Iowa now records the second-highest rate of new cancer diagnoses in the United States, trailing only Kentucky, and is one of only a handful of states where the rate is still climbing while the national rate falls. Much of the public debate has centered on the state’s intensive agriculture — and, increasingly, on glyphosate, the...
Two unrelated developments in American popular culture converged in the fall of 2025 and, together, revived a long-running argument about race, representation and the fate of diversity initiatives. In late October, Billboard reported that its Hot 100 chart had, for the first time since 1990, no rap songs in its top 40. Months later, the...
ActBlue, the online payment processor behind the bulk of small-dollar fundraising for Democratic candidates and progressive causes, is at the center of a widening dispute over how it screens donations for fraud. Congressional investigators, several state attorneys general, and the platform’s own outside lawyers have raised questions about whether ActBlue’s internal controls did enough to...
A decades-old assumption underlies American antitrust law: that competing companies are run by rivals with opposing interests. A growing body of legal and economic scholarship—and now a federal lawsuit proceeding in Texas—is testing whether that assumption still holds when the same small group of asset managers ranks among the largest shareholders of nearly every major...
Democratic socialists scored a broad set of victories in New York’s June 23, 2026, primary elections, ousting two sitting members of Congress and expanding their bloc in the state legislature. The results have prompted competing explanations among political analysts, who disagree over whether the outcome reflects a genuine embrace of socialist policy, a shift in...
When a witness before Congress declines to affirm something nearly every cardiologist in the country accepts, the moment tends to outlast the hearing. That is what happened June 25, 2026, when Gina Plata-Niño of the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) repeatedly would not give a direct answer on whether sugary soda is healthy or...
Introduction Over the July 4 weekend, the busiest travel stretch of the summer, a stretch of Midtown Manhattan around Madison Square Garden is set to go quiet — not for a parade, not for the nation’s 250th birthday, but for what is widely reported to be the wedding of pop superstar Taylor Swift and Kansas...
Introduction A New York State proposal to tax house flippers is back before lawmakers, reviving a debate over whether short-term real estate speculation drives up home prices in working-class neighborhoods—or whether taxing it is government overreach into a market that depends on private investment to renovate aging housing stock. The End Predatory Home Flipping Act,...
Federal and state agencies are increasingly obtaining Americans’ personal data not by passing new surveillance laws or obtaining warrants, but by purchasing it on the open market. Because the information is bought as a commercial product rather than seized, the practice operates within existing statutes while bypassing the legal process those statutes were designed to...
Across the United States, foster parents are not paid a single flat rate for every child. Reimbursement is layered: states pay a base amount for routine care and progressively higher amounts for children assessed as having greater behavioral, emotional, or medical needs. Those higher tiers — labeled “special,” “exceptional,” “specialized,” or “difficulty of care” depending...