In a Texas Democratic primary between an anti-abortion Democrat whose home and office were raided by the FBI and a young, progressive, pro-choice woman, top House Democrats—including Speaker Nancy Pelosi—are going with the former. Even after it became clear this week that the Supreme Court is apparently planning to overturn Roe v. Wade. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a longtime Democratic congressman from Texas’ 28th Congressional District, won a plurality of support in the March primary over Jessica Cisneros, a progressive 28-year-old immigration lawyer whom Cuellar narrowly defeated in 2020. They’ll face each other in a runoff election on May 24 to decide the Democratic nominee, which Democrats view as key to their slim chances of maintaining a House majority next year. The conservative Cuellar is avowedly anti-choice, one of the few Democrats left in the House who fits that description. Last year, he was the only House Democrat to vote against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would protect abortion access as a matter of federal law and was passed after Texas banned abortion after six weeks. “It’s called conscience: I am a Catholic, and I do believe in right to life, and it’s just a conscience,” Cuellar told reporters in October. “Sometimes people vote because of [politics], they think just because [it’s a] Democratic or Republican issue, for me it’s just a matter of conscience.” Cuellar has been endorsed by top House Democrats including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, as well as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, whose campaign arm funded attacks on Cisneros in 2020. Pelosi’s political action committee gave Cuellar $4,000 in December, according to FEC records, Cisneros, on the other hand, is vehemently pro-choice, and has been endorsed by reproductive rights advocacy groups such as NARAL and EMILY’s List, as well as progressive politicians such as Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cisneros slammed Cuellar after his vote last year. “Once again, Henry Cuellar has refused to stand up for South Texans’ reproductive freedom and the constitutional right to abortion care,” Cisneros said in a statement to the Texas Tribune. “Even after our state’s Republican leaders just passed the country’s most extreme ban—ending almost all abortion access in Texas with no exceptions after 6 weeks—our Congressman refuses to defend us and our reproductive rights.” Cuellar has also been plagued by questions about his integrity. In January, the FBI raided his home and office in connection with an investigation into ties between Azerbaijan and U.S. companies and groups. Records related to Cuellar and his wife were subpoenaed, ABC News reported in January, but his lawyer told Fox News last month that Cuellar is not the target of the investigation. But even with the FBI raid and his almost total opposition to abortion rights, Cuellar is continuing to receive enthusiastic support from the House Democratic leadership. Clyburn, the third-ranking House Democrat, who wields major influence in national Democratic politics, is set to campaign for Cuellar in a get-out-the-vote event on Wednesday in San Antonio.

Activists are mobilizing in preparation for the weakening or end of Roe v. Wade. That's the subject of Jessica Bruder's new cover story for The Atlantic. "There are lots of people who want to keep abortion accessible for everybody who might want access to abortion, regardless of what the Supreme Court does," she says. Bruder is also author of the book Nomadland, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film. Also, Maureen Corrigan reviews Sea of Tranquility the new novel by Emily St. John Mandel.

Data from more than 18,000 canines show that pedigree is not destiny.

A year ago, the elevation of Marcia Fudge to secretary of housing and urban development created a vacancy in Ohio’s deep-blue 11th Congressional District in Cleveland. Progressives saw it as another prime opportunity, similar to ones they took advantage of in a series of 2020 primaries. The idea was to take shots in favorable seats, challenging moderates and moving the center of gravity within the party. A revitalized progressive campaign infrastructure, candidates that fit the districts in which they ran, and a nationally energized donor network made this possible, and for a minute, the long-term outlook was pretty positive. But the race in the 11th District saw the first successful counterattack to this strategy, from a group of outside donors who represented the old-guard establishment. Though Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) was active in campaigns prior to 2021, including supporting Joe Biden and the ultimately losing campaign of former House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Eliot Engel, OH-11 is where they made their stand, getting behind Shontel Brown in a race against former Bernie Sanders surrogate Nina Turner. Like in the New York campaign pitting Engel against Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Democratic Majority for Israel’s ads in Ohio had little or nothing to do with Israel. The ads pulled messaging directly from an unmistakable banner on Brown’s campaign website, focusing on Turner’s divisiveness and some choice negative comments she made about Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign. DMFI spent around $2 million on TV and other advertisements in the race, and that was enough to help Brown secure a comeback victory. The PAC almost single-handedly took over the reins of a lifeless campaign and turned it into a winner. Funding for this effort largely came from a collection of oil company executives, investment fund managers, and the former chairman of multilevel marketing firm Rodan + Fields. And DMFI’s vendors also work for Democratic Party groups like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Senate Majority PAC.

Protests have taken place in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) against plans for the UK to take direct rule of the territory following the arrest of its elected leader. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside of Government House in Tortola, the residence of the governor-general John Rankin, on Monday, after an inquiry led by British judge Sir Gary Hickinbottom into corruption recommended the islands be governed from London for two years. It is being proposed that Mr Rankin, who represents the Queen, should assume the position of premier in place of an elected government official. However, many BVI residents are resisting this suggestion which has been described as “colonial”, particularly in the context of the region’s history as a former British slave colony, and undemocratic as there are no plans to put the matter to the public.

A petition has been launched online by National Trust Cymru, asking people what their thoughts are on the potential removal of Dobby’s grave from…

In late March, a 72-year-old woman took the jacket from an exhibition at the Musée Picasso in Paris. She was caught upon a return visit.

"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled," Justice Alito writes in an initial majority draft circulated inside the court.

A body inside a barrel was found over the weekend on the the newly exposed bottom of Nevada’s Lake Mead as drought depletes one of the largest U.S. reservoirs — and officials predicted the discovery could be just the first of more grim finds. “I would say there is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” Las Vegas police Lt. Ray Spencer told KLAS-TV on Monday. The lake’s level has dropped so much that the uppermost water intake at drought-stricken Lake Mead became visible last week. The reservoir on the Colorado River behind Hoover Dam has become so depleted that Las Vegas is now pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead, which also stretches into Arizona. Personal items found inside the barrel indicated the person died more than 40 years ago in the 1980s, Spencer said. He declined to discuss a cause of death and declined to describe the items found, saying the investigation is ongoing. Police plan to reach out to experts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to analyze when the barrel started eroding. The Clark County coroner’s office will try to determine the person’s identity. Boaters spotted the barrel Sunday afternoon. National Park Service rangers searched an area near the lake’s Hemenway Harbor and found the barrel containing skeletal remains. Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream are the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S., part of a system that provides water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and across the southern border in Mexico.

The deplatformed CEO tried to slither his was back onto Twitter following news Elon Musk plans to acquire the company for $44 billion.

Otter would likely not have survived without intervention of goldendoodle Gus, officials say.

He took her breath away and changed her life forever.

Former president seemed to mix up JD Vance with his rival Josh Mandel in Republican Ohio Senate primary at rally on Sunday

If you need monster trucks and pyrotechnics to feel like a man, you might have bigger problems.

A string of setbacks made the pundit flee television, the Republican establishment and even his home. He re-emerged with what may be the most racist, and successful, show in the history of cable news. In the years since, Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice — “We don’t judge them by group, and we don’t judge them on their race,” Mr. Carlson explained to an interviewer a few weeks before accusing impoverished immigrants of making America dirty — his show teaches loathing and fear. Night after night, hour by hour, Mr. Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilization under siege — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters in American cities, by diseased migrants from south of the border, by refugees importing alien cultures, and by tech companies and cultural elites who will silence them, or label them racist, if they complain. When refugees from Africa, numbering in the hundreds, began crossing into Texas from Mexico during the Trump administration, he warned that the continent’s high birthrates meant the new arrivals might soon “overwhelm our country and change it completely and forever.” Amid nationwide outrage over George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Mr. Carlson dismissed those protesting the killing as “criminal mobs.” Companies like Angie’s List and Papa John’s dropped their ads. The following month, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became the highest-rated cable news show in history.

Striking Kellogg’s workers were “intoxicated” by last year’s surge in labor activity, said Ken Hurley, the vice president in charge of union negotiations.

A man is dead and several are injured after police in Kissimmee, Florida attempted a “takedown” in a Target parking lot. On Wednesday evening, more than a dozen units allegedly responded to a Target in Kissimmee in response to a suspicious vehicle with covered or unmarked license plates. Officers watched two men get out of the car wearing “masks and hoodies” and enter the store, according to the affidavit written by Deputy Cole Miller. Miller talked to the store’s Loss Prevention Supervisor on the phone, who told him that the men were leaving the store without paying for a pizza and multiple packs of Pokemon cards. According to the Orlando Sentinel, two deputies shot and killed a man, and three others were injured. The one who was fatally shot died at the hospital, and two of the other men, 18 and 19 years old, were taken to the hospital and charged with petty theft. Another court document obtained by Motherboard shows that one of the suspects was unable to appear in court because “defendant in the hospital unable to identify.”

An unidentified person donated over 1 million U.S. dollars in Bitcoin to an address advertised on the conspiracy website Infowars on April 23, Hatewatch found, potentially buoying the finances of embattled extremist Alex Jones. The person donated 26 Bitcoin to Jones, which traded at around $40,000 apiece at the time of the transaction. During an investigation of Jones’ known wallets, Hatewatch found that he demonstrated an increased appetite for cryptocurrency starting in April 2021, around the same time that industry boomed and his standing in the Sandy Hook defamation lawsuit took a significant blow. Sandy Hook families filed a motion on April 6 claiming that Jones moved his funds to shell companies in order to avoid paying money he owes in compensation for the historic defamation case. The court found the Infowars chief liable for damages after he repeatedly claimed that the 2012 shooting rampage, which killed six adults and 20 primary school children, never happened. Far-right extremists have exploited loose regulation around cryptocurrency to obscure the nature of their funding, as Hatewatch previously reported, but it remains unclear whether Jones has done anything similar. Jones launched a new “crypto” page to solicit donations on his conspiracy website Infowars.com on April 7, 2021, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court denied him a critical appeal in the Sandy Hook case. Jones had for years expressed skepticism about cryptocurrency prior to shifting more of his attention to the emerging investment space. In addition to that million-dollar donation, supporters of Jones’ far-right activism have flooded him with more than $330,000 worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum since he involved himself in cryptocurrency, Hatewatch found. Jones’ current holdings put him in a class with some of the largest accumulators of cryptocurrency among far-right extremists.

He influenced multiple generations with his style and co-created such characters as Ra's al Ghul, the Man-Bat and one of DC's first Black superheroes, Green Lantern John Stewart.

Residents are voicing fury over expansions set to displace thousands while Biden’s administration last year launched an investigation into a Houston project Texas, with its wide-laned roads and supersized highways, seems like an unlikely place for a rebellion against the supremacy of American car culture. But last week a band of residents from across Texas descended upon the state’s department of transportation (DoT) to voice fury over new highway expansions that are set to displace thousands of people and raze hundreds of businesses, schools and churches. Meanwhile, the state is actively crushing local plans to encourage more cycling and walking as an alternative to driving. Festering concern over the seemingly endless swelling of highways has even sparked an unusual intervention from the federal government, with Joe Biden’s administration launching a civil rights investigation last year into the Houston project that has paused its construction. “Federal transportation department monitoring and intervention on civil rights grounds is rare,” said Theodore Shaw, director of the center for civil rights at the University of North Carolina. “The courts have not done much about it.” Holding signs riffing off familiar tropes in this conservative state, such as a picture of a bicycle under the words “Come and take it”, several dozen protesters rallied outside the Texas department’s headquarters in the shadow of Texas’ pink-hued capitol in Austin.