We’re nine days from the first total solar eclipse to be seen in America in nearly a century, and eclipse-watchers are frantically organizing travel and equipment to ensure a good view, including protective glasses. But some people who purchased those glasses on Amazon received warnings today from the retailer not to use them.
As the US radical right demonstrates in Charlottesville, Virginia, today, protesters against the rally have also gathered. With some right wing demonstrators reportedly chanting “Jews will not replace us” and dressed in Nazi paraphernalia, locals including Charlottesville vice mayor Wes Bellamy have shown up with their own signs and songs against white nationalism.
Update 3:30 pm: At least 10 people were reportedly struck by a car speeding through an area crowded with counter-protestors. One death was announced by Charlottesville mayor Mike Signer, who has repeatedly asked demonstrators to go home.
Despite attempts from his secretary of State to cool down the escalating exchange of threats between the White House and North Korea, Donald Trump and his surrogates seem determined to keep the temperature high. After doubling down on his incendiary threat to direct “fire and fury” toward North Korea, saying that “maybe it wasn’t tough enough,” Trump went a step further, announcing on Twitter that the US is ready to repel a North Korean attack:
US president Donald Trump took his famously bombastic rhetoric to new levels in his response to the discovery of yet another North Korean military development.
There are a lot of controversial statements in the leaked diversity memo written by Google engineer James Damore—most notably, his theory that the gender gap in tech could be attributed to biological differences between men and women.
By now, much of the internet has read the 10-page diversity memo written by a software engineer at Google. The document, obtained by Gizmodo, criticizes the tech giant’s diversity programs and takes aim at the left-leaning bias of Google’s culture.
British women may enjoy a glass of wine every now and then during pregnancy, but in the United States, drinking while pregnant is fraught. Forty-three US states have regulations around the practice, which range from prohibiting criminal prosecution of pregnant women who drink alcohol to mandating rehab for pregnant women who drink alcohol. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pegs the number of American women at risk of alcohol-exposed pregnancy at more than 3 million, a controversial figure that includes any woman who consumes alcohol without being on birth control.
This item has been corrected.
It’s been a hot few months—some of the hottest in recorded history, in fact—and the world is worried about it, according to the latest report on global security threats published today (Aug. 1) by the Pew Research Center.
So the last-ditch attempt at an Obamacare repeal failed. Can the millions of Americans who risked losing their health-care coverage sleep tight now?
When president Donald Trump announced his intention of banning transgender people from serving in the US military, he blamed “the tremendous medical costs [..] that transgender in the military would entail.” Many noted that in fact those costs were tiny: On its existing transgender personnel the military spends $8.4 million at most, or 0.13% of its total medical budget.
Update at 2:59am ET, July 28: Senate Republicans failed to partially repeal Obamacare when three Republicans, including John McCain, sided with Democrats. US president Donald Trump later tweeted that those who voted against the repeal had “let the American people down.”
The US Senate has voted to open debate on the Republican party’s health-care proposals for replacing the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. According to NBC’s congressional reporter, the Senate’s next step is to vote on a full repeal of Obamacare—which will probably fail without a proposed bill to replace it. Then it will try an amended version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the latest Senate proposal; this will also likely fail since it hasn’t yet been scored by the Congressional Budget Office and thus needs 60 votes to pass rather than just 51.
Jared Kushner, special advisor (and son-in-law) to the US president, was called before the Senate today (July 24) to discuss his June 2016 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian attorney said by a middleman to have damaging information on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election adversary, Hillary Clinton.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer is out. The New York Times reports that he “vehemently disagreed” with the appointment of Anthony Scaramucci, a New York hedge fund manager and not-so-longtime Trump supporter, as communications director.
For now, at least, the health-care fight in the US is over. The Senate bill replacing president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act has collapsed after two more Republican senators withdrew their support, leaving the ruling party without a majority. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to repeal Obamacare entirely, with a two-year delay so his party can negotiate a new bill, but several Republicans oppose that too.
In the late 1700s, July was a good month for democracies, and for revolutions. Only 13 years and 10 days after the approval of the American Declaration of Independence, another people began a fight to emancipate itself from monarchy—the French.
Matteo Renzi is in trouble. Or, rather, he’s still in trouble—the former Italian prime minister resigned late last year, following the failure of a referendum on constitutional reform that became more of a vote on his leadership than on the constitution. Since then, he has been scrambling to build support for his center-left Democratic Party ahead of the next general election—likely this year or next—in which populist parties like the Northern League and Five Star Movement expect to gain ground.
Finally, it’s happened: After being associated in news stories, commentary and speculation for months, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, who had only spoken telephonically, finally met in Hamburg, Germany at the G20.
“I’m a creep,” wrote Dave McClure on Medium on July 2. “I’m sorry.”
With cities across America fresh off Pride celebrations, the US Supreme Court has announced it will rule on a dispute between religious rights and LGBT equality: Did Jack Phillips, baker from Denver, Colorado, break the law against discrimination by refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because of his religious beliefs?
Becoming president inevitably changes your perspective. But Donald Trump has flip-flopped on many issues: He praises what he used to criticize and ignores things he had previously made it his mission to highlight. Perhaps the most glaring evidence is found in his Twitter feed: His past tweets at times contradict his present ones so perfectly it’s funny.
Amidst the motley crew of characters that surround US president Donald Trump, his oldest daughter Ivanka has emerged as conservative white America’s dream woman: At only 35, the blonde former model (“a piece of ass,” according to her father), is a hardworking mother of three, a devout wife who converted to orthodox Judaism for her husband, and a businesswoman worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Even liberal commentators have been wowed by her aura of influence, she is an advisor to the president, a bestselling author, a keynote speaker on women’s empowerment and work-life balance, and an advocate for family friendly policies.
