The GOP Is Working Overtime to Take the People Out of Democracy
Republicans across the country are trying to get those pesky (Democratic) voters out of politics as much as they can get away with.
Recent Stories
Donald Trump Uses Only the Best Words To Troll His Enemies
Trump’s words seem designed to encourage his supporters and MAGA acolytes to denigrate the rest of his fellow Americans as miscreants and traitors.
Trump Tries New Tactic to Distract MAGA Base From Epstein
Donald Trump spent his Saturday morning fantasizing about stripping entertainer Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship, which is an authority he does not have.
Saturday Hashtag: #TheCVEDefund
Welcome to Saturday Hashtag, a weekly place for broader context.
Medicaid: Millions Have It, and Don’t Even Know It
What will they do when they find out? Turns out “socialized medicine” was keeping them alive — until the GOP cut it.
Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Indiscriminate Arrests of Brown People in LA
A federal judge ruled on Friday night that the Trump administration has to stop its practice of indiscriminately rounding up Hispanic people in Los Angeles.
One Small Thing: A Time for Action
A good activist will still make mistakes. How you handle those mistakes is what matters.
Can the Giant Moa Be Resurrected?
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
Iran’s Final Gambit
A regime that once ruled through fear now faces its own collapse. Shay Khatiri explains why this moment changes everything — and what happens next.
Trump Goes Full Mobster on Brazil
It’s never more clear that Donald Trump runs the US government like a crime syndicate than when he tries to shake down other countries.
Browser Extensions Turn 1M Browsers Into Website-Scraping Bots: Researcher
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
Trump’s Deep-Sea Mining Order Will Likely Impact Gulf Coast States, Biodiversity
The US military is a major interest in this new extractive industry, which is poised to emerge both off- and on-shore.
Global Financial Industry Retreat From Coal Hasn’t Cut Its Funding: Analysis
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
Trump Assures MAGA That Farm Worker Amnesty Is Not Amnesty
Much to the chagrin of rank and file MAGA supporters, the Trump administration wants to create a work program that will allow some undocumented immigrants to legally remain in the US.
Media Still Dancing Around the Actual Danger Trump Represents
Big Journalism must — finally — tell the full truth about what is underway.
Epstein Question Rattles Trump
Donald Trump on Tuesday blew up when a reporter asked a question about Jeffrey Epstein, which will likely only fuel speculation about what is in all those files the FBI has been reviewing.
Trample-Down Economics
The Big Beautiful Bill plows forward.
Portuguese Man O’ War Turn Out To Be Four Separate Species
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
Supreme Court Denies Exxon Request to Get Rid of Citizen Lawsuits
The oil major’s bid was one of several fossil fuel industry efforts to get a Supreme Court shield from accountability.
Texas Floods Illustrate Limitations of Disaster Forecasting
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
FBI’s ‘Nothing to See Here’ Epstein Memo Will Surely Placate MAGA Faithful
The FBI sent out a memo on Sunday night debunking a couple of conspiracy theories popular with the MAGA crowd. Some right-wing influencers are already pushing back.
The Trump Tariff Circus Is Back
If you understand what the plan is this week on tariffs, then you’re way ahead of the Trump administration.
Texas Floods Reveal Some Ugly Trolls
Criticizing government officials for the decisions they make and policies for which they advocate is always fair game. Shaming the victims of disasters for their political affiliation never is.
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill: Where It Came From, What It Does
A masterstroke of branding in the Orwellian tradition.
How Long Will Americans Put Up With Trump’s ICE on Steroids?
While much of the damage that the GOP megabill does will be delayed, turning ICE into a Gestapo-like internal police force is going to happen right away. How much of that are Americans going to put up with?
Trump and the Rise of the New Confederacy: It’s All John Roberts’s Fault
More than any other individual, Chief Justice Roberts has paved the way for the resurgence of racism in America.
Saturday Hashtag: #AITelepathyBomb
Listen To This Story On May 13, 2024, the authors of a paper titled “The Platonic Representation Hypothesis” dropped a bomb: AI models, no matter how they’re built or trained, end up thinking in near-identical ways. This breaks a core assumption in AI safety — that models are siloed and can’t interpret each other’s inner […]
Easy Come, Easy Go
Emigration or immigration? Depends on your tax bracket.
Elise Stefanik Is Taking a Break From Fighting Antisemitism
After Donald Trump made yet another antisemitic comment, the silence from Republicans is deafening.
Gestapo? Ja Vol, Mein Herr. Wir Haben Eine Gestapo.
Even the Gestapo and the Nazi Brownshirts showed their faces.
When The World Was Their Beat
Tales and wisdom from three foreign correspondents who covered conflicts across decades, when journalism drove the global narrative.
GOP Bets It All on Trump’s Big Bill
Donald Trump’s megabill is so big and all-encompassing that we should know fairly quickly whether it leads to a boom or a bust. And no president and his party have ever owned a law so thoroughly.
Israeli Startup Says Its New Tech Will Save the Planet. Scientists Have Doubts.
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
Abrego Garcia Alleges Torture in Court Filing
In a new court filing, the attorneys of Kilmar Abrego Garcia allege that he was tortured while in El Salvador and detail a harrowing ordeal that reveals the cruelty of Donald Trump’s deportation program.
Musician Uses Moth Flight Data to Compose Piece Warning About Their Decline
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
Props to Every President Not Named Trump
The president’s blatant corruption makes all of his predecessors look better by comparison.
An Early ‘Independents’ Day?
What if a few moderate Republicans stood up and left their party? A bold move could weaken Trump and help democracy and the planet.
Trump Tours Everglades Auschwitz; Top MAGA Brass Revels in Its Own Cruelty
Republicans are loving “Alligator Alcatraz,” a detention camp that reflects how they feel about immigrants.
All the King’s Horses
…couldn’t put democracy together again.
Cloudflare Program Charges AI Bots for Each Crawl
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
A Vindictive, Lying Con Man – Trump Keeps Telling Us Who He Is
Donald Trump is so routinely crazy and corrupt that he has gotten the media to not pay attention anymore when he does things that would doom any other politician.
Hundreds of Fossils Reveal Squids’ Evolutionary Origins and Early Dominance
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
What Is WRONG With Bill Ackman?
Exhibit A in the Great Mamdani Freakout.
Trump Has Empathy for Leaders Like Him Who’ve Been Treated Very Badly
He claims nobody has been treated as badly as he is, but Vlad and Bibi come close.
Zohran Mamdani, Bill Moyers, and Making People Mad
Movers and shakers are doing their thing. Can you feel the earth move under your feet?
Lawless & Disorderly: Trump Just Offered Crooks Another Way to Escape Justice
More evidence has been revealed that the Trump administration’s indictment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is, at best, shady.
GOP Senators Advance Mega Bill to Save Their Own Hides from Trump
Republicans once again abandoned their stated principles to give Donald Trump a major victory.
We Found That Elusive Socialist Fox News Has Been Warning Us About
Republicans have spent decades trying to scare Americans into believing that socialism is just around the corner. Under Donald Trump, parts of it are now here.
What’s Really Behind the Israel-Iran Bombing Campaign?
The danger of cultural misinterpretation, when what you say isn’t what they hear, and vice versa.
Saturday Hashtag: #PrivatePrisonPayback
Welcome to Saturday Hashtag, a weekly place for broader context.