Tesla Wants to Put Puerto Rico Back on the Grid
Milos-Muller/Getty This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was a transaction concocted on Twitter—and in a few short weeks, declared official: Tesla is helping to bring power back to Puerto Rico. Early this month, Elon Musk touted his company’s work building solar-plus-battery systems for small islands like Kauai in Hawaii and Ta’u…
The Clinton-Uranium “Scandal” Is Right-Wing Nonsense. Here’s Everything You Need to Know.
Larry Marano/Rex Shutterstock/ZUMA You’ve likely heard by about the Uranium One story—a much-hyped Washington controversy promoted by conservatives, led by President Donald Trump, who are accusing Hillary Clinton of handing over US uranium to Russia as part of a pay-to-play scheme. At issue is the 2010 sale of a Canadian company called Uranium One, which had…
Progressive Politics Can Probably Survive 4 Years of Trump. It Might Not Be Able to Survive 8.
Six weeks of semi-vacation from Donald Trump was nice, but jumping back into the cesspool is…bracing. Unlike a lot of people, though, I don’t have Trump fatigue. I’m not sure exactly what I do have, but it’s bigger than Trump. It’s more like a slow but steady rise in my unease about the future of…
Here’s What Russian Trolls Are Promoting Today
My colleague Denise Clifton writes today about the ongoing Russian social media campaign in the US, and does a great job of summarizing what we know. She also links to a fascinating website I hadn’t heard of before: Hamilton 68, which purports to follow Russian influence on Twitter. Here’s one of their charts this morning:…
Trump Tries to Downplay Role of “Low Level Volunteer” George Papadopoulos
Bill Clark/ZUMA President Donald Trump distanced himself from George Papadopoulos, the former campaign aide who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian officials, claiming in a Tuesday tweet that Papadopoulos was nothing but a “low level volunteer.” It was the president’s first public acknowledgement of Papadopoulos after it was revealed the…
We Found Cool Dinosaur Fossils in Utah and Now Trump Might Ruin Them
This story was originally published by HuffPost and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Environmentalists and scientists were rattled last week following a report that President Donald Trump plans to scale back two of southern Utah’s national monuments. Not only would the project endanger sacred Native American sites and breathtaking Western vistas open to the public…