Here are some things parasites will do to survive.The hairworm makes infected crickets commit suicide in water so it can find a mate. Parasitic barnacles invade the bodies of crabs, sterilize them, and then trick them into caring for baby parasitic barnacles. Toxo makes rats so f … | Continue reading
The threat of drug-resistant bacteria grows more pressing with every year. These microbes can shrug off the most potent antibiotics, including some drugs of last resort. Some bacteria have become resistant to all of our available drugs. Scary stuff, but bacteria don’t have to res … | Continue reading
After months of waiting and a few hour-long trips into Austin from his home in New Braunfels, Texas, for background checks, Terry Flemings was finally going to start working as a transcriptionist at the Internal Revenue Service. Flemings had applied for the job in October but had … | Continue reading
Alabama’s new U.S. senator, Luther Strange, already has the name to match these unusual political times. But the circumstances that led to his appointment as the successor to Jeff Sessions may be equally curious.Governor Robert Bentley on Thursday named Strange to take Sessions’s … | Continue reading
It is extremely easy to make fun of CNN. All those shouty octoconvos. That over-reliance on ALL-CAPS CHYRONS sharing NEWS THAT IS FOR THE MOST PART EXTREMELY UN-CAPS-WORTHY. That time it confused Faith Evans with Faith Hill. Et cetera. The easy mockery is a case of great power br … | Continue reading
President Trump’s attacks on the federal appellate judges considering a constitutional challenge to his immigration ban—he called the proceedings “disgraceful” and the courts “so political”—has provoked widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum. Even Judge Neil G … | Continue reading
Months before the election, there were reports of greater political tension in offices than in previous election cycles. In one survey from the American Psychological Association, 10 percent of respondents said that political discussions at work led to stress, feeling cynical, d … | Continue reading
Sturm und drang, the German Romantic movement of the 19th century, contains—as Merriam-Webster defines it—“ rousing action and high emotionalism that often deal with the individual's revolt against society.” The U.S. might today be involved in what might fairly be called Nordstro … | Continue reading
In the wake of the Trump administration’s first counterterrorism mission, which reportedly killed 14 al-Qaeda fighters, one U.S. Navy SEAL, and an unknown number of civilians in Yemen, the president and his press secretary have set a remarkably steep standard for when its militar … | Continue reading
More than a quarter of Americans say that someone in their household is struggling to pay medical debt, according to a report from the Kauffman Family Foundation last year. Low-income and other uninsured people tend to be in this situation at higher rates. Many dealing with the c … | Continue reading
I can vividly recall being a kid, standing in front of a mirror, and wishing I was someone else. Maybe I could be Christina Aguilera or Jennifer Lopez; Beyonce or Aaliyah. They were all singers who shared the one thing I coveted for the better part of my 26 years—not their musica … | Continue reading
—Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, is reported to have described as “demoralizing” the president’s criticism of the federal court. —Airlines have canceled flights and schools are closed across the U.S. Northeast, as the region prepares for a massive snowstorm … | Continue reading
“I've learned a lot about being a patient. The place where you receive oncology care really takes on significance in your life. You have a strangely deep relationship with it—it’s the source of some terrible experiences, but also your hope and refuge. Just walking through the fro … | Continue reading
William Happer is a Princeton University physicist, an immigrant, and a registered Democrat. But last year, he voted for Donald Trump, and now he’s in the running to be Trump’s science advisor.“We had eight years of one direction for the country,” Happer told me recently, “and it … | Continue reading
President Trump likely surprised many supporters when he told Bill O’Reilly in their Super Bowl interview that formulating a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act was “very complicated” and might not be finalized “until sometime into next year.”That sounded very different than … | Continue reading
Bob Bennett didn’t think the new president was such a bad guy. To be sure, Bennett, a Republican senator from Utah, had a lot of policy differences with Barack Obama, the Democrat who had just won the 2008 election in a landslide. But just because Bennett was a conservative and t … | Continue reading
It was supposed to be Avery McRae’s first day back at school after winter break, but fat snowflakes were falling outside and class was canceled. Her horseback-riding lesson wasn’t happening either. At lunch with her mom and dad at Hot Mama’s Wings, in Eugene, Oregon, Avery slumpe … | Continue reading
If you’re having trouble with your internet connection, one of the first things tech support will ask you to do is to run a speed test. There are dozens of websites and apps that will, at the tap of a button, measure your network speed—but they can’t tell you which sites you can … | Continue reading
NEW YORK — The zone for Public School 67 was drawn exclusively around the sprawling Ingersoll public-housing complex, but as children trudge into the building, they can see the tips of the gleaming glass luxury towers that are reshaping the skyline around them in downtown Brookly … | Continue reading
—The U.S. Senate voted along party lines to confirm Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama to the position of attorney general, with only one Democrat, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, crossing the aisle to vote for Sessions. More here—The House of Commons passed the final bill to be … | Continue reading
President Trump’s harsh words for the federal judges weighing his controversial immigration ban received criticism from an unlikely source: Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee for the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.Gorsuch, a federal appeals judge, told Connecticut Senator Richard B … | Continue reading
Jeff Sessions is the newest member of Donald Trump’s cabinet, narrowly winning confirmation in one of the closest votes for attorney general in years.Along with our Cabinet Tracker, we’re automatically keeping score on Trump nominees here, updating as they’re considered and confi … | Continue reading
What We’re FollowingWarren’s Speech: Last night, as she read a letter from Coretta Scott King criticizing the civil-rights record of AG nominee Jeff Sessions, Elizabeth Warren was accused of impugning a fellow senator and forced to sit down. The silencing of Warren was based on a … | Continue reading
Updated on February 8, 2017 at 7:23 p.m. ETThe Senate on Wednesday night confirmed Jeff Sessions of Alabama as attorney general after a lengthy and polarizing debate, elevating one of President Trump’s closest allies to serve as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer.In a 52- … | Continue reading
Just before the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was sentenced to five years in prison, he stood up and addressed not just the nervous young judge but the bailiffs, the prosecutors in their sky-blue polyester uniforms, and the cameras. He had been convicted on a convolute … | Continue reading
Today in 5 LinesPresident Trump tweeted that his daughter, Ivanka, was treated “unfairly” by Nordstrom after the company announced it would stop carrying her products, but in a statement, the company defending its choice, saying “sales of the brand have steadily declined.” At lea … | Continue reading
The president’s 3 a.m. phone call is typically a metaphor. It’s a symbol of the president’s ability to handle a crisis. But in the case of President Donald Trump, it appears to be a revealing reality.According to the Huffington Post, Donald Trump recently placed a late-night phon … | Continue reading
Like apparently a lot of Americans lately, I can’t stop listening to Migos. The particular object of obsession off the Atlanta rap trio’s No. 1 album Culture keeps changing, but for me, for now, the standout is a work of minimalist hypnosis called “Slippery,” on which a high, eer … | Continue reading
President Donald Trump’s most iconic property is about to get a new tenant: the Department of Defense. According to CNN, the Pentagon, hewing to a longstanding policy of establishing an offshoot headquarters near the president’s private, non-White House residence, is planning to … | Continue reading
WASHINGTON, D.C.—From a politics and policy standpoint, it’s brilliant.The United States has a problem: runaway climate change, which will degrade or damage agriculture, biodiversity, coastal cities, and the social politics of some of the most volatile regions of the world. Clima … | Continue reading
One of the first things Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions promised the Senate Judiciary Committee was independence.Donald Trump ran on a vision of “law and order” that included violence against protesters at his rallies, the promised incarceration of his political opponent … | Continue reading
During the Obama administration, I repeatedly criticized the murky program of extrajudicial killings that slayed thousands of people—including hundreds of innocents—in countries including Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. On Inauguration Day, Donald Trump inherited control of America … | Continue reading
Several days ago, press reports revealed that U.S. special-operations troops had conducted a raid in Yemen. Impoverished, violent, and bitterly divided, Yemen has hitherto had a place on the roster of countries that the United States periodically bombs without being graced with t … | Continue reading
In northern Japan, the Tsugaru Railway operates between Tsugaru Goshogawara and Tsugaru Nakazato stations, about 12 miles apart, or a 45 minute ride through a quiet rural landscape. In the winter, the company operates a train with an old-fashioned potbelly stove to heat the passe … | Continue reading
Kriste Dragon grew up in Atlanta, a mixed-race child in a segregated school system.When it came time to find a school for her children in her new Hollywood, California, home, Dragon was hopeful that the neighborhood’s highly diverse demographics would be reflected in its schools. … | Continue reading
As the Democratic Party searches for a leader in an uncertain political era, Elizabeth Warren wants it known that she is at the front lines of the fight against President Donald Trump’s agenda.On Tuesday evening, the Massachusetts senator attempted to read a 1986 letter written b … | Continue reading
Rule XIX—the suddenly infamous Senate edict that Republicans invoked Tuesday night to silence Elizabeth Warren—began 115 years ago with a fistfight in the Capitol.In February 1902, the Senate was debating a treaty to annex the Philippines when Senator Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Til … | Continue reading
During the 1990s and again over the last several years, the United States engaged in an intense, wide-ranging argument about the contested concept of political correctness. For its most incisive critics, political correctness was a problem insofar as it elevated deference to poli … | Continue reading
There are many ways that American culture tells women to be quiet—many ways they are reminded that they would really be so much more pleasing if they would just smile a little more, or talk a little less, or work a little harder to be pliant and agreeable. Women are, in general, … | Continue reading
Earlier in Stephen Colbert’s tenure on CBS’s Late Show, it might have been unusual to see the host deliver a resigned, almost angry assessment of Donald Trump’s political approach, but that was what happened on Tuesday night. “So many beanballs are coming over the plate that you … | Continue reading
When it comes to size, nearly all the known black holes in the universe fall into two categories: They’re big, or they’re really, really big. Stellar mass black holes weigh up to a few dozen times the mass of our sun, and supermassive black holes can weigh millions or billions ti … | Continue reading
A novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet, James Baldwin was a writer with an arsenal of artistic talent and moral imagination. His signature style was his prose—startling in its intricate design and depth of perception, and fierce in its determination to dismantle the racial as … | Continue reading
In recent days, the tweets of President Donald J. Trump have largely set out to target those—the media, “so-called” judges, the University of California-Berkeley—whom the president feels are interfering with his agenda or America’s greatness writ large. But on Wednesday, Trump of … | Continue reading
One of the most striking aspects of Tuesday night’s dramatic encounter between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren was how little real drama there was.The Republican leader forced Warren to sit down for impugning Senator Jeff Sessions, P … | Continue reading