Back in 1966 — seven years before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade — Mississippi was the first state in the nation to legalize abortion for victims of rape. Up until the early 1980s, when state legislators embarked on a campaign to shutter them via a series of increasingly …
Read More »Minneapolis Police Caught on Video 'Hunting' Activists
“You see a fucking group” in the street, a Minneapolis police sergeant in a riot helmet told his fellow officers: “Fuck ‘em up, gas ‘em, fuck ‘em up.” It was the evening of May 30th, 2020, five days after Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. An 8 p.m. curfew was …
Read More »They Were Joe Biden's Climate Allies. Now They're His Critics
Hurricanes and wildfires are ravaging the United States, and President Biden is on the road reminding everyone that the climate crisis is real, it’s here, and action — bold action — must be taken to combat the devastation being wrought by rising temperatures. Last week he was in New Orleans …
Read More »The Revenge of John Roberts
WASHINGTON —In the fall of 1981, a young conservative lawyer named John Roberts, fresh off a Supreme Court clerkship, arrived at the Justice Department at the start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Hired as a special assistant to the attorney general, Roberts focused on voting rights, and in particular the battle …
Read More »As Trump Bashes China, His Administration Pays Millions to a Consulting Firm Used by the Chinese Government
President Trump and his allies have settled on a new strategy for defending their weak response to the novel coronavirus pandemic: Attack China. On Tuesday, that strategy took the form of Trump’s announcement that he would freeze funding for the World Health Organization. At a White House press conference, Trump …
Read More »'Absolute Clusterf-k': Inside the Denial and Dysfunction of Trump's Coronavirus Task Force
This story appears in the May 2020 issue of Rolling Stone, on newsstands May 5th. On February 24th, Dr. Duane Caneva, the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security, sent an urgent email with the subject line “Red Dawn Breaking Bad” to a small group of doctors, epidemiologists, …
Read More »The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign
Since we released the first edition of this list in early December, the news cycle has taken several hectic turns. The president was impeached, and responded by issuing “official movement permits” to Santa Claus and his nine reindeer, so they could legally enter the United States (not a joke!). The …
Read More »Michael Wolff's 'Siege' Is Like His Last Book — But Worse
Michael Wolff might be the most unreliable historian America has ever encountered, but at least he admits it. This is from the author’s note to Siege, the less-explosive sequel to his smash-hit “inside” account of the Trump presidency, Fire and Fury: Dealing with sources in the Trump White House has …
Read More »The Pentagon's Bottomless Money Pit
A retired Air Force auditor — we’ll call him Andy — tells a story about a thing that happened at Ogden Air Force Base, Utah. Sometime in early 2001, something went wrong with a base inventory order. Andy thinks it was a simple data-entry error. “Someone ordered five of something,” …
Read More »Six Historians on Why Trump's Border Wall Won't Work
President Trump’s promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was a defining and divisive talking point throughout the 2016 campaign, rallying his conservative base enough to help win him the election. In trying to fulfill one of his most popular campaign promises, President Trump has halted the U.S. …
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