Fearless, Adversarial Journalism – Spoken Edition

Last week Puerto Rico officially became the largest bankruptcy case in the history of the American public bond market. On May 3, a fiscal control board imposed on the island’s government by Washington less than year ago suddenly announced that the Puerto Rico’s economic crisis “has reached a breaking point.

In the northern suburbs of Atlanta in February, days after President Donald Trump went on a 3 a.m. Twitter rant to defend his crackdown on “illegal criminals” (“Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!”), the first batch of immigrant arrests for the day started rolling in just after peak rush-hour traffic. City police in the town of Norcross that morning pulled over a Latino man for driving too closely behind the car ahead of him.

Here’s some news for the alt-right activists in the United States behind a disinformation campaign aimed at getting Marine Le Pen elected president of France by spreading rumors about her opponent, Emmanuel Macron: The French do not much like having their intelligence insulted by Americans. Funniest part of #MacronLeaks is the US alt-right, who can't read French, spending time on misinterpreting mundane documents.

On April 27, France voted for a new president in a first round of elections that decimated both established political parties. Although polls currently favor Emmanuel Macron, a centrist independent, to win the May 7 run-off, and the establishment parties have vowed to unite against the neo-fascist National Front, Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric appeals to many voters across the political spectrum.

In 2012, shortly after Uber started operating in Los Angeles, Rachel Galindo bought a new car and signed up as a driver. She had worked as a journeyman carpenter, but contractors who used to hire her stopped calling after she transitioned her gender. Driving for Uber, Galindo hoped to avoid transphobia — after all, the company’s own billboards made the tantalizing promise: “Be your own boss.” The harassment began almost immediately.

The hardest part of reversing the warming of the planet may be convincing climate change skeptics of the need to do so. Although scientists who study the issue overwhelming agree that the earth is undergoing rapid and profound climate changes due to the burning of fossil fuels, a minority of the public remains stubbornly resistant to that fact.

An ingenious new Roosevelt Institute study on the influence of money on politics begins with an incredible story about how the world actually works: In the spring of 1987, Paul Volcker’s second term as chair of the Federal Reserve was running out. Volcker had first been appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1979, and was willing to stay for another four years if President Reagan asked.

Barack Obama will deliver a speech this September at a swanky healthcare conference for investors run by Cantor Fitzgerald. As Fox Business News first reported on Monday, the firm is paying him $400,000. The ensuing criticism of Obama for cashing in on his presidency has been thunderous – but has overlooked exactly whose money he is taking.

Since at least the end of World War II, supporting the world’s worst despots has been a central plank of U.S. foreign policy, arguably its defining attribute. The list of U.S.-supported tyrants is too long to count, but the strategic rationale has been consistent: in a world where anti-American sentiment is prevalent, democracy often produces leaders who impederather than serveU.S.interests. Imposing or propping up dictators subservient to the U.S.

The courthouse inCorsicana, Texas, roughly 60 miles southeast of Dallas, has been meticulously restored to its original 1905 glory, a time when the county was awash in oil money. Its main courtroom has soaring, two-story pink walls andgold-flecked architectural details that frame the judge’s bench, witness stand, and jury box.

Just over one year ago, Brazil’s elected President, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached– ostensibly due to budgetary lawbreaking – and replaced with her centrist Vice President, Michel Temer. Since then, virtually every aspect of the nation’s political and economic crisis – especially corruption – has worsened. Temer’s approval ratings have collapsed to single digits.

France’s Jewish community is watching the second round of this year’s presidential election with profound unease, as Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front has unveiled plans to ban the ritual slaughter of animals for kosher and halal meat and promoted a deputy who has been accused of praising an infamous Holocaust denier.

Thousands of peoplewill gather in Washington, D.C., Saturday for amarch to demandaction on climate change and rejecting the Trump administration’s promise to overturn or scale back the federal efforts on climate.

Jeff Sessions’s first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border as attorney general kicked off with a ride in a Black Hawk helicopter. It began just after sunrise at the Davis-Monthan airbase outside Tucson, Arizona, and ended in Nogales, where he delivered a blistering address in which he vowed to take the “fight” to the criminal elements that have turned border communities into “war zones.” The performance was repeated a week later in El Paso, Texas.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s far-right National Front, was expelled from the party two years ago by his daughter Marine — for spoiling her rebranding campaign by repeating his infamous claim that the gas chambers used to exterminate Europe’s Jews were merely “a detail in the history of the Second World War,” and saying nice things about Marshal Pétain, the wartime leader who collaborated with the Nazis.