The judge in Donald Trump’s civil rape and defamation trial denied a request by the former president’s attorney to grant a mistrial in the case on Monday. The motion, which was filed Sunday night by Trump attorney Joe Tacopina, amounted to a laundry list of complaints that Judge Lewis Kaplan hadn’t been fair to Tacopina, […]
Last week, the Republican-controlled Montana House of Representatives voted to bar Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr, the state’s first transgender woman lawmaker, from the floor for the rest of the session. Her offense? Telling GOP lawmakers that they had “blood on their hands” for supporting a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. Zephyr’s expulsion from the […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A leading private equity firm that claims to be an industry climate leader in fact almost doubled its average annual greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel investments over the past decade, according to new research. The Carlyle Group’s portfolio of […]
President Joe Biden, for those fortunate enough to have missed it, made a “Dark Brandon” joke Saturday night at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. This was no surprise. Biden’s reelection campaign already references this meme through a picture of the president with laser eyeballs. But the 80-year old president’s reference completes a process through which […]
The success of Donald Trump, an asshole who became president, created a fallacy: Americans want an asshole as their president. This misapprehension greatly appeals, of course, to assholes, especially those in public office, who seem happy to drop the traditional practice of politicians pretending to be nicer than they really are in favor of trying […]
Conservative Supreme Court justices padded their salaries and took gigs abroad that one critic likened to “all-expenses-paid vacations, with a little teaching thrown in,” courtesy of a law school that used access to the justices to boost its fundraising and status, the New York Times reported Sunday. The cozy ties of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence […]
This story was originally published by Yale E360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It is being hailed as a sea change in scientific understanding of the global ocean circulation system and how it will respond as the world heats up. A doomsday scenario involving the collapse of the circulation—previously portrayed in both peer-reviewed […]
Could a blossoming kinship, forged in the fire of unceremonious dismissals on the same day, be developing between Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon? Maybe. That’s one of the big takeaways from Brian Stelter, who reports for Vanity Fair that the two men, in addition to retaining the same entertainment lawyer, have reportedly exchanged several texts in […]
On Friday, Montana joined an alarming number of states to ban gender-affirming health care for minors when its Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, signed a bill that had been condemned as “unconscionable” by the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker. Gianforte, who catapulted to the national spotlight in 2017 after body-slamming a Guardian reporter, signed the legislation […]
In a wide-ranging interview with the Wall Street Journal, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito seethed against criticisms of the high court, appeared to mock the abortion pill, and suggested he knew who leaked the draft majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. “I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible,” Alito said, declining to name […]
This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In an anodyne gray North Vancouver business park, Gavin Schneider is growing a whitish paste he believes will one day replace meat and feed astronauts on Mars. The paste is mycelium, the so-called “body” of fungi. This long-overlooked organism […]
San Francisco’s public officials and tech execs have been crying for years that the city is becoming more violent: the “reign of criminals who are destroying our city,” Democratic Mayor London Breed said in 2021, ends “when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement.” When Cash App founder Bob Lee was […]
This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Ever since brutal winter storms blacked out much of Texas and killed hundreds of residents in February 2021, the state’s government has constantly talked a big game about bolstering its grid and shielding Texans from future disasters. There is shockingly little […]
In his opening statement in the ongoing civil sexual assault and defamation trial against former president Donald Trump, his attorney Joe Tacopina was aggressive, scathing and snarling in his attacks on E. Jean Carroll, the writer who has accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in […]
When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decided to go after Disney last spring for opposing his “Don’t Say Gay” law, he was making it an example. He chose a powerful, high profile target that had disagreed with his policy preferences, and he punished that company for crossing him. In doing so, he sent a clear warning […]
On Wednesday evening, Tucker Carlson broke his silence on his surprise firing from Fox News. After saying he’d taken a moment to step back, Carlson lamented that both political parties had cohered around a set ideology endorsed by cable news. But now, after his dismissal, he foretold an end. “This moment is too inherently ridiculous […]
Fox News on Monday announced that Tucker Carlson, by many measures America’s most-watched cable news star, is leaving. A reason was not immediately provided. “Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st,” a statement read. “Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX […]
In recent years, there has been greater awareness of the need to recast American history by including the stories of this nation’s original inhabitants. Museums have created lesson plans to impart to students a more comprehensive understanding of the erasure of Native peoples and more universities are offering courses on Native history. Ned Blackhawk’s The […]
A version of this essay originally appeared in The London Review of Books. The “Special Military Operation” (the law forbids calling it anything else) got off to bad start – Russian armed forces crossed into Ukraine and found themselves stuck in the mud, low on fuel and provisions, surrounded by a hostile civilian population. Then […]
Tennessee’s Republican lawmakers ended the legislative session early on Friday without taking action on gun control, less than a month after a mass shooter at a Nashville school killed three adults and three 9-year-olds. The state allows 90 days for each legislative session, but lawmakers adjourned after just 27 days, even as thousands of students, parents, […]
The fight over the nation’s debt limit has been brewing in Congress for months and is now ramping up. On Sunday, several Democratic lawmakers called on Republicans to stop using the cap as a bargaining chip for the GOP’s broader efforts to cut social safety net spending, a negotiating strategy that could threaten the US […]
Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville, Kentucky, police officer who fired the shot that killed Breonna Taylor in 2020, just got a new job at a nearby sheriff’s office. The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to local reporters on Saturday that it hired Cosgrove after he passed a background check; following investigations by the state attorney […]
In a historic move, the Environmental Protection Agency will propose limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, according to the New York Times. If implemented, it would be the first time that the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal and gas-fired power plants, which produce 25 percent of the United […]
After a recent poll put him 13 points behind Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, Ron DeSantis decided to lick his wounds and head to Utah, a state where he might actually be more popular than the former president. On Saturday, the Florida governor spoke at the state’s GOP convention, where, amongst pleasantries, promises, […]
Twitter’s blue check marks used to verify the identities of celebrities, public figures, and members of the media. Now, all it verifies is that you’ve got $8 to spend every month. On Thursday, CEO Elon Musk finally fulfilled his promise of stripping every legacy account, from Beyoncé to the pope, of their check marks. Now, […]
In a major, if temporary, victory for abortion rights advocates, the Supreme Court on Friday granted the Biden administration’s emergency request to pause a lower court ruling challenging the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone after a Texas judge suspended it earlier this month. The decision, the high court’s most consequential abortion ruling since overturning Roe […]
Harlan Crow—the second-generation Texas billionaire who lavished Clarence Thomas with expensive getaways in the Adirondacks and Indonesia, purchased the Thomas family home, and let the Supreme Court justice’s mother continue to live there rent-free—has a passion for a particular kind of horticulture. At his $55-million estate outside Dallas, Crow has built what he calls the […]
On March 20, 2023, Storming Caesars Palace, a documentary directed by Hazel Gurland-Pooler, premiered on PBS. It was based on the 2006 book Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty, by Dartmouth history professor Annelise Orleck, which was rereleased in an expanded edition this month. It chronicles the remarkable story of a […]
On Wednesday the DeKalb County Medical examiner released the autopsy results for Manuel Paez Terán, the 26-year-old protester who was killed by a Georgia state trooper during a January 18 raid of campsites set up to stop the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center often dubbed “Cop City.” The autopsy revealed, according to reporting from Fox […]
This week, a long-running legal saga over a prominent right-wing mouthpiece’s false assertions about the 2020 election finally came to an end. No, not Fox News’ historic $787 million settlement with Dominion. I’m talking about MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who just lost a ton of money in the funniest way possible. The wrongest guy in […]
The United States is on the brink of its most consequential transformation since the New Deal. Read more about what it takes to decarbonize the economy, and what stands in the way, here. For the first time in history, the full financial weight of the United States federal government is aligned behind an epic transition […]
The wildest trial in America got wackier Tuesday when the defendant, former Fugees’ rapper Pras Michel, unexpectedly took the stand to defend himself against campaign finance and illegal foreign lobbying charges—hard on the heels of testimony by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Michel said he decided to testify, “after consulting with my attorneys and the […]
The much anticipated $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, widely viewed as one of the most consequential libel cases in decades, is officially over. On Tuesday, Dominion Voting Systems and the cable TV giant reached an eleventh-hour agreement. The details of the settlement are not yet public. News of the deal comes moments after a […]
The United States is on the brink of its most consequential transformation since the New Deal. Read more about what it takes to decarbonize the economy, and what stands in the way, here. This story was originally published by Inside Climate News as part of our Climate Desk collaboration. Andy McDonald recalls a decade-old Kentucky legislative hearing on […]
The United States is on the brink of its most consequential transformation since the New Deal. Read more about what it takes to decarbonize the economy, and what stands in the way, here. This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Russians forces attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power […]
The United States is on the brink of its most consequential transformation since the New Deal. Read more about what it takes to decarbonize the economy, and what stands in the way, here. This story was originally published by YaleE360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In Odessa, Texas, workers at a […]
“It was absolutely revolutionary,” Dr. Marguerite Cohen, an OB-GYN in Portland, Oregon, says. Dr. Cassing Hammond, an OB-GYN in Chicago, Illinois, describes it as a “sea change—a godsend for so many of the patients who needed it.” These physicians are referring to the advent of mifepristone more than twenty years ago, a drug that has been approved […]
The United States is on the brink of its most consequential transformation since the New Deal—a colossal shift from a fossil fuel economy toward one based on cleaner and renewable sources of electric power. This difficult yet vital makeover, the sheer scope of it, and the obstacles to its success are at the heart of […]
The United States is on the brink of its most consequential transformation since the New Deal. Read more about what it takes to decarbonize the economy, and what stands in the way, here. Leer este articulo en español. Like the planes in the image above, microgrids are poised to take off. If you’ve never heard […]
The United States is on the brink of its most consequential transformation since the New Deal. Read more about what it takes to decarbonize the economy, and what stands in the way, here. This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration. Imagination is a powerful thing. Mary Shelley […]
Ralph Yarl, a Black 16-year-old, rang the doorbell of the wrong house when he went to pick up his younger brothers from a playdate in Kansas City last week, according to his family. A white man in his 80s came to the door and shot him, according to reporting from CNN. Yarl was shot twice, […]
Florida’s government is very busy. The GOP-dominated legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican darling considered a top contender for the 2024 presidential nomination, are currently hard at work in a special legislative session, cranking out bills that serve a far-right agenda. On Thursday, for example, they found time to pass a six-week abortion ban. […]
Two months before a right-wing judge in Texas threw the legal status of the abortion pill mifepristone into limbo, a group of red-state attorneys general ganged up on executives at CVS and Walgreens, trying to stop them from filling prescriptions for the abortion medication through the mail. In a letter citing a federal law that hadn’t been […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In February of 2022, Colombian human rights activists Teófilo Acuña and Jorge Tafur were assassinated in front of their friends and families after decades of working to protect small, rural communities from mining and land-grabbing. Their killers have not been brought to […]
For more than a month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been on medical leave, with no indication of when she might return to her powerful seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Having missed dozens of Senate votes, she’s facing calls to resign, as her inability to do her job is obstructing President Joe Biden’s judicial […]
Over the past two decades, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has reported on mandatory financial disclosure forms that he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in income from a real estate firm. But that real estate closed its doors in 2006, according to a Washington Post investigation. The Post found that Thomas erroneously reported income […]
Two deadly shootings took place on Saturday: one at a teenager’s birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama, killing four and injuring several others, and the other in a park in Louisville, Kentucky, killing two people just days after a gunman in the city killed five bank employees. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, […]
Fox News luminaries will be taking the stand over the next six weeks, as Dominion Voting System’s landmark defamation case against the conservative media behemoth is set to go to trial on Monday. The jury will decide whether the network can be held liable for making groundless claims that Dominion’s voting machines rigged the 2020 […]
This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The floodwaters rose swiftly and silently inside Nicole Norris’s family home and other residences of the Halalt First Nation on Vancouver Island when a storm unleashed a furious deluge of rain in November 2021. Her brother, asleep in the […]
Three unions representing 9,000 faculty members at Rutgers University are suspending their strike after reaching a tentative framework on Friday night with Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) and his staff. After more than nine months without a contract, faculty unions and the Rutgers administration worked out the deal in marathon negotiations in Trenton. The framework secures […]
Gov. Ron DeSantis is on the verge of signing a bill that would allow people in Florida to be executed without a unanimous decision by a jury. Instead, an 8-4 vote would be enough for someone to be put to death in the state. The bill passed the Florida Senate last month and passed the […]
In 2017, Matthew Kacsmaryk, then deputy general counsel at the right-wing First Liberty Institute, criticized protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions in a draft law review article. The Obama administration, he wrote, was ignoring doctors who, for religious reasons, “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use […]
Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s former CIA Director and Secretary of State, was never going to be president. Now he’s admitted that he won’t be running in 2024. Few Republicans will think twice; a poll this month put him at 1 percent. Pompeo has long harbored presidential ambitions. The problem was that his base never extended […]
This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. President Joe Biden, whose own press releases refer to him as a “car enthusiast,” may have just signed a death warrant for the gas-powered car. On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed aggressive rules to curb air pollutants and carbon emissions from […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Even America’s favorite pastime is not immune from climate change. A new study from researchers at Dartmouth College says that a warming atmosphere could be causing more home runs in professional baseball. The research, published last week in the Bulletin of the American […]
The Florida legislature on Thursday approved a ban on abortion after six weeks gestation, before many women know they’re pregnant. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign the bill into law, ending the state’s status as an abortion destination for women throughout the South and likely forcing many to travel even farther to access […]
On Thursday morning in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Martin Gliserman, a silver-haired English professor wearing his cap and gown, looked to be an elder statesman of the picket line. But despite having taught at Rutgers for more than 50 years, this was all new to him. For the first time in Rutgers’ 257-year history, the […]
After Black workers at a Tesla plant in Fremont, California, came forward with explosive allegations of racism at the company last year, the state Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a major ruling in the case, allowing the workers to seek a public injunction requiring the company to acknowledge and address workplace discrimination. In other words, […]
This article was produced as a collaboration between Bolts and Mother Jones. In Minnesota, a disagreement on how to prosecute two teenagers suspected of killing a 23-year-old has put two of the state’s leading criminal justice reformers into a high-profile political dispute, testing how much change even progressive politicians are willing to embrace. Last Friday, […]
By any measure, Stephanie Seneff is an accomplished scientist. A senior researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, she’s been a leader in the emerging field of computer response to human speech. After earning two PhDs from MIT in the early ’80s, in the following decades she paved the way […]
If you’re not driving an electric car yet, you probably will be soon. (Provided, of course, that you drive a car at all.) The Environmental Protection Agency just proposed two ambitious new regulations that seek to cut vehicle emissions dramatically and ensure that two-thirds of new vehicles sold by 2032 in the US are all-electric. […]
Days after Nashville officials unanimously voted to reinstate Rep. Justin Jones, one of two Black Democrats expelled last week for participating in a gun control protest, the Shelby County Commission on Wednesday voted to reappoint Justin Pearson to Tennessee’s House of Representatives. 📷 HAPPENING NOW: @garrison_hayes is on the ground with some exclusive photos and […]
The burning question over whether Prince Harry will attend his father’s big boy party has finally been answered: Yes. Yes, he will. “Buckingham Palace is pleased to confirm that the Duke of Sussex will attend the Coronation Service at Westminster Abbey on 6 May,” an official statement proclaimed Wednesday. “The Duchess of Sussex will remain […]
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has filed a lawsuit against Congressman Jim Jordan, telling the Ohio Republican to back off the DA’s case against Donald Trump. Even before a New York grand jury officially indicted Trump, Jordan and other top House Republicans were threatening Bragg with an investigation of their own, apparently aimed at helping […]
On Friday night, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk rolled back the FDA’s authorization of mifepristone, the first drug in the standard two-part medication abortion protocol. The ruling is an unprecedented judicial act: A federal court overruling the long-standing scientific judgment of the FDA. As if to underscore the dangerous absurdity of the situation, Kacsmaryk quickly abandons science in […]
Former President Donald Trump has missed the deadline to file a personal financial disclosure—a requirement of all presidential candidates shortly after they announce their campaigns. It’s a simple document in which politicians are supposed to make public their assets, their liabilities, and their sources of income. The idea is to give voters some transparency about […]
In a unanimous vote Monday, the Nashville Metropolitan Council voted to reinstate Rep. Justin Jones, one of the two Black Democratic lawmakers expelled last week after protesting for gun control from the chamber floor. Their demonstration was in response to a deadly mass shooting at a Nashville grade school that killed six people. Justin Jones […]
After ProPublica revealed that billionaire and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow spent decades lavishing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with pricey gifts and globetrotting trips, follow up stories noted Crow is an ardent collector of Nazi memorabilia and indigenous American artifacts. What’s on display at his Dallas mansion includes two Hitler paintings, a signed copy of Mein Kampf, […]
The November midterms proved it. So too, did the most important race of 2023 when Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly chose a progressive judge for their supreme court: Abortion rights win elections. Yet, despite the issue’s resounding success on the ballot after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, Republicans have only lurched deeper to the […]
Sometime in January, as a string of “atmospheric rivers” from deep in the South Pacific pummeled California, that query began hitting my phone in the form of texts, emails, and tweets. In a chapter of 2020 book Perilous Bounty (excerpted here) I had written about a Biblical-scale flood that had submerged much of the state […]
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he wants to pardon a man found guilty of murdering a racial justice protester in July 2020. The man, Daniel Perry, was found guilty on Friday nearly three years after he shot and killed Garrett Foster. Abbott announced his intention to pardon Perry less than 24 hours after the verdict. […]
The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing a regulation that would ensure up to two-thirds of all new cars sold by 2032 will be fully electric, according to reporting from the New York Times and Washington Post. The proposal would go beyond President Joe Biden’s previously stated goal to have “50 percent of all new vehicle sales be electric by […]
Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said the administration is willing to do whatever it takes to protect access to the abortion drug mifepristone, after a federal judge in Texas suspended the FDA’s approval of the medication on Friday. As my colleague Madison Pauly reported, the ruling could have “potentially explosive implications for the […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Brandon Johnson, the newly elected mayor of Chicago who won a tight race on Tuesday, campaigned on crime and education but he also talked about something else: environmental justice. Johnson, 47, a former teacher and union organizer, currently serves as a […]
There are plenty of data points you could plot on the “Does Elon Musk Have Any Idea What Is Going On?” chart. Here’s a quick and incomplete primer featuring his most ludicrous actions since he bought Twitter and took over as CEO at the end of October: Lifting a conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi from […]
Public outrage was immediate and intense on Thursday following the Tennessee legislature’s Republican supermajority decision to expel two Black lawmakers for an act of protest. Fired-up demonstrators in the State Capitol rotunda welcomed Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, both Democrats, as fallen heroes with impassioned chants. Their anger was amplified from the highest office […]
President Biden slammed the unprecedented Friday-night ruling by a Texas judge that suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone—a drug that has been used in medical abortions for over two decades. As my colleague Madison Pauly explained last night, the case has potentially explosive implications for the availability of abortion nationwide. Biden called the decision […]
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and the Illinois Institute of Technology have created a solid-state battery that could be used to vastly expand the range of EVs, and it could unlock the ability to use batteries on short-haul […]
A federal judge in Texas on Friday suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a drug commonly used in medication abortions, in a closely watched case with potentially explosive implications for the availability of abortion nationwide, regardless of state laws and politics. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s order suspending the FDA’s approval of mifepristone takes […]
On Friday, the New York Times reported that former president Donald Trump would be interested in hiring Laura Loomer, despite the concern of potential backlash. Staffers anticipated pushback because Loomer is a bigot. There is no other way to describe her. Loomer is not a political operative who is also known to be racist. She is not a […]
President Joe Biden is facing the inevitable political fallout from his approval of the Willow Project this week, after a federal judge declined to halt construction on ConocoPhillips’ $8 billion oil drilling venture in the western Arctic. Willow, one of the most contentious fossil fuel infrastructure projects since the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, was formally […]
In March, Utah lawmakers passed a bill requiring parental consent for minors to join social media platforms—and enabling parents to read their children’s messages and posts. While this isn’t ideal for any teen, granting homophobic or transphobic parents full, unquestioned access to the messages and posts of a teen still in the closet could spell […]
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Insects are strange, wondrous beings. Butterflies can see parts of the light spectrum that are invisible to human eyes and use these ultraviolet patterns to find their way to tasty plants. Moths use the Earth’s magnetic field to orient themselves on journeys of […]
Tennessee’s House of Representatives on Thursday expelled two Democratic members who participated in a gun control protest following the mass shooting at a Nashville grade school. Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson have been stripped of their titles and legislative responsibilities, an extraordinary development in the GOP-led effort to punish him for his involvement in […]
Donald Trump loves revenge. Who says so? He does. For years before he became president, he gave speeches touting the value of vengeance and its critical role in his own personal success. And now, as the first ex-president to be indicted, arrested, and arraigned on criminal charges, he is once more turning toward avengement. Trump […]
During an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast in January, Noor Bin Ladin—right-wing influencer, Osama’s niece—said she had a message for Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chair of the World Economic Forum: “I don’t want to eat the bugs.” This requires some backstory: In 2020, Schwab and the WEF introduced a plan called “The Great Reset.” A […]
Last month, in the wake of the school shooting in Nashville that killed six people, Congressman Tim Burchett (R.-Tenn.) said in an interview that went viral, “If you think Washington is going to fix this problem, you’re wrong. They’re not going to fix this problem.” He added, “I don’t see any real role that we […]
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A majority-Black rural community in Georgia is battling to stop a railroad company from seizing private land for a new train line they say will cause environmental and economic harms. Residents of Sparta, a poor community of 1,300 people located 100 […]
“I feel like North Korea has more democracy than we do in the state of Tennessee, and it’s terrifying to me that we’re in this march to fascism,” state Rep. Gloria Johnson told me today in an exclusive sit-down interview at the Capitol in Nashville. “And it seems like the Tennessee supermajority is leading the […]
In the weeks leading up to Chicago’s mayoral election, polls showed that voters were especially concerned about crime. This led plenty of journalists and political pundits to suggest that the candidate with a tougher, police-centric approach to public safety would have an advantage. They were wrong. On Tuesday, Brandon Johnson, one of the most progressive mayoral […]
If history were any indicator, yesterday’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin should have been a dud. Voters notoriously stay at home when there isn’t a presidential race and when the election isn’t in November—and that’s saying nothing of the storms that barreled down on southeastern parts of the state this week, wiping out power for […]
Whatta mess. Donald Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan drew more press than, well, everyone else, including photographer M. Scott Brauer, who covered the circus for Mother Jones. Brauer heard one NYPD officer say he’d never seen so much media in one place. Many of the Trump supporters on hand seemed to be performing for the cameras—and […]
Michigan enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution last November, but a 1931 abortion ban remained on the books. On Wednesday, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a law repealing that abortion ban, ensuring that Michigan’s laws align with its constitution and solidifying the right to an abortion in the state. Whitmer struck down three laws: one that banned […]
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For nearly a decade, tribal leaders in Arizona have fought to save Oak Flat—a sacred site central to the religious practices of the San Carlos Apache and other Indigenous nations connected to the area. Now, the site’s fate rests with the […]
You used to be able to count on former President Donald Trump’s speeches being at least entertaining. But hours after his historic indictment in New York on charges related to hush money payments he allegedly made to an adult film star, Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago to offer a rambling, lie-filled monologue that left the Mother Jones […]
Liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz won a critical seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday, giving progressives their first majority on the court since 2008 and a pathway to challenging the GOP’s decade-plus stranglehold on power in the Badger State. Occurring on the same day as Donald Trump’s arrest in Manhattan, Protasiewicz’s victory over former […]
A little over a week after a devastating shooting at a Nashville grade school, the Tennessee House of Representatives, in a historically rare move, took the first steps to expel three Democratic members for participating in a gun control protest. On Monday, Republican lawmakers filed resolutions to remove Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin […]
New York prosecutors on Tuesday released the formal indictment against Donald Trump, detailing 34 felony counts related to Trump’s alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Pundits have been speculating for weeks about the exact nature of the allegations against the former president, but this is the first time the full details have been made available. Trump […]
Former president Donald Trump was formally arrested, fingerprinted, and charged with 34 felony counts related to hush money payments from 2016 that he allegedly made to cover up an extra-marital affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts. Trump arrived at the New York Supreme Court in lower […]
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As darkness fell on Nov. 28, 2016, residents of Butte, Montana, heard the unmistakable honking of some 60,000 snow geese circling the Berkeley Pit, a defunct mine now flooded with toxic water. A snowstorm hit that night after an unusually […]