This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A train carrying hazardous materials heading from Pennsylvania to Illinois derailed in early February, causing a major fire and alarm over a possible imminent explosion. The situation has local people worried, despite reassurances from officials, and has highlighted how vulnerable many […]
The Department of Justice has elected not to press charges against Rep. Matt Gaetz after a years-long sex-trafficking probe, according to a CNN source familiar with the subject. In late 2020, during the Trump administration, investigators set out to determine whether or not the Florida Republican had violated federal law, examining what the Washington Post described as […]
In her first public appearance since officially announcing her presidential run, Nikki Haley kept it safe: The former South Carolina governor touted her Indian American identity, declared that America is not racist, and noted that the left’s focus on race is a form of pathetic self-loathing. And, as expected, she declined to mention her former boss […]
After more than three decades in office, Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced Tuesday that she will not be running for reelection in 2024. The 89-year-old senator from California, the longest-serving woman in Senate history, said in a press release that she would “accomplish as much for California as [she] can through the end of next year” […]
On Tuesday, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced she was running for president, the way most people do—with a three-minute-long soft-focus announcement video that begins with a few notes from a piano over an aerial shot of the water tower in her hometown. Haley, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations during […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The flames and deadly black smoke that billowed high over a small town on the Ohio and Pennsylvania border Monday were an acute reminder of a type of commonly used plastic with a particularly troublesome environmental and health record. […]
Jennifer Crane pulled a fifty-pound tote off the conveyor belt, boxed it up at her station, and pushed it back on the belt to be labeled and shipped. Mindful of her quota—70 packages an hour for up to 11 hours—she grabbed a twenty-pound box and felt pain shoot up her arm. Amazon’s medical team told […]
This morning, the driver of a U-Haul in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, hit and injured eight people, apparently intentionally, in a stunning example of the use of a motor vehicle to inflict harm. Two people are in critical condition, according to authorities. Video from the scene shows the U-Haul careening onto a sidewalk, nearly hitting a […]
A bunch of the “Make America Great Again” crew watched the Super Bowl on Sunday—and apparently did not approve of what unfolded on their television screens. I’ll let you guess what they took issue with. The complaints started rolling in as Broadway legend and star of “Abbott Elementary,” Sheryl Lee Ralph, performed a rendition of […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In my mid-20s, I undertook the quintessentially Australian rite of passage of moving to London for a few years. Months into my first English winter, I started having dreams about the Australian wilderness. The images were so vivid and […]
In East Palestine, Ohio residents are unsure of whether or not it’s safe to return to their homes after a train derailment in the area forced officials to do a “controlled release” of vinyl chloride, a “colorless compound that is a human carcinogen and can be deadly if inhaled” into the air to avert an explosion. […]
Late on Saturday evening, the College Board responded to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s wave of attacks on education in Florida accusing the state’s Department of Education of criticizing the Advanced Placement African American studies course, and its use in the state of Florida, as a vehicle for the governors’ far-right politics. The College Board said that it welcomes […]
Ah, the Super Bowl is upon us. Like most American news organizations, we are obligated to offer some predictions today, and the time of the game, for easy web traffic. The game is on at 6:30 p.m. eastern time. I think the Philadelphia Eagles linebackers will try to target Kansas City Chief’s go-to tight end […]
Rescuers in Turkey and Syria continued to pull survivors from fallen buildings on Saturday, as the death toll from a 7.8 magnitude earthquake reached 25,000. The quake last Monday and its aftershocks led thousands of buildings to collapse in the region, injuring tens of thousands of people and leaving millions homeless during below-freezing temperatures. Turkish […]
Monterrious Harris, 22, was sitting in his car outside his cousin’s apartment in Memphis on January 4 when eight men in black hooded sweatshirts and ski masks allegedly approached the vehicle and ordered him out. “I will shoot you!” one of the men said, according to Harris. “I will shoot you!” Harris put his car […]
Outside a Family Dollar store in Gulfport, Mississippi, a stream of cars enter a parking lot. It is early February, a Saturday, but no one is here to shop. Katrina Mateen, 41, stands with her back toward the store’s entrance, where a cluster of teddy bears, fake flowers, and tea candles sit in the sun. […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Proponents of a “moonshot” idea to deal with global heating have been handed a new, very literal, interpretation by researchers who have proposed firing plumes of moon dust from a gun into space in order to deflect the sun’s rays […]
This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Clear blue sky above a forested island surrounded by glittering sea. Wild. Uninhabited. Protected. It appears as if we’re approaching paradise. We cut the boat’s engine and nose into a rocky beach. Crowned with Douglas fir, Garry oak, and […]
A lawyer for Hunter Biden has threatened to sue Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese mogul closely linked to Steve Bannon, over Guo’s role in disseminating material reputedly copied from Biden’s laptop. In a letter sent Thursday, high-powered attorney Abbe Lowell demanded that Guo preserve any evidence that might be relevant to such a suit. Lowell—who Biden […]
President Biden is still riding the high from his State of the Union zinger on protecting Medicare and Social Security. He even gave a whole speech about it yesterday in Tampa. Sensing that Americans don’t like the notion of being denied the retirement benefits they’ve paid into their entire lives, Republicans are trying to argue […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. While 2022 inflicted hardship upon many people around the world due to soaring inflation, climate-driven disasters, and war, the year was lucrative on an unprecedented scale for the fossil-fuel industry, with the five largest western oil and gas companies alone […]
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 […]