Listen to Episode No. 162 of Slate Money

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Did President Obama blow the 2016 election? Should he have spoken up sooner and louder about Russia‘s interference? That‘s what many Democrats are wondering, particularly after reading the Washington Post‘s latest investigative report on Obama‘s reticent response to the Russian attack. A former official tells the Post that after the election, Obama‘s aides, ‘mortified‘ by Donald Trump‘s victory, tho

Listen to Episode 771 of Slate‘s The Gist:

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Once a year, the Environmental Protection Agency‘s Board of Scientific Counselors and the EPA‘s Office of Research and Development get together to publically debate the current direction of the EPA‘s research. The BOSC releases a review of the agency‘s research plan to point out strengths and weaknesses, and the ORD responds and addresses the BOSC‘s criticism. The EPA isn‘t perfect, but these conversations have

A time to be seen: In 2017, Pride can mean any number of things, but the common thread is visibility: ‘LGBTQ people need to be seen to be respected,‘ writes J. Bryan Lowder. Join Slate‘s Outward as it spends the week re-examining the long-standing values of the LGBTQ movement, and exploring what it means to be queer and visible.

Since the election of President Donald Trump, news outlets and social media accounts have swelled with reports of swastikas at schools, racist taunts, and other hate-fueled attacks and acts of intimidation. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has aggregated media reports and gathered submissions from its website, catalogued 1064 such incidents, 13 of which were later debunked as false reports, in the first month after Trump won the presidency.

In the Slate Plus bonus segment of Thursday‘s edition of the Political Gabfest, First Amendment fans Emily, John, and Julia discuss two Supreme Court decisions: one striking down the disparagement clause in federal trademark law, and the other striking down a state law keeping sex offenders off social media.

Last week, Corey Stewart came within a hair‘s breadth of claiming the Republican nomination for governor of Virginia after having run on a revanchist campaign focused on battling local efforts to rename and remake Confederate monuments and spaces. Even as Stewart‘s campaign ended, the fight over these monuments in Charlottesville, Virginia, continued. They might soon reach a new fever pitch, and as they do it‘s worth considering

This week, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case of Gill v. Whitford, whose plaintiffs claim the electoral boundaries drawn up by the GOP-controlled Wisconsin legislature constitute a gerrymander so extreme as to deny them their full ability to vote. The maps in my home state were engineered with merciless precision to ensure a lasting Republican majority in a place whose recent voting practices have oscillated within a narrow purple band.

To listen to Episode 5 of Trumpcare Tracker, use the player below:

Alone among citizens, police have the right to use deadly force to compel compliance and obedience. As a society, we give them broad discretion to do so, judging them on a standard of ‘objective reasonableness,‘ where an officer‘s use of force ‘must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene.‘ If an officer believes someone could imminently cause serious injury or death-or if he fears for own

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Thursday that the Yellowstone grizzly bear will no longer be listed as protected under the Endangered Species Act. The grizzly‘s population has rebounded and it now ‘stands as one of America‘s great conservation successes,‘ he crowed.

Several years ago, a county government in Hawaii debated a measure to ban genetically modified crops on the island. The hearings highlighted the divergent views of pro-GMO scientists and anti-biotech activists, many who assert, without credible evidence, that GMOs are linked to numerous diseases.

Listen to Episode No. 154 of Live at Politics and Prose:

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This is a transcript from the June 15 edition of The Gist, Slate‘s daily news and culture podcast. Slate Plus transcripts are lightly edited and may contain errors. For the definitive record, consult the podcast.

According to a hoary legend of the book publishing world, Bennett Cerf, one of the founders of Random House, was once asked if he could discern any formula for a best-seller. Reasoning that books about Abraham Lincoln, doctors, and dogs all did reliably well, Cerf suggested that somebody write Lincoln‘s Doctor‘s Dog.

Dating apps for gay men don‘t have the greatest reputation. From Grindr to Scruff, Hornet to Jack‘d, the digital platforms are best known for dredging up flakey users, svelte-only fat-shamers, masc-4-masc femme-phobes, and it‘s-a-personal-preference racists.

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Welcome to Slate‘s weekly news quiz. It‘s Friday, which means it‘s time to test your knowledge of the week‘s news events. Your host, Ray Hamel, has concocted questions on news topics ranging from politics to business, from culture to sports to science.

It may be that there is no way to write a definitive history of a particular cultural scene of a particular time and place that doesn‘t reveal itself to be simply the story of a loose group of acquaintances who all got drunk in the same five-block radius for a few years in their twenties. (Ask Hemingway.) The New Yorkspecific subset of the genre is the romanticization of, then regretful lament for, the lost grimy glamour of those bars and n

In a June 22 Moneybox blog post, Jordan Weissmannmisstated that the Medicaid penalty for states would be based on whether the federal contribution was 25 percent above average. It is based on combined state and federal Medicaid spending.