In East Palestine, Ohio residents are unsure of whether or not it’s safe to return to their homes after a train derailment in the area forced officials to do a “controlled release” of vinyl chloride, a “colorless compound that is a human carcinogen and can be deadly if inhaled” into the air to avert an explosion. […]
Author: Ali Breland
“Slander”: College Board Blasts DeSantis Attacks on African American Course
Late on Saturday evening, the College Board responded to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s wave of attacks on education in Florida accusing the state’s Department of Education of criticizing the Advanced Placement African American studies course, and its use in the state of Florida, as a vehicle for the governors’ far-right politics. The College Board said that it welcomes […]
A Tesla Will Hit a Child-Sized Mannequin in a Super Bowl Ad This Year
Ah, the Super Bowl is upon us. Like most American news organizations, we are obligated to offer some predictions today, and the time of the game, for easy web traffic. The game is on at 6:30 p.m. eastern time. I think the Philadelphia Eagles linebackers will try to target Kansas City Chief’s go-to tight end […]
The Website That Wants You to Kill Yourself—and Won’t Die
Most websites aren’t known for having a “kill count.” Kiwi Farms is. Its victims reportedly include Julie Terryberry, who in 2016 took her life after being targeted by users of the site. Two years later, after years of harassment from Kiwi Farms trolls, Chloe Sagal lit herself on fire in a public park. In June […]
It Came From the Basement
The white nationalist figure Nicholas J. Fuentes ignited a political firestorm by dining with Kanye West and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, he strode out onstage to a crowd of what he claimed were 1,000 followers, chanting “America First.” Behind a podium, flanked by two American flags and one with that slogan, he hit his standard […]
Trump’s Dinner Fiasco Was a Win for Fascists Playing the Long Game
The 24-year-old white nationalist Nick Fuentes dined with Donald Trump and Kanye West (who now goes by Ye) at Mar-A-Lago last week. For the last six years, Fuentes has built up a following on Twitter, Twitch, and other social media platforms while touting his support for antisemitism, fascism, and the creation of a white ethnostate. In […]
They Weren’t Rich But They Wanted to Invest. Then They Lost Everything on FTX.
In early November, Iqbal Kassam, a Vancouver-based 30-year-old, had decided to take a couple of days off. His marketing business was running smoothly and the crypto markets, which he had been actively following and investing in on the side, seemed to have cooled, requiring less of his day-to-day attention. So he and his wife decided […]
Election-Denying Secretary of State Candidates Got Crushed
Are you an election-denying secretary of state candidate? In a key battleground state? Then you might be having a difficult election year. Election deniers running to oversee state elections did particularly poorly in the 2022 midterms—even in comparison to the underwhelming performance of the Republican Party more generally. Almost the entire America First Coalition, for […]
Elon Musk Responded to a Senator the Only Way He Knows How
Elon Musk seems to have settled on a bold new strategy for responding to a letter from a US senator probing his handling of Twitter: shitposting. On Friday, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) tweeted out a letter he had sent to Musk, partially in response to a Washington Post story in which the writer used Twitter’s […]
Funding Fringe Candidates in Republican Primaries Is Still a Terrible Idea
The Democrats had a plan: Fund the right-wing radicals. For the 2022 midterms, according to numbers compiled by the Washington Post, Democrats spent $19 million in support of far-right Republican primary candidates who denied or questioned the results of the 2020 election. Fringe-right candidates, they assumed, would be less palatable to voters in specific districts […]