• A third and very dramatic day for Trump's jury selection

    The challenge to secure jurors for Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan bumbled further on Thursday morning after two jurors were excused—one after prosecutors questioned their truthfulness and another, an oncology nurse, who expressed concerns that the media had effectively outed her. The latter dismissal follows several media reports that featured biographical information about selected jurors. Fox […]

  • Good recipes for tough times

    This article was produced by The Bittman Project and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. which supports independent journalists as they forward fresh narratives about inequality. It is co-published here with permission. EHRP’s high-quality journalism is co-published with mainstream media outlets, to help readers understand and address systemic hardship. Cooking and food shopping are very different in America […]

  • "We need shade": America's hottest city rushes to plant more trees

    This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was a relatively cool spring day in Phoenix, Arizona, as a tree-planting crew dug large holes in one of the desert city’s hottest and least shaded neighborhoods. Still, it was sweaty backbreaking work as they carefully positioned, watered and staked a […]

  • Police loom as pro-Palestine students occupy Columbia University

    New York City Police gathered in force outside of Columbia University on Wednesday, after students convened in the pre-dawn hours to erect dozens of camping tents on a campus lawn. The demonstration backing Palestine was launched hours before president Minouche Shafik began testifying at a Congressional hearing addressing allegations of anti-semitism on campus in the […]

  • Sen. Rick Scott says he's a China hawk. But he's made lots of money with China-related investments.

    In November, ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) issued a press release casting himself as a fierce opponent of China. It declared, “Since being elected to the U.S. Senate, Senator Scott has introduced dozens of bills to punish Communist China for its increased military aggression, continued […]

  • Trump could use the 1873 Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide. Here’s how.

    Last week, in a bid to clarify his historically nebulous stance on abortion, Donald Trump said that if reelected, he intends to leave abortion rights “to the states,” seemingly contradicting his prior stance in favor of a 16-week national ban.  But Mary Ziegler, a law professor at UC Davis and leading abortion historian, thinks that […]

  • A firm bought up land in a tiny Arizona town—then sold its water to a faraway suburb

    This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves. Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, […]

  • Conservative SCOTUS Justices: Why isn't DOJ treating Dobbs protesters like January 6 attackers?

    Conservative Supreme Court justices on Tuesday questioned the Justice Department’s use of a 2002 statute against obstructing an official proceeding to prosecute a number of people involved in the January 6 attack on Congress. In pressing Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar on how broadly the DOJ can apply the law, several justices offered similar hypotheticals. “Would […]

  • Conservative groups are outraising Democrats on the state level—by a lot

    State legislative bodies have always played a leading role in determining outcomes for fundamental but humdrum issues like state budgets, insurance regulations, road safety laws, and civil services. But the last few years have demonstrated their overriding importance in matters related to personal freedom and social wellbeing. One issue where this has played out powerfully […]

  • Indiana will test a highway that can charge moving vehicles

    This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Blake Dollier spoke excitedly as he watched the construction crews pulverize concrete along a quarter-mile stretch of US Highway 52 where it passes through West Lafayette, Indiana. Soon, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), where Dollier works as the public […]

  • Trump's trial marks the return of "Individual-1."

    The justice system finally caught up with Individual-1—a.k.a. Donald J. Trump.  On the opening day of Trump’s historic trial for his porn-star-hush-money caper—no former president has ever been on trial for criminal charges—New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan had to clear up a few pending legal issues before moving to the arduous task of […]

  • Donald Trump's historic hush-money trial finally begins

    So, here we are.  The first day of the first criminal trial of a former US president. Can it get more extraordinary than that? “He keeps setting new Guinness Records in terms of unprecedented history,” Mother Jones’ own David Corn explained in a new video outside a Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump’s trial kicked off this […]