A Senate gun control package that once looked like the most significant reform effort in a generation failed on the floor this week, with the bill’s own supporters conceding that whatever version manages to pass will likely fall well short of what advocates originally sought. A Compromise Built to Attract Republican Votes At the center…
A congressional hearing billed as an investigation into homegrown terrorism has instead become a flashpoint over whether singling out one religious community for scrutiny actually makes the country safer — and legal experts studying counter-radicalization policy argue the approach taken this week gets the underlying problem badly wrong. A Hearing Built Around a Contested Premise…
Viviette Applewhite has voted in nearly every election since 1960. Under a new Pennsylvania law, she may not be able to vote in this year’s presidential election at all — and she’s now the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit arguing the law that could disenfranchise her violates the state’s own constitution. A Law With a…
A fire tore through the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos late Monday, sending thousands fleeing into the surrounding hills after violence broke out among camp residents — the latest crisis at a facility regional officials have warned for months is dangerously overcrowded. A Camp Already Past Its Breaking Point More than…
Nevada had one of the fastest-growing rooftop solar industries in the country — until state regulators changed the rules governing it, and the industry all but collapsed within months. From Boom to Bust in a Single Ruling The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada voted unanimously in December to eliminate one-for-one net metering, the system that…
A federal appeals court has ruled that a transgender woman facing deportation to Mexico cannot be sent back, finding that immigration officials wrongly conflated gender identity with sexual orientation in denying her protection under an international torture treaty. A Ruling Built on a Distinction the Lower Board Missed The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found…
Down a dirt alley in a suburban corner of Jakarta, past chickens and playing children, sits a small pink house — Indonesia’s first retirement home built specifically for elderly waria, the term used across the country for transgender women, many of whom have spent decades with nowhere safe to grow old. A Life Built Without…
As the new Trump administration moves to expand immigration enforcement, California lawmakers have passed a measure urging the state’s schools to teach a largely forgotten chapter of American history — one historians say offers a direct, uncomfortable preview of what large-scale deportation campaigns actually look like in practice. A Mass Expulsion Most Textbooks Skip During…
Vigil Held for Injured Iraq War Veteran More than 1,000 people gathered in Oakland last night for a vigil honoring Scott Olsen, the Iraq War veteran who fractured his skull earlier this week after being struck during an Occupy Oakland protest. Olsen’s condition has since been upgraded to fair. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan issued a…
At the Surajkund Craft Fair on the outskirts of Delhi, a group of snake charmers plays for visitors between sets from local folk musicians — one of the few remaining, legally gray spaces left for a tradition that Indian law effectively made illegal decades ago. A Tradition Cut Off at the Root “Snakes and snake…