Former US President Donald Trump exits his criminal trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 25, 2024, in New York City. | Jeenah Moon/Getty Images Trump allies newly indicted in Arizona, testimony continuing in New York, and the Supreme Court hearing arguments in DC. The Arizona attorney general’s office unsealed a new case indicting several top Trump allies, including Rudy Giuliani, for trying to steal the 2020 election. The former publisher of the National Enquirer spilled new details about Trump in testimony during the former president’s firs ..read more

Then-President Donald Trump shakes hands with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who Trump placed on the Supreme Court. | Getty Images It’s unclear if the Court will explicitly hold that Trump could commit crimes with impunity, or if they’ll just delay his trial so long that it doesn’t matter. Thursday’s argument in Trump v. United States was a disaster for Special Counsel Jack Smith, and for anyone who believes that the president of the United States should be subject to prosecution if they commit a crime. At least five of the Court’s Republicans seemed eager to, at the very least, permit Trump to dela ..read more

Dairy cows at an operation in Lodi, California, in 2020. | Jessica Christian/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images The US Department of Agriculture’s failed response to bird flu in cows, explained. Bird flu has had a busy couple of years. Since 2022, it’s ravaged the US poultry industry, as more than 90 million farmed birds — mostly egg-laying hens and turkeys — have either died from the virus or have been brutally killed in an attempt to stop the spread. Last month, confirmation that the virus — a strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza known as H5N1 — had infected US dairy cows al ..read more

Members of the US Army National Guard patrolling Penn Station in New York City. | Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images Crime rates are falling. Why are lawmakers passing tough-on-crime bills? When it comes to public safety, lawmakers have two primary jobs: enacting policies that curb crime and making their constituents feel safe. It might seem like those two things go hand-in-hand; after all, if lawmakers successfully reduce crime rates, then people have less to worry about. But as has been especially evident recently, there can be a big disconnect between actual crime trends and how people feel ..read more

Former President Donald Trump greets his own appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, ahead of the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives on February 04, 2020. | Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images The justices already effectively gave Trump what he wants in his Supreme Court immunity case. Today, the Supreme Court will hear what might be one of its least consequential arguments in modern history. I’m referring, of course, to Trump v. United States, the case asking whether former President Donald Trump is immune from a federal criminal prosecution arising out of hi ..read more

The world might soon see a sustained decline in greenhouse gas emissions. | Eric Yang/Getty Images Greenhouse gas emissions might have already peaked. Now they need to fall — fast. Earth is coming out of the hottest year on record, amplifying the destruction from hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, and drought. The oceans remain alarmingly warm, triggering the fourth global coral bleaching event in history. Concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere have reached levels not seen on this planet for millions of years, while humanity’s demand for the fossil fuels that produce this poll ..read more

Photo illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty Images  The potential TikTok ban is now law. What happens next? The bill to require TikTok to separate from its Chinese parent company or face a nationwide ban made it to President Joe Biden’s desk on Wednesday as part of a huge foreign aid package that passed through Congress this week. And Biden, as he previously promised, signed the bill into law. ByteDance now has nine months to sell TikTok, a deadline that Biden can opt to extend once by 90 days. And while TikTok could avoid a ban with a successful sale or court challenge, the new law means Amer ..read more

Photo credit should read Umer Qadir/ Eyepix Group/Future Publishing via Getty Images It is almost hard to believe just how effective vaccines are at saving infants’ lives. The world has become a much safer place to be a young child in the last 50 years. Since 1974, infant mortality worldwide has plummeted. That year, one in 10 newborns died before reaching their first birthday. By 2021, that rate had fallen by over two-thirds. A lot of factors drove this change: lower poverty and better nutrition, cleaner air and water, and readily available antibiotics and other treatments. But one of the big ..read more

Getty Images Seasonal allergies making you miserable? Here’s what you need to know. It’s a sneezy, snotty, itchy-eyed time for many Americans — perhaps more so than ever before. Seasonal allergies are the effects of the immune system’s overreaction to pollen spewed into the air by trees, grasses, and ragweed, most commonly in the spring (although really, year-round). Climate change is making allergy season worse: As warm seasons get warmer and last longer, more plants release more pollen for longer periods. Although the risk of developing allergies is hereditary, experts suspect higher pollen ..read more

Mike Faist, Zendaya, and Josh O’Connor in Challengers. | Challengers/Amazon MGM Studios An investigation into a sport of short shorts and thrown rackets. In addition to solidifying Zendaya as a movie star, the new Luca Guadagnino film Challengers presents a couple of ideas about the seemingly polite and preppy game of tennis: One, it’s a sport that belongs on the silver screen as regularly as football, baseball, or boxing. Two, it’s quite possibly the most erotic activity outside of sex. Early on in Challengers, tennis prodigy Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) explains to her fellow players and future ro ..read more