One of my earliest memories of Donald Trump is his claymation iteration. There he was in 1999, crudely animated, facing off against the boxing promoter Don King during an episode of Celebrity Deathmatch, the stop-motion MTV series that featured clay renderings of celebrities killing one another in a boxing ring. Like anyone else watching at […]

When I buried my father, a man who bequeathed me his entire face but very little of his time, I turned to words from Jesmyn Ward. I didn’t feel appropriately shaken, and certainly this was a problem. By my late 20s, half my family spanning four generations were dead, each person lost to some calamity […]

On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released its interim final rule on Medicaid work requirements, mandating that everyone who seeks Medicaid support has to prove they are unable to work to a greater extent, even if they have already been diagnosed with a debilitating condition like sickle cell disease—and even if they […]

It has now been almost two weeks since the laborers keeping ICE’s Delaney Hall mega-jail open went on strike—demanding a chance to speak with New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, reviews of their cases, and ultimately, their freedom. Those workers are the detainees themselves, who serve as custodians, line cooks, hairdressers, laundry workers, and janitors at […]

The FIFA Men’s World Cup starts next week—and some players still don’t know whether they’ll be able to travel to their matches. On Wednesday, Switzerland’s main goalscorer, Breel Embolo, applied for a visa at the US embassy in the country’s capital after US officials blocked him from boarding a flight with his teammates to their […]

While most California races were called by the morning after Election Day, a handful of key holdouts remain. “This is normal,” Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, who was on the ballot herself, emphasized in a press release. “I would call on all Californians to be patient.” That’s a hard ask, at least for Richard […]

It’s impossible to overstate rapper Tupac Shakur’s influence on music and culture in the 1990s. One of the era’s bestselling musical artists, Tupac helped define West Coast hip-hop through vulnerable, introspective lyrics and Black power politics. His death in 1996 at just 25 years old sparked conspiracy theories for decades and left his fans wondering […]

For the second time in three weeks, the Roberts Court on Tuesday night green-lit an Alabama congressional map that a lower court has repeatedly found intentionally discriminates against Black voters. The ruling is another stark example of how far the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority will go to give their party additional seats in Congress and […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Six states sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its decision to cancel a major offshore wind lease off the coast of New York. In March, federal officials announced they would pay nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to French energy firm TotalEnergies in exchange for the…

On a recent Wednesday at 11 p.m., Arianne Betancourt’s phone rang. It was her father, Justo Betancourt, who had spent much of the last six months at the notorious Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention facility in Florida. ICE had just transferred him to Krome, a different facility in Miami, and with little warning, he was being […]

“The principles I hold dear are gone,” 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley said after getting fired Tuesday night for criticizing Bari Weiss’ leadership at CBS News the day before as submitting to President Donald Trump’s whims. “And so I must leave.” In his statement, he detailed how the program’s new management repeatedly instructed him to […]

This story was originally published by Popular Information, the author’s substack publication. Subscribe here. Jared Kushner’s efforts to negotiate an end to the Iran War are not going well. But he is only moonlighting as one of the Trump administration’s top diplomats. Kushner is also having problems at his day job as the founder of Affinity Partners, a […]

President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that Bill Pulte will serve as acting Director of National Intelligence—taking over the post from the embattled Tulsi Gabbard—makes a weird kind of sense. Pulte, who currently serves as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has no experience that prepares him to oversee the 18 intelligence agencies that the […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In June, athletes from 16 countries will kick off the World Cup wearing other people’s used clothing. Well, maybe. They’ll be sporting uniforms made from recycled fabric, potentially including a mix of scraps and old clothes. It’s the latest initiative from Nike, […]

As protests inside and outside of Newark’s Delaney Hall continue into their second week, federal, state, and local officials are vying over the future of the privately-run ICE detention center and former prison in New Jersey. This morning, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka held a press conference, calling for the facility’s closure and threatening further legal […]

On Fox News Sunday morning, President Donald Trump’s lead economic policy adviser, Kevin Hassett, dismissed Americans’ struggles to cover the rising cost of living by noting that people are “spending more.” But Kevin, isn’t that the problem? When the host questioned Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, on why folks are delinquent on credit […]

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook. For about five days in December, Abdullahi Mohamed seemingly vanished into the US immigrant detention system. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had detained him near…

This story was originally published by Yale e360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For the last 15 years, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, has been Congress’s most outspoken member on climate change. In 2012, he had a sign made up that showed the Earth as seen from space. “Time to Wake […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On a graffitied Sarajevo backstreet, a path leads past an overgrown patch of garden to a white door. Beyond is the registered office of a company that is on the brink of winning contracts worth more than $1 billion. […]

At midnight on Sunday, New Jersey officials chose to help federal agents suppress the ongoing rallies at a New Jersey ICE detention center rather than acknowledge the concerns of hundreds of detainees and protesters gathered there. Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka, citing an “increasing need for police intervention,” declared that “immediate action is required to […]

On Fox News Sunday morning, President Donald Trump’s lead economic policy adviser, Kevin Hassett, dismissed Americans’ struggles to cover the rising cost of living by noting that people are “spending more.” But Kevin, isn’t that the problem? When the host questioned Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, on why folks are delinquent on credit […]

In 2015, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and repression were trying to reach safe havens in Europe. From his home in Norway, Tommy Olsen decided to travel to Greece, a major gateway for migrants and refugees. He joined hundreds of volunteers helping the new arrivals and later created an NGO, the Aegean Boat […]

This story was originally published by Vox and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Earlier this year, a billionaire investor and philanthropist named Tom Kaplan auctioned off a small Rembrandt drawing of a lion at Sotheby’s in New York City. It sold for nearly $18 million. A press release prior to the auction noted that Kaplan would donate […]

In preparation for President Donald Trump’s UFC fight on the White House South Lawn next month, Pentagon officials are hoping to lure hundreds of troops to attend the event. The catch? Troops need to meet strict physical requirements, including weight and height standards, in order to be eligible. That’s according to internal memos seen by […]

Greg Bovino, the Nazi-garbed former Border Patrol commander, was ousted in January after CBP and ICE agents during his tenure killed Minneapolis protesters Renée Good and Alex Pretti. These days, Bovino has a lot of time on his hands, and he’s using that time to post about wanting his job back—and offering to go to […]

This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s set to be an abnormally hot summer this year—but the US grid appears to be in decent shape to handle the heat. The credit goes to a boatload of new solar and storage and a handful of new gas plants. That’s […]

These may be confusing and difficult times in America, but I consider myself pretty lucky. Most weekends, I get to hang out with an extraordinary group of people from around the country and see things their way. These folks are complicated, wise, and funny—and they’ve all been through a lot. There is Sammy from rural […]

At campaign stops across California’s Central Valley, Randy Villegas asks a simple question: Do you or someone you know drive to Tijuana to get medicine or fix your teeth? Almost inevitably, hands go up. For Villegas—a 31-year-old community college professor running for Congress in a largely Mexican American district—the outrage has a personal dimension. In […]

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Fertility isn’t a topic that tends to come up in the macho, male-dominated world of wildland firefighting—at least not according to Jasper Kehoe, 23, who served as a Colorado wildland firefighter for four summers. But whenever Kehoe talked about […]

Republican attempts to erase Black representation in the wake of the Supreme Court’s destruction of the Voting Rights Act have hit a few roadblocks in recent days. A federal court found that Alabama’s map, green-lit by the Roberts Court, intentionally discriminated against Black voters and blocked it for November. And the state senate in South […]