Author: Reporter

If you stumbled on the scene too late, you might have missed him there, bloodied and beaten. The officers’ demeanors seem untroubled and their work nonurgent as they mill at this quiet corner trading battle tales, a fist bump and a back pat. The police ranks have ballooned, but everyone seems to agree there’s nothing to see here. They tie their boots and fret over their glasses and carp about knee pain, so you might have missed him there among the phalanx that towers above, the ones who wear a smile and spurt laughter and will go home safe....

A timeline of events in the Tyre Nichols case, which sparked state and federal investigations into police brutality and led to murder and other charges against the five officers involved in his arrest in January. January 7: Tyre Nichols is pulled over by police for an alleged traffic violation after photographing a sunset, according to accounts his family would give later. A confrontation ensues, and he is brutally beaten by five Memphis police officers in an encounter that is recorded by police body cameras. January 8: Memphis police say in a statement that officers attempted to stop a man...

Nearly six years into monitoring the content of conservative media outlets for his website and newsletter The Righting, Howard Polskin has not lost the capacity for surprise. Case in point: when Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential candidacy, and many of his long-time media allies let fly with anger and insults. Two impeachments, two years of election denials and a U.S. Capitol riot didn’t have the impact of a disappointing showing by Republicans in the midterm elections. “I didn’t expect the level of vitriol, there’s no question about it,” he said. Trump’s inauguration in 2017 started Polskin on his...

Jerry Lamb could not maneuver his wheelchair into the rows of pews at his church. It would not fit. Nor could he sit in the aisles without awkwardly blocking the way. So he adapted. It is a regular part of his new life with limited mobility that requires near-constant calculations of how to navigate a world no longer set up for him. That included his longtime church in Camden, Tennessee – one of the many U.S. houses of worship with accessibility limitations. Instead, on Sundays, he worshipped in the narthex at the back of Camden First United Methodist Church,...

Anti-abortion groups hoped and strategized for decades for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that was delivered last June, ending a court-protected right to abortion after nearly 50 years. The fallout was immediate and far-reaching, and it is not over yet. The midyear ruling in 2022 overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established the right to abortion, shaped the national political agenda for the rest of the year and put abortion access in flux. The shifts are expected to keep coming as lawmakers, voters and judges weigh in. After the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling that left abortion up...

As Republican Tyler Kistner’s closing ad aired before the 2022 midterm elections in one of the most competitive congressional districts in the United States, Vickie Klang felt that something was missing. The 58-year-old veterinary technician and self-described independent voter watched as the 30-second spot showed grainy black-and-white images of President Joe Biden with two-term Democratic Rep. Angie Craig superimposed alongside him. The narrator ominously described life in America as “dangerous and unaffordable” because of an alliance between the two Democrats. Absent from the ad, Klang thought, was anything close to a solution beyond electing Kistner. “You’re never telling me...