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In January, Zach Witkoff sat down at a table in Islamabad and signed a deal with Pakistan’s finance minister. Witkoff is the young CEO of Donald Trump’s crypto finance firm, World Liberty Financial, and the arrangement he struck that day would allow WLF’s stablecoin to be used for Pakistan’s cross-border transactions.

Extreme heat is already creating “nonsurvivable” conditions for humans in heatwaves that have killed thousands and likely many more, according to new research that warns people are more susceptible to rising temperatures than first thought.

California Assemblymember Nick Schultz is leading an effort to phase out the use of pesticides containing toxic “forever chemicals” to safeguard the nation’s produce.

President Donald Trump and the election conspiracy theorists he surrounds himself with are determined to exclude people from voting in the 2026 election based on one database: the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), gave the keynote speech at a conference on Wednesday morning, one which was hosted by a prominent climate-denying think tank that previously compared those concerned about the climate crisis to the Unabomber on billboard posters in 2012.

The American buffalo—those ornery, hairy prairie beasts that reign as the official mammal of the United States—have joined wind turbines, electric cars, and climate researchers in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.

Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election received far less attention than a similar contest a year ago, when Elon Musk spent $25 million trying to flip the balance of power on the court. Back then, the world’s richest man—who, at the time, was also a key White House adviser—personally hand-delivered $1 million checks to voters while wearing a cheesehead hat.

Her abusive husband had hurt her too many times.

On a Saturday morning in March, high school students, mountain bikers and soldiers from a nearby Army base climbed the winding path up Mount Cristo Rey. From the summit, they could see most of El Paso, the sprawling city that dominates a stretch of desert where New Mexico, Texas and the Mexican state of Chihuahua meet.

On March 31, the US Forest Service announced plans to move its headquarters from Washington, DC, to Salt Lake City, Utah. It will also close or repurpose all nine of its regional offices, create 15 state offices, and shutter research and development facilities in more than 30 states. According to a news release, the plan is intended to make the agency more “nimble, efficient [and] effective.” Forest Service leaders told staff on a call after the announcement that no changes will be made to fire and aviation management programs or field-based operational firefighters.

The Trump administration is turning to the nuclear option on endangered-species protections in the name of national security.

On February 15, 2025, two law professors dropped a legal bombshell. Just three weeks before, President Donald Trump had signed an executive order attempting to unilaterally deny birthright citizenship to the children of visa holders and undocumented immigrants despite the Constitution’s clear mandate that virtually everyone born on US soil is an American citizen. In quick succession, four federal district court judges blocked the order, with one deeming it “blatantly unconstitutional.” Into this righteous consensus rode Ilan Wurman, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, arguing in the pages of the New York Times that, actually, Trump might have a point.

Thousands of years ago, beasts of burden helped make humanity what it is today. When farmers first started putting down roots, they’d plant and tend their crops by hand. With the power of oxen, they could drag plows across their fields before sowing, which boosted soil fertility and eliminated weeds. Today, that job has been made even easier by giant machines that rake the landscape.

Beneath the neon lights of a laser-scanning microscope, newly classified species glow in vivid greens and oranges—a far cry from the pitch-black abyss of their natural ocean floor.

The first thing you notice when you enter Sherman Austin’s Long Beach, California, apartment is the sounds. His cellphone buzzes constantly, mostly notifications requiring his attention from StopICE.net, a crowdsourced nationwide alert system he developed to let users know when federal immigration officers are nearby. Then there are the beeps. Follow them and they’ll lead you to Austin’s cramped bedroom, where two large computer screens sit inches from his bed. On one, columns of characters scroll continuously, Matrix-style, tracking traffic and potential attacks on a server he uses for StopICE. The beeps come from the other, which displays security camera feeds outside his apartment. Every time a camera spots a potential intruder, it issues a series of loud beeps. It beeps a lot.

In January, the Trump administration announced that it had completed its dismantling of yet another Biden-era climate program. This time, the target was the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which Democrats had injected with almost $400 billion to support ambitious new clean energy projects.

In January, after ICE detained 5-year-old Liam Ramos—with his blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack—and his father outside of Minneapolis, the two were sent to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the nation’s only detention center for families. Located on a flat, desolate stretch of land about an hour south of San Antonio, Dilley is a sprawling collection of trailers run by the private prison company CoreCivic. The facility held as many as 1,400 people, including young children, teenagers, and their parents, earlier this year.

In Texas’s largest public school district, in Houston, the immigrant student population plummeted by nearly 4,000 students, or a decrease of 22 percent, this school year. In Maine, absences at some schools hit 25 to 30 percent during a week of heavy ICE presence in January. In Minnesota, up to 40 percent of students stayed home during the agency’s violent operations in the Twin Cities.

Drilling through 500 feet of floating ice into the Antarctic Ocean floor, climate scientists have retrieved a rare 23-million-year record of sediments that helps demonstrate why the planet’s southern ice shield could determine the fate of distant low-lying coastal areas.

President Trump has claimed he is “going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and is currently lobbying the US Senate to effectively outlaw the practice as part of his push to pass the Save America Act.

I do, they will hurt people for no good reason.

Federal agencies have been branding some of their research and policy work as “gold standard science,” a trend that gained new force after an executive order on the term was issued in May 2025. The phrase now appears in speeches and guidance documents from agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. It shows up in social media posts intended to signal credibility, rigor, and authority. The message is clear: This is science you can trust.

Surprise! Just one day before Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are supposed to be deployed to airports around the country to help reduce long lines caused by the partial government shutdown and spring break crowds, the Trump administration appears to have no coherent plan for what they will do.

United Farm Workers co-founder and labor activist Dolores Huerta went public Wednesday with her own account of being raped by Cesar Chavez, following a stunning New York Times investigation that uncovered decades of sexual abuse, including of young girls, by the civil rights icon.

The Trump administration is scrambling to cover its tracks amid legislative pressure and a First Amendment lawsuit over its alleged “domestic terrorist” database, new legal filings and emails reviewed by Mother Jones reveal.

“It’s all hands on deck for the legal community.”

When Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced last month that she was planning to sue the governors of New York and California for refusing to extradite doctors accused of mailing abortion pills to her state, Gavin Newsom was unfazed. “@AGLizMurrill: Go fuck yourself,” he mocked on X. “California will never help you criminalize healthcare.”

On January 7, Daniel Suitor raced the less than half a mile from his home to the spot where a federal immigration agent had just killed Renée Good in Minneapolis. He had heard from a local group chat that someone had been shot, and he wanted to bear witness. At the scene, Suitor, a lawyer, started talking to witnesses. One observer who had recorded the incident shared the video with Suitor, who sent it to local authorities and the press and posted it on social media. Soon, the images were everywhere.

Tennessee teenagers are suing Elon Musk’s company xAI over allegations that its artificial intelligence tool Grok undressed photos of them as minors—the latest challenge against the wealthiest living person’s chatbot.

For a year, the Trump Justice Department has been on an odd mission: to assist a mysterious former FBI informant with ties to Russian intelligence who ended up in prison for passing disinformation about Joe Biden to the bureau. His crime deeply affected American politics. The false claim he slipped to the FBI—that Biden and his son Hunter each were paid a $5 million bribe by a Ukrainian energy company—became the main evidence in the House Republicans’ reckless and ill-fated impeachment drive against the 46th president.

For three years, Andrew Osborne helped his bosses promote the idea that good design could make imprisonment more humane. As a public relations specialist at DLR Group, one of the largest architecture firms in the world, he crafted campaigns for multimillion dollar projects, like the construction of a “youth campus for empowerment” in Nashville. Or the rebuild of San Quentin state prison—former home of California’s death row—into a “rehabilitation center.” It wasn’t about simply adding more windows, he argued in marketing material. Prisons could be revamped to prioritize education; jail space could be set aside to help people through mental health crises instead of booking them into the system.

In the opening days of his war against Iran, Donald Trump had a message for members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: Surrender and get “total immunity”—or face “absolutely guaranteed death.”

In the opening days of his war against Iran, Donald Trump had a message for members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: Surrender and get “total immunity”—or face “absolutely guaranteed death.”

For a year, the Trump Justice Department has been on an odd mission: to assist a mysterious former FBI informant with ties to Russian intelligence who ended up in prison for passing disinformation about Joe Biden to the bureau. His crime deeply affected American politics. The false claim he slipped to the FBI—that Biden and his son Hunter each were paid a $5 million bribe by a Ukrainian energy company—became the main evidence in the House Republicans’ reckless and ill-fated impeachment drive against the 46th president.

The yearslong battle over TikTok’s ownership has concluded in a $10 billion windfall for the Trump administration. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that investors in the recently completed deal to create a US-controlled TikTok will pay the government the exorbitant sum for its role in helping broker the transaction. The fee is about 70 percent of the new US TikTok’s $14 billion valuation.

Federal Judge James Boasberg quashed two grand jury subpoenas on Friday afternoon that are part of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, finding ample evidence that the subpoenas were intended to harass or coerce Powell into lowering interest rates, with no evidence pointing toward wrongdoing.

Kristi Noem is out as Homeland Security Secretary, but a luxury 737 she has traveled on remains in government hands. That plane, reportedly dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Jet” by DHS staffers, has been quietly leased to the department by a company linked to William Walters, a former State Department official who donated thousands of dollars to a pro-Noem political action committee. Walters owns a constellation of businesses that—despite a dearth of prior experience working for the government—won lucrative contracts with Noem’s DHS over the past year.

Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to withhold his signature from all bills until Congress passes a GOP-led voting bill that implements voter restrictions ahead of the November midterms.

Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to withhold his signature from all bills until Congress passes a GOP-led voting bill that implements voter restrictions ahead of the November midterms.

Once the site of an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, Camp East Montana is made up of six long tents at the Fort Bliss Army base outside of El Paso. On an average day, the facility holds around 3,000 detainees who are living in harsh conditions: They lack sufficient food and often go without proper medical care, according to AP’s review of 130 calls made to 911. Those calls took place in just about five months—from when the tents were quickly constructed in mid-August to January 20.

Google is seeking to bypass data center zoning rules recently adopted by Linn County, Iowa, by annexing the land for its proposed campus into a city two miles away.

On Friday, the Buffalo-based Investigative Post reported that New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a Blind Rohingya refugee who died in the cold streets of Buffalo days after Border Patrol dumped him without coordinating with his family or lawyers.

On Monday afternoon, as war raged with Iran, President Trump was seemingly preoccupied with more trivial matters. “FREE TINA PETERS!” he wrote on Truth Social, referring to the former Colorado election clerk who’s serving a nine-year sentence for giving election conspiracists access to sensitive voting equipment.

A lawyer for the Justice Department argued on Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine decisions are protected from legal scrutiny, in a case brought by medical groups challenging HHS’s vaccine policy changes. So much so that the Trump administration appears to believe that Kennedy’s actions are “totally unreviewable.”

The Richmond Standard has little to say about the gas flares, haze, and smoke plumes that shape life in its California community.

The Supreme Court on Monday evening overturned a New York state court ruling that found that the Staten Island-based district of Republican US House Rep. Nicole Malliotakis discriminated against Black and Latino voters and needed to be redrawn. The Supreme Court’s intervention preserves a GOP-led seat that would have been likely to shift to Democrats this November.

Kristi Noem faced frustration from some Republicans during a Senate oversight hearing Tuesday over how she’s handling her job as secretary of homeland security.

Just one in four Americans supports the Trump administration’s ongoing strikes on Iran, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday.

Ritidian Point, at the northern tip of Guam, is home to an ancient limestone forest with panoramic vistas of warm Pacific waters. Stand here in early spring and you might just be lucky enough to witness a breaching humpback whale as they migrate past. But listen and you’ll be struck by the cacophony of the island’s live-fire testing range.

Leaked documents reveal that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has blocked its AI chatbot from discussing topics including abortion with minors—a blanket policy that contrasts sharply with the firm’s handling of child sexual exploitation claims, and that may also inadvertently affect its content for adults.

It seems quaint to think about now. But in October 2016, just one month away from the presidential election that would fundamentally warp American politics, the biggest threat to Donald Trump’s candidacy was a 2005 Access Hollywood recording that caught Trump bragging about “grabbing” unconsenting women “by the pussy.” As a celebrity and a man of prominence, Trump claimed that he “could do anything” and get away with it.

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night toggled between being remarkably dull and profoundly racist. During a screed against undocumented immigrants, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) shouted at Trump, yelling, “You have killed Americans,” and “You should be ashamed.”

This just sets them up for deportation upon a second arrest because

In the wake of the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol, Donald Trump and his close associates found themselves mired in lawsuits that, among other things, sought to hold them accountable for inciting the violence that resulted in injuries to more than 140 police officers and likely contributed to the deaths of five. By 2023, the legal fees had ballooned into the millions, all while Trump also was mounting an expensive presidential campaign.

When the US Supreme Court unanimously blocked a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration in 2024 over the agency’s regulation of the abortion drug mifepristone, conservatives were disappointed but undeterred. The justices ruled that anti-abortion doctors didn’t have standing to sue. But in a hopeful sign for those opposed to abortion, they left the courthouse doors open to other parties who might be able to make a more convincing case.

While Ukraine’s energy system, which had a pre-war generation capacity of 60 gigawatts, scrambles to keep the lights on, grid operators are also looking past the next drone swarm, pushing to diversify the country’s energy sources, says Lars Handrich, a German energy expert who works closely with Ukraine. The plan is to replace the bulky thermal plants and centralized grid, which are vulnerable to drone and other attacks, with distributed renewables and modestly sized gas-fired plants that make less attractive targets for incoming fire.

The people of Springfield, Ohio, are exhausted. It’s been one hit after another lately.

Over the past few months, I have spoken to over a dozen people who know Rep. Cory Mills. Nearly everyone, I found, dislikes him. Some outright despise him: “repulsive and vile,” “schmuck,” “little bitch.” Others were more formal. “I have no use for people with no honor,” an Idaho firearms instructor who worked with Mills in the Middle East told me. The most blunt was a veteran who once reported to Mills in the Army. He told me of the congressman from Florida: “I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.”

North Idaho came up a lot during my time at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the storied civil rights watchdog where I worked from 2018 through 2023. The region seemed to have an uncanny ability to attract bigots from elsewhere in the country. But Leigh McOmber, a 57-year-old resident I met last summer at Coeur d’Alene’s annual Pride celebration, recalled a time when the area felt far more tolerant.

[I]n the filing, Murdoch et al. argue that Trump is too lewd a person to suffer reputational harm from this story. To prove this, Murdoch relies on the infamous Access Hollywood video in which Trump boasted that due to his celebrity status he could sexually assault women.

From her home in Donaldsonville, La., less than three miles from the world’s largest ammonia plant, Ashley Gaignard says the air itself carries a chemical edge.

In 2013, Nicole and Dan Virgil lived in a lush, affluent suburb of Chicago. Dan had a good job. Nicole home-schooled their two kids.

An extensive review by Floodlight found no evidence that existing carbon capture projects anywhere in the world have achieved anything close to the emissions cuts companies like CF Industries are promising. Permit documents, meanwhile, show that the proposed plants combined could be allowed to discharge more than 2,800 tons each year of air pollutants (not greenhouse gases), including more than 400 tons of ammonia.

You don’t often see genre endorsements like this.

Security detail for President Donald Trump’s budget chief and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought is being paid for by what’s left in funding for the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

This past year, official social media accounts from the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, and other government agencies have adopted a distinct voice online. The posts look like memes, utilizing dramatic AI-generated art, general patriotic slogans, and cinematic language about “defending the homeland” and shaping America’s future.

The Republican-controlled US House on Wednesday passed a new version of the SAVE Act, a sweeping voter restriction bill that would require people to show citizenship documents to register to vote and strict forms of photo ID to cast a ballot, potentially disenfranchising tens of millions of Americans.

Newly released body camera footage further undermines the Trump administration’s efforts to falsely portray Marimar Martinez—who was shot multiple times by Border Patrol agent Charles Exum in October—as a “domestic terrorist.” Federal prosecutors shared three videos on Tuesday evening after a federal judge ruled last week that the footage and other evidence could be made public.