Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Desperate officials pleaded with President Donald Trump to send federal assistance Monday after at least 20 people were killed by storms and tornadoes that caused devastation authorities likened to the impact of a nuclear blast. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said he had dispatched a letter to Trump pleading for help after four people were killed…
President Trump on Wednesday conceded that U.S. taxpayers will foot the initial bill for his proposed wall on the nation’s southern border, a project that will start “in months.” Trump pledged during the 2016 campaign that he would make Mexico pay for the wall, which is meant to cut off the flow of drugs and illegal immigration…
Photo of a sign promoting the volunteer group welcoming Syrian refugees to Rutland, Vt via AP As protestors gathered in action against President Donald Trump’s executive order that would immediately halt funding to “sanctuary cities” that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration policies, city officials across the nation prepare themselves for what will surely be…
Back in September 2016, two months before the election, The New Yorker ran an article imagining the worst possible future: a Trump presidency. The article was accompanied by a mocked-up photo of Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Well, that darkest possible future really happened. And oddly enough, ABC News just accidentally used the fake…
President Donald Trump with the First Lady at the Freedom Ball, Friday, January 20, 2017, in Washington (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) It’s 2.5 minutes to midnight. We’re all fucked. Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been using a clock to symbolize how close we are to a catastrophic event. The closer to “midnight”…
Image: Twitter White House Press Secretary and shouting ball of wax Sean Spicer has tweeted plenty of dumb things. (And who among us hasn’t?) This morning, though, he may have accidentally compromised the security of his Twitter account. At 8:42am Spicer sent a string of nonsense out to the world: “n9y25ah7.” It’s not long enough…
For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high,…
Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times It is now two and one-half minutes to midnight. Our organization, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is marking the 70th anniversary of its Doomsday Clock on Thursday by moving it 30 seconds closer to midnight. In 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to…
Rex Tillerson, President-elect Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, had a rocky first day facing members of the Senate during his confirmation hearing on Jan. 11 at the Capitol. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials…
A Manhattan judge on Wednesday declined to delay criminal trials for two defendants given summonses last year for low-level offenses who are challenging the appointment of New York City Police Department legal staffers to prosecute their cases. Trials for Arminta Jeffryes, 23, and Cristina Winsor, 39, who were given summonses last year while they were…