After a Week From Hell, Donald Trump Calls Democrats “Savages”
Utrecht, Robin/Action Press via ZUMA Press How was your Friday night? Donald Trump’s was terrible. His envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, stepped down. Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada became the first Republican member of Congress to come out in support of an impeachment inquiry. And the Washington Post reported on another bombshell meeting with a…
The Big Apocalyptic Bird Story Everyone Read This Week May Have Missed Some Necessary Nuance
Patrick Pleul/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images This story was originally published by Undark and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When a major new study on North American bird populations appeared in the journal Science last week, it included all the trappings of a typical scientific paper, along with one, less conventional addition: The study also came with its own…
Rudy Giuliani Has a Long, Shady History With Ukraine
Rudy Giuliani speaks at the Victor Pichuk Foundation in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2017.Danil Shamkin/NurPhoto via Getty Images In March 2018, Rudy Giuliani met in Manhattan with a delegation of lawmakers from Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million in eastern Ukraine. Giuliani, who joined President Donald Trump’s legal team a few weeks later, was at this…
Trump Picked Big Oil Over Big Corn—and Now Farmers Are Pissed
As the Trump administration fights political fires raging in Washington, another one is smoldering on the prairie. Farmers in the corn belt, the cluster of states centered on Iowa that produce the great bulk of corn and soybeans, supported Trump overwhelmingly in 2016, helping swing battleground states like Iowa and Wisconsin. But now many of…
How Trump’s Response to the Ukraine Scandal Helped Russia
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images When President Donald Trump released a quasi-transcript of his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he was trying to short-circuit a burgeoning scandal that was fueling a cry for his impeachment. Because there was no making-an-offer-you-can’t-refuse quid pro quo in the memo reconstructing the conversation, Trump believed he could…
Tufted Puffins, Gray Wolves, and Grizzlies: 9 Species Likely Screwed Thanks to Trump’s Endangered Species Rollbacks
A grey wolfDennis Fast/Zuma Trump’s war on wildlife continued this week when new rules went into effect that weaken protections for plants and animals listed under the Endangered Species Act, a powerful environmental law responsible for saving the bald eagle, humpback whale, and brown pelican from extinction. The Trump administration announced the final set of rules last…