Huge corporations and banks like AT&T, Wells Fargo, and Comcast have announced their plans to deliver bonuses to non-executive employees in light of a massive tax cut courtesy of the GOP tax bill. Under the new tax law, corporations will be taxed at a rate of 21 percent instead of 35 percent. In a report […]
Federal investigators are looking into an incident at a juvenile prison facility in northern Wisconsin, in which two prison guards allegedly broke a 16-year-old inmate’s arm, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported this week. According to the outlet, details of the incident — which took place in March 2014 and is the subject of a civil […]
Lucia “Lucy” McBath watched Sunday night’s telecast of the Golden Globe Awards and, like millions of other viewers, was awed by Oprah Winfrey’s rousing speech that rallied women to challenge sexism and to become politically empowered. “It was a phenomenal speech,” McBath told me a few days later. “She’s a great orator and sometimes it […]
Tuesday evening, a federal district judge in California handed down a surprisingly broad opinion reinstating much of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which the Trump administration planned to wind down beginning this year. DACA has allowed hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to remain […]
On Tuesday, President Trump held a White House meeting with a bipartisan group of members of Congress that was praised by media outlets, rightly or wrongly, for its relative normalcy. Trump’s restraint apparently didn’t carry over into Wednesday. Because during a portion of a cabinet meeting open to the press, the president bragged about his […]
The White House’s Tuesday announcement that President Donald Trump would attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland later this month came as a bit of a surprise, given that the last U.S. president to attend the swanky annual event was Bill Clinton in 2000. Event organizers said Trump’s presence will allow other participants to […]
A Wisconsin school district decided Tuesday night to stop fighting a lawsuit filed by transgender student Ashton Whitaker, who’d been denied access to restrooms that match his gender identity. The decision follows a significant loss at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that set a major precedent for protecting transgender students across several states. The […]
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) announced Wednesday that he will be retiring ahead of the 2018 midterms. Issa becomes the 30th House Republican to announce his retirement ahead of the election, breaking the record 29 Republican seats open in 2008. “Throughout my service, I worked hard and never lost sight of the people our government is […]
Solar, wind, and battery prices are dropping so fast that, in Colorado, building new renewable power plus battery storage is now cheaper than running old coal plants. This increasingly renders existing coal plants obsolete. Two weeks ago, Xcel Energy quietly reported dozens of shockingly low bids it had received for building new solar and wind […]
The growing movement to hold fossil fuel companies financially responsible for the damages associated with climate change scored a major ally on Wednesday, as New York City announced that it would be filing a lawsuit against five of the largest fossil fuel companies in the world. “Internal industry documents demonstrate that the defendants engaged in […]
In a court filing on Tuesday, the White House announced that it had not uncovered any preliminary findings of voter fraud in the 2016 election and that it would be destroying confidential voter data initially collected for President Trump’s controversial voter fraud commission, which was disbanded on January 3. The revelation stands in stark contrast […]
Actor Mark Wahlberg was reportedly paid $1.5 million to reshoot his scenes for a film while co-star Michelle Williams was paid a per diem rate ultimately totaling less than $1,000. A number of Hollywood figures have declared that “Time’s Up” when it comes to misogyny — but the incident makes it clear the industry has […]
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a sweeping decision Tuesday ordering the legal recognition of same-sex families and transgender individuals that could impact as many as 20 countries across Central and South America. The decision was a response to an inquiry from Costa Rica, which has already acknowledged it will comply with the ruling. […]
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did an about-face, only one week after releasing the Trump administration’s five-year plan for offshore drilling, by removing Florida waters from potential oil and gas leasing. Even before Zinke released the offshore drilling plan, it was widely known that Florida politicians and residents strongly opposed drilling off the state’s coasts, especially […]
In the days leading up to President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January of 2017, hackers, librarians, scientists, and environmental advocates spent days furiously downloading troves of climate-related data from government websites, fearful that the incoming administration — which had pledged fealty to fossil fuel interests and industry over climate action — would scrub important data […]
A panel of three federal judges in North Carolina ruled on Tuesday that the state’s congressional map was unconstitutionally partisan, and ordered that it be re-drawn before the end of the month. The court agreed that the map, which was originally drawn in 2011, was drawn to favor Republicans and thus violates the First Amendment, […]
The Baltimore City Public Schools Board Meeting on Tuesday was packed with people who wanted to voice their concerns about the frigid classroom temperatures many students were forced to endure last week, along with a host of other complaints about the condition of their schools. Community advocates and activists encouraged parents and concerned members of the […]
At least eight people were killed in Southern California on Tuesday when torrential rain sent mud and debris streaming through Montecito in Santa Barbara County — a nightmarish development for a community that just endured the Thomas Fire, the worst wildfire in state history. The heavy rain struck at around 2:30 a.m., quickly causing “waist-high” […]
President Donald Trump sent the names of several controversial candidates back to the Senate — including one nominee a Senate Democrat described as “overwhelmingly unfit for such a crucial position” — as he seeks to fill high-level environmental and science positions in his administration. The nominees were included in a White House announcement late Monday that […]
In November, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer promised that a fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would pass by the end of 2017. The DACA program, which was terminated by Trump this fall, provides legal protections for 800,000 undocumented young people, also known as DREAMers, who were brought to Americans as […]
When Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to give a massive bailout to the coal and nuclear industries was released last September, most energy regulatory experts dismissed it as a desperate attempt to reward the Trump administration’s political supporters in the energy industry. Perry’s plan, according to numerous analyses, would lead to confusion and chaos in the […]
A number of publications announced on Tuesday that President Trump had agreed to a clean immigration bill guaranteeing protections for a number of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. There’s only one problem: that didn’t actually happen. During the closed-door portion of an extended meeting with congressional leaders, the president discussed […]
Sen. Diane Feinstein’s (D-CA) office on Tuesday released a transcript from an August 2017 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing containing testimony that a source of information for the Steele Dossier has already been killed as a result of its publication. The purpose of the meeting was to ascertain Fusion GPS’s role in the compilation and publication […]
Steve Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, has been forced out of his post after a public feud with President Trump. Bannon’s position became imperiled after he was quoted in Michael Wolff’s newly released book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, disparaging the president and his family. Among other things, Bannon described […]
