Rescue teams in central Texas are still searching for about 160 people who went missing in the catastrophic flash floods on July 4. The official death toll has climbed to at least 121 victims. State policymakers are now in the spotlight, as questions swirl around Texas’s lack of emergency precautions and the climate denialism of Republican political leaders.
We speak with United Nations expert Francesca Albanese, one day after the Trump administration announced it is imposing sanctions on her over her advocacy for Palestinian rights. Albanese has served as the U.N. special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2022. She recently released a report highlighting dozens of companies aiding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and fueling its genocidal war machine in Gaza, including U.S. tech giants.
Ideally, this interview would have been over breakfast at a diner in Omaha, and the local congressman, Don Bacon, would have ordered his namesake. He says he eats bacon two or three times a week when he’s in Nebraska; he likes it extra crispy and, if possible, prepared at home. “If you ask me for my favorite bacon, it’s Angie Bacon,” he told me this week, referring to his wife of 41 years. (Sadly, the congressman and I were speaking not over breakfast but by phone.
Pamela Anderson wore a structured Tory Burch gown to the Met Gala this year, its bell-shaped skirt, rounded neckline, and long sleeves hiding every part of her except her hands and her face, which was mostly free of makeup, her preference for the past few years; her blond hair was newly cut into a bob. It was the fashion of subtraction, only her face identifying her as the famous star.
If she had wanted something like invisibility, however, she missed the mark.
My father says to pick a beer.
Outside, two men in yellow coats
hose mud from a reef of oysters
to be priced and sold by the bucketful.
The owner’s a fellow named Tadpole.
Lives up Mosquito Creek
and raises labradors, without which
the basin’s fallen mallards
would vanish to the marsh
and the mouths of its gators,
which wear feathers in their teeth.
Write that down, says my father,
who knows a beautiful thing
when it slithers over his path.
I’ve seen him point a pistol
at a coiled cottonmouth.
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Spend time with stories about the bizarre relationship of a “work wife” and a “work husband,” the great cousin decline, and more.
The Great Cousin Decline
Families are shrinking. But the weirdest family role is a vital one.
The shoeless shuffle through security lines is finally over.
Riders don’t want buses to be free. They want something else.
Brian Goldstone on the unrecognized population of full-time workers in America without stable housing.
After the tariff turmoil of months ago, what do we make of the big upswings we’re seeing in the markets?
Red states are banning the tooth-protecting mineral, while blue state skeptics aren’t budging.
Civil servants told POLITICO they’re anxious and exhausted, but holding out hope their lawyers can still save their jobs.
The CDC says cases have reached nearly 1,300, the most since 1992.
It seeks information on employees who quit or faced discipline during the Biden administration for refusing to execute DEI orders, according to an email obtained by POLITICO.
They say the decision “erodes trust” by pitting providers against federal recommendations that aren’t grounded in evidence.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
The president’s approval rating had been ticking upward since its biggest drop in April.
The General Services Administration, which oversees government contracting, is leading a review of more than 20,000 consulting agreements for what is “non-essential.
The crowded contest in the Garden State shows how hard it is to address pocketbook issues.
Democracy Now! recently interviewed U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk in Geneva, Switzerland. The wide-ranging conversation touched on immigration policy in the United States, climate change around the world, the global fight to preserve human rights and more.
See Part 1 of our conversation with Türk, including his response to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.
A federal judge in New Hampshire has issued a nationwide injunction against President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born in the United States since February 20. In a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of immigrant parents, the ACLU argued that the order would leave children born to undocumented parents “effectively stateless.
Rescue teams in central Texas are still searching for about 160 people who went missing in the catastrophic flash floods on July 4. The official death toll has climbed to at least 121 victims. State policymakers are now in the spotlight, as questions swirl around Texas’s lack of emergency precautions and the climate denialism of Republican political leaders.
We speak with United Nations expert Francesca Albanese, one day after the Trump administration announced it is imposing sanctions on her over her advocacy for Palestinian rights. Albanese has served as the U.N. special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2022. She recently released a report highlighting dozens of companies aiding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and fueling its genocidal war machine in Gaza, including U.S. tech giants.
DAN BONGINO HERE!
I MUST GET OUT OF THIS TERRIBLE POSITION OF “DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE FBI” (where I am HELPLESS to see what’s really going on), so that I can get to the bottom of this Jeffrey Epstein situation!
(Kash Patel can come with me if he wants.
Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
Donald Trump has wrapped up his tour of central Texas, where he met with state officials and those affected by last week’s devastating floods.
The “transgender tipping point,” in the words of Time magazine, supposedly came in 2014, when trans adults living proudly public lives began showing up regularly on mainstream screens. Such figures are still around—one is even in Congress. And yet, we seem to be tipping the other way. Laws regulating which bathrooms trans people can use are back. The Trump administration is kicking us out of the military. And in United States v.
