This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Chinese surveillance balloon seen over Montana in January riled up state legislatures and got them asking the question: How much control should foreign countries have over US land and natural resources? Senate Republicans in Texas answered, “None […]
Joe Biden’s latest budget, not surprisingly, is pretty pie-in-the-sky. Presidential budgets are wish lists, after all, statements of priorities that throw down the gauntlet for the other side. In this case, Biden is daring congressional Republicans—who only seem to be concerned about deficits when a Democrat is in power—to oppose higher taxes on rich families […]
At a hearing before the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee on Thursday, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw insisted that he was “deeply sorry” for last month’s train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio. But throughout the hearing, he seemed hesitant to commit to measures that could begin to make it right. […]
How much would it take for you to publicly pledge allegiance to a man you privately loathe? Not just once, but night after night, in a pair of stale khaki pants? Really think about it: How much would it take for you to sell out, knowing full well your own lies convince others to live […]
The mother of a close friend, probably around the time I was 16, once told me to never put anything in writing. The way she saw it, the permanence of emails, handwritten notes, and text messages always posed a threat: Something could get yanked out of context to hurt you. I found her warning mildly […]
This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last month had slid off the tracks seven minutes later, it would have been on Dave Anderson’s farm. Echo Valley Farm, where Anderson lives with his wife and six of […]
For someone who claims not to be anti-union, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) certainly seems to have it out for the president of the Teamsters. On Wednesday, at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing, Mullin prefaced a diatribe by averring: “I want to make it very clear, I’m not against unions. I’m not […]
Tucker Carlson’s disdain for his own viewers, whom he supplies with lies and hateful discourse every weeknight as Fox News’ biggest star, apparently extends to one in particular: Donald Trump. Despite playing a MAGA diehard on television, a message Carlson sent in the lead-up to January 6 reveals his private verdict: “I hate him passionately.” […]
Modern conservatives love to own the libs by supporting people who claim they’ve been “canceled.” Yet Kyle Rittenhouse can’t seem to draw a crowd, no matter how many times he gets shut down. In January, Rittenhouse headlined the Rally Against Censorship in Conroe, Texas, an event you’d expect to draw a healthy turnout in a […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Environmental and Indigenous activists rallied outside the White House last Friday, calling on President Joe Biden to reject a major Arctic oil project that has been in development for years. The Biden administration is expected to make a final decision […]
On a Saturday afternoon in August 2019, South Dakota Republican state Rep. Fred Deutsch sent an email to 18 anti-trans activists, doctors, and lawyers with the text of a bill he planned to introduce that would make it a felony for doctors to give transgender children under 16 gender-affirming medical care. “I have no doubt this […]
President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a proposal to raise taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 annually in order to continue funding Medicare, marking a new front in the White House’s efforts to position itself as a critical safeguard against efforts to cut the program. “The budget I am releasing this week will make the […]
Last month, Fox News reported that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had set his sight on 14 school board members across the state whom he wanted to see defeated in the upcoming 2024 elections for not sufficiently upholding parental rights or protecting students from “woke ideologies.” The “target list” had come together after the governor reportedly […]
As Yana Ibragimov and her two young children waited at the Lviv train station, it was snowing. This was March 7, 2022, early in the war in Ukraine. Russian troops were advancing. A day earlier, Russian shells had killed refugees like them in Irpin. The family, tired and scared, searched the parking lot for the […]
Last week, a Florida-based medical group called The Wellness Company made a big announcement: It would provide free medical care to those affected by the February train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Residents, the company said, could simply go to a website to “register to receive free acute virtual care with a licensed doctor or […]
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Fourteen-year-old Callie Lawson is living with a broken bedroom door perpetually ajar, leaking privacy. A teenager’s nightmare. That’s just one of the many repairs needed for her family’s aging mobile home—repairs that most craftsmen, unaccustomed to working on […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67 million […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. February marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 12 months of humanitarian, political, and economic crises. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost, millions of people have been displaced, and while the Ukrainian military surprised the world by […]
On Sunday, President Joe Biden traveled to Selma, Alabama to commemorate the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the violent crackdown on voting rights activists, led by the late John Lewis and Hosea Williams, marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way to Montgomery. The brutal attack perpetrated by state troopers on March 7 left Lewis with […]
About a month since the disastrous freight train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, another Norfolk Southern train has gone off the tracks. Twenty or so of the 212 cars on a cargo train derailed near Springfield on Saturday evening, but according to a spokesperson with the company, there was no presence of […]
On Saturday, Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has become a darling of the US far-right, attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC. After losing his reelection bid last October to three-time president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro self-exiled in Florida, where he has been living the life of a retiree, […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Jutting out of the permafrost on a mountainside on Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago, the entrance to the world’s “doomsday” seed vault is worthy of any James Bond movie. Surrounded by snow, ice and the occasional polar bear, the facility houses […]
The Conservative Political Action Conference, the New York Times reported on Saturday, is not what it used to be. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis skipped out on what has for years been the conservative movement’s premier cattle call. Mike Pence will be at a donor retreat instead. Fox News will not be streaming the event, nor […]
Donald Trump has been running for president for more than three months, but it has sometimes been easy to forget. Fox News, which lent him an endless supply of on-air advertising during his last two campaigns, has all but blacklisted him, offering hours of free programming instead to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Although Elon Musk’s […]
Earlier this week, Florida State Sen. Jason Brodeur introduced a bill that would require bloggers to register with the state government when they are paid to write about the governor and other political figures. After registering, bloggers would be forced to file monthly reports listing every one of their posts, how much they were paid […]
LIV Golf advertises itself as “Golf but louder.” Since its debut last year, LIV (which is not an acronym; it’s a Roman numeral) has sought to take over the market from the PGA Tour by playing music over the loudspeakers during tournaments, shooting t-shirts into the crowd, cozying up to Donald Trump, and—mostly—paying famous golfers […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The US Justice Department has sued the two petrochemical giants behind a facility in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” responsible for the nation’s highest cancer-risk rates caused by air pollution—a major lawsuit that seeks to substantially curb the plant’s emissions. Unveiled on […]
Tina Peters, the former Colorado election official who has been charged with election fraud, could be going to jail for obstructing a government operation. Peters made national headlines last year when she pleaded not guilty to numerous felonies related to her alleged participation in a scheme to prove that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. […]
A South Carolina woman was arrested this week for allegedly taking abortion pills in October 2021 to end a pregnancy. The State reports the Greenville woman, who was 33 at the time, had sought medical care for labor pains. At the hospital, where she had a stillbirth, the woman informed medical staff that she had […]
This piece was published originally by Capital & Main. What the hell is “net zero” anyway? “Zero” is an elegant word, the last word in a descending line down a scale from something to nothing. And so, among our nation’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, it’s getting popular. ExxonMobil claims it’ll be heading there by 2050. So do Shell and […]
In early February, days after a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying toxic chemicals including vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate and isobutylene derailed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio, authorities opted to burn off the materials to avoid an explosion. This prompted an evacuation of residents close to the site and images seen around the world […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Before the sun rose on a cold January morning, Alex López navigated an 18-wheeler through busy traffic on the 710 freeway. He was headed to the Port of Long Beach, just south of Los Angeles, to retrieve a shipping container […]
This story was reported by Public Health Watch and is being co-published by Investigative Reporting Workshop and Mother Jones. Even as wildfires intensify each year, the people who risk their lives to fight them are often denied workers’ compensation for what firefighters contend are job-related cancers. This is happening even though all 50 states have laws or […]
In a scathing letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Norfolk Southern worker and Teamsters union rep denounced the rail company’s cost-cutting business model, alleging that workers who were deployed to clean up February’s vinyl chloride spill have experienced adverse health effects. “I am writing to share with you the level of disregard that Norfolk […]
“It’s a strange way to be,” Kate Abramova said. “You live in the city you are living in, but you are living in Russia in your head.” Kate is part of the Russian independent news organization Meduza, which was recently declared an “undesirable organization” by the Kremlin. We were introduced shortly after Putin’s troops began […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Mysterious whale feeding behavior only documented by scientists in the 2010s has been described in ancient texts about sea creatures as early as two millennia ago, new research suggests. In 2011, Bryde’s whales in the Gulf of Thailand were first […]
A Republican lawmaker has filed a bill that, if passed, would, apparently, eliminate Florida’s Democratic Party. On Tuesday, Florida state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia filed the “Ultimate Cancel Act“—a bill that doesn’t mention the Democrats by name but would require the state’s Division of Elections to “immediately cancel” the filings and official status of any political party […]
On the eve of his coronation, King Charles faces an apparent predicament: What ever to do with Prince Andrew, the disgraced brother accused of sexually abusing a teenage girl, who can no longer afford his massive estate? And what about the estranged son intent on publicly speaking out against the family’s alleged cruelty? Does one, […]
Editor’s note: The below article 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 features; and more. Subscribing costs just $5 a […]
New York City’s interfaith breakfast, an annual gathering of religious leaders hosted by the city’s mayor, is a typically staid event. But this is Eric Adams’ town now—and anything goes, including overt dismissals of fundamental, overwhelmingly supported U.S. Constitution doctrines and one deeply absurd sponge metaphor. “Don’t tell me about no separation of church and […]
Using Coinbase to facilitate racism and hate is apparently no longer against the cryptocurrency platform’s rules under little-noticed revisions the company made to its terms of service several years ago. Until August 2021, the “Prohibited Uses” section of Coinbase’s user agreement banned customers from wielding the platform to “incite, threaten, facilitate, promote, or encourage hate, racial intolerance, […]
This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. What goes through a person’s mind when disaster strikes? In Jake Bittle’s The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, an ambitious book that details the radical transformations climate change is wreaking on American life, we are given a glimpse. […]
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two separate cases that challenge President Biden’s plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt for approximately 40 million Americans. The two highly watched cases are both quite technical. But in the first argument of the day, Justice Sonia Sotomayor managed to cut through […]
During Rep. George Santos’ second run for a congressional seat on Long Island—he lost his first—he helped raise money for and direct a political action committee called Rise NY that was set up in 2020 under New York State law. Its declared mission was to focus on voter registration, education, and turnout. The PAC collected […]
Last Tuesday, as the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in key case that could shape the future of the internet, it quickly became clear that some important information was missing. No one seemed able to explain how the algorithms that underlie the Internet actually function. “I was ripping my hair out.” “These are not […]
President Biden’s cabinet is the most diverse in American history, according to the White House. But in Tulsi Gabbard’s view, the bragging right is anything but. In fact, the former Democrat believes it warrants comparison to Adolf Hitler. “They’re are proud to be judging people, hiring people, selecting people based on race,” Gabbard said during a […]
Preparations are underway for King Charles’ coronation, a lavish affair that’s expected to see the only G-7 economy likely headed for a recession this year dig deep into taxpayer funds to host an anachronistic pageant honoring hereditary rule. If that doesn’t smack of a grand old time to you, well, you’re in good company. Some […]
Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a legislative proposal to “fight against Biden’s border crisis.” The bill, if approved by the Republican-dominated legislature, would make it a third-degree felony to “knowingly transport, conceal, or harbor” an undocumented migrant “within or into the state,” punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 […]
In his 6.5-by-14-foot cell, Leo Hylton keeps an unopened cherry-flavored Hint seltzer. Since March 2022, he’s held on to the bottle as a prized possession, a “touchstone” that he says helps remind him of “the visceral feel” of the first day he spent outside the Maine State Prison in 12 years. Hylton left for work. […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As a series of deadly storms whipped through California’s wine country, liquefying fields and turning vineyards into wading pools, thousands of farmworkers in the region were forced to stay home. Though the power has been long since restored and roads reopened—many […]
Earlier this month, the New York Times published an article about the least pressing issue arising from the legalization of marijuana: Dogs are getting stoned. That might strike you as strange, since humans do not get high from eating raw weed. The cannabinoid receptors in our brains respond to cannabis only after its THCA has been heated […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Georgia, a state once known for its peaches and peanuts, is rapidly becoming a crucible of US clean energy technology, leading a pack of Republican-led states enjoying a boom in renewables investment that has been accelerated by Joe Biden’s climate agenda. […]
Nearly three months into 2023, it’s easier to count the states that aren’t considering legislation attacking LBGTQ rights. Around 327 bills proposed this legislative session target queer and trans people across the country, and much of their impact would fall on kids: the nonbinary student afraid of losing their home and family if their school […]
A dozen Democratic state attorneys general have opened a new front in the legal war over mifepristone, the “gold standard” medication used in the majority of all US abortions. In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, the AGs—from states including Arizona, Illinois, and Washington—accuse the Food and Drug Administration of imposing unnecessarily “onerous” restrictions on mifepristone, which is used […]
At this moment, there’s only one confirmed Democratic candidate for president in 2024: Marianne Williamson. The self-help author, New Age guru, and spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey confirmed her candidacy in a Facebook post on Saturday, writing that she was running for president a second time to “bring an aberrational chapter of our history to a […]
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The plastic crisis looks like a sperm whale filling up its stomach with bags. It looks like cucumbers and bananas—which have perfectly good skins of their own—wrapped in single-use plastic. But before all that, it looks like a burning train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio. Before […]
Cheerios. Fruit of the Loom. Cheetos. What do all these brands have in common? They’ve all relied on the exploited labor of migrant children, according to the New York Times‘ latest investigation. Journalist Hannah Dreier, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2019, pulled back the curtain on the shadow workforce of kids who are forced […]
The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention are warning public health officials about a significant uptick in stomach infections caused by an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria. On Friday, the CDC issued an advisory, saying that they’re monitoring an increase in cases of shigellosis, an illness that can cause diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. Caused by […]
It’s a sad day for fans of mediocre comic strips. The long-running series Dilbert will be removed from several local and national publications after its creator, Scott Adams, called Black Americans a “hate group” and urged white Americans to “get the fuck away” from them in a recently uploaded YouTube video. On Friday, publications like […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Americans are looking for greener ways to die, and a new wave of deathcare startups are rising to the occasion. After death, bodies are typically handled in one of two ways: embalmed and buried in a casket, or incinerated and […]
In a speech marking the first anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday vowed to push for victory and praised Ukrainians for their enduring strength. “Our faith has grown stronger. Our morale has been reinforced. We endured the first day of a full-scale war,” Zelenskyy said in a defiant speech that referred to […]
The messages left on the group chat are the record of a modern-day exodus. “There is only one way out of Melitopol,” the group chat administrator cautioned on September 20, referring to the Russian-occupied city in southern Ukraine. “There are not any safer routes!!!” Other messages are more personal. “Looking for a spot for a […]
John Hagee’s been around. And around. And around. The pastor has been a prominent figure in GOP presidential races for years, with his support sought after by candidates from the Bushes (H. and W.) to Trump—and now Nikki Haley. As the founder of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas (established in 1966), Hagee made a name […]
After waking to the sound of explosions on February 24, 2022, the morning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Anastasiya Volkova knew that she and her family had to leave Kyiv. They were visiting the city from their home, an ecovillage, in the Ukrainian countryside two hours south of the capital, far from where the sound […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Joe Biden’s administration has been urged not to sink its own climate goals by approving an unprecedented ramp-up of oil export infrastructure off the Texas coast that could result in planet-heating emissions equivalent to three years of the US’s entire emissions output. […]
On Thursday prosecutors updated their indictments against former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, expanding on allegations the feds initially filed in December. Bankman-Fried ran the now-collapsed FTX crypto-trading platform and made a name for himself as a disheveled, casually dressed boy genius. He made no secret of his desire to use his new wealth to support […]
Four months after a Mississippi police officer shot a Black 15-year-old, Jaheim McMillan, in the head outside a Family Dollar store, the state’s Department of Public Safety has released video footage of the encounter, following the state attorney general’s announcement Wednesday that a grand jury found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by law enforcement. The […]
One of my favorite recent documents in American politics is Evan Bayh’s schedules from his last year in office as a Democratic senator from Indiana. In the months following his 2010 announcement that he would retire rather than seek re-election, the Associated Press reported, the man who was almost Barack Obama’s running mate “held more […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Thousands gathered at New Jersey’s Point Pleasant beach on Sunday with a united mission: to pause offshore wind projects in response to recent whale deaths along the New York-New Jersey coast. The gathering unfolded even as officials dispute the notion […]
In November 2015, Nohemi Gonzalez was a 23-year-old California State University-Long Beach student studying abroad in Paris. That’s when a coordinated series of terrorist shootings and bombings in the city killed 130 people. She was one of them. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks—but Gonzalez’s family charges that the massive search engine Google is also partially […]
In his seemingly never-ending quest to remove “divisive concepts” from Virginia’s schools, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has taken a page right out of Ron DeSantis’s playbook and called for a review Virginia’s AP African-American studies programs. According to a report this weekend from the Washington Post, Youngkin, a Republican, asked state officials to review the curriculum to […]
Editor’s note: The below article 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 features; and more. Subscribing costs just $5 a […]
This piece was originally published by Capital & Main. Over the last few years, as California has introduced stronger regulations on oil and gas drilling aimed at protecting public health, a pattern of events has started to emerge. Here’s how it typically goes: After years of advocacy, environmentalists successfully push for new oil and gas drilling regulations. Then the […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. During his Thursday visit to the site of a fiery train derailment that may have poisoned a small eastern Ohio town with a range of highly toxic chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency chief, Michael Regan, told residents: “All families need to know […]
As the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches, assessing the extent of the enormous toll on lives is impossible. Millions of people have been forced from their homes and tens of thousands have been killed, while cities and towns throughout the country have been destroyed. In the midst of the suffering, remarkable […]
After weeks of anticipation, the Biden administration has finally followed through with the plan to revive a policy first proposed during the Trump administration. It would make migrants ineligible for asylum in the United States if they don’t first seek protection in countries they passed through on their way. The proposal for the so-called transit […]
For a group that constantly complains that Democrats enjoy “making everything about race,” the right’s biggest names are suddenly eager to push the narrative that the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and the Biden administration’s response to the disaster are the result of racism against white people. That’s the big takeaway from Tucker Carlson, […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. American homes in flood zones are overvalued by hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Low-income homeowners in states controlled by Republicans are especially at risk of seeing their home values deflate […]
After the recent shooting at the University of Michigan, staff at Vanderbilt University in Nashville sent an email offering support and comfort to students. “In the wake of the Michigan shootings,” it read, referring to the February 13 attack that left three students dead and five injured, “let us come together as a community to […]
A wealthy executive I interviewed for my book a couple of years ago told me that his kids had attended Lakeside Elementary, the same Seattle school where the Gateses, the Bezoses, and other local tech royalty sent their children. “Someone flew a private jet to one of the soccer games,” he said. That “someone” is […]
The United States has popped a whole bunch of balloons lately. Earlier this month, famously, an American fighter jet took out a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina with a Sidewinder missile. In the weeks to follow, American jets shot down three more objects floating high above the United States and Canada. […]
This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Years ago, Christopher Kyba was skeptical about astronomy data collected by citizen scientists—after all, it relies on people making naked-eye assessments of the night sky. But when a student wrote to him with a question about measuring the sky’s brightness, he thought […]
The water level at Lake Powell, the massive reservoir on the Colorado River whose southern reaches straddle the Utah-Arizona border, hit a record low this week, sinking to just 3,522 feet above sea level. A 23-year megadrought combined with climate change has left the reservoir at just 22 percent of its capacity—so low that it […]
Former President Jimmy Carter has decided to begin hospice care in his Plains, Georgia home. The news was disclosed on Saturday in a brief statement from the Carter Center: After a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter today decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive […]
“You’re in!” the email said. “Welcome to the new Bing!” Last Sunday, I joined a small wave of users granted early access to Microsoft’s new chatbot backed search engine, put forward as an “AI-powered copilot for the web.” Given that “multiple millions” across 169 countries were stuck on the waitlist, I felt like Charlie waving […]
On Friday evening, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the “breaking” news that father would visit East Palestine, Ohio, next week, in the wake of the train derailment there whose aftermath has cloaked the region in a toxic cloud, killed thousands of fish, and required the evacuation of residents who fear longterm health risks. Breaking News: Trump […]
On Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris told an international security gathering that the United States has formally determined that Russian forces have committed “crimes against humanity” during their invasion of Ukraine. “There is no doubt: These are crimes against humanity.” “Let us be clear: Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Kathryn Huff grew up in Bellville, Texas, a city of about 4,200 residents in the rural area west of Houston, and discovered at a young age that she had an aptitude for math. She remembers the moment that she […]
The New Orleans Police Department on Wednesday pulled a new recruitment video featuring, among many things, rainbows and Big Freedia backup dancers, that had aimed to promote a more diverse workforce after the video instantly attracted a flood of homophobic comments and hate speech. “The immediate reactions were just hate—horrible, slanderous, makes-your-heart-sink type comments, like, […]
Tucker Carlson—the Fox News host who has made a wildly successful career out of pushing white nationalism on what is arguably the most racist show on television—is an entertainer, not a reporter. Carlson’s lawyers said as much when he was accused of slander for falsely claiming that Stormy Daniels had extorted President Trump. As NPR […]
On Friday, a federal judge in Washington, DC sentenced a veteran GOP operative to 18 months in prison for funneling $25,000 from a Russian businessman to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Jesse Benton, a longtime aide to both Ron and Rand Paul, was convicted in November on six related charges. The court found that he and another GOP […]
The Torah tells its followers to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,” so that’s what Lisa Sobel, a devout Jewish woman from Louisville, Kentucky, set out to do. It wasn’t easy. First, she endured three years of infertility. Then, she and her husband embarked on a $50,000 In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) journey, during […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Thousands of employees of the Environmental Protection Agency are lobbying this week for Congress to address staffing issues that they say are limiting their ability to meaningfully carry out the Biden administration’s ambitious climate goals. Leaders of AFGE Council 238, a […]
Tesla just realized that testing “self-driving” vehicle technology on public roads isn’t such a good idea, after all. Today, the automaker recalled nearly 363,000 cars equipped with its “Full Self-Driving” technology after a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that the Autosteer feature “led to an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety […]
Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Daniel Werfel, President Biden’s nominee for IRS commissioner, though not nearly so contentious as it might have been, hinted at partisan battles to come over America’s most beloved federal agency. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden commenced the hearing by calling out America’s “two-tiered” tax system—one set of rules for most […]
President Biden on Thursday, in his most detailed remarks addressing the recent spate of aerial objects that were shot down over North American skies, said that there is no evidence tying the three unidentified objects to foreign surveillance programs. Officials, however, are still working on confirming the exact details of the objects and their provenance. […]
Earlier this month, a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, triggering a massive fire and forcing everyone within a one-mile radius of the crash to evacuate. To avoid a potential explosion, officials conducted a controlled detonation of five tankers three days later, sending carcinogenic vinyl chloride into the air. Two days later, […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Deep underneath the sodden soils and the berms of snow that now coat California, fuels for fire are waiting to sprout. Grasses and other quick-growing vegetation, spurred by the downpours that saturated the state at the start of the year, […]
In the fall of 2020, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton faced a mutiny. Seven high-ranking staffers suspected that the state’s chief law-enforcement officer was using the powers of his office to benefit an Austin real-estate developer named Nate Paul, who had given generously to the Republican’s re-election campaign. The staffers put their concerns in writing, […]
Today, I think we’ve seen the entire 2024 Republican presidential primary writ small. Let’s start with specifics and then go broad. This morning, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced she is running for president. She did so at a relatively normal rally with a pre-Trumpian tone, a reminder that once a “BYAH” could sink a campaign. And it was so […]