long read

When Conor McGregor landed in New York City to take part in the UFC 229press conference, many expected the brash Irishman to provide some entertaining banter in an attempt to promote his upcoming fight against UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov. However, few anticipated that the former...

The town welcomed hundreds of Somali refugees. Then a private militia decided to go “ISIS hunting.” By JESSICA PRESSLER For all of Patrick Stein’s life, Southwest Kansas — “God’s country,” he called it — had looked basically the same. Golden fields, white grain elevators, blue sky. But lately...

How universities, banks and the government turned student debt into America's next financial black hole By Matt Taibbi November 3, 2017 On a wind-swept, frigid night in February 2009, a 37-year-old schoolteacher named Scott Nailor parked his rusted '92 Toyota Tercel in the parking lot of a...

Now that the GOP has failed on repealing the ACA after multiple attempts, :lolbron: the party is moving on to tackle tax reform. The House of Representatives just passed "budget blueprint that will allow a tax bill to pass Congress without any Democratic votes." :francis: House Passes Budget...

Half of Hartford’s schoolkids attend integrated schools, thanks to a legal strategy that might work elsewhere. By: Rachel M. Cohen Hartford, Connecticut, is struggling. Teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, the state’s tiny capital wrestles with many of the same economic challenges as other...

The history of racism and exclusion in the United States is the history of whiteness. A generation ago, as the culture wars raged, Toni Morrison often stood at the front lines, demanding the desegregation of the American literary canon. In her Tanner Lectures in 1988, and later in her book...

“Uncivil,” an excellent new podcast about the Civil War hosted by Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika, begins with a visit this summer to a controversial statue. It doesn’t involve Robert E. Lee or the Confederate flag, they tell us: it’s the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was...

Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it. After a stranger became their guardian, Rudy and Rennie North were moved to a nursing home and their property was sold. For years, Rudy North woke up at 9 a.m. and read...