The situation is dire. Millions of people in the United States are months away from losing their health care. On January 1, dramatic changes to Medicaid outlined in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBA, will take effect, impacting who is eligible for Medicaid. The new law excludes some groups completely (like most immigrants), introduces “community engagement” requirements (defined as 80 hours a month of work, volunteering, or school) for most people (apart from the elderly, children, and pregnant women), and requires renewals twice a year (as opposed to yearly). Some people have been impacted already (Nebraska implemented its changes on May 1 and began disenrolling people this month), and some will be kicked off their health care in October, when some previously qualified immigrants are made ineligible for Medicaid.

Though 92 percent of people should remain eligible for Medicaid coverage (through either a qualifying exemption or meeting the community engagement requirements), millions will still end up losing care.

Minneapolis police arrested far-right influencer Jake Lang and six of his supporters for rioting Saturday outside city hall.

Police said Lang and his entourage drove onto the sidewalk in front of city hall toward a crowd. Social media videos showed Lang standing in the bed of a pickup truck with a sign that included a racial slur.

Videos showed Lang and his fellow activists clashing with counterprotesters. Minneapolis police eventually came out from city hall, with Lang driving off around the same time.

While I'm not holding my breath, I've been waiting for Texas to turn for most of my life. This year is the best shot we've ever had.

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If you want to get the unfiltered skinny on how the never-ending war with Iran is going, it’s written in the dust. Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi reported this week that U.S. service members marooned in the Persian Gulf have been expressing themselves in messages fingered onto a dusty aircraft flap. The anonymous graffiti, which calls to mind the helmet scrawls of disgruntled soldiers in Vietnam, include “Operation Epstein Fury,” “Peace deal #64 incoming … ALL THIS FOR THE HOLY LAND,” and “Bibi’s cucks.” Sounds like things aren’t going so well! “I have no frame of reference, I can’t compare it to the sentiments of U.S. soldiers in previous conflicts,” Parsi wrote. “But I suspect these are new sentiments, or at least a new willingness to express them this openly and directly.”

Whether these sentiments are new is indeed unclear, but it’s not without a frame of reference. Trump has always been fairly explicit in his disrespect for the grunts who do most of the work—and all of the dying—in this racket that we call “war.”

President Donald Trump’s efforts to sow public distrust in election results and expand federal control over elections have so far made little headway, according to a new report from a group of experts who track the health of American democracy.

The finding comes a month after Trump delivered a primetime address to the nation in which he falsely claimed that American election systems were vulnerable to being hacked. “Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen,” Trump said in his address. “And the trust of the American people was lost.”

But a recent YouGov poll and a survey of 568 political science experts showed “no measurable change” since Trump’s speech in confidence in the expected integrity of vote-counting in the fall’s midterm elections, according to Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists that monitors American democratic practices.

Five years after a federal court ruling introduced unlimited spending in Alaska elections, voters there hit back on Tuesday, defying their Republican governor and approving new limits that restrict the ability of rich donors to bankroll candidates.

Ballot Measure 1, a citizen initiative that caps donations to individual candidates at $2,000 per person per year, with a $4,000 cap on donations to governor-lieutenant governor tickets, passed easily. It leads 71 to 29 percent as of Wednesday morning.

This measure would never have been voted on in the first place, but for the fact that Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy last month vetoed a bill to impose the very caps proposed by Measure 1. Because that bill was substantially similar to Measure 1, the measure would have been cancelled had Dunleavy signed it; his veto ensured the matter would be put to voters, who on Tuesday left no question about where they stand.

Poll shows AI industry problems go beyond data center opposition, as CEOs are widely distrusted.

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer was jailed on Friday on allegations of breaking into a woman’s apartment.

Thomas Bailey, 58, faces a charge of unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling after his arrest by the sheriff’s office of St Tammany parish, Louisiana, the agency said in a statement.

The sheriff’s office said Bailey entered his ex-girlfriend’s apartment near the community of Covington, a New Orleans suburb on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, without her permission. She was not in the apartment at the time, and the sheriff’s office said investigators booked him with a crime defined as the “intentional entry without authorization into any inhabited dwelling … used … as a home or place of abode by another person”.

Bailey is employed by an ICE office in the Louisiana community of Oakdale, which by car is about three hours to the west of Covington, the St Tammany sheriff’s office said. The agency’s statement noted that he was a resident of Lecompte, which is about a half-hour’s drive to the north-east of Oakdale.

The judge ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio exceeded his authority by issuing the policy, which "runs afoul" of the Immigration and Nationality Act by mandating "the refusal of visas to eligible applicants without any basis in law."

California is currently one of only three states in the country — alongside Mississippi and New Mexico — that sets no minimum age at all for marriage, allowing a child of any age to be legally wed as long as a parent or guardian signs off. A bill designed to close that loophole for good just cleared a major hurdle in Sacramento, passing the state Senate on a unanimous 38-0 vote this past Wednesday.

"This victory belongs to the voters who made clear that our district cannot be bought," said Wahab, who will serve out the remainder of former Rep. Eric Swalwell's term.

A federal judge in Texas ruled on Tuesday that the state's new law limiting public drag performances was an unconstitutional restriction on speech and he permanently forbid enforcement of it.

"Not all people will like or condone certain performances," U.S. District Judge David Hittner wrote. "This is no different than a person's opinion on certain comedy or genres of music, but that alone does not strip First Amendment protection."

Minnesota’s top prosecutor has sued Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, seeking to force him to extradite an ICE agent to stand trial in Minnesota on felony assault charges — and for falsely reporting a crime during an immigration raid in Minneapolis in January.