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This story appeared in the Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focusing on the Trump administration’s battle with Harvard University, in which a powerful university targeted by the president is pushing back. […]

President Donald Trump’s press conference with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele was, at heart, an authoritarian political performance. This was clearest in their discussion of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man that the Trump administration seized and then erroneously sent (by its own admission) to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison. The two men were sneeringly dismissive of […]

Trump v. Wilcox, a case now pending on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” asks whether several federal agencies that are supposed to enjoy a degree of independence from the president should be stripped of that independence.  Wilcox is the latest in Supreme Court cases involving what’s known as the “unitary executive” theory, which, in its […]

If you’re bothered by allergies every spring, you may pop a Benadryl or Claritin most mornings to make the days tolerable. Two-thirds of Americans report spring allergies, and about 4 in 10 say they take an allergy medication several times a week. But those medicines, while valuable, don’t exactly fix the problem. One 2001 study […]

For many people, working out is a distinctly private pleasure. The way we run, the faces we make, the amount we sweat and the places we sweat from, the creaks and groans our bodies emit during a squat — these are our own little secrets. The last thing we want is to be filmed climbing […]

Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff policy, in which he declared trade war on the entire world simultaneously, was a bizarre and nonsensical undertaking, seemingly shaped only by the president’s own whims. But since that initial announcement, the policy has been modified to bear at least a little bit more of a resemblance to what Trump’s […]

When President Donald Trump unveiled tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories early this month, there was one place that was conspicuously left off the list: Russia.  Initially, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios that Russia had been excluded because US sanctions already “preclude any meaningful trade.” But this doesn’t make a […]

Remember Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law?  The unconstitutionally vague law imposed such unclear restrictions on teachers who speak about sexual orientation or gender identity that many feared they could be fired merely for mentioning their spouses. Eventually, Florida agreed to a settlement which affirmed its right to do things like excluding Harvey Milk from the […]

Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focusing on a showdown between the administration and the courts over a wrongful deportation, a critical test of the judicial branch’s ability to check Donald Trump’s power. What’s the latest? Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge on Sunday that they were not required to bring back a man who was […]

On Friday, four Republican members of the North Carolina Supreme Court issued an order attempting to disenfranchise more than 5,000 of the state’s voters. This order is part of an ongoing effort by Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican and the losing candidate in a recent state supreme court race, to overturn Democratic state Supreme Court […]

Mikaela Shafer values spending time with her friends, and if that means booking a flea market day three months in advance, she considers it a small price to pay. For a while, Shafer, 38, and her friends found themselves in the throes of schedule coordination hell. One person would attempt to make plans on a […]

Is college for everybody? According to Chelsea Waite, a senior researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, the answer is no. And more students, parents, and educators are realizing it.  Waite spent two years speaking to administrators, teachers, parents, and students at six high schools in New England to learn more about post-grad desires. […]

In a podcast landscape dominated by the manosphere, one of the biggest podcasts targeted to women sounds like it could be a children’s television show.  Giggly Squad is hosted by two best friends, fashion influencer Paige DeSorbo and comedian Hannah Berner, who first rose to fame via the Bravo reality show Summer House. In 2020, […]

President Donald Trump’s tariff plan has rattled Wall Street, alarmed the United States’ trading partners, and made Americans afraid of checking their retirement accounts.  It’s also been extremely confusing: After announcing that he would implement steep tariffs across the board (for reasons that didn’t make much sense), Trump walked back some of the tariffs before […]

A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here! Back in 2022, sunglasses-wearing U2 frontman and rock star philanthropist Bono gave one of those long interviews to the New York Times Magazine. In between talking about his band’s new albums and the challenge of staying relevant after nearly 50 years […]

The Trump administration has been arresting and detaining protesters who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. They have justified the action by calling those protesters — without evidence — “Hamas supporters.”   In so doing, the administration appears to be following Project Esther, a plan from the Heritage Foundation with the stated purpose of cracking down on antisemitism. Published in […]

The biggest movie in the world right now sends its characters on a journey through a building-block world full of zombies, talking pigs, and magical artifacts. A Minecraft Movie has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in theaters around the globe since it opened last weekend, not only outperforming expectations by double but smashing […]

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the  Maryland man it had sent to a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison in what the government has conceded was an “administrative error.” Not one of the justices dissented from that ruling.  The justices sent the case back to the federal trial […]

For many years, Donald Trump has viewed unpredictability as one of his greatest negotiating assets. He believes deliberately acting “crazy,” as he reportedly told aides in 2017, is a highly effective way to win concessions in advance of a deal. As I’ve written, this is akin to what President Richard Nixon dubbed the “madman theory” […]

Pollen allergy season is getting longer and more intense as the climate changes, creating more misery for allergy sufferers. But it’s not the only type of allergy threat getting worse with warming.  There are other allergens, like mold spores, whose spread coincides with higher temperatures and weather disruption. But one of the most insidious and […]

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here! We live in a consumerist society. But at least speaking for my own social circles, we also live in an anti-consumerist society: We purchase lots of things, and we also feel vaguely guilty about it and brag about all of the ways we […]

By the time Remi Bader, who built her career as a plus-size influencer with over 2 million followers on TikTok, went on Khloé Kardashian’s podcast to address her smaller body, it had been subject to nearly a year and a half of speculation.  Fans were certain Bader had betrayed them, but exactly how and in […]

American negotiators are headed to Oman this weekend for a round of high-level talks with Iran over its nuclear program. President Donald Trump dropped the surprise announcement Tuesday during his Oval Office meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu. (Netanyahu was reportedly surprised by the news as well, one of a number of disappointments for the Israeli prime […]

The facts underlying Noem v. Abrego Garcia are shocking, even by the standards of the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants. The Supreme Court just ruled that the immigrant at the heart of the case get some relief — but that relief is only partial. In mid-March, President Donald Trump’s government deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia […]