Weeks before the Supreme Court’s emergency session that could determine the fate of TikTok in the United States, Donald Trump on Friday issued a legal filing asking the high court to pause the law that would ban the Chinese-owned social media app if it isn’t sold by January 19.

The filing did not comment on the legal arguments of the law, which was signed under President Biden over national security concerns that have mounted in recent years. Instead, it touted Trump as “one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history,” noting his 14.7 million followers on TikTok. The president also echoed TikTok’s arguments that the law illegally restricts the First Amendment.

The filing marks the latest chapter in Trump’s shifting views regarding the popular app after he tried, and failed, to ban it in 2020. After meeting with TikTok’s CEO earlier this month, Trump hinted at possibly intervening before the law’s implementation, saying that he had a “warm spot” for the platform. In March, Trump experienced a similar reversal following a meeting with Jeff Yass, a conservative hedge-fund manager who happens to have a $33 billion stake in TikTok. All of this has come against the backdrop of Trump’s increasing coziness with some of tech’s most prominent billionaires.

D. John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer and nominee for solicitor general, wrote on Friday: “President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus permitting President Trump’s incoming Administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”

Update, December 28: This story has been updated to reflect Donald Trump’s position on the H1-B visa program.

Less than a month before Donald Trump returns to office, two of his most ardent allies have plunged into a fierce online debate over immigration, specifically the government’s visa program that allows American companies to hire so-called “highly skilled” foreign workers.

The clash started on Monday with Laura Loomer, the far-right social media character known for her virulent racism, condemning Trump’s decision to name Sriram Krishnan, a tech investor who was born in India, as a senior adviser on artificial intelligence. Tech leaders, including Elon Musk, weighed in to defend the practice of hiring foreign workers, specifically through the government’s H-1B visa program. (Musk, a naturalized US citizen from South Africa, once held the visa.) The debate has since devolved into a relentless string of petty insults—Loomer likened tech billionaires to “termites” at Mar-a-Lago; Musk called Loomer a troll—as well as accusations of censorship on X as retaliation. At a different point, Vivek Ramaswamy chimed in to register his support for hiring foreign workers. The former presidential candidate and now-DOGE partner blamed an American culture that has so “venerated mediocrity over excellence” that tech companies have no other option but to hire engineers from abroad.

One might be tempted to view this MAGA infighting as a signal that Musk may not be as extreme as the other faithful. Could this mean that the tech billionaire who openly embraced some of MAGA’s most pernicious racism and conspiracy theories is capable of restraint, at least when it comes to matters of business and the economy? Such a takeaway from this online war would be a mistake. After all, the tech billionaire, who just last week endorsed Germany’s far-right AfD party, is simply acting as he always does: framing any argument to be of service to himself. For him, immigration policy should be crafted strictly in terms of what is economically beneficial to a company, or individual’s bottom line. Never mind immigrants who are deemed to be less than “highly skilled.”

It was their first day in battle and the two best friends had just switched places. Bob Fordyce rested while Frank Hartzell crawled down into the shallow foxhole, taking his turn chipping away at the frozen ground. Just then, German artillery fire began falling all around them. With his body plastered to the ground, Hartzell could feel shrapnel dent his helmet. When the explosions finished, he picked himself up to find that his best friend had just been killed in the blur of combat. 

“When you’re actually in it, it’s very chaotic,” Hartzell said. 

The following day, New Year’s Day 1945, Hartzell battled Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne. In the aftermath, American soldiers gunned down dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war in a field—a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. 

“I remember we had been given orders, take no prisoners,” Hartzell said. “When I walked past the field on the left, there were these dead bodies. I knew what they were. I knew they were dead Germans.” News of the massacre reached General George S. Patton, but no investigation followed.

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on the climate crisis that, among other things, directed the secretary of the Interior to review the potential for clean energy on public lands. Later that year, he set aggressive national targets on green energy: 80% renewable energy generation by 2030 and 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035. Then came the passage of the historic Inflation Reduction Act, which showered the clean energy industry with federal incentives and encouraged private investors to cash in on its explosive growth.

Since Biden’s inauguration, his administration has approved a steady stream of solar, geothermal, and transmission projects across the West. In April, the Interior Department announced that it had permitted more than 29 gigawatts of renewable energy on public lands—an amount nearly equivalent to the total capacity of Washington or Arizona. In the following months, it released a suite of new agency rules and a regional plan aimed at boosting regulatory certainty for clean energy development for years to come.

“2024 felt like the year where all the pieces finally came together,” said Rachael Hamby, policy director for the Center for Western Priorities, a nonprofit that advocates for clean energy and conservation in the West. “A lot of that groundwork has been laid over the past four years, and we’re seeing the culmination of all of that progress.”

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On the second weekend after Hurricane Helene, Swannanoa Christian Church held its first Sunday service since the storm-battered western North Carolina. The sanctuary was piled high with clothes, water, and food, so everyone gathered outdoors. Out in the yard, beneath a clear blue sky and uphill from the devastation wrought by the flood, the congregation interspersed prayer with the testimonies of congregants who had pulled people from the water or been pulled from it themselves.

After the service, as congregants lingered to chat or sort donations, Elder Gordon Dasher recounted his church’s mission following the storm. “Our goal is to be the kingdom of God here on Earth,” the pastor said. “We’re getting into the filth, getting dirty, getting sewage and mud on our feet and hands, and helping people in the darkest moment of their life. That’s number one. And number two, what we want to see come out of that is we want people to see at least a glimmer of a light to come on that says God is real, because here are his people right here, side by side with us in our suffering.”

Dasher and his ministry in Swannanoa are part of a teeming community of faith-based organizations using their deep roots, vast networks of the faithful, and financial means to help in whatever way they can. Beyond the local congregations, Presbyterians, Catholics, Baptists, and many other denominations rushed in to help, as they so often do after floods, and hurricanes, and wildfires everywhere. Almost three months later, the sight of church volunteers clearing away rubble, handing out water, or gathering in prayer remains as common as the sight of damaged homes and washed-out roads. 

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy.

Camo hat, orange letters. The ever-present “Hot to Go!” dance. VMA alien makeout. Beyoncé covering Dolly Parton—and Dolly loving it in return. Feuds. Flirting. That shade of green.

There was a lot of buzz around pop music over the past year, and our younger colleagues have assured us that it wasn’t all hype. The music, especially the pop music, was legitimately good.

Even the numbers back it up. The data shows that 2024 was the year of the “pop star (re)emergence.” But the trend extended to other genres, from country to musical theater and the ’80s power ballads, experiencing a resurgence thanks to their association with pop stardom. The common denominator throughout? Women were at the forefront of all of it:

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy.

Destroyed by Watergate and vilified for suggesting that presidents are above the law, Richard Nixon died in disgrace in 1994.

But it turns out he was right. The 37th president was quietly but resoundingly vindicated by the Supreme Court in its Trump v. United States decision in July, when Chief Justice John Roberts declared that “the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.”

“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy.

For those of us who would be described in HR packets at progressive workplaces as “gender nonconforming” or “of non-normative gender presentation,” it can sometimes be really hard to get a haircut.

The places where one might get one are usually gender-segregated zones, where cisgender people go for what one might call gender-affirming care—that is, cosmetic care toward redeclaring their man- or womanhood. Still, enough gender studies papers have been written about the barbershop as a masculine space and the hair salon as the center of an all-women’s social world. I, frankly, don’t want to get into all of that.

But my point here is, in the expensive coastal cities where broke queer and trans people congregate for safety and community, it can be difficult to find an affordable haircut. When I moved to New York City, I was inundated with ads for queer-affirming barbershops. But these were all promoting places where haircuts cost $120—not, for me, a particularly affirming price tag. For a while, I resorted to making my friends cut my hair with drugstore scissors. 

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy.

When was the 2024 presidential election really lost? 

Maybe you’d argue (though I would not) that it was the rubber-stamp nominating process for Vice President Kamala Harris. You could point, on a symbolic level, to Trump’s fist pump after surviving an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. For a time, it seemed like the clearest answer to this was the first debate, when President Joe Biden melted down on stage. But I think if you want to pinpoint when things went irreversibly downhill, you have to go back further—to the aftermath of the midterms two years ago, when a then-80-year-old Biden moved ahead with his plan to run for a second term.

Biden had always insisted that he was never planning on being a one-term president. Still, he tried to allay concerns about his age that dogged him even in 2020 by referring to himself as a generational “bridge,” and behind the scenes, aides offered context for his public denials. “He’s going into this thinking, ‘I want to find a running mate I can turn things over to after four years, but if that’s not possible or doesn’t happen, then I’ll run for reelection,’” an aide told Politico in 2019. “But he’s not going to publicly make a one-term pledge.” After a strong showing in the midterms against a predicted red wave, any notion of a smooth transition to the next in line—or a competitive primary—went out the window. Democrats shuffled around their primary calendar to warn off challengers. And that was that. Biden was dead set on running, he argued, because the stakes were too high and he was the best candidate for the job. 

Annoyed with time changes in the fall and spring? So is President-elect Donald Trump. On Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social that the “Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time” because it is “inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

Ending daylight saving time would also not be that original—two thirds of countries do not have it. Americans do seem to be split on the issue. In a 2019 poll, 7 out of 10 Americans said they did not like the biannual switches, but 4 in 10 wanted a fixed standard time and 3 in 10 wanted daylight saving time.

Even putting aside the economic argument for ending daylight saving time, some research suggests that the practice of putting the clock one hour ahead in the spring can negatively impact peoples’ mental health. When our internal clock is thrown off and we get less sleep, our mood can be impacted, leading us to feel less focused and potentially more depressed. This lack of focus can also be deadly—a February 2020 study that looked at two decades’ worth of traffic accidents found that there was a 6 percent increase in the risk of fatal traffic accidents in the week following daylight saving time in the United States.

In October 2020, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional society that represents medical specialists who focus on sleep medicine, even issued a statement in support of ending daylight saving time in favor of a fixed year-round schedule:

Every summer, 50 of the nation’s best and brightest teenage girls gather in Mobile, Alabama, to embark on two of the most intense weeks of their lives. Everybody wants the same thing: to walk away with a $40,000 college scholarship and the title of Distinguished Young Woman of America.

Reporter Shima Oliaee competed for Nevada when she was a teenager, and was invited back as a judge more than 20 years later. Oliaee accepted, and recorded the experience for a six-part audio series called The Competition.

In the final days of the competition, there was news from Washington that had big implications for women across the nation: Roe v. Wade had fallen. 

The girls are faced with a tough decision: Do they speak up for their political beliefs or stay focused on winning the money? And what might this mean for their futures—and their friendships?

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In the landscape of international finance for fossil fuels, some of the most important players are obscure government bodies known as “export credit agencies.” These agencies provide funding to companies seeking to build large and risky infrastructure projects, often in developing countries. In return, the developers of those projects purchase construction materials or other goods from the country of the agency. For instance, an oil pipeline company might take a loan from a German export credit agency in exchange for using German steel in the pipeline.

Export credit agencies have become some of the world’s largest public funding sources for energy infrastructure, providing far more money than multilateral institutions like the World Bank, while avoiding much public scrutiny. 

Now, as Joe Biden’s administration winds to a close, officials are working with international partners to push forward an agreement that would see export credit agencies pull back almost all funding for oil and gas projects, a measure the administration had balked on supporting before Donald Trump’s reelection.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Shortly after he was reelected last month, Donald Trump announced an economic gambit that was aggressive even by his standards. He vowed that, on the first day of his second term, he would slap 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, and boost those already placed on Chinese products by another 10 percent. 

The move set off a frenzy of pushback. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau even flew to the president-elect’s Florida resort to make his case. Economists say the potential levies threaten to upend global trade—including green technologies, many of which are manufactured in China. The moves would cause price spikes for everything from electric vehicles and heat pumps to solar panels. 

“Typically with tariffs, we’ve seen [companies] pass them along to the consumer,” said Corey Cantor, electric vehicles analyst at Bloomberg NEF. Ansgar Baums, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan foreign policy think tank Stimson Center, said retaliatory moves from the three targeted countries would only make things worse. “It will drive up consumer costs and hurt those who cannot afford it.”

In his 2023 book, Government Gangsters, which claims a supposed Deep State has been plotting against Donald Trump for years, Kash Patel, whom Trump has tapped to replace Chris Wray as FBI director, recounts his three-year stint as a mid-level attorney at the Justice Department. For him, this gig was apparently a radical learning experience. During that time, Patel writes, he came to see that the top leaders of the government were “political gangsters, frauds, and hypocrites.” Yet in the book and in interviews, Patel has embellished his own work at the department.

Patel, previously a public defender in Miami, was a lawyer at the Justice Department’s counterterrorism section from late 2013 until after the 2016 election. In his book, he calls it “a dream job for a young and ambitious lawyer,” and he states that he played a key role in the Benghazi case, in which the FBI and the Justice Department pursued the culprits responsible for the September 11, 2012, attack on a US diplomatic compound in Libya that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. “I was leading the prosecution’s efforts at Main Justice in Washington, DC,” Patel writes.

Several FBI and Justice Department officials who worked the Benghazi case say this description is an exaggeration. Asked about Patel’s characterization, a former FBI special agent who was on that investigation for years exclaimed, “Oh my god, no. Not on that case. Not on Benghazi.”

“Kash has claimed he made certain decisions on what crimes should have been charged and should not have been. He did not make those decisions. He had no major role.”

Last week, Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Kevin Kiley (R-Calif) introduced federal anti-SLAPP legislation, in a bid to protect journalists, whistleblowers, and individual internet users from those who use lawsuits as an intimidation tactic.

SLAPP suits—formally, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation—are designed to prevent people from exercising their free speech. A common example is a person suing a media outlet after unfavorable coverage—attempting to bankrupt journalists from lawyers’ fees, even if, in the end, the outlet wins the case. Such suits are already illegal in 34 states. But, on the federal level, there’s no such legislation. 

Raskin and Kiley’s bill, the “Free Speech Protection Act,” would allow people being sued over speech acts to file a special motion to dismiss by classifying a lawsuit as a SLAPP. The party who filed the SLAPP suit would then be required to pay the respondent’s legal fees. 

There is a rush to implement the bill before the next presidency. Trump and his companies have sued a broad range of media companies for defamation, ranging from the New York Times to a local Wisconsin local TV station. Most recently, Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS over the editing of  Kamala Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview, asserting that the interview’s presentation was “consumer fraud.” (CBS is moving to get that lawsuit thrown out before Trump assumes the presidency.)

Pete Hegseth, the Fox News anchor whom Donald Trump has tapped to be his defense secretary, has come under intense scrutiny for his mistreatment of women, including an allegation of rape. One of his critics was, at one time, his own mother.

“That is the ugly truth.”

In 2018, Penelope Hegseth wrote her son an email in which she laid into him for poor behavior and disrespect toward women. “You are an abuser of women—that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote in the letter, obtained by the New York Times. 

Hegseth chastised her son for how he treated his wife, Samantha, in the divorce proceedings that prompted her to send her April 2018 email. She concluded it by writing, “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself…”

Democrats will have the unenviable task of pushing back against a second Trump administration as the minority party across Washington. And in the House of Representatives, some Democrats are openly wondering whether the septuagenarian leader of their caucus on the Judiciary Committee is up to the task.

According to the New York Times, a movement is afoot to force 77-year old Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a member from New York since 1992, to step aside and let a younger, more energetic opponent of Donald Trump take charge. If the motif sounds familiar, it may be because the Democrats are generally led by aging long-timers, from President Joe Biden in the White House to committee chairs like Nadler. Now, they must reckon with whether loyalty to these elder statesmen is a winning strategy.

The battle raises the question of how far Democrats will go to shake up their own ranks.

Two years ago, Nancy Pelosi, then 82, stepped down as leader of the House Democrats. Today, she is reportedly one voice urging a changing of the guard on the Judiciary Committee. According to the Times, Pelosi has encouraged Rep. Jamie Raskin, who first won his Maryland seat in 2o16, to challenge Nadler for the job of ranking member on the committee.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On Monday, Senator Debbie Stabenow, a longtime champion of programs that support farmers and increase access to nutritious foods, introduced a new version of the farm bill, a key piece of legislation typically renewed every five years that governs much of how the agricultural industry in the US operates. 

Stabenow, who is retiring next month after representing Michigan in the Senate for 24 years, has staked her career on her vision for a robust, progressive farm bill, one that, among other things, paves the way for farmers to endure the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

The text of her bill comes almost two months after the 2018 farm bill, which initially expired last year and was revived thanks to a one-year extension, expired for a second time on September 30. And it comes mere weeks before the end of the year, when funding for several programs included in the farm bill will run out. 

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

When Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in January 2023, he inherited environmental protection agencies in shambles and deforestation at a 15-year high. His predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, had dismantled regulations and gutted institutions tasked with enforcing environmental laws. Lula set out to reverse these policies and to put Brazil on a path to end deforestation by 2030. 

Environmental protection agencies have been allowed to resume their work. Between January and November of 2023, the government issued 40 percent more infractions against illegal deforestation in the Amazon when compared to the same period in 2022, when Bolsonaro was still in office. Lula’s government has confiscated and destroyed heavy equipment used by illegal loggers and miners, and placed embargoes on production on illegally cleared land. Lula also reestablished the Amazon Fund, an international pool of money used to support conservation efforts in the rainforest. Just this week, at the G20 Summit, outgoing US President Joe Biden pledged $50 million to the fund.  

Indeed, almost two years into Lula’s administration, the upward trend in deforestation has been reversed. In 2023, deforestation rates fell by 62 percent in the Amazon and 12 percent in Brazil overall (though deforestation in the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savannas, increased). So far in 2024, deforestation in the Amazon has fallen by another 32 percent.      

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

At an upscale sushi bar in New York last week, a smattering of media and policy types chowed down on a menu of sushi rolls, Peking duck tapas, and mushroom salad. But what made this menu unusual was the one ingredient that ran through the dishes—foie gras made from quail cells brewed in a bioreactor. The event, catered by the sushi chef Masa Takayama, was a launch party for Australian cultivated meat firm Vow, which will sell its foie gras at a handful of restaurants in Singapore and Hong Kong.

The meal was decadent—one course featured a mountain of black truffle—but that was mostly the point. Vow and its CEO, George Peppou, are angling cultivated meat as a luxury product—an unusual positioning for an industry where many founders are motivated by animal welfare and going toe-to-toe with mass-produced meat. But while growing meat in the lab still remains eye-wateringly expensive, Peppou is trying to turn the technology’s Achilles’ heel into his advantage.

“I feel like the obituary has already been written for our industry,” he says. “But just because Californians can’t do something doesn’t mean something can’t be done.”