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

Confiscated guns on display at Attorney General Letitia James’s announcement that the Attorney General’s Office, Drug Enforcement Administration, New York Police Department, and State Police took down ghost guns and narcotics trafficking ring in New York.  | Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images The fight over “ghost guns” is back before the justices. The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear Garland v. VanDerStok, a case that could open up a massive loophole in US gun laws, effectively neutralizing federal laws requiring gun buyers to submit to a background c ..read more

Pro-Palestine student demonstrators march from the University of Colorado campus in Boulder to show solidarity and to protest the sale of US jets to Israel in this October 1973 photo. | Denver Post via Getty Images And for decades, schools have tried to crack down on their activism. Last week, the country watched one of the biggest escalations in campus unrest this year unfold, when dozens of New York City police officers clad in riot gear entered the grounds of Columbia University and, on the orders of university president Minouche Shafik, arrested more than 108 student protesters who had bui ..read more

An activist with the Center for Popular Democracy Action holds a large photo of US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s head as the group blocks an intersection during a demonstration in front of the US Supreme Court on December 1, 2021, in Washington, DC.  | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images But it’s not yet clear they’ve settled on a rationale for doing so. A federal law requires most US hospitals to provide an abortion to patients experiencing a medical emergency if an abortion is the proper medical treatment for that emergency. This law is unambiguous, and it applies even in red states wi ..read more

Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images The Columbia protests and the debate over pro-Palestinian college students, explained. Protests over the war in Gaza erupted on Columbia University’s campus last week and have sparked demonstrations at other universities across the country. The demonstrations have resulted in some intense crackdowns and political scrutiny, all coming in the wake of recent congressional hearings on antisemitism on campus and amid an uptick in both antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiment in the US. Protests have emerged across the country, including at Yale University, New Yor ..read more

A coyote in the El Capitan meadow area at sunrise in Yosemite National Park. | Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Your taxes fund an obscure government program that kills millions of wild animals to benefit Big Ag. A red fox killed with a cyanide bomb. A gray wolf gunned down from an airplane. A jackrabbit caught in a neck snare. These are just a few of the 1.45 million animals poisoned, shot, and trapped last year by the euphemistically named Wildlife Services, a little-known but particularly brutal program of the US Department of Agriculture. The program kills wild ..read more

On April 18, the United Auto Workers won the union vote at a Volkswagen assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. | Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images The UAW is unlocking worker power in the South. An expert explains why it matters. The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has about 5,500 employees. On April 19, almost three-quarters of them voted to join the United Auto Workers. It’s the latest victory for one of the country’s largest labor unions, coming on the heels of a major contract win last fall with the “Big Three” American carmakers: GM, Ford, and Stellantis (which merged with Chry ..read more

Ukrainian soldiers fire artillery near Siversk, in Donetsk, Ukraine, on April 1, 2024. | Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu via Getty Images New American weapons will buy Ukraine’s defenders some valuable time. Ukrainian forces are having their best week in months, and it’s coming not on the muddy battlefields of the Donbas, but across the Atlantic. On Saturday, after months of delay, the US House of Representatives approved $61 billion in new funding for Ukraine, alongside aid packages for Israel and for US allies in the Pacific; last night, the Senate approved the package and sent it on to President Jo ..read more

Trump speaks at an event in Pennsylvania on April 13. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Voters trust Trump to lower prices, even as his advisers put forward plans for increasing Americans’ cost of living. Donald Trump is currently leading the 2024 presidential race, in no small part because voters trust him to combat inflation. This is a bit strange since Trump has for months now been advertising plans to drastically increase consumer prices. Over the weekend, an NBC News poll found Trump leading Biden nationally by a 46 to 44 percent margin. Yet on the question of which candidate would better hand ..read more

Rep. Summer Lee, a progressive and member of the Squad, is running for reelection in Pennsylvania. | Nate Smallwood/Bloomberg via Getty Images Lee is the first Squad member to face a 2024 primary challenge. It could send a strong message about progressive power. Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) is the first member of the progressive group of House Democrats known as the Squad to be up for a 2024 primary challenge, a contest expected to be a preview of how Democratic divides over Israel could play out this year. Lee, one of the earliest lawmakers to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and to condemn Israel ..read more