x01 Archives

News Source
EXCERPT:

A protest sign outside Alabama’s statehouse on May 7.Kim Chandler/AP

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

In a stunning act of political partisanship, the Roberts Court on Monday night discarded its own precedents to green-light a last-ditch effort by Alabama to use a gerrymandered congressional map for the 2026 midterms. The move, which comes less than two weeks after the court destroyed the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, will reduce Black representation.

Monday’s 6-3 order, divided along partisan lines, shows how Republican-controlled states can use the high court’s April 29 Callais decision as carte-blanche to shut Black representatives out of Congress. In Alabama’s case, precedent, court doctrine, and a damning lower-court ruling stood in the way of the state throwing out its current map containing two majority-Black congressional districts represented by Democrats. Monday night’s decision of the Republican-appointed justices to toss all that aside shows how the court has not only unleashed a new wave of racial and partisan gerrymandering, but is sweeping away any obstacles so that Republicans nab as many seats as possible this November—enough to potentially prevent Democrats from retaking the House.

“There’s something bizarre going on with the court making choices that seem to very heavily benefit one party.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

A horrible situation. The victim was trans, but it’s not clear if that played a role in the crime.

ABC 7 reports:

Suspect at large after transgender college student stabbed to death in laundry room in Seattle

A student at the University of Washington in Seattle was found stabbed to death in a campus housing building, Seattle police said, and now authorities are searching for the killer.

The victim — a 19-year-old transgender woman — was found in a laundry room at about 10:10 p.m. Sunday, according to Seattle police.

“The circumstances leading up to the murder are under investigation,” police said in a statement on Monday.

Police said “officers are actively searching for the suspect” and they described him as a “black male with a beard, 5’6-8″ tall, wearing a vest with button up shirt, and blue jeans.” The university added the suspect is believed to be between the ages of 25 and 30 with a slim build and black hair.

The University of Washington issued an alert about the homicide at the Nordheim Court Apartments at 10:40 p.m. Sunday, saying, “If you are at Nordheim Court, stay indoors and lock doors and windows.” Around 1 a.m., the university said that the residents no longer needed to stay inside.

News Source
EXCERPT:

“Artificial intelligence is not just for computer scientists anymore; it’s going to permeate every aspect of our lives and influence every business,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth.

The world is reaching an inflection point with artificial intelligence: over half of U.S. adults use generative AI — with 12 percent using it daily at work — and 88 percent of global organizations have integrated AI into at least one core function, up from 78 percent in 2024. AI knowledge is no longer optional for career growth, organizational leadership, and life. Yet, a growing information gap exists between those with the capabilities to leverage AI’s potential and those trying to keep pace.

The need for accessible, practical AI education has never been greater. To meet this moment, MIT Open Learning is launching Universal AI, an online, self-paced, modular program that takes a learner from AI novice to authority, starting with core fundamentals and building to real-world, industry-specific applications.

“We identified a need for an AI learning experience that is universal in breadth and accessibility — one that bridges the gap between deeply technical and surface level introductions to the latest AI tools, and that is designed for a non-technical, global audience,” says Dimitris Bertsimas, vice provost for open learning.

News Source
EXCERPT:

A large group of teenagers on e-bikes allegedly ganged up on a man who was riding a scooter with his wife on the boardwalk in Huntington Beach, California, over the weekend — and kicked and stomped him and hit him in the face with a glass bottle, KTLA-TV reported.

The Huntington Beach Police Department confirmed to KTLA that a report was taken in connection with the incident, which occurred around 8 p.m. Saturday in the area of 103 Pacific Coast Highway.

‘Come here on Friday night, on Saturday night. … It’s chaos; it’s terror.’

News Source
EXCERPT:

A key Illinois election law unlawfully requires the prioritization of race in drawing legislative districts, a new lawsuit alleges. The suit was brought in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision stripping states’ ability to use race in the redistricting process.

“States may not use race to allocate power,” said Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams, whose group spearheaded the legal challenge.

Announced on Monday, the lawsuit brought by PILF on behalf of Illinois resident Jeanne Ives contests that the state “has districting criteria that violates the United States Constitution explicitly by elevating race as a primary purpose in legislative line drawing.” Ives more specifically takes to task the Illinois Voting Rights Act (ILVRA), which she argues “mandates the creation of racial districts in violation of [her] civil rights protected by the Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Section 2(a) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (‘Voting Rights Act’).”

News Source
EXCERPT:

Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said Tuesday she agreed with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to closely coordinate on movements in the currency market during talks held after a recent intervention to stem the yen’s depreciation against the dollar.

The financial chiefs also discussed ways to respond to China’s export controls on critical minerals amid the economic powerhouse’s dominance and the growing cybersecurity threat posed by sophisticated artificial intelligence ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s two-day meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing from Thursday.

“We are in good coordination regarding recent currency movements” amid the Middle East conflict, Katayama told reporters after meeting Bessent at the Finance Ministry in Tokyo, noting that Japan’s stance has been “fully supported.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

A cluster of high-profile political attacks in the U.S. spotlight the nation’s extreme divisions—but they don’t necessarily signal a broader uptick in politically inspired brutality, experts say.

Politicians, pundits and ordinary Americans are increasingly worried about political violence. The latest round of concern was sparked on April 25, when a 31-year-old man stormed the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington, D.C., during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where President Donald Trump was in attendance. Secret Service agents arrested the armed man before he could get to the ballroom where the event was being held. He has since been charged with attempted assassination of the president—which would represent the third serious attempt on Trump’s life since 2024. The man has pled not guilty to this and related charges.

News Source
EXCERPT:

COPENHAGEN: Negotiations between Denmark, Greenland and the United States on the Danish autonomous territory are making progress but a deal has yet to be reached, Greenland’s prime minister said on Tuesday (May 12).

The mineral-rich Arctic island is coveted by US President Donald Trump.

“We are negotiating but we don’t have an agreement,” Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a speech to the Copenhagen Democracy Summit.

“It’s difficult for me to be concrete about the conversations in the working group but we have taken some steps in the right direction,” he said.

EXCERPT:

What happens when the Arctic starts to look like the South China Sea?

Historically, a neutral region where cooperation prevailed, the Arctic is quickly becoming a contested space. This is no more evident than in the increasing scope and volume of Russian and Chinese lawfare affecting the region. Through excessive maritime regulations, coordinated challenges to Western continental shelf claims, and the use of shadow fleets to avoid accountability, Russia and China are increasingly coordinating their efforts to exert influence and challenge Western claims to Arctic resources and freedom of navigation. As these tactics continue to converge, the United States and its partners — Arctic and non-Arctic — should establish clear strategies to respond and counter or risk ceding control of this critical region to those who seek to reshape the law in their favor.

News Source
EXCERPT:

 

South Carolina should be a state where redistricting is simple, like in Florida. The Louisiana vs. Callais decision limited the application of section II of the Voting Rights Act, which permits congressional apportionment based on race, to the point of erasure. The whole South can now be redrawn. Florida accomplished it in two days. Tennessee has followed suit, and last night, the Supreme Court gave Alabama the green light. So, what’s delaying the process in the Palmetto State? Three words: South Carolina Republicans.

 

News Source
EXCERPT:

Texas police said they’re investigating the death of six people found in a boxcar by a Union Pacific employee at a rail yard on Sunday.

Police said they responded to a call of “multiple casualties” at about 3 p.m. A Webb County medical examiner said the dead included one woman and five men.

One of the other dead persons appears to be a teenager. Officials said they believe they are all from Mexico and Honduras.

The examiner identified the female victim as a Mexican national and one of the men as a Honduran national.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Democrats must stop conceding that the only answer for various racist voting laws is that Democrats just have to vote more and harder and better.

We try to keep despair out of these pages, tough as the times are. That’s why I didn’t write about Friday’s Virginia Supreme Court’s decision striking down new voter-approved congressional maps for extremely dubious reasons (read Virginia political expert Carolyn Fiddler’s awesome explanation of the ruling here).

Coming after the Supreme Court (of the United States) decision invalidating Louisiana’s congressional maps for taking race into account, the Bayou State’s immediately postponing upcoming elections as a result, and Tennessee’s swift move to use the SCOTUS ruling to wipe a majority-Black congressional district literally off the political map, last week was the worst for voting rights since the court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder ruling struck down two vital sections of the Voting Rights Act. I admit to not seeing much light down this tunnel that afternoon.

News Source
EXCERPT:

A DEVASTATING explosion has destroyed 10 homes in Brazil, killing one person and injuring several others.

The blast happened in the early hours of Monday morning in western São Paulo.

An explosion in São Paulo killed one and injured several more Credit: Reproduction/Globonews
It is thought the blast was caused when a nearby gas pipeline was damaged Credit: AFP

Authorities said a 45-year-old man was found dead, while three other people were rescued from beneath the rubble.

News Source
EXCERPT:
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called the nuclear phaseout a “serious strategic mistake” that left Germany short of firm power that turned the Energiewende into the most expensive energy transition on the planet. This is an early marker for a developing worldwide retreat from policies that sidelined nuclear power and demonized coal, oil, and natural gas.

 

News Source
EXCERPT:

No one agrees on when, where, or how capitalism began, or whether it had a beginning at all, but everyone agrees that capitalism, the word, first appeared in the 19th century. Capital and capitalist slipped into use, unnoticed and unremarked, in the 13th and 17th centuries. Capitalism burst through the barricades of political argument in the 1830s, announcing immediately the hostility of its user. “Long live capital!” cried the French socialist Louis Blanc in 1839. “Long may we go on to attack capitalism, its mortal enemy, with even more intensity.” As much as the word named something, so did it identify its speaker—as a worker, a radical, a hater.

If capital was viewed as a thing and capitalists as people, capitalism was something else. Blanc described it as an act, the taking of collective wealth and turning it into individual or private profit. Proudhon claimed it was a citadel, casting medieval and military shadows across the land. Despite his obvious interest and extensive writing on the subject, Marx steered clear of the term.

News Source
EXCERPT:

For years, the evolution of flight seemed fairly straightforward. Dinosaurs developed feathers, with some learning to glide, and eventually, birds appeared and mastered the skies. Now, a strange fossil from China is making scientists rethink that neat timeline. The feathered dinosaur Anchiornis huxleyi reportedly had four wings, colourful feathers, and a surprisingly messy moulting pattern that suggests it may not have been capable of proper flight at all.Experts say it hints that some dinosaurs could have evolved flight-related features and later lost the ability entirely. A bit like modern ostriches or penguins. The fossil has even been described as the first real “technicolour” dinosaur discovery because traces of its original feather patterns were preserved in remarkable detail.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Chinese researchers have made a significant advancement in circular resource recovery by creating a new way to turn nitrate-laden wastewater into valuable ammonia for fertilisers. They used artificial intelligence to find a super-effective dual-atom catalyst, which led them to a process that tackles two major global issues: water pollution and the heavy energy use of traditional industrial ammonia production. Their findings, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, show that this method achieves almost three times the conversion efficiency of earlier technologies. By converting runoff from farms and factories, this approach provides an eco-friendly solution to lessen environmental ‘dead zones’ and cuts down on the agricultural sector’s dependence on energy-heavy chemical methods.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Canadian citizens are expressing outrage after a woman who was seeking medical attention for back pain was offered euthanasia before she was ever diagnosed. Now, a member of Parliament is citing the story of Miriam Lancaster as proof that Canada needs to stop expanding its euthanasia program.

Miriam told her story in a social media video as well as in a post on The Free Press called, “Never Kill Yourself: When I went to the doctor in Vancouver with back pain, she offered me assisted suicide; instead, I recovered—and went to Cuba!”

It started a year ago when Miriam woke up with back pain and went to the hospital. Before testing her or diagnosing her condition, the hospital staff immediately offered to help her kill herself.

News Source
EXCERPT: