Beginning on April 13, 2022, exploited migrants have been sent on buses to sanctuary cities throughout the country. Migrant busing refers to when political officials transport migrants seeking refuge in the United States by bus to different parts of the country. The busing program that Texas Governor Greg Abbott created has inspired many Republican governors to do the same to their migrant populations, effectively creating a displacement crisis across the United States.
Read MoreIn late summer of 1977, the United States launched the Voyager 1 and 2 probes, each of which carried a copy of a 12-inch gold-plated record that contained a time capsule from the planet Earth—sounds, images, and a message from then-President Jimmy Carter. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first manmade object to reach interstellar space. The record it carries is the first message that humanity sent off into the universe in search of extraterrestrial life. Scientists estimate that the Golden Records may survive for over five billion years—likely far longer than the human species itself. That means that when humanity is long extinct, all that remains of our legacy may be the words of an oft-overlooked one-term president.
Read More“If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”
DeSantis is just one among several conservative voices who assert that Big Tech is controlling the media to unfairly suppress conservative viewpoints, pushing the national narrative towards a hidden, progressive agenda. This wave of fear has prompted two prominent conservative states to draft laws aimed at regulating Big Tech’s power to moderate content. However, these laws have sparked a wave of legal challenges from angry tech companies, prompting important questions about our country’s freedoms of speech, press, and expression.
Read MoreOn Jan. 23 2023, Jaahnavi Kandula, a graduate student at Northeastern University in Seattle, was struck and killed by a police officer going 74 mph in a 25 mph zone. Jaahnavi’s family mourned for months, aggrieved by the loss of her happy presence and the fact that she was so close to achieving her dreams, only months away from graduation. Then, shocking new footage emerged. In the video, taken the day after the accident, Officer Daniel Auderer, the vice president of the police union, is seen driving around while chatting on the phone with Mike Solan, the union’s president. They’re talking about the case, and Auderer is nauseatingly flippant about the situation.
Read MoreAmerican law has long recognized the role of negligence in criminal proceedings. Determining guilt in the case of malicious action is straightforward enough—if a person acted with intent to do harm, they ought to be held responsible. But the justice system accepts that cases of inaction can be just as fatal. A person does not need to hold the knife to be held liable; the simple failure to act when there is known risk that apathy will lead to harm—take, for example, failure to feed a child—is enough to establish guilt. In the eyes of the law, death that can be easily prevented—yet is not—is just as immoral.
Read MoreAfter waking up this morning, you probably went on your phone and began to scroll through your feed, coming across a TikTok of Kanye singing “Hey There Delilah”, a drawing of Spiderman in the style of Warhol, and then read a fascinating article from the Onion to make sure you start your day informed. Maybe the algorithm was feeling nostalgic, so it decided to serve you some Key of Awesome clips. The specifics might be different for you, but one thing is clear, parody is everywhere, and more often than not, it is based on another’s creative works.
Read MoreIn the lead-up to last year’s elections, many political strategists and pundits predicted Republican wins across the country, based on the trend in U.S. politics wherein the president’s party performs poorly in midterm elections. The GOP sought to fragment the existing trifecta consisting of a Democratic House, Senate, and White House in an effort to stall President Biden’s legislative agenda—and to an extent, they were successful. Republicans gained control of the House after four years of Democratic control.
Read MoreWhen overenthusiastic patriots get into online scraps and start comparing countries like PTA moms comparing kids, the mark they often point to at the top of America’s report card is free expression. Since its founding, the United States has maintained a vigorous discourse around the topic of free expression, with many decades of oft-controversial First Amendment jurisprudence under its belt. A 2015 Pew Research study found that Americans are the most supportive in the world of free expression (in theory); however, the United States receives a perennially middling score in each year’s World Press Freedom Index—this year, it ranked 45th.
Read MoreFrom the mechanical pencils we write with to the energy we use to power our homes, every facet of human civilization impacts our natural world significantly. Since the 20th century, humans have consumed more resources per year than civilizations have for centuries. Environmentally, humans are cutting down entire forests, polluting oceans with plastics, and drilling oil out of the ground. The consequences include rising sea levels, abrupt changes in weather patterns, more intense ‘natural’ disasters, and mass extinction of thousands of animal species.
Read MoreThere has been another massive leak of classified government documents, and this time it's from a junior officer in the Massachusetts Air National Guard. At 21 years old, Jack Douglas Teixeira has single-handedly become the center of a vast Pentagon data leak that has cost the United States significant damage to its national security and international reputation. Teixeira was a cyber transport systems specialist and was given Top Secret clearance as well as sensitive compartmentalized access, otherwise known as SCI, to highly classified documents. Some of these documents were released on the social messaging platform Discord, where they would eventually spread around the world.
Read MoreThe introduction of anti-trans bills are on the rise in state legislatures across America right now. This year alone, there have been 528 anti-trans bills proposed in nearly all 50 states, which is a devastating record for the United States that is only increasing as the year goes on. This extreme increase in anti-trans legislation at the state level is a result of the damage the Trump administration was able to cause in its four years of holding power.
Read MoreThe President of the United States is not the most powerful man in America. The leaders of the House and Senate, whose whips may set the leviathan Federal government barreling in whichever direction they please, do not top the rank. The nine Justices of the Supreme Court, a half dozen of whom can permanently alter the very meaning of the Constitution, are far from the most commanding figures in Washington. Rather, the true heart of American power lies not on Capitol Hill, but two miles westward, nestled between the Vietnam War Memorial and a Dunkin’ Donuts.
Read MoreThe proposed California Senate Bill 31 would make living on streets, sidewalks, or public property 1000 feet from schools, daycare centers, parks, or libraries a misdemeanor. In New York City, the administration has begun heavily enforcing rules that prevent people from using the subway system to sleep at night. At the beginning of 2023, a Missouri law went into effect, banning people from sleeping on state-owned land, like under bridges. St. Petersburg, Florida has a combination of ordinances that prevent people from lying and sleeping on sidewalks, as well as banning the unpermitted placement of “any object that is used as the functional equivalent of a table.”
Read MoreThe trope of the creepy crossdresser is nothing new. From serial killers in movies to flashers in the park to weird neighbors on Disney channel shows- growing up it was everywhere, and now it’s back. And this time, drag is being dragged through the mud.
The most recent wave of anti-drag sentiment has been driven by talk shows, protests, and most importantly an influx in anti-drag legislation. Alongside a greater trend of anti-trans bills, Tennessee recently passed one of its harshest anti-drag bills yet, criminalizing participation in “adult cabaret performances” in public spaces or in the presence of children. This bill lumps drag performers with exotic dancers and strippers, labeling these performances as shows with “prurient interest.”
Unions are one of the most important parts of our workforce today and they are under attack. Union membership has been steadily decreasing since the 1980s, but why? There are many answers to that question but the most obvious and the most relevant answer is corporate union busting and the deregulation that allows it. Corporations and their political lackeys put up a big fight, but are unions worth the effort?
Totally and completely.
Read MoreA Texas federal judge has invalidated the FDA ruling on mifepristone. Mifepristone is a common medical abortion drug used widely throughout the United States. This controversial decision has sparked a national, and now international conversation about the importance of protecting abortion.
The US judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs who argued that mifepristone was incorrectly advertised as a drug marketed to address serious illnesses and providing therapeutic effects to those with hormonal impairments. The judge further explained that when the FDA originally approved the drug as a safe and effective method to conduct medical abortions it was due to political pressure.
For the LSU Tigers, Louisiana State University’s women’s basketball team, April 2nd should have been a truly triumphant day. It was the day they won the NCAA national championship, wowing spectators and making history. A record-breaking event, the match saw the majority-Black team score the most points ever in a women’s championship game as well as the most points scored at halftime, accomplishments that secured them their first ever championship victory.
The excitement quickly soured, however, when First Lady Jill Biden, who had been attending the game, invited the Iowa Hawkeyes, the runners-up, to the White House to celebrate alongside the Tigers. LSU’s star forward, Angel Reese, was quick to call this “a joke.”
Read MoreThree Mile Island. Fukushima. Chernobyl. The three worst nuclear disasters in human history, and yet they barely account for a few hundred deaths, as opposed to millions of deaths caused by the fossil fuel industry. Nuclear energy has a stigma of being inherently bad for the environment, toxifying whole cities, and spreading radioactive material. That is exactly what fossil fuels do, yet the lobbying efforts against nuclear power center the danger of nuclear power and brush off the harmful impacts of fossil fuels to scare the public against clean energy.
Read MoreAndrew Tate is a controversial figure who has been in the news a lot lately, for a multitude of reasons ranging from the heinous to the hateful. Along with this media attention, many questions follow: Who is he? What does he do? What does he represent? And most importantly, why is he so damn popular? Due to his immense following, we need to understand what he truly represents to a lot of people, those who dislike him and those who idolize him.
Read MoreRecent weather events demonstrate a very different narrative to what we’re told: lower-income communities will face dire weather conditions, flooding, and extreme events as climate change unfolds over the next half of the century. The Environmental Protection Agency reported that lower-income communities disproportionately experience and have difficulty rebounding from heat waves, poor air quality, and flooding. The statistics are there, but the narrative that only those of a lower tax bracket experience climate change is off base. Believing in this rhetoric will prompt a rude awakening for the rich. Mother Nature doesn’t discriminate.
Read More
