Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Podcast: Hello, 2022: 1978 and 1982 are calling

Podcast: Hello, 2022: 1978 and 1982 are calling

Sabato’s Crystal Ball has been tracking how 2022 is different from previous midterm election years, when the party that holds the White House is often punished. The 2022 midterm elections feature an unpopular president, but there are indications that the unpopular president’s party won’t be strongly punished. In this episode, Kyle Kondik discusses how echoes of the 1978 and 1982 midterm elections may be reverberating in 2022.

https://open.spotify.com

Read More

RFK Jr. Vowed To Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying To Do Just That.

Erin McCanlies spent almost two decades at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health studying how parents’ exposure to chemicals affects the chance that they will have a child with autism. This spring, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eliminated her entire division.

Nate Smallwood for ProPublica

RFK Jr. Vowed To Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying To Do Just That.

Erin McCanlies was listening to the radio one morning in April when she heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to find the cause of autism by September. The secretary of Health and Human Services said he believed an environmental toxin was responsible for the dramatic increase in the condition and vowed to gather “the most credible scientists from all over the world” to solve the mystery.

Nothing like that has ever been done before, he told an interviewer.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

U.S. President Donald Trump visits the U.S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility on August 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker

Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

Trump says his deployment of federal law enforcement is about restoring order in Washington, D.C. But the real message isn’t about crime—it’s about power. By federalizing the District’s police, activating the National Guard, and bulldozing homeless encampments with just a day’s notice, Trump is flexing a new kind of presidential muscle: the authority to override local governments at will—a move that raises serious constitutional concerns.

And now, he promises that D.C. won’t be the last. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia—cities he derides as “crime-ridden”—could be next. Noticeably absent from his list are red-state cities with higher homicide rates, like New Orleans. The pattern is clear: Trump’s law-and-order agenda is less about public safety and more about partisan punishment.

Keep ReadingShow less