Outsider, queer and Indigenous artists are getting an overdue platform at the 60th Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition that opens Saturday, curated for the first time by a Latin American. Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa’s main show, which accompanies 88 national pavilions for the seven-month run, is strong on figurative painting, with fewer installations than recent editions. A preponderance of artists are from the Global South, long overlooked by the mainstream art world circuits. Many are dead — Frida Kahlo, for example, is making her first appearance at the Venice Biennale. Her 19 ..read more

The House is preparing in a rare Saturday session to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, Democrats and Republicans joining together behind the legislation after a grueling months-long fight over renewed American support for repelling Russia's invasion into Ukraine. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson — putting his job on the line — relied on Democratic support this week to set up a series of votes on three aid bills, as well as a fourth that contains several other foreign policy proposals. If the votes are successful, the package will go to the Senat ..read more

After its midnight deadline, the Senate voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key U.S. surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data nearly forced the statute to lapse. The legislation approved 60-34 with bipartisan support would extend for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law. “In the nick of time, we are reauthorizing FISA right before it expires at midnight,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said whe ..read more

On a weekend reprieve from the courtroom, former President Donald Trump will campaign Saturday in North Carolina as he juggles legal troubles and his rematch against President Joe Biden. Trump’s evening stop in the coastal city of Wilmington marks his first rally since his criminal hush money trial began this week with jury selection in Manhattan. The occasion offers the former president a fresh chance to amplify claims that his multiple pending indictments are an establishment conspiracy to take him down — and, by extension, squelch the voters who first elected him eight years ago. “They want ..read more

When Washington state opened some of the nation's first legal marijuana stores in 2014, Sam Ward Jr. was on electronic home detention in Spokane, where he had been indicted on federal drug charges. He would soon be off to prison to serve the lion's share of a four-year sentence. A decade later, Ward, who is Black, recently posed in a blue-and-gold throne used for photo ops at his new cannabis store, Cloud 9 Cannabis. He greeted customers walking in for early 4/20 deals. And he reflected on being one of the first beneficiaries of a Washington program to make the overwhelmingly white industry mo ..read more

Former first lady Melania Trump will attend a fundraiser Saturday for the Log Cabin Republicans, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ members of the GOP, in a rare political appearance after months of being absent from her husband's campaign. The event at the Palm Beach estate she shares with former President Donald Trump will take place behind closed doors. But it will be the first major political event this year for the former first lady. Melania Trump had for months not appeared at her husband’s campaign events, notably being absent at his victory party on Super Tuesday. Her attendance at the fundr ..read more

Special LP releases, live performances and at least one giant block party are scheduled around the U.S. Saturday as hundreds of shops celebrate Record Store Day during a surge of interest in vinyl and the day after the release of Taylor Swift's latest album. There were no announced Record Store Day specials for the arrival of Swift's “The Tortured Poets Department” on Friday, but her fans always anxiously look forward to the new albums and accompanying collectible LPs. In suburban strip malls and big city downtowns, indie record stores are often the first to recognize and promote emerging arti ..read more

Weihua Yan had seen dramatic demographic changes since moving to Long Island's Nassau County. Its Asian American population alone had grown by 60% since the 2010 census. Why then, he wondered, did he not see anyone who looked like him on the county's local governing body, the 19-member Nassau County Legislature? Last year, he decided to do something about it and ran for one of the seats. He pulled together a campaign team that knocked on 10,000 doors and developed what they believed would be a solid strategy — focusing on their potential base: white Democrats and people of color, especially As ..read more

Employees at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly voted to join the United Auto Workers union Friday in a historic first test of the UAW’s renewed effort to organize nonunion factories. The union wound up getting 2,628 votes, or 73% of the ballots cast, compared with only 985 who voted no in an election run by the National Labor Relations Board. Both sides have five business days to file objections to the election, the NLRB said. If there are none, the election will be certified and VW and the union must “begin bargaining in good faith.” President Joe Biden, who backe ..read more

Here is something that might surprise you: pickleball is a professional sport. Yes, you are reading that right. America’s fastest-growing sport has an elite group of players who get drafted, traded and play for paychecks. Major League Pickleball (MLP) brings together top-ranked men and women to play in innovative team-based competitions. There are 24 teams split across two levels. The Premier Level consists of 48 of the most in-demand players in all of professional pickleball divided among teams in 12 cities. The Challenger Level consists of up-and-comers. Each team drafts four new players eac ..read more