On Friday afternoon, thousands of veterans who fought wars on behalf of the United States descended on the National Mall in Washington, DC, to fight something else: cuts proposed by the Trump administration. Since his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump has moved to slash and burn the federal workforce—and the Department of Veterans Affairs […]

Last fall, members of the California Coastal Commission criticized Elon Musk’s political rhetoric during a meeting in which they voted against allowing SpaceX—Musk’s rocket company—to conduct more launches. Musk, one commissioner complained, had been “hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims […]

In May, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka made headlines when he was arrested during a protest outside of an immigration detention facility in New Jersey and charged with trespassing. Baraka has staunchly opposed the reopening of the 1,000-bed detention center, called Delaney Hall, since Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a deal with the private prison company […]

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. More than three-quarters of new gas pipeline capacity under development in the US would feed additional liquefied natural gas exports rather than supporting domestic energy needs, a new report concludes.  Greenhouse gas emissions tied to that new […]

A new Trump-backed attack on domestic violence services just dropped—and this time, it’s targeting survivors’ pets. Tucked inside the 1,200-page appendix to the White House’s budget request to Congress is a proposal to eliminate a grant program, funded by the Agriculture Department and administered by the Department of Justice, that provides domestic violence shelters with […]

On Wednesday, District Court Judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to provide the due process it denied to Venezuelans in March when it sent them to a Salvadoran megaprison. The order means that the roughly 140 men sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act—a rarely used […]

On Wednesday, the Trump administration issued a new travel ban on foreigners, primarily targeting people from countries in Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. Under the guise of protecting the United States against “foreign terrorists” and national security threats, this executive order amounts to an even more sweeping bar than the infamous travel ban […]

Last week, the US Supreme Court lifted an order from a Massachusetts district court that had maintained humanitarian parole protections in place for about 530,000 immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua who had been living in the United States legally under a Biden-era program. Advocacy groups in South Florida condemned the decision that will […]

When the Secretary of the Department of Labor (DOL), Lori Chavez-DeRemer, testified before the House Appropriations Committee last month, she seemed to assure worried lawmakers that the more than century-old, congressionally-mandated Women’s Bureau was here to stay.  “The Women’s Bureau is in statute,” Chavez-DeRemer said in response to a question from Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) about […]

This story first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter. When the promises politicians made went unkept, when they were left without any reasonable alternatives, American veterans took to the streets by the thousands, forced to become their own advocates. The year […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Dig down about a mile or two in parts of the United States and you’ll start to see the remains of an ancient ocean. The shells of long dead sea creatures are compressed into white limestone, surrounding brine aquifers with a […]

Dr. Shelley Sella kept a journal from the first day she got on a plane to work for Dr. George Tiller, the third-trimester abortion provider who was assassinated in 2009. As the first woman to openly provide third-trimester abortions in the US, she spent nearly 20 years commuting from her home in California to Tiller’s […]

In September, Elon Musk amplified a post from Autism Capital—a pro-Trump X account that he often reposts—that read: “Only high T alpha males and aneurotypical people (hey autists!) are actually free to parse new information with an objective ‘is this true?’ filter. This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision […]

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. Elon Musk packed his bags and skedaddled out of Washington, DC, last week, […]

Elon Musk is trying to rewrite the history of his four-month tenure in Washington. As the billionaire founder of Tesla and Space X returns to the private sector after four months as a “special government employee,” he has put aside the celebratory chainsaw and cast himself as a misunderstood outsider whose dreams of efficiency were […]

The Trump administration’s new chief pardon attorney is considering a plan to grant clemency to dozens of so-called fake electors who aided Donald Trump in his scheme to overturn the 2020 election, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. Ed Martin—the failed US attorney nominee whom Trump recently named to a different high-level […]

Dr. Emily Hawes-Van Pelt, an OB-GYN working in Minneapolis, didn’t consider herself an expert on fighting racism in health care. Then in May 2020, George Floyd was murdered a few blocks from her hospital. “What we knew about the world, many of us”—she looked out at an audience of doctors, most of them Black like […]

“It’s all gas, no brakes.” For David Hogg, a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, there’s little time away from politics right now, especially considering his $20 million campaign to disrupt his own party.  Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, and gun control advocate, is looking to oust what […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Thomasville, Georgia, has a water problem. Its treatment system is far out of date, posing serious health and environmental risks. “We have wastewater infrastructure that is old,” said Sheryl Sealy, the assistant city manager for this city of 18,881 near the […]

The Democratic Party has commissioned a taco truck to serve free lunch outside the Republican National Committee’s DC headquarters beginning at noon on Tuesday. “Trump always chickens out—we’re just bringing the tacos to match.” The giveaway is not just to mark taco Tuesday, says a Democratic National Committee staffer who tipped Mother Jones off about […]