Author: rpnadmin

Rennie Glasgow, who has served 15 years at the Social Security Administration, is seeing something new on the job: dead people.They’re not really dead, of course. In four instances over the past few weeks, he told KFF Health News, his Schenectady, New York, office has seen people come in for whom “there is no information on the record, just that they are dead.” So employees have to “resurrect” them — affirm that they’re living, so they can receive their benefits.Revivals were “sporadic” before, and there’s been an uptick in such cases across upstate New York, said Glasgow. He is also…

April 28, 2025 Pro-housing advocates offer an analysis of class relations that is more sophisticated and has more explanatory power than the one held by many critics of the “abundance agenda.” Ad Policy Construction continues on a mixed-use apartment complex that will hold more than 700 units of housing and 95,000 square feet of commercial space on August 20, 2024, in Los Angeles.(Mario Tama / Getty Images) “Abundance” is a slippery term. In their recent book, appropriately titled Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson describe it as a “a simple idea: [that] to have the future we want, we need…

A contest of sorts has played out across Europe, the United States and the Middle East in recent days as President Trump’s two older sons have pursued a blitz of family moneymaking ventures capitalizing on their father’s name and power, each seemingly trying to outdo the other.It is a rush to cash in that involves billions of dollars with few precedents in American history.A luxury hotel in Dubai. A second high-end residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Two cryptocurrency ventures based in the United States. A new golf course and villa complex in Qatar. And a new private club in…

Inflation has pushed up the price of many things, but not of tickets to the 2025 Met Gala.The A-list event, held annually on the first Monday in May to benefit The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, draws celebrities from the worlds of entertainment, business and other domains in support of the Met’s acquisitions and exhibitions on fashion. While the cost of attending the event, dubbed “fashion’s biggest night,” jumped in 2024, the price of tickets to this year’s gala is unchanged. The catch?  You must be invited to attend — tickets aren’t available for purchase…

The Trump administration has scrapped more than $800 million worth of research into the health of L.G.B.T.Q. people, abandoning studies of cancers and viruses that tend to affect members of sexual minority groups and setting back efforts to defeat a resurgence of sexually transmitted infections, according to an analysis of federal data by The New York Times.In keeping with its deep opposition to both diversity programs and gender-affirming care for adolescents, the administration has worked aggressively to root out research touching on equity measures and transgender health.But its crackdown has reverberated far beyond those issues, eliminating swaths of medical research…

On a recent Friday, Mark Wasser, an eminent-domain lawyer from Sacramento, embarked on a one-day road trip of more than 500 miles. It is one that he has taken often over the past decade.A tall and trim man in his 70s, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, Mr. Wasser folded himself into the driver’s seat of his car and aimed south. He drove toward dozens of California’s high-speed rail construction projects scattered across the vast farmland of the Central Valley.No one has represented more eminent domain cases involving the rail project than Mr. Wasser. In the long distances between…

President Trump on Sunday announced movies as the latest target for tariffs because the U.S. movie industry “is DYING a very fast death.”In a Truth Social post, the president said he’s authorizing the Department of Commerce and  the United States Trade Representative to begin the process of imposing a 100% tariffs “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”It wasn’t immediately clear how the tariffs would be applied.Mr. Trump said the incentives that other countries are offering filmmakers and studios constitute a national security threat.”Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to…

Attorney General Merrick Garland looks at an exhibit titled the Faces of Gun Violence while on a tour led by Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, at ATF headquarters on April 23, 2024, in Washington, D.C. The display has now been taken down. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images An exhibit showing victims of gun violence has been taken down at the headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Department of Justice has confirmed. The exhibit showed the portraits of 120 people killed in gun…

President Trump confirmed on Sunday that he had pressed Mexico’s president to let U.S. troops into the country to help fight drug cartels, an idea she summarily rejected.Mr. Trump told reporters traveling with him aboard Air Force One from Palm Beach, Fla., to Washington that it was “true” he had made the push with President Claudia Sheinbaum. The proposal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, came at the end of a lengthy phone call between the two leaders on April 16, The Journal said.Ms. Sheinbaum has also confirmed that Mr. Trump made the suggestion, and that she…

After more than a week of oil shooting vertically out of an unused well off the coast of Louisiana, the U.S. Coast Guard announced Sunday evening that the offshore well blowout — first reported on April 26 — has been controlled. The well had been leaking oil and natural gas in a 30 to 40-foot-high “geyser of oil,” as one witness described, contaminating nearby marshland and protected Gulf Coast habitats, and prompting a large-scale emergency response. “Gaining control of the discharge is a vital milestone, but it marks only the beginning of our work. The Unified Command is fully committed to an…