Progressive search for action

10+ min ago (185+ words) The Daily Show host Jon Stewart ridiculed Newsmax host Greg Kelly on Monday for struggling to locate Venezuela on a map during a news segment about a potential conflict with the country. "Now, a lot of people are gun-shy after Iraq, and I understand that. Totally get that," said Kelly in a clip from his show: Stewart mocked, "You had a feeling?! Do you guys not have a meeting before the news?! Where they might show you where Venezuela is before you go on television? So you don't learn about it on-air?" He continued, "Are you not an anchor? Do you just roll out of bed and hit the ring light like a news influencer? Is that what this is? Is this supposed to be one of those "Get Ready For War With Me' videos? All right, so now we…...

11+ min ago (1230+ words) Seniors" rising political influence is a threat to economic growth. America is getting old. Between 1960 and 2024, the share of Americans over 65 doubled " from 9 percent to 18 percent. And the US will only grow grayer in the coming years. Within a decade, America"s seniors will outnumber its children for the first time in history, according to Census Bureau projections. By 2060, those over 65 are expected to comprise about one quarter of the population. This demographic transition will be a defining fact of the 21st century, shaping nearly every part of American life. But its political implications are liable to be especially profound " and immediate: Seniors already accounted for 29 percent of the US electorate in 2024. Older voters have always exerted disproportionate political influence, due to their exceptionally high turnout rates. Historically, however, seniors" power was limited by their small share of the population. Now,…...

15+ min ago (265+ words) Bruna Ferreira, the mother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's nephew, has been ordered released on bond from federal immigration custody. Immigration Judge Cynthia Goodman on Monday granted bond to Ferreira, who had been held more than 1,500 miles away from the Massachusetts community where she was arrested. Her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, said the $1,500 bond was "the lowest amount allowed under the law," and noted that in court her lawyers argued "she's not a danger, she's not a flight risk." The government's lawyer did not contest the claim and waived the appeal. Ferreira's case has drawn attention in part because of her history with Michael Leavitt, the brother of President Donald Trump's press secretary. The pair share custody of their 11-year-old son, whom Ferreira was driving to pick up in New Hampshire when she was arrested, according to her attorney....

28+ min ago (235+ words) President Donald Trump upped his pressure campaign against the Supreme Court, warning that any ruling against his sweeping tariff authority would mark the "biggest threat in history to United States National Security." Taking to Truth Social in an overnight double post on Tuesday morning, the president warned that a "negative" ruling on his tariff powers would leave the U.S. "financially defenseless": The biggest threat in history to United States National Security would be a negative decision on Tariffs by the U.S. Supreme Court. We would be financially defenseless. Now Europe is going to Tariffs against China, as they already do against others. We would not be allowed to do what others already do! (Screengrab via Truth Social) The Supreme Court heard arguments in November on a challenge to Trump's ability to impose tariffs without congressional approval under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers…...

41+ min ago (499+ words) A mailman has an urgent message for women on his route: do not walk around your houses naked unless you want your local postal employee to see it. "So around this time last year, I came to y'all as a grown mailman and asked politely if you could close your windows," Michael Morgan II said in a video with 78,000 views. "You guys didn't listen. So to the lady in the kitchen dancing in your undies, I [saw] you. You can't dance, and I [saw it]." To his surprise, a majority of the women in his comments section simply didn't care if he saw them. They're gonna keep dancing like no one's watching. Morgan was clearly uncomfortable encountering near-naked women on his routes, although he had a good laugh about it. Commenters quickly let him know that his discomfort was noted…...

41+ min ago (1550+ words) A strange porn subculture reveals what life online is doing to us. Open the internet today, and you'll find entire worlds most of us never encounter. Spaces built around practices so strange, so hyper-specific, they read like satire at first glance. Few writers have explored this frontier more vividly than Daniel Kolitz. His Harper's essay, "The Goon Squad," is part ethnography, part cultural diagnosis, and part prophecy about where the internet may be taking all of us. I invited Kolitz onto The Gray Area to talk about what he discovered inside these communities and what "gooning" " he'll explain below " reveals about the rest of us. As always, there's much more in the full podcast, which drops every Monday, so listen and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. What's your simplest definition of gooning? Gooning…...

1+ hour, 7+ min ago (797+ words) Senate Republicans have no shortage of health care plans. The challenge is getting all 53 of them to rally behind one," Politico reports. Three days before a high-profile vote on a Democratic proposal to extend expiring Obamacare subsidies, GOP senators are nowhere near coalescing behind any single alternative that could be put up alongside it. Instead, Republican leaders appear happy allowing their members to freelance, even as Democrats and some in their own ranks fume at the lack of clear direction." For Republicans, the risk of proceeding Thursday with a side-by-side vote is clear. While Democrats say they will have their entire 47-member caucus behind the three-year extension, any GOP plan right now is likely to fall well short of complete unity " and highlight the divisions in their party." The Best Laptop I've Ever Used In 25 years of running Political Wire,…...

1+ hour, 11+ min ago (654+ words) If Ukraine ends up capitulating to Russian demands to end the war, give the self-proclaimed peacemaker Donald Trump the lion's share of the credit. Since he took office, Trump has done nothing but strengthen Russia's hand while putting Ukraine in its weakest negotiating position. Trump is far from an honest, impartial broker. He has been a great admirer of Russia's murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin, for more than a decade, and in 2022 called Putin's invasion of Ukraine "genius" and "savvy." Trump has refused to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine " thereby putting the U.S. in league with countries including China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and Nicaragua. On the other hand, Trump has treated Ukraine's courageous president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as a minor-nation inferior, someone purely to bully. In 2019, Trump withheld military support from Ukraine for 55 days while trying to extract damaging information from Zelenskyy…...

1+ hour, 11+ min ago (788+ words) Since the start of the war, the Ukrainian government has been cracking down harder on unions and workers" rights. But slowly, the public mood is shifting. On June 5, shortly after ten in the morning, black-clad officers stormed into the House of Trade Unions. The symbolic building on the Maidan, Kyiv"s Independence Square, is the headquarters of the country"s largest trade union federation, the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU). The roughly 30 officers ordered the union employees to pack their things. The House of Trade Unions, they stated, has been confiscated. Employees and journalists were stopped outside, prevented from entering the building'by force if necessary. The president of Profbud, an FPU member union representing the rights of workers in the construction industry,Vasyl Andreyev, speaks of a completely new level of escalation. Despite the government"s aggressive campaign…...

1+ hour, 11+ min ago (1669+ words) This past June, Ashley Voss-Barnes received a court summons in the mail. PrairieStar Health Center, a nonprofit community health center in south-central Kansas, was suing her for $675 and her wife for $732 in unpaid medical bills. Voss-Barnes knew the clinic received federal funding to make preventive health care accessible in a region where many families, including her own, needed financial help. "If I have something due, then I will try to pay it," she said to ProPublica. "It came out of nowhere." Voss-Barnes, a nurse who feels confident navigating the health care system, wanted to push back. She reached out to a local lawyer to see if he could represent them, but he said the debt was too small to be worth it. So she represented herself, filing a letter in court objecting to the lawsuit and asking to continue the…...