A s he took the stage at the BET Awards in June 2022 to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, Sean “Diddy” Combs was elated. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” he bellowed, punctuating his words with triumphant jumps. The adoring crowd — who gave him a sustained standing …
Read More »How Conservatives Are Rebranding Pro-Life
Americans don’t want abortion to be banned. In fact, they barely want it legislated at all: A 2024 poll found that 81 percent of voters don’t want abortion issues to be regulated by the government. Instead, they want the decision to be between a patient and their doctor. That overwhelming …
Read More »Life As an Abortion Doula
I n 2016, Ash Williams became pregnant for the first time. Williams wants to be a parent eventually — but he wasn’t ready for a child then. He didn’t know much about what an abortion entailed, and he needed a ride, so he called up a friend who drove him. …
Read More »How Kid Rock Went From America's Favorite Hard-Partying Rock Star to a MAGA Mouthpiece
W HEN YOU VISIT BOB RITCHIE at his home in the jagged hills outside Nashville, the guy who will likely greet you at the door is a tall, well-dressed, exceedingly polite gentleman who goes by “Uncle Tom.” Because of course he does. Ritchie makes his living as Kid Rock, but …
Read More »Alabama's War on Women
K rista Harding’s daughter was eight weeks old when that police cruiser pulled behind her on the interstate and hit the lights in September 2019. She called her boss at the Little Caesars in Pinson, Alabama, where she’d just been promoted to manager: I’m going to be a little late, …
Read More »The Mad Scientist and the Killer Whales
T he five animals took an hour to put the sailboat beneath the waves. At the end of October 2022, four men, each in his late twenties, set sail from western France toward Lisbon. Augustin Drion, an experienced sailor from Brittany, was one of them. He had come to lend …
Read More »Inside the Columbia University Student Encampment — and the Crackdown
NEW YORK — Linnea Norton spent Sunday at Columbia University jamming on the guitar with other students — a drummer and a cohort of harmonizing singers. They played Appalachian folk music and protest songs by Bob Dylan and John Lennon. The encampment smelled like sunscreen, and students kicked a soccer …
Read More »Russian Mercenaries Hunt the African Warlord America Couldn't Catch
Russian mercenaries are chasing one of the world’s most notorious fugitives: the warlord Joseph Kony, who abducted tens of thousands of children from across central Africa, brutalizing and brainwashing them as child soldiers and sex slaves in a decadeslong maelstrom of terror. Multiple sources independently describe to Rolling Stone a …
Read More »A Private School Promised to Help Troubled Kids. Instead, Some Say, It Was a Nightmare
In 2004, Bonnie Allen was a 12-year-old girl in Wilmington, Delaware, who loved Spongebob Squarepants, Lizzie McGuire, and the Grease soundtrack. She had fine, corn-colored hair she regularly chopped up and dyed jet black or Elmo red, and a grin that stretched across the entire bottom half of her face, …
Read More »Amid Debates Over Black History, a Park Stands For Truth and Reconciliation
M y recent trip to Montgomery, Alabama, wasn’t my first visit. I had previously explored the city and the sites associated with Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in 2019, in what turned out to be a pivotal moment — after Donald Trump’s ascent to power, but before the Covid-19 …
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