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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | ‘Stop talking about Biden!’: Democrat shreds Trump official…

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By Melissa Bailey for KFF WHITE MESA, Utah — On a hot April day, Malcolm Lehi maneuvered his Jeep Wrangler over a rough dirt road past junipers and sagebrush in search of Entrance Spring on land long connected to his tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute. The cool, mossy spring lies just across the highway from White Mesa Mill, the nation’s only remaining conventional uranium mill…

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Medi-Cal enrollment among children has fallen by more than 460,000 since 2025. Medicaid cuts taking effect next year will push coverage even lower. By Mark Kreidler for Capital & Main From the outset of the Republican-led attack on federal Medicaid funding, health care experts and advocacy groups have warned that the worst effects of the projected $1 trillion in cuts would land on…

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Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of the weapons-tech company Palantir, is also a major force behind the Trump administration’s policy of pushing unhoused people toward incarceration.  

Lonsdale, a longtime critic of “housing first” policy—which proposes that homelessness be solved by supplying those in need of housing with somewhere to live—argues that fining and arresting people for sleeping in public will push them into mental health treatment. 

“We’ve made it easier to civilly commit those who are mentally ill and need treatment,” Lonsdale wrote in the New York Post in 2023. “With non-ideological policies rooted in incentives, accountability, and competence, we will show a better way and build a brighter future for our urban centers.”

But there is data to suggest this might not be the right approach. One study of homelessness-criminalization measures in 100 US cities found that the ordinances did not lead to a decrease in the number of people counted as homeless.

“It’s absurd to think that fining people will get them into treatment,” Dr. Margot Kushel, a physician who directs the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, told the New York Times. “Many people are desperate for treatment and can’t get it.” And since Trump cut Medicaid, which finances most of the healthcare options available to unhoused people, “it’s hard not to see the cynicism in this,” she said. 

The Cicero Institute, a lobbying group he founded eight years ago, has been instrumental in passing laws criminalizing camping or sleeping in public in 16 states, according to the New York Times. In total, the think tank has worked to pass 241 pieces of legislation in the past 5 years, on issues ranging from education to healthcare. Its c4 arm, Cicero Action, has engaged in lobbying related to military spending and defense contracts, according to the National Homelessness Law Institute. But time and again, Lonsdale and Cicero return to their push to eliminate unhoused people from public life.

That push has now gone federal. In 2024, in a Supreme Court decision called Grants Pass, the court found that camping bans do not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, even if the only available alternative to camping is incarceration of the unhoused. And Trump has now issued an executive order that closely mirrors the Circero Institute’s policies.

Lonsdale’s allies see him as a man of principle. “In some ways he is like a 16th-century knight who was dropped into present day,” Zac Bookman, who co-founded the government database company OpenGov with Lonsdale, told the Washington Post. “There’s this code of honor and duty that he is trying to advance.”

Advocates for unhoused people take a less rosy view, and argue that Lonsdale is putting the 700,000 unsheltered people in the US in danger. “I just can’t imagine having that much wealth and power and using it to kick people when they are down instead of lifting them up,” Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center, told the Post. 

NHLC has sued the Trump administration over its Lonsdale-inspired approach to homelessness. 

“I don’t actually think you can separate [Trump’s homelessness policy] from Cicero,” Rabinowitz said. “I think they’re so embedded in this administration, when you look at Trump’s executive order or the HUD funding, it is not a coincidence that it is parroting Cicero.”

Great News: The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy is a Best Seller on Bookshop and Amazon!

First-week sales matter—a lot. If you haven’t already, please buy The Nerd Reich at your local bookstore today. Or use this Bookshop link to support this newsletter. I can’t do it without your support! This is the day it matters most. (Already got the book? Please leave a review on your favorite books website.)

Nerd Reich Podcast Triumphs On YouTube

It looks like YouTube has backed down from its threat to delete The Nerd Reich’s YouTube channel.

The channel remains up today—with over 2000 new subscribers. Alex Shultz of Hard Reset Media reports that the company has no plans to disable the account. In addition, the mysterious campaign of false complaints against our channel has vanished just as quickly as it appeared.

Last week, YouTube sent a message threatening to disable the Nerd Reich channel by today. But it’s still up—and with a new episode.

This time, I’m in the guest chair being interviewed by Jean Guerrero, a New York Times contributing opinion writer and author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda.

Click below to watch the full episode on YouTube.

Click here for Apple Podcasts.

Click here for Spotify.

Visit Jean Guerrero’s newsletter, UNSILENCING, for a full transcript.

“The Nerd Reich” is the book Silicon Valley elites don’t want you to read. Here’s what the author has to say.I spoke to the journalist Gil Durán about his new book, which sheds light on what the tech fascists behind Trump are planning.Peter Thiel Roasted by Gandalfs in Argentina

If Peter Thiel hoped to find peace and refuge when he purchased a mansion hideout in Argentina earlier this year, he’s in for a rude awakening.

The surveillance billionaire and Antichrist enthusiast’s interest in the South American country has sparked energetic protests from local activists, and they know how to hit him where it hurts.

Earlier this week, a mysterious flock of Gandalfs descended on Thiel’s mansion:

Protesters dressed as Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings protested outside the Buenos Aires home of Peter Thiel, a Palantir co-founder.

They had gathered to highlight Mr Thiel's recent 1pc stake purchase in Argentina's Vista, one of the largest oil companies operating in the country.

The demonstrators carried banners reading “You shall not pass,” a line delivered by the Lord of the Rings character, played by Sir Ian McKellen.

Images of the protesters—wearing robes, wizard hats and white beards—made headlines and newscasts around the globe.

Thiel’s obsession with The Lord of the Rings is one of his defining traits. He tends to name his companies—Palantir, Mithril, Valar—after objects in the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy books. Oddly, Thiel does not seem to recognize that he and his cronies resemble the book’s villains rather than its heroes.

But the Gandalfs of Argentina have been summoned to remind him.

Protesters dressed as Gandalf surround Palantir founder’s houseProtesters dressed as Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings protested outside the Buenos Aires home of Peter Thiel, a Palantir co-founder.

This week, the DOJ was put in its place about religious liberty, but it continues to be a nationwide embarrassment by insisting James Comey is a murderous terrorist, basically. Oh, and meet Trent McCotter, who may be your next deputy attorney general and loves long walks on the beach, candlelight dinners, and the treasonweasel slush fund. When Trump got into office, he promptly got rid…

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A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Trump says struggling sailors haven’t been at sea ‘nearly long enough’…

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Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia made a relatively tame reference to Donald Trump’s “human printer” aide, Natalie Harp, while calling out the president’s hands-off approach to fixing the affordability crisis his policies have exacerbated. The GOP promptly lost its collective mind. You know, the same GOP that rallies around Trump when he calls women “piggy,” or when he is found liable for…

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This January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed consular officers to refuse to process immigration visas for people from 75 countries because, he said, those immigrants would be more likely than others to “extract wealth” or “take welfare and public benefits” from the US. Since January, people from those 75 countries—all located in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe—have had their visa applications frozen or denied.

On August 21, though, a federal judge in New York struck down this blanket visa ban, on the grounds that it violates the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965’s prohibition on nationality-based discrimination in issuing a visa. 

As my colleague Julia Métraux reported earlier this year, these “public charge” bans are in part based on eugenicist ideas.

Since the 19th century, the United States has used “public charge” rules to restrict entry, alleging that immigrants and even visitors would strain public services—reasoning very much rooted in the eugenicist and ableist thinking that shaped key aspects of public policy in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including the claim that so-called “defective” people would produce “defective” children. As president, especially in his second term, Donald Trump has brought eugenicist immigration policy roaring back.

Judge Jeannette Vargas’ August 21 ruling in CLINIC v. Rubio reverses any visa denials that occurred solely due to the “public charge” visa ban.

The policy, Vargas found, “is contrary to law and was issued in excess of
Secretary Rubio’s statutory authority,” and “has the effect of categorically
banning the issuance of immigrant visas to nationals of nearly 40% of the world’s
countries.” The government may still appeal the decision.

In a written statement to reporters, the nonprofit groups and private law firms involved in the suit praised Vargas’ ruling. “This latest attempt by the Trump administration to enforce its white nationalist worldview through US immigration policy is, like the others, equal parts retrograde and unlawful,” said Baher Azmy, Legal Director of The Center for Constitutional Rights. “We are proud to stand by communities that will not stop fighting against the administration’s attempts to project its racist insecurities to tear apart families.”

2 years after ruling on emergency abortion care, justices may see another Idaho case about health exceptions. By Kelcie Moseley-Morris for Stateline A federal court ruling out of Idaho has potential implications for exceptions in abortion bans nationwide and could eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court to decide. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled earlier this month…

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A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | The medical world slams Trump’s harmful anti-vax quackery…

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At the limits of adaptation, governments face a choice: point fingers, or seize the moment for transformational change. By Bob Berwyn for Inside Climate News A summer-long series of heatwaves that has been blistering much of Europe since June has turned political. Elected leaders are facing growing scrutiny for their lackluster response to the deadly consequences of climate…

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A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

It’s very easy to be a conspiracy-monger. Let’s give it a shot.

This week, there was a hullabaloo about Natalie Harp, Donald Trump’s 35-year-old aide who’s been derisively referred to within the White House as the “Human Printer.” She’s always by Trump’s side, typing his social media posts and printing out and feeding him positive and misleading information about his presidency. (“Look, this poll shows that 110 percent of all Republican voters think you’re better looking than Jesus Christ!”) She’s also a conduit for aides and foreign leaders who want to slip Trump a message.

There’s been much speculation and tittering about her devotion and physical closeness to Trump. She was part of the small elite band that was hustled into that now-infamous catering compartment in Turkey when Trump covertly fled Air Force One to use another aircraft due to a security threat. Her notes to Trump read like love letters. (“You are all that matters to me.”)

This new shot of attention for Harp was triggered when Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, said at a campaign rally, “[Trump] golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.” Outraged MAGA-ites and Trump defenders pounced (see Dumbass Comment of the Week below) and slammed Ossoff for supposedly implying Harp and Trump were trysting and denounced him for denigrating a hard-working woman.

Harp’s 24/7 presence in Trump’s life has prompted the predictable and icky whispering. But we can be even more conspiratorial.

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether Ossoff unfairly insinuated anything and demeaned Harp. His remark was at least partially prompted by the reports that Harp was one of the few aides who accompanied Trump when he skedaddled from Air Force One and left behind the seemingly expendable Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

Whether he intended to or not, Ossoff spurred a national conversation about Harp—and about the appropriateness of discussing her bizarre relationship with Trump. Her 24/7 presence in his life has prompted the predictable and icky whispering. But we can be even more conspiratorial.

On Wednesday, MSNOW reported that for more than a year, while working for Trump in the White House during his second term, Harp declined several times to seek a security clearance. Obtaining clearance is a routine move for an aide, especially a staffer in such proximity to the president. After all, she can hear and see the top-secret information flowing to and from Trump. It’s a tremendous security lapse to allow a person without clearance around-the-clock access to the president. Yet Trump permitted this. Eventually, Harp did receive a clearance. But how stringent was the review? And why did she not do so at the start?

That’s a bit suspicious, right? What would Alex Jones have said if an aide to President Barack Obama or President Joe Biden had done the same? Now let’s add to the picture where Harp worked prior to joining Trump’s presidential campaign in 2022: the One America News Network.

OAN is a far-right cable news outfit that’s for Trump fans and MAGA-heads who think Fox News has gone soft. And it’s been overtly pro-Russia. When it was launched in 2013 by Robert Herring Sr., a millionaire who got rich in the circuit board business, he instructed OAN staff to promote Trump, push conservative issues, and downplay Russian aggression. Fun fact: Herring married a Russian woman years earlier. And OAN aired reports from RT, a Kremlin-funded media outlet and propaganda shop. In 2017, the Washington Post reported that OAN producers “said Herring repeatedly urged against running stories critical of Russia.” This was after Russia had launched its first invasion of Ukrainian territory and illegally annexed Crimea—and after Vladimir Putin had attacked the 2016 election in part to help Trump win.

Where did Harp work prior to joining Trump’s presidential campaign in 2022? The One America News Network, which, during the 2020 campaign, played a key role in promoting Russian disinformation.

Later, during the 2020 presidential campaign, OAN played a key role in promoting Russian disinformation. One of its anchors, Chanel Rion, teamed up with Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s personal lawyer, to smear Joe Biden, claiming without evidence that Biden had engaged in brazen corruption in Ukraine. The pair both promoted baseless allegations about Biden made by Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator who was later sanctioned by Trump’s own Treasury Department for being a Russian agent. Derkach served as a major source for a series of Rion reports bashing Biden.

After the 2020 election, the US intelligence community stated in a public report that Moscow used “proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives—including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden—­to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump.” The media organizations referenced here included OAN. The report also noted that Derkach and the Russian operation assisted the production of an anti-Biden documentary, apparently a film that aired on OAN in early 2020. (Following Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Derkach fled to Russia. In 2024, he was appointed to a seat in the Russian parliament’s upper chamber.)

After the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, OAN aired a report from the front lines filed by Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop and fugitive who found asylum in Russia and became involved in disinformation operations Moscow mounted against the United States. He was identified on OAN as a foreign correspondent for the network, and the long piece he produced claimed that Ukrainian forces—whom he called “Nazi terrorists”—had massacred civilians and that the war had been caused by “kleptocrats in Washington” who were desperate to keep “Ukraine out of the hands of Russia” because they used Ukraine to “launder their money” and needed to hide their corruption. Dougan accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of skimming billions of US aid money and causing “thousands of innocent people to die.” OAN was broadcasting straight-­out, pro-­Putin, made-in-Russia propaganda.

As regular readers might guess, I cover OAN, Derkach, and Dougan in more detail in my forthcoming book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America.

I’m not saying that a young blond woman who has become such an important aide for Trump is a Russian operative. I’m just asking questions—as the conspiracy-peddlers like to say.

Now what might a creative, conspiracy-minded person do with all these dots? An attractive aide has an oddly close connection to the president and is situated to know everything and can influence his thinking. She helps write his tweets. She can control what information he receives. She once worked for an organization that has aired Russian disinformation, that has been identified by US intelligence as an outlet for Kremlin propaganda, and that has been ordered by its owner to go easy on Russia. And she was reluctant to submit to a security clearance investigation.

Hmm.

I’m not saying that a young blond woman who has become such an important aide for Trump is a Russian operative. I’m just asking questions—as the conspiracy-peddlers like to say. But I have no doubt if there had been a similar set of facts for Obama or Biden, OAN, Fox News, Kash Patel, Glenn Beck, Roger Stone, and just about the entire MAGAsphere (and maybe Joe Rogan) would have been off to the races with such a narrative.

But the Harp tale is indeed a serious episode that reminds us of how Trump and his gang don’t give a damn about security. The fact that a staffer with such access to Trump could blow off a security clearance for so long is troubling. As is the fact that Jared Kushner, who is not a government employee and who has business interests around the world, is handling highly sensitive matters in three sets of negotiations: the Ukraine war, the Israeli-Palestinian war in Gaza, and the Iran war. (He’s also doing a piss-poor job in each of them.) No one was punished for Signalgate. Trump readily accepted a 747-8 from Qatar that posed significant security problems. Mar-a-Lago is a counterintelligence nightmare. Trump’s crypto business and other deals allow foreigners—perhaps even overseas officials—to buy influence with him. Let’s not forget he swiped top-secret documents when he left the White House in 2021 and stored some in a bathroom.

Trump won the presidency in 2016 partly because he and MAGA world went apeshit over Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails when she was secretary of state. There was never evidence that her use of a private server for her official emails—a violation of the rules—led to any security breaches. But during both Trump administrations, there have been multiple instances of Trump and his lieutenants violating basic security protocols. Harp dodging a security clearance investigation is the latest example. The Donald-Natalie story might seem like gratuitous gossip. Yet it shows once more that Trump and his gang have no respect for rules and believe they can get away with anything. That attitude is a national security threat.

The Conversation is a weekly dive into the most popular stories on Daily Kos and what it tells us about the national political environment. Two big stories have dominated attention this week. The biggest is the hysterical reaction from Republicans over Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia including three simple words in this sentence about President Donald Trump: “See, he doesn’t want…

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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | GOP sure doesn’t like Jon Ossoff’s quip about Trump’s creepy aide…

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This story was originally published by Capital B and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As a young boy in the 1960s, almost every weekend Elbert McGee walked a half-mile with his father through the wooded streets of Roseland, Louisiana, to the Tangipahoa River. There, he learned to swim and fish for bass, crappie, and the occasional catfish.

​“We had a good, good life as children,” McGee said, unloading fishing gear from his truck. “We grew up healthy and in community.”

Today, McGee still lives in the home where he was raised. But he no longer makes the 10-minute walk to the river to fish. Instead, he drives three hours to Grand Isle.

That change only came after August 22, 2025, when Smitty’s Supply, an oil facility in the majority-Black town, exploded. The disaster released an estimated 12 million gallons of oily liquid and chemical waste into the river, and painted hundreds of homes, churches, schools, and playgrounds with black oily streaks. 

Within weeks, McGee’s then-15-year-old son, Markel, began having nosebleeds severe enough to make him miss school. A friend who is battling cancer developed a respiratory illness. Neither family has received a definitive answer as to whether those conditions are linked to the blast.

For McGee, who has a combined eight children and grandchildren, and other Roseland parents, the loss of the river has been surpassed by a much more pressing question: What does it mean to be a parent when you cannot stop harm from reaching your children?

Across Roseland and communities like it, protecting a child from refineries, railyards, and contaminated water becomes a never-ending, intimate form of vigilance—one Black parents shoulder disproportionately. Research shows Black children experience higher exposure to environmental toxins like lead, air pollution, and pesticides than children of any other race in the US, turning everyday parenting into an act of defense against threats they never chose and often cannot see.

“This is my home,” McGee said. “I have no other realistic option to leave.”

McGee, 63, has begun to sit with the devastating thought that he may have failed to protect his children by raising them here.“They’re not gonna be healthy here, especially doing anything in the dirt or the river,” he said.

“We can’t control the government or these companies,” he added. “We can pray on it. But you want the best for your children, and it hurts not to be able to give it to them.”

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality did not respond to Capital B’s requests for comment. In a statement, Smitty’s Supply said: “Smitty’s has completed all of the remediation requirements under the existing CERCLA Consent Order with EPA and has submitted its final report to EPA for its concurrence.”

Elbert McGee grew up fishing and farming in his community before the explosion.
Adam Mahoney/Capital B

McGee’s fears are rooted in more than parental instinct. After toxic events, children can absorb a larger dose of contamination than adults because they breathe, eat, and drink more relative to their body size, and because they often spend more time outdoors and closer to contaminated dust and soil. Their developing lungs, brains, and immune systems can be especially vulnerable.

Markel, a football player, was back in the dirt, running and breathing hard, just days after the explosion. McGee wonders if he should’ve pulled him from the sport, but it is one of the teenager’s main joys. And at the time, McGee said, he had been told Roseland was safe.

McGee now joins the Black mothers trained to keep the windows shut on a day the air smells metallic in Philadelphia, even as the house grows hot without air conditioning. The fathers, like John Ishmael Taylor in Flint, notice rashes developing on their children and begin buying bottled water they cannot comfortably afford. And the parents in Houston forced to decide whether their child’s cough is another cold or the result of pollution from the trucks idling outside.

When Markel first developed nosebleeds after the explosion, McGee immediately took him to the doctor, only to be dismissed. “They didn’t even examine him,” McGee said, “they said it was normal, but this had never happened before Smitty’s [exploded].”

All the while, across local farms and along the riverbanks, dozens of animals have died.

“I just want to make it to 70,” McGee said.Adam Mahoney/Capital B

One year since the disaster, both the federal and state governments have publicly maintained that the toxic cocktail of chemicals that spread over Roseland posed “no imminent threat to public health.” But the government’s assessment did not answer the questions parents said governed their daily decisions. They are still unsure if the soil on their property is safe or if children can play outside. And increasingly: What symptoms should prompt medical care?

For parents, the lack of clear answers has meant becoming informal toxicologists and medical advocates while still getting children to school, holding down jobs, and paying rent or mortgages.

“I just want to make it to 70 [years old],” McGee said. “I don’t think I can make it here this long and I’m doing all of this while trying to take care of the children in my house.”

He estimates he has spent more than $20,000 on his property since the disaster. He has replaced his roof and exterior siding and continues to excavate soil around his home.

In Roseland, where the average person makes just over $17,000 annually, many households have largely been left to fend for themselves since the explosion. Capital B has spoken with dozens of residents who said they have received no compensation or support as they have tried to clean their properties, rid their yards of contamination, and, in some cases, replace the exteriors of their homes.

Since the August explosion, the town has also experienced a chemical spill from a processing facility related to Smitty’s that infiltrated the drinking water supply.

Earlier this year, Pam Bean, who has two granddaughters who attend Roseland Elementary, said the lack of support has been “insulting.”

“You always hear about politicians talking about rural America for votes. This is rural America, and look at how they really treat us,” she said.

The absence of help is not only a burden adults carry.

Young people who grow up learning not to trust their drinking water or not to play outside when the refinery is flaring are learning that home is a place of potential danger. They notice whether a spill is cleaned quickly, officials answer questions, or a school is treated as worth protecting. When those signals are absent, children can learn that the institutions meant to safeguard them will not, research shows.

Pam Bean posed for a photo with her two grandchildren in April.Adam Mahoney/Capital B

The consequences can compound when exposure contributes to asthma attacks, sleep disruption, lead-related developmental risks, or repeated school absences. Parents may keep them inside, miss work to take them to appointments, or pull them from class when symptoms emerge. 

At a protest in April, Candice Hart held her daughter’s hand as she described what the contamination has meant for her family. Her daughter has had respiratory problems since the explosion, Hart said, and she has emails and letters showing that she and other parents had raised alarms for months, despite school officials’ claims otherwise.

“No parent should have to choose between their child’s education and their child’s health,” she said.

Markel, now a junior in high school, wants to leave Roseland, and perhaps Louisiana, after graduation. The explosion has changed his relationship to the place where his father learned to fish and swim.

His desire to leave is not simply teenage restlessness, McGee admitted. It is one consequence of growing up in a place that has taught him home can be hazardous.

Standing outside of his tarped home about half a mile from Smitty’s, McGee said the lack of an urgent response is inseparable from who lives in Roseland. 

He grew up with Ed Smith, the white owner of Smitty’s Supply, and graduated high school with him. “But [today,] he’d walk right past me like he never knew me,” McGee said. 

Smith has not made a public appearance about the disaster in the year since the explosion. Smith and his family live in a town 25 miles away from Roseland.

“I think Smitty’s hasn’t done nothing for this community because of who lives here, knowing him,” McGee said, referring to the town’s racial and economic makeup.

In Louisiana, Black communities home to industrial plants are exposed to seven to 21 times more toxic pollution than similar communities with more white residents. And historically, Black communities have received less recovery aid than white areas with comparable damage during environmental disasters.

But in Louisiana, the Black families living with the costs of industrial pollution are often also tied to the industries that create it. Industrial work remains one of the few accessible paths to a stable, middle-class income.

McGee lives inside that contradiction. Like 30 percent of Louisiana’s workers, he has an industrial job, driving more than an hour to shifts at a chemical facility in the region commonly known as Cancer Alley, a disproportionately Black area with some of the nation’s highest rates of cancer.

He knows the risks of the work, he said, but sees few alternatives that would allow him to provide for his family.

Dominic Kruger, a father in Cancer Alley, took his first job at a petrochemical plant shortly before his 18th birthday. It was the only way to survive in his home state, he said, “unless you want to work at McDonald’s.”

For McGee, it felt much the same. “I just want to feed and clothe my children,” he said. “I know I’m killing myself for a job, breathing in benzene and chemicals every day, but I didn’t want my children exposed, too.”

His home doesn’t feel like a place he can offer his children and grandchildren anymore. In his backyard, where a patch of dead grass has sat since the oily rain, McGee’s father grew “everything” and had hens.

“It is hard to give up generations, but we may have no choice.”

“I know I’m killing myself for a job,” McGee says,”but I didn’t want my children exposed, too.”Adam Mahoney/Capital B

If you want to get the unfiltered skinny on how the never-ending war with Iran is going, it’s written in the dust. Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi reported this week that U.S. service members marooned in the Persian Gulf have been expressing themselves in messages fingered onto a dusty aircraft flap. The anonymous graffiti, which calls to mind the helmet scrawls of disgruntled soldiers in Vietnam, include “Operation Epstein Fury,” “Peace deal #64 incoming … ALL THIS FOR THE HOLY LAND,” and “Bibi’s cucks.” Sounds like things aren’t going so well! “I have no frame of reference, I can’t compare it to the sentiments of U.S. soldiers in previous conflicts,” Parsi wrote. “But I suspect these are new sentiments, or at least a new willingness to express them this openly and directly.”

Whether these sentiments are new is indeed unclear, but it’s not without a frame of reference. Trump has always been fairly explicit in his disrespect for the grunts who do most of the work—and all of the dying—in this racket that we call “war.” But only now is a seemingly unwinnable war bringing this all to a head. It’s no longer possible to pretend that the president doesn’t have boundless contempt for U.S. service members. They’re trapped in a war that was essentially kicked off to distract from all the other terrible news the Trump administration generates—or at least to turn attention away from the Epstein files. (Though if these dust etchings are any guide, Trump failed in this attempt to wag the dog.)

In recent weeks, this dynamic has been playing out on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has been on a nine-month deployment to support Trump’s war with Iran. Conditions on board the carrier have deteriorated to the point where some seamen have jumped overboard in an attempt to escape the misery. The crew has, for several weeks, been dealing with food shortages and grotesque sanitation issues. As TNR’s Hafiz Rashid reported, “In recent town hall meetings with military leaders, including acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, things have gotten heated, with family members expressing fear and worry over mental health and the risk of self-harm for the ship’s personnel.”

As it happens, this trouble is not confined to the USS Lincoln: Crews on the USS Benfold, Carl Vinson, and Tripoli have also reported miserable conditions in recent weeks. Pete Hegseth, our self-styled “secretary of war,” has gone to great lengths to downplay and even deny these accounts, characterizing them as misrepresentations while covering up the reason the Lincoln, which is now finally coming home, wasn’t resupplied. The dust scribbles surfaced by Parsi tell a different story.

If anything, the story is an old one. There has always been good reason to question Trump’s respect for U.S. service members. As The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported in September of 2020, Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Paris, questioning his senior aides as to why he should go to a cemetery full of “losers.” Per Goldberg, “In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as ‘suckers’ for getting killed.” All of this came about because he didn’t want to get his hair mussed in the rainy conditions. (Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, would later confirm Goldberg’s reporting.)

Trump’s disparagement of the military is pretty consistent. He’s slagged off the armed forces’ top officers as “dopes and babies” and compared them unfavorably to the military leaders he, for whatever reason, holds in high esteem: Adolf Hitler’s generals. He’s complained about having to see disabled veterans at military events, and has advocated for the exclusion of wounded soldiers at official functions because, “Nobody wants to see that.” These kinds of insults were a staple of his first run for office, during which time he mocked Gold Star families and, famously, Vietnam POW survivor John McCain.

But Trump’s disregard is hardly limited to mere aesthetics. As The Huffington Post’s David Wood reported in 2017, Trump’s gigantic military buildup shoveled billions of dollars to the Pentagon, but not much of that kitty ended up benefiting the working grunts who risk their lives on our nation’s behalf.

Only the outlines of Trump’s proposal to lavish money on the military have been drawn up. There’s a request for Congress to add $30 billion to this year’s defense budget and a vague plan to add $54 billion to next year’s spending. Not included in those plans: money for the best infantry weapons, the safest troop-lift helicopters, the most protective lightweight body armor. Instead, grunts will have to settle for budget leftovers with antiquated rifles, helicopters built for their grandfathers during the Vietnam War, and communications gear that is overweight and unreliable.

The least surprising observation you can make about Trump is that he is an asshole and a cheapskate. Still, the president’s Iranian misadventure has fully exposed both his ineptitude as commander in chief and the consequences of this lack of care for military members and their families. As conditions on U.S. ships erode, the administration is finding itself in a media war with the concerned families of troops deployed to the region. Stockpiles of vital munitions are being burned through at an alarming rate. And for some reason, Trump has picked this moment to order a bizarre retrofitting of U.S. aircraft carriers, demanding that they be kitted out with obsolete steam catapults. (TNR contributor Brynn Tannehill has the lore drop you need if you’ve been confused by this story.)

Public opinion about the war in Iran has been consistently awful for Trump, whose overall approval hit a low of 33 percent this week. As Parsi reports, those who are stuck on the front lines of this folly are not likely to disabuse their fellow Americans of this being anything but FUBAR. As one service member told him: “What people in the media don’t understand when they compare past conflicts to this one, is this operation has no morale behind it. That makes a world of difference to service members deployed to undesirable locations indefinitely.” Parsi thinks that the only thing left to do now is to “simply end” the war. But Trump is knee-deep in this big muddy, and there truly is no end in sight.

The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its “40 acres” promise to formerly enslaved people—and it has continued over decades. 

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Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation. 

“They lost land due to racial intimidation, where they were forced off their land [to] take flight in the middle of the night and resettle someplace else,” said Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, an assistant professor of Africana studies at Morehouse College. “They lost it through overtaxation. They lost it through eminent domain…There’s all these different ways that African Americans acquired and lost land.”

This week on Reveal, we dive into the examination of American history happening at the state, city, even county level as local government task forces are on truth-finding missions. Across the country, government officials ask: Can we repair a wealth gap for Black Americans that is rooted in slavery? And how?

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.

This video was created in partnership with PBS NewsHour. 

The record amounts of glyphosate being sprayed in California’s forests—revealed in a yearlong Mother Jones investigation in April—has continued to attract national attention and fuel public debate. 

In Lake Tahoe, community members have flooded meetings and organized rallies to stop the US Forest Service from spraying the controversial herbicide better known as Roundup as part of the government’s plan to plant trees in the wake of wildfires. 

Members of Congress who oversee the Forest Service have sent detailed questions stemming from our investigation, demanding further information about the practice. 

And late last month, our investigation uncovered that Monsanto, the original developer of glyphosate that Bayer purchased in 2018, had secretly orchestrated yet another widely cited study that found glyphosate was safe. The EPA knew what Monsanto had done, determined it was ghost writing and “research misconduct,” and yet the agency continued to cite in government reports as evidence that the herbicide was safe for public use.

Bayer, which manufactures Roundup, is on the hook for more than $12 billion in legal expenses and payouts from lawsuits by people who say the popular herbicide gave them cancer. But last month, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that a technicality in federal law bars people from suing the company under state labeling laws, which require companies to disclose risks like cancer. The justices found that only the EPA can mandate safety labels on pesticides, and the agency—which has continued to rely on Monsanto’s ghostwritten studies—says the product is unlikely to cause cancer. Bayer agrees, stating that Roundup is safe when used as directed and that regulators around the world have approved it. 

“They’re taking away the choice of being surrounded by a toxic chemical,” says Tahoe resident and three-time Olympian Hannah Teter about the US Forest Service’s spraying of herbicide around her home town.

The Supreme Court decided last month that the maker of Roundup,  the world’s most widely used weed killer, can’t be held responsible for failing to warn users that one of its key ingredients – a chemical known as glyphosate – may pose risks to human health. Glyphosate has been a mainstay of agriculture in this country for decades, and thousands of lawsuits allege that exposure to the chemical caused cancer.  PBS NewsHour featured our reporting based on an analysis of millions of pesticide reports in California which reveals another, lesser known way glyphosate is being used right now:  to spray this country’s national forests. 

Our analysis of California pesticide records shows that the amount of glyphosate sprayed in state forests has quadrupled over the past decade. From Yosemite to Lassen Volcanic National Park in the very north of the state, residents are up in arms about the fact that the efforts to help them recover from wildfires may expose them to a harmful chemical.

PBS NewsHour featured our reporting on their nightly newscast. You can watch the story here: