ARC–Southeast had expected to reapply for more funding once that grant expired; the demand from abortion seekers was growing only more acute as more states imposed bans. But after the abortion fund published its Palestine solidarity letter last year, Schusterman moved to distance itself from its grantee. In the weeks following the letter’s release, the foundation informed ARC–Southeast that, rather than pay the third installment of the grant as normal, it would route it through a third-party donor-advised fund. The staff surmised that the change had been made “so that Schusterman’s name was not attached to funding us,” Springer told me. They had reason to worry: An employee at the foundation, whom Springer described as an “ally,” had warned them in an off-the-books meeting that the solidarity statement had put their funding in jeopardy. In late July, after the final installment, of $325,000, had arrived via the third-party fund, a Schusterman official told ARC–Southeast in an email that the payment amounted to a “tie-off/closing grant,” and that the foundation was “waiving any pending report requirements,” according to Springer, who read me the email. In philanthropy-speak, Schusterman was saying that it didn’t want to hear from ARC–Southeast again. (Roben Smolar, a spokesperson for Schusterman, disputed the idea that the philanthropy had cut ties with the abortion fund for political reasons, telling me in an emailed statement that the foundation “made the strategic decision long before October 2023 to shift away from funding individual funds to a long-term approach that will advance broad-scale access across the country,” and adding, “Our level of giving to abortion access has not changed—in fact, it has increased.” She declined to elaborate or answer further questions.)

Donors’ break with abortion funds is just one example of a quiet crackdown currently underway inside the veiled world of American philanthropy. In conference rooms, Zoom meetings, and email inboxes, largely hidden from public view, funders who style themselves as champions of progressive values are conditioning their grants on support for—or, at least, silence about—Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza, denying resources to organizations they had previously supported and praised. More than 40 interviews with people on either side of the grantmaker–grantee divide reveal a pattern of funding decisions that punish expressions of Palestinian solidarity, affecting social justice organizations that work on a range of domestic issues, from police violence and the prison system to environmental justice and the affordable housing crisis. For funders—including prominent Jewish family foundations like Schusterman—the enforcement of Israel-related guardrails lays bare the contradictions inherent in a philanthropic portfolio that pursues a progressive domestic agenda while promoting allegiance to the Jewish state. “These liberal Zionist foundations were not necessarily hiding their focus on Israel, and their support of Israel, as part of their philanthropic work,” before October 2023, said Rebecca Vilkomerson, a former executive director of the anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace who now co-directs Funding Freedom, which organizes for Palestinian liberation within philanthropy. “It’s just that there was an apparent dividing line between the support for progressive causes—which is in line with the ‘liberal’ part of liberal Zionist—and the Zionist causes. And now they’re feeling forced to choose, and they’re choosing Zionist over liberal.”

The clemency action applies to all federal death row inmates except three convicted of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attack; Dylann Roof, who shot dead nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh's Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers in 2018.

Of the more than 3,000 candidates who ran for seats for provincial governors, city leaders, and regents across the country, more than a dozen were influencers. Shu, 37, has more than 200,000 followers on TikTok and about 2.8 million on Instagram. She has been a member of the NasDem Party since 2018, often seen at campaign rallies for party leaders. Still, it is through her social media platforms that voters in Cilacap in Central Java know her best.

Shu did not win, but she is among dozens of influencers in Indonesia trying to parlay their social media success into a career in politics. More than 20 influencers were elected to the Indonesian parliament in the national election in February, the highest number so far. That shows that influencers are gaining the trust of voters, Pradipa Rasidi, a digital anthropologist, told Rest of World.

While Indonesian political parties have a long history of recruiting famous people to boost their chances in polls, the fact that this has now become routine underlines a larger issue of the parties having “failed to foster a new generation of politicians,” Titi Anggraini, an advisory board member at the advocacy group Association for Elections and Democracy, told Rest of World.

With few strong candidates, “they have to increasingly rely on influencers to win elections,” she said. Politicians tend to pick celebrities because of their fame and following rather than their leadership qualities because “people ultimately vote for familiar faces over politicians who they don’t know.”

Candidates who run for office don’t need to have a political background or other relevant experience. But what is worrying is that even after being elected, “most celebrities and influencers don’t spend enough time learning and understanding the party’s ideologies … so they focus more on appealing to people’s emotions and less about educating them, or themselves, about the programs and policies,” Titi said.

The draft law replaces legislation from 1984 and targets internet users who have more than 100,000 followers on a single platform or 200,000 across several, the justice ministry said in a statement.

These outlets and the platforms that host them must have a mechanism to facilitate citizens' right to ask that false or inaccurate information that harms them be corrected publicly, the ministry said.

The correction request will no longer have to be addressed to the outlet's director because confirming their identity is difficult for many "pseudo media", justice minister Félix Bolaños told a press conference.

Manufacturers say that installing a couple of 300-watt panels will give a saving of up to 30% on a typical household’s electricity bill. With an outlay of €400-800 and with no installation cost, the panels could pay for themselves within six years.

In Spain, where two thirds of the population live in apartments and installing panels on the roof requires the consent of a majority of the building’s residents, this DIY technology has obvious advantages.

With solar balconies, no such consent is required unless the facade is listed as of historic interest or there is a specific prohibition from the residents’ association or the local authority. Furthermore, as long as the installation does not exceed 800 watts it doesn’t require certification, which can cost from €100 to €400, depending on the area.

As with all solar power systems, balcony power only works in daylight and a battery storage system can add at least €1,000 to the installation cost.

Vernetta says the vertical surface area of cities is far greater than that of the roofs and that, in Spain, balcony panels benefit more than roof panels from the low winter sun.

Cities such as Helsinki are already experimenting with buildings with solar panel cladding.

From Atlanta’s Westside to Chicago’s South Side, Black neighborhoods are driving bold, innovative climate solutions rooted in community pride and collective action. These efforts aren’t just about survival in the face of systemic neglect — they’re building a future that thrives despite political hostility.

Amite School Center, like many private schools across the Deep South, opened during desegregation to serve families fleeing the arrival of Black children at the once all-white public schools. ProPublica has been examining how these schools, called “segregation academies,” often continue to act as divisive forces in their communities even now, five decades later.

In Amite County, about 900 children attend the local public schools — which, as of 2021, were 16% white. More than 600 children attend two private schools — which were 96% white. Other, mostly white students go to a larger segregation academy in a neighboring county.

“It’s staggering,” said Warren Eyster, principal of Amite County High until this school year. “It does create a divide.”

The difference between those figures, 80 percentage points, is one way to understand the segregating effect of private schools — it shows how much more racially isolated students are when they attend these schools.

A stark pattern emerged across states in the Deep South — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina — where about 200 majority-Black school districts educate 1.3 million students. Alongside those districts, a separate web of schools operates: private academies filled almost entirely with white students. Across the majority-Black districts in those states, private schools are 72% white and public schools are 19% white.

Many of those districts are home to segregation academies, which siphon off large numbers of white students. In many areas, particularly rural ones, these academies are the reason that public school districts scarcely resemble their communities — and the reason that public schools are more Black than the population of children in the surrounding county.

Which county has the largest chasm? Amite.

Unlike for alcohol or heroin, there are no targeted medications to help drug users wean off stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine. While the deadly opioid crisis might make more headlines, 65 percent of drug-related deaths in California now involve stimulants, especially meth. Deaths from these kinds of stimulants more than quadrupled between 2011 and 2019, and the number of amphetamine-related E.R. visits increased nearly 50 percent between 2018 and 2020, according to an analysis by the Oakland nonprofit California Health Care Foundation. Therefore the state is urgently looking for new ways to rein in the drug crisis, and in early 2023, it began the controversial experiment: paying people to stay sober. This could be one part of the puzzle in securing an unexpected outcome: For the first time in decades, overdose deaths have plummeted by 10 percent between April 2023 and April 2024.

Two dozen counties, including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Orange, are participating in the “recovery incentive” or “contingency management,” as it’s called. The state has allocated $60 million for the pilot phase. The 24-week program essentially uses positive reinforcement with the aim of readjusting people’s brains so they associate being sober with gratification. After each negative drug test, they receive a reward. For the first negative test, they get a gift card in the amount of $10, for the second $11.50, up to $26 or a total of $599 (because any amount larger than that needs to be reported to the IRS). It is part of a bigger initiative, CalAIM, to connect the most vulnerable and high-need citizens with resources and non-traditional benefits in a whole-person approach.

Most importantly, when clients test positive, there are no negative consequences. They simply don’t get their reward and drop back to the initial $10 the next time they deliver a negative test. “If they test positive, we take it as an opportunity to engage with them,” Duff explains. “We say, ‘We’re glad you’re here. Let’s sit down and talk about what happened.’ The goal is to keep them completely engaged. The longer they stay talking to a counselor, the better off their chances in the long run.”

The gig economy’s labor model and its algorithmic management technologies now have a foothold in one of the largest labor sectors in the country: health care. On-demand nursing companies such as CareRev, Clipboard Health, ShiftKey, and ShiftMed have promised hospitals more control and nurses more flexibility. Through original interviews with 29 “gig” nurses and nursing assistants, this brief finds that these apps encourage nurses to work for less pay, fail to provide certainty about scheduling and the amount or nature of work, take little to no accountability for worker safety, and can threaten patient well-being by placing nurses in unfamiliar clinical environments with no onboarding or facility training. On-demand nursing platforms are also using the Uber playbook to lobby state legislatures in an attempt to exempt themselves from existing labor regulations. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses have fled the profession as a result of poor working conditions, creating what some have incorrectly identified as a “nursing shortage.” As gig nursing platforms falsely promise to empower workers and meet their needs, it is up to legislators, policymakers, civic leaders, and community organizations to act to solve the real problems at the root of this crisis.

Why shoplifting data matters

Why does it matter if the retail industry produces reports with unreliable data about shoplifting? The NRF is already using this report to advocate for more aggressive prosecution and longer terms of incarceration for people caught shoplifting.

The report encourages "state lawmakers" to "review and amend current criminal statutes that relate to retail thefts and crimes." Specifically, the NRF supports the "aggregation of thefts," which would allow people to be charged with felonies for stealing small amounts of merchandise. The NRF also supports "stronger penalties and consequences" for people "establishing, operating, and supporting" organized retail crime (OCR). OCR, which refers to shoplifting on behalf of a criminal organization, is a poorly defined concept that can be used to more severely punish individuals.