1A

One drug is at the center of the current legal battle over abortion: mifepristone. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, mifepristone has become the dominant method of abortion in the United States, filling the gap left by clinic closures in states with abortion bans. And the number of abortions has actually risen nationally as a result. That’s a problem for abortion access oppon...

Last November, Calvin Duncan won an election to serve as the chief records keeper for the criminal courts of the parish that covers New Orleans. He received 68 percent of the vote, beating out a powerful incumbent. He has some personal experience with Louisiana courts. He was incarcerated for a murder conviction for 28 years. He studied criminal law to advocate for himself, and a judge eventually...

Power is at the center of Americans’ lives. It lets us cool our homes, keeps them lit, and charges our electronics. But the more things we plug into our aging power grid, the more strained it becomes. And electricity use in the U.S. is rising for the first time in more than a decade. What happens when our grid can’t keep up? We sit down with a panel of experts to find out. Find more of our program...

Last week, in a six-to-three ruling along ideological lines, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That’s the landmark Civil Rights era law designed to prevent racial discrimination in an election. The law was passed to unravel Jim Crow era policies that limited or blocked Black Americans’ access to the ballot. The decision in Louisiana v. Callais struck down Louis...

The Supreme Court this week struck down a voting map in Louisiana that created a second majority-Black district, ruling it an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In doing so, the majority also struck an enormous blow to the landmark Voting Rights Act , and fueled GOP redistricting efforts before the midterms. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth headed to Congress, where things got testy as lawmaker...

American farmers are being squeezed. Tariffs are raising the cost of equipment and services. And now the war in Iran is driving up the cost of fertilizer and fuel . And the Farm bill — the sweeping, traditionally bipartisan legislation that shapes everything from crop insurance to food aid – hasn’t been reauthorized since 2018. Next week, the House will try again . What’s in the bill and why the c...

In 2024, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a presidential hopeful running under the banner of “making America healthy again.” Among his most fervent supporters: vaccine skeptics and cynics, nutrition-focused parents and anti-pesticide activists. After dropping out of the presidential contest and endorsing Donald Trump, Kennedy emerged as the president’s foremost pick to lead the Department of Health and H...

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how we run cities. It has the potential to make life more affordable, efficient, and safe. But with little oversight and policy, what are the risks to residents? As tech changes our communities, it’s often mayors who are leading the way. More than 500 of them are meeting in Madrid to share their best ideas as part of this year’s Bloomberg CityLab , a glob...

A growing number of states are looking at implementing a wealth tax to fund social services. California is among them, with a billionaire tax set to be included on its November ballot. And this month, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, and Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul introduced a proposed tax on luxury second homes in the city. In March, Washington passed its fir...

President Donald Trump is giving Iran a short window to unify behind an offer for peace in the Middle East after negotiations between Tehran and Washington recently broke down — or the ceasefire he extended Tuesday ends. Donald Trump’s labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, is leaving the agency amidst accusations of misconduct. She’s now the third cabinet member to leave during the second Trump ad...

Just a few decades ago, human immunodeficiency virus, also known as HIV, was a death sentence for those who contracted it. However, over the past 35 years, more effective medication and widespread access to AIDS drug assistance programs have helped those with the virus live longer and healthier lives. But in the coming months, tens of thousands of people living with HIV in the U.S. could lose acce...

More than 70 million Americans live with a disability. That’s roughly one in four adults. And any of us can join that number at any point in our lives. Through an injury, illness, or simply getting older. Disabled people are one of the largest minorities in this country. Yet there’s one part of their lives that almost never gets discussed: sex. Today, that silence is being challenged – by disabled...

Towns across the U.S. are now grappling with what it means to have ICE detention centers in their backyard — even communities that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump and support his deportation efforts. Last week, hundreds of protestors showed up outside a Maryland courtroom while a federal judge temporarily blocked the construction of a detention center in the state. That pause will...

Most of us would agree that access to foreign intelligence is important to national security. But whose private data gets swept up in the process? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was first established in 1978 following Watergate. It’s a key U.S. surveillance tool. Section 702 was added to the act in 2008 allowing the government to collect the communications of more than 300,000 fo...

We start with the U.S.-Israel war with Iran — a war that President Donald Trump said would end in two to three weeks. Now, in its seventh week, the Pentagon is sending 10,000 more troops to the Middle East to pressure Iran into making a peace deal. On Sunday, Trump posted a long rant on Truth Social calling Pope Leo XIV “weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy.” Then, later that night, Trum...

For over 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has bolstered American power and shaped the world order as we know it. But under President Donald Trump, its future is uncertain. The United States has spent the better part of a year telling its allies they’re on their own. Trump has threatened to annex Greenland – the sovereign territory of NATO ally, Denmark. He skipped the Munich Securi...

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...