It is not the unflap­pable per­spec­tive of the true beach peo­ple that lends Flori­da its rep­u­ta­tion for insan­i­ty. The state’s inte­ri­or is a swel­ter­ing, bug­gy patch­work of small coun­try towns anchored by Walt Dis­ney World, the black hole of the Flori­da uni­verse, which pulls tourists towards it, fil­ter­ing and squeez­ing them for mon­ey as they approach like a blue whale suck­ing in krill. South Flori­da is the trash can of America’s upper mid­dle class, attract­ing that part of the nation’s pop­u­la­tion that is both rich enough to make life deci­sions based upon min­i­miz­ing income tax rates, and vac­u­ous enough to believe that an aggres­sive­ly air con­di­tioned mod­el home on a golf course in a hous­ing devel­op­ment built on what was recent­ly a swamp is the ide­al embod­i­ment of the Amer­i­can dream. North Flori­da is indis­tin­guish­able from Geor­gia or Alaba­ma or Mis­sis­sip­pi, a deep South bas­tion with bet­ter beach­es attached. In this huge and dis­con­nect­ed state, many tribes — rich Yan­kee golfers, surf bums, tourist-fleec­ing busi­ness moguls, immi­grant farm­work­ers, stone cold red­necks, and mil­lions of poor peo­ple whose best prospects are a job dress­ing up as Goofy at the Mag­ic King­dom — coex­ist with­out mingling. Pun­dits seek­ing easy polit­i­cal nar­ra­tives in Flori­da will always fail, because there is no coher­ent defin­ing thread that unites all of these fac­tions. (Not even the beach itself — a shock­ing num­ber of Florid­i­ans refuse to ever ven­ture out­side of a space that is air con­di­tioned down to ​“New Jer­sey in Octo­ber” tem­per­a­tures.) The one val­ue that comes clos­est to doing so is racism, which accounts for its won­der­ful util­i­ty as a polit­i­cal tool. For some­one like Don­ald Trump, who doesn’t care to dig too deeply into the intri­ca­cies of any sit­u­a­tion, racism will do. As Con­fed­er­ate flags slow­ly become less social­ly accept­able, Trump ban­ners have tak­en their place. They com­mu­ni­cate the same sen­ti­ments. In Flori­da I have seen sev­er­al trucks fly­ing both of those flags at once, as if mak­ing explic­it the bridge from one to the oth­er. No one here mis­un­der­stands the point. St. Augus­tine, where I grew up, is ​“the nation’s old­est city,” claimed for the Span­ish by the explor­er Pedro Menen­dez in 1565. He cel­e­brat­ed his dis­cov­ery by mas­sacring hun­dreds of French peo­ple at an inlet called Matan­zas, now a pop­u­lar local surf spot. A cen­tu­ry lat­er the Span­ish built a big fort, the Castil­lo de San Mar­cos, which trad­ed hands between colo­nial pow­ers in var­i­ous wars over the next sev­er­al hun­dred years. The fort served as a prison for the famous Semi­nole leader Osce­o­la, and today serves as the anchor of down­town St. Augustine’s many tourist attrac­tions. Across the street from the fort, on the bayfront, Mar­tin Luther King Jr. was arrest­ed in June of 1964, while try­ing to inte­grate a local motel, the Mon­son Motor Lodge. (There is a famous pho­to of the motel’s own­er pour­ing acid into its swim­ming pool in response to an inte­grat­ed group of pro­test­ers jump­ing in.) A house that King was rent­ing near Cres­cent Beach was rid­dled with bul­lets dur­ing his time here. When civ­il rights lead­ers tried to march into the plaza down­town, they were beat­en uncon­scious by white mobs. King called St. Augus­tine ​“the most vio­lent and law­less racial sit­u­a­tion in the South.”

For more than three decades, the Gwich’in Native community has helped to fight off repeated attempts by Republican administrations and fossil fuel companies to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, the largest remaining stretch of wilderness in the United States.

Michael Scheuer used to hunt Osama bin Laden, whom he now says he admires. Now his quarry is Donald Trump’s enemies, whom he equates with terrorists.

J.K. Rowling, who has been criticized in recent months for transphobic comments, faced renewed criticism following reviews of her new book 'Troubled Blood.'

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said officials are "pleased" with the 9th Circuit ruling. "For approximately two years, the district court's injunction prevented the Department of Homeland Security from taking action that Congress has vested solely within the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security — action that is statutorily precluded from judicial review. We applaud the Ninth Circuit's recognition of the plain language of the Immigration and Nationality Act and its rejection of the baseless accusations of animus behind the actions taken by the Department of Homeland Security," the spokesperson said.

A segment of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson promoted the idea that vigilantes -- residents blockading their neighborhoods and patrolling at night with guns -- are “needed” in cities seeing protests against police brutality. The segment did not explore whether such roadblocks are illegal and made no mention that a gunman who claimed to be protecting local businesses during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, engaged in vigilante violence and killed two people. This segment on Full Measure began airing September 12, during the first episode of the new season. According to a transcript search of the Kinetiq video database, the episode was shown on at least 96 Sinclair-owned or -operated stations in 41 states and Washington, D.C. -- including in Wisconsin, where the vigilante gunman allegedly murdered two people and severely wounded a third during the protests against the August 23 police shooting of Jacob Blake. The show’s verified Twitter and Facebook accounts promoted the segment with claims that some cities are “on the edge of a race war not seen since the sixties.” On the Full Measure website, the online post of the segment also used the exact same language in its introduction.

A Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office deputy was placed on administrative leave Saturday after a video was posted online of the deputy repeating false claims that anti-fascist activists had been starting fires in the area. The deputy, who has not been publicly identified, is recorded saying: “Antifa motherfuckers are out causing hell, and there’s a lot of lives at stake. And there’s a lot of people’s property at stake because these guys got some vendetta.”

he media mogul stated the Black Lives Matter initiative aims to end Christianity because of “being racist.” The denouncement on BLM was stated by televangelist Pat Robertson who said the result of it would be a “lesbian, anti-family, anti-capitalist, Marxist revolution.” Robertson stated this during his long-running show, The 700 Club, in a rant about athletes who protested institutionalized racism and police brutality. He specifically cited Colin Kaepernick, the NFL player. “Of course Black lives matter,” he stated then. “But that legitimate thing has been hijacked by radicals.” Robertson made an accusation that BLM aims to “destroy the nuclear family” and “destroying, essentially, Christianity as being racist.” “They want to up-end the capitalist structure and destroy America.” “This is a stalking horse for a very, very radical anti-family, anti-God agenda,” said Robertson. “We don’t want to go along with a lesbian, anti-family, anti-capitalist Marxist revolution.”

The Trump Make America Great Again Committee is run by both the Republican National Committee and the campaign.

Men who refer to themselves as 'moderate' or 'centrist' score basically the same on values and opinions as people who identify themselves as 'conservative'

Before the pandemic, Tilly Tsang, owner of Washington Bakery and Restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown, says breakfast was always the busiest. Each morning, a rotation of regular customers would enter the restaurant, order their usual – sometimes a bun or a pastry from the bakery counter – and sit down to survey who else from the neighborhood was around. “A lot of people, mostly older people, come every day to sit down and just have a cup of coffee, or a cup of lai chai,” Tsang said. “They just want to see if they know anybody so they can chat, chat, chat.” Lai chai, or milk tea, is one of the many Hong Kong staples that Tsang has offered at her restaurant, a local favorite, for over two decades, along with their beloved baked pork chop rice plates and salt and pepper chicken wings. Her loyal customers include Chinatown residents who live in single-room occupancy hotels (SROs). They treat Tsang’s restaurant, and other immigrant and family-owned businesses, as an essential place to catch up and socialize with one another because many of their cramped buildings lack common areas. But since the COVID-19 pandemic, small business owners like Tsang are facing the devastating reality that many will not survive. Tens of thousands have already permanently closed in the United States, and it is uncertain when another round of federal government assistance will arrive. Aid from the federal Paycheck Protection Program has largely run out for those who could get it. Eviction moratoriums have prevented more San Francisco businesses from folding, but the city’s commercial eviction moratorium ends on Sept. 14. That means commercial tenants will have until Monday to pay back missed rent payments – which for many add up to six months rent – or else landlords can start evicting them as early as October. Locals fear that once commercial evictions begin, those who depend on the businesses for jobs, culture and community will be displaced, and the cultural landscape of San Francisco will be irreparably harmed.

When nine killer whales surrounded the 46ft boat that Victoria Morris was crewing in Spain on the afternoon of 29 July, she was elated. The biology graduate taught sailing in New Zealand and is used to friendly orca encounters. But the atmosphere quickly changed when they started ramming the hull, spinning the boat 180 degrees, disabling the autohelm and engine. The 23-year-old watched broken bits of the rudder float off, leaving the four-person crew without steering, drifting into the Gibraltar Straits shipping lane between Cape Trafalgar and the small town of Barbate.

Several legal advocacy groups on Monday filed a whistleblower complaint on behalf of a nurse at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center documenting "jarring medical neglect" within the facility, including a refusal to test detainees for the novel coronavirus and an exorbitant rate of hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women.

This past Wednesday, popular Oakland pop-up Broke Ass Cooks was shut down by the health department of Alameda County, which sent a letter to their landlord insisting that they cease operations immediately.

Far too many homeless Oaklanders have no good options for escaping the smoke blanketing our skies and city. Tiny dangerous particles from fires burning hundreds of miles away easily leak into their tents, shelters, and vehicles. Oakland’s skies have been “unhealthy” for 30 days straight, and over the past month, we’ve seen lots of advisories about how Californians can protect themselves from the hazardous air: stay inside with the doors and windows shut, buy an air purifier, and so on. Very little of this advice is relevant to people who don’t have secure housing. Mahnaz has been homeless for three years and currently lives in the Wood Street encampment in West Oakland. She’s had asthma since she was born, and was hospitalized each of the last three years with pneumonia due to fire-related smoke. She noted that it’s hard for unsheltered people to take precautions right now because of all the other problems they’re dealing with. “We’re just out here trying to survive, and I think the wildfire smoke is just something that isn’t really on our minds,” said Mahnaz outside her home in the Wood Street encampment on Saturday afternoon, surrounded by dozens of bicycles she and her brother fix up. “Our bodies are just used to this treatment in general.”

David Legates, a University of Delaware professor of climatology who has spent much of his career questioning basic tenets of climate science, has been hired for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Legates confirmed to NPR that he was recently hired as NOAA's deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. The position suggests that he reports directly to Neil Jacobs, the acting head of the agency that is in charge of the federal government's sprawling weather and climate prediction work. Neither Legates nor NOAA representatives responded to questions about Legates' specific responsibilities or why he was hired. The White House also declined to comment.

Discussing the recent police killing of a self-described anti-fascist suspected of fatally shooting a far-right activist in Portland, Oregon, President Donald Trump openly endorsed extrajudicial executions in a Fox News interview Saturday, declaring that “there has to be retribution.” “I put out, ‘When are you going to go get him?’ And the U.S. Marshals went in to get him,” the president told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, referring to Michael Forest Reinoehl. “This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I’ll tell you something—that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”

Storm preparations ramped up across the New Orleans metro area Monday, and though the worst fears about Hurricane Sally's high winds and heavy flooding had shifted to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, southeast Louisiana residents in vulnerable areas were still bracing for an onslaught of wind and water. A move east in Sally's forecast track overnight on Sunday put the storm on a path to buffet the Louisiana coast before making landfall in Mississippi on Tuesday. The exact trajectory of the slow-moving storm remained uncertain, however, and officials still expect area parishes to suffer a blow even if they avoid a direct hit.

It's peak hurricane season, and that's clear when you look at the Atlantic Ocean, which has five active tropical cyclones at the same time for only the second time in history. The only other time there were five active tropical cyclones -- hurricane, tropical storm and/or tropical depression -- in the Atlantic was in 1971. The five systems are Hurricane Paulette, Hurricane Sally, Tropical Storm Teddy, Tropical Storm Vicky, and Tropical Depression Rene.

Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections and political affairs around the world, according to an explosive memo sent by a recently fired Facebook employee and obtained by BuzzFeed News. The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Bolivia, and Ecuador she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them. “In the three years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions,” wrote Zhang, who declined to talk to BuzzFeed News. Her Linkedin profile said she “worked as the data scientist for the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team” and dealt with “bots influencing elections and the like.”