The Secret History of the White House’s Kitchen Slaves
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. When you look at the White House, you probably don’t think of it as a Southern plantation mansion—the way you might, say, a columned antebellum pile in Georgia. But Washington, D.C. was carved out of territory from Virginia and Maryland, both slave states. Slavery was legal…
Trump’s EPA Just Made a “Highly Unusual” Concession to a Big Pesticide Company
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Back in 2016, seed and pesticide giant Syngenta got some harsh news from the the US Environmental Protection Agency: in a complaint alleging the company had failed to protect workers from exposure to a highly toxic insecticide in an incident at a corn farm it operates…
Californians Could Vote to Give Themselves the Measles
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. This fall, Californians may have the opportunity to vote on a catch-all ballot initiative that would ban genetically modified organisms and get rid of school vaccination requirements. But that’s not all. The so-called California Clean Environment Initiative would also prohibit the use of 300 substances,…
The Price-Fixing Scandal Rocking Big Chicken
buhanovskiy/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. The biggest poultry processors in the United States face widespread allegations that they colluded to raise prices over the course of 10 years in the $30 billion broiler chicken market. In just three weeks, two grocery retailers and the country’s two biggest food…
Here’s the Worst, Anti-Science Idea of the Week from the Republican Congress
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. At a hearing this week, Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Texas) lashed out at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the group that assesses cancer risk for the UN’s World Health Organization. He accused it of conducting “cherry-picked science,” which, he declared “raises questions about why IARC…
USDA Chief to People on Food Stamps: Get a Job
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. According to a recent US Department of Agriculture report, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly called food stamps) “increasingly serves the working poor.” Indeed, among working-age SNAP recipients, 57 percent either work or are seeking employment, and 22 percent are disabled. Even so, USDA chief Sonny…