June 22, 2026
Age and Politics
Alternet America - A paper published last month in Nature analyzed individual health data from a long-term study of a large, representative sample of Americans across all 50 states. The finding is blunt: conservatives are dying at significantly higher rates than liberals, and the gap did not exist a decade ago.
“2010 is the last year in which we can say fairly clearly that there is not this gap,” coauthor Elizabeth Elder told Fast Company. By 2016 it showed up in biomarkers. By 2020 it was showing up in deaths from heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
The numbers are stark and specific. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.
Voting
CBS News - A federal judge on Monday ruled the Trump administration acted unlawfully when it created a centralized database that contains Americans' private information, which she said has since been used by some states to incorrectly remove U.S. citizens from their voter rolls.
Tucker Carlson leaves the GOP
Alternet - Speaking for his podcast Can’t Be Censored, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said he is leaving the Republican Party — and he blames President Donald Trump’s ostensible support for Israel.
.... Carlson argued that, by starting a war against Iran in February, he prioritized Israel’s interests over those of the United States. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, Carlson asserted that the president was unduly influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enter a war that America has “effectively lost already.” He added that he believes Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign was funded by individuals whose “loyalty to Israel” does not align with American foreign policy priorities.
The right-wing podcaster’s split with Trump over Israel is part of a broader pattern on both sides of the aisle. A February poll taken by Gallup found support for Israel has dropped among Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. Independents support Palestinians over Israel by 41 to 30 percent and Democrats do so by 65 percent to 17 percent. Republicans still overwhelmingly support Israel, by 70 percent to 13 percent, but this still counts as a 10-point drop since 2024. Overall American support for Israel has fallen from 46 percent to 33 percent in favor of Israel in 2025 to 41 percent to 36 percent against Israel in 2026.
Senate passes housing affordability bill
NBC News - The Senate voted overwhelmingly Monday to pass a sweeping housing affordability bill aimed at lowering costs, putting Congress on the brink of a rare bipartisan victory in President Donald Trump’s second term.
The vote was 85-5. Several senators missed the vote due to severe thunderstorms in the Washington area that led to a ground stop at Ronald Reagan National Airport.
The legislation, which would make it easier to build homes and slap limits on Wall Street investors’ buying up houses, now goes to the House, which hopes to vote on it in the next few days. Then, it would go to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
Donald Trump
The Hill - President Trump’s relationship with key Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), is crumbling after repeated clashes over strategy on an array of issues. The two sides are splitting further apart as the midterm election nears and GOP lawmakers fear the potential loss of both chambers of Congress.
GOP senators say there has been a major loss of trust between the president and many members of their conference as the White House has repeatedly blindsided Thune and other Republican leaders.
...The president undercut GOP leaders last week when he suddenly ordered Jay Clayton, his nominee to serve as director of national intelligence, to not show up at his Senate confirmation hearing. The reversal of the plan left Thune and other Republicans dumbfounded.
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who lost his Senate Republican primary runoff by 27 points after Trump blasted him as “very disloyal” and endorsed his opponent, said Republican colleagues are feeling betrayed by what some of them view as the president’s lack of respect for them as senators and, in most cases, loyal Republicans.
Polls
The Guardian - If any demographic group was key to Donald Trump’s election victories in 2016 and 2024, it was white, blue-collar voters. But in perhaps perilous news for Republicans, Trump’s support from that group has plummeted – as many white, working-class voters have grown upset about everything from increased inflation and gas prices to Trump’s war against Iran. These glaring cracks in Trump’s blue-collar base point to big trouble for Republicans in this November’s midterm elections.
In 2024, Trump won 66% of white voters without a college degree, but a new CBS News poll found that 54% of that demographic disapprove of his performance. That was up from 45% disapproval in February (before Trump began bombing Iran) and up sharply from 32% in February 2025.
This shows severe cracks in Trump’s white, blue-collar base, a group that candidate Trump wooed by promising to crack down on immigration, to reduce prices on day one, to bring back manufacturing jobs and to not start new foreign wars. Many blue-collar voters see that Trump has failed to deliver on any of these promises except for his massive crackdown on immigrants.
Trump calls NY Times treasonous
Independent - Donald Trump lashed out late Sunday night over negative press coverage of his war with Iran, singling out The New York Times for criticism after it asked what the conflict had actually achieved. “The way the Corrupt and Failing New York Times is covering stories on a very battered and beat up Iran, through FAKE & MADE UP ‘FACTS’ is, in my opinion, ‘TREASONOUS,’” the president threatened on his Truth Social platform.
“I will be adding all of their false and ridiculous reporting to my multi Billion Dollar lawsuit against them. They are Criminals!”
National parks: visitors up, staff down
NY Times - Soaring international airfares and other fallout from the war in the Middle East have many Americans looking to stay closer to home this summer, and the 433 National Park Service locations are looming large in those plans.
A summer travel industry forecast released last month by Expedia Group said that interest in national parks and other outdoor hot spots has spiked 65 percent over last year, and that seems to be bearing out: Last month was Yellowstone National Park’s busiest May on record.
Despite major staffing cuts and a 43-day partial government shutdown, more than 323 million people visited national parks last year, about 3 percent fewer than the record-breaking numbers logged in 2024. To accommodate the crowds, parks pulled workers from other duties to focus on visitor services.
This year, staffing remains sharply reduced, and some parks have scrapped their reservation systems, already leading to gridlock at popular sites. In addition, steep new fees for foreign visitors have caused confusion at entry gates, resulting in delays.
Pope Leo: Feed the hungry not war
Independent - Pope Leo on Monday accused world leaders of "feeding" wars instead of the hungry, declaring global priorities "badly skewed". The pontiff, who has been outspoken on political issues in recent months, said governments should increase spending on combating hunger and avoid subjecting food aid to geopolitical limits.
"Conflicts are 'fed' more readily than people are nourished," the first US pope said during his visit to the World Food Programme (WFP) headquarters.
He said this "reflects not only operational shortcomings but also a fundamental imbalance in political and moral priorities." Leo, who drew President Donald Trump's ire earlier this year after criticising the Iran war, did not mention any specific leaders.
The WFP is the largest provider of food aid worldwide. Its biggest donor is the ?US, which announced a new $800 million contribution last week, following earlier cuts by President Donald Trump that more than halved planned US funding.
Gray divorces growing
NY Times - Rates of “gray divorce” — splits among those 50 and older — have risen sharply in the United States, doubling between 1990 and 2010. Though those rates have stabilized since the pandemic, nearly 40 percent of divorces today occur between people 50 and older.
While divorce rates have been dropping across age groups in recent years, the exception to that trend is among Americans ages 65 and up. The reasons are complicated, but it’s becoming clear that some Gen Xers and baby boomers are increasingly unwilling to stay in what sociologists call “empty-shell marriages.”
These are relationships in which there is no real connection or vitality, where one or both partners are not happy, said Susan Brown, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University who co-directs the National Center for Family and Marriage Research. Traditionally, such couples often decided to stay together for the sake of their kids, in view of economic stability or out of fear of stigma.
... Longer life spans are driving older people’s decisions to divorce, said Justin Garcia, the executive director of the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Ind., and the author of “The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love.”
“We as a species are in longer relationships than our ancestors ever were,” he said. “Lifelong monogamy maybe meant a few decades.” Now, though, there are couples who have been together for 50, 60 or even 70-plus years. “That is evolutionarily unprecedented for our species,” Dr. Garcia said.
Sea level rise force island dwellers to leave
Inside Climate Change- Terry Parks stood in the rear of a boat passing the western shore of Tangier Island. A native of this Chesapeake Bay island, he pointed to an area of bulky rocks with withered and wispy green grasses under the sun. A blue water tower stood in the distance.
“That’s grandma’s house,” Parks said, pointing to the gray peaked roofs of homes. “When I was a kid, about a hundred or so yards off the bank is where I used to play. Now there’s about five feet of water there.”
Under the blue sky, wind gusts pushed choppy seas into the vessel, causing people to sway as sea water sprayed onto the deck. Crab traps deep below the surface are marked by buoys. Stilted shanties line the channel that cuts through the middle of the archipelago the island is part of.
Locally, some members of the community leave the fate of the island to God and blame natural erosion, the loss of land because of waves crashing into it, knocking sand and dirt free into the sea. In 2017, Mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge debated former Vice President Al Gore, claiming that sea level rise is not responsible for what’s happening to the island. The coverage prompted President Donald Trump to call and pledge support to Eskridge. But even the mayor now acknowledges that the climate is changing, from differing wind patterns to extreme low and high tides, though he stopped short of saying fossil fuel emissions are what’s putting his people at risk.
But science shows the culprit is sea level rise driven by climate change. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent to buy more time for the 1.2 square-mile island, which was first settled by Europeans in the 18th century....
.... Southeast of Washington D.C., Tangier Island is about a 50-minute boat ride heading west from the Delmarva Peninsula. ...“Eventually it’s going to affect a lot more people than it already affects. People don’t really pay much attention to it until it really affects them,” said Eskridge, of the flooding. “The climate is definitely changing and changing fast … you’re going to need to adapt. If you’re unable to adapt you are in trouble.”
... Research from BayLand, an engineering and consulting firm working with Tangier Island, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, show that parts of the island have experienced a rate of 32 feet of land loss a year.
Trump regime
Headline USA - The Pentagon has told Congress that it needs $80 billion to pay for the Iran war and other non-war-related costs, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
The Pentagon had previously claimed that the war cost $29 billion as of mid-May, a number that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, as an analysis from Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute found that the war had cost about $72 billion in just the first 60 days, an estimate that doesn’t factor in indirect costs.
The costs have continued to add up despite the ceasefire, and the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, as the US is maintaining its military posture in the Middle East, which includes major naval armadas that were enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports.
There is a concerted effort to move away from the current ‘Duration of Status’ system, which allows students to stay in the country as long as they remain enrolled and maintain academic progress. Under the proposed rules, students would instead receive a fixed period of admission.
Those whose studies extend beyond that period would need approval from U.S. immigration authorities to remain in the country. These changes would be notable for international students who move from undergraduate programs into master’s or doctoral programs, transfer schools, or use programs such as Optional Practical Training (OPT) to work in the United States after graduation.
The Epstein files
New Republic - The Department of Justice claims that it’s released every document that’s required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But the agency previously said it collected more than six million pages of material during its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, and it only released around three million. So what’s in the rest of the Epstein files?
The DOJ claims that the other three million pages are either duplicates, unrelated to Epstein, or protected by legal privilege. But because of the administration’s lack of transparency in regard to Epstein, many are concerned that something is still being hidden.
CBS News analyzed the available files to try to figure out which documents appeared to be missing, and found a number of notable omissions: questionable redactions, missing emails from older accounts, lack of massage scheduling records after 2009, missing prison surveillance footage, and more.
Notably, most of the emails in the released files were from an email account created in 2008, around the time Epstein went to jail...
But Epstein had other, older email addresses that were mentioned in only a few, highly redacted publicly released files. One missing account, littlestjeff@yahoo.com, was from the early 2000s—the time when Epstein was most in touch with Donald Trump.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is innocent of all charges when it comes to his connection with Epstein. But, as this analysis by CBS reveals, we may still be missing major pieces of the puzzle.
Middle East
If our coverage of the Iran crisis seems a bit weak, it's because both sides in the conflict are currently involved in negotiations and their descriptions of the status is highly unreliable.
How clinical psychologist Dr Mary Trump views her uncle
Alternet - President Donald Trump's niece, Dr. Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist by profession, is sounding the alarm that her elderly uncle is spiraling. In a conversation with reporter Steven Beschloss for her Sunday newsletter, Dr. Trump explained, “He may still have moments when he appears more coherent, but psychically he’s in a downward spiral. He’s experiencing constant narcissistic injuries, and nothing terrifies Donald more than humiliation.”
Beschloss questioned whether she felt that the 80-year-old president looked “unusually diminished” as of late. Dr. Trump cautioned, “I think this is simply the direction things are heading.”
"He’s experiencing constant narcissistic injuries, and nothing terrifies Donald more than humiliation," she continued. "The problem for him is that nobody humiliates Donald more effectively than Donald humiliates himself. The G7 came immediately after the sixty-million-dollar taxpayer-funded spectacle at the People’s House. Everything he’s doing now exists in service of protecting his fragile ego and trying to fill what I’ve long described as the black hole of need within him."
Building a working class political party
Redneck Gone Green - Tune in today, Monday, June 22nd starting at 3pm pacific, 6pm eastern when Shane and I will be in conversation with Les Lopold, co-founder of the Labor Institute and author of The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own. As always, the video broadcast will be on the Democracy@Work Youtube channel.
Les Leopold has long occupied a distinctive position within American labor intellectual life. Les is part educator, part movement historian, and part strategic diagnostician of working-class decline. As co-founder and executive director of the Labor Institute, he has spent nearly five decades translating the abstractions of political economy into concrete, understandable, and usable tools for union educators and rank-and-file organizers. His work—from Wall Street’s War on Workers to Runaway Inequality—has consistently argued that the central conflict in American politics is not primarily cultural or partisan, but structural: the systematic transfer of wealth and power upward.
The new book, The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own, extends this argument into explicitly electoral terrain. His wager is that working-class Americans already hold broadly shared economic preferences across racial, regional, and partisan lines, but lack an organizational form capable of expressing them independently of the two-party system.
His career emerged in the aftermath of deindustrialization, union decline, and the consolidation of finance capital. Unlike many academic political economists, he has consistently prioritized pedagogy over theory-building: workshops, training manuals, and popular education materials designed to make systemic critique legible to workers themselves.
This orientation matters because The Billionaires Have Two Parties is not written as a theoretical intervention but as a strategic manual. Its empirical backbone is a multi-state poll of working-class voters in the industrial Midwest, which finds broad support for policies such as price controls on pharmaceuticals, limits on corporate layoffs, and expanded public employment. The implication is clear: ideological polarization is far less entrenched at the level of material interest than electoral behavior suggests.
UK
The Guardian - Keir Starmer has announced he will stand down as prime minister after days of intense pressure from Labour MPs, paving the way for Andy Burnham to take over at Downing Street. Less than two years after a historic election victory, Starmer had faced calls from his MPs, including privately from cabinet ministers, to set out a timeline for his departure, with many of them unnerved by the threat from Nigel Farage’s party before the next general election.
Starmer’s decision to announce his departure kickstarted the process to become the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years.
Burnham confirmed he would run for the Labour leadership, saying an “orderly and responsible” transition of power would ensure “stability, seriousness and a continued focus” on the issues that mattered most to the country.
Within minutes of Burnham’s statement, Wes Streeting – the politician most likely to have run against the former mayor of Greater Manchester – announced he was instead throwing his weight behind Burnham, making a coronation highly likely despite the misgivings of some MPs.
Burnham, who was travelling down to Westminster from Manchester on Monday, is likely to have just over three weeks to prepare for government, including confirming his policy priorities and picking his cabinet, with his choice of chancellor eagerly anticipated.
NPR - Part of Starmer’s challenge was his failure to
connect with people and to deliver the real change he promised after
14 years of austerity under the previous Conservative rule, NPR’s Lauren Frayer
tells Up First. In recent weeks, Starmer's own Labour lawmakers and
parliamentary party began to turn against him. Burnham is viewed as more folksy
and could be more relatable with voters in a way Starmer was not. He is also
likely slightly to the left of Starmer and more inclined to robustly defend the
welfare state. Burnham will face the same
challenges that Starmer did, including rising global energy prices and
strained public finances. Frayer says this shift represents more of a change in
personality rather than policy, given that they belong to the same party.
June 21, 2026
Polls
Futurism - In a sweeping new poll conducted by Pew Research, only 16 percent of respondents said they believed AI will have a positive impact on society — a number as dismal as the perception of the tech.
Meanwhile, 49 percent of adults say they use AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which remains the most popular by a considerable margin, with a quarter saying they use the tools daily. That proportion is considerably higher than the 33 percent of American adults who said they used AI chatbots in 2024.
In other words, the tech’s widespread adoption isn’t helping its perception. A full 40 percent of respondents said they anticipate AI will have a negative impact on society, and 31 percent said it will impact them personally in a negative way, too.
How do people in the US describe customer service
The Guardian - Guardian readers from across the US wrote in to tell us about their battles with big companies, and the time, expense and emotional toll exacted by businesses they say are prioritizing the bottom line over all else. The top takeaway: people really, really don’t like AI customer service.
Readers’ main complaint is not that it is impersonal, it’s that it doesn’t work for anything but the most basic customer service tasks, like checking balances, changing addresses or making payments, things most customers are doing online anyway.
About one in 10 of the reader responses we have received so far called out automated chatbots as endless doom loops, a massive time suck, and steep hurdle to resolving product problems and fraud claims.
“It’s the bots. Daily battle with stupid, useless, brain-dead bots on the phone, trying to reach a human being to learn or explore or resolve some damn thing,” wrote a communications professor from a university near Boston. “Infuriating, exhausting, debilitating, depressing, enraging. Ugh.”
Six camping essentials
Erin Neil, NY Times - I like the idea of camping more than I like camping itself. But even if I were a fan of spending a weekend entirely outdoors, I’m dissuaded by having to figure out what I’d do with the equipment for the 51 other weekends not spent sleeping under the stars. After all, my boyfriend and I share a small apartment with only one closet between us.
However, my outdoorsy (or outdoorsy-ish) colleagues recently shared a whole bunch of ways they use their camping and hiking gear, even when they’re not actually camping or hiking. I found it inspiring enough to add a couple items to my cart. (I’ll figure out where to put them later.)
Hiking shoes are unsurprisingly exceptional walking-around-anywhere shoes. Writer Caroline Mullen wore her Salomons gallivanting around Japan for two weeks. “They’re the most comfortable and easy-to-slip-on sneakers I own,” she says. And head of newsletters Sofia Sokolove lives by the “wrong shoe theory,” styling her gorp-y hiking sandals with super girly tops and dresses in the summer.
Headlamps received a resounding endorsement from quite a few people. Deputy editor Annemarie Conte says she uses them “for all sorts of annoying DIY tasks that require peering in dark corners,” like when her husband needed to peek inside a particularly finnicky doorknob. Pets expert Mel Plaut recommends it as a hands-free way to light up nighttime dog walks. And writer Evan Dent reminds us of another way it can come in handy, “Two words: Night. Grilling.”
Mel also told us that their multitool — which is specifically built for the wilderness — never actually sees the outdoors. “It lives in the center console of my Kia,” they admit, “and is very useful right where it is, cutting random stuff and screwing random screws.”
Carabiners aren’t just for mountaineers. Editor Rory Evans says, “My entire life is pretty much held together with a long chain of carabiners and hook thingamabobbers.” As a gift, she recently received a real-deal version that can hold up to 350 pounds. And editor Katie Okamoto uses a sleek mini carabiner to hang her keys. (And, for the record, so do I.)
We’re also big fans of keeping packable camping chairs nearby at all times — even if we’re never leaving the city. Social media editor Hali Potters loves that her tiny, lightweight seat breaks down small enough to fit inside a standard tote. “Having a tiny chair on me at any given time changed my life,” she says.
Book Stores
Arts Journal - Bookstores are booming even as literacy declines (Lit Hub), summer box office has surged (Deadline), and the Book of the Month Club is somehow cool again (Publishers Weekly). Against that, the machinery of choosing is consolidating fast. Penske Media swallowed what was left of Vox to become the world’s largest digital publisher (TheWrap), Fox spent $22 billion on Roku (Hollywood Reporter), and the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger approval drags on (MSN). Consolidation everywhere.
Motor oil
NPR - The cost of lubricants like motor oil is rising rapidly, and even a tentative agreement to end the war in Iran will not alleviate the issue. Motor oil is essential for protecting your car's engine from wear and tear. The oil used in synthetic motor oil, in particular, is not produced in large quantities in the U.S. In addition, the U.S. has the largest trade deficit in the world for this form of oil. The current shortage could lead to significantly higher costs for your next oil change. Since the war began, the industry has been relying on inventories — stockpiles of base oil — that have helped mitigate the impact on retail customers. However, these stockpiles are now depleting. While full-price hikes have not yet affected drivers, mechanics are starting to feel it.
Housing
NPR The United States is currently experiencing a renter's market, but there is one significant caveat: location matters. According to Zillow, the typical asking price for rent nationwide is rising more slowly than wages and inflation, up by 1.9% year-over-year. Approximately 40% of rentals listed on Zillow are offering move-in deals, such as a month of free rent, due to a construction boom that has led to a surplus of apartments in certain areas of the U.S.
Health
The Hill - The COVID-19 vaccine lowered the risk of cardiovascular issues associated with the virus by around 40 percent, according to new research. The study, which was published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday, studied the incidence of medical events like strokes and heart attacks in veterans immunized for COVID-19.
The study found that the vaccine decreased the risk of cardiovascular death associated with the virus by nearly 60 percent, the risk of heart attack by around 40 percent and the risk of stroke by just more than 30 percent. Additionally, it decreased the risk of hospitalization for heart failure by around 40 percent, according to the study.
The researchers found that people over the age of 75 had the greatest reduction in risk for these health issues, as well as those with preexisting health conditions. Other research supports these new findings.
June 20, 2026
Polls
Pew Research - About eight-in-ten U.S. Catholics (78%) have a favorable view of Pope Leo XIV, down slightly from last year, according to a survey conducted after a public clash between Leo and President Donald Trump. While 19% of Catholics say Leo has been too critical of the Trump administration, 51% say the president has been too critical of the pope.
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