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Imagine you’re in a bookstore and you wander over to the fiction section. There, you find two shelves: one for human-written novels… and one for novels written by AI. That future may not be as far off as you think. Roughly 4 million books were published in the U.S. in 2025. That’s a more than a 32 percent increase from 2024, according to the trade magazine Publisher’s Weekly. It’s unclear how many...

It’s that time of the year again. Have you finished filing your return? Doing taxes this season has been particularly fraught – for both taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service. It’s been a year since DOGE slashed federal funding and cut droves of federal employees. Those departures hit the IRS hard. Its leadership has largely turned over. Also, Republicans in Congress took back billions of dol...

The Democrats are having a moment. They’ve enjoyed massive turnout for recent primaries, special elections, and local races. And voter data shows they’re also gaining support among Republican and independent voters. In Wisconsin, liberal judge Chris Taylor recently won a spot on the state Supreme Court by nearly 20 points. That’s nearly double the margin of victory another liberal candidate in 202...

The U.S. and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire after President Donald Trump threatened that “a whole civilization will die” in a social media post this week. Iranian officials are temporarily reopening the Strait of Hormuz as long as the truce remains unbroken. Trump also signed an executive order this week that restricts mail-in voting, a practice he’s long criticized due to his belief tha...

In 2019, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, the first openly gay governor elected in the U.S., signed a bill banning conversion therapy in the state. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that ban may be unconstitutional. Conversion therapy seeks to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The practice has been deemed unethical and ineffective by most major mental health groups. And a study fr...

After threatening massive attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure, Donald Trump is agreeing to a ceasefire to end the war in Iran. On Tuesday morning, the president posted on social media that “an entire civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” referring to his Tuesday night deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for trade. Tuesday evening, the president exte...

More than 80 million people rely on Medicaid. It’s the single largest source of funding for health coverage for low-income Americans. But President Donald Trump’s massive 2025 spending bill is expected to cut the program by nearly a trillion dollars over the next decade. Hospitals could be among the hardest hit. Medicaid covers about a fifth of all their spending, according to KFF Health News. And...

Both Iran and the U.S. have been accused of committing or planning war crimes since “Operation Epic Fury” began in late February. Targeting electricity-generating stations, schools, and water-purifying plants is illegal under international law. Pretty much any civilian infrastructure is supposed to be off limits. But what does it actually mean to label military action a war crime in today’s confli...

President Donald Trump told the nation during a presidential address that he expected the war in Iran to come to a close soon, saying that it was “nearly complete.” Meanwhile, the Pentagon is preparing for a weeks of ground operations in the Middle East. The House rejected a Senate-approved bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security this week. Now, the Senate is scrambling to get another ver...

It’s been nearly four years since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Since then, abortion access across the U.S. has been in flux – and the fight around that care continues today. Now, 13 states have a total ban. And five have restricted abortion after six weeks of gestation. The latest state to do so is Wyoming. But legal challenges to such bans are swift and constant, leading to confusion and uncertain...

In 2024, many voters were frustrated with the state of the southern U.S. border. A growing share of the electorate thought the Biden administration was being too lax on illegal immigration. And Pew Research said roughly one in 10 Democrats were in favor of a national deportation effort. Over the past 14 months, President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has launched a strict and ofte...

If you’re born in the United States – with a few exceptions – you’re a U.S. citizen. That principle is called birthright citizenship and it’s existed since the end of the Civil War. Some 160 years later, President Donald Trump wants to change that. On his first day back in office in 2025, he signed an executive order that tries to narrow the category of who is eligible. The Supreme Court is set to...

Is the Trump administration creating a centralized database that tracks the activities Americans? Americans who are not suspected of committing a crime? That’s the question at the heart of a new lawsuit filed against the administration by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. That’s an organization advocating for press freedoms. These allegations stem from an executive order signed by Donald Trump...

The Pentagon is planning on putting boots back on the ground in the Middle East. Some 2,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division have received orders to deploy to the region despite President Donald Trump signaling last week that he was interested in ending his war in Iran via diplomatic means. As Democrats and Republicans continue to find themselves in a stand off over DHS funding, security l...

The morning after major airstrikes by Israel on Iran’s oil facilities, black rain fell in Tehran. The city of nearly 10 million people was engulfed in thick black smoke. The World Health Organization is warning that “the conflict in the Middle East poses serious threats to public health.” A new report from the Climate and Community Institute finds that the war unleashed over 5 million tons of carb...

The United States Postal Service has delivered mail for 250 years, from the busiest cities to the most remote parts of the country. But decades of money troubles have left the USPS billions of dollars in debt. Now, the postmaster general warns that the agency could run out of money by October – and is urging Congress to save it. We explore the uncertain future of USPS with a panel of experts. Find...

Owning a house appears further and further out of reach for many people in the U.S. The problem is a national one. The median price for an American home is now just over $400,000. On average, houses cost five years of the median salary for someone working in the U.S. In some cities on the West Coast and in parts of Florida, that ratio is now eight years of salary to buy a home. Rents have also gon...

The U.S. has a long history of getting rid of foreign leaders it doesn’t like. But a new pattern has emerged in the Trump administration’s dealings with its foreign adversaries. In January, the president ordered a precision military operation that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the U.S. The next month, the administration launched a high-powered bombing campaign again...

As Israel and the U.S. continue to fire missiles at targets within Iran, the American military and President Donald Trump are weighing the costs and benefits of putting U.S. boots on the ground in the Middle East once again. Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s Department of Homeland Security confirmation hearing saw him clash with his fellow congresspeople. Despite the meeting’s testy tone, the commi...

Cases of colorectal cancer in young people have risen nearly 60 percent since the early 2000s. That’s according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute. And a new study out this month by the American Cancer Society found that colorectal cancer is now the deadliest kind for those younger than 50. But this rise isn’t being felt across all generations in the sam...

Big changes are coming to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. With Kristi Noem out at the Department of Homeland Security, all eyes are on FEMA to roll out millions of dollars in stalled federal funding for disaster responses. That’s especially true in North Carolina, where the western part of the state is still grappling with the effects of Hurricane Helene. We sit down with a panel of exper...

Wars are fought by militaries — but they’re usually ended by diplomats. So, what happens when diplomacy is sidelined? Officials from Washington and Tehran engaged in talks for weeks, trying to avoid war before the U.S. and Israel fired missiles targeting Iran weeks ago. Now, as President Donald Trump publicly muses about why the military is engaged in another conflict in the Middle East, experts a...

President Donald Trump and his administration and allies have sent mixed messages about the war with Iran in the first two weeks of the operation. The Secretary of Defense called it war. Now, the Speaker of the House said thus conflict with Iran is not a war. Whatever the president decides to call the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign – it’s cost the lives of 13 American troops and more than 2,000 peopl...

Two weeks into the war with Iran, the United States has spent more than $10 billion dollars. The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Iranians and seven American service members. Those numbers are likely to grow if there are boots on the ground, a possibility that Trump Administration officials refuse to rule out. The president traveled to Kentucky and Ohio this week where he went on...

Waging war is not cheap. Experts estimate that the U.S. has already spent more than $10 billion launching missiles at Iran in the past few weeks. Meanwhile, thanks to fighting in the Strait of Hormuz disrupting the global energy supply trade, the price of oil is rising sharply worldwide. With no clear end in sight, how will Congress wrangle the high price tag of the war – economically and politica...