There’s a new, more contagious form of the novel-coronavirus. It’s got a greater ability to evade our antibodies. And it’s spreading easier than ever. You’ve read these words before, and you’ll almost certainly read them again as the Covid pandemic grinds into its fourth calendar year. But pay attention, because …
Read More »Far-Right Superstars Are Failing on Rumble. Who's Winning?
To ring in 2023, the social video site Rumble announced an exclusive partnership with Donald Trump Jr. Beginning in late January, the former president’s eldest son will bring to the platform a biweekly livestream show, Triggered with Don Jr., riffing on current events and, presumably, seeking to own the libs. …
Read More »'Violated, Confused, and Incredibly Disrespected': Another Woman Accuses Andrew Callaghan of Sexual Misconduct
When Charlotte was 18, she matched with a then-19-year-old man named Andrew Callaghan on Tinder. The now-24-year-old, who requested a pseudonym to protect her privacy, was familiar with Callaghan, as they had attended neighboring high schools in the Seattle area. Though Callaghan would later become well-known as the host of …
Read More »Real-Life 'Training Day': Inside the Corruption Scandal That Brought Down the Oakland PD
This month marks the twentieth year of the longest-running police reform effort in the United States. The Oakland Police Department was placed under federal court oversight in 2003 following revelations that a squad of officers had spent the summer of 2000 running rampant in a predominantly Black part of the …
Read More »They Hunt Cartel Killers
Y OU NEVER FORGET your first murderer, they say — though few cops recall the killers they caught as charitably as Vargas does. At the wheel of his seven-seat Escalade — a car that drives like an opium dream and is fancied equally by narco bosses and the retired federal …
Read More »Does the Queer Scene Have a Ketamine Problem?
The Stud was packed wall-to-wall with shirtless men, but JP and their friends were in their own dimension. The traveling party Horse Meat Disco had commandeered the San Francisco bar, filling it with pounding dance music and the carnal stench of amyl nitrate poppers, but for three and a half …
Read More »Inside the Christian Reform School From Hell
W hen Andrew Breshears arrived at the Agapé Boarding School in 2018, he was a sandy-haired 12-year-old who weighed less than 100 pounds. He enjoyed watching movies, listening to Elvis, and playing soccer with his friends. “I was sheltered,” Breshears says. But he struggled at home. When he was told …
Read More »Why New York's Underground Weed Market Isn't Going Anywhere
In 1995, Lamont, a Black man from Harlem, New York, then in his mid-twenties, was arrested and charged with selling drugs aspart of a vast criminal enterprise. Though he maintains it was a case of mistaken identity, the feds claimed he dealt cocaine and kicked profits up to a drug …
Read More »'A Celebrity in the Land of Celebrities': Remembering P-22, L.A.'s Favorite Mountain Lion
P-22, the solitary male mountain lion who became a local legend after taking up residence in Los Angeles‘ Griffith Park a decade ago, was euthanized on Saturday due to severe injuries and health problems. The cat, 12 or 13 years old — elderly for a mountain lion —was mourned by …
Read More »A Gruesome Mutilation. A Global Manhunt. Inside One of the Most Twisted Crimes Ever
M ICHAEL AWOKE STARING down the muzzle of a short-barreled, pump-action shotgun.It was well past midnight on a warm, clear October night on the Southern California coast. The 28-year-old medical-marijuana dispensary owner — half asleep on a couch in the Newport Beach bungalow where he rented rooms — reached out …
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