When Hurricane Helene plowed over the Southeast last September, it caused more inland deaths than any hurricane in recorded history. The highest per capita death toll occurred in Yancey County, a rural expanse in the rugged Black Mountains of North Carolina devastated by flash flooding and landslides.

On Monday, we published a story recounting what happened in Yancey. Our intent was to show, through those horrific events, how highly accurate weather warnings did not reach many of those most in harm’s way — and that inland communities are not nearly as prepared for catastrophic storms as coastal ones. No one in Yancey received evacuation orders — and many, including those living in high-risk areas and caring for young children and frail older people, didn’t flee because they didn’t see clearer signs of urgency from the county.

Much has been written about Helene, but very little focused on evacuation orders. During four months of reporting, we found that the responses of local officials across western North Carolina’s mountain counties differed a great deal. We also found that the state lags behind others in terms of what it requires of its county-level emergency managers and that legislators paused for almost a decade an effort to map landslide hazards in the counties that were hardest hit by Helene.

Here are five key discoveries from our reporting:

1. Some counties in harm’s way issued evacuation orders. Others did not.

To determine which cities and counties communicated evacuation orders, we reviewed more than 500 social media posts and other types of messaging that more than three dozen North Carolina jurisdictions shared with their residents in the lead-up to the storm. We compared that with a letter Gov. Roy Cooper sent to then-President Joe Biden seeking expedited disaster relief.

We found that by nightfall on Sept. 26, the day before Helene hit, three counties near Yancey issued mandatory evacuations, targeted toward people living close to specific dams and rivers, and at least five counties issued voluntary evacuation orders.

McDowell County, just southeast of Yancey, took particularly robust actions to warn residents about the storm, including issuing both mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders in enough time for people to leave. Henderson County, southwest of Yancey, targeted a voluntary evacuation order at residents living in floodplains that have a 1 in 500 chance of flooding annually, and its directions were clear: “The time is now for residents to self-evacuate.”

Yancey and at least four other nearby counties also did not issue evacuation orders. Yancey’s emergency manager, Jeff Howell, told us he doubted the county commissioners would support issuing orders or that local residents would heed them given the area’s culture of self-reliance and disdain for government mandates, especially regarding property rights. But some Yancey residents said they would have left or at least prepared better.

Although local officials received repeated warnings — including one that said the storm would be among the worst weather events “in the modern era” — some argued that they couldn’t have done more to prepare because the storm’s ferocity was so unprecedented.

We found that inland mountain communities too often lack the infrastructure or planning to use evacuations to get residents out of harm’s way in advance of a destructive storm like Helene. Some officials in Yancey, for instance, said that they weren’t sure where they would have directed people to go in the face of such an unprecedented onslaught of rain and wind.

In recent years, far more people died in the continental U.S. from hurricanes’ freshwater flooding than from their coastal storm surges — a dramatic reversal from a decade earlier. That’s largely due to improved evacuations along the coasts.

Several Eastern states — including Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia — have adopted plans called Know Your Zone to execute targeted evacuations when storms approach. But these plans don’t often extend very far inland, even though warming ocean temperatures create stronger storms. Powerful storms that are not hurricanes can also turn deadly. In February, storms killed at least 24 people in Kentucky. More have died since in other storms.

2. Disaster messaging varied considerably by county.

To understand how local officials communicated disaster warnings to their residents, we compiled a timeline of alerts and warnings sent out by the National Weather Service and then scoured contemporaneous social media posts that more than three dozen jurisdictions were sharing with their residents. We found big disparities.

For instance, in addition to issuing evacuation orders, McDowell County put out flyers in English and Spanish that warned of life-threatening flash floods and urged all people in vulnerable areas to “evacuate as soon as possible.” Many did.

And about 36 hours before Helene hit, Haywood County’s sheriff warned in a brief video message that a “catastrophic, life-threatening event is about to befall” the county, which has one of the larger populations in western North Carolina. The emergency services director, standing beside him, emphasized: “This message is urgent.” The sheriff then asked residents, starting that night, to “make plans or preparations to leave low-lying areas or areas that are threatened by flooding.” He ended with: “Please, seek safety — and do so now.”

Almost an entire day later, with Helene closing in, officials in rural Yancey were among those who used less-direct wording. In Facebook posts, they asked residents to “please prepare to move to higher ground as soon as you are able” and advised “now is the time to make plans” to go elsewhere as the final hours to leave before nightfall wound down. In one post, they softened the message, adding, “This information is not to frighten anyone.”

ProPublica interviewed dozens of survivors in Yancey, including many who told us that in retrospect they were looking for clearer directives from their leaders.

3. Unlike several nearby states, North Carolina does not require training for local emergency managers.

At the heart of evacuations are emergency managers, the often little-known public officials tasked with preparing their areas for potential disasters. Yet, education and training requirements for these posts vary considerably by state and community.

Yancey’s emergency manager had taken the job seven years before Helene hit after a long and robust Army career. He had no emergency management experience, however. In the years before Helene, he had been asking the county for more help — but by the time the storm arrived, it was still only him and a part-time employee.

Florida recently enacted a law mandating minimum training, experience and education for its counties’ emergency managers starting in 2026. Georgia requires its emergency managers to get the state’s emergency management certification within six months. But North Carolina doesn’t require any specific training for its local emergency managers.

4. North Carolina began examining landslide risks by county, but powerful interests stood in the way.

More than 20 years ago, North Carolina legislators passed a law requiring that landslide hazards be mapped across 19 mountain counties. They did so after two hurricanes drenched the mountains, dumping more than 27 inches of rain that caused at least 85 landslides and multiple deaths.

But a few years later, after only four of those counties were mapped, a majority of largely Republican lawmakers gave in to real estate agents and developers who said the work could harm property values and curb growth. They halted the program, cutting the funding and laying off the six geologists at work on it.

Almost a decade later, in 2018, lawmakers jump-started the program after still more landslide deaths. But it takes at least a year to map one county, so by the time Helene hit, Yancey and four others in the storm’s path of destruction weren’t yet mapped.

Without this detailed hazard mapping, emergency managers and residents in those areas lacked the detailed assessment of risk to specific areas to make plans before landslides clawed down the mountains, killing far more people. The U.S. Geological Survey has so far identified 2,015 Helene-induced landslides across western North Carolina.

The geologists back at work on the project are almost done mapping McDowell County. They would have finished it last year, but Helene derailed their work for a time.

5. We could find no comprehensive effort (yet) to examine lessons learned from Helene to determine how counties can prevent deaths from future inland storms.

Helene left many lessons to be learned among inland communities in the paths of increasingly virulent storms. But as North Carolina figures out how to direct millions of dollars in rebuilding aid, there has so far been no state inquiry into the preparedness of local areas — or what could better equip them for the next unprecedented storm.

Yancey County’s board chair said that he expects the county will do so later, but for now its officials are focused on rebuilding efforts.

A review commissioned by North Carolina Emergency Management examined its own actions and how its staff interacted with local officials. It found the agency severely understaffed. But it didn’t examine such preparedness issues as planning for evacuations or the training requirements for local emergency managers.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022, Anna Malaika Tubbs was in the middle of writing her second book about how fabricated hierarchies of race and gender have become deeply ingrained – and unnoticed – in the United States. When federal protections for abortion access were lost, Tubbs said people were so shocked, asking “How did this happen?” and “Why did this happen?”

“It just really felt like I had to get this book out there,” Tubbs said. “It’s a book on understanding the system of American patriarchy, how that came from the minds of the founding fathers, how they systemized their vision and how we still see traces of it.”

Tubbs, who holds a doctorate in sociology and master’s degree in multidisciplinary gender studies from the University of Cambridge, again felt urgency to publish this book one year later when the Barbie movie came out in the summer of 2023. The film grossed over $1.4 billion worldwide, making it one of the highest-grossing of all time and spurring widespread conversation about gender roles and societal norms. 

“So many people saw this as sort of revolutionary, and there were so many people in the audience around me crying about this film,” Tubbs said. “The only thing the film said was that women need to wake up to the fact that patriarchy exists, spread the word to each other and now everything’s going to be just fine. And that is not the full picture. We’re blaming the victim, especially mothers, and telling them they just need to become more empowered — and that’s absolutely not the case.” 

The following year, as the presidential election was coming to a close, people around Tubbs, including her husband, were excited and hopeful for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. But Tubbs, still working on her book, was fairly positive that President Donald Trump was going to win. She saw connections between her research and the whispers about Project 2025, Trump’s rhetoric around what it means to make America great again and how his campaign spoke about people of color and immigrants. 

“I was so angry in the sense that I kept hoping and wishing that this book could be out right now,” she said. “This could help so many people understand what’s going on and why this is happening. I think we can understand who to turn to for solutions, how we need to vote differently and what kind of policies we need in place so that this doesn’t repeat itself.” 

Tubbs’ new book, “Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us,” hit the stands on May 20. In an interview with The 19th, Tubbs discussed how an unjust system has been perpetuated and outlined concrete steps for how to create a new more equitable country. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Mariel Padilla: You mention in the book that American patriarchy is distinct from other countries and cultures. Can you elaborate on how?

Anna Malaika Tubbs: When I say American patriarchy, I’m not trying to say that it’s the only patriarchal system by any means at all. I have seen patriarchy across the world — the premise being that men should hold more power over women. What I am saying is that one of the reasons we haven’t been able to really challenge patriarchy in the United States is that we haven’t contextualized it. 

American patriarchy is going to be different than Mexican patriarchy, for instance, because of our history with slavery. Who is defined as a man and woman and how we define that binary is largely connected with our history: The founding fathers wrote into the Constitution that to be a man was to have control over other people, to own land and to have the ability to vote. Women were completely left out of that. Black men certainly didn’t have access to this and even some poor White men weren’t included. 

I think one of the primary ways in which patriarchy has persisted is by tricking us into thinking that race and gender aren’t intertwined with each other. When we go back to that breakdown of what it meant to hold power in the United States, we were talking about White, cisgendered, able-bodied, privileged men. It was a very specific, very limited group on purpose because they wanted to maintain their own power. And so we can’t think about humanity in the U.S. without understanding race, and we can’t think about that without understanding gender. 

Let’s appreciate the gains we’ve made. But also ask ourselves why we’re still so vulnerable. We’re still coming up against a system that is at the core of our nation, and we’re not challenging it. We’re only kind of putting band-aids on some of its symptoms and not really addressing the disease where all of those are stemming from. 

The title of the book is “Erased.” For me, it called attention to the fact that there are actors actively doing the erasing, something is being erased and therefore what’s left is not the full picture. Can you walk through how you came to this title? 

I feel like American patriarchy is doing the erasure, but it also has purposely erased itself from the picture so that we think that everything happening to us is natural and unavoidable. We think things have to happen a certain way, and we continue to sort of be surprised because we can’t actually trace it. 

In another way, it’s like a pencil mark that you try to erase, but it is still there. You can’t ever fully erase it, and that’s where the recovery part comes in. Because while you try to take something away, we can always access it by retracing the lines and piecing things together. This is especially important at a time when books are being banned and really blatant erasure is happening — we have to reclaim. 

The last several parts of your book discuss solutions. How can people — particularly women and people of color —  take action, resist unjust systems and create a more equitable society? 

It’s a step-by-step process. I always say we have to start individually. Once you’ve gone through the book and you understand what has been so ingrained, how even maybe our parents have parented us and our teachers have taught us — ask yourself how you see yourself. Do you see yourself as someone who’s supposed to dominate other people? Do you see yourself on this trajectory of needing more power to finally be treated the way you want to be treated? Do you feel the need to wield control over people around you? Or do you see yourself as somebody who’s supposed to be silenced? The individual piece of this is just a general reflection on how the system has already influenced you. 

The second part is our relationships. How are we interacting with each other as a result of this system? How are we parenting our children? Are we trying to dominate them? Are we trying to make them fit into this social order because we’re afraid of what might happen to them otherwise? How are we allowing American patriarchy and its ideals to infiltrate our closest relationships, our marriages, our ties to our parents? 

The third part is a community-level reflection. What are the ways in which we can start fighting against the system by meeting each other’s needs? You don’t have to wait for a national shift. We can start making shifts in our own families and our immediate communities. We can think about how someone else’s pain is hurting me and start to find solutions together. This will change how we vote and who we vote for and the policies we support that bring us back to the things that American patriarchy has taken from us. 

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The effects of Trump’s reshaping of NSF and other national science agencies will be felt far beyond these institutions.

Trump’s aversion to science and research is well-known. So, it is not surprising that the country’s top scientific research agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), were among those targeted under his anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion executive orders and reckless federal funding cuts. At the NSF—where, along with the NIH, about 40 percent of all basic research in the U.S. is conducted—the fallout was immediate and extensive. Grant money was frozen, and any new grant reviews were halted, plunging thousands of researchers into uncertainty. 

Research projects focused on race and gender are facing the brunt of these executive actions. These include projects doing critical work to understand gender and racial disparities in the sciences and develop initiatives to make them more equitable. 

In the U.S., STEM professions are highly inequitable and continue to be male and white-dominated. According to one 2023 estimate, only 28 percent of the U.S. STEM workforce is women. Women professors in STEM face significant barriers to achieving tenure and promotion compared to their male colleagues. Women professors also often leave their jobs at a much higher rate. These are just a few among the many issues that DEI initiatives like the ADVANCE program sought to address within NSF and NIH. 

The ADVANCE program website was archived on Jan. 31, 2025. On Apr. 18, 2025, after weeks of uncertainty, the NSF posted an update on its new priorities. According to this update, awards that will be terminated include, but are not limited to, those celebrating diversity, equity, and inclusion. Since then, hundreds of NSF and NIH grants at institutions across the country, including ADVANCE grants, have been terminated. 

According to one 2023 estimate, only 28 percent of the U.S. STEM workforce is women.

The ADVANCE grant program was founded in 2001 by NSF to support institutional change and increase the representation and advancement of women in academic STEM fields. NSF recognized that despite two decades of efforts to create more opportunities for women in STEM, systemic barriers remained. By its 20th year, the ADVANCE program had supported over 200 institutions with over $365 million in grants. These grants fund various multi-year initiatives to support women faculty through seminars, peer mentoring, professional development, advocates and allies’ programs, as well as institutional surveys to identify barriers and bias. The ADVANCE program has also evolved to become more inclusive. In 2016, it mandated that all funded initiatives should have an intersectional lens by addressing race, nationality, ability, and other factors that shape the barriers faced by women and minority faculty. 

ADVANCE grants, large and small, have positively impacted women faculty at various institutions. They have produced a nationwide inter-institutional support network of women faculty members and administrators in STEM higher education. They have allowed women faculty to initiate meaningful conversations about gender, racial equity, and intersectionality within their STEM departments. For many women in STEM higher education, ADVANCE grants were a critical lifeline. 

For Dr. Sue Rosser, who has served as the Principal Investigator on numerous ADVANCE grants, the significance of initiatives such as ADVANCE is clear. “Several studies have documented that in both basic and applied research, diverse teams are more productive and innovative than non-diverse teams,” Rosser explained. “Restricting gender and racial equity and inclusion efforts undercuts U.S. science and technology.” 

Certainly, there are critiques of institutional DEI initiatives worth discussing. However, the Trump administration is not interested in reforming programs or making them more efficient. Labeling all equity-focused initiatives as “wokeness,” “discrimination,” and “wasteful spending” is really about putting up new barriers for women and minorities. If you’re not convinced, simply look at the press release published by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in February. Titled “Cruz-led investigation uncovers $2 Billion in woke DEI grants at NSF,” it includes a list of federally funded projects that the administration deems to be noncompliant with its executive orders. The grounds for non-compliance are broadly identified as race, gender, social justice, and environmental justice. Unsurprisingly, several projects funded by the ADVANCE program are on the list.  

Labeling all equity-focused initiatives as “wokeness,” “discrimination,” and “wasteful spending” is really about putting up new barriers for women and minorities

A few months ago, creating mentoring groups and other resources for women faculty, or publishing research articles about gender and racial equity issues in STEM, was commonplace. These types of initiatives would never land you on a government “hit list.” But that is the reality we live in now. Dr. Susan Shaw, Professor at Oregon State University, Ms. contributor, and Senior Editor of the ADVANCE Journal, which publishes research on gender equity and institutional transformation in STEM higher education, laments this shift. “The uncertainty created by the threats to grant funding is incredibly demoralizing,” she said. “We have been working to create more inclusive, equitable, and just working environments for women and other minoritized people in academic STEM through publishing research, narratives, and artworks. Now, suddenly, that’s a bad thing?” The NSF ADVANCE grant, which funded the journal, was terminated just a few weeks ago. 

Trump’s attack on what his administration deems “illegal DEI” ignores several critical and validating aspects of these inclusivity projects. First, any project funded by the national science agencies undergoes a rigorous selection and review process by experts. Second, funding for equity projects is not a handout: it is the result of decades of work by women and minorities demanding an end to systemic discrimination and equal opportunities. For instance, the ADVANCE program was created soon after the release of the explosive “MIT report,” which was compiled through the relentless efforts of Professor Nancy Hopkins in 1999. The report detailed the gender inequities and discrimination, including pay disparity, faced by women in the sciences at MIT. 

Further, it is important to remember that what breaks the law is not diversity, equity and inclusion work but the elimination of DEI at agencies like the NSF. NSF’s initiative to expand opportunities for women and minorities is coded into various laws going back to the Science and Engineering Equal Opportunities Act of 1980. The NSF is congressionally mandated to assess how its projects increase the participation of women and minorities in STEM. 

As Trump’s war on inclusion and science continues, the future of NSF’s 45-year-long commitment to creating equity in STEM looks bleak. NSF’s new policies state that “projects that have limited impact or rely on DEI frameworks or advocacy do not effectuate NSF priorities.” The effects of such reshaping of NSF and other national science agencies will be felt far beyond these institutions. Not only will equity in STEM remain a faraway dream; we will lose the progress we have worked so hard to make.

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Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Israel’s expanded offensive in Gaza, Hungary preparing to leave the International Criminal Court, and G-7 finance ministers seeking unity.

Deadly Offensive

As Israel pursues an expanded military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, foreign pressure is mounting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt the new offensive or else risk diplomatic and economic consequences.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Israel’s expanded offensive in Gaza, Hungary preparing to leave the International Criminal Court, and G-7 finance ministers seeking unity.

Deadly Offensive

As Israel pursues an expanded military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, foreign pressure is mounting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt the new offensive or else risk diplomatic and economic consequences.

Leading this charge is the United Kingdom, which announced on Tuesday that it will be suspending free trade negotiations with Israel over its conduct in the territory. London also imposed new sanctions on Israeli settlers whom it said were linked to violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, and it summoned Israel’s ambassador to the British Foreign Office.

“I want to put on record today that we’re horrified by the escalation from Israel,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Parliament on Tuesday, with Foreign Minister David Lammy calling the offensive “incompatible with the principles that underpin our bilateral relationship.”

Israel’s new ground offensive, which the Israel Defense Forces announced on Sunday, came after days of renewed airstrikes on the territory, and more than 300 people have been killed in the latest spate of fighting. The expanded operation is also expected to further displace many of Gaza’s 2 million residents and exacerbate already dire humanitarian concerns there.

Israel has so far resisted foreign efforts to persuade it to stop its military action. “External pressure will not divert Israel from its path in defending its existence and security against enemies who seek its destruction,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein posted on X on Tuesday.

But international pressure and warnings of famine in Gaza have pushed Israel to concede to some demands. On Sunday, Netanyahu allowed his cabinet to approve the resumption of aid deliveries into Gaza. “We cannot reach a point of starvation, for practical and diplomatic reasons,” Netanyahu said, alluding to threats by key allies that Israel would lose support if its monthslong blockade on humanitarian assistance continued.

Since Monday, dozens of trucks carrying baby food and medical supplies have entered the territory. But this number is far less than the 600 vehicles that traveled in and out of Gaza daily during the last cease-fire deal.

“If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response,” the leaders of Canada, France, and the United Kingdom said in a joint statement on Monday. French leadership went further, with Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot telling local radio on Tuesday that “indiscriminate violence and the blocking of humanitarian aid by the Israeli government” has turned the territory into “a death trap.”

Israel’s closest ally, the United States, has been less publicly vocal, but behind the scenes, the Trump administration has reportedly begun to increase the pressure. According to Axios, U.S. President Donald Trump is upset by images of starving Palestinian children and wants the conflict to end soon. The White House has been pushing Israel and Hamas to accept a new cease-fire and hostage-release deal since Trump concluded his Middle East trip last week. But such negotiations have made little progress, and this week, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance canceled his trip to Israel, with one U.S. official saying that Vance did not want his visit to be construed as the Trump administration condoning Israel’s offensive.

Trump has “made it very clear to Hamas that he wanted to see all hostages released” and “made it very clear he wants to see this conflict in the region end,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday. Both Israel and the United States deny that Trump is prepared to abandon Israel or apply more pressure on Netanyahu.

Today’s Most Read

What We’re Following

Leaving the ICC. Hungary’s parliament approved a bill on Tuesday to formally begin the yearlong process of leaving the International Criminal Court (ICC). Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced his intention to do so last month, after Budapest defied an ICC arrest warrant by not detaining Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited the country in March. Netanyahu is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for Israel’s military conduct in Gaza.

The ICC is “no longer an impartial court, a rule-of-law court, but rather a political court,” Orban said at the time, with Netanyahu praising his actions as a “bold and principled decision.” The Hungarian leader has accused the 125-member court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes” and escalating regional tensions.

The ICC’s Rome Statute was adopted in 1998 to prosecute those accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Hungary will become the first European country to leave the global authority since its founding. China, Russia, Israel, and the United States are also not members.

Striving for consensus. G-7 finance ministers and central bank governors convened in Canada on Tuesday to try to seek unity on non-tariff issues, namely efforts to counter China. Six of the seven nations hope to keep the powerful grouping of leading industrialized democracies on the same page, but Washington’s differing priorities—particularly the Trump administration’s disruptive trade war and hostility to climate change mitigation efforts—have hindered the bloc’s effectiveness.

G-7 officials familiar with ongoing talks have suggested that a draft communique is in the works to demonstrate group solidarity. This could include a broad statement of support for Ukraine, backing for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and global collaboration on combatting financial crimes.

According to one U.S. source, the White House is not likely to “do a communique just for the sake of doing a communique.”

For his part, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he plans to use the three-day conference to brainstorm ways to generate more private-sector growth. The Trump administration wants to cut government spending and “reprivatize” the U.S. economy.

Arson attacks. A Romanian man was charged in London on Tuesday with conspiracy to commit arson with the intent to endanger life. Prosecutors accused Stanislav Carpiuc, 26, of being linked to three fires within the past two weeks that targeted two properties and one car all tied to the British prime minister. Carpiuc is the second man charged with involvement and one of three currently in custody. He has denied the allegations.

The first incident occurred on May 8, when a car once owned by Starmer was set ablaze in Kentish Town, North London. Three days later, a fire erupted at an Islington property that Starmer once lived in. The next day, a small blaze broke out at Starmer’s private home in Kentish Town; he has been living at Downing Street since taking office last year. No injuries were reported in any of the fires, though some damage occurred.

These assaults are “an attack on all of us, on our democracy and the values we stand for,” Starmer said. British counterterrorism police are leading the investigation.

Odds and Ends

In 2019, five individuals broke into England’s Blenheim Palace to steal the satirical art piece “America,” a fully functioning, 18-karat gold toilet worth $6.4 million. On Monday, the man convicted of helping the burglars sell the commode was granted leniency. “You no doubt, for the last five and a half years, regret doing [that] … every day since your arrest,” British judge Ian Pringle told the accused. Instead of prison time, the individual was given a two-year suspended term and ordered to perform 240 hours of unpaid work.

Tim Miller talks the latest developments with President Trump’s economic roller coaster.

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Former Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t even announced whether she will run for governor of California, but already the contours of the race are taking shape around her—and they’re being defined by her old boss.

In a statement last night, Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor who is running to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2026, called on Harris and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra (who has actually announced a bid) to “apologize to the American people” and answer questions about the “cover up” involving Joe Biden’s health and physical capacity for office.

“Voters deserve to know the truth, what did Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra know, when did they know it, and most importantly, why didn’t either of them speak out?” Villaraigosa said in a statement.

Villaraigosa’s remarks aren’t just about Biden—who, it’s sometimes hard to remember, led the Democratic party this time last year. They’re also about the future. Revelations about the ex-president’s declining health and the lengths to which his close aides went to keep it private are set to spark massive debates in how Democrats conduct their elections, from the demands placed on the candidates, to the media strategies they pursue, to the scheduling of the presidential primary contests themselves.

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Every presidential cycle loss prompts a party to rethink and restructure how it operates. But Democratic strategists say the 2024 defeat and Biden’s handling of his re-election bid created a massive trust issue that the party will have to address. Some compared it to the role that the Iraq war authorization vote played in shaping the 2008 primary—reconfiguring the issues of that race and tanking the candidacies of those who supported the invasion.

One Democratic strategist who worked on a 2008 primary campaign said, “Obama was fortunate because he wasn’t in D.C. so it allowed him to have natural distance. He could say ‘I’m an outsider’ without saying ‘I’m an outsider.’” In other words, since he wasn’t in Congress in 2002, he didn’t have to vote on the Iraq resolution.

In the modern version of that, candidates further removed from the Biden White House will have more credibility and trust among those in the 2028 electorate who feel burned by party leadership.

Democratic strategists who spoke with The Bulwark said there already seems to be an understanding that whoever runs for the party’s nomination in 2028 will have no choice but to unveil copious amounts of health information, providing the public with a far more detailed report than has been the recent norm. The conventional wisdom is that no one over the age of 70 will even bother running.

Major Democratic voices are calling for even more radical transparency from presidential hopefuls. Some are all but blackballing potential candidates already.

Will Saletan breaks down Bruce Springsteen criticism of Donald Trump at a concert, the hypocrisy of Trump’s response, and how Trump himself repeatedly trashed America and its leaders while abroad.

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Ben Parker is joined by former CIA analyst Holly Berkley Fletcher to discuss Wednesday’s oval office meeting between President Donald Trump and South African Cyril Ramaphosa, where the administration’s conspiracies about white genocide in the latter’s country were brought to the surface.

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