White House officials were immediately spooked by President Donald Trump’s phone call to Ukraine’s president, and their concerns prompted a whistleblower complaint from an intelligence official. The complaint, which was released Thursday morning, details Trump’s efforts to pressure Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and U.S.-based...
Measles cases flare beyond 700 and anti-vaxxers — the apex helicopter parent — are to blame
Leaving Kabul, Afghanistan for the border with Pakistan was like traveling back in time from the 21st to the 5th century. I was there in the spring 15 years ago. The dirt roads from one tiny village to another were pock-marked with deep craters, and enormous boulders the size of...
Stephen Miller hatched secret plan to embed ICE agents at refugee agency for children: report
Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller pushed a “secret” plan to embed immigration agents at a refugee agency that cares for unaccompanied migrant children, The Washington Post reports. Miller, who has argued that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was being exploited by families hiring...
Democrats’ first order of battle in 2025: Doge
Why the new year must begin in defense of federal workers
Some towns still don’t have drinkable water months after Hurricane Helene. A full recovery could take years.
The most exciting part of the day at Spruce Pine Montessori School is when the truck arrives to empty the porta-johns. At that point in the afternoon, the kids abandon their toy dinosaurs and monkey bars, throw up their hands, and yell in excitement as they run to watch the...
Mississippi River towns pilot new insurance model to help with disaster response
This story was originally published by St. Louis Public Radio. Early on Election Day, highways in the St. Louis area were inundated with water. Over several days, intense storms battered Missouri, bringing six to 10 inches of rain — record-breaking amounts for November. The flash flooding killed at least five...
How a dwindling helium supply is impacting public land management
In October, the Bureau of Land Management finalized a new resource management plan for Colorado’s Western Slope that will determine how 2 million acres of public land are managed for the next 15-20 years. The plan includes some conservation wins; it sets aside land designated as critical habitat, for example,...
Trump has vowed to kill offshore wind energy — but it might not be easy
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and Deep South Today, a nonprofit network of local newsrooms providing essential journalism in underserved communities and ensuring its long-term growth and sustainability. President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to kill offshore wind energy development “on day one” of his second term is...
How the world gave up on 1.5 degrees
When, at the annual United Nations climate conference in Paris in 2015, the countries of the world agreed to the goal of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, it seemed possible, probable even, that humanity was on track to avoid the worst effects of climate...
‘We lost’: How COP29 ended with a deal that made the whole world unhappy
Two weeks ago, diplomats from almost 200 countries arrived at a sports stadium on the outskirts of Baku, Azerbaijan, to debate a subject that had never before been at the center of a United Nations climate conference: money. World leaders have long agreed, in theory, on a dire need to...