In the list of campaign promises from Donald Trump, the one about the war in Ukraine stood out for the number of times he repeated it—“I’ll have that thing ended in 24 hours”—and for the undeniable way he failed to deliver. His self-imposed deadline, of course, passed in January, and the president has since admitted that the belligerents proved much harder to reconcile than he had expected. Still he continues to try.
This afternoon, blocks from the White House, a man sneaked up on two West Virginia National Guardsmen and shot them in the head with a handgun. Both soldiers are reportedly in critical condition. A motive has not been determined, but a recent Afghan immigrant named Rahmanullah Lakanwal is in custody, according to CBS News. Early photos of the suspect show a burly, bearded man being wheeled almost naked into an ambulance.
In a recent article for The Atlantic, W. David Marx argued that culture as we know it today is a hoarder’s paradise, a hopelessly cluttered landscape of rubbish. “Everyday life has never contained more stuff—an endless reel of words, ideas, games, songs, videos, memes, outrageous statements, celebrity meltdowns, life hacks, extremely talented animals,” he writes. My 5-year-old’s favorite song is a version of “Golden,” the standout hit from Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters, meowed by fake cats.
Pay attention to the dates, because the timing matters. Steve Witkoff spoke with Yuri Ushakov, a Russian official, on October 14. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held a meeting with President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on October 17. Trump had been hinting that he would offer to sell Tomahawks, long-range cruise missiles, to the Ukrainian army. But he did not.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wants us to return to the golden age of air travel, when nobody got into a punching match for reclining a seat into someone else’s lap. He says this golden age starts with us, and he has a whole campaign prepared! I assume it will involve more humane accommodations for travelers—or less harrowing working conditions for the flight attendants charged with both crowd control and safety. Or modernizing air-traffic control to make it safer and more efficient.
Protests have erupted in North Carolina after federal agents arrested 370 people in immigration raids. On Monday, Bishop William Barber and other religious leaders gathered in Charlotte to demand an end to ICE raids. “What you have is a conglomerate of policy violence, and it’s deadly,” says Barber, who is organizing protests against ICE and Medicaid cuts across the country.
Zohran Mamdani will be taking office as mayor of New York in just five weeks. His transition team continues to make announcements about the new administration, recently unveiling a 400-person advisory group, broken up into 17 committees. Democracy Now! speaks with the incoming first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan, on how Mamdani plans to implement his progressive vision.
During a controversial Oval Office meeting last week, President Trump defended Mohammed bin Salman when a reporter asked about the Saudi crown prince’s involvement in the 2018 murder of Washington Post opinion columnist Jamal Khashoggi. “The man sitting in the White House next to President Trump is a murderer,” says Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN, an organization founded by Khashoggi in 2018. To Whitson, Trump’s main motivation for cozying up to Saudi Arabia is financial.
The church’s minister gets sick and everyone knows it.
Lawmakers want to close a so-called hemp loophole. They might blow up a massive industry in the process.
After US Airways left Pittsburgh high and dry, yinzers finally built an airport on their own terms—and it’s incredible.
Larry Summers’ appalling emails to Jeffrey Epstein aren’t the only reason not to like the guy.
From affairs with big-name politicians to a MySpace-era pop song, the journalist’s comeback attempt is hitting a few bumps along the way.
GOP lawmakers knew subsidies were expiring and premiums would spike, but no clear, conservative alternative emerged.
The HHS secretary said in an interview he ordered the CDC’s website to acknowledge gaps in studies on vaccines and autism.
Commissioner Marty Makary is pushing back on the demand, officials told POLITICO, in the latest development to roil the agency
The church’s “it couple” faces AIDS, caregiving, and loss as part of a pair, part of families, and part of a community.
A celebrity contracts HIV, the world finally pays attention to AIDS, and Jim Mitulski preaches to a community tired of people dying from it.
When a lesbian minister is physically assaulted, the church is galvanized. When it happens again, the city is galvanized.
A gay minister seeks healing with his family and his queer kin, even as he knows he’ll soon die from AIDS.
AIDS helps forge an unlikely friendship between two San Francisco churches from very different neighborhoods with very different views on sexuality.
Democrats running on cost-of-living anxieties outperformed Republicans in Tuesday’s elections by greater-than-expected margins. The president chalked it up to partisan lies.
A recent poll found a majority of Americans feel they’re spending more on groceries than they did a year ago.
The Republican nominee has promised tax cuts and economic growth, but the numbers are fuzzy.
Trump’s strength with Republicans on the economy could prove to be a boon for the GOP.
Global negotiations at the annual U.N. climate summit ended Saturday in Belém, Brazil, with a watered-down agreement that does not even mention fossil fuels, let alone offer a roadmap to phase out what are the primary contributors to the climate crisis. The COP30 agreement also makes no new commitments to halt deforestation and does not address global meat consumption, another major driver of global warming.
“I’m angry at a really weak outcome.
The president said an extension of subsidies that help people pay for health insurance “may be necessary” to buy time for a broader overhaul.
The president said an extension of subsidies that help people pay for health insurance “may be necessary” to buy time for a broader overhaul.
Mark Kelly thought he was merely stating the obvious. Earlier this month, the Arizona senator joined five other congressional Democrats to film a message addressed to members of the military. “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders,” they said.
An ordinary president, Kelly told us on Tuesday afternoon, would have responded to the video by affirming that troops should of course follow lawful orders. “But not this guy,” he added. “We basically said, ‘Follow the law.
The second round of Inflation Reduction Act negotiation prices, which includes 15 brand-name drugs, will kick into effect in 2027.