Author: Reporter

During his two months of occupation in the White House, Donald Trump has embarked on a dizzying teardown of the federal government and attacks on long-standing institutions in an attempt to increase his own autocratic authority. Trump’s actions are not just about consolidating power, they are a deliberate stress test on the resilience of American democracy. By aggressively dismantling legal guardrails, ignoring ethical norms, and challenging institutional independence, he forces the system to either yield to his authority or expend its strength trying to contain him. The tactic is designed to weaken democratic defenses over time, conditioning the public...

As President Donald Trump pushes the historical boundaries of executive power, some of the Democratic Party’s core political institutions are preparing for the possibility that the federal government may soon launch criminal investigations against them. The Democrats’ dominant national fundraising platform, ActBlue, and the party’s largest protest group, Indivisible, are working with their attorneys for just such a scenario, according to officials within both organizations. Trump’s top political allies have suggested both groups should face prosecution. Other Democratic allies are planning for Trump-backed legal crackdowns as well. Wary of antagonizing the president, most prefer to stay anonymous for now....

Fifty years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War remains a defining rupture in American history. Not only in terms of foreign policy and military engagement, but in how it reshaped culture, identity, and public trust. It was the first U.S. conflict to be fully televised, the last fought under conscription, and perhaps the most bitterly contested at home. As American troops fought a shadowy war abroad, an equally fierce cultural battle unfolded at home across radio airwaves, bookstore shelves, movie screens, and living room televisions. This was a war that left no corner of American life untouched....

A U.S. citizen was arrested in Florida for allegedly being in the country illegally and held for pickup by immigration authorities even after his mother showed a judge her son’s birth certificate and the judge dismissed charges. Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez, 20, was in a car that was stopped just past the Georgia state line by the Florida Highway Patrol on April 16, said Thomas Kennedy, a spokesperson at the Florida Immigrant Coalition. Gomez and others in the car were arrested under a new Florida law, which is on hold, making it a crime for people who are in...

Erin McGuire spent years cultivating fruits and vegetables like onions, peppers, and tomatoes as a scientist and later director of a lab at the University of California-Davis. She collaborated with hundreds of people to breed drought-resistant varieties, develop new ways to cool fresh produce and find ways to make more money for small farmers at home and overseas. Then the funding stopped. Her lab, and by extension many of its overseas partners, were backed financially by the United States Agency for International Development, which Trump’s administration has been dismantling for the past several weeks. Just before it was time...

Jeremy Ford hates wasting water. As a mist of rain sprinkled the fields around him in Homestead, Florida, Ford bemoaned how expensive it had been running a fossil fuel-powered irrigation system on his five-acre farm, and how bad it was for the planet. In October, Ford installed an automated underground system that uses a solar-powered pump to periodically saturate the roots of his crops, saving “thousands of gallons of water.” Although they may be more costly up front, he sees such climate-friendly investments as a necessary expense — and more affordable than expanding his workforce of two. It is...