans, not to mention much of the rest of the world, call these regions, which Vladimir Putin illegally annexed, Ukraine. The tweet […]
During a vacation earlier this year, a stranger, who later said he was a real estate agent, approached me on a beach in an upscale section of Rio de Janeiro. “What did you think of Joe Biden?” he asked in polished English. I demurred. My interlocutor then went on to tell me that the people […]
This weekend, former president Donald Trump did his best to remind us why he is banned from major social media platforms. In a post on Truth Social targeting Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump declared, “He has a DEATH WISH.” He then pivoted to a racist attack on McConnell’s wife, Trump’s former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, […]
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Lawns began as a flex by the uber-wealthy in 17th-century England. (Look how many resources I can waste to replicate nature, when actual nature is right next to my palatial home!) Today, turfgrass has spread like a green […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Bitcoin is less “digital gold” and more “digital beef,” according to a study that suggests the cryptocurrency has a climate impact greater than that of gold mining and on the level of natural gas extraction or rearing cattle for meat. […]
Last Sunday, Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was forced to exit the game in the second quarter of Miami’s game with the Buffalo Bills after what looked to anyone watching like a serious blow to the head. Tagovailoa appeared to slam his helmet on the turf after being knocked down by a defensive player, got up, […]
Have you been following what’s going on at Yale? I haven’t, because I’m 35 years old and didn’t go there. But James Ho, a Trump-appointed judge who sits on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, has, and he’s pissed. So pissed, in fact, that he has announced in a speech on Thursday that he will […]
Earlier this week, two West Texas men—one of whom was a former warden of a migrant detention center—were arrested and charged with manslaughter in the death of a Mexican national who had recently crossed over the border. An affidavit filed by a Texas Ranger alleged that Michael Sheppard, the now-former warden, and his brother Mark, […]
This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Wearing a navy-blue polo neck emblazoned with the Florida Aquarium logo, Keri O’Neil hugs a white cooler at Miami International Airport. “Coral babieeeeees,” she says, before letting out a short laugh. Relief. The container holds 10 plastic bottles teeming with […]
Six-year-old Phyllis Webstand wore an orange shirt to her first day of school. It was shiny, she remembers, and laced up the front—more importantly, it was a gift from her granny. At the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School in Williams Lake, British Columbia, it was taken from her, as were all the personal belongings she […]
About five years ago, Kat decided to stop taking her birth control pills. She wanted to give her menstrual cycle a chance to return to normal before trying to get pregnant in the future—and anyway, she was beginning to have some doubts about the Pill. Her friends had been talking about what they saw as […]
When the Soviet Union still existed, Anatolii Harahatii made his career as a photographer in the small village of Savintsi in northeastern Ukraine. Snapshots of him as a younger, sharply dressed man appear on many surfaces in the cozy, one-story house he shares with Natalya, a former nurse and his wife of over 40 years. In […]
Every other day, my WhatsApp bursts with messages from friends in Brazil and abroad expressing equal parts of excitement and apprehension as Sunday’s Brazilian presidential elections approach. On Wednesday, my best friend who lives in the country’s capital, Brasília, texted to say she was scared of wearing red clothes to go vote this weekend because […]
During the mid-1990s, trust and estate lawyer Jonathan Blattmachr had an innovative idea that would come to revolutionize the American trust industry. Blattmachr is a veteran of the wealth management field, cutting his teeth at the famous white shoe law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, wealth managers to the Rockefellers and other dynastically wealthy […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. “It’s all about the water,” warned meteorologists as Hurricane Fiona battered Puerto Rico last week and as category 4 Hurricane Ian edged closer and eventually hit Florida on Wednesday. The water refers to the rainfall and storm surge—both of which are becoming more […]