Trump promised ‘total respect to the existing building’ then demolished part of the White House

Trump promised ‘total respect to the existing building’ then demolished part of the White House

CNBC reports: The White House on Tuesday dismissed anger over the demolition of parts of the building’s East Wing to build a new ballroom at the behest of President Donald Trump. “In the latest instance of manufactured outrage, unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies are clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom to the White House,” the White House said in a statement. The White House called the ballroom “a…

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Amazon plans to automate 75 percent of its operations with robots

Amazon plans to automate 75 percent of its operations with robots

The New York Times reports: Over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. In its ascent to become the nation’s second-largest employer, it has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, built an army of contract drivers and pioneered using technology to hire, monitor and manage employees. Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on…

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Scientists uncover first evidence of the 4.5-billion-year-old ‘proto Earth’

Scientists uncover first evidence of the 4.5-billion-year-old ‘proto Earth’

Space.com reports: Scientists have identified what may be the first direct evidence of material left over from the “proto-Earth,” a primordial version of our planet that existed before a colossal moon-forming impact reshaped it forever. The study, published Tuesday (Oct. 14) in the journal Nature Geoscience, suggests that tiny chemical clues of this proto-Earth have survived deep within Earth’s rocks, essentially unaltered, for billions of years. The findings provide a rare window into the planet’s original building blocks and could…

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What can we do?

What can we do?

Paul Waldman writes: In my years of writing about politics, there’s one question I’ve gotten more than any other from readers, attendees at bookstore events, and my own friends and family: “But what can we do?” It’s an earnest question born of a dilemma faced by every member of a giant democratic polity such as ours. We’re more attuned than ever to the goings-on in politics and government; the average American living 50 or 100 or 150 years ago had…

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Civil resistance confronts the Trump autocracy

Civil resistance confronts the Trump autocracy

Paul Krugman writes: Last Saturday’s No Kings Day 2 was awesome to behold. The very best of America shone through. From coast to coast, in big cities and small, in red states as well as blue states, Americans peacefully marched to uphold our humanity as a country and to show our solidarity against autocracy and lawlessness. And also awesome were the right-wing attacks on Kings Day 2 participants in the days before the rallies. They were so extreme and so…

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What you should know about Russ Vought, Trump’s shadow president

What you should know about Russ Vought, Trump’s shadow president

By Andy Kroll This story was originally published by ProPublica On the second day of the federal government shutdown, President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video set to the classic song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult. The star of that video, which quickly went viral, was Russell Vought, the president’s top budget adviser. More than that, Vought is the architect of Trump’s broader plan to fire civil servants, freeze government programs and dismantle entire agencies, and he’s…

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Trump nominee says MLK Jr. holiday belongs in ‘hell’ and that he has ‘Nazi streak,’ according to texts

Trump nominee says MLK Jr. holiday belongs in ‘hell’ and that he has ‘Nazi streak,’ according to texts

Politico reports: Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, told a group of fellow Republicans in a text chain the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and said he has “a Nazi streak,” according to a text chat viewed by POLITICO. Ingrassia, who has a Senate confirmation hearing scheduled Thursday, made the remarks in a chain with a half-dozen Republican operatives and influencers, according to…

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What over a decade of incel messaging and Bronze Age Pervert have done to Young Republicans

What over a decade of incel messaging and Bronze Age Pervert have done to Young Republicans

Alan Elrod writes: “The Spanish came to America and had sex with every single woman.” “Sex is gay” “Sex? It was rape.” “Epic” This text exchange is part of the cache of messages sent in a Telegram group chat by Young Republicans. In these messages, exposed by POLITICO reporters Jason Beeferman and Emily Ngo, hundreds of racial and homophobic slurs are used by leading Young Republicans, including a Kansas state senator, along with joking references to Hitler and the Holocaust….

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One target at a time: The logic that helped Israeli liberals commit genocide

One target at a time: The logic that helped Israeli liberals commit genocide

Yuval Abraham writes: A few months after October 7, I enrolled in an introductory course on genocide at the Open University of Israel. The lecturer began the first class by telling us — about 20 Jewish-Israeli students gathered on Zoom — that by the end of the semester we would understand exactly what genocide entails and be able to explain why Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. In a nutshell, his argument was this: At most, Israel might be…

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How soon will the global sea-level rise?

How soon will the global sea-level rise?

Evan Howell writes: In May 2014, NASA announced at a press conference that a portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appeared to have reached a point of irreversible retreat. Glaciers flowing toward the sea at the periphery of the 2-kilometer-thick sheet of ice were losing ice faster than snowfall could replenish them, causing their edges to recede inland. With that, the question was no longer whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would disappear, but when. When those glaciers go,…

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Stunning success of No Kings protests gives Trump a bout of AI diarrhea

Stunning success of No Kings protests gives Trump a bout of AI diarrhea

Julianne McShane writes: Saturday’s “No Kings” protests were, as my colleagues chronicled, about as wholesome as you could imagine. There were inflatable animals. There were American flags galore. Even the New York Police Department admitted that the 100,000 protesters were peaceful and that cops made no arrests; police in Washington, DC and Austin, Texas said the same. But that hasn’t stopped top Republicans from thoroughly melting down over its success. Case in point: On his Truth Social platform on Saturday…

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson calls for a nationwide general strike

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson calls for a nationwide general strike

HuffPost reports: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson boldly called for Americans to stage a general strike during his speech at his city’s ‘No Kings’ rally on Saturday. Summoning people of all backgrounds to unite and take a stand against President Donald Trump’s “tyranny,” the “ultra-wealthy” and corporate greed, Johnson said, “We are going to make them pay their fair share in taxes to fund our school, to fund jobs, to fund healthcare, to fund transportation.” “Democracy will live on because of…

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No Kings protests the largest single-day political protest ever in the U.S.

No Kings protests the largest single-day political protest ever in the U.S.

Strength In Numbers partnered with independent Atlanta-based science newsroom The Xylom on Oct. 18, 2025, to produce a crowdsourced estimate of turnout for the second “No Kings Day” protests held around the country. This follows our first attempt at crowdsourced crowd-counting for the first protests held in June. Our median estimate is that 5.2 million people participated in a No Kings Day demonstration somewhere in the country on Saturday, with an upper bound of 8.2 million people. We provide an…

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From California to Chicago, the Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino is seen making race-based arrests

From California to Chicago, the Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino is seen making race-based arrests

Chicago Sun-Times reports: On the morning of Jan. 7, Jesús Ramírez and other day laborers huddled in a Home Depot parking lot in Bakersfield, California, hoping for work. Suddenly, they were surrounded by U.S. Homeland Security vehicles. One agent demanded Ramírez show his papers. When he pulled out his wallet, the agent “snatched” it and took his ID without asking questions, Ramírez said. “It was clear to me the agents did not know who I was,” Ramírez, 64, said in…

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