On April 3, a Justice Department contracting officer sent the Acacia Center for Justice a “notice of termination for convenience.” The email instructed the nonprofit to discontinue several federally funded programs described as “no longer needed.” Among them was the little-known National Qualified Representative Program (NQRP), which appoints government-paid counsel to detained immigrants deemed unfit […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The federal Energy Star program is among the most successful government initiatives in modern history. Its signature blue label is now nearly as recognizable as the Nike swoosh or a Coca-Cola can, and appliances bearing it save American consumers some $40 […]

In late March, Ed Martin, then the embattled acting US attorney for DC, showed up at a community meeting at a police station to tout his efforts to combat crime in the district. Martin politely fielded questions from attendees, even answering one from a man who, citing Martin’s widely condemned description of his office as […]

The Conclave has spoken, and President Donald Trump will not be the next pope. Instead, that designation will go to Robert Francis Prevost, who will be known as Pope Leo XIV, the Vatican announced on Thursday. Leo, who is 69 years old and was born in Chicago, will be the first American pope following the […]

On Wednesday, following controversy about inconsistencies in her résumé, President Trump withdrew his nomination of Dr. Janette Nesheiwat to become surgeon general and gave the nod to alternative medicine practitioner and author Dr. Casey Means. “Her academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Dr. […]

Last week, baffling many and delighting a few, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared during a Trump administration Cabinet meeting that he’s engaged in a hunt for what he said were 300,000 missing children trafficked by the Biden administration. “We have ended HHS’s role as the principal vector in this country for child trafficking,” […]

In Donald Trump’s second term, a familiar pattern is emerging: the president does something illegal, someone sues to stop him, and eventually the Supreme Court decides the case. From which agencies Trump can effectively shutter, to which agency heads he can depose, to whether or not he can disappear people into a Salvadoran gulag or […]

Since she was first elected in 1990 as Washington, DC’s nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) has fiercely defended the civil service in Congress. Nearly a quarter of her constituents work for the federal government. So after the second inauguration of President Donald Trump, as Elon Musk’s US DOGE Service targeted agency after agency with […]

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is making significant changes to how it will respond to disasters on the ground this season, including ending federal door-to-door canvassing of survivors in disaster areas, WIRED has learned. A memo reviewed by WIRED, dated May 2 […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) plans to end future funding for research projects focused on vaccine hesitancy and the Covid pandemic, as well as gender-affirming care, climate change, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, among other areas, according to a new draft guidance memo reviewed by Mother Jones. The internal memo, which has not been […]

President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to support women, grow jobs, and revive American manufacturing in his second term. But a recent round of cuts by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) appears to undermine all three of those supposed priorities. On Tuesday, the Department of Labor (DOL) terminated more than two dozen […]

At a 24-hour vigil to protect Medicaid on the National Mall in Washington, DC, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) was to the point: to protect democracy, Medicaid has to be protected, too. The vigil, which kicked off Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET, is hosted by the advocacy group Caring Across Generations and will be livestreamed until […]

On Thursday, April 24, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was halfway through a tour of the East Coast, speaking to large audiences about his plans to starve the people of Gaza. That night, he was scheduled to speak at 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Chabad Lubavich Hasidic Jewish movement, in Crown Heights, […]

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. Imagine a situation in which the threat of fascism is so pressing that […]

Six months after the November election, Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin finally conceded to Democratic Justice Allison Riggs on Wednesday after his unprecedented effort to throw out thousands of votes and overturn Riggs’ win was rejected by a federal court. Two recounts affirmed Riggs’ 734-vote margin of victory after the election, but Griffin, […]

President Donald Trump’s second term has swung a wrecking ball at diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs throughout the country. Few writers seem better suited to explain this unique moment in America than Nikole Hannah-Jones. A New York Times journalist and Howard University professor, Hannah-Jones has spent years studying and shaping compelling—and at times […]

For decades, American hospitals have been subject to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and to the Americans with Disabilities Act, landmark federal disability civil rights laws that guarantee equal access to health care. But Hickson v. St. David’s Healthcare Partnership, a case before the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, could upend those protections—giving […]

One particularly surreal aspect of Donald Trump threatening the tax-exempt status of Harvard, one of the nation’s oldest and foremost educational institutions—and excluding it from federal research funding for refusing to heed the administration’s oversight demands—is the fact that even some of the nation’s most hateful and antidemocratic entities qualify as tax-exempt charities. As I […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The aviation industry is “failing dramatically” in its efforts to tackle its role in the climate crisis, according to a newly formed group of aviation professionals. They say they are torn between their passion for flying and their concern for the planet […]

Ed Martin, the acting US attorney for Washington, DC, had recently been peppering medical journals with “vaguely threatening” letters accusing them of acting as “partisans” in scientific debates. Those missives are just one genre within a barrage of communiques Martin has sent to perceived Trump foes—congressional Democrats, special counsel Jack Smith, a former Mueller prosecutor, […]