It was shocking news: Charles McGonigal, a former counterintelligence chief for the FBI, was arrested for his alleged role in two separate schemes. In one, he purportedly accepted $225,000 from an Albanian-American businessman, while he was still in the FBI, and did favors for that businessman and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. In the other, […]
This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In September 2022, two months before PhD student Megan Kerr was scheduled to board a military plane bound for the Antarctic ice sheet, she found herself in a conference room on Oregon State University’s campus, waiting to ask a question that […]
Editor’s note: This short piece accompanied “Forever Home” in the March/April 2023 print edition of Mother Jones. This spring, the US Supreme Court will hear a case that could decide the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the 1978 landmark law that strengthened tribes’ rights to keep Native children out of the foster care […]
“Can you tell the court a little bit about what she was like as a baby?” It was December 2018, and Robyn Bradshaw sat on the witness stand in the Hennepin County Juvenile Justice Center in Minneapolis, fighting for custody of her granddaughter. The night before, Bradshaw had attended a support ceremony with other members […]
House Republicans spent much of their first big oversight committee hearing Wednesday attacking Twitter for denying American voters the chance to look at Hunter Biden’s penis. The lawmakers’ pro-dick-pic position was probably inadvertent. But that is where they landed. The hearing failed to produce any evidence to support the central allegation advanced by committee chair, Rep. Jim […]
Between 2019 and 2022, Jair Bolsonaro governed a country with a population of almost 215 million people, but since losing Brazil’s presidential election to the Worker’s Party’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in late October, Bolsonaro’s real-life universe has shrunk considerably. It is now confined to Kissimmee, Florida, in one of two houses owned by José […]
This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It took only a split second after the climate activists strode into the busy Berlin intersection for drivers on their morning commute to realize what was happening. Several leaped from their vehicles to wrestle the activists off the road, but two […]
Shortly before Election Day in 2020, Steve Bannon was bragging about his success with the “laptop from hell.” He and his allies had been spreading damaging rumors about Hunter Biden—including outright lies—and Joe Biden’s campaign had failed to refute them. “Nobody came out and said anything you’re saying’s not true,” Bannon asserted in an October 31 meeting […]
I’m in my elf pajamas, and one hand holds spiced coffee while the other unwraps my husband’s Christmas gift to me on this bright, bitter cold, bracing morning. It’s a copy of Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook, by Illyanna Maisonet, and naturally, I’m immediately offended. I have the punchiest sofrito in my family and my […]
The average cost of day care in the US exceeds $10,000 annually for one child, according to national nonprofit Childcare Aware. More than half of US parents say the cost exceeds 20 percent of their household income, and nearly three-quarters of families say child care expenses eat up more than 10 percent of their earnings, […]
Sounding a note of unremitting economic populism, President Biden put unleashing domestic economic might at the heart of his third State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Heralding several of his administration’s landmark legislative wins as “blue-collar blueprint” for American growth, Biden detailed an agenda that included going after the tax-evading rich, pandemic profiteers, […]
You don’t have to look far to find people who have been ticketed for jaywalking in American cities. Two of my colleagues eagerly shared their stories of being hit with fines during their morning commutes to Mother Jones’ offices. In 2012, when she was an assistant editor, investigations editor Hannah Levintova was fined $200 for “violating […]
Ever since its acquisition 15 years ago by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, a powerful member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, Manchester City Football Club has been the Future. City has spent billions of dollars to become one of the world’s biggest soccer clubs, but its greatest innovations have come off the […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Caleb Blair entered the Circle K gas station in Phoenix asking for help. “I can’t breathe, I’m hot, I need to sit down. I can’t breathe,” he told the male cashier. He was sweaty, panting heavily, and struggling to stand up straight. […]
Whether you call it “tattleware,” “bossware,” or “surveillance capitalism,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has had enough of exploitative workplace monitoring technologies. Late last week, Casey and a handful of other Senate Democrats introduced the Stop Spying Bosses Act, which would help protect workers from intrusive employer surveillance both on and off the clock. The legislation would require “timely and […]
On January 9, in an interview with Bloomberg, an agency commissioner at the US Consumer Product Safety Commission floated the idea of regulations, or a potential ban, on new gas stoves—citing the “hidden hazard” of natural gas pollutants. As Mother Jones reported in 2021, this is not a new finding. Gas stoves, and the pollutants […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Chess experts make more mistakes when air pollution is high, a study has found. Experts used computer models to analyze the quality of games played and found that with a modest increase in fine particulate matter, the probability that chess […]
A US military fighter jet shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, but the Biden administration has a different kind of foe that has yet to be neutralized: attacks coming from Republicans trying to score political points over the floating white orb that appeared in America’s skies. The […]
As President Joe Biden prepares to launch his re-election campaign in the coming months, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll on Sunday showed that Biden must overcome a lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy and a feeling that voters’ financial situation has worsened since he took office. Biden has not officially announced his campaign, though he is […]
Koch world is over Donald Trump. Americans for Prosperity Action, the group that spends millions on conservative candidates in American elections, backed by the billionaire Charles Koch, announced Sunday that it would take sides in the GOP presidential primary after sitting out the last few cycles—vowing to support a candidate who is not Trump. “The […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s late October in the northeast corner of Wisconsin. Trees have started to change colors and a colder wind whips across Lake Michigan. Gas station marquees welcome back fall hunters on their annual pilgrimage. Tucked away at a technical college, citizens of […]
The giant white, aerial blob that US officials described as a Chinese spy balloon was seen plummeting towards the Atlantic Ocean near Surfside Beach, South Carolina, on Saturday afternoon, having been shot down by a US military fighter jet. “I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday, as soon as possible,” President Biden […]
Bucking decades of political tradition, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) voted for a new line-up of early primary dates in the 2024 presidential cycle. It was a-long awaited move that top Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have championed for years in hopes of making the country’s nominating process more representative of the party’s voters. The […]
Nineteen minutes is basically enough time to watch a sitcom without commercials, cook a frozen pizza in the oven at 400 degrees, or walk one mile at a leisurely pace. But somehow within the first 19 minutes that EMTs Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge were on the scene after 29-year-old Tyre Nichols was severely beaten […]
One time, I accidentally put a personal medical appointment on the public work calendar. Years ago, I tweeted something (very innocuous) from a brand account, intended for my own followers. The modern workplace requires vigilance (and numerous browsers and devices) to demarcate the strictly professional from the private. For you and me, co-mingling can feel […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Deep in the confines of the hulking, brutalist headquarters of the US Department of Energy, down one of its long, starkly lit corridors, sits a small, unheralded office that is poised to play a pivotal role in America’s shift away […]
We’re only three days into Black History Month, and people are already cutting up. Within the first two days of February, police departments in both Miami, Florida, and Columbus, Ohio, unveiled their own separate police cruisers commemorating the month, complete with Kente cloth patterns, raised “Black Power” fists, and Martin Luther King Jr. quotes. And, […]
President Joe Biden seems to be pretty unhappy about the suspected Chinese spy balloon flying over Montana. His administration signaled this by postponing Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing—less than a day before Blinken was supposed to depart. Donald Trump apparently prefers a different response. “SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON!” the former commander-in-chief Truthed […]
The past two weeks have marked a significant escalation in the years-long struggle over the proposed construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (PSTC), a $90 million project that would be built on nearly 100 acres of city-owned land in an unincorporated section of DeKalb County—Georgia’s fourth largest county that encompasses a sliver of […]
Illustration by Shira Inbar On January 5th, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted about the unexpected passing of Quentin Williams, a Democratic member of the Connecticut House of Representatives. “Terrible news today of Q Williams sudden death,” he wrote. “I’m sending every good thought I have to his family and friends today.” Most of the replies […]
A decade ago, with school shootings on the rise across the country, Virginia passed a law requiring all K-12 districts to adopt a violence-prevention method called threat assessment. The method—which relies on trained teams of administrators, counselors, police officers, and others to evaluate and manage alarming behavior—is designed to help avert tragedies like the one […]
At first I figured the Republicans would be all over this. I guess I figured wrong. I’m referring to the bombshell working paper that made headlines earlier this week, in which a team of academic and Treasury Department economists found that the IRS audits Black taxpayers at roughly three to five times the rate of […]
House Republicans removed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday because she is a Black, Muslim woman. Officially, that’s not the reason. But the facts speak for themselves: The removal is the culmination of years of targeting Omar by Donald Trump, the rightwing media, and Republican lawmakers who attacked her religion, […]
Misdirection, an essential tool for magicians, is not usually a component of media criticism. But in a lengthy critique of the coverage of the Trump-Russia scandal published this week by the Columbia Journalism Review, veteran investigative reporter Jeff Gerth deflects attention from the core components of Russiagate, mirroring Donald Trump’s own efforts of the past six years […]
This piece was published originally by Capital & Main. The writer Upton Sinclair once famously said, upon the reaction to his classic exposé of the slaughterhouse industry, The Jungle, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” He thought he was writing a book exposing the horrendous conditions for workers, and instead ignited […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. After months of tense negotiation, a half-dozen states have reached an agreement to drastically cut their water usage and stabilize the drought-stricken Colorado River—as long as California doesn’t blow up the deal. The plan, which was developed without the input of […]
Three weeks after his death at the hands of Memphis police, Tyre Nichols is finally being laid to rest. On Wednesday, friends and family gathered to celebrate Nichols’ life at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Several lawmakers and civil rights advocates, including the Reverend Al Sharpton and Vice President Kamala Harris, attended […]
In 2015, Kerry King was arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma, because she failed to stop her abusive boyfriend from beating her and her young daughter. That’s a slight simplification (read more about her case here), but in essence, prosecutors chose to blame the victim. King, then 28, tried to fight her boyfriend off when she discovered […]
The College Board released the curriculum for its new AP African American Studies course Wednesday, revealing that the group had stripped the course of the topics that prompted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to ban the course. It will no longer contain certain material that DeSantis, who seeks to erase LGBTQ and Black experiences from school […]
Last week, Mother Jones reported that more than a dozen top donors to Rep. George Santos’ first congressional campaign did not appear to exist. The donations from people whose names or addresses could not be confirmed totaled more than $30,000. This pattern of questionable contributions, Mother Jones has learned, extends to Santos’ successful campaign last year. […]
Most websites aren’t known for having a “kill count.” Kiwi Farms is. Its victims reportedly include Julie Terryberry, who in 2016 took her life after being targeted by users of the site. Two years later, after years of harassment from Kiwi Farms trolls, Chloe Sagal lit herself on fire in a public park. In June […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The difference between the carbon emissions of the rich and the poor within a country is now greater than the differences in emissions between countries, data shows. The finding is further evidence of the growing divide between the “polluting elite” of […]
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. David Cottrell stood on what used to be a 14-foot-high cliff at the crumbled end of Blue Pacific Drive. Just a few years ago, this was the fastest-eroding shoreline on the US Pacific Coast; locals here in North Cove, […]
Shauntae Anderson lived for the weekends. Growing up Black and transgender in a small West Virginia city in the 1990s, she spent a lot of time alone, hiding her self-knowledge from her mom and coping with ridicule from classmates. Yet on Friday and Saturday nights, she could lock herself in her room, put on Whitney […]
The cuts have come even for the word itself. “Austerity” is a cornerstone of conservatism—a catch-all term for limiting government spending to promote capitalist growth—and yet the expression seems to have disappeared from deficit hawks’ speeches. “I call it balancing the budget,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2013. “Everyone else is using this term […]
Fresh off securing convictions against the Trump Organization in a tax fraud case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly once again investigating Donald Trump over an alleged hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign. The New York Times reported on Monday that Bragg’s prosecutors are preparing to present […]
The parents of Tyre Nichols, the Black man who was fatally beaten by Memphis police officers, have accepted an invitation from the Congressional Black Caucus to attend President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on February 7. The invitation came days after the Memphis Police Department released bodycam footage that, as warned, showed an abuse […]
On Sunday, Ben Crump, an attorney representing the family of Tyre Nichols, called on Congress to pass police reform legislation in the wake of Nichols’ death at the hands of Memphis police earlier this month. “Shame on us if we don’t use his tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act […]
After more than 14 hours of debate, the Minnesota Senate passed a bill on Saturday that would establish a “fundamental right” to abortion in the state. Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has said he will sign the Protect Reproductive Options Act, known as the PRO Act, into law. The move makes Minnesota the first state to […]
The Memphis Police Department has disbanded the so-called Scorpion Unit whose members abused and fatally beat Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, earlier this month. Those five officers have now been fired and charged with murder. Community leaders and Nichols’ family had called on Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis to eliminate the unit, which worked […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On a chilly recent morning, customers inside a Starbucks in New York City’s midtown were doing what you’d expect: buying coffee, warming up, chatting. But one person was moving through the store with a different purpose: she first approached a woman standing […]
On Saturday, Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed legislation banning gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth and placing an indefinite moratorium on hormone treatment for minors who haven’t yet been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. While Utah is the first state of 2023 to limit gender-affirming care, it is not likely the last: A barrage of state bills […]
At least three people have been killed and four injured after a shooting early Saturday morning in the upscale Los Angeles neighborhood of Benedict Canyon. Two of those wounded are in critical condition, reports the Los Angeles Times. No suspect has been publicly identified. The shooting took place outside a “gathering” at a short-term rental […]
On January 8, the Memphis Police Department released a statement about a “confrontation” between police officers and a 29-year-old Black man, Tyre Nichols, that had taken place the previous evening. Body-cam footage released on Friday night shows glaring differences between the police’s version of events and reality: Five officers brutally beat Nichols to his death. The […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The global energy transition has reached a pivot point, in which fossil fuels have likely peaked in their use for producing electricity and are about to enter a period of decline. This is the idea at the heart of a […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. As a climate reporter, I was well aware of the growing concern about the gas stoves in people’s homes leaking dangerous pollutants, like methane, a potent greenhouse gas and explosive hazard; nitrogen dioxide, which worsens asthma; and benzene, which causes cancer. But I was a renter who had no […]
In an interview with the Associated Press, Pope Francis has become the first Roman Catholic pontiff to denounce laws that criminalize homosexuality. “Being homosexual isn’t a crime,” the 86-year-old pontiff told the AP on Tuesday. Laws that criminalize homosexuality, Francis said, are “unjust,” and the Catholic Church “must” seek to end them. Let’s not get too excited. […]
This article contains descriptions of graphic violence. Nearly three weeks after Memphis police fatally beat Tyre Nichols during a traffic stop, the city has released body-cam footage to the public, warning that it would show an abuse of power that was “heinous, reckless, and inhumane.” Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was stopped by multiple officers […]
In September 2020, George Santos’ congressional campaign reported that Victoria and Jonathan Regor had each contributed $2,800—the maximum amount—to his first bid for a House seat. Their listed address was 45 New Mexico Street in Jackson Township, New Jersey. A search of various databases reveals no one in the United States named Victoria or Jonathan […]
For years, gay and bisexual men have fought back against what they consider to be outdated restrictions on who can give blood. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration finally issued a new guideline allowing men who are in monogamous relationships with men to give blood. Men who have sex with men have long faced restrictions […]
Tyre Nichols was a “good boy” who spent Sundays doing laundry and preparing for the week, his mother told CNN. “Does that sound like somebody that the police said did all these bad things?” RowVaugh Wells asked. “Nobody’s perfect, okay, but he was damn near.” Among the most gutwrenching details to emerge from the murder […]
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. At first glance, electric vehicles seem like rolling disasters for the power grid. Surely the ancient, creaky network in the United States can’t handle the demand for charging those massive batteries. But a new analysis suggests that just a fraction of EV owners could […]
When Adriana Parizzi sees freshman Congressman George Santos (R-N.Y.) on television these days she barely recognizes the man with whom she once shared an apartment in New York City. Parizzi first met Santos in Brazil years earlier. She remembers Anthony, as he is generally known by his Brazilian acquaintances, as the “playful and smiley one, […]
In a stunning development, five Memphis, Tennessee, police officers have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols following a traffic stop earlier this month. All five officers were fired last week, the police department announced yesterday. “These officers were found to be directly responsible for the physical abuse of Mr. […]
In a rare public statement, Elaine Chao, the former transportation secretary and wife of Mitch McConnell, hit back at Donald Trump’s anti-Asian attacks on Wednesday, claiming that the overtly racist insult “Coco Chow” revealed more about her one-time boss than it did about Asian Americans. “When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced […]
It was a usual day in the offices of the Nation, a collection of cluttered warrens overflowing with stuffed filing cabinets, piles of books, and file folders containing who-knows-what in an undistinguished building below 14th Street on Fifth Avenue. This was four decades ago, and I was an editorial assistant for the liberal political and […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was a confronting moment for a vegetarian. First, a pork meatball and then slices of bacon, balanced in a sort of mini BLT, were served to eat by beaming, expectant hosts. The meat even came from a named pig, an […]
In the wake of three school shootings in less than two years, the latest involving a 6-year-old boy, the Newport News School Board on Wednesday voted to fire superintendent George Parker III, citing a loss of trust among the city’s staff and parents. Effective February 1, Parker will no longer lead the district’s public school […]
On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) lashed out at reporters who questioned his decision to remove Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) from the House Intelligence Committee, of which Schiff was the ranking Democrat. McCarthy, who has been repeating these talking points for nearly a year, sounds convincing when he says that Schiff and Rep. […]
Donald Trump will regain control of his Facebook and Instagram accounts with tens of millions of followers after his suspension following the January 6, 2021, attack, Facebook parent company Meta announced Wednesday. Trump had been banned from these social media accounts after he helped to incite the violent attack on the US Capitol. Meta said […]
On Wednesday afternoon, more than a half-dozen campaign committees affiliated with George Santos filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission stating that Thomas Datwyler, a campaign finance consultant, had taken over as the committees’ treasurer. It meant that Datwyler was replacing Nancy Marks, the Santos campaign treasurer who may be key to unraveling the source […]
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is having a moment,” a recent headline declared, one of a host of news reports wondering why the Georgia congresswoman—whose endorsement of the execution of prominent Democrats got her kicked off two congressional committees—is suddenly, sort of, cleaning up her act. But as with everything in politics, it seems that unadulterated, DC-brain ambition is […]
The white nationalist figure Nicholas J. Fuentes ignited a political firestorm by dining with Kanye West and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, he strode out onstage to a crowd of what he claimed were 1,000 followers, chanting “America First.” Behind a podium, flanked by two American flags and one with that slogan, he hit his standard […]
Ever since a 6-year-old boy shot his teacher in early January at a Virginia elementary school, the case has been difficult to comprehend. That starts with the bewildering youth of the child, who authorities said intentionally fired a pistol he’d brought to class at 25-year-old Abigail Zwerner, seriously wounding her. The high-profile case is also […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Dolphins have been spotted frolicking in New York City’s Bronx River, an encouraging sign of the improving health of a waterway that was for many years befouled as a sewer for industrial waste. A pair of dolphins was seen gliding […]
Has the FBI checked Dick Cheney’s house? On Tuesday, a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence announced that classified documents at Pence’s Indiana home had been recently found. The news offers a chance to pause for a moment and consider just how far off the rails the general discourse about former officials’ possession of […]
The pre-sale for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour imploded in November, when tens of thousands of fans waited unsuccessfully in hours-long Ticketmaster queues that failed to secure them an opportunity to purchase any seats. Empty-handed super fans were then devastated a second time when, later that week, Ticketmaster cancelled its scheduled public sale for remaining tickets, citing […]
On January 10, Tyre Nichols, 29, died. Three days before, Nichols was stopped by Memphis police and beaten for three minutes, according to his lawyers for his family. Investigations are underway. Today, nearly two weeks after his death, Tyre Nichols‘ family met with law enforcement and were shown footage of his death. The video has not […]
In 1993, a group of activists rented a warehouse in suburban Westchester County, New York. It was smaller than they’d hoped and had limited ventilation, but the two other locations they’d tried to rent belonged to universities and required jumping through too many bureaucratic hoops—the exact sort of paper trail this group was trying to […]
This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The ocean seafloor is one of the last true frontiers of the unexplored and unexploited. Even as the world above it lurches with the changes of global warming and human displacement, the bottom of the ocean has remained a place so […]
The 2023 Oscars are shaping up to be a lot of the same we see every year—legacy directors getting rewarded—and also a little bit of something different. Many of the actresses in discussion for the awards are women of color, though the actor category remains mostly white. With Everything Everywhere All At Once, a genuinely […]
Earlier this month, in his first on-the-record statement rejecting calls to resign after he admitted to lying about huge swaths of his resume, a defiant Rep. George Santos insisted that he would step down only if voters turned against him. “We’ll find out in two years,” Santos said. But Santos may not have to wait […]
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s decision last month to leave the Democratic Party was, in no small part, an attempt at political self-preservation. The Green Party-candidate-turned-independent-turned-Democrat-turned-indepenent, who has angered Democrats in her home state—and pretty much everywhere—by opposing majority-rule in the Senate, was facing a likely primary challenge from at least one, and possibly several big-name […]
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Niugtaq—the Yup’ik name for Newtok, Alaska—means “rustling grass” in Yugtun, the local Yup’ik language. That’s the sound you hear when you step off the small commuter plane that lands here daily. In late fall, tall dry tundra grass rustles […]
President Biden has chosen Jeff Zients to replace Ron Klain as his chief of staff when Klain steps down sometime in the coming weeks, people familiar with the decision told the Washington Post and Politico. Zients will help the president manage his work with a divided Congress, while other members of his staff prepare him for a […]
George Santos’ ceaseless lies might further diminish the often dubious reputation of Republicans in Congress, but they are also occasionally very funny. On this week’s Saturday Night Live, Bowen Yang offered a hilarious portrayal of the New York congressman—and provided a persuasive explanation for their lack of physical resemblance. “I know that I look Asian,” […]
Vice President Kamala Harris marked the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case by lamenting that the Supreme Court had overturned the constitutional right to an abortion and announcing a series of Biden administration efforts to ensure access to medication abortion. She spoke in Tallahassee, Florida, to about 1,500 abortion rights supporters at a venue […]
A gunman opened fire Saturday night at a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, California, killing at least 10 people and injuring 10 others in the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since the Uvalde Elementary School massacre in May. The five male and five female victims have not been identified. The shooter is still […]
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The terms atmospheric river and bomb cyclone were not in my vocabulary until recently. During the first two weeks of 2023, however, the San Francisco Bay Area was deluged with a series of storms. I […]
One of the little-noticed moves by President Biden in his first days in office was an executive order that required federal agencies to examine their policies and programs to identify whether and how they perpetuate barriers to equal opportunity. It was a stab at addressing structural inequality in the wake of the national protests over […]
A few weeks ago, I was having lunch with a friend who is a former cop and a MAGA-leaning conservative. We were arguing about politics as usual, when he went on a rant about “President Ron Klain.” White House chiefs of staff generally aren’t household names, so I was impressed with his level of knowledge […]
When he ran for president in 2008, the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) denounced the views of Texas evangelical minister John Hagee as “crazy and unacceptable” and rejected his endorsement for the GOP nomination. But tomorrow, former Vice President Mike Pence, who has presidential aspirations for 2024, will engage in a fireside chat with Hagee […]
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Animal testing has long been necessary for a drug to gain approval by the US Food and Drug Administration—but it may be on its way out. A new law seeks to replace some lab animal use with […]
On Friday, for the 50th year in a row, tens of thousands of anti-abortion proponents gathered in Washington, DC, to demonstrate their commitment to “protecting the lives of the unborn.” Originally created to protest Roe v. Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court decision that established the constitutional right to an abortion, the March For Life […]
Donald Trump is not afraid to file a lawsuit, and he certainly no stranger to being sued himself. Once in court, Trump and his attorneys are prodigious filers of complaints, appeals, and protests. In fact, his legal strategy is often “more is better.” But that strategy is suddenly hitting a wall—a federal judge in Florida ruled […]
In the summer of 2011, as Washington deadlocked over the once routine task of raising the nation’s debt ceiling, Kevin McCarthy, then the House GOP whip, decided to mix things up. At a closed-door caucus meeting, the California Republican cut the lights to screen a clip from the heist movie The Town, where Ben Affleck […]
This piece was published originally by Capital & Main. Not only does every good story begin with a question, but the first questions journalists are most likely to ask are often the same, and they start with one of two letters, a “W” and an “H.” But before we get started, let us first tip our hat to […]
Former President Donald Trump has given many denials to writer E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that he cornered her and raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. He’s called Carroll’s story “all fiction,” “a con job,” and “a big fat hoax.” “I know nothing about this woman,” Trump insisted in 2019, when Carroll first […]
Florida’s ongoing war against so-called “wokeism” has reached a new low. On Wednesday, 28 presidents of Florida’s state and community colleges announced that they would seek to eliminate policies and academic programs that are viewed as forcing a “belief in critical race theory” or subjects related to intersectionality. “Our institutions will not fund or support any institutional […]
Alec Baldwin will be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a Santa Fe movie set, New Mexico prosecutors announced Thursday. Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will also be charged. Baldwin fatally shot Hutchins with a Colt .45-caliber firearm while preparing to film a scene for the movie Rust in October […]