White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders dodged a question about whether President Trump spoke with billionaire investor Carl Icahn prior to announcing last week his intention to impose hefty tariffs on steel. Trump and Icahn’s communications have been at issue after ThinkProgress reported last week that Icahn dumped more than $30 million in steel-related stock […]
As the NCAA’s biggest pay day – the annual March Madness basketball tournament to crown a national hoops champion – jump starts later this week, demands that athletes receive a share of the millions to be earned threaten to swell as loud as the cheers in arenas. Prominent African-American athletes, sports commentators and even one […]
President Donald Trump is standing by his decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem — a decision that’s going over well with Israel’s conservative government. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lauded Trump’s controversial decision to declare Jerusalem the country’s capital and relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to the city. During a Monday […]
A new report by the Wall Street Journal on Monday suggests that President Donald Trump knew about payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels weeks before the election. In a previous statement made in mid-February, Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen claimed he used his “personal funds” to “facilitate” the payment and was not reimbursed by […]
Last week, the Iowa Senate approved a bill along party lines that would allow university student groups to discriminate against LGBTQ students and others. It appears to be a direct response to a conflict at the University of Iowa, where a Christian group was stripped of its recognition for discriminating against a gay student. Senate […]
White nationalist Richard Spencer has been given control over which journalists get to cover his free speech rally at Michigan State University (MSU) Monday — and has responded by banning two local news outlets from the event. Spencer, head of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a neo-Nazi think tank, is hosting a two-hour talk at […]
The NRA is not untouchable. After a mass shooting killed 17 people in Florida, companies rushed to distance themselves from the NRA. In just one week, amid pressure from thousands of people on social media, two dozen companies announced they would end their partnerships with the gun lobby. This pressure came after ThinkProgress published a […]
Coal ash — the residual byproduct of burning coal — is the second-largest form of waste in the entire country, with utilities producing more than 100 million tons of it each year. For decades, companies have dealt with all that coal ash by storing it in unlined pits or landfills. Now, new reporting data shows this has […]
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu meets with President Donald Trump for lunch on Monday, there are things that the two will likely not discuss, like the criminal investigation swirling around Netanyahu or the ongoing FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. According to the White House schedule, Trump and Netanyahu’s meeting on Monday is […]
As the midterms approach, intelligence chiefs have warned that Russia, yet again, could seek to interfere with American elections. But the Kremlin is only part of the problem; over the weekend it’s become clear just how abundantly unwilling the Trump administration is to take any sort of firm stance against Russian election meddling. On Sunday, […]
President Donald Trump nominated a top official with Dow Chemical Co. to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) unit that oversees chemical spills from Superfund sites. Dow Chemical is linked to more than a hundred of these 1,340 toxic clean-up sites across the nation. If confirmed by the Senate, Peter Wright, an attorney for Dow […]
Two super PACs have been registered in recent months with names that coincide with the #MeToo movement, the grassroots effort to end sexual violence. But the two independent-expenditure committees appear to be coming from very different worldviews — one pro-women, the other perhaps less so. And while neither committee has reported raising any money as […]
Berkshire Bank will no longer provide lines of credit to Sig Sauer, the assault weapons manufacturer whose MCX semi-automatic rifle was used by the Pulse gay night club shooting that left 49 people dead in 2016. The bank had previously been one of six identified by New York City’s Public Advocate that combined to provide the arms […]
On Monday morning, President Trump claimed that the Obama administration launched an investigation into his campaign months before the 2016 election in hopes that it would prevent him winning. “Why did the Obama Administration start an investigation into the Trump Campaign (with zero proof of wrongdoing) long before the Election in November? Wanted to discredit […]
One of the nation’s leading experts in insider trading, James D. Cox, believes that Carl Icahn’s sale of more than 1 million shares of a steel-related stock just days before President Trump announced plans to impose steep tariffs on steel imports was “awfully suspicious” and “unquestionably” warrants a federal investigation. Cox, a professor at Duke […]
In September 2017, the Trump White House rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, an Obama-era executive action on immigration that granted temporary deportation relief and work authorization to certain undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children. The administration set in motion a six-month delay period, giving DACA recipients whose statuses […]
By the time Jimmy Kimmel, host of the 90th Academy Awards, took the stage at the Dolby Theatre, there was already an uncomfortable tension surrounding what Hollywood loves to call its biggest night. Outside on red carpet during the pre-show was Ryan Seacrest, accused by his former stylist of sexual harassment but still armed with […]
Sunday night, the same organization that has promised to protect and advocate for women in a post-Weinstein world awarded an Academy Award to someone who faced credible allegations of sexual assault. Kobe Bryant, former NBA basketball player, won an Oscar for “Dear Basketball,” an animated short Bryant wrote announcing his retirement. Many on the internet […]
Actors Lupita Nyong’o and Kumail Nanjiani expressed solidarity with DREAMers, recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and other young immigrants, at the Academy Awards Sunday night. “We are the actors you keep hearing about, but whose names you have trouble pronouncing,” Nyong’o said when the two came to the mic to present the award for […]
Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, two actresses reportedly blacklisted by defamed film producer Harvey Weinstein, attended the 90th Academy Awards ceremony as each other’s dates Sunday night. Before the ceremony, Judd and Sorvino made the red carpet rounds arm-in-arm in support of the Time’s Up, an organization founded in response to the mountain of sexual […]
The National Rifle Association (NRA) released the latest in a line of vaguely threatening videos on Twitter Sunday afternoon, this time twisting the #TimesUp slogan for their own cheap gain ahead of the evening’s Academy Awards ceremony. “We’ve had enough of the lies, the sanctimony, the arrogance, the hatred, the pettiness, the fake news. We […]