Arlie Hochschild, an award-winning author and sociologist, has spent years talking with people living in rural parts of the country who have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and shuttered coal mines. They’re the very people President Donald Trump argues will benefit most from his sweeping wave of tariffs and recent executive […]

As Americans celebrated Earth Day on Tuesday, the nonprofit world was left anxiously wondering, “Will they or won’t they?” For the past week, rumors have abounded that the Trump administration would issue an Earth Day order seeking to revoke the IRS tax-exempt status of climate focused groups and foundations.  An administration official has told E&E […]

The Trump administration is coming for the National Climate Assessment. Officials reportedly cut funding for the federal program behind the congressionally mandated report, which describes how climate change affects everything from agriculture and transportation to human health and economics in the United States. Under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, researchers issue a new […]

Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers in Florida passed a slew of immigration bills that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed less than an hour after they were sent to him. “Today, the Florida Legislature has passed the strongest legislation to combat illegal immigration of any state in the entire country,” DeSantis said. “We are ahead of the […]

Donald Trump doesn’t talk about “draining the swamp” nearly as much as he did in his first term, but his ultra-populist 2024 campaign was built, at least in part, on an anti-Washington message. Yet despite his attack on so many of Washington’s structures, early signs are in that K Street, home to the city’s lobbyists, […]

The federal government plans to eliminate services for LGBTQ youth who call 988, the national suicide and crisis hotline, according to a Health and Human Services budget draft leaked last week. The budget, first reported by the Washington Post, would go into effect in October if approved by Congress. Since the hotline’s launch in 2022, […]

Nearly 30 years ago, in September 1996, Hurricane Fran swept through North Carolina. It was the most expensive natural disaster in state history—causing an estimated $10 billion in damage in today’s dollars and killing 37 people across the region. Raleigh took a direct hit, with the storm toppling thousands of trees and dumping nearly 9 […]

This month, Noah Lanard and Isabela Dias won the Sidney Award for “You’re Here Because of Your Tattoos,” a Mother Jones feature revealing that young Latino men are being deported without due process because of innocuous tattoos. The Trump administration falsely claims the tattoos indicate affiliation with Tren de Aragua, a notorious Venezuelan gang. This is an […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Hundreds of marches, pickets, and cleanup events are taking place across the US in the run-up to Earth Day on Tuesday, as environmental and climate groups step up resistance to the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and its “war on the planet.” A […]

Lisa Fazio expected her National Science Foundation grant to be cancelled. The associate professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University had watched, with apprehension, the GOP targeting disinformation in a series of legislative attacks. She only grew more certain when, on April 18, the National Science Foundation (NSF) put out a statement on […]

For over a decade, Americans with private health insurance have enjoyed free access to dozens of types of preventive health care: cholesterol medication, prenatal care, and many cancer screenings, as well as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the “miracle drug” that prevents HIV infection. But on Monday, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case […]

On Wednesday, a leaked draft Health and Human Services budget document revealed, among other sweeping cuts to health- and disability-related services, that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s department plans to defund protection and advocacy services for people with developmental disabilities—including autistic people, about whom Kennedy also spreads harmful disinformation. The budget document is a proposal, […]

On Monday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is mulling a suite of initiatives aimed at encouraging Americans to have more babies. Some of the suggestions for these programs came from pronatalists, a loose network of activists who believe that the humanity is basically doomed unless people have more kids. A few […]

On February 13, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would allow state law enforcement to arrest and prosecute undocumented immigrants for being in the state without legal status. It was quickly paused. On April 4, US District Judge Kathleen M. Williams temporarily blocked the law from being enforced, saying enforcing immigration is strictly […]

Late in September, as Hurricane Helene struck the Southeast, Wally Smith immediately thought of the salamanders. Of course, he fretted over the safety of his parents, brother, and extended family in the path of the storm in the north Georgia mountains, but he couldn’t help but worry about the amphibians in harm’s way, too. As […]

On Sunday evening, The New York Times published details of another potentially damning security scandal involving the chat app Signal and discussions of “detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15″—this time centered on a group chat created by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Citing four people with knowledge of the group chat, the […]

Donald Trump’s inaugural committee raised almost $250 million, much of it from donors who are seeking—and in many cases have already received—valuable favors from the administration of the famously transactional president. The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed the committee’s filing ahead of a Sunday deadline, reported that the funding haul far exceeded what the committee […]

Miles Guo, an exiled Chinese billionaire best known for his ties to Steve Bannon, is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting sentencing following his conviction for orchestrating a massive fraud scheme. But Guo’s years of using his wealth to forge ties with people close to President Donald Trump appear to be bearing fruit. As my colleague […]

This story was originally published on the substack Public Domain to which you can subscribe here. At an all-hands meeting of Interior Department employees on April 9, Secretary Doug Burgum stressed that managing and protecting federal public lands “must be held in balance.” “It says in the mission statement the job of Interior is to ‘manage and protect,’” he said. “It doesn’t […]

This weekend, national protests broke out once again to demand an end to creeping authoritarianism and to defend the rule of law—sparked by the chaotic opening months of the Trump administration, defined by the flouting of judicial authority, executive overreach, and a subservient Congress. You can find a wrap-up of those protests, organized under the […]