April 22, 2025 at 4:39 PM EDT
'Shakes you to the core': Family members mourn loved ones lost to far-right conspiracies

Rolling Stone writer Fortesa Latifi says Redditors are mouning what looks like the permanent loss of family members as Trump 2.0 drowns the national argument in lies and conspiracy. The subreddit r/QAnonCasualties subreddit crawls with alienated family members saying "Dad has gone full nazi," or "Mom finally contacted me after my late stage cancer diagnosis to screech " about black people." There are also plenty of entries in the line of "Mom said she's removing herself from my life."

April 22, 2025 at 4:13 PM EDT
Republicans silent on Hegseth fear 'questioning Trump and earning his wrath': analysis

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is now fighting for his job leading the U.S. military after the second scandal in which he allegedly mishandled classified information in as many months. And the Washington Post's Aaron Blake is exploring why Congressional Republicans seem hesitant to hold him accountable. On Tuesday, Blake pointed out no Republican elected officials -- save for Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) -- have so far called for Hegseth to resign or be fired. This is despite the former part-time Fox News weekend host being accused of using his personal, unsecured device to share highly sensitive attack plans with his wife, Jennifer Rauchet and his attorney, Tim Parlatore. This came just a month after Hegseth shared separate attack plans on a group text thread that included a journalist who was mistakenly added by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

April 22, 2025 at 3:22 PM EDT
'Throbbing engine of reactionary hatred': How 4Chan became Trump's main 'propaganda organ'

The two-decades old online dumping ground known as 4Chan got hacked out of existence last week by a rival message board, but WIRED reporter Ryan Broderick examined how the former home of harmless cat memes became the toxic network that influenced X and YouTube and eventually saw its darkest elements infect the U.S. government. Founded by 15-year-old Christopher "Moot" Poole as a spin-off site for a Japanese message board 2chan, or "Futaba Channel," 4Chan evolved into the internet's "Wild West" devoid of organization or moderators. Without solid rules, Collins said he watched over the next two decades as a site featuring owls saying "ORLY" devolved into a fan club for mass shooters and the launchpad for the infamous Gamergate.

April 22, 2025 at 2:37 PM EDT
Army suspends first female base commander after Trump's photo found improperly displayed

The United States Army has suspended the first female leader of Fort McCoy -- Col. Sheyla Baez Ramirez -- due to a controversy related to photos of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Ramirez, who became the first woman garrison commander of Fort McCoy in Wisconsin in the base's 110-plus-year history, has been removed from the position.

April 22, 2025 at 11:42 AM EDT
'A hinge moment': Analyst fears 'season of fever and visions' as Trump clashes with courts

Legal experts have been raising concerns over President Donald Trump's defiance of the court and the administration's continued refusal to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador. In an article published in The Bulwark Tuesday, legal analyst Corbin Barthold noted that Trump is invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which cannot be used in peacetime and can only be applied to citizens of nations attacking the United States.

April 22, 2025 at 11:03 AM EDT
GOP insiders privately fear Trump's 'ill-advised' vendetta against Fed chair is 'likely to backfire'

President Donald Trump continues to angrily rail against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, calling for him to be fired and attacking him as a "loser" on his Truth Social platform. And some of Trump's critics believe he is playing with fire. Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, recently hired as a weekend host on MSNBC, considers Trump's feud with Powell an even bigger economic threat than his steep tariffs.

April 22, 2025 at 10:52 AM EDT
Historian sounds alarm from the Gilded Age -- for Democrats

More than five months after President Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Democrats are still trying to understand why they lost the election and the Senate majority - and how the party can regroup. These concerns have only increased in the wake of Trump's sustained activity at the start of his second term. The American public has witnessed a Democratic Party struggling to craft a coherent strategy.

April 22, 2025 at 10:47 AM EDT
A thousand-year-old legal principle is getting a workout under the Trump administration

In some parts of the world, a person may be secreted away or imprisoned by the government without any advanced notification of wrongdoing or chance to make a defense. This has not been lawful in the United States from its very inception, or in many other countries where the rule of law and respect for individual civil rights are paramount. The legal doctrine of "habeas corpus," a Latin phrase that has its American roots in English law as early as the 12th century, stands as a barrier to unlawful arrest.

April 22, 2025 at 10:24 AM EDT
John Roberts owns this nightmare -- and he has no one to blame but himself

John Roberts owns this nightmare; without him and his corrupt Republican co-conspirators against democracy on the Supreme Court we never would have had a reality star neofascist ascend to the highest office in the land. And it's getting worse daily.

April 22, 2025 at 5:37 AM EDT
Corruption or incompetence? Experts worry GOP-connected firms are cutting secret Trump deals

After President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs earlier this month, the White House released a list of more than a thousand products that would be exempted. One item that made the list is polyethylene terephthalate, more commonly known as PET resin, the thermoplastic used to make plastic bottles.

April 22, 2025 at 5:28 AM EDT
'Brainwashed': Columnist tears into 'gullible' Trump voters who bought into 'obvious lies'

After nearly 100 days into President Donald Trump's second term, New Republic editor Michael Tomasky is wondering who were the "gullible" people buying the lies before November. "How many times did Trump say he'd end [the Ukraine] war on the first day of his presidency?" Tomasky asks. "It had to have been hundreds. I saw a lot of those clips on cable news over the weekend ". He did not mean it figuratively. You know, in the way people will say, 'I'll change that from day one,' and you know they don't literally mean day one, but they do mean fast. But that isn't what Trump said. He meant it literally. He used the phrase" in 24 hours" many, many times. So, I ask you: Who really believed that?"

April 22, 2025 at 5:21 AM EDT
America's billionaires plan for a world without us in it

Billionaire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the drop in the stock market is nothing to be concerned about because Americans aren't looking at the "day-to-day fluctuations" in their retirement savings. Billionaire Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick says we shouldn't be concerned that mass layoffs in the Social Security Administration have caused delays because his mother-in-law wouldn't be worried if she didn't get her monthly Social Security check.