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
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
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
Scientists are discovering more ingredients for life on Ceres.For the first time, researchers have detected organic compounds on the dwarf planet, the second-biggest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The materials contain hints of carbon and ammonia, the chemi … | Continue reading
Reuters photographer Christinne Muschi recently spent time at the end of a small country road in Hemmingford, Quebec, that dead-ends at the U.S.-Canada border, just across from another dead-end road near Champlain, New York. She was photographing refugees, traveling alone, or in … | Continue reading
Catholic schools, once a mainstay for the Irish, Italian, and Polish communities in American cities, are struggling. With shrinking numbers of nuns as a source of free labor, and fewer parishioners passing the donation baskets on Sunday and enrolling their kids in parochial schoo … | Continue reading
Like many other late-night hosts, Stephen Colbert introduces the musical acts that close out his show while holding their CD in his hands. His recent guests have included Japandroids, A$AP Mob, and Billy Joel, but Tuesday’s episode was a bit different: The album Colbert was promo … | Continue reading
President Trump announced Thursday he is nominating Alexander Acosta as secretary of labor, moving fast to bounce back from Andrew Puzder’s failed nomination.Acosta, the son of Cuban immigrants, is an experienced former government employee, having served on the National Labor Rel … | Continue reading
It’s a rare event when President Trump tweets approvingly of a journalist, but yesterday Eli Lake of Bloomberg View gained that unusual honor.Thank you to Eli Lake of The Bloomberg View - "The NSA & FBI...should not interfere in our politics...and is" Very serious situation for U … | Continue reading
It could not look more grave, more straightforwardly destructive. Below a simple title—H. R. 861, A BILL TO TERMINATE THE EPA—runs the staggering text:Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,The Environmental … | Continue reading
What does American tyranny look like? In the past few months, fears about the collapse or degradation of the American democratic system have led many to engage in the grim exercise of game-planning the endgame of tyranny. For some, dystopian novels ground that exercise. Some take … | Continue reading
“Being in your thirties is like your teenage years, but without all the cool role models,” the Swedish singer Jens Lekman writes in the press notes for his excellent fourth album, Life Will See You Now. “When you were a teenager you had the Ramones. When you’re in your thirties y … | Continue reading
After Donald Trump’s presidential victory, many left-leaning politicians and commentators started considering what sort of message would help them regain political power. Given the clear racial subtext to the 2016 campaign—Trump stereotyped Mexican immigrants and Muslim families, … | Continue reading
In June 1998, while renovating his home in St. Louis, Joseph Heathcott found a collection of trash moldering in the slender cavity between his pantry and his laundry chute. It was a stack of small paper scraps “lying in repose at various scales,” with sooty edges that were just b … | Continue reading
Republicans understandably want to use the GOP’s control of Congress and the White House to pass the domestic agenda Paul Ryan has spent years crafting. If the executive branch wasn’t such a mess they could focus on that project with a clear conscience.Instead, Ryan and his colle … | Continue reading
On Thursday, immigrant workers across the U.S. won’t be going to their jobs in protest of the immigration policies of the Trump administration. “A Day Without Immigrants” is meant to show what the country would be like without immigrants, with employees and employers giving up th … | Continue reading
Taylor Stevenson’s family never left him out of conversations, but they never expected him to participate, either. His contributions, if he made any, were a few random words—gibberish or a Big Bird quote.So when Taylor started speaking his mind in his squeaky, sing-songy voice, h … | Continue reading
The link between traumatic experiences and the development of addiction has been well-documented. Edward Khantzian, who originated the self-medication hypothesis of substance abuse, writes that “human emotional suffering and pain” and an “inability to tolerate [one’s] feelings” a … | Continue reading
Over the weekend, Yale President Peter Salovey announced that the university will give Calhoun College, dedicated to the white supremacist and fervent slavery supporter John Calhoun, a new name: Hopper College, after the renowned computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper.In the fall … | Continue reading
When Michael Flynn resigned as Donald Trump’s national security advisor after serving in the post for 24 days—the briefest such tenure in history—he left an already chaotic national-security bureaucracy stunned. His resignation also left Washington’s largest special-operations co … | Continue reading
Sometimes, when technology and nature collide, the results are awe inspiring. (Think: photos of distant planets, artificial hearts, deep-sea robots.)Other times, in more literal collisions, the results are that you have to make an emergency landing in North Carolina because your … | Continue reading
At its heart, a mechanical watch is a fancy spring. A metal coil stores power when the crown is wound tight. A series of gears harnesses that energy in even increments. It spins a central wheel, whose oscillations are geared to turn the watch’s hands.Once gears spin, it’s possibl … | Continue reading
Each strand of hair that grows out of our bodies begins its life in a little well under the epidermis. From there, it journeys upward, stretching through a pore into the outside air beyond the skin, where it emerges, wanted or unwanted, for all the world to see.Sometimes, however … | Continue reading
—The Wall Street Journal is reporting that U.S. intelligence officials kept sensitive intelligence from President Trump amid fears it could be leaked or compromised. More here —Authorities in Malaysia arrest two more people in connection with the death of Kim Jong Nam, the half-b … | Continue reading
Even as congressional Republicans mobilize for a new drive to retrench federal anti-poverty efforts, whites without a college degree—the cornerstone of the modern GOP electoral coalition—have emerged as principal beneficiaries of those programs, according to a study released Thur … | Continue reading
People are mighty touchy nowadays about how they are treated, and quick to condemn accidents or confusion as rudeness. Being pushed against someone in a crowded bus is as likely to inspire a loud denunciation as an accepted apology. Wedding invitations may be received as insults … | Continue reading
Unhappiness at The Wall Street Journal doesn’t stop at the United States border. A slew of layoffs around the world, combined with uncertainty over the paper’s direction in the Trump era, have left foreign correspondents on edge.The Journal’s inner turmoil over its coverage of Do … | Continue reading
Donald Trump wanted to start his presidency with the shock and awe of rapid change. Instead, almost everywhere he looks, he’s stuck in the mud of grinding trench warfare.Trump’s tumultuous first month has been an extended lesson in the limits of a president’s power—as well as the … | Continue reading
Each winter, hundreds of AI researchers from around the world convene at the annual meeting of the Association of the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Last year, a minor crisis erupted over the schedule, when AAAI announced that 2017’s meeting would take place in New Orlea … | Continue reading
Senate Democrats are calling for Attorney General Sessions to recuse himself from reported inquiries into contacts between former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, but legal experts also say that Sessions’ closeness to Presiden … | Continue reading
What We’re FollowingNetanyahu’s Visit: During a joint press conference today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump said he wouldn’t commit to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, he said, “I’m looking at two states and one … | Continue reading
Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was a work of virtuoso improvisation: Even though it seemed to be in permanent chaos, with frequent changes of leadership, perpetual gaffes, and a strategy devised on the fly, the Republican managed to defeat the elaborate, best-and-brightest, data-wo … | Continue reading
Thanks for the appointment, governor: You’re under investigation.Those weren’t Steven Marshall’s words exactly, but that was the gist of his announcement on Wednesday a few days after Governor Robert Bentley gave him the promotion of a lifetime: He made the local county prosecuto … | Continue reading
Today in 5 LinesPresident Trump condemned a report in The New York Times that claimed his associates had contacted Russian intelligence officials in the year before the presidential election, tweeting that it was “an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s … | Continue reading
Scott Shepherd is a former grand dragon of the Klu Klux Klan in Tennessee, but now refers to himself as a reformed racist. Shepherd’s troubled past includes witnessing violent physical beatings and plots to attack the government—and cheering them on. In this short documentary by … | Continue reading
Tuesday evening, The New York Times reported that associates of then-candidate Donald Trump, including within his presidential campaign, had had “repeated” contact with Russian intelligence officials, and that American intelligence and law-enforcement officials had records of int … | Continue reading
By most accounts, July will mark the 80th anniversary of the two-state solution. It was in 1937 that the British Peel Commission set about to understand why Arab riots had engulfed Mandatory Palestine. “An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within … | Continue reading
The biotech trial of the century is over—for now. On Wednesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decided in favor of the Broad Institute, which has been battling the University of California for the patent over CRISPR, a widely hyped gene-editing technique with applications i … | Continue reading
Democrats on Capitol Hill want answers on who knew what, and when, in the wake of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s resignation and reports that Trump campaign aides communicated with Russian intelligence officials. On Wednesday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Sc … | Continue reading
Updated on February 15, 2017 at 4:03 p.m. E.T. In the end, it wasn’t Andy Puzder’s track record on labor that tanked his bid for the job of labor secretary. Liberals were always unhappy with the Puzder nomination—his history of hostility toward labor regulations made him an unacc … | Continue reading