Human resettlement after 2011's nuclear disaster facing opposition from indestructible, betusked interlopers.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said late Thursday it came as a surprise when a billionaire GOP donor reached out with a $1 million offer to fund the National Guard's deployment to the U.S. border with Mexico.

As far as the plant scientists at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis know, the tiny purple-and-white flower that recently grew in their greenhouse has never before been seen, at least by experts like them.

Over a century ago, "Americanitis" plagued a subset of the country. We're still afflicted today.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority limited the reach of the Voting Rights Act on Thursday and ruled that states may enforce election rules even if they have a more discriminatory effect on Black, Latino or Native American voters. In a 6-3 decision, the justices upheld two Arizona rules that were sponsored by Republicans and opposed by Democrats. One calls for throwing out legal ballots that were cast in the wrong precinct. Arizona discards a higher percentage of ballots than any other state because of its shifting precinct boundaries. The justices also upheld a second law that makes it a crime for anyone other than family members or postal workers to deliver a mail ballot, a rule that has a significant effect on tribal reservations.

The woman who was with a Black man when he was fatally shot by members of a U.S. Marshals Service task force during an arrest attempt last month in Minneapolis said through her attorneys Thursday that the law enforcement officers were not in uniform and did not identify themselves as authorities when they surrounded the SUV with their guns drawn. Norhan Askar was on a date with Winston Boogie Smith Jr. and was sitting in an SUV in an Uptown parking ramp on June 3 when Smith was fatally shot as authorities were trying to arrest him on a Ramsey County weapons violation. Authorities have said Smith, 32, of St. Paul, showed a handgun, and that evidence shows he fired it. Askar’s attorneys said previously that she never saw a gun on Smith or in his vehicle... They said Askar was pulled out of the SUV, handcuffed and put in the back of an unmarked car. She stayed in handcuffs until paramedics gave her medical attention. The attorneys said an officer later asked her how her date was. Smith died of multiple gunshot wounds after a Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy and a Hennepin County sheriff’s deputy who were members of the task force fired their weapons. Both deputies were working in an undercover capacity so their names are barred from being released under state law, state investigators have said. State investigators have said they are unaware of any video of the incident. Investigators said there is no body camera or squad camera footage, and they are unaware of surveillance video. It was not immediately clear if Smith recorded any Facebook video before he was shot.

Medical personnel searched the area attempting to preserve parts of the man’s hand but couldn’t locate anything, police said.

The night before a federal jury in Camden, New Jersey, began deliberations in the U.S. government’s case accusing Kevin Ruiz-Quezada of assaulting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, a juror named Stephen Meile had questions.

The Miami condo collapse is a crisis for the entire state.

A mostly white high school basketball team in Southern California has been stripped of its regional title after tortillas were thrown at a predominately Latino opposing team following a championship game last month, officials announced Wednesday.

Last month, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a measure to radically overhaul how social media companies operate in his state. Under its provisions, sites like Twitter and Facebook would be prohibited from banning from their platforms elected officials who violated the sites’ terms of service. The pretext of the legislation, which included a hilarious but sort of incongruous exemption for Disney+, was obvious—it was a response to former President Donald Trump’s banishment from Twitter and Facebook for cheering on an insurrection. Equally obvious was the measure’s unconstitutionality. A governor cannot dictate a private company’s speech; there is no constitutional right to post. And sure enough, after a challenge from tech companies, on Wednesday a federal judge in Florida issued a preliminary injunction against the law, finding that it would likely “violate the First Amendment.” DeSantis vowed to appeal, of course, and so this cycle will likely just repeat itself again a few months down the line. But the whole episode is clarifying. Earlier this year I wrote about the outsized place that content creation has taken in conservative politics. Much like a child repeating a curse word because they heard it from their parents, when a new generation of conservatives treats shitposting as the end-point of politics, you know they learned it from Trump. The ex-president often substituted the performance of governing for the real thing—look no further than the daily coronavirus briefings last year—and held elaborate signing ceremonies for what were essentially press releases. Everything was a product, packaged for consumption via an increasingly online conservative media:

Vintage Porsches, smoked salmon pizza, double-breasted blazers: your parents' cheesy signifiers are back, and they've never felt cooler.

[I was made aware of this by IT at work. It seems like a huge deal.]

The son of the Dungeons & Dragons creator, and his company, face criticism for anti-trans and racist comments.

During the COVID-19 pandemic shut downs and isolation, more communications shifted to web-based systems such as Slack, Zoom or other live-streaming services. That shift included more adult content online on sites like OnlyFans, a DIY streaming site where models, singers and others such as personal trainers or adult performers post images and videos to followers who pay for access. After a tip about the practice and questions about whether or not live-streaming adult, sexual content from a home in the township is legal, a web search turned up scores of OnlyFans accounts for ‘OnlyFans’’ and ‘in The Woodlands.”

Americans for Prosperity Foundation v Bonta centers on a California requirement that forces nonprofits to disclose identities of major donors.

Bill Cosby, who has admitted to using drugs to target women, is out of prison. And Bruce Castor is the disastrous Trump impeachment lawyer who set the stage.

In a New York Times interview, Fieri — regarded as a populist hero — compared workers collecting unemployment to kids filling up on Doritos

As the country reopens for “Hot Vax Summer,” I’ve had to face the crippling fears I avoided for more than a year.

A major explosion in South Los Angeles damaged buildings and injured at least nine people, including police officers, as a bomb squad was in the process of seizing more than 5,000 pounds of illegal fireworks in the area. The blast damaged cars in a residential neighborhood and left debris on the streets, footage on social media showed. A truck that was apparently being used to collect the fireworks was also severely damaged, video showed. The Los Angeles Police Department said on Twitter that at the time of the explosion, its bomb squad officers had been handling thousands of pounds of fireworks in the area of 27th Street and San Pedro Street.