Bed space was so hard to come by inside immigrant detention facilities across the country last fall that federal officials scrambled to rent out extra room in county prisons and jails. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration-enforcem … | Continue reading
The Quebec mosque shooting, in which six Muslims were killed on January 29, occurred in the context of a bitter debate over religion that has roiled the Canadian province for years. That debate reemerged one week after the attack, when some politicians in the provincial legislatu … | Continue reading
Medicaid has essentially functioned the same way for half a century. Eligibility for the program has changed, most notably when Obamacare extended an option to states to expand coverage to all low-income adults. But once they are enrolled, beneficiaries are entitled to guaranteed … | Continue reading
What We’re FollowingThe Fourth Estate: One of today’s biggest stories was the AP report—based on a leaked draft memo—that the Trump administration was considering deploying the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants.The memo was real, but the White House denied it, an … | Continue reading
Donald Trump traveled to a Boeing plant in South Carolina on Friday, ostensibly to poke around the company’s new jet and sit in the cockpit. But his real interest was the few thousand workers assembled in the hanger, and the television cameras behind them.“We love our workers, an … | Continue reading
Today in 5 LinesDuring an address at a Boeing plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, President Trump promised to “fight for every last American job,” and concluded his speech by saying, “God bless Boeing.” Trump will hold a rally at the Orlando-Melbourne International Airport … | Continue reading
Don’t MissOn Not Saying His Name—Elizabeth Limbach explores why the president’s critics have taken to talking about him without actually using the words “Donald Trump.”HBOTelevisionJohn Oliver Is Buying Ads on Cable News to Talk to President Trump—Megan Garber discusses the Last … | Continue reading
The chances that a high school football player makes it to the NFL are extremely small. In 2015, 23-year-old, D.J. Morrell was an offensive lineman for the NFL with the Buffalo Bills and felt like he had actualized a lifelong goal. However, Morrell was released before the footbal … | Continue reading
It’s the confirmation hearing nobody was watching.Thursday morning, the Senate Finance Committee held a confirmation hearing for Seema Verma, the Trump administration’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Though relatively breezy by confirmation-hearing s … | Continue reading
On Monday, February 20, we’ll celebrate Presidents’ Day. So this week, we asked our Politics & Policy Daily readers: What U.S. president do you admire most—and why? We received dozens of thoughtful responses, but here are a few of our favorites.For Dolores Oliver, the answer is G … | Continue reading
Only one president’s name came up during the new Congress’s first hearing about NASA this week: John F. Kennedy.This makes sense. The House committee on science, space, and technology gathered on Thursday to discuss the “past, present, and future” of NASA, as the name of the hear … | Continue reading
“This is great,” says the comedian Pete Holmes, early in one episode of his new HBO series Crashing, which premieres Sunday. He’s talking to a group of fellow stand-up strivers who are about to spend the afternoon handing out comedy-club fliers to earn stage time for their own pe … | Continue reading
Friday morning, the Associated Press dropped a bombshell report: “Trump administration considers mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants,” the new agency’s Twitter account announced.The hubbub that followed, as the White House denie … | Continue reading
Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 52-46 to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday afternoon, after a marathon all-night session in which Democrats held the floor for hours to oppose his nomination.The … | Continue reading
Luis Gutiérrez has seen this before.The unannounced raids. Reports that federal agents had detained immigrants who posed no threat, who had committed no crime, whose children were Americans citizens, who were not targets of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A sense of con … | Continue reading
The miracle of filmmaker Steve McQueen’s work is the miracle of not blinking. For 2008’s Hunger, he recorded a 17-minute uninterrupted shot of a tormented political dissident in Northern Ireland; for 2011’s Shame his camera stayed with a sex addict through every excruciating paus … | Continue reading
Makha Bucha Day in Thailand, an overflowing dam in California, the Yanshui Beehive Rockets Festival in Taiwan, alpacas in Siberia, Beyonce at the Grammys, Carnival in Venice, protests in Romania and France, and much more. | Continue reading
Since the inauguration of Donald Trump, Venezuelans have been scratching their heads, wondering how U.S. policy toward their country might be transformed under his administration. Up until this week, we had precious little to go on. Trump criticized the regime of Venezuelan Presi … | Continue reading
Conspiracy theorists are on the national stage like never before, says Atlantic writer Rosie Gray. Alex Jones of Infowars fame is at the forefront. He’s responsible for propagating the widespread conspiracy theories that 9/11 was an inside job and that the Sandy Hook massacre was … | Continue reading
For the first time since he took a late-night hosting job in 2009, Jimmy Fallon seems on rocky ground. His Tonight Show, which has led in the ratings almost every week since he took it over, is suddenly falling behind Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. Fallon’s brand of celebrity and p … | Continue reading
Thursday’s confirmation hearing for David Friedman, President Trump’s nominee to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Israel, started on an ominous note. Addressing those assembled, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker warned that while in the past he had been successfu … | Continue reading
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Growing up here in the 1940s and 1950s, Sevone Rhynes experienced segregation every day. He couldn’t visit the public library near his house, but instead had to travel to the “colored” library in the historically black area of Brooklyn, a neighborhood that used to … | Continue reading
It’s probably safe to presume that, had he known the political climate into which he would be dropping his debut English-language film, the legendary Chinese director Zhang Yimou would have chosen a subject other than the heroism of warriors defending an immense national wall aga … | Continue reading
It’s my second day at the Tucson Gem Show and I’m standing in front of the Expo Center, examining the fossilized shell of the world’s largest giant killer clam. It’s gray-white and smooth, with a lip that’s curvy and meandering, like a piecrust with a crimped edge.“Should I sit i … | Continue reading
Since President Trump took office last month, the future of 750,000 young people living in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has become uncertain. On the campaign trail Trump vowed to repeal the Obama-era policy, which allows certai … | Continue reading
Below DeckLizzie Presser | California Sunday“When Filipino cruise workers arrive in U.S. ports with U.S. crew member visas, American laws almost never govern their conditions on board. Nearly all cruise ships are registered outside the United States, often in Panama or the Bahama … | Continue reading
Your family tree might contain a few curious revelations. It might alert you to the existence of long-lost third cousins. It might tell you your 10-times-great-grandfather once bought a chunk of Brooklyn. It might reveal that you have royal blood. But when family trees includes m … | Continue reading
On Thursday, Donald Trump gave a press conference that was rife with untruths and evasions. Let’s begin with specific examples of demonstrable falsehoods, so that readers who are favorable to the president won’t have to trust my characterization:Bragging about all the electoral v … | Continue reading
Just hours after a deadly blast killed at least 70 people and wounded more than 150 others at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Sufi shrine in southern Pakistan Thursday, the country’s military issued a series of tweets vowing “no more restraint for anyone.”Recent Ts acts are being exec on di … | Continue reading
“Lie” is the watchword of the early days of President Donald Trump’s administration. But not all lies are bad. In fact, the normal ebb and flow of international politics relies on a few agreed-upon falsehoods. Here are some of the useful fictions that make the world go ‘round.5. … | Continue reading
I started stippling concealer beneath my eyes around middle school. That was also when I began suffering from insomnia, which wrote itself across my face in half-moons the color of storm clouds.I bought little plastic tubes with built-in applicators, and as I brushed the wands ac … | Continue reading
Almost 20 years ago, the U.S. Energy Information Administration had an idea: Make an educational website for children about energy sources and the science behind them.In short order, the EIA created “Energy Kids,” which now features energy-themed Sudoku and crossword puzzles, col … | Continue reading
The dysfunction at the highest levels of the American government right now obscures a dramatic reality: Donald Trump is going to defeat the Islamic State, and Americans need to be fine with that.Like most of the people reading this, I have been so completely absorbed by the drama … | Continue reading
—President Trump used a news conference Thursday to berate the media and rail against intelligence leaks. (More here) Meanwhile retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, said to be Trump’s pick to succeed Michael Flynn as national-security adviser, reportedly turned down the job. More … | Continue reading
The Trump administration told a federal appeals court Thursday it would rewrite its controversial travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries, effectively conceding defeat for now in the new president’s first major confrontation with the federal judiciary.In a 61-page … | Continue reading
Donald Trump has dismissed concern about undue Russian influence on his campaign and presidency as “fake news”—a fiction created by Democrats to explain away their defeat. Much of the news isn’t fake; it includes, among other things, a very real U.S. intelligence assessment that … | Continue reading
Massive crowds have gathered in cities like Washington, D.C., and New York to protest actions taken by the president since he took office. But outrage over the current state of American politics isn’t confined to liberal strongholds. Even in red states, frustrated and anxious vot … | Continue reading
In what will surely go down as one of the most bizarre and combative presidential press conferences in American history, President Trump redirected what was slated to be an announcement about his labor secretary nomination (sorry, Alexander Acosta) into an oratorical version of … | Continue reading
The most bizarre and unsettling moment in President Trump’s bizarre and unsettling press conference this Thursday came near the end. Trump, who had been insulting the journalists questioning him for more than 90 minutes, declared that, “I want to find a friendly reporter.”Then he … | Continue reading
What We’re FollowingTrump’s News Conference: In his first extended press conference from the White House, President Trump took the opportunity of announcing his new pick for labor secretary (more on that below) to rail against intelligence leaks and the media. His many complaints … | Continue reading
Today in 5 LinesIn a wide-ranging—and at times, unwieldy—press conference, Trump defended his tumultuous first weeks in the White House, saying his administration is operating like a “fine-tuned machine”; railed against the media and its reporting on alleged contact between his a … | Continue reading
These are chaotic times for Americans. The nationwide cheese recall, I mean. (What did you think I was talking about?)Several well-known cheese brands—including Sargento, Meijer, Santino, Amish Classics, Country Fresh, and Guggisberg—have issued recalls of Colby, pepper jack, shr … | Continue reading
Have you ever had a job you loved, but one where you felt like you’d achieved everything you could? So you looked for a new job, went through a fairly grueling application process, if you do say so yourself, got the offer. Then you started the job, and you hated it. Worse, all th … | Continue reading
For leaders of European nations, it’s impossible to know which of President Donald Trump’s remarks about Europe and the Atlantic alliance—the bellicose or the conciliatory—to take to heart. Is he agitating for the EU’s demise when he extols Brexit? Is NATO “obsolete,” or a corner … | Continue reading
R. Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s pick to run the Labor Department following the withdrawal of Andrew Puzder’s nomination, was the head of the civil-rights division of the Department of Justice in the Bush administration during a period in which his subordinates became embro … | Continue reading
President Trump used a news conference ostensibly meant to announce his new choice to head the U.S. Department of Labor to rail against intelligence leaks that have connected his aides to Russia, explain why he fired Mike Flynn as his national-security adviser, and defend the rol … | Continue reading
That’s the charge leveled by one reader, J., who responds to my grammar confession from earlier this week by advising me to “battle the misinformed pedantry of the peevers”—and points out a number of ways in which I’m guilty of misinformation myself. But first, two more readers o … | Continue reading
Ilse Cruz was brought into the United States by her mother when she was 4 years old, and has no memories of her native Mexico. She also doesn’t feel truly American—because she’s undocumented. “American culture and Mexican culture, they're both a part of who I am but I can't under … | Continue reading